Donovan's Woman (2 page)

Marri woke at first light to find Gryff standing beside the bed. She stared up at him, wondering what he was doing in her bedroom, and then she remembered - he wasn’t in her bedroom. She was in his.

She drew the covers up to her chin, trying not to notice the width of his shoulders beneath his long-sleeved black shirt, or the way his faded trousers hugged his long legs. She clenched her hands, stifling the unexpected urge to reach out and run her fingers over his beard-roughened jaw, down his long, muscular arms.

“Get up,” he said without preamble. “We’re leaving.”

With a nod, she pushed the covers aside and reached for her shoes. Last night, feeling troubled and uneasy in her mind, she had slept fully clothed.

Rising, she tried to smooth the wrinkles from her skirt even though she knew it was useless. Never in her life had she felt so dirty and disheveled. Did he think she always looked this way, Marri wondered, and then chastised herself for caring. His opinion of her was of no consequence.

Wordlessly, he thrust a thick slice of dry brown bread into her hand.

She stared at it with distaste, her mouth watering when she recalled the enormous breakfasts Malia had prepared ~ poached eggs, wafer-thin slices of ham, honey cakes and peppermint tea.

When her stomach growled, Marri took a bite, thinking wistfully of fluffy scones, warm from the oven and smothered in butter and wild honey.

Marri sighed. No point in hoping for what she couldn’t have. At the moment, she was lucky to have a piece of bread. She was surprised to find it tasted better than it looked. At any rate, she was too anxious to be on her way to worry about breakfast. The sooner they left this place, the sooner she would reach Tarnn and the safety of Aisley Cloister, where her older sister, had taken her vows.

Marri followed Gryff into the other room. He swung a pack over his shoulder, glanced back to make sure she was behind him, and left the shack.

Outside, Marri blinked against the early morning light. Overhead, the sky was a bold, bright blue. Rolling foothills loomed in the distance, barren and brown beneath the harsh desert sun. A few spindly trees near the shack provided scant shade.

Marri shook her head. Why would anyone want to live in this desolate place?

“Let’s go.”

She looked at Gryff, standing beside a two-man Landskiff. Surely he didn’t intend for them to travel in
that
old thing? It was rusty and dented; the windshield was cracked, one of the front lights hunk askew.

He shrugged as if reading her mind. “It’s this or your own two feet,” he remarked sardonically. “And it’s a hell of a long walk to Tarnn.”

She waited for him to open the door for her. When he didn’t, she reached a tentative hand toward the handle, half-expecting it to fall off in her grasp, surprised when it didn’t.

Gryff climbed in the other side, tossed his pack behind the seat, and fired the engine. The whole craft shook as it coughed and sputtered to life. He had to admit, it wasn’t much of a vehicle, but it had been the best thing he could steal on such short notice. It would have been faster to hop a transport to Tarnn but that required tickets and identification. He didn’t know about Marri, but he didn’t have any papers and he didn’t dare show his face in a space port, not with Serepta’s bloodhounds on the prowl. The last time he had considered using a transport, he had seen his photo and description posted at the ticket window.

Marri grabbed hold of the door handle, hanging on for dear life as the craft shot forward. Walking might have taken longer, she thought, but it would undoubtedly have been much safer.

Gryff turned to her after an extended silence. “So, why don’t you tell me about yourself? How’d you wind up here, in the armpit of the galaxy?”

“I told you, I don’t remember.”

He grunted softly. “Any idea who sent those guys after you?”

Shrugging, she glanced out the grimy window. Should she tell him the truth? Did she dare trust him? She didn’t know a single thing about him. What would he do if he knew her younger brother was trying to usurp the throne? Though she had no proof, she was certain that Artur had killed their two older brothers. Caddin had gone hunting one morning and never returned. She could still remember her horror when his body had been brought home. The physician said he’d broken his neck, likely in a fall from his horse. Marri had refused to believe that was the cause of death. Caddin had been an excellent horseman. There was no horse he couldn’t ride. He had never been thrown.

She had been equally horrified when her other brother, Cobb, had been found dead in his mistress’s bed a little more than a month later, the same day Orlani had mysteriously disappeared. Artur had claimed that was proof of Orlani’s guilt, but again, Marri refused to believe it. Orlani might have been Cobb’s mistress, but Marri knew her brother and Orlani had been very much in love, though they could never wed.

When Marri’s mother, Amerris, learned of the death of her second son, she had gone into deep mourning and left the keep. Cobb had always been her favorite child. No one, not even Marri’s father, knew where Amerris had gone.

