Shadowheart (22 page)

Elayne lowered her hands. He smiled derisively, a harsh shadow in his battered face. The fleeting instant of wistfulness when he spoke of Heaven vanished, so that she was not certain if she had heard it, or if he only meant to mock himself.

“Do not the priests say that anyone might enter Heaven, if they repent and do penance?” Elayne said.

He shrugged, scanning the salt flats. “Doubtless.” He reached down for the palfrey’s saddle. “I place no dependence on what priests say; they contradict themselves once an hour. We must move inside, if we linger here. This place is too exposed.”

As he began to lift it, he stumbled a little. He recovered himself and stood swaying, the saddle sprawled against his leg. Elayne rose. She hefted the hind-bow to her hip. Together they carried the burden to the base of the windmill. The pirate stopped at the doorway of one of the salt houses, leaning hard against the jamb.

“In truth, ‘tis as you say.” He took a deep, shaky breath. “I am not fit.”

She pulled the saddle inside herself, where the deserted brine baths were still whitened with fans and icicle-pendants of salt. “Rest here,” she said, shoving it into a position he could use for a pillow. “I’ll bring the other, and tie the horses between the walls.”

He stood leaning against the doorframe. As she made to pass him, he reached up and touched her shoulder. She paused.

He smiled at her, a drowsy, faraway smile. “Hellcat,” he said softly. “Will you stay with me in truth?”

Elayne drew a breath, looking up into his dark eyes. They were half-hidden by black lashes, encircled by purpling skin. His fine lips were swollen at one corner, his cheekbone scraped and red. It was not his beauty now that made desire and pain sink down through her.

“Yes,” she lied. “I will stay.”

The stallion had not wandered far. She bridled it hurriedly and led it back to where its saddle lay, looking over her shoulder often at the empty doorway. The bags were still tied to the hind-bow; they held a purse of coins, enough to buy food, she hoped, if she could not find a religious house soon. She would be leaving him with nothing but the bread and watered wine.

She heaved the saddle over the stallion’s back in one great effort, pulled up the girth, and wondered if a liar and thief would be allowed into Heaven. With a glance over her shoulder, to make certain again that the doorway was empty, she swung herself into the saddle.

As she gathered the reins, she remembered the tuft of Nimue’s white hair that she had saved. Carefully she drew off her glove, to make sure of the keepsake. It was there still, clinging to her palm beneath the ring. Elayne turned around and slipped the tuft into a safe corner of one saddlebag. She took a deep breath, frowning fiercely at the horizon. She would not think of Nimue and Margaret and Matteo and the others. She could not.

She started to pull on her glove, and paused. In the soft morning light the engraved ring on her hand gleamed.

With an effort, twisting and rotating it, she tried to remove it from her finger. It was tight about her joint, a painfully close fit over the knuckle. She spit into her hand and worked at it, whimpering in frustration. But she wanted to leave it with him; it did not belong to her; she did not want to abandon him injured and outlawed and utterly without resource. There was at least a little gold in the ring. With more saliva and a painful rush of air through her teeth, she managed to work it off at last.

She hesitated, her finger throbbing from her efforts. She had left him as he was easing back against the saddle, propped up on the lambskin pad, with his arm across his forehead. She was unwilling to go back into the salt house now.

She held the ring in her palm, looking down at it. When she turned it in her hand, she saw for the first time that there were letters engraved on the inner curve as well as the outside. She tilted it to the light.

A vila mon Coeur
, it said in French.

A vila mon Coeur. Gardi li mo.

She closed her eyes, curling her fingers tight around the ring, and bowed her head with a whimper of despair.

Here is my heart. Guard it well.

“Allegreto,” she said.

He had lain in a dead sleep for the whole of the day, propped against the palfrey’s saddle. When she had returned to the salt house, when she had tugged the stallion’s gear inside, when she had noisily overturned a heavy tub to sit upon and sent crystals of salt flying across the dirt floor, he had not stirred. It was a little frightening, for she had never yet known him to fail to wake alert at the slightest sound.

