by Glenda Larke
He felt ill. Nauseous, as if not only his assumptions had been turned upside down, but also his stomach. Thilda wouldn’t have done this. She couldn’t have. And then, heartbroken, Mathilda, how could you? You shame us all!
When she pushed his hand and the dagger away, he didn’t resist. His mind was saying, Tell me it’s a lie. Sweet creation, tell me this is all a lie … But his memory was of his grandmother calling Thilda a cunning scallywag. She manipulates you so easily, Ryce. You must be more alert to her wiles.
Oh, Va. It’s true. Thilda betrayed Saker. She seduced him and then threw him away, knowing where he’d end up, as though he was a piece of offal.
He still had his hand on her shoulder, but he held the dagger loosely in his other hand now. Something had died inside him. So this is what it is going to be like to be king. “I’m not sure it makes any difference what Thilda did,” he muttered. “Saker committed treason when he lay with her.”
“Of course it makes a difference!”
“Mathilda has to marry the Regal. It’s a – a concern of trade and commerce and Ardronese prosperity. So it’s essential that no one knows of her lack of innocence. How it occurred is of no consequence. What matters is that you know and Saker knows. And so you both have to die. I’m sorry, mistress. I think Saker still deserves to die for what he did. It was his duty to advise his charge, not to take her to bed. And it was your duty to protect her. You both failed.”
Yet I don’t want to do this.
He took a deep breath, preparing himself to stab the knife upwards between her ribs and into her heart, knowing that this time there was no stepping away from his duty as Prince of Ardrone.
26
The Shattering of a Dream
Aren’t princes supposed to be noble defenders of the Kingdom? Sorrel thought bitterly. Protecting the people and upholding the law? Pox on this calf. He’s forgotten he’s supposed to have grown up.
Well, she’d be cursed if she’d give up so easily. Besides, Ryce’s determination had no more ice to it than summer snows. His hand quivered as he hesitated.
Sorrel allowed her face to appear to melt like butter in the sun. Under his horrified gaze, her skin sagged, then shifted into shapeless runnels. Eyes, nose, mouth flowed into the flux. He stumbled backwards away from her, appalled, then paralysed with shock.
She began to untie the horses, but kept a watchful eye on him. As soon as she saw he was beginning to regain his wits, she altered her appearance once more. This time she chose to become Mathilda. Perhaps he’d find it difficult to kill someone who was the image of his sister.
Smiling at him, she imitated the curve of Mathilda’s lips, changing her dark hair to golden as it blew around her face. She even added the solitary freckle to her cheek, the blemish Mathilda hated so much. There you are, your highness: your sister, blue eyes twinkling at you, wearing her favourite dress. And you should recognise that necklace; I believe it once belonged to your mother.
Twice he tried to say something, but no words would come.
She had the grey untied, but the reins belonging to the roan had become hooked into the furze. Struggling with the thorns, she unsettled the roan, and that agitated Saker’s horse in turn. Worse, it was so hard to maintain a smiling Mathilda while trying to deal with the horses and her own growing fear. I don’t want to die. And what happens to Saker if I do?
“Thilda?” Ryce whispered, a tentative sound she hardly heard. Then, as if he realised that was nonsense, “Who – what are you?” His two hounds sniffed around her skirts, but without alarm.
“What does it matter?” She tried to sound like Mathilda.
“Witchery!” He spat the word at her.
“That’s right,” she agreed, tugging the reins free at last. “And witchery is granted by Va, remember. It’s not an evil thing.”
She stepped past him to mount the grey, but he grabbed her by the arm. “You can’t trick me this way! I know who you are.”
The hounds lost interest and disappeared as if they’d smelled something new. Pulling herself free, she flicked her appearance back to her Celandine face, but kept the blue dress. She plumped the imaginary material up into the full overskirt and kirtle, to disorientate him if he grabbed for her again.
The calm in her voice was at odds with the skipping of her heart, “Your highness, you can’t kill me like this. You are an honourable man, and my death would haunt you. Besides, Lady Mathilda needs me, you know that. She’s panic-stricken about her marriage and I can calm her. And think on this: I have the witchery of glamour, granted at the shrine that day you and the Princess met me in Melforn. I can spy for Mathilda at the court of the Regal. Think how useful I can be to the Princess of Ardrone.”
