by Jean Johnson
The work was intricate and consuming…for hand and for eye. Her mind and her heart ached, however, free to wander, free to think.
Morganen said I was one in five. If he hadn’t seen me burning alive at that moment in time, I would have died. And another woman would be here, right now. Someone else would have caught Saber’s eye…and probably a lot smoother than I did, she thought, flushing a little at the memory of how she had hit him, had bitten him, had yelled at and treated him. I don’t even see why he fell in love with me.
She stitched a little more, changing threads to a slightly darker shade of tan-peach to sculpt the shadow of his cheekbone, carefully blending it into the lines of the other ones for a few passes before solidifying the color, to blend the two shades without an unruly, abrupt line between them.
A thought stilled her hand.
We both drank from the same potion-cup; Morganen could have cast a second spell…a spell to make him only think he’s in love with me. And to make me…care for him. She carefully skirted around the topic of love where it concerned herself. She wasn’t ready to examine if she loved him utterly and unconditionally; she was afraid she might find out she didn’t. Which made that thought even worse. Biting her lower lip, Kelly forced herself to focus on the tapestry, taking extra care in placing her stitches while the turmoil went on inside her. Everything here was just a little too different for her to trust her own feelings.
Embroidery soothed her, particularly something as painstaking as portraiture. She switched threads when the current color grew too short to work any further and began the carefully curved, sculpted lines of his hair, arcing up and out from the smooth stitches of his forehead. That meant she had to dig into the embroidery chest to see if she had enough of the right colors to properly describe his honey-blond locks. Just after she set the fourth stitch of the new thread, the door of the master chamber opened and Saber stepped through.
Saber could tell instantly that something was wrong. She was biting her lower lip, yet he wasn’t making love to her, which was the only other time she ever did that. Closing the door, Saber crossed to the window seat she was sitting on. His portrait was set in the freestanding workframe angled in front of her, illuminated by a pair of carefully positioned lightglobe stands. When she didn’t even look at him as he sat down beside her, he guessed that whatever was worrying her had something to do with him.
“Will you tell me what is wrong?”
Her lower lip trembled; she released it. He was being so nice, it made her heart ache and her eyes sting. “I…I’m afraid.”
“Of the men in the ship, or of something else?” Saber asked, hoping it wasn’t him after all.
“Something else,” she murmured, keeping her gaze down. She couldn’t even look into the eyes stitched on her embroidery.
He had to ask. “Is it me?”
“No…yes…I don’t know.” Her lip went back between her teeth.
That hurt. Saber drew in a breath around the pain in his heart. “I don’t want you to be afraid of me—”
She shook her head. “Not you—I’m afraid…that you don’t really love me.”
Saber blinked. He cupped her cheek, turning her face toward him, though she didn’t raise her gaze. “Not love you? How could that be? You are my true love, my Destiny—”
Shaking her head, she looked up at him. “Morganen said it himself: I was one of five! How can I be your ‘true love,’ if it could have been any one of us?” She stared at him in anguish, her lip catching briefly between her teeth before she went on. “How do we know he didn’t slip another potion into that Ultra-Tongue drink? One that…that made you think you’re in love with me?”
Something about the way she put that gnawed inside of him. Met up with other things she had said, and how she had said it. Saber stared at her. “You don’t love me.”
Bite, pause… “I don’t know. I don’t know anything right now. The rules of this world are so strange, so different from my own.”
He got up and paced, leaving her on the bench. She doesn’t love me. I love her, but she doesn’t love me…How can that be? He thought it over as she stayed where she was, lip between her teeth, hands unmoving in her lap. Saber turned. “It cannot be, Kelly. Some forms of love can be faked, coerced, or forced by a spell…but true love cannot be.
“I saw your heel lit by sunlight, followed the sun, and spotted the ship that now lies out there, anchored in the night,” he reminded her, striding back to her side. Nudging the embroidery stand aside, he knelt in front of her and took her talented, idle hands in his; they felt cool, and he rubbed them slightly to warm them. “The Seer Draganna Prophesied that Disaster would come at the heel of my true love…and it would not be true love if only I loved you. True love can only exist when it exists on both sides. You do love me, Kelly.”
She tried to tug her hands free. “But I treated you so badly, when we met!”
He smiled, one side curving higher than the other as he held on to her hands. “Then that proves it wasn’t a potion, for if it were, we would have liked each other from the very start. Right?”
She raised her eyes to his. Uncertainty and doubt still lingered—though his last comment did make undeniable sense. Heck, she’d even used the same argument herself, convincing herself the potion was safe to drink when it hadn’t changed his initial irritation with her one bit. Rising, Saber slid one arm behind her back, the other beneath her knees.
“I will prove that it is true love,” he murmured, carrying her to their bed. Flower garlands still wrapped its posts, a reminder that they were still very newly wed. Laying her on the bed, he knelt beside it and picked up her feet, while she propped herself up with her arms. Slipping her shoe off, he kissed the heel that had been illuminated by Destiny only that very morning, half a day and half a lifetime ago. He told her as he showed her what he meant. “In these past few weeks, I’ve discovered many things. I’ve discovered I didn’t live before I met you. I didn’t breathe before I kissed you. I couldn’t think before I knew your name, Kelly of Doyle…Kelly of Nightfall, my true love.”
