“Admiral is a good horse.”
The older man made an exasperated noise. “And you are a dense dolt.” Then he added, “Your Highness.”
“Explain,” Cobalt said. He certainly was dense, because he had no idea what Matthew was getting at.
“She is a, uh, young bride.” Matthew’s face reddened. “The two of you go off together. You come back, both with wet hair and she has on different clothes. It would not be a stretch to imagine that for an inexperienced young woman, well, that is—riding a horse right now might be painful.”
“Oh.” Cobalt felt like an idiot. He thought of her question: Did something just happen? If he had managed better control and initiated her in the proper manner, Matthew might have reason for his concerns. As it was, the point was moot. He could hardly tell Matthew that, though. So he said only, “She will be all right.”
The older man scowled. “You are impossible,” he muttered. He strode away before Cobalt could respond.
When Cobalt reached the carriage, his men were mounted and ready to go. Matthew stood holding Admiral’s reins, with Mel at his side. Rather than saddling the horse, he had strapped a blanket across Admiral’s back. Cobalt took the reins, avoiding Matthew’s gaze. As soon as he mounted, he reached down for Mel’s hand. He pulled her up easily and she straddled Admiral in front of him.
Cobalt put his arms around her, and for a moment, he just sat with his head bent over hers. Her hair smelled damp, a trace of the soapy fragrance from yesterday lingering. He was aware of everyone watching them. He wondered what his men thought, if they envied him, if they considered him insensitive, like Matthew, or if they even cared. He pressed his lips against Mel’s head and snapped the reins. Admiral started off at an easy pace across the land.
So they left their fragile refuge. Their interlude had ended.
Up ahead, the Misted Cliffs loomed in the sky.
9
The Airlight Room
Mel thought Admiral must surely descend from the mounts ridden by the ancient wind saints of Aronsdale. He was magnificent. Like his rider. Cobalt sat easily with his arms around Mel. Her face warmed when she thought of her husband. She doubted she would forget those moments when he had undressed this morning. Such long legs, broad shoulders, narrow hips, all those planes of muscle, hard and lean. She blushed. Did he know what a fine figure he cut? He didn’t seem to care. Perhaps her reaction was only that of an untutored woman seeing a man that way for the first time, but she didn’t think so. She couldn’t imagine that he had any match.
Although he was a strange man, he wasn’t unkind. She had seen that this morning. He had more to him than the darkness of his reputation. She recalled Matthew’s words: He feels far too much. If he didn’t, his wounds wouldn’t be so deep. What was it like to be the son of a warlord who had lost his throne? Whatever stories Cobalt may have heard, it hadn’t stopped him from seeking recompense for Varqelle. But not vengeance. If that had been his intent, he would never have offered this marriage and the treaty they had all signed.
Mel wanted to understand him. The survival of three countries could depend on how well she judged his intentions and those of his father. Hell, her own survival probably depended on it. How Stonebreaker came into all this, she didn’t know, but Brant Firestoke’s warnings remained in her thoughts.
She closed her hand around the twenty-sided sphere that hung around her neck. If only she could draw on such a high-level shape, she might pick up more from the moods of her husband and the other people around her. She focused on the sphere, imagining emeralds and jade, sparkling green stones, tens, hundreds, thousands. But no spell formed. Frustrated, she tried harder, increasing her concentration.
Pain jabbed her temples.
“Ah!” She let go of the pendant with a jerk.
“Are you all right?” Cobalt asked.
Mel took a calming breath. Remembering how uneasy he had been about mages, she said only, “I’m fine. Just a little tired.”
They continued on in silence.
The Misted Cliffs hadn’t seemed far away this morning, but it took all day to reach them. They rose up, taller and taller, until they dominated the sky, a great wall that sheered out of the lowlands as if the world had split in two here, half of it dropped down and the other half standing like a barrier fit for the saints or the stars.
