you all right?”
It was Jonas who spoke. I looked at him, I think, in some wonder. “Yes. Did I seem ill?”
“For a moment.”
“I was only reflecting on the familiarity of this place, seeking to understand it. I think it recalls to me many summer days in our Citadel. These trees are nearly as large as the towers there, and many of the towers are wrapped in ivy, so that in quiet summer weather the light between them has this emerald quality. Too, it is quiet here, as there …”
“Yes?”
“You must have ridden many times in boats, Jonas.”
“Occasionally, yes.”
“It is something I had long wanted to do, and did for the first time only when Agia and I were ferried to the island where the Botanic Gardens stands, and then later when we crossed the Lake of Birds. The motion is much like the motion of this beast, and it is as silent, save for a splashing, sometimes, when the oar goes into the water. I feel now that I’m traveling through the Citadel in a flood, solemnly rowed.”
At that Jonas looked so grave that I burst out laughing at the sight of his face, and stood up, meaning (I think) to look over the side of the howdah and show by some remark about the forest floor that I was merely indulging my fancy.
I had no sooner stood, however, than the scarred man rose too, and holding his dirk’s point within a thumb of my throat told me to sit again. To spite him I shook my head.
He flourished his weapon. “Get down or I’ll rip your belly open!”
“And lose the glory of bringing me back? I don’t think so. Wait until the others tell Vodalus that you had me, and you stabbed me when my hands were tied.”
Now came the turn of fate. The bearded man who held Terminus Est tried to draw her, and not being acquainted with the proper way to bare so long a sword—which is to grip the quillons in one hand and the throat of the sheath with the other, and by opening the arms to the right and left draw the blade clear’sought to free it by pulling up, as if he were jerking a weed from a field. In this clumsy business he was taken off guard by one of the baluchither’s rolling steps, and lurched against the man with the scarred face. The edges of the blade, keen enough to part a hair, cut them both; the man with the scarred face threw himself backward, and Jonas, by hooking one of his feet behind the scarred man’s and pressing his leg with the sole of the other, managed to tumble him over the railing of the howdah.
Meantime, the black-bearded man had dropped Terminus Est and was staring at his wound, which was very long, though no doubt shallow. I knew that weapon as I know my own hand, and it took only a moment to turn and crouch and grasp the hilt, and then, wedging it between my heels, to cut the thongs that bound my wrists. The black-bearded man drew a dagger then and might have killed me had not Jonas kicked him between the legs.
He bent double, and long before he could straighten himself I was up, with Terminus Est ready.
The contraction of his muscles snapped him erect, as often happens when the subject is not made to kneel; I think the spray of blood was the first sign the trainer had (so swiftly had it all taken place) that something was amiss. He looked back at us, and I was able to take him very neatly, swinging the blade one-handed in the horizontal stroke, as I leaned out of the howdah.
His head had no more than struck the ground when the baluchither stepped between two great trees growing so close together that he seemed to squeeze himself like a mouse through a crevice in a wall. Beyond lay a glade more open than anything I had seen in that forest—where grass grew as well as fern, and spots of sunlight, unshaded with green and rich as orpiment, played over the turf. Here Vodalus had caused to be erected his throne, beneath a canopy woven of flowering vines; and here, as it chanced, he sat with the Chatelaine Thea beside him just as we entered, judging and rewarding his followers.
Jonas saw nothing of that, being still sprawled on the floor of the howdah, where he was cutting his hands