One Good Knight (14 page)

This was goat country, goats being the only livestock you could successfully raise here among rocky, tall hills, tough grass, weather-beaten trees that were mostly acacias, weather-beaten bushes that were mostly gorse. It had neither the advantages of the coast, nor of the mountains, and it was very hard to find your way here. Things you thought were trails turned out to be goat-tracks that thinned away to nothing, then vanished altogether on the rocks. Afoot (though she badly wanted some ointment for her legs and the skin on her shoulders) she was able to scramble ahead, find out if they were on one of those dead-end tracks, and scramble back before the knight had gone too far along it. If the frequent backtracking made him doubt her boasted ability as a guide, he didn't say anything, and the contempt for her that oozed from him was more than enough to cover every possible defect in her character twice over.

She almost regretted attaching herself to him. The gray clouds were clearing off, the weather was rapidly improving, and she could have enjoyed hiking out here—slowly—without him. But she needed the
protection he represented. Short of being able to do something clever, or lucky—and she thought she had probably used up her store of good luck for the next decade—she would never be able to defend herself against an attacker. And at least she
knew
the knight was safe to be around.

Though, every time a little contemptuous sniff or an exaggerated sigh came out of that helmet, she regretted her decision.

They made their way into the mountains in silence right up until about noon, when the knight said, as reluctantly as if the words were being pulled from him with tongs, “If we see a stream, we should stop. My horse needs to be watered.”

“All right,” she replied. “There's a stream in the next valley.”
And more than your horse needs tending to.

Actually, since they had found their way to one of the regular trails that appeared on maps, she knew that there was a stream and a habitation in the next valley, but she wasn't going to tell
him
that. Two could play at the “surly” game.

Truth to tell, even though she didn't strictly need a rest, she wanted one. And more to the point, she wanted what she might be able to get at the manor-farm that she knew was there. Like ointment…

So when they edged their way down the steep slope to the lushly grass-covered banks of the stream, she waited just long enough to be sure that the knight really
was
going to dismount and stay for a bit, then followed the stream down to where she
knew the farmhouse was. Or at least, where the map she remembered said there was a farmhouse.

Farmhouse
was a little bit of a misnomer, because this was an estate, but the absentee-owner lived at the Court of Ethanos, and the place was run by a Steward who never saw the Court and wouldn't recognize her. He
might
recognize her as an escaped sacrifice, except that no sacrifice had ever escaped before. And she had a good story ready to explain why she had gold to barter—though she took the precaution of twisting off three links from the chain she had worn as the maximum she would bargain with, and hiding the rest. No point in making whoever she met greedy by showing too much gold. Each of those links was worth three gold thalers, and she now knew that much gold would buy a good farm hereabouts.

It was a big house, indeed; surrounded by a low stone wall, meant mostly to keep livestock out of the gardens, it was made of more mellow, old stone, with a fine red-tile roof. It looked big enough to support a staff of twenty, more or less. Plus the owner and his family, when they chose to visit. She slipped around to the back of the house, by the kitchen garden, and found the kitchen door. The good smells coming from the place nearly knocked her over, and her stomach growled, reminding her she hadn't had much appetite last night nor this morning.

But as she had hoped, lunch was over for the workers, the household servants and the Steward, and now
the kitchen staff was just sitting down to enjoy their own meal when she tapped at the door frame.

There were six people sitting around the big wooden table in the kitchen, and all six heads swiveled to look at her. She tried not to stare at the food, but her stomach growled again.

“Don't need kitchen help, girl, if that's why you're here,” the woman at the head of the table said. She was plump and red-faced, with a big floury apron tied over her skirt, her sleeves rolled up to the elbow and her hair bundled up under a cap. She looked stern, and there was a frown line between her brows, but the staff didn't look overly cowed and they were all well-fed. So as long as Andie trod carefully, this was probably someone she could work with.