As they rode, the sun crossed the sky, never directly above them even at its highest point. They rested the horses and then continued on. Their party reached the base of the cliffs in late afternoon, as the sun sunk out of view and shadows stretched across the borderlands. They stopped to transfer Mel’s belongings from the carriage to the spare horses, which included the mounts of the six men who had died. Cobalt directed his men with confidence. He didn’t need to demand or bark; they responded to his taciturn self-assurance with a respect that had obviously been earned over time. The warriors were silent as they worked with the animals. Every now and then a man would bend his head in the traditional gesture of honor for a fallen soldier.
As Cobalt rode up to the carriage, Matthew came forward with Fog’s basket. He handed it up to Mel and she smiled.
“My thanks for looking after him,” she said. “Did he behave himself?”
Matthew pretended to grimace, but it didn’t hide his good mood. “Ran me ragged, he did, scampering all around the carriage. Ate my soup and drank my water.” His expression softened. “He’s been a busy young fellow. I think he needs a good rest.”
She lifted the top of the basket. Fog blinked at her, half asleep. “Good kitty,” she crooned, petting his fur with long strokes. He butted his head against her arm.
“You should do that with me,” Cobalt said behind her.
She smiled as she scratched behind Fog’s ears. “Are you a sweet, cuddly kitten, Husband?”
His answering snort sounded like a laugh.
After she gave Fog some mush from leftover grain and meat, she closed up his basket, and Matthew fastened it to the travel packs on one of the horses. The carriage driver started up again, heading south along the cliffs. Four of the honor guard went with him and the others remained with Cobalt.
Mel watched the carriage recede. “Where is he going?”
“To a southern pass.” Cobalt guided Admiral toward the cliffs at a slow walk. “They will go on to the Diamond Palace.”
“Aren’t we going there?”
“No.”
“But—then where?”
“My home.”
“Your home isn’t the Diamond Palace?”
“No.”
Mel tried again. “We’re going into the cliffs?”
“Yes.”
“Will you tell me where?” she growled. “Or must I extract the answer as if I were pulling a broken tooth from your mouth?”
“Ach, I hope not.” He sounded alarmed. “I had my back teeth removed when I was young. It was exceedingly painful. I should never like to repeat the experience.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” She was impressed, though. That was four full sentences.
“We are going to the Castle of Clouds,” he said. “It is closer than the palace. I am concerned about the attack. The sooner we reach safety, the better.”
Mel shuddered at the memory. “Yes.”
“My mother and I usually live there,” he added.
“Your mother.” Panic touched Mel.
“She might appreciate another woman to talk to.”
“Might?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted.
“Don’t other women live at the castle?”
“No.”
“None?” She didn’t want to believe that.
“None.”
“Surely servants.”
“No.”
“Don’t the men have wives?”
“Some do.”
“But they don’t live with their husbands?”
“My grandfather has never allowed it.”
This sounded strange. “But why?”
“I don’t know.” His voice had lost its vibrancy.
She had a feeling he did know, but didn’t want to say. “Your mother must be lonely.”
His silence stretched out. Then he said, “Yes.”
Why would his grandfather deny her companionship? It sounded bleak. “Are your friends there?”
“I have no friends.”
Mel couldn’t tell if he really meant it. She had thought he was having fun with her this morning when he said they were going to “the Cloud,” but now she realized he had meant the castle. Surely, though, he couldn’t be serious about having no friends.
“Are you teasing me?” she asked.
“No.”
If he truly believed he had no friends, he led an even more parched life than she had thought. “There is Matthew.”
“My stable hand?”
“Does he really work in your stable?”
“Since before I was born.”
“He acts like your friend.” She thought of the disparity in their ages. “Or a mentor.”
“He is my stable hand.”
Mel gave up. She had friendships with many of the young people who worked in the stables at her home, and she had done chores there herself, at her parent’s insistence. But the Misted Cliffs had a more stratified society. Suggesting to the crown prince that his only friend was his stable hand might be an insult. Or perhaps he thought he had no friends because he didn’t recognize friendship.
