Stonewiser: The Heart of the Stone, page 41
“Keep him under.” The Prime Hand dunked Kael's head under the water and the guards held the rest of him submerged.
“You're drowning him!”
“It will be worse if he doesn't keep his body under the water,” the mistress said. “Remember Malord's paddle?”
Kael's thrashing grew worse. His head banged against the wood. He managed a kick that hurled one of the guards against the wall. He landed a fist on Mistress Grimly's arm and tried to climb out of the tub, clinging to the tub's edge with a locked grip.
“Uncle Kael!”
“Hold it back, Mia.” Sariah jumped in the icy tub. Her legs fizzed with the poison's residual sting. Kael was fighting the ropes, the water, the pain, the guards, and now her, all at the same time. She sat on him and when that didn't work, she lay on top of him, holding on to him as tightly as she dared. “It's me, Kaelin. It's over. You're out of the poison. This is water, you see? Just water.”
“Sariah?” His eyes were open and wide, his breath came in rasping gasps.
“Be still, Kaelin, be calm.” Sariah held him down as carefully as she could. “You need to stay in the water.”
“There were ropes.” He wheezed. “I couldn't breathe.”
“You can breathe now.” She undid the ropes around his neck. “You're safe.”
She cursed the Prime Hand for her cruelty. She clung to Kael until he stopped thrashing. He was slippery between her arms, coated with slime, shaking and burning badly. She tried to infuse him with endurance and strength, but she didn't know if she had enough left in her to make a difference. She barked, “All of you, get out of here! You too, mistress. Get out of this chamber.”
Her outrage must have been persuasive because everybody but Malord and little Mia filed out of the room in abject silence.
“They're gone. It's just us. Kaelin? Just us.”
He convulsed in the icy water. He winced and squirmed and swallowed a moan that turned into a groan. “The rot take me. Can't … stand it.”
“You've got to stay in the water, do you hear me?” She held him down despite herself. “Hold on to me.”
She cradled him against her breast, caressing his hair, wiping the slime from his back, soothing him as best she could. He clung to her as if she was his last link to life. “Let go of the edge.” She peeled his fingers from the tub's edge one at the time. “We're almost done.”
“Did it work?” he rasped after a while.
“We'll know very shortly.”
“Is he all right?” Mia's eyes were immense over the tub's rim.
“He's better, Mianina.”
Kael was shaking in earnest. “Mia?”
“Hush, Kaelin. Be still. It's a long story, but all you must know now is that she's safe. I promise. Just a few more moments.”
He squeezed his eyes shut and clenched hard. Sariah wiped him down as gingerly as she could manage. She waited until the water had soaked all the black bile from his body. By then, his teeth were rattling, his lips had turned blue from the cold, and black blobs of congealed slime floated in the tub among the ice chunks.
“We'll do this slowly.” She stepped out of the tub first and put Kael's arm around her neck. “We'll do it together.”
It took a few tries. His body was slippery and he was weak and exhausted, but between Malord, Mia, and a drenched Sariah, they managed to help him to the bed without further injury. The sight of him shocked her. From the neck down, a viscous whitish coating covered him like a thick layer of rancid lard. Clumps of translucent skin peeled from his body when she patted him dry, leaving behind long strips of exposed pink tissue suppurating blood and a watery dew. Parts of his body were bleached, wrinkled, and discolored, while other parts were a macabre, mangled mess of angry pink. He flinched at her every touch; she winced each time he flinched.
Malord examined Kael's wounds. The wound's edges had turned white and thickened into rubbery crusts. The wounded flesh looked sickly gray and deflated. Where the festering had flourished before, Sariah found only loose skin and dead muscle. The hack on his leg gaped, devoid of swelling or redness. She pressed down gently on his mutilated hand. A clear discharge trickled out without a trace of pus. His forehead was cool.
“I think it's a matter of needle and thread now.” Malord began to suture the wounds, a difficult feat, given the condition of Kael's skin and the extensive carnage. On his chest, Malord had to cut the wound's rubbery edges to find healthy flesh to stitch together. Sariah applied Malord's soothing ointments to the rawest spots.
