Lady of weeds, p.32
Lady of Weeds, page 32
part #2 of Lady Series
“I’ve food here,” Carys said, but she set the table regardless.
Enfys sniffed. “Old and hard, no doubt.”
“It’s edible.”
Enfys sniffed again, and pushed herself up from the floor. To Carys’ baffled amusement, she went through Carys’ cupboards, alternately sniffing and snorting, and slammed the last one behind her as she turned.
“Well, Miss!” she said again, taking the kettle from Carys, who had picked it up almost out of habit. “I suppose you think it’s perfectly normal to stop eating and caring for yourself when you’re heart-sick and pining!”
“I’m not pining,” Carys said. Her heart certainly ached, but she didn’t think she was as blinded in her aching as she had been once. Perhaps that was because the one she ached for was still whole, still alive.
“Is that why the fire isn’t lit and you’ve no food in the house that isn’t days old?” jeered Enfys, poking vigorously at her kindling fire to let the air in underneath. “Sit down and eat, Miss! I’ll not have you going to skin and bone again just because you’re too silly to come and fetch that boy back home!”
“You know I can’t do that,” said Carys, but there was a warmth in her chest. Perhaps there hadn’t been sunshine before Eurion came into her life, but she was beginning to think that there had always been a bit of it there, and that she simply hadn’t been capable of appreciating it. “I’ve a calling here, and I can’t leave it. He won’t—he won’t stop trying to help. It was too dangerous.”
“Yes, yes,” said the old woman testily. “But just because it’s your calling doesn’t mean you have to do it alone all the time.”
“I didn’t ask for help,” Carys protested.
“I know that!” snapped Enfys. “Why else do you think I’m here? If you’re too stupid to ask for help, you—”
“Thank you,” said Carys. “For the food. For the care.”
Enfys stopped, then turned to poke vigorously at the fire once more. She cleared her throat and said, “Do you think you were the only one concerned? The boy told me to come and make sure you were eating and warm. I wouldn’t have come under my own power.”
“Liar,” said Carys, the warmth spreading in her just as the fire grew and warmed the cottage. “Come and eat, Enfys. I’ve to leave for the shore soon, and I’ve a fancy to eat together first.”
* * *
Carys wasn’t sure when she made the decision. It could have been on her way to the rocky shore with her belly full and her heart warm, or it could have been when she saw the water roiling in the pools that were limned with a touch of golden sunlight. Perhaps it was when she turned her feet toward the cottage again, her cart loaded high with seaweed. She had enough purpose of mind left to make herself enter the cottage again, and enough to sit by the remaining fire with her hands clasped tightly in her lap until the afternoon grew dark around her, but some time after she mechanically ate the remainder of the food that Enfys had left, Carys found herself outside and on the path to the village.
In a last attempt to circumvent herself, she forced herself to take the longer path that meandered around below the craggy clifftops, hoping to come to her senses before she reached the village itself. By the time she saw the lights of the village as separate lights instead of a glow from above the top of the cliffs, Carys was convinced she had lost her senses and the light both to the same extent. Still she went on in the sable night, her feet soft in the grass, and as she walked she heard the sound of music and laughter from the brightly lit dance hall.
She paused in the shadow of the first house outside the village proper, wavering, and as she did, Carys heard the crunch of gravel around the corner. As she settled back against the house, nonsensically unwilling to be seen in the village on a day that was not market day, a familiar voice spoke quietly from behind the house.
“Are you there?”
It was Steele’s voice, Carys knew it at once. With cold fingers, she felt her way along the wall in the darkness, stepping lightly through the grass, and edged around the corner to see who it was he spoke with.
In the faint glow of moonlit clouds, Carys saw a tall, black-clad man. He wore a hood, his face obscured by the shadows it threw—and also, if Carys were not mistaken, obscured by magic. Who was this man who needed both shadows and magic to hide his identity?
“He’s there? You’re sure?” his voice was low, but Carys heard the pinched edge of a high-born Sunderman accent, and before she heard the reply, she knew who the speaker was.
