The Palace of Impossible Dreams (45 page)

“No!” she insisted, slapping away his arm as he tried to pull her closer. “That's not what I mean. I mean she
owns
them. I think the pups are Crasii.”

“Well, of course they're . . .” He hesitated, as he realised what she was saying. “Oh, Tides, no . . .”

Boots had started crying again. “Didn't you see her with them? They stop crying when she commands it. They turn at the sound of her voice . . .”

“They're just reacting to any old noise, Boots. They're too young to understand. Besides, we're both Scards . . .”

“My parents were both Crasii,” she reminded him. “And so were yours, I'll wager. That doesn't make the slightest difference. If a couple of Crasii can throw a Scard, then there's no reason why a couple of Scards can't throw a Crasii litter.”

Though she tried to push him away, this time Warlock wouldn't be put off so easily. He pulled her to him and held her close, letting the implications of this dreadful news sink in. He'd never even considered the possibility his pups wouldn't be Scards, just like him and Boots. But if she was right, if the pups were pure Crasii, compelled to obey their immortal masters, their futures were all in doubt.

He glanced down at the sleeping pups, so innocently curled into their mother's body for warmth.

Tides, could fate be so cruel?

“It's too early to tell, Boots. And even if they are . . .”

“What? They'll still
love
us? No, they won't. They'll betray us as soon as look at us, Farm Dog, and you know that as well as I do. They won't have any choice.”

“We can't hate them for being what they are,” he said.

“But they can hate
us
for it,” Boots replied. “So you'd better find us a way out of here, and soon, Farm Dog, before your own children destroy us both.”

It was quite a while since Arkady had felt self-conscious wearing the slave skirt of a Senestran
makor-di.
Wearing it every day, while surrounded by others wearing the same thing, had deadened her sensibilities. She no longer saw the bare flesh, no longer noticed the sagging breasts of the older slaves or the wrinkled pot bellies hanging over the skirts belonging to the well-fed scribes whose jobs required little physical labour.

But donning the skirt again after her brief stint wearing Ambria's borrowed dress and walking back out into the kitchen where Cayal and Declan waited, was more harrowing than she bargained for. Arkady tied the skirt on and squared her shoulders, scolding herself for her foolishness. Declan had already seen her wearing it. Tides, she slept the night in his arms wearing little else. And it wasn't as if Cayal had never seen her naked . . .

“Get a grip, girl!” she told herself sternly.

Taking a deep breath, she opened the door to the storeroom and headed back toward the kitchen before her courage failed her. Everyone looked up as she entered. Cayal and Declan, who'd been discussing something with Arryl, both wore expressions Arkady could have read any number of thoughts into, had she been prepared to look either man in the eye.

Instead, she focused her attention on Arryl, trying to behave as if it was perfectly normal to be standing in a stranger's kitchen wearing nothing but a strip of black-banded cloth around her hips that didn't quite reach mid-thigh. “The brand was two links of a chain,” she said, as matter-of-factly as she could manage.

Arryl, perhaps sensing her uneasiness, nodded in agreement. “I know the one. It's fairly common on batch-bought slaves. Right or left breast?”

“Right.”

Carrying a small bowl, she pushed past the two men. There was a gooey, gelatinous mess in the bottom that Arryl was stirring with a small stick. It smelt disgusting.

“It's hide gum,” Arryl explained. “Once it's set, it should look like scar tissue if nobody gets too close or starts picking at it. And it won't wash off easily.”

That made sense, Arkady supposed. She turned her head away from the fumes as Arryl began to apply the gum with the stick, in the same pattern
as her now-healed brand. By turning her head, however, she was forced to look at Declan.

Arkady turned her head the other way and closed her eyes, just to be on the safe side.

“If they sailed back to Port Traeker with Ambria and Medwen,” Cayal said after a moment, picking up the conversation Arkady had interrupted with her arrival, “then we have a few days before they get back to the Delta Settlement.”

“Is that where you're planning to attack them?” Declan asked in the same I'm-not-interested-in-anything-Arkady-is-doing tone.

