Sing the Four Quarters

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Bohdan's daughter, Rozyte, set down the wooden platter of bread, cold pork, and cheese on the table, then slid onto the bench beside her partner. Her eyes locked on Pjerin, Due of Ohrid, she pushed the platter toward An-nice and in a low voice instructed her to eat.

Annice picked at the food, too tense with worry about Stasya to be hungry.

"I'm sorry to be of so little help, Your Grace," Bohdan sighed. Discovering the due he loved had not betrayed him had erased years from the ruin they'd found in the bed, but he still looked old and tired. Scrawny shoulders rose and fell in a disappointed shrug. "I've been sick. I don't get out." He sighed again. "I would like to think that the whole village would stand behind you, our rightful lord, but…"

"But?" Pjerin prodded when the old steward paused.

"But most people would rather be ruled by Cemandia than Shkoder," Rozyte answered.

Pjerin's face grew dark. "Ruled?"

Rozyte raised a cautioning hand. "Your Grace, please, don't wake the children. I can only tell you what I've overheard."

"But Shkoder doesn't rule in Ohrid," Annice pointed out, her tone only slightly less sharp than Pjerin's had been. "The treaty is a partnership. Ohrid guards the pass and has access to Shkoder's greater resources. Shkoder gains security and provides Ohrid with those things it hasn't the size or population to acquire on its own. All five principalities retained their independence."

"We have not overly benefited from that partnership," Rozyte replied shortly. "But since His Grace has been presumed dead, Cemandian traders have done very well by us."

"Cemandian traders have bought you!" Pjerin spat. Annice closed her fingers around his arm, and he settled back onto the bench, seething.

"We were without your leadership, Your Grace," Rozyte's partner, Sarline, spoke for the first time.

Pjerin nodded a tight acknowledgment of her words, but Annice heard the shadow of another meaning and took a long look across the scarred planks of the table. Sarline pushed a graying braid back over her shoulder and pointedly refused to meet the bard's gaze.

"Olina will close the keep if she finds out I'm alive." He pronounced his aunt's name like he hated the taste of it in his mouth. "A siege will place us and His Majesty—when he arrives—right in the path of the Cemandian army."

"But, Your Grace," Bohdan protested, "we don't know for certain there will be an army."

Pjerin laid both hands flat on the table. "Olina knows what capturing King Theron will mean to a Cemandian invasion."

"Granted," the old steward allowed, "but how would Cemandia find out that His Majesty was arriving in Ohrid?"

"Rozyte said that Olina's new toy left for home just after Stasya arrived. No doubt she sent a message with him."

"But, Your Grace, to change the course of an army he would have to gain access to the throne and he was only a mountebank."

"He was Albek."

All five adults at the table swiveled to stare at Gerek standing in the door to Bohdan's room.

Rozyte shook her head. "Simion was nothing like Albek," she said sternly. "Father asked me to check when he arrived, Gerek. The two were very different."

"They had different hair and different clothes," Gerek snorted. "But the person was the same."

"Gerek…"

Pjerin's raised hand cut off Rozyte's protest. "How did he react to your Aunt Olina," he asked.

Gerek beamed. He knew his papa would understand. "Just exactly the same."

"Come here."

The boy ran to his father's side and clambered up onto the bench looking pleased with himself.

"Since you don't seem to be sleeping anyway," Pjerin told him, "and since you apparently kept a pretty close eye on things while I was gone, you might as well join the council."

"Your Grace! He's only a child!" Rozyte's lips drew into a tight, disapproving line. She had insisted from the moment she'd been awakened with the news that her and Sarline's two children—both twice Gerek's age—be left strictly out of the night's deliberations.

"For a time, he was the seventh Due of Ohrid. This concerns him more than any of us save myself. And I am getting into that keep tonight." Pjerin's tone settled the matter. "The only question is how."

"What about the path through the thornbushes Gerek used when he ran away?" Bohdan wondered.

Gerek shook his head. "Papa's too big. I'm almost too big."

"What about secret passageways?" Annice demanded, ripping a crust of bread into crumbs. "The palace is full of them."

Bohdan almost smiled. "Unfortunately, my dear, we are sadly deficient in secret passageways. A regrettable lack of foresight on the part of the first due."

"What about the drain?" Gerek asked. "That's sort of like a secret passageway. 'Cept it's not secret."

Pjerin turned and stared at his son. "Have you been playing near the drain?"

The question merited consideration. "Not 'zactly."

"What does not exactly mean?"

"I wasn't playing." He picked at a loose thread on the edge of his tunic. "I was looking."

"What did I tell you about that area?"

Gerek sighed deeply. "Not to go near it 'cause it's dangerous and yucky and maybe I could get drowned. But, Papa…" His small face grew serious as he fearlessly met his father's scowl. "I was the due. And you said a due's gotta know every bit of his land and stuff."

Pjerin gripped his son's chin between thumb and forefinger. "You are no longer the due. Do you understand?"

The small chest heaved with the force of a second sigh. "Yes, Papa."

