Gate to Kandrith (The Kandrith Series) (24 page)

Sara nodded.

“Will he implicate you as well?” Julen asked.

“No,” Sara said, then realized she was assuming he would try to protect her because they were lovers. But just as her loyalty to her family came first, so would Lance’s to his. “That is, I don’t think so.” She licked her lips. What would he do? “I’m still the Child of Peace. I don’t think he’ll risk entangling me in local justice.” Once he delivered her to his father, it would be a different matter, of course.

“Stay clear of it, if you can,” Julen told her. “If I’m jailed, you’ll need to try to pass the information on to your father by yourself. Your best bet is to use a simple code and include it among an innocent letter. If that doesn’t work, you can try to bribe someone to send a message for you…”

Sara listened closely as he gave her a quick lesson in spycraft.

* * *

Lance had already healed four coughs, a festering cut and a bad case of boils from his bed by the time Sara returned. He became aware of her as soon as she set foot in the cottage even though she hung back as he dealt with his last two patients.

The realization was…disturbing. It reminded him of how his deaf father would turn and smile as soon as Lance’s mother entered the room. But the comparison was ridiculous. He was just sensitive to her nearness because he wanted her again already. Memories from this morning sluiced through him, bringing with them a wave of heat. Despite her inexperience, she’d been wildfire in his arms.

“There,” he told the young mother in front of him. “She’ll be able to see better now.”

The mother and her red-haired daughter beamed at him, revealing identical gaps between their two front teeth, and left.

“So what did Julen say?” Lance asked, trying not to sound jealous. The fact that he had no right to feel that way only made him more prickly.

She shrugged. “He was tired of walking and wanted a horse. He almost won one on his own and succumbed to temptation.”

“You mean he thought it would be easy to cheat ignorant barbarians.” Lance’s ire rose.

Before they could get into an argument, a cry from outside attracted his attention. “Healer, healer come quickly!”

Lance lunged for the door. Only the room swayed, and he would have fallen if Sara hadn’t put his arm over her shoulder. “I suppose it’s useless to tell you to go back to bed and let them bring the patient to you?” she asked even as she continued helping him to the door.

His lips quirked. “Yes.”

A horse stood in the middle of the street, eyes rolling. At first glance it appeared riderless, and then Lance saw why the mare was flinching with nerves. A young man lay in the dusty street behind it, arms flung out, one foot still caught in the stirrup. From the look of it, he’d been dragged some distance.

Lance’s stomach clenched, but maybe it wasn’t as bad as it looked. He hurried.

A villager caught the mare’s bridle and kept it from trotting away. “Easy now.”

Lance knelt. Grimly, he ignored the gory wound on the man’s head and put his hands on the man’s unbreathing chest. Nothing. For long moments he willed healing into him, but Loma’s healing warmth did not come.

Bitter defeat filled him. He was too late. Again.

Both the black-and-white mare and the straw-haired dead man looked familiar to Lance, but he wasn’t sure of their identity until a pregnant woman cried, “Huw!”

Half the village lined the street by now, but the anguish on Iorweth’s face stood out. “Is he—?”

“I’m sorry. He’s beyond my help.” Lance spoke as gently as possible, keeping the anger out of his voice. He hated admitting defeat. And the rote words never got any easier.

Iorweth collapsed on the dirt road, weeping.

Valda laid a cloak around the pregnant woman’s shoulders and embraced her. The village women gathered around Iorweth, while the men unhitched the horse from his grisly burden in silence.

“You need to get back to bed,” Sara said quietly.

I didn’t do anything. I’m not tired
, Lance wanted to snap. He allowed Sara to steer him back to Valda’s, but paused in the doorway, frowning at the knot of women.

“Bring Iorweth to me,” Lance instructed. Shock often brought on early labor. He hadn’t been able to save Huw, but he could make sure the man’s wife and child lived.

Valda understood his message. She nodded and pulled Iorweth to her feet.

An hour later Iorweth had cried herself out, and Lance judged her out of danger, lifting his hands. Valda and the other neighbor women who’d gathered coaxed the story out of her. Her husband, Huw, had come home late the previous evening and confessed that he had lost their horse in a game of chance. Iorweth had been furious, especially since the horse was one she’d raised from a foal. She’d shouted things she now regretted, and Huw had taken a jug of ale and slunk off to sleep in the barn.

