Eona - Alison Goodman [185]
“No, my lady,” Yuso said. “His Majesty wishes me to carry your swords.”
Vida’s eyes met mine. None of us went unarmed in the camp.
“Give Captain Yuso my swords, Vida,” I said, overriding the mute objection in her face.
I recalled Yuso asking about their power. Did Kygo think they were a threat? Did he think I was a threat?
Yuso slung the back sheath over his shoulder. “My lady, you are expected now.”
“She has just risen,” Vida said quickly. She kneeled beside me, twitching the hem of my tunic into place. “She needs a few moments to prepare herself.”
Yuso’s gaze swept over the room, stopping on the table with my belongings. Perhaps Kygo thought everything I owned was a threat.
Yuso’s eyes shifted back to me. “Lady Eona is expected now,” he repeated.
“It’s all right, Vida.” I patted her hands, which were busy repleating my waist sash. Reluctantly, she pulled away.
I walked across to Yuso. He wore his usual dour expression, but there was energy coiled tight in him, distilled into the continual rub of his forefinger against his thumb. He knew something was about to happen.
“I will wait here, my lady,” Vida said.
I looked back and smiled as reassuringly as I could, then stepped over the threshold. Yuso shut the door and silently led me across the large space outside the meeting tent. We passed small groups of people talking and laughing around fires, their warm camaraderie grating against my disquiet. I caught the slink of a shadow dog between two tents, only the white tip of its tail giving it substance in the gloom. A child howled in the distance, or maybe it was the keen of a night animal. It was soon obvious that we were headed beyond the heavily settled areas of the camp, toward a round tent set well apart from its neighbors, a guard stationed at its door.
“Is that where you are keeping the black folio?”
“Yes,” Yuso said.
I stopped. “Why does His Majesty want to see me in there?”
“That is for him to tell you.”
The guard saluted as we approached. Yuso opened the door, the wash of yellow lamplight casting his thin, lined face into seamed relief. He bowed and shifted aside for me to enter, hanging back a moment to give a murmured order to the sentry. With a crawl of unease across my shoulders, I stepped into the tent. Uncovered walls, no carpets. Just one man—another guard—standing beside a table that held a black lacquered box. No Kygo. The guard ducked his head in a duty bow.
Yuso ushered me farther inside.
“Sirk, your watch is over,” Yuso said, dismissing the man, who bowed again and backed out of the tent, closing the door behind him.
I walked over to the black box, its polish catching the lamplight in a slide of bright reflection. Why did Kygo want all the guards gone? Was he going to compel my power?
I turned to face Yuso. “What does His Maj—”
My head snapped back, the blow as solid as the man behind it. I staggered, my hands pressed into the pulsing agony across my cheekbone. The second blow into my stomach was so heavy it lifted me off my feet and punched away my air. I doubled over, gulping silently for breath, my vision blurred by shock and pain. He hooked his shin behind my knees. My legs buckled and I dropped on my back. The tent around me hazed into streaming lines of gray. Something slammed into my chest like a stone weight, pinning me to the ground; Yuso’s knee. He bent over, his mouth set with the business at hand.
“Open up,” he said.
He clamped my nostrils together. I gasped for air and saw the white porcelain of a herbalist’s bottle in his hand. He forced it into my mouth, the cold ceramic edge clipping my teeth. Foul, briny liquid ran down the back of my throat. I wrenched away, coughing and gagging against the bitter draught, trying to spit it up. Trying to yell. He dug his fingers into either side of my jaw and forced my head back. I punched at him, connecting once onto a hard edge of bone, but the tent was already fading into soft blackness, the drug dragging me down into the thick silence of the shadow world.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
A STINGING SLAP across my face hammered