Or it could be both of us drawing attention because it’s quiet enough that a rather noisy activity from two floors up might have carried. My cheeks burn at the thought.
From a far corner, a willowy young woman offers me a tentative wave.
I frown. Do I know her…
It’s the sobbing girl from the pillory. I scan the faces around her. They’re all here. Dressed and healthy, though visibly nervous, several of them stealing frequent glances at the intersecting crescent moons marked on their hands.
“Their keepers were poisoned, and many of them have tainted blood. No one will take them in. Elisaf told them to come here until we can decide what to do with them,” Zander says, answering my unasked question.
“We already know what to do with them.” I offer the girl a small smile.
“Why do I suspect you have dug your heels in on this matter?”
“Because you’re more than a good lay? And by lay, I mean you’re good at—”
“I understand.” He flashes an exasperated look, but the corners of his mouth curve.
Two legionaries linger nearby, waiting. It’s obvious they want to speak to Zander.
“I will bring you something to eat.” He ushers me in the other direction, where Gesine, Abarrane, Jarek, and Elisaf sit. “You can be angry with me if it makes you feel better, but do not take it out on Gesine. She had no choice.”
“I thought we all have a choice,” I mutter, heading for the table, my stomach tense at the sight of Jarek. The truth is, I’m not really angry with Zander. Annoyed, yes. But I think it’s disappointment that overwhelms me. I’d convinced myself that this prophecy was true. I wanted it to be true.
But now I appreciate Zander’s warnings about Mordain and casters, and the half-truths they deliver that may as well be blatant lies. If Gesine had told us from the beginning that I needed to open the nymphaeum door to end this blood curse, we might never have left Cirilea together.
“… not understand how two legionaries have utterly vanished from this town, and no one can tell us anything.” Abarrane punctuates her anger by stabbing her sausage link with a fork. “It does not make sense.”
“You beheaded the one with the answers. That did not make sense either.” Jarek stirs a heaping spoonful of honey into a mug of tea. It seems so out of character for a warrior whose diet has consisted solely of roasted meat, apples, and young women up until now.
I bite my tongue against the urge to make a joke—Abarrane’s liable to spear me for finding humor in anything—and take the seat at the end across from Gesine. “What about Isembert’s servants? Do they know anything?”
“His tributaries, I found in a cellar like pigeons, wallowing in their filth, kept there so they could not poison themselves and kill him. If they knew something, they would have sung the moment I unlocked the door.”
“What about a wife? Did he have one?”
“A wife and several mistresses. They welcomed his cock but not his secrets.” She sneers. “Fools, all of them. Even you have more sense than that.” She gets up and marches out the door.
“I think that was meant as a compliment?” I say to no one in particular.
Elisaf watches her go. “She would have handled this better had she found her men hanging from the gallows. It is this in-between she struggles with most.”
“She doesn’t like feeling helpless. None of us do.” Jarek’s focus drifts out the window. He hasn’t made eye contact with me yet, which is not normal. He’s usually thrown in at least one barbed insult by now.
Is Zander right and it’s his pride over being kept in the dark that has him so angry? Just as I am unhappy with being kept in the dark about something that undoubtedly involves me?
Or is Jarek plotting to kill me in the name of Islor?
“Here. It looks mildly edible.” Zander sets a bowl of oats in front of me.
“Thank you.” This may be the first time the king of Islor has ever served me. “Has anyone seen Pan?”
“He was here, looking for you. Abarrane scared him away.” Gesine adjusts her cloak to cover her gold collar before displaying a polite smile at the older couple who gawks from several tables over.
“Good. I was worried he might have run off after last night.”
“He is not going anywhere. He knows the safest place is with us.” Zander takes Abarrane’s spot, plucking the sausage link off her abandoned plate.
“And what of the other mortals?” Elisaf asks.