• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

“It wasn’t Catti’s fault!” Arhys said hastily. “Oh, the look of woe upon her face—it was like being stabbed again. No wonder she . . . After that . . . after that, I don’t remember.”

“You fell at my feet. The fool girl yanked the blade back out of you—I shouted, No, Catti! Too late. Though I’m not sure if leaving it in would have staunched anything, the way you spurted. I was trying to get one hand pressed to your wound and hang on to Catti’s sleeve with the other, but she twisted right out of her overrobe. Umerue was shrieking, climbing back over the bed to try to get to you—I wasn’t sure why. Catti plunged the knife straight into her stomach. Umerue grabbed the hilt, then looked up and gave me the saddest look. And said Oh, in this lost little voice. Like . . . like her voice when first I ever saw her.” His voice faded further. “She just said Oh. Catti’s face took on a very strange air, and after that . . . I don’t remember.” He sank back on his pillows. “Why can’t I . . . ?”

Ista’s hands were trembling. She hid them in her skirt. “What do you remember next after that, Lord Illvin?” she asked.

“Waking up here. With my head buzzing. Dizzy and sick. And then waking up here again. And again. And again. And again. And—something must have happened to me. Was I hit from behind?”

“Cattilara said Pechma stabbed you,” said Arhys. He cleared his throat. “And Umerue.”

“But he wasn’t there. Did he come in after us? And besides, I am not”—Illvin’s hand went to his chest, beneath the sober linen, and came away smeared carmine—“ow! . . . stabbed?”

“What was Pechma like?” asked Ista, doggedly.

“He was Umerue’s clerk,” said Arhys. “He had a disastrous taste in clothing, and was the butt of her retinue’s jokes—there’s always one such feckless fellow. When Cattilara told me he had attacked Illvin, I said it was impossible. She said it had better be possible, or we’d have a war with Prince Sordso before the body was carted home. And that no one among the Jokonans would stand up for Pechma. And indeed, she proved right about that. She also said to be patient, that Illvin would recover. I was beginning to doubt, but now I see it is so!”

Ista said, “You’ve eaten no food for over two months, yet you didn’t wonder?”

Illvin glanced up from his smeared hand to stare at Arhys, startled, his eyes narrowing.

“I ate. I just couldn’t keep it all down.” Arhys shrugged. “I seem to get enough.”

“But he’s going to be all right now,” said Illvin slowly. “Isn’t he?”

Ista hesitated. “No. He’s not.”

Her gaze traveled to the silent auditor of all this, half crouched by the far wall. “Goram. What did you think of Princess Umerue?”

The noise he made in his throat sounded like a dog growling. “She was bad, that one.”

“How could you tell?”

His face wrinkled. “When she looked at me, I was cold afraid. I stayed out of her sight.”

Ista considered his ravaged soul-stuff. I imagine you would.

“I would like to think that Goram helped bring me back to my senses,” said Illvin ruefully, “but I’m afraid that was just the effect of Umerue’s inattention.”

Ista studied Goram briefly. His soul-scars were a distraction in this reckoning, she decided; they were an old injury, old and dark. If, as she was beginning to suspect, he’d once been demon-gnawed, it was well before this time. Which left . . .

“Umerue was a sorceress,” Ista stated.

A brief, fierce grin flashed across Illvin’s face. “I guessed it!” He hesitated. “How do you know?” And after another moment, “Who are you?”

I have seen her lost demon, Ista decided not to say just yet. She desperately wished dy Cabon were here now, with the theological training to unravel this tangle. Illvin was staring at her more warily of a sudden, worried—but not, she thought, disbelieving.

“They say you were seminary-trained in your youth, Lord Illvin. You can’t have forgotten it all. I was told by a learned divine of the Bastard’s own order that if a demon’s mount dies, and the departing soul has not the strength left to drag it back to the