“Don't.” Kael jerked. “Let me be.”
“Only a little longer. Then you can rest.” Sariah dotted the ointment lightly on his skin.
He hissed. “No more.”
“Almost done.” Malord knotted the last of many stitches.
Mia took in everything from the foot of the bed. “You're like a snake, changing your skin, Uncle Kael. Have you been made undead?”
“No, Mianina, he wasn't dead before, just very sick.” Sariah fed him some warm broth. “He's weary, now, he can't talk to you. Maybe later. Aye? Go with Malord.”
“Come, Mia, we'll have one of those ugly guards take us to find something good to eat.” They made for an unlikely pair, the old dark wiser and the little golden girl, shuffling shoulder to shoulder through the door, sharing the solemn look of those daunted by knowledge.
Sariah placed a soft kiss on Kael's cracked lips. “Thank Meliahs. It's done. You're alive. Sleep now. I'll clean the mess and fetch you some hot wine.”
“Wait.” Kael clutched her wrist. “Stay. Please?”
Sariah understood what he needed. She took off her wet clothes and lay next to him under the covers, delicately pressing her body against his, heating him with her warmth, holding on to him as much as he held on to her. She caressed him gently, running her fingers through his hair and tracing the lines of his face, infusing him with her tenderness and strength.
Slowly, his tremors began to subside. The quivering muscles stilled and relaxed. His respiration slowed to even breaths.
“Keep a little for yourself,” he said after a while.
“Of what?”
“I can feel it. All that strength you give me.” His voice sounded frail but his stare was focused. “Keep some, at least until I can return it in kind.”
“Kaelin, I—”
“Hush, sweet, don't say it. I can't doubt how you feel about me now, and neither can you. What's done is done.”
Sariah buried her face against his neck and thanked Meliahs because he was alive and he knew and somehow, he understood.
“Sariah?” he whispered.
“Yes?”
“I know the location of the seventh stone.”
FORTY-SIX
SARIAH POURED OVER her annotations, examining every word, trying to weave the truth depicted in Aya's hanging into a coherent tale. On the bed beside her, Kael slept placidly, mostly because she had infused him with peacefulness to offset the nightmares that had been plaguing him. The festering was gone and although he was far from mended, he was getting better. Now she had to get Kael, Mia, Malord and herself out of the Shield's fortress on the merits of her stones and her wits. And she had to prepare herself to wise the last of the twin stones.
It surprised Sariah how she'd begun thinking differently about the stones while Kael had been trapped and sick. It had happened without her notice. The stones had become a tool to her, a means to achieve Kael's desperate rescue. Had Kael been right from the offset? Was life always above stone? Meliahs help her. She wanted to loathe her unfaithfulness to the stones, but she couldn't. The best way to atone for her wickedness was to finish the search she'd begun. She imagined that Meliahs could only be pleased if, in the process of revealing the stone truth, her children were spared. Or was it the reverse?
Concentrate. The second breaking of the pact, the tale that told of the stone births, continued to puzzle her. She turned to the engrossment where she had isolated Zeminaya's words. Into the world came a child, born not of the flesh but of the stone, outside the care of a fallen goddess. Zeminaya had said that she had witnessed the breaking of the blood, that the blood had been estranged. What had she meant?
When the first whiff of the strange notion struck Sariah, she dismissed it as impossible, but as she considered it through the night, she understood. She was already regretting her conclusions when the sun rose.
“What's going on here?” Sariah smelled the scent as soon as she entered the bedchamber. Kael, Mia and Malord shared a guilty look. The chamber was hot. The flames in the hearth were too high for comfort.
“Uncle Kael has been teaching me to aim,” Mia said.
“Is that so?”
“Hush, Mia, I told you not to tell her. She's likely to roast me for the favor.” Kael's wicked grin was enough to disarm all of Sariah's objections. “If she must do it, it's better if she can direct the flow.”
