Bitterness colored his tone in the last sentence, though at what she couldn't say. At the consummation itself? Or that their marriage bed would be tainted by money?
Curling up against him, she asked, "Will we take meals together now?"
"Yes, once the Masque is over and most of the court has returned home."
"What is the Masque?" Gwen said. Word of it had spread throughout the palace, but no one had taken the time to explain it to her. "I've never heard of such a thing."
"It's a new fad," Druam replied. "Started by King Henrik. Like a ball, but where each patron dresses in costumes and wears elaborate masks. No one should reveal their face throughout the entire thing. A night for anyone to speak without repercussion."
"Is each earl hosting one?"
"No, just myself, though the king's court will hold one at the beginning of spring. The Treaty of Riverfen, signed here a hundred years ago, marks the end of the last war Dotschar has been in. All of us hope that the peace may last another hundred years."
"I hope so, too," Gwen mumbled as she snuggled deeper into his arms. Eventually, she fell asleep, exhausted by the anxieties of the day.
Deep in the early hours of the morning, she woke, aware that a heavy blanket covered her now and that Druam was not beside her. Paltry light, the first hints of dawn, filtered into the room. She pulled on a robe and stepped barefoot to the floor to explore the room. As her eyes adjusted to the low light, she saw that Druam had left, though his wedding clothes were laid out. She wandered over to them, touching the cold fabric. A table had been set behind his partition, with an empty goblet and plate of food placed on it. She upturned the goblet, watching as red liquid dripped to the floor. Then she crawled back under the covers. Her nether region felt sore and stretched, and a musty smell made her wrinkle her nose.
Sitting up, the robe on her shoulders and the blankets on her legs, Gwen waited.
At last, she heard the creak of the door, light footsteps on the carpet, the rustle of fabric – no doubt Druam undressing – and the curtain pulled gently open. His head poked in, and he saw her awake. "I'm sorry to wake you, love. Pressing matters required my attention."
"I thought perhaps it was all a dream."
Druam chuckled and climbed into the blankets beside her. "I hope it was a decent dream for you. Sometimes I wonder if all my life is a dream, especially now. Are you hungry? Do you need anything?"
"I was just thinking about my brother," Gwen confessed. She hadn't spoken of him in days; who could she talk to? "I pray every night that the Trials have ended, that he's safe, but...how would I know? I'm afraid for him, and I don't know how I could ever hear any news." It all came out suddenly, those nights of silenced worries. "I'm afraid, too, that no one here can ever learn to like me."
"If they see what I see, they will," Druam said, pulling her into his arms. "I'll arrange for some gatherings for you. As for your brother...whatever I find out, I'll tell you, as soon as I know. I'll send one of my men there now as my eyes and ears for the Trials."
"Thank you."
"Anything for my wife," he murmured as Gwen cuddled against his chest. She finally felt like she had found a new home.
Chapter Eleven
Sandu
IT'S BETTER Merick's gone. Makes my job simpler. Sandu wanted to think such thoughts, but his weak heart instead urged him to comfort Cara. She had been nearly silent for two days, staring into the trees or at the road.
Sandu whistled a strain from "Dinara the Fair," a song his grandmother used to bellow next to the campfire on long winter nights. He had taken the spare horse's lead, as Cara seemed apathetic.
Sandu noted her morose expression, eyes unfocused, mouth slack. Her ruddy cheeks had turned redder, her nose pink. The green flecks in her eyes were brighter than usual. She looked the same as Sandu's father had after Mumma's death: vulnerable, lost, and not quite sure how to deal with her grief.
"How are you feeling?" he asked, immediately regretting it. She's a product to be delivered. You're in this for the gold, don't forget that. Don't get attached.
Cara raised her eyes, gave him a blank look, and said nothing. For the better. She's nothing more than an assignment. Just get her to Riverfen and be done with it. For once, the small voice in the back of Sandu's head stayed quiet. A relief, though a minor one.
