“Do you like to hunt the deer, then?” she said as she went up to him.
“Only in the season of the year,” he answered. Correctly.
Her knees were weak with relief. She vowed inwardly that she would never do this again.
“Christ, you stink,” he said.
She stood frozen. She didn’t know what whores did; did she sit down?
He glanced up. “Don’t sit. We’re not friends.” He gave her a very small smile, as if to soften the words. “Beer?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. “I was attacked,” she said softly.
He shrugged, as if people were attacked every day, which might have been his notion of the world. He waggled a finger and a tall, heavyset man appeared with the bushiest eyebrows Lessa had ever seen.
“A pint of bitter for the whore,” her mission said. “And someplace I can get my business done.”
“Not in my place,” the keeper said, shaking his head. “We’re a royal inn.”
The man at the table leaned back and showed a golden leopard in his hand.
“Perhaps you’d like a room?” the keeper suggested wearily.
“If I must,” the bastard at the table said. “A kitchen bench is more her speed.”
“Not in my kitchen,” the keeper said. He vanished.
“You have to dress better to come in here,” the bastard said. He shook his head. “This is bad enough already.”
Lessa shrugged. She was afraid all over again. Because a man with a sword, in a room with a lock, could go very badly for her, and no one was going to come and help her.
At the top of the inn stairs, when he glanced into the room, she paused.
“I’m no whore,” she said softly.
He raised an eyebrow. “I know,” he said, and went into the room.
She followed, and he closed the door behind her.
“Get rid of that overgown,” he ordered her.
She shook her head.
“Mary Magdalene, girl!” he spat. “I won’t rape you. My word on it. But you stink like a sheep a week in the grave.”
She stripped off the overgown.
He threw it out the window. “I’ll give you my cloak,” he said. “So, here we are.”
“My friend wants to meet your friend,” she said.
“My friend is watched night and day,” the man said. “And your friend’s the most wanted man in the kingdom.”
Lessa shrugged. “Our friends want the same thing,” she said. Although personally, she didn’t think it true. She knew that the voice, that shadowy demon thing that talked to Tyler, had ordered him to make this approach. She knew because she listened in the night. They lived with beggars; there was no privacy. She knew why she was here, and she didn’t fully agree with it.
The man with the grey beard frowned. “I’m not sure of that at all,” he said, as if echoing her thoughts. “My friend is a loyal servant of the queen.”
“Really?” Lessa asked with more tartness than she ought to use. “Then why are you meeting me at all?”
The question hung in the air.
There was a knock at the door, and the man rose from the chair, went, and fetched two earthenware cups and a pitcher of ale from the keeper.
“Shall I pour?” he asked with old-fashioned courtesy.
Lessa nodded.
He handed her the bitter and she took a sip, and then more, with gratitude. She felt better immediately.
The man smiled. “That’s a proper mug,” he said. “Aye, you’re a sharp one. I didn’t expect a woman, and I didn’t expect a whore, and I didn’t expect a witty answer like yon. So … mayhap you and your friend know a thing or two. What’s the game?”
She looked at him. If he was false, then once she said the words, she was a dead woman. But Tyler was in a hurry, and she had, for her sins, volunteered. It seemed stupid now.
“We kill the queen and her babe,” she said. “Towbray becomes king, and we’re all pardoned. An’ we weren’t born yesterday; we get guarantees so that we don’t find ourselves dancing in halters at your friend’s coronation.”
The man flushed. “Treason,” he said.
“Your friend’s hobby,” she mocked.
“Fuck you, witch,” he said. But he didn’t come at her. She sat, and was afraid, despite her mouth, which usually ran away with her. And how did he know she had Power?
“You aren’t a whore,” he said. “You’re not even a peasant.”
“Right now I’m a fucking beggar,” she said.
“You’re the only beggar in Harndon who pronounces all the letters in fucking,” he said. He took a long pull on his bitter. “Noble?”
“Not your business,” she said.
