Duty-Bound [ Lore of Penrua: Book II ]

30

"Where is she now?"

"You didn't exactly give me much direction on what to do with your new pet," Uachi snapped. "She's currently sleeping—in my bed, so I guess I'm bunking with you tonight."

Matei sighed, putting his face into his hands and leaning against the table. They were sitting in the dining hall, although there had been no dinner. "I doubt I'll be sleeping, so you're welcome to it," he said. "Captain Alban and that tragedy of a High Council meeting have given me much to keep me awake. But, anyway...has she stopped shaking like a leaf at any point since she came to us?"

Uachi cocked a brow. "Well, the day she came here, she laughed at my misbehavior," he said. Matei frowned, opening his mouth as if to inquire further, but Uachi raised a hand. "Later. I may have made an enemy. Possibly two, depending on how highly Mhera values that old stick of a woman she keeps at her heel. Anyway, I got half a laugh out of Ealin, and then she went off into this story about goddess knows. I think she's a half-wit, Matei."

Surprised, Matei tried to get a read on whether Uachi was joking, but it didn't appear to be so. With a frown of concern, he said, "She didn't seem like a fool, Uachi. Just frightened."

"Aye, but if you'd have heard..."

"Well, you'd better tell me, then."

Uachi reached for the decanter of wine. "How is that we haven't got two peas to rub together in this forsaken palace, but we've enough wine to bathe an army?"

"Be mindful of your empty stomach, that's all the advice I have for you," Matei said.

Pouring himself a goblet of wine, Uachi explained. "She was asking me where I had grown up, whether I had spent my childhood in the city. And then she asked me if you were the Glorious Emperor. 'Bit early to be giving him fancy titles,' I said."

Matei snorted. "You are not very charitable, are you?"

"I'm honest. That's why you keep me around. Now shut up, or did you not want to hear?"

Matei gestured for Uachi to continue.

"Anyway, she says, 'No, the Glorious Emperor, he's the one who's going to save us all.' Blah, blah, set the world to rights, something like that—"

"Such a keen ear for detail. I value you, my friend."

"—and then she says, normal as you please, 'You know, Emperor Korvan, the Sovereign of Souls.' And that's when I lost her completely."

Matei felt more confused than concerned, but all the same, a cold tickle of foreboding touched the back of his neck. He was uneasy. "What do you think she meant by that?"

"I think she believed it, Matei. I obviously did not ask her much more—by this time I was convinced she was delirious, or mad. But the way she looked at me...it was...uncanny. Like she could not believe that I did not know as much as she did about this so-called Glorious Emperor. I got it out of her last night that they taught it like that in the Mage's Keep, and it seems she thinks the archmage's flight had something to do with the Corpsemaker's death, but she wouldn't say more."

"That's a name for Korvan I've never heard," Matei said. He looked at Uachi thoughtfully. "What do you suppose it all means? Sovereign of Souls? Restore the world to rights? Could she be talking about his efforts to crush the rebellion?"

"To eradicate the Arcborn, more like. It sounds like some kind of Starborn propaganda. Dangerous propaganda."

"Do you suppose the others who lived with her there in the archmage's keep would know what she's talking about?"