TheKingsViper (10 page)

“I trust you as much as I trust any man with my wife.”

“Oh—bitter words, friend.” He leaned forward a little in the
saddle, looking hurt. “And we’ve been so kind to you, have we not? It was my
family’s bread and beer and mutton that you ate last night, wasn’t it? My roof
that you slept beneath? Yet you treat me as a villain. Haven’t I been more than
good to you, Boscian—a stranger and a guest in my country?”

“More than good,” said Severin.

“Yet here you are doubting my honorable intentions. After
you’ve run off from my farm still owing me work.” There was an edge in his
voice now that might have been complaint or might have been something sharper.
“I’m being good to you, Boscian. Aren’t I?”

“You said it.”

“Why are you being unfriendly then, hey? Why are you
doubting me?” Duggan sat back sharply. “Is this how a guest should behave?”

“Forgive me.” Not a muscle moved in Severin’s face.

Duggan smiled, pleased by the force of his argument. “And is
this how a man should treat his wife—making her walk to market like a dry cow?
Let her ride up behind me and rest her feet, man.”

“I don’t…” said Eloise faintly. The prospect made her
stomach clench in fear.

“Come on. Let me take her up.”

Severin stepped aside. “Go ahead then,” he said, with a
shrug.

Eloise was still staring at him with her mouth open as
Duggan urged his cob forward and reached down from the saddle to take her arm.
As Severin shifted abruptly forward again, faster than she could really see,
grasping that outstretched wrist and hauling the off-balance rider forward and
down from the saddle. As Duggan hit the road and Severin wrenched his arm round
and back, pinning him bent double. Nor had she recovered enough to close her
mouth by the time Severin’s boot smashed into Duggan’s head; his jaw broke with
a vile crack. Then Severin’s fist swept round and punched up beneath the bigger
man’s chin. It seemed to wedge there. Eloise saw the pommel of his knife
sticking out beneath that fist and she was still wondering where that meant the
blade was—
Straight up through the roof of his mouth, into his skull
,
said a voice in her head—when Severin jerked the haft sharply back and forth.
Blood washed out of Duggan’s mouth. Severin stepped out of the way almost
fastidiously and let the body crumple to the ground.

It was over. Almost before it had started, it was over, and
the bay cob was shying nervously across the road and there was a dead body
nearly at her feet. Eloise saw the color draining out of the world—all the
color except those bright splashes of crimson.

“You killed him.” She felt dizzy with shock.

Severin didn’t bother dignifying that with a reply. He
grabbed the body by the wrists and began to haul it off the side of the road.
“Get the horse,” he told her.

Eloise didn’t listen. “You killed him! Why?” she shouted.
“Why’d you kill him?”

He seemed perplexed. “What do you think was going to happen
if he got you away from me? He was going to rape you, Ella.”

“You don’t know that!”

“Yes.” He grinned unpleasantly. “Yes I do. He was going to
rape you and probably cut your throat and dump you in a ditch so that you
wouldn’t be able to accuse him afterward.”

“But he hadn’t done any of that!”

“Nor will he, now.”

“And you’re going to kill everyone you think
might
have vile intentions toward me?”

He shrugged. “If I have to.”

It was like talking to a wild animal; he wasn’t grasping her
meaning or her distress. “It doesn’t bother you?”

“No. It doesn’t. And I doubt he’ll be the last.”

“But it’s murder! He was a living man! He had a soul!”

Severin straightened up from Duggan’s body, suddenly looking
curious. “Have you never seen anyone die before?”

“No I haven—”

“No execution? No riot?”

‘They don’t do that sort of thing on Venn!” She was shaking.
“We’re a peaceful island! And…if there are judicial executions I don’t go and
watch. Why would I want to?”

He ran his hand through his hair. “All right. I understand. It
is hard the first time you see a human being die. I…remember. What can I tell
you? It’s like anything else; it gets easier with practice.”

She clenched her fists. “Well I don’t want it to get easier!
I don’t want this to happen!”

“Ella,” he said, holding her gaze. “It’s my duty to protect
you. And I will do it, any way I have to. Now I’m going to get this man out of
sight, and you are going to go and catch the horse. Then we will be able to
ride away from here.”

