Dragon Tree (10 page)

When the bowl
was emptied, refilled, and emptied for the second time, she looked
hopefully for more, but he wagged a cautious finger and set the
empty vessel aside.

“Wait a while,
Little One. Too much too soon can be more painful than the lack. If
you suffer no ill effects, you can have as much as you like—and
bread and cheese besides—for there was not much flesh on your bones
to begin with. After such a long fast, I began to fear we would
lose you in the bedding.”

“Little One,”
she whispered. She leaned back against the bolster and her gaze
rose to the ceiling beams crossing overhead in the gloom. “I have
not been called that since I was a child.”

“I would call
you by your name, but alas, I do not know it.”

Tell too
many lies,
said her inner voice,
and you begin to forget the
truth.

“Amaranth,”
she said. “My father called me Amaranth.”

“The flower
that never fades,” Marak said, smiling.

“He hoped I
would grow into a likeness of my mother.”

“And did
you?”

“I know not.
Mother died when I was two and Father when I was twelve. He told me
yes, but he might have been saying that through a father’s clouded
eyes.”

“And your
husband?”

Startled, she
looked up at the shadowed face. "My... husband?"

"Was he from
the same village, or did he have family elsewhere?"

She
remembered, then, telling the knight with the green eyes that she
had been living with her husband in the village.
Tell too many
lies...

“No. No, there
is no one else,” she said in a whisper.

Hopefully he
would assume her stumbled words stemmed from her bereavement,
although there was something in the way the shape of his mouth
changed that suggested he knew more of the truth than she
suspected.

“If it please,
may I ask where I am? How far are we from the village?”

“You are
inside the stone walls of Taniere Castle. The vill lies along the
easternmost border of Lord Tamberlane’s land and luckily for you,
he was out hunting when he was alerted to the raid.”

“Yes,” she
mirrored. “Luckily for me.”

“They counted
a dozen crossbowmen enjoined in the ambush... an uncommonly strong
force to raid a simple farming village.”

“I... did not
stop to count. I was too busy running for my life.”

“You had no
children of your own?”

The blue of
her eyes sparked for a moment. "If I had, I would never have left
them behind, they would have been running with me."

"Of course.
Forgive me."

"Why do you
not show your face?"

The question
caught him off guard and he paused a moment before he answered. "I
have... an affliction. Sunlight... or any manner of bright light
for that matter, causes great pain to my eyes. And as you can see—"
he splayed the fingers of one hand and turned it over for her to
observe— "my skin has no color."

"An
albino?"

The hood
tipped slightly. "Yes, that is the term used. From the Latin word
albus
, meaning—"

"White."

"Yes. White.
Lord Tamberlane said the men who attacked your village were neither
common thieves nor outlaws.”

She blinked at
the rapid change of subject, but answered smoothly. “The one who
chased me rode a destrier and carried a sword wrought with a fine
silvered hilt. But how did Lord Tamberlane know this?”

“Three of the
men he slew were knights.”

“He slew
them?

The gray hood
nodded. “Lord Tamberlane is not a man to be trifled with when his
temper is roused.”

It was on the
tip of Amie's tongue to ask if one of the slain knights had hair
the color of hell’s own flames, but she curled her lip between her
teeth and kept the words to herself.

She thought to
distract him from more questions by sliding her arm out from
beneath the covers and testing how much she could move her arm by
reaching for the cup of water on the table.

“Perhaps it
would be easier if you sit up first,” he suggested.

Since he kept
his hands tucked inside his long sleeves and made no move to
assist, Amie sucked in a small mouthful of air and rolled herself
onto her right elbow, using it to inch and wriggle her way up until
she was sitting tall with her back against the bedboard. Straggled
lengths of hair fell over her brow, and when she shoved it back,
she could sense Marak watching her every move and gesture.

Her brow
pleated with a frown. “Why do you stare at me so? I feel like a
mouse being watched by a cat... a cat I cannot see."

