The Burning Stone (Crown of Stars 3)

“Take it off, I beg you.” The words choked her. “It’s wrong for me to wear it.”

“Nay, it’s meant for you.” He passed a hand over his eyes as at a vision he dared not dream of seeing. “Had it been Taillefer’s court, you still would have outshone them all.”

She slid her fingers under the curve of gold braid, twisted it off, and set it down hard on the table as if the touch of it burned her skin to ice. “There must have been three hundred people in there, and all of them staring at me!”

“You’ll get used to it.”

‘I’ll never get used to it! I don’t want to get used to it!”

“Hush, Liath.” He tried to kiss her, to calm her, but she was too agitated to be calmed. She went to the window and leaned out. Many figures moved beyond the corner of the residence: and by their voices, and coarse jesting, and the tidal flow of the crowd, she knew the feast had ended with her departure. “He meant to shame you,” said Sanglant as he came up beside her. He was careful not to touch her.

“Ai, God.”

“Did you bewitch him?” he asked casually, flicking a finger along her cheek.

“I did nothing!”

“You did nothing, and yet he offered you his bed and his protection. My father is well known for his piety and his continence. In all my years at his side, I have never seen a display such as he gave us this night.”

“I did nothing!” she repeated, furious now because the humiliation was still so raw. She remembered his own words of yesterday. “I will not have this conversation over and over if you in your heart doubt my intention!”

He laughed, relaxing suddenly. “No, I think you are the on who is witched somehow. Any man in that hall tonight would have taken you to his bed and given you half his estates and a third of his mother’s treasure in return for your favor. The Lord and Lady know that you are beautiful, Liath.” He leaned so close that his breath stirred her hair. “But not even the fair Baldwin makes all the ladies of the court go mad with desire for him. And I think God have molded him more like to the angels even than you.”

“Who is the fair Baldwin?” she asked indignantly.

He bent away from her, shut his eyes as he stood silent, listening to the distant chatter of the assembly as it broke into groups and eddied away. She heard only a meaningless murmur, but she knew he could hear far more. “Nay,” he said finally, “there is something else at work here, some spell laid on you.”

“Is that the only reason you asked me to marry you, then,” she asked harshly, “because of a spell? And if the biscops so choose, can they can condemn me for something I had no part in?”

He shook his head, having come to a decision. “You will not appear before the biscops. We will ride out with Conrad.”

“Conrad was the worst of them!”

“We can’t stay at court! Not after the king—my own holy father—tried to take you away from me!” Then he paused, made certain hesitant gestures as a prelude to speaking so that she knew what was coming next. “Were you tempted?”

Because he asked so timidly, the question made her laugh. “Of course I was tempted. The king’s bed. The king’s protection! I’d be a fool to cast that aside, wouldn’t I? But I swore before God that I would never love any man but you.”

“Ai, Lady, Liath.” He embraced her, although he was unsteady. “We will make many strong children together, each one a blessing on our house.” He pulled her gently toward the bed, but she slid out of his arms.

“Let me just stand here for a while,” she said, going back to the window. “I’m dizzy.” She had drunk so much wine that her head still spun with it. He only smiled and went to sit on the bed, content to watch her.

She leaned out for a draught of air. She could see stars now in the vault of heaven: the Queen’s Sword stood at zenith, but from this angle she could not see it. The River of Heaven poured westward, and the Guivre rose from its waters with stars streaming off its back. Like Judith’s eye, turned on her with malice. So many stars, a thousand at least, as numerous as the courtiers and servants and hangers-on who followed the king.

“Da and I were always alone. Even at the court in Qurtubah where everything was rich and crowded, we stayed hidden on the fringe, mostly. We were always alone.”

“Qurtubah,” murmured Sanglant from the bed, a soft echo. “I saw a sword from Qurtubah once, light but strong. It had a curve to it.”

Directly north she saw Kokab, the north star, and below it the Ladle, forever poised to catch the heavenly waters and bring them to the mouths of the gods should the gods thirst for such nectar. That was the story the old Dariyans told, but it was not the explanation which the Jinna astronomers, beholden to the great Gyptian philosopher Ptolomaia, set down in their books.

“‘The highest sphere encompasses all existing things,’” she said softly. The Book of Secrets lay so close behind her that she could feel its quiescent presence; she did not need to open its pages to quote from the text of the Jinna scholar al-Haytham whom she and Da had once met. “‘It surrounds the sphere of the fixed stars and touches it. It moves with a swift motion from east to west on two fixed poles and makes one revolution in every day and night. All the orbs which it surrounds move with its motion.’”

“Does this mean something I ought to understand?” Lounging on the bed, he yawned.

“We call Kokab the north star because it marks the north pole. There must be a south pole, too, which I haven’t seen.”

“Has someone seen it?”

“I don’t know if any of the Jinna astronomers traveled so far. I don’t know if there’s any land in the south. They say it’s all a desert, baked to sand under the sun’s heat.” Out among the palace buildings, people filtered away in ripples made of laughter and song and movement as hall and courtyard emptied. “Al Haytham says that day and night increase the closer you are to the place where you would stand under the pole. It would be a zenith—”