Lady Knight (2 page)

“You may rise. I will, of course, be following that with a goodly purse.” His
eyes twinkled and he laughed. “What a shame I have no young heir to bestow on
you. Or would an heiress be more to your liking, my Lady Riannon?”

The men took their cues from his Grace and joined his laughter. Riannon’s
fingers tightened on the ring, and she kept her disappointment to herself.

“
Lady
?”

A vaguely familiar man with a jutting black beard pushed indignantly through the
ring of men. She remembered him as one of Lord Grammaire’s knights.

“A woman?” he said. “But this cannot be! He is a Knight of the Star. If you seek
to demean my lord further with this jest, my lord count, I protest though it
cost me my head.”

Count Berenger smiled. “Knew you not that she is a woman? Though, for certès, it
isn’t obvious.”

The knight’s face suffused with fury. “My lord surrendered in good faith on the
word of this… this
person
. Now you tell me his trust was for nought? That you
played him false by making him swear to a woman?”

Riannon’s hand dropped to the hilt of her sword. “You question my honour?”

“Not if you’re female,” he said. “For you have none and know nought of it. I ask
you, my lord count, to account for my lord’s safety. Will you swear to me that
he’s safe in your custody?”

“I pledged you my word,” Riannon said.

“Your lord is beyond all possible harm,” Count Berenger said.

Damory laughed. It was an ugly sound.

“He rests with the gods,” Berenger said.

Riannon frowned at him. Grammaire’s knight hissed and reached for a sword that
he did not carry.

“Mind your tongue and temper,” Berenger said, “or you’ll be joining your
faithless master. Get this dog out of my sight.”

The knight shrugged off the grabbing hands long enough to turn to Riannon and
spit at her. “May you rot in the deepest hell for impersonating a man.”

Riannon watched as three of Berenger’s men dragged him outside. Beyond the ache
of her old wounds, she felt a hard, sinking coldness that tasted of gall. It was
no less bitter for being familiar.

“He’s fortunate that I’m in such a good humour,” Berenger said, “or I’d hang
him, too. Now, where is that accursed minstrel? Gast, you’re not drinking? You
there, give her wine.”

Riannon ignored the offered cup. “My lord, I pledged my word that you sought not
Lord Grammaire’s death.”

The count waved that aside. “Now that you’re walking again, I expect you to
accompany me to Destan. I’ll hold a tourney there for my son’s knighting. I
expect you to captain my team.”

Riannon should have been elated to be granted such a prestigious position. But
she inverted her hand and opened her fingers to let the gold ring fall to the
rushes. The soft thud cut off the chatter around them. Damory gaped like a
landed carp. Disbelief and anger tightened the count’s face.

“With your permission, your Grace,” she said, “I’ll take my leave. My service to
you is ended.”

“You dare!” he said. “You’ll get not a penny from me.”

“I did not expect it,” she said.

His face pinched and his lips thinned to pale, compressed lines. “I could have
you flogged. Hanged. And where do you think you’ll get any other man to take on
a… a female who plays the man?”

Riannon wanted to kill him. She kept her thoughts to herself and her hands
conspicuously away from the hilts of her sword and dagger.

As she reached the door, she heard a burst of laughter. She did not look back.
Another failed opportunity that had glittered as brightly as gold but turned to
dross when finally within her grasp. The pattern grew long and dispiritingly
predictable.

Alan waited with their horses. His face showed dismay in reaction to what he saw
in her expression.

Riannon took her reins from him. “We’re leaving.”

“Where do we go?” he asked.

Riannon settled in the saddle and put a hand to the ache that mounting had
tugged across her stomach. “East.”

“The war in southern Kardash that the bard spoke of? Aye, there should be work
there aplenty. And good pickings.”

Riannon saw the body hanging from the branch of an elm tree. She halted her
gelding. Even gently swinging in neck-broken death, Lord Grammaire looked tidy.
He would likely have died had he not surrendered to her. But it would have been
a better death in defence of his castle. Instead, he died like a common criminal
despite her having given her word that no harm would come to him. Would Count
Berenger have held her honour at nought had she been a man?

