Gate to Kandrith (The Kandrith Series) (29 page)

The Protector walked with him, giving more orders, but not before giving a sharp nod to Sara’s two guards.

Sara appealed to Lance. “I wouldn’t betray you. You know that, don’t you?”

Lance studied her. “I don’t know—and neither do you. Think for a moment, Sara. Right now you may want revenge on your father, but how will you feel once you are back among your own people? Can you really change loyalties so quickly?”

Sara heard herself laugh, a low, bitter sound. “Your loyalty may be to the whole of your country, but mine… I gave all my loyalty to my father. To House Remillus.”

It was hard to explain now why building her House’s power and prominence had seemed such a worthy goal. Lance had given his life to healing people, had lived among strangers as the Child of Peace so that his country could remain free from slavery. His heart was so much bigger than hers, Sara felt shriveled in comparison. Sara hadn’t the right to give her loyalty to Kandrith, but she could strive for higher than personal gain. She could declare herself on the side of peace and
work
to prevent war and bloodshed. She could save Lance’s sister from being her father’s pawn.

Lance was still watching her, waiting for her to work through her thoughts.

“I never told you why I came to Kandrith,” Sara said abruptly. “Why I agreed to be my father’s spy.”

He shook his head.

“I came to Kandrith to keep my family safe and to avert a bloodbath, maybe even a war.” She explained about the two hundred people slain by magic on Lord Favonius’s estate. “Despite the presence of a group of Qiph warriors, my father convinced me that the King of Slaves was responsible and told me that we had no magic to fight yours. That we would soon be at war with the Qiph, leaving the Republic vulnerable to further magical attacks.”

Lance’s brow furrowed. “The Goddess would never lend her power to such a thing.”

Sara shrugged. “I don’t even know if there
was
a massacre at Lord Favonius’s.” Her father’s every word was now shaded with doubt, and the only proof she had was the Favonius deathboat. “But he intends to conquer Kandrith and re-enslave you. And that’s wrong.”

She paused a moment to marshal her thoughts. “I always thought being a slave was a matter of bad luck, and that it was simply the way of the world for nobles to own slaves. But here in Kandrith you truly have no high caste, and all it has cost you are a few luxuries.

“I thought that since I happened to be highborn all I could do was be kind to those in my care. But you and Felicia and Rochelle have taught me that’s not enough. Nobody should have to rely on someone else’s whim for protection, or be treated like a child with all your decisions made for you.”

Sara stumbled to a halt. In the Republic, women were viewed as children. When she’d fought her father for independence he’d laid a massive load of guilt on her shoulders so that she would do as he wished. She looked up and found Lance watching her with pride in his eyes.

“I would be happy to have your help freeing my sister,” he said. “My mother will need more convincing.” He gestured with his chin. “Here she comes now.”

Both Donal and the Protector were approaching with identical grim expressions.

Sara spied the old man and his wife on her left and raised her voice. “Listener, hear me! I came to your country to avert a bloodbath. I want Kandrith to remain free and for there to be peace between our countries. My father—” her voice broke, “—my father has fallen to evil. I want to help stop him.”

“All truth,” the Listener declared.

Lance turned to his mother. “I’ll have a better chance of saving Wenda with her help.”

“I can get him into the capital,” Sara told Lance’s mother, then forced herself to wait. Surely the Protector would see the sense in letting Sara go?

The Protector’s lips pressed together. She turned to Cadwallader, who was fortuitously close to hand. Was that anticipation part of a seer’s power? Sara wondered.

“Wenda will be the next Kandrith. Trying to remember how she gets out of the Republic gives me headaches—it keeps changing. I do remember what happens to the Child of Peace.” Cadwallader looked sad.

The Protector bowed her head. “I pray that you have foreseen correctly, that my daughter will return to us and take the oath. But until that time, I am still charged with protecting Kandrith. I will not be the one to break the Pact. Bors, Brendan.” At her gesture, Sara’s two black-bearded guards grabbed her arms and started dragging her toward the large stone block in one corner of the room.

They meant to kill her.

Shock kept her still for an instant. Her gaze met Lance’s. Wouldn’t he help her? But he watched hopelessly.

The wildness inside her snapped its chain. Sara stepped on Bors’s foot and elbowed the younger man, Brendan, in the mouth, making it bleed. She fought like a racha. Both men cursed, but neither let go. “I thought this one was supposed to be a lady,” Brendan muttered.

