The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars #5)

The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars #5) Page 31

“Where do you sleep, Zachri?” she asked, using the pet name she’d called him when she was too young to fit his entire name to her tongue.

“Elsewhere,” he said softly, hoping Wolfhere would not hear. It hurt to hear her use that fond old name. He was no longer her cherished older brother, the one she followed everywhere. He was no better than the dogs, sleeping wherever he found a corner to curl up in. No one tolerated him enough that he had a regular pallet—or perhaps it was more fair to say that Anna could not stand him, he could not himself bear to sleep near Wolfhere, and the camaraderie of the soldiers grew painful after a few nights. He could only exist on the edge, never in the heart.

She came back to hug him. “There’s room enough in the stall where I’ve been given straw—”

“Nay, nay,” he said hastily. Tears stung his eyes. “Go to sleep, Hathui. I’ll see you in the morning.”

She remained there a few breaths longer, staring at him in the hazy halo of light wavering off Wolfhere’s candle. She was trying to understand his hesitation, knowing him well enough to see that there was something wrong. But she could not yet see what he had become. She still saw the older brother who had walked proudly into the east to bring the light of the Unities to the barbarians. How could she know that he had become lost in the umbra? That he had compromised his honor, submitted to the worst indignities, and licked the feet of those who owned him, in order to stay alive? It was only when they had threatened to cut out his tongue that he had fled. Shouldn’t he have offered up his tongue, his very life, before he had sacrificed his faith and his honor?

“You look tired, Zacharias,” she said at last, leaning down to kiss him on the cheek. “You should sleep, too. I’ll be looking for you at first light, to make sure you aren’t a dream.”

She went inside the stables with Wolfhere. The light fled. So small a thing had the candle’s flame been, to cast so harsh a light onto his soul.

When she found out the truth, she would hate him. And she would find out the truth in the end, because the one person who knew everything still traveled with Sanglant’s army and had no better way to amuse himself. He would know. He would see Zacharias’ weakness, his fears, and his hopes. He would destroy Zacharias’ last chance for redemption, as long as he still lived.

Zacharias got to his feet and staggered like an old man to the door of the stable. It was dark inside, Wolfhere’s candle vanished entirely, although he heard a murmur of voices that faded. Half of the stalls were empty; at this time of year, and in a peaceful city, many of the horses had been put out to pasture beyond the inner walls. But soldiers stored other things here as well.

Groping, as quietly as he could, he found a stout spear leaning with its brothers in a stall. He slipped his fingers around it, eased it free, and crept out of the stable. Hands trembling, breath coming in gasps, he hugged the shadows, having to steady himself on the butt of the spear every time his knees started to give out. The haft kept wanting to spring right out of his grasp, but he clutched it tightly.

He would not lose Hathui, not after losing everything else.

Beside the great hall lay the old keep, said by the locals to have been built in the time of the ancient Dariyans, although Heribert had firmly proclaimed that it could not possibly have been built by Dariyan engineers: the technique and stonework were too crude. With a new hall and stables now built inside the ring fort’s restored walls, the old keep was considered too drafty and damp for the king and his court. But stone made good prison walls.

The two Ungrian soldiers standing guard at the entrance to the keep knew him by sight and let him pass. Up the winding stairs lay the tower rooms where King Geza kept certain prisoners who traveled with him wherever he went—his first wife, an unrepentant pagan whom he had divorced on his conversion to the Daisanite faith and whom he was forced to hold hostage so that her angry kinfolk did not murder him for the insult; an Arethousan priest who had poisoned a young Ungrian princeling but whom Geza dared not execute because of the priest’s connections to the Arethousan royal court; an albino boy who was either a witch or a saint, too crazy to be allowed to roam about on his own and too valuable to be given into anyone else’s care.

Others, too, slept confined in chambers, but they weren’t the dangerous ones, only hostages. Usually the dangerous ones were killed outright.

As he should have been killed, the day they captured him.

Zacharias used the butt of the spear to feel his way down the curving stairs to the lower level, where stone foundations plumbed the ground. It was cooler here, damp, smelling of mold and decay.