Airs and Graces Page 19

  He bowed and took her plate and linen napkin. The sun was fully up now, and the black sand and boulders glittered. Philippa even had a chair to sit in. It was more of a stool, really, canvas and wood, but it was set up before a well-laid table with a sheet of framed canvas as a windbreak. It was hard to believe that only a short distance away a battle was being concluded. People had died, could still be dying, but the cook appeared unperturbed by the circumstance.

  Baron Rys, on the other hand, looked somber, sitting a little apart, head bent to speak with one of his captains. Francis paced the black sand and stared up at the smoke swirling into the sunshine with a hard expression Philippa had never thought to see on his gentle features. She left Peter devouring the last of the pan bread and went to join him.

  He looked up at her approach. “Winter Sunset will be all right, I think,” he said.

  “She’s fine,” Philippa said. “Tomorrow she’ll be able to fly.”

  “And you?”

  “I’m well enough, none the worse for the last two days. Though I am in desperate need of a bath,” she added, with a little laugh.

  He didn’t smile. “I was frantic for you,” he said. “This should never have happened. We should have gone after them the moment they attacked the village.”

  “You’ve done all you could, Francis.”

  He shook his head. “Not yet. There’s still a child missing.”

  A breeze from the sea gusted around them. Philippa wrapped her arms around herself, feeling the chill through her tabard. Francis frowned. “Where’s your coat?”

  “Some barbarian has it,” Philippa said. “It’s probably burned to ash by now.”

  Francis shrugged out of his own cloak, a finely made piece of black wool with a worked-silver clasp at the throat. “Here, Philippa. Please.”

  She accepted it. As he wrapped it around her shoulders, enveloping her in a circle of warmth, all the sweeter after the reeking blankets of the Aesks, he said, “You have blood on your neck, Philippa. Are you hurt?”

  “It was only a scratch.”

  He didn’t answer. A muscle jumped at the corner of his mouth, and his eyes strayed again to the smoke above the beach. He put his hand on the hilt of his smallsword. “I’m going back there,” he said in an undertone.

  Philippa said hastily, “No—Francis, no. Let Rys’s soldiers do what needs to be done.”

  “I can’t. My whole life has been one of privilege. We are effete, we lords of Oc.”

  “Francis, you’ve never been effete.”

  “I’ve never done anything real,” he said, shaking his head. “And I’ll never again be content to think of myself that way.”

  “Francis, don’t talk nonsense! You arranged all of this! None of it would have been possible without your diplomacy—that young boy would still be a captive, and the Aesks—”

  “They still have one of my citizens.”

  Philippa was so struck by his phrasing that for a moment she could think of nothing to say. What a fine duke he could make, however reluctant! He could restore integrity to Oc, leadership to the Palace. When he strode away from her, his boots sinking deep into the fine black sand, she watched his tall, lean figure with a regretful admiration.

  She turned about, half-expecting Baron Rys to dissuade him. But she found Esmond Rys gazing after Francis, nodding slightly. Approvingly.

  FRANCIS paused in his climb through the scattered black boulders to look back at the camp on the beach. He was so relieved by seeing Philippa seated there, the winged horse blanketed, tethered, and safe, that his blood seemed to run warmer in his veins, his breath move easier in his lungs. Why did William not feel these things? How could it be that William did not feel the compulsion he, Francis, felt, at knowing one of Oc’s citizens was still held captive?

  It may be that the girl Lissie was past saving, but he could not go back across the Strait until he knew. He, it seemed, was the only Fleckham left to answer to his people.

  He drew a deep breath, spun about, and marched up toward the compound.

  Francis saw, as he approached the smoldering longhouses, that the row of bodies had lengthened. Some corpses lay in quite staggering pools of blood, and one of them, at least, had died at his hand. There were children among the dead, and Francis supposed such tragedies had been unavoidable. He tried to remember the deaths that had sparked this mission, the dead fishermen and the stable-girl Rosellen, but the stillness of the corpses sickened him. His only consolation was that none of them wore Klee uniforms. Or a flyer’s habit.

