The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars #5)

The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars #5) Page 223

Liath had forgotten how much she hated being the center of attention of any crowd; and all of Wendish court life was crowds. One could not be a prince without a retinue. No noble lady had ever traveled alone with just her father, making her way through the world.

One of the Jinna spoke. “If we have displeased you, if we have sinned by calling attention to your presence, Bright One, speak only the word and we miserable worms will slit our throats.”

“No,” she said hastily. “Do not hurt yourselves. I am surprised, that is all. No matter.” That was the first phrase one learned in Jinna, a word so useful and so complex that it could not be properly translated into Wendish. No matter.

“What is your wish, Bright One? We are your servants.”

She did not want a retinue. She had never become accustomed to one. But as she glanced around the camp, seeing the shining bulk of the griffins, the herds, the tents, the patient army of men and women who had followed Sanglant across the wilderness simply because he had asked them to, she knew that what she wished for most—solitude—was to be denied her.

Duty came first.

“Obey this man, as you have been doing,” she said at last, resigned to her fate. “He is called Captain Fulk. He is a good man. I must go to the camp of the Horse people. When I return, you may serve me.”

They wept with gratitude.

She could have wept, with frustration, but she didn’t have time. She didn’t need the burden of their belief that she was something she was not.

“I pray you, my lady, what do they want?” asked Fulk again, too eaten up by curiosity to take heed of her sour expression.

“The Jinna worship Astareos, the fire god,” she said at last. “It is no secret that, like Prince Sanglant, I am only half human. By some magic known to the Jinna, they must see my mother’s soul in me. They think I am an angel.”

“I will agree to attend a council,” said Li’at’dano when Liath returned to the centaur encampment to begin the second phase of her campaign, “but I am not accustomed to the presence of males who claim to speak with authority. They are emotional and unstable. I grant you that a stallion may be a handsome creature, but all he is good for is fighting and breeding. Still, because I have known a few human and Ashioi males who have—what shall I say?—been able to think with the same rigor and intellect as a woman, I will allow all those you mention to join the council. In exchange—”

This was the part of negotiation Liath hated most: all the stipulations and exceptions and claims and demands.

“—the child will be given into the care of my people. She will be well cared for, bound around with magic so that she cannot suffer or weaken.”

“And when she wakes?”

“If she wakes.”

“What if I give her to you only to discover that she is being held as a hostage? What if we succeed—as we must succeed—in defeating Anne, only to find Blessing used as a weapon held at our throats, to make us agree to whatever conditions you demand?”

“Desperate times call for desperate measures. You must trust me, Daughter. Are you not my namesake?”

Liath laughed angrily. “This is no argument.”

Li’at’dano inclined her head in agreement. “This is no argument, that is true. This is the argument: Already she grows weak. In three or four more days, without a cloak of protection, she will die.”

Liath set her booted foot on the stairs that led up to Sorgatani’s door and paused there to survey the horse herds that accompanied the centaurs and their Kerayit allies. These horses were nothing like the stocky beasts that now made up fully half of the mounts in Sanglant’s army—the herds bred by the centaurs were powerful and cleanly built, with long, slender legs and big heads. The Kerayit used oxen to pull their carts, but both men and women rode their lovely horses. Right now the members of the tribe labored about the necessary tasks of living while they waited for Li’at’dano’s command to move on, women and men together although working at different tasks. Among the herds she saw mares and geldings and the stallions—the best among the males, the ones left intact. There were foals, from yearling colts down to one lanky, awkward newborn, and foals among the centaurs as well, although not so many of those and all of them female.

It troubled her.

She rapped on the door. The younger servant admitted her.

Sorgatani knelt beside the brazier minding a tiny pot, set over the coals, in which herbs withered and smoked. The scent shot straight up Liath’s nostrils and gave her a headache behind her eyes. She waved a hand back and forth in front of her face to dispel the smoke while Sorgatani chuckled.