Elliott, Kate - Crown of Stars 1 (18 page)

"There will be much finer things than these, Liath. The abbot of Firsebarg has died at last. My mother has duly overseen the election of his successor. When shall we ride south? You'll like Firsebarg. I think you'll even like my mother. She was convent educated, so she can read, though not, I think, as well as you or I. And certainly she can't read Jinna, which is never taught in the church schools."

Ride south.
Liath stared up at him. She had not really considered before that she might be torn away from the last people she knew and trusted, from her last link with Da. How could she possibly carry the book on such a

journey without Hugh finding it? He must know she would take it with her. In Firsebarg, knowing no one, she would be entirely 'within his power.

Hugh watched her, enjoying her discomfiture. "Not until spring, I think. There's no hurry. I do hate traveling this late in the year."

She said nothing, only held tight to the blanket, gripping it around her as if it could protect her.

"Must we keep up this pretense? I know you are educated. You betray yourself constantly, with words, with the way you speak, with knowledge you ought not to have. I am bored, Liath. I have never been so bored as these last two years, wandering here in these northern wilds tending to my blessed sheep. Ai, Liath, we might at least call a truce so we can converse like the educated people we are. I will even offer you a trade."

He paused, to let her consider his generosity. "I will teach you Arethousan. //you will teach me Jinna. Queen Sophia, while she lived, was very firm that all of us in the king's schola be taught Arethousan. She was the Arethousan Emperor's niece, as I'm sure you know, a marriage prize brought to these benighted lands by the younger Arnulf for his heir. And although our praeceptor, Cleric Monica, thought it acceptable that those few of us chosen for her special tutoring should indeed learn Arethousan, should any of us ever be called upon to lead an embassy to that distant land, she cuffed me hard and well the one time I asked if she might teach us Jinna as well. 'A language fit only for infidels and sorcerers,' she said, which only made me wish to learn it the more, although I never said so to her again. But I never met anyone who knew it until I met your father. And now you,
my treasure. What do you say?"

There was something very wrong with all this, and Liath knew it. As long as she gave him nothing, she was safe from him. But a small doubt had arisen. Perhaps he
was
owed some sympathy, flung from the bright center of the king's progress into these hinterlands, where there was no one like him. No wonder he had gravitated toward Da.

And if she could learn Arethousan, she could translate the glosses in the oldest text of
The Book of Secrets.
Perhaps she could even puzzle out the unknown language, written in that ancient hand. . . .

"I don't know," she said in a low voice.

He smiled. She understood at once that she had lost something important, that he had won this battle and was on his way to winning the war. She slid off the bed, pressing herself against the wall to keep as much distance between herself and him as possible, and ran out of the cell and down to the kitchen, to the safety of rougher work.

Behind, incongruously, she heard him begin to sing.

"The Lady is glorious in Her beauty. The Lord is mighty with His sword. Blessed are we, Their children. Glory, glory, rests where Their eyes linger. Glory sleeps on Their hearth."

He had a beautiful voice.

ON the morning of the first hard freeze, Liath woke from a fitful sleep at dawn. It hurt to stand up. With her blanket pulled tight around her, she shuffled to the woodpile. It hurt to uncurl her fingers and touch any surface. A thin shell of ice covered the wood, and she bit at her dry lips to cover the pain of wrenching the logs free. She had to struggle with the latch before she could get it open and make her way into the kitchen. In here the change in temperature was abrupt. It hurt almost more than the cold did.

She stoked up the fire and simply stood before it, shuddering and coughing. After a while she bent to ladle warm water into her mouth. The water slid down her throat, warming her. She looked around, although certainly there was no one else here, then plunged her hands into the kettle of water and just stood there, letting her hands thaw. The fire snapped and burned so close her face felt seared, but she did not care. She heard something, a voice, a footstep, and she jerked her hands guiltily from the kettle and bent to scoop out rye flour for flatcakes.

Hugh appeared in the doorway. "It's cold. It's damned cold and I
hate
cold. I hate this frozen wasteland, and I damned well don't want to winter here. We should have ridden south last month when I got the news, but it's too late now." He strode across the room and gripped her chin, wrenching her face around so she had to look up at him. "You look like hell. You look like a damned land girl burned brown from doing a man's work in the fields all day long, with a chapped face and a running nose. Go make my chamber warm. Make me breakfast. Then get out of here. I can't stand to look at you."

He cuffed her on the cheek. It stung the worse because her skin was still chilled. She shrank away, trying not to cry. In his cell it was warmer even than in the kitchen. She heaped glowing coals into the brazier and crouched next to it, soaking in the heat. On the table rested a single neatly-trimmed piece of parchment with fresh writing in a graceful hand damp across the top. She craned her neck to read the words.

"Out! Out!" Hugh came up behind her and slapped her casually on the back of the head-. "You're filthy. Get out!"

She fled back to the kitchen. She dawdled as long as possible, making porridge and flatcakes and then serving them to him. But she could only draw out the work for so long; soon he emerged from his cell and drove her outdoors. She tucked her hands into her armpits and set off briskly for the inn. She had to fetch meat, after all, from Mistress Birta. It was excuse enough. But she had scarcely gotten there, had only two heartbeats lingering in front of the hearth, surreptitiously watching a lone traveler eat his solitary meal at a table a few paces from her, when Hugh burst in through the front door.

He did not even have to say anything. She would have died rather than cause a scene. Mistress Birta emerged from the kitchen with the meat, dressed and wrapped since it was the frater's portion. She greeted Hugh but he replied with a monosyllable. Hanna appeared from the back room and watched as Liath took the meat from Birta and then retreated toward the door. Hugh walked two paces behind her, as if he was driving her. The traveler looked up. He was a grizzled, weather-beaten man wearing a fur-lined riding coat. He studied the scene with interest. Liath felt his gaze on her back as she left.