“He’s there, your highness. We saw him by the fire: there’s no one around him but a few local men and the dancers, and an old woman or two.”
“He thinks I won’t kill my people,” said the eldest prince. “He’s not entirely wrong. Kill as few of them as possible—and if I can draw him outside, none at all. I’d as lief not be seen killing him, either; with that yellow hair, he’s very recognisable.”
Carys swallowed, her fingers curling against the stone of the house she lingered behind. They were certainly speaking of Eurion. Was this what he had planned with the Mas? To call out the eldest prince by promising him the seal and no doubt information as to the half-Eppan prince’s whereabouts?
“The spell on the hood is still good, your highness,” said Steele. “No one will recognise you, even if it becomes necessary to kill the boy.”
“Very good,” said the eldest prince. “Then he seems as willing to deal with us as he said he would be? He has the seal with him?”
“He didn’t attempt to fight me off with a sword this time, at least,” Steele said. “But he does say he’ll deal only with you. As to whether he has the seal on him or not—well, call me suspicious, but he stole it from us once before.”
“Then we’ll return in force: keep the men outside until I signal otherwise, and I’ll do my best to call him out. We’ll return tonight with the seal and the prince, or the seal and his body.”
Carys waited, her heart pounding, until the flutter of their shadows and the crunch of their boots ceased, then she fairly ran across the grass to silence her footsteps, the village hall bright and glittering and too far away. A weight thumped against her leg as she ran—the pouch with the seal in it, forgotten again until now—and Carys gripped it through her skirts so that it wouldn’t hinder her running.
She stopped at the entrance, her breath shallow and too thin, and threw a hasty look around the whole room, searching for that head of golden hair. She thought she saw it briefly by the door that led to the kitchen, but it was just the boy Jessamy, ducking into the little room that held the refreshments. Carys looked around the room again, trembling, and saw Eurion across the room by the fire.
There were other ways, but no time. Carys passed through the dancers toward the fire, disregarding the order of the sets, and took Eurion by the hand.
“Come home,” she said, pulling at that hand to raise him up; and she turned to go.
She didn’t expect the resistance that pulled her back to find Eurion still seated, nor did she expect him to twist his hand away from hers. Eurion didn’t look up at her as she stared down at him. Instead, he watched Miss Allen dance across the room.
“I can’t, Carys,” he said. “Please go away.”
It wasn’t right for it to hurt as much as it did: she had pushed him away oftener and with more harshness. Carys knew she had no right to feel such hurt at a softer rejection, and yet, she felt that she hadn’t ever experienced quite the sharpness of pain below her breastbone that she now did.
But it didn’t matter right now: it couldn’t matter. All that mattered was getting Eurion away safely before the eldest prince and his men arrived.
She put her hand on his shoulder and said again, “Come home with me.”
Eurion’s eyes fluttered shut for a brief moment before they opened and he said, more loudly, “I don’t—I don’t want to talk to you. Go away.”
“I’m not asking you to talk to me,” Carys said, with what felt like a terrible calmness. It was her own fault, after all. She couldn’t blame Eurion if he had ceased to be…to be fond of her. And yet, she hadn’t expected it—hadn’t thought that five days were so long as to bring about a change. “You only need to listen.”
“I don’t want to listen, either,” said Eurion, and finally he looked up at her. “I don’t want to be near you. You’re not supposed to be here.”
“Even if you don’t wish to see me,” said Carys, fighting to keep her voice even, “it’s not safe for you here! I don’t know what bargain you made with Steele or the Elder Prince, but they’re on their way here with men to take you. Even if you don’t want to look at me, you need to get away from here—go to the inn and ask for the Mas. It’s not safe any longer.”
“Lady,” said the voice of Joon Ha, once more unexpectedly present. Miss Allen by his side, he stood before them and added, “Come away and dance with me.”
“I have no wish to dance,” Carys said impatiently. “Captain—”
“I’ll not accept your orders today, Lady,” said Joon Ha.