Sara fought in desperate silence, twisting and kicking. She didn’t care that she was putting on a show like a common fishwife. The pride that might have let her go to her death with dignity depended on her last name, Remillus, on her father. And he had betrayed her.

“Give over,” Brendan muttered as if she were a child being difficult over some small matter. Sara threw all her weight backward, breaking free, but only for a few seconds. Taking firmer grips, Brendan and Bors dragged her up to the black basalt block and forced her head down.

“Hold her,” Bors said.

“Can I break her arm?” Brendan growled, but he kept her head down. Sara kicked him one more time in the thigh—she wished viciously that it had been his groin instead—before Bors locked manacles around her wrists.

The chill of stone on her cheek felt like the hand of Mek. “Bas, God of Miracles,” she prayed. “Save me. Loma—” No, it seemed wrong to pray to Lance’s Goddess.

Sara could only raise her head a few inches from the block; strands of hair hung in her face. Where was Lance? How could he abandon her?

Red robes approached in her peripheral vision, but the feet were too small to be Lance’s. It was the Protector.

Sara clamped her lips together, refusing to beg.

“If you have a last request, speak it.” The Protector sounded uncomfortable, stiff. “But be warned, I won’t brook a delay.”

No twenty course last meal of peppered songbird tongues and roast giraffe then. Sara closed her eyes and tried to think over the blood rushing through her ears. Should she ask that Felicia be given her dresses and jewelry? No, Lance would see to it that Felicia received her few possessions and that her refetti was cared for. There was no need to ask.

Should she ask for wine then, to wet her dust-dry throat? Or for her ashes to be thrown in the Vaga River? Both seemed equally useless.

The Protector tapped her foot. Beyond the woman, Sara could see that Lance’s face was white. With anguish? She wanted to think so, but it could’ve been fatigue or grief.

Suddenly, Sara knew what her last request would be.

Before I die, I want to know that someone loves me, that someone will mourn me.

“I wish to choose my executioner,” Sara said.

The Protector raised her eyebrows. “You think I’m too squeamish to swing the axe? I’d do it in a heartbeat.”

“Not you. Lance.”

She didn’t believe he would do it. He couldn’t kill her. She remembered how tenderly he’d held her while she cried over her mother’s death, how worried he’d been over her headache. Surely he must care for her, just a little?

If he refused, then Sara could meet her fate with a little dignity. She looked to Lance in hope.

The Protector leaned close, her face red with fury. “My son wears the Brown. It’s wrong to ask this of him. Withdraw your request.”

“Or what?” Sara asked. “What can you offer me, or threaten me with, when I am already condemned?”

The Protector’s lips tightened. “I’m asking you to show common human decency—but I suppose that’s beyond someone like you.”

Sara kept her voice low. “Enough lies. You’re not executing me because of the law, you’re killing me for revenge. You hate me for contributing to your husband’s death—and for what I was born. If you truly wish to spare your son this ordeal, let me live.” She waited. “I thought not. Who lacks decency now?”

The Protector straightened. “Your request is denied.”

“No, Mother,” Lance said, his face set like stone. “I will do it.”

Sara felt her heart crack.

Frantically, she tried to bind it back together. Lance believed in the Pact, the death of one innocent. That’s why he’d agreed to do it, but once it came down to the moment, he wouldn’t be able to go through with it.

The Protector took down a silver axe from the wall, then paused. “You don’t have to do this thing.”

“Give me the axe, Mother.”

Scowling, she handed it over. The axe was almost as tall as a man, but Lance took it in one hand, his face stoic. The curved blade gleamed.

Sara clenched her teeth on a wave of nausea.

When she lifted her head again, Lance stood beside her, the axe head resting by his foot. He put a hand on the back of her neck, brushing her hair out of the way. Was there tenderness in his touch? An apology? Did she imagine that his hand shook slightly?

“Keep still.”

Obediently, Sara turned her head to one side and laid her cheek on the basalt block. Lance raised the axe.

And still she could not relinquish all hope, her thoughts scurrying in a dozen different directions like frightened mice. Lance would refuse at the last instant—Lance would bring the axe down on her manacles and free her—he would threaten to turn the weapon on Brendan—

The axe whistled through the air—

And cleaved down on Sara’s neck.

