The Dagger and the Cross (45 page)

He stared at her. “You would dishonor yourself for that?”

“They’ll hush it up, of course,” she said. “They’re not
likely to whip me or starve me, or do anything but sunder me from you.”

“Is that love, then, my lady? Or disposal of an
embarrassment?”

The heat rushed to her face. “I love you, damn you! I want
you to be happy.”

“An odd way you have of showing it,” he said dryly, “my
lady. Proposing that I smirch your reputation, shame your kinsmen, and abandon
you to whatever fate they may propose for you.”

“I know what my fate is. It is to marry a man of their
choosing, to bear heirs to their house.” Her hands were fists; they ached. She
could not will them to unclench. “I don’t want you to have to see it. Or suffer
it. Or be torn out of your own place, thrust into one in which you are always, and
only, a foreigner.”

“As to that, my lady, I’ve never had a place that was mine.
Except this one.” He gestured toward his scarlet coat where it hung by the
stall. “Seven of us died for my lord. Allah chose not to take me. I accept what
Allah wills; that is what it is to be a Muslim. Would you have me refuse Him?”

“Surely your Allah would want you to worship him in his own
country, among your own kind.”

“If that were so,” he said, “then He would never have given
me to my lord.”

Elen had begun to tremble. “What if I can’t bear it? What if
I tell you that, if you come, I will never be able to accept any other man?
What then, messire?”

Now she could read his face. It was set hard, with his eyes
glittering in it, the color of ice under a winter sun. “If you tell me that, my
lady, I will tell you that you are not so poor a creature as that. You are a
lady and a princess. You will do what is best for your house.”

“No,” she said. “No, Raihan. I am not that noble. I am not
that strong.”

He was. She could see it in him. He would give her up
because he must; because his lord required it.

She raised her fists. She set them with trembling care on
his breast. She wound her fingers in his shirt, and wrenched it down.

The soft cotton tore. He did not move. She stripped him of
the tatters. Her mind was quite clear. White fury, that was the name of it. “I
can’t give you up,” she said. “I can’t.”

“Therefore you would force your kin to do it for you?”

She combed her fingers through the hair of his chest. He
shivered almost imperceptibly. He was not as calm as he seemed, or as cold.

“Every night I prayed for you,” she said. “Every morning I
dreaded that, that day, I would learn that you were dead. Every hour I thought
of you.” She tried to laugh. It was an ugly sound, dry and strangled. “I’ve
gone mad, I think. And I can’t even want to be sane. It must be in the blood.
Prince Aidan is just like me. Just—like—”

The tears startled her. She was not a woman for weeping. But
he could have died, and he had not, and she had to give him up for both their
honor’s sake.

He opened his arms and gathered her in. He smelled of horses
and man-sweat and musk.

He had a bed there, indeed: a heap of sweet straw in a far
stall, with his box of belongings beside it, and his weapons hung up carefully,
and a pot for his needs, for he was fastidious. He blushed a little. “This is
no bower for a princess,” he said.

There was too much that she could have said. She kissed him
instead, long and deep, and pulled him down into the straw.

Akiva lay utterly still on his pallet. He was so white and
thin and elongated that he looked as if he had died. Then, as Gwydion bent over
him, he drew a breath. The king laid a hand on his brow, his own face going
still, until it seemed hardly more alive than Akiva’s. They looked like kin,
then, with their arched noses and their black-black hair and their narrow
bloodless faces.

Ysabel, mute, huddled in her father’s lap on the high bed
that was Gwydion’s, watched and tried not to fidget. Morgiana was there, too,
frowning over the king and the boy, but she touched neither, simply stood
guard. They had had to send Simeon out. He was afraid, and Akiva could not help
but know it, and it slowed the healing.

For that was what it was. It did not look like much. But to
power’s eyes it was a great flaming torrent, reined and bridled to Gwydion’s
will. In the light of it they all could see the places that had burned from
being used too soon, and the places that were raw and bleeding, and the threads
that ran, frayed and raveled, between body and power. It was much worse than
Ysabel had thought. They had not even known, when he did it. Even when he
fainted. Power could do that, if one used too much of it.

