Sing the Four Quarters (23 page)

"I'll have to have a bard for that." Pjerin suddenly realized it himself. "I'll have to have someone who can try to get behind the lies."

Stasya ignored him. She slipped to her knees by the side of Annice's chair and gathered both the other woman's hands into hers. "Nees, love, it's too dangerous. You'll be on the run, living the life of a fugitive. You can't expose yourself, or the baby, to that kind of risk."

"So do I just let an innocent man die?" Annice tightened her fingers. "I can't do that, Stas. You can't either.

"Then I should come with you."

"You have to cover our tracks."

"But you're only two months from delivery."

"A lot can happen in two months."

"Maybe if you convinced the captain…"

"That it's possible to lie under Command? We'd have more luck convincing the king."

"Fine."

"No."

"He's your brother, Nees."

Annice pulled Stasya's hand forward until it rested under hers and pressed against the movement of the baby. "And he's the one who said that
this
is death."

Stasya laid her head on what remained of Annice's lap. "You're right," she admitted. "I hate it when that happens." She rubbed her cheek gently against the knee of Annice's breeches. When she continued, the clipped and matter-of-fact tones rang out in direct contrast to her position. "Well, after Vidor you can take to the countryside and there won't be enough people in all of Shkoder to find you, but getting to Vidor means the River Road, and that means we'll have to hide you in plain sight. How much money do you have?"

"I've been Singing earth for the city gardens."

"Good. I haven't had a chance to spend anything in months, so if we pool our coin, you should have enough. There's enough junk in the cellars to turn the two of you into a fairly believable pair of traders, but we'll have to hurry—we can't pull this off if you're not out of the Citadel by dawn."

"What are you talking about?" Pjerin growled. "Why are we going to Vidor?"

"We're not," Annice told him, her fingers stroking the velvet nap of Stasya's dark hair. "We're going to Ohrid. You told me that you haven't been farther into Shkoder than Lake Marienka in years, so if we're going to find out who's done this to you, we're going to have to look closer to home."

CHAPTER NINE

"Can't you move any faster?"

Annice shifted the straps of her pack and wished she was back in bed with Stasya curled up warm and protecting around her. "No. I can't. And you'll just attract attention if you try to hustle me along."

Unable to see around the edges of his much larger pack, Pjerin swiveled from side to side, trying desperately to pierce the surrounding shadows—there could be a guard in any one of them. Six times he'd escaped on the way to Elbasan, six times they'd captured him again. He wasn't going back to that cell. "The longer we stay on the streets," he ground out through clenched teeth, ignoring the pain from newly stressed ribs, "the more attention we attract."

"Not if you'll stop acting like a fugitive." Her voice which had been pitched for Pjerin's ears alone, shifted slightly to cover a broader audience. "And I don't care how much you think you can make in Vidor, profits are less important than the health of your unborn child!"

Pjerin started, glared at her, followed her line of sight, and glared at the guard on the bridge.

"And furthermore," Annice continued, beginning to enjoy the performance a little in spite of the circumstances, "you have no business making bets with your cousin that involve me. Leaving Elbasan in the middle of the night, indeed.

We'll be in Riverton before the sun's even up. Pay the toll."

"What?"

She sighed. "The toll. Remember? Oh, never mind." As she rummaged in her belt pouch, she looked directly into the guard's eyes and favored him with a smile. "He's the hardest man to get coin out of I've ever met, believe me."

The guard, wisely deciding to stay out of what looked to be a nasty domestic battle in the making, stepped silently aside.

"Was that absolutely necessary?" Pjerin growled a few moments later when they had River Road to themselves again.

"Why couldn't we slip quietly out of the city by a back way?"

"What did you have in mind, swimming the canal?" A deliberate waddle thrown into her walk emphasized the protruding curve of her belly. "Frankly, I don't think I'm up to it."

"Then why the bullshit? Why not tell the guard to forget he ever saw us?"

