“You said it.”
“Why are you being unfriendly then, hey? Why are you doubting me?” Duggan sat back sharply. “Is this how a guest should behave?”
“Forgive me.” Not a muscle moved in Severin’s face.
Duggan smiled, pleased by the force of his argument. “And is this how a man should treat his wife—making her walk to market like a dry cow? Let her ride up behind me and rest her feet, man.”
“I don’t…” said Eloise faintly. The prospect made her stomach clench in fear.
“Come on. Let me take her up.”
Severin stepped aside. “Go ahead then,” he said, with a shrug.
Eloise was still staring at him with her mouth open as Duggan urged his cob forward and reached down from the saddle to take her arm. As Severin shifted abruptly forward again, faster than she could really see, grasping that outstretched wrist and hauling the off-balance rider forward and down from the saddle. As Duggan hit the road and Severin wrenched his arm round and back, pinning him bent double. Nor had she recovered enough to close her mouth by the time Severin’s boot smashed into Duggan’s head; his jaw broke with a vile crack. Then Severin’s fist swept round and punched up beneath the bigger man’s chin. It seemed to wedge there. Eloise saw the pommel of his knife sticking out beneath that fist and she was still wondering where that meant the blade was—Straight up through the roof of his mouth, into his skull, said a voice in her head—when Severin jerked the haft sharply back and forth. Blood washed out of Duggan’s mouth. Severin stepped out of the way almost fastidiously and let the body crumple to the ground.
It was over. Almost before it had started, it was over, and the bay cob was shying nervously across the road and there was a dead body nearly at her feet. Eloise saw the color draining out of the world—all the color except those bright splashes of crimson.
“You killed him.” She felt dizzy with shock.
Severin didn’t bother dignifying that with a reply. He grabbed the body by the wrists and began to haul it off the side of the road. “Get the horse,” he told her.
Eloise didn’t listen. “You killed him! Why?” she shouted. “Why’d you kill him?”
He seemed perplexed. “What do you think was going to happen if he got you away from me? He was going to rape you, Ella.”
“You don’t know that!”
“Yes.” He grinned unpleasantly. “Yes I do. He was going to rape you and probably cut your throat and dump you in a ditch so that you wouldn’t be able to accuse him afterward.”
“But he hadn’t done any of that!”
“Nor will he, now.”
“And you’re going to kill everyone you think might have vile intentions toward me?”
He shrugged. “If I have to.”
It was like talking to a wild animal; he wasn’t grasping her meaning or her distress. “It doesn’t bother you?”
“No. It doesn’t. And I doubt he’ll be the last.”
“But it’s murder! He was a living man! He had a soul!”
Severin straightened up from Duggan’s body, suddenly looking curious. “Have you never seen anyone die before?”
“No I haven—”
“No execution? No riot?”
‘They don’t do that sort of thing on Venn!” She was shaking. “We’re a peaceful island! And…if there are judicial executions I don’t go and watch. Why would I want to?”
He ran his hand through his hair. “All right. I understand. It is hard the first time you see a human being die. I…remember. What can I tell you? It’s like anything else; it gets easier with practice.”
She clenched her fists. “Well I don’t want it to get easier! I don’t want this to happen!”
“Ella,” he said, holding her gaze. “It’s my duty to protect you. And I will do it, any way I have to. Now I’m going to get this man out of sight, and you are going to go and catch the horse. Then we will be able to ride away from here.”
“So we’re bandits now?”
He clenched his teeth. “We’re fugitives. Now—get the bloody horse before someone else turns up and there’s a real fight on our hands.”
She obeyed, slowly. She was usually good with horses, but this one took a lot of persuasion. When he’d hidden the corpse behind a clump of bushes and searched it for anything useful, Severin returned, re-sheathing the knife at his back, and kicked dirt over the bloodstains on the road. The cob was a little skittish of him, but calmed when he held its head and stroked it. He mounted up and swung Eloise up behind him and they moved on at a swift shamble.