Sara’s head toppled face-first into the basket, bumping nose and forehead. Pain and blood filled her mouth and ran from her nostrils. Somebody was screaming, “Get out! All of you, out!” but it wasn’t her.

She had no throat with which to scream.

Her eyes rolled. She saw the basket in intricate detail: the delicate weave, the criss-crossing fibers stained by gushing blood…

Shock slammed through her. Her head had been severed from her body. She couldn’t feel her legs or wiggle her fingers. Her heart no longer beat. Yet she lived.

She didn’t want to live like this. Not for another second. “Please.” Voiceless, her lips formed the word, a prayer to any god that would listen.

Her vision dimmed, and she embraced the darkness. The God of Death stalked her on soft footsteps.

Someone grasped a handful of her hair and pulled her head out of the basket. As if through a black veil, she saw Lance’s desperate face—

—and, horribly, she saw her own body, legs kicked straight in a spasm of death, headless.

Then Lance held her facedown over the stone block and pressed her head back onto her neck. “Don’t die, Sara. Live a little longer,” he pleaded. “Goddess, help me.”

Perhaps because she was so close to passing through Mek’s door, Sara saw the Goddess this time: the round face and simple robes, the capable hands and, most of all, the kind eyes. Her eyes pierced Sara with pity as She began to shake her head.

Sara was glad. The mercy she needed now was death.

“Please,” Lance said, voice anguished.

The Goddess’s expression grew tender. Sara saw love in Her gaze. And pride. The Goddess of Mercy felt compassion for every living being, but Sara thought Lance was Her favored son.
“I will try, Faithful One.”

Loma stepped somehow inside Lance and put Her hands over his. Power radiated out of Her, so much power, but most of it spilled on the floor, wasted, unable to flow into Sara’s severed body.

Just as Sara could sense the heat and power pouring out of the Goddess, so too could she see the cord running from Lance to Her as his sacrifice flowed into Her.

It wasn’t enough. Horrified, Sara realized the Goddess was weakening herself, bleeding power to no purpose. It had to end. Sara started to tear her spirit free from her broken body—

“No, curse it!” Lance lifted one hand and slammed his little finger against the edge of the stone block. The splint shattered, and he slammed it down again, rebreaking the fragile bone and snapping his ring finger too.

Lance’s sacrifice traveled up the cord, and the Goddess kept none of it, feeding the magic straight back into Sara. This time it exceeded some threshold. Sara’s body jolted as healing magic poured into her in a torrent.

The edges of her neck melded together, veins and nerves connecting. With it came the return of pain. She felt the first kick of her heart and drew her first gasping breath. She smelled springtime. The pain began to ease, chased out by the power coursing through her.

The Goddess retreated, or perhaps Sara’s more human vision could no longer see Her.

Sara moved her fingers, awed and astounded when they wiggled. Experimentally, she tried to speak. “Lance.”

“Shhh.” Lance brushed her hair back with a trembling hand. “You’ve lost a lot of blood. I need to heal you more before you can get up.”

Sara lay limply, too weak to stand. Her heart galloped, and she felt dizzy.

She was alive. Lance had cut off her head and then, with the Goddess’s help, healed it back on.

Cut off her head.

Nausea ambushed her, and she retched.

Lance patted her back and made crooning noises.

The scratch of a key in a lock, and the manacles released their cold grip on her wrists. Gently, Lance helped her sit down on his lap behind the block. He laid her head on his shoulder and folded her close. “Sara.” His voice rasped. “I thought I’d lost you. It took so long to get everyone out of the room, I thought I’d run out of time.”

Sara pulled away so she could look at him. “You saved my life.” The words came out slurred; her throat not yet fully healed.

Lance nodded. He bent his head to kiss her.

She punched him in the stomach as hard as she could. He barely grunted, but his look of surprise was worth it.

Anger trembled through her. Because he could have let Bors cut off her head and still healed her. “Don’t ever kill me again. I didn’t like it.”

She sounded idiotic, but Lance understood. He shuddered. “No. Never again. I’d seen a man beheaded once before. I remembered that he hadn’t…died right away. I planned to heal you from the first, and I knew I needed to be close by to act, so when you asked for me… But it was a mistake. I ought to have let Bors do it. His hands would have been steadier.”