“I can’t trust you. Mathilda can’t trust you! If you – or Saker – were to speak of what was done to her…”
“Nothing was done to her. And her secret is safe with me.”
“Did I hear my name mentioned?” The new voice, coming from the other side of the horses, was so unexpected they both whirled in shock.
Saker stepped out from behind Ryce’s horse, the two hounds indicating their enthusiasm at his arrival by leaping up, tails wagging. He winced as their paws landed on his naked skin.
“Well,” he said, pushing the dogs off, “this is an interesting meeting. The last two people I expected to see standing around having a chat in the middle of a moor. Mind if I join you? Of course, I’m hardly dressed for company…”
Ryce, thunderstruck, jaw sagging, drew his sword.
“Mind? Of course not,” Sorrel said, struggling to contain her relief. He’s alive! Va be thanked … “Every conversation needs a naked man to add a touch of spice. You look cold.” His chest rose and fell as if he had been running, but his lips were pinched and blue.
Thank you, Va, thank you, guardian of the oak, thank you for saving him. The relief she felt was so heartfelt, it destroyed all her carefully built barriers, all her carefully constructed self-delusions. Her heartbeat hammered at her ribs.
She cared about him. Damn him.
And there was nothing she could do about it. Idiot.
Saker twitched the Prince’s cloak from where he’d left it on his saddle. Ryce said nothing, but there was no mistaking his look of consternation. He had no idea what to do.
He expected Saker to be dead, she thought. Or close to it.
Saker wrapped the cloak tight around himself. Sorrel stared at him, wondering at the rage she read in his expression, rage directed not at the Prince, but at her. She struggled to comprehend the lack of a wound on his face. His cheek should have been disfigured, horribly. Instead, it was smooth and untouched. She felt her own witchery recognise the existence of a witchery within him, where once there had been none. His burn had been healed and then concealed, but not by glamour magic. Whatever his witchery was, it was nothing like hers.
His gaze took in her clothing and the dapple grey. He said, in an apparent mix of puzzlement and outrage, “You’re wearing my clothes! What in Va’s name are you doing here? I can’t think of a single reason for you to be up on this moor, in this weather, with Prince Ryce.”
She didn’t answer, unable to know where to start. She had pictured their meeting countless times, she’d planned the words, but now they didn’t seem adequate. Or even appropriate. And she didn’t understand why he was furious with her. He’d seen her come to his defence in the law court, risking much to do so. She didn’t exactly expect gratitude, but even neutrality would have been preferable to this undercurrent of rage.
Ryce was holding his sword at the ready, but he didn’t move and he still hadn’t spoken, so she said, “I didn’t come with the Prince. I came alone.”
“Alone? From Throssel?” He was still staring at her, this time as if she’d taken leave of her senses. “Who brought Greylegs?”
That, she assumed, was his horse, so she said, “I did. Your things are here.” She fetched the rear saddlebags and threw them down at his feet. “Some clothing, fo
r a start.”
He knelt to unbuckle them and haul out the contents. “I never expected to see these again.” He pulled on his drawers and hose, then looked up to stare meaningfully at the sword she wore, still buckled at her side. “Especially not that Pashali blade. It’s worth a small fortune.”
She recognised the insult. The loggerheaded lout. He could have thanked her. As for the sword, she’d even forgotten she was wearing it. She undid the sword belt and was about to toss it to him, blade and all, when Prince Ryce grabbed at it, wrenching it out of her hands.
“The Prince is here to kill you,” she warned. “In fact, he wants to kill us both, because he doesn’t want the world to know you took Mathilda to bed. Of course, he thought you ravished her.”
Saker said nothing to contradict that, but he eyed Ryce warily as he pulled on a shirt. “In that case, I hope you’ll forgive me if I die fully dressed, your highness. It’s fobbing cold up here, and I swear there’s ice instead of blood in my veins. Besides, I am doubtless outraging the modesty of Mistress Celandine.”
