Shana Abe Read online

  In the end he left it as it was, more out of concern for destroying the balance of a fine sword than out of any reverence for a dead saint.

  In the dim light now the brilliance of the little chip dwindled to almost nothing, outshone by the polished silver and cabochons of rubies of the hilt.

  Marcus sat at his table, right where the elder of the church had sat, and examined the grain of amber once again, marveling that it had never fallen out, no matter how fierce the battles had become.

  Avalon had stood so close to the wooden edge of the table, closer than even Marcus had when he faced the pope’s emissaries and their self-serving demands. She had seemed fearless. She obviously had no idea what those men of God had been capable of doing to her.

  Balthazar entered the solar, walked leisurely over to a chair of dark oak and cracked leather.

  “Behold,” he said, waving his hand about. “She walks.”

  Since Bal was the third person to come to the laird and inform him that the bride had chosen to leave her chamber, Marcus only nodded, still staring at the amber.

  “She cannot go too far,” Marcus said.

  “Oh?” Bal leaned back in the chair.

  Marcus gave a short laugh. “There is nowhere much to go, in case you had not noticed. Half of Sauveur is a ruin. Outside the rain has not eased.”

  “It is so,” Bal admitted.

  The rain crashed against the leaded glass window of the room, running down the panes in smears, rubbing together the brilliant September colors of the trees and grass outside. At least the habitable portions of Sauveur would be dry and solid for the coming winter. That much they had managed to ensure.

  “Did you know my father kept horses in what used to be the west gatehouse, after the stables collapsed?” Marcus watched the rain outside. “I remember that. He said the horses were more important than the stones.”

  “A wise man,” said Bal.

  “Now, there’s an extraordinary thought. That Hanoch might have been wise.”

  “Horses are valuable. Stone is free.”

  A woman poked her head in the study, looked at Marcus, and said, “Begging yer pardon, laird, but the bride is out, ye know.”

  “I know,” he replied.

  The woman eyed him expectantly, then left when nothing more seemed forthcoming.

  Marcus shoved a hand through his hair, finally looking down at the mess of letters and scrolls and bits of paper that littered the table. There was so much to do. It overwhelmed him so easily, he wanted to close his eyes and wish it to oblivion. Or wish himself to oblivion. Whichever.

  “Your lady requires some clothing to be delivered,” said Bal now. “I believe you may expect it quite soon.”

  “Clothing?”

  “It will be sent up from the castle of your enemy.”

  “What the hell does she need clothing for?”

  Bal looked away. Now a guard entered the chamber, gave a short bow. “The bride is loose,” he said, concerned.

  “I know,” Marcus sighed.

  “She is in the buttery,” continued the guard.

  “Let her be,” Marcus said.

  The guard bowed his way out.

  The papers were stacked up in precarious piles across the desk. There were ledgers and scrawled notes in his father’s handwriting, almost illegible. One regarding the payment of an ewe and her lamb for the loss of a hut. One on giving three sheep to the traveling priest, payment for a visit. One on a dispute over eight reams of woolen cloth. One on the formal protest of one farmer regarding another, claiming he had plowed five rows of oats into the other man’s land, set aside that year for barley. It was endless.

  “So, what do you do now, Kincardine?” Bal watched from his chair, his words easy, affable. “Do you think to wait for your king to grant you leave to wed the woman?”

  “I already have his leave,” Marcus said, bristling despite the casual tone of his friend. “I’m not waiting for that.”

  “From the English king, then. The pope.”

  “I don’t give a damn what they say. I’m not waiting for their approval, either.”

  “But you do wait. For what, I wonder?”

  Marcus shrugged, looking over the stacks of paper again. Bal studied him for a moment, then spoke once more.

  “Are you not worried these English will come back and take her?”

  “No,” answered Marcus. “That won’t happen.”

  “You are certain of this?”

  “It doesn’t matter. They may try, but they will not take her. We will be wed before the pope can make up his mind to be bribed by d’Farouche.”

