The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars 5)

“Go with my blessing, Daughter.” Rosvita kissed her on either cheek, then on her forehead, and wiped away tears as the Eagle left the circle of rope and went with the general and his escort. Hanna did not look back, but Fortunatus went right up to the rope and gripped it in his hands, staring after her. Rosvita joined him there.

The day was so hot. “This is not natural heat,” she said. The guards glanced at her, but since they could not understand Wendish, the conversation did not capture their attention. “I feel all the Earth holds its breath.”

Another rumble danced through the ground and faded so swiftly that it might have been no more than a fly buzzing at her ear. No clouds softened the hard blue sky. The sun dazzled over the ranks of white tents arrayed in neat columns. They had settled into this campsite four days ago and not moved, and she did not know why, although she suspected that over the last weeks they had marched well into Dalmiakan territory and now waited close to the sea.

They camped on the slope of hills that crumpled up the ground to the north and west, and it seemed likely that the hills rolled flat to become a plain to the southeast, but since they rode in the midst of the army and camped in the midst of the army, it was hard to get a good look. No vista opened before them, only the rugged outline of hills burned to a pale yellow by the autumn heat. The quartermaster’s tent blocked their view to the west. Under the glare of the sun, the camp lay quiet. A man walked between tents hauling two buckets of water from a pole balanced over his shoulders. A dog slunk out from the shade of a tent and trotted, ears flat, after a scent too delicate for her to catch.

Lady Eudokia, too, was waiting. That was why she had ordered her army to leave off marching and set up camp. That catch in their air was the false calm before a storm breaks, the worse for having held steady for three days. Often the noontime sky lightened from blue to a shade nearer white, and on occasion she thought it actually rippled the way tent canvas ripples when wind runs across it. She hadn’t heard a bird for days. Even the bugs had fled.

“I am afraid, Sister,” said Brother Fortunatus.

She put her hand over his, then glanced back at their tiny encampment. The young clerics had fashioned a writing table and took turns copying to her dictation or from the pages of one of their precious books while the rest clustered around watching or offering commentary. Gerwita read aloud to Mother Obligatia in a voice so soft it was inaudible from a stone’s toss away. Teuda and Aurea were washing shifts in a bucket of water, now gray with dust, and chatting companionably as Aurea labored to improve her Dariyan. Petra slept, as she did more often these days.

“A peaceful scene,” said Rosvita. “Deceptively so.”

“What will become of us?”

“I have told Princess Sapientia what I know. If she chooses not to believe me, I can do no more. It is in God’s Hands now.”

2

IN the general’s tent there was wine as well as sherbert cooled in a bowl of ice crystals, all arranged on an ebony table placed beside a couch covered with green silk. Lord Alexandros indicated that Hanna should sit. At first he sat beside her, taking her hand in his as he examined her emerald ring and fingered her hair, but quickly enough he rose, went to the entrance of the tent, and spoke in a low voice to a person stationed outside.

Hanna ate the sherbert, seeing no reason to let it go to waste. It tasted of melon; it melted on her tongue and sent a shiver through her as she braced herself for what would come next. Besides the table and the couch, the tent was empty. A sumptuous jade-green carpet, embroidered with pale-green Arethousan stars, covered the ground.

A servant—one of the beardless eunuchs—brought in a bowllike brazier glowing with coals and opened up its tripod legs. He arranged sticks in a latticework over the top and, receiving a nod from the general, retreated. The curtains swayed back into place. The general frowned thoughtfully at Hanna, standing with hands clasped behind himself as he surveyed her, his gaze lingering longest on her hair. She waited, holding the empty cup in one hand and the silver spoon in the other. Even a spoon could be used as a weapon, if need be.

He chuckled. The injury to his eye—not visible beneath the patch—had affected his facial muscles; when he smiled, he had crow’s-feet only on the unmarked side of his face.

“I know what you think.” He spoke so softly that she had to listen closely to distinguish words out of his heavily accented Dariyan. “I have a wife. You’re not that pretty.”

She flushed and with an effort did not touch her hair. The curtain lifted; Basil the eunuch entered and held the cloth aside as Lady Eudokia was carried in on a chair by two brawny men adorned with bronze slave collars and wearing only short linen shifts and sandals. An embroidered blanket covered the lady’s legs. The slaves set her down beside the still smoldering brazier. Smoke trailed upward, but the latticework of sticks had not yet caught flame. A spark popped out of the coals and spun lazily to the carpet. Hanna shifted her knee to grind it out. She couldn’t bear to see a hole burned in such a magnificent rug.

“I understand you can see through fire,” continued Lord Alexandros without greeting the lady. He did not look toward Eudokia, as if he had not noticed her entrance. “The Eagle’s Sight, they call it. Show me.”

Hanna grunted under her breath, both amused and outraged, but she supposed it mattered little. They could not see what she saw unless they had themselves been trained in Eagle’s Sight. As she knelt before the low brazier on its tripod legs, Lady Eudokia cast a handful of crumbled herbs onto the fire and flames blazed up and caught in the sticks. The heat seared Hanna’s face, and she sat back on her heels, but the general had already moved, as quick as a panther, to draw his sword and rest the blade flat across her back.

“If you see nothing,” he said, “then you are no use to me. I will kill you here and now. If you see, I spare you.”

All her breath whooshed out. She set her palms on her knees as she steadied her breathing, however difficult it was with the pressure of the blade along her shoulders and the chill of the threat hanging in the air. Fear not. She had survived worse trials than this.

She focused her thoughts and stared into the flame. Whom should she seek? What could she see through fire that would not betray them?

Eudokia, too, was waiting. That was why she had ordered her army to leave off marching and set up camp. That catch in their air was the false calm before a storm breaks, the worse for having held steady for three days. Often the noontime sky lightened from blue to a shade nearer white, and on occasion she thought it actually rippled the way tent canvas ripples when wind runs across it. She hadn’t heard a bird for days. Even the bugs had fled.

“I am afraid, Sister,” said Brother Fortunatus.

She put her hand over his, then glanced back at their tiny encampment. The young clerics had fashioned a writing table and took turns copying to her dictation or from the pages of one of their precious books while the rest clustered around watching or offering commentary. Gerwita read aloud to Mother Obligatia in a voice so soft it was inaudible from a stone’s toss away. Teuda and Aurea were washing shifts in a bucket of water, now gray with dust, and chatting companionably as Aurea labored to improve her Dariyan. Petra slept, as she did more often these days.

“A peaceful scene,” said Rosvita. “Deceptively so.”

“What will become of us?”

“I have told Princess Sapientia what I know. If she chooses not to believe me, I can do no more. It is in God’s Hands now.”

2

IN the general’s tent there was wine as well as sherbert cooled in a bowl of ice crystals, all arranged on an ebony table placed beside a couch covered with green silk. Lord Alexandros indicated that Hanna should sit. At first he sat beside her, taking her hand in his as he examined her emerald ring and fingered her hair, but quickly enough he rose, went to the entrance of the tent, and spoke in a low voice to a person stationed outside.