Miss Allen said primly, “Eurion wishes to have nothing to do with you: isn’t it very obvious?”
“Even so,” said Carys directly to Eurion, “Come away. There is a danger to your life.”
“Ah Lady!” said Eurion, on a sigh. His eyes glowed with light from the fire—or perhaps tears. “I love you so much! Please go away! Joon Ha will explain—there’s no time!”
Carys allowed Joon Ha to lead her away into the dance with the first real stirring of dread in her heart. Someone had tried to kill the prince, and when he was taken by the sea, Steele had been sent to look for him. At the same time, Carys had found a boy in the sea—on him a seal that was far too rich and expensive to belong to someone of normal Eppan birth. The earrings that were also too rich and expensive, she wondered now, what exactly did they signify? Eurion’s place in his family? Had Eurion been bargaining with the seal, or with himself?
Moving through the dance in stiff unfamiliarity, Carys began to be aware of something she had not at first noticed in her single-mindedness to get to Eurion.
“How many of these men are yours?” she asked Joon Ha, quietly. Almost all the men in the set closest to the fire were unfamiliar—all the ones by the fire and at the supper tables were unknown to her as well. “What is going on?”
“They are coming for the prince,” said the captain softly. “We thought it best that they should have access in a setting that suited us.”
“Then Eurion—”
“—is not Eurion,” Joon Ha agreed.
A feeling of cold hopelessness settled over Carys. Her fears were horribly true: Eurion must be, could only be, the missing half-Eppan prince. That he had remembered as much was likewise obvious—it was the perfect explanation for his behaviour over the last week: the back and forth with the Mas, his closeness to Joon Ha, captain of his guard.
Then Eurion, she thought, with heaviness to her steps, would soon be leaving. No matter how much he loved her, it was ridiculous to think that there could be anything between a royal heir and a keeper of the shore. And no matter how much Carys might have become persuaded that she loved him in return, it was equally ludicrous to think that she could leave the stormy, rocky seashore without someone to tend it, following a sunshine that was never meant to be hers in the first place.
“It begins,” said Joon Ha.
Carys, dragging her eyes away from where they had been fixed over his shoulder, unseeing, turned her head for the entrance of the elder prince. He passed through the dancers as Carys had done earlier, though he moved in a much more leisurely fashion, and stopped before Eurion.
“Don’t look at them so closely,” the captain said in Carys’ ear. “He’s too sharp; he’ll notice.”
Carys looked away, but she caught flickers of the scene as she turned in the dance with Joon Ha; Eurion on his feet, his mouth moving silently, the elder prince, shoulders stiff and every line of him silently furious. Carys saw a blur of dark movement, and the shattering brightness of a knife, and tore herself away from Joon Ha. He pulled her back as Eurion met the knife with the fireplace poker and kicked the prince away from himself.
The prince staggered back, and called above the sound of the music, “Now! Now, Steele!”
There was a slither of steel at the windows and at the doors, and the dance hall erupted into a seething chaos. At the eye of that chaos, Carys and the captain were pressed together with the dancers from the village, while from all around the room men sprang, ready armed, to meet the threat at the windows and doors. Carys would have pushed away again to get to Eurion, who struggled with the prince over by the fire, but Joon Ha seized her again, and she thought she heard him say, “He’d never forgive me if I let you go, Lady!”
Carys fleetingly saw Miss Allen in the moving press, Aled’s broad back turned against the melee that drew too close, then the chaos miraculously cleared in a panting, scuffling quiet.
Eurion, grinning, still stood by the fire, though now his hair was dishevelled and his shirt torn. Beside him was Ma Yong Hwa, gloveless. Close nearby, two very hefty men gripped the elder prince by his arms, and at every window there was either blood or a prisoner.
“Very tidy,” said Joon Ha. He pushed his way through the dancers, which permitted Carys to follow him as swiftly as she might, and strode across the scuffed floor to stand before the group at the fire. Formally, he said, “First son Andras, elder prince, you’re arrested under the authority of the crown for the attempted murder of your royal brother.”
