Lady Knight (14 page)

Eleanor set the cup aside and drew Riannon’s face down for a kiss that tasted of
wine and passion. Eleanor put her hand to the side of Riannon’s neck to anchor
herself. Riannon’s pulse thudded under her fingers just as hard as her own
raced. Riannon stared at her with an exhilarating intensity more sincerely
flattering than any words.

“How fierce you look and yet how tender you are.” Eleanor’s fingers slipped over
Riannon’s jaw and across her cheek. The scar felt no different to Riannon’s
unmarked flesh.

Riannon jerked back and snatched Eleanor’s hand down from her face. Her fingers
gripped Eleanor’s wrist tight enough to hurt. Her guarded look slammed back into
place.

The speed and vehemence of her reaction caught Eleanor by surprise. After a
couple of heartbeats, Riannon released her and climbed off the bed.

“I must leave,” Riannon said.

Eleanor scrambled across to catch Riannon’s arm as she straightened from
scooping her clothes from the floor. “Riannon?”

“I’ll leave you now to sleep,” Riannon said. “You’ve much to do with the wedding
on the morrow.”

In Riannon’s not looking at her, Eleanor understood where she had erred. But
understanding did not present her with a simple solution. She wondered what
grotesque continuation of the disfiguring scar marred Riannon’s body beneath her
shirt. She slipped her arms around Riannon’s waist and rested her cheek against
Riannon’s chest.

“You will come back to me tomorrow?” Eleanor asked. “My lover.”

“Do you want me to?”

“If you do not, I’ll be forced to throw myself at you where everyone can see us,
like one of your countless serving wenches.”

Eleanor felt Riannon relax and looked up to see Riannon’s grin returned.

“I’ll be a long time living that down,” Riannon said.

“Even longer, if I have aught to do with it.”

Riannon smiled.

Eleanor lifted her face in invitation. Riannon obliged without hesitation.
Improbably, that kiss stirred what Eleanor had believed well sated. Riannon’s
hands kneaded and stroked her desire back to life. Eleanor moaned and sagged
against Riannon.

“How can you keep doing this to me?” Eleanor whispered.

“Would you like me to stop?”

“No. Yes. Please. Don’t. Oh, merciful lady…”

When Riannon lifted her onto the bed and climbed on top of her, Eleanor’s
arousal soared and pulsed between her legs. She ached to be filled. Her thighs
parted and she locked her legs around Riannon’s hips to hold her in place. A
small, rational voice, squeezed almost to oblivion at the back of her mind,
reminded her that Riannon did not have the erection her body craved. It didn’t
matter. Eleanor’s fingers dug into Riannon’s back as she came with Riannon’s
groin rubbing hers. She called Riannon’s name.

Eleanor sleepily let Riannon pull the sheet up over her. Riannon retrieved her
candle, then bestowed a lingering kiss warm with the promise of unfinished
business. Eleanor sighed happily and listened for the door to softly shut after
Riannon’s departure.

Tomorrow, she would think of some way to deal with those scars and giving
Riannon some taste of the pleasure she had given. Tonight, she stretched
contentedly and let her eyes sag closed. She drifted into sleep smiling.

Riannon hardly saw Eleanor the next morning, busy as the Lady of Barrowmere was
with helping her niece ready herself for the day’s festivities. The ceremony
would take place at noon in the basilica of Kamet, lord of justice, giver of
law.

Riannon escaped the bustle of the busy household by stepping into the house
shrine chamber. After laying her dagger on the miniature anvil of Atuan, she sat
on Eleanor’s padded stool. Her thoughts raced back to Eleanor’s bedchamber. She
smiled, though still partly dazed by the wonder of what had unfolded. More than
just the joys of flesh, Riannon had discovered a part of herself she had not
suspected. Deeper than memories. It had lain curled up inside the core of her,
protected from every day bitterness and disappointments, to emerge fresh but
fully-grown and powerful like the god Naith from the chest of Atuan, his father.
Yet the part of her that Eleanor had released last night owed nothing to any
male.

