“All right,” Cyrus said. “So he’s summoned you there … and you suspect a trap?”
“No,” Genner said with a smile. “You do not engage in hostilities of any kind at Enrant Monge. It is a place of peace, kept as a shrine to the days when our Kingdoms were united and all Luukessia was ruled from within its great halls. To fight at Enrant Monge is anathema, unheard of. To be summoned there by Briyce Unger is a shocking development. We expected to hear from him, but only in the form of a letter requesting terms to go back to our earlier borders.”
Cyrus shrugged. “So he’s got some other threat in mind?” There were nods from the courtiers. “Any idea what it is?”
“We are not receiving regular messengers,” Genner said. “With our army moving north and Unger’s forces still withdrawing from the keeps they’ve taken, we don’t have a clear idea of what’s going on.” He cast a look at the King. “But this is all mere courtesy, to let you know about the conclusion to the war you helped us win. The King has summoned you here for a different purpose entirely.”
Cyrus gave the King a polite nod, inwardly chafing. I’ll be old by the time these bastards get to their point. He shifted in his armor, feeling the discomfort in his greaves from the thought and touch of Cattrine, still waiting in his bed …
“We have received another message,” Genner said, somewhat grave. “This one is also of some import.”
“I appreciate a good sense for the dramatic as much as the next person,” Cyrus said, “but would you mind just cutting to point? I’m a soldier, and we’re not renowned for our patience or craftiness with words.”
“Very well, General,” the King said. “On your way to our land from the bridge, you laid siege to the keep at Green Hill in Actaluere.”
“I did,” Cyrus said calmly. “Though it wasn’t much of a siege. It took less than an hour.” The courtiers all shuffled uncomfortably. “Is this a problem? Your son told me conquests of that sort are common, and in fairness, Baron Hoygraf provoked us by kidnapping one of our scouting parties and holding them prisoner.
“It is all well and good to storm a keep, take some plunder,” Odau Gennar said, “and young Longwell was correct, such skirmishes do happen regularly, and if not part of a sustained invasion, are generally overlooked.” He hesitated. “However …”
“However,” the King interrupted Genner’s dramatic pause, brandishing a letter, “this was not a normal instance. We have received this because of it.” He unfolded the page, waving it from the throne. “A declaration of war! From Actaluere!”
“Excuse me?” Cyrus stared at the paper. “Actaluere has declared war on you? Or on Sanctuary?”
“On us,” Genner said. “Because we are harboring you. They demand—”
“Look at this!” The King stood, holding the paper before him, waving it at Cyrus. “You come to my Kingdom and you bring war and despair. And now you would retreat back from whence you came and leave the wreckage behind!”
“Hold it,” Cyrus said. “You were a night away from total defeat when we got here, let’s not go forgetting that. Second, if it’s as you say, I won’t leave until I can resolve this situation with Actaluere.” He watched the King’s outrage subside, the waving of the letter stopped, and the page crumpled as the King’s hand fell by his side. “So they’re upset with us for raiding Green Hill?”
“Not exactly,” Odau Genner said, stepping in. “The thing you have to understand is that Milos Tiernan, the King of Actaluere, is quite cunning, but not disposed to wanting a war. We suspect this declaration is his way of warning us of his dissatisfaction.”
“So you don’t think he means to prosecute a war against you?” Cyrus asked, confused.
“Oh, he will fight,” the King said, “and he will roll across our western border with nothing to stop him, sacking everything in sight and leaving our land a smoking ruin. But he warns us first, so that first we may accede to his demands, and let the whole thing be taken back, put away, and never spoken of again. Honor satisfied, he will rescind his declaration of war and be done with it.”
“Honor satisfied?” Cyrus looked at Genner, hoping for an explanation. “What does Tiernan want?”
“You took something from Green Hill when you sacked it,” Genner began delicately. “Something important—vital, really. He wants it back.”
“That’s fine,” Cyrus said. “None of the plunder we took was of vital importance to us. Some gemstones, silverware and the like. Whatever of it he wants, we’ll give back, no issue.” Cyrus looked around at the courtiers, some of whom seemed extremely discomfited. “So what is it? A jewel? A sword?”
