THIRTY-FOUR
A HUM OF VOICES nearby tugged at me through layers of grey sleep until I jolted awake.
Remembering what had happened, I lay still, gradually gaining a sense of where I was and if anyone was near. I was lying not on a bedroll spread on the ground, but on a tick stuffed with wool and laid atop a low wooden frame. A travelling bed! An unlit brazier and a single lamp squatted in the centre of an otherwise empty floor, casting a weak, orange gloom over the small tent.
The door-flap hung slightly ajar, revealing a slant of afternoon sunlight and no tree shadows. How long had I been asleep? Were we already approaching the Turholm?
The tent-flap twitched aside and I jerked upright – and froze, hunching over the sharp pain of my ribs. When it receded, I saw that it was Roshi and stood up. Carefully. Her smile was bright as the light framing her, when she saw that I could stand. ‘Welcome back.’
‘How long have I been asleep?’ I asked, brushing unwashed hair from my face.
‘Three days – we’re back near the Turholm. Achim says you would’ve woken sooner, but he had to dose you up because the travelling would have pained you too much.’
The mention of Achim brought the memory of my last waking moment ramming into me with the speed and force of a kick to the stomach: You will pledge whatever aid the emperor, or any of his representatives or ambassadors, deems necessary.
I’d found the Amaeri who could dissolve Dieter’s binding – and then I’d turned around and sworn my aid to Ilthea. What had I done but exchange one collar for another? I sank back onto the cot, burying my face in my hands with a groan. Need seemed a weak justification now.
Roshi came forward and knelt by me, lightly touching my knee.
‘He’ll put me back on the throne. That was our bargain. He’ll unseat Dieter and put me back on the throne. Then, ravens take my eyes, I’ll owe my throne to Ilthea,’ I said, speaking through my fingers.
And ravens take my eyes if it wouldn’t give rise to an endless round of requests, and eventually demands, from the empire.
I shook my head. ‘Everything I’ve done has been so I could live, but that doesn’t excuse any of it. I sold my throne to the man who murdered my family, and now I’ve sold my people to the Iltheans. None of it’s excusable.’
‘You listen to me,’ Roshi said, gripping my knee hard. ‘The blood of the Skythes runs in you. We are not a people who lie down and die. I’ll not hear you rail against your fierceness like some limp Turasi cowering beneath a stone roof.’
I didn’t answer and she chose to interpret my silence as acquiescence. ‘Good,’ she said. ‘Now let’s wash that bird’s nest on your head. Then I think you should talk with Achim. He’s a most interesting man.’
Within moments she’d organised for a basin to be fetched, along with buckets of water and fresh clothes. She’d obviously settled into life with a travelling army.
‘Cold, I’m afraid,’ she said with offensive cheer, combing the chill water through my hair then scrubbing the soap into it, her fingers working some of the tension from my scalp.
I fell to wondering about Clay and whether he’d been destroyed. If he hadn’t, he would still come seeking me. Thought of the golem sparked an idea. As everyone kept reminding me, taking a throne was never bloodless. Sidonius’s campaign would be no exception. There would be a battle. Clay might come hunting again. Even if he didn’t, there were uncountable ways in which a general might find himself an inadvertent casualty of his own campaign. A dead general couldn’t carry word of my pledge back to his emperor.
‘Stop it,’ said Roshi, as if she could read my thoughts.
I cleared my mind and smiled at her.
‘Better,’ she said approvingly, before winding my hair into a braid and binding it on the crown of my head.
I cast an eye over the clothes she’d brought. The Ilthean matron’s sleeveless gown she held was cinched under the breasts with a string of silk and fastened at the shoulders with bronze clasps worked in the shape of a serpent’s head, fangs bared. There were also sturdy leather sandals with crisscrossing straps, which Roshi wound halfway up my calves. A great swathe of cloth, blue as sapphires, completed the outfit. Roshi draped it around my shoulders like an oversized shawl.
So easily had I been turned into a southern snake.
The choice was Sidonius’s, I had no doubt.
I stood, conscious only of the ache of my ribs against the linen bandages as Roshi stepped back to admire her handiwork. I grimaced as she twitched the stole first this way and that, adjusting its fall to her satisfaction. When she was done I feared to move at all lest the entire contraption collapse around my feet.
‘Enough,’ I said, when she looked like she might dive in for another round of adjustments. ‘I don’t need to look like the perfect Ilthean woman.’
Roshi bit her lip and held the tent-flap aside for me as I stepped outside, the pain of ducking through almost too great to bear.
I emerged to the sight of line upon line of Ilthean soldiers stretching between me and the plain behind which the Turholm towered, Dieter’s black raven banners snapping in the wind from every turret and tower. Despite Roshi’s warning, the sight was a blow.
