I let out an involuntary cry.
“I’m so sorry,” Raphael repeated, catching Denis as he sagged and wrenching his dagger free, lowering him to the floor. “Truly.”
The black river of ants flowed forward, chitinous mandibles clicking.
Raphael de Mereliot glanced over his shoulder. “No,” he said to them. “He was my friend.”
The tide subsided.
For a long, stunned moment, no one moved; and then Bao sprang into action with a hoarse shout, his staff whipping through the air.
Before it could make contact the tide of ants surged once more, pouring over Bao, crawling up his legs with impossible speed, enveloping him like a living carpet despite his frantic efforts to brush them off, all thoughts of attack abandoned.
“I suggest you hold still,” Raphael said in a mild tone. “They’ll eat you alive if I order it, starting with your eyes.” He peered at Bao. “Master Lo Feng’s surly lad, is it? Where’s your master?”
Bao glared at him through a mask of writhing ants and gritted his teeth. “Dead.”
“I’m sorry to hear it.” Raphael’s regret sounded unnervingly genuine. “He was a wise man, and I always admired him.” He plucked Bao’s bamboo staff from his hand. “So this one serves you now?” he asked me. “Is that how it is?”
“No,” I whispered, shaking with terror. “He’s my husband. Please, Raphael, call them off him, won’t you?”
He laughed. “Your husband?”
I nodded.
“How low you’ve fallen, Moirin,” Raphael remarked. “Naïve as you always were, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. But it’s a long way from sharing the bed of Jehanne de la Courcel, Queen’s Companion.” He met my gaze, sparks flickering in his implacable storm-grey eyes. “You know I blame you for her death?”
“Aye,” I murmured. “So do I.”
Bao closed his eyes, ants crawling over his eyelids.
Balthasar Shahrizai cleared his throat. He was pale and trembling, but his voice was steady. “My lord de Mereliot?” he inquired. “Or should I address you as Lord Pachacuti? Which do you prefer?”
Raphael shrugged. “Either will suffice.” He eyed Balthasar. “I’m surprised to find you here, Shahrizai.”
“No more than I.” Swallowing with a visible effort, Balthasar glanced uneasily at the black, seething statue that was Bao. “My lord de Mereliot, if you mean to kill him, I beg you, at least do it cleanly.”
“Oh, I don’t think killing him will be necessary.” Raphael smiled at me. “I suspect he’ll be quite useful to me in keeping Moirin in line—and vice versa. But he needed to be taught a lesson. Have you learned it?” he asked Bao.
“Yes,” Bao whispered.
“Very well.” Raphael waved one hand and the black tide of ants receded. I was weak-kneed with relief as Bao’s figure reemerged unharmed, his face rigid with anger and horror.
“Elua have mercy, man!” Septimus Rousse’s voice cracked. “Why in the name of all that’s sacred are you doing this?”
“I said I was sorry about Denis,” Raphael said irritably. “Gods! I didn’t want to kill him. He was my friend! I just couldn’t take the chance. Moirin knows why. Don’t you, Moirin?”
“Caim’s gift,” I said faintly. “The language of ants.”
Raphael nodded in approval. “Exactly so. Mind you, I’m not sure if Denis could have learned to control them,” he said thoughtfully. “It is no easy thing to learn to coax one’s glands to produce the proper scents. I did, but I’m… special.”
I stared at his beautiful face, at the sparks flickering in his eyes like the tail end of a lightning strike barely glimpsed, and I remembered the spirit Focalor, the Grand Duke of the Fallen, with his incandescent eyes breathing Claire Fourcay’s life-force into me, attempting to pour his own essence into Raphael de Mereliot. “He’s still inside you, isn’t he?” I asked. “Focalor?”
“A mere pinch.” Raphael demonstrated with thumb and forefinger. “But it’s growing stronger. Like all numinous beings, it thrives on worship.” He glanced at the ants and the Quechua with equal affection. “And with your aid, Moirin, I believe I’ll be able to summon the rest of him on my own terms this time.”
“No.” I shook my head. “I won’t do it.”