  “She is a jewel, a worthy prize for any man,” said Bal, testing him, perhaps.

  “Not just a prize,” Marcus responded. “She is a woman first.”

  Aye, how well he knew that: flesh and lips and sweet warmth, burning passion, kisses like illumination to his soul.…

  “A jewel,” said Bal again, “craved by powerful men. Men who think to steal her from you, who enlist the aid of the holy and the mighty to do it.”

  Marcus scowled down at the papers, each word a sharp threat to him, as they were meant to be.

  “And yet, you wait for her,” Balthazar finished, and the question was still there in his voice.

  “I have to …” Marcus trailed off, unable to put into words what he felt. He wanted to gain Avalon’s trust; he wanted to prove to her that he was worthy of her. He wanted to avoid anything that reeked of his father: force and violence and crushing dominion.

  He wanted to win her, he realized.

  Bal had been watching him, silent, assessing his thoughts with that slightly uncanny way he had.

  “To woo such a woman,” Balthazar said now, “surely takes the bravest of men.”

  Marcus brought his hands up to his eyes and rubbed them, letting out another sigh.

  The cook came into the room. What was her name again? Tara? Tela? Tegan.

  “Laird” said the cook. “The bride has left the buttery. She is off to see the south tower, she said.”

  “Thank you.”

  The papers would wait. They had waited this long, some of them years old already—what the devil had Hanoch been doing all that time, anyway?—and they could wait a day more. Or a week. Marcus pushed back his chair.

  “Where do you go?” asked Bal, his voice rich with mirth.

  “South tower,” said Marcus as he left. “I don’t believe I have taken in the view there yet.”

  The south tower had needed no major repairs, as Marcus recalled. The stairs had all been fit, the beams still solid. Perhaps Hanoch had concentrated on maintaining it because it faced the Auld Enemy, England. Marcus had continued his father’s regimen of keeping a steady change of guard in that tower, a constant eye on the horizon.

  But the guard was not looking out at the horizon when Marcus had finished climbing to the top.

  He ducked out to the wall-walk to discover the rain had stopped as if on command, and now a field of stars was poking through the remains of the clouds above, sparkling even though the setting sun had left painted bands of teal blue and pink and lavender in the western edge of the world. And surrounded on all sides by these celestial diamonds was Lady Avalon d’Farouche, talking amicably with a group of men and boys on the wet walkway, puddles of the night sky everywhere.

  He had to stop to admire her, he couldn’t help but do it. If Trygve had ever truly seen an angel in his visions, Marcus doubted it had been more glorious than Avalon right now, with her ivory hair that caught the starlight, almond-shaped eyes framed in black, an easy smile on her face at the question of one of the boys.

  He had never seen her like this before, relaxed, unguarded. As she talked she moved the hand that was out of the sling in a graceful arc, slicing the night air in a gesture that was at once feminine and strong. She did it again, slower, a demonstration. Another boy added a comment and she laughed, prompting the same in those around her. Marcus moved closer, fascinated.


  “No,” she was saying, “no one has ever actually fled from me, not in battle or otherwise, I imagine.”

  She broke off before she saw him; he could see her head lift from talking to the child, those marvelous eyes turning in his direction.

  He could watch her forever. He wanted to stare into her eyes, violet or heather or whatever they were, and stay there, happy at long last, living in her world, the splendor of Avalon.

  But when she finally spied him the smile disappeared, her manner grew guarded. The moment withered.

  Don’t fear me, Marcus thought, half a plea, and could have sworn he saw her falter.

  She had heard him. He knew she had.

  By now the others had noted his presence, the guards snapping away from the group, the boys looking up at him with open mouths, then back to her.

  “Good evening,” he said, because he could not think of anything else.

  The boys chorused back his greeting; Avalon offered only a downward glance to her feet.

  They all stood like that for a while, until Marcus ventured closer. The youngsters broke apart and allowed him in their circle.

  “Can ye hit, laird, as the bride does?” asked one bold fellow.

