Llesho could hear the sound of a hand slapped companionably on a back. The grunt that followed was definitely Tayy losing his breath to the trickster’s exuberant approval. It was time to wake up, before anyone said anything else about him. He had a report to give as well, he figured, and though he wasn’t up to dream traveling to Durnhag quite yet, Master Den would do in a pinch. He figured Habiba would tell her ladyship what had happened, but he needed the reassurance of his teacher that he hadn’t messed up along the way.

As he’d guessed from the heat beating on his eyelids, Great Sun shone brightly, chasing his pale brothers through a clear blue sky. Sitting up, Llesho stared stupidly around him, trying to get his bearings. As Moll had complained, the ship had backed itself onto the strand with its bow facing out into the flat blue water of a sheltered lagoon. Low hills covered in dense green growth surrounded them, blocking the wind and gentling the tides.

He licked his lips, realizing he was parched and sore from the sea salt that had dried on his wounds. They wouldn’t fester that way—salt cured more than barrel-pork—but he could have used some of Carina’s salve right about then. Looking around, however, he felt a more pressing need for answers than for physical comforts.

“Where are we?” was the first question that came to mind, though perhaps not the most important he could have asked. As it was, Moll seemed unwilling to provide an answer anyway.

“That’s for us pirates to know, and no business of yours,” she answered him warily. “You cost me six copper pieces,” she added for effect. “I suppose, if you’re a prince, you’ll be worth more than that in ransom.”

“Probably not.” If they were speaking plain truth, Llesho had to admit that she’d paid too much and wasn’t likely to get even that back for his hide. When it came to money, he had none. “My country is in the hands of the raiders from the South,” he explained, careful not to insult Tayy by damning all Harnishmen for what he now knew to be the work of the southern clans.

“What’s this, then?” Alph, who seemed to be Moll’s partner in matters of the galley slaves, had worked his way to the forward bench where the current conversation was taking place. He carried a short whip, flexing the long thin handle in an unspoken warning. Overhearing Llesho’s words, however, his mouth pinched in around the idea of ransom while his eyes widened round as gold coins.

“Two worthless princes littering our decks,” Moll filled him in, but a sly smile had creased his slippery features.

“This one isn’t worth a silver penny to the Thebins.” Alph had heard some of their conversation and he nudged Llesho in the chest with the handle of his whip. “But the Southerners would likely pay a good bit to get their hands on him.”

“They didn’t place much value on me when they sold me to work in the pearl beds in my seventh summer,” Llesho pointed out.

The wily pirate burped, which seemed as much opinion about the young slave’s worth as it was indigestion. At the mention of pearl beds, however, Moll brightened.

“And might you remember where to find those pearl beds now, young apprentice?” The pirate flung her arm companionably around Llesho’s shoulder, leaving him in no doubt about the trade in which Moll considered apprenticing him. Pearls were worth more than most of the plunder they could gain by boarding the trading vessels that plied the Marmer Sea. If you had someone who knew where to find them, and if that someone had the skills to raid the beds.

“Pearl Bay,” he told her, and because he knew that answer would mean nothing here at the other end of the world, he described its whereabouts: “Pearl Island lies off Farshore Province, on the other side of the empire of Shan.”

“You’ve been to Durnhag, then?” Alph seemed to measure his answers for a lie. Durnhag, the capital city of Guynm Province, was the most southerly inland trade city of the empire. It seemed unlikely that he would know his geography beyond that point. Even Durnhag must be a place out of tales for the rovers of the Marmer Sea. With the trickster god at his side, it seemed a good time to strike a little wonder into the pirate’s heart.

“I have,” he therefore answered. “Once by caravan, and several times again in dream travel to the governor’s palace.” He did not say that the emperor himself now took up residence in that palace. Shou’s business was his own, and didn’t bear discussing in the open.

Alph seemed on the point of dismissing this for a tale constructed out of wishes to buy a moment free of the lash, when Llesho offered a detail out of his memory of that recent occasion: “The floors are made of colored bits of glass that glitter like many-colored jewels in the sunlight falling from the windows high overhead.”

“So I heard once from a lady who had visited that court in her travels.” Something about the way he said it discouraged asking what had happened to the lady in question. But the pirate’s eyes widened as he realized Llesho had indeed seen the inside of Durnhag Palace.

“As far south as we are from Durnhag, that is as far south as Durnhag is from Pearl Island. I’m on a quest set me by the Lady SienMa, mortal goddess of war, and the ghost of my own adviser, Lleck, to free Thebin and defeat the demon that lays siege to the gates of heaven.”

“Such a quest requires money,” Alph poked at Llesho’s hip as if he might have a purse hidden there, which he knew was impossible. He’d been searched before boarding theGuiding Star, and had dropped his drawers to do his business over the side like the rest of them. If he didn’t get the pirate off the idea that Llesho must have some source of income on his person, however, he was likely to discover the pearls of the Great Goddess that now hung around his neck.

He couldn’t let that happen. Giving a falsely casual shrug as if it meant nothing to him, Llesho brushed the lash away and launched into the relevant conclusion of his tale:

“When I have needed the aid of troops, armies have been given to me. Emperors and khans have counted me a guest in their palaces of stone and felt. But I haven’t seen any money since I left Pearl Bay.”

For some reason, while this answer seemed only to confirm something that Alph had been thinking on his own, it outraged his consort, Moll. “You’ve come all the way from the other side of the world with not a penny in your pocket?”

“That’s about it.”

“And that fellow who sold you into my care for six copper pieces—he was no outraged farmer but a companion pulling a con to finance your quest?” she continued.

“Not exactly.” Llesho refused to feel guilty for the deception. They were pirates, after all, and did what they accused him of on a regular basis. He still wanted it clear that his plan had called for nothing so like their own tactics.

“Kaydu, our captain, sold our horses at auction for the funds to buy passage on a ship. We made up the story about Stipes and a farmwife to get me close to Prince Tayy so I could rescue him.”

“So you mean to abscond not only with your own person, for which I paid hard-earned money, but with this wretched excuse for an oarsman as well!” Moll cuffed Tayy on the back of his head, but neither he nor Llesho made a move to protest. They still hoped the trickster god’s presence meant they would escape their current situation without bloodshed. Especially their own.

Master Den said nothing, though he watched this give and take as avidly as the pirates themselves. Tayy did the same while Singer listened with his head studiously turned forward, trying his best—with little success—to look smaller than Llesho. Doubtless, he wished to avoid the scrutiny of these powers who argued around him. His ploy didn’t work, however.

“And you!” Moll cuffed Singer as well. “I suppose you have been plotting with these destitute princes to rob me of my honestly acquired property?”

“I knew nothing,” Singer protested, “until the dragon appeared to take the young king off to herd the storm.” He glanced up at the sky, shaking his head as if he still couldn’t believe the clean-scrubbed blue above him.

This came as further news to Moll, however, whose eyes opened wide with suspicion. “Dragons!” she complained, anger pinching her eyes into slits. “Dragons and princes and storms turned aside by magic! That’s what comes of allowing the trickster god on your decks! You’ve cost me enough this trip, Master ChiChu; you can find your own way home from here!”

“If it weren’t for Marmer Sea Dragon, and for the young kingling, come to think of it, you’d be having this conversation with the fish and not breathing on dry land!” Master Den seemed to grow even larger, puffed up in his most offended dignity. “Who do you think turned the storm?”

“I reckon there’d have been smooth sailing if I’d left the lot of you where I found you,” she threw the answer over her shoulder, having dismissed them from her mind with a toss of her scarf-wrapped head.

“Does that mean we can go?” Tayy asked in a small voice from where he huddled in the well between the benches.

“And as quickly as possible,” Master Den stressed his meaning with a shooing motion to get them up and over the side.

As usual, however, Tayy balked. “We’ve washed up on an island in the middle of the sea.” He flung his arms wide to take in the whole of their surroundings: sand, water, hills, and trees. “We need water and food and a wayback off again. How are we going to do that if we leave the ship? That old pirate is stranding us here, not freeing us. We might as well be behind walls for all the good the sea does us!”

No Harnishman tolerated walls for long. That he made such a comparison said more than any speech he might declaim about his feelings for the sea. Fortunately, things were not as dire as the prince made them out to be.

“I expect Kaydu will be here shortly. Right, Master?” Llesho cast a glance at his teacher to confirm Marmer Sea Dragon’s parting words. “We’ll just wait up on the shore until they arrive and continue on to Pontus with the rest of our cadre.”

Master Den scanned the horizon with a worried frown, though Llesho saw nothing to trouble him. Off in the direction of the rising sun he saw a speck growing larger in the sky, an osprey, he thought, but not Master Markko, whose questing mind sought Llesho from a greater distance. He thought it might be Kaydu on a scouting mission.

The trickster god agreed, squinting off in the direction of the rapidly approaching seabird. “Help is on the way,” he said. “If you want to be here when your rescuers arrive, I’d suggest you get off this ship before it leaves for less crowded climes.”

Llesho was thinking the very same thing. He picked up his weapons from under the rowing bench where his dream-self had laid them.

“Hey, then!” Alph tapped his wrist with the handle of the small whip he carried. “What’s this? And where did it come from?”

“You don’t want to mess with the spear,” Tayy warned the pirate with a too-casual air. “It’s magic and it likes to kill people. He sometimes has trouble controlling it.”

Alph took a breath: to scoff, Llesho figured. He’d been deadly with the knife long before he’d ever met the short spear, but Tayy was right. He didn’t always control the spear. Right now, however, he did. It was easy enough to will the weapon to life in his hands, and he let the blue lightning flicker faintly along its length.

“Is that from a dragon, then?” The pirate seemed more curious than frightened by the strange effect. He reached a finger almost to the point of touching the spear, then pulled away again, wiping his hand on his red-and-yellow pants as if the thing had burned his fingertips.

“No,” Llesho answered with the same false casualness that Tayy had used. “Her Ladyship SienMa, the mortal goddess of war, returned this heirloom of my family at the start of my quest. Sometimes I rule the spear, and sometimes the spear rules me.”

He gave the man a dire smile that made even Tayy shiver. It had its intended effect on the pirate, however. “Did anyone ever tell you that you travel in unlucky company, boy?” Alph asked Tayy with no real expectation of an answer. “Best get the thing off this ship, then. We want no bad-luck magics on this voyage.”

Alph backed away with his hands open in front of him to show he meant no threat. He tracked with a flicker of his eyes as Llesho wrapped his belt around his waist with his Thebin knife hanging by its small scabbard. If the pirate noticed the bag bulging with pearls that Llesho now wore around his neck, he wisely decided to keep the information to himself.

Sheathing the spear, Llesho gave him a nod to acknowledge that he intended to do just as the pirate instructed. Then he slid the strap carefully over his shoulder. It hurt where it rested against the lash marks on his back, but he couldn’t very well swim with it between his teeth. When he had it secured, he clambered over the rowing bench to lower himself over the side.

This far forward the galley was still in the water, which was deeper than he expected so close to the shore. He plunged in over his head and came up sputtering again, bobbing in place as he called for Prince Tayyichiut to join him. Tayy, however, remained where he was, blinking down at him as if his eyes couldn’t decide whether to widen in surprise or narrow in expectation of something nasty at the end of whatever had pulled him up short in the middle of the rowing well.

“Our cadre?” Prince Tayyichiut asked as if he suddenly found himself in the dream world without quite knowing how he’d gotten there. He’d always been the outsider before. This was something new and he half expected to have the words snatched back if he reached for them.

“Your uncle seemed to think you’d want to come along.” Llesho treaded water, hoping that Tayy would take as given the part missing from that statement, but the prince seemed to be having more trouble processing the unstated apology than he’d hoped.

“I’d scramble, if I were you.” Master Den urged Tayy forward with a little nudge between the shoulder blades.

Llesho remembered his own less than dignified entry into the sea at his teacher’s hands back the other side of the storm, and apparently so did Tayy. His long hours at the oar and cowering under the near approach of Master Markko’s storm hadn’t helped the Harnish prince’s fear of the water, however. He peered over the side with a grimace. Llesho waited patiently, but offered the encouragement, “Pinch your nose closed with your finger and thumb, like this—” he demonstrated with his own nose. “—Close your mouth and your eyes tight, and just jump. I won’t let you drown.”

“I’m sure Moll would be happy to have you if you wanted to stay,” Master Den answered the hopeful look passed his way.

The day before, he’d been ready to die quickly in the sea rather than linger slowly on the bench. The reminder of his fate if he remained on the galley was all it took. Prince Tayyichiut of the Harnish people, who for all his life had avoided all water wider than a teapot, clambered over the rowing bench and onto the side. Then, with his hand over his nose and his eyes tight shut, he took the last small step and fell, splashing, into the sea.

“Glug!”