"So, what about the drain?" Annice prompted. "We have to get to Stasya, Pjerin. We have to get to her as soon as we can."

"Not that way. The drain exits under the road in full view of the gatetower. If Olina has someone on watch, we couldn't get to it without being seen."

"Even at night?"

"It wouldn't matter, Annice. They'd hear you trying to get in. There's a heavy iron grille and it's bolted right into the mountain."

"The third due's stonemason and smith installed it together," Bohdan explained. "It would take a stonemason at least to free it."

"Or a kigh," Annice said pointedly.

"Earth and stone are not the same thing."

"They are eventually. If that grille has been in place since the third Due, it's begun to wear. I can Sing it loose." She twisted around and glanced at the shuttered window, trying to judge how much of the night remained. Stasya had been six days in that pit. She wouldn't leave her there one day longer.

"Your Grace, while I recognize the necessity of your retaking the keep and rescuing the young bard, may I remind you that the drains are barely four feet around. You'll have to crawl up a steady slope through debris that will be unpleasant at best. And don't forget, you're wounded, without full use of both arms. Why not just show yourself to the people? Surely when they see you're alive…"

"Some of them may try to remedy the situation." Pjerin stood, lifting the makeshift sling over his head and tossing it down onto the table. "We don't know who, besides Lukas, Olina has corrupted. Gerek, I want you to stay here." Gerek began to protest but cut it off at his father's expression. "Annice, once you've freed the grille, can you make it back here without being seen?"

She stood as well. "I'm going in with you, Pjerin. After Stasya's out of the hole, you can be a hero on your own."

"No. You're not taking the baby into the drains. Do you realize what you'd be climbing through?"

"Nothing will touch the baby. I'll breathe through a damp cloth if it makes you happy, but I'm going with you."

"I won't allow it."

"You don't get in without me."

He glowered at her. "We haven't time to argue…"

"Then let's not."

They left the packs. Pjerin slung the Ducal sword across his back and Annice slid her flute case into the deep pocket of her overdress. As they slipped out into the night—Gerek glowering with Bohdan's hands clamped firmly on his shoulders—Sarline's hand flicked out in the sign against the kigh.

"Well?" Pjerin demanded, the force of his whisper lifting the hair around Annice's ear. "Can the kigh get it off."

Perched carefully on a shelf of kigh above the gully's highwater mark, Annice gave the grille another shake. While brute force might be able to bash the heavy iron free, it would be, as Pjerin had said, impossible to work quietly. As to whether the kigh could manage…

Fortunately, although the keep could hold the whole village in need, not many people actually lived within its walls and the area around the drain stank less than she'd feared. On the other hand, it still stank. Annice sucked a shallow breath through her teeth and very softly Sang a question to one of her attendant kigh.

"It's attracting their attention that takes the volume," she'd murmured to Pjerin as they'd hurried through the village. "And right at the moment, attracting their attention is hardly something I have to worry about."

The squat brown body with its pendulous breasts and bulge of belly disappeared and tiny gray figures—identical in every respect to the first kigh save in color and size—flickered beside each of the bolts.

Frowning, Annice pitched her voice for Pjerin's ears alone. "They can do it, but it's going to take a while."

"How long?"

"As long as it takes." She rubbed her fingertips over the exposed bones of the mountain. Stasya? Do you

know I'm here? "Apparently, no one's ever tried to influence nascent earth kigh before. I'll have to keep Singing in order to keep pulling them from the stone."

"Can you Sing so they don't hear you in the keep?"

Annice looked up, past the drain, over the lip of the gully to where the crenellation on the gate tower appeared like dark teeth against the stars. "I don't have a choice, do I?"

The Song was so quietly insistent that Pjerin felt almost compelled to drive his fingers into the rock and yank the bolts free himself. He locked his hands together and tried to listen for any sign they were discovered—tried not to listen to the Song.

Stone became earth, very, very slowly.

Pjerin waited as patiently as he could, glancing only occasionally toward the east where the bulk of the mountains hid the approaching dawn. It wasn't until the Song grew both softer and deeper that he realized that the coming of the sun was not the only thing that could defeat them.

Only three days before, Annice had Sung her voice to a rasping croak. It couldn't have fully healed. He thought about stopping her, then he thought about what would happen if Olina closed off the keep with him still outside, and he let her Sing on.

Annice could feel her voice sliding from her control as the pain became harder to ignore. She struggled to hold the Song, allowing it to drift into a lower key, whispering the same request over and over. Stasya had been in that pit for six days. There would not be a seventh. Finally, the whisper faded and the kigh, taller and darker than when she began but still very small, disappeared.

The sky behind the mountains had lightened to a hazy blue-gray.

Wrapping her hands around one of the heavy iron bars, Annice yanked at it with all her strength. Was that movement or had her imagination supplied what she so desperately desired? Adjusting her grip, she yanked again. It was movement, definitely movement. The bolts were loose but still a long way from free.

