Daughter of the Flames (27 page)

“Sorin!” I cried joyfully as he heaved himself painfully up out of the water, hair plastered to his head, and crawled under the smouldering rail. “You’re all right!”

“Which is more than I can say for you, idiot woman,” he shouted, slumping on his hands and knees. “What the sweet goddess do you think you’re doing? Do you want to burn alive? Get into the lake!”

“I can’t – Rashna. What about your legs?”

“My legs are fine in the water! I’ll help with Rashna; there are boats coming. For Ioana’s sake, Zahira! Come on!” He beckoned urgently.

I staggered to the edge, and between us we clumsily eased Rashna into the water on her back, her head on Sorin’s shoulder and his arm across her chest. I slid in beside them, trying to remember the sculling motion that I had been taught when I was tiny. The water had lost any warmth the sun gave it in the day, and after the heat on the boat the cold was almost unbearable. It made my whole body burn and tingle. I wheezed, fighting for air.

“Boats –
ack
.” I choked as a wave of black water broke over my head. I surfaced spluttering. “Boats coming?” I managed to get out.

“Fishing boats,” he panted, struggling to keep Rashna above the jumping water.

“Who … did all this? Fire?” I choked again, and began coughing, the combination of smoke-burned throat and water too much.

“Rua people. Shut up!”

There was a shout in the distance – a familiar voice. I tried to turn in the water and went under again. I thrashed, trying to get back up, but the weight of clothes and boots felt like lead on my limbs. I should have remembered to take them off; they’d be ruined. I didn’t know if my fingers were breaking the surface any more. Am I sinking, or just floating? I wondered. It was like being blind, the darkness… My chest is going to burst.

Something closed round my wrist, biting into the numbed flesh. The lake seemed to clamp down on me, and I screamed at the pressure, inhaled water – and broke the surface.

More hands closed on my arms and shoulders, grabbing my sopping clothes, and yanked me up. I was choking and coughing, water streaming out of my mouth and nostrils as I was pulled aboard the boat. I forced my eyes open and saw Sorin leaning over me, his face dripping with water and ghostly pale in the reflected flicker of the fire.

“Thank the elements,” he said, sagging with relief.

“Reia? Can you hear me?”

“Deo?” I croaked. “What – how?”

“Time enough for that later,” Deo said. “Here.” He tucked a thick blanket around me. It prickled against my wet skin and smelled strongly of fish, but the warmth felt like a blessing.

“Help…” I whispered. My throat felt like the time Rashna had tried to strangle me, when I was eight. “Help me up.” I reached out a hand to Sorin. He tried to clasp it, but his fingers wouldn’t close tightly enough; eventually I grabbed his wrist, and he was able to pull me into a sitting position. I leaned against him with a sigh, and tucked the trailing edge of the blanket around him.

I looked about me. We were in a middle-sized Rua fishing craft, five other boats of varying sizes clustered around us in the water. They were too far away in the shadows for me to make out the faces of the occupants, but I recognized several as wearing the uniforms of Abheron’s servants, and was glad.

In our boat, two Rua oarsmen whom I didn’t know worked hard, taking us away from the burning pleasure vessels. Deo sat with us in the stern, a northern-style recurved bow and empty quiver of arrows beside him. He had a nasty scratch on his forehead and a spectacular black eye, but otherwise seemed to be unharmed. Between the two rowing benches Rashna had been carefully laid out and wrapped in more blankets like mine. Stefan, Sorin’s man, leaned over her, holding one of her hands, while a Sedorne woman applied salve to the cuts on her face. Judging by the look of tenderness on Stefan’s bruised face, Rashna would be well taken care of.

“We’re even now, you know,” Sorin said quietly.

I started from my half-doze. “What?”

“You saved me. Now I’ve saved you.”

“We were already even,” I said sleepily. I knew there were lots of important things to ask and tell, but at the moment my head felt as if it were full of rocks. Thinking would make them all tumble and grind together – and I wasn’t too anxious for that to happen just yet. “You kept your promise when we came to you at Mesgao.”

“That didn’t make us even. You saved my life. Do you know that in Sedra, if someone saves your life, then your life belongs to them? I’ve belonged to you since you saved me from burning to death. Now I’ve saved you from the same fate, we’re even.”

