She pushed back through the door, her charming instructions complete, and we were left with the suffocating fumes of the yellow-green mixture filling the room. Jeb noted that the stench of horse manure was preferable to the poison the cook had brewed. How it would help a wound, I wasn’t sure, but Sven seemed confident. He took a hearty whiff of the putrid substance.

“I’d rather have a dose of your red-eye,” I said.

“So would I,” he said longingly, “but the red-eye’s long gone.” He took great pleasure dipping the pieces of cloth into the hot liquid and placing them over my gash and Orrin’s festering leg wounds.

“For dragging her all the way across the Cam Lanteux, that Assassin seemed none too fond of her tonight,” Sven observed.

“He’s more than fond of her. Trust me,” I said. “He’s just incensed that she agreed to marry the Komizar while he was away. I know she had no choice. The Komizar’s holding something over her—I just don’t know what it is.”

“I know,” Jeb said. “She told me.”

I looked at him, dread flooding through me, waiting.

“You,” he said. “The Komizar said if she didn’t convince everyone that she had embraced the marriage, you’d start losing fingers. Or more. She’s marrying him to save you.”

I leaned back against the wall and closed my eyes.

For you. Only for you.

I should have known when she added those words to the prayer. They had haunted me ever since she said them.

“Don’t worry, boy, we’ll have her out of here before the wedding.”

“The wedding’s in three days,” I said.

“We’ll be sailing down the river by then.”

Sailing.

On barrels.

CHAPTER FIFTY

The big day the Komizar promised me began with a fitting for a wedding dress. I stood on a block of wood in a long, barren gallery not far from his quarters. A fire roared in the fireplace at the end of the room, chasing some of the chill away. Every day had grown colder, and a puddle of water on my window ledge from last night’s rain had turned to ice.

I watched the flames lick the air, hypnotized. I had almost told Kaden last night. I came close, but when he said it was a game I wouldn’t win, I feared he was right. All it took was one misstep.

A confession was on the tip of my tongue but then the smug exchange between Kaden and the Komizar at the end of the evening had flashed through my mind. There’s a strong bond between them. They have a long history together.

I could almost admire the Komizar for his brilliance.

Who better to have as his Assassin than Kaden, so intensely loyal, so loyal he would never challenge the Komizar? So loyal he would set aside a knife even in a fit of rage. Kaden was forever in his debt, an Assassin who couldn’t forget the betrayal of his own father and who would never repeat his treachery even if it cost him his own life.

“Turn,” Effiera instructed. “There, that’s enough.”

The army of dressmakers were a welcome distraction. Though a special dress was not customary in Vendan weddings, the Komizar had ordered one, and he wished to supervise the fitting as it progressed. He would issue his approval before final work was begun. It was to be a dress of many hands to honor the Meurasi clan, but he had specified the color was to be red, which Effiera and the other dressmakers had clucked about all morning, trying to find just the right mix of fabrics, and seeming satisfied with none. They pieced together scraps of velvets, brocades, and dyed buckskin.

They pushed and prodded with their pieces, and a dress finally took form on me as they pinned and unpinned, a labored nervousness to their work. They were used to crafting dresses from their tents in the jehendra and not under the supervision of the Komizar.

Every time he said “Hmm” and shook his head, one of the dressmakers would drop her pins. But his comments weren’t harsh or angry—he actually seemed preoccupied with something else. It was a side to him I hadn’t seen. We were all grateful when Ulrix called him away to attend to a matter, but he promised to return soon. They worked quickly while he was gone to finish the long snug sleeves—this time I at least had two—but my shoulder was still carefully left bare to show off the kavah.

“What do you know of the claw and vine?” I asked.

The women all fell silent. “Only what our mothers told us,” Effiera finally said quietly. “We were told to watch for it, that it was the promise of a new day for Venda—the claw, quick and fierce; the vine, slow and steady; both equally strong.”

“What about the Song of Venda?”

“Which one?” Ursula asked.

They said there were hundreds of songs of Venda, just as Kaden had told me. The written songs were all long destroyed, but that didn’t keep her words from living on in memory and story, though there were few now who remembered them. At least they knew of the claw and vine, and the clans I’d met on the fens and uplands knew of the name Jezelia too. An anticipation ran through them. Pieces of Venda’s songs were alive, in the air, and rooted in some deep part of their understanding. They knew.

All the written songs destroyed. Except for the one I possessed. And someone had tried to destroy that one too.

The door opened, and they all startled, expecting to see the Komizar, but it was Calantha.

“The Komizar’s been delayed. It may be a while. He wishes the dressmakers to wait in the next chamber until he’s ready for them again.” The women wasted no time in following the instructions and scurried off with armfuls of fabric into the next room.