  The fighting seemed to be at an end. He paced through the center of the compound, smoke billowing about his ankles. Someone, huddled in the ruins of one of the longhouses, was sobbing endlessly. Francis turned. An Aesk woman squatted in the ashes with something in her arms, something small. Francis looked away, not wanting to know for whom she grieved.

  Rys’s men had herded the survivors of the battle to the far end of the compound, where a couple of buildings still stood, more or less intact. One was a sort of hut, with the same walls of sod and thatched roof as the longhouses. The other was a covered pen, and here he found several enormous dogs that whined and cowered against the far wall, as far as their tethers would reach. A center pole still held them fast. If the fire had reached this enclosure, these dogs, great creatures with huge teeth and restrained by the heavy spiked collars, would have died where they were. As it was, Francis could see that the fire and noise and smoke terrified them. He supposed they could smell the blood on the air. He could smell it himself.

  One of the soldiers turned at his approach and pointed to a sagging hut next to the dogs’ pen. “That’s where they kept the horsemistress,” he said shortly.

  Francis stared at it, aghast. It was little more than a cave, dark and stinking and cold. He turned back to the soldier. “Are these all the people left? Surely there were more.”

  The soldier nodded toward the Aesks huddling together, with Klee soldiers surrounding them. Francis looked at them more closely, and frowned. “They’re all women and children.”

  A captain heard his question and threaded his way through his men to stand beside Francis. “The men fled,” he said. “Those that weren’t killed in the initial incursion.”

  Francis eyed the clutch of people, thinking he had never seen such misery. They were short, square people. The women wore cloth dresses beneath layers of animal skins that were matted and greasy-looking. Their hair looked no better than the furs. “They left them,” he said. “Ran off and abandoned their families.”

  The captain shrugged. “Barbarians.”

  “Barbarians, perhaps,” Francis mused, “but they are people.”

  The captain fixed him with a level gaze. “They kill children, my lord.”

  “Yes. I do remember.” Francis approached the group of Aesks, noting that none shrank away from him. Several of the women gave him fierce looks as they pushed their children behind them. One or two boys, on the verge of manhood, thrust their chests out and did their best to look brave, though their dirty faces were haggard with fear and shock. Francis circled them, trying not to let his own dismay show. He had no heart for this. He was sure he would have made a terrible soldier.

  “Don’t get too close, my lord,” the captain said at his shoulder.

  Francis looked back in surprise. He hadn’t known the man was following him. “Surely there’s no danger now,” Francis said.

  “There is always danger,” the captain answered.

  “I need to find the girl from Onmarin,” Francis said.

  “You may need to look among the dead,” the captain said. “This lot all look alike to me.”

  Francis’s belly clenched at the thought of telling the grieving mother that she had lost another daughter. He glanced back at the far end of the compound, where the dead lay cold and still, then he surveyed the disheveled survivors. He would look here first. He had to try.

  They looked back at him as he walked around them, their eyes slitted an
d wary. A child whimpered in the little group, and was quickly shushed. Some of them sat on the hard ground, others knelt or stood. All faced outward, reminding Francis of a hunt he had once been on, when a herd of deer gathered in a protective circle. And there was, he thought uncharitably, something animal about these people. They were dirty, and they smelled bad, but it was more than that. The veneer of society had never touched these creatures, never softened their edges, disguised their drives, or cushioned them from the basic necessities of survival. These people lived as close to the land as it was possible to do, and the land that was theirs had not been kind to them.

  Suppose, Francis thought, with jarring irrelevance, suppose we were to help them, rather than hunt them? Suppose we employed our ships to send them goods, grain or cloth or tools—

  He stopped, and gestured to two women standing shoulder to shoulder in front of him. One was a crone, grizzled and tiny. The other was younger, but hideously scarred, one half of her face ruined, the other flat-featured and stoic. “Stand aside,” he ordered, his confused emotions making his voice harsh. “Who is that behind you?”

  The women stared at him, and for a moment, he thought they would not move. He put his hand on the hilt of his smallsword and pulled it from its scabbard. The soldier behind him moved closer.

  Slowly, the old woman moved, a half step to her left. The scarred one didn’t budge, except to put one hand inside her furs.

