She bit her lip, chagrined. She had surely not struck him so hard: his current unconscious condition was more due to her stay-spell than to the head blow staged to disguise her foolish use of magic.
Why then was she reluctant to free him?
Elaira regarded Arithon’s still face, its severe planes and angles unsoftened by her jewel’s faint radiance. Under her hands she felt the corded tautness of him, the light-boned, lean sort of strength that was easiest of all to underestimate. His handling of attackers and pot-hook had proved him no stranger to violence; and the raw new scars that encircled his wrists hammered home the recognition that only his bloodline was familiar. The man himself had a past and a personality unknowably separate. He had not even been raised on Athera.
The intuitive deduction that marked Koriani origins shot Elaira’s uneasiness into focus. She had been mistaken to bring this prince here, alone. Even incapacitated his person bespoke a man wayward in judgement and decisively quick to take action. The association that had set him off-balance when he entered the Four Ravens must run deeper than a defaced kingdom banner: he had not expected to be attacked. When he woke, Arithon, High Prince of Rathain, was bound to be mettlesomely, royally enraged.
Elaira blotted flour off miraculously ungrazed knuckles: the fingers seemed too finely made for the offensive delivered by the pot-hook. She tossed aside her rag as if it burned her. The remiss young junior on lane watch
Arithon stirred on his own in that wretchedest moment of uncertainty. Elaira had time to panic and jack-knife clear as the heir apparent to a high kingship gathered his wits and sat up.
An immediate grimace twisted his face. He reached up, touched the swollen cut in his scalp, and looked at her. ‘Which wheel from the afterlife did you spare me from, Daelion Fatemaster’s or those of Dharkaron’s Chariot? I feel as if I’ve been milled under by something punishing from the Almighty.’
‘How could you be so utterly, unbelievably stupid!’ Elaira burst out. Damn him, he was laughing! ‘They could have killed you in there, and to what purpose?’
Arithon lowered his fingers, saw blood and thoughtfully hooked the rag she had discarded. He folded the frayed edges neatly over on themselves and pressed the compress to his scratch. ‘Now that’s a question you might answer for me.’
‘Dharkaron, Ath’s avenger!’ Elaira was fast becoming exasperated. ‘You’re in
Very still, Arithon said, ‘Whose heads are the hunted?’
His curiosity was in no wise rooted in insolence. Filled by creeping disbelief Elaira said, ‘Asandir never told you? They pay bodyweight in gold for the fugitive heirs of the earls. Half-weight for clan blood and probably every jewel off the mayor’s chubby daughters for anything related to a prince.’
Arithon lazed back on one elbow in the hay, his face tipped unreadably forward as he knotted the cloth around his head. ‘And what do you know of any princes?’
Elaira felt her heart bang hard against her ribs. ‘Do you mean to tell me,
His response came back mocking. ‘I thought I did. Has something changed?’
‘No.’ Elaira gripped both hands in front of her shins: two could play his game. ‘Your Grace, you are Teir’s’Ffalenn, prince and heir-apparent of the crown of Rathain. All that pompous rhetoric means true-born son of an old-blood high king. Every able man in this city, as well as the surrounding countryside, would give his eldest child to be first to draw and quarter you.’
A sound between a choke and a gasp cut her short.
Elaira glanced up to find Arithon’s hand fallen away and his head thrown back. The face beneath the black hair was helplessly stripped by confusion.
He had not been baiting her: he had plainly not been told. That was not all; around Arithon’s person Elaira sensed a gathering corona of power, invisibly triggered and unmistakably Asandir’s. She had a split-second to note that the forces that rang in opposition to Arithon’s will were in fact an ingeniously-laid restraint; then the gist of what she had said lent an impetus that provided him opening. He reacted with a practised unbinding, and the fabric of the ward sheared asunder.
A snap like a spark whipped the air.
Then Arithon did get angry, a charged, blind-sided rage that left him wound like a spring and staring inward. ‘
His command allowed no loophole for refusal; afraid to provoke an explosion, Elaira chose not to try. ‘The five northeastern principalities on this continent were territories in vassalage to Rathain, whose liege lord once ruled at Ithamon.’ She shrugged wretchedly. ‘Since sovereignty of Athera passed from Paravians to men, the high king crowned there by the Fellowship has always, without exception, been s’Ffalenn.’
Arithon moved, not fast enough to mask a flinch. He ripped the rag from his head as though it were metal and heavy, and an anguish he could not bury needled his reply to sarcasm. ‘Don’t tell me. The people of Rathain are subject to misery and strife and Ithamon is a ruin in a wasteland.’
In point of fact he was correct; but even rattled to shaking, Elaira was not fool enough to say so. There had to be a reason why Asandir had kept knowledge of this prince’s inheritance a close secret.
Arithon arose from the hay. He paced in agitated strides across the loft and barely a board creaked to his passing. At length he spun about, his desperation sharp as unsheathed steel. ‘What about Lysaer?’
Elaira tried for humour. ‘Oh well, there’s a kingdom waiting for him too. In fact, we’re sitting in the middle of it.’
‘Ah.’ Arithon’s brows tipped up. ‘The banner in the Ravens. And perhaps such unloving royal subjects were the reason for Asandir’s reticence?’
Careful to suppress other more volatile suppositions, the enchantress nodded placating agreement. She
