Hawk picked up his other hand for inspection. “I’ve seen something like this before.” He dropped the hand just as quickly. “Some sort of pox. Best not touch him if you don’t wish to catch it, too.” Hawk’s eyes narrowed. “You’re like to need to burn all your clothes.”
“That depends,” Torch said. “If it’s just on your hands. It is just on your hands, isn’t it?”
Owl studied the ground, but the back of his neck turned flushed. At least that part of him was free of blisters, at the moment.
“Best tell us what you’ve been up to,” Hawk prodded.
“Nothin’. At least nothin’ out o’ th’ ordinary.”
“That’s what I’m worried about,” Torch said. “At your age, I was after about anything wearing a skirt.”
“I never touched her.” Now Owl looked him in the eye, and his tone took on a belligerence.
“Touched who?”
“The maid, Tamsin.”
“What about anyone else?”
“No, sir, I swears it by all Three Gods.” Too much vehemence there, but Torch didn’t think the boy was lying. Not completely.
“Perhaps we ought to question the girl.”
“Please don’t, sir.” Owl’s cheeks turned so red, they might have matched a robust southland wine in the glass. “She already won’t talk to me as it is.”
“We’re going to have to take you to Calista with this, though.”
“Ah, do you have to?”
Torch nodded. “Might be she has some kind of salve that could relieve you.” She also might have some sort of notion of what afflicted the boy.
—
The stillroom was dark and silent—the perfect spot to shut out the rest of the keep and seek calm. Calista took a deep breath of dank air, redolent with rare and precious cinnamon and cloves along with lavender, honeysuckle, and blackbriar roses. The flowers hung in bunches from the ceiling, where they would eventually dry and their scent could be preserved in the sweet-smelling soaps and lotions her mother made.
Those scents were Blackbriar’s true bounty, Amara always claimed. Her tinctures and perfumes fetched a hefty price at Highspring, which was the source of much of the castle’s wealth. One day, Calista herself would be entrusted with the secret recipes and the making of such things. Bounty to bring to her husband’s coffers.
Husband. For some reason the word weighed heavily in her gut, turning her stomach sour, but for the life of her, she could not work out why. She’d grown up in the knowledge her father would marry her off to form the most advantageous alliance possible. When he’d presented her with the king himself, she’d immediately agreed. He could not ask for a more powerful ally.
And now Torch had stepped in to claim her. Another king. One who would claim Magnus’s throne. One who believed his claim was the true one. While he might bring her passion, he would accompany that personal joy with a wider war. It would bring wounded and dead. It would bring about the horror she’d witnessed firsthand last night. And if she defied Magnus and married Torch, she’d bring all that down directly on Blackbriar.
Torch has already challenged Magnus in taking this keep, a voice in her head reminded her. Magnus would have swept his hosts down upon us either way. True, but she couldn’t escape the feeling it would happen all the sooner now, with Torch’s desire to marry as quickly as possible.
Once more she heard the echo of his words. No child of mine will know the life of a bastard. His voice had strained with suppressed emotion. And he should know the rigors of such a life. She’d seen as much filtered through Jerrah’s memories.
“Gracious, my dear. I’ve been looking all over for you.” She turned to find her mother’s form silhouetted in the sunlight filtering from the bailey. “Your father’s been released at last. Such a relief. But is it true what he tells me? You’re planning on wedding this upstart?”
Thank the gods for the darkness that hid the blush fast rising on her cheeks. “I’ve no choice.”
“So your father says.” Her mother crossed to her and took Calista by the shoulders, angling her face so the daylight from the door illuminated her features. Mother’s gaze penetrated. “That man…tell me he did not force you.”
“No, he did not. It was…” She nearly said “comfort,” but she preferred not to have to recount her experience with the Stone to her mother. Something at the back of her mind warned her to keep the depth of her experience and knowledge quiet for now, both the horrors she’d witnessed and the secret she’d discovered. You’re not even certain it’s true. It’s what Jerrah believes, but that’s no solid proof.
