“If the Lestra sees this burn on your arm,” he had told her, speaking slowly and deliberately, “if she knows it was caused by your moonstones, she will believe you are a mystic. If she believes you are a mystic, you will die. Do you understand me, Ellynor? She is on a campaign to systematically eliminate mystics from the realm. It will not stop her that you say you have no magic. It will not stop her that you say you didn’t know. Nothing will stop her. She will kill you. You will be dead. Do you understand me?”
She had understood. She had believed him, and she was frightened. All good things. But she would not, even so, agree to leave as soon as she could gather her clothes and slip out into the darkness. He had urged her to leave right then, that very night, creep past the guards at the gate and loiter in the forest until Justin and his companion could pick her up as they left the following morning.
“You could sneak out. I’ve seen what you can do. No one would know you were leaving,” he argued. But she would only shake her head.
“No. Justin. No. I’m not ready to leave yet. I’ve kept my secret for a whole year and I didn’t even know I had a secret to keep. Now I’ll be twice as watchful. I won’t make any mistakes.”
“Everybody makes mistakes,” he said. He had regarded her speculatively by moonlight, trying to decide if he could take her by force, steal a horse and escape with her this very night. His mood favored the plan, but his cooler intellect recognized it as suicidal.
“I won’t. I’ll be fine. Just trust me.”
Since he’d had no choice, he had left her behind, but he was already scheming about how and when to return and what sorts of persuasions he could bring to bear when he did. He would go back with the freighting man; that was a dead certainty. Maybe sooner, if he could think of a way to get inside the compound.
Sweet Mother of the burning sun. Ellynor was a mystic.
She could not have found a more dangerous place to stand if she had searched every acre and plot in the entire country of Gillengaria looking for one.
“YOU’VE been quiet lately,” Faeber remarked to him two nights later as the magistrate joined Justin in the taproom. Justin was almost done with his meal and couldn’t have said what he’d eaten. He had no attention to spare for inessential details these days; he only bothered to eat because he intended to keep himself as strong, as ready for action, as humanly possible.
He didn’t make much effort at a smile. He was finding it hard to keep up this game of pretending to be harmless. “You’d rather I started breaking tables and throwing chairs through windows?”
“I’m thinking you’ve done some damage in your time.” Justin shrugged and took a swig of ale. He didn’t particularly care if Faeber thought him rude. Who cared what anybody thought about anything? Ellynor was in danger. “Not lately,” he said.
“Not so sure about that,” Faeber said in a soft voice.
Now Justin gave him a quick, level stare out of narrowed eyes. “What have you heard about me?”
Faeber settled himself more comfortably in his chair. Clearly Justin’s hostility wasn’t having much of an effect on him. “There was a story some weeks back. Fancy house burned down a few miles up the road in Nocklyn territory.”
“And you think I had something to do with it?”
Faeber shook his head. “I think it was burned down by convent guards trying to smoke out mystics,” he said bluntly.
Plain-speaking for someone as roundabout as Faeber. Justin remained noncommittal. “Is that right?”
“Trouble is, they seem to have missed their target,” he said. “Young boy was staying at the house—everyone thinks he’s got magic in his blood. Everyone thought he died in the fire. Turns out he didn’t. The story I heard—just today— is that some stranger happened to be riding by, and he helped the youngster get clear of the soldiers. Turned the boy over to people who could be trusted. Never told anyone his name.”
Who would have expected nobility to be gossiping with the magistrate of Neft? “Depending on how you feel about mystics, that was a stroke of either good fortune or bad,” Justin commented.
“I think the young serramarra who’s running Nocklyn thought it was good fortune,” Faeber said. “Serra Mayva? That boy’s related to her somehow, and she’s very fond of him. She was ecstatic to get the news, they say.”
“Well, that’s interesting,” Justin replied. “What about you? Pleased or disappointed?”
Faeber stretched out his legs. “I’m not one who sanctions outright murder,” he drawled. “I can think of a few men I’d like to see dead, but I wouldn’t set their houses on fire in the middle of the night.”
Which was as close as Faeber had ever come to admitting he disapproved of the persecution of mystics. Still, that didn’t mean Justin should share his own views. He wasn’t ready to trade confidences just yet. “No,” Justin said. “If I’m going to kill someone, I want him to be armed and staring me straight in the face.”
Faeber chuckled. “Just the sort of thing I’d expect you to say,” he said. “Even so, I have to wonder why you were out roaming the countryside the night that house burned down.”
Justin grew very still. “Who says I was?”
“No one. It just seemed to me like the man who saved that boy sounded an awful lot like you. From the description I heard.”
