King's Dragon (Crown of Stars #1)

King's Dragon (Crown of Stars #1) Page 48

He paused, to let her consider his generosity. “I will teach you Arethousan. If you will teach me Jinna. Queen Sophia, while she lived, was very firm that all of us in the king’s schola be taught Arethousan. She was the Arethousan Emperor’s niece, as I’m sure you know, a marriage prize brought to these benighted lands by the younger Arnulf for his heir. And although our praeceptor, Cleric Monica, thought it acceptable that those few of us chosen for her special tutoring should indeed learn Arethousan, should any of us ever be called upon to lead an embassy to that distant land, she cuffed me hard and well the one time I asked if she might teach us Jinna as well. ‘A language fit only for infidels and sorcerers,’ she said, which only made me wish to learn it the more, although I never said so to her again. But I never met anyone who knew it until I met your father. And now you, my treasure. What do you say?”

There was something very wrong with all this, and Liath knew it. As long as she gave him nothing, she was safe from him. But a small doubt had arisen. Perhaps he was owed some sympathy, flung from the bright center of the king’s progress into these hinterlands, where there was no one like him. No wonder he had gravitated toward Da.

And if she could learn Arethousan, she could translate the glosses in the oldest text of The Book of Secrets. Perhaps she could even puzzle out the unknown language, written in that ancient hand. …

“I don’t know,” she said in a low voice.

He smiled. She understood at once that she had lost something important, that he had won this battle and was on his way to winning the war. She slid off the bed, pressing herself against the wall to keep as much distance between herself and him as possible, and ran out of the cell and down to the kitchen, to the safety of rougher work.

Behind, incongruously, she heard him begin to sing.

“The Lady is glorious in Her beauty.

The Lord is mighty with His sword.

Blessed are we, Their children.

Glory, glory, rests where Their eyes linger.

Glory sleeps on Their hearth.”

He had a beautiful voice.

3

ON the morning of the first hard freeze, Liath woke from a fitful sleep at dawn. It hurt to stand up. With her blanket pulled tight around her, she shuffled to the woodpile. It hurt to uncurl her fingers and touch any surface. A thin shell of ice covered the wood, and she bit at her dry lips to cover the pain of wrenching the logs free. She had to struggle with the latch before she could get it open and make her way into the kitchen. In here the change in temperature was abrupt. It hurt almost more than the cold did.

She stoked up the fire and simply stood before it, shuddering and coughing. After a while she bent to ladle warm water into her mouth. The water slid down her throat, warming her. She looked around, although certainly there was no one else here, then plunged her hands into the kettle of water and just stood there, letting her hands thaw. The fire snapped and burned so close her face felt seared, but she did not care. She heard something, a voice, a footstep, and she jerked her hands guiltily from the kettle and bent to scoop out rye flour for flatcakes.

Hugh appeared in the doorway. “It’s cold. It’s damned cold and I hate cold. I hate this frozen wasteland, and I damned well don’t want to winter here. We should have ridden south last month when I got the news, but it’s too late now.” He strode across the room and gripped her chin, wrenching her face around so she had to look up at him. “You look like hell. You look like a damned land girl burned brown from doing a man’s work in the fields all day long, with a chapped face and a running nose. Go make my chamber warm. Make me breakfast. Then get out of here. I can’t stand to look at you.”

He cuffed her on the cheek. It stung the worse because her skin was still chilled. She shrank away, trying not to cry. In his cell it was warmer even than in the kitchen. She heaped glowing coals into the brazier and crouched next to it, soaking in the heat. On the table rested a single neatly-trimmed piece of parchment with fresh writing in a graceful hand damp across the top. She craned her neck to read the words.

“Out! Out!” Hugh came up behind her and slapped her casually on the back of the head. “You’re filthy. Get out!”

She fled back to the kitchen. She dawdled as long as possible, making porridge and flatcakes and then serving them to him. But she could only draw out the work for so long; soon he emerged from his cell and drove her outdoors. She tucked her hands into her armpits and set off briskly for the inn. She had to fetch meat, after all, from Mistress Birta. It was excuse enough. But she had scarcely gotten there, had only two heartbeats lingering in front of the hearth, surreptitiously watching a lone traveler eat his solitary meal at a table a few paces from her, when Hugh burst in through the front door.