“Inos…”
He paused. She wondered if he would dare try to kiss her, and how she would react. It was rare indeed for the two of them to have a moment alone, but she sensed that this was for more than idle chat. How long until Aunt Kade tracked them down? Then she noticed the concern in his face.
“Andor?”
He seemed to be having trouble finding words, and that was rare indeed for him. Suddenly he broke away from her and pounded his fist on the balustrade. “I should never have come here!”
“What? But—”
“Inos… your Highness, I… I told you the first time we met! I said then that I could not stay long. A month, I said. I have been here five weeks.”
How her heart stopped dancing. Indeed it seemed to stop altogether. “You are leaving?”
He spread his palms on the marble and stared out over the dark-shrouded trees. “I must! It tears me to ribbons, but I must leave. I have given my word.”
Happiness cracked, shattered, crashed down in a million shards like breaking ice. And a brainless little princess could find nothing better to say than: “When?”
“Now! At once! My horse is to be ready at midnight. I have stolen every minute I could. I must be in Shaldokan by dawn.”
Inos took several deep breaths and forced herself to consider the matter rationally. She was only a child, after all. Andor was a man of the world—charming, learned, cultivated, experienced…
“There is an elderly friend…” Andor paused.
“Please! The details do not concern me.”
It had been inevitable. She should have known. She had known, but she had not admitted it to herself. While visiting friends, as the gentry of the Impire so often did, Andor had taken pity on a lonely youngster. He had amused himself by passing the time in her company. It had been light entertainment for him. He probably did not even realize that for her it had been life itself, that he had saved her sanity in the boredom of Kinvale, that he had shown her what life was really for, that if she lived to be a hundred—
“Yes, they do concern you. To this man I owe a great debt. He is frail and he needs make a long journey. I promised to escort him, and the time is come.”
After all, Inos should be grateful that she had enjoyed five whole weeks of such a man’s company. The fact that the rest of her life was going to be a barren desert…
Andor turned to her again. He took her in his arms again. “But I swear to you, my darling, that I will return! I vow by the Powers and by the Gods that only my solemn word already pledged would drag me from you now.”
Her heart went mad. Darling?
“I have asked you for no commitment.” His voice was taut, his manner intense. “And I ask none now. I beg you only to believe two things—that nothing in this world but honor itself would drag me from your side, and that nothing save death will keep me from returning as fast as I am able.”
“Andor… Oh, Andor! There is danger?”
He laughed, as if to dismiss such childish fancies. He paused. Then he sighed. “Yes! There may be danger. I could deceive most women, but you would see through my lies if I denied it. And I owe you the truth. If this task were something—anything at all!—that I could delegate to others, my love, then I would never hesitate. But there is some risk.”
Oh, Andor! Danger? And had he said LOVE?
“I will return! And when I do return, my most adored princess, then I shall kneel and beg you to accept my service—” He pulled her against him, and the whole world seemed to whirl away into nothing. There was only Andor, Andor’s so-powerful arms clutching her tighter than she had ever been held, Andor’s superb male body hard against her, as she had often dreamed that one day it might be, Andor looking down at her with starlight shining in his big dark eyes—eyes that should be full of joy, and instead were haunted by the agony of parting.
“My service,” he repeated softly. “My life. I came to Kinvale to while away a few days until I must go to aid an old family friend. You lost a brooch; I returned it and lost my heart. Even that first day, I knew. You are like no other woman I have ever met. If you want a knight to slay your foes, then my arm is at your command, and my blood is yours to spill. If you want a stableboy, then I will be your stableboy. Kennelmaster, poet, boatman… I will be for you whatsoever you want, your Most Wonderful Highness, Forever. And if, once in a while, you might condescend to smile in my direction, then that would be all the recompense my soul would ever seek.”
She could not answer. It was unbelievable. She had not dared to hope. She raised her lips to be kissed—
Light flamed across the balcony as Aunt Kade pushed aside the drape. “Inos, my dear, they need another couple for the quadrille.”
3
Summer aged gracefully.
As the first blush of fall was tastefully tinting the leaves at Kinvale, the legions of winter marched in triumph into the hills of Krasnegar. Like a defeated army in retreat, the workers fell back on the shore cottages, there to regroup and make a last defiant stand. The hilltops were white, the skies dark, and even the salt tide pools showed ice in the mornings. Wild-winged geese, wiser than men, fled southward overhead, honking sad warnings.
Now the nights were as long as the days. The causeway could be crossed in darkness only if the moon was full and the clouds scanty, but one tide in two did not give enough work time to clear the backlog. Every year these last two weeks were critical. In some years the moon was helpful; in others it was not. The wagons splashed out onto the causeway as soon as the tide ebbed, and the last crossing was made in the teeth of the flow. Often on the island side they did not waste time climbing to the castle—urgent hands threw out their loads on the dock and sent them back for another. Men and horses worked and rested, the wagons themselves rolled unceasingly, and when the tide was high they brought their cargoes to the landward end of the causeway and went back at once for more. The piles were still growing larger instead of smaller.
To the ephemeral settlement by the shore cottages came the herdboy Rap, driving in the charges the herders had guarded jealously all summer so that they might die now. He arrived just after sunset. Flakes of snow drifted aimless in the air—a warning from the God of Winter, but not yet a serious assault.
Rap fastened the corral gate, threw his tack on the heap, and headed off through the gathering darkness in search of food. He was bone-weary and grubby inside his furs, and he had a gratifying stubble on his lip, but his most urgent problem was hunger.
The shingle beach was an inferno of controlled confusion. Here the excess cattle were being slaughtered and butchered, their flesh salted into casks, bones boiled, hides cleaned and bundled for later curing. Blood and entrails were being collected and made into sausage. It was only here and at this time that fresh meat was freely available to the common folk of Krasnegar, and his mouth watered at the thought of it.
The flickering flames of the driftwood fires danced sideways below the wind, throwing unearthly glows on the high stacks of hides and peat and hay. Curls of snowflakes swirled over the hard dark ground, seeking sheltered places in the shadows to make small drifts. The wind brought smoke—tainted first with delicious cooking odors and then with the unbearable stench of the abbatoir. It brought the sound of cattle bellowing in the corrals and the rush of waves on the shingle. Men and woman hurried by, swathed in the anonymity of fur, stooped and huddled against the cold like bulky misshapen bears.
As he picked his way between the grotesque mountains of produce, Rap wondered how many wagonloads they represented. He wondered also how many days were left before the road would close. But those were Foronod’s problems, not his. The king’s factor must be a literate man, so however Rap might serve the crown of Krasnegar in his coming manhood, it would not be in the post of factor. He found the grub line and joined on the end, noting that most of the men and women there looked just as listless and filthy as he did.