“Don't need to hire on, mistress,” she said, bobbing a curtsy. “Goin' home. Tarrant Three Pines village, up west in the mountains. Just need some provisions, mistress.”

The cook's frown deepened. “Turned out, were you?” she began, but Andie shook her head, and let some of the tears she'd been holding back flow.

“Been serving House Tarrant in Ethanos. I was the five-year servant to the daughter of the house. They brought me up from there when the young milady came out of the nursery,” she said, naming the family of last week's lottery loser and keeping her eyes cast down. “She lost the lottery.” Watching through her lashes, she saw the disapproving expression on the cook's face fade, turning into embarrassment. A
five-year servant was a girl who contracted to serve for five years in order to build up enough money for her own dower; often, a family from far away from the capital would hire a five-year girl out of one of their villages to be their daughter's handmaiden when she was in that in-between stage of “old enough to leave the nursery” but not “old enough to consider for marriage.” It was reckoned that such girls were “safer,” didn't have haughty airs, and were less susceptible to wheedling and bribery.

“So, they don't need me anymore. Paid me my five years with some of mistress's dower-jewels, so I'm off back home.” Most people didn't keep a great deal of actual coin money around, and under the circumstance she had just described, that was a reasonable thing for a family to have done in order to pay five years' worth of wages at once. She fished in the pocket of her skirt and held out the three links of gold where the cook could see them. “I'm needing a few things….” she began. “I turned up with just the clothes on my back, and that's pretty much how I left them, except for my pay.”

The cook smiled slightly.

Andie trudged back up the bank of the stream with a full stomach, and a very full pack with a rolled blanket tied atop it. In the pack was a real chemise (not new, of course, but clean), a wooden spoon, a small clay pot to cook in, a wooden pot of ointment and another of pine-sap liniment, a wedge of homemade soap, a wooden comb, a pot of soothing scented
lotion, a wax-covered round of goat cheese, a second loaf of bread, some dried figs, a bag of dried peas and a little bag of salt. Strictly speaking, she did not
need
the soap, but it was one of the cook's little specialties, scented with rosemary, and it had smelled so good when she passed where it was sitting out to cure that she'd asked for a wedge of it, too. The cook had looked sharply at her, then at her hands, which, while not as fine as Cassiopeia's or any of the other ladies Andie had been with, were certainly not all that dissimilar to Iris's. A lady's maid had to keep her hands softer than those of other servants; she gave her mistress massages, tended her hair and skin and handled her fine clothes.

“Ha. Aye, you've been a lady's maid, right enough.” That must have clinched the story in the cook's mind, because the cook was a great deal more sympathetic after that. While some servants might run away from a bad master, a lady's maid was generally treated so well that at least half of them elected to remain after their five-year term, rather than going home with a dower, and turned into full household servants with yearly fees, two suits of clothing, bed and board, and a raise in pay every year.

But no one would want to keep the girl who only reminded them that the daughter of the house, rather than the servant, had lost the lottery. The cook had thrown in the little wooden pot of rosemary hand-salve as a gift. Andie thought, rather wryly, that she was going to need it.

Actually, there were a great many things she was going to need, but that could wait until they got to Merrha's village, Rocky Springs in the holding of House Kiros. If Merrha had thought there was
any
chance that Andie would survive the dragon, she would have known that was where Andie would go next.

In fact, if Merrha came to check after the dragon was gone, she would find the signs of fighting, the empty manacles, the pack gone. She would probably try to get a message out by heliograph.

Andie wouldn't dare stay at Kiros Rocky Springs—especially not if some of what she suspected turned out to be true—but there would be people warned she was coming and prepared to sell her what she needed and not talk about it afterward.

When she got back to where she had left the knight and his horse, she found the latter tethered and grazing, and the former with his helmet and some of the pieces of his armor finally off. Not the mail shirt or trews, but the bits of plate, which he was inspecting with a frown. The frown deepened when she entered the clearing.

“Damn,” he said ungraciously. “I thought you'd run off.”