Drizzle turned the clay-textured dirt into sticky mud as day wore into evening. Sandu's cloak soaked through, his clothes clinging to his wet skin. No matter how many times he had lived through such an experience, he shivered at the cold and cursed the heavens. No one likes being rained on, he mused. Not even the farmers who need it to grow their crops. Beside him, Cara had pulled her hood up, only the tip of her nose visible from its depths.
Galen struggled on. The rain sleeted down in cold sheets, masking the surrounding mountains in misty grey droplets. Water trickled down their horses' necks and tangled their manes into fierce messes. The morass underfoot sucked at Galen's hooves, making dreadful, squishy sounds. Sandu hated mud.
"What's that?" Cara asked, pointing in front of them. A path, barely visible through the rain, cut away from the road.
"I don't know. Maybe a trail to a farm or an outpost? Could be made by animals."
"Let's take a look." Cara climbed from her horse, dropping into the mud like a stone. Eyeing with distaste the brown slime that coated her boots, Sandu reluctantly followed suit. He led the way, wincing with every step. Gods, he hated mud.
Sentinel pines and granite boulders marked the way, nature's statues that had stood solemnly for centuries. After about fifteen minutes, during which Sandu had been tempted no fewer than eight times to just turn back, they emerged into an open space bordered by trees and a rocky slope. A ruined keep interrupted the greenery, its roof crumbled in and its stone walls scorched from some long-past fire. Filthy water filled the parts of its moat which weren't strewn with rubble, and three of the four towers had collapsed, covered now with nature's slow green hand.
"It must be ancient," Cara mused, one hand pulling her hood back slightly. "Abandoned years ago, to be this worn down. Is it safe, you think?"
"Safe enough, though I'm guessing we're not the first ones to have found it. Wait here; I'll take a look around inside, make sure no one's holed up in there. If I'm not back in half a candle, go back to the road and continue to the next town. Leave Galen, though."
"Be careful."
As he drew closer to the keep, Sandu listened for voices and watched for tell-tale smoke. He scurried to the walls, flinching as mud squelched under his boots. No hollers, no silhouettes at the broken windows; good signs, all told.
Double doors must once have guarded the entrance, but only fallen hinges and wood scraps remained now. Scavengers had picked the place apart, leaving only the most worthless or heaviest objects. Sandu passed as quickly as he dared through the haphazard maze of rooms, met only by bare walls and cold floors. Just as he thought about turning back to fetch Cara, he stumbled on an inner room which smelled of woodsmoke and onions. It had no windows and no other doors. A wool blanket had been spread against the far wall, and a fire pit made of old stones occupied the center, still full of ashes and barely burning embers. A pot lay to one side, scraped clean by whoever lived there. Only one, Sandu thought, frozen at the threshold. A hermit, perhaps, or another traveler? Still, the keep was large enough to fit all of them, and no one had to know the other passed through.
Retracing his steps, Sandu padded down a different main passage than before and found a decent-sized tower room on the far side of the keep. Just down some stairs from it, a small scullery door let out into the woodlands. It was a perfect place to rest and keep the horses.
After collecting Cara, Sandu led her and the three horses to the scullery door. When the horses were taken care of, he pilfered the saddlebags for food. For the last two nights, when they slept beneath wayfarer pines and couldn't risk a fire for fear of prowlers, they had eaten only meat, bread, and an apple split between them. T
onight though...tonight they could make a vegetable broth flavored with spice, with bread to dip. And an apple each. A veritable feast in Sandu's eyes.
Cara left to gather firewood as Sandu set up their sleeping place. He laid out their blankets, placed stones in a circle for the fire, and chopped an onion and potato. By the time he had finished, Cara returned with an armful of large and small sticks. Most were wet, so Sandu used some of his paper to get the flames going. In a few minutes, a happily spitting fire warmed the room, and the stew began to smell of home, flavored with Valadi herbs.
Sandu watched Cara. Why does Laris Stanthorpe want her? What did she and Merick hide from me after the prowlers? Having never been tactful, he asked, "Why do you want to find your mistress? Why not leave it to the soldiers?"