  “Well, I can hit, but not like your lady. She has a special skill.”

  “Anyone can learn it,” Avalon said quickly.

  The boys’ attention swung immediately back to her, hope and excitement teeming around them.

  “Will ye teach us, milady?” asked the same boy.

  Avalon hesitated, looked over at Marcus and down again. Faint starlight adorned her cheekbones, her lips, the very tips of her lashes, marking her in utterly feminine lines with cool blue light.

  “I will, if I can,” she said at last.

  Marcus crossed his arms over his chest. “Why couldn’t you, Lady Avalon?”

  It was another challenge; he didn’t seem able to stop himself from issuing them to her.

  She lifted her head, gazed at him deliberately. “I will if there is time,” she amended, and the boys gave their enthusiastic approval to this.

  In their excitement they began the lesson plans without her, discussing between them when would be best to start, who should participate, and where to hold it.

  “A moment, lads,” broke in Marcus. “Our lady has an injury. We must wait for her to heal.”

  The boys settled down amid exclamations of disappointment. Avalon listened to them, then shook her head.

  “We may begin as soon as tomorrow, if your laird allows it,” she said. “I can tell you what to do, and you may practice it before me. It would be a good beginning.”

  Twelve pairs of young eyes swung back to him, and Marcus gave in with apparent grace. “As you wish,” he said to Avalon, and had to bow his head to hide the triumph he felt. One more small step taken to bind Avalon to Sauveur. He silently praised the persistence of the boys.

  It seemed, however, that persistence had its drawbacks. The boys would not leave even after Marcus gave them his look of dismissal. They had turned back to Avalon and were again peppering her with questions, talking over each other, hardly waiting for her to respond. Avalon noticed his growing impatience; he saw the corners of her lips tilt up whenever she looked in his direction, each time the smile a little more obvious.

  Eventually he had to physically break apart the group and motion them away, telling them it was time to go back down to wherever it was they came from, that the lady would still be here the next day to grant them an audience.

  They dispersed at once, running off into the night, excitement undimmed about what great fighting the future would hold for them, armed with the battle skills granted by the warrior maiden of their infamous curse.

  Avalon faced the damp stone wall, looking south over the sea of treetops and sheer mountain faces. Marcus noted her sling looked different, a different color, a different pattern. He only somewhat recalled that moment in his study with those deceiving men, but it seemed to him Avalon had done something rather amazing at the time, something about removing her sore arm from the sling to prove her health. When it happened he had watched it from a distance; it had been one more ingredient in the volatile mixture of words and intentions in that room. But now Marcus wondered why she did it.

  The emissaries would have been appalled if they thought she had been mistreated. They would have taken any injury and held it up as an example to suit their claims. Marcus was certain Avalon knew this as well as he did. And yet, she had acted in his favor. She had dismissed their concerns with princessly dignity and spared Marcus the necessity of taking action against them.

  He came up beside her on the walk. “New sash.”

  The top of her head reached just over his shoulder; she inclined it now, looking down at the sling.

  “Yes. Your wizard gave it to me.”

  “My wizard?”

  “Your holy man,” she corrected herself. “Balthazar.”

  Marcus grinned. “A wizard. How flattered he would be to hear it.”

  “Don’t you think he’s like that?”

  “Oh, aye, I agree with you.” Marcus leaned his elbows on the battlement, examining the sky. “Wizard is a good word for him. You found him out right away.”

  “It’s his bearing,” she replied, serious.

  He couldn’t help the question. “And what do you call ray bearing, my lady?”

  She really seemed to consider it. A slight crease formed between her brows. “You … you are the laird. You walk with authority, and I think this is natural to you. But there’s more. You also walk with open eyes, and I think you have learned this.”

  “Open eyes,” he repeated, captivated.

  “Awareness. Even caution. And swiftness. Underneath all that command is the swiftness, like a falcon. A hawk.”

