Solace Shattered (12 page)

Fassal downed a cup. “I’d like to challenge that Outhouse.”

“Challenge him to what? And Ousterhall is his name, Fassal. If you wish to challenge a man, whose name you either cannot remember or pronounce, over a game of widshins, you are a greater blockhead than I thought.”

Fassal’s malignant look cautioned Degarius he wasn’t going to be teased out of anxiety. Degarius adopted a mollifying tone. “You forget she’s young and accustomed to the attention due a princess. She’s a good girl. After the excitement of his admiration is past, she’ll think nothing of it.”

“Do you really think she’s a good girl?” Fassal brightened upon hearing her praised.

“Of course.”

“But I don’t like this,” Fassal said grimly. “You there,” he called to one of the idle noblemen, “be a good man and finish my game.” To Degarius he said, “I am going to see the armory master’s son about that pup. What a slobbering great dog he will be. I wager you ten crowns Sarapost has never seen the likes of him. Make my excuses.”

Degarius was about to argue that it had been Fassal’s idea to play when he glanced to the princess. She was smiling radiantly at Ousterhall. Perhaps it was best if Fassal left.

“Are you coming to Summercrest?” Miss Gallivere asked Degarius when he returned to with her punch.

“It’s the prince’s intent, but I don’t see the point. I have a great deal to finish here before returning to Sarapost.”

“A great deal.” Miss Gallivere shielded her eyes from the sun. A coy smile showed beneath her hand’s shadow.

The Saviors’ Gate bell tolled half past the hour. Degarius had hoped to be at the archive by now. Having to go home first to change to a clean shirt and wash his face, he might just make it before five so he’d be there to carry her kithara to Lady Martise’s for her. To Miss Gallivere he said, “Carry on without me.”

“We’re nearly finished. What’s so pressing you must leave now?”

“While in Acadia, I’m looking into their archive books to compile a manual of winter campaign strategies.”

“You can’t spare one afternoon?”

“I have a war to prepare for.”

“I’ll come and turn pages or take dictation. Everyone praises my clear hand.”

“That’s good of you,” Degarius said, but the prospect of sharing the one blessed hour of the day he spent in a manner of his own choosing was unthinkable. “I have all the assistance I need.”

“Really? Who?”

Degarius hailed Sebastion, who’d been lounging in the shady recess of a door through the Citadel’s immense outer wall that let to stairs to the beach below. “Would you play with Miss Gallivere?”

“Why leave now?” Sebastion called back. “The game is almost over. If you win, I’ll get you a drink. Be a good sport.”

“Another time.”

As Degarius turned to leave, Miss Gallivere caught him by the sleeve. “Be careful which books you look into at the archive. The Lerouges are peculiar about their possessions.”

“What?”

She smoothed his sleeve. “Consider yourself warned.”

Changed into a fresh white shirt, Degarius was just entering the shortcut through the Citadel woods that he and Hera Solace always took to and from the archive when the bell sounded five. Damn it, he was late. But surely she would wait, or at least he’d catch her on the path.

He rounded a statue of the current King Lerouge, donated by the Weaver’s Union. With the king looking rather tired and paunchy under the puffs and ruffles of his coat and collar, it was no wonder it had been hidden in this small clearing.

A muffled woman’s cry came from ahead on the path. There was a note of terror in it. He broke into a run. Through the trees, he caught sight of movement. He drew his sword and pushing aside branches, plunged into the wood.

Where could they have vanished to? The wood wasn’t that big. Degarius burst into a clear-cut path around the wall. To his right, a man was climbing a ladder up the wall. Atop the wall, was a giant of a man with a limp-bodied woman in a gray dress slung over his shoulder. Hera Solace. Degarius, the blood coursing through veins in his neck, sprinted to the ladder. The man climbing it, nearing the top, heard him and looked. He scrambled the rest of the way up. From the wall, he began to draw up the ladder. The moment Degarius reached the wall, he dropped his sword and leaped into the air. His fingers grazed the bottom rung, but couldn’t catch it.

By the time his feet reached the ground and he crouched to leap again, the ladder was out of reach. He scanned the length of the curved wall within sight for vine or low-slung tree he could climb to scale the wall. There was nothing. He picked up his sword. They were gone. Long gone on the other side.

What was on the other side of the wall? Nobles mansions. Perhaps someone had seen and could point him after them. His chest heaving, though he hadn’t run far, he turned back into the woods to get to the path to the gate. He had to find her.

He burst from the trees into the clearing around the statue.

A woman screamed.

“Hera!” She had just turned the bend in the path of the statue.

“You frightened the life out of me, Captain.”

“And you me. You’re all right?” He’d never felt so relieved in his life, not even after he’d escaped from Lake Sandela. Every muscle went soothingly slack.

“You aren’t. Look at your shirt.”

He glanced down at his shirt and felt oddly like laughing. There was a snag in the sleeve. A branch must have caught it and he hadn’t noticed.

“What happened?”

Then, he remembered. “I have to get to the gate. I saw two men take a woman through the woods. I swore it was you. She was wearing a gray dress.”

