Child of Flame (Crown of Stars 4)

“Beauty doesn’t last forever,” said Liath, feeling the headache coming back. What a sight she herself must look in her tunic, fallen loose because she had no belt, with her quiver strapped to her back. Yet the whore smiled as seductively at Liath as if she, too, wore a fine shift to mark her exalted status, as if they had shared other intimacies here in this light-draped chamber while they waited for the king. Liath even took a step forward, as if to go lie down on that bed beside the pretty whore, as if her body meant to do what it willed without consulting her. It was like fighting a stubborn horse, to grab hold of a chair and sit down solidly, with a thump.

“Oh, don’t talk to me like that,” said her companion now. “I’ve seen you eyeing him when he comes in with Ironhead.” She laughed, not kindly. “Iron head, indeed. He’s as elegant as an ax, is the king. Pump and grunt, that’s him. Nothing like his presbyter, is he, darling? My Lord, now there’s a true man, all bright and handsome, clever and kind, with such a beautiful voice as you can get all lost in, and the hands of a saint. Haven’t you ever snuck into St. Thecla’s Chapel to watch him praying? I have, and I know you have, too. I just wonder what it would be like to have those hands soliciting me. Haven’t you just? Haven’t you? All witty and elegant as he is, thoughtful and wise. But I see the look in his eyes. He’s all lit inside, God’s chosen one.” She sighed so passionately, shifted so sensuously on the bed, that Liath felt all on fire, remembering the ecstasies known to the body. “Don’t you wish he’d choose you?”

“Yes,” she whispered, not sure what question she was answering, except that arousal warred with nausea as her thoughts sharpened for an instant. She had to get out of here. She lurched out of the chair, tipping it over behind her, and fled to the door.

But instead of the safety of the servants’ corridor, she stumbled into an anteroom so soft with carpets that her bare feet made no sound as she hurried across the room to the only open door. Out of breath, she leaned against a doorframe painted with a mural depicting the ancient Emperor Tianathano driving a chariot pulled by griffins.

In the dim chamber beyond, a man was reading aloud from the Holy Verses in a voice so beautifully composed and melodious that like a roped lamb she was drawn in past a carved wooden screen into a vast and subdued bedchamber shrouded by approaching death.

“‘In those days,’” the voice declaimed, “‘young Savamial came into the service of God. One day she was given the task of sleeping beside the holy curtain that concealed the glory of God. The lamp burning beside the holy curtain had not yet gone out, and while Savamial lay sleeping in the temple the voice of God called out to her, and she answered, “I’m coming.” She ran to the veiled woman and said, “Here I am. You called me.” But the veiled woman replied, “I didn’t call you. Go back to sleep.’”

That harmonious voice made her head throb painfully. A single lamp hung from a tripod set beside the bed. It illuminated an aged woman, so frail that the hands lying on the coverlet were seamed with blue veins, as pale and thin as finest parchment. Her eyes were closed. One could only tell she was alive because she had the merest brush of color in her cheeks and, once, an eyelid flickered at the expressive lift of the reader’s voice. Another man stood back in the shadows, looking on with a rapt face. The reader’s face was concealed from Liath because his back was turned, but she saw how his robe fell in elegant drapery from his shoulders. His hair gleamed golden in the lamplight as he continued to read.

“‘So she went back and lay down again. But God called a second time, “Savamial!” Savamial got up and ran to the holy woman and said, “Here I am. You called me.’”

“Hugh,” Liath breathed, lips moving although she hadn’t meant to make a sound. A sick, horrible pain clutched in her guts, and she could not move.

He turned to see who had come in. “Who is there?” he asked softly. She knew she should run, but her legs moved her forward into the soft glow of the lamplight. Seeing her, he looked surprised and even a little shy. Was he actually blushing as a youth might faced with the lady for whom he has conceived a sweetly guileless passion? It was hard to tell because the light was behind him.