“It was seduction, I’m sure.” Mother enfolded her in an embrace. “Thank the Three it was no worse. There’s no denying he’s easy on the eyes, and he can be charming when he chooses.”
Charming, handsome, seductive—he was all that and more. “How do you know this?”
Mother stepped back to study her daughter once more. “Tamsin has gone on at considerable length about the entire lot of them. It’s grown quite tiresome. And naturally, I’ve kept an eye on things myself.” She raised a hand to Calista’s jaw. “You won’t be the first maid to fall victim to a man’s clever tongue, nor the last, but this does not condemn you to a marriage you do not want nor one that would lower your status, no matter what the men have told you.”
Calista stepped away from her mother’s touch. “You cannot believe Magnus would go through with a wedding now. He would set me aside after one night.”
“A mere trifle.” Her mother looked about, as if to make certain no one stood at hand. “There are ways around it, ruses you would not be the first to play, potions you might drink to ensure your courses come upon you in a timely manner. Magnus need never suspect a thing.”
The silence of the stillroom bore down on Calista. It all seemed so easy. Too easy. But then, her mother was offering what she’d wished for all along—a choice. But was it a true choice when her father had arranged the union with Magnus from the start? Or had her body made the choice for her last night? Worse, had it been her heart? “I shall think on it.”
“Do not take too long considering. Your father says Torch will not delay.”
She knew as much. Torch wanted this done as soon as might be so he could ride to his sister’s aid. And how could Calista blame him? “He can drag me to the altar, but he cannot force me to repeat vows if I refuse.”
“If you refuse? How can you even consider throwing aside the offer of a king for this…this…Well, he’s nothing more than a landless bastard, isn’t he? And he only wants you for the keep you can provide him.”
He wanted her for that, yes, but he wasn’t just a landless bastard. Not if what Jerrah believed was the truth. Not if what her brother believed, and all the rest of the Bastard Brotherhood. But Calista couldn’t get into that with her mother, not without some kind of proof less nebulous than a magical dream where she’d inhabited someone else’s head, no matter how real it had seemed. And that was assuming Torch wasn’t controlling what the Stone had shown her, for his own ends.
But if his claims were, in fact, true, he did not need her lands. He didn’t choose you for your beauty or your accomplishments or even your body. He believes you’re his destiny because of that Stone, much as he believes himself to be the rightful heir to the throne at Highspring. For some reason that thought settled uneasily over her heart.
Part of her, at least, wished he had chosen her for Calista Thorne.
She thrust those notions aside. It was time to think about her marriage with her head, not her heart. What she really needed was more information, but she wasn’t going to get that from her mother, her father, or even Torch. They all had their own aims in this. She needed to talk to someone neutral who was familiar with events that occurred before her birth.
“Calista,” her mother went on. “Remember why I named you.”
“I won’t forget, Mother.” She turned for the door. As loath as she was to leave the peace of the stillroom, she wasn’t g
oing to find her answers here, either. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some thinking to do.”
“But—”
She had to give some kind of reply her mother would accept. “Perhaps it’s a matter of the man I know compared to the man I don’t know.”
The man she knew, indeed. The handsome charmer who weakened her knees with a single seductive grin. Who had known how to wring every last drop of pleasure from her body. Magnus will never be that to you.
“What did he do to you?” Her mother shook her head. “It’s almost as if he bewitched you.”
“What he did to me was nothing more than what men and women have been doing for centuries. For what it’s worth, he wasn’t cruel.” Cruel. Now, there was a descriptor that ought to apply to Torch based on rumor, but in the bedchamber, his touch had been singularly gentle. He would have stopped had she asked it of him. Magnus, on the other hand, wasn’t one to go easy on any who dared oppose him. All the more reason for her parents to fear his reaction.
All the more reason for her to fear, but her every choice led down a frightening path. She could repudiate Torch and watch him die slowly. Or she could go through with the wedding and condemn herself and her entire family, unless by some miracle Torch prevailed.
