Hearing the slow, methodical rattle as I made a close study of each link, the older Vralian glanced behind him to see what I was about. I raised my brows coolly at him and kept at it. He watched me in that reluctant, sidelong fashion for a moment, then shrugged and turned back.
His lack of concern didn’t bode well.
There was good reason for it. The chains that bound me were impeccably wrought. Every single bedamned link was a miracle of perfection, joined without the slightest gap or chink, burnished to immaculate smoothness. I couldn’t find a single drop of solder that had fallen astray. Every perfect link was etched with a tiny, perfect sigil.
Insofar as I could tell, the chains were flawless. And to be honest, I wasn’t sure what I would have done if I had found a flaw. Focalor had spread his enormous wings, and thunder had rolled. Lightning had flashed in his eyes. The chain wrapped around him had burst with a sharp crack and fallen to the floor.
I couldn’t summon thunder and lightning, only the gentle twilight. I was good at the arts of pleasure and coaxing plants to grow, not commanding the sea to rise and fall.
At last, I gave up searching for a flaw that didn’t exist, and that I wouldn’t know how to exploit if it did. Instead, I began testing the chains’ strength, gathering short lengths in my hands and hauling on them with all my might. Mayhap there was some weakness in a link not visible to the eye.
Again, the older Vralian glanced back at my strenuous efforts and the elaborate contortions that accompanied them.
I was short of breath, furious, and sweating beneath my thick Tatar coat. “Do you expect me not to try?”
He shook his head, his expression curiously gentle. “No.”
I wore myself out with trying.
By the time we made camp that evening, I was too tired to despair. Chained to the axle once more, I ate my bowl of stringy stew-meat and stale roots, and retreated beneath the wagon to curl up in my nest of furs. The ground was harder and rockier than it had been. Shifting stones out of the way, I had another idea. Selecting an especially keen-edged shard, I fell asleep clutching it in my hand.
On the following day, I set about trying to destroy the integrity of my chains. I affected a docile appearance and hid the stone shard in my sleeve until we were under way. As soon as the cart-horses leaned into their traces and we resumed our plodding, jolting progress toward the north, I shook the shard into my palm.
Both Vralians gazed fixedly forward. I had begun to note that they had a marked reluctance to look directly at me, especially the younger one.
Fine.
This time, I took care to make my movements small and unobtrusive. Leaning back against the covered bales of wool, I drew up my knees. I braced my left wrist against my left knee, shoving my last remaining jade bangle higher on my forearm so it wouldn’t rattle against the metal and give me away. I chose a link, the third closest to the cuff around my wrist, easiest to reach.
Its perfect little sigil gleamed.
With my right hand, I drew the sharp edge of my stone shard across it, timing my action to the dull, thudding fall of the cart-horses’ hooves.
It didn’t even make a scratch at first. But I kept at it, patient and deliberate, timing each careful stroke to hide the faint scraping sound, scoring the metal’s surface over and over until the lines of the sigil were blurred and imperfect.
It should have worked. I don’t know why it didn’t, except that it didn’t. Like as not there was some rule governing its magic. The chains had been made perfectly at their inception, and I could not unmake them by inducing a flaw after the fact.
And I hadn’t been as discreet as I’d thought. When we halted for the evening, the older Vralian came around to the side of the wagon and put out his hand, looking like a reproving parent. “Give the stone.”
I hesitated, fingering the edge of the shard. With sufficient force behind the effort, it was sharp enough to cut through flesh.
A trained warrior like Snow Tiger wouldn’t even have hesitated. I’d watched the princess snatch an arrow from an enemy’s hand and plunge it into his throat in a move as swift and deadly as a snake striking.
Of course, she hadn’t been laden with chains.
A clever, cunning fighter like Bao would have found a way to use the chains to his advantage. He probably wouldn’t even bother with the stone. I could imagine him vaulting over the Vralian’s head, wrapping his chains around the fellow’s neck in the process and throttling him on landing. By the time the second man had a chance to react, Bao would have plucked the knife from the first man’s belt and armed himself.
But I wasn’t a trained warrior or a skilled, clever fighter any more than I was a Grand Duke of the Fallen. With the element of surprise, I might, might succeed in slashing the first man’s throat. Even if I did, I could barely climb out of the cart unaided. I didn’t like my chances against the second fellow.
