Beyond the Pale (42 page)

The odd pair approached the hedge maze in the center of
the courtyard. They paused a moment—did Logren look from side to side?—then slipped through an arch woven of leafless wisteria and disappeared into the maze.

Grace bit her lip. She knew from Aryn that, in this world, a host’s permission was required before a guest could leave his house. She should ask Boreas, or at least Alerain. But venturing into the courtyard wouldn’t really be like leaving Calavere. Before she had time fully to consider what she was doing she dashed from her chamber.

It was colder outside than she had thought.

Grace had neither coat nor woolen cape, as she had seen Kyrene wearing, and the wind sliced right through the fabric of her gown. The side door shut behind her—it was a servant’s entrance, little used, and out of view of the main keep, which was why she had chosen it. Her time spent exploring the castle had not been wasted after all. She clasped her arms over her chest and hurried across the cobblestones of the upper bailey, toward the tangled wall of the hedge maze.

She paused and looked over her shoulder when she reached the arch of withered vines that formed the entrance. There was no one else about the upper bailey, save a squire leading a horse toward the king’s stable, and he did not so much as glance in her direction. She drew in a deep breath, braced her shoulders, and—before she could reconsider—plunged into the maze.

After a few dozen paces Grace began to think it might not be such a good thing after all that no one knew where she had gone. Already she had lost track of the number of turns she had made—four lefts and two rights, yes? Or was it the reverse?—and she had no idea in which direction the entrance lay. Nor was there any chance of cheating and cutting through the walls of the maze. The hedges were a dozen feet high and formed of dense, thorn-covered branches. If she tried to force her way through, she would be torn to shreds before she had gone a foot.

Come on, Grace, think. You’re a doctor and a trained scientist. Surely a conundrum created by some medieval gardener is not beyond you
.

She clenched her jaw and forged on, deeper into the maze.

Then she began to detect a pattern. Yes, that was it: two
lefts, then a right. Each time she made the turns she found herself in a new passage that—she was almost certain of it—led toward the heart of the maze. She lifted the hem of her gown off the damp ground and quickened her pace, she had to be close to the center now. A left. Another left. Then a right. And—

—a dead end.

Grace stared at the wall of thorns. She hadn’t expected
that
. She bent her head and retraced her steps in her mind. Had she made a misstep somewhere? No, she had followed her formula exactly. There was only one logical conclusion. The pattern she had thought she detected wasn’t a pattern at all. Which meant …

“… I’m lost,” she whispered.

Her breath fogged on the air. In the exertion of running through the maze she had begun to sweat, but now she shivered inside her gown. She walked back down the dead end until she reached a crossing of paths. Now which way? At this point one direction was very like another, and neither was likely to get her back to the castle by suppertime. Would Aryn miss her? Or would the baroness be too busy with her tasks?

Left
, she decided after a minute and started down that path. She rounded a corner, then suddenly clasped a hand to her mouth.

Turn around, Grace. Turn around now
!

But fascination was stronger than fear. She peered around the corner of the hedge-wall and gazed into the small, circular grotto.

Despite the cold they were naked. He had spread his cloak on the ground, and they lay upon it, limbs tangled like the winter wisteria. Her arms were coiled around his neck, white as ivory against his olive skin. The lean muscles of his back and legs rippled as his hips moved with hers in slow, easy, familiar motions. His eyes were closed in ecstatic concentration, but not hers. They glittered like emeralds as she gazed past his shoulder. A satisfied smile coiled around the corners of her pink mouth.

Grace tried to back away, but her legs would not respond. Her mind felt dull and soft, the scent of apricots filled her lungs. Seemingly of its own will her hand moved away from
her mouth, slid down her throat, down over her breasts and stomach.…

As if sensing the presence of another, the emerald eyes turned in Grace’s direction. Grace froze. For a heartbeat surprise flickered in those eyes. But only for a heartbeat. Then a new light shone in them, a glow that was almost … 
approving
. The white arms tightened around his back, and the smile about her pink lips deepened.

No
!

