Hard Day's Knight (24 page)

“Walker? Why would you want Walker to join us?”

She wanted me all to herself? I looked down at the breast shelf flowing over the top of my bodice. “I had no idea this bodice would make me so irresistible to everyone! The power of really good boning is simply amazing. Veronica . . . I don’t know what to say. Other than no, that is. I’m flattered and humbled and I appreciate what it must have cost you to approach me, but to be completely honest, I’m not . . . er . . . into girls. That way. So thank you, but no.”

She stared at me in silence for a few moments, then raised both eyebrows. “Do you believe I just asked you to join me in bed?”

She wanted to have sex with me somewhere else? Somewhere nonbed? I was obviously way out of my league. “Well, usually it’s done in bed, so I assumed . . . er . . . you weren’t?”

She shook her head for a moment, as if she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “No, I wasn’t asking if you’d like to sleep with me. I was asking you again if you wanted to join my company as an alternate.”

“Oh,” I said, and prayed for the earth to open up and swallow me whole. “Sorry. Just a little confused here.”

“Obviously,” she said.

Once I got over the mortification of believing Veronica wanted to have a lesbian fling with me (not to mention the little pang of disappointment that I wasn’t as seductive in my bodice as I had surmised I was), our conversation settled down to something a little less out of
Pepper and Veronica’s Amazing Crosstalk Show.

“What I said before is still true, Veronica. I’m not practicing to joust professionally.”

“You also said that you had no intention of learning how to joust, and yet I’ve heard that you spent an hour and a half today learning how to do just that.” She picked a tiny bit of dried leaf out of my hair as proof of my perfidy.

I raised my free hand in a gesture of denial. “I didn’t
intend
to learn anything, but I sort of got myself railroaded into it. Bliss is difficult to say no to when she’s got a lance in her hand and she’s galloping toward you. Besides, I did kind of throw a challenge to Farrell, and I’ll be damned if I give him anything more to gloat about. That man’s ego badly needs to be taken in hand.”

“Granted, but there is no reason why you cannot do so under my auspices. Pepper”—she smiled a persuasive smile—“a little bird told me that you and Walker have found pleasure in each other’s company, something else I believe you decried. Your relationship with Walker aside, do you really think his troupe offers you the best opportunity for instruction?”

I prepared to bristle on behalf of everyone in the troupe. “Well, as a matter of fact, Bliss is very good—”

“Yes, she is,” Veronica interrupted me smoothly, taking the sting out of it with another friendly smile. “But she is also relatively new to the sport, and has never taught anyone, whereas I have jousted professionally for almost eight years, and was taught by the best.”

She waited a couple of beats until I couldn’t help asking, “Walker?”

Her smile put Moth’s smug look to shame. “I believe you will agree with me that he is a very talented man . . . in many ways.”

Ding, ding, ding!
We were stepping into relationship territory, somewhere I definitely didn’t want to go. “Mmm. I’m afraid I’m just not dedicated enough to do your team proud. If Farrell wasn’t acting like such a butthead, I wouldn’t be learning to joust at all, so it really wouldn’t be fair to the rest of your team to have me hanging around their necks as an alternate when everyone knows I’m a rank novice at the sport.”

“You underestimate your natural ability,” she said, clearly wanting to talk about it some more, but I hoisted Moth higher on my hip, ignoring his growl of unhappiness as I scooted around Veronica toward the door.

“And I think you’re overestimating it. Thanks for the invite, but I just can’t do it. Good luck with your runs today. I’ll be rooting for your team.”

I escaped without further argument, but I couldn’t help mulling over Veronica’s strange request as CJ, Fenice, Geoff, and a newly released Bos watched the last of the jousting qualifiers.

“Why on earth would someone with a professional team want an untrained know-nothing like me hanging around? It just doesn’t make sense.”

“It does if you are Ronnie,” Fenice said, flinching as both jousters on the arena floor took simultaneous headers off their horses, their broken lances falling beside them. All the teams’ lances had been double-checked by the jousting society sponsoring the competition, but no other weakened ones were found.

“What on earth does
that
mean?” I asked, my mind not on the sabotage but on why Veronica was so interested in me.

