Dark Moon Defender

  “Koban says they can stay,” he reported. “Bunk in the barracks. Eat with us, too.”

  “Good news,” the freighter said. “Damn, it’ll be dark in an hour! I hate winter. Don’t mind the cold so much, but I can’t stand the dark.”

  Ellynor, who all this time had helped Jenkins unload his packhorses, now turned casually toward Justin’s string and watched as he hauled down a package wrapped in brown paper. It was solid but not too heavy; a round of cheese, she thought. She held her arms out for it and he carefully handed it over.

  She allowed her eyes to lift to his face for just a second, knowing he would be watching her, waiting for her signal. Midnight, she mouthed. He nodded infinitesimally and turned instantly away, pulling out something else from his saddle-bags. Ellynor carried the cheese into the kitchen and stood there a moment, shaking. If her heart were to beat any faster, any harder, it would hammer its way out past her ribs and she would die of fear right here, right now.

  Fear. And excitement.

  IT was a simple matter for Ellynor to leave the courtyard with all the other novices who had formed the moon shape— tonight, just a sliver past full—and step inside the building with the rest of them. Simple for her to mention that she was hungry and head on back toward the kitchen while the others turned for the stairs. Any number of people were still awake in the convent at midnight. They were, after all, women who worshipped a night goddess. Some of their prayers and rituals could only be performed in the darkest hours. The Lestra, it was said, often stayed awake the whole night through, scribbling in her study or wandering the grounds under the direct eye of the Silver Lady. Surely Ellynor did not want to run into her.

  So she cloaked herself in a veil of secrecy, the Black Mother’s gift, and drifted through the hallways like an only slightly corporeal shadow. Now and then she heard voices, a few rooms back, and footsteps from overhead or down another hallway, but she did not encounter anyone. The kitchen was empty and the door yielded silently to her hand. No one stood in the denuded garden, breathing in the star-chilled air. No one lurked along the pathways that connected the great hulking structure of the convent proper to the scattering of buildings in the back of the compound, where the guards were housed and the horses were kept.

  Where novices were not supposed to go.

  Justin would not have strayed far from the barracks, a long, low, utilitarian building that looked out over the training yard. If he had managed to win free at all, which he might not have, he would have stuck close to the territory outlined for him as permissible. This was hardly the time and place to go exploring, no matter how curious he might be about his surroundings. If a guard came across him, outdoors at this hour, he would have to appear as innocent as possible.

  But he might not have been able to creep out. He might have been too closely watched—he might not have the skills of stealth that came so naturally to her. He might not be there at all.

  But he was.

  She saw him before he saw her, even though she was moving and he was standing still. He was leaning against the slat-tedfence that enclosed the training yard, staying as close to the stables as he could to take advantage of what cover the building afforded. He was in profile to her, so that half his attention could be on the barracks in case anyone was searching for him, and half of it could go toward listening for her approach. She paused a moment, just to take the chance to truly look at him, drink in the sight of the face that she had been so certain she would never see again. Sweet Mother, when had he become so dear to her? When had she fallen in love with him?

  She moved closer, silently, she thought, but he turned his head as if a sound had caught his notice. She could see his eyes scanning all approaches—he even looked straight at her—but the goddess’s power was stronger than human eyesight. He could not see her. Ellynor stepped closer, even more daintily, and saw a frown cross his face. He was concentrating so hard that he could hear her slippered feet in the brown grass, or her breathing, or her heartbeat. He knew she was near.

  But she was still invisible to him as she placed a hand on his arm and spoke his name. She had thought to startle him, but she guessed wrong. His hand closed over hers and he drew her against him so swiftly she didn’t even have time to gasp. She loosed and reformed her night-dark cloak, and now he was standing inside it with her, both of them safe from the eyes of outsiders, sheltered in the arms of the goddess.

  “Ellynor,” Justin said, and bent in to kiss her.

  She couldn’t help herself; she pressed herself into that kiss as if he was light and air and she had been deprived of both for a lifetime. Only for a moment. She pulled back, hard, her hands against his chest. He caught her by the shoulders before she could move too far away.

  “Justin, what are you doing here?” she demanded in a furious whisper. “Don’t you know how dangerous it is?”

  “Dangerous how?” he shot back, raising his chin and showing every evidence of stubbornness. “A man asks if he can hire me to help deliver goods, and I accept on good faith, and I do my part of the job. I’m here, and no one cares that I’m here. What’s wrong with that?”

  She stared at him in the dark. His face was as clear to her as if they were standing under a noon sun. “Don’t pretend,” she whispered. “You came here to see me. Don’t pretend you didn’t.”

