The Black Prince: Part II (49 page)

There was a rug on the floor, too, in shades of red and blue and cream. The hangings on Asher’s bed, which were tied back for the moment, were blue as well. Faced with all this opulence, she vaguely recalled having heard that blue dye was produced in Darkling Reach. And that it, along with several other treasures, formed the source of the duke’s wealth.

She’d grown up hearing that the North was a wasteland with nothing but the occasional savage running through it. And that said savages camped out in rude huts that, in truth, were little more than glorified tents. That they had none of the luxuries enjoyed by their Southern counterparts. Nor saw the need for them, as they were too busy drinking the blood of their dead to care for such things as literature or music.

None of which, plainly, was true. In Chilperic only her brother, Balzac, had had a room as nice as Asher’s. But in this place, as dark and frightening as it was, it was everyone else’s standard of living that struck her. The servants had their own rooms. Some of them, like the blacksmith, had suites of rooms. His were above his shop. Caer Addanc was huge, a village unto itself, but she had yet to see a single person who looked to be suffering. In any fashion, even the most minor. To be sure, not all of them were happy, but all of them had adequate clothing. Even for this horrible cold, which she’d heard referred to as spring. And they all had food.

So much food.

“This is really good,” Asher said. “Thank you.”

“I know you’re only supposed to have broth,” she said, “but I don’t see how eating something real is supposed to damage your arm.”

He’d made short work of the meat pie and moved on to the cheese. “Neither do I.”

“It has to be better for your health than getting stabbed.”

His laugh was a quick, short bark. He wasn’t the most…cheerful of people, even at the best of times, but she discovered that she found that sort of endearing. You knew where you stood with him.

“You must think I’m really stupid,” he said, relaxing against the pillow.

“Well.” Yes. “It’s not nice to say stupid.”

“As my father is fond of saying, truth takes no position.”

She studied him. The pale skin, paler now from blood loss and shock. How much he did look like his father. And sound like him, sometimes. It was a little unsettling. “Why didn’t you tell me that Maeve was your mother?”

He could have. The other day, when she’d met George. But he hadn’t. A knowledge that left her feeling obscurely defeated.

“She’s not my mother.” He was tired, and sounded like it, but there was surprising vehemence in his tone. “She just gave birth to me. That’s all. And besides,” he added, “I didn’t want you to think of me differently.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know…not like me. Not that, of course, it matters.”

Right. All boys were fools, even at his age. At least according to Solene. Who was, by Aveline’s count, now right about at least two things. Solene, who to all intents and purposes had been her mother. She wondered if, now that Solene were married, she’d have children of her own. And discovered that the idea no longer upset her as much as it once had.

“But how could you be so stupid?” He’d almost
died
. The only friend she had. If a very strange and somewhat arbitrary friend, who seemed to alternately treat her like a little sister and a pariah.

“I needed answers. Answers only she could give.”

“Did you go there to meet her?”

“No.” It was a simple declaration, and she believed him. “And I wasn’t going to go with her, either.” He sounded irritated. “I’d told her that. Before you arrived.” His eyes met hers. They seemed dark, but they weren’t. They were an unusual, and really quite pretty, shade of blue. “Thank you,” he said, “for saving my life.”

“We hostages—or, in your case, former hostages—have to stick together.”

That small half smile again.

She passed him some water, which he drank.

“So did you get your answers?”

“I suppose.” He gestured. “She stabbed me.”

“And it serves you right.” And then, for the third time that day, Aveline burst into tears.

“Please…don’t cry.”

“How could you be so stupid?” She didn’t mean to yell at him, and he an invalid who’d recently been snatched from the jaws of death, but she couldn’t help herself. “I heard what she did to you before. From the giant in the kitchens. Magnus.” He handed her the napkin from the plate and she blew her nose. Loudly. “People like that, they don’t tell you things. They aren’t helpful. If she were helpful, you dolt, she would have come in through the front door!”

“I know.” Asher’s voice had grown very quiet. “I wanted her to be different.”

“I want my sister to be different, but I still wouldn’t drink from a cup she handed me!”

Asher’s eyes widened slightly.

“Just because you love someone, doesn’t mean you forget who they are.”

“You know,” he said after a minute, “you’re right.”

“True love should not require sacrifice.”

“That sounds like something my mother would say. Isla, I mean.”

“Your mother is a wise woman. Maeve, on the other hand, is an evil hag. And you’d do well to remember that.”

“I doubt I’ll forget that, now, with you to remind me.” But he didn’t sound upset.

She favored him with her own small smile.

“I’m tired,” he said. “I have to rest but—will you stay? Just, I mean, only if you want to. There’s room on the bed. And that extra coverlet. But only if you want to.”

“Okay,” she said.

“It’s pretty boring in here, with no one to talk to.”

He said, even though he was about to take a nap. She couldn’t imagine being bored, though, with all these books. But she didn’t say anything, on either count. She was just happy to be wanted.

“A word of warning, though.” His eyes flashed with what she’d come to recognize as his own brand of humor. “You might get served broth for dinner.”

That was alright. So long as there was dinner. Taking the extra coverlet he’d indicated, a velvet soft wool that had been dyed a light blue, she made herself a nest. It wasn’t long before, at the other end of the bed, Asher’s breathing took on the low, slow pace of sleep. Aveline wasn’t, herself, particularly tired. But she was content. To be with him, and to just be.

And he was right: she wouldn’t let him forget.

“I
don’t like it,” Thomasina said, “you going off to consort with these Southrons.”

“It’s fine,” Lissa said, looking up from her trunk. She was kneeling in front of it, placing in piece after piece of folded clothing. She’d accumulated more than she’d realized, in her time with the Hamels. Some of it she’d bought herself but most of it had been made for her by Thomasina, who was a truly gifted seamstress. “I’m sure it can’t be as bad as people claim.”

