After a while the sun slipped behind some clouds. Shrouded from the glare, his sweat from the climb now dried, Pasevalles began to walk the rectangular tower-top, something he did whenever he could find the chance, in search of that catlike feeling of peace. Holy Tree Tower had been built in the years after the Storm King’s War, when the Hayholt’s two tallest structures had both become useless. Hjeldin’s Tower—the squat, brooding cylinder of stone he looked down on now—had been sealed up at the order of the king and queen, and Green Angel Tower, which had soared far above everything else, had collapsed in the final hours of the struggle. A castle without a tower was like a rich man without eyes, a target for thieves and bandits, and so a new tower had been constructed against the wall of the Inner Keep, a high place where sentries could stand and look over the innermost lands of the king’s and queen’s protection—the heart of the High Ward.
Pasevalles gazed at the secretive mass of Hjeldin’s Tower, its premises forbidden to all for many years. Then he continued along the tower battlements until he could look down on the spot where mighty Green Angel Tower had once stretched to the sky. What a thing it must have been, he thought, to have stood atop it—twice this height or more!—and looked out across the world. No cat, no matter how ambitious, could be displeased with such a perch!
Even the rubble of Green Angel Tower was long gone, hauled off to rebuild the ruined parts of the castle after the last, dreadful battle; all that had remained for many years were the faint marks of its foundations. Now even those were gone, the ground filled and leveled, and foundations laid for a new hall that would become the royal library. Lord Tiamak thought a monument to learning would be a fitting use for the place where the Storm King had almost managed to tear open the world and turn it inside out, but Pasevalles was not so sure.
Learning itself cannot stop destruction or repair its ravages, he thought, suddenly caught up in old sorrows. It can only make certain that you understand how much you have truly lost.
He straightened, stretched. Those were not the kind of thoughts he wished to have now. He had carefully, deliberately put those bad days in the past and turned his back on them. He had work to do now—a kingdom to care for.
He heard footsteps and voices. The sentries, whom he had sent off to find themselves a drink and a late morning meal, were climbing the stairs back to their posts. Pasevalles took a long breath and tasted rain coming. The king and queen would be back in a few weeks and there was much to do.
Still, he regretted having to descend the stairs, not because of the wearying journey, but because he hated leaving the quiet and isolation of the heights. He had not realized before how lonely it was to rule a kingdom, as he had been doing in the royal couple’s absence. And it was lonelier still when you were surrounded by the voices and faces of all the people that wanted something from you.
“God give you good day, Lord Chancellor!” said the first sentry onto the tower top. His beard was shiny with butter, and crumbs were caught in the sleeves of his hauberk. “Did you have yourself a breath of fresh air?” The second one climbed up behind the first, then they both turned toward him and clutched their pikes in formal salute.
“I did,” Pasevalles said, smiling. “Enjoy the view, men. You do not know it, but you have a better job than mine.”
As he stepped into the stairwell, he saw the two sentries exchange puzzled looks.
? ? ?
Pasevalles had climbed many more steps by the time he reached the residence hall of the Inner Bailey and the bedchamber where he had installed the wounded Sitha. He was given no time to rest, though: instead of the sentry who should have been standing guard at the door, two frightened chambermaids huddled there, faces pale as cooked fish, and he could hear men shouting beyond the door. He drew his knife and hurried forward.
“What has happened?” he demanded.
One of the maids said, “Oh, my lord, she is awake—and angry!”
He sprang past her and threw open the door to discover the even more surprising spectacle of Brother Etan and an armored Erkynguard wrestling with a naked woman. “What is the meaning of this?” Pasevalles shouted.
Brother Etan had several long scratches on his face, and blood dripped from his chin. “She woke and attacked me!” He struggled to keep the Sitha’s long nails from scoring him again. “Help us, your Lordship! By my vow, she is ungodly strong!”