Irked, she threw the packet of bread and cheese she'd gotten for his lunch at his head rather than in his lap as she had intended. Quick as a snake, he snatched it out of the air before it could hit him.

“You're welcome,” she said sarcastically, before he could utter a word. “I told you I could fend for myself.”

The frown became a full-fledged scowl. Which was rather sad, since underneath that sour expression, he wasn't bad looking, if you liked the androgynous sort—absolutely beardless, so he was probably no older than she was, with somewhat angular features, which was a bit unsettling to someone used to softer, rounder faces, but by no means was he ugly. He looked exotic, and he had a generous mouth that unfortunately was set in an ungenerous expression. His hair was reddish brown with a wave to it, and his eyes were green—which was also a little unsettling to someone used to brown eyes and black hair.

“Why didn't you fend yourself into a job, then?” he demanded. “Get yourself out of my life. I told you, I don't need you, and I don't want you!”

From the sudden sharp whiff of liniment that wafted to her when he matched an emphatic gesture to that statement, she suspected that he
did
need her, even if he didn't
want
her. He was bruised all over at the least, and at the worst, might have cracked bones. He hurt now, and in the morning he would be hurting worse, and he'd be stiff to go along with the pain.

Idiot.

Now that she saw him, and saw how young he must be, there was at least a partial explanation for his rudeness. He probably hadn't grown past the “girls are stupid and useless” stage. Or even if he had, he wasn't going to let one get in the way of “his” quest.

“And just where, exactly, am I supposed to go?” she demanded. “Don't you know who I
am?
”

“The Queen of all Acadia, I presume,” he sneered.

“Close, you dolt,” she retorted. “You don't think they bedeck every lottery loser in enough gold to buy a noble estate, do you? I'm
Princess Andromeda!
And if anyone ever figures out I wasn't eaten, knowing what I know, they will make certain I never get a chance to tell anyone about it! There is nowhere safe in this entire country for me! Or—well—” she amended, “almost nowhere safe. If I can get to the centaur settlements in the heart of the mountain forests, in the Wyrding Lands, I might be all right. But I'm going with you for now. I'm not stupid, and I can fend for myself, but I can't protect myself.”

“And I have a job to do!” he shouted in exasperation.

She noted absently that he was very lucky; his rather high voice clearly hadn't broken when he'd begun to mature, because it didn't crack when he yelled. “I have a dragon to track down and kill, and then I have to go back to Glass Mountain and make a report to my Chapter-Head!”

“Good!” she replied sharply. “Because I have plenty for you to report!”

So much for not speaking to him. Now that she had an opening, she wasn't going to let him get away without hearing everything she knew, or guessed. She told him all that had happened to her since she'd begun making those reports to Solon, filling the silence while he sullenly ate the food she had brought him. She told him what was in those reports while they continued to
walk in the direction she had chosen for them. She told him all about her beginning suspicions and speculations, and the altogether-too-well-timed arrival of the dragon. She told him about the lottery, and her suspicion that it had been rigged to silence those who most opposed the Queen's current policies. By the time she was close to being done, it was late, the sun was going down, and the landscape had changed from goat country to forested mountains. She'd never been here; had only heard of the forests, and in the back of her mind, she was wishing she could stay for a while. To see trees that were so tall and so thick that they blocked out the sun, to hear birds she didn't even recognize—she wanted to explore this place. And she knew she didn't dare.

He didn't say a word until they made camp—and to his credit, he helped her gather firewood and he himself built and lit the fire. For a long time he only spoke in occasional monosyllables, until she finally ran out of things she wanted to tell him and he stopped responding at all.

By then, it was fully dark, the moon was up and the night sounds of birds, animals and insects that had always seemed so pleasant and soothing coming in through her open window were distinctly unnerving when coming from all around her. She had never spent a night in the open before, and the sounds that might have elicited a sleepy “Oh, I wonder what that is” were instead making her react with
“What was that?”
as she tried not to jump out of her skin.