Marri had voiced her suspicions about Artur to her father, but he had refused to listen to anything she said. Artur was a quiet, gentle boy, her father had insisted vehemently. Everyone from the lowliest housemaid to the parish priest knew Artur was harmless. Why, he wasn’t even strong enough to participate in battle games with the other men. The mere sight of blood sickened him so that he stayed behind when the knights went hunting or rode off to war.

But Marri had seen the other side of her youngest brother, the side that tortured helpless animals and bullied the servants when no one else was looking. He delighted in frightening the keep’s children.

She frowned, wondering why Artur hadn’t killed her outright, as he had Caddin and Cobb. She blinked back tears. In spite of what she knew of Artur, in spite of what she suspected, she still found it hard to believe that he had killed her brothers and wanted her dead, as well. He was the baby of the family, born four years after Marri. He had been such a sweet infant, such an adorable little boy with his tawny hair and bright blue eyes. She had loved him with all her heart. How could he have turned into such a monster? And how could she convince her father that the lad he doted on was a murderer?

She shook her head. Surely she was mistaken. Despite everything, she couldn’t make herself believe her brother meant to kill her. She had no designs on the throne, wanted only to join her sister at the cloister. Indeed, she would have done so years ago if her father hadn’t objected. He had given one daughter to the church, he had said adamantly, and that was enough.

“You’re gonna have to tell me what’s going on if you want my help,” Gryff said, breaking into her troubled thoughts. “I have to know what we’re up against, who else might be after you, and why.”

She hesitated a moment before answering. “I think it’s my little brother, Artur.”

Gryff looked at her, one brow arched. “Your brother? What’d you ever do to him?”

“Nothing. He’s…he’s unstable. You know, not quite right in his head.” It wasn’t a lie, not entirely. She had once seen her brother throw a kitten from one of the tower windows just to see if the animal would land on its feet. It might have been excused as a youthful prank had Artur not been a man fully grown at the time.

She felt Gryff watching her, waiting for her to go on.

Marri folded her arms over her chest. She couldn’t tell him the truth, couldn’t tell him that Artur’s lust for the throne had turned him into a killer. Not until she knew him better. Not until she knew, without a doubt, that Artur had hired those two assassins.

“It’s the truth!” she exclaimed, discomfited by his unblinking gaze.

“Lady, I can smell a lie a mile away, and that one stinks.”

She felt a rush of heat climb into her cheeks. “That’s the second time you’ve called me a liar!”

He shrugged. “I call ‘em as I see ‘em.”

“He wants to kill me,” she said, “but only because he’s troubled in his mind.”

“Okay, princess, if that’s the way you want it.”

She looked at him sharply, wondering again if he knew who she was. But how could he? He couldn’t. It was impossible. With a sigh, she looked out the window again, her thoughts as dreary as the countryside.

Gryff concentrated on the road, which had become increasingly rough. He couldn’t force her to tell him anything, he thought, then grunted softly. No doubt he could force her, but the idea didn’t appeal to him. One thing he knew for sure, she was afraid of more than a younger brother who wasn’t quite right in the head.

He slowed the Landskiff. The road was little more than dirt and rocks at this point. The trees that grew in the area were stunted and dry. There was no other vegetation to speak of save for a few dried husks and shriveled plants.

He hated this place. Perhaps, after he’d seen the woman safely to Tarnn, he would go home. He could see it clearly in his mind, the tall mountains, the rivers that ran blue and clear both summer and winter, the trees that were ever green, the multitude of flowers that dotted the hillsides, the lacy ferns that grew along the lakes and streams. It was a verdant land, green all year long except in the high mountains where it snowed during the winter.

“What are you thinking about?” Marri asked.

“Home.” He answered without thinking.

“I thought the tavern was…?”

“Hell, no.”

“Have you been away a long time?”

“More than five years.”

“Where do you live?”

“In the mountains of Nardinnia.” Once, his family had raised the best cattle and the most coveted horses on the planet. But Serepta had put an end to that.

“Do you have people there?” Marri asked. He seemed like such a solitary man, she couldn’t picture him as part of a family.

He shook his head. They were all gone now, destroyed by Serepta in a fit of pique.

“Why don’t you go back?”

“I can’t.” It was the first place Serepta would look for him.

Serepta. She was a witch without equal. Thinking of her, of what she had put him through, sent a shudder of revulsion down his spine. She had told him once that, should he ever escape, she would not rest until she found him again.

“And I will find you,” she had said, her voice as cold as Brynn Tor’s icy sea. “I will find you and flay the flesh from your bones an inch at a time. And then I will heal you and do it again.”

