The Dread Wyrm (Traitor Son Cycle) (62 page)

The Queen called out. “I’m sorry to be so helpless, Blanche, but I am so hungry…”

Blanche had no idea where to get food, and she didn’t want to interrupt Nell.

The Red Knight came back and managed to set the full bucket down by the fire without spilling a drop.

“My lord, can you—fetch some food for her grace?” Blanche hesitated. It was always dangerous, giving any kind of a demand to a lord. “I’m sorry, my lord, but it’s for the Queen.”

“Ser Gabriel will do,” he said. “We did share a saddle all day. Your grace,” he said, bowing in the Queen’s direction, “what do you fancy that I can find for you? I wouldn’t wake my worst enemy right now for service.”

The Queen stretched out a hand and took his. “You saved us,” she said.

Ser Gabriel knelt.

“Ghause…” the Queen said.

Gabriel cleared his throat. Blanche thought he might have sobbed. “She tried to kill you and the babe,” he said.

“And now?” the Queen asked.

“I fear she is dead—though not through our efforts.” Gabriel’s smile
was shaky in the firelight, and Blanche turned away, unwilling to watch. “I hope it is not treason to want my mother not on my conscience.”

“Your
mother
is
dead
?” the Queen asked. “Oh, ser knight, I’m so sorry.”

“If you are so sorry immediately after she tried to kill you and your baby,” he said savagely, “then you are a saint.”

Desiderata smiled. “A hungry saint,” she said with a glance at Sister Amicia. “She is watching in the
aethereal
.”

Ser Gabriel put a hand on her forehead with great tenderness. “In the Wild—when a Power reaches a certain—level—”

Desiderata nodded. “I know. Apotheosis.”

Gabriel looked at Amicia. “I think she’s close.” He shrugged, trying to make light of it. “What happens to Christians? Sainthood?”

Desiderata smiled. “She will not leave us just yet, ser knight,” she said with serene confidence, as if…

… as if someone else were speaking through her. Blanche shivered. She knew the Queen intimately—and the Queen was somehow
different
.

But Ser Gabriel merely bowed. “Can I help you with a hale winter apple, some sausage and a nice hard cheese?” he asked.

Blanche busied herself with the water. She served the Queen two cups and put a third at her elbow. Then she put the rest on to heat in a big, often-patched copper cauldron that seemed to have more rivets than a porcupine had quills. It held water well enough, though.

She stirred her first laundry load and skimmed the foulest crud off the top.

Ser Gabriel came back with food. At the first scent of the sausage, Blanche realized that she, too, was famished.

He knelt by the Queen and fed her.

While she was chewing, he asked, “Can you ride tomorrow, your grace?”

Blanche put a hand to her throat, but the Queen managed a chuckle.

“I guess I’ll have to, won’t I?” she asked. “De Vrailly won’t give me a day to rest.”

Ser Gabriel was cutting sausage with his eating knife. “I fancy it is the archbishop at the root of this, and not poor de Vrailly.”

“Poor de Vrailly?” Desiderata asked, and the open malice in her voice was the Queen that Blanche knew. Human. And angry.

“He’s a pawn,” Ser Gabriel said. “We are all pawns.”

“Now you sound like de Rohan,” she said. “Yes, I can ride tomorrow. Or right now, if you let me have more cheese first. Promise me you’ll feed Blanche, too. She’s done nothing but ride and work all day.”

Ser Gabriel nodded. He put the last piece of cheese in her mouth as if she was an infant. “I can give you about eight more hours,” he said. “Unless the news is bad.”

“Worse than the death of your mother?” Desiderata asked. “I’m sorry, that was pert.”

Ser Gabriel managed a smile. “Yes. Many things could be worse. Mater and I seldom saw eye to eye.”

“You saved me,” Desiderata said again. “I will never forget it.”

Ser Gabriel chuckled. It was a dark sound with no pleasure in it. “Can I tell you something?” he asked. He was cutting the apple into slices.

Blanche suspected that they’d forgotten she was there, but as a servant to royals, she was used enough to the feeling. But the Red Knight’s manner scared her.

The knife paused on the apple.

“Yes, if you will,” Desiderata said.

“My mother wanted me to be King,” he said.

Desiderata’s breath was loud.

The small eating knife rested against the apple’s skin. And cut.

“It is the deepest irony,” the Red Knight said, “that on the very night of her death, I have you and your babe under my hand.”

