The Poison Throne (50 page)

She shook her head at his half-hearted whisper.

No
. She shut her eyes.
No
.

No!
She made up her mind.
No
. She could not do this. She began to fumble with the ties of her knapsack. She
wouldn’t
do it! She wouldn’t sacrifice this lovely man, and everything they meant to each other, all that he had given for her. She wouldn’t sacrifice it all for the sake of politics. She would stay. She would damned well
stay
. What had she been thinking? She would be his comfort and his harbour as he had been for her. She would be with him, right to the very end.

She couldn’t manage the God-cursed knots! She grunted in frustration and began scrabbling at the buckle of her travel belt.

Lorcan was rising slowly to his feet. She sensed him making his unsteady way around the table towards her.

“No, Dad!” she growled without looking at him. “No!” and she tugged clumsily at the buckle of her belt.

He was beside her then. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders, and, still leaning heavily on the table, he pulled her into him, squeezing her tightly against his chest. Wynter buried her face in his shirt. She could feel him trembling. He rested his cheek against the top of her head, and she knew he would let her stay.

“Oh Dad…” she began gratefully, snaking her hands up to wrap them around his neck. But his grip tightened even more and trapped her hands between them. With a groan, Lorcan pushed himself suddenly from the table, sending the two of them staggering sideways, toppling towards the door.

Wynter thought they would fall, and cried out in panic. But Lorcan flung out his free hand and caught them both with one powerful arm against the hall door. He leant there for a moment, panting. Wynter, still clutched against his chest, as helpless as a doll, felt him shaking, his heart beating fast and unsteady.

“Dad!” she pleaded, “No!” She turned her face up against his shirt, trying to push out of his determined grip. “Dad! Please!” He was holding her too close to let her see his face. All that was visible when she finally managed to tilt her head, was his blood-red hair, falling into her face, and the clean-shaven set of his jaw.

“Dad! Dad! Please!”

She felt his breath hitch as he shifted to support himself with one shoulder against the wood, and Wynter heard the awful sound of metal against metal as, one-handed, Lorcan slid the bolt open.

“DAD!” she wailed. “
DAD!
Please!” A tear fell onto her upturned face, and then another one. They were sliding over the clean line of her father’s jaw and they dropped into her eyes, onto her cheeks. She sobbed and Lorcan pushed the two of them away from the wood, almost losing his balance as he drew on the last reserve of his incredible strength to stand back and open the door.

He pulled it open a crack and shifted abruptly to hook his free hand over the top of it. Supporting himself on the door, Lorcan abruptly released Wynter from his powerful grip and pushed her through the narrow gap into the hall.

“No! No!” She clung desperately to him. But he was determined and had already started to close the door and withdraw his arm. Wynter’s hands slipped from his shoulder to his elbow. He continued to pull his arm back, she clung to his powerful forearm, he pulled back. Their fingers squeezed for a moment. And then Lorcan pulled his hand free, and shut the door in her face.

He drew the bolt. He turned the key in the lock.

Wynter clung to the wood, tears streaming down her face. She listened. There was no sound from within.

“Dad,” she whispered. “Dad.”

“Please…” he said softly, his voice muffled as if his face was pressed to the other side of the door.

Wynter shut her eyes and sobbed.

“Please…” he said again. “Go…”

Wynter spread her hands against the wood and pressed her forehead to the door. Tears dripped from her face, dropping to the stones at her feet. She nodded.

“Goodbye, Dad,” she whispered. “I love you.”

There was no more sound from inside the room. She pressed her ear to the door and faintly, very faintly, she heard a long slow slide against the wood, as if her father had run his hand down the panel on the other side.

Slowly, every movement a supreme act of will, Wynter pushed herself back. She stood for one last moment, one hand still on the door. Then she dropped her head, let her hand fall to her side, and walked stiffly away.

