“Of course,” Chemoise said. She could not really promise such a thing. She could only throw herself on the mercy of Raj Ahten’s men, hope they’d let her care for her father. They’d allow it, she told herself. Dedicates needed caretakers.

“No!” her father grumbled. He quit trying to walk, suddenly let his feet drag, making her stagger to one side. She bore the weight, tried to carry him against his will.

“Let die!” he whispered fiercely. “Feed . . . feed poison. Make sick. We die.”

It worried her how he pleaded. Killing himself was the only way he could strike back at Raj Ahten. Yet Chemoise could not bear the thought of killing any of these men, even though she knew that life for them would be horrible, chained to some dirty floor. She had to hope that her father would return someday, whole, undefiled.

Chemoise hugged her father, bore him through the big oak door, into the light. The fresh wind carried the smell of rain. Everywhere, Raj Ahten’s troops rushed to and fro, seeking the King’s treasury and armory above the kitchens. She heard glass break down the street, the cries of merchants.

She dragged her father to the huge, covered wain in the bailey. The sides and roof of the wain were made of thick oak planks, with only a thin grate to provide any light or fresh air. One of Raj Ahten’s soldiers grabbed her father by the scruff of the neck, lifted him into the wain with no more care than if he were a sack of grain.

“Ah, de last,” the soldier said in a thick Muyyatin accent.

“Yes,” she said. The Raj’s vectors were all in the wagon. The guard turned.

Chemoise glanced down the road through the portcullis gate, startled. Iome, King Sylvarresta, two Days, and Prince Orden were riding fine horses down Market Street toward the city gates.

She wanted to ride with them, or to shout a blessing to help them on their way.

She waited while the guard wrestled her father through the door. The wagon shifted with the movement. At the front of the wagon, some horsemen expertly began to back four heavy horses into their traces, hitching them to the axletree.

Chemoise climbed up the wagon steps, looked in. Fourteen Dedicates lay on straw inside the shadowed wagon. The place smelled fetid, of old sweat and urine that had worked into the floorboards and walls. Chemoise looked for a place to sit among the defeated men—the blind, the deaf, the idiots. At that moment, the guard was laying her father on the hay. He glanced over his shoulder at Chemoise.

“No! You no get!” the guard shouted, hurrying up to push her back from the wagon door.

“But—my father! My father is there!” Chemoise cried.

“No! You no come!” the guard said, pushing her.