LITMIR.BIZ

      “What’s wrong with you?” Someone had hold of Stone’s hair, shaking his head as if it were a sackful of kittens to be drowned.

      His mind felt full of kittens, crying and yowling and crawling over each other. His head hurt. And his hands. He was shocked to see his fingers raw and bleeding. “What did you do to me?” His voice croaked like a frog’s.

      “What have we done?” The fat guard gave Stone’s head another shake. “You’ve done it to yourself, you barmy idiot. Clawin’ at the walls, bangin’ your head on it. We should’ve give you back to your side. Let them keep you from killin’ yourself.” He grabbed an arm and hauled Stone to his feet. “Come on.”

      “Where are you taking me?”

      “Not that it matters—whatcha goin’ ta’do? Not come?” The fat man laughed at his feeble joke. “But you’re getting’ a cleanup. General wants you. Told ’er you were barmy, but she don’t care. You’re the only one we found alive. She wants to see you.”

      Stone’s knees sagged at the reminder. Fox was dead. They were all dead. Save him.

      He submitted tamely to the humiliation of his bath. They stripped away the stained remnants of his uniform and stood him in a courtyard with a drain in one corner, his hands fastened before him in finely wrought steel shackles. He’d never seen such expert workmanship wasted on a prisoner. The fat guard pulled a lever and cold water poured down on Stone from a pipe over his head.

      He was scrubbed from head to toe with a rough brush, drowned again in the water and dressed in an Adaran-style tunic and trousers of unbleached cotton. Again the quality of the cloth was much higher than he would have expected. If this was their poor stuff, no wonder the king wished to rule here.

      With the clothing sticking to his wet skin, Stone was marched into a second room where his hands were bandaged and his hair was taken down from the tangled top knot tied there days ago by Fox. Stone didn’t protest. He wanted the memory gone. Remembering caused pain.

      The fat guard waited while another man combed the knots from Stone’s hair and began to braid it into one of the tight pigtails worn by Adaran warriors. No, not warriors, soldiers. They were not born to their trade. His hair was too short in the front and kept falling away, but the rest was caught tight.

      “Perhaps your birthmark is the reason you survived the dark scythe,” the hairdresser said as he tied off the tail of hair.

      “What birthmark?” Stone had one on his hip, round and small, but it was covered.

      “This one.” The man ran a finger over the nape of Stone’s neck. “Shaped like a rose. Maybe the One protected you, since you bear His symbol.”

      “I don’t have a birthmark there.” He’d never seen the back of his neck, but Fox would have teased him mercilessly about any flower-shaped mark.

      “Of course you do.”

      “Let me see.” The guard lumbered closer and shoved Stone’s head forward to expose his nape. After a few seconds, he made a sound through his nose and backed away. “You’re clean enough. Time to go.”

      The guard kept his distance as he escorted Stone out of the prison and through a square to a squat, imposing building, prodding him with the heel of his pike to indicate direction. He’d used his hands on Stone before, dragging and shoving him. Before he’d seen the rose supposedly marking Stone’s neck. Did he fear the mark? What did it mean?

      Stone walked through corridors and antechambers filled with Adaran soldiers clad in dun and gray, their tunics decorated with bold devices like those on divisional banners in the Tibran army—green trees, gold lions, red stags. Most soldiers had ribbons in white, yellow or red tacked to the shoulders of the sleeveless tunics, left to fall free front and back. Stone’s skin crawled when he realized that the majority of the people wearing the uniforms were female. Why did the gods not punish them for their blasphemy?

      Then the guard was opening a door, ushering him into a large room faced with maps and charts. A soldier stood at the window beyond the wide, paper-cluttered desk, back to him, shoulders sprouting a veritable fringe of red ribbon. The guard came to attention, snapped the heel of his pike against the floor and held it at ready. “General Uskenda. Sergeant Borril reporting with the Tibran prisoner as ordered.”

      The gray-haired general turned around. Stone staggered and would have fallen except for the guard catching his arm. The commander of Adaran forces was also a woman. How could this be? The defenses should have fallen the first day. Everyone knew women had no war skills, no war sense. Of course, they had won through magic, not in a fair fight. That had to explain it.

      “So.” Uskenda walked toward him, around him, as if conducting an inspection. “You are the one who lived.”

      Stone stared straight ahead, refusing to speak to any woman who did not know a woman’s place.

      “What is your name?”

      He remained silent.

      The general sighed and moved away a few paces, clasping her hands behind her back. “You would do well to answer of your own will.”

      Stone’s eyes flickered toward the guard. He let his contempt show. Nothing they could do would change his mind.

      “Oh, I know physical persuasion will do no good.” Uskenda lifted a sheet of paper, perused it briefly. “That’s why we rarely use it. We have no need. Corporal!”

      The door behind Stone opened and a man spoke. “Yes, General?”

      “Tell the naitan I have need of her.”

      “Yes, General.” The door closed again.

      Naitan. The word Adarans used to name their witches. Cold rushed from Stone’s heart into his outermost parts, and the hair along his spine rose.

      “Do you understand me?” Uskenda leaned against the desk. She somehow looked like a warrior with her stern face and close-cropped gray hair, despite her femaleness. How was it possible? “I think you do. I think you understand every word I say.”

      The guard came to clashing attention again and spoke when Uskenda looked his way. “General, the prisoner speaks perfect Adaran.”

      “Thank you, Sergeant.” She crossed her arms and studied Stone. “How did you come to learn it?”

      How indeed? And when? Stone had picked up a word or two of the local language in the week after landing, but no more than that. He hadn’t realized he was speaking Adaran until this moment. His mind had been too filled with…what? Grief? Must have been. His thoughts were so fogged by grief that he scarcely knew how much time had passed since his capture. That was likely how he’d learned the language without realizing it, listening to his captors.

      “What is wrong with his head, Sergeant?”

      “General. The prisoner injured himself by striking his head against the wall, General.”

      She tapped a forefinger against her mouth. “And why did you do that? I wonder.” She studied Stone a moment longer, then moved behind the desk and sat in the high-backed chair. “Ah well, no matter. We will know soon enough.”

      They waited. Stone and the guard stared straight ahead.

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