by Beverley, Jo
Perhaps her prayer to the more kindly goddess of the fields angered sour El. She had lifted her head to try to decide her best path back to the riverbank over the packed debris when she saw what she had feared. A large chunk of the cart bridge had decided to join the rest of itself. It was moving down the river in a majestic chaos, rolling in slow splashing turns that sent gushes of white water shooting up. It was coming straight at her. It was unavoidable.
She scrambled up on the debris raft, slipped, fell between pieces of wreckage, and for one nightmare instant was trapped beneath it. Then she saw a slice of daylight and frantically clawed her way up into it. She got her head above water, hooked an arm over a tree trunk, and then just had time to see the bridge bearing down on her. “Damn you, El!” she shrieked to the merciless sky. He’d taken everything from her—father, lover, even her precious blue boots. Taking her life would probably be the only act of mercy he ever committed.
Much later, she would wonder if she said those words aloud, or if a god did not need the words spoken to respond to them. The last thing El would do was give mercy to anyone. By a superhuman effort, she pulled herself up on the floating junk just as the bridge hit it. Timbal saw it turn as it came, saw it crashing toward her, and then saw a blast of white light.
A DRENCHED WOMAN awoke on the bank of a river. Her wet hair was strewn across her face. Her clothes were waterlogged, her skirts tattered. She was barefoot. Blood was thick on her hands. It took her a little while to understand that a cut on her head was still seeping blood. And she could not recall who she was or how she had come to be there.
The sun had come out and a thin light warmed the air. She managed to stand, and then to limp. She followed the river downstream until she saw a bridge, then climbed up the bank, through a shallow edging of forest, and found a road. She followed it, staggering gamely along until a woman driving a donkey cart came by and gave her a ride.
She awoke later in a room at an inn. She gazed around her groggily, then lifted her hands to look at the heavy bandaging that wrapped one of her forearms. Her head was bound also, her hair cut away from one side of her skull. She could not remember who she was or how she had come to the inn. A girl came to her room, bringing her a simple meal on a tray. “You’re Timbal,” the girl told her. “You used to work here, but you left here months ago. Looks like you fell in the river, or maybe got beat up and left to die in the storm. But don’t you worry. You’re safe here, and with friends. The King’s Patrol has been looking for you for quite a while. They found your father’s wagon and team, and the men who killed him. They had to sell off the team and wagon when they couldn’t find you, but the money they got for them has been waiting for you for a while now. So don’t you worry. We’ll take good care of you.”
It was all too much to take in. It took several long days for her to accept the past the innkeeper and his employees assigned to her. It took longer than that before she could cross the room without staggering sideways. Gissel, the pleasant girl who had been tending her, assured her that she had plenty of money to pay for her care, but Timbal soon insisted on coming down and resuming her tasks at the inn. The work seemed familiar and pleasant enough. Bits of her old life came back to her, and she fit them together as best she could. No one could tell her where she had gone after she left the inn’s employ, or how she had come back, and eventually she let that year of her life go. The money from her father’s team and wagon gave her a nice little nest egg, and she was able to add to it with her wages from the inn.
She cut the long hair on one side of her head to match the short curly crop that was rapidly covering the scar where the healer had stitched her scalp closed. Soon she could serve in the tavern again as well as cook in the kitchen. She made friends easily with the regulars and was a favorite with the King’s Patrol when they were in town. Her life, she decided, was good. The only time she became melancholy was when minstrels came to the inn to entertain, and even then, it was only certain old songs that brought tears to her eyes.
Three months after her accident, she was waiting tables on the evening that the good news arrived from upriver at Timberrock Keep. “Lord Just has an heir!” a young teamster announced loudly as he entered. Timbal was shocked at the roar of approval that went up. That night it seemed that everyone in the little town and surrounding farmsteads flocked into the inn to raise a mug to the wonderful tidings. Timbal was kept busy trotting back and forth from the kitchen to the hearth tables, and only learned in snatches of gossip from Gissel why the rejoicing was so raucous. It was no newborn child they celebrated; the people of Lord Just’s holdings had reluctantly given up the hope that their beloved but crippled lord could sire a child. Instead, they had lived in fear that his lands and holdings must be inherited by his cousin Lord Spindrift. All knew how he had already plunged his own inheritance into ruin and taken all his folk with it, enacting taxes no one could possibly pay and running up debts that would never be settled. The prospect of the reckless young noble becoming their lord was now at an end.
