The light came back slowly. Infinitely slowly. Its focus was dim, more suggestion than shape: vaulted arch, loop of chain, clustered shadow outlined in flamelight. A lamp—lamps, set in a wheel of iron. But only one was lit, the one directly overhead.
Anna blinked. She did not know that lamp. There was nothing like it in any room she could have been sleeping in. But then she seldom woke with hurts in so many places, with a throbbing in her head to match the throbbing in her hands.
She raised one. It was stiff, swathed, bandaged. The sleeve was indubitably her own, the tightness of her white linen camise, the embroidered edging of her third-best cotte, gold on russet.
Her hand fell again to a clean rough sheet, a blanket she did not recognize, heavy and well woven though not rich. There was a pallet under her, a bare floor, a wall beside her of smooth pale stone. Four walls, a heavy door—she did not know any of it.
Something stirred against her foot. She recoiled, knotting against the angle of the wall.
It was only a hound. A white alaunt with ears more red than brown, crouched at the foot of the pallet as Anna crouched at its head. A heavy collar circled its neck, with a chain welded to it and welded again to a ring in the wall. Even had the beast tried, it could not have reached Anna; the chain was too short.
Anna’s heart slowed its pounding. She was not afraid of a hound. This one was very beautiful.
It—she. A bitch, her teats swollen with milk, her belly distended as if she were newly delivered of pups.
Beneath the sheltering body something moved, a tail, the pink tip of a nose. Two half-blind, half-formless creatures, seeking each the sustenance of a nipple. One was male, red-eared like its dam. The other, female, was all silver-white. Or, no; pale, pale gold. The exact color of—
Anna snapped from her crouch. Bright witch-eyes gleamed strangely in the beast-faces, Thea’s, Cynan’s, Liahan’s; Thea’s temper snarled in the collared throat. Those fangs were deadly sharp; Anna’s fingers remembered beneath the bandages.
Yet she dropped to her knees well within striking range and gripped the collar. It was massive, all iron, and welded shut; though not precisely choking-tight, it gave not an inch to Anna’s tugging. Her fingers found evidence of Thea’s own futile efforts, fur worn and roughened, the beginnings of a gall.
Anna could not breathe properly. She found herself at the door, beating on it, gaining no response. It was bolted as solidly as a castle gate; the grille above the level of her eyes looked out upon darkness. For a long moment she dangled, clinging to the bars, biting back a howl. Then she dropped and turned.
Thea had not moved. Her eyes held a glint of mockery.
Anna faced her again. “This is a joke,” she said. “The Folk are playing pranks again. Morgiana—the things an Assassin will laugh at, even a tame Assassin—”
Thea’s muzzle wrinkled. Anger, scorn, or both.
“It is a joke,” Anna persisted. “It can’t be what it seems to be. We were in the tower, and Alun was falling hopelessly in love with his own prophecy, and—”
A stab of pain brought her up short. This time Thea had not broken flesh, only nipped it scathingly. Anna hit her.
Tried to. One could not hit air and fire. Even air and fire in an iron collar, with ears pressed flat and fangs bared.
Very slowly Anna sank down, huddling into her skirts. She was cold, and not only with the damp chill of stone untapestried and uncarpeted, with neither hearth nor fire to warm her.
Anger was no help. She had been in the White Keep, warm and glad, and now she was elsewhere. And Thea—Thea was a shape-changer, that was her nature, the white gazehound her most beloved disguise; but not collared and chained and in visible discomfort, perhaps even in pain, her children transformed as was she, not after she had labored so long against her very nature to bear them in their proper forms.
“Thea,” Anna said as steadily as she could, “Thea, if this isn’t a joke or a game, you had better put an end to it. Your babies are too young yet for shape-shifting.”
If Thea’s eyes had blazed before, now they blinded; her snarl had risen to a roar. Anna caught her before she could lunge—stupid, stupid; but her hands were tightly bound, protected.
At length Thea quieted. She crouched panting, trembling, her short fur bristling.
Shakily Anna smoothed it. “You can’t,” she translated.
