“Are you well, Hercegesé?” Sinhue eyed her, concern for her mistress furrowing her brow. “You look paler than usual.”
Ildiko swallowed and gave the maid a thin smile. “I will be,” she said. “As soon as this is done.”
When she’d first told him what she wished to do, Brishen had offered to accompany her, his face grim, his eye bright with the slow-burning anger that had yet to cool since he’d rescued her and Tarawin a month earlier. “You don’t owe that traitorous bitch anything, Ildiko, except maybe your wrath. If you wish to bid her farewell, I’ll do it for you so you won’t have to see her again.” The audible snap of his teeth on those last words had made Ildiko wince.
She’d squeezed his hand. “I could use the same argument for you. Someone else can mete out her sentence. Why does it have to be you?”
A coldness settled over his features that almost made Ildiko recoil from him. “Because she stole my wife and daughter, injured both, tried to extort me into a rape, and nearly got you killed. I failed to protect my loved ones.” He bared his teeth, and this time Ildiko did step back. “Iwantto do this, wife.”
His cheek had been hot under her palm when she cupped his face. “Once this is done, you have to let your anger and the undeserved self-reproach go. If you don’t, then the question becomes who is truly being punished? Don’t surrender that power to her.”
She understood the rage. Had once simmered with it herself as Brishen healed from wounds inflicted on him by his torturers. She’d ordered their deaths and never lost sleep over it, buoyed by the fury that had made the blood sizzle in her veins. Still, she didn’t wish another burden upon him. Guilt and anger were relentless overseers. Even Ildiko’s insistence that the only person at fault in this entire debacle was Ineni—a desperate woman who’d paid a terrible price thanks to the blindness of despair and the misguided fervor of zealotry—did nothing to blunt the edges.
Saggara’s prison, while hidden deep in the earth below the redoubt, was clean and dry. Brishen had been unbudging in his insistence that it be so, and regularly inspected it himself to make sure his decree was followed to exacting measures.
“Filth, damp, and vermin promote disease,” he once told Ildiko. “Even if I had no mercy for the prisoners, I do for the guards, and I certainly don’t want my family and servants living above a plague pit in the making.”
A good king, she thought. With or without a crown. She was blessed beyond words to be the consort of such a man.
The thought stayed with her as their entourage turned a corner to enter another much shorter hallway where a newly built cell stood at the end. Were it not for the lamp Sinhue carried, the darkness would be thick enough to scoop with a shovel. One guard lit a cold torch bolted to the wall, the blaze of light making everyone, including Ildiko, flinch away for a moment.
“Will this be enough for your needs, Hercegesé?” The warden squinted at her from the shadows of his hood. Torchlight danced across the low ceiling and spilled into the cell where a single occupant crouched, their back to the visitors standing on the other side of the bars.
Ildiko nodded and motioned for Sinhue to pass the lantern to her. “Give us time alone,” she instructed the group. “I’ll summon you when I’m ready to leave.” None protested though Sinhue’s half frown warned she verged on an argument. Ildiko patted the maid’s hand. “I’ll be fine, Sinhue. “This is nothing more than a conversation between two people, and there’s a wall of bars between us. I’m perfectly safe.”
Sinhue’s frown didn’t fade but she did as her mistress bade and followed the others back to the main corridor, leaving Ildiko alone with the prisoner.
“We’re not to have an audience then?” Ineni’s voice was raspy as she slowly stood and pivoted to face Ildiko. She didn’t turn away from the torchlight, and her mismatched gaze settled heavily on Ildiko.
Ineni Emelyin, once a lovely Kai woman of grace, charm, and intelligence, had irrevocably changed. The spell she’d invoked to deceive Brishen had worked its awful power too well, though not well enough. Human magic wasn’t Elder magic, and sorcery was a mercurial thing, even when wielded by an experienced hand. Ineni’s attempt to control a spell not of Elder origin had failed in ways she’d likely never anticipated.
She no longer looked like either Ildiko or herself. Her long hair was a faded mess of white and dull orange, her visage reflecting an unnatural amalgamation of both Kai and human features. It was as if a clumsy god had cobbled together a chimera made from the broken poppets of two races. Her mismatched eyes, one a human gray with a black pupil, the other a glowing yellow, watched Ildiko from the other side of the bars with a bleak steadiness. Her skin, a mottled patchwork of gray and pale pink looked sallow in the torchlight, and her healing hands still bore the marks of Anhuset’s work as torturer. Despite Ineni’s bizarre appearance, Ildiko found it much easier to look upon her now than when she was her mirror’s reflection.
She mentally shook off the memory. “There’s no need for an audience, Ineni.”
“Then you’re here to gloat about my impending death?” She laughed, a bitter sound. “Strange. I never imagined that from you.”
Ildiko bristled. “And I never imagined your treason.”
Ineni’s laughter died abruptly. She sidled up to the bars, the straw covering the cell’s floor whispering under her feet. “Then why are you here, Hercegesé?” Her mismatched eyes narrowed. “If it’s to glean an apology from me, you’re wasting your time. My only regret is my plan failed.”
“The plan where you’d rape the regent for his seed, bear his child, and raise it to overthrow the queen regnant?” Ildiko squeezed the lantern handle with one hand and made a fist of the other behind her back.
She jumped when Ineni slammed her body against the bars, sharp Kai teeth gleaming in the light. “I would never betray the queen! She is Secmis’s granddaughter!”
Ildiko rolled her eyes and watched Ineni’s altered features twist in revulsion. “I think it’s a bit late to reclaim any misplaced morality.” She held up a hand to halt Ineni’s reply. “I didn’t comehere to spar with you, or to gloat. I came to tell you that your father has requested he witness your execution. The herceges has denied that request. However, if you wish to see him a final time, an escort will bring him here. But be prepared for…unpleasantness.”
Hatred was more like it, accompanied by crushing grief. The lie of their only child’s death had nearly broken Cephren and his wife. The truth of her survival would have surely killed them. Brishen’s solution for not only sparing Ineni’s parents the truth of her actions, but also any shame for the entire Emelyin clan, had seemed almost god-sent.
They had stood together in the garden, away from prying eyes and listening ears. A small army of guards were outside the garden walls, out of earshot but close enough to defend against any attack. Safety had replaced the days of freer movement for now.
“We can tell them, and the families of her guards, they were ambushed by those who’d abducted you and Tarawin. Ineni admitted she’d told her parents they were going on a hunting trip.” Brishen had paced in front of her. “What do you think?”
“And their bodies?”
He sighed. “That’s the hard part. Even if we say they were burned to ash, there would still be bones. We can say we never found their bodies, only their horses, which their killers stole. Neither one will offer much comfort to Cephren.”
She’d caught his hand, halting his pacing. “Spinning the most elaborate tale will never accomplish the thing Cephren wants most—his daughter back whole and hearty.” She squeezed his fingers. “Keep it simple. I think the ambush idea will work, and our inability to find the bodies more realistic.” It was her turn to sigh. “Who knows? Lack of proof of her death may not offer closure, but it might offer a tiny spark of hope to hold onto, that maybe she isn’t dead but simply lost.”
