King's Dragon (Crown of Stars #1)

King's Dragon (Crown of Stars #1) Page 152

And the oar slaves bowed before him

And begged for him to tell his tale.

When he captured the ships,

This was his song.”

That was Theophanu, accompanying him. Though the king’s court was in a constant hum, and had been since morning, she sat calmly and strummed a lute in time to her brother’s sweet singing.

The other sister, small and dark and neat, was Sapientia. She paced back and forth, back and forth, like a caged animal. Hanna took a hesitant step forward. Sapientia saw her, began to rush toward her, then stopped short, recalling her position. She beckoned.

“Do you have a message for me, Eagle?” she demanded.

Without losing track of the song, Theophanu raised her eyes briefly to take in the scene and went back to her playing. Ekkehard sang on, oblivious.

Hanna dropped to touch a knee to the floor. “Yes. King Henry charges you to go now to the smith’s quarters.”

“Hai!” said Sapientia under her breath, exultant. She turned and gestured to her servingwomen, who sat sewing near the fire. “Come!” she said, and strode out so quickly they had to drop their sewing work on the bench and had not even time to grab cloaks before running out after her.

Hanna hesitated. Ekkehard was well into the song by now, a song within a song, really, wherein the hero Sigisfrid relates to the hapless oar slaves his many great deeds as well as revealing for the first time his forbidden love for his cousin Waltharia, the love that would doom them both. Ekkehard had, in fact, an astonishing command of the epic. Hanna had heard old master bards sing from the great epic while taking a night’s lodging at the inn, and while Ekkehard’s rendition was clearly immature, it was still compelling.

Theophanu glanced up again to study Hanna. The princess’ gaze was clear and completely unreadable. Suddenly self-conscious, Hanna backed away and ran right into one of the Lions.

He steadied her with a grin. “Begging your pardon, my friend,” he said. “You rode in from Gent with the other Eagle, this morning.”

“Yes.”

“You’re new to the Eagles?”

She nodded. She didn’t quite trust him: He was a good-looking young man, and the few good-looking men in Heart’s Rest—like her brother Thancmar—were, in her experience, full of themselves.

He opened the door, grinned at his companion guard, and followed her outside. “Where are you barracked tonight?” he asked. He did have a pleasant smile, and a pleasing face, and very nice shoulders, but Hanna loathed men who were full of their own self-importance. All, except Hugh. She shoved that thought away.

“With the Eagles, I expect,” she said coldly. “Wherever they sleep.”

He considered. In the torch-lit entryway, he did not appear downcast or offended by her rejection. In fact, she was not entirely sure he had taken her words as rejection. “Well, if we’ll not be barracked together,” he said quickly, glancing behind him. “I’m on duty, so I haven’t time to talk. You were at Gent. Did you see the Dragons there?”

“We saw one company of them, but I never got inside the city. We turned back, Hathui and I.”

“Was there a woman with them, do you know?”

“A woman? With the Dragons? Not that I noticed.”

“Ai.” He grimaced, disappointed. Had he a sweetheart among the Dragons? Having misjudged him, she suddenly found him rather attractive. “My sister rides with the Dragons.”

“Your sister?”

He laughed outright. “You’re thinking a common-born lad like me has no business having a sister in the Dragons.”

Since she was thinking so, she did not deny it.

“It’s true most of them are nobleborn, bastards usually, or younger sons without a bequest to get them into the church. But my sister never wanted anything except to fight. She dedicated herself to St. Andrea very young, before even her first bleeding, and couldn’t be swayed. She joined the Lions, bludgeoned her way into them, more like. I followed after her.”

Hanna remembered how her young brother Karl had looked at her the day she rode away from the Heart’s Rest as a newly-hatched Eagle. Had this young man watched his sister ride away so? Had he followed her, years later, because of that admiration?

“She distinguished herself,” the Lion continued, eager to talk about his sister in front of a new audience. “Saved the Dragon banner, she did. Some say she saved the prince’s life, although others say no man or woman can do that. That he’s under a geas, spoken on him when he was an infant by his mother, that he can’t be killed by mortal hands or some such kind of thing. Ai, well. I say she saved his life.”