Child of Flame (Crown of Stars 4)

“Truly, that one. Don’t forget that some walk closer to God than do the rest of us sinners. You can thank him in your prayers.” Two of the guards, working together, dragged the door shut. It scraped noisily over the stone floor, the sound grinding and echoing down the corridor.

With a grunt, the first guard led the two boys away. Liath did not move while the others lingered.

“You could have kept the silver and let them hang,” whispered the second guard. “How do you dare go against the king’s wishes?”

“The king will have forgotten the incident in a week’s time. Poor lads, they hadn’t any harm in them. I remember being that hungry and desperate once. But don’t ever think I’d have kept the silver, boy.” The third guard’s voice got tight as he chided the other. “Not when you know who gave it to me to give to those poor lads. We get two meals a day in the king’s service. They’ve nothing, all the poor wandering in the streets while the king raises taxes in order to buy more soldiers for his army.”

“How would he have known, the one who gave it to you, if you’d have kept it? You could have let them go and kept it for yourself. That’s a month’s wages!”

“Tchah! He’d know.”

“And he’d punish you?”

“Truly, so it would be punishment, to be called before him and have to look him in the eye who is a better man than any of us. I’ve no wish to go standing there before him while he forgives me for giving into temptation, not a word of blame from him, who knows how sinful humankind is and how we struggle with the evil inclination. I’d rather not sin than be shamed before him.”

“Oho, is that why you’ve not been to Parisa’s brothel in the last month?”

“So it is, lad, and I’ll never go again. I’m courting a young woman who’s a washerwoman down by the Tigira docks. I mean to marry her and live a Godly life.”

“Once this war is over.”

“Once this damned war is over. Have you heard the latest rumor?”

Moving from the corridor under a stone archway that led to a staircase, they vanished from her view, carrying the only torch. Their conversation was quickly muffled by stone and distance. Her legs carried her after them, but by the time she reached the staircase she could only follow the receding glow of torchlight. She climbed quickly, chafed by a sudden cold draft of wind. Between one breath and the next, the torch went out, leaving her in pitch-blackness. She climbed the stairway by touch, fingers brushing the dressed stone, feeling the cracks and flaking mortar smoothing away beneath her skin until it seemed to her that she was in a narrow stair with wood walls, wood floors, and a ceiling so low that it brushed her hair. She stumbled up against a latch. Though her fingers touched the latch, they hesitated.

Her jaw had gone tight, clenched hard, and the pain brought a rush of questions. Where was she? Had she unwittingly descended back to Earth?

Quickly vanquished and fled. “Walk through the door,” her voice murmured, “and I will be one step closer to my heart’s desire.” Wasn’t it true? Surely it was true. She set her hand on the latch just as she heard muffled sounds of weeping to her right. Startled, she jerked back as the latch twitched, turned from the other side, scraped against wood, and snapped up.

The door was thrown open.

A pretty young woman blinked into the darkness. She had a fresh scar on her upper lip and wore only a shift, the fabric so finely woven that Liath saw the blush of her nipples beneath the cloth. “Oh, thank the Lady,” she said, grabbing Liath’s wrist and tugging her out into a bright chamber where a rosy light poured in through four unshuttered windows. “You got her safely hidden.”

The mellow light pooled over a parquet floor and set into relief a set of frescoes depicting such obscene subjects that Liath blushed. Her new friend pressed past her into the hidden cupboard—for such it was—and helped the weeping woman out from the shadows. She wore the long and rather shapeless wool tunic, dyed a nondescript clay red, worn by common folk, although unlike the Wendish style she wore also a tightly fitted bodice and a brown apron over it. Her hair was bound up in a crown of braids rather than covered by a light shawl, as a respectable Wendish woman’s would be. Beneath the streaked tears and the frightened expression, Liath could see that she was remarkably pretty, blackhaired with the kind of eyes one could stare into for hours. She shrank away from the sight of the huge bed and its silken canopy.

“I’ll not be abused by him without a fight!” she said in a voice made hoarse by screaming. “He may be king, but I’m a Godly married woman and I only come to pray at the cathedral to ask for God’s mercy on my poor sick child.”

“Hush,” hissed the pretty woman. “He’s gone now. What did you say your name was?”

“I’m known as Terezia. Ai, Lady!” She began to snivel again, overcome by relief. “I was just there in the Lady Chapel, praying, when in he come and grabbed me right out of there. What was I to say to the king? I never imagined—” She began to sob again while the pretty woman in the shift gave Liath a look to show that she’d seen this scene played over many times before, a shared glance of commiseration and disgust. “—that he would try to rape me. If it hadn’t been for that holy man who come in and put a stop to it—”

“Yes, friend, if it hadn’t been for him.”

“I thought the king was like to run him through. Ai, Lady, how brave he was!” Her eyes shone with remembered admiration.

“And so handsome.”

“And a holy presbyter, sister, not for the likes of us, so go back to your good husband and your sick child. Hurry, now, for the king might come back any time.” Two doors stood open, one leading into an opulent hallway and the other to a narrow servants’ corridor. She beckoned toward the servants’ corridor. “Go on. That’ll get you down to the servants’ hall. My friend Teuda will get you out of the palace. She’ll be waiting at the bottom of the stairs.”

“What about you? Aren’t you wanting to escape as well?”

The pretty woman laughed lightly. “Nay, we’re the king’s whores. We’re paid well enough to want to stay.”

“But you’re so pretty.” Terezia looked ready to faint again, and she hadn’t even gotten as far as the door, stopping to lean on the back of a chair. “Why would he be coming down to the cathedral to abduct God-fearing women who’ve just come there to pray when he has lemans as pretty as you to warm his bed?”

o;Once this war is over.”

“Once this damned war is over. Have you heard the latest rumor?”