“Yes, I am,” she said stiffly, “so forget I asked.”
“R’shiel, if word got back to Lord Jenga that I’d helped Tarja escape, I’d be in the cell he vacated before morning.”
“I said forget it,” she assured him, disappointed. This was the young man who had helped her climb the outside of the Great Hall to spy on the Gathering. She had thought him more daring than the average Defender. She had thought him Tarja’s friend.
He sighed and shook his head. “Don’t you know how dangerous this is?”
“Well, I’m certainly not going to just stand around and watch Joyhinia hang him!” she declared.
Davydd glanced up the deserted street for a moment before looking at her closely. “R’shiel, don’t you think you should stay out of this? Your mother would kill you if you’re caught. She’d kill me too.”
“She’s not my mother.”
“Maybe not,” Davydd said, lowering his voice, “but she’s bound to react like one.”
“I have to free him, Davydd,” she pleaded. “I need your help.”
“R’shiel, Tarja has more friends in the Citadel than you realize,” he told her cautiously. “Take my advice and leave well enough alone.”
“Please, Davydd?”
Davydd studied her in the darkness for a moment, weighing his decision. Then he sighed again. “I just know I’m going to regret this.”
R’shiel leaned forward, meaning to kiss his cheek to thank him, but he moved at the last minute and she found herself meeting his lips. He pulled her closer and let the kiss linger far longer then she ever intended it to. With some reluctance, he let her go and shook his head.
“Now she gets romantic,” he joked as he let her go. “Come on, then. I know someone who might agree to this insanity. I never did plan to live long at any rate.”
The stables that housed the Defenders cavalry mounts were vast, stretching from the eastern side of the amphitheater to the outer wall of the Citadel. They were warm and pungent with so many animals stabled in such close confines, but their soft snores comforted R’shiel. Davydd had left her here and told her to wait. He had been gone more than an hour, plenty of time for R’shiel to imagine any number of unfortunate fates had befallen him. It was also more than sufficient time for R’shiel to wonder if she had misjudged him. He could be reporting her presence at this very moment; gathering a squad to arrest her while she waited here like a trusting fool...
“R’shiel!”
She spun toward the whispered call. “Davydd?”
A uniformed figure appeared in the gloom.
“R’shiel.” Nheal Alcarnen moved toward her, his expression unreadable in the dim light of the stable. She did not know him well, but he was an old friend of Tarja’s. He was also the captain who had been hunting them in Reddingdale. She glanced over his shoulder, but he was alone. “Davydd says you need my help.”
“I... I want to free Tarja.”
Nheal looked at her for a long moment. “Why?”
“Why? Why do you think! They’re torturing him, and in a few days they’re going to hang him! Founders, Nheal! What a stupid question!”
He nodded, as if her answer had satisfied some other, unvoiced doubt. “Aye, it was a stupid question. I don’t agree with what he’s done, mind you, and I don’t hold with any of that pagan nonsense, but this has gone beyond the simple punishment of an oathbreaker.” Nheal took a deep breath before he continued. “I was there when Draco arrested him. The Spear of the First Sister held a blade to an innocent man’s throat and threatened to kill him and his entire family. If Lord Draco can betray his Defender’s oath so readily and be honored for it, I see no reason why Tarja should be hanged for the same offense.”
The news did not surprise R’shiel. She had suspected something of the kind. Tarja would never have surrendered willingly.
“You’ll help me then?”
He nodded. “The guard changes at dawn. If I call a snap inspection I can delay them for a time. We don’t waste good men on cell duty. The night watch will be half asleep, or drunk if they’ve managed to smuggle in a jug when their officer wasn’t looking.”
“I don’t know how to thank you, Nheal.”
“Don’t kill anyone,” he told her. “And if you’re caught, keep my name out of it. I’m doing this because Tarja was my friend. But he’s not so good a friend that I want to be hanged alongside him.”
She nodded. “I understand.”
“I doubt it,” he said, then he turned on his heel and walked away. Within a few steps the darkness had swallowed him completely and she was alone.
chapter 27
Tarja woke at first light. Gray tentacles of light felt their way into his cell from the small barred window as he swam toward consciousness. He opened his eyes and lay there for a while, trying to work out what was wrong, what was different. The smell of his own body disgusted him. It stank of sweat and blood and stale urine.
It took him a while, but eventually he worked out that both his eyes were open. It took him even longer to realize he could move. He sat up gingerly, waiting for the pain to return, but it was gone. Completely gone.
Tarja flexed his fingers, his unbroken, unmarked fingers, with increasing wonder. He pushed his tongue against teeth that were firm in their sockets, ran it over lips that were smooth and supple. Pulling back the torn sleeve of his filthy, bloodstained shirt, he picked at a scab on his arm. The crust lifted with a flick to reveal pink, healed, and unscarred flesh beneath. He rotated his shoulder, and it moved freely and smoothly. Swinging his feet onto the floor, he discovered the soles of his feet were whole and undamaged, only the stains of blood and loose flakes of skin giving any indication of their condition the night before.
Tarja wondered if he was still dreaming. The last thing he remembered was the little girl who had featured so prominently in his dream, and another shadowy, undefined figure. The details were hazy. He’d lost consciousness; he remembered falling into the blackness but nothing after that. For a moment he wondered if perhaps his pagan friends had petitioned the gods on his behalf. There seemed no other explanation for his sudden recovery. It was an uncomfortable thought for someone who did not actually believe that the gods existed.
A noise in the guardroom outside diverted him from taking an inventory of his vanished injuries. They had come for him already. Oddly, pain heaped upon pain was easier to bear than pain inflicted where there was none. Tarja wondered what the reaction would be to his miraculous recovery. Joyhinia would probably have him drowned as a sorcerer.
The door flew open, and the guard stumbled drunkenly into the cell. Close on his heels was Davydd Tailorson. Tarja stared at the guard uncomprehendingly as he fell to the floor.
“He’s drugged,” Davydd explained. “Don’t worry, all he’ll have is a hangover.”
Tarja looked at the young man blankly.
“Hey! Snap out of it, Captain! This is a gaol break, in case you haven’t noticed. Get a move on!”
Tarja jumped to his feet, leaped over the body of the guard, and ran down the hallway after Davydd. “Do you have horses?” he asked, as he skidded to a halt near the door. It seemed such a banal question. What he really wanted to ask was:
“Out the front,” Davydd assured him.
Another man was waiting for them, this one a man who had still been a Cadet before Tarja had left for the southern border. He could not even recall the man’s name.
“You’d best get changed,” the young man advised urgently, handing him a clean uniform. “We’re going out the main gate as soon as it’s opened. You’ll never pass as a Defender looking like that.”
Tarja took the uniform and changed into it, delighted to be rid of his soiled clothes. As he was pulling on the
