The Sentinel Mage (51 page)

The princess shook her head. “No.”

That word, quietly spoken, seemed to enrage Rikard. Rage blossomed red on his face. He took a step forward, one hand going to the hilt of his sword.

Karel stepped in front of the princess. “Dare you draw your blade in the presence of a royal princess?”

Rikard gripped his sword hilt. “She’s my wife!”

“Not any more.”

Movement in the doorway of the bedchamber caught Karel’s eye. Yasma stood there, terror on her face.

“Ernst!” Rikard bellowed.

The door from the antechamber swung open. An armsman came into the salon at a run. He stopped short when he saw the tableau, his sword half-drawn.

“Dare you draw your blade in the presence of a royal princess?” Karel asked again. He held Rikard’s eyes, and then the armsman’s.

The armsman listened to the words. He slid the sword back into its scabbard and lifted both hands, holding them palm outward at his waist. He took a step back, distancing himself from his master.

Rikard didn’t listen. He took another step forward. “Out of my way, you whoreson islander. She’s
mine
.”

Karel took a pace forward too. “No. The marriage has been annulled.” And silently, he said,
Come on, try to take her.

Rikard seemed to hear the unspoken challenge. Metal hissed as he drew his sword.

Everything slowed down, dream-like—Rikard charging with his sword raised, Yasma opening her mouth to scream.

It happened just as Karel had imagined: the weight of the sword in his hands, the flex of his muscles as he swung it. The sword blade caught Rikard solidly below his chin, shearing through flesh, through bone.

He’d seen it a thousand times in his imagination—Rikard’s head spinning, blood spraying across walls and ceiling. In reality it was faster, less messy.

The head struck the floor, bounced, rolled to a halt. The man’s body followed with a meaty thud. Blood gushed across the rugs. Its scent filled his mouth and nose.

Karel lowered his sword. Exultation sang in his veins. He looked at Rikard’s armsman. The man’s face was pale with shock. “Fetch Prince Jaegar.”

The armsman obeyed at a run.

Karel turned. Princess Brigitta crouched behind him, her face buried in her hands.

He dropped the sword and knelt alongside her. “Princess?” He hugged her to him without thinking. “He’s dead. It’s all right.”

She was shuddering.

Karel tightened his grip. He smoothed his hand over the nape of her neck, over her upwoven hair. “He’s dead,” he whispered, pressing his lips to her temple. “Britta, he’s dead.” And then he heard what he’d said—Britta—and realized what he was doing.

He lifted his head and pulled away from her, stopping when her hand clutched his breastplate. “Princess?”

“Dead?”

“Yes.”

For a moment she clung to him, shaking, and then she turned her head and looked at the body. Outside, the fifth bell began to toll: noon.

Princess Brigitta inhaled a deep breath. He felt the shuddering stop. She released her grip on his breastplate and pushed away until she was kneeling. She looked at him, meeting his eyes. “Thank you,” she whispered, and then she took another deep breath and her face became composed, regal. She stood.

It was my pleasure, princess.

He stood too, reaching down to pick up his sword. Rikard’s blood dripped from the blade.

Karel wiped the sword on a cushion stitched with gold thread and sheathed it.

CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

J
AUMÉ HAD NEVER
seen so many people or buildings in his life. The crush of houses and shops and inns, the crush of carts and horses and dogs, of farmers and townsfolk, was too much to take in. He shrank back against a dirty white-washed wall, hugging the blanket and waterskin tightly. Noise and smells buffeted him. His ears were full of shouts, full of horses neighing and dogs barking and the rumble of wagon wheels on cobblestones. The smell of the town filled his mouth and nose: woodsmoke, cooking smells, sewage, horse manure, and sweat and panic and fear. Everywhere he looked were more people, more horses, more wagons. Even the buildings seemed to be moving, shouldering each other.

Jaumé repeated the names the miller had told him—Lundegaard, Osgaard, the Allied Kingdoms. He took a deep breath and plunged into the crowded street, joining the stream of people.

T
HE BOAT WAS
a hundred times bigger than the little wooden herring boats that fished out of Girond. The dark hull came up out of the water like a cliff and the lofty masts with sails furled to their spars looked tall enough to scratch open the sky. Jaumé stared at it.
Not a boat; a ship. Built to sail across the ocean.

Great white gulls with black wings soared and swooped overhead, their cries as plaintive as mourners’ wailing. Each breath Jaumé took tasted of the sea—tangy, salty—and tasted of sweat and fear, too. People stood shoulder to shoulder, jostling each other. Despite the sunshine and the blue sky, the air was heavy, charged with tension.

It’s every man for himself.
And he made himself as small as he could and began to work his way through the crowd, slipping between gaps like an eel, using his elbows, moving towards the ship.

H
UNGER CRAMPED TIGHTLY
in his stomach, but Jaumé scarcely noticed. He was in the shadow of the ship now. He could see the sea—sunlight sparkling on a vast stretch of water—but it was the ship that commanded his attention: the hull jutting out of the water, the faces of the passengers peering down.

There was a name on the ship’s side. He couldn’t read it, but a picture had been painted below: a dolphin riding the crest of a wave.

Jaumé stared at the dolphin, at the tall masts, at the rigging and the furled sails. Soon he’d be one of those people climbing the plank up to the deck.

