Perhaps she had underestimated Adelheid. Anger and suffering had honed her into a fitting weapon.
“Many will seek God’s guidance,” Antonia agreed.
“It’s true I still have an army, if Lady Lavinia can feed and house us. There are other allies who will be desperate for guidance—as you say—in this time of trouble. Frightened people seek a strong leader.” She touched each gem fixed to the seven points on the massive crown: gleaming pearl, lapis lazuli, pale sapphire, carnelian, ruby, emerald, and last of all banded orange-brown sardonyx, which represented God’s hierarchy on Earth: God, noble, commoner.
“My lady!” The first steward reappeared at the door. Veralia was stout and brisk, a good captain of the hall. “The guards have brought the new prisoners, as you instructed. They are armed, but have offered no resistance, so Captain Oswalo deemed it best not to provoke a fight. They are heavily guarded.”
Adelheid stepped forward. “What have you found, Lavinia?”
“A small band of Wendish folk, so I am told. I have already given instructions that any Wendish refugees are to be brought to me. We know not what jewels we may find among them. Veralia?”
“They were arrested by our soldiers yesterday, on the road that leads down out of the north.”
“Wendish refugees should be fleeing to the north,” said Adelheid.
“Captain Oswalo wondered at first if they might be spies, but—well—you will see, my lady. Your Majesty. There is a young Wendish lord and his attendant, a cleric, a servingwoman, two barbarians, and a girl who claims to be the descendant of Emperor Taillefer.”
Indeed, a piercing, immature voice was suddenly audible to every soul in the chamber, driven in from outside by powerful lungs and delivered in Wendish.
“I said I don’t want to come here! I said it. Why does no one listen to me?”
“Perhaps because your voice is too loud,” remarked a second voice, that of a youth. Its timbre caused Antonia’s heart to race; she flushed, heat speeding to her skin.
“It has to be loud if no one can hear me!”
“Everyone can hear you, brat.”
“I’m not a brat. I’m not! We need to keep going south, to Darre. I have to find my father, you know that. He’s supposed to be in Darre, so that’s where we’re going. If we’d fought them to begin with, we wouldn’t be prisoners now!”
“That’s right. Because we’d all be dead. They outnumber us three to one.”
“That never stopped my father! Did it, Heribert? Did it?”
The sound of that name made her dizzy. She thought she might collapse, but she forced herself to totter forward in the wake of Lavinia and Adelheid as they sallied out the door, their curiosity piqued by the childish outburst. Adelheid began to laugh, almost sobbing.
“How came this prize to me?” she asked Lady Lavinia.
“Do you know these folk?” Lavinia asked.
Antonia caught herself on the door’s frame as she stared past Adelheid’s shoulder.
“I know the one who is most important to me,” said Adelheid.
Even Antonia, who had only seen her as an infant, recognized Sanglant’s daughter in the lanky, furious girl straining to break free of a stolid young servant woman who held her by the shoulders. Whether the girl meant to kick the youth who stood with arms crossed in front of her, alternately making irritated faces at her and measuring his captors, or whether she meant to throw herself onto Lavinia’s guards like a wild lion cub, Antonia could not tell. The servingwoman had a queer cast of skin but looked otherwise normal. There were, indeed, two barbarians, one man and one woman with dark complexions, slanted eyes, and outlandish tunics fashioned out of stiffened cloth nothing like woven wool. The woman wore an elaborate headdress. The man carried a quiver and a strung bow and seemed only to be biding his time, waiting for a signal. There was a youthful servingman as well, a callow lordling of a kind she recognized from her days as biscop in Mainni, some minor noble’s youngest son sent off to serve a higher born man.
She recognized the youth who was arguing with the princess. He had his father’s look about him; no one could mistake him for another man’s son.
But what bent her back and made her sag against the frame was the seventh in their party, dressed in well-worn cleric’s robes. A careful observer might remark on a certain resemblance between the noble youth and the once elegant cleric, but few bothered to look closely in a place where they had no expectation of reward.
The princess broke free of her servant and marched right up to Adelheid.