Crown of Stars (Crown of Stars 7)

“You’d best sleep … while have chance.”

She smiled at him. “I can’t sleep now. You’re the one must sleep.”

He made a kind of grin although it was more a grimace. “Can’t. Hurts too much. God!” His eyes hooded as he gathered strength, then opened again, so fixed on her that at once she knew what was coming and what Rosvita had seen that had caused her to slip away. Dying men said things they might otherwise keep secret.

“Have you given any thought… to what you will do … when you leave the Eagles?” He had a hard time talking, but he was determined. “Thought… of marriage?”

She pitied him and hated herself, and pitied herself and hated him, all in the space of a breath. She could not lie, yet dared not sadden him, not if he had a chance of living. Mostly, she expected he would die, yet even so she could not lie to him in his last moments, and anyway, what if Sister Acella had certain magical healing arts and he lived and she was faced with a promise she could not honor? Best to speak what was true, even if it was only part of the truth.

“I am already promised. If I were not, I would be thinking about you a great deal, Thiadbold. You’re a good man.”

He smiled, although he was in so much pain that his jaw was clenched and his neck as tight as rope pulled to the breaking point.

She bent and kissed him on the lips. To her surprise, she found it true as she tasted the sweat and sweetness of his mouth; she did find him attractive. On another day, in another place, she might have chosen him.

He slipped away into sleep, of a kind. She waited for a long while, and after a longer while she wondered if he had died from the poison.

Sister Acella eased down beside her. “If he lives out the week it is likely he’ll survive the wound. As for the others—six were struck, and four died at once. Some poison, it is agreed.”

“Deadly,” murmured Hanna, who was still holding onto Thiadbold’s grimy hand. “Yet why did he and that other one not die?”

“Surely the arrows that struck them were not poisoned.”

“Then did he lose that hand for nothing?”

“Ah.” The nun had a way of smiling that suggested an old and deep conspiracy. “By cutting the first wound away from the rest of the body, Sergeant Aronvald saved his life—if that arrow was poisoned. So, you see, we will never know. Are they gone?”

Hanna startled, lost in contemplating Thiadbold’s curly beard, neatly trimmed and rather handsome and noble looking, now that she thought on it. “Are who gone?”

“Those who attacked us with poisoned arrows,” replied the nun dryly.

She laid her hand on his chest, to feel his breathing, then rose. “Best to see, although I’ve heard no alarms.” Ill at ease, she left.

Outside, the night remained silent but for the wind and the occasional restless whicker from one of the horses, under the control of half a dozen men. Those horses were precious, having survived a terrible journey. She saw Wicked standing among them, recognizing the mare’s sleek contours.

Ingo stood at the gate with Folquin, Leo, and Stephen on watch to either side. Half the men were down, trying to sleep right up against the shelter of the wall. The weaving shed still smoked, but all the fires had gone out. It had stopped raining but still smelled of rain. The three dead men were gone.

“The captain still lives,” she said to Ingo. “The nun says if he survives the week then he’ll likely survive.”

He sighed.

She said, “Let me stand a turn on watch, I pray you. I can’t sleep. Better I look, in case there is something to be seen of the Kerayit shaman. Or had you heard that tale?”

He had. “Down,” he said sharply to the others. “Hanna will stand sentry for a while.”

The wall had a ledge built into it two thirds of the way up, alongside the gate, where a watcher could sit almost at her ease and keep an eye on the valley and on the cleft where the ravine gave way to open ground. From here also she could see the forested eastern stretch of the valley to which Sorgatani had been exiled. Hanna settled herself on slickly wet stone and surveyed the dark vista.

Of the four torches burning earlier three had gone out. The fourth burned fitfully atop a post. She saw the curve of a helmet at the edge of its aura, but after looking again that way, and a third time, realized that no man inhabited that helm. It had been propped there to draw arrow shot.

Was it a lie to tell half a truth? Was it right to spare a dying man another sorrow? Or had she only spoken that way to Thiadbold to spare herself the awkwardness?

I am already promised—to the Eagles.

Yet after all, alone on this wall, she knew she had not lied. What she had said, discounting the Eagles, was true enough, only she had not known it or had not admitted it to herself. Tears dried on her cheeks and still a few more slid from her eyes, a ceaseless trickling waterfall fed by sorrow and loss. Was this what it meant to have a broken heart? After all, her heart had promised itself what it would never have. Thiadbold would be a good man for a husband, but it would never be fair to him.

Yet why not? She could come to love him well enough. Love wasn’t everything. In a marriage, it counted less than so many other qualities: respect, liking, trustworthiness, hard work, steadfastness, honor, alliance between families. Or she could stay in the Eagles, like Hathui, always and forever, because she loved being an Eagle even after all this, even after everything. Here she felt at home, standing watch in the middle of the wilderness with enemies all around and a few stout friends at her back, all in service to the regnant. Here she felt a measure of peace, perched on the wall with the damp air and the spattering of rain and the night wind breathing on her. Not knowing what the next day would bring and aching with the misery of wondering what has happened to the ones she loves.

Her family, mother and father, brothers, selfish sister.