It sounded something like that. Tayy hadn’t waited until he surfaced to scream. Llesho found himself holding the Harnish prince up by his collar with one hand while he pounded on his back with the other, all while treading water to keep them afloat.

“Stop thrashing around! You’re going to drown us both!” Tucking an arm under the prince’s chin, he gave a simple two-part command: “Shut up and stop moving. You can’t sink while I’ve got you this way.”

Which wasn’t entirely true, not if Tayy kept windmilling his legs and arms that way. Llesho figured assurances would work better than threats, though, so he took the positive approach, if not an entirely truthful one. “It’s impossible to sink in salty water. I promise. Relax your arms. Watch what they do.”

Tayy did what he was told. “Wow!” he said as they floated to the top.

Llesho gave him a smug smile. “Now relax your legs.”

He had the idea now. Tayy didn’t fight when he found himself tilted with the back of his head in the water. Slowly, his knees and upper legs floated into view on the glassy surface.

“That’s it. Now just lie there and think dry thoughts. Are you coming, Singer?”

The question seemed to take the oarsman by surprise. He looked over the side, then back toward where Moll and Alph had their heads together in fierce discussion. “It’s not the work,” he said. “The oar or the plow makes little difference. The conditions, however—with more food of better quality, and more rest. With a wage at the end of the day, or a share of the takings . . .”

“You’d rather be a pirate than a hero?” The trickster god, Chichu, asked. He was the patron of pirates, Llesho remembered, so wasn’t as surprised by the questions as he might have been.

Singer, however, seemed more amazed at his own answer. “Yes,” he said, “I think I would.”

“It can be arranged. I’ll be leaving the ship with our young royals; theShark will need a new captain. You’ve protected my interests well enough so far . . .”

Llesho didn’t wait to hear any more but took off for the shore with Prince Tayyichiut in tow. The sea was warm and the storm had stirred up the bottom very little in this protected cove. Comfortable, Llesho would have thought, if he wasn’t escaping from pirates while towing a prince of the Qubal clans, on his way to a soon-to-be-deserted island. That the pirates had agreed to let him escape took some of the danger out of the occasion. The presence of the Harnish prince and his fear of water balanced that scale however. Llesho almost would have preferred the arrows of the pirates, which he could avoid by diving, over the prince, who could drown him with a thoughtless grab at his throat. But if the prince stayed calm, he’d have to admit the day seemed to be improving.

Beneath them, fish darted on their own business through ribbons of seaweed that reached for them from the bottom. Tayy couldn’t see what was going on below, which was for the better. It was impossible for him to forget that he was floating in water deeper than the river that had killed both Qubal and Southerner during the battle on the banks of the Onga. When he didn’t instantly drown, however, the Harnish prince started to think beyond his fear of water. When he had lost hope of escaping the pirates any other way, Tayy had considered drowning himself in the Marmer Sea. To convince him not to seek his own quiet death in the water, Singer had threatened him with sea monsters. At some point, the prince would remember that threat.

Llesho could have told him that sea monsters were often very nice people. Pearl Bay Dragon and Marmer Sea Dragon were two such creatures who proved the point. He couldn’t be sure what lay beneath them in the caves that honeycombed the hills where they plunged into the sea, however. He kept quiet on that point and so they came to the shallows.

“You can stand up now.” Llesho dropped his feet to the shelf to demonstrate. When he stood, the water came only to his waist.

Tayy did as he was told, thrashing and sputtering as the rest of him sank with his feet. He managed to right himself in short order, however, requiring neither a thump on the back nor assistance getting his legs under him in the knee-deep surf. Overhead, the sea osprey Llesho had sighted before wheeled in a great sweeping circle overhead then banked in a slow glide to return in the direction from which it had come.

“Chewk! Chewk!” She was a female, as Llesho recognized from the markings, and it seemed that in her cries the sea eagle was laughing at them. Definitely Kaydu, he decided, and he’d hoped to keep this tale out of her ear until it was old news.

Now that they had almost reached the shore, Tayy was regaining his cocky assurance. He watched the osprey with a hunter’s appreciation of a great hunting bird, but he hadn’t put together yet that he might know her in another form. “What about Master Den?”

Too soon, Llesho allowed his guard to fall. “He’ll be up on the beach.” They both looked toward land, and that was when Tayy noticed what Llesho or Master Den could have told him from the start. TheShark had grounded with her stern up on the beach. That way her bow guns faced outward to the sea for defense. Her lowest and most vulnerable aft section stayed out of reach not only of attack, but also of storms like the one they’d just escaped. Pirate galleys were made for just such a maneuver, and offered easy escape to dry land for her pirate crew.

“There’s a gate,” Tayy said.

“It appears so,” Llesho agreed.

“And a ladder.” Tayy pointed to the sturdy ship’s ladder by which pirates and slaves alike left the stern for the shore.

“I suppose that’s how they bring on supplies and water.”

A search party returned then, bearing supplies scavenged from the island and confirming Llesho’s guess. He didn’t feel it was necessary to add that Master Den awaited them at the foot of the ladder. Or that the trickster god had reached the same beach without a drop of the lagoon touching even the cuffs of his billowing red-and-yellow breeches.

Moll watched from the deck above. She’d planted her hands on the rail so that she didn’t fall overboard as she craned her neck to watch them soggily drag themselves to shore.

“Did you have a nice swim?” Her laugh bounced off the hillsides, echoing in the air. Even the slaves hauling water from the stream hidden among the trees could hear, and their own laughter rippled back as the story was passed along.

“He tricked me!” Prince Tayyichiut had shown little of the haughty temperament of a royal since leaving the camp of the Qubal ulus on his adventure. Now he spluttered in outrage, his face growing very red under the streaming water from the lagoon that dripped from his hair. “I can’t believe he tricked me into jumping into the lagoon!”

Llesho figured he’d have to calm Tayy down soon or they’d find themselves chained to a rowing bench again. “He’s the trickster god,” he pointed out. “That’s what he does.”

He let Prince Tayy figure it out for himself, saying nothing about his own shaken faith in his teacher. Deciding a young prince needed a lesson in sinking or swimming was one thing. But the pirates had killed innocent travelers, children. He couldn’t forgive the old trickster for being a part of that, especially as he’d been present during the attack on theGuiding Star.

“That makes it all right, then? We are nearly killed, and the only answer you have is that he just does that?”

Stalling for time to sort his thoughts, Llesho reached down and scooped a bit of sand from the beach. Drying his hands on it, he gave the only real explanation he had. “It’s his way as a teacher. If you ask yourself why he played that trick at this moment, you will come to understand a little more of what he has been doing to me for the past three cycles of the sun, and to Shou before us, for that matter.”

“Well, not to me, he doesn’t. My people have fought wars for insults less grievous than his.”

“The pupil doesn’t choose the lesson.” They hadn’t been in danger of death at any point in their swim to shore, of course, but that wasn’t the part of Tayy’s rant that grabbed hold and refused to let go.

“Going to war over an insult put your clan in my debt!” The accusation brought Tayy’s chin up on the defensive, but slowly the meaning of the angry words they had said to each other sank in.

Tayy let go of his frustration with a long sigh. “I’m all wet,” he said.

“So am I. I never said he was an easy teacher.”

“The tales make adventures sound like so much fun,” Tayy complained, though with considerably less heat. “Storytellers never mention the cold and wet and hungry part, or the drowning part.”

“If they did,” Llesho pointed out reasonably, “no one would go on quests. Then where would the new tales come from?”

“Well, when they tell this one, I hope they leave out the falling in the water bit.”

“Don’t worry,” Llesho assured him, “Once they polish up the adventure with embellishments for art’s sake, you will have risked your life overboard in high seas to save a princess. There’s always a princess in tales. The embarrassing parts will be forgotten forever.”

“You’d better be right.”

“There you are!” Master Den slogged toward them through the sand, but Prince Tayy was in no mood for conversation with the trickster god just yet. He set his gaze on the trees above the sandy shore with distaste. “We’re going to need food and water.” He didn’t wait, but headed for the line of palm trees that marked the start of the forest.

“Was it something I said?” Master Den asked, innocently enough, though he had that twinkle that always made Llesho nervous.

“He’ll survive,” Llesho asserted. Tayy already had, but he wasn’t ready to tell Master Den that yet. “Others on this journey, innocents who did nothing to deserve their fate, have not. I need to think about that. Alone.” Throwing a disgusted look over his shoulder, he followed Tayy. He hadn’t gone more than halfway up the beach, however, when a ragged shadow dark as the deep of night blotted out the light of Great Sun. The creature, for Llesho could make out the line of outspread wings and the trailing darkness of its tail, let go a cry that thundered off the hillsides and rattled among the trees. Pirates fled in terror, or fell on their faces in the sand, as if they could escape the terrifying presence that had invaded the island. Even the birds in the trees and the insects chittering beneath the carpet of rotting leaves fell still as if in silence they might escape notice of this terrible invader.

In a moment it was gone, but Llesho guessed what it must be and started to run toward the forest where it had disappeared. Master Markko, blown across the vast sea as they had been themselves, had fetched up on the same hopeful shore. And Llesho had sent Tayy alone into the forest to look for water.

“Ahhh!” A high, shrill, pain-filled cry startled the birds out of the trees who added their own dismayed calls to the afternoon. Tayy screamed again, a sound so terrible that it cut through the sudden cacophony of birds and pirates like an icy wind.

“Ahhh!”

Almost without thinking, Llesho drew his spear with one hand and his Thebin knife with the other. He started to run.

“What’s happened?” When the shadow didn’t return, oarsmen escaping the watchful lash of the pirates burst from the woods. They dropped their water kegs and their nets full of fruits and small animals as they ran, seeking the protection of the ship.

Master Den was running, too, faster than someone his size ought to be able to move. Llesho picked up his pace. Prince Tayy was his responsibility, and he would not let the trickster god arrive first at the site of whatever had befallen him. Because he wasn’t certain what Master Den’s intentions were.

 

 

 

 

 Chapter Twenty-two

INTO THE forest Llesho followed that terrible sound. Animals had made a sandy path and he followed it, leaping over trailing vines that crossed his path and swatting with his spear at low-hanging branches that brushed his temples as he dashed by them. He’d done this before on Pearl Island, once trying to run away from his own life and then in long training sessions for the arena. The terrain was rockier here and the hills climbed more sharply, but he didn’t let that slow him down.

Visions of Tayy attacked by the magician filled his head. All his fault. He’d taken Tayy away from the protection of his people and lost him first to slavers and now to the deadly clutches of his own personal nemesis.

“Too late, too late.” His feet pounded the rhythm through his body until it hummed in his teeth and in the scars that still pulled sometimes when he moved the wrong way.

It’s just been minutes,he reminded himself, though it felt like he’d been running forever. Prince Tayyichiut would be all right, he just had to reach him in time. Master Markko didn’t want Tayy anyway—he wanted Llesho, and if Llesho was there, he’d leave the Harnish prince alone. Llesho ducked a branch and tumbled into a clearing broken by shattered rock from which hardy beach grasses grew.

Tayy lay with his back against a jutting boulder spattered, like his clothes and the sandy grass beneath him, with blood oozing from a dozen or more razorlike slashes scoring the prince’s belly and ribs. A bedraggled monster, half bird and half beast, loomed over him: Master Markko. Attacking with beak and claw, the horrifying creature opened a deep gash across the prince’s gut. Llesho saw the pulsing of his entrails until blood filled the gaping wound.

The prince had already screamed his throat raw. The sound this latest wound tore from him rattled with despair as he gazed in fixed horror on the bedraggled creature out of nightmares. Holding him in its obsidian stare, the creature used its beak to pick a bit of dangling human flesh from its talon.

Llesho’s palm ran with sweat around the knife hilt clutched in his left hand. In his right, the spear of the mortal goddess of war sparked lightning all along its length.

“Kill him,” the spear whispered in his mind. Normally, he didn’t listen to the weapon, but this time it had a point. His grip on his knife relaxed, ready for the explosive unfolding of the ritual defense moves that would leave his opponent dead. The spear he clutched more tightly, lest it lead instead of follow his action. He knew better than to show any sign of fear. In fact, however, he didn’t feel any fear, except for Tayy. Markko’s powers were at a low ebb, sodden and tattered, while Llesho felt fresh from his untroubled sleep and calm in his purpose.

“Leave him alone!” he shouted, waving his arms wildly to distract the magician from his helpless prey. Then he charged.

The creature fluttered its waterlogged wings, raising itself only as high as the lowest branches of the palm trees that surrounded them. It was enough to evade the initial attack, however, and to counter with its vicious talons. Llesho shifted to the left to avoid a slash, jabbed with the spear, drawing blood that burned to blackened ash on the blade, and leaped back to avoid a blow from still-powerful wings.