  He grinned. “Well, of course. Wouldn’t have taken the job if you weren’t here. But I didn’t do any harm by coming.”

  She wanted to hit him, or shake him, or scream out her fear and fury. But the first two options wouldn’t have budged him, and the last would have had dire consequences. “Justin. You can’t come here to see me. You can’t. You have to stay away from me. You have to stay away from the convent.”

  He shrugged. “Well, I won’t. I want to see you. I want to know you’re all right. You don’t have to talk to me. You don’t have to meet me in the middle of the night. Just stand in the window or the courtyard or the kitchen garden and let me get a look at you, make sure you’re still breathing and you’ve got no broken bones. And I’ll deliver my goods, and mount back up on my horse, and ride on out.”

  He would, too. She could tell by the set of his mouth, his obdurate stance. This was a man it was impossible to turn aside once he had decided on a course of action.

  What would he do, what would he say, when she told him she could never see him again?

  She could not have that conversation, now, tonight, on the convent grounds, with so many hostile parties so close and probably wakeful. She could not warn him away, she could not lie to him, she could not make him believe that she did not love him.

  “You shouldn’t have come,” she said, but now her voice was gentle, full of some of the wonder she felt. That he would come so far just for a glimpse of her, just to assure himself that she was safe. “Whoever you are, I can’t rid myself of the feeling that you are no friend to the Lestra, and that she and her men would do something terrible to you if they found you inside this compound.”

  Now his face showed amusement. “I was here once before, and they didn’t like me much then,” he admitted. “But I’m being more careful this time.”

  “You can’t come back.”

  “Then you have to come to Neft.”

  She shook her head. “I have no control over that.”

  “Then I’ll be here again. Look for me.”

  “Justin—” she said, having absolutely no idea how to finish the sentence, but she didn’t have to. He pulled her back into his embrace and kissed her, and she lost any interest in forming a coherent sentence. Nothing mattered except his arms around her body, his lips against her mouth. Nothing moved, nothing breathed, nothing lived, except the two of them in their dark and secret circle.

  Eventually they broke apart, just a little—pulling back just enough to watch each other’s face—it was cold enough that they actually needed each other’s body heat to stay warm. Idly, they began to talk, sharing the tales of their recent days. More friends of Justin
’s had passed through Neft, and he was careful not to use their names, for some reason, but she got the impression one of them was a woman. Oddly, she didn’t feel the same hot jealousy she had felt when he mentioned the beautiful Kirra. Maybe he had a different relationship with this particular woman—or maybe Ellynor no longer worried that Justin’s heart was bestowed elsewhere.

  She told him about Rosurie and her unnerving desire to offer a sacrifice to the Pale Mother. “Is she the kind of person who just talks about things and never does anything, or is she the kind who follows through?” he wanted to know.

  “Follows through. Usually in the most dramatic fashion possible.”

  “Then nothing you say is going to be able to stop her. Just step back. Don’t let her drag you with her into whatever conflagration she starts.”

  Better advice than she had been able to give herself, and she was comforted by his practical words. Imagine how restful it would be to always rely on Justin to help her solve problems big and little. “I’ll hope that this time it’s a small and personal fire,” she said, joking.

  He had loosened her braid so that her hair fell free all the way past her waist, and now he was stroking his hands slowly, rhythmically, down her back, allowing plaits of hair to slip through his spread fingers. He had done the same thing back in Neft; he seemed fascinated by the feel and texture and pattern of her hair. “It doesn’t sound to me like she’s going to be ready to leave the convent anytime soon,” he said, his voice as slow and deliberate as his caress. “Would you be willing to leave without her? If you decided you wanted to? If you became uneasy enough about unfolding events?”

  “I don’t know,” she replied. She rested her forehead against his chest, feeling the chilled leather of his coat smooth against her cold skin. He smelled like horse and sweat and something indefinable. Maybe just himself. “My family might not want me to leave her behind. And I would find it hard to abandon her, I admit. She is—she doesn’t always make good decisions. Without someone to watch her, her choices might be even worse.”

  “Well, it’s something you should start thinking about,” he said. “How you can leave the convent. And, if you won’t walk out without her, how you can persuade Rosurie to come, too.”

  “I’ve thought about writing a letter to my father,” she said. “To tell him it’s time to bring us home. But I’m not sure— well—it’s possible the Lestra has our mail read. I mean, I don’t know that for a fact, but—”

  “But it would seem entirely in character,” he finished up. “I can take a letter for you and send it on its way.”

