“So you still claim the babe is yours.” With little more than a twist of his long fingers, Blaise made quick work of my leg ropes. His spare build gave no impression of strength or power, until you noted his large bones and broad hands. I was taller, but I guessed that he outweighed me.
“Everything I told you was the truth, which is more than you can say.”
He stepped back, offering no help as the blood rushed back to my extremities, and I stumbled to my feet. He tossed me a shirt of coarse brown wool, much like his own, and he watched with interest as I managed to get it on gingerly over my back—a necessary skill of slaves.
“We are not here to discuss my truth, only yours. I was brought up to mistrust Ezzarians, and I’ll not be easy to convince. You were with the Derzhi willingly. You wear no slave rings, though I can see you’ve done so in the past. You walked Vayapol a free man. If you wish to live beyond sunset, I would recommend you tell me a good story.”
“I’m surprised you would listen to my story. Your friend was ready to kill me.”
“He is rarely wrong with such advice.”
I followed him out of the squalid little shack and into the predawn stillness of a verdant valley, much like the one from which the outlaws had escaped. Four ramshackle houses set along the streamside; several more tucked back into the woods. A horse pen upwind. Rocks and trees. We walked along the bank of the stream that sparkled in the lingering light of a waning moon. No one was about. Only sleepers in the houses, watchmen at both ends of the valley, several men restless with injuries in a house deep in the woods. My own injuries stayed quiet as we walked. I had long wished for some such enchantment, but I had the uneasy sense that I would not like its making. I could not allow the demon woman to touch me again.
It was imperative that Blaise trust me, so I put aside my worry about the demon and told him my history as accurately as I could without revealing my relationship with Aleksander. I had been a slave of the Derzhi after the capture of Ezzaria, I said. I had served in a number of Derzhi houses, the last one being the Emperor’s summer palace in Capharna. Two years previous, in the confusion of Prince Aleksander’s arrest and near execution, I had escaped and returned to my people to take up my life. Then my son was born and sent away.
“And that drew you out of your forests, risking capture as a runaway in order to find him.”
“I need to see him.” To look into his soul and verify what Ysanne and three witnesses had claimed. “Our customs seem cruel, but there are good reasons that . . . some children . . . afflicted children . . . cannot remain in Ezzaria. As I told you before, I don’t want him dead. I want him to grow up in safety with someone to care for him.” Until I could enter his mind and remove the demon that had no business there. But this man was not going to understand that part. He had left me in the care of a demon-possessed madwoman.
“And how did you find me?” His stillness was profound. We had stopped on a wooden footbridge that crossed the dancing stream. I did not know what skills Blaise possessed, but he listened with all of himself, so I needed to stay as close to the truth as possible.
“There is a Derzhi named Vanye, the son of a powerful house. He was a bitter enemy of Prince Aleksander in the days when I was held in Capharna. He did this”—I pointed to the burn scar on my left cheekbone—“as an insult to the Prince. He thought that to mar the Prince’s property would make him look stronger in other men’s eyes. The Prince did not kill Lord Vanye, because the deed was not entirely unprovoked, and despite what many believe, there is a strong sense of justice in Prince Aleksander.” Now, for the riskier telling. The lies. Aleksander claimed I was the world’s worst liar. I hoped he was wrong. “As I was hunting you, I was picked up by the Derzhi. Vanye was hunting the Yvor Lukash—he thinks to regain favor with the Prince by doing so—and was sure that an escaped Ezzarian slave must know something of the rebels. He had learned of your hiding place and dragged me there, promising to let me go free again if I helped him capture and identify you. I agreed. I had no enmity for you; how could I, of all men, disagree with your goals? I just didn’t think there was any way ordinary outlaws would survive the Derzhi attack. When I saw who and what you were—”
“You recognized me?”
“There are a great many things that define a person beyond his face. Why do you think I allowed you to keep my son?”
He looked at me quizzically. “Go on.”