I gazed at my beloved home, standing tall and proud before the approaching onslaught, and thought I might break somewhere deep inside.
To my left, Achim rose from a squat. ‘Lady,’ he greeted me.
‘I find myself in unpleasant circumstances,’ I replied stonily.
Achim cast a questioning glance at Roshi, but she had planted herself beside Sepp, who sat cross-legged at the far corner of the tent, shrunk in on himself, head down. Neither he nor Roshi came to Achim’s rescue.
‘Tell me how you came to be here,’ I said, still staring at the Turholm.
Squatting again, Achim rolled his shoulders in a shrug. ‘It is a long story, if you want all the details, not to mention a dry one. The short version is, I came away from my homeland to find someone and I joined Sidonius because he asked.’
‘Who is Sidonius to you?’
‘What is Dieter to you?’
‘Private,’ He replied, his expression making it doubly sure I understood this was a closed topic. ‘This much I will tell you. We learned the lore of the Amaer together, during his time in my homeland.’
‘You know his tricks of old.’
‘I do,’ He said, flicking a finger I assumed was meant to encompass the marks Dieter had put on my brow. ‘He was always one for the quick and easy way. Most of us scorned him for it, for usually it is the most easily broken.’ He paused and shook his head. ‘But Dieter always had a trick up his sleeve which turned the quick and easy way into the best way.’
‘You mean his ruse with believing.’
‘Yes. Use the victim’s mind to make the lie true,’ The shadow-worker said. ‘Brilliant. Amoral, but brilliant.’
I considered the black raven snapping in the distance. ‘Must it be amoral? Couldn’t the same trick be used to make a sick patient believe themselves healed?’
‘Don’t let Roshi hear you talk like that – she has a most decided opinion as to your regard for Dieter.’
This time it was my turn to shrug. ‘She has good reason.’ There were no words to explain the riot of confusion which made up the way I felt about Dieter, so I didn’t try.
‘My lady, if I may say, you look ravishing,’ Came Sidonius’s voice, and I turned to find him approaching, wearing the self-satisfied smile I’d heard in his tone. ‘Dressed as you are,’ He continued, ‘I see the likeness to your aunt.’
The mention of Helena made me shiver, and I could find no response that didn’t choke me.
‘Silence is a good attribute,’ Sidonius noted. ‘You might want to cultivate it. Particularly during the parley.’
His words started a trip-hammer in my breast. Parley meant Dieter.
‘Now?’
‘Second thoughts, little queen?’ said Sidonius, his choice of epithet sending a chill down my spine.
I had to stiffen my neck against the urge to turn and check for Clay’s approach.
‘Might I suggest it’s perhaps a little late?’ he added.
‘You may not,’ I snapped.
Sidonius examined me with a critical eye before offering me his arm in its white silk sleeve. ‘In that case, your throne awaits, lady.’
I rested the tips of my fingers on his arm, taut and warm beneath the thin layer of silk, and let him lead me towards the parley, and Dieter. My knees felt weaker with every step, his pace quick enough to make my bound rib twinge.
A makeshift pavilion had been set up, an open-sided tent of white silk, excess scraps of cloth fluttering at each corner. A small party on horseback were picking their way across the plain towards the pavilion already.
We had no mounts of our own, not directly. Instead, a single horse stood harnessed into the traces of a small open carriage.
‘In you step, lady,’ said Sidonius.
‘I’ll ride the horse,’ I said, not moving.
He took no notice, urging me into the carriage with a hand on the small of my back to block off any escape. The carriage creaked as I stepped in, then rocked and tipped as Sidonius followed me. He stood dead-centre, lifting the chariot’s prow from the ground.
I clutched at the lacquered wooden rim, terrified by the thought of landing on my backside in the dust.
‘Closer to me,’ said Sidonius.
‘I’m fine here,’ I said, curling my fingers tighter.
He pulled me towards him, forcing me to release my hold on the rim and step back. Only a fraction of an inch separated us as he reached around and tucked me into the crook of his elbow. He picked up the traces and the horse flicked glossy ears back and forth, shifting on its hooves as it felt the subtle change in its harness.
An escort formed around us: soldiers in bronze breastplates, scraps of white silk knotted to the tips of their lances. Sidonius flicked the reins and gave a sharp cry in my ear and the horse burst into a trot. The chariot’s rattling start swayed me tighter into his grip. Unsteady with the jolt and sway, pull and lag, I didn’t fight, but concentrated instead on controlling the pain shooting through my body and the nerves making my hands hot.
Heralded by the beat of hooves and the rattle and creak of the chariot, clad in the garb of the Iltheans and cradled in the arm of his brother, I made my way towards my husband.