“I suppose you are right,” Sariah said. “But remember, Mianina, you can't do it just because you're angry.”
“Only if my life is in danger,” Mia said. “Only if I thought Uncle Kael would use his sling or his swords to make something right.”
“That's a start,” Sariah said. “Kael, you better pray that she doesn't use it to irk her brothers.”
“You take offense to a singed heinie?”
“More like a roast of kin at this point.”
“It's no harder than aiming a sling,” Mia said. “Want to see?”
“No, thank you. I think the chamber is hot enough to bake bread.”
The door opened and the Shield stepped in the room followed by Mistress Grimly. “We've been thinking,” the Shield said. “It's time.”
Sariah had been expecting this moment for a few days now. She had been delaying it for as long as she could. In fact, it was a true measure of the Shield's keen interest in Kael's information that he had waited this long and that he had helped stall Mistress Grimly's eagerness. Sariah wished they had time for Kael's proper recovery, for a more careful reckoning, to devise a better plan. But they didn't. The Shield demanded his due, the Prime Hand required hers, and perhaps most pressing, Arron had begun his assault on the fortress this morning with a volley of arrows and a bungled attempt at scaling the walls.
“I'm ready,” Sariah said.
“I'm coming with you.” Kael pushed himself up from the chair.
“You ought to stay here. You are mending, but you can't walk that far yet. I don't want you hurt again.”
He took the leather case from Sariah and slung it across his back. “I may be lame and I may falter, but I'm not leaving you alone in this.”
The set expression on his leaner face told Sariah he wouldn't be dissuaded. He'd lost a lot of weight during his ordeal and he was still a bit faint on his feet, but dressed and with his bandages fully tightened, he stood ready by the door. The mere sight of him filled her with hope despite the dire circumstances. His tale continued, and she was a part of it just as he was a part of hers. That's all Sariah asked of Meliahs.
“Shouldn't you be on the ramparts, defending the wall?” Kael asked Horatio.
“Julean will call if he needs me.”
The words were harmless enough but the tone left no doubt that these two men didn't like each other, would never like each other, despite the agreements she'd forced on them. Meliahs help her. Sariah's patience had dwindled to where she couldn't stand even the slightest posturing between the two.
“I suppose we should complete our business?” the Prime Hand said.
“Our business? Yes, of course. I promised you a translation of the intrusion's words if Kael lived, provided that you could deliver on my second request?”
“And you doubt my abilities?” The mistress dangled a tiny pouch by the strings.
“What's this?” the Shield asked.
“Wiser business. It has naught to do with you.” Sariah took the bag and emptied a bit of the gritty black mix in her palm. She offered a pinch of the powder to Mistress Grimly. “Why don't you taste it?”
The Prime Hand grinned amusedly. She swiped the powder and licked her finger. “Satisfied? I'm not dead and you're a silly, silly chit.”
Sariah refilled the pouch and tucked it in her pocket. She handed the mistress a sheaf of parchment, a copy of the intrusion's words in the tales. “My debt to you is paid.”
“If you two witches are done, I too require my due,” the Shield said.
Sariah showed him the sack with the stones. “Six pairs of twin stones, as I promised, but I expect that you'll hold your end of the bargain when I'm finished. Kael's life is mine.”
“After he tells me what he must,” the Shield said.
Sariah prayed that her many trades would hold long enough to cheat fate.
“What about them?” The Shield gestured with his chin to Malord and Mia.
“I don't need them,” Sariah said. “They stay here.”
“I don't think so,” he said. “No tricks. They're coming with us.”
“I've told you, I don't know how she'll react.”
“And I've told you, I don't trust you, her, or him. I'd rather have all of you together.”
“You ought to chop the girl's hands,” the Prime Hand said. “That misbegotten creature is as foul as she's dangerous.”
“Mianina, help your uncle,” Sariah said when she saw anger flare on the little girl's face. The notion of the Prime Hand blackened to a crisp was most appealing, but Sariah was trying to train Mia by taming her terrifying abilities instead of transforming her into a reckless assassin. “If I were you, Prime Hand, I'd be careful with what I say. The child doesn't like you much.”