“It would be,” Cayal said, glancing at Arryl, “if certain people hadn't made me promise to keep the amphibian casualties to a minimum.”

“Don't start, Cayal . . .” Arryl said, without looking up from her task.

The Immortal Prince made a noise that sounded somewhere between a snort of derision and disgust, and continued explaining his plans to Declan. “We'll have to wait until the fleet reaches the shallower water around Watershed Falls. The channels around the Delta Settlement are too deep. If we take their ships down there, we'll take the Crasii with them. They've a better chance of getting out of the harnesses and swimming away in shallow water.”

“Is that how you're planning to deal with this?” Declan asked. “Just sink every ship that sails up the channel?”

“You have a better idea?”

“Well . . . not exactly . . . I'm just wondering what you hope to achieve.”

“Sinking their boats,” Cayal said. “Weren't you listening?”

“So you sink them. What then? Won't they just send more?”

“What if they do? We'll sink them too.”

“And how long can you keep that up?”

“As long as we have to. They'll get the message. Eventually.”

“I don't think they will,” Declan said. “I think they'll get increasingly annoyed at the loss of life and shipping—although given this is Senestra, not necessarily in that order—and you'll end up causing the annihilation of the wetland Crasii, long after they've forgotten what they came here for in the first place.”

“He has a point, Cayal,” Arryl said. “I'd prefer we kept the human casualties to a minimum too.”

“Why not just insist nobody gets hurt?” he snapped. “Just to make things really interesting.”

“Very well . . .”

“Not funny, Arryl.”

“I wasn't trying to be funny, Cayal.” Arryl finished with the brand and stood back to admire her handiwork on Arkady's breast. “That should do it. Try not to touch it until it dries. It'll probably itch like crazy for a while.” She turned to Cayal and Declan, placing the bowl of gum on the table. “Declan is right, Cayal. Murdering anybody who comes up the channel to inquire about Cydne Medura's death will result in reprisals that defeat the whole purpose of the exercise. Defend the Crasii if you must, by all means, but there's nothing to be gained by provoking an attack.”

“I may not be the one provoking it,” he said. “Ambria and Medwen may have done that already, simply by still being alive.”

Arkady couldn't resist it any longer. She opened her eyes and turned to look at the two of them. Engaged as they were in their discussion about tactics, the men seemed to have lost interest in her.

“Why don't you just tell them who you are?” she said.

They all turned to look at her.

“The Tide's on the rise, isn't it? And it's not as if the Senestrans haven't heard of the Tide Lords. They still have cults dedicated to your worship.”

“Not in the wetlands, they don't,” Arryl said. “I've made damn sure of that.”

“But it's not the wetlands you have to worry about. The men coming here to punish the Crasii for Cydne's death are from the cities, and the cults there are thriving. I don't know if they really believe the Tide Lords ever existed, but they use the common-held belief in the immortals as an excuse to join the club. There's some pretty influential people involved too.”

“Do you know that for a fact?” Cayal asked.

“I do,” Declan said, surprising her a little with his support.

He seemed to have taken her advice and was no longer trying to distance himself from the immortals. She didn't know if he'd decided to throw his lot in with them to help the Cabal or himself, and supposed it didn't really matter. Immortality was his problem, not hers. Arkady just wanted to get this over and done with so she could be gone from this place.

But that didn't make seeing Declan Hawkes and the Immortal Prince in cahoots with each other any less disturbing to watch.

“We used to keep tabs on the cults for just that reason,” Declan explained. “The Senestran ambassador to Glaeba was a member of one of them, if I remember correctly.”

“So was the wife of the Senestran ambassador to Torlenia,” Arkady said. “Kinta had her thrown in gaol for calling her a whore.”

That made Cayal smile. “Even
I
wouldn't be brave enough to do that.”

“And I'm not sure I see your point, Arkady,” Arryl said. “Senestran ambassadors currently stationed across the globe aren't much use to us, here and now.”

