Sing the Four Quarters (46 page)

Relieved, Pjerin slipped his injured arm from the sling, sat beside her, and gathered her up against his chest. This, he could deal with. "Don't worry," he murmured into her hair. "We'll manage. You're a bard, remember? You must be able to recall something about having a baby."

She rubbed her nose on his shirt. "Yeah. 1 guess."

"And I'm not a city due. Remember, I've helped mares foal and cows calve and goats…" He paused, trying to think of what it was goats did, then realized that Annice had pulled away.

"Oh
that
," she declared with scornful emphasis, wiping her eyes on her sleeve, "makes me feel much better! Should I go down on all fours and moo? Will that help?"

"Annice, I didn't mean…"

"What? That 1 look like a cow? Well, thanks for nothing! Oh!"

"What!"

"It's stopped."

Pjerin closed his eyes and counted to ten. "Don't do that," he said quietly when he opened them again. "Or by the time we get to the keep, I'll be too gray for anyone to recognize me."

"Nees?' They turned as Gerek held out a cupped hand, the fingers stained a brilliant red. "I picked some strawberries to make you feel better."

Annice felt her eyes grow dangerously wet. "
You are

not going to cry again
," she told herself sternly. "Thank you, Gerek."

He dumped the squashed fruit onto her palm and smiled at his father. "It's okay, Papa. I tied up the lead ropes to a bush."

"Why don't you show me," Pjerin said, standing and taking his son's sticky fingers in his. "And then maybe we'll both pick some more berries for Annice." He reached back with his free hand and gently stroked her cheek. "Are you going to be all right?"

She nodded. "I just need to sit for a minute or two."

She watched them walk away and began to slowly eat the warm fruit, trying to calm the frightened pounding of her heart and wondering why she hadn't told Pjerin about the blood.

Three days or four, Stasya wasn't certain. Night and day had no meaning in such utter blackness and time became too unstructured to hold.

The water continued to seep up through the stone. She was thirsty but not desperately so, not yet. More than anything, she was cold. The chill ate through clothes and flesh and settled in bone. She tried to keep moving, but it didn't seem to help. Her muscles were knotted and her feet and hands had begun to ache. Sleep came fitfully if at all.

She'd had one screaming panic already, throwing herself against the stone, stopping only when the injury to her head exploded orange and yellow lights behind her eyes and brought her to her knees. She didn't know how much longer she could prevent another one.

She sang. She told herself stories. She recalled her last few Walks. She thought about Annice. She began to pick the embroidery off the sleeves of her shirt.

And it had only been three days.

Or maybe four.

Lukas opened and shut his mouth a few times, but no sound emerged. Finally, he managed a strangled, "But, Lady, if a Cemandian army comes through the pass…''

"It will be followed by wealth and power." Olina traced the carved sunburst in the arm of her chair, her eyes half closed as she thought of how close success lay to hand. The end of isolation. The end of near barbarism. Although the woodworker had likely not intended it as such, the sunburst was a symbol of the Havakeen Empire.
The first Emperor
started with less
. "I will control the only route between West and East Cemandia. Any merchants desiring to use their newly acquired access to the sea trade must travel through Ohrid and will have to pay dearly for the privilege."

"Every merchant," Lukas repeated, his tongue appearing between beard and mustache to wet his lips.

She could see him adding up the possibilities. He'd had a taste of power over this last quarter and wouldn't be willing to give it up. Nor would he be likely to realize that her plans were a great deal more complicated than she'd allowed him to see and that they included the removal of Lukas a'Tynek the moment the dirty work was done. But if he wanted to believe she'd be content operating a tollgate, or more precisely having him operate a tollgate for her, she had no intention of correcting him.

"But His Grace," he began hesitantly, a wary eye on her reaction, "the due—that is the last due—was executed for agreeing to open the pass to Cemandia."

"And what does that have to do with the current situation?" Olina asked him, steepling her fingers and staring at him over their tips. "Pjerin a'Stasiek broke his oaths. I swore no oaths to Shkoder and neither did you." No point in mentioning that the due's oaths were expected to hold the people as well. "I would have thought you'd prefer a Cemandian overlord."

