Sing the Four Quarters (13 page)

Annice dropped her instrument case on the floor and dropped herself into one of the two padded chairs. The captain could read nuance off a brick. She couldn't help but draw the correct conclusions from a hysterical declaration of Pjerin's innocence.

Allowing her jacket to fall open, Annice rubbed at the itchy skin of her swelling abdomen through sweater and shirt.

"The Due of Ohrid has been charged with treason—it's ridiculous, but the charge will stand until he's questioned under Command. The Due of Ohrid is the father of my baby. By having this baby, I'm committing treason. She sighed deeply. "What a mess. I couldn't have got knocked up by some pretty shepherd. Oh, no—it
had
to be the Due of Ohrid.

Pjerin was innocent, Annice was as certain of that as she'd ever been of anything—he didn't need her help. All her efforts had to be concentrated on not exposing her baby's paternity to the Bardic Captain because, the moment that happened, the king would be told. Theron was a proud man; no one knew that better than she did. For him to discover she'd committed treason was one thing, for him to discover she'd committed it with a man accused of selling out his oaths was something else again. She had to protect her baby.

In order to do that, she'd have to discuss this whole situation and the Walk she'd made to Ohrid without giving anything away.

Impossible.

So she'd just have to give something else away.

"And your personal opinion of the
due
, Annice?" Liene's tone made it very clear she'd tolerate no further dancing around the subject. Annice, after skimming a copy of young Leksik's testimony, had given opinions on the political situation, economic prospects for the region, and the feelings of the people on everything from government to the weather, but had mentioned Pjerin a'Stasiek only in passing. The captain had strong suspicions about that omission; if she didn't get a straight answer soon, she'd Command one.

Annice shifted in the chair, searching unsuccessfully for a position that would take the pressure off her lower back.

"The due," she said levelly, "is loved and respected by the majority of his people. Not only because of the hereditary position he holds but also because he's cast in the heroic mold. He, in turn, cares very much for his people and very much considers them to be his responsibility."

"All that was in the recall, Annice." Liene leaned forward, taking in the way the younger bard's fingers had closed over the arms of the chair and tightened while she spoke of the due. "And you edit your recall of personal material more tightly than any other bard Singing in Shkoder. I want to know what
you
thought of him."

"What I thought of him." Annice drew in a deep breath and released it in one short burst, obviously aware she wouldn't be able to put it off any longer. "First and foremost, I thought he was the most gorgeous man I'd ever seen.

After a few hours under his roof, I soon came to realize that he's incredibly strong-willed, stubborn, opinionated…"

The words tumbled out as though the dam that had been holding them back had burst. "… arrogant, abrasive, pigheaded, mannerless, self-important, overbearing…" She sputtered to a stop at Liene's upraised hand, panting slightly.

"Put it to music," the captain suggested, her eyes narrowing. "Did you sleep with him?"

Annice lifted her chin defiantly. "I
wanted
to."

It didn't take a bard to read the implication. "But he didn't want to sleep with you. Why not?"

"
He's
the Due of Ohrid." The emphasis came without effort. Even stripped to the waist and wrestling a stubborn colt into a halter, Pjerin i'Stasiek had been definitively the Due of Ohrid.

The captain, as intended, misunderstood.

"And you're only a bard." Liene finished the thought silently.
And you've always gotten what you wanted, haven't you,
Princess? If he only knew who you really

were; not that pride would allow you to tell him. You must have been furious
. "The father?"

"Someone willing."

"I see." And she could see it. Exactly. Annice had probably stormed away from the due and kicked the feet out from under the next person she met. Liene spared the fellow a moment's sympathy and hoped his heart had been up to it.

Then she spared another moment to Sing a silent and heartfelt gratitude that the fear she'd nursed had been unfounded.

"So…" Leaning back, Liene drummed her fingers against the edge of her desk in a martial rhythm. "Do you think the due has agreed to open the pass to a Cemandian army?"

Annice tossed her head. "Only if they were willing to put him in charge of it," she snapped.

