Jannoula’s voice from Gianni’s mouth brought everything back. I fled Gianni’s cell, pushing past a confused Moy, and rushed up to my room at Palasho Donques. I buried myself under blankets and spent the whole night reliving it all: the violation, the horror, the guilt, the sorrow.
At first light, I pounded on Josquin’s door. It took him some minutes to answer, bleary-eyed and tucking his shirt into breeches he’d evidently just put on. “I’ve been thinking,” I said, my words pouring out in a miserable rush. “We shouldn’t take the wild man back to Segosh.”
“What are you proposing?” said Josquin hoarsely. I really had awakened him, it seemed. “Release him back into the wild?”
If Jannoula could make him talk, she could propel his taloned feet after us, the way she’d walked me through the world. Whatever she was after, I wanted her nowhere near me. “Shouldn’t Lord Donques incarcerate him here, where the murder happened?”
“He would have preferred that, yes,” said Josquin, folding his arms. “I burned through rather a lot of his goodwill yesterday, convincing him to let us take the creature back to Segosh.”
“Then he’ll be happy you’ve changed your mind.”
“And the next time I have to negotiate with him or anyone else?” said Josquin sharply. I recoiled at the rebuke; I had never seen him cross before. “I speak on Count Pesavolta’s authority,” he said, “but I have to be circumspect with it. He’s no hereditary monarch, ordained by Heaven, whose caprices none may question. He rules by the goodwill of his baronets. I’ve spent enough of Count Pesavolta’s capital here to make myself uncomfortable. If I throw it back in Lord Donques’s face, suddenly my credibility—and the count’s—would be in question. It would unbalance the whole economy of rule.”
I could see no argument to make; he understood the peculiar politics of Ninys, and I did not. I acquiesced with a little bow and set off toward the infirmary to see Abdo. Josquin, perhaps sensing that he’d been hard on me, called after: “If you’re worried about our safety, Seraphina, we’ll have him bound. The Eight know what they’re doing.”
I turned to face him, walking backward a few steps while I bowed again, smiling to cover the unnameable dread in my heart. The Eight might bind Gianni’s limbs, but it was the person who’d bound his mind who scared me.
We reached the capital in half the time it had taken us to reach the mountains, thanks to good Ninysh roads, a guide who knew them all, and the fact that we were no longer actively searching for anyone. Josquin knew where to change horses and where it was safe to ride after dark. Gianni Patto, his hands bound and a lead line tied securely around his torso like a harness, kept up with the horses easily. He made no aggressive move toward anyone, and his ice-blue eyes remained benignly unfocused.
I watched him like a hawk, but Jannoula did not speak through him again. At night, in my garden of grotesques, there was an ache where Tiny Tom had been.
Abdo was in pain and barely spoke. The monk’s blade seemed to have severed more than just the tendons of his wrist; it had pierced his buoyant spirit somehow. How would the injury affect his dancing? Being robbed of music would have been a mortal blow to me; dancing surely meant as much to him. The Eight took turns riding with him, even the ones who’d made St. Ogdo’s sign. He was a child, first and foremost, and that brought out their empathy. He sat curled on the saddle horn, resting his head upon a gleaming breastplate.
Darkness had fallen and mist was rising over the lowland farms when the torches of Segosh finally winked into sight ahead of us. The two youngest of our guards gave cries of joy and spurred their tired horses onward, racing for the city gates.
“Youth is wasted on the young,” laughed Moy, who was carrying Abdo.
Shouts of alarm rang out from the gatehouse ahead; our bravos replied with something vaguely obscene. Seven weeks’ travel, and my Ninysh had increased by only the rudest words. The gatehouse guard returned the compliment, and there was laughter all round.
The city gates opened, iron hinges complaining shrilly. Upon a tiny pale donkey, swearing heartily herself, Dame Okra Carmine rode out, followed by a man in dark robes. Reflected torchlight danced upon her spectacles; a smirk played on her lips. “Don’t look so astonished,” she called, spurring her wee steed forward. “My premonitions of you, Seraphina, give me a very particular stomachache, like eating bad beets.”
“I think of myself as more of a turnip,” I said, parrying insult with absurdity.
She emitted a short laugh, then shouted something in Ninysh to the severe-looking man who’d ridden out behind her. “This is Dr. Belestros, Count Pesavolta’s physician,” Dame Okra explained. “If you want to keep doing handsprings, Abdo, you’d better let this fellow take you to the palace.”
I don’t like her premonitions, fretted Abdo. She prods without permission.
I’m not sure she can help it, I said.
She’s just had one about Moy, said Abdo.
“Moy,” called Dame Okra, “don’t hand the child across; you’ll drop him. Follow Dr. Belestros to Palasho Pesavolta.”
“Of course, Ambassadress,” said Moy, bowing his head to Dame Okra and letting Dr. Belestros ride ahead. Abdo met my gaze as they rode away; I couldn’t read his expression in the darkness.
They’ll take good care of you. I’ll see you tomorrow, I said, relieved that Abdo’s wrist, at least, might find healing. Abdo made no reply.
Dame Okra, having settled the matter of Abdo’s arm, turned her donkey toward our remaining guard. Gianni Patto stood docilely behind the horses, his crooked mouth agape. Dame Okra gave an exaggerated sniff and said, “Is this the newest member of our big ugly family, then? He’s whiffier than you mentioned.”
“I couldn’t find words to describe it,” I said.
“Well, he’s not staying at my house,” said the old woman flatly.
“Technically, he’s under arrest,” said Josquin, reining his horse alongside mine.