Some time later, Huw’s friends had arrived with the good news that the Listener had judged Julen guilty of cheating. Iorweth had been relieved, but still so mad at Huw that she left him in the barn so he’d have all night to regret the foolish chance he’d taken.

When she woke up, Huw and the horse were gone, and the jug was empty. “He was a good man, but when he drank he could get…foolish,” she said tearily. “I think he decided to hide the horse somewhere.”

It was all too easy to fill in the rest. A drunken man riding too fast in the dark…

Iorweth closed her eyes. “I should have gone out to the barn and told him. Why didn’t I tell him?”

Lance put his hand on her shoulder. “You had a right to be angry at him, and you didn’t know what he would do. You should go home and get some sleep now. For the babe’s sake.” He looked at Valda, and she nodded, showing her willingness to stay with the pregnant woman.

But Iorweth shook her head. “Home, but not to sleep. I need to think. There are decisions I need to make.” She and Valda left.

“Poor woman,” Sara said. “This is awful, just awful.”

“The blackguard will pay for this,” one of the village women muttered on her way out. “If he hadn’t cheated, Huw would be alive. Iorweth will make him pay.”

“What did she mean Julen will pay?” Sara asked, once the room had cleared.

Lance didn’t like the fear in her eyes—but even less did he like that her fear was for Julen. He explained brusquely, “Huw’s dead. Iorweth will be Justice in his place at Julen’s trial. She could demand a life for a life.”

* * *

At the trial, Iorweth listened stoically to Julen’s plea that he had not known how precious horses were. Sara held her breath.

All the village attended so, of necessity, the trial was held outside. Julen stood on a patch of bare earth in front of the forge, the key over his head, facing everyone. He wasn’t bound, but two brawny louts glowered at him from the front row. They looked of an age to be Huw’s friends—probably the other poker players.

“I did not mean your husband any harm,” Julen said.

“A lie,” the Listener said. She stood with her hands clasped, to the side of Julen, her expression cool and remote.

“Any permanent harm,” Julen quickly corrected himself. “I admit I was annoyed with his stroke of luck.” He looked straight at Iorweth.

“The truth,” the Listener said.

Iorweth seemed unimpressed. “You may not have meant great harm, but you caused it.”

“I am deeply sorry,” Julen said. His green eyes shone with sincerity—but then they always did.

A nod from the Listener. More truth. Sara let out a breath of relief.

“I wish to compensate you. Let me pay the price of two horses.”

Bad move. The crowd grumbled in anger. Across from Sara, Rowena bared her teeth and hissed.

Tears glistened on Iorweth’s cheeks. She let them fall unchecked. “Huw was a rash man. He should not have gambled with you, and he should not have gotten drunk and tried to hide the mare. But he is dead. I have no husband, and my child has no father.”

Julen’s face turned white, sensing death. Sara’s hands ached from being clenched into fists. Back in the Republic it would have amused her to see Julen on trial, but she wasn’t laughing now.

“I could ask for your life,” Iorweth said without expression.

“Make him pay!” Huw’s friends urged.

Valda glared at them. “Iorweth is Justice!”

Iorweth hardly seemed to notice, her attention locked on Julen. “I could, but what good would it do me? My Huw would still be dead.” Her face lacked a theatrical heroine’s tragic beauty, but no actress could have faked the terribly matter-of-fact tone of her voice. “The crops will ripen soon and need to be harvested. The babe will be born in a month’s time.”

“What is it you ask of me?” Julen wisely didn’t mention money again.

“I think you wanted to leave very badly.”

Julen nodded cautiously.

“My judgment is that you stay and take the place of the husband I have lost,” Iorweth said clearly. She did not blush.

Valda gave a short nod of satisfaction, but Sara was taken aback. Had Iorweth fallen for Julen’s breath-stealing handsomeness? But, no, there was no infatuation on her face, only exhaustion and determination. Her hands touched her pregnant belly.

“Iorweth, you can’t!” one of Huw’s friends burst out. “You can’t lie with the bastard who killed your husband!”

Iorweth blinked. Sara had the feeling she’d been so focused on sheer survival that the more intimate aspects of her judgment hadn’t even occurred to her. “I am eight month’s pregnant.”