  And then be struck dumb when he realized it was directed to her family in the Lirrens. “I don’t have one ready just at the moment,” she said, forcing a light laugh. “Perhaps I will by the next time I see you.”

  “And that will be when?”

  “I told you, I don’t know.”

  “In four or five weeks, maybe,” he said. “If I bring in your next supply of goods.”

  She was alarmed. “Justin. Won’t it seem strange if you keep showing up here? Won’t someone notice?”

  He shrugged. “Far as I can tell, Jenkins has been hauling goods in for the past six months, and no one seems concerned about him. No one should pay any attention to me as long as I behave myself.”

  She lifted a hand to his mouth and traced the full lips. “And this is what you call behaving yourself?” she murmured. “Seducing novices under the moonlight?”

  He caught her hand in his and pressed a kiss into the palm. “And this is what you call seduction?” he asked. “I must have missed part of it.”

  She giggled and tried to free her hand but he held on tighter, sliding his other arm around her waist to hold her in place. His lips moved from her palm up to her fingertips, back to her palm and down to her wrist. The sleeves of her robe fell back; her moonstone bracelet slid down her arm toward her elbow, every glowing gem hot against her skin.

  His mouth paused in its travels and his hand closed with unexpected pressure around her fingers. “Ow. Justin!”

  Now he lifted his head and twisted her arm so he could try to see it, but the light was too poor. His grip shifted; he ran his fingertips back and forth over the rough patch of skin encircling her entire wrist. “What’s this?” he asked, his voice quiet but holding a note that struck her as ominous. As if he believed someone had offered her great physical harm and he was determined to discover who. And then set off on a mission to strangle that person or run him through with a sword.

  She tried without success to pull her hand away. “What’s what?”

  His finger, for a moment, pressed harder against the band of roughened skin. “This. You’ve got a scar around the base of your hand. Feels like—doesn’t feel like a knife wound, so I guess nobody tried to slice your hand off. Feels more like a burn.”

  She sighed and stopped tugging on her hand. His fingers continued investigating, gentle now, checking for the extent of damage. “That’s what it looks like, too. I wear my sleeves long, so it doesn’t show. And most of the time I try to keep the bracelet off my skin, wearing it outside the cloth of my robe, but sometimes it—”

  “Wait,” he interrupted. “Wait. Are you saying your bracelet is burning you? Your moonstones are hot to the touch?”

  She felt her heart skip in sudden fear. He knew something she didn’t and he was suddenly, deeply alarmed. “Yes,” she said cautiously. “I just assumed—aren’t they always? Don’t they burn everybody?”

  Now he was staring at her in something like horror, and it took her a moment to realize he was not terrified by her, but for her. “The touch of a moonstone only bothers people with magic in their blood,” he said, his voice low and urgent. “A moonstone will only burn your skin if you’re a mystic.”

  CHAPTER 20

  JUSTIN and Jenkins accomplished virtually the entire trip back to Neft without saying a word. The freighter attempted a few conversational gambits, but gave up when Justin didn’t respond; even their stops for food along the way were passed in silence. Not until they reached Jenkins’s barn and property on the edge of town did Justin rouse himself to speak.

  “If you need me again, I’d be happy to ride out with you next time you’re going to the convent,” he said, as the freighter counted into his hand the money he’d promised for the job.

  “Got a trip up toward Nocklyn Towers later in the week,” Jenkins said hopefully.

  Justin shook his head. “Not interested in any route except the one to Lumanen.”

  If Jenkins thought that odd, he gave no outward sign. “Well, I might need you at that. I’ll let you know.”

  “Appreciate it.”

  Justin hiked over to the stables to tell Delz he was back and ready to work. Indeed, he shoveled manure and hauled down hay with more vigor than most men would have mustered after a long ride and a virtually sleepless night. But he had to work off some of the ferocious energy building up in his muscles. His body had braced itself for combat and now had to launch itself into action or explode.

  A mystic. By the grace of the Bright Mother, a mystic? In Lumanen Convent? That explained Ellynor’s ability to heal sick old Paulina Gisseltess—that explained her eerie skill at practically making herself disappear. That explained almost all of the mysteries about her, but added a whole new layer of conundrums.

  She hadn’t believed him. Justin, don’t be ridiculous, I’m not a mystic. I scarcely even understand what that means! He had tried to explain—A mystic is merely someone who has been granted magic by the gods, and surely you have—but she just shook her head and laughed. I’m not a mystic. I’m an ordinary woman.

  In the end, it didn’t matter if she believed him or not, if she acknowledged that her power was in her own blood, and not granted on a random basis by a careless goddess. What mattered was that she understood how much danger she was in now. Real, mortal, immediate danger.