The Vralian watched me with his deep-set gaze, holding out his hand and waiting for me to make up my mind. Obviously, the element of surprise was gone.
With a heavy sigh, I put the shard in his palm.
His expression softened. “Good girl.”
I lowered my gaze in a penitent manner, replying in vulgar Alban and a sweet, remorseful tone. “Go to hell, you miserable goat-fucking bastard.”
We made camp that night within the sight of mountains. After I finished the bowl of barley gruel that they gave me for the evening meal, I sat with my back against one of the wagon-wheels and gazed at the distant range. Here and there, I could make out carpets of dark green on the slopes.
Trees.
As much as I’d come to be fond of the vast, wide-open expanse of the Tatar steppe and its immense blue sky, I’d never stopped missing trees. I’d never imagined that my first glimpse of them would be aught but joyful. Instead, it was a reminder that I was bound and helpless, cut off from my own inner senses, and headed in the opposite direction from everything and everyone I had ever loved.
It was not a joyful moment.
NINETEEN
The older Vralian’s name was Ilya; the younger’s was Leonid.
I learned this through observation over the course of days, since neither of them deigned to tell me when I asked. It is more difficult than one might expect to pick out proper names in the midst of an utterly foreign tongue, especially among folk who speak seldom.
Beyond that, I learned nothing. By the time we had spent a week’s time jolting our way through the mountain passes, I was just as puzzled and confused as I had been from the moment Ilya first clamped a cuff around my wrist. I could not for the life of me understand what it was they wanted of me.
Not pleasure, that was certain. They were as reluctant to touch me as they were to look at me or talk to me.
For that, I was grateful. If they had been intent on committing heresy on me, I would have been helpless to prevent it. But instead, it seemed quite the opposite. I had the sense that they regarded me as unclean, and not in a way that owed to my limited and unsuccessful attempts to maintain good hygiene, a difficult task rendered near impossible by virtue of being chained within my dirty clothing.
No, it was somewhat deeper and more profound.
Over and over, in a thousand different ways, I asked what it was they wanted, why they had taken me. The only answer I ever got was, “God wills it.” Eventually, I gave up asking and pondered why Vralia’s god wanted me.
What little I knew of Vralian faith came from Berlik’s tale—Berlik the Oath-Breaker, who had fled to the snowy wastes, carrying his curse far, far away from his people. In the end, the Maghuin Dhonn Herself had accepted his atonement.
I knew that Berlik had fallen in with Yeshuite pilgrims on his journey, and that he had found a place of sanctuary in a Yeshuite monastery in Vralia. No one had clapped him in chains. No, the head priest had given Berlik his blessing, allowing him to retreat into hermitage and roam freely in an immense tract of pristine wilderness owned by the monastery. When Imriel de la Courcel came seeking vengeance for the life of his wife and unborn child, the priest begged him to spare Berlik.
Of course, we only know Prince Imriel’s side of the tale, but the Maghuin Dhonn have always believed he told it fairly. Tales say that Berlik bowed his head to the sword willingly, and the prince fell to his knees in the snow and wept after he took his life. A man with every right to vengeance would not lie about such a thing.
I wondered what had changed in a hundred and some years that Yeshua’s priests had gone from giving succor to a great magician of the Maghuin Dhonn, one with a dire curse on his head, to dragging me away in chains for the dubious sin of having been falsely accused of cheating in an archery contest.
It was madness.
Vralia had been a country at war in Berlik’s time, that I remembered. The Yeshuite faith was not born here; indeed, it had far closer ties to Terre d’Ange. Mayhap I was approaching the matter from the wrong direction, and Vralia’s gods were interested in me because of my D’Angeline blood.
I tried to think the matter through, looking for some thread of a clue woven into the tapestry of history.
“Yeshua ben Yosef was the only begotten son of the One God of the Habiru folk,” I said aloud in my native tongue, addressing the back of Ilya and Leonid’s heads. “And they acknowledged him as the long-awaited savior of their people. Is that not so?”
I could see both of them stiffen at hearing Yeshua’s name coming from my lips. Although they understood nothing else, they did not like it when I spoke of him, but it helped me think and remember.
