Chapter 14

I drifted up to warmth. The mattress shifted under me, crinkling, and an arm slid over my waist. Kiefan spooned against my back with a sigh.

My eyes cracked open. Dim. Traces of light flickered; the fire was low beyond the wooden screen. I lay my arm over Kiefan’s and my hand found his. Our fingers laced together. He squeezed me closer. His ear slid past mine and he touched a kiss to my shoulder.

All those lonely winter moons with only Rafe to keep me warm… I breathed a sigh.

Kiefan kissed my cheek next, lingered there. His hand slid up across my linen under-cote, slow and deliberate. I tugged him higher. His hand curled around my breast and the jolt of it caught my breath. My nipple was a tight peak when his fingers found it.

He leaned up on his elbow, pressing kisses to my neck, my cheek, and when I twisted toward him his tongue found mine. I let his hand go to touch his cheek, to find his braided crest above his Blessing ridges — no crown-band on him. Just Kiefan.

Our eyes met, glints in the dim light. His hand found the hem of my cote, slipped under it to feel my skin, to caress both my breasts, gently tweak them and make me shiver. My back arched. My butt brushed against his cock. Already eager.

I rolled over to kiss him, get my arm around him, let him pull my leg up over his hip and stroke his way from my thigh to my butt. My linen braies twisted in the rolling, and pulled further askew under his hand. I was too busy kissing him, lost in grinding against him, to worry much. My wandering fingers found the tie on his braies, pulled it loose, and slipped under the cloth.

Kiefan’s breath caught, against my mouth. His grip on my butt-cheek tightened. Then he went for the tie on my braies — but it wasn’t where it should be — and after a moment’s fumbling I breathed a chuckle and pushed his shoulder. He tipped on his back and I followed, straddling him as I started un-twisting my braies.

He tensed, under me, with a hiss, and sat up suddenly. Nearly knocked me over.

“What —?” Had I leaned on a bruise? Pinched something?

“Sorry.” He caught me by the arms. “I’m sorry, I —” He exhaled. Set his head against my shoulder for a moment, his hands shifting to my hips.

“Did I —?”

“No,” he whispered. He nuzzled against my neck, took a deep breath of me. Then he found my braies’ tie and undid it.

I nuzzled him back and called his pattern. Some bruise somewhere, some untended nick…? My hand found his cock again, meaning to distract him. He liked a firm grip, so —

His breath caught and he flinched, but then he steeled himself.

There wasn’t anything amiss under my hand. “What —?”

Kiefan cut me off with a kiss and rolled me back to the mattress. “It’s nothing,” he whispered and another kiss followed. “Roll again.”

Back to where we’d started, but this time his hand slipped under my braies and down to — make my breath catch and my back arch against his hard cock — and oh yes, Síochana had taught him a few things…

My clothes were drying by the fire. Captain Aleks turned as I crept out to claim them; she stood in the open front door. Through it, dawn was lightening the sky. The King’s Guard posted outside glanced in around the sill. I snatched up my beige wool cote and held it to my chest; my linens were lightweight, for summer.

Captain Aleks only chuckled and told me, “The Guard isn’t filled with lechers. And we know a thing or two of keeping secrets. Will you two finally be admitting to this?”

My cheeks warmed a bit. I found the hem of my cote and slid my arms into it. “How long have you known?”

“Housemistress Wenda and I have common cause. You’re good for him, you know.” Her hand rested on her sword as she watched me. She was in full armor already, early as it was, and her four-starred tabard and captain’s brasses were immaculate. Her waist-long, braided knight’s crest disappeared against the black.

My gaze went to the peg leg I’d crafted from her burnt bones and skin. “How has that been?” I nodded to it.

Aleks nodded. “Took some settling, but it’s a sight better than being cripple.” She raised her voice as Kiefan stepped into the firelight. “The abbot would have a word, on the coming Saint-day. We asked him to wait outside.”