The Uncharted Path

W
ynter stood, staring at the jostling line of people as the gate guards meticulously checked each egress paper. The midday sun blasted down on her straw hat, throwing a stark shadow across her blank face. Her tell-tale hair was hidden beneath her dark hood; she had pulled the legs of her britches out to hide her expensive riding boots. She was just another whey-faced servant girl in travel clothes, patiently waiting in line. She was Madge Butterfield, to be precise, Under Pot-girl and Scour, fully papered, courtesy of Marni, and legitimately released from work to head home and tend her sickly mother.

The gates were unusually busy for midday in the summer. Dust rose in choking clouds from the shuffling feet and the restless horses and the wagons, and most people had their faces covered. It was Progress Day and people had been trickling from the complex all morning, heading into the town for the two day fair. Wynter suspected that Razi had specifically chosen this uncomfortable time to depart, so that he could do so in the relative safety of a big crowd. She knew he would travel with only a small band of men, probably in disguise, and once outside the complex they would simply melt into the eternal chaos of the Port Road.

A small band of Musulman boys and women strolled up the gravel path, chatting amiably amongst themselves. At first Wynter had thought that they had come to see Razi off, and it had puzzled her. Much like everyone else in Jonathon’s kingdom, the Musulmen had no idea what to do with Razi. Like everyone else, they paid court to him for his position and power, but many of them thoroughly disapproved of the man they called The Prince Who Would Not Pray.

Wynter watched them as they took their places at the end of the queue, and realised that they were waiting their turn to leave. A pilgrimage then, or an extended family heading to some wedding or another. The women chattered happily, the men laughed and jostled, their faces covered against the appalling dust. One of their number hurried up the gravel path to join them, pulling his keffiyeh tight across his face. He got a gentle ribbing in Arabic for being late, and quietly joined the other men, his head ducking under the heavy tide of good-natured insults. Their happy, familial camaraderie filled Wynter’s chest with black despair and she turned bleakly away as the line moved forward.

Everyone fell quiet at the sound of horses cantering up the drive, and the whole queue stepped back and turned as one. They watched silently as the royal travel party trotted up and stayed their horses under the gate-arch. Wynter shrank back into the crowd and peered up from under the brim of her hat.

Razi sat, remote and imperious at the heart of a small group of well armed men. He was dressed in the Bedouin robes that he had always preferred, and his head and face were protected from the sun and dust by a pale blue keffiyeh. Only his beautiful eyes were visible, hooded and reserved. His horse stamped and snorted and shook its magnificent head, and Razi gazed out into the middle distance as though none of this concerned him. One of his men leapt from his own mount and handed papers into the gatehouse. He pulled his keffiyeh from his face as the guard checked the papers and Wynter recognised Simon De Rochelle. She was filled with a mixture of nervousness and relief for her friend. Thank God he didn’t have to travel under the dubious protection of Jonathon’s hate-filled men, but at the same time, De Rochelle? He was as oily and as self-serving as a cat. She glanced at Razi, and her heart filled with fear for him.

De Rochelle accepted the papers from the satisfied guard and remounted. All the gate guards snapped a neat salute, and Razi paid them no more heed than he would a dog as he urged his horse forward through the open horse-gate and into the blistering sun. The party clattered unhurriedly over the drawbridge and set off uphill, allowing the thin stream of travellers to set the pace for their horses.

Wynter handed her papers to the guard, her eyes glued to the small knot of riders as they climbed the hill. The guard tossed the papers back at her and turned to the next in line. Wynter passed under the horse-gate and set off at a quick walk. She did not falter as she left the protective shadow of the gate-arch. She did not look back. But a small piece of her tore away as her feet left the bouncing timbers of the drawbridge, and she felt her heart begin to bleed as she took to the dust-laden road to town.

Razi was still in sight when she got to the inn, his party a good distance away, but easily discernible as the only group of men on horseback in the predominantly pedestrian and cart-filled road. She glanced at them as she entered the stable-yard, and then looked around for Marni’s nephew. There was no mistaking him. He was Marni with a beard. She caught his eye as he wrestled a recalcitrant hog into a sty, and she made Marni’s special hand signal to let him know who she was. He nodded almost imperceptibly and disappeared into the stable, returning moments later with Ozkar, who snorted and blew lippy kisses at the sight and smell of his mistress.

