TWENTY-ONE

I LIVED IN a ceaseless nightmare, wracked by fever, even the slightest touch lancing me with pain. Light blinded me, voices haunted me and a constant knot of agony in my gut nailed me in place.

I had nothing to gauge the passage of time except the occasional touch of the faceless, hovering overhead, and the frequency with which they poured their dark, choking brew down my throat. It was as if I was drowning in the mattress, pulled down and under, all my cries going unregarded.

But I didn’t drown, and eventually, little by little, I began to swim back to the surface. Gradually, the moments when calm granted me rest grew more frequent, lasting longer each time. The voices haunting me quieted a notch further, until I realised it was my own cries that had ceased.

Eventually I opened my eyes to find not a faceless creature with hands of lead, but Roshi. She was sitting on the bed’s edge at my feet, propped against a bedpost, dozing. Her features were drawn and dark shadows rimmed her eyes.

The suite was silent, though distant sounds from the Turholm drifted in: the snuffling of the pigs as they hunted in the gardens outside my window, a clatter of hooves, footsteps in a nearby corridor. For a moment I lay still, relishing the pleasure of having my mind returned to me, though new physical discomforts crept over me, too. My back ached, stiff with lying down so long.

Before long dark memories, the scrape of the plate across the bench, prowled at the edge of my thoughts.

When I stretched, Roshi jerked awake, her gaze flying to me.

‘You look dreadful,’ I said.

She smiled, relieved. ‘You look worse.’

‘I feel worse,’ I said, shifting as a sharp pain ratcheted down the muscles of my left side. The sheets bore the rank odour of sickness in their weave. My mouth was dry and raw, and the ache in my head made thought slow and difficult. ‘What’s happened? Since the dinner, I mean,’ I said, trying to push myself up.

‘Don’t sit up,’ said Roshi, holding the edge of a cup to my lips and gently tipping it. The water was icy, cleaning the horrid taste from my mouth.

‘Not too much,’ she said, pulling the cup back. ‘I doubt your stomach is strong enough. You’ve had enough salep poured through you to turn you into an orchid yourself, and that was the nicest part of your treatment. It was … unpleasant.’

Her talk of orchids made no sense to me, but I had no inclination to learn the details of my treatment.

‘The leech fears permanent damage to your stomach,’ she added with a sorrowful look.

‘What poison was it?’ I asked.

‘There’s a pinkish flower which grows along the border of the little garden with the fish pond.’

‘The autumn saffrons?’ I’d always thought them purely decorative, planted to give colour to the garden when the spring and summer flowers wilted and dropped. I shook my head in an attempt to dispel a growing ache.

She shrugged, then gave me an angry frown. ‘Why did you eat off his plate? I’ve never seen you touch one of his dishes before.’

‘Believe me,’ I said, ‘I regret it more than you do.’

‘Yes,’ she said, dropping her gaze. ‘The crocus is thorough.’

I froze. Not the saffron, the crocus. And she’d said it was thorough.

‘You poisoned the food?’

‘Of course,’ said Roshi, her guileless eyes reminding me of how she had stepped forward, colliding with the thrall, disrupting the meal before I could take another bite.

‘I also went to a lot of trouble to get you in the kitchen and working on the meals,’ she went on, ‘then you went and ate his meal! Now no one assumes you were behind it. All my effort to keep your honour intact,’ she said with an angry shake of her head that set her braids and feathers to swinging, ‘and you undercut it.’

I gripped the bedcovers to steady my hands at this new revelation, a sharp pain in my fingertips reminding me of the damage the crocus had inflicted.

‘You meant for me to be blamed?’ I cried. ‘Why?’

‘If you want your throne back, you can’t afford people to think you will shy away from doing what’s necessary,’ she said.

‘I asked you to get me out of the palace, not kill him!’ I snapped, appalled.

‘What did you want but your freedom, and eventually your throne? Running won’t achieve either.’

The truth of her words brought on a fit of trembling. I should want Dieter dead, I needed him dead to end this – so why did I shy so fiercely from it?

‘You need to rest,’ said Roshi.

