I looked forward to killing him.
He circled around to my left, angling to get the rising sun in my eyes. It made me smile. Elua knew, Astegal wasn’t going to defeat me that way. I pivoted right on my good leg and positioned myself behind him. He jumped to face me before I had a chance to land a blow.
“What the hell are you smiling at?” Astegal growled.
“You,” I said simply.
His left arm snaked forward, folds of cloak unwinding in the direction of my face. I ignored it and parried the low thrust I knew would come beneath it. His breathing quickened as he took a step backward and rewound his cloak around his arm. For the first time, I saw fear in him.
We traded a few blows, testing one another. If Astegal had had a shield, we might have been evenly matched. We weren’t. I didn’t press him yet. I didn’t want to risk making any mistakes, fearful that my leg would give out beneath me if I made a careless move. But when I parried his blows with ease, I saw the realization dawn on him that he was truly in grave danger.
He was good with a sword.
I was better.
Still, Astegal was a fighter. He sought to goad me as I’d goaded him, sending a pointed glance in Sidonie’s direction.
“Very romantic, seeking to defend your beloved,” he said smoothly. “She’s a wanton little thing, isn’t she?”
I didn’t answer.
He essayed a quick jab at my face, hoping to force me off balance. I held my ground and parried, sweeping his blade to one side. “So willing and eager,” Astegal said, taking a step backward to regroup. He licked his lips. “She tastes sweet like honey.”
I kept silent, holding my sword angled before me.
Astegal’s expression hardened. He came at me fast and our blades crossed and locked. Both of us strained for leverage. My left leg trembled. I tensed my muscles and willed it to steadiness. He leaned toward me, close as a lover. “She suckled my root like no one has ever done,” he whispered in a confidential tone. “I miss that.”
I held my tongue.
Patience.
“Betimes . . .” Astegal raised his voice. “Betimes when I was finished with her, she would beg me for more.” The crowd around us murmured. He searched my face for a reaction and found none. I felt frustration weaken his resolve and took a quick step backward, resettling myself. “Gods!” Astegal spread his arms slightly, dropping his guard. “And you call yourself a man?”
I plunged my sword hilt-deep into his belly. “I do.”
Astegal’s mouth gaped. The executioner’s sword dropped from his nerveless right hand. For a moment he merely stood and swayed. Then he sank slowly to his knees. And as he sank, I withdrew my blade with a ruthless wrench.
“All that passion you’re so quick to boast of didn’t belong to you, Astegal,” I said in a cold voice. “It never did. You took it and twisted it to your own ends, you and Bodeshmun. And I will tell you what I told him while I watched him die. It is not wise to meddle with D’Angelines in matters of love.”
On his knees, Astegal grimaced and clutched the wound in his belly with both hands, holding his entrails in place. “You promised me a warrior’s death,” he said hoarsely. “Grant me the mercy of the battlefield and make it swift.”
“Mercy.” I placed the tip of my blood-stained blade over his heart. “Mercy is not mine to grant.” I turned my head toward Sidonie and addressed her formally. She was my beloved, but she was also the Dauphine of Terre d’Ange. “Your highness?”
If there was anyone present who would have denied her the right, they stayed silent. I would have given her the sword if she had wished. Instead, Sidonie approached and laid her hand over mine on the hilt.
We would do this together.
She gazed down at Astegal. When she spoke, her voice was cool and venomous. “How fitting that in the end you should plead for the sweet release of one final thrust.”
Astegal didn’t reply. Through the pain that racked his features, I saw a complex mix of emotions: anger, shame, bitterness, and regret. I couldn’t see Sidonie’s expression, and mayhap it was just as well.
Sidonie’s hand tightened on mine.
Together we drove the blade home and granted Astegal mercy. I could feel a shudder the length of the blade as he died. Sidonie never flinched.
Sixty-Seven
On the heels of Astegal’s death, there was a great outcry of bloodthirsty cheers in the plaza. It hadn’t been Aragonian justice, but it had been a spectacle beyond their wildest dreams. The executioner dragged Astegal’s lifeless body into place, positioning his head on the chopping-block. He retrieved his sword with grim determination and hewed Astegal’s head from his body.
