"If you must know," the physiker replied testily, "I wasn't letting anyone in, I was letting—her—out. One of the wine-girls from the Silver Rose. She has—ah—a slight infection of a personal nature." Lorryn had to admire the way the man coughed and flustered, as if he were embarrassed. "I was—ah—treating her—ah—as a favor, you might say."
The other man remained silent for a moment, then broke into a gale of laughter. "She, huh? A
personal
problem? You sly old dog, I didn't think you had it in you! Or have you got somethin' in those leaves of yours to
get
it in you?"
Bryce coughed again, and the man laughed even harder. "Next time, you ask the Master before you go treating
personal
problems. Otherwise I just might bust in here before you've let her out so I can get some of mat fun for myself."
The door slammed again, and the heavy boot-steps retreated.
The light returned, and Bryce pulled the towels off him. "You'll have to go out the rooftop now," the man said, his face white in the dim light of the lamp that trembled in his hand. "He'll be watching the front. I hope you can climb—come, I'll get you out and you'll have to take care of yourself from there—"
He was babbling with fear, a fear that made him literally sick, and the images in his mind told Lorryn why he was so afraid. Lorryn swallowed his own nausea and kept his mouth shut.
He couldn't get out of there quickly enough—even if it meant a harrowing climb across the roofs. Anything was better than being in the same room with a man with
those
memories in his mind…
Sheyrena dressed carefully in a purposefully soiled and torn gown, one she had prepared herself for this ruse. It had to look as if she had trekked across the wilderness in it. and not willingly, either. Instead of shoes, though, she wore a pair of worn-out old boots that could have belonged to Lorryn, with rags stuffed into the toes to make them fit. No shoes she owned would have survived the trip she was going to de scribe to Lord Tylar, and she would claim to have stolen the boots from Lorryn.
She and Mero had worked out every detail of her story, from the point where Lorryn talked her into coming for a morning walk with him to the point where she escaped from him, stealing his boots both to protect her own feet and prevent him from following her, and traveled alone, back along the route he had taken. Inside her gown, sewn into the body of her petticoat, she had two sets of the iron jewelry, one for herself, and one for her mother.
Myre would become, in this tale, Lorryn's willing accomplice and his contact with the wizards. Why not? It would certainly account for her presence in the boat, for a third figure had surely been seen, and it would also account for her
absence
after she fell out of it. That would also be why Lorryn had not gone straight to the wizards, but had wandered around on his own—without her, he had no guide. Anything that anyone overheard in that brief period between the moment when the pursuers had sighted the boat and the moment when it flew out of sight that might indicate that Rena had been encouraging Lorryn could easily be attributed instead to Myre.
"Are you ready?" Lorryn asked. She nodded, unable to force herself to speak. Mero was lying down with his eyes closed; that was because Lorryn was going to take all of
his
magic power and most of his own to send her straight to the border of Lord Tylar's land. The transportation spell, as modified by the wizards and taught to Mero, then taught by Mero to Lorryn, was not as "noisy" as the version Shana had used. The trick was that the person actually casting the spell had to remain behind, and the "noise" remained with him. In a big city such as this one, where there were hundreds, even thousands of spells being cast each day, another burst of magical "noise" would not be noticed.
Mero was actually better at this than Lorryn, but it was Lorryn who knew where Rena had to go, so it was Lorryn who must cast the spell, and it would take its direction from his mind.
As soon as Mero recovered, he would journey by more conventional means to Lord Tylar's estate, where he would wait for Rena and Lady Viridina with horses and supplies. Lorryn had insisted on that part of the plan, knowing that Mero would fret himself to pieces—and be all but useless—if he was not somewhere nearby, where he could help at need. It would be dangerous for him, certainly, but no more dangerous than remaining here with only half of his mind on keeping himself hidden from those searching for halfbloods.
'Take a deep breath and close your eyes," Lorryn said, and Rena obeyed him. She sensed power gathering around her, twisting and turning as Lorryn sent it through the amber globe in his hand as Mero had taught him, twisting and turning around
her
.