“And you can’t even write!” Thomasina dropped into a chair. “And when will I see you?”

“I can write. There are ravens in Chilperic, too. And now, with Hart having taken over, there will be commerce between us and Barghast as well.” Which meant longer letters could be sent along with merchant caravans.

Lissa didn’t want to leave Thomasina, either. Nor Master Hamel. Nor Tad. Nor anyone, even their wretched neighbors. But she told herself, again and again, that women had been doing this for hundreds of years. Most women, when they married, at least changed villages. And it seemed that the higher up a woman was, in their social strata, the greater the distance she had to move.

She was lucky, she told herself too, that Chilperic was only a few weeks’ travel. She might have been moving to Eamont, or the Southern Isles. That was where the queen’s family was from, and she hadn’t been back since she’d gotten married. And as for women who weren’t the queen, a good many of them got married and never saw their families again.

“I am coming to visit,” Thomasina announced. “For Solstice.”

Lissa looked up again. “Good. I hope you do.”

“By which point, I expect you to be with child.”

“How do you know I’m not already?”

Thomasina’s eyes lit up. “Are you?”

Lissa shook her head. “No. I don’t know.” But she’d stopped taking moon tea. She and Hart both wanted children. He’d wanted her to stop before, he’d confessed, but hadn’t told her as he hadn’t wanted to risk leaving her with child and alone. Not realizing what a woman would have instinctually known: that, if he
had
died, a piece of him growing inside of her would have been a comfort.

“Stinging nettle.”

“What?”

“Drink stinging nettle tea.” Thomasina threw her hands up. “Oh, and who will
make
you stinging nettle tea, in that horrible place!”

Lissa thought, privately, that she could do without Thomasina’s herbal remedies. Most of which struck Lissa as highly suspicious. Although she would miss them. Or, rather, the bustling mass of unwanted advice behind them. She didn’t want to admit, even to herself, how much.

She stared at the kirtle in her hands, blue embroidered with thread the color of a salmon’s flesh.

“Those are your colors, you know.” Thomasina sniffed.

Lissa smiled.

“Oh, Master Hamel and I should just move to Chilperic. I’m sure they need helmets there.”

“I’m sure they do.”

“Southron armorers know nothing!”

“Which is good, really,” Lissa pointed out. “I mean, from our perspective.”

“Hah!”

There was a knock at the door. Thomasina turned. The door opened.

It was Tad, and he looked nervous. “Lissa,” he said, “there’s someone here to see you.”

Hart
. The thrill was the same, whether she’d seen him the morning before or whether he’d just returned from using the garderobes. But then she realized, no. Not Hart. Had it been Hart, he would have just come in. And Tad wouldn’t have that expression on his face.

“Is it Mona Potter? Because if it is—”

“No.” Tad shook his head. “It’s someone from the castle.”

Lissa stood up and, heart pounding, walked to the window. There was a carriage outside, bearing the duke’s official crest. A couple of bored looking men were with it, dicing. Leaning against the front seat, one on either side, they were using its flat surface as a board. So not the duke, then. He would have taken his own guard, not these oafs. And he wouldn’t have taken a carriage.

“She says her name is Solene.”

Lissa’s heart stopped. She turned. Solene was here? How had she even found where Lissa lived? How did she even know who Lissa was?

What had Hart told her?

And where was Hart?

Tad must have seen something in Lissa’s face, because his own darkened. “Should I send her away?”

“No. I’ll see her.”

Thomasina stood, now. She, too, had sensed that something was wrong. “I’ll set her up in Master Hamel’s private sitting room, then. You can come down when you’re ready.”

And then she and Tad were gone, leaving Lissa alone with her packing.

She returned to the window, and thought. Let Solene wait, if she was so inclined. She’d barged in on a household to which she was a stranger; she should not expect to be waited on hand and foot.

Master Hamel’s private sitting room was a smallish room that adjoined their great hall, where Master Hamel sometimes adjourned with favored guests. It was also where he conducted certain business matters. Not all clients, especially those who thought themselves very important, wished to haggle at his forge. Painted in shades of green, it had a desk and two chairs. There was a couch, too. And two full cabinets of books, each with five shelves each. A space to impress if ever there was one. Most of Master Hamel’s treasures, that he’d picked up on his travels, had found their way in as well. A dragon carved from bone that he’d been gifted in the East, a bronze urn he’d bought from what he described as an exceedingly seedy caravan leader.

If Solene thought she was coming here to beat up on a gaggle of helpless peasants, then she was in for a shock.

Lissa only hoped that, left to her own devices, she didn’t pilfer something.

She turned from the window. She was dressed simply, and wore no cosmetics. She’d only scrubbed herself clean, that morning, and put her hair up in a bun. But she had no intention of prettying herself up. Let Solene take her for what she was. Or not.

There was a time when she would have felt differently. But she’d changed, these past few months. A truth that only came upon her at times like these. Most times, she felt the same as she always had. She couldn’t pinpoint any precise thing that was different. Rather, it was seeing her own reactions to things that told her. How, where before she would have cowered, or hid, now she held herself with pride. She might not welcome Solene’s existence, but nor did she feel threatened by it.

Finding out that Hart was married had hurt her. But she understood the world they lived in as well as he and, once he’d explained the situation, she’d accepted it. Eventually. Most men of his station kept mistresses and at least half of those women, she suspected, were the wives they would have chosen for themselves had they been allowed.

Growing up as a peasant, she’d never expected to marry—or not marry—other than for love. And then, after she’d come to Barghast, she’d never expected to marry at all. She certainly hadn’t expected to be loved. But she’d entered Hart’s world, now, and that meant accepting that certain things were different. Loving a man like him came at a cost.