Mistress Grimly swallowed whatever unkind retort had come to her mind.
Sariah smiled at the small satisfaction. “I don't want Mia anywhere near the stones.”
Malord accepted his charge with a nod.
She offered Kael her shoulder and together they made their way out of the room and down the stairs. With Kael hobbling between Sariah and Mia, their progress was slow. Malord, scooting on his knuckles, moved faster than they did. The Shield strode along with patient resignation. The Prime Hand's steps were as springy as those of a young girl. She could hardly contain her excitement.
The middle bailey was covered with arrows, stones and other projectiles from Arron's failed attempt at the walls. Sariah was surprised to see a fire being smothered in the south bailey and a couple of dead bodies along the way. Despite his swift defeat, Arron had managed to inflict some damage. Sariah guided her little party to the courtyard. Kael's body grew rigid at the sight of the quartering stone. She couldn't help but shiver. Any enthusiasm she may have harbored for wising drained from her body. Her feet grew heavy and then refused to take another step. Her little journey dead-ended there.
“This is no place for a rest,” the Shield said. “We are open to Arron's attacks here. If the New Blood is too tired, we can take cover in the next guardhouse.”
“I'm afraid we'll have to take our chances here, if you want the seventh stone wised.” Sariah forced herself to take a step and then another. She reached out and landed a tentative hand on the quartering block.
“Here?” the Prime Hand asked. “But why?”
Sariah's eyes shifted from Horatio Maliver to the Prime Hand and back to Horatio Maliver. “Because we think that the quartering block is the seventh stone.”
“The quartering stone is the seventh stone?” The Shield was skeptical.
“Fitting, methinks, especially for such a bloody tale.” Sariah studied the stone's contour.
“But I thought you were looking for another pair of twin stones,” the mistress said.
“Me too,” Sariah said. “Until Kael remembered.”
Mistress Grimly tapped on the quartering block. “How can it be? This is just a huge chunk of carved stone. I can't feel anything.”
“The rot take me, me neither,” Malord said.
“Only if your palms are sealed,” Kael said. “Only Sariah.”
Sariah displayed her hands. Awestruck, Mistress Grimly and Malord stared at the scars on her palms.
“I told you I'd seen her mark.” Kael traced the carvings of the rock. The deep grooves of the triangle within the oval served as the quartering block's gutters. The mark was impossible to detect from any angle, except perhaps from above.
“They make you climb on the quartering block before they strap you down.” The detached look in his eyes scared Sariah. “They pelt you with trash and feces. It was a reflex. I looked down and saw it. I remembered it when I was in the tub.”
Pain remembered pain. Sariah squeezed Kael's good hand softly. It was the first time he'd spoken of his ordeal. The pain and humiliation were still fresh in his gaze, no less troubling than his other wounds. They would have to attend to all of those later. The quartering block was clean and bloodless now. Sariah fingered the stone. She could sense the wising in it, the distant call of a needy tale.
A screech grew in volume and desperation. A ball of fire soared over the walls and above their heads. Arms and legs flared wildly in the fireball. Blood exploded and spattered when it crashed against the armory's wall.
“Meliahs help us.” Sariah gasped. “They're firing live people!”
Another screaming fireball flew overhead, and then another. The sounds ended with a dreadful splat.
“My lord, it's the catapults.” Julean ran down from the ramparts. “They are hitting us hard.”
“They can't be doing much harm,” the Shield said. “It's just flesh and bones, and a little fire.”
“Those are only the dissenters among them,” Julean said. “Farther down the wall, they are using stone and tar. They are trying to hit the site we were repairing last.”
“If they succeed—” the Shield said.
“They'll surround you from all sides,” Kael finished. “Not bad, for a mad Speaker with a ragtag army.”
“Rally the Shield,” Mistress Grimly said. “We have catapults too and they have no walls to protect them.”