Outside, Hugh hit her. At least he was wearing gloves, so the blow did not sting quite so badly. "Did I give you leave to come down here?"

"I had to fetch the meat
—"

He slapped her again. Unable to help herself, she covered her cheek with a hand. Lady, it hurt. From the shadowed eaves of the inn came a movement, stifled; someone was watching them.

"You will ask my permission. Any time you go anywhere. Wait here." Hugh went back inside. Liath waited.

Hanna crept out from the side of the inn: "Liath
—

The door opened and Hugh came out. Mistress Birta following behind him as if she were his bonded servant. "Of course, Prater," she was saying with her hands placed just so and her expression as fixed with good cheer as any image carved into wood, "I'll have my boy Karl deliver everything from now on." She cast a piercing glance toward Hanna, and Hanna retreated hastily back around the corner of the inn.

"Come, Liath." Hugh grabbed her by the arm, his fingers as sharp as talons, and dragged her forward. She shook his arm off and kept up on her own. He said nothing more, the whole walk back. Nothing more the entire day, but he dogged her movements everywhere, and he hit her any time he thought she might be getting the least rest or respite from the cold.

She slept fitfully that night. The next day, and the day after, passed the same. And the next, and the next, until the days blended together into one seamless blur of cold misery and she lost track of time passing. The weather remained cold, but it was not yet bitterly cold. She settled her dirty heap of straw well in among the pigs. Trotter liked her best and allowed her to sleep huddled up against his rough back.

Once, brushing down the horses, she heard Hanna's voice outside. She ran to the door. There stood Hugh surveying Hanna with coldest contempt.

"Your young brother is to deliver goods, no one else," he said. "So I arranged it with your mother."

"I beg you, Prater, if you would only let me speak with
—"

"I told you to go."

Hanna turned and saw Liath.

"Do you intend to challenge me, girl?" Hugh demanded.

There was nothing Hanna could do but leave.

"Get back to your work," Hugh snapped to Liath.

She slunk back inside the stable, denied even the solace of watching Hanna walk away.

One early morning Ivar appeared on his rnare. He was bundled in a bulky fur-lined cape, his face white with cold and distress.

She was chopping wood. She stopped, staring; she had riot seen a familiar face for so long that at first she thought she was dreaming.

"Liath." He spoke low and fast. "Come with me. I've got a plan. Gero will help to hide you, and then we'll
—" He flung up his head, listening. From inside, Hugh called out to her.

She ran to Ivar, clutched his hand, jumped to get her belly awkwardly on the horse's back and swung her leg all the way over. Ivar turned the mare and kicked it forward. It was a sturdy creature, broad of beam, and it seemed able to carry both of them though it could not manage any gait except a jarring trot.

They made it most of the way to his father's holding before Hugh caught up to them on his bay gelding. He rode past the struggling mare and pulled around in front before drawing his sword.

"Are you armed, boy, or are you smarter than I thought?"

Ivar was alarmed only with a dagger. He stopped.

"Liath, dismount," said Hugh.

Liath dismounted.

"Liath," protested Ivar, "you can't just
—

"I have not done with you yet," said Hugh to Ivar. "You can come with me and present your case to Count Harl or I can simply present your folly to him by myself. I don't care. Liath. Walk beside my horse."

She walked, head down. At least walking had the benefit of keeping her almost warm. She stumbled once, not from fatigue but from sheer despair.

She could not look up as they crossed over the ditch and through the palisade and into the great open yard of Count Harl's castle. She stared at her feet, at Hugh's feet, which she followed up the broad path that led to the lord's hall, up a stone stairway, into the count's chambers. She heard voices, speaking her name, speaking Ivar's name. She could not bear to see their staring faces.

A chatelaine ushered them into Harl's private chamber. The old count was still in bed, covers heaped around him. A tonsured and clean-shaven cleric wrote to his dictation onto parchment. Ai, the room was so very warm. Liath inched toward the hearth. Hugh grabbed her and jerked her back to stand beside him in a cold eddy of air.

"Count Harl," he said curtly. He offered Harl only a stiff nod. It was a remarkable piece of arrogance, and if Liath hadn't hated him so much she would have admired

his astounding vanity: that he, a mere bastard, considered a legitimate count his social inferior. But his mother was a margrave, a prince of the realm, and his family far more powerful than Marl's. "This stripling of yours has just attempted to steal my slave."

Liath risked a glance toward Ivar, who stood by the door. His face was bright red, and a few tears streaked his face. It wasn't fair that he be humbled so for trying to help her. Yet she dared not speak.

Harl rubbed at his grizzled beard and considered Hugh with obvious dislike. In the silence, a man marked on the cheek with the brand of the unfree came in to pour fresh coals into the brazier. Liath's gaze flinched away from him. Harl ignored the slave and turned his gaze to his son. "Is it true, Ivar?"

"I've some silver saved, not enough yet, but . . . but others have offered to help me make the price. To buy out her debt price."

"She is not for sale," said Hugh smoothly. "Nor will there be any manumission but the one written by my own hand."

"You have not answered my question, Ivar."

Ivar glanced, searingly, toward Liath, then bowed his head. "Yes, my lord."

Harl sighed and looked back at Hugh. "What do you want?"

"I want nothing except your promise it will not happen again."

Hope flared. Could it be possible that Hugh actually feared that Ivar might find a way to free her? Everyone knew Count Harl disliked the frater.

"Very well," said Harl. He looked as if he were contemplating maggots in his meat. "It will not happen again."

"How can you assure me?" demanded Hugh.

Count Harl had much the same coloring as his son: Liath watched a flush spread across his lined skin. "Are you doubting my
word!"
he asked softly. The tone in his