mey ahead in a curve that faded at length into distant hills whose heads were shrouded in rain clouds, although here where he walked the sun shone, its light winking on smooth waters. His feet crunched on coarse sand. The rhythmic shush and suck of waves along the shore and the shrill cries of seabirds overhead kept him company.
A mist rose off the surface of the wide bay. It boiled into a silver fog that rolled toward the land like a watery beast shouldering up out of the depths. On the crest of this fog, as on a wave, lifted a rider mounted on a winged horse, and it surely was Marit riding that horse because even at this distance he would know her anywhere. He ran toward the water, to meet her. The foam of the cresting wave broke over the form of rider and horse, obliterating it; he was left behind with wavelets lapping his toes and his hands grasping air.
'Reeve! Reeve Joss!'
The low voice woke him, or possibly he woke himself, moaning aloud. He stirred and sat, and found that he could sit. The bit of rice and water taken earlier had strengthened him. His head ached, but he could blink without wanting to pass out.
After all, he was only hearing things. He could see nothing in the blackness. The air smelled of rotting things and sickness and worse, a foul smell lightened only because it was rather dry, not at all fresh. Thank the gods.
'Reeve Joss!'
The hatch scraped open to reveal a light lowered through to dangle, swaying back and forth on a line. A hand appeared, fingers slender and strong. It fastened the lantern's looped handle to a hook set in the ceiling off to one side, too high for him to reach. He blinked back tears as his eyes adjusted, and when he was able to look up past the light, he saw a face looking down at him through the hatch as hands lowered a rope until its end curled on the floor.
'Hurry up,' she said. 'Are you strong enough to climb?'
The rope had been knotted at intervals to provide footholds and handholds.
'Very thoughtful,' he said, for it took him a moment-he was thinking slowly- to recognize her. 'But I'll take my chances with someone who hasn't already tried to kill me.'
'As usual, you men always jump to conclusions about what we women intend. It's quite tiresome.'
'When I met you last, you tried to kill me.'
'Are you sure?'
'Hmm. Let me think. A naked knife. A mostly naked woman. I admit that part was appealing.'
'Why in the hells would I come to kill you stripped to the waist?'
He chuckled, although it sounded exceedingly like rolling pebbles in his mouth, a trick he had tried when a lad with predictable results. He felt now, too, as though he had swallowed something small and hard that wedged in his throat. There was still a little water left in the cup, and he sipped at it and recovered and could speak.
'I thought it was a clever ploy to distract my attention.'
She laughed as she grinned down at him. The flame of the light gave her complexion a glowing cast, bathing it in gold. Her eyes were very dark, heavily lidded. Her mouth was lush and very red. Delectable.
'Aui! The hells,' he muttered. 'I'm delirious.'
'No doubt. All the better reason to climb that rope and escape your prison.'
'With your help?'
'I'm the one with the rope.'
He lifted a hand and was pleased he had strength enough to gesture in a casual way, reflecting a degree of unconcern he did not, in fact, feel, not with her hanging over him in such a position that he got a look right down her vest to the rounded shadows beneath. He remembered-very well-the curves she had on her.
'I'll pass.'
'You'll wait for the justice of this corrupt council? I think you'd do best to be well shed of them, for they've been colluding with all manner of folk who will be happy to kill you once they have conquered Olossi. Which they are like to do if you can't get a message to the northern reeve halls, which I wish you would do by climbing this rope, calling your eagle, and leaving this place as soon as ever you can.'
'Oh. Slow. I beg you. That was too much and too fast, my sweet.'
'I've not given you permission to call me your 'sweet.' '
'Maybe not, but you ask me to trust you. That should give me a few privileges, don't you think?'
'Why shouldn't you trust me? You're such an easy target now that had I wished to kill you, you'd be dead already.'
'It is a great comfort, knowing that. Why did you try to kill me before?'
'As I said, you misread the signals.'
'A knife thrust at my guts is a strange way to signal something other than murderous intent.'
'I had to protect myself. I wasn't sure who had sent you. You might have been on the side of our enemies.'
'Who did you think had sent me? Who are your enemies? And who are you?'
She looked away, over her shoulder, then back down at him. 'Best we get you out of here before we're interrupted, then I'll tell the tale.'
'So, again, you're saying I must trust you.'
'Or stay here. Your choice.'
'How did you get here? Where are the guards?'
'Aui!' She had a very attractive way of setting her jaw when she was exasperated. 'You talk too much, after all. Just like other men. Here I hoped you were different.'
'Oh! Eh!' He laughed, although it hurt his head and his ribs to do so. 'Now you've appealed to my vanity. I can't bear to be 'just like other men.' '
He tried to stand but found he was too weak to do it easily. Setting a hand against the wall and one on the ground, he managed to lever himself up, but he had to lean against the wall lest he collapse. He was cold, and then hot, and then cold again, in waves that made him sweat and shiver. 'Whew. I'm sorry to say, it'll be hard for me to climb that rope.'
She withdrew. A second rope slithered over the lip and its end dropped to the floor. Two bare feet appeared, gripped the rope as she eased her body over the lip. She shinnied down hand over hand at a speed that should have burned her thighs, landed softly, and paused with a hand still on the rope to fetch a tiny globe from her cleavage. It was glass, of a kind. With it balanced in one palm, she blew into it, and it lit with a pretty flame that cast an aura of light before her.
'I'll help you up,' she said.
He stared at her tight sleeveless vest and short kilted wrap. The rig showed her figure to advantage, and she knew it. She smiled, amused by his stare.
From above, a snap like the sound of a door slid hard shut cut the quiet.
Her smile vanished as quickly as it had come. She stepped forward to examine him, and the floor of the cell, under the glow of the globe light. He became aware of what he must look like and how he must reek. For the first time, he got a good look at the coating of dried grime that had slicked the floor, every possible thing he could disgorge from his body: blood, vomit, diarrhea, urine, the worst sort of spume.
She lifted the globe to the level of his eyes. 'Did they try to poison you?'
'I don't know. I ate a little rice earlier. It-stayed down.'
'Follow the light.' She moved it slowly from side to side, but she watched his eyes. 'Did you take a hard blow to the head?'
'That I did.'
'Ah. Sometimes that will make you cast out your stomach. Yes, you've quite a few signs of that illness. You'll want a bath and your clothes washed. We best hurry, for this is taking longer than I had planned for. Can you walk?'
'I don't know.'
By the way she tilted her head just a little to the right and then back a little to the left it seemed she was considering options and discarding them.
She touched the globe to those rich lips. Its light extinguished immediately.
'I'll put it back in its warm setting, my sweet,' he said hopefully.
She looked at him sidelong in a way that would have set him aflame if he wasn't feeling and smelling and looking like a dead rat well run over and left in the dank to get really ripe. Then she tucked away the globe, slung a