The elder prince stared at him. “You’re not the one I thought to have killed on the castle wall,” he said. “Under what authority do you arrest me?”
“The authority of the half-Eppan prince,” said Joon Ha, as Eurion came to stand beside him.
The other man looked from Joon Ha to Eurion, his grey eyes sharp and disbelieving, and he laughed. “Neither of you can arrest me. You have no right—you have no proof! Let me free while you can do it without being arrested yourself.”
One of the men Carys had seen earlier by the fire, who seemed not to have moved during all the excitement, rose to his feet and said, “My name is Hwyl. I am witness by order of the king, in duty to the crown. My witness is true.”
The elder prince stared at him, and laughed again, this time bitterly. “I never could remember all of your dour old faces,” he said. “But it’ll take something to prove it. Who sought your witness?”
“The half-Eppan prince sought it,” said Hwyl. “The evidence will be presented before the king within the month.”
“I look forward to that,” said the elder prince, and his smile was mocking, despite the fact that he was held fast on either side. “The prince will have to prove his identity, after all, and I think there might be some difficulty there.”
“That’s as may be, your highness,” said Hwyl, “but it’s hardly your concern any longer, is it? You and I must be off to the king. Your brother will follow with his evidences in due course.”
He motioned to the men who held the prince, and they took him outside while Hwyl bowed toward the little group at the centre of the hall. “I hope to see you in the capital soon, your highness,” he said, and followed after his men.
A heady roar of astonishment rose up in the hall as the villagers took in the scene they had just witnessed, and Carys, shaken, asked Eurion, “Are you hurt? Your shirt is torn.”
“As if he could hurt me with that little knife!” scoffed Eurion, his eyes dancing with danger and delight. “Wasn’t it exciting, though, Lady!”
“The shame of it is that we still don’t have the seal,” said Joon Ha, rather heavily. “After our little deception it will be hard to convince anyone we’re who we say we are. It will also be difficult to explain the legitimacy of the arrest of the elder prince.”
Eurion, at once downhearted, said, “It could have been lost while I was in the sea. I don’t remember it coming out, but it wasn’t in the things Carys gave me.”
Ma Yong Hwa, his eyes on Carys, said, “Do we not have it?”
“I brought it with me,” Carys said, bringing it out of her pocket. “It’s fortunate I forgot it was in there, or we would have had to go back to the cottage for it.”
Eurion’s eyes grew wide, then turned into joyful slits of laughter.
Joon Ha laughed, too, and that laugh was one of disbelief. “Lady, you had it?”
“You knew I had it!” Carys said, disbelief in her own voice. “We spoke of it last week! You said you would not take it away at once.”
“I spoke—I spoke of Eurion! I thought you were afraid I would take him away at once, and I wished to reassure you that I would not do so—that it wasn’t safe to do so.”
“This is what comes of talking about me as if I’m a thing,” said Eurion, pouting. “Lady, aren’t I warm enough to prove that I’m human?”
He would have slipped his arms around her as he said, it, but Carys evaded him. She said quietly, “Don’t do that.”
“Oh, Lady! But why now?”
“Because it is necessary for me to return this to you,” Carys said, pushing the pouch with the seal in it into his hands. It made a space between them that was more than physical, and as he took it, Eurion turned a little.
Then, as she watched, frowning, he presented it to the captain with both hands, bowing low over it until his face couldn’t be seen. In just such a stately manner, Joon Ha accepted it, but when Eurion rose from his bow he grinned at him and embraced him without reserve.
“You did well, brother,” he said.
Carys, struggling to understand, said in something of a daze, “You’re not—you’re not the prince? The captain is the prince?”
Eurion broke into gleeful laughter. “Lady, did we fool you, too?”
“You’re—you’re—” Carys stopped, and knew at once who he must be. “You’re the captain of the half-Eppan prince’s guard.”
“Yes,” said Eurion. “So it’s no use trying to push me away because you think I’m the prince. I’m not.”
