“Yes, my lord prince.”
“We’ll need a straw pallet for the girl. Sergeant Cobbo can see to it.”
Zacharias glanced at Heribert, but the cleric only gave a puzzled shrug. With a bow, Zacharias left on the errand.
Unaccustomed to palaces, he quickly got lost, but a sympathetic servingman directed him to the servants’ hall. He passed through the mostly deserted hall and found a door that led outside. The hush of early evening hung over the courtyard. Stars glittered overhead. An unrelenting cold seeped through his clothes to chill his bones. His old scars ached, and he suddenly had to pee. Looking for a private place where no one might accidentally see his mutilation, he finally stumbled up to the door of the cookhouse, meaning to ask for directions to the privies.
Smoke and the odor of burned roast drifted out of the cooking house, together with something tangier, so sharp it made his neck prickle. In the Quman camp he had learned to walk quietly, because Prince Bulkezu had liked his slaves to be silent and had once killed a man for sneezing in the middle of a musician’s performance.
Her voice had the breathy quality of air. As he peered into the smoky interior, he saw a woman standing at the big block table, hands hovering over a platter ringed by four candles placed to form a square. An apple fanned into neat slices lay on the wooden platter, so freshly cut that the juice welling up from its moist flesh shone in the candlelight, making his mouth water. No one else was in the cookhouse.
“I adjure you by your name and your powers and the glorious place wherein you dwell, O Prince of Light who drove the Enemy into the Abyss. Let your presence rest upon this apple and let the one who eats of it be filled with desire for me. Let him be seized by a flame of fire as powerful as that fire in which you, Holy One, make your dwelling place. Let him open his door to me, and let him not be content with any thing until he has satisfied me—”
Nay, there Was someone else there, over by the spit. She emerged from the shadows, a woman of middling years. In the half light, Zacharias saw the wicked scar blazed on her right cheek, puffy and white.
“What madness is this, Frederun?”
The pretty servingwoman broke into tears. “I thought he was dead! I was so happy when I was his lover—”