His reasoning made sense, but Sara’s hurt remained. Lance might have saved her, but only because he needed her help to rescue his sister. If he’d felt anything more than lust for Sara he wouldn’t have been able to swing the axe.

Sara touched her neck, expecting to find a seam looping across her throat like a grim necklace, but her fingers found only smooth flesh. It seemed wrong not to have even a scar as a memento.
The axe whistling down
—

A noise from the corridor made them both flinch, but no one came in.

“We need to go,” Lance said abruptly.

Sara trembled. “Yes, of course.” She forced herself to her feet, but her mind refused to work. “Where?”

“I’ll pretend to carry you away to be buried, then find you a disguise, and we’ll go to the courtyard and be Moved with the others to the battle. It’s the fastest way to the Republic.”

Sara didn’t understand, but held her tongue. They lacked the time for detailed explanations. If anyone so much as peeked into the throne room, a cry would go up. And she didn’t want to get her head cut off a second time. Once was enough.

* * *

When his mother found out what he’d done, she would accuse him of committing treason. She’d be right. No matter how Lance might dress it up and say he was doing it to rescue Wenda, he had willfully broken the Pact. And he didn’t care. He’d do it again.

When he’d thought he was too late and he would have to live with Sara’s death on his hands for the rest of his life, he’d gone crazy inside.

He could not bear for Sara to die. He loved her. The raging physical attraction between them was only part of it. Her kindness, her ability to admit that she’d been wrong, her courage and her passion for life all spoke to something deep inside him. He even found her misplaced loyalty to her father admirable.

She came first, before Wenda, before his mother, before Kandrith. It was a good thing Cadwallader picked the person most suitable to be the next Kandrith instead of the Kandrith’s eldest child.

For all her iron, Lance knew his mother felt—had felt—the same way about his father. She Protected the Kandrith, and today she’d failed. What Lance had done was going to hurt her even more. He regretted that, but it didn’t change anything. He hoped she’d forgive him when he brought Wenda home. In the meantime, he would just have to make sure they weren’t caught.

He turned to Sara. “Lie down behind the stone block.” Once she did only her feet would show to a casual glance.

Sara shuddered, but obeyed.

“What is it?”

Sara stared at him as if he were insane. “I’m lying beside a puddle of my own blood.”

Blood had ceased to horrify Lance once he’d received the Goddess’s gift, but he would remember Sara’s life running out of her in nightmares for years to come.

Out in the hall Lance intercepted a woman carrying a load of rough gray blankets, obviously on her way to the Mover. He relieved her of two of them, scowling so hard that she didn’t even ask what he needed them for.

It took him longer to locate his pack. Someone had moved it from where he’d left it; he eventually found it in his rooms at the foot of his bed. Scooping it up, he left at a near run. He’d left Sara alone—unprotected—for close to ten minutes now.

Loma was merciful. The throne room was still empty when he returned. He knelt beside her.

Sara rose up onto her elbows, but Lance pushed her back down. “Wait. I’m going to carry your body out of here.” But first he took out the Qiph box and wrapped it in a blanket until it was roughly spherical. “Your head,” he said shortly.

Sara looked queasy at the idea.

Lance used the bigger of the two blankets to bundle up Sara, but her feet still stuck out. He set the ‘head’ on her stomach. “Remember, you have to lie perfectly limp no matter what happens,” he reminded her.

She nodded. He loosely draped the last fold of blanket over her face, then picked her up. He needed two hands for the job, and his broken fingers shrieked pain. He would have to resplint them later.

Before he reached the door, Brendan slouched inside, scowling. Thank the Goddess Wenda was smart enough not to marry him. Brendan would be a disaster as Protector.

“What are you doing?” Brendan asked, as if it weren’t obvious.

“What are you doing?” Lance shot back. “Shouldn’t you be in the courtyard, getting ready to go to battle?” Brendan used to pick on Lance when they were boys—until Lance outgrew him by half a foot.

Brendan’s face flushed. “You’re the one holding things up. Your mother won’t let anyone in here to grab a weapon,” he nodded at the walls, “until you’re through. She sent me to get rid of the body.”

“No need. I’ve got her,” Lance said shortly.

Brendan smiled nastily and stepped in front of Lance. He obviously felt safe taunting Lance, because he knew Lance wouldn’t put Sara’s body down.

