by P. J. Fox
“My sister,” she confessed, blushing. She laughed, a small sound but genuine.
The whole thing was so stupid and, realizing that, some of her upset dissipated. She told Tristan about the fight. He smiled slightly, the merest twitch of his lips. He smiled rarely, and then only fleetingly. This was the first time, she thought, that she’d seen the expression reach his eyes. He looked at her with an interest that was hard to interpret. Flustered, she dropped her gaze.
“I came as quickly as I could,” he told her. “I would have been here an hour ago but we were delayed on the road.”
He didn’t specify the nature of that delay, but she could imagine. The roads, particularly the main roads, were thick with thieves and outlaws. A man condemned to the life of an outlaw did, in some ways, suffer a fate worse than death: doomed to live outside the protection of the law, he was forbidden from seeking succor in any village or hamlet where a sheriff’s writ held sway. Whatever poxes, criminals, or other hardships befell him, he was alone. Some left for other parts of the kingdom, or for other kingdoms entire, seeking a fresh start. Others, unwilling to leave their families or other loved ones, stayed behind and made lives for themselves in the forest. With no means of legitimate employment, most turned to crime eventually.
Somewhere outside, a man shouted. Life, amazingly, was going on as usual. “I would have spared you this,” Tristan continued after a moment, “but I gained some very valuable information.”
Isla stiffened. She didn’t care for the implication in his words. Was he telling her that he’d planned this nightmare? That the man she’d turned to for safety had, in fact, been the cause of her pain? Seeing the expression on her face, he spoke. And Isla, once again, found it eerie how easily he read her. There was no magic in the ability, just very keen observation.
“You’re alright,” he said firmly, “and will remain so. I wanted to see what the so-called priest would do while I was gone, and I suspected that he might approach you. But I had no suspicion that he’d act so brazenly, and no intention of letting him hurt you. Nor will he,” he added. “I apologize for my…error.”
He’d apologized? She shook her head slightly, in an attempt to clear it. She was so overwhelmed. “I…no one came,” she whispered, hot needles pricking the backs of her eyeballs as the tears threatened to return. She still couldn’t believe that her father, her entire household had let her down this badly. No one had even knocked, in response to her screams.
Tristan stood, pulling her up with him. “You need some fresh air,” he said.
THIRTY
She watched him saddle the evil-looking destrier, which glared down at her with a baleful eye.
“His name is Arion,” Tristan said, giving the horse a swift pat and tightening the girth. Arion transferred his glare to Tristan, angered that he’d been fooled.
He hadn’t offered to saddle Piper or suggested that she do so and so, still stunned from the morning’s events, she waited. The stable was cool and dark, smelling of manure and hay. Enzie Moor’s stables weren’t as clean as they should be; her father lacked the skill to either choose a suitable overseer or supervise the matter himself. And so, as in most laxly run establishments, the employees lazed about all day and did little more than the bare minimum. Which was virtually nothing. The horses ate, and didn’t wallow in their own filth; but that was because the stable hands, good lads all if lazy, liked horses. They had no wish to see an animal suffer. They also didn’t want to miss time away from the dicing ring.
Arion snickered. Isla always offered Piper treats. She didn’t think Arion was the kind of horse who got—or wanted—treats. As if to confirm this suspicion, Arion glared at her again.
“How tall is he?” she asked, for wont of a better question. When she’d first laid eyes on the massive stallion, she’d guessed him to be at least eighteen hands. Isla was tall for a woman, at least by Western standards, but Arion towered over her.
“Twenty-four hands,” the duke said, leading Arion through the stable and out into the sunlight.
Seeing them standing side by side, Isla realized that Arion was in fact taller than the duke. Arion, like every true war horse, had a dense, rounded body with a broad back. He had strong loins, powerful hindquarters, and long legs. Destriers were bred for these qualities, along with very dense bones. Arion had a silky black coat. His eyes, like the duke’s own, glowed with suppressed fire.