One look into her hell-black eyes and he had known she meant every word. But it hadn’t kept him from trying to escape at every opportunity, no matter the risk. She had chastised him each time, each punishment worse than the last, but he had craved his freedom the way some men craved drugs, had been willing to endure any pain, any torture she could devise, to be rid of her. She had burned his flesh with hot irons. She had whipped him until his back was raw. She had kept him chained in a small, dark room until he thought he would go mad. It had been the worst torture of all.   

Lost in thought, Gryff paid little heed to the woman until he heard her stomach growling.

He slid a glance in her direction. “We’ll stop at the next tavern and get something to eat.”

She murmured a quiet thank you, then went back to looking out the window.

Gryff blew out a sigh, wondering what in blazes had prompted him to offer to take her to Tarnn in the first place. Though he had no love for tending bar in a rundown tavern, he had been relatively safe there, responsible for no one but himself.

He glanced at Marri once again. Her hair fell down her back in a thick braid, her skin golden brown and unblemished, her features delicate but not weak, and her figure…it was nicely rounded in all the right places.

He shook his head. Women! The ones he had known in the past had been nothing but trouble.

He had a feeling deep in his gut that this one would be no different.

Artur paced the floor of the great hall, his agitation growing with every step. Dakkar and Trist should have returned from Ironntown with news of his sister death by now. The fact that they were late could only mean one of two things: either they had been unable to find Marri and were afraid to return and face his wrath, or they were dead.

Going to the door, Artur summoned his bodyguard. Dunnin was a big brute of a man, with white hair, cold gray eyes, massive arms, and legs like tree trunks. Artur shook his head as he regarded the man. For all his size, Dunnin was amazingly quick in both mind and body.

The bodyguard bowed when he entered the room. “How may I be of service, my lord?”

“You’re the only man I dare trust with his,” Artur said. He was, in fact, the only man in the keep that he trusted at all. “Dakkar and Trist should have returned by now. Their last transmission was day before yesterday. Take as many men as you need and go to Ironntown. If Dakkar and Trist are dead, I want to know who killed them. If they’re alive, find out where my sister is, and then kill them all. Don’t fail me.”

With a bow, Dunnin backed out of the room and closed the door.

Artur went to the window and stared into the distance. He should have killed Marri when he had the chance. Instead, he’d had her drugged, then ordered two of his most trusted men to dispose of her in any way they saw fit as long as her body could not be recovered. His gut told him they had failed and now Marri was out there somewhere.

“Ah, Marri. Marri,” he murmured, as he paced the floor. “As much as it grieves me, I cannot allow you to return to the keep.” For all that she was only a woman, he mused, she was no fool. He knew she suspected he had killed both Caddin and Cobb, though she could never prove it. He had been far too clever for that. “I dare not take any chances, sister, not now, when I am so close.” It was a difficult decision, but one rulers were expected to make. In order for him to take the throne, she had to be eliminated before she could voice her suspicions again.

He gave no thought to his father. The King was old and sickly. News of Marri’s demise would undoubtedly send the old fool to his deathbed. His mother was no threat. Even if anyone knew of her whereabouts, she could never attain the throne. The line of power passed from father to child.

Smiling at his reflection in the window pane, Artur adjusted his cloak, flicked a bit of lint from his shirtfront. There was nothing to worry about. Dunnin had never failed him.

Soon his sister would no longer be a threat. It saddened him that she had to die. She had ever been kind to him but, like all women, she was unimportant in the grand scheme of things.

Turning, he glanced around the great hall. This was the seat of power. It was in this room that his father issued formal decrees, pardoned or condemned those accused of crimes, welcomed foreign emissaries, accepted gifts from his subjects.

Artur’s gaze rested on the many tapestries that hung from the walls, each one depicting scenes of victory from the battles of the former kings of Brynn Tor. Large stone hearths stood at each end of the hall. Carpets and rushes covered the floor, the windows were of stained glass imported from Brazia. Long trestle tables lined the walls. A longbow that had belonged to the first ruler of Brynn Tor hung over the fireplace on the eastern wall. It was the ancient symbol of authority and as such, had been passed from one ruler to the next.

His gaze continued around the room, coming to rest on his father’s throne. It stood on a raised dais at the southern end of the room. It was a remarkable piece of craftsmanship, carved from a single tree and inscribed with the name of every man who had ever worn the crown. The seat and back were covered in rich dark purple, the color of royalty.

Filled with a sense of pride and power, he stepped onto the dais and sat on the throne, his hands resting on the carved arms. Soon, the kingdom would be his, the throne would be his, with no one left to challenge his power, his authority, or his right to rule as he saw fit.

He would allow no one, not even his beloved sister, to keep him from the throne.