He tried to understand that. “How many, traitor? How many of my people did you kill?”
“Well, unless you still count me—I’m thinking you don’t—I would have to say everyone.”
“Everyone?”
“Yep. Even little Dario.” She licked juice from her fingers.
“He’s just a boy!”
“Not anymore. Graduated with the rest of them.”
“Why?” he sobbed. His eyes stung with tears.
“Again, not telling. A little mystery, remember? Like your bird here.” She smiled. “How does it work?”
“I’m going to kill you!” he screamed. “You hear me?”
He lifted his head to direct his shout to the strangers. “Did she tell you who I am? Do you know what you’ve done?”
Incredibly, they laughed.
“All right,” Radhasa said. “Break’s over. Get him horsed, fellows, and let’s move along.”
He tried to fight, but his head was ringing and his limbs were sapped of energy, but most of all he couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t get his mind to stand still. What was happening? This didn’t happen, not to him. How could all of his friends be dead?
The horse started forward, and, slung over its back, he watched the wheel ruts in the road.
She was lying, of course. Gulan and the rest were probably tracking them. Some of them probably were dead, but most of them must have made it. He’d never lost more than three of his personal guard in one battle anywhere, including the Battle of Blinker Creek.
So she was lying, and they were coming. He just had to stay alive until they found him.
How long had he been out? Where were they?
The immediate answer to that last was that they were on a hunting trail of some sort, surrounded by massive oak and ash trees. The land rolled a bit, so it was a good guess they weren’t in the Niben Valley anymore, which meant that he must have been unconscious for at least a few days.
His best guess was that they were somewhere in the West Weald, and by the sun, traveling mostly south.
So where were they going?
He looked to Radhasa, riding slightly ahead of him.
“You said you were supposed to kill me,” he croaked. “Why didn’t you?”
“Because I’m going to sell you,” she replied. “I know a certain very eccentric Khajiit who collects people like you. He’ll pay more than ten times what I was offered to kill you. So we’re off to Elsweyr. Think of it as a holiday. A really, really long holiday that will be no fun at all.”
“Radhasa,” he said, “that’s insane. People know what I look like. Someone between here and there is going to recognize me.”
“You haven’t seen your face since I whacked it,” she replied. “Looks a little different at the moment. And we’ll keep the bandages on. Once we get you where you’re going, there’s going to be a real limited selection of people you’re likely to meet, and it won’t matter to any of them who you are.”
“My father,” he said. “He’d pay more yet to get me back. Have you thought of that?”
“He might,” she agreed. “But I don’t think I would survive that. Too many resources at his disposal, too many ways to trap us.”
“Those resources are bent on you already.”
“No, not anytime soon, I think.”
“When he finds the bodies—”
“Don’t worry about that,” she said. “It’s covered.” She chuckled.
“What are you laughing about?”
“Good thing you don’t like being addressed as ‘Prince,’” she replied. “Because you’re never going to hear anyone call you that again.”
She snapped her reins and broke into a trot. His horse, leaded to hers, followed suit.
FOUR
The day after talking with Attrebus, Annaïg felt energized, despite the lack of sleep. She went early to her work archiving the plants, animals, and minerals that appeared on her table every morning. She surveyed what was before her for a moment, then glanced up at the cabinets and drawers that climbed the wall to the ceiling.
“Luc,” she said quietly.
The hob peered out of the empty cabinet it habitually slept in.
“Luc,” it echoed.
“Luc, you know what’s in all of those cabinets up there?”
“Luc knows.”
“Do you find them by name?”
“If Luc has name.”
“And if you don’t have the name?” she pressed.
“Then describe—color, taste, smell.”
“I see.”
She thought about that for a moment, and then got some of the eucalyptus distillation they had used before.
“Smell this, Luc.”