“Did Zella say anything when you found her?”
“No, not a word. She was unconscious.”
“And what was her appearance? Was she bloody? Were her clothes torn?”
“She had bruises on her face, and she was muddy from where she lay in the mud and reeds, but that’s all. Oh, and she was missing a shoe.”
“Has that been found?”
Syrel looked surprised. “No one thought to look, I guess.”
“Did anyone look for signs of what had happened?”
Syrel shook his head.
Seregil suppressed a growl of annoyance. Two days lost for tracking. He’d be lucky to find any useful signs. “Thank you. You may go.” He managed a smile. “Oh, and welcome to Mirror Moon.”
“Thank you, my lord. I’m glad to be here.” The young man bowed and went out.
“Is there anything I can do for you?” asked Kordira, rising to go.
“Thank you, but I think I just need to rest.”
“Very well. I have a room down the corridor if you need me.”
“Thank you.” Seregil was asleep before the door closed behind her.
IT was dark when Seregil woke, except for a crackling fire on the hearth. Grateful as he was for the warmth, he always disliked sleeping so deeply that someone could come and go without him waking. The small window was open, but the room was not unusually cold or damp. Perhaps the drowned lady had taken his advice.
Getting out of bed was a challenge. The bandages were stuck to his skin in places and pulled painfully as he moved. His back was getting better, but he still felt like he’d been beaten with fuller’s bats.
Not bothering with boots, he found the pot under the bed and used it, then went to the door in his stocking feet and opened it. Vhadä, who’d been sitting just outside, jumped up and made him an awkward bow.
“Hello, Seregil. Mistress Khiria sent me to watch for you. She says you’re to stay in bed and she’ll have Mistress Sabriel send up some supper for you. I’m to take word of what you want.”
“Did she now? Well, I think I’ll do just that. Please tell Sabriel that I would like meat and lots of it, any fruit she might have, and very strong tea.”
“She has some honey cakes, too,” Vhadä informed him, looking rather hopeful.
“Well, then, I guess we better have some of those. Ask her to send up enough for two. And if you see the good doctor, please tell her I’m in need of her.”
He found some thin wax tapers in a cup on the mantel and used one to light the candles nearest the bed. As he settled in the armchair, he noticed that Alec had left the journal on the table. Opening it, he turned to the page with the portrait of the ’faie ghost the journal’s owner claimed to have seen at the oracle’s cave. Could this be Khazireen, Alec’s ghost in the dark? And if so, who was he?
A knock came at the door, and Kordira entered with a mug and her simples bag. Willow followed bearing a steaming basin and a pile of flannels over her arm.
“Will you let me change those bandages now?” Kordira asked.
Seregil nodded and accepted the mug. The contents smelled of brandy and herbs this time. He took a sip and made a face.
“It is bitter,” Kordira said with a laugh, “but it will make you feel better much more quickly than willow bark.”
Seregil gulped down half of it and felt the warmth of the brandy course through him. It took the edge off the nasty taste. With Willow’s blushing assistance, the doctor soaked off his stained bandages, sponged away the dried blood and salve, and checked his wounds. “Yes, you’re starting to heal nicely except for the wounds you’ve pulled open today. If you can manage to stay put here for another day, you might find you’ll be of more use to the others than if you keep pushing yourself.”
“Yes, Doctor.” Seregil winced as she worked on his chest. Soon he was cleaned up, swathed in clean linen, and lying back in bed divested of coat and breeches thanks to Kordira’s assistance. Willow had been far too modest and fled the room.
They were just finishing when Vhadä and Oria, the chambermaid, came in with two heavily laden trays.
“Sabriel took you at your word,” Vhadä said with a grin. Lifting the cloth covering the tray, he showed Seregil eight glistening honey cakes, a plate laden with sliced mutton and mint jelly, and three baked apples redolent with spices and swimming in cream.
“Doctor, you’ll have to stay and help us eat all this,” said Seregil.
“It does smell good,” she replied. “Vhadä, you and I are going to need chairs.”
