VII
The ten-command waited uneasily where it had been left, under drifting petals.
Jame knelt beside Graykin. Difficult, in this light, to see if he had regained any color, but his breathing was more regular than it had been and his skin less clammy to the touch. After all, she reminded herself, he was half-Kencyr; the shock once past, his recovery should be rapid.
"Good work," she said, grudgingly, to Kindrie, who looked startled at the compliment.
As for the cadets, however, the boy taken ill on the stair had been sick again with the tower's movement and several others looked distinctly unwell. Mistrusting their stomachs if not their nerves, Brier stopped them at the stair-head and descended alone, cautiously, into chambers of her former lord.
The Kendar moved well for someone so large, Jame thought, leaning over the upper rail to listen, but not as quietly as she herself would have done—not that Iron-thorn obviously thought her capable of anything but causing trouble. Odd, to be considered inferior and superior simultaneously. It reminded her, with a painful jolt, how she and Marc had parted without finding a balance between her new-found Highborn blood and his Kendar, after all they had been through together.
Roofless and rootless . . . how could she live among her own people—or anywhere else—without equals, without friends?
Iron-thorn reached the foot of the stair, turned toward the balcony, and froze.
"Well, well, well," said Lord Caineron's voice.
Jame leaned farther over the rail, holding her breath, gesturing urgently for the cadets behind her to keep back. The burnished crown of the Kendar's head was a dozen feet below her. Caldane remained out of sight, but he must be very close.
"Brier Iron-thorn," purred his hated voice. "How kind of you to drop in, just when another randon candidate has . . . er . . . dropped out. But I forgot. Pretending to be a Knorth now, aren't you? Not easy, is it, with Caineron blood in your veins? Not possible, I should think. Come, girl: we both know where the real power lies."
His voice had grown thick and deep. Jame's skin crawled. There was real power here, stripped to its ruthless core by days of self-indulgence, enough to shake even those of a different lineage. For the first time, she understood how Caldane could have ordered that young man to do what he had done to Graykin and be obeyed.
"Shall we resume where we left off?" Lord Caineron was saying. "Would you like to reapply as a Caineron candidate? Let's see your obedience, girl. ON YOUR KNEES."
Brier Iron-thorn made a choking noise. She crashed down as though the legs had been chopped out from under her.
"Kendar are bound by mind or by blood. Such a handsome woman as you, though, deserves to be bound more . . . pleasurably. By seed . . . ."
Cloth rustled.
This is obscene, Jame thought, and shouted, "Iron-thorn, move!"
Brier looked up with a start, and threw herself aside barely in time. Jame landed where she had knelt.
"BOO!" she shouted in Lord Caineron's face.
"Hic!" he said, recoiling.
Jewelled slippers flew off as he thrashed, hiccupping, inches above the floor. Peacock blue sleeves flapped like broken wings on wind-milling arms.
"Hic!"
Pudgy hands leaped up to clamp futilely over his mouth. Small eyes boggled over ring-encrusted fingers.
Highborn, thought Jame, and prodded him in the stomach with a long, black-sheathed finger.
"HIC!"
He bobbed helplessly away from her, beginning to tilt sideways. A sudden stench filled the air as fear-twisted bowels let go.
Rotten, stinking Highborn.
Behind her, she heard Brier say hoarsely, "Don't . . . ." but ignored her.
"Make sport of decent Kendar, will you?" she demanded, following Caldane, jabbing at him. "Play God almighty in your high tower, huh? Well, the next time the urge takes you, remember me. And this. And keep looking down."
Caldane looked, and screamed. He was over the balcony rail. Under his feet was nothing but empty space—all the way to the foul waters of the pit some two hundred feet below.
Jame watched, savoring every detail: the gaudy, flailing figure; the inarticulate cries; the loosened, befouled trousers tangling around plump ankles, falling off. She didn't at first recognize her berserker flare, pure, cold, and deadly as it was, like the chill bite of poisoned wine. This wasn't the brute rage which she had previously known. Use had refined it, could refine it further still, she realized, into an instrument of terrible power. Was this intoxication what it felt like to be truly herself . . . a nemesis? Very well.
Or perhaps not: in Brier's face she saw her enemy's terror reflected and heard his screams echo from other throats in the hall below. Ancestors only knew what was going on among his Kendar, down in the square. Damn all Highborn anyway, herself most of all. What right did any of them have to respect, much less to friendship?
White knuckled, Brier gripped the rail to anchor herself. Caldane's panic had plunged her into the reeling world of a height-sickness which she hadn't known she possessed.
I am not a Caineron, she told herself, gulping down nausea, clutching at control. I am not.
A cold hand caught her chin and turned her head, neck muscles creaking like ironwood in winter's grip. Gray eyes shaded with silver smiled into her own.
"You don't know what you've done," she heard herself croak.
"I seldom do," said that husky voice, burred with destruction. "But I do it anyway. This is what I am, Brier Iron-thorn. Remember that."
The silver stare held her a moment more, then let go as the other turned.
Brier stumbled back a step, catching the rail, braced for nausea. Caldane had begun to turn bare bottom up despite frantic efforts to snag him from the balcony below, but the world didn't spin with him. That slim, cold hand had wrenched her free of the Caineron, perhaps forever.
Dammit, Brier thought. She should have been able to do that herself, as she had at the Cataracts . . . .
No. Even there, it seemed, she'd had help. It hadn't been her own strength at all, of which she had been so proud after so many humiliations. Damn all Highborn anyway, who could jerk her about like . . . like that Southland's bastard, a puppet on strings.
Out in the shaft, the foxkin had found a new playmate.
"Ticklish," said the Knorth, watching. "Good. Now, what's this about a boat?"