Oh, yes, he’d changed. His eyes saw something new where she stood. He seemed to see beyond the loyalty, beyond the fair looks that had always drawn him, beyond the anguish and the struggle to remain loyal. And beneath it all he saw her guilt. That she had, in the end, turned to Weaver. And somehow she suspected it no longer mattered to him: she’d become nothing more than a tool to be used to serve his purpose.
“I’m not the only one to have changed. You have, too.” The thought filled her with an overwhelming sadness, that stripped away all her anger as suddenly as the weather changing on a high ridge. “What happened, Tresilian? I… I saw you die.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Indeed? You intrigue me.” This time he wanted to hear what she had to say.
She twisted her fingers together. “I saw it happen. In the dungeon at Highkell. Vasic stabbed you – I saw it all. It was as if I was in there with you.”
He raised his hands in the air, smiling. “Do I look as if anyone has stabbed me?”
“I saw it.” She pressed her hand over her own ribs. “Right there.”
“Well, well. Crazy old Gwydion was right after all.” With a twisted smile he stood up, tugging his shirt out from the waist of his leggings. “There’s no point denying it. You’re bound to see it sooner or later.” He hitched the fabric up so his abdomen was exposed. And there between his ribs was an ugly, puckered scar with an angry network of veins radiating from it as if his blood had been poisoned, far worse than Drew’s shoulder.
Alwenna stared. How could he have survived such an injury?
“You can touch it if you want.” Tresilian stepped closer and she pushed herself up from her seat before he could lean over her.
“Go on, touch it. You are my wife, after all.”
She reached out an unsteady hand and set it over the wound, not sure what to expect. The flesh there was heated and there was some inflammation, but it was undeniably healing. And, yet every instinct told her it was wrong. Unnatural. She snatched her hand away and stepped back.
Tresilian laughed and let his shirt drop over the injury, leaving it hanging loose. “Satisfied now, my dear?”
It hardly seemed possible. “So Vasic’s blade missed your heart? You didn’t die?”
“Oh no.” Tresilian grinned. “I died.”
Impossible.
Alwenna took another step away from him but found herself backed up against the wall. The baby in her womb shifted fretfully.
“The bonds of kinship, my darling, run deep. Deeper than you or I ever imagined, innocents that we were.” He leaned closer, then set one hand over her abdomen, where their baby lay. “Through all those years we never even guessed. And now, what wonders we have wrought between us.”
“You must be mistaken.” Alwenna fought the urge to edge towards the door. “These people must have lied to you. No one could–”
He frowned. “No, dear wife, it is you who are mistaken.” He raised his hand and gently traced the side of her face with his fingertips, bringing them to rest at the point on her throat where her blood pulsed. “It wasn’t at all easy, of course.” He smiled, not quite the lopsided smile she knew. “You will see in due course.”
Alwenna pulled away, and he made no effort to stop her.
“It will be good to have you dining at my side once more.”
Alwenna looked back as she opened the door. He still stood where she’d left him, watching her with that same smile. Oh, yes, he’d changed.
CHAPTER NINETY-ONE
Alwenna had already eaten what little food she felt need of. On her right side Tresilian was deep in conversation with the freemerchant, Marten. In the bustle of the hall her husband’s manner seemed less sinister – so much so she began to wonder if she’d imagined it in her initial shock at finding him alive. She surveyed the room from her vantage point at the high table, unable to shake off the sense she was being watched.
Weaver was seated halfway down the long table on the left, eating in a desultory fashion while Curtis and Blaine beside him were drinking and laughing over some joke. Something jarred about the scene. For a moment she couldn’t pin down what it was, then realised: Weaver was clad in the livery of the king’s guard, while Curtis wore the emblazoned tabard of King’s Man. That could only mean one thing. But did Tresilian know the truth – just as she knew about him and the priestess – or had he acted on the basis of Garrad’s false accusation?
What was done was done. If she’d known her husband lived she’d never have turned to Weaver. Or so she liked to think. And then, Tresilian claimed to have died. Where did that leave marriage vows made in a former life? Her tutor’s etiquette lessons had neglected to address such niceties. She drained her goblet of wine. It was poor stuff, and burned a raw path down her throat. At least it was strong enough to dull her mind and to soften the edges of this strange new court she’d blundered into.