They rode through a natural archway in the cliffs and up a path that wound back into the great wall. In some places, the trail was a crevice open to the sky; in others, it became a tunnel, jagged and uneven. Their honor guard ranged ahead and behind them.
After a while, Cobalt said, “You are quiet.”
“I was wondering.”
“About what?”
“You.”
“What about me?”
She decided to have another go at solving her puzzle of a husband. “Do you have other members of your staff like Matthew?”
“Other stable hands?”
“Men you talk to as you do with him. As if his companionship pleases you.” She recalled how Matthew had stood up with him during the wedding. “As if you trust him.”
His voice hardened. “I trust no one.”
Surely he had someone in his life. “Were there…women?”
“Women?”
“Um, concubines.”
“No.”
“Oh.” She didn’t believe him. He had seemed too experienced at the pool this morning. “Then who?”
“Who what?”
“Who taught you so well?”
“You ask many questions.” Now he sounded embarrassed.
“Were you married?” He was thirty-three, after all.
“No.”
“A mistress?”
“No!” He made a frustrated noise. “I have known several courtesans. Now stop asking me these questions.”
“You mean prostitutes?”
“I do not wish to have this conversation.”
Mel let it go. His answers bewildered her. Surely he hadn’t spent his life with no companionship except soldiers, prostitutes, and servants he wasn’t allowed to acknowledge as friends.
They rode quietly after that, with only the clatter of hooves to break the silence. The shadows deepened and several riders lit torches. Their mounts went slowly, both for safety and to conserve strength. Sometimes they walked the horses. Mel was sore and stiff, but she had always liked to ride and she enjoyed this solemn procession despite the strangeness of going at night. One time Fog woke up and cried. She fed him and played with him until he let her coax him back into his big basket. Then they set off again, and Mel rode with Cobalt. Every now and then, a night bird cawed or a small animal scuttled into the shadows, but even those intermittent noises seemed muted.
She drowsed for a while, held by Cobalt. When she awoke, they were climbing a steep portion of the trail. Late-night constellations shone in the sky. She could see the borderlands to the east, over a natural wall of rock. They had gone high into the cliffs and the rest of the world had become distant and removed. Wind gusted through the open chasm beyond the trail. With a sigh, she stretched her arms.
“You’re awake,” Cobalt said.
“Hmm.” She wasn’t sure. “Aren’t you tired?” He had slept only a few hours last night and none tonight, as far as she could tell.
“I am fine.” He moved her hair aside and brought his lips to her ear. “Look.”
Mel almost said, At what.
Then she saw.
They were coming out at the top of a cliff. Dawn had tinted the sky red in the east. A castle rose before them in a wonderland of towers. Their onion tops evoked the palaces of the southern countries rather than the turrets of Aronsdale. Bridges arched among them and their spires were silhouetted against the paling sky.
“Ah, saints,” she said. “It’s lovely.”
He blew against the sensitive ridges of her ear. “Yes.”
A wall about four stories high circled the keep. Sentries walked along its crenellated top, disappearing behind merlons carved in elongated onion shapes and then reappearing again. They must have already seen the party, for a large gate was opening in the wall. The honor guard escorted them past the wall, twenty men with Cobalt and Mel in their midst. Inside, pages were running across an odd courtyard, a wide strip of ground that curved around the bases of three towers. Other towers rose behind them and to the sides.
“I’ve never seen a castle like this,” Mel said.
He kissed her ear, which was distracting, especially with his body pressed against hers. She felt warm in places he wasn’t even touching.
“This is my home,” he said.
“Then what is the Diamond Palace?”
“A place in the western lowlands. Grandfather lives there.” He dismounted with unexpected agility, given how long they had been riding, and gave the reins to a groom. Then he reached up for Mel. She hesitated to trust him, but she knew she had no good reason to believe he would drop her, and she was tired enough to accept help.