Eloise had gone quiet. She held on to his waist, but as loosely as she could, not wanting to be in contact with him. For hours she said nothing, and he didn’t try to break her silence. She waited for the turmoil inside her to settle, but nothing got better. She kept thinking, even though she would have given anything not to, of the way his hands had moved on the man’s arm, wrenching it round with such purposive force. She kept remembering the noise the man’s jaw made as it broke. She kept remembering Severin’s black, emotionless eyes as he looked up from the body.
How many people had he killed in his life?
What was he, to be able to do that?
Late in the afternoon Severin halted the horse before a rattling plank bridge over a ravine, one where they’d have to walk across and lead the animal, and suddenly she couldn’t stand it any longer and she slipped down from the other side of the saddle and ran away from him, along the edge of the narrow valley. She had no fear he would ride after her. This wasn’t terrain to trust a horse on. She heard him curse, and then call after her, but she hurried onward, ducking beneath pine branches and scrambling over the great rocks that jutted from the sandy soil, hugging the cliff.
She stopped on an overhanging boulder, rather closer to its edge than she was really comfortable with, staring down. The bank was steep and eroded, with rocks sticking out from the raw soil like broken teeth, the water far below a brown snake in a choked bed of fallen stones and smashed trees that were the legacy of a winter landslip.
God, but she had tried and tried to be obedient and useful and to bear everything asked of her, but she could not bear this. His hands—long, clever hands, she thought of them—gripping that farmer and in one stroke sending him out of life. It had been so easy. She reeled with vertigo. Death should be an effort, she thought. Not done within a moment. All that man’s thoughts and plans and memories, the years of his life…snuffed like a candle-flame. His mother will still be wondering when he’s coming home.
She’d trusted Severin too much, she realized, feeling sick. He was an assassin, and he no more cared for her than he did for anyone who got in the way of his goals. It occurred to her, with cold logic, that he’d probably kill her himself rather than let her fall into the hands of the Mendean crown.
“Ella?”
She heard his footfalls on the dry pine needles. A glance behind, and then she scrambled off the rock and hopped down the slope onto the next jutting boulder along. Dirt rattled down the runnels carved by rain.
“Ella, for God’s sake—stand still!”
She didn’t answer. She just stared into the river wishing that he would leave her alone. Wishing that the water would rise and sweep her away.
“Ella, I didn’t mean to upset you. Please, come back here.”
“You left Edith to die.” Her voice was breaking up into jagged pieces that hurt her throat. “Edith and Ailya and Fritha.”
There was a moment’s silence. “The boat was going down. I had to save you.”
“You made me leave them to die!”
He slithered down to join her, stepping onto the big rock warily, and this time she couldn’t see a good line of retreat. “All I’m doing is keeping you safe—you must understand that. I have to get you back home.” He reached out and laid one hand on her shoulder.
“Don’t touch me.” She tried to shrug off his hand, but he wouldn’t let her and that made her scared. “Don’t touch me,” she repea
ted, twisting in his grip to face him. “You’re not allowed to touch me!” Then she hit him across the face.
He was so surprised that he took a half-step back, releasing her. Fire surged in her blood. She hit at him again; this time he blocked the blow. She struck with the other hand. He didn’t try to grab her, he just parried anything aimed at his eyes or throat, knocking her hands away, so she gave up and struck at his chest and stomach, balling her fists and putting all the strength of her arms into each punch. He took several of those, deliberately, though she was trying her best to hurt him. The rage seemed to come from deep, deep within, from a place she didn’t even know. “Don’t touch me!” she screamed, tears running down her face. “I hate you!”
He grabbed her bodily and pulled her to him, pinning her arms. He was far too strong for her to resist.
“I can’t even hurt you, you bastard!” she spat into his chest.
“Can’t you?” he gasped.
