Sing the Four Quarters (47 page)

In many ways, geese were better sentries than dogs. They couldn't be bribed and they didn't like anyone.

"If they are…" Pjerin reached down and laid a cautionary finger across his son's lips. "Annice will sing them a lullaby."

Annice rolled her eyes, "I don't do lullabies for geese," she muttered.

Pjerin's voice buzzed against her ear. "You do now."

A few steps farther and a half a dozen of the village dogs raced out to meet them; ears up, tongue lolling, and great plumed tails beating at the night air. Gerek, being closer to the ground, had his face thoroughly licked. One of the dogs went into such ecstasy at Pjerin's touch that it made a nuisance of itself and finally had to be told sternly—but quietly

—to go home.

Fortunately, the geese were conspicuous only by their absence.

When they reached Bohdan's daughter's house, Pjerin lifted the latch and silently swung open the heavy door. The odor of roast pork permeated the building; obviously they'd just culled one of the suckling pigs before weaning the litter and sending them out to the forest with the village swineherd for Second Quarter foraging. Annice couldn't decide whether the smell—a familiar one at this time in the year—made her feel hungry or sick.

Holding a clog in each hand for it was impossible to move quietly wearing them, she followed Pjerin and Greek down the main room of the house to a pair of doors set off center in the far wall. The polished planks of the floor felt strange after earth under her feet for so long.

It appeared that Pjerin was having trouble deciding which room Bohdan slept in. Annice sighed and pointed to the left-hand door. The door on the right, set farther from the outside wall, defined a larger room. Logically, because Bohdan's daughter and her partner would need a larger bed, they'd have to have the greater amount of space. When he continued to look doubtful, she pushed forward and opened the door herself. They didn't have time for this.

A high, narrow bed stretched the entire length of the left wall. At its foot, the thick stone wall of the cottage held a small hearth—which shared a chimney with the other bedchamber—and a narrow window. The single shutter had been left open and the moonlight painted silver-white highlights across the bed.

The man in the bed was old, his body barely lifting the blankets draped over him. His cheeks had sunk on both sides of a jutting nose where the flesh had wasted off the arc of bone. Yellowed parchment stretched over the dome of his head. His eyes were deep in shadow, untouched by the moonlight. The one hand resting outside the quilt looked translucent, veins and knuckles swollen through the thin skin.

Pjerin couldn't believe that Bohdan had aged so much in such a short time. When he'd been falsely accused, when the guards had taken him away, his steward had been elderly, yes, but vigorous. A man, if not in his prime, equally not in his dotage. This ruin appeared one breath from death.

His throat tight, Pjerin touched the old man lightly on the hand.

Gray-lidded eyes flipped open, widened, and then Bohdan's lips twisted into a smile. His voice echoed the dry rasp of fallen leaves stirred by the wind. "Have you come to take me into the Circle, Your Grace?"

"I'm not dead, Bohdan," Pjerin told him softly, taking up the skeletal hand in his. "I'm as alive as you are, and I need your help."

"Alive?" The parchment brow furrowed. "Alive?" Gnarled fingers pulled free and crept up the younger man's arm.

Breathing heavily, he dragged his hand across the broad chest so that it rested over Pjerin's heart. Rheumy eyes filled with tears. "Alive."

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Bohdan's daughter, Rozyte, set down the wooden platter of bread, cold pork, and cheese on the table, then slid onto the bench beside her partner. Her eyes locked on Pjerin, Due of Ohrid, she pushed the platter toward An-nice and in a low voice instructed her to eat.

Annice picked at the food, too tense with worry about Stasya to be hungry.

"I'm sorry to be of so little help, Your Grace," Bohdan sighed. Discovering the due he loved had not betrayed him had erased years from the ruin they'd found in the bed, but he still looked old and tired. Scrawny shoulders rose and fell in a disappointed shrug. "I've been sick. I don't get out." He sighed again. "I would like to think that the whole village would stand behind you, our rightful lord, but…"

"But?" Pjerin prodded when the old steward paused.

"But most people would rather be ruled by Cemandia than Shkoder," Rozyte answered.

Pjerin's face grew dark. "Ruled?"

