Robin didn’t turn, just kept looking at the woods. “There are people who live on this land. They need someone to run it, to lead. My father left us all in a hard way.”
“He’s trying to do God’s work.”
“I don’t care. That doesn’t change things here.”
Will crossed himself. Robin hadn’t blasphemed, but just to be sure.
“Still, why try to be him? I can assure you, that will never happen.”
Robin’s head dropped. “He thought the same thing.”
Will moved forward. His hand went out to touch Robin’s shoulder and stopped an inch short. It hovered in the air, wavering for long moments before he finally let it come to rest. His hand felt hard-packed muscle under the grimy muslin shirt. When Robin didn’t jerk away, he spoke quietly.
“Your father’s greatest flaw is that he’s never understood you—never realized that you are your own man.”
Robin turned at that.
“That’s what Old Soldier tells me.”
“He’s much older than me, and certainly not as pretty,” Will said, allowing a hint of a smile, “but I’d listen to him nonetheless.”
Robin smiled back. “That’s good counsel. If I don’t start doing just that, he may decide to kick my arse across the fields.”
“He is a tough old knot.” Will leaned close, conspiratorially. “Working with him, have you yet seen him without his mail?”
“He wears that shirt even in the heat of the day.”
Will shook his head. “Must be miserable.”
“He never shows it.”
Robin moved from the door, glancing back over his shoulder at the woods, now just shadows and shapes even though the twilight of the evening was still several turns of the hourglass away. He moved into the pantry, going to a dark cubby.
“You’re one to talk,” he said, “with your many layers of velveteen and leather.”
Will sniffed. “At least I am wise enough to not work a field.”
Robin tensed.
Will immediately regretted the words, but didn’t take them back.
Robin reached deep in the cubby, drawing out a wide jar with a narrow spout. Red wax dribbled off the cork, sealing the contents inside. He held it up, and Will nodded.
Robin twisted the cork, wax crumbling to the floor.
“Old Soldier chooses to be here, and does so freely. He seems to like this life, dirt and sweat and hot sun and all.” He shrugged and took a swig of his father’s secret whiskey. “It’s lost on me.” He handed the jar over.
Will held the jar low to his chest. It was warm from Robin’s hand. The vapors rising from the uncorked container took his breath away. Uncle Philemon had a taste for strong spirits, and this one smelled as if it would strip the lining off his gullet. Closing his eyes, he took a swig. His throat seized like a fist and he coughed harshly, keeping the alcohol down, but just barely.
His fist thumped his chest, trying to clear the fireball inside it so he could draw in air.
“Whooo, that’s brutal.”
Robin shrugged and took another sip. “There was another jar.”
“What happened to it?”
“It helps me sleep, after day upon day of monotony.” Robin looked away. “And my back hurts enough to keep sleep away without it.”
Will nodded. Many deep winter nights, when travel was impossible and he had to remain at home, away from the court intrigue he loved so much, he turned to the bottle to help him fall into the arms of slumber.
Robin took a deep breath, eyes wide and staring away in the distance. They snapped to focus as he turned toward Will.
“So, tell me why you have come, cousin.”
“The new king summons you to his audience.”
“He’s not the king.” The words were out in an instant. “And since when do you do the bidding of the throne?”
“There is something strange going on at the castle,” Will said.
“I see,” Robin replied. “And you think you are going to untangle whatever the mystery may be?” He didn’t wait for a response. “You should leave that nest of snakes alone, before you get bitten.”
Will’s eyes narrowed. “You know who would say that?”
“Who?”
“Your father.”
Robin thought about it for a long moment. “You’re right,” he replied. “So tell me, what is happening at Lionheart Castle that has you so concerned?”
“Not just I, but Marian as well.”
Robin straightened.
That got his interest.
“Let’s find a seat, and then tell me all about it.”
* * *
Smoke still hung on the air, seeping from the charred remains of dozens of ancient tapestries. One lone servant leaned on a wooden pole, its end blackened from stirring the thick folds of cloth so the flames could reach every inch.
