The Lascar's Dagger (39 page)

His gaze took in her clothing and the dapple grey. He said, in an apparent mix of puzzlement and outrage, “You’re wearing my clothes! What in Va’s name are you doing here? I can’t think of a single reason for you to be up on this moor, in this weather, with Prince Ryce.”

She didn’t answer, unable to know where to start. She had pictured their meeting countless times, she’d planned the words, but now they didn’t seem adequate. Or even appropriate. And she didn’t understand why he was furious with her. He’d seen her come to his defence in the law court, risking much to do so. She didn’t exactly expect gratitude, but even neutrality would have been preferable to this undercurrent of rage.

Ryce was holding his sword at the ready, but he didn’t move and he still hadn’t spoken, so she said, “I didn’t come with the Prince. I came alone.”

“Alone? From Throssel?” He was still staring at her, this time as if she’d taken leave of her senses. “Who brought Greylegs?”

That, she assumed, was his horse, so she said, “I did. Your things are here.” She fetched the rear saddlebags and threw them down at his feet. “Some clothing, for a start.”

He knelt to unbuckle them and haul out the contents. “I never expected to see these again.” He pulled on his drawers and hose, then looked up to stare meaningfully at the sword she wore, still buckled at her side. “Especially not that Pashali blade. It’s worth a small fortune.”

She recognised the insult. The loggerheaded
lout
. He could have thanked her. As for the sword, she’d even forgotten she was wearing it. She undid the sword belt and was about to toss it to him, blade and all, when Prince Ryce grabbed at it, wrenching it out of her hands.

“The Prince is here to kill you,” she warned. “In fact, he wants to kill us both, because he doesn’t want the world to know you took Mathilda to bed. Of course, he thought you ravished her.”

Saker said nothing to contradict that, but he eyed Ryce warily as he pulled on a shirt. “In that case, I hope you’ll forgive me if I die fully dressed, your highness. It’s fobbing cold up here, and I swear there’s ice instead of blood in my veins. Besides, I am doubtless outraging the modesty of Mistress Celandine.”

She winced at his sarcasm. “Indeed, you’d better get dressed before you freeze your pizzle off,” she snapped.

He raised an eyebrow; at her language, she assumed.

A pox on you, Saker. I’m not going to be a sweetly demure lady to please your delicate ears
. She took the second set of saddlebags from the front of the saddle and dropped them in front of him.

He said, pulling on his breeches, “While I can quite see why your highness would like to bring my miserable existence to an end, I must admit I fail to understand what crime Mistress Celandine has committed that is deserving of assassination. After all, was she not the informant who told you of my iniquity in this matter? As indeed she ought, as a loyal servant of the Crown.”

She stared at him, unable at first to comprehend the enormity of what he was suggesting. Then, as the words sank in, she felt the pain right through to her backbone.
Oak-and-acorn, he thinks I not only betrayed Mathilda by going to the King in the first place, but that
I
told the lie about what happened!

Her shock left her breathless.

Ryce spoke for the first time since Saker had arrived, his passion breaking through his shock. “Leak on you, you whoreson! I don’t know what the rattling pox you mean, and I don’t care. You are going to die here for what you did!”

“Oh, don’t be such an idle-headed dewberry!” she snapped at the Prince.
Damn his loggerheaded stubbornness! He’s trying to dredge up enough anger to murder us …
“You know now he didn’t do anything to the Lady Mathilda that she didn’t invite!”

But Ryce wasn’t listening. He lunged at Saker with his blade, all his pent-up frustration bursting into action.

Saker moved as fast as a startled cat, flinging himself sideways into a head-roll. He rose to his feet in a half-crouch, arms raised at the ready, his stance balanced for either flight or fight. “Confound it, your highness, you do realise I’m not going to stand still and allow you to run me through, don’t you?”

“You can’t escape the King’s justice!”

“Va has judged me, and then sent me here to you,” Saker said quietly. “I cannot believe it was just so I may die on your sword.”

“You
betrayed
my friendship. You betrayed your position in the royal household. You committed treason. You deserve the death coming to you.”

“Deserve? Perhaps. But I will serve my country and my faith yet, Va willing.” Even as he spoke, he was moving, grabbing Greylegs’ reins, swinging himself into the saddle.

Ryce lunged forward again, but not for Saker. Instead, he grabbed Greylegs’ bridle and swung his sword up to the horse’s exposed throat. “Get down, or your horse dies.”