Turning to explain, she saw the expression on Pjerin's face and silently moved out of his way.

Bracing his feet on opposite sides of the pungent mud in the center of the gully, Pjerin threw his weight against the grille. Flakes of rust dug into his palms. The bolts rocked in their anchorage, but held.

Breath hissing through his teeth, he continued to pull. The veins stood out on his forearms, muscles knotted across his back. The new tissue closing the hole the crossbow bolt had left in his shoulder tore and it felt as though hot knives were twisting in the wound. He bit off the cry of pain, couldn't stop the sudden blurring of his vision.

Then over the roar of blood in his ears he heard a single low note throb in the stone.

The grille began to shake.

Slowly, the bolts began to pull free.

One inch. Two. A handbreadth.

Panting, Pjerin collapsed against the bars, drenched in sweat, muscles trembling. Forehead resting on his arm, he managed to turn in time to see Annice break down her flute and slip it back into its case. "I thought," he gasped, "that you had… to Sing the… kigh."

"You do." He had to strain to hear her. "But the right notes will call them." She swallowed, wincing as the motion wrenched abraded flesh. "I thought calling them back might make room around the bolts."

"Seems you were right." Grunting with pain, he straightened, shifted his stance, and made ready to pull again. A handbreadth's worth of space between the grille and the mountain would do them no good at all.

"Pjerin?" She poked at one sweat damp arm. "Wouldn't it make more sense to use a lever now?"

He looked at the grille—at the space between the grille and the mountain—and allowed his hands to fall to his sides. "Yes," he sighed, "it would."

Although the valley still lay in the mountain's shadow, a cock had already crowed in the village when the grille finally slid down to rest in the mud.

Pjerin squared his shoulders and turned to face the greater challenge.

"It's all right," Annice told him, the stiff line of her back clearly stating how little she liked what she was forced to admit. "I'm not going with you. Not," she added hoarsely, "because of a few bad smells." She chopped a gesture at the dark hole. "I can't bend. And what's more, there's too much of me sticking out—I couldn't climb up into the keep at the end. Happy?"

He was.

Her hand came up to hold her throat, as though to lend strength to her voice. "Swear to me you'll get Stasya out first."

"Annice, if Olina…"

"Swear!"

He could see whites showing all around her eyes and her palms pressed against his arm were far too hot. "Annice, the baby…"

"Swear!"

"All right! I swear." She took a deep breath and Pjerin watched, relieved as she calmed. "If I go up the laundry drain, I can get to the cellars without being seen. I'll free Stasya and then take care of Olina."

"And Lukas?"

"Without Olina, Lukas is nothing." He pulled himself up into the drain. "Will you be able to get back to Bohdan?"

She nodded. "Be careful."

"Don't worry."

As he disappeared into the darkness, she closed her eyes and murmured, "Soon, Stas. Soon."

Although masking shadows grew fewer with every step, Annice made little effort to hide while returning to Rozyte's house. Without Pjerin, she was completely unrecognizable as the bard who'd visited the keep back in Third Quarter. Just another pregnant woman waddling about on business of her own.

The ache in her temples finally forced her to unclench her jaw. Pjerin had given his word. Stasya would soon be free. But what did Pjerin know about bards? Stasya needed her and here she stood, helpless on the sidelines. It made no difference that her own somewhat latent good judgment had placed her there or that honesty and near exhaustion combined forced her to recognize that she needed to lie down.

Then she saw the small basket of potatoes tucked up against a low stone wall.

Pjerin couldn't just walk in the front gate of the keep. But nothing said she couldn't.

Just another pregnant woman waddling about on business of her own… We'll look like a villager, delivering something to the kitchens, baby. I can't be the only person in Ohrid shaped like a gourd.

With the village coming awake, she had no time for deliberation. Any hesitation and this chance would be lost.

Stasya's going to need me. I can't not be there.

Already sprouting, the potatoes had obviously been saved from last year's harvest and, now that the ground had warmed, would probably be planted any day. An-nice squatted and awkwardly stood again. A chicken, scratching in the garden, paused long enough to give her a stupidly superior stare, but no one else appeared to have seen. When this is over, I'll see that these are returned, she promised silently.

With the basket balanced on one shoulder, screening her face from watchers on the walls of the keep, Annice picked her way onto the track and began the long curving climb up to the gates.

Sarline quietly pulled the heavy wooden door closed behind her and shoved her feet into her clogs. It had taken her until dawn to come to a decision. Lying in the darkness beside a sleeping Rozyte, she'd weighed the alternatives.

Pjerin a'Stasiek was neither oathbreaker nor traitor, and he was their rightful due.

But Pjerin a'Stasiek supported the dangerous belief that the kigh were enclosed in the Circle and he had fathered a child on a bard.

While Sarline by no means approved of everything that had allegedly been happening over the last two quarters, she could not allow the kigh to return to Ohrid in such strength.

Lukas a'Tynek was her cousin. As he was still steward of Ohrid, she'd give him the information she had and wash her hands of it.

