The spectre of his noble descendants scratching a living out of the dirt or bending the knee to some jumpedup New Man was the stuff of nightmares for Lord Bartok. By sending Atticus to rescue the queen, he’d given his son a chance to banish those nightmares—either by finally proving himself worthy or by signing his own death warrant.
Lord Bartok frowned now, his pale eyes like chips of ice beneath his silvery brows.
Though the knowledge that Atticus had done the latter caused Lord Bartok the father a measure of genuine grief, Lord Bartok the patriarch saw it for what it was: an opportunity to start over. After all, he was not so old that he could not father more sons—sons who would hopefully be better suited to their elevated positions in this world.
And though the royal woman upon whom he sought to father them was, at present, most likely warming the bed of the lowborn cripple who’d forced her into marriage, with some shrewd manoeuvring, she’d soon be a widow free to marry him and warm his bed.
Whether she liked it or not.
TWENTY
LORD BARTOK MAY HAVE been comforted if he’d known that at that particular moment, Persephone was not warming anyone’s bed. Rather, she was standing with her back pressed against the wall of a barn, her dagger clutched tight in one sweaty palm. Across the nearby yard, all was still and silent in the thatch-roofed cottage where the farmer and his wife slumbered.
In the four days since her dramatic escape from Mordecai’s black stone castle, Persephone had done everything she could think of to elude trackers, and she’d eaten almost nothing at all. To her intense disappointment, the panniers slung across the haunches of her stolen horse had contained no food or hunting weapons, only a ridiculous feathered cap, a riding crop and an empty silver flask. Unable to hunt, with no provisions and too wary (and proud) to beg, she’d thus been forced to rely on foraging. The first day she’d found a sugarberry bush and a handful of mushrooms. The second day she’d found nothing; the third she’d come across a stunted stalk that boasted three scraggly ears of wild corn. Yesterday she’d passed by an orchard, and even though the apples had been small, green and bitter she’d forced herself to eat half a dozen of them. She’d gotten a stomach ache for her trouble and it had hardly made a difference, anyway. Her body was crying out for sustenance—real sustenance. Her last real meal had been on the evening before the ship had dropped anchor in the deserted cove; she could feel herself weakening and her ribs were beginning to protrude.
Fearing for the life of the baby if she did not eat soon, she’d decided to take a page from Azriel’s book and “borrow” what she and the baby needed to survive.
Adjusting her grip on the dagger now, Persephone slipped through the open barn door. The moist animal smell inside evoked powerful memories of the owner’s barn where she’d laid her head for four years’ worth of nights, but Persephone paid these memories no mind. Instead, she hurriedly tiptoed past the slumbering goats, geese, cows and sow. Coming to a halt before the chicken coop at the far end of the barn, she slowly eased open the wire door, leaned over and lifted one of the chickens off her roost so gently that the creature did little more than cluck softly in her sleep.
Relieved that it had been so easy—and feeling a burble of near-hysterical laughter at the thought that Azriel was no longer the only chicken thief in the family—Persephone turned …
And froze at the sight of the now-wide-awake sow glaring up at her from between the boards of its stall, looking quite as ill-tempered as the owner’s sow had ever looked.
Without warning, it began to squeal.
Loudly.
“Reeeee,” it squealed. “REEEEEEEEEE!”
“Shush,” whispered Persephone frantically. “Shush!”
But the sow would not shush. Indeed, in addition to squealing, it began to snort and charge around in small, frenzied circles as though to demonstrate how it planned to trample her if it but got the chance. Thoroughly alarmed by the cacophony, the chicken tucked under Persephone’s arm began clucking at the top of its lungs. Its clucking awoke the rest of the chickens and also the cow, goats and geese.
Given that the racket the animals were making could easily have awoken the dead, Persephone knew she had only minutes before the farmer came running.
Turned out she had less than that.
For she was barely halfway to the open barn door when the silhouette of a large bearded man holding a shovel suddenly loomed at the threshold, blocking her escape.