Now you know why I’m always after you to rein yourself in,
Aidan said in her mind.

She hated it when he preached at her. But because she was
afraid for Akiva, and because she did know, she only scowled; she did not say
anything.

He smiled and tugged at one of her curls.
You’re growing
up, catling.

Not fast enough for me. She glowered at Akiva. He’s starting
to look like you.

What, less homely?

Less human.

Aidan nodded slowly.
It happens,
he said. His
mind-voice was soft.
It will happen to you.

She shivered. I’m not human. Am I? In spite of Mother.

You are what you are.
He kissed the top of her head.

People call us witches. They want to burn us. They hate
us. But why? We’re not bad people.

We have things that they can’t have, and wish they did.
We don’t get sick. We don’t grow old. We have power.

She shook her head sharply. I’d hate to give up power. But
they can go to heaven.

Not all of them. And the ones who hate us most are often the
ones with the least chance of heaven. Aidan hugged her to him, tender but
fierce. None of them will ever lay a finger on you. I won’t let them.

One could believe him when he shaped the words so, each one
distinct, ringing with truth. She looked at him while he watched his brother.
He had no glamour on him now. He was tall and strong and splendid, as a prince
ought to be. He did not look human at all. His face was too odd, his eyes too
big, his skin too white. Human skin was different. Coarser and softer and
darker, and it grew odd bits of colorless hair, even where it seemed bare.

People are afraid of us,
she said, but deep within
herself, where only she could hear.

She did not like it, that she was frightening. She ran her
tongue over her teeth. Cat-teeth, to go with her cat-eyes.

She was only Ysabel. She never wanted to hurt anyone, except
when she was angry, and even then she knew better. She tried to be good. It was
not her blood’s fault that she was a hellion.

o0o

The healing lasted a very long while. Humans were quicker,
Aidan told Ysabel, and easier. They had no power to fight back. Power was like
an animal in a trap. It fought to protect itself even from what would heal it;
from anything at all that was outside of it.

But Gwydion was stronger. It was a fierce battle, but he won
it.

When Akiva slept, and Gwydion stood up and staggered and
needed Morgiana to keep him from falling, Aidan set Ysabel on her feet and went
to help his brother. Gwydion needed sleep at least as much as Akiva did, but he
insisted on telling Simeon that his son would be well. That was what a king
was. He always put his people before his own comfort.

Ysabel hovered for a bit, but no one needed her. She was too
young, again. Without her friend and with her father all caught up in looking
after his brother, she felt horribly alone.

Everyone else was sleeping through the midday heat. She was
not sleepy at all; she had seen enough sleep in the healing to last her for a
while. She looked for Lady Elen, but did not find her in her room, or in the
women’s solar, or in the garden. The last place Ysabel looked, the stable, held
the lady, but she was not alone. Not in the least.

Ysabel backed off before either of them could see her. She
knew what they were doing. When animals did it, it was breeding. When people
did it, it was loving. They looked hot and rather desperate, but to mind-eyes
they were beautiful: a great, blooming flame, with two colors in it, shifting
and blurring and mingling.

She was sorry to leave them, but they would be deathly
embarrassed if
they knew that she was there. Humans could only see the
ugly, sweaty, heaving part, and they were odd about that even when the lovers
were married. Some of Elen’s worry spilled over, and it was full of defiance.
Let her uncles find her; let them despise her; let them call her a whore. She
loved this man. No one could make her recant it.

Raihan thought much the same, but he went all dark and blood-tinged,
willing violence on anyone who spoke ill of his princess. He meant to find a
way, somehow, to protect her honor and have her, too.

Ysabel wished them good fortune. Loving was nothing that she
could understand, or wanted to, yet, but she liked the two of them; she would
not want them to be unhappy. It had been bad enough when Raihan was gone to the
war and Elen feared that he was dead. Ysabel had never been able to tell her
that he lived. She had been too fierce about keeping him a secret.

