She sat frozen for a moment, staring at Kindren’s ghostly white face and blank eyes, before shaking her head.
“I won’t,” she whispered.
“I have a certain lady in my possession that might think otherwise, sweet sister.”
Aully looked at him, wishing she could shoot spears of fire from her eyes and kill him on the spot.
“I know to change your thinking so greatly will take time. I give you a month. A month alone in the cellar with these as keepsakes.” He picked up Kindren’s fingers and held them out to her. “I want you to spend that time thinking over all I could give you, both as an ally and a husband. And when you come to me with your answer, it best be the right one. For the next time you see me, it will not be the young prince who feels my blade, but our mother. And trust me when I say that there is no one waiting for her return, no one that does not think she is already a breath away from death. Should you deny me, or betray me again, it will not be her fingers I leave with you in your cell. It will be her head.”
CHAPTER 15
I should have sliced Catherine’s throat when I had the chance, the deceitful bitch.
These thoughts ran through Moira Elren’s mind as she urged her horse onward into dusk’s waning light. She ripped into a stick of salted beef, swallowing it quickly and then spitting out the salty residue before lifting a skin of hard liquor to her mouth and swigging it down. Her mouth was in horrible shape, her teeth aching and gums bleeding, the unfortunate result of the sickness she’d suffered soon after leaving Port Lancaster.
It had been horrible; her stomach had begun to cramp, her insides revolting against her. She’d spent nearly three weeks holed up in a small hamlet just outside Gronswik, choking down concoctions to heal the illness. It felt like the longest three weeks she’d ever experienced, and the only way she’d made it through was by focusing on her hatred of Catherine and her burning desire to see Rachida again. Failure was not acceptable, and with sheer stubborn will she fought through.
“Should we keep riding or camp for the night?” asked a deep male voice. Moira looked to Rodin, one of the sellswords trotting his horse beside her. His expression was stern yet hopeful while he ran a hand over his shaved pate.
She glanced at the vast fields stretching out to either side of her, half overgrown with weeds. “No. Omnmount is an hour’s ride from here at most. We keep on the road. We’ve had far too many delays as it is.”
“Very well, milady,” Rodin said, and he pulled back on the reins, retreating to where his cohorts rode behind her.
Moira considered the five of them, and a small part of her started hating Catherine Brennan a tad bit less. The woman couldn’t have been all bad; she had allowed her to have her pick of the sellswords under the employ of the house, after all, and the five she’d chosen had been her lifeblood since leaving the city, both literally and figuratively.
The five called themselves “Movers,” and Moira knew them each by a single name: Rodin, Gull, Tabar, Willer, and Danco. They were a mostly stoic, headstrong bunch, lifelong friends from some tiny village in the Northern Plains. The Movers believed in the virtue of skill over all else, or so Gull, their quiet leader, was fond of saying. Gull was a man of nearly indistinguishable features-his hair sandy and straight, his nose slightly crooked, his round chin a bit too small for his face-which made him not the most handsome of men. However, his gray-green eyes were intense, and he was the best among them with a sword. He was also prone to lengthy, self-righteous tirades while they sat around the nightly cookfire, tirades his fellow Movers would then debate for hours before finally agreeing with their leader, if they ever really disagreed in the first place. They weren’t the brightest bunch, but they held tight to Karak’s tenets while damning the god himself, which Moira appreciated. Also, their worship of those of ability was vital to her cause. She had bested each of them in duels over her extended stay in Port Lancaster, and ever since they had treated her with near reverence. It was the reason she’d chosen them in the first place. She would rather surround herself with talented, faux-intellectual dullards who worshipped her than with a man like Bren Torrant, who would betray her for a sack of silver.
She heard one of them pick up the pace behind her, and she swiveled in her saddle, expecting to see Rodin there once more. Instead, it was Willer, the youngest and smallest of the bunch, who had droopy eyes and a head of unkempt chestnut hair. Willer was attached to Tabar like a growth and rarely left the taller man’s side unless he had something to prove.
“Lady Moira,” Willer said softly. “How long will this meeting with the merchant take?”
Moira shrugged. “Who knows? It’s up to Cornwall Lawrence. If he wishes to discuss the contents of Lady Catherine’s letter, it might be awhile. If not, it will take only moments, and we can strike out for the docks.” She let out a sigh. “And please, don’t call me ‘Lady’ again.”
“Many apologies. . Moira.” Willer’s eyes grew wide and eager. “The moon is full tonight. If this meeting doesn’t take long, what do you say to sparring beneath the moonlight and then kissing each other’s wounds until we feel them no more?”
Again, Moira sighed. That was another annoyance about the Movers; to them, the carnal pleasures were just as much a game of one-upmanship as swordplay, which meant that Rodin wasn’t the only one nipping at her heels. She counted herself lucky that each of them was too noble to have abandoned her while she was on her sickbed.
“I’ve told you before, Willer, my pearl is reserved for one woman only.”
He nodded, dejected. “That’s right. The maid. Penetta.”
Moira’s hand shot out seemingly on its own. She snatched the young sellsword by the collar and yanked “him” toward “her” so violently that he almost fell from his saddle.
“Wrong. And that name will not pass your lips again,” she whispered.
He looked confused, but still he said, “All right.”
She released him, and he repositioned himself in the saddle, brushing off his boiled leather jerkin as if he could brush away his embarrassment.
“Willer, go back to your mates. I wish to ride alone for a while.”
“Yes, Moira,” he replied, and did as he was told.
After that they all rode in silence, hooves clomping on packed dirt and the chirping of insects the only sounds. Dusk passed into night, and no one appeared on the road, which was not surprising. It was rare enough to find a carriage or rider about during daylight hours, and the women in the towns they visited said they stayed locked in their homes with their children after dark, for fear of bandits. That was a fear Moira saw as unfounded because not a single man crossed their path during the journey, brigand or otherwise. It was as if the whole male population of Neldar had up and left. . which, in a way, she supposed they had.
Before very long the road veered to the southwest, and the fields around them gave way to clusters of huts and cabins. All were silent and still; no candles burned in the windows, no telltale puffs of smoke exited the chimneys. These were Omnmount’s border settlements, where the transient men and women who toiled in the Lawrence fields put their feet up after a long day’s work. Yet they seemed abandoned. She paused for a moment, looking this way and that, searching for signs of life. In some of the windows, she could see human outlines bathed in shadow and the occasional flicker of light off someone’s eyes.
“There is no one here,” said Gull. “All have fled.”
“Stay quiet.” Moira put a finger to her lips. “The people are hiding. There must be a reason for that.”