Twenty-Three

 

Day dawned and Bianca rose with the sun, as usual. Her sisters had returned and they were sound asleep, having left the usual pile of shoes before the door, which she stepped over carefully. She didn't want to trip and wake Vasco.

When she reached the receiving room, she found his bed empty and the outer door ajar. She needn't have bothered being quiet. For a moment, she worried that he might have left, but his belongings still hung from the hooks over his bed. Perhaps he was simply breaking his fast, she decided. Something she should do, too.

Maybe they could speak more over the morning meal. After all, it wasn't like her sisters would be joining them. She would have him all to herself.

She fairly skipped down to the kitchen to order breakfast, before asking about Vasco's whereabouts.

"Out by the archery butts," she was told.

Bianca knew the spot, though she'd never seen anyone using them. The practice targets stood on the lakeshore, faded from long disuse.

As she approached, she heard the whistle and thunk of arrows hitting a target in quick succession. It wasn't until she stepped out onto the sand that she realised how good a marksman he was.
The targets were at least a hundred yards away, maybe more, yet he never missed. In fact, one target was peppered with so many arrows it had split in two, and the one beside it looked dangerously close to sharing its fate.

"You are an exceptional shot, Vasco. Wherever did you learn to shoot?" she called.

The next arrow sheared off into the water as Vasco started in surprise. He recovered quickly. "Good morning, princess. My father taught me to shoot a bow when I was a small boy, and it became a part of daily training when I joined the army. An infantryman who cannot shoot becomes a target for those who can." He winced as if at a painful memory.

"From seeing how well you shoot, I imagine you have killed many men with your well-placed arrows," Bianca said.

Vasco sighed. "Then you imagine wrong." He set down his bow and trudged out of earshot to retrieve his arrows. He took his time, as though he hoped she might grow bored and leave, but she had learned early in her life that boredom was best chased away by a busy mind when it belonged to a girl in a harem, lest she go completely mad at the tedium of her own life. Some of her father's wives and concubines had succumbed to madness, and taken their own lives, she knew, though her mother had considered her too young to hear of such things.

Watching him walk away from her, Bianca realised he limped, favouring his left leg. For all her days of watching him, she'd never seen him limping before.

When he returned with his arms full of arrows, she asked, "Did you fall from the roof and injure yourself while you were fixing Kun's house?"

Vasco frowned. "No, I did not."

"Then why are you limping?" she persisted.

He slid his arrows back into their quiver. "Because in the heat of battle, someone shot me with an arrow that I will carry with me always." He patted his knee, shouldered both quivers and his bow, then headed for the house.

"That is hardly fair," Bianca said, hurrying to catch up. For a lame man, he moved quite fast.

He laughed without humour. "Princess, war is never fair. Good men die and bad men live on, unhurt. And then there are those like me who perhaps should have died from their wounds, who yet survive, as if fate has yet to make up its mind about me. When your business is war, you live from day to day, meal to meal, one battle to the next until it is your last. I am not a shoemaker, piecing together pretty things for your feet. My job was to destroy. Men and lives and property – whatever got in my commander's way. Perhaps I am no longer a good man at all, but a bad one, after all the things I have done."

No. She refused to believe it. "You built Kun a new barn, and rebuilt her house. That is not destruction."

"There are dozens of dead trees now filling her woodshed that would call you a liar, if they but had mouths to speak," Vasco said. "My axe no longer cuts down men, but it still thirsts for death."

Bianca stopped dead. Had she truly been so stupid not to see it?

"You mean you've hurt women? And you will again?" she asked, hating how weak her voice sounded.

"NO! I have never intentionally hurt a woman, and I never intend to. I have made mistakes, but..." He shook his head. "Never mind. My troubles are so far beneath you as to be completely insignificant. Please forget I said it." He redoubled his pace back to the house.

"What was her name?" Bianca demanded. "The woman who was hurt because of your mistake?"

Vasco stopped so suddenly she almost ran into him. He whirled on the spot, eyeing her as if sizing her up. "Eudokia. If she had lived, she would be my wife."

Bianca's heart ached for him. "I am sorry for your loss," she said carefully. "I hope she sees the honour you do your family now that she walks among the ancestors."

Vasco's mouth twisted into a wry smile. "Given her memory disturbs my sleep and drives me to practice shooting even when I no longer have anyone to shoot at, perhaps the honour belongs to her. She was a good girl, and a kind one, who did not deserve to die the way she did."

"How did she die?" Bianca ventured.

"Horribly. Painfully. Perhaps even cursing my name. I can only guess, for I did not see her die." Vasco's eyes seemed to focus on her properly. "My apologies, princess. You do not need to hear of such things. Have you broken your fast yet? Gerel said she would summon me when the food was ready."

Horribly. Painfully. And in the next breath, he spoke of one of the palace servants, as if the death of the woman he loved was something he could easily dismiss. Palace servants he could name, though he had only arrived last night.

Bianca didn't know what to make of the man. He was certainly different to the others, but...had she made a terrible mistake and invited a killer into her home?