Elliott, Kate - Crown of Stars 3 (31 page)

And she did not want to, not even now.

"Count Lavastine would have taken her into his retinue, and he is no fool. Even my trusted cleric, Sister Rosvita, has taken an interest in her. No doubt others have as well." Villam coughed, then cleared his throat. "The church is right to control such powers," Henry mused, "yet they exist nevertheless. Given what you have seen, Sanglant..." He gestured, and the steward hurried forward with a cup of wine, which the king drank from and then offered, in turn, to his daughters, to Rosvita, and to Villam. "It may have seemed more advantageous to marry a woman connected with sorcery than one who shares a claim to the Aostan throne."

"Why should I care what advantage she brings me? She saved my life."

"By killing Bloodheart. You saw the worth of such power as she has."

"Nay." He flushed, a darker tone in his bronze complexion. In a low voice, he spoke quickly, as if he feared the words would condemn him. "I would have gone mad there in my chains if I hadn't had my memory of her to sustain me."

"Ah," said Villam in the tone of a man who has just seen and understood a miracle. He glanced at Liath, and she flushed, recalling the proposition he had made to her many months ago.

Henry looked pained, then rested head on hands, as if his head ached. When he looked up, he frowned, brow furrowed. "Sanglant, folk of our station do not marry for pleasure or sentiment. That is what concubines are for. We marry for advantage. For alliance."

"How many times was it made clear to me that I was never to marry? That I could not be allowed to? Why should I have taken such a lesson to heart?
She
is the one I have married, and I have given my consent and sworn an oath before God.
You
cannot dissolve that oath."

"But I can judge whether she is free to marry at all. Father Hugh was right: As my servant, she must have my permission vo Ysrarr . S •sY>e Ya
tio ttt?
servant, 'Cnen sYie is Yiis slave, and
thus his to dispose of."

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apientfa gro^ecfcrna^/l^df^^flreS^SfH^sre^ffi^r Theophanu made a movement toward her, as though to comfort her, but Sapientia thrust her away and hid her face with a hand. Quickly, Sister Rosvita hurried over to her.

"We have not yet spoken of Father Hugh," sad Theophanu in a low voice, "and the accusations I have laid before you, Father. I have also brought with me—in writing—Mother Rothgard's testimony."

"I, too, have a letter from Mother Rothgard," said Rosvita. Sapientia was weeping softly on her shoulder. "Is there not a holy nun in your party, Your Highness?" she asked Theophanu. "One Sister Anne, by name, who has come to investigate these matters?"

Theophanu blinked, looking confused. "Sister Anne? She came with us from St. Valeria. A very wise and ancient woman, devout, and knowledgeable. Incorruptible. But she fell ill on the journey and had to be nursed in a cottage for several days. When she emerged, she always wore a veil because the sun hurt her eyes so. I will send for her."

"How do we know," sobbed Sapientia, "that it is not this Eagle who is the maleficus? If she has bound a spell onto Hugh—?" But her heart wasn't in it. Even she did not believe her own words. "God have mercy! That he should betray a preference for her, a common-born woman, and in front of everyone, and humiliate me by so doing!"

"Hush, Your Highness," said Rosvita softly. "All will be set right."

"I am not yet done with these two," said Henry. "But be assured that any accusation of malevolent sorcery in
my
court will be dealt with harshly should it prove unfounded, and more harshly yet should it prove true. Sanglant." He gestured, and Sanglant knelt beside Liath.

"Eagle." Liath flinched. The king had so completely recovered his composure that she felt more keenly the power he held over her. What soul, struggling to free itself from the eddy surrounding the dreaded Abyss, does not fear the gentle breath of God? With one puff of air They sweep damned souls irrevocably into the pit. "Liathano, so they call you. What do you have to say for yourself?"

She choked out the words.
"I
am at your mercy, Your Majesty." "So you are. Why did you marry my son?" She itashei, CCftM
oc>r.
at no one, not e^en SatvgYairt, especially not Sanglant, because that would only recall too vividly the night they had passed so sweetly together. Instead, she fixed her gaze on the flagstone floor partly covered with a rug elaborately woven in imperial purple and pale ivory: the eight-pointed Arethousan star. "I—I swear to you, Your Majesty. I gave no thought to advantage. I just—" She faltered. "I—

"Well," said Villam with a snort of laughter, "I fear me, my good friend Henry, that I see nothing here I have not seen a hundred times before. They are young and they are handsome and they are hungry for that with which the body feeds them."

"Is it only the young who think in this way, my good friend Helmut?" asked Henry with a laugh. "So be it. If there is threat in her beyond the sorcery her father evidently taught her and that others seek to exploit by gaining control of her, I do not see it. But."

But.

The word cut like a blade.

"I will not tolerate my son's disobedience. Naked he came into the world, and I clothed him. He walked, until I gave him a horse to ride. My captains trained him, and he bore the arms I gifted him with. All that he has came from me, and in his arrogance he has forgotten that."

"I have not forgotten it." Sanglant said it hoarsely, as if the knowledge pained him—but his voice always sounded like that. "You no longer wear the iron collar set upon you by Bloodheart. Where is the gold torque that marks you as blood of my blood, descendant of the royal line of Wendar and Varre?"

"I will not wear it." At his most stubborn, with high cheekbones in relief, the un-Wendish slant of his nose, the way he held his jaw taut, he was very much the arrogant prince, one born out of an exotic line.

"You defy me." Henry's tone made the statement into a question. She heard it as a warning.

Surely Sanglant understood that it was pointless to set himself against the king? They could not win against the king, who had all the power where they had none.

"I am no longer a King's Dragon."

"Then give me the belt of honor which I myself fastened on you when you were fifteen. Give me the sword that I myself gave into your hands after Gent."