Lady Lucent had traveled to her home, taking with her a minstrel loyal to her and her husband, so that her adoption of her sister’s son might be witnessed and made legal before Lord Spindrift could mount an objection. To hear the teamster tell the tale, it had been a plot long in the making, with the minstrel sworn to secrecy and the lady herself begging on her knees that her sister would give up her youngest son to them. By all accounts, he was a good and likely lad, open-faced, friendly, and an excellent horseman. All the folk at Timberrock Keep were rejoicing, and all who lived in Lord Just’s holdings could now know and share the good tidings.
Timbal rejoiced in the lively trade and good spirits that provoked such excellent tips that night. The names rang familiar in her ears, but of course they would; had not she worked at this very inn since before her accident? She was accustomed to names and bits of old news that jangled oddly in her mind and almost stirred a memory to the top.
So there was no reason for her melancholy to deepen over the days that followed. Yet it did. She awoke weeping in the dark of the night, felt a weariness that had no reason, and could not find a smile for anyone’s jest. She knew her life was good and nightly thanked Eda for blessing her. But, as she explained it to Gissel, “I cannot find my heart. I feel I have lost something, that I am missing something very important, and can know no peace until I find it.”
“You lost your father not that long ago,” Gissel ventured, but Timbal shook her head.
“I grieve him. I recall him, in flashes. His face seen by firelight, and how his hands clasped my shoulders, and even that he taught me to thank the goddess for every good fortune. No, Gissel. I recall enough of him to miss and mourn him. But there is something else. Something I had and I lost.”
“Tomorrow,” Gissel announced firmly, “we will tell my father we need a day off and we will walk up to Smithfield. It’s the next village on the river. We’ll visit my cousins, for I want you to meet Seck. I believe you’ll like each other, and he may be exactly the cure for whatever you’ve lost.”
Timbal was reluctant, but Gissel pestered her until she agreed. Her father agreed to give them both the day off, for trade was slower in winter. But he frowned at Gissel’s plan to visit her cousins, reminding her, “Seck has been seeing the farrier’s daughter. I heard he was quite taken with her.”
Gissel shrugged that off. “Perhaps he is, but I am not. And once he meets Timbal, he will likely forget all about scrawny Missa and her shrew’s tongue.”
They set out the next morning, catching a ride with a carter that Gissel knew. He was taking a load of late cabbages to Smithfield and would be happy to give them a ride back as well. Timbal sat on the tail of the cart while Gissel shared the seat with the carter, and soon divined that this was a ride that had been arranged well in advance of any favor that Gissel hoped to do for Timbal. He even kissed her before he set them down at her cousin’s house.
Her father’s gossip was correct. Seck was not even home t
hat day, having gone to his sweetheart’s house to help her father repair a fence. Timbal found she didn’t care. The cousin’s house was a noisy place with several small children and an adorable new baby. The women there were as friendly as Gissel, and Seck or no Seck, the visit lifted Timbal’s spirits. She was reluctant to bid them farewell and lingered as long as she could. It was evening when they set out for the Smithfield inn where Gissel’s carter was going to pick them up for the ride home.
“Oh, and if I’d known, I’d have sent you on your way sooner, so you could have had a bit of music there, too,” Gissel’s cousin told her. “I’ve heard rumors of the minstrel playing at the inn. Tall and dark he is, and setting all the girls to swooning over his voice, but not a one of them will he look at! They say he mourns a lost lover, and always plays his last song to her memory.”
