Page 22 of The Maiden

“You are a fool,” Thal croaked up at his son. “She will make your life miserable.”

Rowan smiled. “I do not have a choice in the matter. As I am to be king, she is to be mine.”

“Yours?” Lora asked. “What is going on? Rowan, tell me you aren’t planning a…a union with that woman. She is rude, thoughtless, uncaring of anyone but herself, and she has no respect for your right to be king. She is altogether unsuitable to even live in our house much less in a position of honor.”

“Mmm,” was all Rowan said, and turned back toward the archery range.

• • •

Jura trained harder than anyone would have thought possible over the next few days. She attended no banquets of welcome for the arriving contestants nor did she leave the fields to greet them. She was up before dawn, running for miles on the long, winding trails outside the city walls. She jumped across wide streams, walked across four-inch-wide logs, practiced throwing her spear and shooting her arrows. She stopped only long enough to wolf down vast meals and at night fall into bed into a deep, dreamless sleep.

“Jura,” Cilean said on the fourth day, “slow down. You will be too tired to compete.”

“I must be ready. I must win.”

“You want to win?” Cilean asked softly.

“Winning to me is making sure that you win. He must have someone of wisdom on the throne beside him. His vanity and stupidity are overwhelming. Without you beside him, I fear he will destroy Lanconia.”

Cilean frowned. “Jura, I’m not so sure you’re right. He doesn’t seem vain at all. He trains almost as much as you do and he oversees the men all day. He is very fair and impartial in settling disputes and he is very kind to the women who are arriving for the Honorium.” She stopped and laughed. “Do you remember three years ago when we came upon that hunting party of Zerna? You and I were alone and they stopped to water their horses.”

“Yes, we hid in the bushes and waited for them to leave.”

“Remember the leader? That big woman with the scarred face?”

“We heard her speak and thought she was a man.”

“Yes,” Cilean said, “that’s the one. Her name is Mealla and she has come to try for Rowan’s hand in marriage.”

Jura smiled wickedly. “He deserves such as her.” Her face changed. “But we Irial do not. Cilean, you must win.”

Cilean looked at her friend sharply. “Why is it that you hate him so much? Since he opened the gate, most of us are willing to give him a chance to prove himself.”

“Yes,” Jura snapped, “all of you are willing to forget how he does not belong here, how he is taking Geralt’s rightful place. You look at his pretty form and do not see the treachery inside his soul.”

“I did not know you knew him so well.”

“I do not know him at all,” Jura answered, and knew she was giving herself away. The man haunted her every waking moment, and in the morning before she fully woke, she reached for him in her bed. “I do not want to know him. Are we going to talk all day or train?”

Jura beat everyone at every contest during training. The Honorium was to be three long, hard days of games, and the contestants were awarded points for how they placed in the contests. At the end of the first day, one third of the entrants with the lowest scores were eliminated, another third at the end of the second day. On the third day, all the games were replayed but only with pairs of contestants. The loser of each match was eliminated. By the end of the day there would only be two women left and the winner of the final match, a hand-to-hand battle with wooden poles, won the prize—which happened to be the queenship of Lanconia. Twice Jura received messages that she was urgently needed in some dark, secluded spot but both times she refused to appear. He thought she was a lightskirt, someone who was easy prey for his lusts, and twice she had fallen under his spell, but she wouldn’t be such a fool again. She wondered how many other women he was secretly seducing. Every time she saw one of the trainees return from Escalon, her face flushed, her voice hushed, her eyes alight, she wondered if she had been with Rowan.

“And who has he chosen for his bed?” she blurted once to Cilean. She was drenched in sweat and her muscles ached but she wouldn’t stop training.

“He? Who?”

“Thal’s son, of course,” Jura said tightly. “Who else does everyone speak of? Who else is Lanconia obsessed with?”

“You seem to be also,” Cilean said thoughtfully.

“Me? I hate him.” She threw her javelin with ferocity and hit the target exactly in the red center.

“How can you hate someone you’ve met only once? You should come with me tonight and speak with him.”

Jura retrieved her javelin. “Is that all you do? Speak with him? No doubt he is as celibate as a saint and he does not bed a different woman each night.”

“I have not heard a whispered word of what he does in bed at night. If he has a woman, he is very discreet about it. Somehow, I do not believe he does. I think he sleeps alone or everyone in the city would know about it. The chosen women would no doubt brag.”

“Brag about what? That some soft English—”