Blood-Bound [ Lore of Penrua: Book I ]

36

Rhea emerged from her room an hour or so later, and it was evident that she had not slept. Mhera still sat on her cot, her long braid falling over her shoulder. Matei, for his part, had stretched out on his cot and lay with his head toward her, his hands behind his head. They had not spoken again; both of their cups of tea still sat on the floor, cold and forgotten.

"Have you made your plan?" Rhea asked. She moved toward the kitchen, where she began to pull together the makings of a meal.

"The trader, Karsa—is she still living on Whitestone Row?" Matei sat up, turning his head from one side to the other and gingerly stretching his arms up over his head. Mhera noted again that something seemed to pain him.

"Aye, she is. We see each other now and then at the market. What are you thinking?"

"We can go out of the city in one of her carts. Concealed under a tarp. Once she has taken us a distance, she can leave us and we can ... walk, I suppose." Matei rose and made his way across the room. With an ease that spoke of years of routine, he took the knife from Rhea's hand and began to cut the potatoes she had set out on the table. Rhea, relieved of this duty, turned back to the counter.

"Won't they search the carts?" Rhea asked.

Matei didn't respond at first. Mhera recalled the sound of trumpets, the guards marching in the streets. Not only had Matei escaped his prison, but surely her uncle had noticed her disappearance by now. "They will," she said. "They'll be searching for ... you." She had been about to say, They will be searching for us, but something stopped her—some sense that she must collude with Matei to hide who she was. It was to protect Rhea, who had been kind to her and seemed as hurt by the rebellion as she was, and to protect herself from Matei's wrath.

Matei looked across the room at Mhera and frowned, pausing with his hand on the knife. "You're probably right. I don't know how we'll get out. There are only the two ways—the gate to the north, which opens to the shore, and the gate to the south. Unless ... I could take us out. But it's far. Too far." He shook his head and returned to slicing the potatoes.

"What do you mean, take us?" Mhera asked, knowing the answer already.

"Transport us. Use magic. The way I did ... before." The rebel's eyes flicked toward Rhea's back.

"It's safer, 'Tei," Rhea said. "Use the spell. Because if it's a matter of facing guards at the gates, I beg you to just stay here."

"I can't stay, Grandmother. I won't." Matei's tone brooked no argument. He cut into a potato with such force that the knife clacked audibly on the table. "But I do not think I'm strong enough to take us all the way to the wood. The last transport spell I worked taxed me sorely, and it was not so far at all."

Mhera said nothing. She leaned back against the wall and closed her eyes, heartsore at the thought of leaving Karelin. What did it matter which way they went? But if they did go through the gates, and the guards discovered them crouched under some sacking, they would take Matei to the dungeons again, and thence to the gallows. And Mhera ... if what he said was true, Mhera would die.

Perhaps it was worth it. Perhaps she was called to sacrifice herself. Were she to do it, at least the rebel would die, and all the pain and strife he planned for her people as the new leader of the rebellion would be ended before it began.

But Mhera was no battle-hardened warrior, and martyrdom did not number among the virtues that came easily to her. Her heart quailed at the thought of consigning herself knowingly to death.

"Do the spell," she said. "The gates will be impassible. Were I ... the emperor, I would not permit anyone to leave—not until some clue had been revealed as to your whereabouts. If folk are permitted in or out of the city, it will not be done lightly."

"Very well," Matei said with a sigh. He scooped up the chunks of potato and dropped them into the heavy pot Rhea had standing ready, turning then to some meat she had placed on the table. "We'll need provisions, and we'll need to beg fortune to smile on us. I do not think I can get us to the Duskwood."

"I know how you can do it," Rhea said. She paused in her search through her small collection of dried herbs in little jars. She took a pinch of something and sprinkled it into the pot as Matei dropped in the pieces of meat. "Wash your hands."

"A genius plan, Grandmother," Matei said wryly. "You have always stood by cleanliness as the antidote to everything."

Rhea rapped him smartly on the shoulder with a wooden spoon as he crossed to the basin and plunged one hand into the water, reaching for soap. "You and your cheek!"

"Tell me, then."

The old woman plunged her spoon into the pot and stirred the contents. "You must use a bloodstone."

Mhera saw the line of Matei's shoulders stiffen. She looked from him to Rhea, whose expression was nonchalant ... almost deliberately so. Matei reached for a cloth to dry his hands. "That is out of the question. I won't touch one. And even if I wished to, they come at too high a price. There is no way for us to buy one."

"You do not need to buy one. I have one."

Matei turned slowly around, the cloth still in his hands, to look at Rhea. "You what?"

"I have a bloodstone." Rhea placed her wooden spoon aside and picked up the pot. She crossed the room toward the hearth to place it on the hook. "Mhera, dear, could you bring me one of those logs for the fire?"

Mhera slid off of her cot and walked to where Rhea kept a tidy stack of wood. As she selected a piece at random, she glanced back over her shoulder at Matei, who stood in the kitchen as if thunderstruck. He looked pale. Pale and angry.

Rhea took the piece of wood from Mhera and placed it on the hearth, then bent over to stoke the fire. Sparks floated up from the glowing embers. She swung the kettle arm so that the pot hung over the fire and continued to coax the flames to burn brighter.

After a silence, Matei demanded, "Rhea, how can you have one of those cursed things? Is it here? Here in this house?" It was the first hard tone he had used toward the old woman since they'd come. Mhera looked nervously at Rhea.

"I'll remind you that I am yet the mistress of this house, Matei," Rhea said. She turned and looked at him, her fire poker in one hand. "And I shall have anything in it that I please. It has never done me any harm. I keep it locked away, and no one knows it's there."

"How can you stand to keep it here? And where on earth did you come by it?"

"I'm glad I did keep it, for now it can be of some use, can't it? You can use it to get out of the city safe. Believe me, my child, I was as sore as you when Rhodana brought that dreadful thing home. I told her to take it and bury it somewhere. But she wouldn't. She was always headstrong—like you."

"How did she get it?" Matei's lip was curled in disgust.

"Stole it," Rhea said, shrugging one shoulder. "Wouldn't tell me more. Does it matter? They're all the same. I punished her for the theft; she was just a little girl then. But now I'm grateful for it. Use it, Matei. Then do with it what you like—but use it. For my sake. For hers."

Mhera was standing near the hearth, watching this interchange with curiosity. She wanted to ask what a bloodstone was, but she had no wish to insert herself into the matter. She crept back to her cot and sat down, wrapping her arms around herself.

"Very well," the rebel said at last. "I'll use it—and then I'll get rid of it for good."