“Actually it is,” he said. He leaned back, as if he wanted her to feel unthreatened. “It is because if you are gently born, I’m more likely to trust you, frankly. I don’t love Jacks, and neither does my friend.”
“We don’t love you, either,” Lessa said.
“East Brogat?” he asked.
“I’m not a lord. I’m a Jack,” she said with pride. “Who I was and what crimes I committed are no man’s business, nor woman’s.”
He met her eyes, and his were steady. “I’d hate to think you were some well-born runaway,” he said. “A little adventure, a little fun, and then you run home and sell us all to the hangman.” He smiled. “Maybe a boy you want rid of?”
“Fuck. You.” She had no trouble meeting his eye.
He shrugged. “Let’s do it,” he said suddenly. He drained his beer and stood up. “Next time, in the Oar House in East Cheaping by the docks. It’s rough; send a man, or dress like a real whore. Wear a scarlet hood and carry a black handkerchief; no one but a madman troubles a chit with the plague.”
She wanted to bridle, but his words made sense. “When?” she asked.
He shook his head. “I have no idea,” he said. He tugged at his beard. “Day after tomorrow, same time,” he said. He opened the door slightly, tugged at his sword and used his left thumb to crack it out of the scabbard, looked both ways in the empty hall. He looked back at her and winked and tossed his cloak on the bed; a fine wool cloak with fur in the hood. “Room’s yours for the night,” he said. “Though I wouldn’t linger,” and he was gone out the door and down the steps.
Later, after she’d told everything to Tyler, she lay under the man’s cloak in the beggar’s hall, the undercroft of the former Guild Hall of the Drapers, burned by the Galles. The upper stories had fallen in, but the basements were mostly intact, and the King of the Beggars and his court had moved in.
Tyler came and sat cross-legged like a tailor by her palette of straw. “One more thing,” he said.
She rolled over. Out in the smoky hall, a man was beating another with his fists. Closer in, two women made love in relative silence. “Yes?” she said softly.
He gestured with his thumb. “What’d he look like? Your contact?”
She thought about it. “Middle height, grey beard, sharp nose, beard and mustache like a courtier, sword hands; clean nails, calluses. Clean linen.”
“Scars?” Tyler asked.
“On the backs of both hands.”
Tyler made a motion with his mouth; she didn’t like it, because she associated it with his hiding something. But in this case the old Jack nodded. “Kit Crowbeard,” he said. “You did well,” he said, the rarest of praise.
“Comrade?” she asked. “Why kill the queen?” She paused. “I mean, I know why. But why for Towbray?”
Tyler leaned close in the whisper-filled darkness. “We will bring it all down,” he said softly. “Let it all burn. Then we’ll be free.”
But you take orders from a demon, Lessa thought. She was still trying to parse it when she fell asleep.
Albinkirk—Mistress Helewise
Mistress Helewise was watching her daughter flirt. Her daughter was standing in their yard, now finally clear of refuse, with swept cobbles and one neat pile of horse dung by the stable door, th
ere apurpose. The well worked and had a pump, and by the pump stood two tall, well-muscled young men, Jamie Le Hoek and Haegert Coucy, squires, and today, reapers. Most of the women had been out in the fields; the wheat was tall and dark autumn gold, the grains full and hard so that the stalks bent a little with the weight; the wheat and the oats were both ready to be harvested, and it was the fullest harvest anyone could remember, if on the fewest farms. Viewed from the roof of Helewise’s stone manor house, there were more fields fallow than tilled, stretching away to the walls of Albinkirk; the red and gold of the trees had to replace the glowing gold of crops in too many places. But if the planting had been sparse, the crop was rich beyond imagining, and they were too few to reap it all and get it into the barns and stone silos.