“And after you’ve had Huw’s baby?”

“After—” Iorweth checked herself, then continued sturdily, “The marriage would be unconsummated for—for a year.”

Sara’s intuition kicked in. Iorweth, so plagued with bad luck, probably thought she was going to die in childbirth. She didn’t want a husband. She wanted her child’s future taken care of. The other villagers were living hand-to-mouth. An extra child would be a burden.

Huw’s friends still muttered, but Sara didn’t see either of them offering to marry Iorweth.

“Do you accept my judgment or do you wish to appeal to the village?” Iorweth asked.

Julen didn’t like it, but he was no fool. His gaze touched uneasily on the other villagers, who seemed all too ready to lynch him. “I—”

Careful,
Sara thought.

Julen’s eye fell on the Listener. She was watching him with a touch of contempt, and whatever weasel words he’d been about to utter died on his lips. Sara could almost hear his mind working overtime, searching for another option and not finding it. She watched the realization come over him, that he either had to make the commitment to Iorweth
and mean it,
or die.

He looked at Iorweth, at her ravaged face with the bags under her eyes and at her distended belly. He bowed his head for a moment before looking up. “When I was a child, my father was crippled and lost his livelihood. I would not see any woman with child left destitute as my mother was.”

“Truth.”

Sara drew in a sharp breath at the picture his words painted.
A crippled father, a mother worked to the bone…
Is that why ambition drove Julen so hard? A need to save his mother from drudgery? Fear of poverty? Sara hadn’t known; she hadn’t asked.

And then Lance stepped forward. “There is another matter to consider. Julen is a visitor to our country, a Republican.” The mood of the crowd instantly darkened. “Iorweth, show him your wrist.”

Iorweth turned up her palm so all could see the drop of blood branded below it, which showed her to have once been a sanguelle. By law, her child would be a cuoreon or cuorelle. Neither one could ever risk setting foot in the Republic.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Lance asked Iorweth.

Sara watched Julen closely. Unwilling sympathy stirred inside her. This meant the end of his dream to earn a title. Nobles did not marry ex-Blood Slaves.

Iorweth turned to Julen. “Do you own slaves?”

Julen straightened. “No. Nor have I ever. I am an equitain, freeborn but not of the nobility.”

“Truth,” the Listener said grudgingly.

Sara lifted her own voice. “Julen was always kind to my slaves. I never saw him abuse one.” No need to mention the reason he’d always been so charming to Felicia and Rochelle had been to cultivate sources of information.

“Truth.”

The villagers’ hostility shifted to her. Sara tried to lift her head, but couldn’t meet anyone’s eyes. Because this time, she’d earned their hate. She could say with perfect truth that she, too, had always been kind to her slaves, but she wished—oh, how she
wished
—she could say that she had freed Felicia. Or better yet, that she’d never owned any slaves at all. When she returned to the Republic, she swore that she would find a way to send Rochelle to join Felicia in Kandrith.

Iorweth’s gaze didn’t leave Julen’s face. “Would you treat me and the baby like slaves?”

“No,” Julen said firmly.

“Truth.”

Iorweth’s shoulders relaxed. “Then my judgement is the same, for you to stay and take the place of my husband.”

“I thank you for your kindness in not asking for my life,” Julen said. “I will do my best to see that you do not regret it. I will be your husband.”

“And father to my child?” Iorweth looked intense.

“And father to your child.”

Iorweth relaxed, the frown line fading from her face. “Then I will be your wife,” she said simply.

“Truth has been spoken,” the Listener said loudly. “Let it be witnessed. Julen and Iorweth are husband and wife.”

“It is witnessed,” Lance and the crowd spoke in unison.

Only Sara and Julen were caught off guard. That was a wedding ceremony? Sara remembered attending Aunt Evina’s second marriage to Uncle Paulin. The hour-long ceremony had taken place at Diwo’s temple rather than the traditional Goddess of Fertility’s temple, because Evina had said if she was lucky she wouldn’t need the other’s favor. The feasting had gone on for a week.

Of course, she doubted Aunt Evina’s vows would have passed the scrutiny of a Listener.

* * *

Lance declared himself well enough to leave the next day. Sara had her doubts. What if he had a relapse on the road? To delay them, she insisted on saying farewell to Julen before they left. Lance reluctantly agreed.