"He'd remember me doing it if they put him under Command. This way, he'll only remember two traders leaving the city in the middle of the night—one of them charming, one of them cheap. And since no one but Stasya knows I'm with you, they've no reason to assume that you were one of those traders." If she was going to have to explain the reasoning behind every little thing she did all the way to Ohrid, it was going to be one unenclosed walk.

Pjerin could feel the guard's eyes on his back, even through the bulk of the pack. He fought the urge to turn. "Next time, let me know what part I'm playing
before
you start."

"If
you
can just remember you're a trader on your way to Vidor, I can work grunting and glowering into any situation."

"This isn't one of your ballads, Annice. It's real life and all three of us are dead if we're captured."

"All four of us," she reminded him. "If we're captured, Stasya will go to the block with us."

"So, we've got to get away from here!"

The catch in his voice surprised her. "I know." Sighing, she reached out and touched him lightly on the arm. The muscles beneath her fingertips were rigid. "Really, Pjerin, I
do
know. You want to run and hide. Put as much distance as you can between you and that cell. You're feeling frightened and vulnerable, so am I. You have every right to be in a bad mood."

"I'm not in a bad mood. I'm just…"
Feeling frightened and vulnerable
. He shook the thought off. It wouldn't help. "We need to move faster. It's almost morning."

Annice let her hand fall from his arm. So much for understanding. "I don't go any faster," she snapped.

"What is it, Theron? You've been tossing and turning all night."

Theron glanced over at his consort, her face a pattern of shadow on shadow against the pillow. "Did I wake you? I'm sorry. Perhaps I should get dressed and go for a walk."

"The king roaming about the halls in the middle of the night? You'll give your guards spasms." When he didn't respond, Lilyana sighed and sat up, propping the pillows against the crowned ship carved into the headboard and pulling the heavy linen sheet up over her breasts. "Why don't you tell me what's bothering you?" she prodded gently although she suspected that she already knew.

"It's young Ohrid." Theron heaved himself up beside her. "Something about his testimony felt wrong."

That he was concerned about Ohrid and the upcoming execution was no surprise. But how could the testimony feel wrong? "He was placed under Command by the captain herself."

"I know.
That's
what's bothering me." He rubbed at the stubble on his chin. "The greater part of our justice system is based on the belief that only truth can be spoken under Command, but every instinct says that something wasn't right yesterday in that Assembly Hall."

"You know how you hate to order executions."

"That's part of it," Theron admitted. For weeks after his first Death Judgment, every time he closed his eyes, he saw the ax fall. He'd despised himself for a weakling until his brother, on a rare visit to Elbasan, had pointed out that a king with a conscience was hardly a liability for the kingdom. "But this time, there's more. I just wish I could work out exactly where the problem lies. It might be nothing, but…"

"It might not," Lilyana finished thoughtfully. "Should we summon the captain and have her do a recall?"

"No, I'm sure it has as much to do with me as anything that actually happened."

"All right, then." She settled back against the pillows and laced her fingers together on top of the sheet. "
You
do a recall. Tell me everything you remember happening and how you felt about it from the moment you entered the hall until you left."

"Are you sure?"

"I wasn't sleeping anyway," she pointed out with a smile. Then she sobered. "That boy goes to the block at noon, Theron. You've
got
to be completely certain that he's guilty."

Perhaps because it had been a Death Judgment, Theron remembered more than he thought possible. He remembered how the rose scent that his chamberlain always wore clung to the area around the throne. He remembered thinking how the crowds had sounded like the sea, building to a storm. He remembered staring past the stocky, black figure of the Bardic Captain at the young Due of Ohrid and knowing that this one would not beg for his life. He remembered every word that was said.

"It matched the recall of what happened in Ohrid, essentially word for word. Then, when I asked him why he would betray his oaths, he asked me in return what his oaths had gotten him from Shkoder. My greatgrandfather promised him an end to isolation and, though it irks me to admit it, that promise hasn't been well kept."

"Justifiable treason?"

"Certainly in his mind. You should've heard the passion as he accused me of sending tax collectors and…" Theron frowned, murmuring, "Passion…" He twisted on the bed to face his consort. The room had begun to lighten with the approach of day and he could see her staring at him expectantly. "The man who made those accusations was a different man than the one who spoke before and after. Those words had a ring of truth that had nothing to do with being under Bardic Command."