Bare feet making no sound against packed dirt, Gerek ran to the shelter of a building and peered out at his quarry. Sarline had thought he was asleep, but he'd seen her staring at him with her face all twisted. He'd been frightened, for she'd looked a bit like Lukas did and he knew now that Lukas was a bad man.

When she'd snuck out of the house, he'd got his bow and arrows from his papa's pack and followed her.

Pushing his quiver back behind his hip, he dashed forward and ducked behind a garden wall as an early riser called out a greeting. Sarline answered without stopping.

Eyes narrowed in an unconscious imitation of his father's glare, he watched her pass the last house and head up the track toward the keep. When the curve took her out of sight, he raced for the narrow twisting path under the thornbushes.

Calves burning, Annice sagged against the cool stone of the gatetower. Buildings swam across her vision, then steadied into the solid black rock of the keep. She'd never wanted so desperately to sit down.

"You don't look so good."

Somehow, she managed to turn to face the owner of the voice.

Sandy brows drawn into a deep vee, he took the basket from her slack fingers and set it at her feet. "You shouldn't be carrying stuff like this. Here, let… Hey! You're not…"

As the realization she wasn't who he thought replaced the concern in his eyes, Annice caught his gaze and snapped, "Go on with what you were doing."

The young man shook his head. "Not until I get you where you're going. You really don't look like you should be walking around on your own. Are you Anezka's sister? I heard she was visiting from Adjud."

Annice knew she was staring at him and tried to stop. Her voice hadn't been strong enough to carry the Command. Hand on her throat, she sank back against the wall, hoping she didn't look as frightened as she felt. What if her voice was never strong enough again? "You're, uh, not… that is…" She dropped her gaze to follow his line of sight and forced herself to think. The baby. He thought she was having the baby. "Uh, no. Not now. Soon."

"Soon?" The word slid up an octave and shattered. "Look, you stay right here. I'm going to go get the mid wife." Before she could protest, he was gone, bounding down toward the village.

The baby twisted and Annice clutched at the curve of her belly. Not now, she pleaded silently. Not now.

Abandoning the potatoes, she moved as quickly as she could toward the laundry, hugging the shadows morning had left along the walls. Hang on, Stas. I'm coming.

In another quarter when the rains hadn't been so frequent and the overflow from the cisterns hadn't regularly washed through the drains, it would have been worse. Knowing that didn't help much. Pjerin tried not to think about what squashed beneath his boots or knees or hands, but he couldn't stop breathing and every breath told him unmistakably where he was. The complete lack of light helped and when he began to pass the privy holes, he looked up, not down.

Fortunately, he'd stopped gagging although his ribs burned and his stomach was a tightly knotted ache. Without a healer, the shoulder wound would have to be cauterized to prevent infection.

Nice to have something to look forward to, he mused darkly.

He'd never thought of himself as having an overly active imagination, but he couldn't banish the screams of soldiers from his mind—their scalded skin sloughing off their bodies as they drowned in boiling water. If they'd been seen as they freed the grille or Annice had been taken on her way back to Bohdan… Even now fires could be burning under the huge kettles in the laundry, the water steaming gently, Olina waiting for just the right moment to pour an agonizing death into the drains.

Not fond of small, enclosed spaces at the best of times, which this most assuredly was not, he held a picture of Olina in his mind's eye, his hands crushing the ivory column of her perfect throat. The image pulled him forward, teeth gritted, muscles tight. She'd pay for what she'd done to him, and to Gerek, and to Ohrid.

The Ducal sword scraped along the stone as he crawled through a puddle less foul than the rest and smelling faintly of lye. He'd long since lost his bearings in the darkness and the stench but he was sure he'd passed the kitchens, so the laundry had to be close.

Had to be.

A strand of hair stuck to his cheek and he fought the urge to yank free his dagger and hack it off short rather than consider what agent plastered it to his skin.

Up ahead he could see the graying that meant another opening into the drain. Eyes streaming, he scuttled for the circle of dim light and thankfully sat back on his heels trying to work the painful kinks out of his back. The stone was damp and cold under his bruised and filthy legs, but that was all. When he stretched up his arm, he could touch the grate over the opening.

The laundry. The drain ended just beyond it at the cisterns. Moving as quietly as he could, Pjerin unbuckled his swordbelt and rehung the weapon around his waist. Up on one knee, he paused, head cocked to one side, straining to hear any sound from above. Nothing. Not that there would be if Olina waited, bow drawn, for his head to crest the stone.

Rising to a crouch, the steel grid pressed against his shoulders, he straightened bent legs.

Tried to straighten bent legs.

As far as he could remember, there were no bolts. The skin between his shoulder blades crawling with the thought of arrows trained on his back, he shifted position slightly and tried again.

The instant age and rust finally released their hold, he threw up his good arm, toppled the grate, and vaulted stiffly out of the drain. If this began the moment when Olina made her move, he'd have less than a heartbeat's grace to defend himself.

