Child of Flame (Crown of Stars 4)

“Wait.” Rosvita took the lamp from the Eagle and, wetting thumb and forefinger, snuffed the wick. “Better that we approach without being seen.”

They waited for their eyes to adjust, but fanciful lamps molded in the shapes of roosters, geese, and frogs rode the walls at intervals, splashes of light to guide their path along the narrow walkway. Wisps of cloud obscured the stars in trails of darkness. Was that Jedu, Angel of War, gleaming malevolently in the constellation known as the loyal Hound? Hathui, walking ahead, put out a hand to stop her in a pool of shadow between two broadly spaced lamps.

A faint stench of decay rose off the river, the dregs of summer. According to the locals, only the winter rains would drive it away. The wind shifted, and Rosvita pulled her sleeve across her nose to muffle the smell.

She heard voices, two men, one angry and one as sweetly calm as a saint.

With Hathui beside her, she moved forward cautiously, hugging the interior wall, until they came to a sharply angled corner of a main tower and could see onto a wider section of the walkway, set between the square tower at their back and its twin, opposite. Three men stood there, one silent beside a landing that led to a second set of stairs, one leaning gracefully on the waist-high railing that overlooked the abyss, and the third halfway between the two, as though to make a shield of his body. Even without the light of two lamps set on tripods, Rosvita would have known two of them anywhere.

The bell rang for Vigils.

“But Margrave Villam,” said Hugh most reasonably as he rested against the railing while the wind played in his hair and lifted the corners of his presbyter’s cloak, “you do not understand fully the gravity of the dangers facing all of us, which remain hidden from mortal eyes. Like my mother, I act only to serve the king.”

Villam seemed ready to spit with fury. She could see it in the way he held himself as he took a single threatening step toward Hugh, the way his hand brushed his sword’s hilt. Hugh was unarmed. “You! Sorcerer! I never knew what you did at Zeitsenburg, but the whole court knows what your blessed mother thought a fitting punishment for you, her golden child! To humble you by making you walk into the north like a common frater. What would she say to this night’s treachery?”

“What treachery is that? King Henry walks beside me to meet with the Holy Mother. Who has been speaking to you, friend Villam?”

Villam glanced at the man standing rigidly beside the stairs. In that moment, Rosvita realized that she had not recognized him; his posture and stance were utterly wrong, not her beloved king’s at all. “Your Majesty,” Villam entreated, “do we not ride out in two days’ time to return to Wendar, where the people cry out in hope that you will soon come to aid them?”

“We will not return to Wendar,” replied Henry in a voice that rang hollow, like a bell.

“But the news from Theophanu! The Quman raids that devastate the marchlands! Geoffrey in Lavas, besieged by drought and famine and bandits. What about Conrad, who may already be plotting? Two Eagles have come, pleading for your return! Your Majesty!”

“We will stay here and unite Aosta, and receive our crown, Adelheid and I, crowned as emperor and empress. We will send emissaries to every kingdom, to each place where a stone crown is crowned by seven stones, and there they will await their duty to save all of humankind from the wicked sorcery of the Lost Ones.”

“But, Your Majesty, it is not practicable. The emperor’s crown will fall quickly from your head if you lose Wendar to the Quman, or to Conrad, who has married your niece! What of Sapientia, fighting in the marchlands? What of Theophanu, who sends an Eagle to beg for your swift return? Aosta must wait until you have settled affairs in Wendar!”

“And Mathilda anointed as our heir.”

“Your Majesty!” The soft chanting of clerics and presbyters, intoning the service of Vigils, floated up to them even as Villam sounded ready to weep. “Your Majesty. Your children by Queen Sophia !”

“Mathilda anointed as my heir,” repeated Henry. With his arms clamped tightly against his sides, he moved only his lips, like a statue, like a slave caught in fear for his life.

Villam drew his sword and turned on Hugh. The presbyter had not moved but only watched, one hand stretched out along the railing, his slender fingers stroking the stout wood railing as a woman might pet her cat. “You’ve bewitched him! That is not the king’s voice! That is not the king! You’ve used foul sorcery to pollute his body and imprison his mind!”

Impossible to say what happened next. Villam lunged. Hugh moved sideways, pantherlike, as graceful as one of the acrobats she’d admired yesterday evening. He even had a startled look on his face, as though surprised. But Villam hit the wooden railing with a crash, sword still raised.

The railing splintered and gave way. Villam staggered outward, cried out as the sword slipped from his fingers, but he had only one arm to grasp with as Hugh reached out to him and it was not enough to save him. He fell. Hathui gasped out loud. Her hand closed on Rosvita’s and held on there, as tight as a vise, but neither woman moved as Villam’s shriek of outrage and fear faded to silence. Nor did King Henry make any least acknowledgment that his eldest, dearest, and most trusted companion had fallen to his death right in front of his eyes.

After a moment in which Rosvita thought she had actually gone deaf, the distant voices from various chapels in the palaces and down in the city reached heavenward again; she knew the service so well that scraps of melody and words were enough to reveal to her the entire psalm.

“I cry aloud to God when distress afflicts me, but God have stayed Their hand.

In the darkness of night, have They forgotten me? Can the Lord no longer pity?

Has the Lady withdrawn Her mercy?”

“Come out,” said Hugh. “I know you’re there.”

How soft his voice, and how delicate. Not threatening at all. An eddy in the breeze roiled around her as suddenly as an unseen current turns a boat in the water of a swift-flowing river.

“Come forward, I pray you,” he said.

She slipped her hand out of Hathui’s strong grasp, trying to shove the Eagle away, trying to give her the message to run, to flee while one of them could.

Who would come to their aid? Whom could they trust?

Stepping forward into the light, she said the only thing she could think of to give the Eagle a hint of her thoughts. “A bastard will show his true mettle when temptation is thrown in his path and the worst tales he can imagine are brought to his attention.”