I fought the suggestion, trying to sit up. The smell of the sheets and my unwashed body were nauseating; I wanted to tear off my rank garments and bathe. ‘I don’t have time to rest,’ I snapped.

Dieter was no fool; after Roshi’s behaviour at the meal, he would surely suspect she was behind the poisoned food – and he would infer her orders came from me. He still had the vial of my blood. One wrong move against me, and I’ll finish what I started at Aestival.

‘You’re not strong enough,’ Roshi protested as I shoved at the bedding in a vain attempt to rise.

I wanted to rail at her and order her out of the room, she with her loyalty more dangerous than any betrayal could be. With difficulty, I fought the urge down. I needed information, and I didn’t have time to spare.

‘Has Dieter questioned you?’ I demanded, finally succeeding in untangling my legs before having to pause to rest. ‘What have you told him?’

Roshi grinned, sharp and conspiratorial. ‘That I was so distraught at the sight of my kin in chains, I didn’t notice one of the hounds at my feet, and when the thrall collided with me, I tripped. I do not think he believes me,’ she concluded happily. ‘He’s charming, isn’t he? I can see why you don’t like him.’

Skythes, I decided, were mad. Perhaps the voices in my head weren’t the artefacts of arcana after all, but insanity from my mother’s bloodline.

My racing pulse, and Roshi’s inane cheer in the face of disaster, made my head ache. ‘How long have I been sick?’

‘A little more than a week. You need to be abed longer still,’ she added sharply as I tested my weight on my feet. ‘Don’t think waking up is all the recovering you have left.’

‘The gadderen,’ I said, forestalling her further. ‘Which drightens are here?’

‘All except the Vestenn lord,’ she said, surprising me with her prompt answer. She had obviously been paying attention. ‘There’s been no word of him. Maja of the Saschan arrived yesterday morning.’

I knew what she had left unsaid. House Saschan ruled the Cuathn tribe, and ruled their holdings from Eysgard in the far west. If Maja had arrived, Harald of Vestenn should have, too. The Eberholm, his stronghold, stood south and west of here – in the throat of the fertile valley which served as a pass through the Sentinels. The Ilthean empire lay south of the valley; Nureya, and Helena’s Ilthean army, lay east. The Vestenn’s absence spoke of trouble, for his Majkan tribe and for the whole of the Turasi.

‘Has the gadderen started without him?’

Roshi shook her head. ‘Not precisely. Dieter has spent much of his time watching over you. When he isn’t here with you, he’s closeted with them. Not much happens, though, except the consumption of vast quantities of food and ale. The thralls say Vestenn’s absence has the other drightens worried.’

Worried, but apparently not yet united. If they knew or even simply suspected an army camped on the southern march, they should have ratified someone by now. What held them back?

‘Which way do the drightens bend? Will they ratify Dieter as Duethin?’

‘I’m not privy to their counsels,’ she shrugged. ‘But they seem … reluctant.’

Reluctant? It made no sense. The man had all the pieces in play: support from the three most powerful drightens; support from the Skythes; even the threat of an Ilthean army at the gates.

‘And Dieter?’

‘He …’ She trailed off while she considered her answer. ‘He is fractious.’

A sly, dangerous hope sparked within me. If I could play on the drightens’ prevarication, if I could nudge them into refusing Dieter … If he were refused the throne, he could be held accountable for the Aestival slaughter. I might see justice done. Although that didn’t mean I’d get to sit the throne. Why support me, when the drightens might each angle for their own interests? At least Dieter would be banished back to the swamps of the northwest where he belonged. Inexplicably, that thought brought a pang of guilt – and sadness.

‘If you won’t rest, you need to eat,’ Roshi said, standing.

‘I’m not hungry,’ I said, queasy at the very thought of food.

But Roshi set her chin and refused to let me out of bed until I promised to eat. The food – black bread soaked in soft-boiled egg – proved problematic. Sore and bruised from the after-effects of the poison, I had also developed a fear of eating. When Roshi brought me the meal, my throat closed over and I struggled against an urge to gag.

Gently, Roshi put the tray on my lap, then lifted a piece of the bread, took a generous bite, and chewed slowly before swallowing.