Bos, sitting next to me with his arm encased in a blue sling, grimaced as Moth suddenly had a spaz attack and attacked the fringed end of the leather belt that lay along Bos’s thigh.

“Please excuse him; he’s deranged,” I said as I carefully pried Moth’s claws from Bos’s tights. “Back to Veronica—”

Fenice—minus her attendant jousters, since they were due in the ring in a short while—half turned on her bench to cast me a knowing look. “Do you know what she does when she’s not doing charitable good works?”

I shook my head.

“She’s what they call a cannibal.”

My mouth dropped open.

“Headhunter, not cannibal, Fenice,” Geoff corrected. “She finds people for high-placed positions in posh companies.”

“Oh, a headhunter. That makes sense . . . no, it doesn’t. What does that have to do with her wanting a person who doesn’t know how to joust acting as an alternate on her team?”

“Boy, you’re just really looking for the strokes today, aren’t you?” CJ asked, whapping me on the arm and dropping her voice to a whisper as the next two jousters were announced. “She thinks you have talent, stupid!”

“Oh.” I thought about that for a minute, then realized that it was a very good compliment. Undeserved, but still good. “Oh! That’s very nice of her.”

“Shh, Bliss is next.”

The afternoon slipped by in a flurry of knights taking dives off their horses. I understood why the majority of the jousters considered the Southern Italian style the most dangerous—with no shields, and passing each other on the right side, the jousters more often than not went flying with the impact of the blows from the lances.

After an hour of watching, I felt the time had come for a little basic explanation. “Okay, explain to me why Vandal qualified when he was knocked off his horse, but the guy from New Zealand didn’t qualify.”

“It’s all to do with the scoring,” Bliss answered. She had joined us, having qualified easily, and was sitting at Bos’s feet, leaning back against his legs. “If your lance touches anywhere between the saddle and the neck, but doesn’t break, that’s half a point.”

“If it breaks, then you get a point,” Geoff said.

“Touch but no break between neck and crest of helmet, two points,” Fenice added.

“Break with a touch between the neck and crest of helmet, three points,” Bliss said.

“Unhorsing, four points,” Bos and Geoff said together.

“Unhorsing as the result of a touch between the neck and crest of helmet, five points,” they all chanted.

“Vandal was unhorsed only once, but he scored more points by going for the higher-scoring shots than his opponents, who played it safe,” Fenice explained.

“Then there’re the penalties,” Bos said, raising his good arm and holding up his fingers as he counted them off. “Hitting any object besides the knight is minus two points. Hitting the saddle is minus one point. Hitting anywhere on the knight but the target areas is minus three points. Sweeping the lance sideways is also minus a point. Striking the horse is disqualification and banishment from the tourney circuit, not to mention a probable lawsuit by the horse’s owner.”

I looked at Bliss. “Right, that’s it, I’m not even going to practice with you anymore. I might not be overly fond of horses”—I ignored the hissing gasps of surprise at that admission. “but I don’t want to accidentally hurt one of them.”

“Don’t be stupid; you’re almost a vet,” CJ dismissed my concern. “You help animals; you don’t hurt them.”

I glared at her, giving her arm a little pinch. “I write software; I’m
not
a vet.”

“Shhh! Your ex-boyfriend is up next.”

“He is not—”

“Shhh!”

“—my ex-boyfriend. He never
was
my boyfriend.”

“You dated him; thus he was a boyfriend.”

“One dinner does not a date make . . . ow. That had to hurt. Guess Farrell has a bit of a chip on his shoulder because of the whole Walker thing. You think that other guy will be able to beat his helmet back into shape?”

“Probably not,” Bliss answered my question. “That was a very skilled head shot Farrell made. I’m just worried. . . . Ah, there, you see? He’s conceded the victory to Farrell. Poor man was obviously not up to going another two rounds with him. Well, that qualifies Farrell.”

The man who had done a very impressive swan dive off his horse hobbled out of the arena, flanked on either side by tournament officials, probably making sure the jouster hadn’t been seriously injured. Farrell rode around the ring taking bows and waving at the women who were leaning over the railing yelling to him.