Cara shrugged. Almost as if the question had started a chain reaction in her, she buried her face in her arms, then looked up again, her eyes sparkling with tears. With an anger Sandu thought rather unjustified, she wiped them away, took a deep breath, and another, until she calmed. His palms tingled with the temptation to reach across and place a comforting hand on her shoulder. I shouldn't have asked. I shouldn't have opened that door.
Outside, the rain danced a tarreta on what remained of the roof. Scooting a bit closer to the fire, Sandu watched the hungry flames devouring the sticks and branches, feeling the heat on his cheeks.
"Merick practically raised me," Cara said softly. She stared at the shadows, the firelight reflected in her eyes. "I was five when I first met him. He terrified me, but he's not all bad. Wasn't all bad. He brought me to the Nellesteres, to Renna. They were my family more than anyone else. Renna and I grew up together. Mumma only came to visit once in a red moon. Sometimes just once a year. It's been two years since I've seen her."
"I'm sorry."
"I thought it was normal at first. Until Merick came, Mumma took me all over, though I don't remember much of it. I wanted Mumma to stay with me. Every time I saw her, I begged her." Cara hesitated, eyes flicking over to Sandu's.
"What did she say?" Part of him really didn't want to know more, the small part that cautioned him against this bounty in the first place and reminded him of what he did to Jagger.
"She hugged me and gave me toys, books, dresses. Never promised anything one way or the other; always ended up leaving." Cara laughed a little, a sad sound.
"Where is your mother now?"
"I don't know." Firelight softened Cara's cheeks, made her hair a myriad of reds and ambers against dark brown. Wisps from her loose braid drifted across her face. It made him think of a Lofalin doll he had seen once in Brin, made from thin clay and painted white, a fragile and lovely thing.
"Renna's all I have left," Cara said. "We played and shared stories. She thought it great fun that I could fight like a boy. She'd get me into trouble sometimes, daring me to beat one of the farmer's sons in a brawl or mud fight. As she grew older, she became beautiful. I knew some rich man would come take her from me one day. When I told her that I was afraid of it, she promised me that wherever she went, I'd go too." She gave a bitter laugh. "I guess neither of us expected her to go where I couldn't follow. But now I have to find her, to make sure she's safe. She'd do the same for me."
But Sandu thought he caught something left out of her explanation, some secret she didn't want to share with him.
"What about you?" Cara asked. "Do you have a family?"
"Once," Sandu said. From the past, his mother's laughter welled up in his ears, his father's grumbling praises, the smell of Nan's sweet apple crumble, the creaking of wagon wheels through the dry ruts from D'Clet to Riverfen, mist kissing his cheeks in the hour before dawn on the morning when the prowlers attacked, screams all over the caravan, blood pooling beneath his feet, Mumma's last painful sighs before she passed and Father grabbing him, running, running for hours until they no longer could. Then Tambrey's voice whispered in his memory, her soft arms holding him as the children played–
Sandu took a deep breath and pushed the memories back down.
"Once?" Cara said. "What sort of answer is that? Don't you have any family, or a lover?"
"I've sworn off romance. It doesn't work for me." Sandu didn't want to tell her about the Valadi caravan he grew up in and its end, or about Tambrey and all that happened what seemed like a lifetime ago. Not about Father, unjustly imprisoned, and his own cowardice.
Veck bringing that up again. What right had she to his hard-won life? What right had she to know anything about him? She was his target, his key to wealth and freeing his father, nothing more. Not to mention the secrets she kept from him, too. His fists clenched, heat rising into his chest.
Anger is worse than the memories. It'll lead you down a road you don't want to travel again. Stop it, Sandu told himself. In the span of seconds, he willed himself to calm down. What harm can a memory do? Pick one of the easiest, and tell her that.
"My father raised me," he said. The safest – the only – story he could tell now. "We lived in Dunfrey, in the Barrowfort lands. Father was a brewer, like his old man; wanted me to be one, too. But I made friends with the wrong lads and spent all my time gambling. Lost what little money I had, and then my father's. He never hated me for it, though. When the debt grew too much, and to the wrong people, men came to take me to debtors' prison. Father hid me and claimed the debt as his own. So I left; I've been working ever since to pay it off and free him."
