King's Warrior (Renegade Lords)

His eyes opened. “She is all you have?”

“All I have.” The words came lightly, as if there was no power behind them.

“Is there no blacksmith?”

She looked over, startled. “Blacksmith?”

“Aye. Visits every night, big burly sort?”

She laughed softly. Firelight from the dying kitchen fire was barely visible, just a pale russet light shifting against the walls. “No. No, there is no one.” Baselard had not visited in years, at her request. It was no good pretending there was fire when there was not.

But oh, how she’d once wished for fire.

“Sisters, brothers, parents…children?”

She ignored the last mention. “I have no sisters or brothers and my parents are long dead, and in any event, they were from the countryside, not town.”

He turned his head toward her. “How did you find your way here, then, to this muddy little town?”

She gave a laugh. “A husband. Business. Errors in judgment.”

“Ah.”

“But how an Irishman found his way here,” she added softly, “now that is a question.”

He gave a shrug. “A woman. Business. Errors in judgment.”

She smiled. “You lie.”

He put a hand to his chest. “Not about the last, lass. Not about the last.”

They shared another smile then turned forward again. Outside the voices had died away, and there was nothing but the sound of the fire slowly dying. “I must make the fire up,” she whispered.

“I will do it.” Moving so smoothly that he made no sound on the plank floors, he glided into the kitchen and crouched before the fire, laid new wood and stirred it up. Then he shut and barred the back door and returned to the front room, as if by some unspoken agreement they must sit together, close in the shadows, and wait for whatever came next.

“What is it?” she asked softly, staring ahead.

“What is what?” he said, also not looking over.

“This thing you carry.”

He was quiet so long she thought he would not answer. Then finally, softly, he said, “Death.”

It was chilling, not so much the word, but the toneless, flat way he said it, as if the thing inside him that carried the word out, had also died. As if his voice were its pallbearer.

She stared at the underside of the counter. Little bits of yellowish wax stuck there, from the wax she used to thread her needles. Outside, a loud crowd of minstrels walked down the street, singing and playing tambourines. Soon it would be Epiphany, Twelfth Night, and even in mucky little Saleté de Mer, a town named for sea dirt, the revelries pressed on unabated.

“Do you know what I think?” she said, keeping her gaze aimed forward. “I think you are on return from the Holy Land.”

Silence.

“Most have already returned. But not all.”

More silence.

“Not even the English king, Richard the Lionheart.”

A very decided silence.