“So we’re bandits now?”

He clenched his teeth. “We’re fugitives. Now—get the bloody
horse before someone else turns up and there’s a real fight on our hands.”

She obeyed, slowly. She was usually good with horses, but
this one took a lot of persuasion. When he’d hidden the corpse behind a clump
of bushes and searched it for anything useful, Severin returned, re-sheathing
the knife at his back, and kicked dirt over the bloodstains on the road. The
cob was a little skittish of him, but calmed when he held its head and stroked
it. He mounted up and swung Eloise up behind him and they moved on at a swift
shamble.

Eloise had gone quiet. She held on to his waist, but as
loosely as she could, not wanting to be in contact with him. For hours she said
nothing, and he didn’t try to break her silence. She waited for the turmoil
inside her to settle, but nothing got better. She kept thinking, even though
she would have given anything not to, of the way his hands had moved on the
man’s arm, wrenching it round with such purposive force. She kept remembering
the noise the man’s jaw made as it broke. She kept remembering Severin’s black,
emotionless eyes as he looked up from the body.

How many people had he killed in his life?

What
was
he, to be able to do that?

Late in the afternoon Severin halted the horse before a rattling
plank bridge over a ravine, one where they’d have to walk across and lead the
animal, and suddenly she couldn’t stand it any longer and she slipped down from
the other side of the saddle and ran away from him, along the edge of the
narrow valley. She had no fear he would ride after her. This wasn’t terrain to
trust a horse on. She heard him curse, and then call after her, but she hurried
onward, ducking beneath pine branches and scrambling over the great rocks that
jutted from the sandy soil, hugging the cliff.

She stopped on an overhanging boulder, rather closer to its
edge than she was really comfortable with, staring down. The bank was steep and
eroded, with rocks sticking out from the raw soil like broken teeth, the water
far below a brown snake in a choked bed of fallen stones and smashed trees that
were the legacy of a winter landslip.

God, but she had tried and tried to be obedient and useful
and to bear everything asked of her, but she could not bear this. His
hands—long, clever hands, she thought of them—gripping that farmer and in one
stroke sending him out of life. It had been so easy. She reeled with vertigo.
Death
should be an effort
, she thought.
Not done within a moment. All that
man’s thoughts and plans and memories, the years of his life…snuffed like a
candle-flame. His mother will still be wondering when he’s coming home.

She’d trusted Severin too much, she realized, feeling sick.
He was an assassin, and he no more cared for her than he did for anyone who got
in the way of his goals. It occurred to her, with cold logic, that he’d
probably kill her himself rather than let her fall into the hands of the
Mendean crown.

“Ella?”

She heard his footfalls on the dry pine needles. A glance
behind, and then she scrambled off the rock and hopped down the slope onto the
next jutting boulder along. Dirt rattled down the runnels carved by rain.

“Ella, for God’s sake—stand still!”

She didn’t answer. She just stared into the river wishing
that he would leave her alone. Wishing that the water would rise and sweep her
away.

“Ella, I didn’t mean to upset you. Please, come back here.”

“You left Edith to die.” Her voice was breaking up into
jagged pieces that hurt her throat. “Edith and Ailya and Fritha.”

There was a moment’s silence. “The boat was going down. I
had to save you.”

“You made me leave them to die!”

He slithered down to join her, stepping onto the big rock
warily, and this time she couldn’t see a good line of retreat. “All I’m doing
is keeping you safe—you must understand that. I have to get you back home.” He
reached out and laid one hand on her shoulder.

“Don’t touch me.” She tried to shrug off his hand, but he
wouldn’t let her and that made her scared. “Don’t touch me,” she repeated,
twisting in his grip to face him. “You’re not allowed to touch me!” Then she
hit him across the face.

He was so surprised that he took a half-step back, releasing
her. Fire surged in her blood. She hit at him again; this time he blocked the
blow. She struck with the other hand. He didn’t try to grab her, he just parried
anything aimed at his eyes or throat, knocking her hands away, so she gave up
and struck at his chest and stomach, balling her fists and putting all the
strength of her arms into each punch. He took several of those, deliberately,
though she was trying her best to hurt him. The rage seemed to come from deep,
deep within, from a place she didn’t even know. “Don’t touch me!” she screamed,
tears running down her face. “I hate you!”

