The Gathering Storm (21 page)

At least the whole troop wasn’t looking on, only Captain Fulk, Sergeant Cobbo, Brother Breschius, and the Eagle, her face drawn and serious. In the distance she heard Blessing shrieking with thwarted anger. Sanglant had ordered the girl shut up in one of the little cells. Maybe he was ready to whip his daughter, too. Maybe he was going there next, once he had finished with her.

The heat made the earthen walls and the dusty ground bake. The sun’s glare on her face made her squint. Sweat trickled down her spine.

“Is it true?” he roared.

The switch whistled past her back. The tip stung a shoulder blade as it whipped past, barely touching her. She burst into tears, shaking hysterically.

“I crave your pardon, my lord prince. But the words I spoke are only the truth.” Flinging herself forward onto the ground, she pressed her face into the dirt.

He cursed so furiously that she imagined him transforming from man into rabid dog, back into a beast like the ragged, stinking daimone she had once thought him when she had seen him years ago as a captive in the cathedral of Gent.

“My lord prince,” said Brother Breschius in the mildest of voices, “she is only a girl, barely a woman. What purpose does it serve to terrorize her in this way?”

She sobbed helplessly as the prince slapped the switch into the ground, once, twice, thrice, to emphasize his words. Dirt sprayed up with each bite, spitting into her face.

“My daughter is a willful. Spoiled. Impossible. Brat! Now it transpires that she is soaked in heresy as well. And has the nerve to tell her own father that I am damned!”

“It cannot have helped to find her surrounded by a brace of slaves who worship her as the magician who freed them,” said Breschius. “It must be a frightening sight, my lord prince, to see your daughter growing into her heritage.”

Sometimes silence was worse than shouting.

All she saw were his boots, six steps, a sharp turn, and six steps back, turn again. Only a very, very angry man paced like that, each step clipped and short. Anger flooded out of
him until she thought she would drown. Sobs shook her entire body no matter how much she tried to hold them in.

Fully a woman now, in the old tradition. Oh, God, why had she done it?

Now Matto and Thiemo hated each other, and she had selfishly and stupidly and dishonorably neglected her duty to Blessing. What did people do who were turned out in the midst of a foreign country with no kinfolk to aid them? Didn’t she deserve to be sold as a slave or murdered by beggars for her shoes?

“What of your brother, Eagle?” the prince demanded harshly, still pacing.

“I beg your pardon, my lord prince. My own sorrow clouds my mind. Did Zacharias choose to stay with the traitors rather than follow her to freedom? I pray it is not so. Yet if he wanted to follow but could not, then he may now be a prisoner. Or dead.”

“I should not have let Wolfhere and Brother Zacharias go into town, my lord prince,” said Captain Fulk. “I should have known that Princess Blessing would try to follow them. I should not have let Wolfhere go unattended….”

“Nay.” The boots stopped a hand’s breadth from Anna’s nose. Her tears had dampened the pale dirt, turning it dark. “I am to blame. I should never have trusted Wolfhere. I knew what he was. My father is not a poor judge of character, but I let my anger blind me. So be it. Get up, Anna.”

No one disobeyed that tone.

She scrambled up. Dirt streaked her tunic and leggings, smeared her face. Her nose was runny, but she dared not raise a hand to wipe her face clean. She swallowed another sob.

“I have unfinished business,” he said to the others. “Lady Eudokia will not be pleased that I left the palace so abruptly. She’ll consider it an insult.”

“But you left Princess Sapientia and Brother Heribert and most of the rest of the party behind,” said Breschius.

“Yes. Now I must retrieve them and complete the negotiations. Brother Breschius, remain here with Captain Fulk.” He paused, glancing toward the cell where Blessing was confined. The girl’s screams and protests had not diminished, although her actual words were muffled by the earthen walls.
She was a persistent child. Wiser and less stubborn ones would have given up shrieking by now, silenced by fear of what was to come or even by an idea that it was better to placate than to annoy.

Not Blessing.

The slaves she had freed knelt beside the door, forbidden to see her although they refused to move away.

“Faithful servants,” the prince observed sardonically. “Let them remain there until I can deal with them. Very well, Captain. You’re in charge.”

He left with a few soldiers hurrying after him.

