The sound of a door shutting drove all such considerations out of my head. It was the main entrance to Kaeska’s reception rooms and I could hear a faint murmur of voices, which set my frustration fully alight. Moving slowly, bare feet silent on the marble floor, I edged toward the door, but I could still hear nothing clearly. Well, with the penalties for using magic around here, she was hardly going to be chanting sorceries at the top of her voice. I caught my breath as I heard a low-voiced murmur, cursing silently to myself as I saw that a muffling curtain had been drawn across the inside of the door, scarlet silk bright against the black wooden slats.

“When the child is born, you will take this message to my cousin, Danak Nyl. He will tell you—”

Who was Kaeska talking to?

“Behind you!”

In the instant that voice sounded inside my head a shadow fell across the wall in front of me and I looked back to see the Elietimm priest, arm raised as he brought down a mace to spill out my brains across the patterned tiles. I launched myself forward, crashing straight through the flimsy louvers of the door, saving my skull but taking an agonizing strike on one thigh. I found myself face to face with a startled Kaeska; she was on her own and with a shock of understanding I cursed myself for an imbecile, taking their bait like that.

“Seize him!” The Elietimm was ripping the tattered drape aside as Kaeska fluttered like a startled cage-bird. She made a futile grab for me and squealed with a mixture of outrage and fear when I put both hands around her narrow waist and threw her bodily at her enchanter. They went clashing to the floor and I ran for the shutters that opened to the gardens, vaulting over a day-bed in my haste to get away. Excruciating pain in my leg felled me like a poleaxed beast as I landed and lost my footing. I rolled around, screaming, clutching my thigh where the mace had landed. When I could blink the tears of agony from my eyes, I looked down to see ivory shards of bone sticking through a ruin of bloody flesh, torn rags of skin. Dast’s teeth, how had he done that much damage with just the one glancing blow? As I whimpered with the torment of it, the bastard came to gloat over me, a mocking cadence to the incantation he was running under his breath.

“More fool you, dungface,” I thought savagely, using the last of my strength and will to kick out with my sound foot, catching the priest in the side of the kneecap with a strike I’d used to disable bigger men than him. Sure enough, he fell like cut timber, screeching as the fine-turned legs of the day-bed splintered under his weight. I caught a mean kick in the kidneys from Kaeska for my trouble, but that hardly bothered me. As soon as the priest’s incantation had unravelled, the agony in my thigh vanished, my hands were gripping bruised but otherwise unbloodied flesh and I scrambled to my feet, shaking with a combination of rage and terror. The bastard was messing with my mind again, scrambling my own wits to trick and betray me. Shoving Kaeska full in the belly, I sent her clean off her feet into a rack of delicate vases, which shattered beneath her. I spared a scant breath to hope she collected a good few shards in her arse, the vicious bitch.

I looked swiftly toward the corridor to see if the uproar had brought any slaves to offer me unintentional protection, but that faint hope proved worthless. I dragged a hand across my eyes and swore vilely as all sense of direction dissolved beneath the insistent pulse of another enchantment in my ears, the meaningless words rebounding from the walls as the room swum before my unfocused eyes. I swung around to face the priest, hands reaching for his blurred form, but he had somehow recovered his mace. I backed off as he hefted it with worrying expertise. He drew a dagger from his belt with his off hand and tossed it to Kaeska. “Hamstring him.”

“You just try it, you slack-arsed whore,” I snarled, not taking my eyes off the Elietimm. He just smiled. I felt the blood start to pound in my head, temples throbbing, my vision darkening and my feet stumbling numbly as the earth seemed to tilt beneath me. As my senses dissolved, I groped blindly for the hilt of my sword and as I laid nerveless fingers on the pommel I heard Guinalle’s precise tones inside my head.

“Of course, a simple ward can be very effective. Try this— ‘Tur-ryal, tur-ryal, tur-ryal.’ ”

I heard a voice that was not my own echoing the meaningless syllables, using my lips in this strange trick of memory. The girl spoke again. “You see, I can’t make your feet cold now, can I?”

I blinked as my sight cleared and drew a breath of release deep into my lungs as I saw the priest’s jaw drop with horrified astonishment.

“You swore they had no true magic,” he spat, his eyes shifting to a point over my off shoulder. That told me where Kaeska was, so I tore my sword free of its scabbard, sweeping it around in a glittering arc. If I had to answer to Shek Kul for gutting her, so be it; I had to get myself free of this snare first. Kaeska squealed and I heard her scuttle backward, the dagger clattering to the floor. I brought the sword to the front and moved swiftly toward the priest, who was between me and my escape to the gardens. Now he was the one backing away but he began another complicated pattern of words and I felt a chill of confusion hover around me, greedy fingers of enchantment ripping away whatever frail shield that strange incantation had given my mind. I couldn’t win this fight, not on these terms.

Yelling a full-throated curse at the bastard, I raised my sword high above my head, both hands on the hilts as I charged at him. Not surprisingly, he recoiled, stumbling over a low stool. I shoved him aside with my shoulder as I brought my sword down on the flimsy latch of the shutters, sending them swinging wildly as I fled to the uncertain safety of the gardens. Running past several startled gardeners, I headed for the practice ground the body slaves shared with the guards, tucked behind the slave quarters. To my intense relief, Sezarre was there, sitting and brooding over a grid drawn in the dirt as he played some solo variant of the Aldabreshi stone game.

“Your leg—” he frowned, abandoning his puzzle as he saw my torn trousers and darkening bruises.

“Kaeska and her visitor, the white-headed man,” I said succinctly, dropping to a bench with a shuddering sigh of relief. Sezarre moved with the instincts of long training to strip away the tattered cloth and wipe down the rapidly swelling and badly scored thigh with an astringent that made me hiss through my teeth. For all that, I realized well enough I was lucky not to have taken the full force of the blow; the bastard could have broken the bone in reality if he’d caught me right, not just crippled me with an illusion woven inside my mind.

“What is this about?” Sezarre asked urgently as he rubbed a salve into the deep scratches, something I’d done for him and Grival often enough since arriving here.

“Kaeska is plotting to kill Mahli and the baby—she is convinced she can then have a child of her own and become First Wife again.”

Sezarre shook his head with a wordless exclamation of contempt.

“The man is not here to trade, he has come to help Kaeska by using magic against Mahli and Shek Kul.”

Sezarre’s hands halted at that and he looked up at me, eyes wide, mouth half open in astonishment.

“I swear this is the truth.” I held his gaze with mine. “I have seen such men as these at work before. Their enchantments killed a friend of mine, closer than my brother. This magic stole his mind and turned his blade against me.”

The pain in my voice as I talked of Aiten more than made up for my remaining deficiencies in the Aldabreshin tongue; Sezarre was convinced, no question of it.

“You have told Laio?”