Kiefan tightened the last tie of his gambeson’s tunic as he came. Gregor slipped past him, going for the mail laid out on the trestle table. He’d been in the children’s mattress across the room from our bed, asleep — or feigning well enough. I didn’t think we’d been so loud.

“I’ll only need tea this morning,” Kiefan told Gregor. He pulled his golden braid from the back of his gambeson. “Any word from Singréne?”

“Not yet. I’d like to see if Reinwin got through the night. He took a bad fall.”

He nodded. “Yes, see about that.”

“I’m going to the infirmary,” I said, pulling on one leg of my hose.

Captain Aleks smiled. “Together, then.”

Physician Brauer was glad to see me. Much was uncertain this morning: the army might march, it might not; how many Arceal soldiers remained wasn’t certain; several companies of our men, and their wounded, were still misplaced. Brauer’s concern was that they’d have to move those wounded we had already. Some were too fragile to jostle around in a wagon bed.

I was required to give them the story of my duel with Fijolais, firstly. All the soldiers who could sat up to listen. They had only unstuffed mattresses to lie on — just sacks, really — and blankets to keep off the chill. Canvas had been strung from the cherry trees to keep the weather off, for what it could help. They were a rapt audience and loved the tale.

Captain Aleks had found her Guardsman among the worst off. I knelt on his other side and touched his pale face. By the breaks in his shinbones, he’d fallen from his horse. A charm had cleansed the gash the bones had made, it had been stitched, and a good splint secured him from knee to ankle. He’d come too late in the day for more healing than that.

I eased bone fragments back into alignment and knit them loosely. It would be much to fix all at once, but when I was done a wagon-ride wouldn’t ruin the set of the bone. Sir Reinwin clung to Captain Aleks’ arm as I worked — this was no painless thing — gritting his teeth and groaning. He asked if he’d lose the leg, many times, and I told him no.

Aleks cuffed him, the dozenth time. “And miss your chance for a peg like mine? Father’s beard, boy, keep a grip on your balls.”

She stayed with him while I moved on to another patient. He was an armsman and he’d taken a spear in the gut. His cousin had dragged him clear, he told me at a whisper. They’d hated each other for years, but his cousin had saved his life. Then he started to give me the long story of why they hated each other. I hushed him. The man had lost much blood, but he was steady enough.

The stitches sealing the rips in his gut were rushed, loose. Need had been to close him up quickly, before he bled to death. His kir patterns told me the stitches were leaking, here and there. It would be a long, hard journey to get him through the fever that would cause.

I pinched each leak shut, using the efficient little stitch-charms that Krepkin had shown me last year. A little more kir cleansed the infection that was already loose.

On to the next. They had six who truly needed me — more shattered bones and stabbed guts. There was a man whose arm had been cut clean off by a centaur. There was little I could do for him, aside from ease the fever he was already running. I lingered beside him, though, considering the pattern of his stump. They’d cauterized it, to seal the arteries.

“Oh, a shame, that,” Captain Aleks said, at sight of the man’s lost arm. “A hook, perhaps? Might you craft something for him?”

There was no spinning a new arm from kir alone. No bone to work with, but for the bit of forearm below his elbow. “Perhaps,” I said, wondering if a bone hook with the muscles stretched and rooted to give it some use… though the meridian would be tricky…

“Your pardon, I must speak to Teleri about the supply line.” Captain Aleks touched my arm before moving off. I nodded to her, glancing in the direction she went. Teleri crouched beside one of the cots, listening to a wounded Caer speak.

Brauer’s worst-off six stabilized, I slipped out the rear tent-flap meaning to wash my hands. One of the patients had bled a little when I changed his bandage; the laundry would be back here, with ample soap and water. I spotted the kettles and Ters bustling over washbasins across the way.