The household at the summer palace was nothing like as large as at Highkell. There were familiar faces at the tables, even though she’d only been there a short time – Tresilian’s portly steward for one, and the guard who’d been on duty outside the king’s quarters that afternoon. And there, towards the top of the right-hand table, she found the person who was watching her.
The priestess sat with her hands clasped in her lap, grey eyes fixed on Alwenna. Alwenna knew those eyes, she’d seen those eyes, leached of any hint of colour, beneath Tresilian as he laboured and sweated in her dreams. And he presumed to judge his wife, after he’d cast her adrift in the first place? The girl met Alwenna’s gaze with quiet determination. Let the girl have him. Let her warm his bed and tend to his insecurities. Then her own unborn child wriggled with her. Could she deprive it of its birthright because of her own capricious fancy for a common soldier? And even if she could, would Tresilian be prepared to let her? She shivered. What a wonder they had wrought, indeed. She took up a wine jug and refilled her goblet.
When Alwenna looked up again the priestess had gone. Her relief was short-lived, for a moment later Tresilian pushed back his chair, scraping it across the floorboards. With a word of apology to the freemerchant he withdrew from the table, striding out through the door that led to his private chambers.
Marten moved over to sit at Alwenna’s left-hand side. “My lady, have you had sufficient? You will find this dish less rich than the rest.” He offered her some concoction made with what looked like chicken, at her best guess. Even the food in the land of her birth was unfamiliar.
“I have eaten well, thank you.” She smiled just enough to take any sting out of her refusal, although she doubted he was much concerned either way. She knew a conversational gambit when she was offered one.
The freemerchant set the dish back down. “You must be overjoyed to be reunited with your husband, my lady.”
Was he fishing for a reaction? Probably. “Of course. The more so because it was so unexpected.” Alwenna swallowed another mouthful of the rough wine. Good luck to him gaining insight into her current state of mind. She’d be glad to know herself.
“Unexpected, my lady? I had no doubt Weaver would tell you.”
“Weaver knew?” The words escaped before she could stop them.
“Why, yes, my lady. I must confess he did seem reluctant to take my word for it.”
Alwenna glanced towards the lower table where Weaver sat. He’d been watching them, but lowered his eyes immediately. “Weaver is a famous sceptic. He once told me he believes nothing he’s not seen for himself.” At the back of her mind the voices began, the lovers immersing themselves in their communion. But this time behind it all was a note of doubt, of disharmony. Alwenna’s head ached. The great hall had become too full, too noisy.
“Then I owe you my apologies, my lady. I ought to have anticipated that.”
“It is of no consequence.” She pushed herself to her feet, taking up her walking stick. “Pray excuse me. I need some fresh air.”
“Allow me to assist.” Marten stood and offered his arm.
She wanted space to herself, not assistance, but it was easier to accept rather than make an issue of it before so many watchful eyes.
Marten led her to a door at the other side of the dais which opened onto a courtyard garden enclosed by high walls. The garden was not as pristine as she recalled, but the air was clear and she had room to breathe. The night air was far cooler in the foothills than it had been on the plain, but welcome after the stuffiness of the hall. Lavender plants still flourished here, although weeds grew in profusion between paving stones. The fountain that had once played in the centre of the garden was silent, the green water in the basin giving off a dank smell. Everything changed, of course. She couldn’t expect it to be otherwise after all these years.
The moon, almost full in a clear sky, had not long cleared the horizon. It cast long shadows across the flagstones. She sat down on the broad rim of the fountain, recalling how her mother had sat there on hot summer days, trailing one hand in the water. Marten wandered about the garden, frost-blown flakes of stone crunching occasionally beneath his feet.
The air at this altitude was sharper, clearer, less laden with humanity’s grievances. Somehow she seemed to be less at the whim of her sight here. Despite that, she couldn’t push the two lovers entirely from her consciousness. It made more sense now that she should have been aware of them for so long, since one of them was Tresilian. She couldn’t rouse any righteous anger against them. She’d believed him dead for weeks and faced up to the fact their marriage had been more a matter of duty than choice, at least for her. She’d once believed it had been otherwise for Tresilian, but his absorption in the priestess suggested she had been mistaken. She was more troubled by his impossible claims to have died. Her only certainty right now was Tresilian had changed, and not for the better.