She had called him “pirate,” and shaken his shoulder as evening came on. She had given him a rousing lecture on just how it felt to be abducted and dragged away from all she knew by an assassin and murderer who was afraid to go to Hell. She had shed tears of hot annoyance and pain as she struggled to push the ring onto her finger again—it was too small, and her joint was inflamed from pulling it off; she informed him in no uncertain terms that it was his fault if she could not wear it. But she shoved it over her knuckle in spite of how it hurt, and there it was now, hiding his secret words.

He breathed steadily. Untroubled, as if she were on watch over him, like Zafer and Dario. As if he trusted her.

She had napped a few hours in the quiet afternoon, while the horses munched outside. No Riata killers came to slay them. No one came at all but the water birds stalking slowly through the reeds and a pale, speckled frog that hopped to the door, sat there for a lengthy time contemplating her with round yellow eyes, and then hopped leisurely away.

She pulled all of the papers from the saddlebags, but they were only brief letters of introduction to men she had never heard of, and lists of words that made no sense. The only thing she found of value among them was the contract that betrothed her to Franco Pietro. She had hardly glanced at it when she had signed it, but she read it now as if the words were written in flame.
Make known that when I give my consent, I will take the most puissant and excellent lord Franco Pietro of Riata and Monteverde to be my wedded husband…

When.

When
she gave her consent. It did not say that she gave it yet.

She had no vow to Franco Pietro. In truth, by all that she had ever read of the ecclesiastical courts and marriage suits in the documents that Lady Melanthe had provided for her education, Elayne was not betrothed at all.

She remembered her godmother in fierce negotiation with Lancaster—the long hours of argument over dowries and gold and this paper, while Elayne stared out the window, deaf to it all. She thought of how the pirate had faced Countess Beatrice and smiled at the mention of the contract and its words.

“Allegreto,” she said again, because when she called him by that name, his eyelashes flickered a little, and he turned his head and sighed.

It sounded so strange on her tongue.

She did not want to become attached to him. She tried to think of Raymond, tried and tried. She loved Raymond. For this pirate, this dark and beaten angel—she felt desire and sin, but not love, or anything like it.

“Allegreto,” she said sharply.

He swallowed and smiled a little, then made a faint groan.

“Awaken,” she said. “The night comes on.”

He winced and let go of a slow breath. He closed one fist, bending his arm upward. “Mary and Jesus,” he muttered, without opening his eyes.

He spread his fingers. He closed the other fist, as if testing it, and then he sat up all at once, exhaling sharply.

“God bless,” he said, leaning on one arm. “I can scarce move.”

“It will be worse tomorrow,” Elayne said.

He blinked at her with one eye. The other had swollen shut completely. “What promising news,” he uttered, his voice slurred.

She offered him the wine flagon. With a painful effort, he sat up against the saddle and drank. He remained still, staring at the floor for a long time. Elayne ate a few bites of bread and left the rest in the rumpled crown of his hat for him.

“How long since we left Venice?” he asked abruptly.

Elayne frowned, reckoning. “Not yet a full night and day,” she said.

He looked up at her, then toward the door, where the reeds and bushes cast long shadows. “The galley—when did it sail?”

“They were drawing anchor as we disembarked it,” she said.

He made a soft curse and tried to stand. On the second attempt he made it to his feet with a sound of agony. “We must move on. Without the rendezvous. I’ll have to conjecture what was arranged. But we must be at Val d’Avina before they reach it.”

Elayne rose. “Val d’Avina? Where is that?”

He gave her an odd look, and a short laugh. “You don’t know? Depardeu, is there nothing they taught you of Monteverde?”

Her eyes widened. “It is there?”

“In the mountains,” he said. “High up the valley, at the mines.” He lifted the wine again and drank deeply. “Zafer and Margaret are bound there, in guise as Il Corvo and his new bride, that fine unknown lady who carries Morosini’s letters of introduction for her comfort.” He wiped his mouth. “With Franco Pietro hot at their heels, if God wills.”

“Franco Pietro!” she exclaimed, taking a step. “No! I thought we were bound for some castle in Bohemia!”