The simple gesture, apology and penance both, brought a sting of tears to my eyes. It took all my strength to force my voice through my throat.

‘Thank you,’ I said.

When I’d eaten as much as my tender stomach could handle, Roshi let me rise. The effort of walking from the bedchamber to the couch exhausted me, however, and I sat down to rest a moment.

Night had settled, bringing chill winds and dark thoughts for company. I rested my head on the back of the couch and closed my eyes while I caught my breath.

The door opened, admitting a rising murmur of conversation from without. I didn’t look. It would only be Roshi, slipping out to return the uneaten food to the kitchen.

‘I’m glad to see you’re regaining your strength at last.’

I turned at Dieter’s voice, my eyes opening in time to watch him stop before me. The lines around his eyes were deeper than I remembered.

Awkward and selfconscious, I scrambled to a sitting position.

‘You look tired,’ I said, surprising myself with genuine concern. It was quickly eclipsed by a rising dread, however. I was not ready for this encounter and whatever punishment he had devised. Did he have the vial of blood with him?

He sat on the floor, his steady gaze bringing a flutter to the pulse at my wrists.

‘You look as if you’ve had some hard news,’ he said. ‘Roshi was here, was she not?’

I stared at a crack in the plaster on the far wall to buy some time. If I told him of her guilt, he wouldn’t believe I had not ordered it, not when Roshi could tell him of my desire to escape.

‘She moved fast, when she saw you eating off my plate,’ he prodded, confirming my suspicions. He wanted to know what she had told me of the poison, and whose hand had wielded it.

‘She tripped,’ I said, the lie sounding thin to my own ears. Roshi hadn’t given me much to work with, however, and I feared to say more lest I contradict her outright.

Dieter waited for more, his gaze fixed on the fire. Silence stretched between us.

‘I was prepared,’ he said at length. ‘I’d made alliances to ensure my position, provided I won the throne cleanly. Which I did. Cleaner than I anticipated, if truth be told.’

He turned from the fire. ‘Thanks in some part to the Skythe alliance you brought me – not to mention you yourself, the jewel in my pocket. The skies were thick with pigeons when the drightens found out about you. All of them wanting to know whether you were a prisoner, or a willing accomplice. What did it mean for them, and the side they’d chosen?’

He paused, closed his eyes and massaged his brows from the bridge of his nose to his temples.

‘I had them, Matilde. Every single one of them.’

‘What happened?’

‘You did,’ he said, staring into my eyes.

‘I thought I was the jewel in your pocket.’

‘That was before the poison,’ he said, the intensity of his gaze silencing me.

‘That dish destroyed my chance at cementing my position,’ he said. ‘You know what the drightens thought, don’t you?’

‘They wonder if you’re strong enough to hold the throne,’ I said.

‘And if I’m not, it opens the way for them,’ he said, drawing his knees to his chest and locking his arms around them. ‘Suddenly I have a pack of drightens circling me, day and night, bickering and manipulating, coy and probing, never settling. And not a soul in the palace knows’ – he broke off, hesitating before he continued in quieter tones – ‘who did this to you.’

I kept my gaze on him, impassive, despite the leap in my pulse that was part panic, part hope. Perhaps he didn’t suspect me of Roshi’s poison after all, perhaps he wasn’t here to punish me …

‘Amusing, isn’t it? Everything I’ve won crumbling around me, and all I can think about is you,’ he said dryly.

Was it possible he truly cared for me? The dizzying idea pushed me into answering him honestly. ‘No more amusing than my being alone in the world but for my enemies.’

He rose to his knees and leant closer. ‘Matilde,’ he murmured, his breath tickling my ear. ‘I find I’m relieved not to have lost you.’

‘Small enough loss,’ I said firmly despite my fluctuating emotions. ‘You have the throne, and the Skythes to swell your army. You have your alliances.’

His hand stole down my shoulder, trailing warmth in its wake.

‘I’m sorry the drightens are wavering,’ I said. ‘But you’ve charm enough to bring them to heel. You don’t need me.’

‘I don’t have that heir you promised.’

