Elliott, Kate - Crown of Stars 3 (27 page)

This close, with her pressed bodily against him and nothing between them,
nothing,
he finally understood what it was that stirred there, inchoate, restless, almost like a second being trapped within her skin.

Fire.

"You're like me," he said, and heard how the hoarseness in his voice made him sound astonished. As indeed he was.

"What do you mean?" She pushed up, weight shifting, and looked down at him, although she couldn't possibly see him in this darkness.

He chose his words slowly, to be precise. "There's more than human blood in you."

"Aoi blood?" She sounded stunned.

"Nay, I know the scent of Aoi blood, and it isn't that. It's nothing I recognize."

"Lady have mercy." She collapsed so hard on top of him that he grunted, all the breath forced out of his chest.

For a long while he spun in an oblivion of contentment, simply lost track of anything except the actual physical contact between them, her breath on his cheek, her unbound hair spilling over his shoulders, her weight on his hip and chest, the sticky contact of their skin. He might have lain there for the space of ten breaths or a thousand. He simply existed together with her, nothing more, nothing less, they alone in the whole wide world all that mattered.

She said into the silence: "You still have the book."

"I do. Did you intend to leave it with me all along?"

"It all happened so fast. I didn't know what to do." She wiggled to blow on his neck, as if her breath would heal the ring of chafed skin that was now all that remained to remind him of his slavery. "Do you know what is in that book?"

"No."

"My father was a mathematicus, a sorcerer. I suspect he was thrown out of the church because of it, before he married my mother—who was also a sorcerer—and they had me. That book contains his compilation of all learning on the art of the mathematici that he could find—" She hesitated, again touched the scar at his throat.

He waited. She seemed to expect something from him.

"That doesn't trouble you?" she demanded finally.

"Ought it to?"

"That isn't all." He heard a hint of annoyance in her voice— that he hadn't responded as she expected him to—and he grinned. Her eyes sparked in the blackness with a flicker of blue fire. From beyond the curtains he heard snoring, a child's cough, the restless whining of a dog, and the faint pop of a log shifting on the outdoor hearth fire, banked down for the night. "What Hugh said about me is true. It's true he wanted me for the knowledge he thought I had, but that wasn't all. He knew all along. He still knows there's something more. When we return to court, he won't give up trying to get me back." Her voice caught. "Do you despise me for what I was to him?"

"Can you possibly believe that after Gent I would judge you? Easier for you to despise me for becoming no better than a dog." He could not help himself. The growl that emerged from his throat came unbidden and unwanted; he could not control this vestige of his time among the dogs, and he hated himself for it.

"Hush," she said matter-of-factly, pressing her finger to his throat again. "You no longer wear Bloodheart's slave collar."

"And you no longer wear Hugh's," he retorted. "I tire of Hugh. Whatever power he may still have over you, he has none over me."

"Do you think not? He tried to murder Theophanu!"

He sat up abruptly. "Not so loud," he whispered. "What do you mean?" Her education had given her the ability to recount a tale succinctly and with all necessary details intact. She told him now of the incident in the forest where Theophanu had been mistaken for a deer; then, haltingly at first but when he made no horrified reaction more confidently, told him of the vision seen through fire of Theophanu burning with fever and of the panther brooch that Mother Rothgard had proclaimed a ligatura wrought by a maleficus—that of a sorcerer determined only to advance his own selfish desires.

She had slid a little away from him during the telling, although the bed sagged heavily between them. It was easy enough to take hold of her shoulder and gently pull her into him. He could not get enough of the simple touch of her—but he must pursue this other line of thought, not allow himself to be distracted by her body.

"If Hugh has practiced sorcery, then what other weapon do I need against him as long as he knows I can make such an accusation? But you must tell me what else you have done, if there is more to tell."

At once, he felt her pull away from him—not bodily, but in an intangible way, a sudden retraction of the bond between them. "W-why?"

"So that we can be prepared. So that we can plan our tactics. It isn't just Hugh's interest you've attracted. Ai, Lord! I have never trusted Wolfhere, though I don't dislike him."

"Even after—?"

He smiled. "It is hard to hate a man for a deed you don't remember and were only told about. He has never attempted to harm me that I recall, only plagued me with his endless accusations about a 'crown of stars' and some kind of unfathomable plot fashioned by my mother and her kin. But now it seems clear why he is interested in you, if it's true you're the child of sorcerers. Does he know everything about you?"

"Not everything," she admitted. "I can't trust him, even though he freed me from Hugh. But I don't dislike him. Yet whom can I trust? Who will not condemn me for what I am? Who will not call me a maleficus?"

J

"I will not condemn you."

"Will you not?" she asked bitterly, and she told him about the burning of the palace at Augensburg. "That isn't all. While riding to Lavas, I burned down a bridge in the same way. I saw the shades of dead elves hunting in the deep forest. I've spoken with an Aoi sorcerer, who offered to teach me. I've been stalked by daimones. One of them was as beautiful as an angel but a monster nevertheless for having no soul. You could see that in its eyes. It called for me in a terrible voice, but it passed right by and couldn't see me though I sat in plain sight. I was too terrified to move. Ai, Lady! I don't know what I am. I don't know what Da hid from me!"

"Hush." He pressed a finger to her lips to silence her helpless fury. "But Wolfhere is right: You need teaching."