“Well, I can tell you this,” Justin said with a little more heat than he’d intended. “Anyone who had been riding around that night and did happen to see that boy running from the fire should have helped him to safety. Doesn’t take a good man to do something like that. Takes a bad man not to.”
“I didn’t think you’d admit it,” Faeber said, satisfaction in his voice. He sighed heavily and climbed to his feet as if the act took a great deal of effort. But he lingered a moment before walking away. “It wouldn’t hurt you to trust me,” he said quietly. “Sometime if you needed to.”
“How do you know you can trust me?” Justin replied.
Faeber only smiled and shook his head. Still smiling, he strolled away, stopping to speak at another table full of diners. Justin finished his meal, finding it a little tastier than he had a few minutes ago. Seasoned with something like friendship.
THE next day was extremely chilly but bright with sun. Delz was sick, so Justin handled the stables by himself. He didn’t mind the extra work, for he still felt driven by that instinct to act, to stay in motion. When he’d finished with the normal chores, he began working at the tasks they never got to, sweeping out the main room, hammering down a loose board, replacing a smashed stall gate that had been kicked in by a fractious horse.
Dark had long since fallen, and he had run out of make-work, when he heard one of the front doors creak open. He was in the back half of the building, checking a gelding’s legs for nicks, and he lifted his head and waited to be summoned. But no one called for an ostler. There was no sound of footfalls, either human or horse, from the main room. Maybe the wind had just blown the door back.
Justin didn’t think so.
He released the gelding’s foot, backed out of the stall, and silently latched the gate. His dagger was already in his hand. There was a lantern lit in here, but the front room would be dark; anyone could be lurking in the shadows. Who had come calling? Convent guards, not deceived by Justin’s air of innocence? Faeber and his men, not so fond of mystics and their champions after all? A thief, come to steal a saddle or a traveler’s horse?
Justin moved noiselessly across the floor, paused at the connecting doors, and listened closely. Someone was breathing, hard and fast, as if he’d been running. Or sobbing. There was a rustle of clothing, the sound of a body dropping onto a bale of hay as if it was the softest, safest sanctuary in the world. More rustling, as if a cloak had been unwrapped—or a skirt had been rearranged. A long sigh, half vocalized, the voice sounding in the upper register.
A woman waited on the other side of the doors.
Justin wasn’t stupid enough to think all women were useless in a fight
—he knew plenty who weren’t—but there were only a handful of people who could beat him in one-on-one combat, and none of them were female. He didn’t think he would risk much by confronting this one head-on.
In three swift movements, he’d snatched the lantern from its hook, swung open the connecting doors, and burst into the main room. The woman sitting there leapt to her feet, one hand pressed to her heart, one pressed to her mouth, and visibly held back a scream.
They stared at each other.
Justin didn’t know what he’d expected, but it wasn’t this woman: small, pale, blond, and very clearly noble. She huddled inside a thick, fur-lined coat and stared at him, eyes wide with terror. The look on her face said she knew he was going to kill her.
He lowered his dagger but kept the lantern lifted high. “Who are you?” he asked in a quiet voice.
She shook her head and didn’t answer.
“I won’t hurt you,” he said, though he found himself wondering how many attackers claimed the same thing seconds before they leapt forward to cut someone’s throat. “You look afraid. Is someone coming after you? Someone who wants to harm you?”
She dropped her hand from her mouth, but kept her other hand balled up against her throat. Or—no. She was clutching something in her fingers, a necklace or an amulet, perhaps. “My husband,” she whispered. “He wants me dead.”
Time to get practical. “How many men does he have with him? What direction did you come from?”
She opened her mouth as if to speak, but no words came out. Clearly she was not used to good fortune; she wouldn’t believe she could trust him. Justin made his voice softer. He kept remembering how Cammon had told him not to intimidate Delz. This lady was probably even more unnerved by his size and ferocity. “How close are they? Do you have a guess?”
She moistened her lips. “I don’t know. No one was paying attention, so I just left. I don’t know when they got back or when they started to miss me.”
“Where were you? Did you come on foot?”
“Yes. Well—someone gave me a ride in a cart this afternoon. I was walking yesterday.”
So she’d been on the run or in hiding for a full day or more. He wondered what had made her trust the driver of the gig. “Where were you?” he repeated.
She tried twice before she could answer. Her eyes were desperately scanning his face, trying to read in it some promise of compassion. “The convent,” she said.
“The Lumanen Convent?” he repeated, more forcefully than he intended. She swayed backward and almost fell over the bale of hay. What in the name of all the goddesses in Gillengaria was drawing half the nobility of the realm to this one small corner of Nocklyn?