Riannon shrugged. Her muscles stabbed with fresh pain. For several heartbeats,
she had to sit with a hand gripping the saddle and her teeth ground down on a
groan. When the crisis passed, she licked sweat from her upper lip.

“My lady?” Alan lowered his voice, though only the dead man might overhear them.
“Mayhap I should get you back to the tent and fetch the leech-priest.”

He always reverted to “lady” when he was worried about her.

Riannon took several uneasy breaths and straightened. “No. We ride. But I’d not
object if we found a grove house to pass the night.”

The priestess-healers had saved her life once before, when she thought herself
beyond healing and hope. Perhaps they could cure her of this recurrent problem
with those same wounds. She doubted, though, that she would ever find a cure for
the problem of never belonging or being accepted for what she was.

A few hours past noon on the next day, Alan pointed to the low building of a
small grove house set on the edge of woods. Riannon’s aches had eased enough
yesterday that she had refused to stop at the previous groves they had passed.
Since before noon, though, her scars had come alive again with their stabbing
hot and cold. She doubted her ability to remain in the saddle much longer. The
fact that they were now beyond the lands owned by men who owed allegiance to
Berenger of Tastamont reinforced her decision to rest beneath a roof.

The dusty track led across a shallow stream and ended in a rough courtyard
bounded by several wooden buildings of different sizes. Smoke poured from two of
them.

“Shite,” Alan said.

Men, horses, and donkeys crammed the tiny compound and spilled into the
surrounding trees. Riannon’s gaze quickly skipped from men in green tunics to
two covered carriages. The entourage was large enough for a countess, but the
green cloth of the carriages – which bore no noble symbols – hinted at a very
high-ranking priestess.

When Riannon’s feet hit the ground, pain jarred her as if someone had sliced her
clean through with a sword. She clung to the saddle and bit back an oath. She
still fought to recover her breathing when her squire returned.

“We’re unfortunate,” Alan said. “All these people belong to the escort of no
less a person than a naer of the groves. The exalted lady rests here this night.
They’ve no beds nor space to spare for travellers. But I made an offering of
coin, and we can camp in a clearing through there. I’ll have John take the
horses.”

Riannon grunted.

“They have a healer priestess,” Alan said. “She’ll see you if you enter the door
that is never closed.”

Riannon released the saddle and turned. Pain stabbed deep into her chest. Her
knees buckled and she pitched into darkness.

Riannon woke with a cool, damp cloth dabbed against her forehead. She lay on a
narrow cot looking up at a thatched roof. The tiny room sported only the cot, a
rudimentary shelf, and a wooden symbol of the quartered-circle nailed to the
wall. A pretty young woman in a faded green robe of a junior priestess sat
beside the cot. She wrung the cloth in a wooden bowl of water and softly hummed
what sounded like a fairing song rather than a hymn. She turned to see Riannon
watching her and froze.

“Your… your pardon, lady.”

“You make a sweet sound,” Riannon said. “Pray, continue.” The priestess glanced
over her shoulder towards the door. Riannon heard muffled voices. The priestess
shot to her feet and spilled some of the water down the front of her robe.

“I… I’m to inform her Eminence, the naer, when you wake,” she said.

“A naer?” Riannon asked.

This place appeared too humble to house a priestess of so elevated a rank, and
the nervous young sio in her faded robes seemed an unlikely attendant to such an
exalted lady of the order.

“We’re blessed beyond imagining,” the priestess said. “Her Eminence chose our
house to break her travels. She’s been with us a day and a night. It’s been
right cramped. We’ve had to send for ever so much salted fish and goats and
grain. More than I’ve seen before in my whole life. I have to share a pallet
with Sio Gwynis in the cookhouse, for there are scores and scores in the naer’s
escort. It’s marvellous. So colourful. And so many horses and donkeys. Men all
talking and jesting. Like a yearly market, though without the mummers. I can
scarce believe I’d ever see such a high and mighty lady. And she has spoken to
me!”

“If you must be gone, sio, I’ll not detain you.”