The boy dragged two to the bedside and sat down, eyeing the cakes as avidly as Mika would have. That thought came like a slap in the face. Seregil wasn’t about to lie here at ease for another day while the boy and Klia were missing.
“I want Zella to show me where things happened,” he told Kordira. “Do you think she’ll be up to it tomorrow?”
“We shall have to see. She had no serious physical injuries, apart from being thrown from her horse and perhaps dragged. Her mind does seem clearer today, which is a hopeful sign. She’s sleeping now, and so should you.”
“I just woke up.”
“You’ll need your strength tomorrow, won’t you?”
“Do you boss all your patients around this way?”
She raised an elegant brow. “Only the stubborn ones who won’t listen to reason.”
Kordira’s decoction worked well. Seregil slept deeply the rest of the night without dreams and woke just after dawn feeling considerably better, though his back was still painfully stiff and one leg felt a little numb.
Easing out of bed, he stretched this way and that, trying to loosen strained muscles without opening up any stitches, then gave himself a cold basin bath, hazarding a look in the mirror as he washed. It wasn’t a pretty sight. At least the bandages weren’t soaked through anywhere today. He slowly dressed himself for the city in a fine coat and boots, slipped his tool roll inside his shirt, and buckled on his sword. As he stood before the looking glass again, he was acutely aware of the empty space behind him. Where was Alec and what was he up to?
Seregil ran a comb carefully through his butchered hair and skillfully tied on the silk headscarf Kordira had given him. His fingers remembered the necessary tasks; the scarf did make a passable sen’gai. It was even almost the right color for Bôkthersa. He closed his eyes a moment, considering, then took it off and tied it more simply over his head. He looked like a corsair now, not an Aurënfaie clan member. He had no right to claim that anymore.
Clean and dressed, he decided to see if he could make it downstairs on his own. It was slow going. Kordira had been right when she said he needed another day’s rest, but that was not an option. And, he reasoned, perhaps he could pry something more out of Zella on the journey.
He made it to the kitchen, surprising Sabriel and Khiria.
“Good morning!” the cook exclaimed, coming around the kneading bench to look him over. “You’re a sight, my dear. Should you be up?”
“I’m up, and I’ll be leaving today for Deep Harbor. Khiria, I’ll need a small clothes chest packed and loaded into the carriage I saw in the barn last time I was here. Do I have a coachman?”
“Yes, Erian is one of those who came back here,” the housekeeper told him. “I’ll see to all that. Is there anything else before I go?”
“Have any more ’faie come here for shelter?”
“Seventeen since you were last here,” Khiria replied. “We’ve had to start putting them up in the empty cottages.”
“Build more if you have to. Make them comfortable, too. Cost is no matter. I’ll greet the newcomers when I pass through again.”
“There’s a few like me among them, if you take my meaning,” said Sabriel.
Seregil raised a brow. “Magic? That does bear looking into. Thank you for telling me. Please let them know that I value their talents. Lady Zella will be accompanying me, and the doctor. Have they eaten?”
“They’re in the dining room now,”
said Khiria. “Breakfast is laid out there.”
Seregil found Zella still pale and bruised, but dressed and looking considerably better.
“How are you today, my lady?” he asked, taking a seat and gratefully letting Kordira fix a plate of eggs, fish, roasted turnips, and bacon for him. He was famished.
Zella gave him a hopeless look. “I’m not sure what to say, my lord. Kordira has been explaining to me all that happened, that my nightmare really happened.” Her lips trembled and she dabbed at her eyes with her napkin. “I failed again in my duty, didn’t I? First the archduke, and now the princess!”
“You can’t be blamed for either, my dear,” Seregil replied, seeing where kindness would get him. “Have you recalled anything else?”
“Let her eat,” said Kordira.
“No, it’s all right, Doctor.” Zella wiped her eyes again. “We were on the road, almost here, when the demons came out of nowhere. That’s truly all I recall.”
“I see.”