“WHO’S THERE?” boomed the farmer.
As if in reply, the chicken tucked under Persephone’s arm squawked for all it was worth.
Alas for the chicken, it was too late.
Persephone had already skidded to a halt and spun back around. Bolting to the far end of the barn, she leapt clear over the fence of the sow stall, past the startled sow and across the sty. Dropping to her knees, she wrung the noisy chicken’s neck with one deft twist then wriggled through the sow-sized opening that allowed the creature access to its outdoor pen. At that moment, having evidently recovered from the shock of seeing her dash past, the outraged sow gave a mighty squeal and came charging after her.
But it was too late for the sow too, because by the time it burst out of the barn with mischief on its tiny mind, Persephone and the dead chicken had escaped into the night.
Persephone did not stop running until she got back to the spot by the stream where she’d tethered the beautiful chestnut mare she’d named Flight. She was trembling with exertion and nerves and so hungry that she truly thought she could have eaten the chicken raw—possibly without gutting or even plucking it—but she forced herself to be patient. Giving Flight a pat on the nose to let her know that all was well, Persephone walked a short distance downstream to a place where the ground was clear enough to safely start a campfire. After building one out of the driest wood she could find to minimize the smoke it produced and driving two forked branches into the ground so that she’d have something to hang the spit on, she quickly prepared and spit the chicken and set it over the fire to roast.
As she sat on her haunches turning the spit and feeling the heat of the fire upon her face, it occurred to Persephone that the last time she’d turned meat on a spit had been the evening Azriel had shown up at the owner’s farm intent upon purchasing her. She smiled into the flames as she recalled how fine he’d looked in his “borrowed” doublet— and later, how undignified he’d looked trying to scramble up onto his “borrowed” horse before Cur removed a chunk from his well-muscled backside.
Then her smile faded. She knew that if Azriel, Rachel and Zdeno were still alive, there was nowhere for them to go but to the Gypsy camp to which soldiers had already been dispatched on a mission of blood. Trying to reach the camp before they did was the reason Persephone had pressed onward at such a gruelling pace in spite of her exhaustion, hunger and fear for the baby. If only she’d had the presence of mind to ask Mordecai when the soldiers had been dispatched, she’d know if there was any hope that—
SNAP.
She was on her feet with her dagger in hand in an instant, but by the time she’d spun around to face the threat it was too late.
Like her, the three dirty, rank-smelling New Men were all dressed in black doublets, breeches and boots. Unlike her, each wielded a rather large sword instead of a rather small dagger. In fact, the tallest of the three had the cold tip of his sword pressed firmly against the tender hollow at the base of Persephone’s throat.
“Drop your blade,” he ordered tersely. When she hesitated, he applied a little more pressure to the sword.
Reluctantly, she dropped her blade.
“We saw your fire and smelt your bird,” he said, his eyes straying from her to the fat roast chicken that sizzled above the flames. “You alone?”
“Well …”
“You a deserter?”
Persephone felt a leap of hope—and dread. The three New Men did not appear to have any inkling that she was the runaway queen, and that was a tremendous relief. At
the same time, their belief that she was a deserter from Mordecai’s army was a significant concern, for although she did not know exactly what happened to deserters, she’d heard enough rumours to know that it was agonizing, gruesome and fatal.
“Of course I’m not a deserter,” she blurted in her gruff boy voice. “I’m, uh, on a mission.”
The shortest of the three New Men looked her up and down and then narrowed his eyes in suspicion. “What kinda mission?” he demanded.
Heart hammering hard, Persephone folded her arms across her chest. “A secret one,” she said, even more gruffly than before. “So, you know, you’d better shove off before—”
“Liar,” hissed the tall man.
Persephone stopped breathing. But instead of doing something rash, for the first time since being confronted she really looked at the three New Men—at their unkempt hair and beards, at their torn, filthy clothes, at the agitated looks in their eyes. And then she took a chance:
“You’re right. I am a liar,” she said. “I’m a liar and a deserter.”
