“I have suffered in the pit for two years, Father Hugh, but those two years have given me time to ponder much that mystified me before. Surely I will be accounted weakest among the Seven Sleepers now. Anne gathers and manipulates the power of the sorceries we weave, but she does not risk herself. That is why she needs a cauda draconis, although in truth I proved stronger than she expected, I suppose, since it was poor foolish Zoë who died.”
“Are you not willing to die in order to enact God’s will on Earth?”
“Certainly I am. But I am not convinced that Holy Mother Anne knows everything, that she knows or understands all of God’s will. I come of royal stock in my own right. I served faithfully as biscop in the north before I was myself betrayed and cast aside. I have certain magics of my own and, as I said, I have been granted a very long time to meditate, pray, and think.”
She smiled as he settled back. She had set wheels turning, made promises, exposed herself. He would now, of course, feel that he stood in a stronger position than she did, and that would make him reckless.
“So you see, Father Hugh, I am at your mercy now. You may arrest me for disloyalty and turn me over to Anne, thus insinuating yourself into her good graces.”
He was too elegant and well bred to protest that such a deed would be beneath him. The presbyters in the service of the skopos bought, sold, and betrayed each other at every opportunity in order to curry favor or gain a better position within the skopos’ court.
“Or you can escort me elsewhere, somewhere isolated but civilized, where I might recuperate.”
“Anne is a powerful sorcerer,” he objected. “She could obliterate either of us should her anger be turned against us. Indeed, she might at this very moment be spying upon us, since she has mastered the Eagle’s Sight.”
Antonia drew an amulet, now withered and fragile, out from under her tattered and filthy robe. “If you have not protected yourself against farseeing, Father Hugh, then you are not as wise as you seem.”
He touched a hand to his chest but revealed nothing. “Or I might encourage you, Sister Venia, and escort you to a private villa where you can recover your strength—only to turn you over to Anne later, when it serves my cause best.”
“So you might. But I think that Anne will never give you Liath, and I think Liath is what you most desire.”
Feet scraped on pebbles as one of the soldiers approached, pausing out of earshot. He inclined his head obediently as he waited to be beckoned forward.
“What is it, Gerbert?” Hugh asked genially.
“The boys have found a way through to the old convent, my lord. We need not climb back the way we came but can descend by way of the ladders they have on the other side.”
“And the convent?”
“Deserted, my lord. No one has lived there for a long time. It seems everyone fled, or has died. There were bones.”
Hugh rose. “Pray bring four men and a chair or pallet on which to carry Sister Venia. I will investigate the convent myself, but I think it likely we will leave tomorrow. Have Cook prepare broth and porridge for our guest, something gentle on the stomach.”
“Yes, my lord.” The man departed.
Hugh did not sit down. He seemed pensive, even unsure. He was tempted but fearful, avaricious but restrained by caution, like a half grown colt deciding whether to bolt through the open gate of its familiar corral for the wide open woodland beyond.
The rising sun had altered the shadows, and light began to creep up the stone on which she sat. Her eyes still hurt, but the pain was becoming bearable, slowly receding.
“I know a place,” Hugh said at last, and offered her his hand.
XIV
THE APPROACHING STORM
1
IN the Kerayit language, Breschius told him, there were multiple words for the manifold gradations of cold. Not cold enough to freeze broth. Lambs must be covered cold. So cold that bronze water jars burst.
Cold enough to turn dragon’s fire to ice.
It was now cold enough to freeze piss, Sanglant reflected as he staggered back into the frail shelter of his tent. With three lit braziers set around the walls, the inside of the tent had warmed just enough that he could peel off the bulky furs that did not keep him warm outside. Malbert hung the furs from the cross braces. The prince was still bundled in the clothing that he would normally wear outside in the Wendish winter. His face ached from the cold blast.
“How do these people endure it?” he demanded of the two dozen people crammed shivering in the tent.
“I’m not cold,” said Blessing. “Come see the letters I wrote, Papa. I hope you like them.” She sat cross-legged on a feather bed on the opposite side of the tent and, indeed, wore nothing more than an ordinary wool tunic with her cloak thrown casually over her legs. Heribert knelt beside her. Fingers white with cold, he picked up the wax tablet on which he was teaching her to form letters.