  There was no mistaking the girl from Onmarin, now that Francis could see her. Though she was shockingly dirty, her pale hair and pinched features set her apart from the Aesks. She knelt on the ground, held there by the scarred woman, who kept one grimy hand clamped on the back of her thin neck. As the old woman moved aside, Lissie’s eyes lifted to Francis’s face. Tears streaked her pitifully bruised cheeks, and she began to sob.

  “Lissie?” he asked, stepping forward. “Lissie of Onmarin?”

  She put out her hand. Giddy with relief at having found her, he bent to help her stand. The Klee captain said, “Have a care, my lord.”

  Lissie’s eyes rolled to her right, stretching wide with alarm.

  Francis didn’t see the scarred woman’s knife, but he felt it. It was not pain, not exactly. It seemed to burn, and yet to freeze at the same time, as if were a blade of ice. It cut through his wool shirt, sliced his skin, and drove in through his flesh until it struck bone.

  Distantly, he heard the captain’s shout, but he could not turn, impaled as he was. He still faced the girl from Onmarin, the thin, shaking child. The last color drained from her face as she opened her mouth to scream. He tried to lift his own weapon, to defend her, and himself, but his arm was nerveless. He managed only to pull it out of its scabbard, and then he dropped it.

  The Klee captain seized him from behind with both hands, and the girl from Onmarin, suddenly shrieking, leaped to her feet, and reached with both hands for Francis’s smallsword.

  The world blurred before Francis’s eyes, and a wave of cold swept his body. He hoped, rather faintly, that he was not dying. He watched, with wonderment and a sort of detachment, as the slip of a girl, the child of Oc, seized the hilt of his smallsword and thrust the blade at the Aesk woman who had stabbed him.

  Francis felt as if he were falling head over heels into a gulf of darkness. He flailed with his hands, trying to grasp at something to stop himself, but he found nothing. He couldn’t tell up from down, left from right. He couldn’t breathe, and the darkness was rising to his waist, to his chest, to his neck. When it closed over his head, all sound faded from his ears, and he sighed, giving in. How foolish he had been, when success had been within his grasp! William would be triumphant. He had failed after all.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  HERBERT took one look at the nasty cut on Bramble’s neck, and said, “Needs stitches.”

  “Aye,” Lark said. “I know it does. Can you do it? I’ll help you.”

  Hester had left them to go and explain to Mistress Morgan what had happened, to try to excuse Lark for leaving her flight. There would certainly be consequences for her infraction, but Lark couldn’t think about that now.

  They laid the oc-hound on a pallet of blankets in the tack room, and Herbert brought a needle and a spool of fine silk thread. Lark knelt beside Bramble and took the dog’s head into her lap. She murmured encouragement to her while Herbert cut the long hair away from the wound, and threaded careful stitches through the torn edges of her neck. Bramble whimpered at each piercing of the needle, and Lark felt each pain as if it were her own. “I know, lass, I know,” she said, through a tight throat. “A little bit longer. It will only hurt a moment.”

  The oc-hound flinched, but she didn’t try to pull away. She licked Lark’s hand when it was all over, bringing tears to Lark’s eyes.

  “Saved her life, you did,” Herbert said as he spread a fresh, dry bandage over the wound. “She might have bled to death, out there in that field.” He pinned the bandage together and sat back on his heels.

  “Hester helped,” Lark said. “Or we might still have lost her.”

  He lifted his eyebrows, and glanced over his shoulder to be certain they were alone. The Beeth carriage had departed, and the horsemistresses and girls were at supper in the Hall. There was only Erna to worry about, and she had gone into the kitchens for her own meal. “The Beeths’ footman told me the Master Breeder showed up,” Herbert said quietly. “After the farmer went to the Palace for help.”

  Lark stroked Bramble’s shoulder. “Aye, Herbert,” she said. Now that she believed Bramble would survive, she trembled with the knowledge of how close they had come to losing the oc-hound. She lifted her eyes to meet the old stable-man’s. “I don’t think Jinson wanted to kill her,” she said. “But the Duke would have made him do it.”