Of all war horses, as a breed, the destrier was finest. They were trained from birth to fight in battle, possessing the strength and stamina to carry a heavily armored man for long periods of time and, in addition, to inflict grievous injury on the enemy. A destrier was, in fact, another soldier—something Isla had learned from Hart, who’d always wanted one.
Specifically, a destrier was trained to take commands from knee pressure rather than reins, freeing his rider to hold both sword and shield. He was trained to trample his enemies, as well as brutalize them with his massive hooves. He both bit and kicked on command. Very few destriers, once they’d reached adulthood, allowed themselves to be ridden by more than one man. It wasn’t uncommon, on the battlefield, for a horse to go berserk once his rider had fallen: charging into enemy lines or, depending on where they were, charging headlong off a cliff or into a ravine. Looking at man and beast together now, Isla thought she saw something of the strange bond of loyalty of which the bards so loved to sing.
Tristan was matter of fact with Arion, not coddling him in the slightest, but the connection was there. Tristan patted him briefly, scratching behind his pointed ears, and Arion whickered. He seemed to enjoy the attention, in spite of himself.
Tristan turned. “Shall we?”
Isla stood, transfixed with trepidation and unsure of what to do. He wanted her to, what, exactly? She’d heard horror stories of men being horribly maimed after having the foolhardiness to approach a strange war horse. Tristan’s own groom attended the beast; none of the manor’s hands would touch it for fear of what might happen to them.
“Come. There’s no cause to be upset.”
His tone conveyed a great deal about his thoughts on the matter: that she was a woman, and therefore a certain frailty was to be expected, but that his patience on the subject was wearing thin. And it was this lack of empathy, oddly enough, that did her the most good. Determined to prove him wrong, and to challenge him, she strode confidently up to the horse. She was hardly dressed to ride and even standing beside Arion made her quake with fear but she’d be damned if she let him see that.
In one swift movement he placed his hands on either side of her slender waist and lifted her into the saddle. She sat side-saddle, blinking in surprise as she looked down at him. She’d found herself atop Arion before she’d even had a chance to realize that she was moving. Placing his hands palm-down on the smooth, worn seat of the saddle, he vaulted up behind her. She turned and, for a split second, saw Rowena standing at the gate. Her sister’s expression was unreadable. She looked like she was about to call out, tell Isla something, but then Tristan kneed the powerful horse in the ribs and they were gone.
He raced down the straight road and Isla laughed, the wind blowing in her hair. As trite as the sentiment sounded in her own ears, she’d never felt so free. She couldn’t help but laugh.
She tucked an errant lock of hair behind her ear as she took in the world around her. They were moving so fast, doing so was barely possible. Tristan, seated firmly in the saddle behind her, kept one hand on the reins and one on her waist. Here together, like this, she could almost believe that he was a normal man—and she a normal woman, two lovers out on an adventure. She felt comfortable in the saddle with him, although she wouldn’t have thought she would have. He was a masterful rider, and his confidence was infecting.
Passing the far gate, he slowed first to a canter and then to a trot. Finally catching her breath, Isla was able to study her surroundings for the first time. They were in the forest, now; old growth trees reared up around them, their bark covered in g
reen-gray lichen. Fall was truly upon them now, having wormed its insidious fingers into a summer that should have lasted another month at least. The leaves were a riot of color, gold and orange and bright, flaming red. Birds called out to one another as squirrels hunted desperately for the last few acorns. Every year they buried trove after trove, and every year their little rodent minds proved unequal to the task of remembering where. Which meant that every year, green shoots pierced the newly thawed earth as more oak trees were born.
The forest had a still, silent air, the battered road stretching ahead of them into the gloom. Even a bright, sunlit morning such as this couldn’t fully pierce the dense canopy of leaves overhead. She felt like they were riding through a tunnel, and one that stretched into infinity.
As uneasy as the thought made her, Isla lost the last vestiges of the horror that had gripped her heart in the beauty surrounding them. Father Justin, his threats, all of it faded away into nothing. The forest was real; life was real. The other began to recede.
