The Briar King (41 page)

Cazio brushed the hand from his sleeve. “I have nothing,” he said, rising.

Z'Acatto did not reply as Cazio went back outside.

Once back on the street, Cazio felt a pang of regret. Z'Acatto
wasn't much, but he
had
raised Cazio from the age of five. They had had their share of good times.

Just not lately.

Avella at night was darker than a cave, but Cazio knew his way around it well. He found the north wall as easily as a blind man feeling about his own house, and after ascending the stairs stood in the night wind looking out over the moonlit vineyards and olive groves, the gently rolling hills of the Tero Mefio, the heartland of Vitellio. He stood thus for more than a bell, trying to clear his head.

I'll apologize to him,
he thought to himself.
After all, there are secrets of the dessrata he still holds to himself.

Returning to his house, Cazio felt an odd prickling at the back of his neck, and his hand strayed to Caspator.

“Who's there?” he asked.

All around him he heard the soft kissing of leather on brick. Four, maybe five of them.

“Cowards,” he said, more softly. “Lord Mamres spit on you all.” Caspator made no sound as he slid from his sheath. Cazio waited for the first rush.

CHAPTER THREE
FLIGHT AND FANCY

ANNE PUSHED OPEN the wooden shutters, wincing as they squeaked faintly. Outside, the night air was warm and strong with the scent of woodfire and the stink of horse manure. The moon wore her scantiest gown and fretted the slate rooftops of the hamlet with dull pearl light.

Anne couldn't see the ground—the street below was sooted with shadow—but she knew from earlier that it was only a single story down, that just beneath her window a narrow eave jutted, and under that was the front door of the small inn. She had jumped from higher places, in her life.

Twenty long days had come and gone since they left Eslen—Austra, five Craftsmen, and she. Anne didn't know where they were or how far they had to go, but she knew her best chance to escape when she saw it. She had been able to lay aside enough hard cheese and bread to last for a few days. If she could but find a bow and a knife, she was certain she could live off the land.

If only she had better clothes for riding—but she could find those, too. Saint Erenda would surely smile on her and bring her fortune.

Anne cast a glance in the direction of Austra's regular breathing, and repressed a pang of regret. But she couldn't tell her best friend what she planned; it would be better for Austra if she knew nothing of this, if she was just as surprised in the morning as Captain Marl and the rest of her escort.

Taking a deep breath, Anne sat up on the windowsill and felt for the eave below with her stocking feet. She found it—
farther down than she had hoped, and more sloping than she remembered it. Fear of falling held her for a moment, but then she eased her weight on down.

And promptly slipped. Her hands scrabbled wildly as she slid forward. At the last moment she caught something—and held it, breath coming in gasps, her feet dangling over the unseen ground.

By its feel, she had grabbed the wooden gamecock that peered from over the doorway of the inn.

Nearby, harsh laughter suddenly cut through the darkness. At first she thought someone had seen her, then two men started talking in some language she didn't understand. Their voices passed under her as she held her breath, and continued on.

Her arms began shaking with the effort of holding herself up. She had to either drop or climb back up to her window.

She looked down, though she couldn't see even her feet, and after another quick prayer, she let go. Air seemed to rush by for much longer than it ought to, then she found the ground. Her knees buckled, and she fell face first. One of her hands went into a pile of something that gushed, and she recognized the smell of a fresh horsecake.

Trembling, but with a growing feeling of triumph, she came to her feet, shaking the wet dung from her hand.

“Anne!” A desperate voice from above, cracking with the attempt to whisper as loudly as possible.

“Hush, Austra!” Anne hissed back.

“Where are you going?”

“I don't know. Go back to sleep.”

“Anne! You'll get killed. You don't even know where we are!”

“I don't care! I'm not going to any coven! Farewell, Austra— I love you.”

“This will be the end of me!” Austra gasped. “If I let you go—”

“I slipped off while you were asleep. They can't blame you for that.”

Austra didn't answer, but Anne heard a scrabbling from above.

“What are you doing?”

“Coming with you, of course. I'm not going to let you die alone.”

“Austra, no!”

But it was too late. Austra gave the briefest of shrieks. Her passing made a slight breeze before she hit the ground with a pronounced thud.

“Her arm is badly bruised, but not broken,” Captain Marl told her, very matter-of-factly. He was that sort of man, taciturn and plainspoken. His manner went well with his pitted, homely face.

“I want to see her,” Anne demanded.

“Not just yet, Princess. There is the matter of what you two were doing.”

“We were being silly. Wrestling near the window, and lost our balance.”

“And how is it you aren't even bruised, when she was hurt?”

“I was lucky. But I did soil my gown, as you can see.”

“There's that, too. Why were you fully dressed?”

“I wasn't. I didn't have my shoes on.”

“Your maid was in a nightgown—as you should have been.”

“Captain, who are you to presume how a princess of Crotheny ought to be dressed? You treat me as if I'm a captive of war!”

“I treat you as what you are, Princess—my charge. I know my duty, and I take it seriously. Your father trusts me. He has reason to.” He sighed and folded his hands behind his back. “I dislike this. Young women should have their privacy, away from the company of men. I thought I could afford to give you that. Now I see I was foolish.”

“You aren't suggesting that I share my room with one of your men?”

“No, Princess. None of my men will do.” His face pinkened. “But when I cannot find lodging that precludes escape, I must stand watch in your room myself.”

“My mother will have your head!” Anne shouted.

“If that's so, that's so,” Marl replied obligingly.

She had learned not to argue with him when he adopted that tone. He had made up his mind and really would take a beheading before changing it.

