The Black Prince: Part I (4 page)

“Thank you, Your Grace. I’m pleased.”

“She will be disappointed to miss you.” Tristan sounded certain. “But there will be time enough, when you return.”

Of that, he also sounded certain. Hart appreciated the vote of confidence, that he would return. He bowed again, and was gone.

P
ledging one’s life to one’s lord was like a marriage, he decided. One gave one’s all, risking everything. Pain, disappointment, even death. All in exchange for a set of vague promises. For the trust—or the desire to trust, really—that he into whose hands power was given was worthy. That he wouldn’t abuse the privilege.

Disconcertingly, Hart realized that he might have finally grasped what it felt like to be a woman.

This line of thought was interrupted by a voice calling his name, attempting to sound seductive.

He didn’t slow. He was on his way to the stables, his packs slung over one shoulder. His boots rang out on the tile. He hoped he sounded purposeful, rather than like the fleeing child he suddenly felt. Hart of Ewesdale, Terror of the North, running from a woman.

“Hart, aren’t you going to stop?”

“No.”

“Where are you going?”

“The stables.”
And then away from you.
But he didn’t add that part.

“Oh. We used to have a lot of fun in the stables.”

Did they? It didn’t seem so now. “Rose,” he said, “I’m busy.”

“What?”

She was attempting to sound all wide-eyed and sweet, the picture of fresh-faced innocence. But she didn’t. She sounded like an old hag. Hard around the edges and brittle, her façade cracking as she grew out of it. Girls couldn’t stay young forever—neither could boys—and pretending one was still young when one wasn’t only drew attention to the problem.

Rose wasn’t precocious; she was an actress who’d missed her mark.

He reached the stables and went to work saddling his horse.

Cedric turned a baleful eye on him, communicating clearly that this was nap time and not work time. No doubt, he felt very much abused. Well so did Hart.

Rose walked over to the gate, swinging her hips in what she imagined was a provocative fashion. She flashed Hart her best ingénue expression. “I miss you.”

Hart tightened the girth, gave Cedric a good slap to surprise him and then tightened it again. Horses were canny creatures; they liked to hold their air in, so nothing would be too tight. “I don’t have time for this,” he said, without looking up.

“You used to.”

He grunted.

“You used to love me.”

He straightened. This was getting ridiculous. “Rose,” he said, turning and facing her for the first time, “I never loved you. If I’d loved you, I would have married you. Or at least asked you to come north with me.” He paused, letting the words sink in. He’d learned the art of silence, at Tristan’s court. “I passed time with you. A time that is now in the past.”

“Passed time, then.” She pouted. How could he have ever found her put-on airs attractive? She was like a spoiled child in a grown woman’s body, fussing because she couldn’t have the toy she wanted. There was no real want there, no real affection, only a determination that she not be thwarted.

He checked his saddle bags.

He felt her hand on his shoulder, her warm breath on his neck. “It’s been so cold, these past few nights. You should have come to me last night, to warm me.”

“I was with another woman.”

But even that didn’t deter her. “We Southrons should stick together,” she said, somewhat fixedly. He noticed that she used the Northern slight, tossing it off casually. “Keep each other warm…help each other. Forgive each other, and be loyal to each other.”

Turning again, he pushed her off him. She stumbled back, surprised. Plainly, she couldn’t understand why she wasn’t succeeding.

“I’m no Southron,” he said. Not now. And this was a woman he’d bedded. Considered a friend. Gods, how had he ever been so young?

“But—”

“You should avoid me.”

Thinking she understood, she once again adopted that false-sweet tone. “Oh, I’m not frightened of you. I’m sure
other
people are.” She smiled. “But I don’t care about your…being one of those people. I don’t need you to be tender, or to be something you’re not.”

“I was tender enough to Lissa,” he said, somewhat cruelly. He didn’t tell her that Lissa was only a whore. “But the reason I tell you to avoid me isn’t that. It’s because you’re a lying, betraying daughter of the marshes who turned her back on her mistress and I’d no more touch you than I’d give my cock into the hands of a leper.”

“Isla?” Rose gaped.

“Yes. Isla.” His
sister
.

“But—you’re supposed to be with me!”

“I was never
with
you,” he corrected her. “And I’d never touch you now.”

“You’re hateful!” Rose shook—with anger. Her eyes had turned small, and cold. This was the face Isla had seen, all those months ago. “I hope this—I hope this Lissa, whoever she is, I hope you give her a disease!”

“The same disease you’re begging for?” His tone was casual.

Rose’s mouth worked.

He knew why Rose wanted him. The same man she never would have seriously pursued before, because he was only a bastard, was now important. She didn’t seem to realize, though, that while she might treat him differently he was still the same man. His loyalty was for those who cared about the man. Not the position, or the reputation. And for those who dealt kindly with his sister, his best friend and, now, the only true family he had.

“You’re lucky I don’t kill you where you stand.”

Rose took a step back.

They’d grown apart so far since they’d come to Caer Addanc. Hart had come, of course, to take service with Tristan; and Rose had come to take service with Isla. A promotion far beyond what her accomplishments allowed. Any woman in Rose’s place should have jumped at this chance to transform her fortunes. A chance at a different life, truly. And an opportunity that should have bound her all the more firmly to Isla. For what did men—and women—earn each others’ loyalty, if not the gift of chances such as this?