The laundry was empty, cool, and clean. A shuttered window laid only broken bands of light against the smooth stone floor, but he'd been in darkness so long the room seemed brilliant. Water dripped from a loose tap into the massive copper kettle, but no fire burned beneath it and the two huge cedar tubs standing beside it on the platform against the cistern wall were dry.

His sigh of relief nearly choked him with his own stink.

What good secrecy when they could smell him coming in Marienka? Climbing into one of the tubs, he stripped off his shirt and opened the cistern spout, ducking down under the gush of cold water,

"What are you doing?"

Heart pounding, feeling like an idiot, he stood in the laundry tub flourishing the Ducal sword, water slamming against his back and rapidly rising up around his feet. "What am I doing?" he snarled. "What are you doing here?"

Annice clutched at the wooden rim and glared up at him. "This is not the time to be…" Then she gagged and turned away, hand clamped over her mouth. "You're covered in shit."

Somehow he resisted the urge to scream at her. Grabbing up a boarbristle brush, he scrubbed violently at skin, clothes, and hair until he felt flayed and blood dribbled from the edge of the purple scar in the hollow of his shoulder. With as much of the encrusted filth removed as quickly as possible, he slammed the spout closed and clambered out onto the floor.

"All right," he growled, water streaming from breeches and boots and hair and running for the open drain, "let's try this again. What are you doing here? I told you to go back to Bohdan's…"

Her stomach still twisting, Annice sank down on the platform. He hadn't told her to do anything. She'd decided not to attempt the drains. "Stasya needs me."

Stasya. He might have known. "I told you I'd get her out."

"I know. But…"

"But you couldn't wait. Didn't trust me."

"It's not that…"

"What did you do? Just dance in through the gates?" When she nodded, Pjerin's eyes narrowed. "I'm crawling through shit and you just danced in through the gates!?"

"Well, they're not going to recognize me, are they? Not like this! You're the one who had to stay hidden."

"Really? Did you even once think that with you as a hostage Olina can dictate her own terms with the king?"

"Hostage?" Annice looked startled. "What are you talking about?"

"You're a princess, Annice. Even if you, and His Majesty, and the whole unenclosed country have pretended otherwise for the last ten years."

"I'm a bard!" Or was. She tried to swallow, but her throat was too tight.

"And you're the king's sister. And you're carrying my child. Think what Olina could do with that, Annice, think."

It started with her lower lip and then her whole body began to shake. She couldn't stop it. He was right and she was so tired. "I wanted to be there for Stasya."

"She's been down there for six days!" He closed his hands on her shoulders, too angry to hold back. "How long does it take to die of thirst?"

Annice stared up at him, every muscle suddenly rigid. "Shut up."

"No, I wo…"

"SHUT UP!" The words ripped past the constriction in her throat, force of will making up for the ruined delivery. "She's not dead. I know she's not dead. She has her pack. Gerek said she has her pack. Without you, I can't free her. I can't even find her." Tears streaming down her face, she closed her eyes and broke the Command. "You just get her out like you promised, and then you leave us alone."

Cursing his temper, Pjerin reached out and lightly touched her cheek. When she slapped his hand aside, he walked a few steps away and tried to find an apology. If someone he loved were down in that pit, he'd have done the same thing, taken the same stupid risks, refused to believe the worst.

"Annice? I'm sorry."

She shrugged and wiped her nose on her wrist. "I don't care."

He wanted to hold her. He didn't know where the desire came from, but he knew better than to give in to it. "Come on. Let's go rescue Stasya."

Sobbing in frustration, Gerek fought to free his quiver from a tangle of thornbush, his struggles dumping the arrows out onto the ground where they slid further down the steep slope. A deep bleeding scratch across one cheek and several smaller ones up both arms were a painful testimony to the battle, but he refused to give up. His papa would never give up.

Sarline ground her teeth and kicked at an uneven edge of cobblestone in the outer court of the keep. Lukas hadn't been in his chamber, or the kitchens, or the stables and she didn't know where to look next in this great, echoing pile of stone. None of the servers hurrying about their early morning duties had seen him and she trusted none of them enough for a message. The servers in the keep had a personal loyalty to the due that would overcome common sense about the kigh.

Rozyte would have missed her by now, the kids would be up, the cow would be bawling. In another minute, he's on his own with this.

Then she saw him, coming around the corner by the stable yard, hitching up his breeches. Her clogs ringing against the stone, she ran toward him.

"Where have you been?"

Lukas gaped at his cousin in astonishment. Partnered as she was to the old steward's daughter, he hadn't even thought of approaching her with the Lady Olina's plan. "I was having a shit. Why?"

"Pjerin a'Stasiek was in my house last night."

"The due?" Lukas traced the sign of the Circle on his breast. "His spirit came to you?"

"Not his spirit, you idiot, he's alive!" Sarlote grabbed up two handfuls of tunic and shook him, hard. "And he's with a bard! And they're both in the keep right now! If you want the kigh out of Ohrid, you've got to stop them!"