The priestess dropped a hasty curtsy and departed. After the door closed,
Riannon allowed herself a grin for the priestess’s tumbling enthusiasm and awe.
The young woman had probably been born of a peasant family not two miles away
and pledged at an early age. It wasn’t surprising she had seen no such
magnificence before as so august a personage as a naer of the groves. Riannon
had rarely witnessed it herself.

Riannon sat up and looked around for her clothes to cover her nakedness. She
paused as she shoved the thin woollen blanket aside. She did not hurt.

She frowned down at herself and lifted a hand to the puckered, shiny pink scar
slashing across her torso. With a finger she traced part of the old wound where
it had cut away most of her right breast and sliced down across her ribs. Her
flesh felt no more sensitive than normal. The sickeningly intense pain was but a
memory.

“Lady of Mercy and Healing, I thank you.”

Riannon traced the quartered circle on her bare skin. She must go to the sacred
grove to offer thanks and leave a goodly donation for her healing.

She had pulled on her washed and mended linen shirt and was tugging her chamois
riding braies up her thighs when she saw the sword hilt beneath the cot. She
knotted the waist tie and frowned. The sword was not hers. The hilt looked
functionally plain with unusual hand guards. The quillons curved gently down
towards the blade rather than projecting straight out to the sides. The simple
round pommel bore no inset stone, enamelling, or engraving.

Instead of reaching for a leg of her hose, Riannon crouched to retrieve the
sword. The brown leather-covered scabbard looked recently worked with fat, and
bore no decorative tool work. Even the protective metal heel on the bottom was
plain save for some scratches from use. It was hard to imagine a less likely
object for a previous guest to have left without anyone noticing. Riannon’s
frown deepened. She was likely within the part of the grove house where men were
not permitted. She had heard of no other woman like herself who carried a sword.

The door opened. Riannon stood.

The woman in the doorway was tall for her sex, though she had to look up to
Riannon. Her dark green robe, the colour of leaves lit by the dying light of an
evening, bore deep bands of embroidery around the collar and hem. That and the
gold quartered circle symbol hanging at her waist proclaimed her high status.
The visiting naer.

The priestess returned Riannon’s study with an equally frank one. Her black
hair, green eyes, and angular face were familiar to Riannon for they bore close
resemblance to the features she saw mirrored in the surface of still water.
Colouring and face were formed by family blood, but the arrogant tilt of the
chin was the priestess’s own. In the four and more years since Riannon had last
seen her, her cousin Aveline had changed little.

Aveline pointedly lowered her gaze to take in Riannon’s loose shirt and bare
legs. Her lips twitched. “Of course, being close kin we needn’t stand on
ceremony with each other.”

Riannon dropped the sword on the cot and reached for her tunic. “You’re not here
by accident. What do you want with me?”

Aveline closed the door. The room was so tiny that the hem of her robe brushed
Riannon’s ankle. Riannon caught a whiff of sandalwood incense.

“As blunt as I recall.” Aveline watched Riannon pull her tunic on. “What a
refreshing change from the diplomatic language of insinuation, hints, and
shadows that is my normal tongue.”

“In which you were born fluent.”

Aveline smiled. “Enough to know that you meant that as no compliment. Only you
could insult a naer within a grove house. I marvel afresh at the Goddess whose
wisdom plucked you from the solar and deposited your strapping form in the arms
yard. You’d not have succeeded at gossiping over the distaff.”

Riannon knew herself no match for Aveline’s dextrous tongue. She folded her arms
across her chest and waited.

“You’ve grown no more womanly, have you?” Aveline stared at Riannon’s face.
“What a fierce expression that ugly scar gives you. It’s a miracle you did not
lose your eye. Did you get the wound at Vahl?”

Riannon’s jaw tightened. “I’d thank you to say what you must and leave me to
offer my thanks and depart.”

“Believe it or not, you are the answer to my prayers.” Aveline cast a
disapproving glance around the cramped room. “The Goddess showed me that I
needed to come here. I could wish our Wise Mother had seen fit to guide our
steps to more salubrious surroundings. Two days in this pest hole is verily a
penance. You can have no idea how fervently I’ve prayed for you to regain your
wits, so that we may be away.”

“I’ve much to do ere I take my leave,” Riannon said. “Mayhap you could get to
your point.”