Breath of Angel (21 page)

She chopped at a coal, sending sparks flying. Thinking of Trevin was like shaking the oil and water in Zastra’s jar, except it was the feelings of her heart that got all shaken up. Scoundrel, rogue, ruffian. Deceiver, defender, friend.

Unlike Zastra’s oil-water, Melaia’s feelings refused to settle into a clear picture.

N
ight by night, Melaia watched the sky. Lord Rejius had left before the new moon, so as long as the moon waxed toward full, she held the hope of escape. But with each night that passed, she grew more uneasy. Had Jarrod been caught? Had he discovered that the fire in the Durenwoods was her fault and decided she wasn’t worth rescuing?

As the moon began to wane, she came to the conclusion that she couldn’t wait for Jarrod. She had to get out of Redcliff to see if the sylvans were all right. She had to get to Hanni and the girls.

Zastra, too, watched the moon’s phases and grew more distraught every day. She paced and whined. She cajoled and needled Melaia for the book, but Melaia continued to act as though she had never heard of it.

One night Melaia glanced over Zastra’s shoulder while she studied her Eye. The oil-water image was small but swiftly grew as the spying drak neared its goal: Caepio and his actors.

Melaia stared as the bird bore down on the wagon. One of the actors swept off his cloak and beat at the drak. The image shrank as the bird rose. Then two riders galloped in. Talonmasters. They searched the actors’ trunks and bags, seized a harp, and rode off.

Melaia wondered if Lord Rejius was confiscating any harp he came across. If so, he was grasping at the wind. Caepio’s harp wasn’t even the right shape.

As the image faded, Melaia leaned closer, enthralled.

“Back!” Zastra elbowed Melaia. The book at Melaia’s midriff caught the blow with a thump, and Zastra’s eyes grew wide. Melaia stepped back and pressed her hands to the book.

Zastra snapped like a harp string wound too tight. She leaped at Melaia
and tore at her gown. Melaia shoved and kicked, but Zastra wrestled her to the bed and fell on her, ripping and tearing until the flaxen sash was exposed. She pried the book out. Melaia grabbed for it, but Zastra yanked it free, returned to her chair, and greedily flung the book open.

An unearthly howl echoed outside the shuttered window. Zastra jerked up her head. “Lock and stay,” she commanded the shutters, but they rattled like the stones in the overlord’s wagering pouch. Zastra crept toward the window, still holding the book tight, pointing and muttering, “Lock and stay. Keep away.” But the more she chanted, the more furiously the shutters shook.

Melaia drew her tattered gown around her, cringing in awe at the force of the rising storm. With a crash the shutters blew open, and in swept a spirit with long white hair. His face was tempest-mad. Zastra shrieked.

“Windweaver!” Melaia gasped, stumbling back as the gale hit her. She ducked behind the bed, watching as the scorching cold wind sliced through the room. It whipped Zastra’s skirts and shoved her into the chair by the hearth, where she sat wind-swept and slack-jawed, clutching Dreia’s book.

Windweaver snatched up the divining jar and hurled it across the chamber. It shattered against the stone wall. Zastra started to rise, but the wind lashed at her, screaming with fury. It battered the bed drapes. Scoured the stone wall. Spat at the fire until every ember was cold and the room was completely dark. Then Windweaver whirled out the window, slamming the shutters.

Quiet filled the room like drifts of snow. Melaia slipped a gray cloak from the clothing chest and tugged it around her shoulders, shivering. In the darkness she could barely make out Zastra’s form, rigid in her chair.

“My Eye,” moaned Zastra. “My Eye.” She slipped the book down the front of her gown. Then she began to cough in raspy spasms and couldn’t seem to stop.

As Melaia listened to the crone’s croup, an idea began to form. A tea of herbs would soothe Zastra’s cough. Add a few drops of dreamweed, and she would never feel her slave snatch the key and the book. Then, Melaia schemed, when the jailer came for their leftover supper, she would follow him to the dungeon in search of Pym and Livia.

Zastra moaned and coughed all night. When the cook brought breakfast, she unlocked the door and waved it away. “I can’t swallow,” she croaked. She slammed the door and locked it, then coughed long and hard, squinting her red, watery eyes at Melaia. “You are the cause of all this.”