Now Ysabel was all alone. Mother was napping with Salima at
the breast. The children never understood Ysabel, even when she tried her
hardest to be like them. She wandered at loose ends, out into the garden, back
into the house, up all the way to the roof. There was not much of a garden up
there, but there was a lemon tree in a basin, and a cote full of pigeons.
Sometimes the keeper let Ysabel hold one of the birds, and told her stories
about their noble ancestors. Some of them were descended from the very bird
that flew the first message of the Crusaders’ coming into Outremer.

The keeper was gone now about some business of his own.
Ysabel talked to the pigeons for a while, but pigeons were not excessively good
company. She perched on the basin under the lemon tree and amused herself idly,
plaiting bits of light and shade, trying to see how big a tapestry she could
make before it escaped her fingers and melted into the air.

o0o

Aimery was in a mildly foul mood. He had come to Tyre
because Prince Aidan persuaded him, and because he did not want to go to Count
Raymond in Tripoli. “Visit your mother,” Aidan had said. “Tell her what you
have to tell. Then let her choose whether to keep you or send you away. She is
your lady mother, after all, and should stand regent for you, now that you are
lord of Mortmain.”

“Lord of Mortmain,” he said aloud, with a curl of his lip.
Oh, he was that, no doubt about it. All the servants called him
monseigneur
now,
instead of simply
messire.
But Joanna was still their lady, and she was
the one they listened to; she was the one they obeyed.

He did not mind that. He was young and his training was only
half done; and she was a very great lady. He was proud of her.

But there was no substance in his title. The Saracens had
his demesne; Mortmain had an emir in its high seat and soldiers of Allah in its
guardroom. He would win it back, he had sworn it, but the winning seemed
farther away now than it had when he left Damascus. All they did here was sit
and wait. Marquis Conrad had a war in train, but he had not answered the
message Gwydion sent, that the King of Rhiyana was in the city. Gwydion would
not call on him until the message was answered. A king did not play suppliant
before a marquis; the message alone went well beyond what was necessary. Conrad
had to know that: he was trained in Byzantium. That meant that he was silent
because he chose to be.

Gwydion refused to speculate on why he did it. Aidan only
said, “An asp bit Conrad in his cradle. He’s been a venomous little snake ever
since.” Which gave Aimery a suspicion as to why Conrad insulted a king by
ignoring him. The king’s brother had never been noted for his tact.

Aimery smiled in spite of himself. Prince Aidan had a
definite, if perilous, gift. People loved him immoderately or hated him passionately.
Never anything between. But only raw newcomers failed to respect him. He showed
the world what a prince should be.

He had made the weeks after Hattin endurable, because he was
what he was. For the first time since Aimery was a baby, he had had Aidan to
himself, and it was bliss. He did not speak of Ranulf unless Aimery began it,
but when Aimery needed him he was there. He took Aimery riding and hunting; he
taught him weaponry; he played chess and backgammon, and taught him strategy.
They were uncle and nephew, kinsman and kinsman, knight and squire.

Now that was ended. Aimery could reckon the very moment.
When Aidan sat his horse under the gate of Tyre, and Ysabel dropped out of the
sky into his arms. Aidan had barely said a word to Aimery since. It was always
Ysabel, Ysabel, Ysabel.

No one had even thrashed her for almost getting herself
killed. Jumping off the wall, for God’s sweet mercy. What if Aidan had not
looked up when he did? What if she had misjudged her leap? She would have died.

Aimery did not want that. He detested her cordially, he
hated her domination of their uncle, but she was his sister. He simply wished
that she could be his sister somewhere else.

All his thinking had carried him through the Mortmains’ part
of the caravanserai from bottom to top. He found himself at the foot of a stair
which led to the roof. He climbed it.

And stopped in the bright air, and almost groaned aloud.
Ysabel was there. Of course. She could not even keep herself out of his
solitary rambling.

He started to turn back, but stopped. She had not seen him
yet. She was doing something indecipherable. It looked like weaving, the way
the weavers did it in the bazaar. But she had no loom. And no thread. Only dark
and light.