  In Egypt, as a squire, he had seen a desert hawk once up close, tethered to a vendor’s arm but not hooded, with ferocious eyes to match the color of the sand and wings as long as a man’s arms. The hawk had been wounded, perhaps from its capture, and kept one taloned foot drawn up close to its body. Marcus had wanted to rescue it but Trygve had not allowed it, calling it a frivolity. Which should have given Marcus a clue to the knight’s true nature, now that he thought of it.

  Marcus had never forgotten that hawk, its tethered leg, its spirit uncrushed and undaunted despite its pain.

  Avalon was nodding to herself. “A hawk,” she murmured, then seemed struck by a thought. “A hawk may kill a snake.”

  Marcus couldn’t follow her line of reasoning. “Am I the snake or the hawk?” he asked, not really joking.

  “The hawk,” she said instantly. “You are the hawk. You must remember that.”

  Anyone overhearing them would think them absurd, Marcus thought, but at her words he felt a soaring kind of relief, as if she had unlocked a private fear in him that he had never even known existed and blown it away on the wind. Following this was gratitude, great gratitude. He was the hawk.

  “Your people have been talking to me,” Avalon said now. “I think you should know.”

  “Know what?” he asked, still feeling bouyant.

  “They are troubled, my lord.”

  “I wish you would call me Marcus,” he said, letting slip the thought that had been on his tongue. She looked taken aback.

  “It’s not that difficult,” he teased. “A small name, really.”

  “You’re not paying attention to me, my lord,” she admonished. “I speak of your people.”

  “I am,” he countered, surrendering to her mood.

  “They come to you with their troubles, you say.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, Avalon, what do you expect? You know what they think of you, who they consider you to be. Are you truly surprised that they seek your comfort?”

  “But there is nothing I can do for them! I’ve tried to tell them!”

  “For many it’s enough simply that you’re here.”

  “It’s not enough, you and I know that. Marcu
s,” she said, startling him, “I beg you once more to take the wealth I have. It would help so much.”

  “Don’t you know?” he asked softly. “Haven’t you realized it yet? Your wealth is not the legend. It’s you. They want you, Avalon.”

  The crease in her brow became more pronounced. She couldn’t seem to manage a reply to this, so she looked away again, shoulders slumping.

  He edged closer to her, ventured one hand around her waist, and to his wonder she allowed him the gesture, unmoving, as a doe might be when confronting a foe.

  He didn’t want her to feel apprehension with him. He didn’t want her antagonism, her anger or dismay. He wanted her to want him as he did her, Marcus realized, and more. He wanted much more than that from her, things he could not even define. It almost made him afraid, the feelings that hovered in the recesses of his heart that all sang of Avalon.

  “Will you marry me?” he asked, both of them touching so carefully.

  “I cannot,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  He had expected this answer but it hurt him anyway, a deeper pain than was warranted, considering their circumstances. No matter. Her response changed none of his intentions. They would be married.

  Far off in the mountains a lone wolf cried as the moon began to rise, heavy and round, the color of bronze.

  “It’s late,” Marcus said, but he did not move his arm.

  Avalon didn’t reply. Like an enchantment her hair now took on the reflection of the moon, growing warmer and more golden. Her skin picked up this light as well, casting her with a suggestion of the tan of the people he had known in the Holy Land. Her eyes were dark and unfathomable. She leaned her head back to look up at him, exotic angel, and her next words jarred him back to their reality.

  “My lord. How did you learn of Bryce’s intention to wed me to his brother?”

  “A note. We were sent a note.”

  “May I see it?”

  He shrugged, removing his arm. The spell had drifted away into the night. “I don’t see why not.”

  Marcus took her back to the only place Avalon felt she knew in Sauveur besides the little room she had stayed in. She had spent the late afternoon exploring as she could, walking aimlessly from place to place until she grew tired of the crowd that followed her and announced she was going out to look at the rain. The procession of young boys, however, had been undaunted by the prospect, and even seemed disappointed that the rain had stopped by the time they found the south tower.