pallets and tents, eating, tending their animals, or just lying on the ground, resting. A company of forty-two was not enough to challenge the Tribe of Jalas when he was protected by the strong walls of Abet.
“Take five of the Easterners you brought back, and give them supplies, a cart, and a horse. Send them to each region, and tell them they must travel from village to village, relocating those who are willing to do so, and making sure the others do not starve. They may draw on our reserves to feed those who were left behind, although I would prefer that local resources be used whenever possible.”
It was evening before the logistics were taken care of, and Israel felt more anxious than ever to be doing something. Just as he was about to propose to Marston that a covert trip to Abet might be managed without rousing too many of Jalas’s guards, he noticed something odd.
“Do you see what I see?” he asked, nodding toward the port side of Abet, and handing over his spyglass.
Marston took it, looked, then lowered the glass, his eyebrows raised. “Where are all the ships?”
“That is a very good question.” He thought for a few moments. “I wonder…could Jalas be so foolish as to have sent his tribesmen away from Abet?”
“He might if he thought the sheer number of captives he drove north could turn on their captors and take over the High Lands,” Marston answered, watching him closely.
“It is an interesting thought, and one that leads me to believe that a little exploration of Abet under the light of Bellias is in order.”
“That is not needed if all you wish to know is how many members of the Tribe remain in town,” a female voice called out of the darkness. There was a ripple in the company, from which emerged a woman with the lithe, elegant grace of a doe.
Idril, Jewel of the High Lands, strode forward with three handmaidens in her wake. She looked annoyed, Israel was amused to note, her gown torn and dirty, her face showing signs of mud that had washed off none too well, her hair poking out at odd angles—in fact, everything about her was unlike the coolly collected perfection that was the norm for Idril. But more unusual than the state of her clothing was her agitation. Israel had grown accustomed to seeing an invariably placid, unemotional expression on her face.
“Lady Idril,” he said gravely, keeping the amusement from his voice at her unkempt appearance. He knew it must be costing her pride a great deal. “So the rumors were true, then? You escaped your father’s grasp? Or did you make him see reason?”
“Reason,” she said with a sound that in any other woman he would have called a snort. That, too, was unlike her. Idly, Israel wondered if the few weeks she’d spent in Deo’s company had cracked her cool, calm exterior. “My father wouldn’t know reason it if came up and bit him on his gigantic pink—”
“Lady Idril, you are with us again? Blessings upon you, child.” Sandor’s voice cut across her words without effort.
Marston choked, and bowing at Idril, murmured something about seeing to his duties.
Idril managed to get herself under control, her features smoothing out to an expression of blithe unconcern. “Greetings, Lady Sandor. I am, as you see, although no thanks to my father. To answer your question, Israel, my father has not been smitten upon the head with the reason stick. If such a thing existed, I would happily volunteer to be the one to beat him about the head and shoulders with it. I managed to get out via the Captain’s Swain.”
Israel blinked at the name of the seediest, rowdiest of all taverns in Abet, one frequented only by women who paid no mind to their reputation. “Via the trapdoor to the bay?” he asked, eyeing the wrinkled and filthy gown, one that bore all the signs of having been much abused.
“Yes.” A fleeting grimace passed over her face as she lifted her chin. “My ladies were waiting for me, and assisted me ashore.”
“Lady Idril fought us most strenuously,” one of the handmaidens piped up in a high, bell-like voice. “She does not swim, and struggled so hard when she was in the water that we had to knock her insensible in order to drag her ashore, and then we had to hide in the swineherd’s hut when Lord Jalas’s men rode past.”
“Yes, I don’t think we need to go into all the details of my escape,” Idril said swiftly, shooting a glare at the maid in question.
“And then she woke up just as the guard noticed Noellia outside the swineherd’s hut, so we had to knock Lady Idril senseless again because she began to yell, and the guard came in to see, but luckily, we had just pushed Lady Idril out the window into the wallow, and the pigs hid her from view. Well,” the second handmaiden added with a glance at her compatriots, “that and the mud, which was up to our knees.”
Lady Idril looked as if she would happily murder her handmaidens, but after a moment’s obvious struggle with such violent emotions, she lifted her chin again, and graced Israel with one of the cool, impersonal looks that were all too familiar. “My journey here was fraught with many trials, but I am at last free of my father, and able to help you take control of the city again.”
“Indeed.” Israel eyed her, his nose twitching with the scent of what must have been her time spent in the pig’s wallow. “I will naturally welcome any assistance you can give me. Has your father called up more of his tribesmen? Is that where the ships have gone?”
“Just the opposite,” Idril said, ignoring the soft, wet noise that followed when a bit of fern tangled with hay fell off her shoulder and hit the ground. Her chin rose, her eyes daring him to comment. “My father feels that you no longer pose a threat to him now that he’s taken away your army and sent them north, to serve the tribes. There was evidently a skirmish that he felt boded ill—I admit to perhaps playing upon his paranoia—and thus, he sent the tribe north via the sea, so as to quell the insurrection that I hinted would be raging all over Poronne.”
“That was astute thinking,” Israel said, pretending not to notice when another clod of mud, straw, and leaf mould fell from a particularly spiky bit of her hair.
One of the handmaids giggled.
“Astute and prescient, perhaps,” Lady Sandor murmured, her gaze on Israel.
Israel raised his eyebrows in an approximation of innocence. “If you are implying that I left behind a set of instructions for the people of Aryia to follow when I went to Eris, I have little to say except it would be most unlikely.”
“Most,” Sandor agreed, her mouth twitching.
Israel met her gaze with equanimity, knowing full well that although the priestess might adopt a staid and circumspect persona, she had a wicked sense of humor that she had once told him had led her into no end of trouble. That she’d been naked at the time and riding him like a rented mule had nothing to do with the assessment. If Dasa hadn’t fought her way into his heart, making herself welcome in that inhospitable organ, he might have taken up the offer in Sandor’s soft eyes.
He gave himself a little mental head shake. “So the city is empty? Then we shall retake it. Immediately. Marston!”
“It’s not empty, no, but the five tribe leaders who were there sailed north yesterday,” Idril answered. “Noellia, whatever that is on the back of my neck, remove it. No, don’t show it to me. I would prefer not to know what it was that slid across my flesh. My lord, wait!”
Israel, who had started to move off to his tent to gather up