"A sincerely held belief is likely to hold more passion than a mere admission of guilt, regardless of the circumstances they're spoken under."

"But a man of that passion, knowing he was caught, would have been defiant, daring me to do my worst."

Lilyana nodded slowly. "He insists he's innocent. The general opinion around the palace, and around the city for that matter, is that he's too arrogant to know when he's defeated."

"Where did you hear that?"

She shrugged.- "Servers talk. I listen. It makes a nice change."

"Well, he's an arrogant pup, that's for certain, but he's not that stupid. And there's more." Theron wrapped one of his hands around both of hers. "After a Death Judgment, I've been looked at with hatred, fear, numb acceptance, and complete incomprehension, but the expression on young Ohrid's face was, just for an instant, almost identical to the expression he wore when swearing his oaths."

"Which was?"

"
You are my liege
. No emotional loading, just a bald statement of fact."

"You said almost identical. Perhaps yesterday he was thinking,
You are my liege, drop dead
."

Theron smiled. "No.
You are my liege, do something about this
." He reached up and yanked on the cord that would summon his valet then he swung his legs off the bed.

"So what are you going to do?"

He paused at the door to his dressing room. "I'm going to have to talk with our passionate young traitor. After that, we'll see."

They reached Riverton just as the sun crested the horizon and gilded the rooftops with light. A few lines of pale smoke drifting into the dawn showed they were no longer the only ones awake. As River Road carried them into the town, a pair of half grown dogs, deep-chested and short-legged, bounded out to greet them, tails slamming from side to side.

"Some guard dogs you are," Pjerin muttered, dropping down to one knee. "No, I don't want my face licked, thank you very much."

Annice rested her pack against the corner of a building, glad of the chance to rest, and watched him dig his fingers deep into fur, reducing both dogs to abject adoration. From the look on his face, this was the most important thing that had happened all night.
There's so

much I don't know about him
. She'd arrived in Ohrid only days after both his elderly dogs had been killed by a mountain cat. He'd fought tears when he'd told her what had happened.
A person that animals trust so absolutely can't
be capable of the kind of betrayal Pjerin was accused of
. Cliche, perhaps, but it further convinced her that she'd done the right thing.

Pjerin bit the inside of his cheek, struggling to hide his emotions. More than Annice appearing in his cell, more than the midnight trip through secret passageways, more than disguises and leaving Elbasan in the middle of the night, this told him he was free. This was one of the things he believed he'd never do again.

The dogs sensed the desperation in his touch and kept pushing their noses at his face.

"Sandy! Shadow!"

Two pairs of ears perked up and Pjerin knelt abandoned in the middle of the road. He stayed there for a moment, unable to move, hands pressed against the ground so hard his knuckles went white. It had been a child's voice. He forced himself to breathe. If he wasn't going to die, he'd see his son again.

Teeth clenched, he surged to his feet. "Let's go."

Annice snagged the back of his pack as he went by. "Hold on! Try to remember I'm walking for two." He shortened his stride and, smothering a yawn, she fell into step beside him. "First inn we come to that's open for business, we stop for food and a rest."

"No." Pjerin shook his head, eyes squinted almost shut against the sun but locked on the east, locked on Ohrid.

"What do you mean,
no
?" But they had time to scratch dogs?

"What I said, no." There was no room for compromise in his tone. "We eat while we travel."

"Then you can travel without me. The kigh will spot you and you'll be back in that cell faster than I can find a rhyme for door hinge." She knew she sounded equally unreasonable, but she was tired enough and hungry enough not to care.

"Annice…"

"You can growl my name all you want to, but it's not going to change anything. You need me to hide you from the kigh, which means we have to stay together, which means you have to travel at my pace." Grabbing his arm, she pulled him around to face her. "Or have you forgotten about
your
child?" The sarcastic tone clearly suggested just how much value she placed on that possessive pronoun. "You remember; the one you wouldn't leave without?"