He chuckled
softly. "If you found Inaya’s scars discomfiting... you might find
my appearance harrowing.”

“You judge my
entire character on one sorry lapse?”

“I judge it on
many things, Amaranth. The smoothness of your skin, the manner of
your speech, the softness of your hands... the stain of burned
walnut shells that was used to darken your hair. My guess is that
you were not from that village,” he added gently. “Nor any village
like it.”

Amie bit down
hard on her lip, unable to stop the flow of heat that rose in her
cheeks.

“You expressed
shock that there were no other survivors, yet you asked no further
questions, blurted no other names, asked after no close friends.
Nor did you show any sign of recognizing Lord Tamberlane’s name,
which you surely would have done had you lived in the village for
any length of time.”

“It is small
and isolated...”

“Yet must
still pay tithes and give homage to the Dragonslayer.”

“Dragonslayer...?” she whispered.

The broth that
had tasted so delicious only moments ago burbled in her stomach and
threatened the back of her throat. She could tell more lies, of
course, add more half truths to those she had told already, but she
suspected they would not stand the test of those unseen, colorless
eyes. More lies, more shameful falsehoods would only make her
appear more of a coward than she was already.

Her fingers
betrayed a tremor as she tucked an errant lock of hair behind her
ear.

“I cannot help
you, Amaranth, if you do not tell me the truth,” Marak said
quietly.

She felt the
sting of tears building behind her eyes. “Why would you want to
help me at all?”

Instead of
answering, he made a general observation. “People say many things
when they are burning with fever. Things they fear, cruelties they
have suffered, horrors they have endured... even crimes they have
committed.” He paused and watched a slow, fat tear slide down her
cheek. "And you forget I have tended your shoulder... front and
back. I have seen the marks."

Amie's lashes
lowered to hide her shame. Of course. He would have seen the
stripes left on her skin from Odo's belt.

“The men who
attacked the village,” he asked gently. “Is it possible they were
looking for you?”

She sighed
faintly and nodded. “It is possible, yes.”

“You... were
running away from someone?”

She nodded
again. “My husband.”

“Your
husband?”

“A vile and
brutish animal," she said, shivering through the words. “A man who
would not have had a moment’s pause ordering the death of so many
innocent people in his quest to catch me and put me in my grave.
People, especially wives, do not run away from a man like him and
live to tell it.”

“Surely you
were not attempting to do such a thing on your own?”

“No. I was...
with someone else. I was with my confessor. A loyal and
compassionate priest whose life, I fear, must have been forfeited
as well in his efforts to protect me.”

“He helped you
escape?”

She nodded.
“But we were caught out in the rain one night and I came down with
a chill. He brought me to the village and begged the good people to
keep me there until I was strong enough to travel again. He was
taking me to a convent, you see. A convent in the south of England
where he thought I would be safe.” Her voice trailed away and she
squeezed her eyes tight against a stronger flood of tears. “And now
all those good people are dead. All dead because of me. They did
nothing. They were guilty of nothing but trying to help the friar
and me.”

She covered
her face with her hands and turned away as the sobs began to wrack
her body. Once set free, she could not stop them and Marak, knowing
it was needed, said nothing more and let her grief and anger run
its course.

He had
suspected, from the moment he saw her, that she was no ordinary
peasant girl. The lack of calluses on her hands, the flawless skin
unblemished by sun and weather, the dulled stiffness of her hair...
and the fact that the plaited length on her head did not match the
soft yellow down at the juncture of her thighs, all these things
pointed to far gentler breeding. She had been raised in wealth and
luxury, with servants to tend her every need, but there again,
something cruelly contradicted by the evidence of lashmarks across
her back and buttocks. She had been subjected to beatings over the
course of many months, whipped until the skin bruised so deep it
bore permanent marks and stains.

The long hours
he had sat beside her, bathing her flaming skin in cool water, he
had listened to disjointed ramblings, bits and pieces of a story he
was unable to stitch together fully, but one that hinted at a broad
tapestry of ugliness and brutality.