The fire had burned and then smoldered for days. Soot smudged his face and arms, making him disturbingly anonymous in the gloom. He looked up and watched her cross the flagstone path leading to the groundskeeper’s lodge, his eyes too white in a face smeared nearly featureless.
Her hand moved in a ward to detach his stare. The servant blinked twice, big owl movements of his lids, before he turned and his gaze fell back to the smoldering coals of burnt cloth.
Blessed be, dark Hecate.
Her steps carried her up the steep slope to the long, low, thatch-roof building. The path was treacherous and the flagstones slick to hamper any intruder coming toward the mighty rear wall. As she drew near, she raised the shawl over her silver-threaded hair. The charms tied into it tinkled against one another.
As she stepped onto the threshold, the heavy plank door swung in, dim lamplight spilling onto her. Inside she could see the shapes of people, all in shadow forms and silhouettes.
Something in the back of her mind, some instinct, some niggling little hindbrain memory, cried out for her to run, to turn and flee as fast as she could. It only lasted a moment before being smothered by curiosity, the wonderment that caused her to chase the unknown, the mysterious, to delve into the very secrets of the universe. The thing inside that drove her to be in this place at this time.
Like the feral cat that was her familiar, she was a creature who could not deny her nature. Curiosity called, and she came.
The castle guards did not know where she lived, in the narrow hollow in the narrow house on the far edge of Sherwood, and yet one had arrived on her doorstep two days earlier. A young man, not tall but well-built, one who practiced his drills far more than required. Earnestness shone from his face. He knew her name and gave her the simple instructions.
Message delivered, he simply turned and left.
Now her foot stepped over the threshold and she moved into the gloom of the long building. Inside she found a plank floor, its surface scratched deep. In her mind’s eye she could picture the heavy iron tools being dragged across the floor after a hard day of use. These tools hung on the walls, lining the entire left side of the building. Wicked spades with wide blades both sharpened and dulled by the rocky soil around the castle hung side by side with axes and hatchets, their robust heads oiled and filed, and wicked-toothed saws whose cutting edges brought to her mind the mouths of ravening animals.
Lamplight traced along cutting surfaces and keen, spiky points.
The room was full of people. The floor was occupied by a few chairs and benches, all of them empty, for everyone stood. At the far end, the wall held a fireplace that watched her with a dead sooty eye.
This was a plain, utilitarian structure, designed entirely to keep tools locked away and allow a groundskeeper and his charges to rest at the end of a long day, or to shelter them from the elements. As she walked further into the room her eye picked up details here and there—an empty wooden cask turned into a table, its surface holding a pair of carved bones used for gambling. Pegs held oiled cloth raincloaks and heavier winter garments made of wool, their dirty blue color a signal to a
nyone that their wearers were in charge of the upkeep of the castle grounds. Around the fireplace squatted pots and pans, blackened from time in the flames.
Something in the firebox made her look twice. A nest of many tendrils lay there, stark against the soot and the ash. Bending close, she could see what it was.
A tangle of perhaps a dozen short, knotted ropes.
Prayer ropes.
The groundskeepers would be simple citizens, villagers who worked for the crown in a servitude capacity. They would have been raised in the shadow of the monastery, under the hand of a Christian king. They would be devout, working hard for lord and liege. They would carry these ropes from the moment they woke until they lay down again at night, using them to count out the prayers they spoke at each break of the day.
They would never desecrate something they used every day in the name of Richard and his God. The blasphemy struck her like a blow to the face. She did not ascribe to the Christ of the monks, but she was not opposed. Her belief was “do as you will, if it harm none.” Belief in Christ did nothing to conflict with that.
Pulling her gaze away from the scorched prayer ropes, she stepped to the wall, put her back to the stone, and watched the occupants of the room with a narrow eye. They were all watching her as well. Most of them stood apart from one another, solitary. A few of them clumped together in twos and threes, whispering with mouth to ear.
