She grinned as she completed the last words, "... iron hard and fixed in place!"
As she set the lutar on the bed, her eyes straying to the window and the almost locked moons, she had to wonder. Should she just leave? Why was she tempting fate to stay in a hall where the walls had ears and where who knew how many souls plotted against her?
Because she would be on the run... and because. . because she was tired of running. What was the point of youth and a new world if she just repeated the old?
Anna took a deep breath and reached for another piece of paper. Not running was getting complicated, and her head was beginning to ache again.
Before too long, she wrote out another set of simple words, based on the fire spell, then worked on memorizing them, not that they were much different, but she might well need them in a hurry.
Then she laid the striker by the candle, the words there as well, with the lutar on top of its case and waiting.
She hoped she needed none of them, and feared she would.
She did not sleep, not at first, not with her thoughts of poor Garreth, possibly tortured, and her own imagination about shadowy figures creeping up the steps and pounding down the door. In time, she dropped into the darkness, Clang! Clang!
The reverberations of the hammers, or whatever they were, woke her out of a nightmare where she kept riding, and riding, and found nowhere to rest. Her whole body was drenched in sweat, and now ... now someone was trying to break into her room.
Her fingers trembled as she fumbled with the striker.
Clang!
"... get on with it . .
"...boys'll keep it clear long enough... bitch... center it, frig it!"
As the candle flamed, she lifted the lutar, and let her fingers caress the strings, clearing her throat, and hoping, just hoping she could make trembling hands, and trembling voice work.
Clang!
The first note told her she wasn't lucky. Her throat was clogged with mucus, and she coughed it clear.
Clang! The door shivered.
Anna ran through a quick vocalise, stopping halfway through to cough up more junk. Shit!
Shit! Shit! What a time for an allergy attack!
'What was that?" muttered the voice beyond the door. After another set of coughs, she sang, chording the simple structure to match her spell.
"Attackers there, attackers strong, turn to ashes with this song.
Be you right or be you wrong, death take you all along."
The tools dropped on the stones of the landing. The screams did not last long, but Anna only half-dozed the rest of the night, the candle burning, the lutar at hand.
The tower remained silent, eerily silent, as though abandoned, and Anna dozed, and woke, and dozed.
101.
FALCOR, DEFALK.
The raven-haired woman shakes Behlem's shoulder.
"Wha..." He blinks and tries to open his eyes, although the sun has barely cleared the horizon, and the room is dim, its shutters closed tightly.
"We need to talk, dear consort and Prophet." She wears a silk robe of dark blood red, tucked in to show a narrow waist and more than ample breasts.
"At this glass?" he groans, dropping his head back on the sheets.
"What I do not understand, Behlem," says the raven-haired woman, almost languidly, as she perches on the foot of the bed that had once belonged to the lords of Defalk, "is why you always think you can deceive me when you go off and leave me."
"Deceive you?" He struggles up into a sitting position. "What on Erde are you babbling about.
I told you everything."
"In the middle of the night, some. . . intruders. . . entered the north tower. They were apparently bent on some mischief with your dear sorceress."
Behiem rubs his eyes. "What are you talking about?"
"There were screams, I am told, but they were not from the sorceress. I was led to believe that she was unprotected." Cyndyth smiles. "After last night, I almost believed you, until this morning."
"You used your father's... resources, and they failed?" Behiem laughs. "The resources of the great Konsstin failed?"
"You would be wise to remember, consort dear, that he is paying for the arms and supplies for this expedition." Cyndyth shifts position, and her eyes smolder. "In the interests of everyone's safely, I inspected many of the lock-bolts throughout the liedburg, rustic place that it is. The sorceress's was singularly inadequate. "Yet..." Cyndyth shrugs. "So I would like to know why you warned her."
Behlem shakes his head, almost sadly. "I did not. I would wish I had, just to see you frustrated, dear plotting consort, but had I, your tame seers would know already."
"You slept with her."
"I would rather sleep with a grass snake." The Prophet grins momentarily.
"As pretty as she is? Have you lost all manhood?"
"Cyndyth, I have no idea what happened to your assassins, but I saw what she did to Delor, as I am certain Menares informed you. I had no desire to end up as he did." Behlem shrugs and sits up farther in the bed. "Since you would be displeased at the results and since I would also, I did not think that you would mind."
"Good. Then you will not mind our devising a way to remove her?"
Behlem holds up a hand. "Only one stipulation. That her removal be quietly handled-after the victory dinner. Her demise before it would not set well with many of the captains and their troops. She must appear... low on the table below all the overcaptains and senior captains. And I will delicately suggest that her victory, while welcome, created significant additional problems that are entirely her fault."
"You worry about peasants?"
"They have more weapons than we do, Cyndyth, and even the densest of them will suspect us-especially after this botch of yours."
"Mine? I had nothing to do with it."
"Yours. Now go get something else to chew on and let me get dressed and talk to Menares.
We will work out something quiet-perhaps in Mencha. I will give her the sorcerer's hall, as compensation, despite her failings."
"You what?"
"Then she will have to travel there. The dark ones will be waiting, to avenge their losses.
Something like that. Now go find someone else to annoy." Behiem staggers to his feet.
Cyndyth smiles as she sways toward the door.
102.
Lady Anna?"
"Yes?" the sorceress answered without unbolting the door. Despite washing up, eating, and dressing, she still felt tired.
"It's Menares. Might I come in?"
"You and who else?"
"There is no one else here." A pause followed. "Do you think anyone else would dare?"
After using the mirror spell to verify that Menares was indeed alone, and feeling untrustworthy about it, Anna opened the door.