Saker froze.

They stared at one another, prince and ex-witan, in a battle of wills. Sorrel knew she should be blurring herself into safety while their attention was on each other, but she was spelled into immobility, paralysed by the possibility that one of the men was going to die.

“You know me too well, my prince,” Saker said at last. “And I think you have learned something about being a prince since last we spoke.” He swung himself to the ground and moved to the mare’s head, on the opposite side of the horse to Ryce. He patted Greylegs’ neck.

Ryce lowered the sword. “It would have hurt to do it,” he remarked. “She’s a fine horse.”

“And you chose her for me.”

“Yes. I did.” He regarded Saker thoughtfully. “Mistress Celandine says Mathilda went freely to you that night. That accusing you of ravishing her was all Mathilda’s idea. Is that Va’s truth?”

Saker looked at Sorrel in surprise. “Ah. So Mistress Celandine changed her mind.” He looked at her, a penetrating gaze of contempt. “First you betray Lady Mathilda by telling the King his daughter was ravished, and then you betray her again by putting the blame on her. What is it you want here?”

Incandescent rage replaced her shock. How
dare
he! She groped for words adequate to express her fury.

Slowly Prince Ryce lowered his sword still further, until the point dug into the soil at his feet. He clasped his hands around the head of the hilt and stood regarding the two of them thoughtfully. “Mistress Celandine did not tell us anything. It was Mathilda. She came to the King with her tale of ravishment on her own volition. She put all the blame on you. If Mistress Celandine is guilty in this matter, it is for her loyalty to the Princess.” He looked away from them both to gaze, unseeing, at the horizon. He added softly, “Mathilda planned the whole thing, right from the beginning, and cozened us all.”

Saker whitened. Blindly, hands fumbling, he turned away to pick up his doublet and pull it on. “Nonsense!” he said. “If you were gulled, it was by Mistress Celandine, not Lady Mathilda.”

Ryce shook his head. “No. I can see it now. I know Mathilda. And her woman’s wiles hold no attraction to an elder brother. Careful where you tread now, Rampion. You come perilously close to calling both the King and me liars.”

Saker looked as if he’d been slapped. He returned his gaze to Sorrel, appalled.

“It never occurred to me that you didn’t realise who betrayed you,” she said, and coated the words with all the contempt she could muster. “It was her futile attempt to find a way to prevent her marriage. She used you, from the beginning. In vain, because King Edwayn insists that this obscene union proceed.”

The Prince gave her a sharp, angry glare. His sword swung up to point at her in threat. She stared back, unapologetic, even as she wondered at the reckless audacity of her words. “The truth can be unpalatable,” she said, and refused to flinch. “But that doesn’t make it a lie.”

“Have a care, mistress,” Ryce said. “What happens here need have no consequences for me.”

They stared at each other, and finally he lowered the blade.

Saker turned away then, to pull his jacket out of the saddlebag and shrug it on. His face was chalk white, his mouth pinched, his look stricken. His composure wavered and he rested his forehead against Greylegs’ saddle, his shoulders rising and falling as he inhaled deeply.

When he turned back to face them once more, it was with a bark of bitter laughter. “So we were all deceived. Va, but she is a woman fit to be a queen!” He took another long breath. “Your highness, I am not guiltless in this matter. I lay with a woman I should have protected and guided. I failed spectacularly to do so.” He gave Sorrel a hard look. “You should have prevented her from such foolishness. And we should all remember that the Lady Mathilda is much to be pitied. Mistress Celandine is right about this union. It is one thing for a man to marry as he is told, and quite another for a maiden to be traded off to another land to bed an elderly monarch with a rancid reputation. We have not served her well, none of us.”

Oh, sweet Va, he loves her still, the loggerheaded ninny.

“I should kill you both where you stand,” Ryce said, but there was only resignation in his tone.

“My liege,” Saker said, “you have my promise that nothing of this affair will ever cross my lips. I serve my faith and my king, as ever. If you wish to slit my throat with your blade, so be it. I do suggest, though, that you spare Mistress Celandine’s life. A woman with a glamour can only be of great service to Lady Mathilda in the hell she has been sold into, and perhaps to Ardrone as well, should the Princess will it that way.”

“A … a … glamour.” The Prince took a deep breath. “Ah, I see. I trusted you once, Saker. Should I do so again?”

