The Blood Curse (40 page)

Karel didn’t close his eyes. They were dark, serious. “Do you know how they plan to use you?”

She shook her head.

“Highness, you have to escape without me.”

“No.”

“I can’t walk—”

“Karel, I’m not leaving you behind.”

“But, highness—”

“No!” she said, her voice sharp. “I’m not leaving you!”

“You have to.” His gaze was stern, his jaw uncompromising.

Britta blew out an exasperated breath. “I’m not leaving you, all right? And stop calling me highness. You called me Britta before.”

“I did? I beg your pardon, princess. I didn’t mean to.”

Britta almost thumped him. “This isn’t the palace. I’m not a princess any more. Call me Britta.”

Karel stared at her, frowning.

“Call me Britta.” And then, because his jaw was still stubborn. “That’s an order, armsman.”

“If you’re giving orders, you’re still a princess.”

Britta did thump him, on his left shoulder, where it wouldn’t hurt. “You’re as stubborn as an ox—and just as witless!”

Karel gave a short laugh, then groaned, pressing one hand to his ribs.

“Will you please call me Britta?”

He sighed, and capitulated. “All right. But only when no one can hear. Whether you say you’re a princess or not, you
are
one, and—”

“No, I haven’t been a princess since they cut off my hair.” She held up a hand to forestall his response. “And I don’t want to be one, Karel. If we get out of this—
when
we get out of this—I’m not going back to King Magnas’s court. I want to be
me
, Britta, not a princess wearing a crown.”

His expression was dubious. “If you don’t go to Lundegaard, were would you go?”

To Esfaban, with you and Yasma
. And then she remembered— “Oh! I didn’t tell you! Jaegar’s been poisoned!”

Karel’s eyebrows snapped together. “What?”

She rapidly told him what Bennick had said. “Five moons, so he’s got three left. And then...”

And then everything changes.

“If Jaegar dies, there’ll be civil war,” Britta said. “Won’t there? Unless King Magnas gets there first.”

“Half the nobles in the kingdom would make a grab for power.” She saw horror and hope mingled on Karel’s face. “But if Magnas steps in first... He can claim Osgaard in the boys’ names. Take control of the kingdom as regent.”

Britta nodded. “And if he does that, he’ll break Osgaard up again, give back the annexed kingdoms. And Esfaban will be free.”

She saw tears rise in Karel’s dark eyes, saw him blink them back.

“We
have
to get out of here!” he said. “We have to get back to Lundegaard and tell Magnas!”

CHAPTER EIGHTY-EIGHT

T
HE ROAD PASSED
through a small hamlet. The hamlet looked empty, but when Innis landed and changed into a dog, she smelled a human scent. Male. Very recent.

She followed the scent trail cautiously. It led her to a small cottage built of dried mud and stone. Shutters covered the windows. The door was latched.

Innis circled the cottage, sniffing, listening. Her ears told her it was empty; her nose told her that someone was inside.

Fithian?

She circled the cottage a second time. A Fithian would have opened the shutters, the better to launch his ambush... wouldn’t he?

Innis shifted into lizard shape. Nervousness tightened her ribcage.
If I’m attacked, I become a lion. Rip out his throat.

She slipped through the crack underneath the door.

It took a few seconds for her eyes to adjust to the dimness. She saw a fireplace, a table and stools—and an open door into another room.

Innis scuttled across the floorboards and peered into the second room. It was a bedchamber. The bed was wooden, with a mattress and pillows. The blankets were the floor. Nesting in them, like an animal, was a man. All she could see was his forehead and one closed eye. It was enough to tell her he was cursed.

Innis sidled warily closer. The man was cursed, yes, but was he also a Fithian?

Assassin or not, she had to kill him. The wagon would pass through this village shortly, and if he woke, he’d attack.

Innis changed back into herself. For a long, terrifying moment, the room was pitch black—then her eyes adjusted. Faint light leaked through cracks in the shutters. She dimly saw the nest the man had made, dimly saw his forehead, his closed eye.

She reached out and touched his forehead with her fingertips, sent her magic into him, killed him.

It was easier this time—there was a terrible familiarity to it: the rupturing of carotid, jugular, aorta. Innis snatched her hand back, curled it into a fist, pressed it to her chest. Her stomach turned over on itself. Bile burned up her throat. She clenched her jaw, clenched her teeth, and stopped herself from vomiting by sheer willpower.

When she had control of her stomach, she opened the shutters, and unwrapped the man from his blankets. His body was limp, heavy, warm. He was dark-haired, younger than Serril, but older than Petrus. Thirty?

The man was naked from the waist down. Had he raped someone? Been raped? Or simply forgotten what trews were for?

Innis peeled off his sheepskin vest and rough cotton shirt and examined his chest, his arms, the nape of his neck, his back. No five-bladed throwing star had been inked into his skin, no rows of dagger tattoos.

Not an assassin. A peasant.

Innis touched the man’s forehead, a gesture of respect, of sorrow, and spoke the words to the All-Mother for him. She covered his body with a blanket, and checked the hamlet a second time. Empty.

She shifted into hawk form and flapped upwards. The hamlet fell away. She saw stony paddocks, hillocks and gullies, looming foothills. Innis followed the dry, dusty line of the road with her eyes, looking for the wagon and the horses. They were a mile from the hamlet, Justen flying guard above.

F
AT SNOWFLAKES BEGAN
to fall. Harkeld pulled his hood up. Ahead, Rand halted the wagon, jumped down, and crouched, peering at the road.

