The Born Queen - J. Gregory Keyes [174]
Now he suddenly felt claustrophobic. The last time he’d come this way, it had been with an army, and they hadn’t much feared bandits; now he realized this would be a perfect place for them to hide, say, just around one of these bends, and wondered if he hadn’t dismissed Jan and the others too quickly.
Of course, that had nothing to do with what he had smelled, which he was beginning to think was an illusion, anyway, just a stray memory of one of the many horrible things he had experienced in the last two years or so.
He kept Acredo in hand as they went around the curve.
There was someone there, all right. It wasn’t a bandit.
“Fratir Stephen?” He drew back on the reins and brought the carriage to a halt.
“Casnar!” Stephen replied. “You’re a coachman now.”
Cazio was momentarily at a loss for words. He didn’t know the fellow well, but he did know him, and the odds seemed against a chance meeting. And there was that other thing…
“Everyone thinks you’re dead, you know,” he said.
“I expect so,” Stephen replied. “The slinders did make off with me. But here I am, fit and well.”
He did look well, Cazio thought, not dead at all. Although there was something about the way he spoke and carried himself that seemed very different.
“Well,” he said for lack of something better, “I’m glad you’re well. Did Aspar and Winna find you?”
“Were they trying?”
“Yes. They went after you. That was the last I saw or heard of them.”
Stephen nodded, and his eyebrows pinched together for an instant. Then he smiled again.
“It’s good to have friends,” he said. “Where are you off to, Cazio?”
“Eslen,” he said, feeling guarded. The whole encounter seemed stranger every moment.
“You’re looking for help for Austra.”
Cazio shifted Acredo to a better grip. “Who are you?” he demanded.
“What are you talking about? You know me.”
“I knew Fratir Stephen. I’m not sure that’s who you are.”
“Oh, it’s me more or less,” the man said. “But like you, I’ve been through a lot. Walked a new faneway, gained new gifts. So yes, things are revealed to me that are denied most. I can put my gaze far from me. But I’m not an espetureno or estrigo if that’s your fear.”
“But you aren’t here by coincidence.”
“No, I’m not.”
“What do you want, then?”
“To help you. To help Austra now and Anne later on.”
“Anne?” Cazio said. “How can you know where to find me and not know?”
“Know what?”
“Anne is dead.”
Stephen’s eyes widened with what appeared to be genuine disbelief, and for the first time his new cockiness seemed to fail him.
“How is that possible?” he said, speaking so low that Cazio could barely hear him. “There’s something going on here I’m missing. But if Anne is dead…”
He raised his voice. “We’ll sort that out later. Cazio, I can help Austra. But you have to come with me.”
“Come with you?”
“Get her,” Stephen said. “Him, too.”
Cazio jerked his head around to see who the fratir was talking to, but all he saw was a weird wavering, like the air above hot stones. Then something wrapped itself firmly around his waist and lifted him into the air. He shrieked involuntarily and stabbed his blade into the invisible thing, but then something grabbed Acredo and wrenched the blade from his grasp.
Then they were hurtling through the air, all three of them, born by the Kept, and there was nothing Cazio could do about it but curse and imagine what he was going to do to Stephen when he could get to him.
After a while, Cazio finally had to give in to the fact that he was enjoying himself, at least a little. He had wondered often what it might be like to fly, and once the initial terror had worn off, it was exciting. They were whisked over the poelen and canals, covering in a bell what would have taken him days in the carriage. Eslen appeared in the distance, a toy castle far below them.
“Hubris,” Stephen said. “It’s always the death of me. But I can’t turn my eye in every direction