The Lascar's Dagger (40 page)

“I’m sorry,” he said, suddenly contrite. “I didn’t mean to be insulting. Forgive me, it has been a … difficult day or two. I am grateful to you for making the journey from Throssel. It doesn’t matter whose idea it was; it was bravely done, and I do thank you.”

She turned her head to look down at him.
Dear Va, he’s right
.
He’s been to the dark of hell and back. Tortured, left to die, surviving – only to find out today that the woman he loved was the one who sacrificed him.
She nodded, recognising his apology.
Glimpsing the despairing hurt in his eyes, she acknowledged that it wasn’t easy to cease loving someone.

It doesn’t stop
, she thought bleakly
, just because you want it so.

“You’re a brave woman, Celandine Marten,” he said. “I heard you stand up to Prince Ryce when he threatened to kill you just then. You were fearless in the face of death.”

“No woman who has lost a child fears death, for she has already died once. And there is no woman called Celandine Marten. There never was.” She flicked the reins, and the roan, without a trace of a limp, headed back down the track.

S
aker watched her go, his emotions in a muddle. It was hard to think because there were too many strands in the tangle, all begging to be considered.

Men weren’t supposed to cry, but right then all he wanted to do was weep. Mathilda had used him, then thrown him to Fox and his hounds to be shredded. Had she ever even
liked
him? Had it
all
been lies? Perhaps she’d tried to save him by asking Celandine to go to the court to help his case, and then to bring him a horse and clothing when he needed it. Perhaps not. Perhaps that was just Celandine’s doing. If so,
why
? He’d hardly ever spoken to the woman, and yet she’d risked her safety for him. She’d looked at him with such contempt, not once, but several times during the conversation they’d just had. And who the fobbing damn was she if there was no such person as Celandine Marten?

Thinking about all that had happened physically hurt. He was still wretchedly cold, so he flung Ryce’s cloak over his shoulders, glad the Prince had ridden off without it. Greylegs nickered at him, so he went to pat the horse’s neck, murmur soft words in its ear and check to see if the animal had picked up any injuries or strains. Then he turned to the saddlebags again, to see what else was in them. The first thing that caught his eye was the lascar’s dagger.

He gave a dry chuckle.

I warned you, Horntail. It didn’t take long for you to lose it, did it?

Not long ago, its unexpected appearance would have given him cold shivers. Now he smiled, oddly glad that it was back. It might have been exotic magic, out of place in the Va-cherished Hemisphere, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t be useful.

He laid the knife aside, and turned to the other items. A pair of his boots was quickly pulled on to his freezing feet. Food and watered wine – excellent. He gulped down some of the liquid and ate hungrily, but was careful to keep some for later.

At last he was beginning to feel human again.
But she said I had a witchery
. He fingered his cheek. He hadn’t healed that, he was sure. That had been done by the unseen guardian. Or by Va. Did he have a witchery? He didn’t think so. He didn’t feel any different. Just chilled, and saddened. And utterly
stupid
to have made such a fool of himself over Mathilda. Furious too, with her. She’d played him, a lute player plucking all the right strings until he danced to her tune. She’d been prepared to send him to the block for treason.

The conniving, spoiled, treacherous little
…

He stopped the thought.
We were the ones who planned to sell her to a man she didn’t want to bed. By Va, who was without blame in all this?

In the last of the saddlebag pockets he found a few odds and ends such as his drawstring purse, his penknife for trimming quills, his bottle of tooth powder, a small bound book of tales that he’d bought for a lot of money on Printers Street and, right at the bottom, a plain gold chain, wrapped in a piece of lace-edged linen. Scrawled across the paper enclosed with it were the words
Gifted by
Mathilda, Princess of Ardrone
.

He rubbed his forefinger across the words, sadness welling up from a place of acid regret somewhere deep inside. Their moments of tenderness had been so beautiful, yet in retrospect, all he felt was a sour taste and scarring pain.

Va forgive her.

And yet – and yet…

Did he blame her? She had so few choices.

Oh, Mathilda.
He didn’t know whether to be heartbroken or enraged.