I went cold. “Does that mean you don’t belong to me any more?” I asked.

“No,” he said, wrapping the blanket more securely around me. “It means we belong to each other.”

I relaxed. “Oh. Good.” I put my head on his shoulder again.

The boat had turned in the water while we were talking. We were well away from the burning ships now and I could see the whole formation. The ropes and walkways that had anchored them together gone, they were drifting slowly away from the pier, listing in the water as their crowns of flame ate at them. Fire sent streaks of light and colour across the surface of the black lake. There were dozens of figures milling about on the pier: guests, servants who hadn’t rebelled, gourdin who had escaped the blaze.

A lone figure stood at the very end of the pier, completely still amid the chaos of the scene. The light gleamed wetly on his reddish-gold hair as he stared out at the burning armada of pleasure craft. Tiredness made my vision blur; I blinked. When I looked again, the figure was gone.

Something breathed into my mind, carrying with it images of gently flickering blue flames and a sense of warmth – and warning. The Holy Mother. I clutched at the comfort She offered like a child, but an instant later Her presence had faded.

I closed my eyes in weary resignation as the loss of Her warmth left me shivering. I knew what She had been trying to tell me.

Abheron is still alive. And he still wants you…

The house where Deo took us was hidden among the trees, low on the north bank of the lake, and constructed on wooden stilts that kept it out of the water when the lake rose in the rainy season. There was a crescent-shaped mooring bay beneath the house with enough room for several small fishing boats. Someone had left a lighted lamp hanging there to guide us in.

I only noticed any of this because, after the little fleet was tied up underneath the house, I had to stumble through tree roots and up stairs before I could get into it and lie down. I was conscious of light and warmth within, and people who flapped around me and my friends briskly, but that was all. I didn’t even notice that for very long.

It wasn’t until the next morning that I met the people who had helped to engineer our rescue, and asked them the many questions which, after a good night’s sleep, had occurred to me.

Sunlight and shadow made dancing patterns over the floor of the living area as the leaves outside the window were tossed by the rising wind. I sat crosslegged on a threadbare but comfortable cushion, with Sorin arranged less comfortably beside me – he was used to chairs, and sitting like this gave him cramp. Across the low table where our breakfast was laid out, Deo and another man sat. The other man was in his early fifties, with that hard, polished look that old soldiers get; and this was born out by the faded tattoo of a falcon across the bridge of his left cheek. What remained of his hair was white and bobbly like lambswool, and his beautiful, bright eyes were serious as he looked at us. His name was Toril and he was the leader of the Rua resistance in Jijendra. The first thing he told me was that he had been born a month after my father, and named in his honour.

While I was still struggling to think of an answer for that, Toril’s daughter came in with a tray of tea and, after placing it gravely on the table, took the final cushion to my left and sat.

“How is she?” I asked. Padmina had been helping the Sedorne herb woman look after Rashna in the other room of the house. The silence from that room had been worrying me since I woke up.

“She has a broken arm and nose, four broken fingers, several cracked ribs, and very nasty bruising all over, which I hope does not reach her internal organs. She isn’t awake yet – but in her condition this is perhaps a good thing.” Padmina folded her hands in her lap with an air of serenity that I envied. “Stefan is resting with her now. His healer friend is fetching more things from home to tend her with.”

“Do you think she will be all right?” I asked hesitantly, dreading the answer.

“I don’t think she’ll die. Neither does the Sedorne healer. She will be a long time recovering from this.”

“She’s a fighter. She’ll fight her way up again,” Toril added quietly.

I sighed. “Thank you.” Sorin touched my shoulder comfortingly, and I managed a smile for him. He was quiet this morning, suffering from terrible pains in his limbs following the exertions of the night before.

As Padmina poured tea and passed out the cups, I looked at Deo. “Well? What happened, Deo? To you and Rashna and Stefan?”

Deo rubbed one hand over his head, taking his tea from Padmina gratefully. “If you have the patience for it, I’ll start at the beginning.”

“Yes, go on.” I took my tea and reached for a date and honey roll, less because of hunger than because my nervous fingers wanted something to play with.