“What?” Harkeld stopped, too.

“Take a look.”

Harkeld dismounted and squatted alongside the healer. “What am I looking at?”

“The snow.”

Snowflakes were gathering in the ruts on the road. Harkeld peered closely at them, white and delicate and... shadowed with Ivek’s curse. He jerked back, almost lost his balance, and stood hastily. “The curse!”

A brown mare halted alongside them. Its rider looked down. Petrus. And behind him was Adel, leading the packhorses. “Something wrong?” Petrus asked.

Rand straightened. He rubbed a hand through his hair, dislodging snowflakes. “What we expected. Soon as the snow touches the ground, it carries the curse.”

“But it’s snow, not water!” Harkeld said.

“Most strong water mages have an affinity to water in both its frozen and liquid forms,” Adel said.

Harkeld had a sudden, horrible thought. “It won’t spread upwards, will it? The curse? To the snowflakes in the air?”

Rand shook his head. “The curse is bound to the soil, not the air.” He scuffed a drift of snowflakes with the toe of one boot. “The snow’ll only carry the curse once it’s touched the ground.”

“As long as snow doesn’t start falling
upwards
, we’re safe,” Petrus said. His tone didn’t quite manage to be flippant.

“Steam might carry the curse,” Adel said diffidently. “If the water it came from did.”

Harkeld remembered the boiling pools in Ankeny, and the thick sulfur-scented steam. He shivered.

“No steam here,” Petrus said. “Thank the All-Mother.”

Rand tipped his head back and frowned up at the sky. “Hope there’s not too much of this.”

O
N
I
NNIS’S NEXT
pass over the wagon, Rand waved her down and held his arm out for her to land on. Snowflakes dappled his cloak, his hair, his eyelashes.

“Find us somewhere sheltered for the night. Say, another twelve miles. And Innis... be careful. The snow’s cursed once it’s on the ground.”

Innis dipped her head in a nod, spread her wings, and launched into the air again.

She found a farm at the base of the foothills. The farmhouse was a blackened, burned shell, but the barn was still standing. It had a loft with dusty straw, and a woodpile. “We’ll try to reach that one,” Rand said, when she told him.

CHAPTER EIGHTY-NINE

T
HEY CAME TO
a village. Half the houses around the market square had been razed. The stink of smoke was strong. Jaumé rode warily, tensely, pressing so close to Bennick that their legs touched.

“Nothing to worry about, lad. No one alive,” Bennick said, but he didn’t move away. He let the mare and the pony walk close together.

Long after they’d passed the village, Jaumé could taste the smoke on his tongue. It made him think of Girond burning. He wondered what Girond looked like now. Was the alderman’s house still standing? The fishermen’s homes? The boatsheds?

As evening approached, they came to a river. On the far side was a range of steep foothills that marched east to the mountains.

Jaumé eyed the river.
Those who drink the water shall thirst for blood. They shall be as wild beasts
. He remembered the yelping laughter he’d heard in Girond.

Bennick squinted at the sky. “Looks like it could snow. We should find some shelter.”

“There’s farmhouses along the river,” Valor said. “Fortified, most of ’em, from what Tancred said. Meant to be wolves in the mountains, and some kind of tribesmen in those hills.”

“Hillmen,” Bennick said. “We’ve met ’em before, haven’t we, lad?”

Jaumé nodded, and shivered.

“Course, they’ll be dead now,” Valor said. “Or cursed.”

“Madder than rabid dogs? The hillmen already were. The curse won’t’ve made much of a difference to them.”

T
HEY RODE IN
silence for a while, following the river, then Valor asked, “What are we going to do with her and her armsman afterwards?” He pointed at the covered wagon with his chin.

“He’s more than her armsman,” Bennick said. “He’s her lover.”

“You reckon?”

“She ran right in front of Vught and a Star to protect him, screeching her head off. You should have seen it.”

Valor grunted a laugh.

“And you heard the way he kept calling for her. Definitely lovers.” Bennick glanced at the covered wagon. “We got a good hold on her now. She’s not going to run without him. And with
her
, we got the prince.” There was something in his grin, something cruel, that Jaumé didn’t like.

“What’re we going to do with them afterwards?” Valor asked again.

“Vught’s choice. Kill them. Leave them.” Bennick shrugged. “I reckon we should leave them. They won’t last long. Probably kill each other, once the curse gets ’em.”

Jaumé looked away. He didn’t like Bennick when he grinned like that, or when he joked about people dying.

He let the pony drop back, so he couldn’t hear Bennick and Valor any more. Jealousy nibbled inside him like a maggot in an apple. He wasn’t sure he liked Valor. Bennick talked too much to him, and he made nasty jokes.

A
S DARKNESS WAS
falling, they came to a tall, square building made of stone. The walls were two stories high, with slit-like windows near the top. There were two doors—a small one at the back, by the river and a jetty with an upturned boat—and a large one at the front, solid and iron-studded and as wide as a barn door. “Is it a fortress?” Jaumé asked, tipping his head back and staring up at the high wall.

“A small one,” Bennick said.

The door was barred on the inside, but Hetchel brought the uncovered wagon close, and Vught and Bennick stood on it and tossed Valor high. Valor pulled himself up onto the roof, and disappeared. Five minutes, later the big door swung open. “It’s empty,” Valor said.

They trooped inside—wagons and horses. There was a large, square dirt yard in the center of the fortress. On two sides were rooms with doors and windows, on the third side were stalls for a stable, and the fourth was a barn.