The ambulance horses were on their pickets here as well, in the shade of the trees with grass underfoot. A man led a pony past them by a simple rope halter. He was ordinary enough, coarse-faced, brown-haired, familiar in a general way but I’d not met him before. The pony was so small I’d have thought him a colt but he had the build of a stallion.

And he stopped, oddly, and stood firm against the jerk of his man coming up short. The pony looked me square in the eye with ears perked.

I blinked. Grey dapples. A white star and a near-black nose. I knew those markings; my memory drew up the matching horse. My mouth fell open.

Anders’ warhorse, Nipper. The pony was a tiny Nipper.

“Anders!” It flew out of my mouth as the pony squealed and bucked away from his man. He tore free and ran. I chased, but even a pony was faster than me. He dodged around a big, brown dray and scared a stableboy half to death. I half ran the boy over in my haste. Cherry trees flashed by, then ended. The pony looked over his shoulder for me and shook his head, slowed a moment. I gained on him. With a toss of his grey mane, he chose his direction and lengthened his stride.

Leaving me behind. I thrust my kir at the earth and bounded after him. The pony turned onto a road and galloped toward a handful of archers.

“Catch him!” I shouted, landing at an awkward run and leaping again.

Strange a scene as we were, two of the archers lunged for the pony’s halter. He braked hard, twisted, and ducked under their arms. Once clear, he galloped again and swerved off the road toward a farmstead.

I gained on him. “Anders!” He had to hear me. Why run? Why —

Kir looped around my waist, mid-leap, and snapped taut. Pulled me from the air. I landed hard on my chest. My head spun but I scrabbled up on all fours and swung around to slash the kir. A second vine caught my arm, breaking and broken by my blade.

Teleri dug in her heels and reeled me back by my waist.

“No! Let me go!”

“Don’t be a fool!”

The pony vanished into the open barn beside the abandoned farmhouse.

Gravel cut my knees. I swung around, letting my kir unfold, and slashed the vine at my waist. She snared me again in an eye-blink. “’Tis a trap! Think on it!”

Trap? Anders? “He wouldn’t! No, he…”

“Do know that pony?”

“It’s Anders. My husband.” She likely didn’t know. “He’s a shifter.”

Teleri squinted at the barn. “Then ’tis fine bait they laid out.”

Bait. I looked to the barn. Off the road. Away from our camp. Alone. My heart sank. A trap. My hands dropped from the kir-vine binding me and it unraveled. The gravelly road under my stinging knees blurred and I covered my eyes with my hands.

Her boots crunched on the gravel. She crouched beside me. “I never failed my Crown, ere I failed Ceelin,” Teleri said, her voice gentler. She took my arm and tugged. “Do know the look of a trap. ’Twas your man who was taken by the Empress, true?”

I stood. A trap for me? Qadeem had said the Empress might spare me but that was a long walk from laying a trap. No, Anders wouldn’t be part of such a thing. “Come with me, then. Come and see.”

“Walk into a trap laid for an Elect? And how do you know ’tis your husband? Not some spooked pony?”

“He’s —” It sounded foolish to say. Teleri put her arm across my shoulders and steered me away, confident she was right. My voice fell. “The dapples. The white star.”

“And did often lay traps for you?” She put her other hand to my near shoulder. “We return with a squad to see what’s afoot. From afar.”

The pony crashed through the hush sphere’s wall just inside the barn and tossed his head at its cobwebby touch. A pair of lamellar-clad knights sprang from each stall, charmed swords at ready, as he braked hard. He reared, lips peeled back from his teeth, and kir clouded out around him. The nearest knight ducked back when he lunged to bite.

Another caught his halter and the pony slammed his shoulder into the knight’s side. He stumbled and the horse lunged to stomp on him — and was shoved back by the squad’s lieutenant. He skittered back, found himself hedged in by three behind him with drawn swords. More men backed up the lieutenant.

The pony snorted and settled, tossing his head.