“The Oak warmed me last night. Without that, I would have died of the cold. The unseen guardian loosed the shackles that bound me to the tree. I – I believe there is a purpose in the life left to me.”

Ryce cocked his head thoughtfully, then nodded. “You were branded. I saw the brand. Now it has vanished.”

“It has?” In surprise, he raised his fingers to his cheek and ran them over the smoothness of his skin. “I feel it still, as roughness beneath my fingers.”

“There’s naught to see.” Ryce paused to consider, then added, “You once told me there were things beyond the domain of a king or a prince. This is one of them. You are free to go. I pray it is Va’s path you follow.”

“That’s not a decision the King would sanction.”

Ryce sighed. “I know. But I made another decision here today: I do not wish to be my father. Take the road over the moors to the coast. Leave Ardrone and do not return, under pain of death.” He turned to Sorrel. “And you – a witan once told me that glamours are the rarest of all Va’s witcheries. That they are gifted only to Va’s most trusted servants.” He walked to his horse and gathered up the reins. “I don’t like you, Mistress Marten,” he added as he mounted. “I don’t think you served my sister well. But you risked much to come here, and I bow to a greater power than mine. You too are free to go. Finish whatever business you have here with the witan, and then ride after me. I shall await you in the Chervil Inn, and will escort you back to Throssel. After that, doubtless your glamour will serve you to return to Lady Mathilda’s side. If the King receives word of your presence, he would see you dead; never doubt it. If you are caught, I cannot protect you.”

As he began to turn his mount away, Saker stayed him with a hand gesture. “A warning, your highness.”

Ryce sighed. “Go on.”

“Beware of Prime Fox.”

“You’re an addlepate, Saker Rampion. He was appointed by the King and serves at the King’s pleasure.”

“Perhaps. But I just saw the wisdom of a man who will one day be king. Such a man is wise enough to watch his back. Va go with you, my liege.”

Sorrel waited until the Prince was out of sight and then said, “That last was patronising, coming from a foolish man not that much older than the Prince himself.”

“Doubtless it’s a fault of mine that the years will cure,” he said, a dangerous edge to his tone. “Prince Ryce needs to believe in himself. Tell me, did Mathilda send you here?”

She gritted her teeth. Did he really think that Mathilda cared a withered acorn about his well-being? “Believe what you will, Master Rampion. Your self-esteem is doubtless in need of repair.”

“I have to think there’s no way you’d be here without the Princess’s aid. You couldn’t have taken my horse from the stable unless you had help. And someone obviously had access to my room and everything in it, so I assume the Lady Mathilda arranged it.”

For a moment she just stared at him, rage and hurt so intertwined she didn’t know what she wanted most: to weep, or to hit him, hard, right on the nose. She turned away so he wouldn’t notice the tears pooling in her eyes. She didn’t want him to see her cry. And vex it, she didn’t like crying anyway. It was so – so
stupid
!

Drained of energy, she let all her witchery fade, until she was just herself, Sorrel Redwing, the woman who by rights should have been no more than bones and sinew hanging on a crossroads gibbet. She dragged air into her lungs, drowning in the pain of resignation.

She walked to the roan where it was grazing, picked up the loose reins and hauled herself into the saddle.

“You can drop your silly glamour,” he said. “You don’t have to appear beautiful to me. I’m not taken in by it. I already know what you look like.”

She blinked at him in momentary bewilderment, wondering what he meant, and then realised. “This is not the glamour,” she said.
Did he just say he thought I was beautiful?
She was no mouse, perhaps, but beautiful? The idea was ridiculous. Nikard had told her she had the coarse looks of a peasant, momentarily pleasing, soon faded.

He snorted. “Oh, I understand. You want me to believe you really are beautiful and Celandine the mouse was the glamour! Do you think me for a beef-witted fool to be taken in by a pretty face?”

The irony was too much. He believed she used a glamour to make herself more desirable? She began to laugh. “Yes,” she said. “I think perhaps I do. A witan with his own witchery should know better!” She dredged up enough energy to bring back her glamour, to return the mouse to his sight. “Is this more to your taste?” she asked.
Not taken in by a pretty face, Saker? What about Mathilda’s?
For all she’d done, he was still in love with Mathilda, and she – Celandine – was nothing more than the mouse beneath his feet.