She's alive. Stasya's alive. Annice repeated the litany over and over as Pjerin lit a torch and led the way into the cellars. She hasn't died. I'd know it if she died. How long did it take to die of thirst? Six days? No. She's alive.

"Here," Pjerin began, but Annice had seen the grille and the shadow below it and dove forward.

"Stasya!" Searing pain shot through both hips as she strained to lift the steel. "Stasya! Can you hear me?" She fought Pjerin's grip as he tried to move her out of his way. "Stasya!"

"Hold the torch!" He pushed her back and forced her fingers around the butt. This was the third grille he'd had to remove since dawn and he threw his anger—or whatever emotion that Annice had evoked in him—against it.

"Stasya!" Annice leaned dangerously far forward, torch shoved out over the hole. Shadowed holes in a gleaming ivory skull stared up at her. Her throat closed around a disbelieving moan. A giant's fist wrapped around her heart and squeezed. Pjerin caught the torch as it dropped from slack fingers and then caught her as she began to fall.

Stasya knew that voice. Even hoarse and desperate, there could be no mistaking it. It spoke to her in her dreams every time exhaustion overcame the cold and she slept. Slowly she unwrapped herself from her fetal curl and shoved the stable blanket back. Eyes shut tightly against the light, she lifted her head and tried to answer.

Days of cold and damp and thirst held her voice. No sound emerged.

The light burned through her lids and she raised a trembling hand to shield her face.

"N… Nees?"

"Pjerin is alive."

Lukas wet his lips. Standing well out of her reach, his tongue occasionally outrunning the story, he'd told her everything Sarline had told him. "Yes, Lady." Her calm soothed him. He could feel his heart begin to beat a little less erratically.

Olina pushed the last pin into the ebony crown of her hair and stood. She'd dismissed her dresser the moment she'd seen Lukas' expression as he stood quivering at her bedchamber door. "It seems you did well to take down that bard, after all," she mused. "She's given us time we wouldn't otherwise have had."

When she turned her ice-blue gaze on him, Lukas shivered.

"I am curious though, as to why you added delay in coming to me rather than sending your cousin while you dealt with my nephew."

"Myself?" His eyes darted from side to side, searching for a way out. "Lady, His Grace is a swordsman. I could never defeat him. But you…"

"Indeed. Well, you've told me. Now go and leave me to deal with him."

"Yes, Lady." Lukas bowed himself back out the door and scurried off. There were things he wanted from his chambers and then he had no intention of remaining in the keep. Not until he knew who won.

Olina picked up a beautifully carved horn comb, stared at it for a moment, then snapped it in half.

"Pjerin is alive," she repeated, throwing the pieces to the floor. It was the one thing she had not planned for. Albek had assured her it would not be necessary.

Eventually, Albek would pay for that error.

Striding across the room, she pulled a padded surcoat from a trunk and slipped it on. Mouth pinched white at the corners, she lifted her sword from where it rested on curved pegs over the bed and buckled the belt around her waist. It dragged at her hip, an unaccustomed weight.

Pjerin was a swordsman. And she was the only other person in the keep trained to fight with the sword.

Not that she had any intention of doing so.

Pjerin knew she had betrayed him. He was larger, younger, stronger and the moment he saw her would be consumed with a blinding rage—she knew her nephew too well to doubt the last. Had Lukas done the intelligent thing and run to the village for all twenty of their committed people, there might have been a chance of stopping him.

But her face him in single combat?

She laughed bitterly and ran for the stables.

Pjerin was alive.

If she wanted to remain alive, she had only one chance.

The Cemandian army.

Let Pjerin and King Theron have the keep; they'd find the pass not so easy to defend as they assumed. Especially in the midst of trying to explain the situation to confused and angry villagers.

Lukas could save himself by crawling back under the rock where she'd found him.

"Nees?"

"Yes. Oh, yes. Stasya, I've got you. Hold onto me.

Everything's going to be all right. You're safe." Annice breathed the last two words into a blood-encrusted cap of dark hair as she shoved the torch at Pjerin and tumbled Stasya onto her lap.

Without a rope, Pjerin had lain on the floor, his arms stretching into the hole. Stasya, harp case slung on her back, had crawled erect up the curved wall of her prison and, with the stone supporting her, lifted her arms over her head.

His hands had closed around her wrists and inch by inch he'd dragged her out of the mountain.

"S'cold, Nees." Her lips were cracked and bleeding, and every word ground shards of pain into her throat.

"C-can't… stop .. shaking."

"I know. We'll go into the sun. You'll be fine." Lips pressed against the clammy skin of Stasya's face, Annice repeated, "You'll be fine," as if defying her not to be.

"My voice…" Her voice had lost all the highs and lows; all the music. Even Pjerin, who had heard Annice reduced twice to a rough whisper, could tell the difference.

"You're just cold. It'll come back."

"No." Stasya clutched at Annice as hard as numb fingers allowed. "Too c-cold, too long. I'm afraid. Oh Nees. No K-Kigh. No K-kigh for so long. I can't Sing anymore. I c~can't Sing."