Helewise had used her store of favours to bring a dozen tall young men from Albinkirk. She was a good neighbor; she’d helped with many a birth, with the serving of fine dinners, the presentation of a supper to the great Duchess of Ticondonaga, the laying out of corpses. People liked her, and because of that, the acting Lieutenant of Albinkirk, the recovering Grand Squire, Ser Shawn LeFleur, saw to it that the squires and junior men-at-arms left behind by the alliance when the army marched west were at her service. He’d come himself; his left side swathed in bandages, his face largely covered in an elaborate silken hood he wore buttoned tight to hide the burns. Now he sat behind her in her best settle, his muddy boots on a scrap of burlap; he’d worked the day through despite his fine clothes and the obvious pain of his burns.
“Your hippocras is the best in the county,” he said with his usual courtesy.
Her daughter had just hit Jamie Le Hoek in the head with a very accurately thrown wedge of soap. Her best soap. Phillippa had worked all day in the fields; her hair was a brown tangle, her forehead shone with sweat, and Helewise was sore afraid that her daughter was the most beautiful woman for a hundred miles. And she had never looked better, despite sweat stains and some honest dirt, or perhaps because of it.
Pippa’s friend Rose, who’d lived with them since the first attacks killed Rose’s papa, came into the yard, tossed her hair, and crowned her friend with a garland of roses.
“Queen of the field workers, that’s me,” Pippa said. “Ouch! Thorns!”
Rose vanished behind her hands, laughing, and young Coucy joined her. “Perfect,” he said. “A crown of thorns for the prickly Pippa.”
“Prickly Pippa picked a peck of perfect pears,” Rose said.
Jamie frowned. And said nothing. He usually said very little, which didn’t help him press his love. Helewise noticed he’d caught the thrown soap, though.
“Why don’t you louts finish up so girls can wash?” Phillippa said. “Otherwise I’ll show you prickly.”
“You can wash while we’re here,” Coucy said.
“Not in my lifetime,” Phillippa shot back. “The smell alone …”
By the saints, she’s good at that, her mother thought. I wonder where she got it from?
Other squires and two big men-at-arms came in from the fields; all dirty, and all tired. But the older women were laying food on the tables in the back, where the hawthorns hid the standing stones, and the smell of roast mutton and turnips filled the air. Old Mother Crabbe came by, directing a pair of younger women in carrying a magnificent, steaming pie, and many of the men lost interest in all else and followed the pie.
The squires dried themselves with their shirts and then put them on, lacing their sleeveless doublets carelessly and moving with all the gawky grace of the young. Haegert Coucy made as if to hide in the stable and watch the girls wash; Jamie grabbed him by the ear and twisted, they exchanged uninspired punches, and then they were off into the back.
“Mind you brush your hair,” Helewise shouted at her daughter.
Phillippa frowned and didn’t deign to answer.
Helewise went back in to her guest.
“You are too courteous for my poor hall,” Helewise said. “You and your little army have saved my harvest.”
Ser Shawn smiled grimly. “Our real army is fighting for its life in the west,” he said bitterly. “The least I can do is see the harvest in.”
She was collecting her good pewter and what little silver she had, so that she could make the harvest table a little brighter. She’d worn the mask all day, but now, without having intended it, she turned to Ser Shawn.
“Will it ever end?” she snapped. “The war?”
He made a face. “Yes,” he said firmly. It was the best thing about him, she thought; the confidence he had. “Yes. We’ll win, and we’ll rebuild.”
“Your words to God’s ear,” she said. “Any word from the east?”
“Antica Terra?” Ser Shawn asked. “Or Liviapolis?”
“I’d settle for any news at all,” she said. “Beyond the state of the crops and Mag’s sick pig.”
Ser Shawn smiled.
The bell rang for dinner, and Phillippa, transformed by a bucket of well water and a heavy hairbrush, went past like a lightning bolt, leaving a tale of perfumed soap and—
“Hey!” roared Helewise. She looked at Ser Shawn. “What was my daughter wearing?” she asked, her question purely rhetorical. Phillippa had somehow managed, in five minutes, to change into a skin-tight dark red kirtle with no shift underneath, so that her sides showed between the lacings, although by the bizarre logic of the young, she still had her reaping hook hanging from her belt like a badge of honour.
“I didn’t notice,” Ser Shawn said, although he was turning a healthy shade of pink.