“I hate you! I hate what you are, you cold-hearted whoreson! I don’t want that! I don’t want to go back to that!” Her words came out in great wet sobs. “I don’t want to go to Kingsholme, I don’t want to have people killed, and lie and betray and fear everyone—I don’t want to turn into what you are! I don’t want to be Queen!”
He stared down into her twisted face—and at that moment she felt the rock shift beneath their feet. Severin turned and flung himself up toward the bank top, Eloise in one arm, and grabbed with the other hand for purchase. The stone turned to empty air under their toes. He seized a low branch, but the tree lurched and tilted as its roots were exposed, and he leaped again for the next foothold. Their boulder and all the bank below it, undermined by river and rain, was falling. She saw the earth rise before her eyes as they crashed face forward into the dirt, sliding. He grabbed at an exposed root and held on with all his might as sand poured into their faces from above. Eloise was crushed to his ribs, arms and legs flailing. Small stones bounced off her head. They heard the rocks smacking into the stream below, and then the water swallowed the stones and rushed on, and there was peace again in the ravine.
Eloise opened her eyes and blinked away grit. She was slung under Severin’s arm, her face crushed to his armpit. Severin’s toes scuffed the exposed earth of the bank-face, seeking purchase. All his weight—and hers—was hanging off his other shoulder. Overhead, the pines leaned, seeming to leer down on them, their branches far out of reach.
She desperately hoped the root he was holding onto was strong enough to take their weight.
“Climb up!” he gasped.
Eloise could feel his grip on her slipping. Working her hands free, she dug her fingers desperately into the loose bank, but the sand and pebbles just crumbled under her nails, slick as scree. “I can’t get a hold!”
“Climb up me!”
It was cruel, but it worked better. She could dig her fingers into his muscles and find purchase for her shoes on his feet and thighs. Grunting with effort, he pushed as she pulled, boosting her until she could catch at the root zone over her head and scramble over the lip to safety. She collapsed on her back on the hard earth, coughing dust and heaving for breath. All the rage had gone out of her, riding her fear into the empty air, leaving her feeling exhausted and alone.
But once he had two hands free, Severin could catch his breath and follow. First his hands, then his head, then his chest emerged, then she watched him haul himself up over the edge and crawl over to straddle her on his knees, propping himself on his fists. Stifling her last cough, she stared up at him mutely, her eyes burning with misery.
How could she hate him? She didn’t have the right, or the strength. Yes, he was a killer—and she owed him her life.
Carefully, Severin reached out to brush earth from her hair. Eloise winced, and he wiped his forearm across his face instead, smearing dirt and sweat. “You’re not going to be Queen.”
“What?” Her voice was hoarse and barely audible even to herself.
“You’re not going to be Queen of Ystria. Not even if I get you home alive.” He pulled away to her side and lay down slowly on one elbow, breathing hard. His shirt was torn and he was covered in dirty sand. She suspected she looked just as bad. “I didn’t tell you because I thought…I thought it would be bad for you if you knew. Until now.”
“I don’t understand.”
‘That’s because you don’t know how things are at Court. But I know. You will never be the Queen, Ella.”
“You said—”
“Listen to me. This is how it will happen, at the very, very best. I will get you home, and King Arnauld will greet you with rejoicing and gratitude. You’ll be welcomed with feasting and celebration, and I will be honored for having brought you safely from the hands of the enemy. Then, after the celebration, the ladies of the Court will come and question you. They will want to know everything about what happened since the shipwreck. They will ask how I behaved toward you, and what I said to you, all in the minutest detail. You will be physically examined by several most respectable and high-ranking women. And you will be put under some duress to confess any wrongdoing. Because, you see, nobody will really believe that after all these days and nights in a man’s company, sharing the road and his bed with him, that you are still an unsullied virgin.”
Eloise’s mouth opened in protest, her eyes widening. Severin paused to hear what she had to say, but she just shook her head.
“In the meantime,” he added grimly, “I will also be questioned. Rather more roughly. By those whose profession it is to seek confession.”
