She smiled at Ezratah’s scowl.
“Admit it. You Mirayans just hate people having any fun. Actually,” she confessed, “I did put a little enchantment on him just before we left. If he takes your horse back by tomorrow, the Duke’s steward will decide he’s a fine young man and offer him a job in the Duke’s service. Much nicer work than fishing!
Ezratah laughed and shook his head. What could you say in the face of such cheerful shamelessness?
“You win! So tell me what’s happening with Yani. Surely she doesn’t really need rescuing?”
Had it not been for the flicker of emotion crossing Marigoth’s face, he would have thought she hadn’t heard him. She turned away and seemed to be coiling a piece of rope in the prow of the boat. Ezratah could tell from the set of her shoulders that the subject upset her. For the first time alarm bells went off in his mind.
“Mari? What is it?” He moved forward and gripped Marigoth's wrist. “Is Yani really in danger?”
“Yes I think she is,” said Marigoth huskily, sounding for all the world as if she was going to burst into tears. “As far as I can tell someone’s taken her off to Miraya.”
“Miraya! I thought she was supposed to be meeting the Prince of Ishtak. How did Miraya come into this?”
“Oh ’Tah! You’re so dim. Miraya comes into everything.” Marigoth laughed shakily and drew her free hand across her eyes. Ezratah ignored the insult and pulled her down onto a seat opposite him. If Marigoth was upset, Yani must really be in danger. He should have considered it earlier instead of dismissing the whole thing as one of Marigoth’s jokes.
“Tell me what happened,” he said.
“Yani met with the Prince, she and Diyar, who was doing the protection on her, and that was the last anyone heard from either of them. Except our agents in Ishtak found witnesses who saw an unconscious Tari woman being loaded onto a Mirayan ship called the Open Eye. No sign of Diyar. The Prince says he has no idea where she is. I bet it would be a different matter if we mindsearched him.”
Nightmarish visions of diplomatic disaster filled Ezratah’s head.
“You can’t...”
“I know! You can’t mindsearch someone that important without his permission! But we can follow this Mirayan ship. I only hope it’s not a false lead.”
“Right!” agreed Ezratah. So they were going to Miraya! He’d never thought to see his homeland again and he was surprised to realise he didn’t much care.
He was much more worried about Yani. Yani might be special but she was only human and Miraya had been in a state of civil war for the last forty years. It was swarming with the kind of people who flourished in civil wars - pirates, mercenaries, assassins. Worst of all, there were death mages everywhere. Pray that Yani hadn’t fallen into the hands of such people. A Tari, with their strong connection to the life spirit, would be of great value to one of the Dark Brotherhood. He shook off the evil thought. No. Probably one of the Mirayan settlers, maybe even the Duke of Ishtak himself had paid for her to be taken out to sea and ...
An even worse thought occurred to him.
“Are you sure she’s still alive?” he said gently.
“No!” snapped Marigoth. “I’m not sure of anything. We just have to find the Open Eye.”
Chapter 2
Yani
For the last thirty days Yani had sat in the darkness, chained to the wall behind her by the iron witch manacles round her neck and wrists. Every time the light in the corridor outside her room lightened to grey she’d made a mark in the spongy wood of the wall as a way of keeping time. Her little prison room stank of rotting wood and the sour stinking water in the bilges beneath, but the worst of it was the rats that lived in this hold. When she fell asleep they would come creeping up to bite her and even though she had caught and killed many, there seemed a never ending army of them.
For thirty days she had listened to the bilge water sloshing back and forward as the ship creaked and rolled across the waves, but today the waves had smoothed and the rhythm of the ships creaking had slowed. Yani had a cold feeling in the pit of her stomach that they had arrived. She was not sure what their destination was, though she had a strong suspicion it was somewhere in Miraya because the old man who was her warden spoke Mirayan. Evil bastard!
She had not been physically mistreated and every day bread and water had been brought to her and the slops bucket taken away. She had no physical reason to fear the old man but every night he would come to the door of the cell, light a candle and leer at her through the small barred window.
He had the face of a skull - greying parchment skin stretched tight over his bones - yet he had the most amazingly white and perfect teeth that he said came from eating human flesh. Sometimes he just stood there shining the light in her face so that she could not sleep. Other times he talked, telling her long stories of rape, torture and cannibalism. The sensual pleasure with which the old death mage spoke of these things - the way he rolled each story round in his mouth as if he were savouring the flavour of some delicious food- was more frightening than the stories themselves. He seemed quite sane - he simply revelled in other people’s pain. The very existence of such a being, defiling the life spirit, made her physically ill.
She had offered him gold. She had threatened him with Marigoth and the others. She had even tried to make him curious about her, to lure him into mindsearching her, hoping thus to touch him with the power of the life spirit and perhaps change him. But he did not listen to her. She suspected that he did not regard her as sufficiently human.
Sometimes when he came she prayed the Morning Chant to herself so that those beautiful words could drown out his speech. Sometimes she did not respond at all, but withdrew into the Raven and let it deal with the stories. Sometimes she made herself weep and screamed at him in the hope that that would satisfy him and make him go away quicker. None of these strategies seemed to make his visits shorter. He stayed talking and staring at her until it pleased him to go away and leave her to the rats.
“You are bait,” he would say every day. “Those who love you will come after you. Your loved ones will fall into our hands and we shall feed them to our servants. Or worse still, we will suck them dry to use their power. Those people you love. Then I shall have you for myself and we shall see how long you can last my pleasure. Meditate on that.”
He must be speaking some truth. The Mirayans in the Archipelago hated her and wanted her gone so there was no reason why they should keep her alive unless they wanted bigger prey. Death mages could always put a Tari to good use. But did her captors actually know this? Was this why they had not touched her?
Marigoth would come after her. They must know that that was certain. And Marigoth was a much bigger prize.
Yani prayed that her younger sister would come prepared, yet in the end what was the power of a great mage? What good had it done her bodyguard, Diyar? When Yani had realised that she had been drugged, she had staggered to the door of the room and pushed it open. And seen Diyar there, her guardian mage, slumped on floor bleeding from the head, a man with a cudgel standing over him. You might be a great mage able to make whole armies fall asleep, but you were still only human when they hit you on the head. Where was Diyar now? Was he on the ship? She’d asked the old man but he’d only laughed.
Sweet life, she regretted swapping the sword for diplomacy, especially when she thought of that bastard Prince Ipius. She never should have trusted him.
When his Chamberlain had called Yani to his house for a secret meeting, she had gone in good faith, assuming that the Prince had wanted to make a deal that his supporters would not approve. She’d thought the Prince smart enough to want to avoid offending the Tari, but even then she had taken care. The Chamberlain had offered her wine while they awaited the Prince and she had drunk only because the Chamberlain had poured his cup from the same jug and sipped before she did. Then the Chamberlain