But Torch didn’t seem to fear Magnus. Nor had Jerrah or Griffin. They had the belief in their own rightness in taking on the king. A belief strong enough to overcome any fear, but again, it was not proof. It wasn’t something solid she might hold in her hand or show someone else. It wasn’t something she could point to and say, “This is the truth. Josse Vandal still lives, and he is our true king. He’s merely been in hiding for the last score of years and five.”
“Any man’s hand and body can give you the same pleasure,” her mother said.
“By the Three, Mother.” For a moment she could not go on. It was as if her own mother had picked up a club and slammed it into her stomach. “And here I’d always believed you were true to Father.”
“I have been, my dear. All these years. He and I are proof that two strangers may wed and yet grow to love each other, given time.”
Strangers? Calista had never before heard her parents’ marriage was anything but a love match. “You chose him, Mother. That is the story you always told me.”
Mother pressed her lips together. “I did, but that does not mean I knew him, not the way I do after so many years together.”
By all the hells, that reply solved nothing, for her mother had still been given a choice. Yes, and Calista still had one, even if Mother wanted to push her in one direction. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ve much to think on.”
She didn’t let her mother protest. She ducked beneath the low-hanging lintel into the yard. Torch’s men were training hard, bashing at each other with blunted swords. A few of Blackbriar’s men had joined them, while others walked the wall, side by side with brigands. And from about the walls came the ever-present pounding of work on the gates. Along the parapet, platforms had been raised, and above them soared the skeletons of trebuchets.
Shored up defenses, indeed. And they would need them before long. A sennight. No, less. For with Griffin’s defeat, nothing stood in the way of Magnus’s army.
A cry from behind drew her attention. Torch. His long legs ate up the ground that separated them as if he’d never been injured. The last thing she wanted was to face him now after the talk she’d just had with her mother, but he wasn’t alone. Hawk was with him, and in between, as if the two older men were personal guards, Owl trudged, head down.
Nothing for it. She’d have to see what they wanted.
“My lady.” Torch touched a hand to his chest and inclined his head. So formal. So courtly. And where had he learned such manners? Certainly not in the wild and certainly not while burning and plundering the villages of the Freeholds. But she knew where he’d grown up. He’d talked about the Pinnacle. She’d seen it through Jerrah’s memories. “Since you healed me, I wondered if you might not see to my squire’s hands.”
Hawk nudged the boy. “Show her.”
Not raising his gaze, Owl thrust his hands at her. Weeping blisters covered red, angry skin. Long welts housing scratches cut across the expanse. “Gracious, that must pain you,” she commented, “especially when you try to hold a sword.”
For some reason, what she could see of Owl’s face turned bright red. “Yes, m’lady.”
She glanced up at Torch to catch him smirking. Even serious Hawk’s lips looked as if they wanted to turn upwards. “Is this some sort of jest?”
“Not at all.” Torch reined in his expression. “The boy can hardly keep up his training with his hands in such a state. I had to cut the gauntlets off him.”
“What have you been into?” she asked the boy. “This looks like the reaction some people have to our roses.”
Instead of replying, Owl turned his head down and away.
“Have you been in the Blackbriar gardens?” She ducked so as to look him in the eye and see if she could detect a lie, but he still refused to raise his eyes to her.
“Answer the lady’s question,” Torch said. The lady. Still so formal. Not as if he’d had her in his bed a mere quarter day earlier. A spot on her hip tingled—the very spot where those long fingers of his had bitten into her flesh while he thrust into her. Again and again and again.
“I only thought t’ pick a few flowers,” Owl said at last. “Thought Tamsin would like ’em.”
A muffled snort came from one of the men. Calista looked up sharply to catch Hawk schooling his features.
She narrowed her eyes on him. “Did you put him up to this?”