Urmi stared at Olina in astonishment, wiping sausage grease from around her mouth before she spoke. "You want Fortune saddled now, Lady?"

"Now, Stablemaster."

Under her tan, Urmi paled. Her gaze dropped to the sword hanging at Olina's hip. "Yes, Lady. But he's in the paddock, it'll take me a moment."

"A moment and no more, Stablemaster."

"No, Lady. I mean, yes, Lady."

"Can you manage from here?"

Annice nodded, Stasya supported in the circle of her arms.

Pjerin jabbed the torch at the floor, then took off at a dead run. Olina had escaped her fate for as long as she was going to. He pounded across one end of the

Great Hall, down a short flight of stairs, and through the kitchen, ignoring the crash of breaking crockery as he was recognized by the cook's helper. Shoving the slack-jawed youth aside, he exploded out into the inner court. The fastest way to Olina's rooms was around—not through—the building.

He raced past his woodpile, heard a shout of disbelief from the direction of the stables, and turned in time to see Olina swing up into the saddle. Her lips pulled off her teeth in a feral smile as she drove her spurs into the stallion's flanks and tried to ride him down. At the last instant, he dove aside. A hoof slammed into the packed earth a prayer away from his hip. Another grazed his calf as he rolled, the glancing impact still enough to drive a cry of pain through clenched teeth. Then he was scrambling back onto his feet, rage blocking everything but his desire for revenge.

Roaring Olina's name, Pjerin broke from between the buildings into the outer court just in time to see Fortune's glossy hindquarters disappear out the gate.

"NO!"

Satchel clutched in a white-knuckled grip, Lukas tottered a disbelieving step forward. "Lady?" She was abandoning him. How could she abandon him? "Lady!"

Behind him, he heard a bellow of fury. Unable to stop himself, he turned.

Lukas did not consider himself an imaginative man, but what he saw standing at the edge of the court was not the taciturn lord who allowed the kigh such license within Ohrid nor even the huge, soot-covered figure who had struck him down in Fourth Quarter. His bare and heaving chest streaked with blood, his hair a tangled mass of darkness about his shoulders, his face contorted with rage, Pjerin a'Stasiek looked like one of the old gods broke free of the Circle.

The sudden realization that with Lady Olina gone, the due would deal instead with him, brought a rush of cold sweat dribbling down his sides.

The same realization came to the due.

"LUKAS!"

The satchel fell from limp fingers. Fear froze him to the spot. Lukas watched his death approach, unable to move, unable to protest. Then some instinct of self-preservation broke through the paralysis, and with a shriek of terror he started to run.

He didn't know where he was running to. He just knew he had to escape. Plunging into the dark recesses at the base of the inner tower, he searched for sanctuary and found only the narrow, spiral stairs leading up four stories to the roof. A mistake. He should never have come inside.

Too late to go back.

Whimpering, all he could do was climb.

His face tear-streaked, his tunic tattered, Gerek came through the gate in time to see Lukas run into the tower with his papa following close behind. Hitching his quiver and the one arrow he'd saved over his shoulder, he darted forward.

"Gerek!"

"I'm okay, Jany," he yelled toward the edge of the court and his suddenly hysterical nurse. He could hear her crying and babbling his name, and it made him feel bad, but he had to help his papa.

From the top of the tower, there was nowhere to run. On the one side, the mountain fell away from the tower's base, adding even greater distance to the ground. On the other, there was only the court with its border of upturned faces.

From the stairwell came the sound of leather slapping stone. The due was nearly on him. Lukas cringed back against the battlements.

Annice pushed past a babbling group of servers, too astounded by the return of their due—of both their dues—to notice a pair of exhausted bards. Supporting much of Stasya's weight, as well as her own, she sank gratefully into a sunny doorway where the wood and dark stone had collected all the heat of the morning.

"S'cold, Nees," Stasya murmured, red-rimmed eyes still squinted nearly shut after so long in darkness. "Still no k-kigh."

"That's because you're with me. Remember?" Annice settled the other woman more comfortably in the bend of her elbow and with her free hand worked the stopper out of a jug she'd picked up as they made their way through the deserted kitchens. "Here, drink some more of this." Glancing up at the tower where Lukas had become momentarily visible as he looked down into the court, she added softly, "When this is settled. I'll go far enough away that the kigh will come and you can Sing the news to the captain."

"No." Stasya shoved her face into the curve of Annice's neck. Too long with the dark and the cold. Too long with no kigh. If she tried to Sing, and failed, she'd know for sure her voice was gone. Better not to know. Better not to Sing.

Annice heard the subtext under Stasya's denial and tightened her hold. With her own voice uncertain, it was the only comfort she had to give.

Too angry to remember that cornered rats would fight, Pjerin charged out onto the top of the tower and was slammed sideways to the stone.

