The Seragian leader risked a glance down the street, at the approaching guards. Calculation flickered in his dark eyes. Behind him, Amron was still on his feet, doggedly fending off the blows.
“Come on, you coward,” Liana challenged the Seragian, raising her blade. But he ignored her, turning away.
“Go!” A growled command in Seragian and their attackers dispersed, fleeing to the side alleys, leaving their fallen comrade on the ground.
In a heartbeat, Amron and Liana were alone again.
“Gods.” Amron fell to his knees, catching his breath. His shirt was stained with blood.
Liana dropped her weapon and ran to him. “Are you wounded?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
The guards caught up with them. A handful ran after the Seragians. The rest moved aside to let a man in a slightly more elaborate uniform pass.
“Your Highness, I didn’t expect to find you here. Are you all right?” the man said.
“A bit bruised and quite furious,” Amron said. “Thank you for saving my skin, Captain. I was looking for you. This young woman has something to tell you.”
The captain’s gaze fell on Liana. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said.
Chapter 10
Melia
There was atime when Melia didn’t speak.
She would sit still for hours on end. Her room had been spare: Not even the lord’s daughter could expect much luxury in Syr. Whitewashed walls with hangings made by the local women, a bed with a sturdy frame, a carved chest for her clothes, a small desk with her spelling and grammar books, and stories.
At first, the real physicians came to examine her—the old, self-important men in long black gowns, pulling and prodding, staring into the whites of her eyes. One opened her mouth and poked at her tongue with a wooden stick, the other opened her legs and touched her with cold fingers. They conferred in low voices, using expressions Melia couldn’t understand.
Her father came as well, sucking the air out of the room. Roderi of Elmar was not a particularly big man, but he somehow always towered above everybody else. “So?” he’d asked the physicians from the doorway, before he spared a single glance for Melia.
“There is nothing physically wrong with her, my lord,” one of them said. “She is unharmed and untouched.”
“I see.” His eyes, so dark they looked black, focused on Melia. She’d always been in awe of her father. On the rare occasions he entered the women’s quarters, she would take cover behind a chair or under a desk, and watch him blaze like molten glass. His intensity left her frightened and confused.
He approached the bed and the physicians retreated, melting away into the shadows.
“They tell me you won’t speak,” he said.
Melia stared at him. It didn’t occur to her to wish for kind words or gentle touch or any kind of comfort, because those were not things her father had ever bothered with. The sparse tenderness in her life had perished with her mother and her nurse.
“There’s nothing wrong with you, though,” he continued. “You’re not injured or in pain, are you?”
Melia stared at him.
“Are you?” he repeated.
She managed to shake her head in response.
Her father’s eyes studied her, assessing her scrawny body, her awkward limbs. “Then it’s just a question of will, isn’t it?”
Melia wanted to tell him he was wrong, but no words came.
“My lord, the child needs time,” one physician dared to say.
“Time is a commodity,” her father said. “This in no place for the weak and the self-indulgent.”