He grabbed her bodily and pulled her to him, pinning her
arms. He was far too strong for her to resist.

“I can’t even hurt you, you bastard!” she spat into his
chest.

“Can’t you?” he gasped.

“I hate you! I hate what you are, you cold-hearted whoreson!
I don’t want that! I don’t want to go back to that!” Her words came out in great
wet sobs. “I don’t want to go to Kingsholme, I don’t want to have people
killed, and lie and betray and fear everyone—I don’t want to turn into what you
are! I don’t want to be Queen!”

He stared down into her twisted face—and at that moment she
felt the rock shift beneath their feet. Severin turned and flung himself up
toward the bank top, Eloise in one arm, and grabbed with the other hand for
purchase. The stone turned to empty air under their toes. He seized a low
branch, but the tree lurched and tilted as its roots were exposed, and he
leaped again for the next foothold. Their boulder and all the bank below it,
undermined by river and rain, was falling. She saw the earth rise before her
eyes as they crashed face forward into the dirt, sliding. He grabbed at an
exposed root and held on with all his might as sand poured into their faces
from above. Eloise was crushed to his ribs, arms and legs flailing. Small
stones bounced off her head. They heard the rocks smacking into the stream
below, and then the water swallowed the stones and rushed on, and there was
peace again in the ravine.

Eloise opened her eyes and blinked away grit. She was slung
under Severin’s arm, her face crushed to his armpit. Severin’s toes scuffed the
exposed earth of the bank-face, seeking purchase. All his weight—and hers—was
hanging off his other shoulder. Overhead, the pines leaned, seeming to leer
down on them, their branches far out of reach.

She desperately hoped the root he was holding onto was
strong enough to take their weight.

“Climb up!” he gasped.

Eloise could feel his grip on her slipping. Working her
hands free, she dug her fingers desperately into the loose bank, but the sand
and pebbles just crumbled under her nails, slick as scree. “I can’t get a
hold!”

“Climb up me!”

It was cruel, but it worked better. She could dig her
fingers into his muscles and find purchase for her shoes on his feet and
thighs. Grunting with effort, he pushed as she pulled, boosting her until she
could catch at the root zone over her head and scramble over the lip to safety.
She collapsed on her back on the hard earth, coughing dust and heaving for
breath. All the rage had gone out of her, riding her fear into the empty air,
leaving her feeling exhausted and alone.

But once he had two hands free, Severin could catch his
breath and follow. First his hands, then his head, then his chest emerged, then
she watched him haul himself up over the edge and crawl over to straddle her on
his knees, propping himself on his fists. Stifling her last cough, she stared
up at him mutely, her eyes burning with misery.

How could she hate him? She didn’t have the right, or the
strength. Yes, he was a killer—and she owed him her life.

Carefully, Severin reached out to brush earth from her hair.
Eloise winced, and he wiped his forearm across his face instead, smearing dirt
and sweat. “You’re not going to be Queen.”

“What?” Her voice was hoarse and barely audible even to
herself.

“You’re not going to be Queen of Ystria. Not even if I get
you home alive.” He pulled away to her side and lay down slowly on one elbow,
breathing hard. His shirt was torn and he was covered in dirty sand. She
suspected she looked just as bad. “I didn’t tell you because I thought…I
thought it would be bad for you if you knew. Until now.”

“I don’t understand.”

‘That’s because you don’t know how things are at Court. But
I know. You will never be the Queen, Ella.”

“You said—”

“Listen to me. This is how it will happen, at the very, very
best. I will get you home, and King Arnauld will greet you with rejoicing and
gratitude. You’ll be welcomed with feasting and celebration, and I will be
honored for having brought you safely from the hands of the enemy. Then, after
the celebration, the ladies of the Court will come and question you. They will
want to know everything about what happened since the shipwreck. They will ask
how I behaved toward you, and what I said to you, all in the minutest detail.
You will be physically examined by several most respectable and high-ranking
women. And you will be put under some duress to confess any wrongdoing.
Because, you see, nobody will really believe that after all these days and
nights in a man’s company, sharing the road and his bed with him, that you are
still an unsullied virgin.”