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Authors: Angela Highland
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taken such a fascinating little houseguest off his hands some time ago. They haven’t—”
“How do we know that? The duke might be holding her for them. Mother’s Mercy, Julian, a major act of magic just took place on the man’s estate. If the Hawks aren’t crawling over it by now, every last one of them is blind!”
Rab was right, and yet annoyance burned across Julian’s mind, unfathomable even as he felt it. He seized his false hand and twisted it into place on his wrist, too restless to sit still and too vexed to hold his partner’s gaze. “Then I want to know if the Church is on to him, and if not, why.”
“Did you hit your head along with everything else?” Rab demanded. “What use is it to hide from the elves only to spy upon the very man who’s doubtless now summoning every Hawk and watchman within two hundred miles to capture us?”
Julian was on his feet and snapping his false hand’s leather straps about his wrist before the question stopped him. He didn’t want to look back at Rab. But neither did he want to consider what had come over him, and what prompted the words that escaped him next.
“Lay low if you wish, Rab. I’m going after the girl.”
Chapter Five
No one with vegetables to peel or clothing to mend roused Faanshi the next morning; no servants bearing orders or insults arrived at the cellar door. For once she slept past dawn, waking only when the morning was well underway, then scrambling to kneel in the small pool of light near her window.
Shame flooded her as she focused her sleep-dazed thoughts for prayer. The sunrise should have awakened her. Sunlight was a tenuous treasure, but Faanshi had claimed it nonetheless, hoping that if she revered it enough, the Lady of Time would deliver her from confinement—and from her master. It was a hard dream to maintain in the face of the duke’s ongoing blithe assertion of her madness, and against the rejection of Djashtet by almost all the Tantiu in Lomhannor Hall. She resented that she had to.
“I’m not mad,” she whispered in the Tantiu tongue, for that too was something to claim as hers. “Dawnmaiden, Noonmother, may Your ridahs keep me that way! Strength and courage and grace...”
Closing her eyes, Faanshi prayed, rhymed stanzas to extol the goddess’s sacred virtues. There were twelve in all, four each for body, mind and heart, each in turn the province of one of the aspects of the Lady of Time. But it was a trial. The lines of the prayer and the virtues they praised jumbled in her thoughts. Wisdom and fortitude and cleverness and compassion ...
Between them all, her mind kept jolting back to the man who’d tried to kill the duke. His soot-masked face was seared across her memory, along with the emotions and recollections that had invaded her when she touched him. He’d spoken to her as none ever had before, neither with her master’s false pity nor her okinya’s reserve, but rather with approval. The memory filled her with triumph.
“Guide him, Djashtet, and make him safe. Noonmother, Crone of Night, don’t let him be captured.”
Conviction caught and burned in the hearth of Faanshi’s heart. The ridah rhyme, each line in its proper place, followed her pleas for the stranger. When she’d finished, Faanshi murmured every other prayer Ulima had taught her along with the ones she’d made up herself in her cellar’s quiet darkness.
She was still praying when the men came to the window.
The rhythm of their voices and the creaking of their cart hauled her out of her litanies. Their figures beyond the window’s bars, blocking the light, sent disquiet winging through her. When she saw them laying brick and mortar in an ordered row along the bottom of her confining bars, all her triumph vanished. Heedless of the beating she’d earn by lifting her eyes, she flung herself toward the window.
“What are you doing? Please, I beg you, no!”
Two men kneeled at the bars, one old, one young, gardeners or perhaps
“How do we know that? The duke might be holding her for them. Mother’s Mercy, Julian, a major act of magic just took place on the man’s estate. If the Hawks aren’t crawling over it by now, every last one of them is blind!”
Rab was right, and yet annoyance burned across Julian’s mind, unfathomable even as he felt it. He seized his false hand and twisted it into place on his wrist, too restless to sit still and too vexed to hold his partner’s gaze. “Then I want to know if the Church is on to him, and if not, why.”
“Did you hit your head along with everything else?” Rab demanded. “What use is it to hide from the elves only to spy upon the very man who’s doubtless now summoning every Hawk and watchman within two hundred miles to capture us?”
Julian was on his feet and snapping his false hand’s leather straps about his wrist before the question stopped him. He didn’t want to look back at Rab. But neither did he want to consider what had come over him, and what prompted the words that escaped him next.
“Lay low if you wish, Rab. I’m going after the girl.”
Chapter Five
No one with vegetables to peel or clothing to mend roused Faanshi the next morning; no servants bearing orders or insults arrived at the cellar door. For once she slept past dawn, waking only when the morning was well underway, then scrambling to kneel in the small pool of light near her window.
Shame flooded her as she focused her sleep-dazed thoughts for prayer. The sunrise should have awakened her. Sunlight was a tenuous treasure, but Faanshi had claimed it nonetheless, hoping that if she revered it enough, the Lady of Time would deliver her from confinement—and from her master. It was a hard dream to maintain in the face of the duke’s ongoing blithe assertion of her madness, and against the rejection of Djashtet by almost all the Tantiu in Lomhannor Hall. She resented that she had to.
“I’m not mad,” she whispered in the Tantiu tongue, for that too was something to claim as hers. “Dawnmaiden, Noonmother, may Your ridahs keep me that way! Strength and courage and grace...”
Closing her eyes, Faanshi prayed, rhymed stanzas to extol the goddess’s sacred virtues. There were twelve in all, four each for body, mind and heart, each in turn the province of one of the aspects of the Lady of Time. But it was a trial. The lines of the prayer and the virtues they praised jumbled in her thoughts. Wisdom and fortitude and cleverness and compassion ...
Between them all, her mind kept jolting back to the man who’d tried to kill the duke. His soot-masked face was seared across her memory, along with the emotions and recollections that had invaded her when she touched him. He’d spoken to her as none ever had before, neither with her master’s false pity nor her okinya’s reserve, but rather with approval. The memory filled her with triumph.
“Guide him, Djashtet, and make him safe. Noonmother, Crone of Night, don’t let him be captured.”
Conviction caught and burned in the hearth of Faanshi’s heart. The ridah rhyme, each line in its proper place, followed her pleas for the stranger. When she’d finished, Faanshi murmured every other prayer Ulima had taught her along with the ones she’d made up herself in her cellar’s quiet darkness.
She was still praying when the men came to the window.
The rhythm of their voices and the creaking of their cart hauled her out of her litanies. Their figures beyond the window’s bars, blocking the light, sent disquiet winging through her. When she saw them laying brick and mortar in an ordered row along the bottom of her confining bars, all her triumph vanished. Heedless of the beating she’d earn by lifting her eyes, she flung herself toward the window.
“What are you doing? Please, I beg you, no!”
Two men kneeled at the bars, one old, one young, gardeners or perhaps
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