“I told the Derzhi to stop the attack, that you were fifty sorcerers and would bring down the rocks on his troops. When he realized how few you were, Vanye swore to put me through the Rites of Balthar again. If you have ever spoken to an Ezzarian slave, you know that death is preferable. If I had known you were coming up that way and could give me a hand, I might have thought of some less drastic way to get free of him. I thank you for your help. I’ve survived a great deal, but I don’t think I would have made it through this one.”
“You don’t make it easy for me to trust you, admitting that you were ready to give us over to the Derzhi.”
“My life is in your hands. I think that is a better place than in Lord Vanye’s hands, though I believe there are a few things you ought to know about the world.” If he could not recognize a demon and understand what it could do to him or his followers, then in no wise could he understand the risks of his activities.
We walked up a short steep path to an open meadow and sat ourselves on a flat slab of rock as the sun lightened the sky beyond the end of the valley. Blaise was silent. I waited for his judgment, reviewing my testimony even as he did, looking for flaws, slips, untruths that I would have to maintain or work around. Unfortunately, it was about that time that the demon woman’s enchantment began to lose its effectiveness, and I began to feel cold and sick. The brown wool shirt touching my flayed back felt like acid-dipped claws. Blood seeped from the deep lacerations and dampened the coarse cloth, and a wave of weakness had my knees feeling like porridge. Even the glory of the red-streaked horizon was lost on me.
“I need . . . if I could go somewhere . . . lie down,” I said. “I’m sorry . . .” All the questions I had ready for the man drifted away in a fog of misery, and what came next was quite unclear.
Blaise left off his pondering and took note of my condition. “I’m a dolt. I didn’t think. Here . . . wait . . .” I curled into a ball and rolled to my side on the rock, trying not to be sick at the waves of fire consuming my back. My companion hesitated, then walked away into the tall meadow grass that surrounded our rock. I squeezed my eyes and mouth shut to keep from shaming myself before a stranger, and when I opened them again, Blaise was gone. Nothing remained in the expanse of meadow but waving grass, the distant line of trees emerging from the night shadows, and the birds of prey circling overhead looking for breakfast. I might have passed out then, but I would have sworn the sunrise still spread a rosy mantle on the grass when two people walked up behind me.
“I let him walk too far. Can you help?”
“I’ll lay it careful on him. Longer than before. Deeper. But so careful as you’ve said to me always. Careful, Saetha. Careful. Careful. Careful. You’re the only one who trusts me. He’ll be well tomorrow. No fever. No hurt.”
I heard the faint warning notes of demon music as the woman cut away my shirt and pressed her bony hands to my head. “No, please don’t let her . . .” I said, panic overtaking my reason. “Demon . . .” But before I could stop her, my mouth sagged open and my eyes sagged shut, and I neither knew nor heard anything more that day.
On the next morning, when dawn poked its fingers under my eyelids, my wounds were healed.
CHAPTER 12
There had been times in my demon battles when I had been slathered with such foulness as was not found in human realms, the fluids and entrails of beasts so vile, imagination could not conjure them. In my years as a slave I had worked in stables and middens, and I had been required to clean up the vomits and defecation of drunken men or of women besotted with yaretha weed. Once I had been commanded to clean a castle where the entire garrison had died of plague, and once to strip hundreds of corpses that had rotted in the summer sun for three days. I had been revolted by such filth, but in every instance I had been able to cleanse myself in some fashion, to bathe or wash or wipe with sand or straw, or to purify myself with prayer or ritual or contemplation until I felt clean again. The filth was never a part of me. But on the morning I discovered that my wounds had been sealed with demon magic, I could devise no cleansing rite that could ever make me whole and could imagine no span of years that could ease my horror. If I could have ripped my back open again, I would have done it.
“What have you done?” I yelled at the ragged woman cowering in the corner of her hovel. “It is unholy . . . foul . . . unnatural.” And so much worse because I had said nothing the previous day. I had allowed her to ease my pain. I had walked with Blaise and never gotten around to telling him that she was not to touch me again. I had lost all sense, all caution, because I was focused on my lies. But for her to close all the wounds . . . I felt as if worms were crawling beneath my skin.
“Does it pain you? I was so careful. The good Blaise watched and said I did well. I’m so sorry, sorry, sorry.” Saetha twisted her fingers into a knot beside her mouth.
