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“You must be bred from Cordelan and Zessaya both,” Pietro whispered.
Stollo was frowning. “But—isthere anyone with such a lineage? I mean, if Dar was his wife—”
“The tales vary,” Jino said. “Some say Zessaya agreed to lie with Cordelan once and bear him one child, as long as she could take the child back with her to the islands. Other versions say that Dar flew into a jealous rage at the very notion, and insisted that Zessaya be banished altogether.”
Pietro was staring down at the tablet in his hands. Could itbe? “I tend to believe the first set of stories,” he said. “Cordelan always seemed determined to leave behind his mark in as many ways as he could.”
“I agree,” Jino said. “Not only did he reshape the world to better suit his fancy, he had such a colossal sense of self-worth that he required it to be fed over and over again with remnants of his own body. A man like that—or a god like that—would never allow someone else her own undiluted power.”
“But the question remains,” Stollo said. “Isthere anyone alive who can claim both Cordelan and Zessaya as ancestors?” He gestured around the destroyed cavern, and the light from his chemstick bounced over the tumbled walls. “It doesn’t seem that anyone like that was living in the ruined lands when their quakes started.”
“No, and if any of their joint descendants ever lived in Corcannon, the priests lost track of them a long time ago,” Jino said.
Pietro turned the tablet over and over in his hands, feeling first the smooth indentation of the palm print, then the rough, rusty protrusions of the bolts. It had to weigh a good ten pounds; it was a miracle it hadn’t shattered when it was thrown to the heaving floor. “I can hardly believe it,” he said. “But I think there’s one. A little girl.”
Chapter Twenty-eight:
Brandon
Brandon and Villette spent almost a month plotting their escape, trying to anticipate every disastrous eventuality and plan a way around it.
“We have to leave at night,” Brandon said, “when the other guards are asleep. I can’t defeat two of them and—I don’t want to kill either one. And that’s what it would come down to if they caught us.”
“Please, no, don’t kill anyone on my behalf!” Villette exclaimed. “That would be unbearable.”
“And we should pick a night when the servants are gone,” Brandon added. “I don’t think they’d fight me, but they’d sound the alarm if they saw us leaving. The fewer people in the house when we go, the better.”
“I agree.”
He had thought finances might be one of their biggest concerns, but Villette waved away that consideration. “I have enough money to fundfiveescapes and keep us in food and housing for a hundred years,” she said. “How do you think I bribed all those other guards who tried to help me?”
“I thought you seduced them with your charm and beauty.”
“Charm and beauty only go so far when people are about to give up everything for someone else. Most conspirators require a cash deposit along the way.” She peered up at him in the darkness. It was very late and unexpectedly cool, and they were sitting outside on the patio, sharing a metal bench and a large knitted blanket. “I would happily give you money, you know. As much as you asked for. You could—”
He silenced her with a kiss, closing his arms around her so tightly that she wouldn’t have breath to argue. It was still astonishing to him that she would allow him to take such liberties—incredible to him that she would cling to him, kiss him back. Oh, he knew she didn’t actually love him. He was a tool, a means to an end. And she needed his services so badly she would give him anything she thought he wanted. Her money. Her body. The rest of her life, maybe, if he was able to secure her freedom.
He should be too proud to accept that bargain. He should only love a woman who would love him in return,trulylove him, light up when she saw his face at the end of the day, worry about him when he was gone from her sight.
But it didn’t even matter to him. He didn’t care that she didn’t love him. He just wanted her out of this place. He wanted her free. Safe. He wanted to build her life from the bones of his own.
“I don’t care about your money,” he whispered against her mouth. “Except to use it to get you out of the city.”
She nodded. “So we’ll leave at night.”
“But all the bridges close at sunset,” he said, still thinking it through. “We’ll need a place to stay till morning.”
“It will look suspicious if we arrive at some inn in the middle of the night, clearly fleeing disaster.”
“I know. Maybe I should rent a room in a quiet part of town. Pay a month’s rent in advance, and visit it on my days off so the neighbors think I’m furnishing it. Then we’ll just be able to unlock the door and walk in, no matter what time we arrive. Stay there one night, and leave in the morning.”
He thought about it a little more, and frowned. Villette read his expression and demanded, “What’s wrong?”
“Unless I can buy horses, we’ll be on foot, which means any search party will catch up with us within a day. But that means I’d have to buy horses in advance—which means we can’t just capitalize on a lucky chance to escape one night when everyone else is, say, laid low with a fever.”
“So buy horses.”
“But any stablemaster will think it’s odd for me to buy horses and then leave them idle until I suddenly demand them one day at dawn. He would certainly describe me to any temple guards who came looking.”