Dark spots of color burned on Lukas' cheeks. "They admit the kigh are not part of the Circle."

As far as Olina was concerned, Cemandian religious beliefs were of no importance next to their potential for economic exploitation, but she recognized the strength of their influence on the people. Especially after she'd worked so hard behind the scene to promote the usefully bigoted opinions of her new steward.

Lukas leaned forward, his eyes darting from side to side. Olina wondered if he were searching the room for hidden listeners or if it were the habitual action of a thoroughly unpleasant man that she'd just never noticed before. "There are still those," he said softly, "who will not want Cemandian rule."

"Really?" She sat back in her chair. "Do you know their names?"

"Yes, Lady." Lukas took an eager step towards her. "I heard Nincenc i'Celestin say the Cemandians were an intolerant bunch of superstitious louts and he'd personally remove them from the Circle if they set foot on his land and Dasa i'Ales said she wished there were more bards and…"

The list was surprisingly short. Without a leader to continuously remind them that Cemandia was the enemy and with Cemandia pouring money and goods into Ohrid, most of the people really didn't care. After all, what had Shkoder done for them lately except execute one due and run off with another? The moment she had Theron safely in the keep and it no longer mattered what the kigh reported to him, she'd have Lukas arrange accidents for those too shortsighted to see where their best interests lay. If it could look like the kigh were involved, so much the better.

"I want you to speak to…" She paused and considered the numbers that Stasya had said were accompanying the king.

Forty people on horseback, crammed into the outer court could easily be taken care of by half that number. "… twenty of those who have no wish to see Ohrid remain a backwater province of a tiny country. Archers may bring their bows, but I will arm the rest." Albek's crossbows and quarrels were still in the armory. "The moment that King Theron's party is sighted at the end of the valley, they're to come to the keep. Once His Majesty has been disarmed, he will be held until the Cemandian army arrives.

"I don't want the kigh reporting a plot to His Majesty, so you will speak to these people in ones and twos and have them come to the keep individually—keeping weapons covered. Once they're here, it will matter less what the kigh tell him as he'll be expecting a crowd to gather.

"When Theron is safely in my control, I will speak to the people of Ohrid, tell them we have the chance to prevent a long and bloody war and profit immediately from the proper use of the pass."

Lukas left off nodding his continual agreement to look suddenly frightened. "But Lady, King Theron's bard will tell the bards in the capital."

"Where they have been left leaderless and in complete disarray. Helpless before the army that will roll down on them out of the mountains." Olina smiled and stood. "I have planned this too well for it to fail."

Pjerin stared out at the village, the Ducal sword an unaccustomed weight at his hip, betrayal a greater weight on his heart. How many did Olina have? How many were willing to bow their necks under the Cemandian yoke? Shkoder may have been less than willing to spend coin in principalities with so little chance of return, but at least it had left them free; something Cemandia would not do.

His hand closed around an obscuring branch and he savagely shoved it down out of his way.

The keep, built to ensure the independence of the first due and his people, tested by steel and blood in the time of both the second due and the third, would become no more than a way station for fat merchants traveling to the sea. A city would grow at the mercy of trade; dependent, parasitic, vulnerable. His people would labor for Cemandian overlords, ape Cemandian ways, subscribe to Cemandian beliefs. Priests would come and build a Center and children who showed any ability to Sing the kigh would be ripped from their mothers' embrace and put to the sword.

Ohrid would exist only at Cemandian suffrage. Better it be destroyed before that. The end would be cleaner if the mountains themselves rose up and crushed it, earth and stone wiping it from the map.

The sudden crack of the branch breaking shattered the dusk, cutting off the evening song of birds and frogs. A crow broke out of the canopy high overhead, hoarsely screaming a protest, ebony wings beating against a sapphire sky.

Pjerin could feel Annice's glare in the prickling of the skin between his shoulder blades. He ignored it.

