The only thing she could think of to say was, “We should eat, then try to sleep. As soon as the rain stops, we have to ride.”
“Yes,” he said. Then: “Have you given any thought to where?”
She had hoped he would not ask that. But since he had, she answered, “I think we’re closer to the Mountain than to Aurelia. It will be safer there.”
“Nothing is safe if our captors do what they set out to do.”
“We can warn the riders through the stallions,” she said. “You shouldn’t—”
“I have to go to Aurelia.”
“You can’t,” she said. “You aren’t strong enough.”
His jaw set. “I must. I know what they’re going to do. I have to stop it.”
“Didn’t you hear me? You’re as weak as a baby. Your magic is full of holes. You won’t even get that far. That mage, that Gothard, will kill you.”
“Maybe,” he said, “but I have to go.”
“You do not.”
“I do,” he said. He reached up and laid a finger over her lips. “No. No more argument. This needs my training, and such discipline as I have left. It needs me. Gothard is strong, but he’s not invincible.”
“He’s stronger than you,” she said stubbornly, shaking off his hand.
He shook his head. “Not in himself he’s not. I was always stronger, even before I went to the Mountain.”
She opened her mouth, then shut it again. He was coming back to himself, and making her feel like a fool. “I noticed before that he looks like you. What is he? Cousin?”
“Brother,” said Kerrec.
“But that makes you—”
He nodded.
“His mother was Caletanni. There’s nothing of that blood in you. Which means—”
“Yes.”
She was not angry. She was hardly surprised. She had guessed a long while since that he had been born a nobleman, and a duke at least. Paulus was too respectful for him to have been any less. But—
“You’re dead,” she said.
He threw his head back and laughed until the tears ran. She was ready to slap him silly by the time he stopped. His eyes were still streaming, and he was hiccoughing, but he could talk, more or less. “There! You see? I’m in no danger. I’m already dead.”
She did slap him then, and not lightly, either. Deep down was the thought that the penalty for striking a deceased imperial heir must be slightly less than the one for flattening a First Rider.
He was in no condition to blast her, and he did not seem inclined to try. He lay in his nest of horse blankets with a new bruise darkening on top of the old ones, grinning like an idiot. “You’re not even in awe of me,” he said.
“I want to throttle you,” she said. “Can you even go to Aurelia? I heard that you died in tragic circumstances, and your family mourned you for a year. If that’s what they really thought, and they see you on one of the stallions, or worse, staggering in looking the way you do now, won’t you be ripped to pieces for perpetrating a fraud?”
“They know,” he said. His grin was gone. “I’m dead to my family. But the blood is still there. I know how to find the cracks and flaws in my brother’s power.”
“He’s found all of yours. He’s damned near broken you, you blazing idiot. Can’t you see—”
He caught her shoulders and shook her. The storm of anger had taken her by surprise. She was terrified for him and furious with him, both at once.
She tried to speak sensibly. “Whatever he was when you were children, he’s a powerful sorcerer now. He’s been torturing you for days. Will you please apply your famous discipline and see that you are no match for him?”
“I have to be,” he said. It was like a door shutting.
“You are so easy to hate,” she said in frustration. “Why can’t you—”
She never finished. He had pulled her to him and silenced her in the most maddeningly irresistible way of all, with a kiss. She wanted to beat him off, but the fire was rising under her skin. Her fingers tightened just short of raking nails down his back.
She had taken him first. Now he took her. It was a completely underhanded thing to do, but she had lost her indignation somewhere. Anger was still there, burning strongly. It made her all the more eager for him. Love was like war, with bloodshed and sweet pain.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Kerrec was asleep. Valeria had drowsed for a while, lulled by the rain, but as it lessened, she swam toward wakefulness. The horses had left the cave and gone to graze in the thin drizzle.
Sabata was not within reach. She was too dull with sleep to be alarmed yet, but she wondered at it. Maybe he had gone for help. Maybe the caravan of riders was somewhere nearby.