Raphael lifted one finger. The river of ants poured over Bao’s feet, climbing to his knees. “You may wish to rethink that position.”
“Don’t,” Bao said through gritted teeth. “Gods! Forget about me! Someone just kill him!”
“Oh, I don’t advise any of you try.” Raphael circled his finger and the black river divided into multiple streams, ants flowing across the floor, scaling new targets, crawling over clothing and under armor. Someone choked back a sob.
“Stop!” I cried. “Raphael, please!”
He looked mildly at me. “Then you agree to aid me?”
“This isn’t you,” I said to him in despair. “Name of Elua! Raphael, no matter what’s passed between us, you’re a healer! That’s who you are, what you are!”
“No.” Tucking Bao’s staff under his arm, Raphael regarded his hands. “That’s what I was. The gods gave me a gift, and saw fit to mock me with it.” When he looked back at me, his expression was bleak. “They took my parents when I was a boy, and too weak to save myself. They gave me a taste of power with you, and took it away.” He raised his voice. “They took Jehanne from me, Moirin! She died hemorrhaging before my eyes, bleeding out her life to give birth to another man’s child, and there was nothing I could do to stop it, nothing I could do to save her, because you weren’t there!”
“I know!” I shouted at him, helpless tears in my eyes. “Do you think that knowledge is not a dagger in my heart?”
“Moirin,” Bao murmured, glancing at the ants covering his lower legs. “I do not think you should antagonize him.”
“Even that was not enough!” Raphael shook his head, his face grim. “They took my sister Eleanore from me, mocking me with a disease I could not cure. Do you know that great feat of healing I’ve accomplished on my own?” He pointed at Eyahue and Temilotzin, both of whom had been motionless and dumbstruck since we entered the throne room. “I taught a nation of bloodthirsty savages to inoculate themselves against the killing pox so that they might go on worshipping death and sacrificing innocent victims.” His face twisted. “What a piece of irony is that?”
“We can’t know the will of the gods,” I said softly. “What you did was a wondrous thing. Mayhap it will alter the course of history for the better.”
“I am past caring what the gods will.” Raphael’s voice was hard, hard as stone. “I will do what I will. Now, Moirin.” He gestured, and the tide of ants crawled higher. Behind me, someone was weeping in fear. “Will you aid me?”
“Aye,” I said in defeat. “I will.”
“Swear it,” Raphael said. “Swear it on the sacred oath of your people.”
I licked my dry lips. “I swear by stone and sea and sky, and all that they encompass, that I will aid you. I swear it by the sacred troth that binds me to my diadh-anam. Now call them off!”
To a chorus of relieved sighs, he did. “Don’t imagine I have any illusions about your loyalty, Moirin,” he warned me. “I know you’ll try to find a way to wriggle out of keeping your oath just like you did before.”
I was silent.
Raphael paced the room, returning to his throne. The black river flowed alongside him. He sat, Bao’s staff over his knees, contemplating us. “So long as you behave, I’ve no cause to harm the rest of you unless Moirin gives me one,” he said. “You’ll be put to labor in the fields with the others.” Dipping into the basket beside him, he scattered another handful of leaves onto the seething floor, smiling indulgently. “It’s hard to keep these little darlings fed. Bear in mind that they do prefer flesh, they’re everywhere, and they’re always watching.” He laughed. “Well, not exactly watching, of course. They don’t see as we do.”
It was so near an echo of the words Denis had spoken only that very morning, it struck me like a fist to the gut.
“If you attempt to escape, they will know,” Raphael continued heedlessly. “If you think to attack me…” He shrugged, stroking Bao’s bamboo staff. “Well, I think you have seen what will ensue. Is that understood?”
Everyone nodded.
“Good,” he said briskly. “Now strip off all armor and weapons. I daresay my Quechua warriors will find them useful when we overthrow the Sapa Inca.”
I startled. “What?”