He rode in the direction of the coast, away from Chervil. He had to pass the oak shrine once more, but didn’t stop. There was no sign of its green-clad guardian, no whisper of her voice. So much had happened there, yet he was still not sure of the significance of any of it. Saved by witchery? Certainly. But
granted
a witchery?

He had to get to Vavala as soon as possible. He had to tell the Pontifect everything, even though his heart sank at the thought. She’d trusted him, and he’d made such a botch of things.

He’d need money for the journey, which meant he’d have to sell either one of Juster’s rubies, which after repeated swallowings he still had, or the gold chain. He’d do that the moment he reached the coast, in the port of Crowfoot. From there he could buy a passage on a flat-boat for himself and Greylegs.

Rubies or gold? He considered it for only a moment. In a small town it would be easier to obtain the real value of the gold – and Mathilda owed him. He certainly wasn’t going to be sentimental about a gift from her. The rubies he would give back to Juster one day.

Although he might keep Mathilda’s kerchief…

Stupid dewberry.
He’d sell that as well.

He rode on, decision made.

A little further down the track, before he’d even lost sight of the oak, he knew something was wrong. A flood of feelings jostled in his mind, none of which made much sense.

He was hungry, but he’d just eaten. Caterpillars. He needed caterpillars. There weren’t any. Beetles. Beetles would do.

What the…?
Not words, but pictures and weird emotions intruding into his head.

Someone was encroaching on his territory. Oh, that made him so
angry.
He puffed up, drew in breath. There, he’d gone, the interloper.

A worm. Good. Search for another. Hungry still.

Pox, he was going mad. His brain must have frozen last night! Fear, unease, contentment, belligerence, all piling up in an unrelated jumble, jabbering for attention, cluttering his mind.

Saker, stop thinking like a witless dunce. What’s the matter with you? Concentrate on where you are going.

It was cold and windy up in the high country, a place where birds skulked low in bushes, hardly ever seen. Their calls were wispy, yet carried far on the wind. But now – not only were the birds keeping pace with his horse; they were noisy, chattering, piping, warbling. They flew from one side of the track to the other, in front, behind, over his head. Greylegs startled and shied until she finally settled into ignoring them.

No caterpillars in winter. Only worms.

Oh, pickle it!
He was hearing the birds think.
As if they were chattering inside his head.
Dear Va, what are you doing to me? Let me find myself again!

He urged Greylegs into a canter and the horse responded. Together they left the birds behind, and he breathed steadily, reclaiming his thoughts.

Around the middle of the afternoon, after crossing the highest part of the mountain pass, he halted on the edge of the treeline. A stream and a patch of meadow grass gone to seed made it an ideal spot for Greylegs to graze, while he washed and filled his water skin. He rested with his back to a tree, watching the way the cloud teased along the crest of the mountains and drifted down into the folds, occasionally pouring into the pass like steaming milk into a pot. Sometimes, without warning, the mist would lift, revealing stark rock faces pocketed with snow.

As he watched, he glimpsed men and horses in the pass, dark outlines against a backdrop of mist. Immediately afterwards, birds shot out of the pass, thirty or forty bunched up in a compact flock. Just looking at them made him shudder with fear, and he knew – without knowing how he knew – that they were fleeing in terror. Alpine choughs. He’d seen them earlier in the pass, picking over the carcass of some small animal on a rock ledge.

He glanced up, expecting to see something in the blue sky above him, an eagle perhaps. There was nothing. The birds flew on, direct, silent, wings beating the air in remorseless desperation. They flew over his head, their fear as tangible to him as the yellow curve of their beaks and the red splash of their legs against the black of their feathers.

They passed on their agonising fear to him, until the drumming of his heart matched their wingbeats. His mouth went dry, his mind filled with a nameless terror. He grabbed up his water skin, snatched up the reins and pulled Greylegs off the grass and into the trees.

It’s the horsemen,
he thought.
Something to do with the horsemen
.

The trees were sparse, the undergrowth scanty. There was nowhere to hide. He placed Greylegs so that her outline was broken up by a few spare saplings, then flung Ryce’s cloak over the horse’s head to keep it still and calm under the dark of its cover. Holding the reins with one hand, he stroked Greylegs’ neck with the other. The kris, alive again in its sheath, pressed hard against his thigh in warning.