The spear had ideas of its own. Without a thought or the twitch of a muscle, Llesho brought the weapon up and thrust for the great bird’s eyes. He missed, but blue lightning snapped between them, throwing the magician off and shaking his hold on the magical shape he had taken for the battle. With a convulsive shudder, as if he were settling his ragged black feathers, Master Markko regained his human form, coming to rest lightly with his sword over Tayy’s heart. The Harnish prince was helpless to save himself, and Markko would kill him before Llesho could move against him.

“Is he one of yours?” the magician asked with mock civility. “I thought I knew them all. Still, it brought you. That’s what matters.”

“You failed,” Llesho commented. “We’re still alive.” One eyebrow raised meaningfully. Of the two of them, Markko seemed to have had the worst of the storm as well as the battle. His face was gaunt and ashen, his hair streaked with white and tangled in a great matted nest from which bits of flotsam peeked like the treasures in a bird’s nest. His dark robes, though made of rich brocades, were torn and showed the wear of salt water and the wrack of seaweed and other, less wholesome stains. He was making an effort to look imposing, but Llesho noticed that he leaned a bit on an upthrust spur of stone. Tayy was in danger from his wounds, but the magician seemed hardly strong enough to hold up his sword to inflict another.

“No failure,” Master Markko corrected with a haughty smile. He gave Tayy a nudge to remind him to stay still. The prince whimpered back, but slowly the magician seemed to cave in on himself. He spoke as if his battle-weary state meant nothing, however. “It was a test, and you passed with flying colors. As I knew you would. And in the end, the storm has put you where I wanted you—where, as you can see, I have been waiting for you.”

“You can’t even lie convincingly anymore. You were thrown up on this island the same way we were—tossed here by the storm.” The spear crackled in Llesho’s hand, but he willed it to stillness. “It’s all been a lie, hasn’t it? You’re not even a magician; you’re a fraud.”

High on Master Markko’s cheeks, spots of color stained the ashy gray. “A fraud? Ask your friend about that.” He brought his hand up and twitched a finger at the prince lying in a puddle of his own blood. Tayy whimpered, responding to some torment that Llesho couldn’t see. He seemed to be trying to draw himself into a ball around his exposed entrails, but his body wasn’t cooperating. They needed a healer, and soon, or Prince Tayyichiut was going to die.

But Bolghai was with Mergen at Shou’s temporary court in Durnhag. So were Carina and Adar. They were all far away, and Tayy had never learned to dream travel. Wouldn’t have been able to do it in his current condition even if he’d studied the art, Llesho figured. He couldn’t have focused on moving between the realms himself with his gut in danger of spilling from his body like that.

Lightning leaked back into the spear at Llesho’s side. “If Prince Tayyichiut dies, I’ll find you wherever you go, however you hide. Then we’ll kill you.” He meant by that the short spear as well, whose whisper had become a persistent moaning in his ear since Master Markko had cast his shadow on the island.

“You won’t kill me. You can’t. We mean too much to each other.” Master Markko sheathed his sword and held out his hands, as if to embrace him. Blood and bits of flesh still clung to his fingernails. “If you intended to see me dead, you’d try it right now, wouldn’t you? But you won’t.”

He was right. In the heat of battle, with a friend’s life at risk, he could have killed the magician and given it not a moment’s thought. But he hadn’t fallen so far that he could kill in cold blood, over a conversation. There would be other meetings, however; Tayy needed him now. Llesho ripped the hem from his shirt. Blood still dripped from the pulsing wound in the prince’s gut and he packed the cloth into it to stanch the flow.

“I know what you are.”

The magician waited with his mad, patient smile for Llesho to reveal himself.

“Marmer Sea Dragon told me what you did. What Pig did.”

He hadn’t expected to hear that. Rage blurred his features. At his feet, Prince Tayy keened a high, panicked whine as the monstrous bird showed through the human form of the magician, and the shape of a lion-headed creature more horrible still. Llesho had seen both before and carried their marks on his body.

“I won’t kill you now,” he repeated, “because I owe the dragon-king of this realm a debt. But all your futures look bleak. If I can, I’ll find a way to free his son from his prison in your flesh. You’ll be powerless then, and I’ll see you face the justice of those you have harmed.

“If I can’t free the dragon trapped within your flesh, I’ll kill you to protect Marmer Sea Dragon. A father shouldn’t suffer the blood of his child—even in this perverted form—on his hands.

“If Tayy dies, however, I won’t be concerned about justice. You’ll have my vengeance to fear then. And the spear of the Lady SienMa likes vengeance.”

Blue flame blazed along the length of the weapon. It sparked azure fire up and down Llesho’s body and filled the clearing with an unearthly light unbearable to look at. For the first time in all of their encounters, from Pearl Island to this hideout of pirates on the other side of the world, Master Markko looked nervous.

“You’ll come around,” he said, but he didn’t sound as assured as he wanted to appear. “And while we are apart, remember. I can reach you any time I want.”

As if to prove his point, the magician raised a talon-clawed hand. Although the broken clearing lay between them, Llesho felt a touch on his shoulder, a stroke that brushed the hair from his forehead.

“I chose you,” a rusty voice whispered in Llesho’s head. “I made you as a father makes a son, in the raising. You won’t escape the path I’ve laid for you.”

The transformation was not as smooth as Llesho had seen in the past, but slowly the magician faded from view. In his place squatted a huge bird with a predatory gleam in its eye. With a lumbering flap of its wings the bird rose awkwardly into the air and circled, found a thermal updraft, and wheeled away.

“Well done.”

Llesho jumped at the sound of the deep voice. It hadn’t come from inside his head, which was an improvement. But where? Ah. Master Den stepped out from among the trees with a satisfied smile. “You did that very well. I liked the bit about Marmer Sea Dragon’s son particularly.” He’d shed his pirate garb for his more familiar dress of loincloth and coat, but it was going to take more than a change in his clothing to trust him again.

“I meant it.” Llesho dropped to his knees at Tayy’s side, but he didn’t know what to do, where to touch him that wouldn’t cause him more pain. They had to close that wound, but how, without sealing up the poisons that festered in hiding? The thought of maggots in that huge wound made his own gut crawl.

“You were right about the false magician. He did lie.” He didn’t dare ask the question,What are we going to do? aloud because he didn’t want Tayy to hear it. But his whole soul cried out in dismay at the growing pool of blood. The prince’s lips had grown as pale as his skin, and his eyes drooped half-closed already.

Master Den squatted down beside him and rested a huge hand lightly on his shoulder. “This is no test. Not for you, not for Tayy. This is the war. I’d protect you from it if I could, but it’s your war. I can only watch, and guide.”

Which was more real information than the trickster god had ever given him before and it made him wonder about all the other gods he’d met along his way. They could help, of course. Hmishi, alive, was proof of that. But Dognut had explained the cost of such a boon. Even once was more than you could ask in a lifetime, the god had made that clear. He hadn’t been able to get Harlol back and he couldn’t ask for Tayy.

Master Den had trained warrior kings and gladiators for more lifetimes than Llesho wanted to think about, however. “Get my pack for me,” he said. “I left it there in the trees.”

The pack, wrapped in a clean cloth, was right where the trickster god told him, hidden behind a rock jutting up between the trees. The trickster took it without looking and continued his instructions as he pulled from inside it a small pouch of what looked like tea and a small length of clean white cloth.

“Go to the beach,” he said, “And bring back some of the nets you find there.”

“What nets?”

His teacher had his mind on Tayy. “Go, quickly,” he urged before turning back to his patient. He wiped gently at the many wounds on limbs and body. The prince was semiconscious, but sounds of distress escaped his slack lips.

Llesho ran for the beach. He would force Moll to take them to Pontus, where they’d find doctors and magicians for Tayy—

The pirate galley was gone. Singer was a good rower, and he’d make a good captain, but he had no taste for the magical. He’d headed out to sea, far from the presence of a magician in the shape of a huge raptor with an eye for human prey.

As Den had known, however, the pirates scavenging for supplies had dropped their bundles on the shore when Tayy screamed. There were drag marks in the sand where they’d retrieved most of them, but a few nets remained, bursting with their booty of fruits and meat. Moll would have more bolt-holes to visit for food and water; safer hideouts. He didn’t know what Master Den wanted with the nets, but he grabbed two of the loads and raced back to the clearing.

“Here.”

“Ah. Better than I thought.” From among the small lizards and the breadfruit, Master Den pulled a coconut and cracked it on the sharp end of an upturned boulder.

“Drink up.” He handed one half to Llesho and gulped down the rest himself.

“What about Tayy?”

“You know better than that.”

He did, of course. Gut wounds were chancy. If you fed one, you ran the risk of horrible infection that killed faster than the wound itself. Without water, however, the patient would die of thirst. Already Tayy had the pinched, almost powdery look of one who had gone too long without drink.

Master Den had straightened the prince’s body so that he lay flat on the grass with the cloth from Llesho’s shirt packed in his wound. With his own belt the trickster god had tied the prince’s hands to his sides, but still Tayy reached mindlessly to pluck at the curling edges of the wound. Llesho had seen the like in battle; without the restraints, he’d tangle his fingers in his own entrails. His lashes fluttered weakly when Master Den spoke, but he seemed unaware of what was being said.

“We can keep him alive if you don’t lose your head,” the trickster reminded him sharply. “When you’ve drunk that coconut, you’re going to find the spring where Moll’s crew were drawing their water and you’re going to bring some back in the shells.”

Water—that made sense. He drank the coconut and took the other half of the shell. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

“I know. Take a bit of net with you to carry the shells in. You may need to keep your hands free.”

Llesho did as he was told, snugged the broken halves of the coconut shell into a net that he tied over his shoulders. Then he looked back, unwilling to leave the clearing for fear that Tayy would die while he was gone. Squatting next to the prince with his elbows on his knees, Master Den made a shooing motion with both his huge hands before tackling the nets with their booty of food inside. “Go, go. We won’t leave without you.”

Which hadn’t been Llesho’s fear, or maybe the trickster didn’t mean on the ship Kaydu was bringing. With an abrupt, single nod to show that he understood, Llesho left the clearing for the forest.

As before, he followed a path already beaten down by the animals that lived on the island. They would know better than he where to find water, and the shortest routes to it. He met with no large predators, though small scavengers skittered in the undergrowth on either side of the path and some strange creature with tall, slim horns on its head leaped out of the way as he came upon it nibbling bark from a pine tree.

Not more than a few hundred paces from the clearing a tumble of fractured rock blocked the path. And from a crack in the rock high over his head, water trickled in a thin stream. It would have been impossible to capture that water, which drizzled through tiny grooves and cracks in the stone. At the base of the spill, however, water collected in a shallow basin made of the fallen rock. On the far side of the path, the water overflowed the basin into the sandy soil. Quicksand, he figured, and creatures with too many teeth that lived in the marshes and fens. He kept to his own side where countless animals had laid the safest course and climbed the stony wall of the pool. Filling the coconut shells, he settled them on his back again and climbed down off the rocky pile. Careful not to spill a drop, he headed back down the way he had come.

It turned out there were more than human predators on the island after all. A tawny she-cat whose head came only to his hip, but with teeth longer than the fingers on each hand, barred his path. The thick hair around her neck bristled threateningly.

“Nice kitty.” With cats, it was simple. Whoever intimidated the other more would have the right of way. Or so he had heard. On the other hand, she was female and looked ready to drop her young. That made it more complicated to know how she’d jump.

Llesho was taller and he glared down at her, eye to eye, declaring his dominance. “Is this your own special route to the spring? That’s okay.” The creature couldn’t understand his human language, but his tone would communicate his confidence. “You can have it. After I’m gone.”

This was the tricky part. Stepping off the path for either of them meant backing down. The she-cat could walk away, submitting to Llesho’s control of the path. Or they could fight. If Llesho stepped aside, he’d be prey again, and she’d try to kill him for sure. He might win either fight, but not without killing the cat.

He’d had enough of bloodshed for the day, however, and would rather not murder a mother defending her own ground. There was always the chance she’d beat him, too, in which case he’d be dead. Slowly he drew the knife from its sheath at his side. Lifting his shoulders away from his body, he made himself look bigger and held his ground.

“Raowr!” She tilted her head, spreading her jaws so that he could see all her sharp, shiny teeth.

“No!” Somehow the spear had come into his hand, flickering the blue sparks it gave off when it wished to strike. That was enough for the she-cat. She shook her head, ceding the territory, and padded away into the forest.

This time, Llesho had won their little game of dominance and power. Even now, however, he didn’t dare let himself be afraid. The cat would smell the emotion on him and stalk him, waiting for her chance. Then she’d be on him before he knew she was there. The back of his neck prickled with unease, as if his skin already felt the heat of her breath, the pressure of her jaws snapping fragile bones. Whistling a cheery tune to convince both himself and the cat that he was just fine, he continued at his former pace to the clearing where Master Den waited with Tayy.

