Linsha listened to the brass’s words in her head and felt a deep sadness. The Tarmaks had not only broken her wings and chained her leg, they had almost broken her spirit. Most healthy, self-respecting adult dragons would have tried to fight their way out of this cave years ago. But the Tarmaks had kept this young one in such a state of bondage and fear that she believed in her own captivity. Maybe now she and Sirenfal could change that.
“I must be married in three days,” Linsha said.
Yes, I heard. To the Akkad-Dar. Will you go through with it?
“Not if I can change it. He has already told me he will not return me to my home. How much time do you need to regain enough strength to fly?”
Sirenfal thought for a moment or two. A few days would help me.
“Then in two days I will try to come to you. We will get out of here together.”
Voices echoed in the tunnel above, sending shivers down Linsha’s back.
Sirenfal’s mental voice took on an overtone of panic. Get out. Go while you can. I will wait, two days, two hundred days.
Linsha leaned over the dragon’s back, hauled her long nose to eye level and said fiercely, “No. If something happens to me, find a way to get out! You can do it! Go to the Plains of Dust and find a dragon named Crucible. Tell him about me. You have to promise!”
Sirenfal’s eyes gleamed with a sickly light of fear, but she seemed to take strength from the intensity in the woman’s voice. She bowed her head and closed her eyes. “I promise,” she told Linsha softly.
Like a deer before wolves, Linsha broke for the passage opening, sprinting with all her strength as the voices in the stair tunnel grew louder. As soon as she was in the shelter of the darkness beyond the torchlight, she slowed and turned for one last look at the brass dragon. Sirenfal had returned to her former sleeping position, head under wing and tail curled around her body. Voices echoed in the cave around her, and to her dismay, one voice sounded like Lanther.
Linsha did not wait to see if she was right. Fear put speed in her feet and led her back on the path to the small entry cave where the two guards still slept by the embers of their fire. Outside the rain fell in the sheets and the wind howled around the island.
Linsha woke to the sound of the bell calling women to morning exercise. With a groan she rolled over to her back on her damp pallet and stared at the ceiling. She hoped never to go through another night like that again. Climbing down the cliff and entering the dragon’s cave had not been extremely difficult, nor had escaping the cave. The guards had still been unconscious when she slipped by them and hurried out of the cave. Going back up the cliff in the heavy rain had been almost impossible.
The trouble had started when she realized the waves, driven by the powerful winds and incoming tide, washed up against the stony face of the promontory. She’d had to fight her way back through water that sometimes surged up around her hips and threatened to drag her out into the bay. Finding the rope she had left anchored ten feet up the slope had not been easy either. She struggled back and forth along the rocky slope where she thought she had left the rope and finally found it when she saw it flapping loose in the wind.
But if it hadn’t been for that rope, she would never have made it back up the cliff face. Instead of a dry descent in the dark, she had a miserable ascent on steep rocks turned slippery and treacherous from the rain. By the time she reached the top of the promontory, her entire body hurt. Bruised and breathless, she’d had to rest before she could even consider climbing the rope up the palace wall. The driving wind and rain helped shield her from Tarmak eyes and kept the guards huddled down behind crenellations or in the tower, but they also buffeted her against the stone wall and made the rope as hard to hold as a wet snake. Her arms and legs, already tired and sore from the treacherous climb up the rocks, trembled and burned by the time she lifted her head over the wall and flopped on the walkway like a gasping fish. Guards or no guards, she’d huddled in the shelter of the tower to regain enough strength to haul up her rope, stumble down the stairs, and return to the women’s quarters before she was missed at dawn. She’d hid the dark clothes, retrieved her own wet tunic, and hurried cold and wet to her pallet to snatch an hour’s sleep.
Now, like it or not, it was time to get up.
Callista stopped in the doorway. “Thank goodness you’re back,” she whispered. She came in bearing a cup of hot spiced tea and the usual dodgagd juice. Linsha gratefully drank them both.
She groaned and lay back for a moment, her eyes closed. “We will go tomorrow night,” she told Callista in a hushed voice. “Before the ceremony. We will need warm clothes, water, and food if you can get it.”
Callista grinned in delight. “I will.”
Although she was sore and bone-weary, Linsha went out for her morning run with the other women. She wanted to appear as normal as possible and give the Tarmaks no reason to be suspicious. But she received a nasty shock when she came in from her run. Two large Akeelawasee guards waited for her at the dining hall. They were from the ketkullik that usually guarded the entrances and walls of the women’s enclosure, not the eunuchs who were permitted inside, so their presence created a stir among the women. The females looked askance, talked behind their hands, and gave the big guards a wide berth. The Empress did not look pleased either, but she made no attempt to have them removed. The guards stood behind Linsha while she wolfed down her meal, and they followed her every step through the morning.
Her thoughts and emotions went through a crazy whirl of fear that the Tarmaks had learned of her clandestine visit to Sirenfal. Had the guards in the cave outpost recognized her? Had she left footprints? Had the dragon been forced to reveal their plans? Her guards said nothing to her. They only watched with cold eyes and dogged her every move. They wouldn’t talk to her even when she demanded answers. Yet they did not search her belongings for ropes or stolen clothes or the carefully hoarded pouch of powder from Afec, and they did not try to drag her before Lanther.
She wished she could talk to Afec, who might know what was going on. But with the guards on her heels, she did not dare approach him for fear of drawing undue attention to him. She waited hopefully for him to come to her in the afternoon for another lecture on Tarmak customs, but the Damjatt was nowhere to be seen, pushing Linsha into more dreadful speculation that perhaps the Tarmak had imprisoned him and were torturing him for his knowledge of her plots. When he did not appear by evening, Linsha grew truly worried. She could not think of a day when she had not seen him somewhere around the Akeelawasee busy at his tasks.
As exhausted as she was, Linsha could only sleep in fits and starts that night while her brain ran over every worry and fear she had concocted. She hoped fervently the guards would be gone the next morning, but one look at Callista’s face at dawn told her they were still there just outside the sleeping quarters.
“What are we going to do?” the courtesan murmured while she served the juice. “If the guards stay with you, we won’t be able to get out of here.”
“I know, I know,” Linsha replied, her mood made sharp by lack of sleep and her own deep apprehension. “Do you know where Afec is? Have you seen him at all?”
“Not since yesterday. He received orders to attend the priests.”
“That does not sound good,” Linsha muttered.
“No.” Callista put a dainty hand on Linsha’s arm and tried to smile. “I have the water and the food we need. I am trying to find some warm tunics or cloaks. What do you want me to do tonight?”