Crown of Stars (Crown of Stars 7)

“She did not sing for me, that lovely creature,” said Conrad, continuing as if he had not noticed the rogue current he had stirred into life. “Mother Armentaria, I think her name was. I do wonder about my cousin and that dark little creature who held the holy woman’s skirts and stared at me with eyes so rich a brown. A taking thing. I don’t know if it was girl or boy, but it was pretty enough to be either even if scarcely old enough to walk. It might have been a beggar’s child, or a prince’s. How can we know when the mother will not or cannot speak?”

He glanced at Alain before turning his attention back to his courtiers.

“It’s said Prince Sanglant sowed a hundred bastards, being a bastard himself,” said one of the younger courtiers, “but is it true?”

“He’s a handsome man,” said Conrad. “Were I born a woman, instead of a man, I suppose I might try a kiss from him. As it is, I can only envy him, for he has a fair beauty for a wife, a fine creature as bright as fire.”

“Of uncertain lineage,” said Sabella. “Both bastards, most likely. She is excommunicated and accused of being a sorcerer.”

“Yes, truly,” said Conrad with a crooked smile, “it is as well you and I, Sabella, make our way to save our grandfather’s precious kingdom from such usurpers.”

“Your great grandfather,” she said curtly. “Tallia is your very distant cousin.”

“Yes, indeed, distant enough that we might be married with the sanction of the church,” he agreed cordially. He had an expression that might have been amused or annoyed. “Yet when I pressed my suit elsewhere, my dear cousin Henry deemed my cousin Theophanu too close to agree to the alliance.”

“Don’t speak to me of Henry!”

Her look was meant to quell, but Conrad smiled. “We are among allies, Sabella. No one in our retinues will cry to the church that I have married consanguineously. What is it? Seven degrees? Eight? Six? Far enough except for Henry’s taste, since he wanted no such connection between his children and mine.”

“He feared you.”

“Perhaps. I think all along Henry was only waiting.”

“For what?” she asked him, and all the courtiers, heads turning side to side as they looked first at Sabella and then at Conrad and then back again, fixed their attention on Conrad.

“Waiting to find a way to raise Sanglant as heir above Sophia’s children. He found it. We battle not Sanglant, but Henry’s sentimental attachment to the child who could not have the thing Henry most wished to give him. He has gotten it anyway. Sanglant always did seem to get his own way, though he was never gloating or crude about it. The best of men!”

Sabella smiled harshly. “Say you so, Conrad? Will you be turning your milites east to join up with him? The best of men?”

Conrad had such an infectious way of laughing that everyone joined in. When the fit of hilarity had passed, he spoke in a voice whose easy charm did nothing to affect its sincerity. “I am sure of what I want, what I deserve, and what I intend to claim.”

“Horses ahead, my lord duke. My lady.” A sergeant called from the foremost line of riders, and a ripple—men checking swords, easing spears free—passed backward through the company. “Nay, it’s only the scouts.”

Atto returned with the trio of men sent ahead to help him seek out their way, and to make sure he did not bolt. Certainly the lad looked nervous enough, sweating and pale and hair a rat’s nest since he couldn’t stop running his hands through it. He consulted with Sabella’s captain, and in time they came to a fork in the road. Instead of continuing on the main road, they cut into broken woodland along a rutted track where they had to ride two abreast. Their line of march stretched back a good ways. The other nobles competed for position, but Alain hung back and let the main part of the company pass before swinging into line with the wagons. He nodded at the soldier who was riding beside the great cage meant for the guivre.

“My lord,” said Captain Tammus reluctantly, dropping his gaze while his hands clenched on the reins.

Sorrow growled, low in her throat, but Alain let the captain and these foremost wagons pass as well and came up behind the supply wagons with their barrels of ale and sacks of grain or flour and small woven sapling cages filled with squawking chickens and a furious goose. A trio of steers paced at the end of ropes. Two dozen sheep followed, pursued by a pair of shepherds and their clever dog. Behind the last wagon walked a half dozen men, each one pushing a flat-bedded cart on which lay the trussed carcass of a deer.

“Where have these come from?” he asked one of the stewards.

The woman rode a stocky pony and was young and weary, hair covered by a pale yellow scarf. She wore a glove on her right hand and her left bare, revealing a rash prickling across her three middle fingers.

“You know the way of it, my lord,” she said cautiously, recognizing him, as any good steward must recognize by sight every noble who rode with the lady. “Three our hunters brought down yesterday and the day before. We hung them all night, though they’ll still be tough. The others came from the manor. Folk are hunting deer in numbers early this year. The sheep we took as part of the tithe, together with the grain. Out in the forest we’ll not find much provender, for few folk live in the wilderness. We must feed all with what we gain here.”

He nodded, and to her evident relief he fell back to ride alongside the rear guard. Farther behind might be found the rear scouts, but he held his position the rest of that day. The land changed its character, and they entered a region of precipitous hills, rugged rocky outcrops, and low spines of rock protruding from otherwise unexceptionable earth. Streamlets flowed in plenty, and there was no sign of human habitation. Folk whispered that they were nearing the lair of the guivre, who hid within a maze of stony dikes. Even the animals grew nervous. A faint odor of rotting carcasses laced the breeze at intervals, but faded as quickly as he caught its touch.

9

KANSI’S voice came sooner than she expected, echoing out of the darkness. “What creature stalked our land? What was it?”

“Set me free, and I’ll tell you,” said Liath, hoarse from weeping and exhausted with rage.

“Tell me!”

Although Kansi-a-lari cursed her and commanded her, Liath did not speak.

After that came silence for a long while during which she slept, drank, ate, and slept again. Although she had taken no physical harm, she felt battered and she felt bruised, and the right side of her face where the galla had swept closest was as tender as if she had scraped it against rock. Strangely, the wound in her thigh did not hurt as much.