A Man Rides Through (79 page)

The knock—

Abruptly, she locked herself still, sweating in runnels; and the sound went on, a wooden sound, not her feet belaboring the bed.

Someone was pounding on the door hidden inside one of the wardrobes. She could feel her pulse hammer against the bones of her skull.

She jerked upright.

At once, the sweat seemed to freeze on her skin.

The dim glow from the embers in the hearth lit Geraden as he leaped past her. He grabbed his underclothes and breeches, pulled them on; tossed a couple of logs into the fire. Then he went into the sitting room, unbolted the door, warned the guard outside.

The knocking was steadier than the rhythm of her heart.

A small crackle of flame caught at the new wood. As if that small sound, that little jump of light, released her, she swung her legs out of bed.

Luckily, her robe was in the other wardrobe, the safe one. Shivering as if her limbs were crusted with ice, she snatched out the garment, got her arms into the sleeves, sashed the velvet around her.

The knocking went on. Whoever was in the secret passage was apparently determined to pound there all night if necessary.

"You all right?" Geraden whispered.

She nodded. "Just a bad dream." She faced the wardrobe. "Let's open it."

The door of the wardrobe was already slightly ajar. Geraden swung it out of the way, then reached in and unblocked the chair from the hidden entrance.

As the secret door opened, light filtered through the clothes like sunshine through a forest.

Adept Havelock.

The light came from his hand-sized mirror, his piece of translated sun—the same mirror he had used to incinerate the red-furred creature which had attacked Geraden.

Seeing the Adept, Geraden let out a slow breath. At once, he turned away, left the bedroom. Terisa heard him tell the guard to relax, heard him bolt the door.

Havelock held his light with an unsteady hand. Its shifting illumination, and the dance of the flames in the hearth, cast wild shadows across his features—winks and leers; deathmasks; contortions of sorrow. His insanity looked irreparable.

"Take off your clothes," he commanded her, grinning like a dog. "I haven't seen a good pair of teats for a long time. Don't ask me any questions."

Don't ask— To herself, she groaned bitterly.

Just to be on the safe side, she clenched one hand in the V of her robe, holding it closed.

Then Geraden rejoined her. "You heard," she said, afraid that any question might upset the Adept.

"I heard," Geraden muttered. "No questions. This is going to be such fun."

"Have you been rutting?" demanded Havelock. He was incensed for a moment, full of righteous indignation. "Naked as animals? Avid as goats?" Without transition, his self-righteousness became self-pity. "Why didn't you invite me?"

Terisa hardly noticed what he said. She was watching the way his light weaved and wavered—the way it moved through the illumination from the hearth; the darkness across the back of his hand. Until she saw black drops spatter to the floor, she didn't understand that his hand was bleeding.

Knocking on the door inside the wardrobe, he had damaged his knuckles.

"Havelock—" She faltered momentarily, then took hold of herself, straightened her shoulders. "You had a reason for coming here. It was a good reason. You hurt yourself to make us notice you. Tell us what it was."

"A
reason?"
he cackled, laughing instantly. "A madman like me?" And just as quickly, his mirth vanished. He extinguished his light, put his mirror away in a pocket somewhere, then raised his hand to his mouth to lick the blood. Red smeared his lips, his chin; a spot of blood appeared on his fierce nose.

Between licks, he said casually, "Trust me."

Terisa stared at him, waiting for him to explain. When he didn't say anything else, she shook her head. The air was
cold
—too cold for the time of year. Even the stones under her bare feet were warmer. And she was angry.

"I went to you for help. Master Gilbur was after me, and I didn't have anywhere else to go. You refused.

"Tell me how to trust you."

To her chagrin, his eyes suddenly filled with tears, and his face twisted until he looked like a damaged schoolboy. His voice ached and cracked.

"I know it's hard. I'm crazy, aren't I? Vagel took my mind away. He showed me how to understand everything. Most of the time, I can't tell shit from shallots.

"But Joyse does it." Trying to rub the tears from his eyes, he wiped blood across his face. "Joyse does it."

"Tell us—" Geraden put in softly, carefully, "tell us where he is."

One of Havelock's eyes turned toward Geraden; the other seemed to plead with Terisa. "He told me not to."

"Havelock—" Terisa was never able to sustain her anger against him. His dilemma moved her. As far as she was concerned, there was no real reason why she hadn't emerged in a condition like this from the closet where her parents had locked her. And maybe a certain kind of madness was required to play hop-board successfully with human beings as pieces.

"Havelock, you killed that creature in the dungeon." Behind bars, helpless; burned down to tallow and stink. "The one that attacked Geraden. With your mirror. But when Gart tried to kill me, you let him live. You didn't even damage him. You just blinded him temporarily.

"I want to trust you. He was trying to kill me. Tell me why you didn't even damage him."

Geraden drew a breath between his teeth, held it hard.

