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“I would rather be dead than a prisoner like that,” Blessing whispered, leaning against her father and wrapping her arms around his waist. Her head came almost to his chest. “Wouldn’t it be more merciful to kill him? He must hate you.”

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“No prisoner loves his jailer,” he said at last.

“Do you think if I’d jumped in the river that merman would have eaten me?”

“I don’t know.”

The river flowed past, more sluggish now as it was glutted with waters leaking out of the marshland. A chorus of frogs chirped, then fell silent as though a passing owl had frightened them. There came a moment of deeper silence, with the flowing waters of the river and the steady lap of waves against the hull the only sound. A hard slap hit water out on the river, answered by a second and a third.

“They’re talking,” said Blessing.

“Who is talking?”

“The merfolk.”

“How can beasts talk?”

“They do! They’re watching us.”

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He smiled, but an itchy feeling between his shoulder blades made him reluctant to laugh at her comment. “It’s too dark to see them.”

“No, it isn’t. There are eleven of them. They travel in packs. Like dogs. They came to spy on us.”

Was she just making up a fanciful story to amuse herself on the long journey? Or had she inherited an uncanny sense from the blood of her parents?

“Is there more you can see that you haven’t told me?”

“Well, I can see Mama sometimes.”

The casual comment came like a jolt, like a man riding a placid gelding that suddenly bucks and bolts. He broke out in a sweat, skin tingling as if he were beset by a swarm of gnats. “What do you mean?”

“Only sometimes. She’s still trapped in the burning stone. She’s trying to find her way back.”

How difficult it was to keep his voice calm. “Is there anything we can do to help her?”

She shrugged, painfully unconcerned. “We just have to wait. The merfolk are waiting, too, you know.”

“What are they waiting for?”

He could feel her concentration by the way her small body tensed against his. At the mast, chains scraped against wood as Bulkezu shifted position again. His guards—Malbert and Den tonight—chatted quietly with each other, reminiscing about a card game they’d lost to a pair of cheating Ungrian soldiers.

“Oh!” said Blessing, sounding surprised and a little intrigued. “They’re waiting for revenge.”

2

AS the river broadened and grew sluggish winding its way through marshy wilderness, Zacharias spent more time on deck watching the riot of birds that flocked everywhere: ducks, egrets, storks, terns that skimmed along the flat sheet of the water, cormorants. Once, but only once, a gray crane. Hathui never moved far from his side unless she was called away by the prince. It seemed strange and terrible to him to stand beside his beloved younger sister in this companionable silence. He kept waiting for Hathui to come to her senses and repudiate him, but she never did.

Instead, she questioned him about Sanglant’s retinue, their names and character. “And the three young folk who attend Princess Blessing? There’s trouble brewing there.”

He glanced toward the bow where Anna stood between the two young men. Matto was shorter but broader through the shoulders, strong enough to wield an ax with deadly measure. Thiemo, half a head taller, still retained a whippet’s slenderness, but he had a cool head in most circumstances, a loyal heart, and a charming smile.

Anna had changed markedly since that day in Gent when Sanglant had taken her into his retinue. She had bloomed.

“True enough,” he said. “She was a scrawny thing when she first became Princess Blessing’s nurse.” Anna would never be truly pretty, but she had a quality of candor about her that made her as attractive as girls with unblemished complexions and handsomer features. She had also matured quite startlingly, with a voluptuous body that any sane man would crawl a hundred miles to worship.

“They’re like dogs snarling over a bitch in heat. Doesn’t anyone else see it?”

“What’s to be done? They’re young. They can’t help it.”

“Poor girl,” she said disapprovingly, but her gaze was caught by a thicket of dense shrubs hugging the shoreline, branches brilliant with red berries. “Look at the hawthorn!” she cried with real passion.

Briefly the land rose out of the mire, and poplars and willows took hold, leaves flashing as the wind disturbed them, before the ground leveled again into grassy banks that looked inviting but were more likely sodden, swampy traps infested by the ubiquitous stinging flies. He scratched his chin, batting away a swarm of gnats; it was bad enough out on the water. pqdm.com