Rozyte raised a cautioning hand. "Your Grace, please, don't wake the children. I can only tell you what I've overheard."

"But Shkoder doesn't rule in Ohrid," Annice pointed out, her tone only slightly less sharp than Pjerin's had been. "The treaty is a partnership. Ohrid guards the pass and has access to Shkoder's greater resources. Shkoder gains security and provides Ohrid with those things it hasn't the size or population to acquire on its own. All five principalities retained their independence."

"We have not overly benefited from that partnership," Rozyte replied shortly. "But since His Grace has been presumed dead, Cemandian traders have done very well by us."

"Cemandian traders have bought you!" Pjerin spat. Annice closed her fingers around his arm, and he settled back onto the bench, seething.

"We were without your leadership, Your Grace," Rozyte's partner, Sarline, spoke for the first time.

Pjerin nodded a tight acknowledgment of her words, but Annice heard the shadow of another meaning and took a long look across the scarred planks of the table. Sarline pushed a graying braid back over her shoulder and pointedly refused to meet the bard's gaze.

"Olina will close the keep if she finds out I'm alive." He pronounced his aunt's name like he hated the taste of it in his mouth. "A siege will place us and His Majesty—when he arrives—right in the path of the Cemandian army."

"But, Your Grace," Bohdan protested, "we don't know for certain there will
be
an army."

Pjerin laid both hands flat on the table. "Olina knows what capturing King Theron will mean to a Cemandian invasion."

"Granted," the old steward allowed, "but how would Cemandia find out that His Majesty was arriving in Ohrid?"

"Rozyte said that Olina's new toy left for home just after Stasya arrived. No doubt she sent a message with him."

"But, Your Grace, to change the course of an army he would have to gain access to the throne and he was only a mountebank."

"He was Albek."

All five adults at the table swiveled to stare at Gerek standing in the door to Bohdan's room.

Rozyte shook her head. "Simion was nothing like Albek," she said sternly. "Father asked me to check when he arrived, Gerek. The two were very different."

"They had different hair and different clothes," Gerek snorted. "But the person was the same."

"Gerek…"

Pjerin's raised hand cut off Rozyte's protest. "How did he react to your Aunt Olina," he asked.

Gerek beamed. He knew his papa would understand. "Just exactly the same."

"Come here."

The boy ran to his father's side and clambered up onto the bench looking pleased with himself.

"Since you don't seem to be sleeping anyway," Pjerin told him, "and since you apparently kept a pretty close eye on things while I was gone, you might as well join the council."

"Your Grace! He's only a child!" Rozyte's lips drew into a tight, disapproving line. She had insisted from the moment she'd been awakened with the news that her and Sarline's two children—both twice Gerek's age—be left strictly out of the night's deliberations.

"For a time, he was the seventh Due of Ohrid. This concerns him more than any of us save myself. And I am getting into that keep tonight." Pjerin's tone settled the matter. "The only question is how."

"What about the path through the thornbushes Gerek used when he ran away?" Bohdan wondered.

Gerek shook his head. "Papa's too big.
I'm
almost too big."

"What about secret passageways?" Annice demanded, ripping a crust of bread into crumbs. "The palace is full of them."

Bohdan almost smiled. "Unfortunately, my dear, we are sadly deficient in secret passageways. A regrettable lack of foresight on the part of the first due."

"What about the drain?" Gerek asked. "That's sort of like a secret passageway. 'Cept it's not secret."

Pjerin turned and stared at his son. "Have you been playing near the drain?"

The question merited consideration. "Not 'zactly."

"What does not exactly mean?"

"I wasn't playing." He picked at a loose thread on the edge of his tunic. "I was looking."

"What did I tell you about that area?"

Gerek sighed deeply. "Not to go near it 'cause it's dangerous and yucky and maybe I could get drowned. But, Papa…"

His small face grew serious as he fearlessly met his father's scowl. "I was the due. And you said a due's gotta know every bit of his land and stuff."

Pjerin gripped his son's chin between thumb and forefinger. "You are no longer the due. Do you understand?"

The small chest heaved with the force of a second sigh. "Yes, Papa."