  Herbert’s jaw set hard. “Don’t understand it,” he said bitterly. “When I think of the foals this dog has fostered…”

  “Aye.” Lark smoothed the blanket beneath Bramble and held a cup of water so she could lap a bit. “’Twas a cruel thing they did.”

  “Don’t understand why,” Herbert muttered. “What’s to gain?”

  Lark caught her lip between her teeth and didn’t answer. It didn’t seem fair to drag Herbert into her troubles with the Duke. “The important thing is,” she said after a moment, “they won’t try it again. They wouldn’t dare.”

  “I’ll watch over her, I promise you that.”

  “Aye, Herbert. I know.”

  “None of them other girls would do what you did tonight,” he said. There was a gruffness in his voice, and Lark looked up to find that his eyes had reddened.

  “I’m a country girl,” she said softly. “The beasts love me, and I them.”

  “I know, Larkyn,” he said. He cleared his throat abruptly. “You’re a good girl, you are.”

  She smiled at him and touched his hand. “Thank you, Herbert.” As he got stiffly to his feet, she said, “Herbert—do you have a Tarn?”

  He gave her a startled look. “A Tarn?”

  “Or some other fetish.” Lark’s cheeks warmed, and she shrugged a little. “I know we’re not supposed to believe in small-magics, but—”

  He put a finger on the side of his nose, frowning. “I think—seems to me there might have been something Rosellen favored.”

  “Do you still have it?”

  “Give me a minute.” He turned and went up the stairs to the room Rosellen had used before Erna. In minutes he was back, a worn and faded object in his hand. He handed it to Lark.

  “Don’t know what it’s called. But Rosellen was a great one for charms and simples.”

  Lark caressed it between her fingers. It seemed to her that a touch of sea air still clung to it, and though it was almost shapeless, little more than a bundle of soft yarn and some sort of dried grass, it must surely retain some of the power Rosellen had believed it to have.

  She twirled the little fetish above Bramble’s wound, as she had once twirled her own Tarn over a teapot or a pot of soup, then
she tucked it close to the dog’s head in a fold of blanket. Bramble’s eyes fluttered closed, and she gave a deep sigh.

  “There,” Lark whispered, stroking the oc-hound’s flank. “There you are, lass. Rosellen’s little charm will watch over you.”

  When she emerged from the stables, she shivered in the hard cold. Automatically, she let her eyes stray to the northern horizon, hoping to see Mistress Winter and Winter Sunset winging toward them, though it was so late. She saw nothing except sharp white stars in a black night sky, not even a sliver of moon. She paused, hugging herself against the chill, and took the icon of Kalla into her fingers to whisper a prayer for their safe return.

  Across the courtyard the lights of the Hall still glowed in the Headmistress’s office and in the dining hall. The Domicile was brightly lit, its reading room awaiting the horsemistresses. The Dormitory entryway shone with lamplight, vivid in the darkness. With the icon still in her hand, Lark felt a quiver of anxiety, but she couldn’t think why. She saw no tall, dark figure with ice-blond hair lurking between the buildings or creeping across the courtyard. Bramble was safe inside the stables, with Herbert keeping watch. Tup was in his stall, with Molly beside him. Still, something was wrong. She didn’t know what, nor did she even know why she knew.

  She walked on trembling feet across the cobblestones toward the Hall, trying to convince herself that it was her imagination, that it was exhaustion after the stressful day, and her fear for Bramble, but she couldn’t drive away the feeling that something had happened, some further disaster.

  “Zito’s ears,” she muttered, an epithet that had not come to her lips since she left the Uplands. “Will no one tell me what is happening?”

  LARK tossed and turned on her cot until the pale dawn washed the stars from the sky. Only then did she fall into a fitful sleep, with dreams and alarms disturbing her often. When Matron roused the girls on the sleeping porch, Lark felt exhausted and dry in that way she had felt during lambing season, when sleep came in short bursts, and was always interrupted. She struggled into her clothes, grateful that she had no need to spend time on her rider’s knot as the other girls did. She ran a comb through her short curls, splashed water on her face, cleaned her teeth, and was ready.