Winter Moon (13 page)

She raised an eyebrow, and regarded him expectantly.

“I owe her the debt of gratitude for sending you,” he elaborated. “Although I confess that when I was told you, a mere slip of a child, was supposedly a Grey Lady, I was very angry and sure you would be less than useless. So I suppose I owe you an apology as well. I could never have hoped to stop this without you—I was never meant to be an assassin, and I cannot think of any other way of removing Massid.”

She smiled grimly, thinking of her own training and the weapons still hidden in her chest. “You would never have gotten past his bodyguards,” she replied firmly. “They
are
trained as assassins. The Khaleems require such, since treachery is so much a part of their lives. Not unless you could conjure up some subtle poison and the means to deliver it that they had never seen before.”

“Alchemysts make poor poisoners,” he murmured. “We do not meddle much with physic and medicine. We leave that to the healers and doctors.”

She tilted her head to one side, curiously. “Why
did
you choose to become an alchemyst?” she asked.

He laughed bitterly. “Trying to transmute this—” he tapped his hunched shoulder “—since healers and doctors had so little success at it. Then, well, I was apt to it, and alchemysts
do
make good spies, the more so when they have other talents to disguise their true nature.”

“Does it cause you pain?” she asked, regarding him steadily.

He gaped at her. Not surprising, it was a surpassingly rude question. But she had a reason for her bluntness.

“No—” he replied, clearly without thinking.

“Then why bother?” she retorted, with a shrug. “It makes you neither more nor less intelligent, nor healthy, nor any other thing that matters. Have you
looked
at the faces, the bodies, the hands of my people?” she continued. “Really
looked?
Or because they are merely underlings, have your eyes slid right by them? I will confess, before the Countess trained my eyes, I would have done the same.”

He shook his head.

“Then when this is over, do take the time to look. See how many of them are scarred, twisted, missing fingers or toes or hands or feet.” She nodded as his eyes widened. “The sea is a harsh mistress, and a harsher teacher. She often claims a tithe of flesh and
blood, especially to pay for a mistake. But they carry themselves proudly, and find ways to do their duty—or find a different duty. They do not think overmuch of what they are
not.
And neither should you.”

She had intended to leave it there, but her mind was tired, and what she had intended to keep to herself slipped out before she could stop it. “What you
are
is a clever and kindly man, a skilled and wise man, more noble in heart than most are by blood—altogether the sort of man I wish was my husband in truth.”

He stared at her blankly. For the first time in a very long time she felt herself flushing, blushing so hotly she was sure that her cheeks rivaled the coals of the fire. “I have said too much. More than I ought. I was tired. More tired than I thought. Forgive my rudeness, my foolishness, and forget what I—” she blurted, and got up, stumbling out of the room and into the bedroom to hide herself behind the bed curtains and curse herself until she unaccountably fell asleep.

 

The transition from dusk to full dark on the evening of Midsummer Moon passed in the blink of an eye as Moira watched from her window. She had seen the edge of the coming storm itself just before the sun set, and as the light was sucked out of the sky, watched as it scurried across the waves toward them on a hundred legs of blue-white lightning. Then the storm came down on the keep like a shark on a herring. It roared across waves already washing
over the lower terraces and hit the walls with an initial blast that shook the entire building.

She strained her ears for the one sound she was waiting for, over the screaming wind, the thunder, and the howling waves—and she strained her eyes during the lightning flashes for a glimpse of—

There! A tumble of planks and posts slammed up onto the rocks beneath the cliff face!

And there! For just one moment, farther out than she would have guessed, a glimpse of a slim fighting ship, masts stowed and sails safely stowed away belowdecks, tossing on the crest of the waves like a child's toy, whirling rudderless and out of control—

She bit her lip in grim satisfaction, and turned at the sound of a familiar step, a familiar tap upon the door. “It's—” said Kedric. He looked at her in shock.

“Yes, it is,” she agreed, shifting her sword belt a little. “It's quite gone, boathouse, ship, and private army. Now it is up to us.”

He continued to stare in disbelief. So, she had managed to keep one secret from him, at any rate!

“Massid knows that the King is out there somewhere,” she said, waving a hand vaguely in the direction of the window. “And I have questioned every servant that has ever been around him when a storm has struck. I know where he goes, and I know he goes alone. I am going to stop him.”

Strange irony that where he went was the timber room. She must have just missed encountering him there dozens of times.

“You? But—”

“If I am to succeed, I desperately need
you
to deal with my father and Massid's men,” she continued. “I don't know how, but you
must
keep them occupied! Keep them from learning what just happened to Massid's ship, and keep them from going to fetch Massid!” She threw a mantle on over her armor. It looked enough like one of the loose gowns she favored, particularly in the uncertain light, that he might not notice what she wore beneath it for a few crucial moments. “You said yourself that you are not trained as an assassin. Well, I
am
.”

The look on his face might have been funny under any other circumstances. She hoped that she would survive to laugh about it later.

To laugh about it with
him
later…

Please God…

“He won't be expecting a female assassin,” she continued, staring into his dark, stricken eyes, willing him to believe her. “I'm going to pretend I followed him to beg his forgiveness and ask for him to take me as his wife. That should let me get close enough. Perhaps if
you
went to my father and told him you had persuaded me—?”

He swallowed hard. “That might suffice, my lady,” he said, his normally melodious voice gone harsh. “I will do that—”

She ducked her head, to avoid the pain and the fear—for her!—in his eyes. “Thank you,” she murmured, and started to push past him.