“Good lad,” she murmured to the horse and thumped him on the neck and rubbed his whiskered nose. “Good boy.” She checked him quickly, but he was in good condition and fresh, and he had obviously not been standing around full-saddled for more than ten minutes or so. She nodded gratefully at the big red-headed man and he gravely cupped his hands to give her a leg up into the saddle.

When she was seated and just clucking the horse forward, the man placed his hand on the horse’s neck and murmured softly. “Tanty sayed to tell you, take care, Lady. She sayed to tell you, nort to be a bleddy fool.” He blushed at the message, but Wynter smiled at him.

“Tell your aunt that I love her, Goodman, tell her that I am for ever in her debt…” she hesitated, “ask her please… ask her please, to take care of my father.”

He nodded gravely again and stood back as Wynter urged Ozkar out onto the road.

She hesitated momentarily as the thin crowd flowed past her, and she watched Razi’s distant figure as the gap between them grew. If she were to follow her father’s carefully thought-out plan, she would fall in behind the slow-moving travel party, and trail them all the way to down the Port Road and then a good deal of the way to Padua. Three weeks into their journey, when they were halfway across the mountains, and there was no fear of Razi sending her back, Wynter would have thrown herself on his mercy and put herself under his wing, travelling the rest of the way with him to Padua and starting a new life there within his protection.

Wynter watched as Razi nudged his horse through the crowds, his pale blue keffiyeh a bright spot of colour above the hanging drifts of yellow dust. She was choked with fear for him, travelling, as he was, surrounded by men he did not trust, into a life so utterly beyond his control. She shut her eyes against the desire to go to him and turned her horse into the crowd, nudging against the main flow of the traffic and heading back in the direction of the palace.

Ten minutes later, Wynter paused at a small crossroads and looked at the thin ribbon of road that led away to her left. Barely populated with traffic, it wound off across a narrow belt of pasture before quickly rising up, climbing the hilly slope and disappearing into heavy forest. She could almost hear the bandits and purse-lifts coming to attention at the smell of a woman taking this path alone. She took a deep and terrified breath, and glanced back up the road to town. Razi was well out of sight, gone from her, perhaps for ever. Behind her the palace crouched over the horizon. Her father lay clutched in its poisonous heart, abandoned and deceived and ailing, completely at the mercy of his wilful and unpredictable royal friend. She turned her head in his direction, trying to imagine him, praying he was well.

It is not too late
, her mind whispered temptingly.
You can turn back. Just urge the horse in either direction and you will be safe and protected and not alone
.

Wynter looked longingly towards the palace. The crowds were thinning now, as most of the travellers were well on their way to the fair. Soon she would be alone on this road, for the first time in her life, conspicuous and vulnerable, with no one but herself to rely on. She was the wrong sex for this task, she was the wrong age, she could not do this. She couldn’t.

Blinking, Wynter dropped her head and looked at her trembling hands.
I cannot do this
, she repeated,
I want to go home
. Even as she was thinking it, she urged her horse forward and he obligingly nudged through the last of the stragglers and stepped from the main road and onto the rutted little tributary that led to the mountains.

A few people turned to glance at the dark-clad woman as she wound her solitary way down the track. Most that looked her way just turned back without even registering her. But some few, particularly the women, likely felt a twinge of sympathetic alarm.
What can that girl be thinking!
they might have gasped,
is she mad? And they would have crossed themselves or knocked their foreheads or made some other warding sign, that they might never find themselves in such a situation
.

For who would choose to be alone and without their men like that, heading away from the comfort of civil-folk and out into the cut-throat wilds? Some of them could not stop watching as the young woman trotted away from them. It was a morbid fascination that kept drawing their attention, so that they craned their necks back to keep track of her. She was travelling at a good pace, though, and it was not long before she disappeared up the winding path, to be swallowed into the treacherous depths of the bandit-laden forest and the company of wolves.