The door shut. Riannon turned. Eleanor walked towards her. The look in her eyes
banished any doubt that last night had been an imagined fancy – or that the lady
would wake full of regrets. Riannon rose to envelop her in an embrace. Their
mouths met hungrily. Eleanor’s fist knotted Riannon’s overtunic.

“I needed that,” Eleanor said. “I needed to touch you. I was beginning to think
last night a dream.”

“It may have been a shared dream.”

“Then I never wish to wake. At least until this accursed wedding is over.”

Riannon smiled. “How is Lady Cicely?”

“As well as I could hope for, but not as well as I might wish, for her sake.
I’ve explained to her the physical side of marriage. And shown her the
traditional charm against the pain of defloration that I’ll put on her when it
comes time for the bedding. It seemed to frighten her more than comfort her.
Which is not wholly surprising.”

Riannon kissed her. Eleanor sighed, leaned against Riannon, and slid her arms up
Riannon’s back.

“All the while I talked with her,” Eleanor said, “my brain plagued me with the
most wickedly wonderful thoughts of coupling that contained only pleasure. How
merciful the gods are not to allow others access to our thoughts. I know not how
I kept my countenance when poor Cicely remarked that I seemed to be fairly
glowing. A truly good aunt would have sought to reassure her that she, too, will
know that sudden confidence in whatever little beauty you have when you know
yourself desired.”

“You are most truly desired.”

After a long, deepening kiss, which they had to break for air, Eleanor put a
hand on Riannon’s chest. Her face was charmingly flushed and wholly desirable,
yet she frowned instead of resuming their kiss.

“Much as I’d like to tarry,” Eleanor said, “I’d best leave. This afternoon is
like to be torture. All those hours at table and not being beside you. A plague
on this wedding. Promise me that you’ll dance with me.”

Riannon had not intended attending the ceremony or celebration feast.

“You did take my hand,” Eleanor said.

Despite her misgivings, Riannon let Eleanor’s smile persuade her. “Yes, lady.”

At the grandly decorated basilica, where the air hung thick with expensive
incense, Riannon found Guy talking with a young woman and her sharp-eyed mother.
He used Riannon’s approach as an excuse to extricate himself. They moved closer
to where their family gathered.

“It’s sad,” he said. “The poor creature cannot help making eyes at me. Being
handsome is a terrible burden that few truly understand.”

Riannon grinned. “She is very rich?”

“Thousands of acres,” Guy said. “Manors all over the realm. In truth, little
Nonnie, she’ll need every last blade of grass. As insipid as watered milk.
There’s not a woman who can compare with our dear Eleanor. Ah, here comes the
radiant bride. Outshone by her aunt.”

Riannon wholeheartedly, if silently, agreed. Eleanor looked magnificently alive
and colourful in her gold-shot scarlet kirtle. By contrast, Cicely faded to a
pale shadow that the deep blue of her clothes unfortunately threw into greater
relief. From their vantage against the wall, Riannon and Guy watched their
brother marry the richest heiress in the realm. Riannon wondered how she would
feel if Henry had instead wanted a rich widow – if she stood and watched Eleanor
marry. She could not do it.

The man most likely to be Eleanor’s groom clapped a hand on Riannon’s shoulder.

“Let us hope that our cousin the queen has dipped deeply into her purse for some
good wine,” Guy said. “Someone ought to enjoy this wedding. Why should it not be
us?”

The great hall of Sadiston Castle must have taken hundreds of servants three
days to decorate with flowers and green boughs. Even the floor, with its
uncounted years of accumulated dirt, food scraps, and rotted rushes, had been
swept, the tiles scrubbed, and fresh rushes strewn across it. The dogs prowled
as if searching for their familiar scents and muck.

“How are you enjoying the happy occasion?”

Riannon turned to see Aveline smiling at her.