“Lord Rejius is the cause of all this.” Melaia slipped on a fresh gown, feeling empty and bare without the book at her midriff.

Zastra scowled. “Buzzard from the Dregmoors. This is the gratitude he shows after I rid him of Laetham’s queen.”

Melaia tied on a sash, studying Zastra. In the aerie Lord Rejius had told Benasin that Queen Tahn didn’t trust him. In the courtyard Zastra claimed she had paid dearly to procure his position for him. “You killed your own daughter,” Melaia murmured.

“My own
fool
daughter. King Laetham wasn’t interested in me, so I enticed him with Tahn. But she never had the instincts of a queen. Didn’t know how to carry power and authority. Fool. I was always better at being queen, and Rejius saw that. He vowed to make me queen once he is king. Riches and youth will be mine.” She coughed. “He has promised me his youth potion. Gash.”

Melaia recalled Gil mentioning a gash merchant drummed out of Stillwater. “Baize,” she said.

“Gash, you dolt.”

“Baize is the merchant who sells gash.”

Zastra’s eyebrows rose. “And you buy it. That’s your secret, isn’t it, Dreia? Gash.” She slowly rose like a snake about to strike, her eyes fixed on Melaia. “I want it.” The cough took her again. “Give me some of your gash,” she croaked, rubbing her throat.

“If I had some, you’d be the first person I’d give it to.” Melaia stood tall, for the first time feeling as though she might be gaining the upper hand. She warned herself to proceed carefully and keep Zastra calm as she mustered her best servant voice. “Majesty, what you need right now is a potion to soothe your throat. I’ve been trained in remedies. Let me gather herbs from the field and steep a hot drink for you.”

Zastra opened her mouth to answer but coughed violently instead. When the fit passed, she glared at Melaia. “We’ll go to the fields, but if you think I’ll let you out of my sight, you’re mistaken.”

She slipped the book out of her gown and locked it in a trunk. Melaia noted that she tucked the key into her waist sash.

After a fit of coughing, Zastra fastened the collar around Melaia’s neck. “I know my herbs too,” she said. “If you dare try to poison me, you’ll not live long enough to regret it.”

They trudged downstairs. Then, as if she were leading a cow to pasture, Zastra led Melaia out the scullery door. The cook gawked at them, and the palace guards stared as the mad queen and her maidservant left by the postern gate.

On the hill outside the walls, the sun shone, and the air was crisp, but the edge of the Durenwoods looked like a charred fence rimming the horizon. Swaths of ashen ground stretched like giant fingers from the blackened woods toward Redcliff. Melaia wondered just how much her lie about the book had cost the sylvans. Her feet felt heavy as boulders as she plodded downhill and through the fire-swept field toward patches of unscorched grass.

At last Melaia spied saffroot and gathered a handful. She plucked several purple-berried stems of plumwort. But was there no dreamweed?

“Show me what you’re gathering,” wheezed Zastra.

Melaia held out a palmful of plumwort and saffroot.

“Is that not enough?” Zastra coughed and spat.

“A few more stems.” Melaia frantically eyed the ground, then spotted it—a stunted plant but bearing fruit.

“Enough!” Zastra tugged on the leash.

Melaia gasped and snatched up the dreamweed, swiftly tucking it beneath the other herbs in her hand.

Melaia rebuilt the fire in Zastra’s hearth. With her plan under way, she felt as though she herself were full of kindling newly lit. When the flames crackled,
she set the kettle on and sifted through the herbs. She hesitated at the dreamweed. Not yet.

Zastra sipped on hot saffroot water most of the day. She ordered Melaia to clean up the shards of her scrying glass, comb her wiry gray hair, and rub her bony feet.

When Melaia reached under Zastra’s chair to fetch the crone’s slippers, Zastra backhanded her. “Leave them!”

“I thought your feet might be cold.”

“Then stoke the fire.” Zastra coughed.

Her cheek stinging, Melaia stirred the fire. For a moment she caught sight of Flametender again and took it as a sign of encouragement. But as she stared wistfully into the flames, she wondered,
Is there nothing more the Archon can do?