The blanket was gone, ripped from his arms, but he still held the waterskin. It gurgled limply. Someone had trodden on his foot. His toenails were bleeding, but it didn’t matter because now it was his turn. He was the one who stood at the foot of the plank. “I want to go to Lundegaard,” he said. “Or Osgaard. Or the Allied Kingdoms.”

“This ship’s to Lundegaard,” the man said. He stood with an armed guard either side of him, a doughy, slope-shouldered man. He held out his hand. “One silver groat.”

“What?”

“One silver groat. Come on, lad. People are waiting.”

“But...I don’t have any money.”

The man closed his hand. His mouth screwed up in a grimace. “Sorry, lad. Can’t let you on without payment.”

“But—”

The man’s eyes slid away from his. “Next!” he said, and someone shouldered Jaumé aside.

J
AUMÉ LIMPED BACK
the way he’d come. A silver groat. Twelve copper pennies.

Despair enveloped him. Where would he find twelve copper pennies?

He remembered the pennies Mam had kept knotted in her kerchief. He remembered Mam lying dead on the floor. He remembered the smell of her blood, the slickness of it beneath his feet. Tears welled in his eyes. He pushed forward against the crowd, buffeted by elbows, by voices.

It was almost dusk by the time Jaumé reached the town gates. Outside the walls of Cornas, a vast encampment stretched. People clustered around fires. He saw horses and wagons, dogs, a bleating goat. The smell of food rose, mingling with the smells of woodsmoke and raw sewage. His belly cramped painfully, as if his innards ate themselves.

Jaumé hugged the almost-empty waterskin to his chest, blinking back tears, and looked down at his feet. The toes of his left foot were bloody.

The blood made him remember Mam again. The knotted kerchief with the pennies had been lying on the bloody floor. If he’d thought to snatch it up—

But then he remembered the sound of hens squawking in the yard as they flapped out of Da’s way. Terror lurched inside him. He clutched the waterskin more tightly.

If he didn’t find twelve copper pennies, it would happen again: the blood and the terror, the screaming—

“Young Jaumé,” a voice said behind him. “I’m glad to see you made it, lad.”

He turned his head. It was the miller. The man’s face creased into a friendly smile above his curling black beard. “Are you hungry, lad? Come share some food with us.”

H
E FOLLOWED THE
miller through the mass of people, past fires and bedrolls and horses and squalling babies. The man’s wife and sons sat beside a small fire. Around them were their belongings: blankets, a few clothes, waterskins, a stew pot, a bundle of firewood.

“Look who I found,” the miller said.

His wife glanced at Jaumé. Her nod of greeting was perfunctory. The smallest boy smiled shyly at Jaumé from the protective curve of her arm. “How much did you get?” she asked.

“Twenty-three pennies.”

“Twenty-three pennies?” Her voice rose; in despair, not anger. “For two horses and a wagon? They were worth five times that!”

“I know.” The miller rubbed his face and sighed. “There’s no market for them here, Sara. I was lucky to get what I did.” He sat, moving slowly, as if his bones ached with weariness. “Sit, lad.”

Jaumé sat. His eyes were drawn to the stew pot. He saw food in it: lumps of meat, chunks of carrot. His mouth watered.

“It’s better than nothing,” he heard the miller say. “It’ll feed us in Piestany. For a few days.”

His attention jerked back to the miller. “Piestany?”

“In the Allied Kingdoms. We’re sailing tomorrow.” He nodded at his wife. “Feed the lad, Sara. He looks hungry.”

The miller’s wife silently reached for a bowl. She filled it from the stew pot.

Jaumé put down the waterskin. He took the bowl and spoon the miller’s wife handed him. His stomach twisted in painful anticipation.

The miller unfastened a pouch from his belt and tipped the contents into his palm. Coins clinked against one another.

Jaumé paused with the spoon halfway to his mouth. A small pile of copper pennies sat on the miller’s palm. In their midst was a silver groat. “Here, Sara.” He held the coins out to his wife. “Put them with the others.”

Time seemed to stand still. Jaumé heard his heart beating loudly in his ears. The groat stared at him from the miller’s palm, winking silver among the copper pennies.

A silver groat.

The miller’s wife reached for the coins.

Jaumé dropped the bowl and spoon and snatched the groat from the miller’s hand and ran as if the curse itself was at his heels. Behind him, the miller’s wife’s voice rose in a scream.

H
E RAN, DODGING
through the throng of people and animals, wagons and campfires. At the entrance to the town he pushed himself inside along with the last few stragglers and heard the
clang
of the gates closing behind him.

Safe.

Jaumé leaned against a wall, panting. Emotions churned inside him. Hope. Triumph. And a different kind of despair to what he’d felt earlier. The groat was clenched tightly in his fist. He remembered the miller’s smiling face, his eyes crinkling above the curling beard.
Are you hungry, lad? Come share some food with us.

Jaumé bent over, trying to catch his breath, trying not to vomit from exertion, from despair. When his breathing had steadied, he lifted his head. Night had fallen.

He had no food, no water, no blanket—but he had a silver groat.

He remembered the miller’s face again, his kind voice.
Had some trouble, did you, son?

But the miller had also said,
It’s every man for himself.

Jaumé clutched the groat more tightly. It was a small, hard disk in his palm. It was the price of passage to Lundegaard. The price of his life.