Two of them she recognized. A man stood near the center of the room, possessed of bladed shoulders and an enviable height. His face was almost handsome from a certain angle and in a certain light. His hands were overknuckled and crossed his chest to press like knobby, pale spiders against his shoulders. A simple monk’s robe of undyed wool suckered to his spare frame, outlining every nook and cranny of him. His eyes glittered with a feverish intensity as he stared at her.
Though they had never met, she knew him by description and by reputation. The Mad Monk. Disgraced and excommunicated for dabbling in the dark arts, he lived in the crags of the northland, above Hadrian’s Wall, among the Picts and the fey and the Bean Sidhe. Legend was that he’d attempted to pull an archangel from the heavens and make it a house servant. According to many, he had never stopped trying to pull down his Seraph through incantations and self-mutilation.
She looked away before his eyes could lock with hers, certain she didn’t want to gaze upon a soul that dark.
Against the opposite wall leaned a woman, broad of shoulder and thick of wrist like a man, but her features were smooth as unchurned milk, her skin twice as creamy. Knots of hair fell around her shoulders like a cape, brushing past dimpled elbows. Blue fain tattoos swirled on her left cheek, chasing one another in spindly patterns running from her temple to under the corner of her deep-set eye.
Pushing off the timbers with her shoulders—a move that thrust out her bosom to distracting effect—the woman began walking toward her, swiveling hips like a dowsing crystal. She was like some form of feline creature.
Stalking a mouse.
Every eye touched them as the woman stepped close.
“Adaryn.”
Her voice was fluid, almost slippery as it wove around the syllables of her name.
Adaryn forced her eyes to stay on the woman’s face, avoiding the appearance of what she felt in her knees.
“Agrona.”
“Have you finally left your jugs and herbs and smelly roots, and joined the true face of power?”
“I still follow the Path.”
Agrona’s eyes narrowed. “You always did kiss arse to father.”
Adaryn didn’t speak. Her sister was right. She clung to their father’s way of magic, through communion with nature and harmony with all of creation. He had been her shelter from their mother, a malevolent whirlwind of cruelty who sought power by communing with the dead. Agrona had worshiped at Mum’s feet. After the woman died Agrona kept her bones in a box that formed her personal altar.
Her sister lived as a necromancer, while she had chosen to become a hedgewitch.
“If not to change your ways,” Agrona said, “then why are you here?”
“I was summoned by a castle guard, just like you.”
Agrona’s laugh was a vicious knife, stabbing shallow and quick. “Oh, dear sister, no servant called me.”
“Then why…?”
“Mother sent me.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The men stood around the throne room in groups of three and five, trying to talk over one another, jockeying for position, establishing dominance in their small circles of nobility. He moved among them, a hawk among hens, stepping into each group long enough to make his presence known, to mark himself as the strongest personality in the room, and then on to the next.
Sometimes the move was simple—step up, and the men parted to make space, smiles latched onto their faces. These groups were the people he’d counted as allies for years, nobles who sided with him when decisions were required.
Bootlickers.
Other groups had a very different reaction to him. They would stiffen as he approached, tensing hands on their belts, always near the dagger or dirk that had become fashionable among the landed gentry. He was the only one who still wore a longsword strapped to his hip. These groups would still part for him, and allow him to stand in their midst as he parlayed and positioned himself. These were Longstride allies left leaderless by a fool’s insistence on sailing with the king.
He wasn’t an unbeliever. To the contrary, his religion was devout and strictly disciplined, but God was in England. If He chose to allow barbarians and infidels to overrun the Jews, then so be it.
Old Man Minter nodded to him, one eye closed in a permanent squint by an old knick with a dagger caught in a border skirmish long ago.
“Locksley.”
The men around him grunted unenthusiastic greetings. He remained silent for a long moment. When he did speak he leaned in, tilted his head, and kept his voice low, sounding conspiratorial.
“Gentlemen,” he said. “Good day to you.”
Feet shuffled. Eyes flickered to Minter.