As soon as she thought it, she knew that was absurd. Even if Master Nikos had sent a party to search for the First Rider and his most annoying servant, the greater part of the caravan, with all the stallions, would have gone on to Aurelia. Nothing, not war, not invasion, not ambush in the mountains, could interfere with the Great Dance. Even for the youngest First Rider in years out of count, who happened to be the emperor’s firstborn son, the Master could not turn aside from his journey.
That was reality. So was the man asleep by the banked fire, wrapped in horse blankets. When Valeria looked at him, she felt a rush of fierce protectiveness. She could not let him go to Aurelia and be killed. He would have to go to the Mountain, to the Ladies and the white gods. No matter how he argued, she would make sure he went where he was safe.
She slipped back into a doze. The rain pattered into silence. Slow light grew. Morning was coming. She had to get up, break camp and ride.
She could not make herself move. The blankets reeked, but they were warm. Kerrec was buried in rough wool, with nothing showing but a tousle of black curly hair.
Just as she convinced herself that she could get up, a stone clattered outside. She froze.
It was only the horses grazing. She heard one of them snort. Still, she hunted down her clothes and put them on. They were damp and her boots were stiff. She wished she had a weapon, but she did not even have a knife for cutting meat.
Kerrec was still asleep. She laid his clothes close by him in case he woke while she was outside.
There was nothing there but the horses. She told herself that, but she crept out with hunter’s caution. The rain had stopped but the clouds were still thick. Mist veiled the trees.
The horses were grazing far down the stretch of grass. Sabata was nowhere to be sensed. It was perfectly quiet. No bird sang. No wind whispered in the branches. Even the sound of horses cropping grass was muted.
She fetched her bay’s bridle, which was as stiff as her boots. Neither he nor the chestnut looked up as she approached.
That was odd. Horses were alert to everything around them, and a human walking toward them with a bridle was worth at least a glance.
She slowed. That moment of hesitation, of dawning suspicion, kept the blow from falling quite so hard. The bolt of magic did not quite knock her unconscious.
She was aware of falling. She saw people around her, taking shape out of the mist. Most of them were in guards’ uniforms, with faces she recognized. She looked from them to Gothard and knew a moment of perfect hate.
She concentrated that hate, aimed and loosed it. Gothard reeled, but he was doubly and triply shielded. The worst of the stroke slid away and blasted the earth around him to ash.
“My lord!” a voice called from behind her. She rolled until she could see. Gothard’s guards were coming out of the cave, dragging the naked, stumbling, bruised and half-conscious Kerrec. He was laughing. Even when they flung him on his face at his brother’s feet, he did not stop.
Gothard kicked him hard. He grunted. His laughter diminished to giggles but did not die away. Gothard hooked his foot under Kerrec’s ribs and heaved him onto his back.
He lay still giggling, with his face bruised and bloody. Gothard’s foot poised to crush the silliness out of him, but lowered to the
ground with the blow unstruck. “Back,” he said to the guards. His voice was thick. “Back to the lodge.”
“Why do you laugh?”
Kerrec grinned at the Brother of Pain. He was beyond fear. All that was left was mirth. “Wouldn’t you?” he said—with difficulty. His lip was split. So was his cheekbone. And his forehead, which had bled abominably before it stopped.
“I find the world less than amusing,” the torturer said.
“Ah,” said Kerrec, “but it’s all a vast pratfall. Everything that is has slipped in the slime of creation and gone tumbling down and down and down and—”
“Kill him,” said Gothard, his voice clotted with hate. “Do it as slowly as you like, but kill him.”
The Brother of Pain lifted a hand in a gesture that might have begged to differ, but if so, he reconsidered. He shrugged. “As you will, lord,” he said.
“Isn’t that a bit of a waste?” Euan asked.
The torturer was plying his trade in a larger room than before, with a gallery from which to observe his handiwork. Euan was somewhat of a connoisseur of torment, as it was sacred to the One. This imperial torturer was a fair journeyman of the art.