Mel maneuvered her leg over Admiral so she was sitting sideways. Then she slid into Cobalt’s arms, putting hers around his neck. As he eased her to the ground, her palms slid down his chest. He wrapped her in his cloak, enveloping her in wool that warded off the predawn chill. Then he held her close, his head bent over hers as Mel hugged him around his waist. It was hard to believe this man was her husband. He was a stranger, yet not a stranger. His embrace could have menaced; the top of her head only came to the middle of his chest and she felt the immense power in his arms—he could break a person’s spine with this hold.
Mel didn’t feel threatened, though. She leaned into him. “Tired…”
“Don’t go to sleep,” he murmured.
With a sigh, she straightened and drew her head back, out of his cloak. The sun hadn’t risen, but it was light enough to see. People filled the courtyard and stable boys were leading away the horses.
As she and Cobalt stepped apart, a commotion came from a horseshoe arch in a tower to their left. The people coming out of it seemed to be headed this way, but she couldn’t see much with so many others in the way. Mel felt too worn down to meet anyone new. She had no moorings and little sense of what they expected of her here. She had to depend on Cobalt, whom she had known only two days.
The newcomers drew nearer, and the courtyard cleared around them. Ten men in blue and silver livery surrounded a man with thick hair. Mel’s breath caught. The center man’s resemblance to Cobalt was unmistakable. They were both tall, though this man didn’t have Cobalt’s extraordinary height. He did have the same mane of dark hair, his streaked with gray. His face had that same aristocratic cast, the dark eyes, strong nose and chin, and high cheekbones. Both men had a hardness to them, as if they had been annealed in the same forge until nothing soft remained.
Mel stayed back while Cobalt greeted the newcomer. Her husband gave him a def
erence he had shown no one else.
The man inclined his head and spoke in a rumbling voice. “I am glad to see you returned safely, my son.”
My son. This, then, was the notorious Varqelle.
“I almost didn’t return,” Cobalt said.
His father’s gaze was like a hawk’s. “What happened?”
As Cobalt recounted the ambush, Mel lost the contentment she had managed to gain during their ride here. She hadn’t realized how severe their situation had been two nights ago. Cobalt estimated the number of their attackers at forty. He and his men had killed eighteen and the rest had fled. Mel remembered how Cobalt had reached out to her yesterday morning, with blood on his hand. Nausea rose within her.
“They were men of Harsdown?” Varqelle asked.
“Probably not,” Cobalt said. “They dressed like farmers, but I think they were borderlands outlaws.”
“Mercenaries,” Varqelle said.
“Yes.”
“Hired by whom?”
Mel recalled the man who had yanked her out of the carriage. He had attacked because she had married Cobalt, not because she was a Dawnfield. “Someone who doesn’t like the House of Escar,” she said behind Cobalt.
Everyone turned to her. When no one spoke, Mel flushed.
“Who are you?” Varqelle said.
Cobalt spoke. “Father, may I present my wife, Melody Dawnfield Escar.”
“Your wife?” Varqelle stared at her. “This does not look like a man, Cobalt.”
A man? Mel flushed. What the blazes did that mean?
“She fights like a man,” Cobalt said.
“But doesn’t look like one,” Varqelle murmured.
Mel’s face flamed, not only because they spoke as if she wasn’t there, but also from the way Varqelle watched her, as if she were prey.
Falling back on the safety of protocol, she bowed as a royal woman in Aronsdale would to a member of another royal family, with one arm at her side and the other holding the cloth of her tunic. Customs varied among the realms, but the ways of the Misted Cliffs were closer to those of Aronsdale than to those of the eastern lands of Jazid and Taka Mal. “I am honored by your presence, Your Majesty.” She gave Varqelle the title for a king, though her own father sat on the Jaguar Throne.
The Misted Cliffs Page 11