Grace shook her head, as if waking from a spell. She snatched her hand up, gripped it with the other, and stumbled away. Without looking back she turned and ran headlong through the maze. The sound of rich laughter followed after her.

She shut the sound from her mind and ran on.

The next morning Aryn threw open the door of Grace’s chamber and rushed inside. Her large blue eyes shone with excitement.

“She’s coming!” the baroness exclaimed.

Grace stood from her seat by the window, and her heart raced in her chest. For a panicked moment she thought Aryn meant the Lady Kyrene. Had the countess come to confront her about what she had witnessed?

Aryn seemed not to notice her startled look. “It’s Queen Ivalaine of Toloria,” the baroness said. “She’s the first to arrive for the council.”

“Ivalaine?”

Aryn gave a vigorous nod. “The guards in the tower spotted her entourage crossing the old Tarrasian bridge over the Dimduorn. They know it’s her by the pennants.”

She unfolded a bundle she had been carrying in the crook of her left arm and held it out. It was a cloak of fine wool.

“Well, don’t just stand there, Grace. Put this on. You’ll be cold if you don’t.”

Grace took the cloak in numb fingers and wrapped it
around her shoulders. It was heavier than she would have guessed. “Where are we going?”

“To the battlements, of course. I want to see the queen the moment she arrives. People say there isn’t another woman in the Dominions as beautiful as Ivalaine. Come
on.
”

Grace opened her mouth to respond, but Aryn grabbed her hand and tugged her out the door. After that she was forced to forgo questions and concentrate instead on keeping up with the light-footed baroness. Breathing hard, they climbed the last steps of a spiral staircase, pushed through a door, and found themselves atop a high wall above the upper bailey.

Grace glanced down and saw the hedge maze below. From this vantage it was easy to trace the twists and turns that had confounded her yesterday. There—that was the grotto where she had spied Kyrene and Logren, and from which she had fled. She had thought it simply luck that after only a few dizzied minutes of running through the maze, she had stumbled upon the exit. Now she wasn’t so certain. The place where she had run from had been deep in the heart of the maze, surrounded by a webwork of paths so convoluted she could hardly follow them even now with her eyes. Yet somehow she had managed to navigate them without once having to backtrack. How else to explain it except luck?

And if it was good luck that had helped her escape the maze, then it was cruel fortune that had caused her to stumble upon Kyrene and Logren. She would never have guessed a liaison between the two. At the feast Logren had seemed so intelligent, so sophisticated. It seemed impossible he would fall prey to Kyrene’s wiles. Or was it? Grace thought back to that moment in her chamber when Kyrene had spoken about the king.

He is a man, and like all men he can be controlled
.

Grace saw again the countess’s white arms coiled around Logren’s muscular back. Was that how Kyrene worked her magics? Or had there been something more to it? She recalled the odd torpor she had felt that day in her chamber, and the presence that had reached out to touch her.
A few herbs, the proper words …
Had Kyrene used something more than simple desire to bring Logren to her? Before she could think of an answer, Aryn tugged her hand.

“This way, Grace. We’ll get a better view of the castle gate from the south battlements.”

Hand in hand, the two women picked their way along the wall. When they reached the crenellated top of the south battlement, high above the lower bailey, they found they were not the only ones with this idea. A sizable crowd had gathered to watch the coming of the queen: petty nobles, squires, servants. However, the throng parted without a word for Grace and Aryn, and the two women moved to the front of the battlement. Grace took in the clear view of the castle gates below and smiled. At least being nobility was good for
something
.

At that moment the call of a horn rose on the icy air: high and distant. The sound of it thrummed in Grace’s blood. She lifted a hand to her brow to shade her eyes from the bright midday sun. Then she saw the line of horses crest a distant rise between castle and river, and her breath caught in her chest.

Ever after Grace could recall little of what actually transpired that afternoon. Feelings, images—these were what stayed with her for the rest of her life. Banners, yellow on green, that snapped in the wind. Sunlight on burnished breastplates and steel helms. Horses prancing to the music of their silver barding. White hunting dogs with muddy paws. Nobles in black, and red, and purple. The sound of horns.

