But they could lose.
Again, the music asserted itself. People brayed and lowed and shrieked, flickering against the canvas. He wondered how many of the tournament knights—brawling second sons and country sergeants—knew about the High Council and the vote. How many guessed that this might be the place that undid the kingdom and set the Banished howling and blood against blood.
Somewhere he heard a voice: Waer or a man like him bellowing a laugh.
As he lay with his head spinning, the campfires slowly burned down all across the headland. Mumbling souls close by found their beds.
Durand thought of Lamoric, taking him aside, talking debts and honor.
Abruptly, something touched his tent. Nails scrabbled at the canvas and a stubborn shadow spread over the wall, and, when he made no answer, a hand flapped, knocking.
"Durand."
Deorwen.
"Host of Heaven," he said, but she slipped inside. "God's sake. You can't come here." Suddenly angry. "We must speak," she said. Durand wrestled himself to his feet. "There's nothing to say," he hissed. "You're his
wife."
The others could be anywhere. They could be right outside. "Yes."
"You could have told me," he protested.
"He was playing Knight in Red and I was playing lady's maid and then it was too late. I tried to keep away."
"Aye," Durand said and fought for a heartbeat to check his momentum. He remembered her ducking away at Red Winding and after. "You did.
"—But no," he said, as memory warmed. "No. You had chances. You had chance after chance. You could have said something. Any time we met."
"Durand—"
"Sure, you had to keep quiet when I pulled you out of that river. Then you had your secret, but, afterward, why hold your tongue? Why?"
"I knew about the Red Knight game that first night on the bluffs. Why didn't you put me off all those other times?" He couldn't look at her. His hands clenched and unclenched.
"It was a mistake, Durand. A mistake."
" Why didn't you just tell me? "
"All of it," she said.
"If you'd said you were married to
anyone."
"I couldn't. I-just couldn't." She caught hold of him.
He felt her heart bearing. He tasted her breath. She was too close. They were right in the middle of her husband's camp— Lamoric's camp. But she was too close. They kissed—like drowning. And he felt her hands over him, pressing and darting under wool, under linen, soft as doves. Her body was hot and smooth under his fingers. He hadn't realized how cold he was. Cold through his bones.
People said that mad sailors lost at sea would slake their thirsts with great gulps of salt water. It was like that as they struggled together in that dark tent.
Afterward, they were alone and still.
Somehow, the tent's center pole had come between them. They curled around it, face-to-face, lying like shipwrecked travelers on a midnight sea.
"The marriage," she said. "My father. We had just come through so much, he and I. And I remembered Lamoric. We met once before. He had an easy smile. He had dark eyes, I thought. And so I listened to the wise women. 'Women weave peace with their bodies,' they say. I went and we swore our oaths under the Eye of Heaven and the Weaning Moon. And then he was off—that same moon. He was so wounded when his father sent Gireth to war without him. This Red Knight dream of his. So I took the road on his heels. I was his wife.
All of those vows I'd sworn. The wise women said as much. I had to go."
Lamoric had left her the same month they were married. She reached out, brushing black curls from Durand's forehead. Her pale cheeks blotched.
"Everything is in this, Durand," she said. "All the lands his father gave him. The quarries and quarrymen. The peasants and mills. Everything." Durand remembered the last pound of silver.
"He's a fool," Durand murmured.
"He—" She paused, her hand sliding to his shoulder. "All his life, he has lived on his father's gifts and his brother's leavings. Nothing earned. I think he gambles all of these things to prove whether he deserves any of it."
Even in the dark, Durand closed his eyes. He wanted to reach down and find rage. He wanted to despise Lamoric the fool. But his father's gifts and his brother's leavings. Durand remembered his own brother and his own father and all the leagues he had traveled. He could feel her breath stirring against his lips. His lidded eyes.
"And then there was you, charging from the reeds like a bull when he'd forgotten me. And you seeing me and knowing when my eyes were on you."
"This cannot be," Durand said.
"I know," she said.
"He does not deserve this."
She gathered herself up, curling her feet and skirts under her. He felt her hands slide from him. "What can we do?" he said.
"Nothing. We can do nothing. This is the way they talk, the wise women. There are things that must be done, it doesn't matter how. Hardships must be borne. The Queen of Heaven, She is never where Her husband is. The Eye and the moons. Because She came late to Creation, She lives not where She loves. Sometimes nothing is all there can be."
Durand climbed to his feet. She had stepped toward the door.
He kissed her.
"God be with you," she said and slipped away.
Durand stood where she left him. He stood still as a hanged man after the kicking's stopped. Beyond his thin walls, living people moved. Low voices. Fires. Laughter. God.
Durand felt like
a ghost.
The lonely Eye of Heaven returned with a storm of ragged gulls that swung over the headland and plunged from its cliffs, shrieking in the cool sea wind. Heremund flapped his hat to keep the things off as he tramped across the bridge from Tern Gyre.
"Durand!" he said, showing the gap between his teeth. The birds were all over him, swooping and pecking. Someone mu
st have fed the things. "I’ll
end up like Berchard before long." The skald closed one eye, still grinning.
"What've you learnt?" asked Durand. The two men hovered at the edge of the camp.
Heremund sobered. "They're having their Great Council right after the fighting, and runners have come already, saying King Ragnal's camped near Biding and will be here by noontide."