“My point is that they
believe
, my lady. Most Senestrans still believe in the Tide Lords. In Glaeba, nobody took Cayal seriously when he told us he was immortal, because we consider the Tide Lords to be nothing more than a child's myth. You have people here in Senestra—influential people with the power to call off an attack—who know you exist. Cydne's wife is a member of the same cult, which means her brothers probably are too. Given the Tide's on the way back and you can actually prove your claim, why
not
just stand up and declare yourselves? Ambria and Medwen may have already done it, for all you know, because they've had no other choice.”

The room was quiet as the immortals digested her suggestion. It was Arryl who finally broke the uneasy silence. “You get so used to hiding when the Tide is out, sometimes it's hard to remember what it was like not to be afraid of who you are.”

Cayal was staring at her thoughtfully. “So you think we should just ask for a meeting with the captain of the Medura flagship and ask him nicely to go home because we're Tide Lords and we don't want them messing with our Crasii?”

“The cult Arkady's talking about worships Jaxyn, the Lord of Temperance,” Declan said.

Cayal looked at the former spymaster and rolled his eyes. “Tides, that's all we need.”

“You could pose as Jaxyn,” Arkady said.

“No, thank you. I do have my standards, you know.”

“You'll need to acknowledge him, though,” Arryl suggested, “if you expect his believers to take you seriously.”

“You need to do more than that,” Arkady said. “I think you need to put on a show. I think you'll need to demonstrate the point forcefully. And you'll need to do it in such a way that they'll leave and you can be sure they won't come back.”

Cayal seemed unconvinced. Arryl seemed uncertain. It was impossible to guess what Declan was thinking.

She threw her hands up in exasperation. “Tides, what are you worried
about? Every Crasii on Amyrantha knows what you are, and have done all along, even when you were in hiding. And seriously, how long do you think it's going to be before one of the other immortals announces they're back, and this whole ‘secret-identity' obsession you people have is out in the open anyway?”

Cayal shrugged after a moment and turned to Arryl. “It's up to you. These are your creatures and your turf. We can give them a show if you want, but there'll be no going back if we do.”

Arryl nodded reluctantly. “She's right, I suppose. If they've tried to harm Ambria or Medwen, they'll know they're immortal by now.”

Cayal glanced at Declan. “What about you? You're the spymaster, the
trained
tactician. What do you think?”

“Why do you care what I think?”

The Immortal Prince let out a long-suffering sigh, designed—Arkady was certain—purely to aggravate Declan. “Because for the time being, Hawkes, I'm stuck with you. It'll be a lot less trouble for all of us if we're on the same side, at least temporarily.”

Declan glared at Cayal but his answer was much less antagonistic than his expression. “Then for what it's worth, I think Arkady may be right. Go out there and tell them the Tide Lords are back. Demand they return Medwen and Ambria. Tell them Cydne Medura was executed for sins against . . . whatever . . . and tell them to back off or there'll be hell to pay. I'm sure you're up for a few random executions of innocent bystanders to demonstrate your sincerity.”

“Or I could show
you
how,” Cayal offered. “I think you'd be quite at home with the random execution of innocent bystanders, spymaster.”

“Stop it,” Arryl said. “Both of you.”

Somewhat to Arkady's surprise, both men heeded her words and ceased their sniping at each other.

The Sorceress turned to Arkady. “If we're going to do it this way, then it's up to you, in the first instance, to prepare them for what's coming. When they arrive in the village looking for your doctor, Azquil can bring word. You can, in the meantime, explain to whoever is thumping their chest the loudest that sending a physician into the wetlands armed with a poison designed to murder any potential carriers of swamp fever has been looked upon very dimly by the Immortal Trinity.”

“But the Trinity's not here, my lady . . .”

“There are three of us here capable of wielding the Tide,” she said. “That's all they need to know.”

“It'll be all right, Arkady,” Cayal said. “We should get there before they string you back up on the Justice Tree. And if we don't . . . well, your old friend here seems to be a dab hand at fixing up things like chewed out eyeballs.”