He carefully closed the book and handed it to his companion, who took it without demur as Hugh rose and came to stand before her. Already the knot in her gut and the aching in her head subsided, subsumed under a flood of new thoughts.

She had actually forgotten how beautiful he was—not a shallow beauty that bloomed quickly and withered with the next season, but something bone-deep, unfathomable because golden hair and a certain arrangement of features cannot by itself create a pleasing face. Why had God seen fit to shower him with that combination of lineaments and expressiveness, charm and intensity, whose sum is beauty?

“Liath! I—” He broke off, confused and flustered. “Where have you come from? Why are you here?” He glanced back at the elderly presbyter, who stood serenely by the bedside of the aged woman, watching the lamplight twist over her pallid face. “Nay, come, let’s go outside to talk. I can’t understand how it is you’ve come here.”

But they had barely crossed the threshold into the anteroom, and her lips parted to speak, she not even knowing what she meant to say, when a middle-aged presbyter with the stout girth of a person who’s eaten well since childhood hurried into view.

“Thank God, Your Honor. I hoped to find you here. How is the Holy Mother?”

“She has not changed, alas, Brother Petrus. May God have mercy. I’ve been reading to her.”

“Yes, yes.” The stout presbyter was clearly in a mounting frenzy, hands twitching, shifting his weight from one foot to the other like a child who has to pee. “You must come at once. The king—”

“Of course I’ll come.” Hugh looked at Liath, opening his hands as if to say, “what can I do?” “Will you wait?” he asked her in a low voice. “Or perhaps, I don’t know, I can’t believe— Nay, perhaps you’ll not wish to wait.”

Perhaps it was curiosity that goaded her, even as it occurred to her that there was nothing about him now at all threatening. “I’ll come with you, if I may,” her voice said.

His face lit. He smiled sweetly, then looked away as if embarrassed at his own reaction.

“I pray you, Your Honor, I fear there’ll be violence if you don’t come quickly—”

“Don’t fear, Brother Petrus. Let us go.”

One lavishly decorated corridor led to the next. She was lost in a maze of staircases and archways, colonnades and courtyards. At last they crossed out of one palace compound and into a second. Here, where the great hall abutted a long wing of princely chambers, they stepped outside into a small courtyard ringed by fig and citron trees. In the center, on a dusty oval of ground, soldiers took arms training. Yet under the rosy light of a cloudy day, so strangely bright that she realized she had no idea what season or hour it was, something in the ring wasn’t going right.

One man, wearing a grim iron helm and a heavily padded coat, was in the process of pounding some poor youth into the dirt.

Brother Petrus was so out of breath that he could barely wheeze out an explanation. “You know how it is… a woman down at prayers in the cathedral… he saw her… conceived a lust… had her brought to him… but then he was called out of his chambers… and returned to find her gone. He’s in a fury. You know how he hates to be crossed.”

Hugh’s mouth tightened. He lifted a hand to his face, laying the back of that hand to his cheek as though at a memory unlooked for and unwanted. The iron-helmed man had a blunted sword carved from wood, but by now he was simply laying into his victim as though he’d forgotten everything except that reflexive snap, over and over, of his sword arm. The young man was crying out loud, begging for mercy. Soldiers stood back, uneasily, but no one moved to stop them.

Hugh unbuckled his belt and stripped out of his presbyter’s robe to reveal a simple linen tunic and leggings beneath, the kind of thing worn by a noble lady’s younger son when he rides off in the retinue of his elder cousin. He was tall, lean, and strong. He gestured. A servant, running, brought him a padded sword.

“Nay, my lord king,” he said in a clear, carrying voice as he stepped out onto the oval, “this poor lad’s not much of a contest, is he? I’ll test you.”

The king hesitated between one blow and the next, lifting his head. Liath caught a glimpse of a cruel gaze behind the visor. He spoke with the voice of a man plagued by a surfeit of spleen.

“No doubt it was your doing the woman was taken out of the palace, my precious counselor.”