So he’s the one to bring to heel, in Longstride’s absence.
Locksley said nothing more, watching the older lord. His years had barely stooped him, just the slightest curve of shoulder. He remembered a younger version of Minter, a rawboned rogue in his father’s hunting parties. He’d known the man near his whole life and he knew to wait, let his patience be Minter’s downfall.
Minter rubbed his upper lip with a blunt finger.
“’Tis certainly no feast we’ve been called to this time,” he said, and the group murmured their agreement, the babble of noise rolling around the circle. “Any idea what the proxy wants with us?”
One by one the faces turned toward him. He waited until they all watched him before casually lifting a shoulder and gesturing lazily with his left hand.
“He is the new king, even temporarily,” Locksley responded. “This is where he establishes how things will run under his hand.”
“I, for one, am not interested in being summoned like a dog,” Lord Staunton said.
“None of us are,” Minter affirmed.
“He needs to be told,” a man to Minter’s right said, a thin voice coming from a thin neck. “He needs to understand that our support is necessary, if he is to rule.”
The murmurs grew louder, more animated. Other men began to move closer, wedging into the group. Men he had in his pocket.
Excellent.
He responded to Minter’s right-hand man, but lifted his voice for the entire group to hear.
“We enforce the throne’s decrees, and yet you worry that this king remains unaware of it,” he said. “Of the fact that we are free men and landowners, who supply the resources he needs through our own nobility.”
The nods and murmurs were vigorous.
He smiled. “Then we shall remind him.”
One of his men struck up a cheer, and the others grabbed onto it like a lifeline. Minter held
fast to the end, but even he joined in, and with that they were his.
* * *
Will fell over his own arms as he leaned forward. Brow furrowed, he tried to make his tongue work properly. “You thee, wha’s happeninanin is strange.”
Robin sighed. His lower back ached; despite his youth and despite the loosening effect of the drink, it still throbbed a little. He leaned forward in his chair and lifted the jar, draining the last dregs. The movement made his head feel as if he were underwater, reality dragging just slightly with the smallest movements.
“You can obserf… ob… look for yourselb when you come wilth me.” Will’s words stumbled into each other, sticky in his mouth.
“I’m not going,” Robin said stubbornly. Will stared at him with wide eyes and a slight shake of his head that wouldn’t stop.
“You muth.”
“No.”
“Buth…”
“Tell Prince John what you want,” Robin said. “Or not. I’m staying here.”
“Do you not take this seriouth… seri-ah…”
“It has nothing to do with me or this land.” He shrugged, and rose to his feet. Standing made the room tilt, but not much. Will pushed himself out of the chair with a lurch. He stopped himself, hands out in the air as if it were a wall to brace on. Nevertheless, he swayed precariously.
Robin grabbed his cousin’s arm. “You will be able to ride?”
Will looked at him with a smirk on his face. “I’ll be fine.” He took a step that made him arc lazily in a quarter-circle. “Walk wif me to the thables.”
Robin laughed, and it felt good to do so after the days he’d had since his father and brother left.
* * *
“I am pleased to see you all here.”
The voice came from everywhere. It wasn’t raised, nor shouted, yet every person paid attention. Sounding as if the speaker stood by her side, it brought Adaryn a chill so strong her skin puckered beneath her clothes.
Her sister shivered and stepped back. Both of them—indeed, everyone in the room—glanced around to locate the source of the words.
The shadows at the far end of the hut deepened, coalescing and taking on the texture of sackcloth. They moved from sooty gray to rich midnight. In the center of the veil something pale moved forward, swimming through darkness like a serpent through stormy seas. The shape clarified as it drew near, closer to the lamp’s light. A man’s face, pale and angular, topped with a shock of white hair that hung straight to the waist. Then two shapes to the side, long fingered hands held in intricate knots of knuckles. He stepped from the pool of darkness, boot heels sounding for the first time as they struck the plank floor, and the knuckle knots relaxed, falling free into simple, normal looking hands.
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