Villam gasped. Even Sapientia looked up, tears streaking her face. Liath's throat burned with the bile of defeat. But Sanglant looked grimly satisfied as he lay belt, sheath, and sword at the king's feet.

"You are what I make you." Henry's words rang like a hammer on iron. "You will do as I tell you. I am not unsympathetic to the needs of the flesh, which are manifold. Therefore, keep this woman as your concubine, if you will, but since she, my servant, has not received my permission to wed, then her consent even before witnesses is not valid. I will equip an army, and arm you for this duty, and you will lead this army south to Aosta. When you have restored Princess Adelheid to her throne, you will marry her. I think you will find a queen's bed more satisfying than that of a magus' get—no matter how handsome she may be."

"But what about me, Father?" demanded Sapientia, whose tears had dried suddenly.

"You I will invest as Margrave of Eastfall, so that you may learn to rule yourself."

She flushed, stung as by a slap in the face, but she did not protest.

"And what of me, Father?" asked Theophanu more quietly. "What of Duke Conrad's suit?"

Henry snorted. "I do not trust Conrad, and I will not send one of my most valuable treasures into the treasure house of a man who may harbor his own ambitions."

"But, Father—"

"No." He cut her off, and she was far too cool to show any emotion, whether relief or anger or despair. "In any case, the church will rule that you are too closely related, with a common ancestor in the—" He gestured toward Rosvita.

"In the seventh degree, if we calculate by the old imperial method. In the fourth degree, if we calculate by the method outlined in an encyclical circulated under the holy rule of our Holy Mother Honoria, who reigned at the Hearth before dementia, she who is now skopos in Darre."

"No marriage may be consummated within the fifth degree of relation," said Henry, with satisfaction. "Conrad will not get a bride from my house." The door opened, and Hathui returned, making her bow, but she had hardly gotten inside the door when Henry addressed her: "Eagle, tell Duke Conrad that I will hold audience with him. Now. As for Father Hugh—well—

"Send him to the skopos," hissed Sapienta. "I will see him condemned!" Then she burst into noisy sobs.

"Well," continued Henry, "I will have the letters read to me, and I wish to speak with this Sister Anne." He caught sight of Sanglant, still kneeling with mute obstinacy, and frowned. "You will return to your chamber, and you may come before me again when you are ready to beg my forgiveness."

It was a dismissal. Liath rose. She desperately wanted to rub her aching knees, but dared not. Sanglant hesitated. Was it rebellion? Had he not heard? Henry grunted with annoyance, and then the prince rose, glanced once at Liath, once toward his sisters—

"Come," said Villam, not without sympathy. "It is time for you to go."

When they returned to the chamber set aside for Sanglant's use and the door shut behind them, she simply walked into his arms and stood there for a long while, not wanting to move. He was solid and strong, and she felt as if she could pour all her anger and fire and fear into the cool endless depths of him without ever filling him up. He seemed content simply to stand there, rocking slightly side to side: he was never completely at rest. But she was at rest here, with him—even in such disgrace. She had lived on the fringe of society for so long, she and Da, that she could scarcely feel she had lost something precious to her.

Yet what if he decided that a queen's bed was more satisfying than the one he shared with her?

The Eika dog whined weakly, then collapsed back to lick a paw with its dry tongue. Sanglant released her, took water from the basin, and knelt so the poor beast could lap from his palms. Someone had put up the shutters, and the corners of the room lay dim with shadows. Light shone in lines through the shutters, striping the floor and the dog and the prince and a strange creature concocted of metal that lay slumped over the back of the only chair. Standing, he wiped his hands on his leggings and said, suddenly: "What's this? It's a coat of mail!" He ran his fingers over coarse iron links. "A quilted coat. A helm. Lord Above! A good stout spear. A sword. A sheath." And a teardrop shield, without marking or color: suitable for a cavalryman. He hoisted it up and slipped his left arm through the straps, testing weight and balance. He unsheathed the sword.

"Ai, Lady!" she murmured, staring at these riches. It was far more than what she had asked Thiadbold for: she had asked only for a sword and helmet.

"But what is it?" he asked.

She found Master Hosel's belt among her gear and slid the sheath onto it, then with her own hands fastened the belt about Sanglant's hips as she swallowed tears brought on by the generosity of the Lions. "It's your morning gift." She tied off the belt and stood back, remembering what Lavastine had said. " 'If you walk through fire, the flame shall not consume you.' "

He gave a curt laugh. "Let
them
declare we are not wed, if they will, but God have witnessed our oath, and God will honor our pledge." Taking her face between his hands, he kissed her on the forehead.

There were two unlit candles in this chamber; both of them flared abruptly to life, and he laughed, swung her up and around, and they landed on the bed in a breathless heap. It was a measure of his disgrace that, even in the late afternoon with preparations for a feast underway and the palace swarming with servants and nobles and hangers-on, no one disturbed them.

Afterward, he lay beside her with a leg flung over her buttocks, head turned away as he examined the sword, good, strong iron meant for war, not show. "Where did it all come from?"

"The Lions felt they owed me a favor, but they respect you even more than they felt grateful to me. This is a tribute to you— and to your reputation."

He rolled up to sit, rubbing his forehead with one hand. "If I have not destroyed it entirely now." He drew his knees up and pounded his head against them, too restless to sit still. "Why didn't I see it before? There's no trace of Bloodheart's scent around you. There never has been. Yet it attacked Lavastine's hounds. It can't have been an adder—yet if it were only an adder, if I mistook the scent." From the floor, the dog whimpered restlessly and tried to stand, but had not the strength. Sanglant tugged at his own hair, twining it into a single thick strand so tightly that it strained at his scalp, and then shaking it out. "No Eagle can do my message justice. No Eagle knows Bloodheart's scent, or can listen for it in the bushes. I must go after him myself."