Durand looked around, as though he might see the battle shaping up in the pastures down the long Eldinor road south.
"As far as the rest is concerned, it's damned hard to read. I mean, there are some you can tell right off. They'll vote as a pack if there's any sign the Council will go against Ragnal. The boy from Cape Erne spends his time either sour as a man with a bug in his beer or gloating like he's just won a fat prize; Hellebore is a pig of a man who'd stick a knife in your back if you so much as filched a pigeon's leg from his platter; Beoran looks like a mad ship's master, daring the storm down upon him. And there are others I wouldn't trust: that Highshields couldn't walk a straight path if he shut one eye and bit his tongue, and old Maud of Saerdana. There ain't a man alive has a blind clue what she'll do next. Oh, and she's relishing every moment of it, trailing about like a merchantman in bunting and bows with half the magnates in the kingdom hanging off her gunnels."
Durand tried to understand it all. "And Radomor?"
"He ain't here, and there's no word from Yrlac yet And it's not so much that no one knows his mind. Seems like everyone knows what's in that man's head, somehow. Only it's never the same thing twice. Sometimes he's alive. Sometimes he's dead. Or he'll be one of the Powers of Heaven when he passes the Bright Gates. I heard the Duke of Garelyn explain it to old Maud. He's a hero, is Lord Radomor. He fought for the king only this summer. Won't believe Radomor wants the crown. It was the Reaper's Moon before he rode home from the fighting.
"But there are others. And I saw something in Maud's face. She was rolling something on her tongue when Garelyn stood there singing Radomor's praises. Plumped up like a hen." Heremund made a face. "Maybe he is dead. There was certainly talk about poor Alwen."
This was what mattered. This was where the kingdom balanced.
"Is Lamoric's brother here?" Durand asked.
"Aye," said Heremund. "Got here early. He'll cast Gireth's vote for the king, that much we know for certain. There's a lot of shifting and shuffling going on, but I think the vote is close."
"I don't like the silence."
"No one does," said Heremund. "You can see them all buzzing at each other behind their hands. Rumors like wasps. Some were even thinking our Knight in Red might be old Radomor, till they saw the size of him. Radomor could eat two Red Knights at dinner."
Durand rubbed his neck. "Well," he said, "Ailnor or his son must come soon."
"By tomorrow eve, we'll—"
Over Durand's shoulder, something caught Heremund's eye. Durand glanced around.
Waer had come to the edge of Lamoric's camp, and Agryn, Berchard, and Ouen had gone to meet him.
"You're a nervous lot," Waer said.
"You can be on your way," Ouen said.
"A man can't walk by?"
"Depends on the man," Ouen answered.
"You should take a good look at yourselves," Waer said. "It's not only me who's watching you. Where does a man's honor lie when he's hiding a coward? Slinking behind tricks, making off with cheap victories. What do you think they're saying about you out here?"
"Oh," said Ouen. "And what are you hiding behind? Gabbling on under the King's Peace. Are you trying to get our master banned from the fighting—or maybe just your master, eh? Save Moryn from facing the Knight in Red a third time?"
Durand began walking to join his comrades, the skald behind him.
"You won't have to worry about Lord Moryn," Waer barked. "Come dawn tomorrow, you'll find him riding at the head of the whole bloody North Company. Marshal of the North. If your man can't see him from where he's hid, tell him Moryn's fighting before half the peers of Errest against the South and whatever lord drags himself here to lead them. I don't know whether your lad will be able to see from the—"
"You really do need the Peace," Ouen growled.
Durand had stepped into line with the others.
"Now who's hiding?" said Waer. "Eh? You're clever. That's twice now you've thrown that in my face. But, somehow, I don't think they'd be banning anyone if I bashed a few of those whore's-bangle teeth down your throat."
Durand saw an uneasy look on Agryn's face.
"Hold on," Durand said. "There're bigger things at Tern Gyre than us, and we'll be at sword's point tomorrow. I don't think—"
Waer rounded on him, big jaw jutting.
"And what makes you so wise suddenly, boy? You shut your mouth and maybe I won't say anything about what I saw last night."
The blood stopped in Durand's heart, black as tar. Creation sagged away. Waer kept talking.
"You think that Lady Bertana would be happy to hear what you've been up to with her lady's—"
"—Shut up,"
Durand said. "Oh. Now I've—"
"Shut up!"
Durand must have put his hand on his sword. He heard someone saying his name.
"Put that toy away before I teach you a lesson," Waer said.
Durand's sword balanced in his fist while Waer slithered his own blade into the cool sea air.
"Looks like I've pricked a sore spot," Waer said.
Durand tried to bury the point of his blade in the man's face. The wrestler ducked back.
"He drew," Waer said, recovering. "You saw him." But the sneer was gone. They had seen Durand draw. No man would contest a peer's right to answer.
They had no armor. It hardly registered.
With a tight swirl, Waer caught his cloak in his free hand— a buckler of wool.
Durand lunged to jam his blade in Waer's face, but this time he felt a sickening tug in his thigh.
Waer had got him.
Durand hopped back, switching a headsman's blow at his foe's neck, covering himself, but, somehow, Waer caught the blade and scissored a bloody ribbon down Durand's forearm.
Durand wove. Gulls screamed. He could see people running. They might be shouting. Blood looped down his arm and filled his fist. Something squashed in his boot.