The short New Man immediately heaved a great sigh, the medium-sized one cracked a rotten-toothed grin and the tall one took his sword from her throat. “Thank the gods!” he declared hoarsely, taking a step backward. “We thought maybe you were part of a tracking party sent to hunt us down. As it happens, we three are deserters too— run from the training camp north of Syon. Been on the run so long I can’t hardly remember the last time we ate fresh meat.”
He addressed this last comment directly to the roast chicken. Though Persephone knew that sharing her supper was a small price to pay for not having been dragged back to Mordecai or stabbed in the throat, her heart nevertheless sank.
“Well, since we’re all in the same boat, you’re welcome to share my fire,” she offered, trying not to sound as grudging as she felt. “And my chicken too, of course.”
“Much obliged,” said the tall man, licking his lips. Slinging the pack from his shoulder, he said. “We’ve cheese and bread enough to share but a man needs meat, after all.”
“He certainly does,” agreed Persephone, her excitement at the prospect of adding cheese and bread to her meal withering at the sight of the filthy lumps of green-tinged grey and brown the man dug up from the bottom of his pack.
Turning away before her recently settled belly rebelled, Persephone lifted the spit off the forked branches, retrieved her dagger, sat down on the trunk of a felled tree and set to work dividing up the steaming chicken.
After shoving into her mouth a piece of meat so tender, juicy, fragrant and delicious that she almost started to cry, Persephone unenthusiastically handed the rotten-toothed man his share.
“So, why’d you desert?” she asked.
“Never wanted to join the army in the first place, did we?” he replied, cramming so much meat into his mouth that juice ran down his chin, making his already filthy beard shine wetly. “But we was given a choice—join up or else.”
“Or else what?” asked Persephone, surreptitiously shoving another piece of meat into her mouth before passing a fat drumstick to the short man and most of a succulent breast to the tall one.
“What do you mean ‘or else what?’” said the short man irritably, snatching the drumstick from her without a word of thanks. “You know good and well ‘or else what.’ Or else get beat to death in front of your own wife and children!”
“Or else get shipped to some northern outpost to build bridges for the realm until you’re crushed, starved or hacked to death by screaming savages,” added the tall man.
“Oh,” murmured Persephone, who’d never given much thought to the fact that not all New Men joined the army out of choice. With the vague notion that this information could be useful at some point down the road, she filed it away. Then she sheathed her dagger and, clutching the chicken carcass protectively in one greasy hand, she reverently sank her teeth into the second drumstick. Closing her eyes, she tore off mouthful after mouthful of meat, swallowing so fast she hardly had time to chew. With each bite she swore she could feel herself— herself and the baby—getting stronger and—
“… headed?”
“Huh?” blurted Persephone, coming out of her roastchicken-induced trance so fast that she forgot to use her boy voice.
The tall man gave her a puzzled look. “I asked where you were headed,” he repeated.
“Oh. Uh, nowhere in particular,” she lied hurriedly as she inwardly cursed herself for her carelessness. “You three?”
“To my village in the west to seek out someone who knows where the General sent my family,” replied the rotten-toothed New Man at once.
“Not me,” said the short one in a hard voice. “I’m off to join one of them outlaw gangs what goes about making trouble for Mordecai. I heard there’s a fearsome one what lives in the Great Forest.”
“There is, but they’ll kill you dressed like that,” commented Persephone, grimacing as she recalled the treatment that Robert and his band of pitchfork-wielding bandits had afforded the last batch of New Men they’d caught tromping through their forest.
“I guess I don’t need advice from an untried boy like you,” grunted the short man, sucking at a piece of chicken caught between his teeth.
“And I guess I don’t need to share my fire and chicken with a hunted arsehole like you,” retorted Persephone before she could stop herself.
The rotten-toothed man chortled appreciatively at this, but the short man just grunted again.