‘You have renatas now,’ I said, anger my best weapon against the strange feelings he evoked in me. ‘If he doesn’t suit your aims, Amalia will bear children sooner or later. No doubt you can mould them exactly as you wish. Tell me, will you brand them, too?’

Gently, he turned my face to his. ‘I would bear your mark, Matilde, if you asked it of me.’

‘I don’t know the common practice in your lands,’ I said, icy with a month’s pent-up bitterness. ‘Here we only brand cattle.’

With surprising ease, Dieter unpinned my veil, shucked the cloth back, and brushed a thumb over the markings, tracing out their shape. His touch was enough to put me into a daze, though I struggled against it.

‘You haven’t thought it through.’ He was still looking at the markings. ‘It’s not all bad. Any who know the spell can erase the crucial mark, of course. But do you realise how few know it?’

‘That’s supposed to cheer me?’ I retorted.

‘Virtual immortality, Matilde,’ he said, his eyes intent on mine.

I stared at him, uncomprehending.

‘What can kill you now? Weapons that would slay mortal flesh and blood will do little to you.’

Harsh laughter erupted from me, breaking through the bewitching moment. ‘I’ve a stomach and throat nigh dissolved from poison. I’ve spent the past week comatose, and I can’t stand without panting for breath. You’re lying.’

‘Yes,’ he said with an unrepentant grin, and took my face in his hands.

Words drowned in my throat like water seeking underground caverns, as his fingers traced a line down my cheek.

‘I’m glad you didn’t die,’ he whispered.

‘I’m not,’ I countered.

He pulled away with a breath of laughter. ‘You don’t want to be dead. You just want to be a goatherd. I’m told there’s a difference, although I struggle to see it.’

I flinched, shame burning my cheeks.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Roshi told me. The shocking truth! A woman who could be Duethin, and what does she want? A hide tent and a flock of goats. Although you would look fetching with nannies scampering around your every step. Perhaps I’ll buy you some.’

‘Goatgirls aren’t poisoned. Or wed against their will.’

‘The poisoning I’ll grant you,’ he said, rising from the floor to sit beside me. ‘Goatgirls have their share of pain, though, and I dare say their share of arranged marriages. I didn’t exactly marry the woman I’d have chosen at the time, either.’

Hurt flared, hot thorns piercing my throat and words. ‘No one forced you to utter the vows.’

‘Political necessity isn’t the same as free choice. Still, I can’t complain. I seem happier in my wife than she is in me, so I suppose you truly are the bigger victim.’

I swung my hand at his smug cheekbone with all my weight behind it, the blow leaving a raw handprint smeared across his cheek.

‘So there is spirit left in you after all,’ he said. ‘Good. I prefer it when you’re brazen.’

Something had changed in his voice: it was lower, and his pupils had dilated. He hadn’t moved, yet he felt closer.

‘Being bound to you is never dull, I’ll grant you that much. And I suppose I should thank you for it, since I couldn’t abide a tedious wife,’ he said. ‘Come, what will you have?’

‘A herd of goats?’ I said bitterly.

His smile sparked lights in his eyes. ‘And goat-leather skirts like Roshi’s, so you can disappear among them?’

A bittersweet hurt suffused me. He had taken everything from me. Since our first meeting, me in my blood-stained finery and him at the head of a mercenary army, he’d used me to further his own ends.

But at the same time he’d protected me.

He’d saved me from Amalia’s rages, sheltered me from her sullen revenge. He’d hidden our indiscretion, saving both of us from a hanging. The smears of weariness beneath his eyes told me he’d barely slept while I lay sick. He’d been truer to me than Roshi, who’d taken my plea for freedom and interpreted it after her own ends. He had accepted my implicit chastisement of the Somners, drightens he desperately needed as allies, because they’d insulted me. I clenched my hands into fists to keep them from reaching out to him.

‘You’re not alone, Matilde,’ he said, his eyes drinking me in. ‘You don’t have to be alone.’

It seemed an eternity before his lips dipped down against mine. The lightning flick of his tongue in my mouth sent a shock through my core.

‘It’s okay.’ Dieter’s murmur soothed away my stiffness. ‘I’m your husband, remember?’

And he was all I had left.