Instead, Rose had no sooner arrived than she’d turned on her mistress. Supposing, apparently, that there’d be a place for her here independent of Isla’s intervention. Or, even more troubling, she might have supposed that Isla would be too cowed by Rose’s defection to object, letting Rose stay on and continue to torment her. That Rose envisioned herself the better mistress was obvious. If the reasons supporting such a conclusion were not. Perhaps she’d planned, indeed, on becoming the mistress; reducing Isla to such a state of self-hatred that she became nonfunctional while Rose herself pursued Tristan.

Had Hart been in Isla’s place, he’d have thrown Rose out into the snow in her smallclothes. But Isla had ever been the gentler spirit, and instead insisted that Rose be found some placement within the castle walls. And so she had been: as a scullery maid.

That she ever saw her former mistress was doubtful, except perhaps in passing. Had she stayed the course, she’d have eaten at table with Isla instead of in the kitchens with the other peasants. The salt of the earth, who had no patience for Rose and her airs and told her so.

She was given all the worst jobs, not because she’d fallen from grace but because she thought herself better than others. Meanwhile Hart’s star had only risen. That he’d earned his reputation—for good and for ill—was beyond dispute.

“That I don’t is merely as a favor to Isla.”

Rose stared.

“She’d be upset.” Hart used his most patient tone, as if tutoring a particularly stupid child.

“She’s…a devil.” That last word was a hiss.

“And so am I.”

And then Hart was on the road.

H
e and Callas made good time that first day, stopping just short of the first passes to make camp.

They’d brought a small group of men with them, hand-picked for their endurance and skill with a sword. Men whom both Callas and Hart trusted. He thought again about what Tristan had told them: that a group of townspeople were harboring those loyal to Maeve. Molag would be a sensible spot from which to launch an incursion down into Barghast. High up in the foothills, it was difficult to reach. While any advancing soldiers could be picked off easily. A handful of competent archers, really, that was all that was needed.

He hoped devoutly that the rebels—and he was certain that there
were
rebels—hadn’t been apprised of their coming.

Callas added more wood to the fire. Around them, snow drifted down in lazy swirls. Dusk was just now lengthening the shadows, long finger-like things that stretched across the small clearing. Only a fool waited to make camp until he had to. They’d found this spot, and so they’d stopped. If they’d waited another hour, they’d have had no choice in the matter and might have ended up somewhere completely exposed to the wind or, even worse, indefensible. Both man and beast were a danger in these woods, as they were everywhere. He who wanted to survive, planned ahead.

Dinner was rabbit. He’d learned the art from Callas of skinning a rabbit without a knife, something that most Northerners apparently learned in infancy. At the rabbit’s knee, one pushed the joint out until it separated from the meat. Which took a bit of practice, and the first few times had left Hart swearing. But eventually he’d mastered the trick, which punctured the hide. He’d learned, too, to follow that up by working his fingers around the leg until the hide separated from the entire knee and slowly freeing the meat from the hide like he was pulling off a woman’s stocking.

Because, as Callas had pointed out, a knife was optimal but sometimes a knife was lost. After battle, or elsewise. A man still had to eat.

And Hart knew from firsthand experience that a man who relied on weapons to survive, wouldn’t.

He turned the stick that held the rabbits. The rest of the men were either pitching tents or gathering firewood. He had trouble crediting the idea that he’d only been lying with Lissa that morning. His departure from the inn seemed like it had taken place a thousand years ago. He was bone tired, but he’d volunteered to take the first watch because it was easier to remain alert than to find the state again after a taste of sleep.

Callas, beside him, seemed content.

Hart breathed deeply, savoring the taste and scent of the air. Fir trees and cold. And with them, that sense of peace that could only be experienced in the forest. He’d dreamed of such a place, growing up. But he’d never expected to actually be there.

Callas turned. “What’s on your mind, brother?”

“That someone wants to destroy this.”

“Wants to, yes.” His friend’s implication was clear.

But to Hart, who’d grown up in the South, the rugged beauty of the North was infinitely more precious. He knew, as Callas never could, what it was like to slog through inches-deep troughs of human waste to reach the butcher shop, or any other shop in the center of town. To feel that same waste trickle down the inside of his collar, because some housewife hadn’t bothered to call out before dumping her night soil. To know that these and other indignities were the result of local leadership too weak to enforce the law and too disinterested in all but their own enrichment to remedy that situation.

Men like his father controlled the South, if
controlled
was the word to use. They inherited their positions, while men like Hart were left to rot. What mattered one’s intelligence, or work ethic? Such things paled in comparison to knowledge of one’s forebears.

He was safer here, on the eve of battle, than he’d ever been riding into town in Ewesdale.

No. The North couldn’t become as the South. Hart would protect his new home.

“I am also,” he added, almost as an afterthought, “concerned for Isla.”

“The cold is no great thing.”

“She must have lost the child.”

His friend’s eyes widened fractionally. “She was with child?”

“Not that she admitted.” He turned the rabbits again. They were becoming nice and crispy. “But it was well known at the time that her husband hadn’t waited until their wedding night to take her virtue. She came to him often in those first few weeks of their courtship, a fact that Rowena advertised to all who’d listen.”