"They sent us down here, just three of us. Orders from the chapterhouse. It wasn't supposed to be anything -- anything real. Just making sure. Making sure it was safe down here."
Clumsily he reached for the pitcher of water at his bedside. Carala stepped forward, pouring a cup of water for him, passing it to Ammas, who held it up to Myrdin's lips. Gratefully he took a long sip and fell back onto his bedding. "It was Kupper's first command. Just commanding two of us but you'd have thought he'd been named a marshal." Myrdin broke into a racking, coughing laugh. Frowning, Ammas peeled back his coverlet and saw his chest was heavily taped and bandaged. Some of bandages were bloodstained, as if he were still trickling from his injuries.
"What were you making sure of, Myrdin?"
"Don't you know? Aren't you from Talinara?"
"The orders weren't clear."
Myrdin sighed. "Swiftfoot. The ones who kidnapped the Princess Carala. They have an office in Vilais, a small one. They said she might be held there."
Ammas's eyes grew wide. Behind him Carala gasped, one hand clutching his shoulder. Myrdin didn't notice.
"Thray was angry about it. I saw him and Elder Nocentius arguing. Thray said it was a waste of time, that there were already men covering the Reaches. Didn't matter. We never even got into the city. They fell on us, three of them, one for each of us, like they'd been waiting. There was a drover coming down the road or they'd have killed me too. They carried Kupper and Pattick off on their shoulders. The drover didn't believe me, the sisters don't believe me. But it's true, I swear before all the gods it is, it's true." Myrdin clutched Ammas's hands in both of his and began to weep openly. For a moment he looked even younger than Casimir.
Ammas's mind was racing. He could feel Carala's hand on his shoulder, warm and quivering, the fingernails ever so slightly sharper than they should have been. Unthinking he reached for it, squeezing. Thray's anger; a token expedition of unseasoned witch-finders sent to Vilais; the Throne knowing that Swiftfoot was more than it seemed to be: he had no idea what any of it could mean. But for the moment all that paled into insignificance. "Myrdin, where is Swiftfoot Carting in this city? Do you know?"
"In Eastshore, on Barrow Street," he murmured. "Will you go there? See if you can take these monsters down?"
"Myrdin, I will do everything I can. I promise you that." Ammas released Carala's hand, frowning at the young man stretched out before him, who was now smiling a little, his eyes closed. Deftly Ammas tugged from his belt his twinhooks. "Let me know if this hurts, would you, Myrdin?" Lightly he traced the silver prongs along an exposed swatch of Myrdin's forearm.
At once Myrdin cried out in pain, his fingers clutching blindly at the bedding, something hot and emerald flaring in his mild brown eyes for a moment. Carala stumbled backward, one hand covering her mouth. For a moment she could smell the wolf inside Myrdin, as powerful and eager to roam as her own was. Ammas didn't draw it out. Quickly he tucked the tool out of sight. "My apologies, Myrdin. I'll speak to the Abbess, see if she can't get you better quarters for your recovery."
Carala gripped him by the forearm as he stepped out into the hall. "Ammas," she hissed. "What are you going to do about him? He's going to change tonight, isn't he? I could smell it on him."
Ammas looked at her curiously. "What do you think I ought to do, Carala?"
"Me? Why do you ask me?"
"He came on your behalf. Maybe he was tricked into doing it, but wasn't he trying to be as helpful to you as myself or Denisius?" Ammas watched her thoughts play across her face, wondering who would answer him: Carala or the she-wolf, and if their instincts really might be so different from one another's.
"I -- I had not thought of it that way," she stammered. Her gaze flicked from the door to Myrdin's room to Ammas and back again, those amber flecks seemingly a permanent feature of her irises now. "Might it not be more merciful to -- to kill him? Not just to him, but to the others in this hospice? What happens to them when the moon shines tonight?"
"Merciful, perhaps," Ammas nodded. "Safer for us, too. And I will tell you that witch-finders are rather less friendly when not lying in a sickbed." He studied Carala's expression, a peculiar mixture of fear and excitement. He doubted she was aware of the latter. "Is that what you want me to do to him, Carala?"
She blinked at the sound of her name. After a moment she shook her head. "No."