Menares stepped in slowly, glancing around. He licked his lips.
"I won't incinerate you, Menares," Anna promised, closing and bolting the door behind the counselor.
"I would. . . appreciate that."
"I've never wanted to kill anyone here," she added. "That's why it's so hard to understand why so many people want to kill me."
"Lady Anna... the Prophet is distressed." After another sweep of the room, his eyes halting on the uncovered lutar on the bed, the counselor settled into one of the chairs.
"Menares, I'm distressed. Do you think I enjoy having people trying to break into my room in the middle of the night?" Anna paused, then sat on the bed beside her instrument. "Do you know who they were?"
"No, Lady Anna. No one is missing from the Prophet's retinue." Menares' eyes flickered, and Anna knew a lie would follow. "It could have been the dark ones. At Synek, when they came, the streets were filled with bodies and they hacked to death those who would not follow."
"These didn't feel like dark ones," Anna said.
"There is no way to tell. They had blades and daggers and coins in their purses. Everything else..." The counselor shrugged.
"And some sort of hammer and chisel?" prodded Anna.
"Ah. . . how did you know?"
"When someone takes a hammer to an iron hinge, it is loud." Anna smiled. "I also found it interesting that no one came to investigate until Skent brought my breakfast tray and found the...
remains. Was he supposed to find mine?"
"Lady Anna, I swear I had nothing to do with this." The white-haired counselor licked his lips.
"And the Prophet is most unhappy about this... occurrence."
Anna almost nodded. She believed most of his statements. There had been a massacre in Synek, and Menares had known, or suspected, someone was out to assassinate her, but had had nothing to do with it, and the Prophet wanted her out of the way, but more subtly, and probably after his victory dinner.
Lord, how many people wanted her dead?
"Can't you find out who they were?" she asked.
"Lady Anna," the white-haired counselor said with a shrug, "you did not leave much except their leathers and. their weapons. And their tools."
"I'm sure they would have left little of me, Menares." Anna smiled coldly. "What do you want?"
"To reassure you, and to offer a solution mutually agreeable to you...and everyone, I hope."
Anna didn't like the term "solution," because it meant she was a problem, and she'd already had enough experience with being a problem. Dieshr had been a wonderful Music Chair, forever offering "solutions' '-each one of which either had or would have isolated Anna more, like suggesting that Anna give up her non-credit performance classes because she was "working too hard." That would have left her students unprepared for their performances in recitals, and in turn, that would have allowed Dieshr to fault officially their preparation by Anna.
"Lady Anna?" asked Menaces.
"Sorry. I was thinking. Your solution?"
"It is the Prophet's solution. He has been thinking and reconsidering the situation as well. He is granting you the estates and hall of the late Lord Brill, in recognition and recompense for your services."
Anna managed to keep her jaw in place. Just like that? After earlier insisting that they would be his? "That's most gracious," she said slowly. "I had understood that he would retain them."
Menares looked toward the door and lowered his voice. "The Prophet and his consort both agree that you should be rewarded and that you should take possession soon after the victory celebration. In fact, he and the Lady Cyndyth would like to meet with you in the hall slightly before the dinner to convey his appreciation and respect."
Anna was beginning to see all the elements of the "solution." She allowed herself a deep breath, trying to consider how to respond. Clearly, the Lady Cyndyth had it in for Anna, and the assassins of the night before had probably been her doing, and that had upset Behiem, who couldn't afford to have anything happen to Anna just yet. Behlem liked things smoothly and quietly done, at least in public, and he just avoided Anna when he feared matters would not be smooth.
"Lady Anna?" asked Menares nervously.
"I'm sorry," Anna lied. "Loiseau is such...such a... gesture. It's hard to believe." And things too good to believe usually were.
"Lady Anna, might I be frank?" The counselor's eyes flicked around the room. "You have done much for the Prophet. And you are beautiful. And powerful. Mencha is near the border, and you would doubtless use your abilities to protect that border. The lady Cyndyth is most devoted to her consort, and would also wish that he not be any more committed to spending time away from Falcor-or preferably Esaria-than absolutely necessary." The white-haired man offered a smile. "So you see..."
"I think so. I can't put it quite so delicately. Cyndyth would prefer my absence and Lord Behlem's presence, and he would like a strong first-line defense.against any future Ebran attacks on the borders of his new expanded lands. He can reward me and please her and strengthen his position, all at once."
"Most precisely. Now... I would appreciate your discretion until the dinner, for there are those among the over-captains..." Menares shrugged, and his eyes flickered. "You are a woman, if a sorceress." He heaved himself out of the chair.
"I understand." And she did, hopefully far more than Menares understood that she did. She walked with him to the door, opening it. While treachery was still theoretically possible, she doubted that anything would happen to her, not until Behlem could get her out of Falcor, or until more time passed.
"Thank you, Lady Anna." Menares bobbed his head up and down. "Thank you."
"Thank you, Menares. I appreciate all the efforts you have made to resolve what could have been a difficult situation." Anna lied with yet another smile, hoping it didn't seem too false.
After she dropped the bolt in place, she walked to her chair and sat down, trying to figure out the situation. If she'd been offered Loiseau while she was in Mencha, she probably would have taken it and never thought otherwise. But this latest turn of events....while she couldn't say why, she knew it was all a ploy to put her on ice, or worse. Was she being unreasonable? Menares'
explanation made sense; it made a lot of sense, and she might have done the same thing had she been in Behlem's position. But Behlem was the type not to give up much of anything, and though she had never met Cyndyth, Garreth' s death told her all she needed to know.
"Aren't you being unfair?" she asked herself.