Nevertheless Euan said to Gothard, “Breaking him I can see. If he’s a slave to your will, he’ll be useful when we come to the Dance. Killing him does nothing but indulge your temper.”
Gothard threw back his head until he could glare down his nose at Euan. Euan lounged against the rail of the gallery, conspicuously unimpressed. Gothard spat, not quite at Euan. “Tell me, then. What would you do?”
“I would use him,” Euan said. “I don’t suppose there’s enough left of him for the Dance now, but the girl is obviously attached to him. Can’t you see the possibilities?”
Gothard’s lip curled. “What, apart from the obvious?”
“Even the obvious has its uses,” Euan said equably. “This one broke before he bent. The other is younger, it’s said she may be stronger, and she’s female besides. She risked her life for him once. What might she give to keep him alive?”
“I want him dead,” Gothard said.
Euan could not afford to snap this idiot’s neck. Fool or no, without him there was no hope of succeeding. Euan unclenched his fists, drew a deep breath, and said remarkably steadily, “You’ll get what you want. But use him first. The girl won’t capitulate to save her life, but she’ll do it for his.”
Gothard scowled. Sometimes, Euan thought, he understood the riders’ insistence on discipline. This spoiled prince might be a powerful mage, and he was unfortunately indispensable, but he had precious little control of his temper.
“Listen,” said Euan as patiently as he could. “Think. We need the girl. The old man has all the words in place and polished smooth, but he lost the horse magic a long time ago. You may gamble that he can control the Dance without it. I’ll wager he can’t. She’s the one who will do it, and she’s already proved that she’s anything but tame. We can tame her—if we use this man.”
“Use him, then,” Gothard said with bad grace. “But watch him—and her—that they don’t use you.”
“I shall be very watchful,” Euan said.
Valeria did not remember the ride back to the lodge. She let go of the world as the guards hauled her up and flung her over a horse’s back. When she came to herself again, she was lying in the familiar, hated bed. Her hands and feet were bound. The wards on her were so strong that her stomach heaved.
There was nothing in it, which was fortunate. Bound as she was, she would have choked.
Then again, if she had, she would have been spared the inquisition that she knew was coming. She had stolen her captors’ royal prisoner and escaped. She would pay for that. How dearly, she would certainly learn.
She slid into a restless doze. Her wrists and ankles were softly bound, the cords as gentle as they could be, but after a while she ached with lying in the same position. When she tried to roll onto her side, further bindings stopped her. She was tied to the bedposts.
After what seemed a very long time, a figure loomed over her. She looked up into Euan’s face.
Of course it would be Euan. She did not know what she felt when she saw him. She still wanted him. She liked him. Loved him? Maybe. But there was the simple fact, the one that overcame them all. He was not Kerrec.
He was not a mage, which at the moment was a very good thing. He sat beside the bed and looked hard at her, searching her face. She hoped he read nothing there but resistance.
“You led my cousin on a merry chase,” he said. He sounded almost amused. “He’s terribly annoyed with you.”
“Listen,” she said. Her tongue felt thick and unwieldy. “Whatever you want, I’m not giving it to you. Just start the torture and get it over with.”
“Torture?” He seemed honestly taken aback. “What makes you think we’d do that to you?”
“You need to ask?”
“I’m not Gothard,” he said, “and you’re not Gothard’s brother. I don’t need to break you. I want to be your ally.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is,” he said. “I won’t hide it from you—Gothard wanted you on the rack, if not worse. But you’re more use to us whole than maimed.”
“Why? I’m worthless as a hostage. The school doesn’t want me. More likely they’ll thank you for getting rid of me.”
“You underestimate yourself,” Euan said.
“I know what I am. Sabata is the one you really want.”
He spread his hands. “We want him, I grant you that. But not as much as we want you.”
“Why?”
He did not answer that. “If I untie you, will you promise not to bolt?”