He reached out, a piece of apple pressed to the knife blade by the pressure of his thumb. The knife blade passed within a fraction of an inch of the Queen’s mouth and all but rested on her cheek as he pressed the apple slice between her lips.

The Queen’s eyes were locked on his.

Sweet Christ, he seemed so nice.

Blanche was moving, but she was too far away.

“You never wanted to be King,” Desiderata said. If the knife troubled her, she didn’t give a sign. Blanche’s lunge was checked by the pail of water, over which she tripped.

Both heads turned. The Red Knight rose, cut the last piece of apple in half, gave the Queen one part and ate the other himself. He shook his head. “The world is an odd place, your grace,” he said. “Nothing is what it seems, and few things worth having are easy to have. I suppose there is a man who, finding the power of Alba under his horse’s hooves on the road, would abandon everything he’s ever done to make himself King.” He bowed, but somehow his glance collected Blanche. He gave her a hand and helped her up. “The Queen is in no danger from me, Lady Blanche. I am not my mother.”

Desiderata smiled—and it was like her old smile, full of a woman’s provocative wisdom. “But you wanted me to know,” she said.

The Red Knight shrugged. “I suppose. There’s no one else to share the jest save Blanche. Lady Blanche, I’ll fetch you some food.”

“I’m not a lady,” she hissed at his back. Her heart was beating very fast.

She had really thought he was about to kill the Queen.

When he was gone, the Queen’s face sagged. “Oh, blessed Virgin, give me strength,” she said. She managed a tired smile at Blanche. “Oh, he scared me, too, Blanche.” She looked around. “We need a Royal Standard, Blanche.”

Blanche laughed. “Your grace, I’m a fine hand with a needle, but even I couldn’t run up a gold dragon tonight.”

She held a cup of water for her mistress to drink, and used a cleanish spot on her kirtle to wipe the Queen’s lips. “Sleep, your grace. I don’t think he’d actually… but I’ll still attend you.”

“Nonsense, my dear. Go sleep. He’s not as dangerous as he—”

Ser Gabriel came in. He had a tray this time—a tray which proved to be an archer’s leather and steel buckler full of bread and cheese and apples.

He motioned to Blanche.

She looked at the Queen, but her eyes were already closed. Her babe lay on her breast with his eyes tightly shut and mouth slightly open.

Blanche glanced back at the Red Knight, who beckoned her. She shut the door to the Queen’s chamber behind her. There was a small stall—probably the abode of a favoured riding horse—just off the passage. He had a camp stool and an upturned barrel there and he set the food down.

“May I join you?” he asked.

“I’m not gentry,” she said. “You don’t have to waste your fine manners on me.”

“Alas, once started they’re very hard to turn off.” He sat on a leather trousseau rather suddenly, as if his knees had given way.

“Does all your chivalry extend to terrifying my mistress, then?” she asked.

He looked at her. His eyes were queer in the darkness—almost like a cat’s. He took out a knife—the same knife—and began to cut another apple into slices. He held one out to her and she took it without thinking and ate it. The apple was tart and hard despite a winter in a cold cellar, and she could not stop herself from seizing the next two slices he offered, greedily.

His mouth made a strange shape—neither smile nor frown. “Sometimes, things need to be said, between people of power,” he said. “Even between lovers, or parents. Things that show intent, or honesty. Or simply draw a line, for everyone’s peace.” He sat back, so his face was hidden, except his odd eyes.

It occurred to Blanche that he was giving her a real answer. It was like when her mother had first spoken to her as a woman. Heady stuff. She was alone with him. She suspected his motives. But he was interesting.

“You had to tell her that you could kill her and be King?” she asked. She was into the cheese.

So was he. “Do you think she’d rather go to sleep wondering what was on my mind?” he asked. “Or knowing?”

Blanche chewed. “Depends,” she said.

“Too true,” he said. “The bread’s stale.”

“I’ve had stale bread before,” she said, and took a slice. It was good bread, if a day or two old. “We lived in Cheapside.”

He poured wine into a somewhat crumpled silver cup. “We’ll have to
share,” he said. “I tried to find Wilful’s cup, or Michael’s, but I couldn’t in the dark.”

She murmured a prayer and drank. The wine was dark red and had a lovely taste, almost as if it had cinnamon in it, with a little sweetness.

“Does your company always eat and drink this well?” she asked.