“There are predators about, we can’t stay here long.” He carefully set the net with the coconut shells down before joining his teacher at the prince’s side.

“We have to get to shore to hail Kaydu’s ship anyway,” Master Den agreed.

“Cover your ears—there’s no time to warm it properly. This is going to hurt.”

Llesho thought he’d lost his mind. The prince was unconscious, or close enough to it to make no difference. He fretted mindlessly against the soft bonds that held his hands out of his wounds, but otherwise showed no sign of awareness. Then, the teacher upended the coconut shell over the vast open wound across Tayy’s belly.

“AAAAHhhhhhh!” The scream that followed echoed from the hills and reverberated in Llesho’s ears, in his head, in his gut. Prince Tayy lifted physically up off the ground in one convulsive heave as his body reacted to the cold touch of the spring water against his tortured flesh.

“Oh, gods and ancestors! Stop!” Tayy whimpered, reaching for his wounds. His hands remained tied to his sides.

“Please!” he gasped, his breath coming in short, sharp gasps.

“Stop!” Llesho balled his fists at his sides, scarcely noticing that his left hand had clenched around his knife. “What are you doing to him?”

“We have to keep the wound clean.” Master Den rummaged around in the bits and pieces from his pack that he’d spread out next to the patient. He took up a piece of gauzy white cloth and poured more of the water on it, then laid it gently across the wound.

Tayy scrabbled at his sides with his fingers, as if he could walk them up his body and snatch away the wet cloth. He was sobbing openly, though apparently not aware that he was doing it.

“Ssshhh, ssshhh,” Master Den soothed. He held out his hand. “The other shell?”

Llesho handed it over, watched as he tilted it first to moisten Tayy’s lips, then, when he had the prince’s attention on the water, lifted his head to the shell. “Drink,” he said, “But slowly.” He pulled the makeshift cup away again and Tayy craned his neck to follow it.

“Shush, shush,” Den continued in the warm soothing tones that Llesho remembered from long ago, at a hospital in Shan. “You can have more in a moment.”

Master Den settled Tayy’s head back against the tussock of grasses where he lay surrounded by broken stone. A worried frown creasing his brow as he studied the contents of his pack spread out before him. Taking up the pouch of herbs, he deftly gathered a pinch of leaves and shredded them between his fingers. “Here, boy, let me put this in your cheek.” He tucked the bundle between Tayy’s teeth and the flesh, complaining, “This would work better in a tea, but we haven’t time to build a fire.” The prince twitched his head away, moaning, but Master Den lifted him again, crooning, “Drink, there’s the thing. Let the water soak the herbs. It will help with the pain.”

Llesho thought he’d been forgotten, but the trickster god had another request, which he gave without looking away from his patient. “We need two strong sticks as long as your two arms spread wide.” He lay Tayy down again to demonstrate his need, opening his own arms so that they stretched from the prince’s head to his feet.

“You’re going to make a litter with the nets,” Llesho deduced. He didn’t need an answer. “I won’t be far, if you need me.”

As promised, he didn’t stray far from the clearing. Nearby, however, a stand of young bamboo grew to just about the right height. Drawing his knife, he went to work on the woody stems. It took longer than he’d hoped to free them. By the time he had finished, soft padding feet were coming nearer, rustling in the undergrowth. The she-cat, drawn to the smell of fresh blood.

Llesho hurried back to the bare campsite, remembering another time, other predators. On the Long March, Harnish raiders had led their Thebin captives on a brutal journey across all the grasslands to the slave markets in Shan. Predators had prowled beside them every step of the way, picking off the sick and the weak and the children, anyone who fell behind. His people had saved him, passing him hand to hand, carrying him across a thousand li and a thousand more. He’d do the same for Tayy if that was what it took.

Bursting into the clearing with a long bamboo pole in either hand, he announced, “We’ve got company.”

“I know.” Master Den tied up his supplies in their white wrap, which he knotted over one shoulder.

“Leave me a knife,” Tayy begged. The herbs had dulled his pain, but his eyes were dark with the terrible knowledge of his condition.

“Don’t be a fool. We aren’t leaving anything, least of all you.” While Master Den tended to his patient, Llesho carefully wove the bamboo rods between the knots of the netting.

“It’s ready,” he said when he had finished. The litter had a bamboo handhold on each side, separated by the width of the nets Llesho had used to form the sling where Tayy’s body would rest while they carried him to the shore.

“Come, help me load him up. And don’t drop him when he screams.” Master Den had already taken up his end of the litter. Llesho slung the net filled with fruit over his back and picked up the other end of the bamboo rods. They carried the litter over so that it lay next to Tayy.

“This is going to hurt, but we’ll have you comfortably tucked in bed before you know it.”

“They’re here?” Llesho tilted his head, listening for the sound of a shore party, but heard only the sounds of the birds and the skulking cat pacing in the trees.

“Soon. Very soon.” Master Den lifted the prince in his arms. The herbs had helped with the pain, but not enough. An agonized growl rumbled deep in Tayy’s throat and he tugged at the belt that held his hands out of his wounds. The mountainous trickster god just held him more securely, as if he were a child, and bent to place him on the litter.

“Now help me get him out on the beach, where they can find us.”

The shore seemed farther away with a wounded burden to carry, but they reached it in a fairly short time. At the edge of the forest, their hungry escort left them to go in search of easier prey. Setting down their burden on the cool, damp sand, both master and pupil looked out to sea. There was no ship waiting for them.

“They’re not here,” Llesho stated the obvious. The lagoon lay placid and still, a mirror in which no ship reflected. Beyond the headlands all the way to the horizon the sea was empty. Not a sail, not a pennon dotted the vast expanse of empty sky.

“Wait.” Master Den dropped to his haunches and took one of Tayy’s hands in his own. Gently, he stilled the restless wandering toward the wound moistened by a cloth laid over it and dampened to translucence.

There didn’t seem to be much else that he could do. Llesho sat himself down on the other side of the litter. Like his teacher, he took Tayy’s hand in his and stroked it to soothe his friend. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered, “I never imagined Master Markko would come after you.”

When he looked up again, the ship had appeared, sailing out from behind the hills that enclosed the lagoon.

“Impossible.” He blinked to clear the mirage from his eyes, but the ship remained on course around the headland and into the protected cove.

“Not impossible,” Master Den instructed. “Not even magic. Just a shift in direction to come up undetected in case there were pirates still about. Our friend Habiba would have seen to that.”

Habiba. The ship had come as near as it dared, and someone had let a small boat over the side. Llesho hoped that Habiba was in it. Her ladyship’s witch would know what to do. He could let go. Three figures climbed down, but they were two small to identify at the distance the ship was forced to keep. The osprey that rose from the deck, however, had watched them from above when they made landfall on the island. In moments, the bird had scrambled to a landing on the sand.

“What happened?” Kaydu asked.

 

 

 

 

 Chapter Twenty-three

“THE WINDS that drove theShark onto these shores carried Master Markko in the same direction. He found Prince Tayy alone and attacked before I could stop him.” Llesho pulled the gauzy covering away to reveal the wound. It had begun to stick, so he poured more water on the cloth. Tayy moaned and his knees bent as if he would draw them protectively around his middle, but the effort left him gasping in pain.

“Hush, hush,” Master Den smoothed the long, thick hair from the prince’s brow, lulling him with the hypnotic sound of his voice.

Kaydu ruffled as if she still had feathers. “And the pirates?” she demanded, and he thought she would rise on the next thermal and attack the galley in her sea eagle form.

“The pirates stranded us here, but they knew help was coming.” He gave her a wry smile. “Their new captain has no fondness for the uncanny.”

She settled then, waiting for the rest of the tale. Llesho explained as briefly as he could while keeping a watchful eye on the advance of the longboat. When he got to where he allowed Master Markko to escape, Kaydu glared darkly at him. “Why didn’t you kill him?”

“I’m not finished with him yet. I’ll know when it’s time.” He didn’t mention Marmer Sea Dragon’s son or reveal his intentions to free the dragon-prince. He was pretty sure she’d damn him for a fool if she knew, but he hoped that wasn’t his reason for keeping the information from her.

It wasn’t his story to tell. Pig had taken everything else the dragon-king held dear. Llesho could leave him his privacy. Missing that key intelligence, however, Kaydu arrived at the wrong conclusion. “Don’t tell me you’ve already forgotten the second rule of a soldier!”

“Never.”

Not a rule in the strict sense, Kaydu was talking about the common sense that soldiers sometimes needed to remember, “Don’t let revenge get in the way of a clean shot.” Llesho had heard the complaint it addressed, that death was too easy for this enemy or that. He’d have said the same about the raiders who had invaded Kungol. The truth was, though, that while you were stewing over how to cause the enemy more pain, he was usually sneaking up on your flank. So said the hardened campaigners, that a dead archer can’t shoot you in the back.

“That isn’t why I let him go,” he answered the question she asked in the speaking of the proverb. For himself or his captain, he wasn’t sure which, he added the reminder, “I hate all this. Hate the fighting, hate seeing my friends die. I don’t know how people do this for a profession.”

He was thinking of Master Jaks, who had once led his troops in battle and who now lay in an unmarked grave on a battlefield a thousand li away. And Shou, who had suffered a broken mind in the camp of the enemy. Kaydu already knew that about him, of course, that hatred of the waste of lives to death and memory. He spoke his fears aloud now for Tayy, who had lived for the war games of his people and might die on this beach of his first battle. Rules didn’t matter when you made war with magicians. The Lady SienMa, mortal goddess of war, had tried to teach him that. She moved them all like pieces on a board, he thought, and shied away from the notion that sometimes he hated her as well.

The longboat had grounded its nose on the shore and Lling jumped out, arrow knocked, bow drawn. Bixei and Stipes finished stowing the oars and then they, too, leaped into the shin-deep water, dragging the boat higher on the beach so that the tide didn’t wash it away.

“Over here!” Kaydu stood up, waved a hand to alert the rescue party to their presence. While they waited, she rested a hand on Llesho’s shoulder. “We all know how you feel,” she said, “It’s why we follow you. But sometimes even the most honorable soldier falls to dark thoughts. Master Markko has given you more burdens than a reasonable man might expect to carry. We might worry less if you let us carry more of the weight.”

Any clearer and she’d be inviting a confrontation over the secrets behind his reasoning. Llesho shook his head, grateful she’d left him room to refuse. “It’s not about revenge.” He gave her that much. “It isn’t even about me.”

She laughed at that. “Haven’t you figured it out yet, Llesho? It’sall about you.”

He returned her laughter with his own ironic twist, pretending she hadn’t meant it. They were saved from further discussion by the arrival of their companions.

“What should I be looking for?” Lling swept a glance over the trees at the edge of the shore, her arrow pointed where her gaze fell.

“There are some hunter cats in the forest, but they seem to avoid the beach,” Llesho reported for his guard. “They have kept their distance while their prey is so closely watched anyway.”

“Pirates?” she asked.

“Gone,” he confirmed. “They don’t seem to have left a lookout behind.”

Bixei had turned his gaze to the hills above them on either side, and he added a caution to that. “I don’t see anybody keeping watch, but it won’t hurt to get out of here as fast as we can. Who knows when they’ll come back?”

There was more than one reason to hurry. “We need to get Tayy to a doctor, fast.”

The wound was visible through the damp cloth. Lling winced, her vision closing in around memories they all shared. Llesho had nearly died of his own wounds inflicted by the magician. And Hmishi—she’d been there when Master Markko had tortured him. The god of mercy had returned his life to them, but he hadn’t wiped away the memory of his death at the magician’s hands.

“Let’s go, then.” Bixei picked up one end of Tayy’s litter, and Stipes, in perfect step with his own partner, lifted the other. Surrounded by the company on the shore, they carried him to the longboat and settled him on the bottom. Together, they pushed the boat into the water.

Bixei and Stipes took the oars—Llesho knew better than to offer, which was just as well. He’d be happier if he never had to row a boat again in this lifetime. He found a place toward the bow and settled himself, felt the bump and shimmy as his companions joined him.

“How are we going to get him over the side?” Llesho asked. Almost as round as a washtub, the sailing ship Kaydu had commissioned for them rode high in the water. Her hull rose well above their heads even standing in the longboat, which Tayy couldn’t do. He wouldn’t survive a seat hoist either.

“Simple,” Kaydu told him. “The rest of us will use the ladder, then they’ll hoist the boat.”

It did seem simple enough—as long as the sailors didn’t drop the boat on the way up, which they did pretty regularly. This time, however, it worked as well in the doing as it sounded in the planning. Hmishi joined them on deck and they soon had Tayy off-loaded and in the captain’s cabin. Stipes swept the luxurious coverings off the bed to reveal the simple linen beneath. They tried to be gentle moving the prince from the litter, but even half unconscious he moaned in pain.