At that Sidonie turned away and hid her face against my chest. I held her gently. Astegal would have been a tyrant, but she’d believed herself in love with him for long months. In the beginning she had seen glimmers of nobility in him about which she still wondered.
I understood.
The executioner mounted Astegal’s head on a long pike. I found myself thinking once more of Berlik. He’d looked peaceful in death. Astegal didn’t. He looked sad and foolish, his face fixed in a grimace. His mouth hung open, his narrow crimson beard looking like blood drooling over his chin. His heavy-lidded eyes were half-open, showing the whites.
“Behold!” Serafin L’Envers y Aragon shouted. “This is the fate of those who would seek to conquer Aragonia!”
The crowd roared their approval. Sidonie shivered and raised her head.
“Are you—” I began.
“I’m all right,” she said. “Or I will be.” She searched my face. “You could have killed him cleanly, couldn’t you?”
“Yes.” I didn’t elaborate.
“You keep your promises,” Sidonie murmured. “Thank you.”
“Shall we go home?” I asked.
She nodded. “Please.”
It was a few hours before we were able to depart. Captain Deimos didn’t have his new ship in full readiness. Lady Nicola insisted that her chirurgeon tend to the cut Astegal had inflicted on Sidonie’s throat. It wasn’t serious, but it was deep enough to warrant bandaging.
“I am so perishing sick of blood,” Sidonie said as I washed the dried residue from her throat and chest while we waited for Rachel.
“So am I, love,” I said. “So am I.”
It was a bit before noon when Kratos came from the harbor to report that Deimos’ ship was ready to sail. I greeted him with pleasure. His blunt, homely face was filled with awe.
“I wasn’t able to get close enough to see,” Kratos said. “But I heard how you killed that bastard.”
“It’s done,” Sidonie said.
“Done, and done well.” He pointed a thick finger at her. “You and my lord here did exactly what was needful. Don’t you ever be ashamed of it, your highness. Not for one instant of one day.”
It made her smile, which gladdened me. “Thank you, Kratos. I’m not. I just want to go home and see my own country safe.”
A sizable party assembled to escort us to the harbor. We said our farewells there on the docks. Another leavetaking, but at least this one wasn’t fraught with deadly peril. Elua willing, we would live to see one another again in times of peace.
“We will pray that the news be swift and joyous,” Lady Nicola said. “For all our sakes. It will be much easier to effect a diplomatic resolution with Carthage if Terre d’Ange stands behind us once more.”
“We will do our best to make it so,” Sidonie promised.
In the end there was little left to say that hadn’t already been said. We boarded the ship and Captain Deimos gave the order to raise the anchor. The rowers leaned their backs over the banks of oars. Within a few minutes, we were under way, leaving the harbor we’d entered in flames. Sidonie and Kratos and I stood on the deck and watched the figures on shore dwindle.
“Terre d’Ange!” Kratos marveled. “Not a sight I ever thought to see.”
Sidonie looked worried. “Pray we find her whole.”
It was a slow journey. The sea was far more calm than when we’d essayed it before and the winds less forbidding, but it was still rough going. Deimos kept us in sight of land and we crawled up the coast of Aragonia. During the days, Sidonie and I passed the time by beginning to teach Kratos the rudiments of D’Angeline.
The nights, we had to ourselves.
On the first night, she was quiet and withdrawn. I let her be and waited for her to speak. She’d learned what it was like to feel a man die by her hand that day. No matter how much Astegal had deserved his death, it was a grave thing. And I had a good idea that it wasn’t the only thing troubling her.
“I keep thinking on it,” Sidonie said at length. “Watching him die. Betimes it sickens me. And then I think about what he said to you today . . .” Her jaw tightened. “And I wish I could kill him all over again.”
“He said it only to goad me,” I said.
Her shoulders moved in a slight shrug. “It was true, though.”