His teeth flashed. “Good food and good wine recruit more men—and women—than silver and gold,” he said. “When Jehan and Sauce and I started the company, we agreed we’d always have good food.” He said, “My father always fed his men…” And stopped, his face working. He put his face in his hands for a moment, and she wondered if he was laughing, but she thought perhaps—not.

She rose to her knees and handed him the wine cup. He took it carefully—so carefully that he didn’t touch her. Blanche was used to a more forward kind of boy and dismissed her earlier suspicions of his intentions.

She wondered what it would be like to be his mistress. Was he rich? He was likely to be the Queen’s captain for some time. He had nice manners—nicer than the court gallants she’d known.

She almost giggled aloud at such an absurd fantasy. Blanche, the laundry mistress, was more like her speed.

“You drank all the wine!” he said in mock annoyance. He had cried, then. Odd man. And now, like all men, sought to pretend he hadn’t.

“I didn’t mean to,” she said.

“You tell that to all your boys,” he said.

She blushed, but it was dark. “I’m so sorry, my lord,” she said. “I should go look at the Queen. The wine was very good.”

“Your servant, Lady Blanche,” he said.

He rose—for a moment she thought he might…

Then he was past her, holding the door. “Since you tumbled the last bucket,” he said wryly, “I’ll draw another before I rest.”

He came back with the bucket, and with Nell, who had a straw palliasse over her arms and her boy in tow. The two of them made her a bed at the foot of the Queen’s. Nell looked well pleased—Blanche, in passing, plucked a straw out of her hair. Diccon, her young man, was diligent in avoiding his captain’s glance.

The Red Knight nodded, and went out the door.

Blanche fell onto her pallet and was asleep before she could think.

Gabriel fell into the straw next to his brother. Gavin muttered something. He’d been kind enough to leave room and two blankets. Gabriel refused to think about Ticondaga or all the errors he’d made—because if he stayed awake mourning, the morrow would be worse.

He closed his eyes. Smiled at a thought instead of weeping, and
went into his palace of power. There—in the cold, clear world of the
aethereal
—he could work his own sleep.

“You need to sleep,” Pru said.

“That’s what I’m here for,” he said.

He cast a simple working, using only two symbols and one statue. Pru’s hands moved, and he was asleep.

“Gabriel—they want you. Gabriel—get up!”

Gabriel surfaced slowly. His self-imposed working was strong enough to keep him down unless he made an effort of will. The effort of will broke the working, but it also brought him a flood of images.

“Ohh,” he said. He moaned. “Oh, noooooo.”

Mater, dead. Ticondaga—destroyed. Thorn, triumphant. The Queen. Amicia.

“Fuck,” he said.

“Sorry.” Gavin was shaking him. “It is Dan Favour, from Gelfred, and he says it has to be you.”

“Fuck,” he said again. He sat up. His eyes filled with tears and he banished them as best he could.

He rose from his blankets in shirt and hose and climbed over the rest of his lance and his
casa
sleeping in a small loft. Nell cursed him. Gavin had a taper lit and handed it to him.

“I’m going back to sleep,” he said.

Gabriel wished he had that power. Instead he went down a ladder and then out to the main area of the barn, where long lines of men and women lay in rows on straw bundles or pallets. The barn was a cacophony of snores and heavy breathing.

The outside air was sharp and cold. He saw Ser Danved in full harness, standing watch with his lance by the road. Cully was dressed. He was buckling his sword belt while he talked to young Favour, who was head to toe in a dark green that looked mostly black in the fitful torchlight.

Cully gave a sketchy salute. “Sorry, Cap’n,” he said. “But you ha’ to hear this your own sel’.”

Favour knelt on one knee. “My lord,” he said. “Ser Gelfred ordered me to find you—he sent ten of us out. We have the main column formed as you ordered, south of Lorica.” He looked at Cully. “But there’s already an army on the roads—Galles and Albans and much of what’s left of the Royal Guard. More’n a thousand lances, my lord.”

Cully had the captain’s case, and he unrolled a map. It was not very accurate, because it had been designed merely to give a traveller distances from various towns to Harndon.

“At last light, de Vrailly was at Second Bridge,” Favour said.

“Get to the bad part,” Cully said.

Favour cleared his throat. “There’s banners with de Vrailly,” he said. “Towbray’s banners.”

Gabriel struggled to be awake. “Towbray? He’s in the dungeons—”