“The what?”
“The elder figs. We need black figs to . . . to . . . I don’t know how you say it. To make them fruit. To give them life, to . . .”
“To cross-pollinate?”
Foxbrush stopped in his tracks. His heart froze, then leapt to his throat and thundered there to escape. Not even when he’d fled the sylphs and the wasps had it pounded so vehemently. “You cross-pollinate black figs with elder figs?”
Lark shrugged. “Without black figs, elder figs can’t be eaten. Hurry up!” She was nearly out of sight within a few paces, so thick was the growth over that trail. Still it was several moments before Foxbrush could find the breath to leap after her.
He could not believe it! Of all the unbelievabilities he’d faced in recent life, this was by far the most outrageous!
“I can save Southlands,” he whispered. Then he laughed a choking, gasping, desperate sort of laugh, and tears sprang to his eyes. “I can save Southlands!”
23
LIONHEART WOKE from violent, unruly dreams to discover that the baron had mostly cut through his bindings.
It took him a moment to realize what was happening. After sitting for so many hours, his body felt like a bundle of knotted cord. He’d not intended to drift off, and he shook himself now, desperate to regain consciousness. His brain was full of red wolf and barren landscape, and he sat in a haze, trying to clear these images from his mind.
With a start like a kick in the stomach, he saw what the baron was doing and was on his feet and surging across the room before his legs were quite ready to move. Thus he fell headlong into the baron but succeeded in knocking the little knife from his hands and sending it clattering across the floor.
“Dragons eat you,” said the baron in a voice that would freeze bonfires. He said nothing more but sat watching with a calculating gaze as Lionheart retied his bonds, now with a much shorter length from the iron ring.
Exhausted and bleary, Lionheart backed away from the baron, studying him. Where had that knife come from? The man was barefoot and bereft of his outer garments. But his undershirt was billowy and dark and might conceal many things.
Lionheart plucked his own knife from his belt and stepped forward. He saw the baron flinch, but only just; after all, he’d expected murder all along.
“If I were going to kill you, I wouldn’t have gone through all this bother,” Lionheart said as he cut away the baron’s shirt and pulled it off his body in rags. There were two more knives attached to his elbows and one tiny penknife at his wrist. Lionheart appropriated these and, after a moment’s hesitation, tossed them out one of the windows to break upon the courtyard stones below. “Even I’m not such a fool.”
“Fool enough,” the baron said. He looked strangely . . . small. Stripped of his majestic trimmings, not to mention the hidden weapons, he was almost a pathetic sight.
Yet his eyes were like knives themselves.
“Do you hear that sound, Eldest’s son?” he asked even as Lionheart returned to lean his back against the great, heavy door.
Listening despite himself, Lionheart heard nothing; nothing save a faint murmur far below, the clatter of hooves in the courtyard, and occasional gruff shouts. North Tower stood too high above it all for him to make out any words.
It took him a moment to realize what the baron meant. No one was knocking at the chamber door.
“That is the sound of your doom brewing,” said the baron softly. “First they flung themselves against the breakers, useless and weak. Now they mass for a tidal wave that will sweep you away.”
“Right.” Lionheart offered the baron a grim half smile. “But only if they can get through the door.”
“How long do you think you can hide in here?” the baron persisted, twisting in the attempt to find a more comfortable position. With the rope shortened, his wrists bound together at chin level, comfort became an elusive friend at best. “How long do you hope to prevent me from taking my rightful place as master of this kingdom?”
“At least as long as the supplies hold out,” Lionheart said with a shrug.
“What supplies?”
All along Lionheart had known this was a foolish plan, though, if asked, he would have preferred the word daring. Kidnapping the most powerful man in the nation on his coronation day was perhaps not the wisest notion ever to take a young rebel’s fancy.
But it might have worked. The baroness, after all, had proven a willing and even reasonably cunning ally. Had she not made certain the door to this chamber was open and ready? Had she not sent servants discreetly bearing rope in readiness for her husband’s binding?
Had she not promised to supply abundant food and water for the probability of a long siege?