But he seized her before she could get out the door, and pulled her to him, holding her in an em
brace that probably hurt
him,
given the armor she was wearing. He cupped one hand behind her head and crushed his mouth down on hers in a kiss that felt as if one of those lightning bolts outside the window had struck her on the lips. She couldn't breathe—couldn't think—didn't want it to end—

He let her go, and she stood, wide-eyed and swaying, staring at him.

“You
will
return to me, wife!” he grated, his eyes wild. “You will come back to me whole and unhurt, for Grey Lady or not, I shall not give you or myself up to the service of any other, nor shall I let anyone part us, even if he be the King himself! And if you do not come back to me, then by the signs and the seal, I
will
follow you, though it be to the gates of heaven or hell!”

With that, he whirled, and was gone, his footsteps, half-running, echoing down the hall amid the noise of the storm.

She stood swaying a moment more, somehow managed to get some sort of control over herself, and walked with swift but uncertain steps to the first servants' stair that would take her where she needed to go.

It was a good thing she knew the way by heart, because most of the lanterns were out, and she fumbled her way through the darkness in a kind of daze. Half of her wanted to shout with elation, and the other half was frozen with fear, for despite her brave words, she was not even remotely certain that her ruse would work. Women
were
used as assassins all the
time in the Khaleemates, though usually it was poison in the festive cup or a knife in the dark, the pillow over the face or the serpent in the bath. But there was no guarantee. And no guarantee that Massid himself was not an assassin, and had already recognized her for what she was.

She stumbled out into the open space of the timber room, looking every bit the confused and distressed maiden, she was sure, though it was not by design. The cavern echoed with the storm below and all around; strange drafts whipped her clothing tightly to her body, and the flickering and uncertain light made bewildering shadows everywhere. She could not see Massid.

“Massid?” she croaked, her voice not even carrying a foot from where she stood. She coughed and cleared her throat. “My lord Prince?” she tried again. “Massid? My lord?”

A movement that was not shadow warned her, and she half turned as Massid, clad from head to toe in black, rose up from behind a pile of masts. She could not see his face, but there was anger in his voice.

“What do you want, woman?” he growled. “This is no time for the idiocy of females! Begone!”

She stumbled toward him, deliberately trying to make it look as if she could not make out her footing. But she knew every stick and plank in this room, where it was, and how steady or unsteady it was underfoot. Her stumbles, at least, were feigned.

“My lord?” she said plaintively. “My lord, I have sinned against you and my father. I was evil, dis
obedient, my mind polluted by that wicked woman with whom I have lodged all these years. I know I was wrong to say what I did, I know that I never deserved the honor of being made your wife, and in spurning you, I—”

“Enough.”

The unmistakable sound of a sword being unsheathed made her freeze where she stood.

“Do you think I do not know about the Countess Vrenable and her Grey Ladies? Do you think I had not guessed that you were one of that detestable creature's polluted assassins?” He took a step closer, and it was all she could do to keep from shrinking backward. “How like that weakling King of yours, to hide behind skirts and send little girls to do his work! Well, there is no dishonor to a blade in using it to spit a viper—and there will be no dishonor in using mine to rid the world of one more poison-tongued witch!”

He leaped, and that was enough to shock her into dodging, not backward, but to the side—to fling off her mantle and throw it at him in the hopes of entangling his blade while she unsheathed hers, dagger and rapier together.

A gust of wind caught it as she got her sword clear, and threw it over his head.

Her body recognized her one chance, even though her mind went blank.

Her body acted as she had trained, throwing her forward in a long, low lunge under his flailing blade, flinging her arm out in a swift strike.

Her body followed up the hit as the blade, instead of encountering the resistance of armor and a blunted tip, slid into his gut as a fish slid through water.

Her arm wrenched upward of itself, driving the blade in and up until it grated against bone, and hot wetness gushed against her hand.

And her body drove home the dagger into his throat, as he flailed at her head with the hilt of his sword, in blows already weakening, until he dropped to the floor of the cavern, taking her weapons with him.

His eyes stared up sightlessly at the ceiling; she turned and stumbled away a few paces, and fell to her knees, heaving and retching, until there was nothing left in her stomach—and weeping hysterically between each bout of gut-wrenching sickness.

Then, out of the darkness, a voice, and hands on her shoulders. “Moira? Moira! By God, if he has harmed one hair—”

She turned into his embrace, laughing and weeping at the same time, the taste of bile bitter in her mouth and her throat raw. “You'll do what? Bring him back to life so that you can beat him?”

“Fiat lux!”
came the unexpected words, and the cavern blazed with light from a globe that appeared just over Kedric's head. “Oh, my love—” He wiped her mouth and chin with his soft linen sleeve, then dabbed at her eyes with the napkin someone behind him handed to him. He took her chin and tilted it up. “You'll have a black eye in the morning,” he said, with calm matter-of-factness that belied the fading fear in his eyes. “And a sore stomach.”

“Yes, well, I've never—” She made herself say the words. “I've never killed anyone before. I suppose—I—” She started to relax in his embrace, then pushed him away in alarm. “Father!” she exclaimed.

“Lord Ferson has met with an accident,” said Kedric. “I don't know the details. Your cook tells me I do not want to know the details. There was some little to-do in the Great Hall when one of Massid's men came up with the news that the ship, the boathouse, and the dock were all gone. Unaccountably, they blamed me—and your loyal retainers rushed to my defense.”