“Be happy I’m here at all,” he snapped back. Goddess, but the woman was beautiful, he thought. His gaze ran over the perfect body barely concealed by a yellow silk bedrobe. Her hair was in tangles and her feet were bare, and it was obvious that she had been aroused from a nap by his arrival with her prize. As her face suddenly lit with an inner fire, he knew she had spotted Rohan.
“He’s not hurt, is he?” she asked, anxious as any mother, though there was nothing tender in her sharp dark eyes.
“Not much. A nick in his shoulder and a sore head. He’s all yours, princess. Do what you want with him.”
“I intend to,” she said, and gestured to her hovering women. They maneuvered the prince to the ground and two men came forward with a litter. As Rohan was carried into the keep, Ianthe caught sight of the boy. “What’s that?”
“His squire, I should think. Farid died in the skirmish. I didn’t think you’d mind about that, but I do draw the line at killing children.”
“So you do have limits. How interesting. Untie the gag. I want to hear what he has to say.”
Stiff from a long night and longer day spent slung across a saddle, the boy’s blood quickly warmed with the chance to vent his fury. He spat on the ground as the cloth was removed from his mouth, then spat once more, this time at Ianthe.
She backed off a pace, scowling. “Don’t try that again, brat! What’s your name?”
He set his jaw stubbornly and glared at her.
“Speak while you’ve still the tongue to do so!”
Green eyes widened, but he said nothing.
“Those aren’t just Rohan’s colors you’re wearing,” Ianthe mused. “The blue and silver are his, but the black and green—” Tapping a finger against one flawless cheek, she began to laugh. “Oh, I should have known it by the eyes! You’re related to the Sunrunner witch, a kinsman from River Run!” Turning to Beliaev, she said, “How wise of you not to kill him. He’ll be my messenger back to Sioned. Do you know what you’ll be telling her, boy?” she directed at the squire with a viciously sweet smile. “That an army of Sunrunners won’t get her precious prince back for her, not even with Andrade at its head and down on her knees before my father the High Prince. Rohan is all mine now, little one, as he should have been from the start. I’ll let you keep your tongue after all, so you can tell Sioned exactly what you’ll see while you’re here.”
“She’ll kill you!” the boy burst out.
“A faradhi, kill? Never! She hasn’t the courage. None of them do. But I’m a different sort, as your prince will find out soon enough. Beliaev, see that the brat is cleaned and fed. I want him in good condition for his journey back to Stronghold.”
“What are you going to do to my lord?” the boy cried out.
“Things you won’t be interested in until you’re older,” she laughed. “But I may let you watch so you can be educated—and so you can tell that green-eyed bitch exactly what sort of care I gave her beloved.”
She swept away up the stairs, calling for her women to minister to the prince’s wounds. Beliaev, understanding at last what she really wanted from Rohan, remembered the dragon tapestries and was very glad they had not been stitched with himself in mind.
Chapter Twenty-two
Kleve had spent fourteen of his forty-four years traversing the northern princedoms, accompanied only by two sturdy mountain ponies. The solitary life of an itinerant faradhi suited him; he avoided any place larger than a village with the same zeal that he avoided crossing water. But each spring he spent a little time in Tiglath, enjoying the company of a certain innkeeper’s widow and congratulating himself on a life spent away from walls and cities.
Kleve presented himself as usual at Lord Eltanin’s small palace of sun-yellow stone—a sad court since the death of lovely young Lady Antalya. Kleve expected that his lordship would as usual require him to contact Princess Sioned with reports too sensitive to be entrusted to parchment and which faradhi oaths kept secret. But Eltanin, whose face was scored by lines that made him look nearly Kleve’s age, had only two messages for the princess: the Merida threatened, and Prince Rohan was many days overdue.
Thus it was that Kleve saw only one sunrise in Tiglath before setting off