In the Ruins (Crown of Stars 6)

Soldiers had already pitched the journeying tent in which they slept. Thank the Lord and Lady that it was too small to admit more than two people.

She caught Captain Fulk’s attention, and he nodded at her and chivvied the king toward his pallet, separating him smoothly away from the others. Liath wasn’t sure if Fulk liked her, or even respected her, but on this account, at least, they understood one another.

She took her leave of the Eagles and, as Sanglant’s attendants made ready to sleep, dispersed to their own encampments, or settled in for guard duty, she crawled into the tent and pulled off her boots.

“You must come with me when I tour the army,” he said impatiently. “You must be seen at my side, as my consort. As co-regnant.”

“I pray you, give me time. I am not yet accustomed to it.”

She doubted she would ever become accustomed to it. She needed peace, and silence, and the company of books, but she dared not tell him that, not now. Not yet.

He seemed about to say something, but did not, and stripped off the rest of his clothing instead. In general, unless attack was imminent, he preferred to sleep naked, and he was warm enough to protect her against the cold, which always debilitated her.

“I will never get used to cold,” she said as she pulled off her shift and, shivering, pressed herself against him skin to skin while pulling furs and cloaks over them.

“Yet you burn!” he whispered, kissing her.

“Umm,” she said.

But after a moment he lay back, and she rested her head on his shoulder and waited. She was getting to know him. At moments like this, he had something in his mind troubling him that he would at length spit out.

“Are you still angry with me?” he asked. “For forbidding you from going after Blessing?”

Guilt, like a hungry dog, will stare and stare. She had lived with its presence all day until it had become a dead weight in her stomach. His breathing was steady. Hers was not.

“Oh, love, had I insisted on going, I would have gone, and you could not have stopped me.”

He caught in his breath as if slapped, but said nothing; then let it out again, and still said nothing.

She went on, because his silence hurt too much. “I abandoned her. In Verna, first, even though it wasn’t my choice to leave. For the second time out on the steppes, when we left her behind knowing she was close to death. And now, this time, for the third. So many voices chase through my head. What use is such a long journey when there are others who can make it for me? Who are better able to endure the trek. Who can serve in this way, as I can serve in others.”

He still made no answer except to stroke her arm, shoulder to elbow, shoulder to elbow, his way of pacing when he was lying down.

“I do not even know Blessing. I may never know her. That is the choice I face. That is the choice I made.”

“I could have gone,” he said angrily, hoarsely, but his voice always sounded like that. “Yet she is one child. Wendar and Varre and all who live there—all who survived the cataclysm—may fall into chaos. Without the order imposed by the regnancy, there will be war between nobles, between duchies and counties. That is the choice I made. It is the obligation I accepted, although I never sought it. How is your choice different?”

“I am not Henry’s heir. I am not even Taillefer’s great grandchild. I am the daughter of a minor noble house, nothing more.”

“That strangely makes me think of Hugh of Austra, who would not have cared one whit for the daughter of a minor noble house, if that is all you were.”

“Ah! That was a cruel blow.”

“So it was intended to be. I grieve for Blessing. No one does more than I do. I admit I didn’t always like my sweet girl, but I always loved her. Love her. If she is dead, Liath, if she already died, then we made the right choice.”

“I saw her.”

“You are blind in your Eagle’s Sight. What was this vision, then? True, or false?”

“I believe it was true. I saw Blessing. I saw Li’at’dano. I think I saw Wolfhere. I saw a vision of you, when you took in the Wendish refugees who had fled Darre. Henry’s schola, most of them.”

“That’s right,” he admitted. “It might well have been a true vision.”

“Or it might have been a dream. I might only have wanted to see her so badly…. It seemed so real. I saw her arguing with a youth, a young man—”

“Thiemo? Matto?”

“I never saw him before.”