“You are more comfortable now, my lady?” She’d almost forgotten Marten was there. It took a moment for her to realise the honorific still applied to her, despite recent events.
“Why, yes, thank you.” Court small talk. She could remember how it went. “It is a beautiful, clear night.”
“It is indeed – the Hunter watches over us all. An auspicious night for new beginnings.”
Beginnings? She doubted this was any such thing. But she suspected Marten had accompanied her here for a specific purpose. And he would get to it in his own time, no doubt. “Tell me more about the Hunter. I understand he is your freemerchant god?”
“We worship the Goddess as well, my lady.”
“Indeed? I did not know that.” Alwenna had no need to feign surprise.
“I understand everything you learned of freemerchant lore would have been taught by the brethren from your local precinct?”
“That is true.” She remembered fidgeting throughout the tedious lessons on warm summer days, counting the hours until she and Tresilian could go riding or exploring the royal estates. “Very dull lessons they made of the subject, too.”
“And doubtless called us heathen, my lady?” There was no reproach in his words.
“I fear they did, sometimes.” Tresilian himself had used the same word, that very day, and claimed it signified admiration in his mind. But… Not all was what it seemed with Tresilian. Not now. “What ought the brethren have taught us?”
“It is simple enough. The Hunter watches over our campfires and ensures our trade prospers, while the goddess watches over mothers and children and ensures our health prospers. They are of equal importance: for what use is good trade if a man has no family to send forward into the world and no heirs to speak his name?”
“So family is important to freemerchants?” She recalled the string they had encountered on the way to Vorrahan, mother and children riding quietly behind the freemerchant Nicholl.
“Family is everything, my lady. And yet we have nothing to bequeath them but our names. That is all the law of the kingdom will permit us.”
Here was the crux of the matter, then. “And you would have it otherwise?”
“I would have a great many things otherwise, my lady. I would have the brethren teach the truth about our ways. I would have our children enjoy the same rights as other children in the kingdom. And I would have the law changed that I might leave mine something more substantial than a name to be carried where the wind would take it. I would call a place home. A place where I may plant and grow. A place where my family might flourish. Not some hole scraped from a barren cliff.”
Weaver had told her Marten was not like other freemerchants. He was certainly the only freemerchant she’d seen carrying a sword. “Would you surrender your freedom to travel for this?”
“You have spent much time on the road of late, my lady. Do you not feel the call of home all the more strongly because of it?”
Home. Where was that? Not here – she had no ties to this dry place. Not Brigholm, where she had been born. Was it Highkell, the place she had lived longest, the place she had destroyed? She shivered. “Mostly, Marten, I feel the call of a place that is… elsewhere. Is that not the call of the road?”
“It is the call of your blood, my sister. And the call of your ancestors’ blood, back to Alidreth and beyond.”
Nicholl had welcomed her as sister… Before she could ask Marten more, the door from the great hall opened, releasing the buzz of conversation across the courtyard, along with a burst of warm light.
Weaver. She knew it before he was closer than a dozen paces. The thrill in the pit of her stomach told her. Goddess, let her not make a fool of herself. Not before Marten: he saw too much.
“My lady. Marten.” Weaver bowed, a sketchy movement.
“Join us, Weaver. We have been stargazing, my new sister and I.”
Weaver nodded. “It’s a fine night. And unpleasantly warm indoors.” He shuffled his feet, fidgeting with a loose button on his surcoat.
“Sadly, that is where I must return. I have papers to prepare for tomorrow.” Marten bowed before Alwenna, then straightened up, nodding to Weaver. He’d taken a couple of steps towards the great hall before he turned back. “I would offer a friendly word of caution: we are watched here, wherever we go. You would do well not to add more fuel to the rumours.” He turned away and strode to the door. Again there was a burst of light and conversation then the door closed, leaving Alwenna and Weaver alone in the courtyard.