She felt weak and dizzy. The Kindred were powerful, invincible. Nothing could bind them, nothing compel them. Not prayers, not cold iron, not any mortal prison. There was nothing they could not do.
Thea made a small bitter sound, half whine, half growl.
“But what? Who? Why?”
Thea could not answer. She could not even set her voice in Anna’s mind; and that was worse than all the rest of it together.
Anna had never been a very womanly woman. In extremity, she did not weep or storm or otherwise conduct herself as befit her sex. No; she became very still, and she thought. Brooded, some might say, except that she did not let revenge overwhelm her reason.
She returned to the relative comfort of the pallet, spread the blanket over herself and her companions, and concentrated on staying warm, still, and sane. It was cruelly hard. She kept seeing Alun falling and Thea changing, melting and dwindling into a maddened beast.
Then darkness, and this. Whatever this might be.
At first she thought she had imagined it. A glimmer. A humming. A tensing of the air.
She had no weapon, not even the little knife she used for trimming pens. Thea’s head was up, ears pricked, a silent growl stirring her throat.
Shadows shifted and took substance. Anna stared.
They remained: a bowl, two jars, a plate. The bowl held meat, blood-raw; the plate a hard grey loaf and a lump of cheese, an onion and a handful of olives. One jar sloshed with liquid; the other was empty, but in shape and size eloquent enough.
Anna’s body knotted from throat to thigh. She had not known she could have so many needs all at once, amid such a nightmare.
The air, having yielded up its burdens, was still. Anna fought to quell her thudding heart. “What is this? Who plays these games with us?”
Silence.
“Where are we? Who are you who taunt us with your power?”
Nothing changed. No voice responded. No figure appeared before her. She had been speaking Rhiyanan; she shifted to the langue d’oeil. Nothing.
“Who?” she demanded in ProvenÁal, in Saxon, in Latin, and last of all, with fading hope, in Greek.
The closed door mocked her despair. She leaped toward the grille and clung. Without lay only darkness and silence and empty air.
“Damn you!” Anna screamed at it, still in her native Greek. “Who are you?”
She could as easily have shouted at the stones, or at Thea, who at least would acknowledge that she spoke.
Her hands cried pain; she unclamped them, dropping the handspan to the floor. There was wine in the smaller jar, sour and much watered but drinkable. She gulped down a mouthful, two, three, before she choked.
Thea wavered in front of her. She had a terrible head for wine; she was dizzy already.
She blinked hard. The hound was on her feet, and the wavering was not entirely in Anna’s vision.
Anna picked up the bowl. It was surprisingly good meat. She set it where Thea could reach it. The witch-hound sniffed it, shuddered, turned her head away.
“You have to eat,” Anna said.
Thea’s eye was as yellow as a cat’s, pupiled like a cat’s, more alien even in that face than in her own.
“Eat,” Anna commanded her. “You were never so fastidious before, when you didn’t need your strength except to play. Eat!”
Thea did not precisely obey. Rather, she chose to taste the offering.
Anna had less restraint. She had to struggle not to bolt it all down at once.
Like the wine, like the meat, the food was inelegant but adequate, far better than any prison fare she had ever heard of. And it gave her strength; it brought her to her senses, and woke her to a quiver of hope. Whatever was to become of them all, certainly they would not starve.
oOo
Having eaten and drunk and put the chamberpot to good use, Anna lay on the pallet.
Thea had finished the bowl after all and licked it until it gleamed dully; she returned to her whimpering offspring and began to wash them and herself. And that, reflected Anna, was a tremendous advantage; she might be condemned to speechlessness, but she would be clean.
She could also sleep, abruptly and thoroughly, as Anna could not. Anna stroked her flank, and after a pause, the small bodies nestled against it. They were warm and soft and supple, a little damp still from their cleansing, breathing gently.
Very carefully Anna lifted one, the silver-gilt creature who was Liahan, cradling her. She fit easily into two joined hands, who in other shape had made an ample armful.
Anna swallowed hard. The small things were always the worst to bear. “We’ll get out of here,” she whispered into the twitching ear. “Somehow. We’ll get out. I promise you.”