“I don’t know why I was spared, my lord. I wish I hadn’t been!”
“There now, don’t say that.” He reached across and patted her hand. “We’ll go back to Deep Harbor today, but before we do, I’d like for you to show me where the demons appeared. Can you do that?”
Zella nodded bravely. “Yes, of course.”
When they were finished eating Seregil had Vhadä fetch Syrel, then went to the front court with Kordira and Zella and found the carriage ready and waiting. Windrunner and Kordira’s horse were tied to the back. Erian, a ya’shel with hair paler than Alec’s, jumped down from the driver’s seat and held the door open for them. The carriage was fine enough for the Street of Lights, with crystal lamps by the driver’s seat and gilt decorating the handsome polished wood exterior. Inside were well-padded seats of tufted green velvet and a clever rack holding a small silver brandy service.
Sabriel came out with a wicker hamper and handed it to the coachman. “Here’s a meal for you all, my lord. I tucked in some honey cakes. Vhadä says you’re partial to them.”
“Give him my thanks,” Seregil said with a wan smile. “Take care.”
Zella took a seat on the left side of the carriage and gazed out the window, studying the scenery as they slowly rolled up the road toward Menosi. They’d gone no more than half a mile when she said, “Stop! It was here, I’m certain.”
They all climbed out and Zella pointed to a steep rise above the road. “There, they came down from there.”
Seregil studied the ground and road, but came up with nothing. With Syrel’s help, he made it up the rise, checking for any sign of foot- or hoofprints as he went, but there was nothing. Even Micum wouldn’t have had much to work with here. The grass was unmarked. There was no sign of Zella’s shoe.
By the time he got back to the carriage he was sweating and in considerable pain, but kept it to himself, unwilling to give the good doctor the advantage of being right. He was going to Deep Harbor, even if he had to do it lying down on the seat.
“Are you certain this was the spot?” he asked Zella, who was standing with Kordira by the carriage.
“Yes, Baron. It was here.”
“Very well. We’ll go to the bridge next.”
Erian turned the carriage around and they drove to the bridge where Zella had been spotted. Climbing down the bank with Syrel, he found where Zella had lain among the rushes growing there, and her footprints in the grass and mud, leading down from the road, but there the trail grew cold. He backtracked for some distance, casting back and forth along the road for any sign of where she might have crossed it, but there was nothing that he could see. He finally gave up and stood in thought. Zella had been spared in the attack, apart from the shock and bruises, and somehow wandered nearly a mile down the road in daylight without being seen, then lain by the river for a day until Syrel found her. Or had she lain at the site of the ambush and wandered down the road later?
Leaving Syrel to walk back to the estate, Seregil took the seat opposite the women. “I’m not finding much to go on, Lady Zella.”
“That’s hardly her fault,” Kordira said, holding Zella’s hand.
Zella said nothing, and remained quiet as they rolled along the highroad. Clinging to the leather hand strap by the window, she gazed out at the countryside.
“You look very pensive, my lady,” said Seregil.
With a forlorn sigh, Zella replied, “I’m well enough, my lord, but I’m so worried about Princess Klia!”
“I don’t suppose you’ve remembered anything else? Perhaps how you were spared when all the others were taken?”
Fear was clear on her face as she turned to him. “I told you, my lord, I don’t know why. By the Four, I’d have taken her place if I could have!”
“Taken her place?”
“Whatever happened, my lord!”
“I see.” Seregil gazed at her until she looked away. “How is it, I wonder, that whoever took Klia in such a dramatic fashion would have left a survivor to tell the tale?”
“My lord?”
“It just seems to me, Lady Zella, that your employers often come to bad ends.”
She burst into tears at that, weeping into her hands. “How can you be so cruel? I—”
“You loved the archduke, I presume.”
“Really, Baron, I think that’s enough!” Kordira exclaimed, even as Zella looked up in astonishment and managed a meek nod.
“And yet both he and Her Highness have run afoul of something unsavory,” Seregil continued.