Almost without conscious thought, she breathed a sigh of relief.
Arion clattered over a small but wide bridge, a brook rushing beneath them. The brook was low in fall, but still full; in spring, as the snow thawed in the mountains, it would be a rushing torrent that flooded everything in its path. More than once, this very same bridge had been washed out and travelers forced to ford the brook at their peril.
“It’s lovely here,” Isla said. She’d miss the Highlands; she doubted that the North could be so beautiful.
“Yes,” Tristan agreed. “I thought we might go for a ride, explore a bit.”
“Just so long as we don’t go near Cariad,” Isla said caustically, and without intending to. But Tristan had that effect on her: around him, her normally tight reserve just seemed to crumble. She found herself telling him things, things she’d never thought she’d tell anyone.
Tristan’s short bark of laughter was utterly mirthless. “She’s had more interaction with me than she’d have you believe,” he said. “She was young and beautiful once; not always the hag you know now.”
There was a disturbing suggestion in his words, but he didn’t explain what he meant and Isla didn’t ask. She didn’t want to know. She’d spent enough time wondering about Cariad, but now the memory of their friendship left a bitter taste in her mouth. Had she and the duke been lovers, once? Somehow, Isla doubted that the witch, for all her disgust with men, was a virgin. And although the thought of Cariad herself was upsetting, the notion that she might have been intimate with Tristan was not.
Isla was pondering why this should be when Tristan reined to a halt. They were in a small natural clearing, the sunlight pouring in through a hole in the canopy overhead. In the shade, the air was chilly; here, it was almost warm. Tristan swung down, and then helped her dismount.
She sat down among the ferns and then, overwhelmed by a sudden impulse, threw herself down into them and laughed with the sheer thrill of being alive.
Ferns tickled her exposed skin. Something scampered through the underbrush near her head. Above her, the colors of autumn were glorious. Tristan sat down next to her, one leg bent and the other outstretched as he leaned back against a fallen log. A minute later, the acrid-sweet scent of pipe tobacco filled the air. He hadn’t yet unpacked his saddlebags, and there was food. Very nice food, too: bread and hard cheese and pickles and some sort of pasty in a flaky crust. Tristan Mountbatten ate better on the road than Isla did at her own table—except when he was dining with them, of course. She felt another stab of impotent rage at her father, which she forced down into her deepest recesses. She wouldn’t think about him. Now, or ever. He’d failed her too many times, in too many ways.
She’d seen him, too, as they were leaving: bleary-eyed and guilty as Hart shouted at him. Hart, who had gone with the duke and had just arrived home as well. Isla felt an equally strong stab of love, and appreciation, for the older brother who’d never gotten all he deserved.
Tristan passed her a flask of wine mixed with well water, the movement graceful and somehow vulpine. She accepted it, surprised and pleased to find that this wine was of a much higher quality than what she was used to. She could actually drink it without puckering up like a prune. She accepted bread and cheese as well, surprised to discover that she was ravenous. Her stomach had been bothering her and she’d doubted that she’d be able to eat more than a bite or two at the most but had wanted to be polite. Instead, with her first bite her appetite returned and she demolished the entire offering. With another small, unreadable smile, Tristan passed her more. She had part of a pasty, too, and more wine.
Soon, she began to feel pleasantly light-headed. She supposed, somewhere in the dim recesses of her mind, that this was a bad thing and that she might say—or indeed do—something she hadn’t intended, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to care. She was enjoying herself too much; enjoying the simple, blissful feeling of being surrounded by nature and free.
Tristan, for his part, seemed content to sit in silence. She wondered what he was thinking about. “So tell me,” she asked, turning her head in the ferns and gazing over at him, “do demons need to eat, or do they do it for show?”
He seemed amused by her question. “A little of both, I suppose.”
