style="font-size:15px;"> ‘Of course not, Princess.’
To say that Mirtai was unhappy would have been the grossest of understatements. She was in chains when Kring brought her into the council chamber with a hopeless kind of look on his face. ‘Nothing I say even reaches her,’ the Domi told them. ‘I think she’s even forgotten that we’re betrothed.’
The golden Atan giantess would not look at any of them, but sank instead to the floor in abject misery.
‘She has failed her owner.’ Betuana shrugged. ‘She must either avenge or die.’
‘Not quite, your Majesty,’ Sparhawk’s daughter said firmly. She slipped down from the chair in the corner from which she had been watching the proceedings. She deposited Rollo in one corner of the chair and Mmrr in the other and crossed the room to Mirtai with a businesslike look on her small face. ‘Atana Mirtai,’ she said crisply, ‘get up off the floor.’
Mirtai looked sullenly at her, then slowly rose, her chains clinking.
‘In my mother’s absence, I am the queen,’ Danae declared.
Sparhawk blinked.
‘You’re not Ehlana,’ Mirtai said.
‘Im not pretending to be. I’m stating a legal fact. Sarabian, isn’t that the way it works? Isn’t my mother’s power mine while she’s away?’
‘Well – technically, I suppose.’
‘Technically my foot. I’m Queen Ehlana’s heir. I’m assuming her position until she returns. That means that I temporarily own everything that’s hers – her throne, her crown, her jewels, and her personal slave.’
‘I’d hate to have to argue against her in a court of law,’ Emban admitted.
Thank you, your Grace,’ Danae said. ‘All right, Atana Mirtai, you heard them. You’re my property now.’
Mirtai scowled at her.
‘Don’t do that,’ Danae snapped. ‘Pay attention. I am your owner, and I forbid you to kill yourself. I also forbid you to run off. I need you here. You’re going to stay here with Melidere and me, and you’re going to guard us. You failed my mother. Don’t fail me.’
Mirtai stiffened, and then she broke her chains with an angry wrench of her arms. ‘It shall be as you say, your Majesty,’ she snapped, her eyes blazing.
Danae looked around at the rest of them with a smug little smile. ‘See,’ she said. ‘Now that wasn’t so hard, was it?’
It was a small, single-masted coastal freighter with a leaky bottom and patched sails. It definitely did not skim the waves. Berit and Khalad wore their mail-shirts and travelers’ cloaks and they stood in the bow looking out across the leaden expanse of the Gulf of Micae as the wretched vessel wallowed along. ‘Is that coast up ahead?’ Berit asked hopefully.
Khalad looked out across the choppy water. ‘No, just a cloud-bank. We’re not moving very fast, my Lord. We won’t make the coast today, I’m afraid.’ He looked aft and lowered his voice. ‘Stay alert after the sun goes down,’ he instructed. ‘The crew of this tub is made up of waterfront sweepings, and the captain isn’t much better. I think we should take turns sleeping tonight.’
Berit glanced back along the deck at the assortment of ruffians loitering there. ‘I wish I had my axe,’ he muttered.
‘Don’t say things like that out loud, Berit,’ Khalad muttered. ‘Sparhawk doesn’t use a war-axe. Krager knows that, and one of these sailors may be working for him.’
‘Still? After the Harvest Festival?’
‘Nobody’s ever figured out a way to kill all the rats, my Lord, and it only takes one. Let’s both behave as if we’re being watched and every word we say is being overheard – just to be on the safe side.’
‘I’ll be a lot happier once we get ashore. Did we really have to make this leg of the trip by sea?’
‘It’s the custom.’ Khalad shrugged. ‘Don’t worry. We can hold off these sailors if we have to.’
‘That’s not what’s bothering me, Khalad. This scow waddles through the water like a whale with a sprained back. It’s making me queasy.’
‘Eat a piece of dry bread.’
‘I’d rather not. This is really miserable, Khalad.’
‘But we’re having an adventure, my Lord,’ Khalad said brightly. ‘Doesn’t the excitement make up for the discomfort?’
‘No. Not really.’
‘You’re the one who wanted to be a knight.’
‘Yes, I know – and right now I’m trying to remember why.’
Patriarch Emban was very displeased. ‘This is really outrageous, Vanion,’ he protested as he waddled along with the others toward the chapel in the west wing. ‘If Dolmant ever finds out that I’ve permitted the practice of witchcraft in a consecrated place of worship, he’ll have me defrocked.’
‘It’s the safest place, Emban,’ Vanion replied, ‘The pretense of “sacred rites” gives us an excuse to chase all the Tamuls out of the west wing. Besides, the chapel’s probably never really been consecrated anyway. This is an imitation castle built to make Elenes feel at home. The people who built it couldn’t have known the rite of consecration.’
‘You don’t know that it hasn’t been consecrated.’
‘And you don’t know that it has. If it bothers you all that much, Emban, you can re-consecrate it after we finish.’
Emban’s face blanched. ‘Do you know what’s involved in that, Vanion?’ he protested. ‘The hours of praying – the prostration before the altar – the fasting?’ His chubby face went pale. ‘Good God, the fasting!’
Sephrenia, Flute, and Xanetia had slipped into the chapel several hours earlier, and they were sitting unobtrusively in one corner listening to a choir of Church Knights singing hymns.
Emban and Vanion were still arguing when they joined the ladies. ‘What’s the problem?’ Sephrenia asked.
‘Patriarch Emban and Lord Vanion are having a disagreement about whether or not the chapel’s been consecrated, little mother,’ Kalten explained.
‘It hasn’t,’ Flute told him with a little shrug.
‘How can you tell?’ Emban demanded.
She gave him a long-suffering look. ‘Who am I, your Grace?’ she asked him.
He blinked. ‘Oh. I keep forgetting that for some reason. Is there actually a way you can tell whether or not a place has been