“May I see Austra, now?” she asked, instead.

“Yes, Princess.”

Austra's face was white, and her arm bound in a sling. She lay on her back and wouldn't meet Anne's gaze when she entered.

“I'm sorry,” Austra said, voice curiously flat.

“You ought to be,” Anne replied. “You should have done what I told you. Now Marl will never let me out of his sight.”

“I said I was sorry.” Tears were streaming down Austra's face, but she made none of the sounds of crying.

Anne sighed and gripped her friend's hand. “Never mind,” she said. “How's your arm?”

Austra set her mouth stubbornly and didn't reply.

“It's all right,” Anne said, more softly. “I'll find another chance.”

Austra turned to her then, red eyes glaring and angry. “How could you?” she said. “After all the times I've watched out for you,
lied
for you, helped you play your stupid games. Your mother could have sent me to work with the scouring maids! Saints, she could have had me beheaded, but I always did what you said anyway! And for what? So you could leave me without a second thought?”

For a moment, Anne was so shocked she couldn't say anything.

“I would have sent for you,” she finally managed. “When I was safe, and—”

“
Sent
for me? Do you have any idea what you're planning?”

“To run away. Seek my love and destiny.”

“The destiny of a woman, alone, in a strange country where you don't even speak the language? What did you think you would do for food?”

“Live off the land.”

“Anne, someone
owns
the land. People are hanged for
poaching, do you know that? Or rot in prison, or serve as slaves until their debt is done. That's what happens to them who ‘live off the land’ in your father's kingdom.”

“No one would hang
me
,” Anne replied. “Not once they knew who I was.”

“Oh, yes. So once caught, you would explain that you are a very important princess, and then they would—what? Let you go? Give you a small estate? Or call you a liar and hang you. Of course, since you're a woman, and pretty, they wouldn't hang you right at first. They'd have their pleasure from you.

“Or suppose you
could
somehow convince them of who you are. In the best case they would send you home, and this would all start again—except for me, for I'll be carrying charcoal on my back up from the barges, or something worse. Worst case, they would hold you for ransom, maybe send your fingers to your father one at a time, to prove they really have you.”

“I plan to dress as a man,” Anne said. “And I won't get caught.”

Austra rolled her eyes. “Oh, dress as a man.
That
will work.”

“It's better than going into a coven.”

Austra's eyes hardened further. “That's stupid. And it's selfish.” She balled her unbound fist and banged it against the bedpost. “
I
was stupid—to ever think you were my friend. To think you gave a single piss about me!”

“Austra!”

“Leave me alone.”

Anne started to say something else, but Austra's eyes went wild. “Leave me
alone
!”

Anne stood up. “We'll talk later.”

“Away!”
Austra shrieked, dissolving into tears.

On the verge of bawling herself, Anne left.

Anne watched Austra's face, limned against a landscape of rolling pasture broken by copses of straight-standing cedar and elegant cottonwood. Her head eclipsed a distant hill where a small castle lorded over a scattering of red-roofed cottages.
A herd of horses stared curiously at the carriage as it rattled by.

“Won't you talk to me
yet
?” Anne pleaded. “It's been three days.”

Austra frowned and continued to look out the window.

“Fine,” Anne snapped. “I've apologized to you until my tongue is green. I don't know what else you want me to do.”

Austra murmured something, but it went out the window like a bird.

“What was that?”

“I said you could
promise
,” Austra said, still not looking at her. “Promise not to try to run away again.”

“I can't escape. Captain Marl is much too watchful, now.”

“When we get to the coven, there will be no Captain Marl,” Austra said slowly, as if speaking to a child. “I want you to promise not to try to escape from there.”

“You don't understand, Austra.”

Silence.

Anne opened her mouth to say something else, but it fell short of her teeth. Instead she closed her eyes, let her body fall into the restless shuddering of the coach, and tried to pretend she was far away.

She put on dreams like clothes. She tried on Roderick, to start with, the memory of that first, sweet kiss on horseback, their steadily more intimate trysts. In the end, however, that brought her only to that night in the tomb and the humiliation that followed. Her whole memory of that night was tainted, but she wanted to remember, to feel again those last exciting, frightening caresses.

She changed the scene, pretending that she and Roderick had met instead in her chambers at Eslen, but that went no better. When she tried to imagine what
his
chambers in Dunmrogh were like, she failed utterly.

At last, with a burst of inspiration that stretched a little smile on her face, she imagined the small castle on the hill she had seen a few moments before. She stood at its gates, in a green gown, and Roderick rode across the fields, brightly caparisoned. When he came near her he dismounted, bowed
low, and kissed her hand. Then, with a fire in his eyes, pulled her close against the steel he wore and kissed her on the mouth.

Inside, the castle was light and airy, draped in silken tapestries and brilliant with sunlight through tens of crystal windows. Roderick entered again, clad in a handsome doublet, and now, finally she could conjure the feeling of his hand on her flesh, and imagine more, that he went farther, that they were both, finally, unclad. She multiplied the remembrance of the touch of his palm on her thigh, imagining the whole length of him against her. There was just one part she couldn't picture, exactly, though she had felt it against her, through his breeches. But she had never seen the privates of a man, though she had seen stallions aplenty. They must be shaped the same, at least.

But the image that conjured was so ridiculous she felt suddenly uncertain, and so she adjusted her imagination again, to his eyes staring into hers.

Something didn't fit there, either, and in swift horror, she understood what it was.

She couldn't remember Roderick's face!

She could still have described it, but she could not
see
it, in the shadows of her mind. Determined, she shifted scenes again, to their first meeting, to their last—