“I never got a chance to thank you properly for my present,” she said. The scent of her perfume mixed with the dense, mineral and moss scent of the undergrowth. The sun felt warm and wonderful on her skin; there wouldn’t be too many more days like this. Already, the faint breeze held the undercurrent of decay and that peculiar scentless cold that was winter.
“Thank me properly?” he queried, a hint of suggestion to his tone.
She blushed; he was far too sophisticated, and that hadn’t been what she’d meant at all. But thankfully he didn’t pursue that line of thought. “You’re welcome,” was all he said. And then, several minutes later, after repacking his pipe and lighting it, “attar of roses becomes you.” He inhaled, and smoke curled upward. “In the East,” he told her, “women are a sign of status. The number of women a man can afford reflects on the wealth of his household.”
“And his stamina,” Isla added darkly, before blushing an even deeper scarlet as she realized what she’d just said.
Tristan conceded the point with a small gesture. “Indeed. Women live in private apartments called harems, which comes from an ancient eastern word meaning forbidden. Forbidden to men, that is, although in practice they’re not. The sultan I stayed with for a time, his sons were frequent visitors to the harem where they desported themselves with their father’s less popular concubines. He had five hundred, and most were rather starved for attention.”
“Five hundred women?” Isla repeated, aghast.
“I would find such a herd rather vexatious, as well.”
“What do they do all day?”
“Many are slaves, either bred to pleasure or broken to the practice. More often than not, they’re drugged.” He sounded disapproving. “A certain…fondness for the warming and seductive effects of opium keeps them pliable, and suitably disinterested to not mind the long periods of the sultan’s absence. More to the point, perhaps, opium also arrests the appetite and thus keeps them svelte and beautiful.”
“And men find this…pleasurable?”
“Men find power pleasurable,” he corrected her. “At least some men do. I do. I merely prefer to gain it in different fashion.”
“I see.”
His eyes met hers. “Do you?” She sensed that he was asking her something other than what he was asking her. She waited, confused. At length, he continued. “Women, in my experience, find power equally aphrodisiac—if not more so.” Which, she had to concede, was true. “The issue isn’t so much the existence of power, or the craving for it, but the legitimacy and efficacy of its exercise. That particular sultan was a good man, but weak. His son, who is a far better sultan, married one of his father’s concubines that he’d grown attached to after murdering his father. F
rom what I understand, his rule so far has been a success.”
“He fell in love with her?”
“Indeed. Her father had sold her to the sultan in exchange for the forgiveness of a debt. There are enough women who are quite willing to laze about half-naked, waiting on an almost total stranger to take pleasure from them, that taking them captive should be quite unnecessary. Such proclivities are, in my opinion, the mark of a weak man. The true challenge,” he added, his voice darkening, “is in teaching them to want it.”
“A willing captive is the only true captive,” Isla mused, “because they’re giving you something you can’t take—that can only be given.”
“Precisely.”
“You know, I’m surprised that you’ve never wanted such a thing for yourself: one or two…or ten women reclining on pillows, perfuming their naked breasts and waiting on your attentions.”
“Maintaining such a stable—and I know several who do, even here, although they keep it to themselves—is too much work.” That strange, enigmatic half-smile returned. “I prefer my lovers to be doing something useful while I’m not using them. Moreover, generally, I’m not interested in the tedium of seeing to their needs. That responsibility is so much easier to outsource: to other servants, husbands….” He gestured dismissively. “The few lovers I have kept all served other purposes as well, and I tired of them quickly. I have no meaningful assignations.”
No mistresses, he meant. At least, not as she might understand the term. She felt a brief stab of—she could scarcely believe it—jealousy at the idea of another women sharing his bed. With an effort she dismissed the unworthy emotion. He was free to consort with whomever he chose. She knew from Hart that to most men the act had little more emotional impact than polishing their boots.
“So is the court as licentious as they say?” she asked.
“What have you heard?” His tone was conversational.
“That it’s a hotbed of evil.” She giggled. She’d had too much wine. Right now, she couldn’t believe that she was having this conversation. With him! And that she was enjoying it!