“No, my lady. Never me. Someone else might’ve.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“The idea was mine,” Torch said. “I merely thought if the boy might convince your maid to…well, to spend a little pleasant time with him in some dark corner of the hayloft, his disposition might improve.”
“What?” Owl glared at his master. “That weren’t how it happened a’ tall. Kestrel only said t’ try t’ win Tamsin’s favor. He didn’t say nothing ’bout no hayloft. Or whatcha call it? Pleasant time?”
Hawk cuffed him on the back of his head. “What do you think winning a maid’s favor means?”
“I thought I was t’ give her flowers and such. Maids like that.”
During this entire exchange, Calista refused to look Torch in the eye. “Maids do indeed like such things,” she said. “But gifts ought not be given with the idea you might get something in return. Especially not gifts like Blackbriar roses. As you’ve seen, the thorns are vicious, and some people have a reaction to touching the leaves. You, my boy, are one of them. But never fear, I have some salve you can put on them. The blisters ought to heal in a day or two.”
Cheeks flaming ever redder, Owl looked away and mumbled something at the ground.
“What did you say?”
Torch cleared his throat. “I cannot be certain. If you’re not used to deciphering his speech, the boy can be difficult to understand under the best of circumstances. But I believe he asked how much of a supply you have.”
“I’ve plenty, and I can make more if necessary. Why?”
Again it was Torch who supplied an answer. “From what I gather the blisters have afflicted more than his hands.”
—
No one lurked about the stables when Calista slipped in through a back door. Thank all the gods. She breathed in a lungful of clean-smelling hay and leather and horse, hoping the familiar scents would calm her. Not wanting to consider the habits of a sixteen-year-old boy, she’d left Owl in her mother’s care. She’d managed to leave Torch and Hawk behind along with the rest.
Now if only she could slip out of the keep undetected, for she was certain if anyone noticed her leaving, she’d find herself with an escort in no time at all. Not just any escort. No, Torch would insist, and she preferred not having to explain herself to him.
For she’d remembered a time in her childho
od, before her body had developed a woman’s shape. A tutor had lived with them, a thin grizzle-haired man in brown cottar-spun linsey robes, wearing a curious triangular pendant on a leather thong. He had taught her to read and to write her name, and to add columns of numbers and subtract still other columns of numbers until she could do it in her head.
She’d far preferred the reality of plants beneath her fingers, and the softness of fresh-turned sun-warmed earth. The scents of the stillroom and the satisfaction of a well-weeded bed of herbs. So Brother Tancrid had played a game with her. For every column of numbers she figured properly, he’d tell her a story.
She’d liked the stories enough to untangle the confusing rows of numbers until she could reckon her way through the steward’s ledgers. At the time, she hadn’t realized he was teaching her history as well, but he had through his tales of the Avestari and the Freeholds and all the varied families of the Eastern Strongholds. He’d told her of the royal family who lived in the gilded palace at Highspring Moor, surrounded by courtiers dressed in rich clothing. She’d recognized his stories as true when, from time to time, a rider dressed in rich velvets and samite and silk would pay a call on her father. Said courtiers bore messages from King Magnus.
Magnus Vandal.
Never once had Master Tancrid mentioned any figure named Josse Vandal or his father Jaffe, only Magnus, who had ascended the throne before Calista’s birth, as a young man, strong of arm and stronger of will.
But if anyone could tell her anything about the rest of the Vandals, she trusted her old tutor to know.
When she grew old enough to discern, she realized his rough garb was a sign he’d taken vows as a member of the Acolytes. Their cloister lay within an easy ride of Blackbriar Keep. So once she’d quietly readied her palfrey, eased along the curtain wall, and slipped through a postern gate, she heaved herself into the saddle and set a course for the southwest.
The air outside the confines of the keep was warm and somehow lighter. How freeing to breathe in its freshness, to hear the birdcalls, to feel the warmth of the sunlight through the trees after all the days she’d been cooped up with Torch. Already her heart beat less heavily in her chest. It seemed to patter more easily without the constant worry, without the eyes on her.
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