He slipped off her other shoe, kissed that heel, too, as he continued with the truth. “I cannot walk without knowing my feet can take me to you, as well as from you. I cannot see without hoping to look at you as I look around. I cannot find peace or relax unless I am touching you, so it must be true love.”
Murmuring softly, shifting up onto the bed, gently peeling back her clothes, he bared his thoughts and feelings as he bared her body. Somewhere in there, he divested himself of his own clothes, until their flesh brushed and touched, a satin glide of skin against skin, illuminated by the lightglobes still lit, standing off to the side.
Slowly, sweetly, he made love to every inch of her, until she drifted free of her fears and entwined her limbs with his. It was not the hot-burning passion of their previous lovemaking, but rather like the tide of the sea, rising slowly, lapping at the shores of their flesh, until their limbs were entwined like the froth of a wave clinging to a beach.
When he surged inside her, it was not with fervor, not with impatience, but with simple determination. It went on and on, slowly, gently, until her lip caught in her teeth from a better kind of pain than mere indecision, caught up in a delicately, torturously, piercingly sweet agony. When they found their pleasure at that leisurely pace, he held her through its quiet but still overwhelming intensity. And then held her some more, close to the beating of his heart, which he had proved beat only for her.
Kelly clung to him gently, feeling that heartbeat. Feeling his words deep inside. She felt loved, so maybe she was loved, truly. And she did feel many of the same things for him that he had whispered to her.
“Do I love you?” Saber asked his strawberry-haired wife in the aftermath stretching quietly between them.
Tears stung her eyes. She snuggled closer, her doubts quelled. “You love me.”
“Do you love me?” he asked, needed to ask.
She didn’t answer for a lo
ng moment, until she felt his heart skip a beat against her cheek. Waiting for her reply. Hoping for a reply. This meant so much to him, one little word.
“Yes.”
I think so…
She just didn’t feel like she could know. Not in a realm where even he admitted potions could imitate several forms of love…and if they could imitate some, surely they could imitate all. If this was her world, her reality—her stable, immutable, nonmagical, undoubtable version of reality—she might not feel doubt. She might be able to know, if she was there instead of here. But it wasn’t, and she wasn’t, and she still suffered from a tiny prickling of doubt.
Closing her eyes, Kelly held on to him. Prayed to whatever might listen that she did love him. Because she knew for certain that, after this night, she desperately wanted it to be true love.
TWENTY
Trevan arrived on the eastern wall before the delegation from the ship did, but then he’d headed for the outer wall after he and the others had watched the party making its way up the long, sloping road, in the scrying mirror over their breakfast. This time, he was clad in an illusion of the same midnight blue, steel-studded leather armor the “guards” his eldest brother had created were wearing, pacing tirelessly along their sections of the outer wall rampart. They were spaced evenly all the way around the vast, eight-sided circle of the palatial castle, and had been enchanted to defend against invaders, just in case their visitors attempted to climb another section of the wall.
He waited for them to arrive and announce themselves, leaning against the parapet wall on the inner side, out of sight. It was apparent in their view through the scrying mirror, from the overly fancy garb of their leader and at least two other men, to the clean and neat clothes on the six sailors accompanying them, that they were indeed coming for a polite, formal visit. As it had been suggested they should.
Trevan grinned at that thought. He had done some of that suggesting himself, as had Saber.
A horn sounded, piping a short-long note like the call to a hunt, then a set of trills that sounded a little militaristic, before ending on an uplifted note. Pushing away from the inner wall, he stepped up to the outer one, leaned on the broad stone ledge, and peered over it. The eight towers were each set in the four cardinal and four ordinal directions. The section of wall he was leaning over technically was the east-by-northeast wall, just north of Morganen’s private tower, and the walls themselves were slightly curved, softening the eight lines encircling the castle, ensuring that all of the gardens and courtyards held ample space. But instead of smooth, tightly jointed gray white granite, the slightly rugged cliff facade he had created fell below him, still artfully draped in vines and moss.
Peering over the edge, he studied the party of nine waiting at the end of the road for a response to their horn-call. “Did you want something?”
One of the other two foppishly dressed men stepped forward and spoke up. “His Lordship, Kemblin Aragol, Earl of the Western Marches, and representative of King Gustavo the Third, ruler of the Independence of Mandare, requests an audience with your…leader.”
“What, with my captain?” Trevan asked, playing on the man’s distasteful avoidance of the word queen.
“With your ruler. This Queen Kelly of Nightfall,” the man added with a touch of impatience.
“I’ll pass your request along,” Trevan called down, then retreated to lean against the inner battlement crenellations once again, hidden from their view, and waited.
He counted slowly, silently to one hundred, then reversed the count back down to zero, then mouthed the names of all forty-four of the phonetic letter-characters of the Katani alphabet, front to back, and back to front. He examined his nails. He drew the knife sheathed at his waist and pared the longer of those nails with its sharp edge. He wiped the blade of all fingerprints, taking care to polish it very thoroughly with the hem of his illusion-dyed tunic before resheathing it. Then, and only then, Trevan stepped back up to the edge and leaned on his elbows once more, peering over the edge.