Then there came a flash of light so bright that she saw it through her closed eyelids.
Then,
nothing
.
No sound, no light, no air,
no floor
—she was falling, falling, she was going to fall forever! Her stomach churned as it had when Kalamadea had hit what he called an "air pocket" and plummeted three times his own length before he got back under control. She thought she screamed, but she couldn't hear herself; thought she stretched out her hands, but she couldn't even feel her own body!
Then, with no warning, she was
there
, feet planted firmly in the grass beside a tall, golden-yellow wall. She stood in the middle of a bare-earth bridle path, with grass on either side of it, in a place she knew as well as she knew her own room. She and Lorryn had been here a hundred times on their rides—there was the apple tree they always used to shade them in the summer when they stopped for a picnic meal, the grass beneath it long and rank, as if no one had tended it in some time. The leaves on the tree were just turning, a reminder that she and Lorryn had escaped in the spring, and now it was already fall.
She had forgotten how far it was to the gate from here—and she was afoot, not riding, wearing boots that were far too big for her, even with rags stuffed in the toes and more rags wrapped around her feet. She shivered as a cool autumn breeze cut through her ragged dress, and the iron jewelry felt very heavy around her waist.
Well, here I am.
And she wasn't going to get anything done by standing there.
With a tiny sigh, she trudged up the path. With luck, she might meet with some of the guards and save herself some blisters.
But no guards appeared—
of course, they never show up when you really want them to
—and her feet were sore enough to give ample evidence to the truth of her story when at last she reached the gate. She didn't
think
they were blistered, but if she got away with this, the very first thing she was going to do would be to have a good hot bath and a foot-rub!
The gate loomed much larger than she remembered it, but then again, her memory now was colored by living in the wilderness and in the tents of the Iron People. Many buildings seemed large now, compared to the tents. Made all of bronze, it boomed hollowly when she rapped on it timidly.
The gate swung open on her second knock, revealing a half-dozen fully armed guards behind it.
Elven
guards, not human, which said more than any words how Lorryn's escape had affected Lord Tylar. He no longer trusted anything important to human slaves, it seemed.
She clasped her hands before her, looked down at the ground, and said in a tired voice that did not need any acting, "Please, could I speak with my father, Lord Tylar?"
"Your
what
?" began one of the guards, as another laughed—but a third cursed and shut the other two up.
"By the Ancestors," he swore, "It's
her!
Sheyrena!"
She hadn't really hoped for gentle treatment—not until they knew she was fully of elven blood, anyway—but she hadn't quite expected to be bound hand and foot and slung facedown over a horse's back. She hadn't expected to be galloped up to the door of the manor, with the jewelry digging painfully into her skin, and her upset stomach being jounced worse than
any
dragon-flight had jostled it.
That, coming on top of the effect of the transportation spell, was just too much. When the guards reached the front door of the manor and manhandled her down off her perch, she threw up on the boots of the nearest.
She took small comfort in the fact that it was the one who had insisted on carrying her in that undignified position in the first place. He swore and kicked at her; she fell back, avoiding the kick. He aimed another at her, but before his foot connected, the sound of the door slamming open and an angry shout froze him where he stood.
"What is the meaning of this?"
Lord Tylar stood framed in his own marble doorway, glaring down at the guards gathered there. They moved aside, quickly, revealing a trembling and miserable Sheyrena huddled at the feet of one of their number.
Lord Tylar's face turned a lush crimson, which went very badly with his pale gold hair and green eyes. "You!" he spat. "How
dare
you show up here again?"
"F-f-father?" she faltered, ready tears springing to her eyes, for she really
did
feel entirely awful. "F-f-father? I—Lorryn fell asleep, and I hit him on the head and stole his boots and—"
He gestured, and the words froze in her mouth;
now
she was glad that she had insisted the iron jewelry be swathed in silk so that none of its protection would reach her. The success of her ruse depended entirely on her vulnerability to Lord Tylar's initial spells.