She winced at his sarcasm. “Indeed, you’d better get dressed before you freeze your pizzle off,” she snapped.
He raised an eyebrow; at her language, she assumed.
A pox on you, Saker. I’m not going to be a sweetly demure lady to please your delicate ears. She took the second set of saddlebags from the front of the saddle and dropped them in front of him.
He said, pulling on his breeches, “While I can quite see why your highness would like to bring my miserable existence to an end, I must admit I fail to understand what crime Mistress Celandine has committed that is deserving of assassination. After all, was she not the informant who told you of my iniquity in this matter? As indeed she ought, as a loyal servant of the Crown.”
She stared at him, unable at first to comprehend the enormity of what he was suggesting. Then, as the words sank in, she felt the pain right through to her backbone. Oak-and-acorn, he thinks I not only betrayed Mathilda by going to the King in the first place, but that I told the lie about what happened!
Her shock left her breathless.
Ryce spoke for the first time since Saker had arrived, his passion breaking through his shock. “Leak on you, you whoreson! I don’t know what the rattling pox you mean, and I don’t care. You are going to die here for what you did!”
“Oh, don’t be such an idle-headed dewberry!” she snapped at the Prince. Damn his loggerheaded stubbornness! He’s trying to dredge up enough anger to murder us … “You know now he didn’t do anything to the Lady Mathilda that she didn’t invite!”
But Ryce wasn’t listening. He lunged at Saker with his blade, all his pent-up frustration bursting into action.
Saker moved as fast as a startled cat, flinging himself sideways into a head-roll. He rose to his feet in a half-crouch, arms raised at the ready, his stance balanced for either flight or fight. “Confound it, your highness, you do realise I’m not going to stand still and allow you to run me through, don’t you?”
“You can’t escape the King’s justice!”
“Va has judged me, and then sent me here to you,” Saker said quietly. “I cannot believe it was just so I may die on your sword.”
“You betrayed my friendship. You betrayed your position in the royal household. You committed treason. You deserve the death coming to you.”
“Deserve? Perhaps. But I will serve my country and my faith yet, Va willing.” Even as he spoke, he was moving, grabbing Greylegs’ reins, swinging himself into the saddle.
Ryce lunged forward again, but not for Saker. Instead, he grabbed Greylegs’ bridle and swung his sword up to the horse’s exposed throat. “Get down, or your horse dies.”
Saker froze.
They stared at one another, prince and ex-witan, in a battle of wills. Sorrel knew she should be blurring herself into safety while their attention was on each other, but she was spelled into immobility, paralysed by the possibility that one of the men was going to die.
“You know me too well, my prince,” Saker said at last. “And I think you have learned something about being a prince since last we spoke.” He swung himself to the ground and moved to the mare’s head, on the opposite side of the horse to Ryce. He patted Greylegs’ neck.
Ryce lowered the sword. “It would have hurt to do it,” he remarked. “She’s a fine horse.”
“And you chose her for me.”
“Yes. I did.” He regarded Saker thoughtfully. “Mistress Celandine says Mathilda went freely to you that night. That accusing you of ravishing her was all Mathilda’s idea. Is that Va’s truth?”
Saker looked at Sorrel in surprise. “Ah. So Mistress Celandine changed her mind.” He looked at her, a penetrating gaze of contempt. “First you betray Lady Mathilda by telling the King his daughter was ravished, and then you betray her again by putting the blame on her. What is it you want here?”
Incandescent rage replaced her shock. How dare he! She groped for words adequate to express her fury.
Slowly Prince Ryce lowered his sword still further, until the point dug into the soil at his feet. He clasped his hands around the head of the hilt and stood regarding the two of them thoughtfully. “Mistress Celandine did not tell us anything. It was Mathilda. She came to the King with her tale of ravishment on her own volition. She put all the blame on you. If Mistress Celandine is guilty in this matter, it is for her loyalty to the Princess.” He looked away from them both to gaze, unseeing, at the horizon. He added softly, “Mathilda planned the whole thing, right from the beginning, and cozened us all.”
