white fingers, a sudden flood, washing across his chest, spreading in a scarlet tide across the sheets. His eyes flew open, he saw her, and he gasped.
Ista woke, shot up, pressed her knuckles to her mouth to stifle her cry. She expected to taste blood, hot and sticky, and was almost shocked not to. Her body was drenched in sweat. Her heart was hammering, and she was panting as though she had been running.
The room was dark and cool, but moonlight filtered through the shutter slats. On her truckle, Liss muttered and turned over.
It had been one of those dreams. The real ones. There was no mistaking them.
Ista clutched her hair, opened her mouth in a rictus, screamed silently. Breathed, “Curse You. Whichever one of You this is. Curse You, one and five. Get out of my head. Get out of my head!”
Liss made a little cat sound and mumbled sleepily, “Lady? You all right?” She sat up on her elbow, blinking.
Ista swallowed for control and cleared her tight throat. “Just an odd dream. Go back to sleep, Liss.”
Liss grunted agreeably and rolled back over.
Ista lay back, clutching her feather coverlet to her despite her sweat-dampened body.
Was it starting again?
No. No. I won’t have it. She gasped and gulped, and barely kept from breaking into sobs. In a few minutes, her breathing steadied.
Who had that man been? It was no one she had ever seen in her life, she was certain. She would know him instantly if she ever saw him again, though; the fine shape of his face felt burned into her mind like a brand. And . . . and the rest of him. Was he enemy? Friend? Warning? Chalionese, Ibran, Roknari? Highborn or low? What did the sinister red tide of blood mean? No good thing, of that she was quite certain.
Whatever You want from me, I can’t do it. I’ve proved that before. Go away. Go away.
She lay trembling for a long time; the moonlight had turned to gray predawn mist before she fell asleep again.
ISTA WAS AWAKENED NOT BY LISS SLIPPING OUT, BUT BY LISS SLIPPING back in. She was embarrassed to discover her handmaiden had let her sleep through morning prayers, rudeness both as a pilgrim, however false, and as a real guest.
“You looked so tired,” Liss excused herself when Ista chided her. “You did not seem to sleep well last night.”
Indeed. Ista had to admit, she was glad for the extra rest. A breakfast was brought to her on a tray by a bowing acolyte, also not usual for a pilgrim so laggard as to miss the morning’s start.
After dressing and having her hair done up in a slightly more elaborate braid than usual—not looking too much like a horse, she hoped—she walked with Liss about the old mansion. They fetched up in the now-sunny court. Sitting on a bench by the wall, they watched the denizens of the school hurry past on their tasks, students and teachers and servants. Another thing Ista liked about Liss, she decided, was that the girl didn’t chatter. She conversed pleasantly enough when spoken to; the remainder of the time she fell without resentment into a restful silence.
Ista felt a cool breath on her neck from the wall she leaned against: one of this place’s ghosts. It wove around her like a cat seeking a lap, and she almost raised her hand to shoo it away, but then the impression faded. Some sad spirit, not taken up by the gods, or refusing them, or lost somehow. New ghosts kept the form they’d had in life, for a while, often violent, harsh, outraged, but in time they all came to this faded, shapeless, slow oblivion. For such an old building, the ghosts here seemed few and tranquil. Fortresses—like the Zangre—were usually the worst. Ista was resigned to her lingering sensitivity, as long as no such wasted souls took form before her inner eye. Seeing such a spirit would mean some god breathed too near, that her second sight was leaking back—and all that went with it.
Ista considered the courtyard in her dream. It was no place she’d ever been before, of that she was sure. She was equally convinced it was a real place. To avoid it . . . to certainly avoid it, all she had to do was crawl back to the castle at Valenda and stay there till her body rotted around her.