“Where did Master Den go?” Llesho asked. He’d done this so much more smoothly before, but he was nowhere to be seen now.

“I saw him heading toward the galley,” Stipes seemed as confused by it as the rest of them.

“Well, somebody fetch him.”

A noise at the hatchway drew their hopeful glances, but it was the captain of the little ship who popped through it. Lling gave a nod of courtesy as she brushed past on her way out.

“I heard you were bringing a wounded boy on board,” the ship’s captain announced, “so I’ve brought up our own surgeon to tend him.”

Llesho wondered where she had brought him up from, until he appeared in the hatchway behind her. The man was almost as big as Master Den, and as dirty as the other was neat. Sweat glistened on his brow and across a chest that looked more like a fortress than mere flesh and blood. His arms were brawny, ending in huge hands that looked like they’d last had a wash on shore before the voyage began. If then. In one of them he carried a hammer the size of Llesho’s head, and in the other, a leather bag that clanked when he put it down.

“He needs sewing up, is all.” The man dropped his bag on the table and took out of it a needle used for mending sails and a length of cotton thread. “It was wise of you to tie his hands. Now if someone will sit on his legs, and two more hold down his shoulders, we can get him closed before you know it.”

Adar would be having a heart attack about now, Llesho figured. Still, he didn’t want to abuse their captain’s goodwill. “Do you think it would help to wash up, and maybe give him herbs for the pain?” he suggested as graciously as he could manage under the circumstances.

“No point,” the blacksmith/surgeon licked the end of the thread and aimed it at the eye in the needle. “That there is what we call a mortal wound. Means he won’t live through the night, if he’s lucky. He might linger a few days more, to all of our regrets, but he’s not getting up from that bed except sewed in a sailcloth to go over the side, and you can lay your money on that.

“No, we’ll just stitch him up for tidiness’ sake. And if he’s still alive at the end of the sewing, I’ll have Cook fix up a nice porridge to keep his strength up. But it won’t do no good.”

The surgeon bore down on the bed but stopped short as Llesho’s cadre formed a wall between the patient and the dirty needle.

“Where’s Habiba?” Llesho asked. He’d hung all his hopes on the magician being aboard to take over. He would know what to do for Tayy.

But Hmishi was shaking his head. “He left when the boat was sent to fetch you off the beach. He said to tell you he’d meet you in Pontus with a doctor.”

“Doctor won’t do you any good.” The surgeon gave a shrug as if to say he took no professional slight from their preference for a foreign healer. “That’s a gut wound. I’ve never seen a gut wound survive.”

“His name is Prince Tayyichiut,” Llesho objected. “He’s not a gut wound; he’s a Harnish prince wounded in the gut. And he will survive. I’ve promised his uncle.”

Mergen had absolved him from that promise, but Llesho held himself to his word. At least until Tayy recovered enough to make his own decisions, now that he knew the danger.

The surgeon shrugged again, clearly at a loss in dealing with these mad strangers. “Suit yourself,” he said. “I’ll send the porridge up anyway. But open or sewed shut, he’s dead by sunset.” With that he left them to their vigil.

When he had gone, Llesho collapsed into a chair. It seemed inconceivable to him that he was among friends again, that they might, if not for Tayy’s wound, have been safe. For all that he refused to believe the surgeon’s prognosis, he was afraid he might be right. “We need to do something before Pontus,” he said.

With perfect timing that usually escaped the trickster god, Master Den chose that moment to enter the captain’s cabin. “We shall, boy, we shall,” he advised.

“What?” Llesho bounded from his chair, finally secure enough to let his temper explode. “Where did you go, and why are you running around with a teapot in your hands when the crown prince of the Qubal clans—our allies against the South in the Harnlands, mind you—lies dying with no one but a grime-besmirched blacksmith to tend his wounds.”

“You didn’t let—”

Master Den had the good grace to look horrified at the mention of the ship’s surgeon, but Llesho had no intention of letting him off the hook.

“Of course not! For all the good that it did Tayy. He needs help now and what do you do? You disappear, just like Habiba, who is off to Pontus to find too little help too late to do any good. I don’t know why I put up with any of you. For all that magic is supposed to have its benefits, it has done nothing from start to finish but cause pain!”

His own cadre stared awkwardly at the deck under their feet, nervous to confront him while he raged. Master Den, however, smiled benevolently. “You’re getting better at that,” he said, and set down the teapot. “The tea is for Tayy. It will help with the pain until we get him to a doctor. If someone will bring me a clean basin and some clean cloths, I’ll see what we can do about the wound until we reach port.”

Grateful for something to do that would take them out of Llesho’s way, his cadre scattered in search of the items Master Den had requested. All but Lling, who joined then at the table where their teacher had set the fat iron pot.

“I brought this,” she said, and carefully unwrapped the jade cup.

Her ladyship, the mortal goddess of war, had given Llesho the cup at the start of his quest, a gift from another lifetime with a challenge to repair the love and honor it represented. He had entrusted it to Lling while he rescued Tayy on the pirate ship. Now he took it in his hands, watching the bowl brighten with the diffused light that poured through the wide windows of the captain’s cabin.

“I thought that, being magical, it might help,” Lling suggested. “I left Lady Chaiujin’s cup in my cabin. I’ll be happy when you take it back—I’ve had enough of the lady haunting my dreams. But this didn’t seem like the place.” That was for reassurance. The Lady Chaiujin had murdered Tayy’s parents, had poisoned Llesho himself once with a love potion in a cup very like the one he now held in his hand. Except that one had a spiral rune at the bottom of the bowl. Llesho looked anyway, but of course Lling was right.

“Thank you.” He handed the cup to Master Den, who wiped it with a corner of clean cloth torn from the bandaging material Bixei had brought. He filled it, then poured an inch of the clear tea into the basin Kaydu set on the table.

“First a drink to dull the pain,” he said, and lifted Tayy’s head, made him drink a sip, another, another. Then, when some of the tension went out of the muscles of arms and legs clenched with pain even in his semiconscious state, Master Den began to moisten the cloth that had lain on the open wound. Gradually, he was able to loosen it and remove it without causing more bleeding. “This is going to hurt,” he warned them all, but asked for no help to hold his patient down. Then, slowly, he poured the remaining tea into the wound.

Llesho knew how that felt, like a knife slicing him open all over again, and his own gut fluttered with sympathy as Prince Tayyichiut screamed. Instinctively, he wanted to cover his ears, but he held his hands at his sides. If Tayy could live it, Llesho could listen. The herbs in the tea did their work, however, and soon the cries fell to murmurs and ended on a sigh. It seemed too much to hope, but Master Den confirmed his suspicion.

“He’s gone to sleep,” the god said. “He’ll rest now.” With that he lay the dampened cloth over the wound and lowered his own considerable bulk into the chair that Llesho had pulled up by the bedside.

“Sit down,” he instructed Llesho. His chair creaked when he moved, pointing to another at the table. “You look like you are about to faint and it is making your cadre nervous.”

Llesho wanted to object that he was fine. He wouldn’t have fooled anyone, however. When Hmishi drew the chair over for him, therefore, he sank into it without further argument. “Habiba’s gone to Pontus,” he said. “When will he be back?”

“He’s not coming back. He’ll be waiting for us on the docks. He trained in Pontus and says he knows a physician who will take us in.”

“How much longer? He needs a proper surgeon now!”

“It’s less than half a day’s journey,” Kaydu assured him, news that would, perhaps, have put a stop to his show of temper before it had begun. “I thought you knew—” She cast a reproachful frown at Master Den, who hadn’t told him as much.

Again, a nod. Llesho heard her voice, but it seemed to be growing more and more distant with every word she said. The ship was on course, he’d done what he could, and there was nothing else to do but wait. With the need to keep moving gone, his eyelids wouldn’t be denied.

Vaguely he heard some hushed argument, to leave something where it was or move it to a more comfortable location, but his weary mind wouldn’t process that they were talking about him. Eventually, the “leave him” faction won and a weight fell across his shoulders, his knees. Someone had covered him with a blanket. He realized from the fringes of sleep that while he didn’t need the cover for warmth, it made him feel safer somehow. Safe enough that he didn’t need even that much awareness anymore. So he let it go.

The cry, “Land ho!” wove itself into his aimless dreams and left them again as fleetingly as it had come. When Llesho next became aware of his surroundings, it was to hear Habiba’s voice, and that of a stranger directing the off loading of their patient. The scuffling of litter bearers followed. In the silence that followed their passage through the hatchway, the rustle of heavy silks almost drew him to open his eyes. But his lids were so heavy . . .

A gentle hand rested on his shoulder, “Llesho? Are you hurt?”

Habiba’s voice, he recognized it even though the man whispered close to his ear. Not the voicing of a secret, but the calming of a wild creature. Llesho wondered what he must look like for her ladyship’s witch to take such care in his waking.

“What’s the matter with him?” Habiba asked someone. “Why doesn’t he wake up.”

“He’s awake,” a stranger’s voice said, “or nearly so. Give him a minute to think about joining us.”

He didn’t know the voice, knew he’d never met the man who owned it, but it stirred comforting memories anyway. A warmth he hadn’t felt in a long time told him he could trust that voice, so he slowly let his eyes drift open. The magician crouched at his side, his brow furrowed in a worried frown. Standing at Habiba’s shoulder, the physician watched Llesho with warm and understanding eyes. He wore a white linen skirt both long and wide with a short square jacket. On his head he had a tall felt hat and on his feet slippers of the same color. In between, he wore a gauzy open coat with long, deep sleeves. His eyes were dark, his skin was pale and he wore a neatly trimmed mustache and a short, pointed beard. Between the two, a warm smile showed a neat row of even, white teeth.

Llesho had seen a priest dressed the same way buying children in the slave market of Edris. Stipes had called the man a missionary, saving the children, not harming them. Which might have been the truth, or might have been a quick lie so that Llesho didn’t break their cover to do some rescuing himself. This man didn’t look like a slaver of children, but still he pulled away, groping reflexively at his side for his knife.

“Welcome to Pontus.” The stranger gently plucked Llesho’s fingers from his belt and held them between his two hands. “My name is Ibn Al-Razi and I’m a doctor. My carriage is waiting on the docks to take you to my hospital. Do you need a litter, or can you walk as far as the carriage?”

A doctor. That made sense. Adar used to hold his hand the very same way when he wanted to check his energy points for vitality.

“I can walk.” Llesho stretched and looked around, but his other senses hadn’t failed him. They were alone in the captain’s cabin. He remembered hearing the ordering of Tayy’s removal, but realized suddenly what had been missing from that scene. Tayy had made no sound, though he’d been jostled surely getting him out of the bed and onto the litter.

“Prince Tayyichiut—”

“Still alive,” the physician-priest assured him, though his expression took a downward course. “I make no promises for the future until I have had a chance to treat him. He’s had some syrup of poppy to put him to sleep until we settle him in my infirmary.”

Llesho nodded, grateful for the update. He’d heard of syrup of poppy, how it dulled the mind to pain more surely than any of the other herbs he knew, but hadn’t seen it in use before. He felt all dull around the edges and curiously incapable of greater motion so that he wondered if he’d been dosed on poppy himself.

“What’s the matter with him?” Habiba had noticed as well. He took Llesho’s other hand, found the pulse point at Llesho’s wrist.

Ibn Al-Razi, more angry than concerned, denied any part in Llesho’s condition. “What did you expect? He’s been charming storms and warding hunting cats, all without proper training in the arts or any magical support.”

Llesho didn’t realize that Master Den had returned until he spoke up from the hatchway. “That’s not entirely true. I may have miscalculated the resources he’d already expended in the galley, but Marmer Sea Dragon was with him when he worked the storm. No one knows these waters, or the working of them, better than the dragon-king himself.”

Al-Razi glared at the trickster god, waiting for the part of the explanation he was unwilling to say. Habiba was the one who gave in, however. “Worse awaits him in the mountains. Her ladyship, whom I serve, had to know if he could do it.”

“The fact is,” Master Den interrupted, brushing away the witch’s explanation, “We expected the boys to spend a few days as oarsmen on a pirate galley before their companions caught up and rescued them. It seemed a good experience for the Harnish prince, who had yet to be tried in adversity.

“Weather working wasn’t in the plan at all. Markko should not have been able to raise a storm of that magnitude. We miscalculated the effect the dragon-prince would have on his abilities in the realm of the dragon’s birth, however. Fortunately for all involved, the boy proved adept at taming storms, or they’d all be dead of our miscalculation.”