Lukas cursed and stumbled back. The due had been moving too fast and a kick intended to smash into his temple had hit only the solid flesh of his upper arm. It wouldn't be enough. It wouldn't be nearly enough. His advantage gone, Lukas began to babble. "Your Grace, I can explain. It wasn't me, it was…"

Pjerin shook off the blow, lurched to his feet, and lunged, growling wordlessly. The two men crashed back against the battlements and Pjerin's hands closed around the steward's throat.

Crouched at the top of the stairs, Gerek readied his bow and his single arrow.

Gasping for breath, unable to break the due's hold, Lukas jabbed his knuckles again and again into the bleeding scar below Pjerin's left shoulder.

Muscles began to spasm and howling with as much frustration as pain, Pjerin stumbled back, his left arm falling useless to his side.

For an instant, Lukas stood alone, silhouetted against the sky. Gerek took a deep breath, held it as he'd been taught, and released the string. The arrow flew wide, rang against the stone, and rumbled over the edge, falling end over end into the court below.

Both men wheeled to track its path.

Lukas saw one final chance to survive. Diving for the stairs, he grabbed up the boy and held him, kicking and shrieking against his chest as he scuffled back to the edge of the roof.

The sight and sound of Gerek's danger pulled Pjerin from his frenzy and gasping for breath he took a step forward.

"No farther," Lukas warned, shifting his grip and swinging the child out over the drop.

Gerek screamed and fought harder to be free.

"Gerek, be still!" Pjerin commanded, muscles knotting with the effort to remain where he was.

Twisting his small body around to face his father, Gerek hiccuped and went limp.

"Good boy."

"Papa…"

"Shh, everything's going to be all right." Pjerin lifted his gaze to Lukas' face. "Lukas knows that if he drops you, he'll go off right after you. That if he hurts you, he'll wish he'd never been born."

The steward's lips twitched up in a hideous parody of a smile. "What difference would that make? You're going to kill me anyway."

"Let him go, Lukas."

"Grant me safe passage out of the keep. Give me your word I can go free."

Pjerin nodded and although every instinct said to rush forward, he stepped back. "Without Olina," he said quietly, "you're nothing."

Nothing. When he'd been so close to having it all. It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair that Pjerin a'Stasiek should have everything and Lukas a'Tynek nothing. Not power, not wealth, not even a child. His only daughter had been taken from him, destroyed by the kigh. No second chance for his child. No one to pull her to safety. Blinded by tears of self-pity, Lukas heaved Gerek roughly up onto the stone and let go.

"PAPA!" With too much of his body still dangling over the court, Gerek slipped backward.

"GEREK!" Pjerin dove, right arm desperately reaching, but he arrived at the edge half a heartbeat too late.

Below, a dozen voices shrieked and a dozen people surged uselessly toward the tower.

Surrounded by stone, with no earth to hear her Song, Annice heaved her body around, threw open the door, and plunged inside. "Sing, Stasya!" she cried as she put thick walls between her influence and Gerek's only chance.

Eyes locked on the falling child, Stasya staggered to her feet. No time to think of what she was doing. No time for fear.

She Sang.

And the kigh answered.

Long pale fingers clutched at Gerek's arms and legs until the child was hidden to bardic sight behind a surging mass of slender bodies. As he continued to plunge screaming toward the stones of the court, the air below him grew translucent, then opaque.

A handbreadth from the ground he stopped, held by Stasya's Song. Tears streaming down her face, she Sang a gratitude just in time for the kigh to loose the sobbing boy into the comfort of his nurse's embrace.

The wind howled about the walls of the keep as each of the kigh swirled joyously around Stasya's head. They pulled her hair and tugged at her clothes and one even went so far as to poke an ethereal finger up her nose. Then, en masse, they rose to circle the tower.

His heart having stopped as Gerek fell and started again as he was saved, Pjerin leaned into the rush of air and breathed a prayer of thanks to every god the Circle contained. He couldn't see the kigh, but he'd heard Stasya's Song and understood what had to have happened. His son was safe. Nothing else mattered.

"No! Get away! Help me!" Whites wreathing his eyes, Lukas frantically worked his right hand in the sign against the kigh. The wind roared around him. His left arm flailed at the air and he stumbled from one side of the roof to the other in an attempt to escape the invisible demons he knew were there. He lurched against the battlements, overbalanced, and began to topple. "Your Grace! Save me!"

Eyes nearly closed by the force of the wind, Pjerin fought his way along the crenellations. Bits of loose mortar, sand, and dirt, stung bare skin. His reaching fingers grazed a bit of rough, homespun cloth, a wrist… nothing.

All at once, the silence became absolute.

Pjerin stared down into the court. Lukas lay face up, staring at the sky, a dark stain slowly spreading out from under his flattened skull. The fingers of his right hand remained bent halfway through the sign against the kigh.

Sagging against the stone, Pjerin half turned to meet Stasya's gaze. Even over that distance, he could see her measuring him. You didn't Sing, he thought. Although you found time and strength both to save Gerek. Are you wondering how hard I tried?

Had it been anyone other than Lukas, would I have reached him in time?