“Unless I miss my mark,” Aveline said, “we’re in for an unsurpassed afternoon of
merrymaking. We and our imperial guests.”

Riannon frowned. “What do you plan?”

“To enjoy myself.”

Aveline strolled away to join her sister. Riannon turned her frown from the
naer’s back to the imperial ambassador and his brawny companion. The man’s dark
tattoo made half his face look dead and rotting. She wondered if that was how
people saw her scarred face. Save, miraculously, Eleanor.

By insisting that his sister sit beside him at the high table, Guy all but gave
the steward a palsy. Riannon would have been more comfortable at a lower table,
but Guy smiled, jested, and got his way. Riannon could look along the line of
diners to Eleanor but could hear none of her conversation, let alone exchange
any words.

Servants swarmed around the tables carrying dishes without number. Pies, meat,
stews, fish, and even swans with gilded beaks and their feathers stuck back in
place. Guy ate with gusto and kept his and Riannon’s wine topped up. Hers needed
little in the way of replenishment. His drinking lubricated a near continuous
stream of comments about most of the marriageable age women in the hall. The
earls, barons, and knights from all over the realm, and their womenfolk all
dressed in their best finery, provided Guy with plenty of meat for his
monologue.

Riannon let his chatter flow past her. Her thoughts tended to return to
Eleanor’s bedchamber. No holy vision could be more marvellous than the sight of
Eleanor, naked, abandoned to sexual pleasure. Riannon could remember the taste
of her skin. The satin softness of the inside of her thigh. The smell of her
arousal. The sound of Eleanor calling her name at the breaking pinnacle of her
excitement. The joy of simply holding Eleanor in her arms.

“You’re not drinking?” Guy said.

Riannon blinked at him and quickly reeled her attention back.

“You’ve not taken some peculiar vow?” he said. “I’ve heard members of those
exalted knightly orders do such things. Like priests. I’m all for abstinence and
piety, but in its place. And as long as someone else does it who is more suited
than I.”

“I’ve no great taste for wine,” she said.

“You’ve a distaste for conversation, too? I swear you’ve barely opened your
mouth.”

“You say enough for us both.”

Guy laughed.

The minstrels who had been entertaining between courses played a fanfare to
herald the arrival of the subtlety. Three men had to wheel it in on a trolley.
The pastry confection was shaped like a castle, complete with surrounding grass
dyed green with parsley juice, and miniature banners flying from the towers.
The model did not resemble Sadiston Castle, but if the portrayal were halfway
accurate, it represented a fortress that would prove formidable to assault.
Cheers, claps, and whistles greeted it.

“At the marriage I attended of a Marchionese countess,” Guy said, “they made a
subtlety shaped like a woman in childbed.”

Riannon stared at him. “You jest!”

“On my oath,” he said. “Not exactly appetising, but an honest acknowledgement of
what the whole business is for. Although, Henry getting his hands on Havelock
Castle is equally as blunt.”

After the next course, when even the guests at the lower tables were looking
mellowed from eating and drinking their fill, the dancers and tumblers gave way
to a thin, extremely handsome man of middle years. A servant carried a stool for
him and set it facing the high table. Another servant followed carrying the
man’s lute.

“Oh ho,” Guy said. “Now we’re in for a treat. Have you ever heard Raoul de
Nuon?”

Riannon had heard of him. Who had not? His reputation stretched from the snowy
mountains of Bralland to the scorching sands of Themalia. Someone had paid good
coin for this performance. She looked down the table and saw Eleanor’s delighted
expression as she watched the troubadour bow. Aveline shifted and intercepted
Riannon’s glance. She smiled at Riannon and settled back in her chair. Riannon
frowned.

The troubadour sat and took his instrument. His strong, deep voice sounded both
mellow and virile as he sang the traditional many-versed wedding song. Even
Cicely smiled and clapped.

“Wait there, Master Nuon,” Henry called, though the bard had made no attempt to
depart. “Another song. To honour my bride. Here.”