Throughout this telling of the secret plans of gods and magicians gone astray, the physician from Pontus was shaking his head. “For whatever reasons, he’s been working well beyond his capacity to protect himself for far too long.” Al-Razi chastised the trickster god and Habiba, the representative of the mortal goddess of war, as well. “It’s drained his resources to a dangerously low ebb. You will be lucky not to end this adventure with two dead princes on your hands.”

“I know.” Master Den came forward then and swept Llesho up into his arms, blanket and all. “But talking about it isn’t going to keep them alive.”

“No, it isn’t. Bring him.”

Ibn Al-Razi swept from the cabin with Master Den following and Habiba in the rear. Llesho struggled to escape the trickster’s firm grip, but was shushed like a child. “Can you even feel your legs, let alone walk on them?” his teacher asked.

When he thought about it, he found only pins and needles where his legs should be. With an ill grace to be caught at such a disadvantage, therefore, he settled into the massive arms and let himself be carried to the docks.

 

 

 

 

 Chapter Twenty-four

IT WAS raining in Pontus, but wrapped in his blanket on the padded bench of the physician’s carriage, Llesho scarcely noticed. Somehow he was brought into a courtyard, and from there into a large airy room with a harmonious combination of architecture and furnishings to create a setting at once peaceful and conducive to healing. He rode in Master Den’s arms, but how he got there or why he traveled that way he couldn’t quite gather the energy to question. For whatever reason, the journey soon ended in a comfortable bed with a soft mattress and cool white sheets. Windows were open nearby, and curtains fine as gauze floated in the breeze that brought the smell of rain into the room.

Master Den stepped away, but another form took his place at the bedside. “You’re safe now.” The man with the pointy beard crouched low so that his patient could see him clearly without straining his neck. “We are in the infirmary of the physician Ibn Al-Razi. I am that physician, and I will see that you are well taken care of.”

“You told me your name before.” Llesho felt uncommonly pleased to have remembered, though the conversation had occurred no more than an hour ago. All his thoughts were light as butterflies, however, that skittered away whenever he reached for them. So he felt a certain satisfaction to have got his hands around this one. He knew the doctor’s name.

“Yes, I did.” The physician smiled as if he’d accomplished some great feat. “And hopefully you will remember it again after your nap.”

“I just had a nap.” Llesho struggled to rise, though it seemed every bone in his body rebelled against the act. “Where are my cadre? Tayy is hurt—”

With a thumb to Llesho’s forehead, Ibn Al-Razi pressed him back down until he lay once again deep in the feather bed. “Your cadre is banished to the house until you’ve rested. As for the young Prince Tayyichiut, you did well to keep the smith away from his wounds. I go to tend him as soon as I am assured that you will not leave this bed. So, you see, your own promise will speed the healing of your friend.”

Between the determination of the physician and the rebellion of his body, it seemed clear that he wasn’t going anywhere soon. “Very well.” Llesho gave in with as much grace as he could muster under the circumstances. “But please, keep me informed about Prince Tayyichiut’s condition. I owe him more than his life, and I’ve promised his uncle—”

“More than you have the power to deliver without the help of a good physician. So go to sleep and let me prove my skills on your friend.” Ibn Al-Razi rose from his crouch with a final warning, or blessing. “I know of the one who guards the wandering of your sleep,” he said, brushing the backs of his fingertips across the silver chain at Llesho’s throat. “If your dreams carry you from your bed, instruct our mischievous friend that your doctor orders peaceful travels only.”

Llesho gave his promise with a nod, almost too tired even to answer. “Why do I feel like this?” he asked, while the infirmary blurred around him. He hadn’t been injured, he’d shown no signs of illness. He’d just taken a nap in a chair by Prince Tayy’s bedside, and yet he still found it difficult to stay awake. “What potion have you given me?”

“No potion,” the doctor assured him. “But a story. In the center of the town of Pontus there is a well. The water from the well pours out freely for all who come there, citizen, slave, or traveler. All their animals are likewise welcome to drink from this well.

“From time to time, however, a great caravan comes through the town, or many pilgrims will descend upon the square at once. They draw and draw from the well, each according to his need and no more, but in so many numbers that the well runs dry. At these times our Apadisha, in his wisdom, builds a wooden house around the well. No one may draw until the water returns.”

With a smile, the physician turned in a light-footed circle, his hands held out at an angle to indicate the walls of his infirmary. “Today you are this well, run dry from too many demands upon your inner resources. And this, my infirmary, is your wooden house. No one may burden you until your strength, like the water to the well, returns.”

“How long?” Llesho asked around a yawn that cracked his jaw. He was, for the moment, willing to concede that perhaps he had drawn too often and too deeply from the well of his own inner strength. A nap couldn’t hurt, and Tayy needed the doctor . . .

“We’ll see,” Al-Razi said, and laughter lurked in the voice that drifted away on sleep . . .

For a while, Llesho was aware of nothing. His sleep was deep and dreamless, like the bottom of that well Ibn Al-Razi talked about. And then, so slowly that he scarcely saw it happening, gray light crept in around his lashes.

 

 

 

 

The moss under his nose gave off a familiar scent, and he curled himself into the lush velvety cushion of its embrace. Memories covered him like a blanket. He’d been here before, under this tree. Safe in the arms of his Goddess. His heart yearned for her while his body dragged him back into sleep. When he woke again, she sat calmly beside him, a book in her hands and a pitcher and cups at her side.

“What are you reading?” he asked. It seemed a mundane question for one who had gone to sleep in a feather bed in Pontus and awakened in the gardens of heaven. He felt warm and sated with sleep, however, and distant from the cares that had propelled him across all the known world to collapse at a foreign doctor’s feet. He was safe and warm and cared for. That other life could wait.

“It’s called ‘A Life of Prayer and Battle,’ by four teachers of Farshore Province.” She set the book aside as she gave the title, and Llesho knew without being told that the life in question had been his own, and that the book had not yet been written.

“Water?” She poured from the pitcher and handed him a cup. The water was cold and crisp on his tongue, reminding him of another time when a yearning for home stronger than Master Markko’s poisons had brought him here.

He returned the cup with an apology, “I am a sorry excuse for a husband. It seems I only find my way here when I need you, and never the other way around.”

“Your every step since you left Kungol as a child has been in my service.” She brushed the hair from his forehead with fingers cool as the water he had lately drunk and smiled in spite of the tears in her eyes. “Through lives uncounted I have never had cause to doubt you, husband.”

“My Lady.” He took her hand in his and held it to his cheek. He had never moved so boldly toward her before, but her palm, her fingers, felt perfect against his skin.

“My husband,” she answered him. As his eyes slid closed again, he felt her lips touch his. Husband. More than a word or a promise, for the first time it felt like the truth.

 

 

 

When he woke again, the sun had come out in Pontus. Golden light poured in through the open windows with a breeze that blew the curtains like streamers into the room. Beyond the windows, Llesho saw the city washed clean in the sunlight and dressed in all her bright colors. And, on a balcony he hadn’t noticed when he was brought in, a man in a wide white skirt and boxy jacket danced in circles, his arms raised over his head, which was itself tilted in a dancer’s pose. The dance looked nothing like the prayer forms Llesho practiced, but still it reminded him of the Way of the Goddess. He’d learned from the Gansau Wastrels that many cultures trained their bodies to seek perfection and the goodwill of their gods and spirits. Watching the hypnotic motion of the dancer, he felt himself drawn up, as if he could float to heaven on the dance.

Presently, however, the dancer noticed his attention. He stopped his turning and entered through the long windows. Now that he’d drawn closer, Llesho recognized him as the physician, Ibn Al-Razi.

“You’re awake. Hungry, too, I would guess.”

“Starving,” Llesho admitted. “It must be past din nertime.”

The doctor smiled down at Llesho with satisfaction sparkling in his eyes. “Breakfast, actually. Your companions have been worried. I told them you’d wake up when you were ready and sent them away to their duties.”

“Worried?” A memory niggled at the back of his mind, of lying in the moss at the feet of his Goddess, but it seemed very distant now, clouded with the sticky darkness of sleep.

“You’ve been asleep for three days.”

“Three days!” Llesho bounded up out of his bed, only to find that his legs refused to work and his head objected to the sudden change in orientation. Dizzy, he fell back down upon the feather bed. Someone had cleaned him while he slept, had taken away his rough clothes and covered him in a soft bed shirt that came to his ankles. Fine for sleeping in, but he couldn’t very well stroll around Pontus dressed like that. Once he was able to stand on his own, which he was determined to do any minute.

“Prince Tayyichiut—?”

“Struggles still with his terrible wound.” The physician shook his head, overcome by sadness at the horror that had been done to the young prince. “Syrup of poppy helps him to rest, and some of the medicines I compound in my workroom help when the wound suppurates.”

Infection. Llesho’d seen enough of that in battle to know the danger. Working with the oysters in Pearl Bay as well, for that matter.

“Kwan-ti, the healer who tended us on Pearl Island, made a paste of molds and seaweed that calmed the redness of a wound,” he suggested. She was far away, however, and he didn’t mention she was a dragon-queen when not tending to the wounds of the children who had harvested the bay for pearls.

“I, too, know of such potions,” Al-Razi assured him, “And my poets are able to recite the compounds for many of them.”

Medicine in the empire of Shan made little use of poetry, and that of the Harn seemed mostly composed of riddles. But much of Adar’s Thebin medical knowledge had been imparted in prayers. The notion of medicines and compounds reduced to poetry did not surprise him as it might, therefore. It did cause him to wonder why Habiba had sought out this particular physician.

“I would like to meet your poets, if I may.” He didn’t mention his suspicion, that Ibn Al-Razi harbored a Thebin prince among his poet-slaves.

“And so you shall after breakfast, when you are examined and your case is rhymed for the record books.”

That wasn’t quite how it was done in Kungol, but Llesho let that pass. He would soon have the answer to his question—did his brother Menar reside in the house of the physician Ibn Al-Razi? In the meantime, he was still worried about Prince Tayy.

“Have your poets given the prince any of these potions?” he asked. He knew that some people responded poorly to them. Had heard of injured divers who died of the potions though their wounds were slight. Al-Razi assured him this was not the case for the Harnish prince in his care.

“Prince Tayyichiut responds well to our unguents and potions,” he said, “but a wound of such horror injures the soul as well as the body. How well he recovers will depend on his spirit and his will.”

Llesho nodded his understanding. He didn’t like the answer, but he remembered the time, several cycles of the seasons past now, when he lay wounded after the Battle of Shan Market. He would have died but for the presence of his brothers. Adar and Shokar, his cadre, and even the emperor himself, had pulled Llesho through the hard times in a way that potions alone could never do. He would have to do the same for Tayy. Flinging aside the clean white sheet that covered him, therefore, he tried once again to rise from his bed.

This time the physician let him stand. “The privy is in that direction.” He pointed down the length of the room. “Can you make it on your own, or do you want a chamber pot?”

The privy hadn’t been his goal when he stood up, but Llesho quickly changed his mind. Privy first, then Tayy’s sickroom.

“I can make it,” Llesho insisted. He wasn’t ill, after all. Just worn to the bone. “Then I want to see Prince Tayyichiut.”

“Privy first,” the physician agreed only so far. “Breakfast second,” he substituted his own schedule. On consideration, breakfast seemed like a good idea, too.

“And an examination of your own condition. Then we will see about visiting.” Al-Razi sounded pretty final about the order of his day, and Llesho found he didn’t have the energy to object. His legs did work, however. More or less. He could find Tayy on his own, later, if the doctor didn’t want to cooperate.

Al-Razi motioned forward a servant who took his elbow and his weight, guiding and supporting him. They made it to the privy without incident, though Llesho wondered at how much longer than it looked the room became when he walked it. The way back was longer still, and the servant was nearly carrying him by the time he reached his bed, which was now mounded with soft cushions. When he was settled propped up on the mountain of cushions, the servant rested a tray with short legs on the bed over his knees.

Llesho wished for a plate of eggs and ham, a slab of bread or a bowl of porridge, but none of those appeared on his plate. Instead he found a variety of delicacies for an invalid. Sherbets and boiled fruits were spread out before him, along with thin squares of flat bread toasted until they were crisp and a yogurt sauce to dip them in.

In spite of his desire for heartier fare he took up a crisp of bread and dipped it, admitting that it was better than he’d expected. The fruit was tasty as well, and he discovered, to his dismay, that the doctor had been more accurate in his breakfast choices than Llesho himself. Half of the food remained on the tray when he stopped, unable to finish even the small amount put in front of him. He was glad he hadn’t protested the tray out loud since he now had to apologize only in his own mind. Al-Razi seemed to read this in his eyes and smiled knowingly as he gestured for a servant to take the scraps away.

“It will take just a moment for my poets to join us. Then, if you have the strength, I will examine you.”