After a moment, he made his way to where she sat, Gerek sprawled half asleep over what was left of her lap, horse and mule stripping the underbrush of green and tender plants. They'd pass a sheepfold on their way to the village where they'd leave the animals. With lambing over, the fold would be empty, but there'd be food and water and a stout door to bar against predators.

"We'll wait until full dark," he said softly, dropping to the ground by Annice's side. "Most of the villagers will be asleep by then; morning comes soon enough at this time of the year."

"Your people work hard," Annice murmured as Gerek resettled himself on his father's lap.

"We aren't like lowlanders. We depend on no one." Pjerin traced the curve of Gerek's cheek with the back of one finger, the gentle motion a direct contrast to the edge in his voice.

"Maybe they work a little harder than they need to."

"What are you talking about?"

Annice pushed a kigh away from her belly. "Granted," she said thoughtfully, "that neither my most royal father nor His Majesty, Theron, King of Shkoder, High Captain of the Broken Islands, and so on, and so on, have exactly beat a path into the mountains, but neither have you done anything to remind them of their obligations. You don't take the seat you're entitled to on the council, nor do you send someone to represent you. You sit up here with your head in the clouds and you say,
if they don't want us, then we don't want them
."

"
You
weren't exactly unwelcomed," he growled.

"Because you didn't have to do anything to get me here. There's a whole wide world out there, Pjerin. Why not make an effort to be a part of it?"

"I take care of my people."

She nodded. "I know. And now you're being replaced by the entire Cemandian nation."

The weight of his son across his legs kept him from leaping to his feet. Red waves of rage washed over him, leaving him trembling, muscles knotted with the effort to remain still. "Are you saying," his voice was dangerously soft and his eyes so dark they absorbed the shadows, "that Olina was justified in what she did? In what she's doing?"

"No." The denial was almost Sung, impossible to disbelieve. "But I think that when you've dealt with
what
she's done, you might consider
why
she did it."

His lip curled up off his teeth. "I don't need a lecture from you, Annice, not about the choices I've made. You haven't always chosen wisely yourself, have you?"

Annice regarded him levelly, wincing slightly as the baby stretched. "I don't regret a single decision I've made," she told him.

His brows rose. "Not even spending ten years isolated from your family?"

"That wasn't my choice," she snapped, slapping at an insect, all at once not so eager to meet his gaze.

"Wasn't it?" Pjerin asked bluntly. "I don't recall you meeting anyone halfway. If they didn't want you," he added, "you didn't want them."

Annice started as he threw her own words back at her. "It's not the same thing."

"Isn't it?" Tucking Gerek more securely into the curve of his arm, he stood. "Maybe we both have something to think about."

Ignoring the kigh leaning against her hip, she watched as he settled the boy onto the mare's saddle. Still only half awake, Gerek clung to the saddlehorn and blinked owlishly into the night. When he turned back to her and held out his hand, she hesitated for a moment, then laid her fingers across his palm. He pulled her to her feet. She held on a moment longer.

"Maybe," she said, "you're right."

Pjerin's smile was a flash of ivory in the darkness, his lips a warm pressure against the top of her head. "Don't strain anything," he advised.

Candlelight flickered through an open window on the far side of the village, the only evidence that anyone remained awake in all of Ohrid.

"Dasa i'Ales," Pjerin murmured. "She'd like to be a poet. While she's creating, you could walk right past her singing at the top of your lungs and she wouldn't notice."

"I remember her," Annice murmured back.
She's terrible
. But she kept that opinion to herself as she had no desire to challenge the protective note in Pjerin's voice. This was his land. These were his people.

Bohdan's daughter's house was very nearly in the middle of the village. The three of them picked their way carefully toward it—
the
moon, a day off full, lighting their path, the wind pushing at their backs.

"The dogs need to catch our scent," Pjerin explained quietly as they passed the first of the gabled stone buildings.

"They need to recognize who we are, then they'll know there's no reason to give the alarm."

"Every dog in the village knows you?" Annice whispered incredulously.

"Dogs like Papa," Gerek piped up, much refreshed by his nap. "And me." He frowned. "Hope Dasa's geese aren't out."