At last the cook brought supper. Zastra coughed so hard she found it difficult to eat. “Dreia,” she whispered, “fetch me more drink.”

Melaia bent over Zastra’s goblet again, her heart racing. This time she added the dreamweed. How many drops for a deep sleep? One? Two? She put in three.

Zastra drank. Ate a few bites. Then held out her goblet. “More.”

Again Melaia made saffroot water and added dreamweed. Two drops.

Zastra took one gulp. Then another. She blinked slowly and set the goblet aside. Coughed. Murmured. Blinked again. Leaned her head back.

And slept.

Melaia tiptoed to Zastra and slowly reached into her waist sash. Empty. Where were the keys? The jailer locked the door after fetching the scraps. If she had no key, she would have no way out. Besides, she needed to unlock the trunk to get the book.

She patted down Zastra’s gown. Nothing. She searched the wall niches. The bed. The jars and basins. Every nook and ledge. Then she searched them all again.

The sun began to set. The scuff of the jailer’s sandals echoed in the stairwell.
Melaia readied the tray of food and tried to think of a way to convince the jailer to leave the door open.

He unlocked the door, trudged in, and grunted at Melaia.

“Let me help.” She held the tray and headed to the door. “I can help you. I can—”

He grabbed the tray from her and trudged out. The door locked.

Melaia wrung her hands and darted back to Zastra to begin the search again. She began with the soothsayer’s waist sash. She would never catch up with the jailer now. Zastra would wake, know she had been drugged, and beat her maidservant to within a breath of death.

“Where are the keys?” Melaia wailed as she dropped to her hands and knees, searching all the cracks in the stones around the hearth. Nowhere. Nowhere. Nowhere.

Melaia choked back a frustrated sob, snatched Zastra’s slippers one after the other and hurled them at the door.

The keys fell out of the second slipper and clattered to the floor.

Melaia shot to the keys, then dashed to the trunk and opened it. She grabbed the book and shoved it into her waist sash, snatched up a cloak, and ran from the room, pausing only to lock the door behind her.

Melaia could barely hear the jailer tramping down the stairs somewhere below. She followed the sound, groping in the dark, hugging the walls.

At last she saw the light from his torch disappearing around a corner ahead. She quickened her steps, keeping to the shadows, following close enough to see by the torchlight.

Through hallways, down more stairs, she followed the jailer into the underbelly of Redcliff.

A
t first Melaia tried to keep the path to the dungeon in her memory so she could retrace it, but she soon gave up. It was difficult enough to keep up with the sinewy jailer and be quiet at the same time.

He passed through a room full of barrels tinged with a sickly smell, then descended a narrow flight of stairs. The air turned dank. He kicked a rat out of the way. Melaia drew back for a moment, then moved ahead, praying the rat would stay hidden.

The jailer lifted an iron key ring off a stone ledge. The keys jangled as he unlocked a barred gate. He plodded through, and his steps echoed farther down the passageway.

Melaia started to follow the jailer through the gate, then thought better of it. She dared not risk being trapped behind the bars when he left with the keys.

She heard him talking, followed by a clang. His footsteps came her way. She groped back up the dark stairwell as he shut and locked the main gate and replaced the keys. The light from his torch began bobbing up the stairs.

Melaia quickened her steps, but climbing up was harder than coming down. She could hear the jailer muttering somewhere behind her. A rat scampered across her path. Shuffling aside, she almost fell. She froze and covered her mouth.

“Who’s there?” The jailer lifted his torch. Light washed up the stairs only two steps below Melaia and found the foraging rat. “Damned vermin.” The jailer lowered his torch.

Melaia reached the storeroom and ducked behind a barrel only a moment before light splashed the walls. The jailer scuffed through the room. Then he was gone, leaving the chamber pitch-dark.

Even after the jailer’s footsteps faded into silence, Melaia’s heart echoed
their beat in double time. She groped her way around the barrels to the stairs, then slowly began to descend again. A faint light outlined the steps ahead. The gate came into view, silhouetted against the glow of the torch wedged into a bracket in the corridor beyond.