The Broken Eye(280)

“I wouldn’t ask it of you,” Gavin said.

“That’s why the hair black, and the charcoal. They don’t want to chance anyone recognizing you like I done—as either Prism or as Dazen, I s’pose. But how are you alive? What do I do?”

Gavin was still on his knees. “Eutheos,” he said. “Be still.”

And the man was still. This, at least, Gavin still had. His voice was sometimes magic over other men.

“Breathe.”

And Eutheos breathed.

Chariots passed overhead again, but they seemed far, far away.

There was no escape from here. If Eutheos unlocked Gavin’s chains, Gavin could go no more than a few hundred paces. He wasn’t strong enough to fight. He couldn’t draft. He couldn’t get out. And there was no point ruining a man and his family for a futile gesture.

“Captain, before I release you from your oaths, as your last duty to me, dye my hair, and black my eyebrows as you’ve been told. I ask only that you keep the dye from my eyes. They will burn soon enough.”

And so he did. He did his job thoroughly, and well, and silently, tears streaming down his face. He dried Gavin’s hair with a cloth, and blacked his eyebrows with coal, and then ground dirt and ash onto his ruddy skin to make him look no more than a beggar.

Gavin said, “I’ve no more right to compel you, soldier, but as a man, as a comrade who once took up arms with you, I ask a favor. Will you send a letter to Karris Guile at the Chromeria of my fate? And tell her that I will be murdered by the Nuqaba’s assassin as I arrive in Big Jasper. Don’t put your own name on this letter, nor anything that can be traced to you. It will be death for you if it is intercepted.”

Former Captain Eutheos nodded and swallowed. “My lord. You made me feel part of something. It was the only time in my life that I—” He cut off, clearing his throat as his brother-in-law the soldier came back, this time not alone. Eutheos said gruffly, “Let me outta here, would you? Got some dirt in my eyes.”

He was let out, and the other man unlocked and locked the door carefully, as if the still-bound Gavin might attack at any moment. The woman who was with that soldier, though, surprised Gavin. It was Eirene Malargos, not the Nuqaba. She dismissed them and they moved out of earshot.

She looked tired. “I didn’t want this,” she said. “You’ve done nothing here that would exact such a penalty under Ruthgari law—but you also know that I can’t let you attack my ally and do nothing. Were she forgiving, she would let us handle this in our way. She’s not chosen that route. I see why she is feared.”

Gavin simply stared at her. He reckoned from her mood that Eirene Malargos would shut down instantly if she felt she were being manipulated. Gavin’s golden tongue was suddenly worth what his eyes would be, soon.

She said, “I’ve been looking for any avenue that doesn’t lead to war? You damned men, always trying to prove who’s bigger. I just want to live. I want my people to live. I don’t know how to avert this. Do you know I tried to align us with the Guiles?”

Gavin’s eyebrows must have twitched, betraying his disbelief.

“Even after the insult of you rejecting our proposal that you marry Tisis, I proposed your father marry her instead. A temporary alliance, perhaps, given that your father is probably too old to give her children, but a gamble worth making with so many lives at stake.”

My father? With Teats Tisis? Me with her?

A thunderous clamoring resounded overhead as a mass of chariots passed all at once.

“But he spurned her,” she said.

“Outright?” Gavin asked. “That doesn’t sound like my father. Does he not know how close you are to betraying him?”

“I don’t know what he knows. I sent a ship with my diplomats and instructions for my sister. It was intercepted by pirates. Perhaps you remember?”

Oh. In more ordinary times, that the ship Gavin had been rowing on had intercepted the very ship that his enemy was depending on for vital communications would have been a stroke of extraordinary luck. It still was extraordinary luck, he supposed, just not the good kind.

A huge cheer went up, above. The race had a winner.

“Believe me,” she said, “I’d prefer to wait until I hear more from the Chromeria, but the Nuqaba is insistent. And I can’t split with her. If Blood Forest falls—and it is falling, even now—I can’t stand against the Color Prince on my own. Even if the Chromeria finally decides to send enough help to change things, I’ll have trouble securing one border against the Color Prince. What if the Nuqaba attacks me from the east? We would be lost in little more than the time it takes her armies to march.”