He opened his arms in invitation, Kerian covered the distance between his window and his bed with swift strides.
“Kerian,” he said, whispering against the tangled gold of her hair. “Kerian, is it really you?”
“You dreamed,” she said, almost laughing. “Now you doubt?”
As though to answer, the king wrapped her up in his arms. He smelled of soap, and clothing taken from scented drawers, and closets hung with sachets of shaved sandal-wood. He shone, a king well tended, and held her as though the marks she left upon his faultless bed clothing- soot and grime and sweat stains-were not more than the faintest imprint of a perfumed body.
“Come,” Gilthas said shortly, slipping out of bed. His night robe moved in silken grace around his body. “You look hungry, love, and thirsty. I’ll find you something-”
Kerian shook her head, a gesture used to still men and women lately grown accustomed to heeding her. The brusque gesture surprised him, and she did not apologize.
“My lord king, I’m feeling suddenly in need of a bath.”
He laughed, quietly for the sake of this secret arrival. “All this way for a bath? Well, then, let it be. I will summon Planchet. He will see that you have one and all else you wish. Sit. Here on the bed. It will be brought.”
There were kettles of steaming water to warm the marble tub kept in the bathing apartment off the bedchamber. With starlight glittering in through wide, tall windows, Kerian bathed long, and later she showed her king how much she had missed him. Afterward, by fading starlight, in her lover’s arms, she looked carefully at him, his face in repose, and she touched the downy cheek inherited from tiie mysterious human who had fathered his own father, Tanis Half-Elven. He stirred to her touch, and she hushed him.
“I’m sorry to have waked you.”
“I’m not sorry you did,” the king said.
He reached for her, but she stopped him, a hand on his chest. “You think I have come home.”
The bluntness of her statement startled him. Gilthas nodded.
“I haven’t. You said I couldn’t, my king. You said if I went away, I could not come home again. I went, and I have been to many places and done …many things I never thought I could or would. You were right: I am back now but not home. Let me tell you, love, how it has been with me.”
She spoke past his doubts, she told the tale of her outlawry, of the first killing at the Hare and Hound, of the burning of the Waycross. She told of finding her brother and losing him. She did not-and this surprised her- speak of Elder, but she spoke well of the half-elf Jeratt, of his band of outlaws and young Ander whose silence on her behalf had made him one of them. She told the king of the elves of the dales, of Felan and his widowed wife, the child orphaned before it was born. She told him all this and more.
“We are outlaws all, my love, and yet, in truth, we should stop calling ourselves that. We must stop naming ourselves outlaws, for though others say so, we are not. We are more.”
Gilthas sat forward, eager to hear what caught his imagination.
“We are some of us outlawed.” Her smile twisted wryly. “All the gone gods know that I am, but many of us are Kagonesti, shunned for being who they are. Others are old soldiers, Gil, forgotten warriors of Silvanesti and of your own kingdom, who once served your Uncle Por-thios.”
Outside his chamber, Planchet spoke with a servant, and they heard footfalls come near and retreat as though a message had been given and sped.
“My lord king,” she said, pride shining in her voice, “we are the ones who through the summer and autumn harried Lord Thagol’s force of Knights in the western part of your kingdom, and we have fought not as brigands and outlaws. We have fought as warriors.”
Planchet had long ago taken away her worn clothing to be washed and mended, but he had not touched her weapons, her bow and quiver, the dagger and the sword she had taken from a Knight after she’d killed him. She now slipped the blade from its sheath. The steel gleamed in the moonlight, sliver running on the edges.
“This sword, my king, I have brought you. This, and the fealty of my heart and the loyalty of men and women who have not forgotten the days when they were free.”
His eyes shone, his poet’s soul leaped with fire as he took her meaning. Outside the window, the sky grayed with the coming day. Gilthas let his glance dwell there for a time, and then, his kindling glance darkened.
“Things aren’t going well for us, Kerian.”
“The alliance?”
He nodded. “My mother has hung her hope on an alliance with the dwarves for as many years as I’ve been alive, Kerian. It’s become more urgent now. The dragon is building her cache and her war trove. The Senate has heen told the tribute in weapons must increase.” He twisted a bitter smile. “Of course, the tribute in gold, silver, and gems must not decrease. We hear from friends outside the kingdom that the dragons are growing restless. Once Beryl gets all she needs of us, what will she do? We need a way out. All of us, Qualinesti and Kagonesti.”
A way out!
Like the sudden glint of starlight on the sword’s blade, Kerian knew her moment, the moment when something bright would be born.
“My king, my love, you need time. There is no way to truly end the dragon’s hold on us or Thagol’s grip. That isn’t the goal anymore, is it? The goal must be to confound and confuse them until Thorbardin can make up its mind.
“I have come with the coin to buy you the time you need. I have come to bring you warriors. They are few now, but the Wilder Kin in the forest have reason to appreciate us. I think this force of warriors I offer can be as many as you desire.”
Gilthas looked at her long, his face alight, his hope shining. “Who are you?” he whispered, and she thought she heard a note of superstitious wonder in his voice, as though some mage of old had cast a change-spell upon her.
Kerian took his hands in her own. “Why, I thought you knew. I am the King’s Outlaw, my love. I am your weapon, I am your warrior, and I am your lover, my lord king. Never doubt it.”
In the golden firelight he looked upon her as though upon something magical, powerful, and his.
There, in his bed, they began to speak of something no one else had ventured to discuss in all the years of the dragon’s occupation, through all the depredations of her Knights. While Senator Rashas and his fellows enjoyed the hospitality of the king they professed to honor and yet in truth despised for a weakling, the king and his outlaw began to speak of resistance to all they had until now endured.
The King’s Outlaw left Wide Spreading the next day, a freezing day of black and gray. She left with her breath pluming out before her, carried by the following wind. Gilthas had provided food and a pouch ringing with steel coins. A fat quiver of arrows hung at her hip, a fine long bow across her shoulders. In its sheath was the bone-handled knife she’d had from a dour dwarf, the sword she’d taken off a battleground.
Kerian went up into the forest with her hope rising. What she’d said to Gil about the Kagonesti having reason to be grateful to her and her fighters was true. She would try to rally them all, the elusive tribes, and ask if they would join her and make the elf king’s cause their own. First, before all, however, she would try her brother, for these were kin.
She knew the way to Eagle Flight’s encampment, though her brother had not told or shown her. She knew because Jeratt knew, for he came and went when times allowed, to see his niece Ayensha. He used to say to Kerian, “You know the way, but don’t go unless you have to,” and by that she knew that her brother would not have welcomed her. Now, this snow-threatening day, she decided she would go, and it wouldn’t be up to Dar to decide whether she should come.