Phedoxia had a premonition that she would die in a warm place.
"You got this one right," I said to her corpse. My voice quavered and I wasn't ashamed of it.
I counted the bodies with slit throats being laid out for burial. Their name tags waited for me in my tent to be recorded, then reforged for the fresh recruits. Renewal and rebirth is the way of the Knowable World.
I counted the bodies again, even though it couldn't reduce the outcome by even one. If it were possible and if I could choose, I would choose Phedoxia, despite her being a thorn in my side for years. Despite annoying me... I pressed the sting of tears out of my eyes with the back of my hand. Soaked up what had already wetted my cheeks on my sleeve. Damn that stubborn old witch!
Not five days ago, when we were sitting next to unconscious Parneres, she had upbraided me for fretting. "You need women to fight, not to guard your old flame. They're like tits on a man next to my magic."
"Huh?" I was only half-listening to her, too absorbed by gazing into Parneres' drawn face. Too busy with the very fretting she was accusing me of.
"Redundant." She drove the explanation through my skull like they drive piles into dirt.
I witnessed the power of her magic many times, but I trusted sharpened steel. "Guards stay. Magic stay."
That should have been the end of our conversation, but Parneres' fingers spasmed, grasping for something known only to him.
"Parneres?" I leaned forward, hoping for a whisper, a nod or a flutter of his thick eyelashes. And I found nothing, until his eyelashes trembled when I sighed. It wasn't him, it was my breath. I glanced at my High Scribe. "Could he hear us?"
Phedoxia shrugged.
My gaze drifted away from the overgrown walnut that passed for her face to Parneres' serene features. Then it slid down the length of his lithe frame. The bandaged cuts oozed nothing vile. The bruises hid under patches of healing paste. His legs remained splintered, his skin hung loose under the ribs, but he looked like he could open his eyes at any moment and smile at me.
Except he never did. He remained unconscious despite medicines and magic.
I hugged myself to ward off the chill on this sweltering afternoon. "Why isn't he waking up, Phedoxia?"
Phedoxia measured me with a glance of her black eyes, the only young part of her. Or a visible young part, at least. "Do you know what his tattoos mean?"
"The Scorpia on the elbow is his cousin's brand. The rest, maybe they're marking him as a member of his tribe or a clan? A gang?" I felt the weight in her question, no matter how gently she'd asked it. I hated that I floundered when answering it. For over a decade, I pined for Parneres and chased shadows, but I'd never asked him about his native land, his tattoos or anything else personal. It must have been important to him and I was too busy with Kozima's charade. Wrapped up in joining the Deadheads. Surviving in the streets of Palmyr... I'd never asked.
Phedoxia shook her head. "What was the first thing that popped into your head when you met this man for the first time?"
At least this was an easy question. A dreamy sigh escaped my chest. "That he is the most beautiful man in the world."
"So did I, so did I..." She dismissed my goggling eyes with a wave of her hand. "I'm telling you this because I don't find men attractive. In my youth, I preferred the company of women. What fire was in my heart--and there wasn't much--it all burned out in pursuit of knowledge. If I find him beautiful when I'm uninterested and he has one foot in his grave, it means one thing."
She bobbed her head, expecting me to draw conclusions like I was her student. I tried my best to think straight. There was an unfortunate woman from Palmyr's Watch, duped into letting the two Scorpia out of the city. Besotted and confused, she also called Parneres the most beautiful man in the world. There could be only one answer to Phedoxia's question.
"Magic," I whispered. "Do you think these tattoos make him more alluring?"
"Precisely. Enchantments need powerful reagents to sustain themselves, Ismar. Blood in the veins of a living creature is simultaneously the cheapest one and also one of the most potent. Paint a whore with henna and love potion mixture--and he'd be the talk of Char'Kermen for one night. He'd wash it off in the morning, maybe sleep it off for two days, and that's that. Little harm done. But tattoo him with magic ink, let the enchantment feed on his blood continuously..."
I gasped. "Feed?"
She shook her head in dismay. "It was a cruel thing to do to the boy. That's why he's healing so slowly as his body's strength is being used up on the aphrodisiac."
I glanced at Parneres again, but the knot in my chest refused to loosen itself. I didn't stop thinking of him for years. The silver and gold swirls were pretty, but I didn't obsess over their intricate patterns. I had faith that the only everlasting magic was the Divines' will. I loved him and once I knew the truth, the tattoos looked like a strangler's garrote.
"Can you purify his skin from this magic?" I asked Phedoxia.
"You could order him flayed, if you want him to die pure," she replied dryly.
I screamed and hit the stool I was sitting on with my fist. Then again. And again, scraping my knuckles until the pain returned the power of speech to me. "Don't let him die, Phedoxia. Do you hear me?! Don't let him die."