There could be no mistaking the ring of truth that statement carried. Satisfied, the Bardic Captain nodded and relaxed for the first time since the kigh had contacted her with Tadeus' news, the knot of worry that had settled between her shoulder blades easing away. "You've had quite an eventful couple of quarters, haven't you? You bring a baby back from Ohrid, then you discover young Jurgis while Walking up coast. I think I'll keep you around the Hall for a while before you inundate us with children."

"Jurgis is…"

"Jurgis is fine. Petrelis is beside himself. They're still getting to know each other, of course, but the boy has fit himself into the Hall like a missing puzzle piece and soaks up music like a little sponge. We have a percussion lesson, he and I, every other morning."

The thought of Jurgis finding a place where he belonged so perfectly combined with the sudden realization that she'd done it and her baby was safe jerked Annice's emotions from one extreme to the other and shoved them right over the edge. To her horror, she burst into tears. "I'm sorry," she gasped, both hands waving in the air as if they were searching for her lost control. "It's just… I mean, I don't… He was so…"

Liene cleared her throat, at a loss for something to say. Raw emotion, unconfined by verse or chorus, made her profoundly uncomfortable. "You're tired," she said at last, coming around the desk and gathering up Annice's outerwear and instrument case from the floor. "I think you should go and lie down. We'll discuss this latest Walk of yours after you've had a chance to rest."

Annice struggled to her feet. "But recall…"

"Recall can wait. This interview is over." The captain accompanied her to the door and whistled a piercing summons down the corridor.

Leonas appeared almost instantly. He gave the captain a cursory nod and glared at Annice who was scrubbing at her cheeks with her palms. "What's wrong?" Concern leaked out around the brusque tone. Not even in the early days, at her most lost and confused, had he ever seen the princess cry.

"Nothing," Annice began indignantly but Liene cut her off.

"She needs to rest."

He snorted. "She's expecting a child. She needs to rest. She needs to eat properly. She needs to not be out tramping around the countryside." He pointedly took the clothing and instrument case from the captain, every movement a criticism. "Probably walked since dawn, skipped breakfast, skipped lunch."

"I had breakfast."

"But not lunch," he concluded triumphantly, shoving the end of her scarf up under one arm and starting down the corridor. "Come on."

Annice shot an apology at the captain who merely rolled her eyes and said, "I'll see you when you're rested. I'm looking forward to hearing Jurgis' story from you."

All at once, as tired as everyone seemed to think she should be, Annice fell into step beside Leonas. She essentially played parts of the truth so loud they'd drowned out the bits she didn't want heard and the performance had exhausted her.
But it wouldn't have worked if I hadn't been playing a tune the captain wanted to hear
. When Tadeus got back to the Hall, she'd have to see what she could do to start clearing the whole mess up. He
had
to have misunderstood what the Cemandian meant.

"I lit a fire in your rooms when I heard you were in the building," Leonas told her as they moved in slow procession up the stairs. "It should be nearly warm in there by now."

"Isn't Stasya back from her Walk yet?"

"Didn't they tell you?"

"Didn't who tell me what?"

"Stasya's the bard they sent into Ohrid."

"They sent Stas?" The disappointment hit her as almost a physical blow; she'd been looking forward to the other woman's company for days. Blinking back yet another unexpected rush of tears, Annice fought to let only the annoyance show in her voice. "She'll be gone for months."

"Needed a bard who Sings a strong air to travel that far in this weather."

"I
know
that, Leonas."

"Stasya was the strongest in the Hall at the time." He snickered. "Got a good blunt Command on her, too. Yours, now, it works because you expect it to. Hers works because she dares it not to. Due of Ohrid won't know what hit him."

"The Due of Ohrid," Annice ground out, trying to determine which of them she was so suddenly jealous of and why,

"can take care of himself."

"You've been this way before?"

Stasya smiled tightly at the guard riding beside her, leading her horse. "I've Walked this way, Nikulas. It's not the same thing."

Nikulas nodded. "You move a lot faster on horseback."

"You see less and it hurts more," she amended.

"I thought they fixed that at the Healers' Hall in Vidor?"

