CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

ISTA HAD JUST FINISHED WASHING, OR AT LEAST, CLEANING, HER body with a half cup of water and some rags when Liss returned to their chambers. She clutched a pile of white garments in her arms, pushing open the inner door with a twist of her hips. "These are the best Cattilara's women could find in a hurry," she announced.

"Good. Put them on the bed." Ista closed the dirty black robe back about herself and came over to examine them. It had not been, by any definition, a bath, but at least the touch of her less-sticky skin against clean clothing might not feel like some violation. "How fares the marchess?"

"She is asleep now. Or unconscious. I really couldn't be quite sure, looking at her. She was very pale and gray."

"Just as well, either way. The blood she spent on the tower buys her a favor, perhaps, in this drained slumber." Ista sorted through the piles. A linen shift the color of new cream, bordered with elaborate cutwork, looked as though it had a hem short enough that she would not trip over it. A delicate white over robe, embroidered in shining white thread that lent it weight and swing, was a Bastard's Day festival garment. The unknown needlewoman had somehow endowed the friezes of tiny dancing rats and crows with considerable charm. "Perfect," Ista murmured, holding it up. The spark, she noticed, was gone from her left hand, though the frost mark on her skin remained.

"My lady, urn... isn't it a little provocative to place yourself in Quadrene hands wearing the Bastard's own color?"

Ista smiled grimly. "Let them imagine so. Its real message is one I do not expect them to read. Haste, now. Tie the ribbons of the shift in back straightly, please."

Liss did so, cinching in the graceful waist. Ista pulled on the over-robe, shook out the wide sleeves, and fastened it closed beneath her breasts with the amethyst-and-silver mourning brooch. The meaning of the heirloom had shifted, it seemed to her, half a dozen times since it had come into her possession. All its old woes had drained out utterly, last night. Today she wore it new-filled with stern sorrow for Arhys, and for those who had ridden with him. All about her must be renewed, in this hour.

"The hair next," she instructed, sitting on the bench. "Something quick and neat. I do not mean to go out to them looking like a madwoman dragged through a hedge, or a haystack hit by lightning." She smiled in memory. "Put it in one braid."

Liss swallowed hard and began brushing. And said, for the fourth or fifth time since dawn on the tower, "I wish you would take me with you."

"No," said Ista with regret. "Ordinarily, you would be much safer as the servant of a valuable hostage than left in a crumbling fortress about to fall. But if I should fail in what I attempt, Joen would make demon fodder of you, steal your mind and memories and courage for her own. Or take you in trade for her sorcerer-slaves that Arhys killed last night, and set you on me not as my servant but as her guard. Or worse."

And if Ista succeeded... she had no idea what might happen after that. Saints were no more immune to steel than sorcerers, as her predecessor the late saint of Rauma—was no longer able to testify.

"What could be worse?" The long strokes of the brush faltered. "Do you think she has enslaved Foix and his bear? Yet?"

"I'll know in an hour." What worse might be, should Liss fall into Joen's hands, suddenly occurred to Ista. Now that would be the perfect, unholy union of two hearts: to feed Liss to Foix's bear, and let Foix's own caring drive him mad with horror and woe as their souls mixed... Then she wondered whose mind was blacker, Joen's, to do such a thing, or her own, to impute such a course to Joen. It seems I am not a nice person, either.

Good.

"There are some white ribbons here. Should I braid them in?"

"Yes, please." The pleasant, familiar yank of the plaiting went on swiftly, behind Ista's back. "If you see any chance of it at all, I want you to escape. That is your highest duty to me now, my courier. To carry away the word of all that has happened here, though they call you mad for it. Lord dy Cazaril will believe you. At all costs, get you to him."

Silence, behind her.

"Say, I promise, Royina,'" she instructed firmly.

A little mulish hesitation, then a whisper: "I promise, Royina."

"Good." Liss pulled the last bowknot tight; Ista rose. Lady Cattilara's white silk slippers did not fit Ista, but Liss knelt and tied on a pair of pretty white sandals that did well enough, binding the ribbons around Ista's ankles.

Liss led the way to the outer chamber, opening the door to the gallery for Ista to step through.

Lord Illvin was leaning against the wall outside, arms folded. It seemed he had also found half a cup of water to bathe in, for though he still reeked more than slightly, his hands and fresh-shaved face were clean of blood and dirt. He was dressed in the colors of court mourning, in the light fabrics of this northern summer: black boots, black linen trousers, a sleeveless black tunic set off with thin lines of lavender piping, a lilac brocade sash with black tassels wrapped about his waist. In the hot noon, he had dispensed with the weight of the lavender vest-cloak, though an anxious Goram hovered with the garment folded over his arm. Goram had arranged his master's hair in the pulled-back, elegant braiding in which Ista had first seen it; the frosted black queue down the back was tied with a lavender cord. Illvin straightened as he saw her and gave her a sketch of a courtier's bow, truncated, she suspected, by bloodless dizziness.

"What is this?" she asked suspiciously.

"What, I had not thought you slow of wit, dear Royina. What does it look like?"

"You are not going with me."

He smiled down at her. "It would reflect exceedingly oddly upon the honor of Porifors to send the dowager royina of all Chalion-Ibra into captivity without even one attendant."

"That's what I said," grumbled Liss.

"The command of the fortress has fallen to you," Ista protested. "Surely you cannot leave it now."

"Porifors is a shambles. There is little in here left to defend, and not enough men left standing to defend it with, though I would prefer to conceal that fact from Sordso for a while yet. The parley for your transfer this morning has bought us hours of precious delay, which we could not have purchased with blood. So if this is to be Porifors's last sortie, I claim it by right. By the unfortunate logic of the situation, in my last bad idea, I could not ride along to correct my strategy in mid-leap. But such logic does not prevail here."

"Your riding would not have changed the outcome."

"I know."

Disconcerted, she studied him. "Do you, in some fey mood, seek to outdo your brother?"

"I never could before; I see no need to try now. No." He took her hand and made little soothing circles on her palm with his thumb. "In my youth, I was apprenticed to my god's order, but I missed the whisper of my calling. I will not miss that calling twice. Well, I scarcely see how I can, when it smacks me on the side of the head and bellows, Attend! in a voice to bring down the rafters. I spent the years of my manhood aimlessly, though well enough in my brother's service, for the lack of a better direction. I have a better direction now."

"For an hour, perhaps."

"An hour will suffice. If it is the right hour."

Arhys's forlorn page padded into the stone court, and cried from the foot of the stairs, "Royina? They are come for you now at the postern gate."

"I come," she called down gently to him. She hesitated, frowning at Illvin. "Will the Jokonans even let you go along with me?"

"They will be glad enough to have another prisoner of rank, at no further cost to themselves. It is also the perfect disguise by which I might scout their camp and number their forces."