She rushed to him. “It could be Hera Musette.”

Hera Musette was fat. “No, they carried her up a ladder and over the wall.”

“But there aren’t any other Solacians in Shacra Paulus.”

He took her kithara and they ran for the gate. She held her dress from her feet so it wouldn’t slow her.

At the gate, he told the guard what had happened and an alarm sounded, sending soldiers to fan out in the direction of the place where the men had climbed the wall.

Degarius looked down at her face, bright red from heat. It could have been her abducted had she been a few minutes earlier, though there was no conceivable reason on earth why anyone would want to hurt her. But men’s baser instincts were beyond reason. “I don’t know what happened back in the wood. But it seemed well planned. They knew exactly where to climb the wall so they wouldn’t be spotted. Don’t walk here alone again.”

“I waited for you...as usual,” she added rather sheepishly.

As usual. Yes, they had a sweet little usual routine. He smiled despite everything. Perhaps just out of respite.

“But you never came.”

“The widshins game ran long. I left before it was over to try to get here.”

“I suspected as much. Everyone has been talking about the match for days.”

“Don’t walk alone here. I’ll be here every day. And if I can’t, I’ll send word and my man.”

Citadel schoolroom, the next day

A
rvana thanked the Maker Miss Gallivere had come to the schoolroom to practice a duet with the princess. All morning the girl had been in a stew, gouging wax from the tablet instead of changing the tense of the verbs in the Old Anglish poem. She’d not answered entreaties as to what was the matter; perhaps she would reply to Miss Gallivere’s. Arvana let the girls twitter while she worked out a harmony part for the duet.

There was a knock. The girls fell silent and stared apprehensively at the door.

Was it Chane, returned to claim the Blue Eye? No, it couldn’t be him. He’d enter without knocking and Jesquin wouldn’t dread seeing him. Arvana opened the door to find Prince Fassal pacing in the hall while his redcoat escort maintained soldierly composure.

The prince strode to her. “Hera, is the princess here?” There was something frantic, and yet dejected, in his voice.

So he was the reason for the princess’s distraction. They might as well resolve whatever issue was between them now, or the rest of the day was sure to be a waste of a lesson plan. “She’s here.” Arvana dismissed the guard, led the prince inside, closed the door after him, and stationed herself against it.

Jesquin’s chin puckered.

The prince only nodded to Miss Gallivere.

They were all uneasily eyeing each other.

“Might we go for a walk?” Fassal asked Arvana.

Arvana looked to the princess. An ashy pallor dulled her olive skin and her lips quivered, but she nodded her head minutely for Arvana to agree to the prince’s request. “The courtyard garden isn’t far. We can take a turn in it.”

With Gregory walking, or rather sulking beside her, Jesquin rounded a bush that clever shears had transformed into a bell. If she could just speak to him, everything surely would be fine. He’d know she meant no harm. How could he even think she did? She glanced over his shoulder. Oh, good Hera Solace! She’d paused with Esmay back at the rose bushes. Jesquin brushed Gregory’s cheek. It was rough with stubble. “You look tired, sweetest. I hardly slept at all, either. Wasn’t the night warm?”

“You attribute your lack of sleep to the warmth? Whose warmth? But I didn’t come here to talk about the weather. Let us be direct as we’ve always been. Do you wish me to come to Summercrest or not?”

“Of course I wish you to come!”

Gregory clasped her hand from his cheek. “Jesquin, if you prefer someone else, tell me now. I don’t wish to be captive at your family’s house to receive a dismissal.”

Prefer someone else? Had her behavior with Stevas Ousterhall really been so immoderate? They had played widshins and later sang together after dinner. Could she be blamed if Ousterhall had a beautiful voice, and it was a treat to sing with him for others’ enjoyment? She knew the answer, knew it last night from Gregory’s stony good night. She knew it in her conscience. But she’d been hoping that he’d not
really
noticed. “What do you mean a dismissal?”

“As I said before, if you prefer someone else.”

“You think I prefer Stevas?”

“You call him by his child name?”

“He is a childhood acquaintance, Gregory.”

“An old acquaintance makes friendly, not bold, overtures.”

“Men behave like that.”

“You’re a princess. Every man with eyes will have them upon you. I’m resigned to that. But is it acceptable if a man, old acquaintance or not, holds your hand as he walks with you?” He held her hand up and released it. “Is it right for you to let him wrap his arm around your waist as you sing together?” He stepped away from her.

“Of course not!” Jesquin cried, truly frightened at the specter of her behavior when viewed from a consideration outside of her own enjoyment.

“It’s not right for you to accept his blatant advances if you mean to accept me.”

As much as Jesquin disliked criticism, she only paid heed to the last words. “Accept you? Are you proposing?”

“Are you prepared for that? Are you ready to swear off Stevas and all others?”

“Not if you ask me in that way. Gregory, how dreadful.”

“I don’t wonder Prince Fassal is upset,” Miss Gallivere said. “Jesquin and Lord Ousterhall sang together last night. He has quite a delicious voice.”