In the Ruins (Crown of Stars 6)

“I see that. What is it she wants?”

Through the open doors, the graying of shadows heralded the approaching dawn. Birds cooed sociably. A creature scrabbled in the rafters. Then, once again, it was silent. Even the guards had ceased speaking in that undertone that had drifted at the edge of Sanglant’s hearing all night.

“She wants to be rid of Hugh,” whispered Ekkehard. “She hates him, but she promised her mother never to harm him, no matter what, and to give him shelter when he needed it. Margrave Judith loved him best of all. Just as our father loved you, the bastard, the least deserving.”

An explosion of pigeons burst out of the arcade, fluttering away into the twilight sky. The sound of their passage faded swiftly as they flew over the town and out past the walls. Sanglant’s senses were strung so tautly that he imagined them skimming over the fields. He felt he could actually hear the pressure of wing beats against the air as their flight took them over woodland and farther yet, racing south into the uncut forest lands where beasts roamed and lawless men hid from justice.

Theophanu clutched his hand, pressed tightly. “Beware. Hugh is the most dangerous of all.”

A certain pleasant, malicious warmth suffused Sanglant. “‘Nor will any wound inflicted by any creature male or female cause his death.’ Was I not so cursed? Hugh can’t kill me.”

“Perhaps not,” said Theophanu, “but he can strike at your kinfolk. At your Eagle. At your wife.”

As if her words were an incantation, a shape appeared at the door, limned by the pallor of dawn. Hathui was already on her feet, ready to move.

“Liath!” He started forward to meet her, but he had not gone halfway down the nave when he halted, seeing what she carried.

Memory struck hard.

She thrust the bundle she carried into his arms. “Keep it safe for me, I beg you,” she said to him before she rode away to carry the king’s word to Weraushausen, to Ekkehard and the king’s schola. Years ago.

The book had been the talisman that had linked him to her in those days when he had thought of nothing except her, because the memory of her had been the only thing that had kept him sane when he suffered as Bloodheart’s prisoner in Gent. The book had brought her back to him. He had kept it safe, and she had married him because she trusted him where she trusted no one else.

She thrust it into his arms.

“See here, Sanglant! Touch it! Look! It’s Da’s book.”

“Where did you get it?” he said hoarsely, and even Theophanu exhaled at the anger that made his voice tight. “Hugh had this. Have you seen Hugh?”

Her expression was bemused, not frightened. She should be frightened and angry! “Not really. He saw me. He gave the book to me.”

“Did he speak to you?”

She hesitated, seeing Theophanu and Ekkehard recoil at his tone. She saw Hathui but not with any indication that she understood the danger the Eagle was in. “I must speak to your aunt, Sanglant.”

“Did he harm you?”

“Me? He can’t harm me. I would have killed him if he’d tried to touch me.”

Hugh had touched her somehow. Her mind was filled with him, or with what he had said to her, words she would not repeat to her own loving husband who thought at this moment that he was likely to batter himself bloody with jealousy.

“If he gave the book back to you, it’s because he has some plot in mind.”

“He might have copied it out. He’s had it long enough. It’s what I would have done.” She spoke the words distractedly. She wasn’t really listening. He knew how she fell away from the world when her mind started churning and turning, caught by the wheel of the heavens and the mysteries of the cosmos.

“He wants something he thinks he can get by disarming you in this way.”

“He didn’t disarm me!” she retorted indignantly, then frowned. “Well. It’s true he took me by surprise.”

“No doubt he hopes we’re quarreling over it now. Sow discord. Plant doubts. Reap the harvest. I expect he’s grown more subtle.”

The comment made her fall back to earth and actually see him. She leaned against him, ignoring Theophanu and Ekkehard’s stares, and with the book crushed between them she smiled so dazzlingly up at him that he got dizzy all over again. “Just as you have?” she asked him.

He laughed. “So easily I’m disarmed!”

“I pray you, Sanglant,” said Theophanu, “if you will not have people say that she has wrapped you in a spell, then you ought not to act in public like a besotted fool. Even our father once asked this woman to become his mistress.”

Ekkehard was staring with mouth agape and eyes wide. “Ivar of North Mark was in love with her, too,” he murmured. “She was condemned as a sorcerer at Autun, at Hugh of Austra’s trial, don’t you remember? She was named as a maleficus. She was excommunicated by Constance and a council of biscops and presbyters! Henry raised no objection!”