The Burning Stone (Crown of Stars 3)

It wasn’t far, no more than one hundred steps, but he had to grit his teeth to stop himself from running to help her. She was still so weak, as if all her strength had been drained from her, poured out into the child. She couldn’t even light a candlewick. But she could walk a hundred paces and only have to lean on him a little as they walked back together. The warmth of her body against him set off all kinds of sensations, but he carefully eased her back onto the couch, patted the dog, and went to wash his hands and face in cold water at the trough by the door.

o;We must be rid of that—that brute!”

“Cautiously, Brother. I have tested his strengths in many ways, and I am afraid that the geas his mother set on him is stronger than our magic.”

“You mean you can’t kill him.”

“I cannot. But I have certain ideas. We still hold the strongest piece. We must only wait until we can use it against him.”

“You will never persuade her to turn on both husband and child!”

“We shall see, Brother. Let us speak of other things.”

They had been strolling down the new walkway all this while and now Sanglant stepped aside to let them pass.

“A good day to you, Prince Sanglant,” said Anne to him as they cut around the portion he was staking into place. Brother Severus grunted out something that might have been a greeting.

“Good day,” he said, resting the mallet over one shoulder. He had a wild urge to slam the wooden sledge into their smug faces, and for an instant the desire seemed blindingly clever, but he dismissed it as quickly. No doubt Anne protected herself, and anyway, he would hardly maintain Liath’s good opinion if he murdered her mother.

Even if she had just admitted to being the person who had tried to kill him.

“Will Liath be attending the noon meal?” asked Anne pleasantly, pausing just out of his reach. She could, he reflected, as easily have walked down the path to ask Liath that question herself. But she did not.

“Nay, I think not.” He jiggled a log with one foot; he had almost the entire walkway laid between tower and hall. He and Heribert had set the walkway over the worst muddy bits first as the spring rains ground the pathways into sludge, so that Severus and Anne did not even get their slippers dirty as they skirted this last missing section. “She’ll eat her meal at our cottage.” Then he smiled.

Anne’s hound growled at him, sensing his insincerity, perhaps. He had left his Eika dog staked down near Liath, a habit he had fallen into these last two months since the birth of Blessing.

“Very well,” said Anne, and she and Severus stepped up onto the other portion of the walkway and continued on. Sister Zoë stood just outside the door to the hall, pretending not to watch. Sanglant admired her from this distance, lush curves suggested by the drape of her robe, and she turned suddenly and vanished into the hall. He laughed, and one of the servants pinched him on the thigh, as if to scold him.

“Hush,” he said to it, still chuckling. “I’ve worked enough this morning. Surely I can amuse myself in such a harmless fashion.” But it had already flitted away toward the hall where, no doubt, it would be called upon to serve or clean. He smelled freshly-baked bread and realized then how hungry he was. The walkway could wait. Shifting the mallet to drape across both shoulders, he jumped over the logs and strode back along the winding path, through budding grapes and orchards green with leaves and young fruit, that led to his wife and child.

He heard her before he saw her.

“Nay, nay, of course he did the only thing he could. I can’t help but envy her, that she can nurse my daughter and I can’t.”

He came into sight of the hut to see Liath reclining on the couch Heribert had built for her so that she could lie outside and study in the books that Meriam and Venia brought for her. Heribert sat at the foot of the couch. He had been carving a rattle out of cherrywood, but knife and carving lay still in his hands as he and Liath watched Jerna nursing the baby under the shade of an apple tree.

It was truly an odd sight: he could see the bark of the tree through Jerna’s translucent body, and although she seemed to have no substance but air and water, she could still hold the baby for short periods of time, enough to nurse it, before it slipped through her pale body as through a thick pudding and sank softly to the ground.

“What do you think her milk is made of?” whispered Liath, but Heribert could only shrug.

“Blessing grows,” he said, as if that were enough. And it was enough.

Liath looked up and saw Sanglant. She got a silly grin on her face, swung her legs off the couch, and levered herself up by clinging to the curling seashell back so painstakingly carved by Heribert out of maple. “No, no,” she called. “I’ll come to you.”

It wasn’t far, no more than one hundred steps, but he had to grit his teeth to stop himself from running to help her. She was still so weak, as if all her strength had been drained from her, poured out into the child. She couldn’t even light a candlewick. But she could walk a hundred paces and only have to lean on him a little as they walked back together. The warmth of her body against him set off all kinds of sensations, but he carefully eased her back onto the couch, patted the dog, and went to wash his hands and face in cold water at the trough by the door.

By the time he returned, a procession of servants had brought trays of food up from the hall: ale, bread, soft cheese flavored with dill, and a pottage of rye meal flavored with salt and cream. She moved aside so that he could sit beside her, and on the whole they ate silently. He was still stewing over the conversation he’d overheard earlier. How had he overlooked that it might have been Anne all along, trying to kill him? She was the obvious choice.

Did Anne truly mean to set Liath against both him and the baby? And how did she mean to accomplish that?

“You’re thoughtful today, my lord prince,” said Heribert.

“Ah, but today is the feast day of St. Mercurius the Changeable,” retorted Liath, “and many stranger things have happened on this day.”

Becoming an invalid had released an unlikely store of humor from some recess deep in Liath’s being. She wasn’t always very funny, but he always felt obliged to laugh because he didn’t want to hurt her feelings, and in any case, it was charming to see her try, who had been so unremittingly serious before.

“It is a strange day,” he agreed. “For once I’m heartily sick of work.”