"So, what
about
the drain?" Annice prompted. "We have to get to Stasya, Pjerin. We have to get to her as soon as we can."

"Not that way. The drain exits under the road in full view of the gatetower. If Olina has someone on watch, we couldn't get to it without being seen."

"Even at night?"

"It wouldn't matter, Annice. They'd hear you trying to get in. There's a heavy iron grille and it's bolted right into the mountain."

"The third due's stonemason and smith installed it together," Bohdan explained. "It would take a stonemason at least to free it."

"Or a kigh," Annice said pointedly.

"Earth and stone are not the same thing."

"They are eventually. If that grille has been in place since the third Due, it's begun to wear. I can Sing it loose." She twisted around and glanced at the shuttered window, trying to judge how much of the night remained. Stasya had been six days in that pit. She wouldn't leave her there one day longer.

"Your Grace, while I recognize the necessity of your retaking the keep and rescuing the young bard, may I remind you that the drains are barely four feet around. You'll have to crawl up a steady slope through debris that will be unpleasant at best. And don't forget, you're wounded, without full use of both arms. Why not just show yourself to the people?

Surely when they see you're alive…"

"Some of them may try to remedy the situation." Pjerin stood, lifting the makeshift sling over his head and tossing it down onto the table. "We don't know who, besides Lukas, Olina has corrupted. Gerek, I want you to stay here." Gerek began to protest but cut it off at his father's expression. "Annice, once you've freed the grille, can you make it back here without being seen?"

She stood as well. "I'm going in with you, Pjerin.
After
Stasya's out of the hole, you can be a hero on your own."

"No. You're not taking the baby into the drains. Do you realize what you'd be climbing through?"

"Nothing will touch the baby. I'll breathe through a damp cloth if it makes you happy, but I'm going with you."

"I won't allow it."

"You don't get in without me."

He glowered at her. "We haven't time to argue…"

"Then let's not."

They left the packs. Pjerin slung the Ducal sword across his back and Annice slid her flute case into the deep pocket of her overdress. As they slipped out into the night—Gerek glowering with Bohdan's hands clamped firmly on his shoulders—Sarline's hand flicked out in the sign against the kigh.

"Well?" Pjerin demanded, the force of his whisper lifting the hair around Annice's ear. "Can the kigh get it off."

Perched carefully on a shelf of kigh above the gully's highwater mark, Annice gave the grille another shake. While brute force might be able to bash the heavy iron free, it would be, as Pjerin had said, impossible to work quietly. As to whether the kigh could manage…

Fortunately, although the keep could hold the whole village in need, not many people actually lived within its walls and the area around the drain stank less than she'd feared. On the other hand, it still stank. Annice sucked a shallow breath through her teeth and very softly Sang a question to one of her attendant kigh.

"
It's attracting their attention that takes the volume
," she'd murmured to Pjerin as they'd hurried through the village.

"
And right at the moment, attracting their attention is hardly something I have to worry about
."

The squat brown body with its pendulous breasts and bulge of belly disappeared and tiny gray figures—identical in every respect to the first kigh save in color and size—flickered beside each of the bolts.

Frowning, Annice pitched her voice for Pjerin's ears alone. "They can do it, but it's going to take a while."

"How long?"

"As long as it takes." She rubbed her fingertips over the exposed bones of the mountain.
Stasya? Do you
know I'm here
? "Apparently, no one's ever tried to influence nascent earth kigh before. I'll have to keep Singing in order to keep pulling them from the stone."

"Can you Sing so they don't hear you in the keep?"

Annice looked up, past the drain, over the lip of the gully to where the crenellation on the gate tower appeared like dark teeth against the stars. "I don't have a choice, do I?"

The Song was so quietly insistent that Pjerin felt almost compelled to drive his fingers into the rock and yank the bolts free himself. He locked his hands together and tried to listen for any sign they were discovered—tried
not
to listen to the Song.

Stone became earth, very, very slowly.

Pjerin waited as patiently as he could, glancing only occasionally toward the east where the bulk of the mountains hid the approaching dawn. It wasn't until the Song grew both softer and deeper that he realized that the coming of the sun was not the only thing that could defeat them.