“Where would I bolt to?”
He acknowledged that with a tilt of the head and bent to unfasten the cords. When they fell away, she flexed her arms and legs carefully. They were stiff, and they ached.
She sat up. Euan braced, maybe not even aware of it, but ready to catch her if she made a run for it.
She was not running anywhere, not yet. “I’m hungry,” she said.
He was quick to call for food, but he never took his eyes off her. She sat rubbing the arm that ached the most and listening to her stomach growl. “How long was I out?” she asked.
“It’s morning again,” he said. “Gothard hit you too hard with his sorcery. For a while we were afraid—” He shook himself. “We—I—made him mend you as much as he could.”
She shuddered. Her stomach heaved. The thought of Gothard’s hands on her, his magic in her, made her physically ill.
“Don’t worry,” Euan said with a grim edge. “He didn’t touch anything that mattered.”
“How would you know?”
“I had a knife at his throat,” Euan said, “and Mestre Olivet watched him to be sure there were no tricks. Olivet likes you. Better than that, he’s in awe of you. He says you’re stronger than any rider he ever saw.”
“Stronger than—”
“Stronger than the one who almost got away.” Euan tilted his head. His eyes were steady, narrowed just a little, as if he were a wolf and she were prey. “That was interesting, how easily you stole him. I didn’t know they taught such skills to rider-candidates.”
There was no thought in her at all. She launched herself at him. “What did you do to him? Where is he? What have you done? By all the gods, if you’ve touched a hair of his head—”
He fended her off too damnably easily, though his eye would swell and bruise where her fist had caught it. “By the One! I never laid a hand on him.”
“Then I know who did,” she said in stillness as sudden as her eruption. “He’s still alive. I’d know if he was dead. How long will he stay that way?”
“That depends on you,” Euan said.
She stared at him, empty of words.
“Come with me,” he said.
Valeria stood in the gallery and looked down at Kerrec. The torturer was taking apart his mind and magic, piece by piece.
She could feel it in the air, a deep, subtly shattering vibration.
“This is killing him,” she said. Her voice sounded flat. The gallery was shielded. If she had tried to leap off it, she would have struck wards like a wall.
Euan seemed unaware of the currents that ran through the air, that to her were all but unbearable. “He will die,” he said, “if this keeps on. Gothard will make sure of that.”
“Gothard is a fool,” she said. “If you’re going to disrupt the Dance, all you need is a cask of thunder powder and a spark. You want to control it, and for that you need a rider. You won’t be abducting another, not after this. He’s all you have.”
“Oh, but he isn’t,” Euan said. “We still have you.”
“Do you?”
He tilted his head toward the figures below. “I’ve forced Gothard to agree. If I can make a bargain with you, that one lives.”
Her heart slammed into her throat. “And if you can’t, he’s dead.”
“You have a fair grasp of the obvious,” he said.
“So? What’s the price?”
“I’m sure you know.”
“I’m not a rider,” she said. “There’s no proof I can do what you need.”
“Mestre Olivet says you can.”
“Mestre Olivet is a bag of empty wind.”
Euan did not seem either surprised or dismayed to hear that. “Oh, he’s a windbag, sure enough. If he really had the powers he claims, he’d have taken stallions with him when he left the Mountain. Still, there’s one thing he has, and that’s a school of riders who aren’t bound to the Mountain. He’s been pondering ways to divert the Called—not with any success, mind, but the seeds are planted. Just think what you could do with them.”
“Start another school? A real one?” In spite of herself, Valeria felt the pull of temptation. “The Mountain would never allow that.”
“How do you know? The Mountain never Called a woman before, either. Maybe it’s making changes, and it’s the men who are lagging.”
She shook her head, more to clear it than to deny what he was saying. “You want me to break up the Dance, change the future and take the stallions away from the Mountain. Do you want me to do anything else while I’m at it? Bring down the moon? Turn the sea to dry land?”
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