On their next afternoon's ride, they crossed the river and took back paths into the mountains, and the day after was a different route yet again. Ilsabet turned toward her sister, smiled happily, and pointed to a pair of deer grazing in the field below their path. 'Let's spread our lunch here,' she said.
They dined and shared a small bottle of wine. The drink and the heat of the day made Marishka warm. When they returned that evening, they changed into loose robes and stole down a private stairway that opened onto a sheltered ledge beside the river. With Greta and Kashi watching over them, they bathed in the Arvid River. 'The water is already getting warmer,' Marishka commented.
No doubt she was thinking how soon her wedding would be. The idyllic times were ending, Ilsabet thought, amazed at how little sorrow she felt.
Hours after she was supposed to have retired, Ilsabet moved through the labyrinth of tunnels in Nimbus Castle until she reached Jorani's hidden room. He wasn't there; she'd doubted he would be. What she planned was dangerous, and she wanted him entirely ignorant of what she intended to do. She lit a single candle and examined his stores with new knowledge, deciding finally on something he had revealed to her months before. With what she needed wrapped in a kerchief inside a pocket, she turned to go, then heard his steps in the room above.
The scent of her candle would linger in the room. He'd know someone had been here. Better to face him now.
When he saw her sitting at the table reading one of his books, he climbed down and locked the door behind him. 'I hardly expected a visit from you at this hour,' he commented as he took a seat across from her.
She closed the book. 'I thought it best that we not meet publicly. I'd hoped to find you here tonight.'
'Publicly?'
'Should anything else mysterious or tragic happen in Nimbus Castle, I wouldn't want suspicion to fall on you.'
'What would possibly happen?' he asked carefully.
She decided on a cautious answer. 'Any number of things, especially with poor Marishka nervous enough to have fainting fits. I've been reading about the calming plants like poppy and foxglove and thinking that perhaps I should ask the cook to fix Marishka tea each night to help her sleep. I suspect she'll need an extra strong brew the morning of the wedding.'
'Are you resigned to letting the wedding take place?'
Ilsabet laughed. 'You act as if I have a choice, Jorani.'
He didn't answer directly. Instead he said, 'In the months you've been gone, the rebels have attacked us twice. Each time, they've been repulsed with a minimum of losses for our side and theirs. Each time, Baron Peto has sent messages of peace. I think they're finally willing to let the hatred die and allow him to marry whomever he wishes. He's a wise man, child; far wiser than I'd expected.'
'And their child will be half Obour,' she commented.
'Exactly.'
So Jorani had also been won over. She could forgive him the betrayal far more than that of her family, for like her father, he had the affairs of their domain to consider.
'I am resigned,' she said in answer to his earlier question. She stood and walked around the table, taking his hands. 'I'll not protest the wedding, but once it's over I would like to return to Argentine. I could learn to manage your lands since it seems that Peto will not let you out of his sight to go home.'
For the first time he showed some emotion, responding with a bitter smile, and she knew she'd spoken no less than the truth.
When she'd gone, Jorani sat at the table looking at the book she had been reading, thinking how quickly she had closed it when he'd come in. She wouldn't dare try to harm the baron; she'd be suspected, imprisoned, hanged. Nonetheless, he examined the bottles on his shelves, noting the dust that had formed on them in his long absence from the room. The spider, which he risked the discovery of this room in order to feed, was still in its bowl, the web untouched. The sand that housed his ants was smooth, their tunnels undisturbed. But as he held the bowl close to the light, he saw a bit of lampblack on the side of their container. He wiped it off, thinking it was natural for Ilsabet to hold up a lamp to get a good look at them.
She's really just a child, he thought. All children are curious.
Nothing more.
The last was less a thought than a plea to the fates; a prayer.
ELEVEN
When Marishka and Ilsabet went riding, Peto accomplished nothing until they returned. He tried to work, but the papers he read, the decisions he made, were all colored by the thought that his love might be waylaid by rebels, killed, raped… The horrors of his imagination were endless.
As a result, when two of the guards came riding back to the castle with news of an accident, Peto was the first one down the stairs to the courtyard. When he heard that Marishka had been the victim, he did not ask for details, but ordered the guard off his mount.
'Send for the troop surgeon,' he ordered, 'and a healer. Don't delay.'
Peto rode out in the company of the second guard. When he reached the high flat meadows, he tried to relax. The rolling grasslands were hardly the place for a fatal accident, he decided. Probably everyone was being overly cautious, as they should be.
Then he saw Marishka lying so white and still among the yellow wildflowers, and sorrow filled him. 'Is she dead?' he asked Ilsabet.
Ilsabet shook her head.
'Their horses bolted after stepping on a snake,' one of the guards said. 'Ilsabet managed to control hers; Marishka was not so lucky.'
'Where is the horse?' Peto asked. He was a sol-dier, used to venting strong emotion with blood. He'd feel infinitely better if he could kill the beast.
'Dead, Baron. It ran off the side of the cliff road.'
'Marishka jumped deliberately, or she would have gone over with the mare,' Ilsabet said.
It was the last word either of them spoke. They sat on either side of the unconscious girl waiting for help.
Peto's campaign surgeon was a seasoned soldier. He arrived a quarter hour after Peto and examined the unconscious girl carefully, beginning with her limbs. 'Her leg is broken,' he said. 'And the bump on her head worries me.'
'Will she be all right?' Peto asked.
'I think there may also be some damage to her back. We'll have to wait until she's awake to determine the extent. In the meantime, I should set her leg while she's unconscious and save her some pain.'
Peto watched the surgeon cut away Marishka's leather boots, then left the man to his work. It would not be correct for Peto to see his future bride so exposed. And Ilsabet was with her to comfort her if she woke.
Marishka had often spoken to him about the Seer's message-that nothing Marishka did would alter her fate. He hadn't understood then; he began to understand now. He'd been so worried about the rebels killing or kidnapping her, but in the end she had been harmed anyway by something as insignificant as a meadow snake. Marishka would undoubtedly tell him it could as easily have been a piece of bad meat or a fall down the always slippery castle stairs.
'No!' he whispered to whatever gods ruled this land. 'You will not have her.'
When Marishka finally woke, the air had cooled with evening. She lay in the same place where she had fallen, but now there were blankets beneath her and a tent erected around the spot to shade her from the setting sun. She looked from Peto to Dow, the old healer, then at the surgeon. 'So much effort for me,' she said.
'Whatever is needed,' Peto replied.
The surgeon examined her first. Though her head hurt terribly and her stomach seemed queasy, she could