“Her Majesty states that, as you have asked politely, you may come within our walls. However, as you are foreigners, you must be apprised of the most pertinent laws of the Kingdom of Nightfall, before you can be allowed to see any of its denizens.
“Privacy is respected, here. You will not be allowed to wander off and try a little exploration on your own; if you do so, you will be gently but firmly returned to only the areas that are open to you. Fighting is not allowed here. You may retain your weapons, but if you attack any of the citizens of Nightfall, or damage any of our property, you will either be removed from the premises if you have not yet actually harmed anyone, or thrown into the dungeon to await trial if you do…and our punishments are very harsh for those who are found guilty of a violent crime.
“Rape is not tolerated on Nightfall. Any man who attempts to do so will be lashed hard fifty times across the back, or until the blood runs to his knees…whichever takes longer. Any man who actually succeeds in rape shall have his manhood and bollocks cut off, and all of his possessions and wealth confiscated to support his victim, with a conscripted labor of five years to continue that support if the forced union is fruitless, and a labor of twenty years should a child have resulted, to support both mother and child.
“Murder is not tolerated either, in Nightfall. Commit murder, and you will be executed, and your possessions and wealth confiscated to support the family of the victim. Theft is not permitted here. Twenty lashes and eight times the value of whatever was stolen will be confiscated from the thief, plus the item in question retaken, with half given to the government and half given to the victim of the theft, in compensation for the trauma of the crime; for those who cannot afford the recompense of a theft, they shall be enslaved to labor until the eight-times cost of the stolen items have been compensated, plus twice more, for the inconvenience put to the Crown for the cost of maintaining a prisoner-slave. Do you understand these points as I have explained them to you?” Trevan finished.
The men below the base of the disguised wall peered up at him silently.
“Do you understand that you are subject to these laws of Nightfall, and do you understand that there are other laws in this land that, explained or not, you are also subject to, so long as you stay within sight of our land?”
Even from high up on the stout wall, he could see a muscle work in their leader’s jaw, from the way it flexed his sideburns. “Yes. We understand these laws. Do you understand that I come as the representative of my own government, and not as some common visitor?”
“If that is what you say. The Lord Chancellor will be here shortly to escort you inside.” Withdrawing from the wall, he grinned and headed for one of the sky bridges. Strolling and taking his time, that was; Trevan could shift into many shapes, but cats were his favorite. Cats loved to play with their prey, after all, and part of the playing was making that prey wait for each velvet-clawed pat of the paw.
Dominor finished shifting the second heavy, enspelled bracing-bar aside via magic. Making certain his hands and clothes were still clean, he smoothed the trimmed, dark sapphire silk of his best tunic—which had been in need of repair since shortly after arriving on Nightfall Isle three years ago, been sentenced to enspelled storage all this time, and finally repaired by his sister-in-law just a few weeks ago—and raised his hand. With a murmur and a pass, the huge and heavy but well-hung doors swung open silently, easily.
Behind him, the eastern courtyard and Y-wings of the castle were already showing signs of life, as the activated illusions could be seen in windows and occasionally crossing the large, garden-edged courtyard behind him on nebulous errands. More of the blue-clad illusory guards that were standing up on the wall also stood at the edges of the courtyard, and a pair of guards stood to either side of the opening gate doors. Between himself and the illusions, Dominor was fairly certain they presented an impressive sight. An imposing one would be better, though.
Through the opening came the nine str
angers. They stopped just inside the gates, facing Dominor, and looked all around them. There was a lot to take in: the age-worn but still ornate carvings of the castle donjon, the dozen soldiers in immediate view, the men and women moving around in the distance. The sailors were carrying three chests between the six of them, and rucksacks on their backs. The three impossibly dressed, supposedly important people studied Dominor as the most interesting part of their view; apparently the rest of it was quickly dismissible.
“You are the Lord Chancellor?” Lord Aragol asked, staying where he was as he arched a brow under that ridiculously broad-brimmed hat. He eyed Dominor’s far simpler outfit of fitted dark blue breeches, deep sapphire tunic, and pale blue shirt, emphasizing the blue of his eyes, and did not seem impressed.
Neither was Dominor. The foreigner’s garb was similar to what he had worn the day before, pastel shades, but still far too many layers. There were ridiculously puffy short-trousers above opaque-stockinged legs on all three of them, their version of formal-garb, apparently—trousers with bulges at the front that were too uniform to be real, but too large to escape being anything other than borderline obscene, in Dominor’s opinion. Still, he had a role to play, so he ignored their glaring excuses for fashion and nodded his head briefly.
“I am Lord Dominor, Lord Chancellor of Nightfall in Her Majesty’s exalted service. I have been informed that you have been given a recital of the major laws of this land, in both expectations and consequences. Is this so?” he asked. The intent was to give the impression of law and order, enough law and order that it would impress these people—who outnumbered them by far too many for comfort, given the number of bodies scried on board their ship—and thus keep them in line by civilized threat alone.