The good Blaise. The fool Blaise. I rubbed my head and could not decide whether to weep or scream. All my superior rambling about demons who had no lust for evil was forgotten in my revulsion. The demon would be laughing. The woman reached out to touch me, and I jerked away, stumbling to my feet and knocking over a barrel. “It’s not you. But I know what you are. I know what lives inside you and what you’ve used to heal me. Vile, poisonous . . .” Inside I was babbling enchantments of protection and purification. “Stay away from me.”
“You know nothing about her.” Blaise stood rigid in the open doorway of the stinking hovel. He was dressed all in black: breeches, shirt, tunic, and boots, and he wore black beads woven in his hair that hung long and loose at his back. His face was smudged dark with coal, and on each side of it, from jawbone to brow, was painted a white dagger. His eyes were pools of seething midnight. “Saetha has done you great service. How dare you speak to her so?”
The woman was crouched in the corner weeping, rocking back and forth, her arms wrapped over her head.
“I don’t blame her—the woman—but she is a danger beyond your understanding. She is possessed by a rai-kirah. Look into her eyes and you’ll see it. Open your ears and it will deafen you. Have you no lore to tell you of demons? Do you have any idea of what they can do? There are enchantments that can be bound with blood . . . terrible, ruinous things.” My years of training and experience demanded their say.
Her blue-flecked eyes told me that she was so far gone in her madness that the demon would answer to her name. Even had I an Aife to weave, I would have hesitated to walk Saetha’s soul. And she had touched me with her magic . . . My gut twisted at the thought of it.
“Saetha has been a healer from the day she came of age. She has saved more lives than the Derzhi have taken, birthed children, healed wounds, nursed and blessed everyone she has ever touched. When I was a boy, I saw her walk into a village where every man, woman, and child was dying of bog fever. She could not save them, but she eased their pain and soothed their madness, staying with them without sleep, not daring to touch food or drink until every one of them died in peace.” Blaise knelt down in the dirt beside the distraught woman and brushed her hair back from her face. She bowed her head and laid it on his breast, and he wrapped his arms around her, stroking her filthy hair, soothing her shaking sobs. “There is no evil in her, whatever you think you’ve seen. Now that she has gone the way of the elders, no one comes to her anymore. But her skill has not died with her mind.”
The sight was incomparably strange, the mad, grieving woman and the painted outlaw twined in a gentle embrace. My fear and anger receded as I watched. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I know she was trying to help. You must understand . . . I’ve seen so much.”
“But not everything.” He pressed his hands to the woman’s cheeks and smiled at her. “You’ve done well, Saetha. I’m proud of you. This Ezzarian did not intend to grieve you. He doesn’t know us, but you’ve given him his first lesson, and I’m going to give him his second.”
Saetha beamed at the young man and laid her finger on his painted cheek. “Lukash. Good hunting, Blaise, and go careful. Careful, careful.”
He laughed and rose. “You can be sure of it.”
Before I knew what was happening, Blaise pushed me out of Saetha’s doorway and into the arms of a short, stocky man who was dressed and painted in the same fashion as himself. “Get him ready, Farrol. He says he’s one of us, and he certainly has hard knowledge of the Derzhi. We’ll see if he can fight.”
“Wait . . .”
But they did not wait. Farrol and two women stripped off my boots and my bloodstained breeches and dressed me in black clothing slightly too small, and black boots, slightly too large, then smudged my face with coal and painted white daggers on my cheeks. They lamented my hair that hung only to my shoulders, but they loosed it from the tie that bound it and strung black beads in it. I asked what was their plan, but they laughed and said they wouldn’t tell until we were there.
“Can’t expect us to trust everything to you right off, now, can you?” Farrol was very familiar. I was sure I’d seen him at Blaise’s side during their retreat from Aleksander, but that had been only a glimpse. His voice told me he was the one who had gone for horses when Blaise had found me after the beating. But even that was not enough to explain his familiarity. He was short and round, but in no way soft. He, too, was Ezzarian, as was one of the women. The other woman—a tall willowy woman named Jalleen—was Suzaini. She it was who buckled a sword belt about my waist.