That was enough to pique the curiosity of both girls, and they hurried, shawls up against the light rain, until they came to the inn. Gissel’s carter was late, but they found a table near the back. Gissel’s cousin had been right. The inn was crowded with a mostly female population. The minstrel was repairing a harp string when they came in, his head bent over his work. “I’ll get us some cider while we wait for your carter,” Timbal offered, and Gissel declared, “He’s not ‘my’ carter. Not quite yet!”
“Oh, but he will be,” Timbal called over her shoulder and made her way through the throng to reach the tavern keeper.
The minstrel struck up while she was trying to get the man’s attention. The chords rang strangely familiar to her ears. She did not recall learning the song, but she knew it. It was about a warrior come home from his wandering too late. His love was lost to him, carried off by death. A strange prickling ran over her skin, lifting the hair on her scalp. Slowly she turned as he sang of his lost love, and her raven hair and her tiny hands. Then he sang of her blue boots.
Cider forgotten, she pushed her way slowly through the crowd, ignoring the unkind comments of those she jostled. She found him by the hearth, seated on a low stool, his harp leaned against his shoulder as he played. His fingers knew his strings, and as he played, his eyes rested only on the chair before him. Enthroned on the chair were a pair of blue boots. They were clean, but water stained. She knew them. Then suddenly she knew herself. She looked at the minstrel. Her eyes devoured him, and at the sight of him, a flood of memories thundered through her blood.
Azen did not see her. Not until she reached the chair and took the blue boots from the seat. Wordless and pale, he said nothing as she sat down and pulled them onto her feet. But when she stood, he was waiting for her. He was shaking as he embraced her. “I thought I had lost you!” he managed to say through the uproar of the crowd’s delighted response. “Gretcha told me you were dead. That they’d found your boots on the riverbank, that you’d thrown yourself in!”
“Gretcha lies about many things.”
“Yes. She does. Blue Boots, you must never go away from me again.” He folded her close and held her tight.
“Eda willing, I never shall,” she promised him.
Jacqueline Carey
Jacqueline Carey is a New York Times bestselling fantasy/romance novelist best known for her Kushiel’s Legacy series. The first novel of this series, Kushiel’s Dart, won the Locus Award for best first novel in 2001 as well as the 2001 Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award, and was listed by both Amazon and Barnes & Noble as one of the top-ten fantasy novels of the year. Since then, there have been five more books in the series, including Kushiel’s Chosen, Kushiel’s Avatar, Kushiel’s Scion, Kushiel’s Justice, and Kushiel’s Mercy, and the start of a related series with Naamah’s Kiss. Carey has also written the Sundering books, Banewreaker and Godslayer; a stand-alone novel, Santa Olivia; and a nonfiction book, Angels: Celestial Spirits in Legend & Art. Her most recent book is Naamah’s Curse, the second book in the Naamah sequence. She lives in Michigan.
Here’s a compelling and intricate tale that follows the consequences of a promise between star-crossed lovers down through the generations—one with quite a high price in blood.
You, and You Alone
Dying is an ugly business.
I am dying; Anafiel Delaunay, born Anafiel de Montrève. When I am dead, they will call me the Whoremaster of Spies.
This I know.
And I deserve it.
There is blood, too much blood. I cannot count my wounds. I only know it flows without ceasing, and the world grows dark before my eyes. Pain is everywhere. I failed, and we have been betrayed, attacked in my own home. Gods, there were so many of them! While I honored my oath, honored the request the Dauphine Ysandre made of me and turned my attention to intrigue beyond the shores of Terre d’Ange so that she might wed her beloved Alban prince, I missed a dire threat closer to home.
My beautiful boy Alcuin is dead or dying; I cannot tell. My vision is fading, and I cannot hear him. I told myself I was honoring my oath when I raised him and made him a member of my own household, but I lied to myself. I trained him and used him for my own ends, he and Phèdre both. Like a fool, I failed to see that the work didn’t suit him as it did her, that Alcuin took no pleasure in Naamah’s Service, in being an object of desire for the nobles of Terre d’Ange.
And yet he forgave me and loved me anyway—a love far greater than I deserved. I had forgotten that life could hold such sweetness.