"Who on this earth will teach such as me without condemning me? Without sending me to the skopos to stand trial as a maleficus?"

"Your mother?"

"Wolfhere wouldn't tell me where she is. I don't trust his secrecy."

"Nor should you."

"And I don't know—I just don't know— It seems so odd for this news to come now, after Da and I struggled so many years alone."

"Then we must find out who can teach you without condemning you. You're like a boy who is quick and strong and gifted, who's taken up a sword but has had no training. He is as likely to hurt himself and his comrades as fell his enemies."

"Sanglant," she said softly, "why aren't you afraid of me? Everyone else seems to be!" Her hand wandered to splay itself across his left shoulder blade. He became overpoweringly aware of every part of her, all that was soft, all that was hard, pressed against him.

The absurdity of it made him laugh. "What more can you do to me that you haven't already done? I am at your mercy. Thank God!"

He literally felt indignation shudder through her. He understood at once that she did not know how to be laughed at. But even after that year among the dogs, he remembered something of the intricate dance eternally played out between female and male. There are places a woman's indignation can be taken, and he knew how to get there.

LIATH woke with a strange sensation suffusing her chest and limbs. Sanglant slept beside her, touching her only where an ankle crossed hers, weighting it down. In fact it was too stifling within the curtained bed to press together. She had no cover drawn over her, yet even so, something lay on her so calming that the sweat and stuffy heat did not bother her. It took her a long while, lying completely still so as not to scare it away, to identify what it was.

Peace.

Thunder rumbled in the distance. A rooster crowed outside. A flea crawled up her arm and she pinched it between two fingers.

Sanglant bolted upright, arms raised defensively, and almost hit her as he growled. "I can't see!" he hissed desperately.

"You aren't in Gent."

"Liath?" He sounded more astonished than pleased. He groped, caught her, and hugged her against him so tightly that she choked out a breath. "Ai, God! You're real."

"What did you think I was?"

He was weeping. "I dreamed of you so often in Gent, I forgot what was dream and what was real, and then I would wake up. Ai, Lady. That was when it was worst, when I would wake up to discover I was still Bloodheart's prisoner."

"Hush," she said, kissing him. "You're free."

He only shook his head. He rocked back and forth, unable to keep still, but with her still clasped in his arms. Then, as suddenly as he had begun, he ceased and lifted his face to look at her. Light seeped in where wooden rings fastened the curtain to rods attached to the ceiling; she saw his expression as a gray mask, bewildered, joyous, determined.

"Make no marriage, Liath," he whispered, echoing words he had said to her a long time ago, before the fall of Gent. Then he smiled. "Unless it be with me."

"Foolhardy," she murmured.

"What is?"

"This. Marrying."

His voice sharpened. "Do you regret it already?"

She laughed. It was spectacularly disconcerting to have this need consume her. She just could not keep her hands off him. "Oh, no. No. Never." It was a different kind of fire, just as intense but more satisfying. He did not try to resist her even knowing that the village woke beyond the curtains as a new day began, but he was far more restrained than she was—although now and again he would forget himself and nip.

They did, finally, have to dress. They could hear Mistress Hilda and her household moving around, hear the soldiers moving restlessly outside the longhouse, talking and joking, although no one dared disturb the two hidden behind the curtains. She was embarrassed when they at last drew the curtains aside. Sanglant did not seem aware of the stares, the whispers, the giggles, the jocular congratulations. He wound up his leggings and laced up his sandals with intense concentration, obviously making plans. He took in a deep draught of air and held it, then shoek his head as a dog shakes off water.

"Nothing," he murmured. "I do not smell his scent here."

"Whose scent?"

"Bloodheart's." He belted on his sword. "Bloodheart laid a curse as a protection against any person who sought to kill him. Your hand drew the bow whose arrow struck him down."

Mistress Hilda bustled over with two cups of cider. As they drained the cups, she surveyed the tangled bedcovers with satisfaction.

The bite of the cider cleared Liath's head. "A curse is woven of magic," she said in a low voice, "and Da protected me against magic. It can't harm me."

He swore. "Rash words!"

"I don't mean them to be! You didn't see the daimone stalk past me, calling my name and yet not seeing me. That's not the only time it happened."

"That you were protected from magic? What do you mean?"

"I suppose the way armor protects you from a sword blow. It's as if I'm invisible to magic."

He considered this seriously. "Do you remember when Bloodheart died?"

She touched her quiver, propped up against the bed. "How could I forget it? When I first saw you—" She broke off, aware that her voice had risen. Everyone had turned to watch them: children, adults, slaves, even the soldiers who had crowded to the door as soon as they heard Sanglant's voice. It wasn't every day that such folk got to witness a royal marriage.

"Ah," said Sanglant, looking embarrassed—but she had a sudden feeling that it wasn't their audience that bothered him but the memory of Gent and the bestial condition in which she and Lavastine had found him. He headed for the door, and Liath hurried in his wake, not at all sure where he was going. But he was headed for the three Eika dogs, who barked and scrabbled to reach them as he approached. He cuffed them down, then retrieved the handsome reinforced pouch. Inside she saw
The Book of Secrets,
but he did not remove it; instead, he pulled out his gold torque, the sign of his royal kinship. He turned.

"This is all I have to give you. My morning gift to you."