"You
dare
to claim to be the daughter of my body?" he spat. "We will see about that!" And with those words, he cast his second spell, which she assumed must be the one that broke illusions.
Of course, she remained precisely as she was, a huddled, wretched mess in a torn gown, dirty, tear-stained, and sick, but entirely, completely, indisputably
elven
.
And Lord Tylar, who had assumed right up to this very moment that his daughter was a halfblood just as his "son" was, stared with his mouth falling open.
But only for a moment; he recovered quickly from his shock. He had not become the kind of power he was by being a complete dolt, after all.
And now he turned his anger on another target: the guards. "
You
!" he raged, although his face was no longer scarlet "You imbeciles! How
dare
you treat my daughter like this! I'll see you broken to sweeping stables for this!"
And before the guards could react, he himself was down the steps and stooping to help Rena to her feet; cutting the ropes that bound her hands and feet with his own belt-dagger.
"Oh,
Father
?' she sobbed, and flung herself at his feet, to cling to them and weep into the leather of his boots. "Father, it was so
horrible
Lorryn was—Lorryn is—"
As she had expected, since any display of emotion horrified him, and hysteria made him desert the scene of the uncomfortable outpouring immediately, he backed hastily away. "You—you—" he said, pointing at two of the guards as Rena watched covertly through her lowered eyelashes. 'Take my daughter to her chamber. Instruct the slaves to attend to her every need, and gown her according to her station.
Now
, you fools!"
And he turned and fled back into the hall, leaving the poor, bewildered guards to help her to her feet again—very gingerly this time, as if they were afraid to touch her—and guide her to her own rooms.
The maids were already waiting—all new ones, which somehow didn't surprise her much—and the guards released her into their hands with ill-concealed relief. As they undressed her, Rena found the opportunity to slip the packets of iron jewelry into the old hiding place in her bed where she used to keep books. Within a few moments, Rena was sinking back into that longed-for tub of hot water, with a maid attending to each hand and two more to each foot, and another to wash and untangle her artistically tangled and dirtied hair.
It was altogether lovely, and she gave herself up into their hands with a sigh of bliss. The maids twittered to each other like a flock of her little birds, exclaiming over her roughened hands and sore feet, and the state of her hair.
"My lady!" one kept saying, as she mended the damaged nails as best she could. "My lady, how could you do this to your pretty white hands?"
As if I had nothing to worry about in the howling wilderness except care for my nails
! She had to bite her lip to keep from laughing.
Eventually they finished with her, dressed her in a gown of a soft rose color, and sent her on her way to her father's study. They had offered her a drink that she suspected was meant to tranquilize her; she accepted it, and surreptitiously poured it into a vase after pretending to drink from it. Their expressions of satisfaction confirmed her suspicion, and she took care to act relaxed and just a bit giddy when she made her way between two much-chastised guards to the study.
But as the door opened, she discovered that her father was not alone, and she was
very
glad that she did not have the jewelry on her person. She did not know these lords by name, but their faces told her all that she needed to know about them. Such arrogance only came with the greatest of power.
She made a deep, though unsteady, curtsy, and did not rise until her father gave her leave, in a voice that betrayed his pleasure at her action.
"These are two High Lords from the Council, Sheyrena," he said, speaking slowly, as if she were a child, or feebleminded. Or both! 'Tell us all what happened to you at the hands of the monster that stole you away."
One of the High Lords brought her a chair, which she sank into gratefully; in a trembling and hesitant voice, she told her story, beginning with Lorryn supposedly coming to her room with her maid to take her on a sunrise picnic, and ending with her "escape" from the terrible halfblood, stealing his boots so that he could not pursue her, and retracing the path she had memorized even in her terror.
"He was going to sell me to the wizards, Father," she cried, her voice shaking, not with suppressed tears as they supposed, but with suppressed laughter. "He told me that he was going to sell me to the wizards, to feed to their dragons! He told me that dragons would only eat maidens, and—"