Deo explained that when we arrived at the summer palace, one of the gourdin opened the carriage door for Anca and helped her down, and she smiled at him. There was something in the soldier’s attitude, and in Anca’s expression, that made Deo suddenly suspicious. He decided to go to the kitchen and make contact with Rashna and Stefan if he could – but they weren’t there, and when he asked the staff about them, they seemed terrified. Deo realized then that something was wrong. He decided he had to make an effort to find Rashna and Stefan before reporting back to us, and remembered his old friend Toril, who lived in Jijendra. Deo hid in a supply cart that was heading into the city, and made his way to his friend’s house – this house – hoping to get information and help. What he found was Stefan, battered half to death, sheltering there.

Here Toril took over the tale. He explained that Stefan had turned up at dawn the day before yesterday, bruised and bleeding, and claiming to be an agent of the alliance. Luckily for Stefan, word of what Sorin and I had tried to accomplish at Mesgao had reached Toril, and he believed Stefan, and took him in.

The news of an attempt at a Rua and Sedorne alliance against Abheron had come to Toril in an unexpected form. Rebel namoa and temple people – the same ones who had leaped into battle on my behalf last night – had raced to Jijendra ahead of us, and contacted the local resistance on arrival. These men and women were angry and disillusioned enough to set fire to Sedorne property in Mesgao, and to attack Sedorne wherever they found them, but they had not been willing to see me taken prisoner by the Sedorne king without acting.

I finally had my answer about Kapila’s attack. The once friends who had fled from Mesgao had not wanted me dead after all. In fact, despite everything, they had risked their lives to save me.

Someone – Anca, of course – had tipped the gourdin off about Stefan and Rashna. Fortunately some of the Rua servants at the palace worked for the resistance, and after Rashna was caught, they hid Stefan and were able to smuggle him out. That was the only reason he had survived.

Deo shook his head. “I probably escaped the same fate as Rashna because Anca was hoping to get more information from me while I still trusted her. I knew we had to get you out of there as soon as possible, so we gathered up all we knew or could guess about Abheron’s plans for the ball, and Toril sent word to every resistance worker and fighter he knew to attack the boats at our signal.”

“You nearly killed Zahira when she got caught in the fire.” Sorin spoke for the first time, grimly. “You put her in more danger yourselves than she was facing from Abheron.”

Deo bowed his head, uncharacteristically cowed. “You’re right. I apologize for the risks we took with both of you. We were desperate, and we lost sight of you in the smoke and confusion.”

I laid my hand on Sorin’s arm when he would have spoken again. “No, it wasn’t their fault. Your plan was sound, Deo. The fire got away from you because the silk and ropes used to make the walkways and canopies had been treated with something – kirth oil, I think – that made them waterproof. It was like they were soaked with pitch. The fire could never have taken hold like that otherwise. Anyway, we’re all here, and still alive. So you succeeded. That’s all that matters.”

Sorin nodded grudgingly. I tightened my grip on his arm, and looked at Toril and Padmina again.

“The question now is what we do next. Is it safe for you, with us staying here?”

“Ah.” Toril smiled for the first time, the wide white grin bringing a devilish look to his face. “There is more to tell you yet.”

“We had news last night, just before we left to rescue you,” Padmina said. Her unsmiling face nonetheless shone with happiness. “It changes everything.”

“The alliance isn’t dead,” Deo said, his cowed expression melting away with suspicious speed. “After we left Mesgao your allies, both Rua and Sedorne, began gathering outside the town. The prospect of losing you both seems to have stirred everyone into action. Casador Fareed and Lord Elgun met with each other and hashed out a treaty between them. They’ve joined together, raised a new banner in your names, and they’re marching on Jijendra.”

“What?” I hastily put down my tea as it threatened to slop out, and gaped at Deo.

“Marching? That implies a force of some numbers,” Sorin said.

“They’re gathering followers as they come. Mostly Rua, but apparently at least three new Sedorne lords have thrown their lot in too, and brought their gourdin with them. At the last count they had a force of nearly two thousand people with them.”

I raked my hands through my hair, dazed. “Two thousand? The garrison here only holds five hundred gourdin.”