He leans in to kiss me but gives a yelp of surprise when he nearly kisses the tip of my knife instead. He grows still and watches me carefully. I feel his pulse beating in his throat, can see his artery throbbing with the blood that flows through it. Slowly I move my knife nearer. I am tempted—so sorely tempted—but he has done nothing wrong and bears no marque. He has not invaded our country, nor does he serve d’Albret. He has not even tried to harm an innocent, for I am no innocent. Of all the lines I have been willing to cross in my life, this is not one of them.
Just as the point of my knife touches the tender skin at his throat, a scream rings out. At first, I think someone has seen me and cried a warning, but the scream is followed by the sound of blows. My heart quickens at the thought of a true fight, and I content myself with simply nicking the chin of the fellow in front of me.
One fat red drop of blood wells up, then falls to the filthy cobbles beneath our feet. “Be gone from here,” I tell him.
Anger flashes in his eyes, and for one moment I think he will reach for his sword. “Be careful of the games you play, my lady,” he says. “Not all will be as forgiving as I.”
I say nothing. When he turns and walks back the way he came, I hurry in the direction of the scream.
It came from downriver, near one of the stone bridges. As I draw closer, the sounds of a struggle reach my ears, and grip my knife more firmly. Cautious now, I move forward. In the shadow of a bridge’s stone footings, two soldiers struggle with a man and a woman. The man’s thin mouth is split and swollen, and his long, sharp nose is bloody. The woman is backed up against the bridge, and one of the soldiers is unlacing his breeches.
It takes but a second for me to recognize that the victims are charbonnerie, which only serves to stoke my fury. Moving on quiet feet, I creep closer. Something feels familiar about the two soldiers, and when the one restraining the man turns to watch his friend, I feel a jolt of recognition. It is Berthelot the Monk, so called because he never touches a woman. Which means the second man must be Gallmau the Wolf, named thus because he cannot leave them alone. Both are d’Albret’s men, and I feel in my bones it cannot be an accident that I have found them.
Killing two of d’Albret’s own will do much to lessen the pain of my breaking heart.
Gallmau is still leering at the woman and taking his time, so I decide to strike Berthelot first. Clinging to the shadows, I move around the bridge’s piling until I am behind the monk. It will be tricky, cutting his throat while he holds the charbonnerie, but the charbonnerie can take a quick dunk in the river to wash away the blood if he must.
Faster than a striking snake, I step forward, grab the man’s hair and yank his head back, then run my knife across his throat, cutting his vocal cords as well as the main arteries. As Berthelot falls to the ground, the charbonnerie stumbles back, managing to pull his arms free just in time so that he does not go down as well. I feel him glance at me, feel the moment that he recognizes me, but I am transfixed by the marque I see on Berthelot’s forehead. I smile then, and turn to Gallmau, who is so engrossed in his lustful activities he has no idea that death is reaching for him. When I am close enough to embrace him, the woman looks over his shoulder and sees me, and her eyes widen. I hold my finger to my lips, then shove my knife into the base of Gallmau’s skull. In truth, this is not the best knife for this sort of job. A thinner knife would slip more easily between the bones of his neck, but I am able to make this work. And keep the blood from ruining the woman’s dress.
To the girl’s credit, she bites back her scream as Gallmau collapses into her arms, and then she shoves the body away so that he falls onto the ground. I peer down, happier than I can say when I see a second marque appear, for that must mean I have not stepped so far outside Mortain’s grace that He no longer reveals His will to me.
I wipe my blade on Gallmau’s cloak, then return it to its sheath and stand up. “Are you all right?” I recognize the thin, dark-haired man as Lazare, the angriest of the charbonnerie. I doubt that this incident has improved his temper any.
“I should have been the one to kill the pigs,” he spits out.
“You can be the one to kill them next time,” I assure him, and then I ask the woman if she is all right. She shakily nods her head. I turn back to Lazare. “Go, wash the blood off in the river before anyone sees. If you come across any other soldiers or the night watch, simply tell them you had too much wine and fell in.”
He stares at me a long moment. Unspoken things move in his eyes. Rage at being preyed on, discomfort at being saved by a mere woman, frustration that he was not the one to avenge their honor. But there is gratitude as well, even if it is begrudging. He gives me a terse nod and does as I instruct. While he is cleaning himself, I ask the woman, “What happened?”
“We were returning from one last delivery, as Erwan wanted to leave at first light, when these two attacked us. They took our money and were going to . . . going to . . . and when Lazare tried to stop them, they beat him. Thank you, my lady. Thank you for arriving just when you did. The Dark Mother was looking out for us.”
“Or Mortain,” I say. “For that is the god I serve, and it was He who led me here to these two.”
The excitement of the hunt has begun to leave and I realize I am tired. So very, very tired. Even so, I take the time to kneel beside the bodies, search for whatever coin they have on them, and give what I find to the woman. “Now go. Collect Lazare and get yourselves back to the others.”
Once I see them on their way, I begin the long walk back to the palace, empty and hollow, nothing but a burned-out ember now that my rage has passed.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
WHEN I REACH MY CHAMBER door, I can feel someone waiting inside. A spurt of panic shoots through me. Is it Beast wanting to confront me? Furious that I even care, I draw a blade from my wrist and open the door.
It is only Ismae, slumped in a chair by the dying fire, and I cannot tell if it is relief or disappointment I feel. At the faint snick of the door closing behind me, she stirs, then blinks awake. “Sybella!” She comes to her feet and takes two steps toward me. “Where have you been?”
I cannot tell her I have been moping over a broken heart when I have worked so hard to convince her I do not have a heart at all, so instead I c**k an eyebrow at her. “Are you going to rail at me for not having told you sooner?”
“No! I’m not surprised the abbess bade you to hold your tongue.” The love and compassion I see on Ismae’s face nearly undoes me.
“It was not the abbess,” I say. The truth begins bubbling out of me like vile humors from a wound. “She never forbade me to tell you. I just . . . could not bring myself to do so. Especially once you’d met d’Albret in Guérande.”
Ismae crosses the distance between us and takes one of my hands in each of her own and gives them a squeeze. I cannot tell if it is meant to show reassurance or exasperation. Mayhap both. “We all have our secrets. And our scars. Annith told me that my first morning at the convent. I have not told you everything about my past either.”
“You haven’t?”
Ismae shakes her head, and I study her to see if this is but a ploy to comfort me.
“I know you were married, and that your father beat you.”
She winces slightly. “Both of those are true, but there is more to my story. I never told you of the poison my mother sought from the herbwitch in order to expel me from her womb. Nor of the long, ugly scar along my back where it burned my flesh. I never spoke of my sister, who feared me, or the village boys who taunted me and called me cruel names. Like you, I was so glad to have escaped, I had no wish to speak of them and taint my new life at the convent with those memories.”
And just like that, she has granted me absolution, declared my crimes against our friendship no crimes at all. I have no words that will let her know how much this means to me. Instead, I smile. “What sort of taunts did they hurl at you?”
Ismae wrinkles her nose and lets go of my hands. “None that I care to repeat.”
“So, then,” I say, changing the subject, “why are you here waiting for me?”
“I was afraid for you.”