“Go on, child,” said Brother Breschius kindly. “You’ve sinned, and been punished. Now go and make it right.”

“How can I make it right? Will the prince turn me out?”

“Not this time. Ask forgiveness from the one you’ve harmed the most, and swear to never again neglect your duty. Princess Blessing wasn’t lost. Think of it as a warning to not allow yourself to be distracted again.”

Did he know? She flushed. Surely only she and Matto and Thiemo knew what had transpired last night. She ducked her head respectfully and ran off to the dark cell near to the one where Blessing was confined. The door was so low that she had to crawl inside, but within it was blessedly cool and dark. She smelled blood and sweat and saw the shape of two prone figures in the dim filtering light. Even those unmoving shapes still had the power to awaken in her the desires that had broken free last night: What a fool she was!

“Anna?” Matto groaned and shifted.

“Don’t move,” she whispered, touching his ankle. “Has anyone put a salve on your back?”

“Sergeant Cobbo did,” said Matto, “and swore at me the whole time. Oh, God, Anna. Why did you have to do it?”

“You’re not the only one who suffered,” exclaimed Thiemo.

“You sorry excuse for a man. You only took those lashes because you were afraid that Anna would comfort me if I was hurt and you weren’t!”

“You’ve no right to speak to me in that way!”

“That’s right! I’m only a poor common boy, your randy
lordship. Nor should I covet what you’ve already taken for your own, isn’t that right?”

“Shut up!” Anna kicked Thiemo in the leg before he could respond. It was hard to feel affectionate toward him; smelling the whipping he and Matto had taken; remembering how close that switch had come to her own back.

“Serves you right,” hissed Matto, rearing up. “Serves you right, you stinking goat—”

Unthinkingly she set a hand on his back to press him down, and he howled with pain. She jerked back her hand; it came away wet with blood.

“Shut up!” She wanted to cry, but her chest was too tight. “Haven’t we done enough harm?”

THE doors to the governor’s palace were closed and Sanglant and his small retinue were, once again, forced to wait outside while the eunuch who acted as gatekeeper vanished into the interior. At this time of day, however, the shadows slanting away from the palace’s bulk gave them some respite from the heat. He had only a dozen men with him; the rest he had left with his sister within the palace courtyard a few hours before.

As he waited, he fretted. He had thought himself so clever, leaving Blessing with the main body of troops in the fort while he negotiated with Lady Eudokia. That way Blessing would stay out of trouble and could not be used as a hostage if the worst happened and the governor plotted intrigue.

But Blessing was getting older every day, far too quickly. Thinking of what had happened made him so angry that he had to twist his fear and fury into a knot and thrust it out of sight. He could not let such feelings cripple him.

Ai, for the love of God, how had Blessing got so wild? What had he done wrong?

He heard the tread of many feet a moment before the heavy doors were thrust open from inside and a troop of Arethousan soldiers marched out. In their midst strode a general, or lord, recognizable by his soldier’s posture and his shrewd, arrogant gaze as he looked over Sanglant and offered him a swift grin that marked Sanglant as his accomplice, or his dupe. The man had broad shoulders, powerful arms, and only one eye, the other lost, no doubt, in battle. He was a fighting man.

Sanglant nodded, recognizing a kindred spirit whether that man were ally or enemy, and they assessed each other a moment more before the general was hailed by one of his officers and turned his attention away. The troop crossed the broad plaza to the stables, where saddled horses were being led out.

Basil appeared in the entryway, recognizable by his jade-green robes although his round, dark, smooth Arethousan face looked much like that of the other eunuchs: ageless and sexless.

“My lord prince,” he said. “You are welcome to dine.”

They entered through the long hall and Sanglant was brought to a broad forecourt where a servant washed his hands and face in warm water poured out of a silver ewer. The soldiers remained behind as the prince was shown into an arbor whose vines were all artifice, gold leaves and stems twining around a wood trellis. Cloth wings slit at intervals offered shade but allowed the breeze to waft through. No breath of wind had stirred the air outside; he heard the wheeze and groan from the fans as the slaves stood out in the sun, hidden from view behind the cloth as they worked the bellows to keep those beneath the arbor comfortable.