"Or what? Would my life would be forfeit? A High Scribe for a whore?"
While I breathed in and expelled the air slowly, she got up to pour me some watered wine. Halfway through limping back to my side, she reconsidered, plucked a vial from the table of neatly arranged medicines and counted out three drops into my cup.
"There, Your Grandissima. Bottoms up."
I obediently drained the sour wine, smelling faintly of something even more pungent. Her level gaze wouldn't leave me until I sucked in the last drop. Once satisfied that I consumed the swill, she said, "Let us hope that all the young women lose their wits over him similarly to you. Or at least his malevolent cousin does. I'm looking forward to setting off the trap."
"He went against my wishes, didn't he? And he involved you into his conspiracy." I gnashed my teeth. "I'll kill the ugly bastard!"
"The twat has it right. Treachery and old age beats brawn and youthful vigor. We'll capture Peleth for you, Your Grandissima."
I argued with the hag for another hour about guards and magic, while Parneres' lifeless body stretched out next to us. I left the tent after voicing a categorical prohibition to reduce security on the infirmary for any reason while I was away. It was a direct order--and Phedoxia disobeyed it with the frivolity of a toddler.
There was no knowing now if she was deceived, overconfident or both to send the guards on a wild goose chase. She'd paid for her mistake. Her wrinkly throat was cut from ear to ear. As well as the throats of five more women she considered sufficient to guard the infirmary. And the throats of every sick and wounded who was there, even those who would have been unconscious during the attack.
Unaccounted for were Parneres, a local nurse and the sixth guard. Unlike predicting her death, Phedoxia had been mistaken about Taffiz' plan. Age didn't matter. It was treachery alone that always won the day.
The night attackers left behind a few corpses of their own, for my women sold their lives dearly. They were all branded with the sign of Scorpia and the newer design burned into the skin around the old.
I squatted for a better look. A circle, the five spokes, one for each sense... wait, was it... could it be?
"It's the wheel from the Chariot of the Virtuous," Taffiz said behind me. It was the first words he spoke to me or anyone else since we'd returned from our raid to find the slaughter at the infirmary. "Ironic, isn't it?"
I ignored him. When a berserker's rage seizes your soul in a battle, it's searing and gratifying. But a Commander has to quench hers in icy water to make a sharper sword.
"Call the full assembly," I told a young aid. "I'll speak to the Company."
She went running, relieved to be dismissed from the scene of carnage.
Taffiz slipped forward a step. "I'm sorry, Your Grandissima—"
"Sorry? You're sorry?" Ondrey pushed Taffiz away from me. "Ismar, mark my words, he's behind this! The imprisonment, the raid, the murders... it could be nobody else. He's betrayed us to his vile Cult."
"He was riding with us when it happened," I said in a carefully controlled voice. Men respond well to it when they are irate.
Ondrey ignored my efforts to calm him down. "So it was his poisonous cohorts acting on his orders! It has his paw prints all over it!"
"I want to see your brand," I told Taffiz.
He hiked up his kaftan without questioning, exposing pale skin tightly pulled against his ribs and sternum bone and a hollow stomach. His chest was as meticulously stripped of hair as were the visible parts of his arms and neckline. A slim golden ring pierced his navel.
The brand sat high on his ribs, to the left side, almost in the armpit. It was pale brown. It would have disappeared if he had let the sun touch his skin more. There was no wheel nor anything else around his Scorpia.
"This proves nothing," Ondrey argued. "The man is a deceiver."
"No," I said. "Secret societies have brutal codes. They wouldn't permit him to be one of them without their sacred sign."
"Then it leaves Parneres." Ondrey opened his arms wide to the sides. "If he pretended to swoon... fooled me."
"No."
"I swear—" Taffiz started, letting the gray fabric slip down his torso, hiding his chest and stomach. He smoothed it over his hips and knees for a good measure. If I didn't know him better, I'd suspect he was embarrassed about baring himself for my inspection.
"I'm satisfied," I told him, because I owed him honesty. "If we followed your plan from the start, our losses would have been less."
"You listened to your heart," Taffiz said quietly. He didn't add that this was the most fatal mistake of all. Damned, damned is a Commander who follows her heart! "But we can still win this, Ismar. I can track them for you, as long as they have Parneres with them--as I had planned from the start."
"Let's hope you don't lead us to Parneres' discarded corpse,'' I heard myself say, like from the bottom of a well. My mind had already skipped ahead to exacting revenge on Peleth. I'd kill her slowly... I'd rip her to shreds... I'd strangle her with her own entrails...
First, I had to catch her. And Taffiz was going to help me.