“Yes,” she whispered. “I was there with my husband.”
“And your husband is . . . ?” he said, but his voice trailed off. He studied her. He had seen her before; he knew he had. Dressed in a fine gown and gracing some sumptuous ballroom, but looking just as fragile and afraid as she did right now.
And more recently. Here in Neft. Standing in a tavern with a group of soldiers who had ridden in with —
“Halchon Gisseltess,” he said abruptly, and the terror on her face ratcheted up a notch. “You’re his wife.”
She didn’t answer. He thought fear might kill her where she stood.
“You don’t have to be afraid of me,” he said, trying to remember the tale. He sat down a few yards away from her on a rickety stool, and set the lantern near his feet. They had been in Nocklyn last summer—Senneth guarding Princess Amalie, Kirra and Queen Valri along to give her consequence, Justin and Tayse and two other Riders there to protect the women— and Halchon Gisseltess had shown up at a grand ball. With his wife at his side. He was, of course, supposed to be under arrest at Gissel Plain. Soon enough, the regent had produced enough royal soldiers to send the errant marlord, and his wife, back to their estates. But before they had left, Halchon’s wife had managed to meet with Senneth and whisper secrets about the war her husband was planning. . . .
So that was a name the shivering marlady might recognize. “I won’t hurt you,” he said again. “I’m a King’s Rider. I’m a friend of Senneth’s.”
It was the talisman he’d hoped. She caught her breath and then seemed to crumple, falling all in a heap back on the bale of hay, her hands over her eyes, her whole body shaking. By the Bright Mother’s red eye, she was crying. What was he supposed to do now?
“We don’t have time for tears,” he said, raising his voice a little so she could hear him over the sound of her weeping. “We have to figure out how to keep you safe.”
“I’m not safe, I’ll never be safe,” she said on a sob. “He’ll find me, and he’ll kill me, and I don’t know what to do! I’m so tired—I’m so tired of being afraid—”
“Well, he’ll find you for certain if you’re here,” Justin said, not wanting to sound unsympathetic but wanting her to pay attention. “Stables’ll be the first place he and his men come looking. We have to find someplace less likely.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said hopelessly. She seemed to have stopped crying, but Justin couldn’t see that this brightened her attitude any. “He’ll find me no matter where I go.”
He shook his head. “Not if we’re smart. Not if we hide you before anybody sees you. . . .”
His voice trailed off again as he considered and discarded options. Obviously, he would have to take her to his room. She was much too exposed in the stables, and she would attract notice if she tried to rent a room for herself. But how to transport her from here to there? She was about the same size as Ellynor. She could borrow Delz’s clothes as Ellynor had—except the clothes were off their accustomed hook, taken home for cleaning, he supposed. He could parade her boldly through the front rooms of the house, pretending she was a doxy he’d brought home for the night. Though that might seem out of character since he hadn’t indulged in such entertainment in all the weeks he’d lived here. He could try to sneak her into the house, hoping he encountered no one on the stairs, but any air of furtive-ness was sure to draw attention just when he didn’t want it.
“Here’s what we’re going to do,” he said. “I’ve got a room in a building not far from here. You’re going to walk there, openly, head up, not looking around like you’re afraid someone’s going to grab you from behind. You’ll go in the front door—if anyone looks at you, just nod your head like you know right where you’re going. If someone asks you if you need help, say, ‘I’m picking something up for a friend.’ If they ask who, tell them Justin. You’ll take my key—” He dug it out of his pocket and passed it to her in an underhand throw; she actually caught it. “You’ll go up to my room and you’ll let yourself in. And then you’ll wait for me. I’ll come in twenty or thirty minutes later so no one sees us together.” He considered. “It would be better if you didn’t have to use my name,” he conceded. “But don’t get flustered if someone asks who you’re seeing. Just be nonchalant. Just act like you don’t have a thought of trouble in your head.”
“Is that your name?” she asked timidly. “Justin?” He nodded. She said, “I’m Sabina.”
That made him smile at her, because it was so politely said. The expression she showed him was almost an answering smile. “Don’t worry, Sabina, everything will be all right.”
She nodded. “When you come—would it be possible—is there any chance you could bring some food?”
“Good idea. I’ll stop by the taproom and pick up something to eat.” He looked around. “If you’re that hungry, I’ve got an apple in here somewhere.”
“Yes,” she said.
He rose, crossed the room, and dug through the pockets of his overcoat to find the fruit. She took it from his hand and bit into it instantly, daintily enough, but clearly starving. He’d have to bring her more than bread and cheese if he could manage it.