Henry pulled a ring from his finger and tossed it to the troubadour. The
extravagantly generous gesture brought another round of clapping and cheering,
and even drew a smile from his wife’s pale face. Riannon had to credit Henry for
that.

Master Nuon’s first chords brought a hush to the hall. Riannon wiped her fingers
on a crust and settled back to listen. The strings filled the air with an
unexpectedly melancholy sound. The troubadour’s voice began soft and haunting.
People leaned forwards to hear about a beautiful young woman’s lament for her
husband and brother, whom she feared dead. Master Nuon’s artistry all but
conjured the woman as a presence in their midst. His clever words gradually
unfolded around the woman a city under siege. His music filled the hall with
notes of rising desperation.

“Who would save doomed Vahl?”

Riannon went cold.

With a dramatic strum, Master Nuon recited the taunting challenge of the
commander of the besieging imperial army.

Riannon was not alone in glancing across the hall to where the ambassador and
his small entourage sat. This was not a diplomatic song to be singing in their
presence.

The song continued, sweeping through the death of man after man who ventured
forth to fight the imperial general. The woman wept when her brother cowardly
refused his turn to take up the challenge, and then wept again when he died at
the hands of the imperial general in the killing field beyond the city walls.

Master Nuon’s dancing fingers produced a lordly melody to introduce valiant
Prince Roland to the song. He spoke against the loss of good men one at a time
and called for those who would sally forth with him. It was suicide. And the
song, composed for the exultation of glory, passed silently over the sufferings
of hunger and disease of those trapped in the city. Over the pretty words and
melodic chords Riannon’s memories slotted in the stink of unburied bodies. The
pinched face of a starving child. The relentless crash of boulders shattering
against the walls and crushing houses. The perpetual fear.

The bard’s music conjured the heartbeat of horses’ hooves on that desperate
ride. The song wove heroically high and tensely low, as men fought blow for
blow.

Riannon’s memory of Vahl did not fit the tune. It was a hard, jagged set of
images of blood and desperation. Screams. Thrusting swords. Prince Roland
confronting the imperial general. A glint of sunlight off his sword as he lifted
it in salute to his foe. The prince toppling from the saddle with agonising
slowness as if time itself tried to stop in an effort to stave off the terrible
moment of his hitting the ground. The prince’s horse rearing.

The music throbbed with the prince’s peril. Not only a single, lordly man lay at
the enemy’s feet, the whole city and all the people in it faced merciless
annihilation.

“He came, the hero, on a horse with flying mane.”

Riannon dropped from the saddle and fought her way to the prince’s body. His
face was mangled and bleeding. His helm carved in two. But his blue eyes were
still open and seeing. Riannon stood over him. The imperial general’s tattoo
twitched as he shouted and sliced his sword down in front of her. Not touching
her. But carving her open with pain so searing that it numbed. That momentary
gap between act and comprehension. She was already moving. Lifting her sword.
Throwing herself at him. He could not swing his unnatural blade, but it sliced
into her all the same as she shoved the edge of her sword up across the side of
his unprotected neck. His warm blood fountained over them both. She crumpled.
Someone carried her back to the city.

“Foe felled and sent to his powerless gods,” the troubadour sang. “The city
saved by the single stroke of a hero.”

Prince Roland leaned over her, his gallant blood staining the bandages swathing
his face. Men had to hold him upright. He gripped her shoulder feebly. “Be thou
a knight.” He had no strength to buffet her. An anonymous anguished gasp sounded
from behind the failing prince when Roland set on her chest his own dagger of
membership of the Order of the Star. He knew he was going to Atuan, god of
heroes, and would have no more need of mortal symbols. “Be true. Be just.”

The lute strummed a final chord. “Vahldomne!”

Riannon shuddered back to the present. One of her hands pressed her chest as she
had when the wounds were fresh. The hall throbbed with silence.