Even so, I will fail him one last time here at the end. As the darkness grows thicker, there is only one man toward whom my thoughts turn—one man loved, lost, and eternally mourned.
My lips shape his name, and a faint whisper escapes me. “Rolande.”
I remember.
A DAY BEFORE I was to depart to begin my studies at the University of Tiberium, my foster-sister Edmée was nowhere to be found in the manor of Rocaille, but I knew her habits well enough to guess where she had gone, and I rode out in search of her.
Sure enough, a half hour’s ride from the manor, I spotted her mare tethered outside a lavender field, idly cropping grass. I tethered my own mount nearby and plunged into the field on foot.
The sun was high overhead, hot enough that sweat began to trickle down the back of my neck. I plaited my hair into a braid and persevered, trudging past fragrant rows of lavender humming with honeybees until I came upon Edmée lying on her back in the dusty soil, arms folded behind her head, eyes closed, her face turned to the sun.
“Good day, near-brother,” she murmured without opening her eyes.
I sat beside her. “How did you know it was me?”
She shaded her brow with one hand and peered at me. “No one else would have thought to look for me here. You pay attention to things no one else does.”
I studied her lovely face, trying to gauge her mood. “Are you angry with me?”
“For leaving me here?” she inquired. “Or for agreeing to serve as my panderer to Prince Rolande?”
A sharp comment from Edmée was a rarity, and I felt myself flush with anger. “If you don’t want—”
“No, no!” She sat up with alacrity, reaching out to take my hand. “I’m sorry, Anafiel. You’re doing a service to the family, and I’m grateful for it. It’s just … I don’t know how I feel about being used to advance my father’s ambition.” She squeezed my hand, searching my eyes. “I need you to be my advocate, too. I trust you. If you think Rolande de la Courcel is someone I could come to love, I will believe you. But if you don’t …” She shook her head. “I cannot wed a man I could never love, heir to the throne or no.”
“Never,” I assured her, all traces of resentment fled. I had known Edmée de Rocaille since we were children. Even as a girl, she had a sweetness of spirit I had quickly learned to cherish, and she was truly as dear as a sister to me; dearer, mayhap, since I had no blood siblings of my own. “I promise, if I don’t find the Dauphin to be kind, generous, wise, warm-hearted, and perfect in every way, not a word of pandering shall escape my lips.”
Edmée laughed. “Well. You might allow him a min
or flaw or two. He is allowed to be human.”
“Oh, no,” I said seriously. “Perfect in every way. For you, I insist on it.”
She eyed me fondly. “I’ll miss you.”
I leaned over to kiss her cheek. “I’ll miss you, too.”
Edmée tugged my hand. “Lie with me here a moment and look at the sky. When we’re apart and missing one another, we can look at the sky and remember that the same sun shines on us both.”
I obeyed.
The sky was an intense, vivid blue. The scent of lavender hung all around us, so strong it was almost intoxicating, mingling with the scent of sun-warmed earth. The buzzing of the industrious honeybees was hypnotic, making me drowsy. Closing my eyes, I reveled in the feel of the sun on my skin, thinking how much I would miss Terre d’Ange. Between my childhood at Montrève and the seven years I’d been fostered at Rocaille, I’d lived all my life here in Siovale province. I couldn’t imagine calling anyplace else home.
The beginnings of a poem, a classic Siovalese ode to the landscape, teased at my thoughts.
“Do you think you’ll like him?” Edmée murmured. “Prince Rolande?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “They say he’s high-spirited.” I cracked open one eye and peered at her. “And handsome.”
Edmée smiled. “I hope he likes poetry.”
“I hope so, too.”
WAS I TRULY that innocent and carefree in those days?
Yes, I suppose I was.
Remembering hurts.
PRINCE ROLANDE DE la Courcel, the Dauphin of Terre d’Ange, did not like poetry.
I discovered this in a Tiberian bathhouse, approximately one hour before the recital that was meant to be my introduction to the Dauphin.
