This made a visceral sense to Ingrey, but it was not really something he wanted Lady Ijada to hear of him. All sorts of men had the capacity to kill for the convenience of their betters; though usually, the only spell required could be fitted in a clinking purse. He had ridden guard, ready to draw steel in his lord’s defense, any number of times, and wasn’t that much the same thing?

Wasn’t it?

“But… “ Ijada’s lovely lips thinned with thought. “Sealmaster Hetwar must have a hundred swordsmen, soldiers, bravos. A half dozen of his guardsmen rode out with you. The… the person, whoever—might have laid the geas on any of them just as well. Why should the only man in Easthome who is known to bear an animal spirit be sent to me?”

A flash of expression—insight, satisfaction?—flew across Learned Hallana’s face and vanished. But she did not speak, only sat back more intently, presumably because leaning forward more intently was not feasible. “Is it widely known, your spiritual affliction?” she asked.

Ingrey shrugged. “It is general gossip, yes. Variously garbled. My reputation is useful to Hetwar. I’m not someone most men want to cross.” Or have around them for very long, or invite to their tables, or, above all, introduce to their female kin. But I’m well accustomed to that, by now.

Ijada’s eyes widened. “You were chosen because your wolf could be blamed! Hetwar chose you. Therefore, he must be the source of the geas!”

Ingrey did not care for that thought. “Not necessarily. Lord Hetwar was in consultation for some time before I came. Any man in the room might have suggested me for the task.” The wolf part, however, seemed all too plausible. Ingrey himself had been ready to blame his prisoner’s death on his wolf-within. He’d have stood self-accused, incapable of his own defense. Presuming he’d even survived his attempt on Lady Ijada’s life… he remembered yesterday’s near-fatal swim. One way or another, victim and tool would both have been silenced.

Two extremely unpleasant realizations crept over Ingrey. One was that he was still bearing Lady Ijada toward her potential death. Her drowning in the river yesterday could have been no worse than some later poisoning or strangling in her cell, and a hundred times more merciful than the horrors of a dubious trial and subsequent hanging.

And the other was that an enemy of great and secret power was going to be seriously upset when they both arrived at Easthome alive.

Ingrey woke feverish from dimly remembered nightmares. He blinked in the level light coming through the dormer window in the tiny, but private, chamber high up in the eaves of his inn. Dawn. Time to move.

Movement unleashed pain in every strained and sprained muscle he possessed, which seemed to be most of them, and he hastily abandoned his attempt to sit up. But lying back did not bring relief. He gingerly turned his head, his neck on fire, and eyed the trap of crockery he’d set on the floor by his door. The teetering pile appeared undisturbed. Good sign.

The wraps on his wrists and right hand were holding, although stained with brown blood. He stretched and clenched his fingers. So. Last evening had been no dream, for all its hallucinatory terrors. His stomach tightened in anxiety—painfully—as the memories mounted.

Groaning, he forced himself up again, lurched out of bed, and staggered to his washstand. A left-handed splash of cold water on his face helped nothing. He pulled on his trousers, sat on the edge of his bed, and attempted his boots. They would not slide over his swollen ankles. Defeated, he let them fall to the floor. He lowered his body carefully into his rumpled bed linens. Reason, in his head, seemed replaced by a kind of buzz. He lay for what was probably half the turning of a glass, judging by the creep of the sunlit squares across his wall, with no more useful thought than a surly resentment of his hopeless boots.

Hinges squeaked; a clatter of crockery was overridden by Rider Gesca’s startled swearing. Ingrey squinted at the door. Gesca, grimacing in bewilderment, picked his way across the dislodged barrier of tumbling beakers and plates. The lieutenant was dressed for the road in boots and leathers and Hetwar’s slate-blue tabard, and tidied for the solemnity of the duty: drab blond hair combed, amiable face new-shaved. He stared down at Ingrey in dismay. “My lord?”

“Ah. Gesca.” When the noise of rolling saucers died away, Ingrey managed, “How is pig-boy this morning?”

Gesca shook his head, seeming caught between wariness and exasperation. “His delusions passed off about midnight. We put him to bed.”

“See that he does not approach or annoy Learned Hallana again.”

“I don’t think that will be a problem.” Gesca’s worried eyes summed the bruises and bandages. “Lord Ingrey—what happened to you last night?”

Ingrey hesitated. “What do they say happened?”

“They say you were locked in with that sorceress for a couple of hours when suddenly a racket rose from the room—howling, and thumping to bring down the plaster from the ceiling below, and yelling. Sounded like someone being murdered.”

Almost…

“The sorceress and her servants went out later as though nothing had happened, and you left limping, not talking to anyone.”

Ingrey reviewed the excuses Hallana had called through the door, as well as he could remember them. “Yes. I was carrying a… ham, and a carving knife, and I tripped over a chair.” No, she hadn’t said a chair. “Upended the table. Cut my hand going down.”

Gesca’s face screwed up, as he no doubt tried to picture how this event could result in Ingrey’s peculiar array of bandages and bruises. “We’re almost ready to load up, out there. The Red Dike divine is waiting to bless Prince Boleso’s coffin. Are you going to be able to ride? After your accident.” He added after a reflective moment, “Accidents.”

Do I look that bad? “Did you deliver my message for Lord Hetwar to the Temple courier?”

“Yes. She rode out at first light.”

“Then… tell the men to stand down. I expect instructions. Better wait. We’ll take a day to rest the horses.”

Gesca gestured assent, but his stare plainly questioned why Ingrey had driven both men and animals to their limits for two long days only to spend the time so gained idling here. He picked up the crockery, set it on the washstand, gave Ingrey another bemused look, and made his way out.

Ingrey had scrawled his latest note to Lord Hetwar immediately upon their arrival last night, reporting the cortege in Red Dike and pressing for relief of his command, feigning inability to supply adequate ceremony. The note had contained, therefore, no word of the Temple sorceress or hint of the later events in that upstairs room. He hadn’t mentioned the incident of the river, or, indeed, any remark upon his prisoner at all. Uneasy awareness of his duty to report the truth to the sealmaster warred now with fear, in his heart. Fear and rage. Who placed that grotesque geas in me, and how? Why was I made a witless tool?

And can it happen again?

His own anger frightened him even as his fear stoked his fury, tightening his throat and making his temples throb. He lay back, trying to remember the hard-won self-disciplines that had stilled him under the earnest holy tortures at Birchgrove. Slowly, he willed his screaming muscles to resistless quiet again.

His wolf had been released last night. He had unchained it. Was it leashed again this morning? And if not… what then? For all the aches in his body, his mind felt no different from any other morning of his adult life. So was his frozen hesitation here in Red Dike just old habit, or was it good sense? Simple prudence, to refuse to advance one step farther toward Easthome in his present lethal ignorance? His physical injuries made a plausible blind to hide behind. But were they a hunter’s screen or just a coward’s refuge? His caged thoughts circled.