upstairs to warn the household.
Dorje relaxed for the first time in an hour and went to tend the guards. 'Cut open the bite and suck out the poison,' he suggested.
The guard looked at Dorje as if he were insane. 'Look how it's already swelling,' he said, pointing at his leg.
'AH the more reason to act quickly,' Dorje replied, then crouched beside the man. He thought he recognized the victim; someone from his own village who had joined Baron Janosk's troops years before. Dorje doubted the soldier would remember him, for Dorje had been hardly more than a child then, but village ties were strong-nearly as strong as the hatred between rebel and soldier-and made him work more diligently.
Ilsabet sat in Jorani's chambers, an illuminated manuscript open on the table before her. It was an old tract, advice given to a son and heir by his father just before he died. The printing was so beautiful and the paper so brittle that she took longer to turn the pages than to read the words on them. She had opened the book to this page before leaving the room and returned to it as quickly as she could after laying out the poisoned bait in the dungeons below.
The hawks screeched a warning, and a moment later Greta, her back pressed against the wall, slipped past them. The woman was out of breath from running up the long flight of stairs. Wisps of dull brown hair had escaped their pins and brushed her round red face.
'Ilsabet! I thought I'd find you here,' Greta exclaimed. 'There are rats swarming the dungeons. They attacked the prisoners and the guards. We are supposed to take care here as well.' She held out a pair of heavy leather boots that laced to the knee. They were the thickest and tallest ones Ilsabet owned. 'Put these on and take care. Don't let them bite you. They're infected.'
Ilsabet looked evenly at her. 'How do you know?'
'They bit two of the prisoners and one of the guards. A prisoner died.'
'Died?' Ilsabet's eyes grew bright and hands shook.
Greta interpreted the emotion as fear and laid a hand on her arm. 'It's all right,' she said soothingly. 'There's been no sign of rats aboveground.'
'Where are the wounded now?'
'In the kitchen, I believe. The healer is drawing out the poison with boiling water.'
Ilsabet frowned. 'The kitchen! Aren't those Peto's prisoners?'
'Only for the moment. They say Baron Peto intends to release them as soon as the wounded man can travel. I'm going to go down now to see what help I can be.'
'I'll come with you.' For the first time, Ilsabet tried to display some fear. 'I don't want to be alone. Just let me put the book away and change my boots. No, go on ahead. I'll be all right.'
When she reached the kitchen, Jorani was kneeling beside the wounded rebel, experimenting with salves on the man's swollen face while the healer looked on and offered what advice he could. When Jorani found a salve that seemed to work, he moved to the wounded guards and used it on them as well.
As she stood in the corner watching Jorani tend the wounded, Ilsabet savored her triumph. None of the men were supposed to get out of their cells alive, but at least the combination she'd used on the rats had worked as she'd intended.
When he noticed her watching him, Jorani frowned. Understanding his concern, she shook her head slowly, implying that she'd had nothing to do with the attack.
She lied, not because she thought he wouldn't understand the reason for what she had done, but because she feared he would stop her education before it had begun if he suspected her of experimenting so soon.
And in spite of her success, she knew he'd have a right to punish her. She was young and inexperienced. The molds and poisons of Jorani's chamber were lethal. A wrong move and she would learn no more.
A wrong move and she would never have her revenge.
Greta joined her. 'Would you like to come help me pack provisions for their journey?'
'Provisions!' Ilsabet whispered. 'They attack us, and we send them home with supplies?'
'Enough for their trip. They're taking a conciliatory message from Baron Peto and your brother to their villages.'
'I doubt I'd be much help,' she said, but followed Greta anyway to a corner where the cook was loading cheese and dried meat into a sack. A second sack of the morning's bread was already full, waiting to be tied shut.
Ilsabet reached into her pocket and pulled out a white linen kerchief she'd carried to the dungeons to poison the rats' food. She'd just begun to unfold it above the bread sack when one of the servants came for it.
She moved quickly out of his way, thinking she'd be pressing her luck if she tried to kill them again. She threw the kerchief into the lit stove, pausing to watch it flare. 'I'm going to sit with my sister a while. You know what she thinks of rats,' she said to Greta, then left the servants to their work.
When Marishka had been a toddler, a river rat managed to sneak into her room. It waited until her wet nurse went to sleep, then slipped into her cradle, pressing its furry body close to her bare chest, licking the milk from her tiny pursed lips.
Sometime in the middle of the night, the nurse awakened and came to check on her. Seeing the rat, she let out a terrible scream. It startled Marishka and the rat, which bit her on the lip.
She was now left with a tiny scar near the corner of her mouth. Each time she looked at it, she recalled exactly how the woman had shrieked, how the animal's teeth had felt as they sank into her flesh, how the servant had beat at her bedcoverings then killed the beast with a fire iron.
When she had heard about the rats swarming through the dungeons, Marishka had summoned two of her maids. Hours had passed, and there had been no sign of the animals aboveground, so she dismissed them, took a fireplace poker, and sat in the center of her bed, determined to remain on guard all night if need be.
Someone knocked. She ran and threw the door open, relieved to see her sister. 'I've come to sit with you,' Ilsabet said. 'I know how terrified you are of rats.'
Marishka made Ilsabet sit beside her on the bed. 'Stay with me tonight,' she whispered. 'There's plenty of room in the bed, and you've always been so brave about such things.'
Ilsabet kissed her sister's cheek and laughed. 'Marishka, it's all right. Even the dungeons are quiet now. Whatever infuriated the beasts seems to have vanished as mysteriously as it appeared.'
'Really?'
'The infected rats are all dead. They say there's over a hundred bodies in the tunnels.'
Marishka took a deep breath, let it out, and smiled. 'Stay the night with me anyway, like you used to,' she said. 'I've hardly seen you or Mihael since…'
'Since father died?' Ilsabet asked, then went on. 'I haven't seen Mihael either, but I assumed you did. After all, I'm the enemy here.'
'No one sees you that way. All our servants say that what you did was very brave. I wish I'd had the courage to stand up to Peto. Then maybe things would be different now.'
'Different?'
Marishka frowned, trying to think of some way to explain without making Ilsabet angry. 'Maybe if I'd shown some defiance, Mihael and Baron Peto wouldn't be bartering over me as if I were a spoil of war.'
'Bartering? Are you for sale, sister?'
'Mihael seems to think so. As for Peto, well at least he's polite enough to try getting to know me before he makes a bid for me. What do you think of him?'
'I think he murdered our father,' Ilsabet retorted. 'You talk about him like a girl falling in love.'
'I'm not!' Marishka insisted. 'I meant, what sort of ruler do you think he'll be?'
'I'm not sure I should answer, just in case you do fall in love with him and repeat it.'
Marishka stared at her sister, then seeing the hint of a smile on Ilsabet's thin mouth, she flung a pillow at her. 'Tell me!' she demanded.
'All right. Peto thinks father was a ruthless barbarian, and the rebels, too. Kislovans-peasants and nobles alike-share the same blood, and the same passion for hate and love. In the end blood will win. Peto's rule will be short and tragic. He deserves what comes.'