“All right.” Another servant took away all but two of the cushions and Llesho gratefully lay back again, exhausted by even the small effort of tending to his physical needs. In spite of his weariness, Llesho’s heart beat faster, and nerves raised the hairs on his neck and his arms. In just a moment—

“Master Al-Razi.” A man curiously tall and thin as a reed entered first, carrying a book of linen paper in his arm. With his free hand he touched his forehead and his heart in a respectful greeting. He was very pale, with chiseled features and strange blue eyes that saw keenly. Nothing at all like Menar, who was both Thebin and blind.

Llesho tried to shake off the disappointment. There were so many places Menar could be in Pontus. They had heard of the blind poet as far away as the grasslands, so he must be something of a public figure. He couldn’t stay hidden for long, not with such a reputation. Once he recovered from this strange weariness, Llesho would go out into the city and find him.

A dark hand rested on the elbow of the first poet, however, where it was crooked to cradle the medical book. In a matter of two paces, the second poet followed his fellow into the infirmary.

“Master,” the poet said. He looked a lot like Balar, but slimmer, more fragile. His eyes were scarred and filmed with cataracts, no natural failure of vision but the remains of a terrible injury.

Pain squeezed at Llesho’s heart at the sight of his brother. Who would inflict such a horrible wound on a poet, even one who was a slave? Surely not Ibn Al-Razi, who tended him with such gentle care. The answer to a different question came easily, however. Who would torture a Thebin prince? The Uulgar clansmen. Remembering what the raiders had done to Hmishi, he trembled to imagine the wounds he couldn’t see on his brother.

“Menar,” he whispered, afraid to believe that he had found the prince. “What have they done to you?”

“I’m sorry, do I know you?” The poet cocked his head uncertainly in the direction of the voice. Llesho had seen only seven summers when the Harnish raiders came. He’d had the high, piping lilt of a child then, nothing at all like his voice now, deepened with maturity.

“It’s me. Llesho.” Struggling with his covers and with the failure of his strength, he dragged himself to the edge of his bed, but the physician kept him seated with a hand on his shoulder.

“Llesho? What Llesho is that?” Grief and anger crossed the poet-slave’s face. “You ask what they have done to me? Only this: my brother Llesho is dead, murdered when just a child with the rest of my family by the same men who burned the eyes in my head.”

A low moan escaped Llesho’s throat. “Menar, it’s me! I didn’t die. The raiders carried me into Shan and sold me as a slave in the pearl beds. I’ve been fighting to get back home ever since.” Which was the truth of his heart if not the start of his quest.

Ibn Al-Razi patted Llesho’s shoulder encouragingly. “If your brother is the young king of Thebin, then this Llesho is he,” the physician assured his poet-slave. “And if you are his brother, then I have sheltered a prince in hiding in my infirmary all these years.”

“It can’t be—” Menar shook his head, refusing the hope held out to him lest it tear his heart out when it was taken away again. Llesho knew the feeling, saw it in the working of Menar’s jaw.

In spite of his doubt, the poet let himself be guided to the bed. Delicately, with fingertips grown sensitive to seeing with touch, he traced Llesho’s brow, the curve of bone around his eye. When he had drawn the chin, the nose, the curve of an ear, he hesitantly withdrew his hand.

“The face of our father,” he whispered, his own face a mask of awe and confusion. “Can it be? Llesho?”

“Yes, it’s me.” Llesho reached for his brother, and Al-Razi moved aside, guiding his blind slave to take his place at the bedside.

When their hands met, Menar sat down heavily on the bed and wrapped his arms around his brother. Pressing Llesho’s head to his heart, he choked out a great gasping sob. “Oh, Goddess,” he cried, “They have burned out my eyes so that I cannot even weep for you.”

“That’s all right,” Llesho answered, his tears falling on his brother’s jacket like a morning rain. “I’m crying enough for both of us.”

“What’s going on?”

Kaydu pretended to wander by coincidence into the infirmary at just that moment, but battle-ready tension underlay the casual words. Little Brother remained tucked away in the pack on her back, ready for battle even in this sheltered place. Llesho raised his head from his brother’s shoulder and wiped at the tears with his gauzy sleeves.

“This is Menar,” he explained, “my brother.”

“The blind poet?” Kaydu sauntered closer, took a better look. “He does look a lot like Balar.”

Little Brother, sensing the change in her mood, crept out of hiding and clambered to his preferred perch on her shoulder. He wore in miniature the uniform of Thousand Lakes Province and on his head a cap with the button of office on it. With a warning screech, the monkey leaped from her shoulder to the bed. There he stretched on tiptoes to touch an inquisitive finger at the corner of Menar’s damaged eye.

Menar froze, afraid to move in the presence of some assault he could not see or rightly interpret. “What is it?”

In answer, the monkey whimpered his own distress and wrapped his arms around the prince’s neck.

“It’s Little Brother. My familiar,” Kaydu explained. “Your injury has upset him and he wants to comfort you.”

Llesho held his breath. He had grown used to traveling with wonders and for a moment let hope overcome reason. But the monkey’s touch didn’t heal the scarred wound. Menar remained blind.

Kaydu made no move to collect her familiar, but watched both princes with calculation in her glance. “I thought my father brought us here because of Ibn Al-Razi’s other patient, but things seem to be moving toward a crisis in all directions on this quest.”

“What other patient?”

The physician answered this question. “Your captain, who has not received visiting privileges yet, probably is speaking about my royal patient in the palace.”

“He’s the personal physician to the Apadisha,” Kaydu confirmed. “My father has gone to pay his respects at the magician’s college, but when he returns, he has promised to explain the next part of the plan.”

Llesho waved away her explanation. He wasn’t interested in Habiba’s plans. Or rather, there remained little choice in what they had to do. “Of course I’ll consider Habiba’s advice in securing the aid of the Apadisha. But the quest remains on my shoulders, whether I want it or not. I won’t see anyone else hurt by it.”

He was thinking of all his friends wounded in battle, and those that he had lost. But Menar stroked his face with a sad and knowing smile. He was, after all, the source of the prophetic verse they sought in Pontus.

“I never thought, when the god of Pontus spoke through me, that he meant the brother I had thought lost all these years ago. But if you are the one foretold, you bring us war.

“People are hurt in war and the Apadisha knows it. He won’t expect to escape unscathed. Rather, he will ask, ‘Is the goal in this battle worth the cost in lives and homes and hearts?’ And, ‘Is this the star who will lead us to that goal, or a false light in a murky sky?’ ”

Llesho took that for a poet’s way of asking if he was likely to lead them to victory, or to take the Apadisha with him into defeat. Mergen, Prince Tayy’s uncle, had asked the same questions Menar predicted for the Apadisha. So far, he’d brought the Qubal people only the death of their khan and possibly the death of their prince as well. He didn’t know if he had a better answer for Pontus. He did know the nightmare of Lluka’s visions, however. The alternative to war was the end of all the worlds of heaven and earth, though the underworld might survive only to welcome the damned.

“War knocks on the Apadisha’s door,” he therefore said. “His choices are to fight, to risk death in battle so that the world he knows will go on, or not to fight, and watch his world burn. I will fight. So will Mergen of the Qubal people who roam the grasslands. The Tashek people of the Gansau Wastes have fought and died in this quest, and will do so again. The emperor of Shan is also with us, and Shokar has trained Thebin soldiers who will fight to return Kungol to Thebin rule. The Apadisha may join us, or he may stand aside and watch. But I have seen Lluka’s visions. If we lose, he will die as quickly as the rest.”

“Important questions, and weighty answers all,” Ibn Al-Razi interrupted, “but the sickroom is no place to decide the Apadisha’s business. Particularly since the Apadisha isn’t here. Matters of state can wait until our young king has rested and can present his case at the Divan.”

“Master.” Menar bowed his head to accept the gentle rebuke.

Outrage stirred in Llesho’s heart, to see his brother bend his neck to the yoke of his slavery. How could he trust the attentions of a doctor who held his brother in servitude?

But Ibn Al-Razi bowed his head to his slave with a smile that Menar couldn’t see but must hear in the words the physician spoke. “I have always known you were a prince among poets. Now I find you are a prince among mortal men as well. When your brother, the young king, has rested, we will discuss the price of your release into his hands. For now, let me enjoy one last afternoon of your talents. Will you recite for us, something soothing to ease your brother’s way into sleep?”

“Not yet,” Llesho reminded them. “Prince Tayyichiut first. Then rest. If you put us together in the same chamber, we’ll both be easier to keep track of. And I will rest more easily knowing how the prince fares.”

“It may distress you, to see your friend so brought down by his injuries,” Al-Razi objected. Then his eyes swept the scars at Llesho’s breast.

“But I am reminded that you are no stranger to the terrible wounds of war. Perhaps.” The physician dropped his gaze, contemplating some image behind his lashes. “Your friend sleeps deeply. He will not know you are there—the poppy robs the patient of his will to rise out of his slumber. But if you will rest more easily in his presence, it can be arranged. At least for a little while.”

He gestured with a flick of his wrist and servants came forward, making a chair of their locked hands for him to ride in. Llesho would have protested that he could walk, but his journey to the privy had robbed him of his adven turing spirit. He let himself be guided to the human chair and carried into a nearby room identical to his own, where Prince Tayyichiut lay in restless dreams.

“His mind struggles to make its way back to the land of the waking,” Al-Razi explained as Tayy’s head tossed on his pillows. “For the sake of his stitches, however, he must remain quiet.”

With that, the physician left him to take up a thin silver rod pierced through its center from end to end like a blade of river grass. He put one end into a vial of dark glass and put the other end to his mouth, sucking, Llesho supposed, until a dose of the poppy had traveled up the rod. Releasing the straw from his mouth, he capped it with his finger. Then he took the open end and inserted it between Tayy’s lips, nudging it past his teeth, until so much of the straw had disappeared Llesho thought the prince must have swallowed it. When he was satisfied at the positioning of the silver straw, Al-Razi took his finger from the end.

Prince Tayy gurgled and choked while the physician soothed his throat with his thumbs. “There, there, it will be better soon,” he said, and Tayy quickly settled down again, beyond the reach of pain or dreams that had caused the restless motion on his bed.

“I’m sorry,” Ibn Al-Razi said. “But he must be kept quiet until the wound begins to heal.”

“I remember,” Llesho agreed with a bitter twist of a smile. He’d had no syrup of poppy in Shan and the herbs his brother had to offer were only of slight help in calming the fire that had torn his belly. “Whatever you can do for him, I’m grateful.”

The physician returned his smile with a gentle one of his own. “And now your own examination, young king?”

“All right.” But he said it around a yawn, as his mind wandered off on vague and meaningless questions, like, “Why does everybody I meet call me ‘young king’ instead of using my title? And why am I still sitting up?”

The answer to this latter came with the doctor’s careful hands on his shoulders pressing him back into a feather bed that seemed to reach out to enfold him.

“Stay with him, if you wish,” he heard Ibn Al-Razi whisper as he tiptoed away.

“Thank you.” That was Menar’s voice, accepting his posting at the bedside of his brother. And then the poet began to recite.

“A king with morning in his eyes Walked out of the sun . . .”

Part of Llesho’s mind made the connection to the sun and recognized that the poem spoke about the king of a new day. But another part, lost in the confused jumble of his undirected thoughts, saw a king in mourning with his losses etched into his weeping face. Neither understanding would be wrong.

 

 

 

 

 Chapter Twenty-five

“Father of thunder! Daughter of heaven! You, from whom all gifts are given! Spare this son of war and strife, Give him back his youth and life!”

IT HAD grown so dark that Llesho wondered for a moment if he had lost his sight while he slept or, by some power of dream-walking, had taken the place of his brother’s spirit in the body of the blind poet. Which would, he thought, explain why the poem he heard seemed hardly the stuff to build a legend on.

“It’s a mother’s prayer for a child at war,” a voice spoke to him out of the darkness. Menar didn’t need the light to see that he’d awakened but used the senses of the blind. The change in the sound of Llesho’s breathing, or the shift from the paralysis of sleep to the stillness of the wary, would have told his brother everything. “I’ve run out of poetry, and fallen back on the simplest pleas of the common folk.”

They’d been little more than children when his cadre set out on his quest, so the prayer seemed apt. He wondered how his companions were faring. Banned from the sickroom, they’d be fidgety and quick to the knife or the sword as boredom and worry made war on their training. They’d manage, of course—they always did. Since he’d left the ship, however, he’d neither seen the trickster god nor heard him mentioned by either of his names. And that made him seriously nervous.

“Master Den?”

The question must have seemed unrelated to Llesho’s earlier conversation, but Menar replied with the patience one shows to the ill. “He’s in the town. Master Ibn Al-Razi could not bar his doorway while your companion carried you in his arms, but he won’t abide the presence of false gods as guests under his roof.”