The notion didn't fit in Kael's head. “Would you massacre your own people?”
“You're drowning him!”
“It will be worse if he doesn't keep his body under the water,” the mistress said. “Remember Malord's paddle?”
Kael's thrashing grew worse. His head banged against the wood. He managed a kick that hurled one of the guards against the wall. He landed a fist on Mistress Grimly's arm and tried to climb out of the tub, clinging to the tub's edge with a locked grip.
“Uncle Kael!”
“Hold it back, Mia.” Sariah jumped in the icy tub. Her legs fizzed with the poison's residual sting. Kael was fighting the ropes, the water, the pain, the guards, and now her, all at the same time. She sat on him and when that didn't work, she lay on top of him, holding on to him as tightly as she dared. “It's me, Kaelin. It's over. You're out of the poison. This is water, you see? Just water.”
“Sariah?” His eyes were open and wide, his breath came in rasping gasps.
“Be still, Kaelin, be calm.” Sariah held him down as carefully as she could. “You need to stay in the water.”
“There were ropes.” He wheezed. “I couldn't breathe.”
“You can breathe now.” She undid the ropes around his neck. “You're safe.”
She cursed the Prime Hand for her cruelty. She clung to Kael until he stopped thrashing. He was slippery between her arms, coated with slime, shaking and burning badly. She tried to infuse him with endurance and strength, but she didn't know if she had enough left in her to make a difference. She barked, “All of you, get out of here! You too, mistress. Get out of this chamber.”
Her outrage must have been persuasive because everybody but Malord and little Mia filed out of the room in abject silence.
“They're gone. It's just us. Kaelin? Just us.”
He convulsed in the icy water. He winced and squirmed and swallowed a moan that turned into a groan. “The rot take me. Can't … stand it.”
“You've got to stay in the water, do you hear me?” She held him down despite herself. “Hold on to me.”
She cradled him against her breast, caressing his hair, wiping the slime from his back, soothing him as best she could. He clung to her as if she was his last link to life. “Let go of the edge.” She peeled his fingers from the tub's edge one at the time. “We're almost done.”
“Did it work?” he rasped after a while.
“We'll know very shortly.”
“Is he all right?” Mia's eyes were immense over the tub's rim.
“He's better, Mianina.”
Kael was shaking in earnest. “Mia?”
“Hush, Kaelin. Be still. It's a long story, but all you must know now is that she's safe. I promise. Just a few more moments.”
He squeezed his eyes shut and clenched hard. Sariah wiped him down as gingerly as she could manage. She waited until the water had soaked all the black bile from his body. By then, his teeth were rattling, his lips had turned blue from the cold, and black blobs of congealed slime floated in the tub among the ice chunks.
“We'll do this slowly.” She stepped out of the tub first and put Kael's arm around her neck. “We'll do it together.”
It took a few tries. His body was slippery and he was weak and exhausted, but between Malord, Mia, and a drenched Sariah, they managed to help him to the bed without further injury. The sight of him shocked her. From the neck down, a viscous whitish coating covered him like a thick layer of rancid lard. Clumps of translucent skin peeled from his body when she patted him dry, leaving behind long strips of exposed pink tissue suppurating blood and a watery dew. Parts of his body were bleached, wrinkled, and discolored, while other parts were a macabre, mangled mess of angry pink. He flinched at her every touch; she winced each time he flinched.
Malord examined Kael's wounds. The wound's edges had turned white and thickened into rubbery crusts. The wounded flesh looked sickly gray and deflated. Where the festering had flourished before, Sariah found only loose skin and dead muscle. The hack on his leg gaped, devoid of swelling or redness. She pressed down gently on his mutilated hand. A clear discharge trickled out without a trace of pus. His forehead was cool.
“I think it's a matter of needle and thread now.” Malord began to suture the wounds, a difficult feat, given the condition of Kael's skin and the extensive carnage. On his chest, Malord had to cut the wound's rubbery edges to find healthy flesh to stitch together. Sariah applied Malord's soothing ointments to the rawest spots.
