“I dearly would like to see our Sister Zoë naked even just one time, for I think she must be a rare sight to behold under that robe.”
Heribert snorted as he measured the corners with a square, then grunted, satisfied with the proportions.
“But I fear me,” continued Sanglant, “that she despises the male kind.”
“Or the male member.” Heribert shrugged the sleeves of his cleric’s robe back on and retied the rope belt at his waist. The servant made the odd noise that signified “farewell,” and slipped away into the uncut logs piled nearby. “She was married very young to a man who used her cruelly, so I’ve heard. She killed him with a spell when she was sixteen, after three years of abuse in his bed.”
Sanglant shook his head. “If only she’d done it sooner! How came she here?”
“She fled to her aunt, who was a nun at St. Valeria. By one means and the other they ended up here.”
“Ah,” said Sanglant. “But which is the aunt?”
o;What has done this?” he asked the spirits. They would not answer, only crowded together. He did not smell their fear, precisely; it was more like a weft woven through the pattern of their being, abrupt, rough, and startling, they who were not creatures of earth at all but some kindred of the daimones whose natural home was the airy heights below the moon, or so Liath had told him. Easy to catch and enslave, these airy spirits served the five magi who lived at Verna.
Just as, in cold truth, he and Brother Heribert served them by building and hewing. Indeed, it was particularly irritating to see that someone in this valley had the means to fell trees with far less effort and time than he had to expend and yet was unwilling to share that knowledge with him and Heribert, the ones who had to perform all the hard physical labor of building decent living quarters for everyone. A king’s son ought not to serve others in this way, no matter how exalted their rank, and yet for the time being, and with Liath’s pregnancy and studies advancing, he was willing to bide his time. He was willing to work and eat and enjoy this interlude of peace.
But the surreptitious attempts on his life were beginning to get annoying.
He explored the forest briefly but, as he expected, found neither sign nor trail of his assailant. He did not expect another attempt today; whoever didn’t want him here was a little clumsy, as witness the incident with the soup, someone unused to murder, perhaps, or someone who consistently underestimated him. Obviously no one in this valley knew of the curse his mother had laid on him, or they wouldn’t have bothered to try killing him.
He went back and felled the tree he had come for, then set to the tedious work of trimming branches off the trunk of the great fir. He paused only to take bread and cheese and ale in the midafternoon, and several times to sharpen his ax, but even so, as dusk neared, he had only cleared half of it. His back ached, and his tunic was clammy with sweat. He slung the sheathed sword over his back and headed downslope on an animal track.
Firs and spruce gave way to oak, to beech and ash, then to orchard. He paused at the vineyard to pluck a few ripe grapes and, savoring these, went on. Shadows drew long over the dilapidated stone tower, the old sheds, and the newly-finished hall, so raw that it still seemed to gleam. Heribert worked at the sawhorse, stripped to the waist with his robes tucked into his belt. He had the slight elegance of a cleric, wiry now with muscle, and the callused hands of a carpenter. He was planing smooth a plank.
“Peace, Brother,” said Sanglant, laughing as he came up. “You’ll shame me if you don’t stop working and join me at the pond.” Heribert grinned without looking up from his work. “Some day,” Sanglant observed, “I expect an avalanche to wipe out this entire unnatural valley, but, by God, while the rest of us flee to safety, you’ll stand your ground and be swallowed up under it because you damned well are determined to get a last corner curved just so.”
Heribert chuckled, but he continued to work. His ever-present helper, a robust creature who seemed as much wood as air, blew wood shavings off the plank as quickly as they flew up from the plane. Sanglant sat on a neat stack of unfinished planks that he and Heribert had sawed out of logs over the last week, and several servants settled around him like so many contained whirlpools of air. He had become accustomed to their presence. While Heribert finished the plank to his liking and touched up the corners, the prince watched two of the magi, one old woman and one young one, who sat outside the stone tower on a crude bench arguing in a language he didn’t know. They were too far away to hear him and Heribert, and as usual did not appear to notice them.
“I dearly would like to see our Sister Zoë naked even just one time, for I think she must be a rare sight to behold under that robe.”
Heribert snorted as he measured the corners with a square, then grunted, satisfied with the proportions.
“But I fear me,” continued Sanglant, “that she despises the male kind.”
“Or the male member.” Heribert shrugged the sleeves of his cleric’s robe back on and retied the rope belt at his waist. The servant made the odd noise that signified “farewell,” and slipped away into the uncut logs piled nearby. “She was married very young to a man who used her cruelly, so I’ve heard. She killed him with a spell when she was sixteen, after three years of abuse in his bed.”
Sanglant shook his head. “If only she’d done it sooner! How came she here?”
“She fled to her aunt, who was a nun at St. Valeria. By one means and the other they ended up here.”
“Ah,” said Sanglant. “But which is the aunt?”
“Dead, now, so they say.” Heribert had started to put away his tools. Now he paused. “Do you think Sister Zoë is the one trying to kill you?”
“Who can know? Sister Zoë and Brother Severus prefer not to speak to me at all. They despise me, I think. To Sister Meriam, I am an object of complete indifference. To our fine and mighty Sister Anne, I do believe I am only another tool, one she hasn’t yet discovered a use for.” He gestured toward the older woman who sat next to the voluptuous Zoë. “Only Sister Venia treats me kindly.”
Heribert colored. “The more subtle they are the more fair they appear. Do not trust her.”
“So you have said before, and since she is your aunt, I suppose I must trust your judgment since you surely know her far better than I do. A fair face can conceal a foul heart.” He grinned, thinking of Hugh. Although it was certainly no Godly sentiment, he liked to remember how he’d last seen Hugh, bleeding and beaten on the ground, at the mercy of the dogs. But thinking of the dogs made him think of his father, and he sighed. Two of the servants brushed against him, their light touch like balm on his scratched-up skin.
“You’d think Sister Anne would put a stop to the attempts to kill you,” Heribert was saying as he tied up his tools in a cleverly-sewn pouch of his own devising.
“Maybe it’s a test. Or perhaps she doesn’t know.”
Heribert laughed sharply. “I don’t believe there is anything she doesn’t know. But surely Liath might have some insight into her mother’s mind that we lack. You should confide in her.”
He considered, but finally shook his head. “Nay. It would worry her needlessly, and she would insist we leave—and that, I fear, would cause more problems than it would solve in every way. She needs to be here, at least until the child is born and she has recovered her strength.” Then he smiled wryly. “And in any case, Heribert, I haven’t found that she can keep secrets very well, although she thinks she does. If she gets angry, she’ll blurt it all out and accuse everyone just because she is so indignant on my behalf. I like knowing that they don’t know that I know.”