Most of all Grace remembered the queen.

Ivalaine rode, not in a litter, but upon a chestnut horse. Her gown trailed nearly to the ground, and was the color of ice, as were her eyes. She was tall, fair, and regal. Her only crown was her hair, fine as flax, woven with jewels, and coiled upon her head. Aryn had been right. Even from a distance Grace knew she had never seen a woman more beautiful than Ivalaine.

In all there were more than fifty riders in the queen’s traveling party, and another hundred on foot, bearing bundles and pushing carts.

Grace whistled softly. “Queens don’t travel lightly, do they?”

“No,” Aryn said. “They don’t.”

Ivalaine’s party halted before the castle gate, and a group
of King Boreas’s knights rode out to meet them. Words of greeting were exchanged, though Grace could not hear them. Then horns sounded, the castle gates opened, and the long line of horses and carts started through.

The throng on the walls began to disperse, and there was a tug at Grace’s sleeve.

“Come, Grace. Let’s be going.”

Grace raised a hand to her temple. Her head still thrummed with the call of the horns. “What?”

“There’s nothing more to see. And it’s getting
cold
. I swear, I’d think this was Midwinter’s Day if I didn’t know by the calendar it was only the middle of Sindath.”

Grace hardly heard the baroness’s words. She could not take her eyes off the road below the castle, even though it was empty now. She wasn’t sure what it was, but she felt
different
somehow. What had she been thinking just a moment ago? It had something to do with the royal entourage, and the way the queen had ridden so proudly at the fore.

“Grace?”

She tore her gaze away. “Yes, of course. I’m sorry, Aryn, let’s go.”

The baroness gave her a curious look, then shrugged and started back along the wall. Grace followed. They had just reached the door to her chamber when she remembered what it was she had been thinking as she watched the queen ride toward the castle.

That should be me
.

No. That was impossible. She shivered, forced the thought from her mind, and shut the door.

Those next days, Grace felt more trapped than ever by Calavere’s stone walls. Ivalaine’s arrival had sent the entire castle, already bustling, into a fevered pitch of activity. Not all of the queen’s traveling party was staying in the castle proper, which was well, as with five more rulers to come Calavere would have burst at the seams trying to hold them and all their courtiers, attendants, and servants. The majority
of the new arrivals were staying in the town below the castle. Still, it was work enough for Aryn, Lord Alerain, and the rest of the castle’s people to situate just Ivalaine and her immediate court in their chambers.

It was odd, but the busier everyone in the castle became, the less Grace had to do. The second morning after Queen Ivalaine’s arrival she found herself fingering the fine wool cape Aryn had given her. Before, the outdoors had been largely off-limits because of the freezing air and her desire not to perish from hypothermia. The cape, however, changed everything.

She picked up the garment. She should ask, she knew it. But Alerain would be too busy, and there was no chance of her seeing the king. Besides, no one had told her that she couldn’t and, after all, wasn’t she a duchess?

You’re rationalizing, Grace
.

But she didn’t care. She was bored, and boredom more than anything else made her feel dangerous. Before she could change her mind, she threw the heavy cape over her shoulders and slipped out her chamber door.

Ten minutes later, Grace stood at the gate that led to the castle’s lower bailey. She pulled the cape around her shoulders and pressed herself against the inside of the stone arch. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all. It had been nearly two weeks since that day Durge had brought her to Calavere, two weeks since the first and last time she had been in the castle’s main yard, and then she had been safely above it, on the back of the knight’s horse. Now she was on foot, and she had forgotten just how busy the lower bailey was.

“You wanted to do this, Grace,” she said through clenched teeth. She took a bold breath and stepped forward.

The mud was deeper than she expected. It squelched around her boots and nearly sucked them right off her feet with every step. People jostled past her: peasants bearing baskets of bread or apples, squires dashing on errands for their masters, merchants selling beer and candles and bolts of cloth. Once Grace found herself engulfed by a flock of bleating sheep, and it was all she could do to keep from getting trampled into the mud by four dozen cloven hooves.