“Nay, Princess. We go to Monteverde.” He smiled at her, his face an evil mask of bruises. “And I do not intend to meet your betrothed with honey and sweet affection, of that you may be certain.”

She had not realized they were so close to Monteverde lands. A dread grew on her as they rode steadily all through the night. She looked toward the dark masses of villages under the rising moon and feared them now, instead of hoping for sanctuary. The marsh and canals and water were not under the hand of the Riata, but they led inevitably to rivers and towns as dawn broke, a rich province of ordered fields and vineyards, of dogs that barked and roads with loaded donkeys and early travelers upon them. She barely remembered the vellum maps that Lady Melanthe had unrolled, so full of unfamiliar names and drawings of castles and churches and hills, but she thought these must be the tributary lands that lay between Venice and the mountains of Monteverde.

The palfrey paced rhythmically ahead of her, tireless as the leagues and hours fell away. The land was flat; the highways dry. When full day came, she could see a precipice in the far distance, a serrated wall of crags that seemed to spring up from the level horizon like dragon’s teeth against the sky.

The pirate did not stop to rest. Their pauses were brief, only long enough to let the horses drink in the swarming marketplace of a walled city, and take a loaf and cheese from a hawker to eat while they were still astride. Though he pulled the unkempt hunter’s hat down low, people noticed his battered face and blackened eye, offering witty condolences and advice to stay out of street fights. He only returned a hellish grin, shrugging.

She could not imagine what he must be enduring. Even she began to feel the soreness of hours in the saddle after all her months afoot. But his palfrey was a smooth-gaited beast, well-suited to its task. It held the steady pace all the night and full into midday, the sweat darkening its shoulders and neck and flanks, the stallion trailing gamely behind. Just as Elayne was near to begging that they rest the animals, Il Corvo pulled back on the palfrey’s reins and brought it to a halt in the midst of the open road.

The sharp mountains were close now: sheer, jumbled faces of gray rock mantled by dark green brush. And they had begun to seem like mere hills, for beyond them rose peaks such as Elayne had never imagined, massive slopes that faded into clouds and misty distance, robed in green and blue. They were startling, so near to the flat lands of Venice, looming unexpected and majestic.

The pirate looked forward and back along the empty road. Here, the neat vineyards had been abandoned to brush and undergrowth. Weeds bloomed in the derelict hayfields and gave way to overgrown ravines. He made a sound low in his throat, like a man not happily surprised. Slowly he walked the horse along the edge of the road, looking down at the ground.

“This way,” he said. He pulled the uncomplaining palfrey onto a smaller track, through a gap in a rotting wicker fence. The trail led down into a heavily wooded vale.

“Let us pause for midday,” Elayne said as they descended a path among the trees. A cool breeze touched her cheek. “The horses must rest.”

He nodded, lifting his hand. The path rose, and the horses labored uphill. She realized that there were flat paving stones among the weeds, and a terraced edge. A road had once climbed the rise. Against the hill, a wooden hut with a poorly thatched roof stood aslant, as if it might at any moment collapse onto itself.

A woman, holding her face covered up to her eyes with a black mantle, looked out the doorway apprehensively as they approached. She watched them silently. Then her eyes widened, and she dropped the veil. She stepped into the path.

“Saint Agatha’s blessing on you,” the Raven said.

“My lord!” she whispered, and then seemed to recall herself with a start. “Commend you to her goodness!” she responded, bowing down to the ground.

He watched her a moment. “I was not expected, then,” he said softly. “You had no message.”

She lifted her face, young and quite pretty. “Nay, my lord! Nothing!” She looked toward Elayne, and stared as if she were a ghost.

He made a gesture with his head, up the hill. “Bid Gerolamo attend me there.”

“Aye, my lord. But God comfort you! You are hurt.”

“I heal,” he said. “Be quick now.”

She nodded and bowed hurriedly, turning to run down some hidden track among the trees. The palfrey heaved itself up the hill, its head lowered.

