Naamah's Blessing - Jacqueline Carey [156]
“If you attempt to escape, they will know,” Raphael continued heedlessly. “If you think to attack me…” He shrugged, stroking Bao’s bamboo staff. “Well, I think you have seen what will ensue. Is that understood?”
Everyone nodded.
“Good,” he said briskly. “Now strip off all armor and weapons. I daresay my Quechua warriors will find them useful when we overthrow the Sapa Inca.”
I startled. “What?”
“Oh, yes.” Raphael smiled at me. “There are sacred places on this earth, Moirin, sanctified by centuries of worship. In Tawantinsuyo, it is the Temple of the Ancestors in the city of Qusqu. That is where I must be coronated. We have a great deal to discuss, you and I. But for now it can wait.” He pointed with Bao’s staff. “Arms and armor! Strip! Moirin, I’ll have your bow as well.”
One by one, the men complied; and so did I, surrendering my yew-wood bow with a pang of regret.
For a moment, I thought Temilotzin would resist. The Jaguar Knight glowered, clutching his obsidian-studded club. Streams of ants skirled and chittered around his sandaled feet.
“Don’t,” I pleaded with him in Nahuatl. “Please, don’t!” I glanced at Denis de Toluard’s lifeless body, my heart aching. “I’m not sure I could bear it. Wait, and let me try to find a way out of this.”
With a growl, Temilotzin hurled his club to the floor, shards of obsidian shattering on the stone. “I do not like this prince of yours, my little warrior,” he said in disdain. “Better we had never found him!”
“I agree,” Eyahue muttered.
Overwhelmed by the shock of the encounter, I was ashamed to realize I’d altogether forgotten the purpose of our journey.
Now I remembered.
“He’s not our prince,” I said firmly. “Raphael? My lord de Mereliot?”
Idling on the throne, being attended by his ants and handmaidens, he lifted his head. “Hmm?”
“You told Denis that Thierry and the others were safe,” I said. “Was that true?”
“Of course it’s true!” Looking offended, Raphael waved one hand. “They’re laboring in the fields just like these men will. And they will confirm the folly of attempting to escape,” he added. “One tried. He died screaming.”
I closed my eyes briefly, fighting a wave of nausea. “But the Dauphin and the others are well?”
Raphael shrugged. “All that made it safely to Vilcabamba. We lost a few along the way.” He fixed me with a hard stare. “Do you suppose I’d murder them all outright? What do you take me for, a monster?”
I gazed back at the man I’d once thought I’d loved, the man I’d believed my destiny—the man whose bed I’d been so eager to share, the man with the golden healer’s touch, the man I’d let charm me into folly and self-sacrifice, the man who had saved my father’s life.
The man who had just stabbed one of his best friends in the throat, the madman who held us all captive and hostage with his terrible army.
If he was a monster, he was a monster I had helped to create. My diadh-anam had spoken truly all those years ago, but I hadn’t understood it. Whether he was mad or no, Raphael was right about one thing. The gifts of the gods were often double-edged. My destiny was indeed entwined with his, but what I hadn’t known was that I’d forged every link of the chains that bound us myself.
“Well?” Raphael raised his brows. “Answer the question, Moirin. Do you take me for a monster?”
“Aye,” I said. “I do.
Trailing his fingers in the black river of ants, Raphael just laughed.
FIFTY-FIVE
I was a prisoner without a cell.
Raphael had no need to confine me. The threat hanging over the heads of Bao and all our company was enough to compel my obedience. Once the men had been escorted away by the Quechua warriors and a column of ants, presumably to labor in the fields or to whatever lodgings they were allotted, Raphael proved surprisingly magnanimous.
He gave me a suite of rooms that opened onto a small, sunlit courtyard filled with fruit trees and a bathing fountain in a stone channel that poured down the terraced mountainside. In other circumstances, it would