Carol Berg - Breath and Bone

“Daughter!” snapped Stearc. “Mind your vixen’s tongue!”

Wrenching her glare from Osriel, Elene crossed her arms, touching opposite shoulders, and bowed to me. “I beg your forgiveness, Master Valen. I had reasons for my silence that seemed compelling at the time but were clearly selfish, foolish, and inexcusable. Please believe, if I had imagined such murderous folly, I would never have left the matter in doubt.”

She turned back to the others. Though her arms remained in the penitent’s gesture across her breast, her fists tightened as if to contain a fury that matched my own. “Papa, Mardane Voushanti, my lord prince, I indeed followed Brother Valen out to the dolmen that night. He did not leave my sight until the purebloods gave chase through the fields. All is as he has said. Only Gildas came. Not Gerard. I heard Brother Valen adamantly refuse to involve the boys in any way. He could not possibly have seen anyone that evening without my knowledge.”

“You returned at dawn, girl!” bellowed Stearc, his cheeks burning. “You said you’d been with some ailing pilgrim woman in the Alms Court all night. What were you doing with Cartamandua? And where were you after he was taken?”

“That has no bearing on Valen or Gildas, so I’ll not waste our time just now, Papa,” said Elene, acid on her tongue. “But I will tell you. What misdirected loyalties induced my silence are now moot.”

I had no wits to sort out what she might be talking about, save that it surely had to do with Osriel.

“I am satisfied that Valen is innocent of these crimes, Stearc,” said the prince, putting a sharp end to the matter. “After yesterday’s encounter with Kol, I fear our hopes of aid are even flimsier than before. Yet before we can consider how to approach the Danae, we must attempt to retrieve the boy and the book…and Gildas. We ride within the hour.”

Voushanti had passed around cups of cider, and now stood across the room, observing me curiously. Every time I blinked, the world seemed to waver. I gulped the cider and set the cup aside before the mardane could notice how my hand shook.

Stearc jerked his head at Elene and snatched up his cloak. “Let’s be off, then.”

“Not you, Thane. You are to remain here.” The prince pivoted on his heel. “You and Fedrol will detail your men as you see fit for the prior’s needs and for the security of the lighthouse and the brothers.”

Stearc flushed and glared at me. “My lord, if this is punishment for my accusations—”

“This is not punishment,” said the prince sharply. “We’ve no time for petty guilts and reprisals. Believe me when I say I would prefer to have your strong arm at my side. But Luviar has fallen. As the only living lighthouse ward-holder, your personal safety is paramount, and we’ve no time to transfer your charge to another. Thus, if you perceive the least threat to your person in these next weeks, you will entertain no foolish ideas of brave antics, but will run and hide, no matter the brothers’ safety or your daughter’s or mine. Do you understand me?”

“Aye, Your Grace. Of course.” Stearc gritted his teeth and bowed.

The prince shifted his attention to Elene, who looked as near jumping out of her skin as I felt. “Mistress, though it grieves me to say it, you cannot go with us either.”

“I thought we had no time for petty reprisals!” she snapped. “I have not faltered in my duty to this cabal, no matter our personal disagreements. I have not hesitated.”

“I would not think of underestimating your determination,” said the prince, as frosty as the windowpanes. “My only hesitation is for the dangers I must ask you to venture instead. Thanks to a few brave souls, Brother Victor lies safely at Renna. To move him was a risk, but not so much as leaving him in Palinur. Saverian will keep him alive if any physician in the world can manage it. Mistress Elene, I would ask you to meet Victor at Renna and take on the burden he and Luviar kept safe from Sila Diaglou. Saverian can work the necessary rite. We cannot leave your father the only ward-holder. Are you willing?”

“You wish me to be a lighthouse warder?” Astonishment wiped Elene’s fine-drawn features clean of anger and outrage. “Of course…of course I will.”

“Good.” The prince turned briskly to Voushanti while Elene was yet stammering. “Dispatch Philo and Melkire to safeguard Mistress Elene on her travels, Mardane. They’re our best, and if they remained with us…Well, I’d not wish them to confuse Thane Stearc’s secretary with their prince just yet.”

Voushanti nodded, as did Elene, only a rosy flush remaining of her surprise.

“I believe we have some time, if we take care,” said Osriel to all of us. “Sila Diaglou has some use for Valen beyond his grandfather’s book. As long as her attention is distracted with her own plans and she is left guessing as to mine, a small, fast party should be able to move unnoticed to intercept Gildas.”

“Gildas knows I’ll come after Jullian,” I said. I wished I shared Elene’s determined composure. My knees squished like mud and my bowels churned like a millrace.

“But you are Osriel the Bastard’s bound servant, and Osriel’s cruel games would never permit you such freedom,” said the prince. “Secrets and deceptions grant us opportunities that fate denies.”

No one could have missed this reproof of Elene. But I could read the prince’s expression no better than any other time. His cool sobriety revealed no hostility.

“Now that Gildas holds the book,” he continued, “Valen is our only hope to warn the Danae and enlist their help. As his safety is critical, and I’ve still some notion of ruling my father’s kingdom, Voushanti must keep the both of us alive through this venture.”

Voushanti bowed. “How many men?”

“Only us three.”

“My lord, no!” Voushanti and Stearc erupted in unison. “Impossible…”

Stearc argued himself hoarse about Osriel’s foolishness in taking a single bodyguard “no matter his exceptional talents.” Osriel allowed him to rant, but altered the plan not a whit. As Stearc moved from sputtering at Osriel to showering Elene with warnings and advice, the prince took up pen and paper to set his plan into motion.

Osriel took Gildas’s threat too lightly in my opinion. The monk might believe me the Bastard’s bound servant, but he also knew how I felt about villains who abused children. Worse yet, he knew my weakness; he’d left a box of nivat seeds to taunt me. I’d destroyed the box and yet clung to the belief that I could manage a few more hours of sanity—long enough to set Osriel on the right path. I could not abandon the boy. I had sworn to protect him.

Voushanti charged off to see to horses and supplies, and conversation shifted to a brisk discussion of message drops and rendezvous and other details that needed no input from me. As the moments slipped by, the knot in my belly launched a thousand threads of fire to snarl my flesh and bones. My companions and their concerns and, indeed, the entire world outside my skin began to recede, until they seemed no more than players and a flimsy stage. My time had run out.

“My lord,” I whispered from my place by the window. It was all the voice I could muster from a throat that felt scorched. “I need to tell you…”

No one heard me. Elene held Osriel’s sealed orders for his garrison at Renna and for this Saverian, his physician and house mage. Voushanti returned and hoisted the leather pack that contained the prince’s medicines. Osriel donned his heavy cloak and tossed his extra blanket to Voushanti, telling him to pack it. “A dainty flower such as I cannot afford to leave extra petals behind.”

My body burned. I tried to unfasten my cloak and padded tunic, but my hands would not stop shaking.