“Don't.” Kael jerked. “Let me be.”
“Only a little longer. Then you can rest.” Sariah dotted the ointment lightly on his skin.
He hissed. “No more.”
“Almost done.” Malord knotted the last of many stitches.
Mia took in everything from the foot of the bed. “You're like a snake, changing your skin, Uncle Kael. Have you been made undead?”
“No, Mianina, he wasn't dead before, just very sick.” Sariah fed him some warm broth. “He's weary, now, he can't talk to you. Maybe later. Aye? Go with Malord.”
“Come, Mia, we'll have one of those ugly guards take us to find something good to eat.” They made for an unlikely pair, the old dark wiser and the little golden girl, shuffling shoulder to shoulder through the door, sharing the solemn look of those daunted by knowledge.
Sariah placed a soft kiss on Kael's cracked lips. “Thank Meliahs. It's done. You're alive. Sleep now. I'll clean the mess and fetch you some hot wine.”
“Wait.” Kael clutched her wrist. “Stay. Please?”
Sariah understood what he needed. She took off her wet clothes and lay next to him under the covers, delicately pressing her body against his, heating him with her warmth, holding on to him as much as he held on to her. She caressed him gently, running her fingers through his hair and tracing the lines of his face, infusing him with her tenderness and strength.
Slowly, his tremors began to subside. The quivering muscles stilled and relaxed. His respiration slowed to even breaths.
“Keep a little for yourself,” he said after a while.
“Of what?”
“I can feel it. All that strength you give me.” His voice sounded frail but his stare was focused. “Keep some, at least until I can return it in kind.”
“Kaelin, I—”
“Hush, sweet, don't say it. I can't doubt how you feel about me now, and neither can you. What's done is done.”
Sariah buried her face against his neck and thanked Meliahs because he was alive and he knew and somehow, he understood.
“Sariah?” he whispered.
“Yes?”
“I know the location of the seventh stone.”
FORTY-SIX
SARIAH POURED OVER her annotations, examining every word, trying to weave the truth depicted in Aya's hanging into a coherent tale. On the bed beside her, Kael slept placidly, mostly because she had infused him with peacefulness to offset the nightmares that had been plaguing him. The festering was gone and although he was far from mended, he was getting better. Now she had to get Kael, Mia, Malord and herself out of the Shield's fortress on the merits of her stones and her wits. And she had to prepare herself to wise the last of the twin stones.
It surprised Sariah how she'd begun thinking differently about the stones while Kael had been trapped and sick. It had happened without her notice. The stones had become a tool to her, a means to achieve Kael's desperate rescue. Had Kael been right from the offset? Was life always above stone? Meliahs help her. She wanted to loathe her unfaithfulness to the stones, but she couldn't. The best way to atone for her wickedness was to finish the search she'd begun. She imagined that Meliahs could only be pleased if, in the process of revealing the stone truth, her children were spared. Or was it the reverse?
Concentrate. The second breaking of the pact, the tale that told of the stone births, continued to puzzle her. She turned to the engrossment where she had isolated Zeminaya's words. Into the world came a child, born not of the flesh but of the stone, outside the care of a fallen goddess. Zeminaya had said that she had witnessed the breaking of the blood, that the blood had been estranged. What had she meant?
When the first whiff of the strange notion struck Sariah, she dismissed it as impossible, but as she considered it through the night, she understood. She was already regretting her conclusions when the sun rose.
“What's going on here?” Sariah smelled the scent as soon as she entered the bedchamber. Kael, Mia and Malord shared a guilty look. The chamber was hot. The flames in the hearth were too high for comfort.
“Uncle Kael has been teaching me to aim,” Mia said.
“Is that so?”
“Hush, Mia, I told you not to tell her. She's likely to roast me for the favor.” Kael's wicked grin was enough to disarm all of Sariah's objections. “If she must do it, it's better if she can direct the flow.”
“I suppose you are right,” Sariah said. “But remember, Mianina, you can't do it just because you're angry.”