"Oh,
that."
Somehow, the Adept passed from distress to scorn without any discernible effort. "You disappoint me. You should have figured that out long ago. How many times has Joyse told you to
think?"

Terisa clamped her mouth shut and waited.

"It's obvious." Havelock fluttered his hands as if he meant to start dancing. "If I hurt him—if I really blinded him—he would have been caught. We'd lose the chance that he might lead us to his allies. If I killed him, we'd have the same problem, only worse." Sharply, the Adept giggled. "If you think things are bad
now,
try to guess how much trouble you'd be in if Gart hadn't accidentally betrayed Eremis by charging in here.

"And,"
he went on, "if I killed him, everybody would think
you
did it. Try to guess how long they would have let you live if they thought"—he giggled again—"thought you were Imager enough to charcoal the High King's Monomach.

"No, you're being stupid." From scorn and humor, he lapsed into vexation. "You're wasting my time. If you aren't going to let me fondle your female beauties, at least learn something
useful."

In a rough voice, Geraden demanded, "Tell us what you want us to know."

For a moment, the Adept faced Geraden as if he couldn't bring the younger man into focus with either eye; then he muttered, "Idiot. It's not that simple," and headed back into the wardrobe.

Desperately, Terisa called after him, "You said you saw the King's daughters in an augury," because she didn't have any better ideas. "Tell us what Elega was doing."

Slapping at clothes, with a gown wrapped over his head and both fists full of fabric, he replied, "Spreading her legs for Prince Kragen."

That shocked Terisa; for a moment, it paralyzed her brain. Helplessly, she echoed Geraden. "Tell us what you want."

The Adept ripped the gown off his head. With both arms, he flung a bundle of clothes to the floor.

"
I
want you to trust me!"

Banging the hidden door after him, he vanished into the darkness of the passage.

She stared after him, dumbfounded.

Spreading her legs. For Prince Kragen.

So King Joyse had known. Before the Prince ever came to Orison as the Alend Monarch's ambassador, King Joyse had known that the Contender and his eldest daughter would become lovers. And he had let it happen. He had practically driven Elega into Kragen's arms.

Suddenly, the test King Joyse had arranged for Prince Kragen, the strange game of checkers in the audience hall, became poignant to her—poignant and awful. By that test, King Joyse had learned that his daughter would betray him.

By that test, he had forced her to betray him.

Now his last message to her made sense.
She carries my pride with her wherever she goes.
He had chosen to put her where she was. And Terisa's nagging sense that Elega had a vital role to play in his plans was confirmed.

And yet, despite what she had just learned, she knew she had missed the point of Havelock's visit.

Left weak by what had happened, what she was thinking, she murmured, "What was
that
all about?"

Glowering darkly, Geraden thought for a moment. Then, to her surprise, his expression lightened, and he smiled like a son of the Domne.

"I think he wants us to trust him."

Trust him. The man who advocates sacrificing pieces to win the game.

Oh, shit.

Really, she needed to increase her range of expletives. Thinking
oh, shit
over and over again just wasn't an adequate way to express herself.

Eventually, she and Geraden went back to bed.

The summons of the guard came much too early.

When Geraden stumbled into the sitting room to answer the door, the guard handed him a breakfast tray and said, "The Tor wants you in an hour. In the King's rooms."

Outside, the sky was still dark, too full of night to give any hint of dawn.

Today, the march would begin.

The air was unconscionably cold.

Blearily, Terisa asked, "Is there any chance we can get some bathwater?"

"Use all the water you want, my lady." She didn't recognize the guard's voice: he must have come during the night to relieve Ribuld. "No rationing this morning. But you'll have to heat it yourself. Nobody has time to do it for you."

"Thanks," muttered Geraden.

After he had closed the door and put down the tray, he came into the bedroom. "I'll put a bucket on the hearth," he offered. "We don't have time to let it get hot, but at least we won't freeze to death."

Pulling a blanket around her, she forced her tired limbs out of bed. Off the rugs, the floorstones were still warmer than the air. On her way to help put more wood on the fires, she asked, "What's happened to the weather?"

Geraden's tone conveyed a shrug. "We had an early thaw. Now it looks like we're having a late freeze."

Good. Perfect. I love being cold.

When she had put three more logs on the coals in the bedroom fireplace, she nearly climbed into the hearth in an effort to absorb some of the new heat.

Once the logs had begun to burn warmly, however, she went to look for some clothes.

Apparently undaunted by the cold—or maybe simply saving as much warmer water for her as he could—Geraden splashed around in the bathroom for a while; he came out toweling himself urgently. Still wrapped in her blanket, with a pile of the clothes Mindlin had made for her nearby, she set out the breakfast and began to gulp down hot tea, warm porridge. Then, when she and Geraden were done eating, she took the bucket from the hearth and retreated into the bathroom.

She didn't notice until she had given herself the best sponge bath she could manage, and had started to get dressed, that all her clothes carried a faint smell of blood.