In the Ruins (Crown of Stars 6)

“I’m called Johanna, Your Highness. After the discipla who was martyred in such a cruel way, yet loving God and professing Her worship and Her Unity, now and forever.”

Horribly, that fervid gaze turned on Ivar, and he ducked his head but not before seeing how her eyes narrowed and a cunning, frightened look came to her face. “Who is this, then? He looks familiar, but I don’t know …”

“He’s my cousin from the countryside, Your Highness, come new to town. He was here some months back helping out but had to go back to aid his ill mother, who passed up to the Chamber of Light after many months of agonizing sickness, may God grant her peace now that she is well shut of the world.” Johanna was a babbler, and it was obvious she had learned long since how to lie to avoid the lady’s ill temper.

Ivar kept his shoulders bowed and his face cast down, hoping Tallia would not recognize him.

“Does he believe in the Redemption? I’ll have no servant toiling in my house who is a heretic!”

“Oh, he believes, indeed, Your Highness!”

“He must say so himself! He must! People lie to me. They say they’re dead and then they’re alive again. They say I will rule, but then they keep the reins in their own hands. They babble about the phoenix, when the phoenix doesn’t matter, and only because of his handsome face and pretty ways—”

Into this tirade clattered the duke, emerging out of a different door with an older and extremely handsome daughter in tow. He was dressed for riding, as was the girl, and he slapped his gloves against his thigh to announce his arrival.

Tallia ceased speaking as though he had struck her.

“Where’s Berry?” he roared.

The girl shrieked, leaped away from her mother, and pelted across the floor to throw herself into her father’s arms. In that instant, her face was transformed. “I wanted to go! I wanted to go!” she cried.

“For the sake of God and peace, Tallia, you told me she was too sick to go riding!”

“She is ill in her soul, my lord,” she said, shuddering, a hand on her belly.

“Too sick! Puling and moping will kill her, not keep her healthy! Do you want her to die as did the two others?”

“You can’t talk to me like this!”

The older girl, just broaching puberty, rolled her eyes in a way that reminded Ivar strikingly of the sergeant with Captain Ulric. Indeed, she had a martial stance that suggested she trained and rode and knew how to handle weapons.

“I told you,” repeated Conrad. “I told you to let the child have done with all this praying. That’s what clerics are for. Twice a day is enough. She needs exercise and a good appetite.”

Tallia was white with anger, but the little girl held onto her father with an unshakable grip.

“Let me stay with you, Papa. Let me stay with you!”

“Of course you’ll stay with me, as you should.”

“I hate you!” Tallia whispered.

He laughed. “That’s not what you said last time you came crawling to my bed.”

Tallia sobbed, then cast a glance of pure loathing at the older daughter and throttled her own tears.

Johanna tugged at Ivar’s sleeve. “Let’s go.”

He set his neck under the yoke and lifted the buckets. He sidled sideways through the door and trudged after Johanna as they walked down a corridor that ended in a set of double doors.

“It’s like poison,” she said in a low voice. “Most of the time, thank the Lady, they stay in Wayland where they belong, but Lady Sabella will have her daughter in Autun to give birth with her own midwives attending.”

“Why? Hasn’t Wayland any midwives?”

“It’s agreed between them. If the young queen gives birth to a boy, Lady Sabella gets him to raise. If a girl, naturally, the duke takes her. The last two died before they were weaned. Only the eldest has survived so long, and her not yet seen five summers.”

“Lady Tallia doesn’t want to raise her own sons?”

Johanna paused before the doors with a hand on one latch. “Lady Tallia has no say in any decision, for all that she’s the last descendant of the royal house of Varre and they call her queen. She’s a frightened, petty, mean-hearted creature. For all that, I do pity her, caught between the stallion and the guivre.” She flicked a glance at the closed door, as if she could be heard by listening ears. “Have a care, Brother Ivar. The stallion is hot-tempered and hotheaded yet honest in its passions and will kick and bite to protect its fillies. It’s the guivre’s cold glare that will kill you.”