The Most Exalted Lady Eudokia had already seated herself to dine at a long, narrow table with a cloth covering the area just before her while the rest of the long table lay bare. Princess Sapientia reclined in the place of honor to Eudokia’s right, and a boy of some ten years of age, a dark-haired youth with little beauty and a slack expression, fidgeted on a couch placed to the lady’s left, at the end of the table. Two servants attended him, spooning food into his mouth and wiping his chin and lips when he dribbled. A dozen courtiers ate in
frightful silence as servants brought around platters all of which reeked of garlic, onion, leeks, oil, and fish sauce. Lady Bertha had been given a place fifteen places down from the head of the table; the rest of the party he had left behind with his sister was absent, all but Heribert, who stood behind the princess with a composed expression and one hand clenched.

Sapientia looked up and smiled as Sanglant entered. Lady Eudokia gestured to Basil, who indicated that he should take the only seat left vacant: on the couch beside the youth. The child wore princely regalia but in all other ways seemed inconsequential, and Sapientia’s smirk confirmed that Lady Eudokia was, in her petty, Arethousan way, taking revenge on him for their earlier verbal sparring and his precipitous departure.

“I pray you, Prince Sanglant,” said Lady Eudokia through Basil, who remained beside her as her interpreter, “drink to my health if you will.” He drank a liquor that tasted of fish, bravely managing not to gag, and she went on. “Her Royal Highness my dear cousin Princess Sapientia has entertained me with a recounting of the many barbaric customs of your father’s people. Is it true that a prince must prove himself a man by breeding a bastard upon a woman, any creature no matter how lowborn or unattractive, and only thereafter can he be recognized as heir to the regnant? Are you the whelp produced out of such a union?”

Sapientia’s cheeks were red with satisfaction.

“I am,” he said.

“A half-breed, spawn of the Cursed Ones, is that so as well?”

“It is!” exclaimed Sapientia.

“They are all gone, eradicated millennia ago,” objected Eudokia. “It can’t be true.”

“It is true,” said Sanglant evenly. He would not give Sapientia the satisfaction of seeing that her dart had struck home.

“You might be Jinna born and bred, or your dam might have been a whore transported westward from beyond the eastern deserts to suit the pleasure of a prince.”

Sapientia giggled, then covered her lapse with a sip of wine. The servants brought around a platter of some kind of meat swimming in a foul brine that stank of rancid oil. The
courtiers gobbled it down. Sanglant could not bring himself to eat more than a bite.

“A bastard, yet like a eunuch you wear no beard. Is it true you have fathered a bastard of your own who travels with you?”

“My daughter is no bastard.” He set down his knife for fear he would otherwise fling it at her—or at Sapientia, who glared at him, caught between glee and embarrassment. “I am married, and she is legitimately born to myself and my wife.”

“Do they let bastards marry among the barbarians? We do not allow such a thing here. It would taint the blood of the noble lineages, but no doubt the Wendish themselves are a bastard race so it is no surprise they should allow their blood to become polluted. Yet, if you wish, I will foster the child with me. Bastards’ get are notorious for the trouble they get wrapped up in. I can raise her as befits a noble servant and make sure she is not led astray by the Dariyan heresy.”

“I think not,” said Sanglant.

“What else do you mean to do with her?” demanded Sapientia. She drained her cup of wine, as if for courage. “There’s nothing for her in Wendar, Brother. She’s got no land and no prospects, no matter what you say. And she’s a brat. I say, be rid of her, and we’d all be happier. Don’t think that I don’t suspect that you hope to use her to usurp my position, as I’ve told my dear cousin Eudokia while you’ve been gone chasing after her. Oh. Dear. Did you find her again?”

All that saved Sanglant from a furious retort was the sight of Heribert, quite pale, brushing a finger along his closed lips as a warning. Instead, he downed a cup of the noxious-tasting liquor and let the burn sear away the edge of his anger. “She is safe. She will remain so. So have I sworn. So, I pray, will you remember.”

“I will remember,” she muttered, flushed, her cheeks sheeny with sweat.

Lady Eudokia smiled unctuously, clearly amused by their unseemly sparring. “It is ever the way with brothers and sisters to quarrel.” She reached over to pat the youth’s flaccid cheek with a pudgy hand. “Alas that I quarreled with my own
brother in the past, but now he is dead in battle and his sweet child come to bide with me.”