“Enough of that, enough.” Behind him, the hedge parted for his handler. Breathing hard, he strode up to take the pony’s halter with a hard jerk. “For she did recognize you, there! How? Tell me all and I may spare you — and her!”

The pony shuddered, head dropping, and his stomach heaved. His handler let the halter go as he fumbled back a step. The charm unraveled and he wobbled as his rear legs shrank at the feet and stretched at the thigh. Shoulders spread as his neck shrank. The dappled hide faded into flesh. His tail withdrew. Anders settled onto his knees and hands, still drawing hard breaths from the jolt of stringence.

“Secure. Find us a clear route back.” The man’s — Seraphine’s — crisp order sent the knights trotting to obey. Laurent stepped from one of the empty stalls, a purple robe draped over one arm if the Empress should shift back to her usual body.

“Spare me? You swore you’d not make a spy of me — and you make me bait?” Anders looked up from under lowered brows. His flaxen crest hung loose, a mane of its own. “Those men would be dead if they tried to hurt her.”

He had no right to be surprised, perhaps, but angry? Furious. It roiled in his gut, tangled in the pain of seeing Kate again, of being so unexpectedly close. And Seraphine’s threat to cut her down where she stood.

“I asked nothing of you,” his master spat at him. “You drew her eye! You ran!”

“You threatened to slaughter —”

Anders choked on the stringence, curling up on the dirt. Seraphine loomed over him, still a plain-faced man. “You were to do nothing. Shall thank me for the chance to save her life in leading her to our escort. Which you did fail. Now answer it: do you think to spy on me for Qadeem?”

The pain eased enough that he could snort out a laugh. “Thinking of home is more agony than you can inflict on me.”

Seraphine paced a circle around Anders as he sat up again, arms trembling from the pain. He closed his eyes, seeing Kate with the sun dappling her hair, back in men’s clothes as when he’d first met her. She’d hugged him that day he put her on Puck’s back to escape. Innocently. Calling him a friend. He’d never told her what that had done to him.

He’d nearly led her into a trap, under threat Seraphine would kill her else-wise. Anders knotted that anger and pain together, clutched it tight even as he smoothed his face to a calm mask. A war, he couldn’t stop. Quarrels between saints were too large a thing to wrestle. But some small corner of Seraphine’s plans, he could block. Especially if it concerned Kate.

“Bait you are, when I demand it,” Seraphine said, in her woman’s voice. When she circled back into view, she was herself again, trailing her thick black braid. The man’s clothes hung lose on her curves. Laurent moved closer, readying the robe.

She paid him no mind. “For if but one elect is worth saving, of your kingdom, perhaps it isn’t you. A silver piece will buy a litter of battle elect. Shifters, rare things. But flesh-forgers, by what became of Fijolais? Precious.”

Anders’ throat tightened at the thought of Kate bound to Seraphine. Suffering her stringence. Though if she were here, perhaps he could protect her — for a moment he felt her in his arms again, cuddled against his side — but he shoved that thought away. “She won’t be a pet of yours,” he said. “You think us all puppies? Only hounds?”

Seraphine folded her arms across her bosom. “I am the hunted, pup. Each saint I bind would gladly murder me and gladly take my throne. So I winnow and must replace what I cull. For my pets do keep me alive. All who rule know it, even your boy king. Shall he live to learn of prudence? For a ruler needs both.” She leaned closer. “But enough, now. You will turn south at last, with the household and see no more of this. You did show me your folk’s weakness. All’s well.” She even smiled.

A thread of kir shot from her hand, struck Anders’ temple, and though he threw himself back it wormed its way into his skull. He grabbed at it in horror but his muscle froze at a pulse through his saint’s-bond. The kir-worm writhed through his brain.

“No — what —?” He jerked when the first loops tightened, and his anger was strangled. Eyes unfocused. “Please,” he whimpered before she tied off his voice.

“Lead him,” Seraphine told Laurent, her voice receding into a blur. “See that…”