“Only if my life is in danger,” Mia said. “Only if I thought Uncle Kael would use his sling or his swords to make something right.”
“That's a start,” Sariah said. “Kael, you better pray that she doesn't use it to irk her brothers.”
“You take offense to a singed heinie?”
“More like a roast of kin at this point.”
“It's no harder than aiming a sling,” Mia said. “Want to see?”
“No, thank you. I think the chamber is hot enough to bake bread.”
The door opened and the Shield stepped in the room followed by Mistress Grimly. “We've been thinking,” the Shield said. “It's time.”
Sariah had been expecting this moment for a few days now. She had been delaying it for as long as she could. In fact, it was a true measure of the Shield's keen interest in Kael's information that he had waited this long and that he had helped stall Mistress Grimly's eagerness. Sariah wished they had time for Kael's proper recovery, for a more careful reckoning, to devise a better plan. But they didn't. The Shield demanded his due, the Prime Hand required hers, and perhaps most pressing, Arron had begun his assault on the fortress this morning with a volley of arrows and a bungled attempt at scaling the walls.
“I'm ready,” Sariah said.
“I'm coming with you.” Kael pushed himself up from the chair.
“You ought to stay here. You are mending, but you can't walk that far yet. I don't want you hurt again.”
He took the leather case from Sariah and slung it across his back. “I may be lame and I may falter, but I'm not leaving you alone in this.”
The set expression on his leaner face told Sariah he wouldn't be dissuaded. He'd lost a lot of weight during his ordeal and he was still a bit faint on his feet, but dressed and with his bandages fully tightened, he stood ready by the door. The mere sight of him filled her with hope despite the dire circumstances. His tale continued, and she was a part of it just as he was a part of hers. That's all Sariah asked of Meliahs.
“Shouldn't you be on the ramparts, defending the wall?” Kael asked Horatio.
“Julean will call if he needs me.”
The words were harmless enough but the tone left no doubt that these two men didn't like each other, would never like each other, despite the agreements she'd forced on them. Meliahs help her. Sariah's patience had dwindled to where she couldn't stand even the slightest posturing between the two.
“I suppose we should complete our business?” the Prime Hand said.
“Our business? Yes, of course. I promised you a translation of the intrusion's words if Kael lived, provided that you could deliver on my second request?”
“And you doubt my abilities?” The mistress dangled a tiny pouch by the strings.
“What's this?” the Shield asked.
“Wiser business. It has naught to do with you.” Sariah took the bag and emptied a bit of the gritty black mix in her palm. She offered a pinch of the powder to Mistress Grimly. “Why don't you taste it?”
The Prime Hand grinned amusedly. She swiped the powder and licked her finger. “Satisfied? I'm not dead and you're a silly, silly chit.”
Sariah refilled the pouch and tucked it in her pocket. She handed the mistress a sheaf of parchment, a copy of the intrusion's words in the tales. “My debt to you is paid.”
“If you two witches are done, I too require my due,” the Shield said.
Sariah showed him the sack with the stones. “Six pairs of twin stones, as I promised, but I expect that you'll hold your end of the bargain when I'm finished. Kael's life is mine.”
“After he tells me what he must,” the Shield said.
Sariah prayed that her many trades would hold long enough to cheat fate.
“What about them?” The Shield gestured with his chin to Malord and Mia.
“I don't need them,” Sariah said. “They stay here.”
“I don't think so,” he said. “No tricks. They're coming with us.”
“I've told you, I don't know how she'll react.”
“And I've told you, I don't trust you, her, or him. I'd rather have all of you together.”
“You ought to chop the girl's hands,” the Prime Hand said. “That misbegotten creature is as foul as she's dangerous.”
“Mianina, help your uncle,” Sariah said when she saw anger flare on the little girl's face. The notion of the Prime Hand blackened to a crisp was most appealing, but Sariah was trying to train Mia by taming her terrifying abilities instead of transforming her into a reckless assassin. “If I were you, Prime Hand, I'd be careful with what I say. The child doesn't like you much.”