It seemed so...so horrible, when Sandu said it like that. Blunt. Like he didn't care at all. For the first time in months, hatred for himself reemerged. What must she think of him now?
He realized that, after he had finished, he feared Cara's judgment.
Damn. Vecking damn.
And still Sandu waited for her to speak, hoping she would not hold his past against him.
"I'd say we're about equal in tragedy," Cara said. "But there's always tomorrow, isn't there? There's time to make things right again."
Damn, it's going to be Jagger all over again. And the small voice piped up, Well, maybe not. She hasn't been delivered to Stanthorpe yet.
Chapter Twelve
Sandu
A CRICK in his neck finally caused Sandu to abandon all hope of sleeping more. With a loud groan, he kicked off the blankets. As he pulled on his boots, he looked over to where Cara had slept. She was not there.
"Aw, vecking hells," he muttered. Cara's blankets had been neatly rolled and tied to the bottom of her pack, which was propped against the far wall. With his old, damp-smelling blanket around his shoulders, Sandu wandered into the keep. Voice low, he said, "Cara? Where are you?"
Sandu had gone through what felt like half the keep before he spotted her. She sat on a window bench, arms wrapped around her legs and head resting against her knees as she gazed out at the forest below. At his approach, she turned to look at him.
"I've already readied the horses for us...I couldn't sleep," Cara said. The darkness beneath her eyes told the truth of that. "I was thinking about Merick."
"It's..." Sandu couldn't think of anything cheerful. "It's going to be a long time before the grief is gone. Even then, it'll pop up now and then, when you don't expect it to."
"I shouldn't have left. I should have stayed in Kell, or gone to Stonetree like Havershim said. I should have realized–"
"And what would have happened if you stayed? Even if you had known that the wound would reopen, Merick would still have died. There's nothing to do against dark magic." Sandu sat across from her on the bench and looked down at the forest, grey and blue in the pre-dawn light. "You lost your friend. It'll hurt for a long time. But you have to move past it if you want to make something of yourself. Would Merick want you to give up what he died for?"
Cara gave a slight shake of her head. Gathering his thoughts, Sandu said, "I don't even know Renna that well, but I intend to help you see this through. We'll find her." The moment the words left his mouth, he regretted them. Gods, he had a job to do!
In the early morning, though, s
itting across from Cara and seeing the expectations in her expression, Sandu weakened. Five marks, compared to a human life? Sickened by his own turmoil, he stood abruptly, unsure whether he'd actually deliver her to Laris.
"We should get going," he said brusquely.
"Sandu...thank you."
He didn't look back at her. "Come on, then."
Sandu remained silent as they trekked back through the keep. Damn, damn, damn! Befriend your target and you'll end up with guilt as your bed partner. Sandu, you weak-hearted bastard. Don't trust her, don't give in. Gods give me the will to see this through and see my father out of prison. Five marks, and he'll be free.
In the first days after giving his report on Daggenhelm to the Realm's Protectors, Sandu had drunk himself to sleep every night and woken only to drink again. Hadn't it been for the greater good? Jagger was no longer a threat to the people of Dotschar, no longer an assassin for hire by those with too much money and too little conscience. Fauste's Shiv deserved to be culled.
But this girl is innocent. She's no longer a child, but only barely; a child that seeks to rescue her lost friend. Isn't that a noble cause?
Through the keep came the snort of their horses and Galen's high, braying whinny. Sandu sprinted past Cara, dashed around corners and leapt crumbling stairs, desperate to reach the bottom. Behind him, he heard Cara yell, "Sandu?"
"Our horses!" he shouted back. "Someone's trying to steal them!"
His small dagger in hand, Sandu ran onto the grass outside the keep. Still picketed, the horses perked when they saw him and Cara. Sandu slipped on the grass as he came to a stop.
In front of Galen was a tall, tall man with blonde hair, his back to Sandu. He reached up, stroking Galen's nose, and she pushed back at his hand playfully.
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