He looked honestly concerned, so Stasya allowed her smile to relax a fraction. "The memory remains painful," she told him, shifting in the saddle. A bard on foot took eight to ten days, Elbasan to Vidor and, on the way, they talked with the people, observed the minutiae of the kingdom, sang, laughed, made love. The troop she traveled with had done the same distance in four days, pounding down the frozen River Road, pounding past many of her favorite inns, pounding the insides of her thighs raw. Drifting snow between Vidor and Caciz had slowed the pace, even though she used the kigh to push through a path, but the Troop Captain seemed determined to make up the lost time.

Speak of something unenclosed and lo, it appears
, she thought as Captain Otik galloped back to fall in at her other side.

"I don't like the look of those clouds," he grunted without preamble. "Could be a storm forming up."

"Could be," Stasya allowed, squinting into the distance where the sky seemed to be resting its weight on the horizon.

"Best Sing it away."

"Excuse me?"

Her tone pulled him around in the saddle and he glared at her from under the fleece-lined edge of his helm. "That
is
one of the reasons you're riding with us, Bard. To control the weather so we can reach this traitor before he's warned and gets away."

"First of all, Captain, I can't control that storm, I can merely redirect the results. Secondly, I won't even do that unless it actively threatens our route. Thirdly, we don't know that the due is guilty of anything until I arrive and ask him."

"You don't seem to understand the seriousness of this expedition, Bard."

Stasya caught his gaze and held it. "And you don't seem to understand that I take my orders directly from
my
captain and she takes hers directly from His Majesty the King. So go away and stop bothering me before I Command you to stuff your head up your ass where it seems to belong."

The realization that she could do exactly as she threatened spurred the captain back to the head of the double line, temper barely held in check only because lack of reaction made it obvious he'd been the only one to hear her.

"You don't like Captain Otik much, do you?"

Stasya carefully turned. "What gave you that idea?"

Nikulas grinned at her, the ice in his mustache cracking. "Oh, not hearing the last thing you said to him, I suppose. The captain's really not such a bad sort. He's just a bit pompous and he desperately wants to do something heroic. Scooping a traitor out of his mountain stronghold and dragging him back to Elbasan in chains is probably the best chance he'll have."

"We don't
know
he's a traitor until I ask him," Stasya reminded.

"Oh, come on, you don't believe that, do you? I mean, from what I heard, that Cemandian was pretty specific when you guys questioned
him
. The due's head is on the block."

"Does everyone feel that way?"

The guard shrugged. "Pretty much. They figure you're along as a kind of formality; you know, the icing on the cake."

There wasn't much Stasya could say to that, so she concentrated on clinging to the horse as, up ahead, Captain Otik waved the troop forward into a trot.
Go ahead, take your revenge, you asshole. I should've kept my big mouth shut
.

She'd tried to contact Annice the morning they'd left the city, but the kigh had disappeared with her message and not returned. Obviously, unfortunately, the pregnancy had advanced to the point where earth had completely superseded air. She'd wanted to ask Annice about this man whose head had so suddenly become so perilously attached. She'd wanted to ask what she could expect him to say and how good were the chances of her word being the one that sent him to the block.

She'd wanted to say good-bye.

"As you know, Majesty, the messages the kigh carry are less than explicit without a strong emotional content." The Bardic Captain reluctantly moved away from the fire as a server approached with a load of wood. "I have, however, received reports that the troop is making excellent time and they expect to be in Ohrid in twelve to fifteen days, weather permitting."

Theron nodded and looked up from the map spread out over his desk. Behind him, the frost coating the inside of the windowpanes sparkled in the sun. "They're still following the Hijma River?"

"It's the best route in Fourth Quarter, Majesty. Everything beyond Lake Marienka is frozen solid and, as far as the gorge, it makes a better road than what goes by that name in the area." She spread her hands. "The problem, of course, will be storms."

Stasya woke just before dawn, the sound of the kigh scrabbling at the shutters pulling her up out of sleep. "All right, all right," she muttered, "I heard you the first time."