“I do not believe you understand,” said Odau Genner, looking at his boots.
“That much is plain,” Cyrus snapped. “Because none of you are explaining this in anything other than a circuitous way. Be out with it, man! What the hells does he want?”
“Your lover,” the King said, matching the fire in Cyrus’s voice. “The Baroness Cattrine Hoygraf. He wants her returned immediately, to satisfy his honor.”
“His honor?” Cyrus spat. “I took her rightly from a man I bested and killed, a man who tortured and abused her. What claim does he think he has to her?”
“No claim at all if you come to it,” Genner said. “You are correct, you took her fairly from a vanquished foe, and by all the standards of Luukessia, he has no right to ask for her back. But nonetheless, he does ask—and if you do not return her, he will invade our western reaches.”
“And I’ll ride out to meet him, kill his army, cut off his head, and leave a smoking ruin of his Kingdom,” Cyrus said, a feral savagery overriding his senses, anger hot in his veins. He felt himself shake, such was the fury that poured through him. “By what right does he imagine he can do this thing? What gives him the right to try and take her away?”
The King exchanged a look with Genner, who looked back at Cyrus. “By honor and blood, sir, does he demand her return. And it is honor that drives him, make no mistake. Your taking of the Baroness does make him look weak, a fool, and her return after a threat of war will soothe his pride, balm his wounded reputation.” Genner let out a small smile, though the King returned to sit on his throne, hands resting on the arms of it. “After all,” Genner said, “would you do any less if someone took your own blood?”
“Own blood?” Cyrus said, feeling as though the ground had dropped from beneath him. “Whose blood?”
The King leaned forward in his seat, his thin fingers caressing the arms of the throne. One of his hands darted up to stay Genner, who had begun to answer. “You don’t know, then?” The King seemed to relish the thought, as though he were gaining sustenance from Cyrus’s unknowing. “Your lover, Baroness Cattrine—before she was the Baroness Hoygraf of Green Hill, was someone else entirely. I suppose she never told you her maiden name?”
Cyrus waited, his jaw clenched, as the King savored his moment of triumph.
“Oh, yes,” the King proclaimed, “she didn’t. What a snakelike creature a woman is, how like a viper to envenom you, and without even an exchange of the proper truths. I see how it is. Very well, then.” He smiled. “Before your lady Cattrine was Baroness Hoygraf, she was Cattrine Tiernan, the Contessa of Caenalys, the capital of all Actaluere, born to the title by blood.
“Because, you see, she is Milos Tiernan’s own dear sister.”
Chapter 23
“You’re not going to hurt her, are you?” Martaina broke the silence between them on the walk back to Cyrus’s quarters. The steady noise of his boots smacking against the marble with each step drummed a rhythm of fury, the walls seemed to blur as he passed. At Martaina’s words his head snapped around at her.
“What?” He nearly recoiled away from her. “No, I’m not going to hurt her. What kind of a question is that?”
“A valid one,” the ranger said, trying to keep pace with Cyrus’s long footsteps as they chewed up the ground between him and his quarters. The meeting had ended shortly after the King had made hi
s revelation—Cyrus thought of it as twisting the dagger, the King had seemed to enjoy his pain so—and Cyrus had left the chamber, not hearing anything else that had been said save for that the royal convoy would begin the month-long journey to Enrant Monge on the morrow. “You’ve been told something that augers badly for a woman you were—dare I say—beginning to fall in—”
“I was not,” Cyrus snapped. “I trusted her, that’s all. I invited her into my bed. I … started to … barely allow myself … I had become comfortable with her,” he finally allowed. “But she has lied to me. Everything about her approach to me from the start to now has been based on that lie.”
“She never lied to you,” Martaina said, breaking into a jog to keep alongside him. “Can you blame her for not wanting you to know that she was the sister of the King of Actaluere, being as they were the ones whose envoy had captured and harmed our people?”