Llesho trembled to hear a prince of Thebin speak so about the trickster god. “How can one deny the existence of a being who walks through the door and gives a proper bow?” Admittedly, ChiChu had never picked Menar up by the scruff of his neck and set him on his path by the might of his tree-trunk arms. But the seven mortal gods made up the greater part of the Way of the Goddess and Menar was a prince of her holy house. He was afraid to ask the next question, so he posed it as a reproof. “But you know the truth. You could have told the physician otherwise.”

Menar heaved a small sigh. As Llesho’s eyes adjusted to the dim starlight, he saw a shift in the shadows. The bulk of the poet’s shoulder moved in a shrug against the darkness. “I no longer follow the Way of the Goddess,” Menar said. “We don’t deny that Master Den exists, or that he may be a powerful magician in his own way. If we met the Lady SienMa, who holds our own Habiba’s service, we would respect her skills as a worthy magician as well. But we do not honor any mortal being as a god. Master Ibn Al-Razi could not in conscience offer the hospitality of his roof to one who makes such claims about his person.”

Llesho didn’t know what to say to that. “Do you mean you don’t believe in the Great Goddess, or in heaven either?”

That seemed impossible. Somewhere in the course of his journeys, Llesho had stopped thinking of the Goddess as an unreachable goal. The heavenly wife who fed him water when he was thirsty, who comforted him when he was in pain, who had mourned him through many lifetimes, was as real to him as his own cadre but more precious even than those companions.

“Once I did.” Menar raised a shoulder in apology. “But no longer.”

She kissed me.He thought to offer his own experience against his brother’s loss of faith—I have been to the gardens of heaven, and they are in need of our help.

Another possibility came to mind, and though it pained Llesho even to think it, he couldn’t leave it unspoken. “Or is it that, knowing the gates of heaven are imperiled, youchoose not to heed her plight?”

A candle or a lamp would have helped him read his brother’s feelings in the nervous twitter of his fingers or the play of emotion across his face. But a blind man has no need of light, so Menar hadn’t lit one. Afraid that asking would break the tenuous mood, Llesho closed his eyes, determined to rely on the senses that Menar used to read the world every day. The poet’s voice would tell him much. And the rhythm of his brother’s breathing, now that he was paying attention, sounded strained with distress.

“The Bithynians are very strict about their religion,” Menar explained. “A slave must accept the Father and his Daughter as his gods or die. A blind slave, even a poet, has few choices in such a place. A blind infidel has only the mines or public stoning. Or beheading, if he has a merciful master.”

That isn’t Mercy,Llesho wanted to tell him.Mercy is a dwarf who plays the flute in the court of the emperor of Shan. Menar had fallen deeply into his story, however. He kept his objections to himself while the poet-prince who had become a slave to gods as well as men continued with his confession.

“For a long time I resisted.” The rustle of cloth brought Llesho’s eyes open. Menar had raised a hand—perhaps reaching out, perhaps a gesture of helplessness—and let it fall again, no more than a shift in the patterns of darkness. “Faith had a part in my resistance, of course, and tradition. But I was freshly wounded as well, and preferred death to my new blindness.

“Ibn Al-Razi, however, refused to let me die. He brought me home to this place. Even in the perpetual darkness of my new condition, it reminded me of Adar’s clinic in the mountains. And he offered me a new life in the arms of the Father and his Daughter.”

“But the Goddess—”

Menar stopped him with a sigh. “It’s different for you, for Adar and the other chosen husbands. For those of us to whom she did not come, faith is a harder thing.”

“Shokar says he had the greater gift, to be set free to live a normal life.”

“The Father and his holy Daughter have been good to me, Llesho, when all the world seemed turned to ash in my hand. I honor your quest, I’ll even follow you, but in the name of my new gods.”

Llesho had always thought that faith couldn’t be forced upon a believer but flowed from the hidden experience of the heart. It seemed that he’d been wrong. He wouldn’t use the tactics of the slavers against his brother, however. As a true servant of the Great Goddess, he could only offer his own experience in exchange for his brother’s story.

“She’s real, you know, not some ideal turned into a philosophical parable. She fed me water with her own hand and held my head when I thought that Master Markko’s poisons would kill me.”

“I understand,” Menar said. “Your companions have talked about this Master Markko. I am only a poet, but I would pierce this villain to the heart with my pen before I would let him touch you again. I have learned in my master’s workrooms, however, that when we suffer great terror and pain, our imagination sometimes supplies what our heart needs.”

“Is that how you explain your own prophecies?”

“Sometimes,” Menar admitted, humor and something more coloring his voice. “Mostly, I just open my mouth and let others decide where the message comes from. But no god has ever given me a cup of water.”

Llesho remembered his own days of doubt. Not that the Goddess existed, but that she could find worthy an exiled prince, an ex-slave and a former gladiator, all things that must fall below the expectations of the queen of heaven. He’d been wrong. So was Menar. He just needed time to find his way back.

Llesho was silent for so long that someone else might have guessed he’d gone to sleep. Menar, with the senses of the blind, knew better.

“Although it’s heresy among the Bithynians to believe so, I can find it in my heart to accept that the Great Goddess exists in her own heaven, while the god of Pontus rules his separate domains of sky and earth. But don’t ask me to abandon the god of Pontus and his Daughter. Try to think of it this way. What the Goddess discarded, the Father and his Daughter picked up for their own use. I would not desert them.”

“All right.” Llesho lay back on his bed. They would have this conversation again but, then as now, he had to respect his brother’s choices. The matter of the prophecy, however, couldn’t wait that long.

“What about the Apadisha?”

“He will not lift a finger to help a goddess whose very existence is heresy and an abomination in his eyes.” Menar stated what Llesho suspected, so it came as no great shock. “Since the Marmer Sea separates the Harn from Pontus, and since the Harnish are notoriously afraid of water, he loses no sleep over the fate of Kungol becoming his own fate either.”

Again, the news disappointed but didn’t surprise him. Thebin was a long way from Pontus. They shared no gods and competed in trade, each at the pinnacle of a different road by which goods traveled west and east. Kungol’s misfortune just made Pontus richer. Menar wasn’t finished, however; he had held the turning point to the end, like the storyteller he was.

“But to fulfill a prophecy handed down by his own god, which his astrologers and the magicians in his service assure him most certainly will sweep all Bithynia before it, for that the Apadisha would do much.”

Ah. The prophecy. Llesho still didn’t know what it said. He took a breath to ask, but Menar quieted him with a hand crossing his forehead. In a gesture so like Adar’s that his heart yearned to bring the brothers together, Menar drifted fingers over Llesho’s eyelids, bringing them down with no force but the suggestion of sleep. “Later,” he said, “when the sun has come up . . .”

 

 

 

“. . . another death of snakebite in the town,” Lling whispered. “Bamboo snakes are rare anywhere in Bithynia and unheard of in the city. It has to be Lady Chaiujin, but how did she follow us so closely? It’s not like there are forests or mountains to hide behind on the ocean. We would have seen a ship out there.”

“It seemed pretty mountainous to me,” Prince Tayyichiut answered in equally hushed tones. “I lay you odds that wretched cup of hers has something to do with it, though.”

They hadn’t noticed he was awake yet. Llesho let the quiet voices wash over him as he came back from the silent place in his dreams. He felt like he’d slept for just a brief moment this time, but the last time he woke up his whole cadre had been gathered in the sickroom. Kaydu was gone now, and so were Bixei and Stipes. Lling was reporting to Tayy the most recent disturbing news from Pontus, leaving Hmishi to watch over their king’s sleep. He was doing so with a peculiar intensity that worried Llesho.

“You’re back,” Hmishi said. “The physician Ibn Al-Razi says I’m to ask you what you recall since you’ve been here.”

“Kaydu was here. She said Marmer Sea Dragon is with Master Den, who is not allowed in to see me.” He remembered that intelligence from the other side of sleep. “Menar said that is because he doesn’t believe in the eight mortal gods and won’t have as a guest any mortal who claims to be one, though he accepts Master Den as a great magician.” Kaydu hadn’t been there when he’d talked to Menar. It must have been two different conversations.

At the sound of their low voices, Lling and Tayy glanced over. Some question passed between his Thebin guards, and some decision. “Master Ibn Al-Razi has put the cup in the care of the college of magicians for safekeeping.” Lling picked up her story again. Reluctantly, Prince Tayyichiut let his attention be drawn away.

“That’s good.” Hmishi tried to look pleased with him but ended up looking uncomfortable instead.

“What has put that expression on your face?” Llesho asked, keeping his voice down. Lling would hear later from her partner. And maybe, when he knew what was going on, he’d tell Prince Tayy himself. But for now, he’d humor his guardsman’s quest for as much privacy as he could manage in the sickroom.

“I asked Ibn Al-Razi why you didn’t wake up.” Hmishi watched him as he spoke, gauging Llesho’s reactions. “He said he couldn’t help you. That you were moving far away from us, beyond even the realm of dreams, and that the dark of sleep offered peace you wouldn’t willingly abandon. You needed to find the will to go on when strength had finally failed you.”

That sounded too close to how he was feeling for comfort, but Llesho didn’t say anything. Hopefully, he kept the truth off his face, but he didn’t have as much control as he would have liked. Tears threatened and he didn’t even know why, except that he was awake now and maybe didn’t want to be.

Hmishi didn’t wait for an answer, though. “I didn’t right away, but the longer I’m alive, the better I remember dying,” he said.

It wasn’t about him, so Llesho felt safe in giving an answering nod. He remembered that time. Too vividly. It still visited his nightmares.

“I felt bad for Lling, but Tsu-tan had destroyed not only my body but my soul as well. I knew that even if flesh and bone mended, the wounds to my self—to who and what I was—ran so deep that they would never heal. So death came as a relief. I didn’t have to hurt anymore. I didn’t have to remember what his soldiers did to me, what he did to me. I could let it all go. Then you brought me back.”

Llesho refused to apologize. “I still needed you,” he said, though it sounded petty in his own ears. “Lling still needed you.”

Lling had suffered as well. Losing Hmishi was one burden more that they had spared her, he and Dognut. That mattered almost as much as his own need to have his companions around him in his struggle.

“I know. I have a sworn duty here, in this life, to your service and to Lling’s heart. I wouldn’t have wished to carry the betrayal of those obligations into the next.” A little smile cracked his otherwise somber expression. “Lling is fully capable of making me sorry the next time we meet on the wheel.”

Which was true enough. Hmishi had put him off his guard with this talk of his own death and his connection with Lling, so the guardsman’s next words struck him like an unexpected blow.

“You moved the realms of heaven and earth and the underworld to bring me back from the dead. Imagine how it is for those of us who have followed you across half the world, who have risked fire and storm for you. Who have entered the camps of our enemies as prisoners and diplomats in your service. Imagine how we feel to watch you drift away into the dark, abandoning the quest that brought us here where we are strangers and powerless.

“And what of the armies that gather at your back?” As he talked, Hmishi’s voice gained volume. Lling and Tayy interrupted their own conversation, watching with mounting concern as Hmishi called his king to account:

“Do you understand what you have set in motion with your actions? And what now waits, losing patience, while you decide whether your quest is worth living for? From what I’ve heard, the Way of the Goddess has carried you down a similar path before; you’ve died in her service before. But that was in battle, or betrayed by your own weapon. How will you answer to the lady in your next life, knowing you left her to the mercy of the monsters raised by your greatest enemy while youslept away your life in Pontus!”

Hmishi ended with a roar that brought the rest of his guards running, Bixei still brushing the sleep from his eyes but with a sword in his hand. Ibn Al-Razi entered on the heels of the cadre. With a gentle but insistent hand on Bixei’s wrist, he urged the sword point down, where it could do no harm in the sickroom that was suddenly boiling with people.

“What’s happened?” Kaydu’s sharp gaze covered the room, but found nothing amiss. She hadn’t drawn her sword, but her hand never left its hilt.

Llesho dropped his face in his hands, too embarrassed to face the anxious crowd that had suddenly transformed Ibn Al-Razi’s hospital into an armed camp.

“Hmishi was giving a pep talk. He got a little excited, but everything seems to be all right now.”

Lling answered the question in a tone that made Llesho certain not only that she’d been listening the whole time, but that the whole thing had been a setup. If he’d had any doubts, a quick look at Tayy’s guilty expression settled them. Ibn Al-Razi just raised an eyebrow in a way Llesho was more accustomed to seeing on Habiba’s face. A universal response, it seemed, but towhat he hadn’t quite figured out yet.

“Now that you’ve ‘encouraged’ your young king, perhaps you would let him rest?” Al-Razi suggested.

Hmishi, however, had other plans. “I think he’s rested enough,” he said. “I respect the rules of your house, honorable physician, but if his teacher is prohibited from entering here, it’s time Llesho went to Master Den.”

“The world would be a safer place if kings chose their teachers more wisely.”