“I know.” I ran a lock of her hair through my fingers. “I know, love. And I’m so very sorry for it. I swear, while there is breath in my body, I will never suffer anyone to hurt you again in word or deed.”
She sighed. “Do you suppose that when we tell our brooding, haughty horde the glorious tale of their parents’ exploits, we might leave that part out of it?”
I smiled in the dim light of the cabin. “I think we might.”
The following day dawned as fair as the previous one. I hobbled through my Cassiline exercises on the deck, reckoning it was better to keep the muscles of my leg from stiffening. Sidonie commented on the likely folly of such a notion, but she didn’t try to dissuade me. Instead she watched. As I told the hours, I caught glimpses of her standing against the railing, the sea breeze tugging at her honey-gold hair and the pretty blue scarf Lady Nicola had given her to hide the bandage around her throat. When I finished, I limped over to join her.
“You look pained,” she observed.
“It hurts,” I admitted.
Sidonie cocked her head. “How badly?”
I felt the blood quicken in my veins. “If you’re asking what I think, not that badly, Sun Princess.”
“You promised me a hundred thousand nights if Blessed Elua spared you.” She took my right hand in hers and raised it to her lips, kissing my knuckles. “Imriel, Astegal is dead. Whatever he said, whatever he did, whatever I did . . . it doesn’t matter. It’s over. And I mean to begin putting it behind me.”
“With my help?” I inquired.
She nodded gravely, but there was a wicked spark of humor and passion lurking deep in her black eyes—still there, wondrously unextinguished. “Oh, yes. A great deal of it.”
The days passed slowly.
The nights fled.
It was a strange time, suspended between one thing and another. Both of us were grateful to be alive. Both of us were fearful of what we would find in Terre d’Ange. We were both haunted by our memories. Some of them, like our flight from New Carthage and the terrible carnage outside the walls of Amílcar, were shared. Some weren’t. Sidonie bore the stigma of her time as Astegal’s willing bride. And the nearer we drew to Terre d’Ange, the more I remembered my time of madness there, the awful things I’d said to those I loved.
But we were able to lose ourselves in each other.
It was a gift of Blessed Elua, and of Naamah, whose blessing I’d sought before our first liaison. I felt their presence attendant on our love-making, which was by turns tender and violent. Once nights had been my bane, the province of bloody nightmares that woke me screaming.
Now they were my joy.
It lasted all the way up the coast of Aragonia and well after we’d passed the mountains and caught sight of Terre d’Ange’s coastline, a sight that made my heart swell. It lasted until the morning we drew near the mouth of the Aviline River and saw a fleet of dozens of war-ships clustered there, anchored offshore outside the harbor of Pellasus. The town was smaller than Marsilikos, but it did a lively trade with ships bound up the Aviline. These weren’t trade-ships and the pennants flying from their masts were not the silver swan of House Courcel, but solely the lily-and-stars of Terre d’Ange itself.
“What does that mean?” I asked Sidonie.
She wore her troubled look. “I’d say it’s an indication that they’re not in the service of the Crown. It’s not an auspicious sign. Do you think Nuno failed to deliver the key?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
One of them raised its sails and hailed us, heading out in our direction. “Your highness?” Captain Deimos inquired. “What will you?”
Sidonie and I exchanged a glance. “If the country’s still torn apart, we’re better off dealing with those not in the Crown’s service,” I said. “And it’s not as though we could outrun an entire fleet.”
“Wait for them,” she said to Deimos.
We lowered our sails and waited as the D’Angeline war-ship made its way alongside us. I felt ungodly tense, and although Sidonie’s face was composed, I knew she felt the same way.
“Hey!” A sturdy fellow aboard the war-ship shouted through cupped hands in crude Aragonian. “What passes? Is anyone speak D’Angeline?” And then the ship drew nearer, the gap closing between us. He caught sight of Sidonie and me. His hands fell and he stared. Everyone on the war-ship stared.
Separately, they might not have known us, not for a surety. None of them had seen us before. But I bore the unmistakable stamp of House Shahrizai on my face, and Sidonie looked enough like her mother that they’d seen the like of her profile on a thousand coins.