Elayne let the stallion follow on a loose rein. As they reached the top, she saw sunlight sparkle ahead through the brush. The view opened suddenly, blindingly… a vast lake, with the sun dazzling across its shimmering surface, a lake so huge that vapor nearly obscured the mountainous shore on the far side. The horses stumbled and lurched down a sharp incline. Their weary hooves sank into pebbly sand. Small waves washed the shoreline, water as crystalline and clear as the Middle Sea, darkening to blue and purple at its heart.

A peninsula ran out from the shore, a low saddle of land thrusting into the lake. At the end of it, like a crown set upon the water, stood a castle—four tall towers and a fifth that surpassed them, strong and beautiful, soaring upward against the mountains and the sky.

A castle—and broken—its crenellated walls breached, its stone harbor torn open, its inner courtyard empty and exposed to the lake’s shimmering reflections.

* * *

The place was deserted, given over to doves and echoes. The towers stood untouched, but no contents had been left within the pale walls. The pirate walked through it silently, without expression. They had left the horses tied on the shore and waded knee-deep, barefoot among reeds and grasses, to reach the arched water-entry. The breached iron gate still lay visible under the crystalline lake, growing streamers of vivid green moss.

Elayne curled her muddy toes, rubbing them clean on a sprig of grass that poked up through sun-warmed pavement. The frescoes on the inner courtyard walls had been spoiled by hammers, the faces of graceful ladies and proud mounted lords hacked and gouged away. The pirate seemed uninterested, passing the great hall and the towers; instead he led her down a stone stair to another water-gate, this one choked with plumy reeds and grasses. Little fish darted between the sunlight and shade, startled by their arrival.

He reached up to a huge lion’s head boss of lead set in the stone. He put his fingers behind the snarling teeth, set one foot against the wall, and with an effort that made the muscles stand in his neck and shoulders, pulled outward. The lion’s head grated away from the wall a tiny distance. He let go, drawing a deep breath, and turned to the water.

At first Elayne saw nothing happen. Then she realized that a dark line was growing at the edge of the small quay. As the water level dropped, a wall appeared, separating the lake from the pool under the arched gate. The reeds at the edge bent and laid down in mud, but the bottom of the pool was deeper. With a gurgling sound, the water line fell, revealing a stair and another arch.

Just inside the arch, under the wall, there was a door.

She recognized it instantly, though the metal had turned black with age. In the relief, the dogs and bear, the shepherd; tarnished but defiant, like the words engraved down the center.
Gardi li mo.

Elayne followed him down the wet stairs in wonder. At the bottom he cast a glance at her, a half-smile in the dun water reflections. “Do you remember?”

Elayne pressed the first letter. She remembered that much. The shepherd’s staff, then the last letter. She reached for the bear. But the pattern had been irregular after that; she could only guess. The darkened bronze gave beneath her fingers as she tried the sheep.

“Nay,” he said, stopping her hand. “Watch again.”

She felt a little ashamed that she had not recalled it correctly. She watched intently as he made the pattern, repeating each letter to herself under her breath. The lock clicked, the panels came apart, though they required some pushing to force them fully open. This door did not give so easily as the one to his island strong-room. He had to put his shoulder against it and shove, wincing as he did it.

A stone stairway lay before them, dry and empty, turning up and up the inside wall of a square tower, a dim, echoing well of stone. Light entered from arrow-slits at each landing, bright beams slanting across the dim height. Doves cooed and rustled somewhere above her, but the floor and stairs were strangely clean.

He closed the door and began to mount the stairs. Elayne hefted her boots under her arm, took a deep breath, and started up after him. Halfway to the top she had to stop and catch her breath, leaning on the plastered wall, looking out the narrow slit through a wall nigh as thick as a man’s height. She could see only a sliver of the lake below.

This was a Navona stronghold. It must have been, with that motto upon the secret door. Though the walls were breached, the gates torn down, it had not been destroyed. Only made unfit for defense. She had read of such, in some of the copies of royal writs among the papers she had studied. It was an insult, a deliberate mark of disdain, to slight the walls in such a way.