King's Dragon (Crown of Stars 1)

“Greetings, friend!” he called. His voice was almost cheerful, for he liked Hugh. “Have you come to watch this night with me?”

“Alas, no, friend Bernard. I was passing this way—”

I was passing this way. All lies, delivered in that honey-sweet voice.

“—on my way to old Johannes’ steading. I’m to perform last rites over his wife, may her soul rise in peace to the Chamber above. Mistress Birta asked if I would deliver this letter to you.” “A letter!” Da’s voice almost broke on the word. For eight years they had wandered. Never once had they met anyone Da knew from their former life. Never once had he received a letter or any other kind of communication. “Ai, Blessed Lady,” he murmured hoarsely. “I have stayed too long in this place.”

“I beg your pardon?” asked Father Hugh. The light of his lamp streamed in through the window, illuminating her father’s figure in the threshold. “You look ill, my friend. May I help you?”

Da hesitated again, and she held her breath, but he glanced up toward the loft and then, slowly, shook his head. “There is nothing you can do. But I thank you.” He reached out for the letter. Liath ran her fingers along the spine of the book, feeling the thick letters painted onto the leather binding. The Book of Secrets. Would Da invite Father Hugh inside? Da was so lonely, and he was afraid. “Will you sit with me for a while? It’s a quiet night, and I fear it will prove to be a long one.”

She eased backward into the deepest shadows of the loft. There was a long pause while Hugh considered. She could almost feel, like the presence of fire, his desire—his wish to enter, to coax Da into trusting him more and yet more until at last Da would trust him with everything. And then they would be lost.

“Alas, I have other duties this night,” Hugh said at last. But he did not leave. Lamplight shifted, spilling in turn into each of the four corners of the room below, searching. “Your daughter is well, I trust?” How sweet his voice was.

“Well enough. I trust the Lady and Lord will watch over her, should anything happen to me.”

Hugh gave a soft laugh under his breath, and Liath curled farther into the shadows, as if hiding could protect her. “I assure you They will, friend Bernard. I give you my word. You should rest. You look pale.”

“Your concern heartens me, friend.” Liath could see Da’s little smile, the one he placated with. She knew it was not sincere—not because of Hugh, but because of the letter, and the owl, and the athar, the strange new star shining in the heavens.

“Then a blessed evening to you, Bernard. I bid you farewell.”

“Fare well.”

So they parted. The lamp bobbed away, descending the path back toward the village, toward, perhaps, old Johannes’ steading. Surely Frater Hugh would have no reason to lie about such a serious thing. But he was hardly “passing by.”

“He is a kind man,” said Da. “Come down, Liath.”

“I won’t,” she said. “What if he’s lurking out there?”

“Child!”

It had to be said, sooner or later, if not the whole truth. “He looks at me, Da. In such a way.”

He hissed in a breath in anger. “Is my daughter so vain that she imagines a man heartsworn to the church desires her more than Our Lady?”

Ashamed, she hid her face in shadow although he could not see her. Was she so vain? No, she knew this was not vanity. Eight years of running had honed her instincts.

I was passing this way.

Hugh stopped by the cottage often to sit and visit with Da; the two men discussed theology and the writings of the ancients and now, six months into their acquaintance, they had begun tentatively to discuss the hidden arts of sorcery—purely as an intellectual exercise, of course.

Of course.

“Don’t you see, Da?” she said, struggling to find words, to find a way to make him understand without telling him the thing that would ruin them, as it had in the city of Autun two years ago. “Hugh only wants your knowledge of sorcery. He doesn’t want your friendship.”

Hugh stopped by often, but now, since St. Oya’s Day, he had also begun “passing by” when he knew Da was out on an errand or on a laboring job, though Da’s health had taken a turn for the worse and he wasn’t really strong enough for day labor. Liath would have gone, but as Da always said: “Someone must stay with the book.” And he didn’t want her out alone.

“I was passing this way, Liath. Has anyone ever told you how beautiful you are? You’re a woman now. Your father must be thinking of what will become of you—and of all that he has taught you, and everything that you know of him and his travels and his past. I can protect you… and the book.” And he had touched her on the lips as if to awaken the breath of life in her.

For a pious brother of the church to proposition an innocent girl not yet sixteen was obscene, of course. Only an idiot would have mistaken his tone and his expression; Liath had never much liked Hugh, but this had shocked and horrified her because Hugh had by this action betrayed Da’s trust in him in a way Liath could never ever reveal.

If she told Da, and Da believed her, he would accuse Frater Hugh, might even attempt to strike him. Two years ago in Autun something like had happened; Da in his impetuous way had attacked the merchant who proposed a concubine’s contract for Liath but only managed to get himself a beating by the city guards and the two of them thrown out of the city. But if Da accused Hugh, if he attacked Hugh, he would make a powerful enemy. Hugh’s mother was a margrave, one of the great princes of the land, as Hugh himself made sure everyone knew. She and Da had no kin to protect them.

And if she told Da, and Da did not believe her, then … Ai, Lady. Da was everything to her, he was all she had. She could not take such a risk.

“Da?” In all her long silence, he had not replied.