“What a hambone,” I muttered under my breath. “Just wait till he sees what a real jouster can do.”

Fenice looked back and me and smiled. “For someone who hasn’t ever seen Walker joust, you certainly do have a lot of faith in him.”

“She’s seen him wield a lance of a different sort,” Bliss said.

I lifted my chin and gave them both a lofty down-the-nose look. “I simply have faith in the man, nothing more.”

“Ha!” CJ said.

“Hush, both of you, there he is.”

Walker rode into the ring on the back of Marley, who was looking very full of himself, prancing a little sidestep that Walker effectively nipped in the bud. Obviously his leg wasn’t bothering him in the least.

I leaned over to whisper in Bliss’s ear, “What are you guys doing about watching the horses?”

She slid a quick glance at me before answering. “When we aren’t around to keep an eye on them, Walker arranged for a couple of Four-H kids to stay near the stable and make a note of anyone who goes near our horses.”

“Good plan.” I sat back, relieved, prepared to enjoy the experience of watching the man of my dreams joust. Truthfully, if I hadn’t recognized Marley, I might not have known Walker was under all the steel plate. His helmet was closed, and his arms, chest, and legs were all covered in black armor, while his hands were encased in leather-and-steel gloves. Only his boots were unprotected.

“Oooh, isn’t he manly in all that armor,” I cooed, watching as he stopped Marley to bow his head at the marshal, sitting in the judging area. “He has black armor just like Butcher!”

“That
is
Butcher’s armor,” CJ said. “Walker didn’t bring his own, and there’s no time to have it sent, so he’s using Butcher’s spare set. It’s just lucky that they’re about the same size; otherwise Walker would be in a world of hurt.”

“Oh. Can’t he have some made? There are armor guys out on the vendors’ row.”

CJ shrugged. “Too costly,” Fenice said, resting her chin on her hands as she watched Butcher and Vandal accompany Walker, both evidently acting as squires.

I was a bit surprised when the knight of my dreams rode to the farthest side of the list, but before I could ask what he was doing, Bliss lifted her hand in a warning for silence. Overhead the tinny loudspeaker announced that Walker had appealed to the joust marshal, and due to having to bring Bos back from the hospital, he was being granted a chance to qualify for the jousting that was run during the morning, following which he would make the Southern Italian runs.

The arena, half-filled as it was, buzzed with comment at that announcement. Bliss sucked in her breath and looked meaningfully at Bos. He just shook his head and leaned against Geoff, his eyes worried. Most people were talking about Walker jousting again, but I had a suspicion that his surprise reappearance wasn’t what caused all the talk.

“What?” I asked, my warning system going into full “Danger, Will Robinson!” mode. “What’s wrong? It’s good that Walker talked them into letting him qualify for the Realgestech, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Bliss said slowly, her eyes on Walker as he took his lance from Vandal. “It is good . . . but that means he’ll have to either unseat the first jouster in both matches in order to beat them, or he’ll have to joust four matches back-to-back.”

“That’s twelve jousting runs,” I said softly, fear gripping my stomach and giving it a vicious twist. “That’s unfair—no one else has to joust four matches in a row without a break! He hasn’t jousted in years; he’ll hurt himself! Someone has to stop the foolish man!”

I stood up to do just that, but CJ and Fenice pulled me down. “You can’t stop him now; it’s too late. If he leaves the ring, he’ll forfeit the match.”

“But what about that thing you told me about earlier—the forgetfulness or something. Can’t he do that?”

“Forgiveness, and no, it’s not applicable in this instance. A knight can call a forgiveness only if the horse’s head is in the way, or if the tip on his lance falls off, or something like that. He can’t just decide not to run after he’s said he would. To do so would be cowardly.”

“Whatever happened to discretion being the better part of valor?” I asked, watching with worried eyes as the list marshal gave the signal for the jousters to start by yelling out, “Lay on!” “
Lay out
is going to be more like it. This is insane. He’s going to get hurt, seriously hurt. He hasn’t trained for this in years. He can’t possibly—Oh, no!”

“Sit down; you can’t help him,” CJ hissed as she pulled me down onto the hard metal bench. “Stop making a scene! He’s used to this.”