The guardsman had his arms around the woman’s slender waist and was doing his best to hold her down on the bed while she slapped at his helmeted head. Etan had managed to catch one of her arms, so Pasevalles threw himself forward and caught the other. The monk was right—the woman, who had seemed nearly dead only a couple of days earlier, was astonishingly strong, and the sweat that coated her limbs made it difficult to find and hold a grip. At last Pasevalles pushed her arm down onto the mattress and lay atop it, but he could still feel her pulling and twisting beneath him like some powerful serpent of the far southern swamps.
“Lady!” he cried. “Lady! You are among friends! Stop fighting us! We will not hurt you!”
He turned his head sideways to see her better, and was nearly rewarded with the loss of his nose as she bit at him savagely, her teeth snapping shut only a thumb’s width from his face. “Redeemer save us, is she mad?” he shouted.
“Does it matter?” croaked Etan. The collar of his robe had been pushed halfway over his face so that he seemed to have shrunk to the size of a child. “Mad, sane, either way she is fierce. Call more guards!”
But the Sitha, as though Pasevalles’ words had traveled to her slowly, over a long distance, at last began to calm. He risked another look and saw her head sag back and her astounding golden eyes roll up beneath the lids. She went limp then, and for a moment all four of them, three good sized men and one slender woman, lay on the bed, struggling for air together.
Pasevalles felt something wet, and rolled a little to the side to see what it was. “By the Aedon, this is blood! Everywhere! Etan, is this all yours?”
The monk groaned. “It feels like it, Lord Steward, but I fear it’s hers. She has reopened the wounds I stitched closed. May God help us, we must close them or she will bleed to death.”
Pasevalles loosened his grip on her arm to see whether she would resume her struggle, but her pale golden face and limbs had gone slack. He sat up. “Get something to tie her down,” he told the guard. “Not rope, something softer. The ties from those curtains.” He watched the guardsman hesitate in front of the window, taking off his helmet to peer at the window fittings like a cow ordered to jump a tall fence. “God curse it, man, don’t stare!” Pasevalles cried. “Rip them down!”
The soldier returned with an expression of deep unease on his perspiring face and a curtain tie in each hand. Pasevalles snatched them from him and, although she was no longer resisting, tied the Sitha’s ankles to the footboard of the bed, pulling the makeshift ropes tight before knotting them. Brother Etan tilted the upper half of her body onto its side so he could examine her bleeding wounds. She seemed quite insensible now, but Pasevalles was not going to rely on this strange creature, who only looked like a mortal woman, to remain passive for very long, so he sent the bemused guard for ties from the chamber’s other set of curtains, then used one to bind her wrists together before dismissing the guard back to his post. The large man all but ran from the room, giving one last wide-eyed look before closing the door.
Pasevalles would have preferred to tie both the Sitha’s arms separately, as he had done with her legs, but he did not want to interfere with Brother Etan, who was stanching the blood still seeping from her wounds. He sat on the floor and held her bound wrists instead. “What do you think?”
“Think? I think I know nothing about the Fair Folk, Lord Steward. She has lost much blood.” The monk shook his head. “As have I! But she had lost far more before she came here, and she survived that.”
Her nakedness was disconcerting—in repose she looked much like an ordinary, slender young woman. Pasevalles was about to reach down and pull the coverlet up over her lower body when the Sitha-woman’s eyes fluttered open again. For a moment, they seemed to rove unfixed, then they narrowed. She tried to fling herself off the bed again, but was hindered by her bound ankles and only succeeded in bucking off Etan, who tumbled onto the floor on the far side of the bed and cracked his head against the stone flags so loudly that Pasevalles could hear it. Meanwhile, it was all Pasevalles could do to hold onto the curtain tie knotted around her wrists. She cried out in what he guessed was her Sithi tongue, but the stream of rapid, fluid sound meant nothing to him.
“Lady!” he cried again, as Etan slowly crawled back onto the bed, a red lump already showing itself above his eye, “Lady, stop! We will not hurt you! You have been wounded, and you must not fight us!”
It took a moment, but he saw something like understanding pass over her, and her features softened, but she still fought against the restraints.
“Where . . . where are they?” she said in perfectly understandable Westerling. “Where are my things?”