“Oh, yes.” Raphael smiled at me. “There are sacred places on this earth, Moirin, sanctified by centuries of worship. In Tawantinsuyo, it is the Temple of the Ancestors in the city of Qusqu. That is where I must be coronated. We have a great deal to discuss, you and I. But for now it can wait.” He pointed with Bao’s staff. “Arms and armor! Strip! Moirin, I’ll have your bow as well.”
One by one, the men complied; and so did I, surrendering my yew-wood bow with a pang of regret.
For a moment, I thought Temilotzin would resist. The Jaguar Knight glowered, clutching his obsidian-studded club. Streams of ants skirled and chittered around his sandaled feet.
“Don’t,” I pleaded with him in Nahuatl. “Please, don’t!” I glanced at Denis de Toluard’s lifeless body, my heart aching. “I’m not sure I could bear it. Wait, and let me try to find a way out of this.”
With a growl, Temilotzin hurled his club to the floor, shards of obsidian shattering on the stone. “I do not like this prince of yours, my little warrior,” he said in disdain. “Better we had never found him!”
“I agree,” Eyahue muttered.
Overwhelmed by the shock of the encounter, I was ashamed to realize I’d altogether forgotten the purpose of our journey.
Now I remembered.
“He’s not our prince,” I said firmly. “Raphael? My lord de Mereliot?”
Idling on the throne, being attended by his ants and handmaidens, he lifted his head. “Hmm?”
“You told Denis that Thierry and the others were safe,” I said. “Was that true?”
“Of course it’s true!” Looking offended, Raphael waved one hand. “They’re laboring in the fields just like these men will. And they will confirm the folly of attempting to escape,” he added. “One tried. He died screaming.”
I closed my eyes briefly, fighting a wave of nausea. “But the Dauphin and the others are well?”
Raphael shrugged. “All that made it safely to Vilcabamba. We lost a few along the way.” He fixed me with a hard stare. “Do you suppose I’d murder them all outright? What do you take me for, a monster?”
I gazed back at the man I’d once thought I’d loved, the man I’d believed my destiny—the man whose bed I’d been so eager to share, the man with the golden healer’s touch, the man I’d let charm me into folly and self-sacrifice, the man who had saved my father’s life.
The man who had just stabbed one of his best friends in the throat, the madman who held us all captive and hostage with his terrible army.
If he was a monster, he was a monster I had helped to create. My diadh-anam had spoken truly all those years ago, but I hadn’t understood it. Whether he was mad or no, Raphael was right about one thing. The gifts of the gods were often double-edged. My destiny was indeed entwined with his, but what I hadn’t known was that I’d forged every link of the chains that bound us myself.
“Well?” Raphael raised his brows. “Answer the question, Moirin. Do you take me for a monster?”
“Aye,” I said. “I do.
Trailing his fingers in the black river of ants, Raphael just laughed.
FIFTY-FIVE
I was a prisoner without a cell.
Raphael had no need to confine me. The threat hanging over the heads of Bao and all our company was enough to compel my obedience. Once the men had been escorted away by the Quechua warriors and a column of ants, presumably to labor in the fields or to whatever lodgings they were allotted, Raphael proved surprisingly magnanimous.
He gave me a suite of rooms that opened onto a small, sunlit courtyard filled with fruit trees and a bathing fountain in a stone channel that poured down the terraced mountainside. In other circumstances, it would have been charming… were it not for the presence of the ants.
I eyed the black stream exploring the courtyard. “Surely they’re not… staying?”
“Just one small colony,” Raphael assured me. “Don’t worry, I’ve assigned one of my handmaidens to look after you and care for them.”
I shuddered.
He sent for the handmaiden, a pretty young Quechua woman named Cusi, who seemed awestruck at being in his presence. Raphael stroked her hair absentmindedly. “Cusi here was raised to be a Maiden of the Sun,” he remarked. “To serve royalty, or even at a time of great need, to serve as a holy sacrifice.”
“I thought you disdained such practices,” I murmured.
Raphael frowned at me. “As the Nahuatl practice it, yes, of course. It is barbaric and… wasteful. But sometimes blood is necessary, Moirin. Sometimes blood is the only sacrifice that will suffice.”