“Him’s the only one really believes we’re being hunted,” he muttered, jerking his chin toward the tall man. “I say there’s too many of us slipping away these days for the General to give proper chase to any of us.”
“Why are there so many of you … us … slipping away?” asked Persephone as she painstakingly stripped the last bits of meat from the chicken carcass.
“Why’d you think?” asked the perpetually irritated short man. “The king is dead, his heir, the queen, ain’t nowhere to be found, Mordecai’s quit the capital, the gates has been shut, the common folk is getting restless, and there’s rumours that the great lords is set to rebel. Bad times is coming, they is, and thems of us what never wanted to join the New Man army in the first place is none too keen to be around when they do. We gots a funny feeling, see, that if it comes to war, us’ll end up in the vanguard, our blood and guts greasing the way for thems behind us—the ones what joined up of their own accord.” He paused to regard Persephone with eyes that were once again narrowed in suspicion. “How long you been on the run that you don’t know all this?”
Before she could answer, Flight—who’d been remarkably quiet up to that point—whickered softly in the darkness some twenty paces off.
“Someone’s coming!” cried the tall man softly.
All three New Men snatched up their swords and jumped to their feet.
“No one is coming,” said Persephone calmly as she flung the chicken carcass into the nearby stream. “That’s just my horse.”
“You got a horse?” exclaimed the rotten-toothed man, rounding on her.
Though he mostly sounded surprised, there was an undercurrent of speculation in his voice that immediately put Persephone on her guard. It reminded her that although the three men were reluctant lowborn conscripts who almost certainly had tragic pasts, they were bigger than she, better armed than she, and three to her one— well, one and a half. It also reminded her that although they appeared to believe she was a deserter, if she was in their smelly boots she might think it safer to slit her throat and steal her horse than to run the risk that she was not what she seemed.
And that is why she casually got to her feet, wiped her greasy hands on her breeches and gruffly said, “Not only have I got a horse, but in the pannier across his back I’ve a full flask of fine spirits. I had intended to save it for medicinal purposes but after supping with you three, I find I’ve had a change of heart. Life for such as us is hard and short, and after all, a man needs drink as well as meat. S
o if you’re of a mind to partake of my drink this night, I’m of a mind to share it with you.”
When the three New Men endorsed her suggestion quite as heartily as she’d anticipated they would, Persephone strode purposefully into the darkness toward the place she’d left Flight. Upon reaching the mare, she silently unwound the reins from the branch to which she’d been tethered, climbed up into the saddle, laid her cheek against the horse’s warm neck and urged her into a gallop.
It didn’t take long for the three thirsty New Men to figure out what had happened, and as Persephone listened to their fading exclamations of dismay and felt the wind against her sweaty face, she made the decision not to stop again until she reached the Gypsy camp.
Fulfilling her promise to Finn, saving the tribes, saving the realm—everything hinged on reaching the camp before the soldiers did. Or at least upon reaching it before Azriel reached it, that she might prevent him from walking into a death trap.
For if she was not able to do at least that, she’d be utterly alone in the world—again.
And quite apart from the fact that she simply could no longer bear the thought of a life without the handsome rascal with whom she’d fallen hopelessly, desperately in love, alone was no position for a powerless, pregnant queen with an impossible destiny to find herself in.
TWENTY-ONE
AS A FIRST STEP in his plan to destroy Mordecai and take the queen to his own bed, Lord Bartok invited half a dozen of his most influential peers down to the palace archery butts under the auspices of passing the idle midday hours with a private tourney dedicated to the memory of his recently deceased royal son-in-law.
Under normal circumstances, the ladies of the court would have trailed after them—twirling their parasols and swishing their skirts, gossiping and giggling, clapping their white-gloved hands and vying for the privilege of awarding trinkets to winners. With the young king barely cold in his tomb, however, the only thing any of them seemed to be vying for these days was who could put on the finest show of grief for the benefit of anyone who might be watching. This made the butts an excellent place for important men to speak without fear of being bothered by women or being overheard by the rats in the castle walls.
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