Even so, the
law of the land declared a wife to be nothing more than chattel,
able to be beaten within a breath of life if she was disobedient or
rebellious, and killed outright if she raised her hand against her
lord, even in self-defense. If Amaranth confessed she was running
away from her husband, regardless of the circumstances or cause,
Ciaran would have no option but to hand her back if someone came
looking for her.

Playing
devil’s advocate against himself, Marak also knew that Tamberlane’s
interaction with women was severely limited. He was naive in every
sense where females were concerned; it was doubtful he had ever
courted or even flirted with one before he entered the Order.

Consequently,
if Tamberlane believed Amie to be a common girl, a victim of
terrible circumstances, her village burned, her family slain, it
would rouse all of the protective instincts that came with the
chivalric vows he had taken as a knight. If anything, he might even
be driven to feel more protective of her, since she was found on
his land and was now, to the extent of his current knowledge,
his
chattel.

Not to be
discounted was the fact she was a beauty. Beneath the pallor, her
cheeks were high and smooth, her face a perfect oval with enormous,
long lashed eyes of such an unusual shade of violet blue he could
see where she came by the name Amaranth. Her mouth was well formed
with a full lower lip and a sweet upper bow that would rouse warmth
in the most frozen of hearts. Her hair, when all the stain was
washed out, would be the same silvery yellow as her thatch,
although even in its present state of reddish gold, it was still
striking. Similarly, she was all skin and bone now, but with a few
healthy meals in her belly and a resplendent tunic of silk molded
to her curves, Marak guessed she would turn any man’s head. Even
Tamberlane's.

Marak clasped
his hands together under the shield of his long sleeves. He was no
frothing Samaritan, yet these past eight days had formed an
admitted attachment. She had been all but dead when Tamberlane had
brought her to his chambers, and in truth he had given her one in
one thousandth of a chance of surviving.

Yet she had.
She had fought through fevers and corruption of the wound. He had
drained the poison half a dozen times and filled the wound
repeatedly with maggots only to discover a sliver of the arrow
shaft embedded in her flesh that had to be cut away before the
process of healing could begin all over again.

After fighting
so hard to save her, he was not about to hand her over to a man who
obviously wanted her dead.

A faint sound
intruded on his thoughts and prompted Marak to glance behind him.
Tamberlane stood on the threshold, one hand on the latch of the
door, the other pressed against the wall.

Amaranth was
still sobbing, still rolled into a fetal ball and was not aware of
the knight’s arrival. The green eyes searched the bed a moment,
then sought Marak’s with a questioning frown. The seneschal, in
turn, raised a bony finger and touched it to his lips as he joined
the knight at the doorway.

“She needs to
do this,” he whispered. “She needs to weep for more than just the
pain of her wound.”

Tamberlane
lowered his voice, “Her husband, of course.”

“Among other
things, yes.” Marak said slowly.

The knight
nodded and glanced over at the bed, clearly distressed by the sight
of the girl weeping. It was not the first time Marak had seen the
same look on Ciaran's face. Many a time over the past eight days
Tamberlane had come quietly into Marak’s tower room to stand in the
shadows and observe, usually under the guise of seeing if the girl
had wakened again and could tell them more about the attack. Marak
had done nothing to discourage him, for the brooding knight had not
shown that much interest in anything over the past three years.

Now, by God’s
own curious grace, there was concern... yes,
concern
in the
iridescent green eyes as they glared at Marak and silently
commanded him to heal whatever was making the girl sob so
inconsolably.

“A posset,”
Marak murmured thoughtfully. “A posset might help ease her mind.
Will you stay with her until I return?”

Before the
knight could answer yay or nay, Marak eased past him into the outer
corridor.

“Should the
need arise to use it, her name is Amaranth. And do try not to scowl
as if you have just come away from kicking the dogs.”