“But the Tiberians reviled him for sowing disorder. They took him prisoner, and killed him like a common criminal,” I continued. “And as his true love Mary wept at the foot of the post to which he was nailed, her tears mingled with his dripping blood in the soil. From this joining, Blessed Elua was engendered, and Mother Earth herself nurtured him in her womb.”
They didn’t like hearing Elua’s name, either, although I had the impression it was for different reasons.
I pondered what little else I knew. Of Yeshua ben Yosef, not much. The history of Blessed Elua and his Companions, I knew well. Ever since I had learned that I was half-D’Angeline, I had been curious about it.
The One God had turned his back on his Earth-begotten grandson, but a handful of his divine servants had abandoned their posts in Heaven and gone to Elua’s side: Naamah, Anael, Shemhazai, Eisheth, Azza, Camael, and Cassiel. When the King of Persis put Elua in chains, Naamah offered herself to him in exchange for Elua’s freedom. When Elua hungered, Naamah lay down with strangers in exchange for coin that he might eat.
Wandering the earth, they came at last to Terre d’Ange, where they were welcomed with joy. There, they made a home and begat thousands upon thousands of children.
Except for Cassiel, anyway. Although he stayed for love of Blessed Elua, he obeyed the One God’s commandment that his servants remain chaste.
I’d never quite understood Cassiel.
When their descendants grew too numerous, the One God took notice at last. He sent his commander-in-chief to fetch Elua and his Companions back to Heaven, but Elua refused, saying his grandfather’s Heaven was bloodless. In the end, Mother Earth intervened and struck a bargain with the One God, who had been her husband long, long ago. Together they created a new place beyond the mortal realm, which D’Angelines call the Terre d’Ange-that-lies-beyond.
Well and so, it seemed to me that the matter had been peacefully resolved. It had taken place over a thousand years ago. So far as I knew, Yeshuites and D’Angelines had lived peaceably together for those long centuries.
Mayhap the answer lay in more recent history. My thoughts circled back around to Berlik’s tale. In his day, there had been a great exodus of Yeshuites around the world as they embarked on pilgrimages to Vralia. There was a prophecy that when Yeshua ben Yosef returned to the world, he would establish his kingdom in the north, and the Yeshuites believed the time was nigh.
That, I remembered, was because of the war in Vralia. Some royal prince named Tadeuz Vral had set himself up as the supreme monarch. He’d even named the place after himself. But his brother had rebelled against him. Tadeuz Vral had appointed a Yeshuite immigrant with a gift for military strategy to lead his army, and swore an oath that he would convert and rule the country in Yeshua’s name if the fellow was victorious.
As it happened, he was.
That was how Vralia had become a Yeshuite nation, and that was the extent of my knowledge. I did recall that in Prince Imriel’s tale, this Tadeuz Vral had been none too pleased with him for killing Berlik, as all Yeshuite pilgrims were under his protection and Prince Imriel had lied about his intentions. But it was the very same priest who had begged Prince Imriel to spare Berlik who convinced Vral to let the prince go, so I did not see how the incident could be the cause of a grudge that had festered for over a hundred years and led to my own half-breed D’Angeline self being taken into captivity.
Again, so far as I knew, it was the start of a diplomatic relationship between the nations, and I didn’t recall hearing aught to suggest it was anything but cordial in the decades that had followed.
None of it made a damn bit of sense.
Of course, I had been gone for a long while. For all I knew, there had been some new incident that had Vralia in an uproar against D’Angelines or the folk of the Maghuin Dhonn, and I was paying the price.
It seemed unlikely, though. There were no great, shape-shifting magicians like Berlik left to my people, and I could hardly imagine thoughtful, steady-minded King Daniel of Terre d’Ange allowing a diplomatic outrage to take place on his watch. No, if anything, he was overly cautious. The only outrageous thing he had ever done in his life was marry Jehanne.
Despite everything, the thought made me smile.
Few folk had ever understood that match, but I did. Daniel’s first wife, the one who died, had been the love of his life, gracious, noble, and kind. To this day, he grieved deeply for her. He had allowed himself to love the fickle, tempestuous courtesan that was my lady Jehanne because she was nothing like her predecessor—and Jehanne knew it full well.