“How can I be blamed for that?” Zella whimpered. “Put me to any test! It will only prove my innocence.”
“I’ll see what I can do about that, my lady. I think you’d best keep to your rooms at the governor’s palace once we arrive.”
“Whatever you think best, my lord,” she replied, then buried her face in her hands again.
Seregil pulled out a clean handkerchief and handed it to her. She took it and her fingers brushed his in the exchange. They were dry though her face was tearstained.
“My lady, forgive me.”
She looked up from the handkerchief. “For what, my lord?”
“For this.” Reaching across, he wiped a thumb across her tearstained cheek. It came away dry. He pulled the poniard from his boot and leveled the needle-sharp tip at her heart. “Suppose you tell me just what you are and what you’re up to?”
“I don’t know what you mean!”
“What are you saying, Baron?” asked Kordira, putting a protective arm around Zella. The other woman shrank against her, pressing her face to the doctor’s shoulder.
“Tears that aren’t wet,” Seregil replied, rubbing his fingers together. “Things not as we’re meant to believe they are.” With that he grabbed Zella by the arm, pulled her forward, away from Kordira, and plunged his poniard into her shoulder. Both women shrieked, but then Zella lunged at him with incredible strength.
Only then did it occur to Seregil to wonder what would happen if you killed the body inhabited by a demon or dra’gorgos.
She tore at his face and clothing with fingers bent like claws, pulling off his headscarf and tearing his coat open. Sunlight flashed off the golden amulet around his neck just as her hand fell on it and she lurched back, uttering a cry that could have come from no human throat. As she slumped to the floor a dark miasma filled the carriage. It swirled around them for a moment, then disappeared. Seregil fell back on the seat, gasping in pain.
“By the Mother!” Kordira cried, kneeling beside Zella and wrapping her handkerchief around the wound.
“Is she alive?”
Kordira touched Zella’s throat, then shook her head. “No, though she shouldn’t have died from this wound.”
“Can you say how long she’s been dead?”
“She was as alive as you or I until just now. She was living with that thing in her. What was it?”
“A dra’gorgos. Apparently whoever put it in her made certain she wouldn’t survive it being found out.
”
“Demons? Dra’gorgos? What is happening?”
“I’d say we’re under attack and Zella was set up to spy on us.”
“But she seemed perfectly herself!”
“She wouldn’t have been much good to whoever is doing this if she didn’t.”
The carriage driver had stopped sometime during the fight. “What is it, my lord?” he asked, appearing at the carriage window.
“There’s been an accident,” Seregil replied, climbing down from the carriage. “Bring me my horse, then take Lady Zella and Lady Kordira to the governor’s house.”
“You’re in no condition to ride,” said Kordira. “Erian, fetch the panniers from my horse.”
He did as she asked and they set off for Deep Harbor again, sitting side by side, with Zella’s corpse laid out on the opposite seat.
“You look worse than ever, Seregil,” Kordira noted with concern.
Indeed, Zella had shredded some of his bandages and he was bleeding from several long scratches and opened wounds.
“I’m fine,” he gritted out. Now that the excitement was over his wounds—old and new—were making themselves known.
“Liar.” Kordira reached into one of the panniers and took out a length of bandage. “Here, staunch the bleeding with this.” Reaching in again, she produced a long clay bottle.
“Will brandy help?”
“It can’t hurt.” Seregil took the bottle, pulled out the cork, and took a long swig, then another. “Much obliged. You’re a useful woman to have around in a crisis.”
She laughed at that and held out her hand for the bottle. “Thank you. That’s enough now. A little brandy is medicinal; too much isn’t.”
“At least I wouldn’t feel anything,” he said, relinquishing it with some regret. It was excellent brandy.
Leaning down, she picked up the silk head scarf and smoothed it out before handing it to him. “We don’t want you scaring small children and old women. Are you going to tell me what just happened?”
“It appears that Lady Zella hasn’t been herself for some time,” Seregil replied as he wrapped the scarf around his head again. “The question is, for how long?”