Mistress Grimly swallowed whatever unkind retort had come to her mind.
Sariah smiled at the small satisfaction. “I don't want Mia anywhere near the stones.”
Malord accepted his charge with a nod.
She offered Kael her shoulder and together they made their way out of the room and down the stairs. With Kael hobbling between Sariah and Mia, their progress was slow. Malord, scooting on his knuckles, moved faster than they did. The Shield strode along with patient resignation. The Prime Hand's steps were as springy as those of a young girl. She could hardly contain her excitement.
The middle bailey was covered with arrows, stones and other projectiles from Arron's failed attempt at the walls. Sariah was surprised to see a fire being smothered in the south bailey and a couple of dead bodies along the way. Despite his swift defeat, Arron had managed to inflict some damage. Sariah guided her little party to the courtyard. Kael's body grew rigid at the sight of the quartering stone. She couldn't help but shiver. Any enthusiasm she may have harbored for wising drained from her body. Her feet grew heavy and then refused to take another step. Her little journey dead-ended there.
“This is no place for a rest,” the Shield said. “We are open to Arron's attacks here. If the New Blood is too tired, we can take cover in the next guardhouse.”
“I'm afraid we'll have to take our chances here, if you want the seventh stone wised.” Sariah forced herself to take a step and then another. She reached out and landed a tentative hand on the quartering block.
“Here?” the Prime Hand asked. “But why?”
Sariah's eyes shifted from Horatio Maliver to the Prime Hand and back to Horatio Maliver. “Because we think that the quartering block is the seventh stone.”
“The quartering stone is the seventh stone?” The Shield was skeptical.
“Fitting, methinks, especially for such a bloody tale.” Sariah studied the stone's contour.
“But I thought you were looking for another pair of twin stones,” the mistress said.
“Me too,” Sariah said. “Until Kael remembered.”
Mistress Grimly tapped on the quartering block. “How can it be? This is just a huge chunk of carved stone. I can't feel anything.”
“The rot take me, me neither,” Malord said.
“Only if your palms are sealed,” Kael said. “Only Sariah.”
Sariah displayed her hands. Awestruck, Mistress Grimly and Malord stared at the scars on her palms.
“I told you I'd seen her mark.” Kael traced the carvings of the rock. The deep grooves of the triangle within the oval served as the quartering block's gutters. The mark was impossible to detect from any angle, except perhaps from above.
“They make you climb on the quartering block before they strap you down.” The detached look in his eyes scared Sariah. “They pelt you with trash and feces. It was a reflex. I looked down and saw it. I remembered it when I was in the tub.”
Pain remembered pain. Sariah squeezed Kael's good hand softly. It was the first time he'd spoken of his ordeal. The pain and humiliation were still fresh in his gaze, no less troubling than his other wounds. They would have to attend to all of those later. The quartering block was clean and bloodless now. Sariah fingered the stone. She could sense the wising in it, the distant call of a needy tale.
A screech grew in volume and desperation. A ball of fire soared over the walls and above their heads. Arms and legs flared wildly in the fireball. Blood exploded and spattered when it crashed against the armory's wall.
“Meliahs help us.” Sariah gasped. “They're firing live people!”
Another screaming fireball flew overhead, and then another. The sounds ended with a dreadful splat.
“My lord, it's the catapults.” Julean ran down from the ramparts. “They are hitting us hard.”
“They can't be doing much harm,” the Shield said. “It's just flesh and bones, and a little fire.”
“Those are only the dissenters among them,” Julean said. “Farther down the wall, they are using stone and tar. They are trying to hit the site we were repairing last.”
“If they succeed—” the Shield said.
“They'll surround you from all sides,” Kael finished. “Not bad, for a mad Speaker with a ragtag army.”
“Rally the Shield,” Mistress Grimly said. “We have catapults too and they have no walls to protect them.”
The notion didn't fit in Kael's head. “Would you massacre your own people?”
