“I will?” Ocyrhoe squeaked.
“Why are you taking the child?” Léna protested stridently. In her head, Ocyrhoe heard an echo of Léna’s earlier words. You see? What you need will be offered. Though she could not see how being remanded to the angry Cardinal was going to help her escape from Rome.
“Frederick has sent me a message, asking for a meeting. He has the mad priest and I suspect he wants to ransom him back to me. I am not so foolish as to go alone,” Fieschi sneered. “Nor am I going to be caught in a political trap. The girl will help me convince Father Rodrigo that Frederick is not his friend.”
“And if she doesn’t?” Léna asked.
Fieschi gave Léna a feral grin. “I will still have you, here, under my guard. If Frederick wishes to negotiate the return of the priest, I will have something he will want to negotiate for.”
“And the girl wouldn’t be more useful to you here as your hostage?” Léna asked.
“In the last few days,” Fieschi snapped, “this child has caused me more headaches than Robert of Somercotes—”
“Dead so unexpectedly,” Léna sighed sadly.
Fieschi paled slightly, at a loss for words all of a sudden. “We depart at once,” he growled, with an impatient gesture. “They are saddling a pony for you.”
Ocyrhoe gasped. “I don’t know how to ride.”
“All you have to do is sit,” Léna said reassuringly. And then to Fieschi, “What if the Holy Roman Emperor’s intent is not as malicious as you make it out to be?”
“Do not insult me,” Fieschi snapped. “I have known Frederick a long time. I know how he thinks. He won’t pass up an opportunity to force concessions from the Church. What do you think his blockade of Rome was for? I don’t trust him.”
“He will be saddened to hear that,” Léna pointed out. “He considers you one of the most rational men in Rome.”
Fieschi slashed his hand through the air, silencing her. “Be that as it may, you will stay here,” he said.
“Well, I’m happy to stay,” Léna observed, and for a second, Ocyrhoe thought Fieschi was going to change his mind, but when Léna smiled innocently at the Cardinal, he stormed out of the room.
“Off you go,” Léna said, shooing Ocyrhoe toward the door.
“Wait,” Ocyrhoe argued. “I don’t understand any of this. I thought you said you weren’t tied to Frederick. How can he be trying to get you back if you don’t belong to him?”
Léna put a finger to her lips. “The Cardinal seems to have overlooked that point,” she said with a wink. “Let’s not tell him, shall we?”
It was a dry, dusty day, even as the shadows began to stretch eastward. Ocyrhoe liked the rocking motion once she had gotten used to it, and to her surprise, her mount sped up, slowed, and shifted at the precise moment she was wondering how to make it move in those ways. As if the pony was itself a Binder, or at least communicated as Binders do. Animals do not have a spoken language, she thought. They must have other ways in which to communicate.
From the height of the pony, the Holy Roman Emperor’s camp looked very different to Ocyrhoe’s eyes; she could see the boundaries much better now than before, when it was all just a big jumbled maze and she was breathless with anticipation at fulfilling her first Binder assignment.
From Robert of Somercotes.
She wondered again at what had passed between Léna and the Cardinal when Cardinal Somercotes’s name had been brought up. The Cardinal had died in the fire, and it was her understanding that it had been a tragic accident, but there had been a mocking note in Léna’s voice. She marveled at how the older Binder had given such a simple declaration such weight. And Fieschi’s reaction! What was he hiding?
If they weren’t about to arrive in the Emperor’s camp, Ocyrhoe would be more concerned about being in Cardinal Fieschi’s presence. She had seen his face when he had lunged at her early this morning. He was just as dangerous as the Bear, maybe more so.
Where the camp met the road, guards stopped the group, asking the riders to dismount and for the Cardinal to descend from his carriage. Helmuth had returned with them, so they were admitted immediately into the campsite. The mundane details of daily life teemed around them in the tent city—chickens crooning in cages, women scrubbing laundry in tubs, bakers shaping loaves beside portable ovens, metalworkers and leatherworkers intent upon their crafts. The size of the camp itself did not impress Ocyrhoe—it was smaller than even one neighborhood of Rome. But the fact of its mobility, of its inhabitants and creators having traveled hundreds of miles together to erect this temporary town, it was a marvel she could not quite get her mind around. Cities were permanent things, yet...