Silence stretched while I tried not to think about a half-dozen crossbow bolts punching through me as if I were wet parchment.
“Your guards will be returned to their quarters,” Erendella said.
“Where he goes, I go,” Bolt said.
“Not this time,” I told him. “I’ll come back to you.”
“No,” he said, his voice flat.
“Dura alone, or no one,” Erendella said.
“Why?” Bolt asked.
The princess, tall as most men, might have shrugged. The haze from the solas powder had yet to clear. “You’re gifted.” She pointed to me. “He’s not. My father’s life is in my care.”
Bolt looked as if he might object again, but in the end he relented. “Understand that I am making you personally responsible for Lord Dura’s safety, Your Highness.”
“Is that a threat?” Erendella’s voice sharpened to an edge.
“Interpret it however you wish,” Bolt said. “Just don’t forget it.”
“Beorgan.” She pointed to one of the guards. “Take these two back to their quarters and rejoin us. If I do not see him within the minute,” she said to Bolt, “Lord Dura will bear the consequences.”
The remaining guards formed up around me, but they didn’t draw their weapons. Evidently, I was so obviously ungifted that I didn’t constitute a threat.
Unlike the court in Cynestol, which ran until nearly dawn, the citadel was quiet, devoid of courtiers or courtesans making the rounds. I remarked on the difference.
“Court life in Vadras is a more serious affair,” Erendella said. “The citadel is the residence of the king, and the audience chamber for those whose petitions cannot be resolved by anyone with less authority. Ceremonial occasions are no longer held in the citadel but in the grand hall across the moat.”
Some inflection within her voice, a hitch in her speech, gave me the impression this was a recent development. “How long has that been the case?” I asked.
Her reserve receded just enough for her to glance my way. “Since father returned from the war.”
We came to the chamber where we’d held conference with the rest of the monarchs earlier, but instead of departing through the east entrance, Erendella and the guards led me north to an inconspicuous door that opened to reveal a stairway heading down. “The king’s illness requires a measure of solitude,” she said. “I hope you’re not uncomfortable with enclosed spaces, Lord Dura.”
“No, it’s forests I’ve learned to fear.”
Her eyes widened at that, but she led the way down into the rock foundation of the citadel without speaking. We came into a room composed of a single arch running its length, and we gathered in the middle so that we could stand upright. At the far end of the room, four guards held vigil by a door. No light showed beneath it.
Closer, I noticed that the door and frame had been padded with heavy felt. Erendella nodded to the guards, and they parted as she pulled a heavy key from within her dress. “You said you could cure my father of his sickness.”
I nodded.
Her mouth tightened as a prelude to anger. “And what is the price of your aid, Lord Dura?”
I needed Boclar’s gift to help me call the Fayit. If I answered Erendella with the plain truth of my intention, she wouldn’t let me within arm’s reach of the king. She’d likely imprison me instead. I took refuge in the fact that I didn’t know what was wrong with Boclar, telling myself I only suspected. “The price depends on who pays it,” I said.
“You sound like a priest.”
I nodded. “There’s probably a good reason for that.”
Erendella opened the door and we stepped into madness.
A small room, hardly more than a niche within the rock, had been equipped to host the king of Caisel. Boclar stood on a thick pile of blankets in the middle of the room, bound by heavy chains anchored to the four walls that offered him just enough slack to sit, but no more. At the sight of his daughter, he threw himself toward her but moved no more than a few inches before the heavily padded manacles drew him up short. The whites of his eyes showed all around, and he strained, working to get his hands around his daughter’s throat. Rents showed in his clothes, and bruises discolored his flesh, testimony to the extremity that had burst the blood vessels beneath his skin.
Just inside the door the king’s alchemist waited with fire, but her mirrored bowl was empty. “Please, Your Highness, let me light the powder,” she begged. “He’s killing himself.”
Erendella watched her father, her expression cold and still like snow piled on a mountain before an avalanche. “How much do you have?”
The alchemist dropped her gaze to stare at her hands as if they accused her. “An hour’s worth. No more. The shipment of phosine from Owmead has been delayed. It will be another week in coming.”
Erendella was wavering.
“Your Highness,” I said, “if you have any hope of defeating this illness, light the powder and let me work.” Inside, I retched at the deception I’d just perpetrated.
She pointed to Helioma, who placed a measure of powder into the bowl and lit it with a taper from one of the lamps. Shadows fled. “My compliments,” I said to her. “The best alchemist in Bunard sought in vain to find a way to make the powder burn more slowly.”
Erendella paused just long enough to turn to me. “Helioma is the foremost alchemist on the continent.”
The king’s struggles ceased, and he looked around at us, his eyes clear. “Aer have mercy,” he cried. “I hurt all over.” Erendella ran to him, holding a cup. “Not too much?” he asked. “I have to be able to function come dawn.”
She swallowed. “Not too much, Father. Drink.”
I steeled myself for what I had to do and tried to ignore the fact that my justifications sounded too much like Pellin’s or Toria’s. “You spent a night in the forest,” I said. If Boclar or his daughter noticed the absence of
