“I had business,” he says, leaning back in his chair and offering Lady Fliad a knowing glance. She shares the look with him. They’ve arranged this together, then. Why? I can’t see it and that bothers me. “As did you, I hear. You’re busy guarding those precious to the king.”
I don’t say anything to that. I won’t be baited or played.
“And in the course of business, one of your vassals has harmed what is mine – a priceless pair of creatures are dead, their lives unredeemable. They would have grown to a breeding pair and now I’m out my investment in them as well as their lives. I demand a life for a life.”
“You won’t have it,” I say grimly my eyes flick back to the kitchen door, and to my surprise, I see the innkeeper is not alone there, hiding in the shadows. Rhurc is there and so is Iva, tucked in tight beside him. My breath hitches in my throat.
“Then I will plead my cause to the king when we reach the front,” Sir Rainside the Younger says easily. “The Lady Fliad is my witness, both to the original crime and now to your failure to uphold the law and exercise your duty as a knight. If we testify it will mean not just the boy’s death but yours and all your vassals present tonight.”
A dozen dead for one boy. And yet I will not give him up. I believe his story.
“Lady Fliad?” I ask, raising a single eyebrow. Will she truly testify to this lie?
“What would you have me say, Sir Oakensen?” Her eyes widen innocently, though I do not think her guiltless. “‘Tis a grave deed. And to see you forsake your duty is just as troubling.”
I clench my jaw against her words.
“I see, perhaps, another way,” she says, idly playing with Hessa’s ear as she speaks. My sweet dog settles down on the floor, wiggling slightly as if she longs to greet me but is being patient. I long to hold her, too. It would loosen something that is growing tighter around my heart.
“I long to hear it, fair lady,” Sir Rainside says. I despise his honeyed tongue. “For I am not a man of violence and would be sore grieved to see it done.”
Not just honey-tongued but fork-tongued. No word of that is truth.
“You have lost two creatures of great value to you,” she says with a sweet smile and wide eyes. “A great tragedy. You ask for a life for a life, and that is fair. But why take a human boy when you could request from Sir Oakensen another creature. This pleasing dog which has been his, I hear, since boyhood.”
I lurch a step forward before I stop myself, and I want to scream when I see the look of knowing pleasure in Sir Rainside’s eyes before he widens them artificially and says, “Why lady, your proposal is as wonderful as any the Great Seer Mervelin could have devised. Truly your wisdom exceeds that of women.”
I force myself to steady calm, but my hands are shaking, my grip tight – painfully tight – on the pommel of my sword. I can see in my mind how it could go. A quick draw and one fast step forward, arcing it over my head and around in a double-handed strike, and I could have his head off. Slight pivot and a backhand and hers would join it.
No.
I force myself to breathe. Unwrap my fingers from the pommel one at a time.
If I do that, we will all pay. And I will have taken two lives that are devious but not worthy of a death sentence.
My breath shudders through me.
“Hessa,” I say, reaching for her, but Lady Fliad grips the skin of her neck so she can’t come forward. My dog whines, more insulted than hurt, but the sound aches through me for I know what comes next.
“I don’t think so,” Lady Fliad says. “If you take her back first, who is to say you will relinquish her. She goes to Sir Rainside directly. Isn’t that so, Sir Knight?”
“I am mollified, dear lady,” he says with a sweeping bow. “The dog for the boy. It is agreed.”
I haven’t cried in five years. Not once. My vision is hazy now. I don’t dare blink, or they’ll splash down my face and I’ll be unmanned before all.
I grunt, wheel, and I’m slamming the door open and striding into the whirling snow before I break and slaughter everyone.
12
IVA FITZROY
Isleep in a bundle of blankets in the stable with the soldiers. I offered to sleep in the second cot in Lady Fliad’s room, but she laughed at me.
“Let’s dispense with the fiction that we are traveling together to protect your virtue,” she’d said. “We both know which of us is meant to sleep in inns and which in stables.”
“Would you not like me to guard your reputation, my lady?” I’d asked and the furious look she’d leveled at me made my cheeks flare red and my mouth snap shut.
I am happier in the stalls anyway. There was only one room free in the inn and Lady Fliad is less warm than the drafty stall where I lay my blanket. Drafty it might be, but the warmth of animal bodies and the soft snuffles of the horses help me drift off in no time. The soldiers offer me the spot with the cleanest straw, kind even though they are skittish with fear. Gragor is bundled in a corner, his face hidden in a blanket and his shoulders shaking. I move toward him but Rangen stops him with a shake of his head.