Anger ignited in Lance’s gut. “Out of my way.”

Brendan didn’t move. “Oh, no. Your mother gave me specific orders. I wouldn’t want to be accused of shirking my duty.” He smirked. “Besides, your fingers look broken. You need help.”

Before Lance could dodge, Brendan snatched up the blanket-wrapped “head”

Lance went cold. He couldn’t grab it back without dropping Sara. “Put it back right now, or I’ll kill you.”

Brendan sneered. “Kind of light isn’t it? Her head must have been empty.” He tossed it up in the air. The blanket slipped part-way off before he caught it again. “Hey, this isn’t—”

Lance didn’t give him a chance to finish. He set Sara on her feet—or tried to. She stayed limp and crumpled to the floor. Lance drove his fist into Brendan’s chin with all the power of chest muscles developed swinging a hammer.

Brendan fell. “You broke my jaw!”

Lance doubted the man would’ve been able to talk if that were the case. He fastened his hand around Brendan’s throat. “Shut up, or I’ll kill you. And don’t think,” his eyes narrowed, “that I won’t just because I wear the Brown. It’s your life or hers, and I choose her. Sara?”

“Yes?” She sat up, making Brendan squeak.

“Give me a hand.” Since most of the weapons were on the opposite wall, Lance judged the best place to hide Brendan was behind the executioner’s block.

Brendan stared first at Sara, then at Lance. “You’re mad. Your mother’s going to kill you. All for a Republican twotch!”

Lance stuffed a handkerchief in Brendan’s mouth. He used Brendan’s own sash to bind his hands behind his back and one foot to his hands. “Change of plan,” Lance said tersely to Sara as the Goddess healed Brendan’s bruises and jaw. “We’ll have to go to the courtyard directly.”

By the time he finished, Sara had arranged the second blanket over her head like a shawl. Since the call had gone out, the courtyard would be teeming with people. If the Goddess was merciful, Sara should pass for a stranger.

* * *

“You must go first, before me. We can’t be together in case someone wants to talk to me,” Lance murmured.

Sara dug in her heels. “I don’t know where I’m supposed to go.”

“To the Mover. We need to get to the Republic quickly and the war is the fastest way.”

Which told Sara precisely nothing.

“Just follow everyone else into the courtyard.” Lance placed a quick, hard kiss on her mouth. Before she could respond, he gave her a little shove between the shoulderblades with his good hand. “Go!”

Sara didn’t want to go. She realized in that instant that she didn’t want to be separated from Lance, ever. He had become her safety. If someone hurt her, Lance would heal her again.

Appalled by her cowardice, Sara walked into the hallway. She received a couple of odd looks from people busy on their own errands, but no one screamed an alarm.

Once outside in the grass of the courtyard, she felt less conspicuous. There was a crowd, as Lance had promised. More than that, a line. Sara joined the end of it and kept her eyes lowered to conceal their color.

The line moved forward with agonizing slowness. Sara had progressed perhaps a third of its length when a furry shape nudged her ankle. Her refetti had found her somehow. She scooped him up, and he enthusiastically licked her hand, as if happy she was alive. “I’m glad to see you too,” Sara whispered, before putting him in her pocket.

“Smelting pot!” A dumpy older man and his tall—son? apprentice?—trundled an iron pot down the line. As they passed, people threw in bits of metal. Queerly, many of them were keys like the one Valda had had over her mantel. Someone threw in an iron spoon, and another dropped in about twenty links of chain—a slave chain, Sara realized. “I hadn’t had a chance to melt it down yet,” the man said.

And that explained the mystery of the keys with no locks. It must be customary to have one’s slave chain reforged into a symbol of freedom.

Sara shook her head when her turn came, her skin crawling with the sensation of eyes on her. If just one person recognized her—

“Where’s your weapon?” the apprentice asked. He had curly blond hair that reminded her of Claudius Pallax, and he seemed to be just as rude. “You’re going to a battle, you know, not off to feed the chickens.”

Lance hadn’t told her she should be armed. But, yes, once Sara looked up she saw that the people in line with her did carry makeshift weapons: a few pikes and swords, but mostly axes and pitchforks.

“He’s right, Miss,” the blacksmith, spoke up. “You should go to the Great Hall and pick out a weapon.”