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Updated: September 28, 2025
"Are you coming to bed?" she asked, drowsily, and fell back among the pillows without even waiting for the answer. Esmay, unconscious of the cold, remained seated at the window looking out upon the river, her mind busy with the ultimatum which had just been presented to it.
Then, suddenly, Esmay stopped in her monotonous pacing of the room and flung herself on her knees by her sister's chair. "You goose!" she exclaimed, with tender suspicion. "I believe you have been crying." "Not a bit of it," returned Nanna, sitting bolt upright and staring hard at the ceiling. "I only want you to be sure and let me know before you go.
Constans was silent. Here was one of his contingencies that existed no longer; with Boris out of the way, the decision that Esmay must make was enormously simplified. Or was it still more infinitely complicated? With a woman to consider, the question was not so easy to answer. Nor would he attempt it.
"It is impossible," said Piers Minor, stolidly. "This is a time of war, and only for life and death " "It is a question of that," insisted the youth. Piers Minor shook himself impatiently. "Speak out, can't you? What is it that he would care to know?" "Tell him, then, that last night Esmay disappeared, and yet still remains in Arcadia House. He will understand, for he knows Quinton Edge."
"I found this on a nail in the passage," went on Nanna, and held out a bit of cloth that had been torn from a garment. It was of that peculiar weave worn only by the priests of the Shining One. Esmay looked at it with troubled eyes. "What does it mean?" she asked, but Nanna only shook her head. "Of course, I remember what happened at the temple," said Esmay, hesitatingly.
But for the best of good-fortune he might now be tugging at a heavy ashen oar, with the lash of the deck-master striping his back. Ulick, Esmay yes, he had much to remember. Two hours later he had scaled the wall of Croye, without being discovered by the sleepy sentinels, and was safe on his pallet of corn-husks in Messer Hugolin's attic.
He rose as Esmay entered, detaining her with a gesture as she would have passed him. "One moment, if you will." The girl stopped and waited for him to continue. He considered a moment, looking her over coolly. And indeed she made an attractive picture as she stood there, the firelight glinting redly in her tawny eyes and her cheeks incarnadined with excitement.
"It makes not a particle of difference," asserted Ulick, stubbornly. "He is my captive, taken in fair fight, and he belongs to me for all of his nicked ear. I sha'n't give him up, and that's my last word to you, Master Quinton Edge." Half a dozen men entered the hall hurriedly; the girl Esmay must have summoned them when she had disappeared a few minutes before.
Apparently he had forgotten her very existence; he sat with feet out-stretched to the fire, his eyes fixed upon the curl of blue smoke that hung above his pipe bowl. Esmay went up to the room on the second floor which she shared with her sister. Nanna was already in bed and asleep, but she started up as Esmay entered, like a dog that has been listening in its dreams for its master's footsteps.
An hour passed, and there was no sign of her appearance. Constans grew restless, impatient, uneasy, until finally inaction became intolerable. Certainly Esmay should have come by this time, supposing that she had observed his answering signal. She might be absent, ill, a prisoner.
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