“Yes, I can blame her,” Cyrus said. “Very easily, in fact. If I wasn’t shaken from taking her along with us by the fact that her husband kidnapped and raped some of my people, I likely wouldn’t have been dissuaded had I known her brother was a royal prick who sold her into slavery to the baron. But she didn’t give me the opportunity. She lied.” He heard the words, and they sounded foreign to him, burned in his gullet.
“Be cautious, sir,” Martaina warned him. “Don’t do anything you’ll regret later—”
“I won’t regret a bit of it,” Cyrus said, the words stinging his lips with a fire of their own. “What’s with this sudden concern? Do you honestly think I’m going to … what? Slap her around? I don’t care how furious I am, I don’t hit women.” He paused. “When I’m not in combat. I mean, some lady brandishes a sword at me, my gentlemanly ways tend to go right out the window—”
“Just …” Martaina stopped, tugging on Cyrus’s arm. “You’re angry, sir. Understandable. But you may make of things differently later. You may want to go easy.”
“I don’t expect I’m going to be seeing this betrayal differently in the evening’s light,” Cyrus said. “Nor in the light of the moon, nor tomorrow’s, nor the next moon’s, nor any day from here going forward til the end of all days. She … lied to me. She betrayed me.” He felt the emotions play across his face, felt it contort, the rage coloring the inflection of his words. “You think I’m likely to forget that? She’s the sister of someone who’s a declared enemy of ours. Whose servant did things—”
“She’s the wife of said servant, and you got over that enough to pleasure yourself with her,” Martaina replied, unfazed. “You took your armor off with her, sir—and that’s not something you tend to do. You may be wearing it now, but she’s already through it. You’re stinging right now. Tread easy.” Martaina withdrew, seeming to fade as she began to step backward. “Lest you find out how much more it can hurt.”
Cyrus looked back at her, unflinching. “I’m a warrior. Taking pain is what I do. Gather the officers together, tell them I’ll met with them in the dining hall in fifteen minutes.” He straightened. “Truly fifteen minutes, this time. Let them know.” He turned away, trying to keep an even pace on his journey through the halls until he reached his room. His urge was to throw the door open and storm in, but he restrained it, shutting it near-silently. He heard something stir in the bedroom, and Cattrine’s head peeked around the doorframe, followed by the rest of her, shyly displaying her nude skin, the scars obvious and plentiful. She had done much the same for the last thirty days, and every time it enticed him, drew him in, the sight of her this way.
Now he saw only the scars, jagged, angry, marring the perfect skin, interrupting the smoothness of her flesh, things he barely noticed yesterday, but were now glaringly obvious, standing out, filling his vision. They were all he could see. “Get dressed,” he said. “Your brother threatens war on Galbadien.”
Cyrus watched her confidence crumple, the smooth, seductive look evaporating from her face like a mirage when one draws too close. One of her hands wrapped around her breasts while the other sank lower, as though she could cover herself with them. “He what? I’m sorry?”
“He threatens war. On Galbadien, for harboring the Sanctuary army.” Cyrus’s gaze was cold, unmerciful, and he could feel Cattrine wilt before it. “The King and his advisors seem to believe it’s his way of salving his wounded honor, because he’s embarrassed that a foreign army marched through his realm, slapped down one of his barons, and stole away his own flesh and blood without challenge.”
“That … does sound like him,” she said. “But it’s just the rattle of the sword, surely he can’t mean to—”
“They think he does,” Cyrus said. “They think he knows they’re weak on the border and that he won’t hesitate to exploit that to save himself some rich embarrassment.”
Her eyes flicked down, even as she stood away from the doorframe, exposed, in the middle of the room. Her hands hovered near uselessly around her body, and she seemed to shiver, though the room felt warm to Cyrus’s skin.
“I didn’t mean … I’m sorry,” she said, still not meeting his eyes, “for not telling you.”
“Yes,” Cyrus said. “I’m sorry, too. Would it really have been that bad? I already took you on knowing what your husband was. Did you think having an ass of a brother would have stopped me?”