Saker whitened. Blindly, hands fumbling, he turned away to pick up his doublet and pull it on. “Nonsense!” he said. “If you were gulled, it was by Mistress Celandine, not Lady Mathilda.”
Ryce shook his head. “No. I can see it now. I know Mathilda. And her woman’s wiles hold no attraction to an elder brother. Careful where you tread now, Rampion. You come perilously close to calling both the King and me liars.”
Saker looked as if he’d been slapped. He returned his gaze to Sorrel, appalled.
“It never occurred to me that you didn’t realise who betrayed you,” she said, and coated the words with all the contempt she could muster. “It was her futile attempt to find a way to prevent her marriage. She used you, from the beginning. In vain, because King Edwayn insists that this obscene union proceed.”
The Prince gave her a sharp, angry glare. His sword swung up to point at her in threat. She stared back, unapologetic, even as she wondered at the reckless audacity of her words. “The truth can be unpalatable,” she said, and refused to flinch. “But that doesn’t make it a lie.”
“Have a care, mistress,” Ryce said. “What happens here need have no consequences for me.”
They stared at each other, and finally he lowered the blade.
Saker turned away then, to pull his jacket out of the saddlebag and shrug it on. His face was chalk white, his mouth pinched, his look stricken. His composure wavered and he rested his forehead against Greylegs’ saddle, his shoulders rising and falling as he inhaled deeply.
When he turned back to face them once more, it was with a bark of bitter laughter. “So we were all deceived. Va, but she is a woman fit to be a queen!” He took another long breath. “Your highness, I am not guiltless in this matter. I lay with a woman I should have protected and guided. I failed spectacularly to do so.” He gave Sorrel a hard look. “You should have prevented her from such foolishness. And we should all remember that the Lady Mathilda is much to be pitied. Mistress Celandine is right about this union. It is one thing for a man to marry as he is told, and quite another for a maiden to be traded off to another land to bed an elderly monarch with a rancid reputation. We have not served her well, none of us.”
Oh, sweet Va, he loves her still, the loggerheaded ninny.
“I should kill you both where you stand,” Ryce said, but there was only resignation in his tone.
“My liege,” Saker said, “you have my promise
that nothing of this affair will ever cross my lips. I serve my faith and my king, as ever. If you wish to slit my throat with your blade, so be it. I do suggest, though, that you spare Mistress Celandine’s life. A woman with a glamour can only be of great service to Lady Mathilda in the hell she has been sold into, and perhaps to Ardrone as well, should the Princess will it that way.”
“A … a … glamour.” The Prince took a deep breath. “Ah, I see. I trusted you once, Saker. Should I do so again?”
“The Oak warmed me last night. Without that, I would have died of the cold. The unseen guardian loosed the shackles that bound me to the tree. I – I believe there is a purpose in the life left to me.”
Ryce cocked his head thoughtfully, then nodded. “You were branded. I saw the brand. Now it has vanished.”
“It has?” In surprise, he raised his fingers to his cheek and ran them over the smoothness of his skin. “I feel it still, as roughness beneath my fingers.”
“There’s naught to see.” Ryce paused to consider, then added, “You once told me there were things beyond the domain of a king or a prince. This is one of them. You are free to go. I pray it is Va’s path you follow.”
“That’s not a decision the King would sanction.”
Ryce sighed. “I know. But I made another decision here today: I do not wish to be my father. Take the road over the moors to the coast. Leave Ardrone and do not return, under pain of death.” He turned to Sorrel. “And you – a witan once told me that glamours are the rarest of all Va’s witcheries. That they are gifted only to Va’s most trusted servants.” He walked to his horse and gathered up the reins. “I don’t like you, Mistress Marten,” he added as he mounted. “I don’t think you served my sister well. But you risked much to come here, and I bow to a greater power than mine. You too are free to go. Finish whatever business you have here with the witan, and then ride after me. I shall await you in the Chervil Inn, and will escort you back to Throssel. After that, doubtless your glamour will serve you to return to Lady Mathilda’s side. If the King receives word of your presence, he would see you dead; never doubt it. If you are caught, I cannot protect you.”