“Out of your reach.”
“Have you killed them?”
“If it weren’t for her foot, I would consider taking your sister as a concubine. Her intelligence is astonishing, and she’s a lovely girl.”
With a false smile scalded onto my lips, I silently count to ten, and then ten more.
He smiles. “Very good, Jessamy. You are learning self-control. Good Goat! She’s not a true Patron woman, despite her looks. As it happens, Menos has taken an intense liking to your sister. In the outer precinct of the temple, where boys live for their first two years, they are allowed attendants. Who am I to deny him such comfort when he will afterward live a stringent and severe life in the service of the gods? Anyway, she is a brilliant tutor. I already see great improvement in his grasp of the Precepts.”
“She is pregnant.”
“Indeed she is, and not the first woman to be so encumbered, nor will she be the last.”
“What will happen to the baby?” I demand.
“You must accept that the baby’s destiny is out of your hands.”
“Do you mean to have it killed?”
“I do not like this tone from you.” His hands tighten on the whip.
I swallow my temper like sour wine. “What do you mean to do with me?”
“Why, Jessamy, I told you when I brought you to Garon Stable that first day what would happen if you did not pass muster.” He taps the whip against my knee. “Imagine all you might have had and the glory and triumphs you could have won as an Illustrious! You have brought this on yourself.”
We travel across the windswept plateau of the table mountain and descend its northern flank into a barren ravine. Cliffs hem us in like fortress walls. Sentinel towers rise from their heights, silhouetted by the sky, as we negotiate a guarded bottleneck. What lies beyond must be extremely valuable if it’s guarded so tightly.
Stony hills devoid of vegetation are pitted with cave openings supported by pillars, the entrances to many small mineshafts. Outside the shafts, under the merciless sun, men hammer chunks of stone into smaller pieces. Most of the workers are Efean, dressed in keldis so worn they are little more than rags. Those branded with a criminal’s mark on their shoulder come in all kinds, Saroese and foreigners as well as Efeans. Every one wears the gray look of people aware they are dying step-by-step.
Patron guards watch the carriage with the curiosity of people who see the same boringly cruel sights every day. Workers glance up before their overseers crack them back to work.
We pass through a dusty settlement tucked away in a side gully and enter the courtyard of an auspiciously large compound painted with bright murals as if to hide from the grit and misery outside. A man wearing an Inkos priest’s garb hurries out with a coterie of fawning servants and unctuous clerks scurrying behind him.
“Your Holiness. I believe you are expecting me.”
“Lord Gargaron! I had the message from a crow just a short while ago. Please, refreshments await you.” He stares as I climb out of the wagon, but recovers. “This way.”
The audience hall has incongruously exquisite couches, silk embroidered with delicate songbirds and windblown petals. Desperately thirsty, I wait as the lords drink.
“I am leaving a valuable object with you, Your Holiness,” says Gargaron. “See that she is put to work, but do not allow her to be molested in any way. Let me make myself clear: what the king has claimed belongs to him alone.”
“Like the land of Efea,” I mutter, although I ought to keep my mouth shut.
“Quite so,” he agrees blithely. “Who more than you is like the land of Efea, Spider?”
The thought that I am to be spared from assault makes me feel a rush of heady relief succeeded immediately by a wave of disgust and anger that I will receive a privilege not afforded to others.
Gargaron goes on. “You may beat her if she is recalcitrant. The point is, if she dies, you will have me to answer to, and you don’t want that.”
The priest sets down his cup as if the wine has turned to venom. “Of course not, my lord. But—”
“That is all you need to know. No matter what message you receive, or what person may arrive here, she will not leave this place unless I come personally to take her. Do you understand?”
He looks at me as he says it.
I always answer a challenge. “You want me alive to keep Kal as your puppet.”
He whips me across the face.
The pain slashes so hard tears spill instantly out of my eyes, and then I realize the liquid streaming down my cheek isn’t tears; it is blood. The whip has opened a gash on my right brow, a throbbing agony that doubles me over as I struggle not to cry because I will not weep in front of him.
“If you were dead, then our trial would be over and where is the challenge in that? Knowing you seek routes of escape but are trapped because your sister will be killed if you run is part of my victory. But yes, you are also a hostage. I have my own position to protect. So I am holding you in reserve.”
I straighten, a hand pressed to the gash, blood leaking through my fingers and clouding my vision. “It’s over between him and me. It’s better this way. He said so himself.”
A clot of grief chokes me, and it’s hard to go on but I force the words out.
“He’ll marry Princess Talessa and forget all about me.”
“Ah, Jessamy. If you believe His Gracious Majesty’s affections are so trifling, then you do not know him at all. I’ve come to see it is his good nature and sincerity that make him dangerous and unpredictable.”
The fear I have felt for myself is nothing compared to the sink of terror that opens up beneath me now. “Are you going to kill him once you no longer have a use for him? Like you killed his father and grandfather? Set a child king in his place? He won’t go down easily! He’s smarter and tougher than you think.”
“Good Goat! Do you still believe the poetical fiction that I brought about the deaths of my uncle Menos and his son? I merely took advantage of the openings their improvident deaths gave me. As for the other, do you honestly imagine a child can lead armies or rule a powerful and wealthy kingdom?”
“A general can lead an army in the name of a child. Powerful advisers can rule powerful and wealthy kingdoms on behalf of underage rulers. It’s been done before.”
“My one regret is that you could not see where your best advantage lies.”
“Where is that?”
“Why, with me.”
He picks up a covered brass bowl and takes off the lid to contemplate the unmistakable gleam of gold dust and nuggets. The sheer wealth takes my breath away.
“You and I are alike, Jessamy. We unravel the complicated patterns within the spinning Rings before others do. Working together, we could have mapped a path to the victory tower. You would have been celebrated as one of the great Illustrious of the land. But it is not to be. We must all take the long view, as you will discover, for it may be years before I return to fetch you, if I ever do.”