“Damn it,” Helewise said, knowing that her daughter was out in the back already, secure that her mother would not make a scene in front of guests. “I will not have Haegert Coucy as a son-in-law,” she spat.
“I’ll speak to him,” Shawn said, getting slowly to his feet.
But the harvest feast was a great success. They were short on men, and there was no Etruscan wine to be had at any price in Albinkirk; Ser Shawn brought one good bottle and she shared it with Mother Crabbe and Ser Shawn; sugar was dear, and saffron and pepper almost unattainable because the seas were closed and the shipping all taken for the war. But there was a bumper crop of honey; the turnips were of legendary size, and the salmon that Jamie Le Hoek had pulled from Ser John Crayford’s favourite pool brought tears to Lady Helewise’s eyes; that man and his fishing rod …
They drank beer instead of wine and were little worse for it, and Helewise had to admit that Haegert Coucy was a very funny young man. She laughed at his antics, and then listened to Jamie play an old romance of courtly love, and a nasty Hillman ballad of war and treachery, and then he played a new love song from Harndon, or so he said. Only Helewise thought he’d written it himself and aimed it at her daughter, but Pippa was playing hide-and-seek like a much younger girl, darting in and out of the trestles with Rose and Carli, the daughter of the next farm toward Albinkirk. The three of them ran, and screamed, and laughed, all of them wearing sharp reaping sickles curved like the rising orange moon, and Helewise was afraid people would be injured, and she called to her daughter. But Phillippa ran on, as if her mother didn’t exist, as if Jamie was not singing with shining eyes and holding his audience, too; he had a beautiful voice and his playing was far better than most people in Albinkirk ever heard, outside of a few wandering nuns and friars.
Then he was done, and Haegert was back, throwing purses in the air and juggling them like a mountebank. He pretended to steal Mother Crabbe’s bonnet and then produced it, crumpled and soiled, from under his arm; even as she shrieked in protest, he restored the undamaged original to her head—backward.
Helewise enjoyed herself so much that she missed the moment when her daughter threw a single glance at Jamie and stepped out of the lamplight and into the darkness beyond the hedgerow.
She slipped down the path, damp at any time of year. She wondered at her own boldness, and at her choice; until moments ago, she’d have said that of the two older boys, Haegert was by far the more attrac
tive with his court clothes and fine manners and his easy laugh. And Jamie was an old hat; he was around often, helped her mother, and had been Ser John’s squire.
She’d never heard him sing like that before, though.
She’d never thought him intelligent until that moment. She’d been running by—fully aware of the song, thank you very much, and she’d glanced at him, and he’d … winked. A different wink entirely.
Would he have the sense to follow her into the dark? She’d played this game once or twice in Lorica and learned not to trust boys; and to be cautious. And not to count on them being any too smart, either.
She heard him coming. She saw him silhouetted against the table lights and she knew his size and his gait instantly, and she drifted back past the hedge to the standing stones.
“Pippa?” he called very softly.
She laughed and went deeper into the stones.
He followed, but he was quick, too. He caught her about the waist …
His hands were good, firm and warm and clean, and she kissed him before he’d even thought to kiss her. And he didn’t move his hands to grab her breasts, like boys in Lorica; he just kissed her.
He had definitely kissed someone before.
He stumbled, off balance with the kiss, and laughed. Then he turned her slightly, and rested her back against one of the standing stones. She put both arms up over his head and pulled him down, and then she felt something like a worm wriggling against her back.
So great was her revulsion that she pushed his not inconsiderable size away and leapt clear.
“Yech!” she said.
Jamie looked as if she’d stabbed him with a sword. “Oh, Pippa,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”
“There’s worms on the stone,” she said. Even as she said the words, she looked, and then the hair on her head tried to stand up straight.
The surface of the stone seemed to be writhing as if it was alive. There was almost no moon; the terrible smoke and soot rising in the west made the full moon into a dull orange ball like nothing anyone had ever seen, and by that strange light, the stones all seemed to move.