"No. Nor do I wish to do that." He frowned at the door. "The alternative is hardly safe. But we need to be leaving Vilais soon in any event. If we have to flee under cover of night rather than stroll out in the morning, so be it. Come." With that he led her swiftly by the hand toward the common ward, where Abbess Rothe was tending to an elderly man who seemed utterly unaware of the world around him. "Abbess, I must speak with you in pivate," Ammas murmured to her.
Surprised, the Abbess nonetheless agreed, and led Ammas and Carala into a small arboretum where planters full of medicinal herbs were arranged around a lush seretto tree. "What is it? Did Myrdin pass while you were with him? I thought he seemed to be getting stronger, but a relapse wouldn't astonish me."
"He is getting stronger," Ammas agreed. "Abbess, I don't have much time to explain. I need you to trust me. That young man has the wolf's blood sickness. He will change tonight." The Abbess's eyes became enormous. "I am afraid his treatment is beyond you or any Madrenite. If you have a secure cell you might keep him, you must lock him there. Chain him if necessary."
"How can you know these things?" the Abbess demanded. Incredulity burned in her face, but Carala could smell her fear lurking close beneath the surface.
Ammas hesitated, but in the end did what he suspected he would have to do from the moment Carala whispered that she could smell a wolf lurking here. Lightly he tugged from his waist his skymetal dagger, showing the flat of the blade to the Abbess, whose face now lit with shock. "I'm no witch-finder, Abbess. I am a cursewright out of Munazyr. And I tell you if you want to save that man's life and the lives of everyone else in your hospice, lock him up. If you have a lunar manifest, you need to consult it, but I can tell you the next night he changes will be some three weeks hence."
Abbess Rothe shook her head, staring at Ammas, and at Carala. "Why do you come here, cursewright? Are you looking for revenge?"
"I don't have time for revenge," Ammas said shortly, his eyes flashing. "I came to see if I could help that young man. I can't. But you can -- or at least you can make him safe."
"I should call the guard," Abbess Rothe said wonderingly. "If you're no cursewright, then you're a madman. And I suppose this is no Munazyri noblewoman, either."
"You could call the guard," Ammas agreed. "The reward is quite high. If you knew my name, you'd know it's even higher. But if you don't call the guard -- if you let us go and say nothing of our visit here -- then in time you may well be responsible for curing that young man. The witch-finders will be in your debt. And," he added, his voice falling to a conspiratorial whisper, "you could be responsible for curing a far more important person than he."
The Abbess frowned, looked at Ammas, then at Carala -- and at the sight of her midnight hair the older woman's jaw fell open. She stammered pointlessly, her eyes brimming with wonder as she tried to grasp just who had set foot in her hospice that morning. "Great merciful gods," she managed at last. "This -- this is no lie, no prank?"
"No," Carala said, surprising Ammas a little. The Abbess seemed to look at her a little more closely. Perhaps she noted the amber flecks in her eyes, for her face grew deathly pale. "This man is sworn to me, and sworn to help me. He is no traitor, and those who help him will have the Malachite Throne's eternal gratitude."
Who has tamed whom, Othma? Ammas thought sardonically as the Abbess began to babble and sink into a clumsy curtsey.
"No, no!" Carala cried, tugging the older woman up by the elbows. "Please! We are trying to remain in disguise."
"I -- very well," Abbess Rothe stammered. "There are cellar rooms with stout locks and doors where we keep madmen when we must. I could place Myrdin down there for the night."
"That should serve well," Ammas nodded. "I would also bring in guardsmen you trust. It may be necessary to kill him if he gets out of control, but given how he was infected I suspect he will be more terrified than anything."
"There are men I trust with that," Abbess Rothe said. She was rapidly regaining her composure. "What else might I do to assist you, your -- Lady Zinna?"
"Can you tell us where Barrow Street is?" Ammas asked.
Abbess Rothe gave them directions to Barrow Street, one of several streets that led to Eastshore's largest market square. Undoubtedly the Swiftfoot offices there were one of many carting and caravan companies in the area. Ammas thanked her, Carala curtsied, and they made to depart. "Wait," she called out.
Ammas looked over his shoulder warily. In truth his heart had been pounding throughout his conversation with the Abbess, and he still had no assurance revealing himself this way would not end in disaster. "Yes, Abbess?"
"Just -- thank you for helping this woman," the Abbess said with a remarkably bright smile. Ammas nodded bemusedly. "I knew you could not all be traitors."
"Indeed," Ammas said sourly. "Come, Lady Zinna. We have business before dark."