She understood. In that moment her internal picture of Severin de Meynard wrenched itself, once again, into a new alignment. “No!”
“The King’s honor is at stake, after all.”
“But…we haven’t…” Her face, pale from shock, flushed now. This was too much for her to take in instantly.
“Of course not. And believe me, I will get you home with your maidenhead intact or not at all, because anything else is treason and we will both be executed for it.”
“What?”
“Don’t panic. There’s no need for that to happen. The King is a just man, when he has the chance to be. You will not suffer needlessly. But neither may he take our word alone for our own innocence. Who would believe us, after all?”
“The King will believe you, won’t he? I mean—you’re his favored man…”
“The King is not all Ystria. The King is not men gossiping in the taverns and women gossiping over the embroidery frames. The King is not the keeper of his own honor.”
“But it will be proved—I will be found…innocent.”
“Yes. And this will be announced publicly, so that no stain may be imputed to you. There will be a time of silence, when the eyes of the kingdom are allowed to turn elsewhere. And in that time, very quietly, the betrothal will be called off, and you—with luck—will be returned home to Venn. And the King will marry another.”
The whole world was crumbling beneath her feet. “But why?”
He sighed. “Because whatever is proved in law, there will always be rumors against you. Your reputation will always be suspect. If you were to become Queen, there would be suggestions that your children were tainted by another man’s seed, if not actually illegitimate, and this would be used by the King’s enemies. Do you think Arnauld could tolerate such a situation? His queen must be unimpeachable.” He caught his lip in his teeth. “And you are not any longer. I’m sorry.”
She sat up, her eyes burning. Didn’t he know what he was saying? “Then it’s all for nothing!”
“You will live. The honor of Ystria will be intact. That’s hardly nothing.”
She didn’t understand how he could be so calm. “But why are you doing this? Why are you risking so much, knowing that your own King will have you put to the torture? Why are you taking me back at all?”
He shrugged. “Loyalty. I am the King’s man, whatsoever he chooses to do with me.”
She shook her head as if tryi
ng to throw something out of it. “I cannot believe this.”
He smiled, wryly. “You get your wish though. You will not be Queen.”
“Oh dear God.”
He got to his feet, brushing off his filthy clothes, but she sat with her face in her hands. “Come on,” he said softly, holding out a hand to help her up. He did it seemingly without thinking, but as she put her fingers in his both of them froze momentarily, shocked by the implication of that touch. Then he pulled her upright. She was trembling slightly.
“You must never,” he said, keeping his voice low, “by anything you say for the rest of your days, suggest to anyone that there might have been any impropriety between us. Not a touch, not a gesture. Do you understand? Don’t trust anyone, even those of your own kin, even the kindest and most loving of friends. If you make any mistake, we will both die. You will be beheaded, and I will be publically castrated and then drawn and burned.”
“Oh God!”
“Do you understand?” he repeated urgently. “Both our lives depend on your silence.”
“Yes.” She nodded, her lips white.
Chapter Four
When they came in sight of Rounay at last, they paused at a milestone to rest. The town lay sprawled out in the valley below them, a jumble of red stone walls and roofs under a pall of wood-smoke.
“There,” said Severin. “Do you see it?”
“What?”
“Beyond the river…”
Eloise was able to make out the silver sliver of the river between the walls. “Yes?”
“The far bank, that’s Ystria.”
She took a deep breath. That first glimpse of their homeland was nothing more than a blue-green line of hills from here. She had expected to feel relief when she saw it, after so many weeks wandering and afraid, but now the weight of the information Severin had confided lay like a stone in her chest. “So we cross here?”
Severin shook his head. “There was a crossing many years back, before Henrick’s reign. The river runs shallow here with low banks, and when the water is low in summer it’s practically a ford. Rounay was a trade town in those days. Now…it’s a garrison. This is the easiest place to get an army across the river-border—in either direction. Both banks will be watched and guarded.”
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