Only half hidden behind a spindly young birch, he stood straight and still, and waited. The kris radiated warmth, a feeling of gentle heat surging upwards, flowing around his body, encasing him.

The horsemen, five of them, rode past at a fast trot. The riders, stony-faced, looked neither left nor right. All were men; all were dressed in dark grey clothing unalleviated by colour or decoration; each was armed with a lance and sword. As they passed, dread left him leaning weakly against the tree trunk. The warmth gradually faded. He had the disconcerting idea that maybe the kris had saved him from being seen.

Dear Va, what were they?

And he thought he heard the echo of something Fox had said to him.
I hate you Shenat. I will never rest until you are all gone from this world.

Assassins, sent by Fox, gone to the shrine only to find him missing? Possible, but he’d never prove it.

He waited a while until he calmed, then removed the cloak from Greylegs. As he did so, he thought he glimpsed the momentary smudge of the black shadow on his fingers.

As if A’Va himself had passed by.

A man burst into Mathilda’s bedroom, flinging the door wide. She woke in fright and confusion, unsure what was real and what were the tendrils of a lingering dream. She sat bolt upright, crying out in alarm.

“Is it true?” the man demanded. He grabbed her, shook her hard enough to make her bite her tongue.

Ryce’s voice.

Aureen, awakening on the truckle at the foot of the four-poster, gave a shrill wail of shock.

Mathilda drew a deep breath, quietened the thunder of her heart. She stared at him, and wondered what he meant. He’d found out something to her detriment, obviously.

“Get out,” he snapped at Aureen, just as the two nuns, clad in voluminous white nightgowns, hands waving in silent agitation, came to the door. “Out! Out! Out, the lot of you!”

They scuttled away, all three of them, and he slammed the door shut.

“This is
my
bedroom,” Mathilda snapped back. “Pox on you, Ryce. What do you want?”

She used her anger to cover her consternation. In his whole life, he’d never threatened her, never really shouted at her, never done what he’d just done – shaken her awake hard enough to rattle her teeth. At dawn, what was more, for she glimpsed first light through the glassed window.

“You know fobbing well what I want!” he said. “An explanation! You’ve had me dancing to match your steps all your life, but that’s over now. This time I can’t be charmed by your smile. You told Father that Rampion raped you, but he didn’t, did he? You went to his bed and
seduced
him! And we were all too blind to see it. You thought you could stop Father sending you to Lowmeer. It must’ve been a terrible shock when you realised your lack of a maidenhead wasn’t going to change his mind. Thilda, you sent a man to be nullified for something
you
initiated!”

She shrugged and batted his hands away from her shoulders. “I was sold in exchange for the use of a port none of us are ever likely to see. What kind of a woman would I be if I took all that lying down? None of you cared, not even Witan Saker Rampion.”

Arranging a shawl over her shoulders, she asked, “Were you up all night? You look awful and you smell of sweat and horses and ale.” Before he could reply, she added, “Will you make me a promise, Ryce? If Regal Vilmar dies, bring me home.”

He stared at her, astonished. “You’re going there to get him an heir,” he said at last. “If you come home a widow, you’d have to leave any children you have behind. You do realise that?”

“Do you think I’d care?”

“I’m beginning to think I don’t know you at all.”

“You’ve never tried.”

“Too late to start now. The moment I arrived back, Father sent for me and kept me up half the night on this business of your wedding and how to treat the Regal. It seems Vilmar – a pox on the Lowmian swag-bellied haggard – is now off the coast of Betany. His ship has been sighted.”

“
Already?”

“He obviously wants to consummate the wedding as soon as he can.”

She swayed, suddenly dizzy, and lay back against her pillows. “And what does Father say?”

“Father is sending me to represent him at your wedding. I will escort you and your ladies to Betany, perhaps leaving as early as tomorrow morning. Prime Fox will come to perform the ceremony.”

“Consign Fox to a choiceless hell! I
hate
the man! He deceived me!” Abruptly she raised her hands to cover her face. “You treat your horses better than this,” she said in a whisper.