Dame Okra wrinkled her snub nose and scowled. “I don’t know where you think the count can keep him. You!” she called to the remains of our escort. “Take this hideous beast-thing up to the palace and quarter it in the count’s third stable, the empty one. No point traumatizing Pesavolta’s racehorses on top of everything else.”
Our soldiers cheered; once Gianni was put away, they’d be free to go home. I felt a pang of homesickness myself, but the bulk of my mission was still ahead of me. I couldn’t linger here if I was to reach the Samsamese highlands by St. Abaster’s Day, and beyond that was Porphyry. Would Abdo have to stay behind while his arm healed?
It felt overwhelming just then, especially if I had to face it alone.
Josquin lingered beside me while the others rode toward the gates. I glanced at him, then looked again because he was staring back at me, his gingery eyebrows raised. “It was a good journey, Seraphina,” he said, bowing slightly in the saddle. “I feel privileged to have traveled with you.”
“I feel the same,” I said, surprised at the lump in my throat. Josquin had become a dear friend; I was going to miss him.
“Best of luck on your road ahead,” he said, winding a finger in his scraggly beard, “and the blessings of St. Nola, who watches our steps. I hope that when you’re finished, when you’ve found all of your kind and the war is over and you have leisure to do so, you will come back and visit us and tell us what adventures you have passed.”
“Saints in Heaven. Breathe, boy!” cried Dame Okra crossly. “And then get gone with your fellows. This one’s not for you, as you well know.”
Josquin stiffened, mortified; it was too dark to tell whether he turned red, but the speed with which he spurred his horse toward the city gate suggested an affirmative.
I may have blushed as well. Who can say? It was dark.
His fellows had not yet entered the city. Gianni Patto had balked before the gate, agitated for the first time since Donques. He dug in with his clawed feet and would not take another step; he roared and tore at his bindings. The guards surrounded him, sensibly dismounting so as not to be yanked off their horses.
As Josquin rode up to help, I said to Dame Okra, “Did you have to be so mean?”
She sneered. “To my weedy great-great-grand-cousin? I’m astonished you care. He was going to lean in and kiss you next.”
She was exaggerating, although my heated face didn’t seem to think so. I waved her off impatiently. “Don’t tell me you had a premonition.”
She said, “There are things one can foresee without a pre … mo …”
I squinted at her. If she hadn’t had a premonition before, she was having an enormous one now: one hand clutched her stomach, and her eyes were glassy.
“Dame Okra?” I said.
She snapped out of her trance, swaying disorientedly in the saddle, and screamed, “Josquin, hold on!”
Josquin turned toward us in confusion, as if he couldn’t make sense of her words. Gianni Patto threw his head back and roared, the loudest, most nightmarish sound I had ever heard a living creature produce. All the horses startled, but Josquin’s bucked and reared. Josquin flailed wildly, but couldn’t grasp the saddle horn in time. He was thrown, landing on the flagstones with a sickening thud.
I leaped from my horse and was running before I had time to think. Josquin’s legs lay crumpled at a gruesomely wrong angle; his face glistened, sweaty and greenish in the torchlight. I knelt beside the herald and took his hand, my throat clenched too tightly to speak.
“Can’t feel my legs,” gasped Josquin, trying awfully to smile. “I know that’s bad, but … feeling them might be … worse.”
The gatehouse guards rushed up with a field stretcher, shooing me away. Josquin smiled bravely one last time as they transferred and lifted him. They carried him away, and I stared after in a mute haze, a buzzing like wasps in my ears.
Gianni Patto had gone slack and stupid and docile again. The Eight, who had swarmed him, shouted blue murder and waved their blades in his face; Gianni didn’t flinch or defend himself. He made no squeak of protest when they knocked him down and began to kick him.
“Stop,” I said, too feebly to be effective. “Stop!” I shouted louder, rushing up to Nan and tugging on her arm. She glanced at me, and my face was enough. She pulled the woman next to her off Gianni, and then the pair put a quick halt to the kicking. The soldiers stepped back, breathing heavily; tears streaked more faces than just mine.
Gianni Patto raised his face from the paving stones; his icy eyes met mine with a gaze of such piercing lucidity that I staggered back as if struck. He smiled eerily.
For a moment I feared I might vomit.
“Fee-naaaah!” Gianni’s voice rumbled like thunder.
“Take him away,” I said, averting my eyes. “And for Heaven’s sake, be careful.”
They hobbled his ankles and strapped his arms to his sides; he rose, awkward and unresisting, and followed them into the city, his taloned feet scratching and chattering on the stones.
Dame Okra, strangely, had neither dismounted nor moved; she stared intently into the darkness, breathing hard. Her forehead glistened with sweat and her eyes bulged.
I shakily mounted my horse, trying to slow my jittering heart. It had happened so fast. “He isn’t usually like this,” I said numbly, as if that might reassure Dame Okra or myself. I knew what must have happened. Jannoula had surely been present in him again. Had she made Gianni scream? Had she hurt him? What was she up to? I couldn’t begin to think; dread clung to me like a wet blanket.
“Eh?” said Dame Okra abruptly, as if startling awake. “Did you say something?”
I opened my mouth and closed it again, out of words. Dame Okra hadn’t even reacted to Josquin’s injury; she was mean, but not usually that mean.
“Then let’s get back to the house. I have a most fearsome headache, and it’s late,” she snapped accusingly, as if I were the one keeping her out past her bedtime.
She spurred her donkey forward, not bothering to see whether I followed.