“I was afraid,” she said, as her body jerked from an unseen chill, “that you might think something like this could happen, and you would change your mind. I thought that perhaps it would be dangerous to tell you, that you weren’t as honorable or decent as you appeared to be. I had reasons,” she said, finally looking up at him. “Very good ones, every single one, or at least they sounded so in my head.”
“I trusted you.” Cyrus stared at her, and she flinched away. “In a way I haven’t … with anyone … in a long time. I understand your reasons, but as of about thirty days ago … when you knew who I was and what I stood for … they should have been null and you should have told me the truth.”
“I’m sorry.” She still did not look up, focusing instead on the floor, the marble, anything but him. “I’m sorry, Cyrus …”
“Yeah.” He heard the scrape of his boots on the floor as he turned back to the door. “I have to go meet with my officers. King Longwell is leaving tomorrow; they’ve been summoned to Enrant Monge by Briyce Unger.”
“Will we be going as well?” she asked.
“I don’t know yet,” Cyrus said.
He heard her move across the floor, taking tentative steps, her feet making a slight sucking noise as they pulled from the marble floor with each step. “Will you hand me back over to my brother? As though I were a piece of property?”
Cyrus felt the answer within him, steeped in the rage he felt inside at her betrayal. Yes! I’ll hand you over to him, let him have you, be done with you and your lies, your deceits, with your … He nearly choked at the memory of her fingers tracing lines down his skin. “You should get dressed,” he said simply, and walked out the door, careful to open it no more than was necessary to slip out, so as not to expose her to anyone who might be walking down the hall.
As he walked away from the closed door, he stopped, halted by some unseen feeling, something that ran through him, a ripple of strong emotion, and he tried to quiet it. She lied. She betrayed you. Just like Vara. Just like Imina. He felt his fist clench. Felt his mask of emotionlessness deteriorate, and he placed his hand on the stone wall of the hallway, as though he could draw some unseen strength from it. He imagined pebbles falling within him, into the giant void, the roiling maelstrom in his chest, the storm that threatened to break loose out of him and cause him to shed tears, something he had not done since … He remembered, and then pushed it down, back into the depths, along with the storm, along with everything else.
One foot in front of another. Keep walking. I need to meet with the officers. I need to decide what we’re going to do next. He took a breath, then another, slow, as though he could excise the venom within simply by breathing it out. He
imagined the stones falling inside him again, rocks, boulders, dropping into his center, weighing down his heart, so that he couldn’t feel the emotion within. He imagined ice, cold, frigid blocks of it, stacked all around his pain, cooling him, building a wall that it couldn’t escape. He let it contain the emotion, bury it, push it far out of sight, behind the wall, where he could no longer taste the bitterness of it in his mouth, and the blood rushing through his ears subsided.
One foot in front of another, he told himself again, pulling his hand from the wall, letting his own strength hold him upright again. He stood up, trying to straighten his spine, as though standing as tall as possible could help somehow, disguise his weakness, put it to the back of him, where he wouldn’t feel it and no one would see it. He resisted the urge to let his knees buckle, fought it, let the ice hold his emotions in check. One foot in front of another. Keep walking.
He took a step, then another, and the pace became quicker and quicker as his feet carried him away from the door, away from the handle he wanted to turn, the words he wanted to say, away from the feel of her skin against his—and back to his duty.
Chapter 24
“Did you know?” It was Ryin who asked the question, after Cyrus had laid out everything that King Longwell had told him. Reactions had ranged from shocked horror (Nyad, who had her hands covering her mouth, her eyes wider than usual) to calm acceptance (Curatio and J’anda, each of whom let only a single raised eyebrow appear on their faces—Curatio, the left and J’anda the right, the contrast of their light and dark skin and facial reactions making them appear as bizarre mirror images) to unflinching, uncaring emptiness (Terian). Only Ryin spoke, though Samwen Longwell had a question of sorts on his face.
“Of course he didn’t,” Nyad said, turning to slap Ryin across the arm with a backhand, drawing an annoyed look from the druid as he rubbed his shoulder. She turned back to Cyrus, and her expression changed to perplexed. “Wait, did you?”
Crusader: The Sanctuary Series, Volume Four Page 27