He spoke a few words of thanks and encouragement to each of us seven, all that remained of our cadre of twenty. When my tongue flapped loose, as has always been my worst failing, spewing some foolish comment comparing a soldier’s hardships and a king’s, he smiled as if my nonsense cheered him in the face of three thousand dead and a worse battle facing us at dawn. And when I chose to take the measure of the only king I was ever like to meet, staring boldly at him rather than dropping my eyes in deference, he did not avert his gaze.
Before or since, I’d never known anyone who left his soul so exposed for another man, a stranger even, to view—and so I witnessed King Eodward’s devotion to all who followed him and his grief for the price they must pay for their loyalty. Though I had already decided that the soldier’s life was not for me, I vowed right then to serve him until one or the other of us was dead—an easy promise, of course, as he was in his sixtieth year and had few battles left to fight.
As he rose to leave our fire and move on to the next, the king cocked his head at me again, half smiling, half grieving. “Your quick feet and saucy mouth remind me strangely of some I knew in my own youth, lad. If you’ve happened here from Aeginea, tell them I don’t think I’ll get back. Tell them…askon geraitz.” The words, neither Navron nor Aurellian, made no sense to me.
I scrambled to my knees and bowed my head. “Of course, anything you ask, Your Majesty, but I know not this place—”
His hand raised my chin, silencing me. “No matter, then, lad. Just dance.”
In the ten years since, I’d asked a number of people where a place called Aeginea might be, but no comrade or acquaintance had ever heard of it. Another of Serena Fortuna’s jests—of anyone in the wide world, my grandfather the cartographer would surely know.
Not that I would ever ask the mad old man. He had appeared at our house at random intervals throughout my childhood, pawing at me with ink-stained fingers and babbling meaningless words in my ear, pretending we were allies in the household warfare. Then he’d disappear again without changing anything, abandoning me to my enraged father and hysterical mother. If a bleeding child’s curses carried the weight of the gods, as some said, then the old gatzé had long since fallen off a cliff and taken a year to die.
Family. Not a topic to consider in a house devoted to the spirit’s health. It was a marvel any of my bodily wounds ever healed with such poison in my blood. Family was long over and done with. I kneaded my scalp and tried again to lose myself in the monks’ mournful music. Without result.
Max was the first member of the Cartamandua-Celestine household I’d glimpsed in twelve years. Contracted as Bayard of Morian’s hound. Walking straight into my refuge. Gods… My urge to run blazed like a new-stoked furnace, even as I argued how unlikely he was to return here.
Truly, Abbot Luviar’s role in this royal brawl ought to fright me more. Now there was a mystery worth the deciphering. If I, a man of thick skull and paltry skills, had come to see that the Duc of Ardra was an arrogant sham who would as soon sell the crown of Eodward as wear it, then why would the Abbot of Gillarine claim that prince’s rescue to be the salvation of Navronne? Had Luviar fallen into the same magical stupor as his monks and I had done, or had he watched as the Bastard of Evanore stole the eyes of the dead?
Gillarine’s safety seemed more ephemeral than I had hoped. Though not yet ready to abandon the place, I dared not relax the caution that had kept me free.
“Tell me, Brother Artur, do the Evanori warrior and his sickly secretary yet reside in the guesthouse?” I asked one of Brother Jerome’s assistants when he brought supper from the kitchen two days after Black Night. The unsavory thought had crossed my mind that the abbot was brokering some alliance between Perryn and Osriel through this Evanori “benefactor.”
“Nay, Thane Stearc and his party departed the day before Black Night,” said the grizzled lay brother, uncovering the bowl of carrot and leek chowder he’d brought me.
A thane! Not just some landed knight, but an Evanori warlord—descendant of a family who centuries past, along with the gravs of Morian, had bound their lives and fortunes to Caedmon, King of Ardra, thus creating the kingdom of Navronne. I dropped my voice to a confidential whisper. “It seems a scandal to find Evanori in a holy place. I was taught they served the Adversary in their heathenish fortresses.”
The monk’s broad brow crumpled. “No, no! The thane’s a scholarly man and Gillarine’s greatest benefactor since King Eodward passed to heaven. Thane Stearc studied here as a boy and has visited the abbey every month for all these years, bringing us new books and casks of wine, and donating generously to our sustenance.”
“But he serves the Bastard Prince…”
“Indeed not!” Brother Artur blanched at the suggestion. “Though he wears the wolf of Evanore while in Ardra to proclaim his neutral state, his house is Erasku, which straddles the border. The thane claims both provinces or neither as he chooses.”
Convenient, if one could get away with such juggling. The thane must be quite a diplomat or quite a warrior…or quite a liar. I hoped these monks were not so naive as to accept the lord’s word without solid proof.
The lay brother carried his soup to the other patients—monks wounded on Black Night. I ate slowly, so that when he brought his tray around to gather up my bowl and spoon, he had to wait for me. “So, Brother Artur,” I said quietly between bites, “I suppose you must carry a good lot of food to the guesthouse now.”
He shook his head, puzzled. “None at all. We’ve few visitors in the best times. I doubt we’ll see another till Lord Stearc returns.”
I dropped my bowl on his tray and slumped back in the bed, disappointed and mystified. No infirmary visitor had dropped the least hint of Prince Perryn’s presence.
The assault had left the abbey a dreary place. Brother Gildas did not show his face. Jullian spent a great deal of time in the infirmary, doing whatever small tasks the infirmarian assigned him, but scurried away whenever I so much as looked at him. Even genial Brother Badger wore a cloak of grief that lightened only slowly as the sun set and rose and set again, the life of the abbey taking up its plodding rhythm.
Though I had every reason to be satisfied with my prospects, Black Night and my odd experiences in the cloisters had left me on edge. I forever imagined dark shapes lurking in the shadowed corners of the infirmary. One night I broke into a nonsensical sweat when someone paused outside the horn windows with a blue-paned lamp and remained there for an hour.
To distract myself, I took to telling stories and reciting bardic rhymes in the hours between the monks’ prayers, though indeed I had to search through my store of experiences and fables for those that would not shock celibate ears. I also began taking regular exercise around the infirmary garth. My leg felt well healed, giving only a bit of soreness and stretching when I took long strides. Though happy to be up and about—activity suited me better than indolence now I’d made up for half a lifetime’s missed sleep—I was not yet ready to give up such a perfectly useful circumstance. I made sure to limp and grimace a great deal. I had a better chance of doing as I pleased if no one knew my true condition.
A tarnished silver medicine spoon I’d found in Brother Robierre’s chest of instruments and a blood-crusted gold button he’d gouged out of a soldier’s chest wound went into the packet under my palliasse—a pitiful lot of nothing. Memories of demon horses and gray-faced warriors left me chary of pilfering valuables from the church. Which meant, should I leave Gillarine, I’d surely need my book.