Chapter 5
Accusations
Brawn led the ride over the course as he had
done the day before. Also, like the day before, Sahar kept close to
Brawn and ignored Aleksi. But, unlike the day before, the Wolf and
the Jackal kept their comments to themselves, though not their
slanting side glances, which were trained on Sahar. Aleksi told
himself over and over again that the princess was not his problem,
and he did not care who ogled and leered at her, or who she went
strolling with through the gardens. If she insisted she could take
care of herself, then by the gods, he would let her, the ungrateful
chit.
After another sumptuous supper, he stopped by
the kitchens to beg another sack of food from Anya for Serge and
Pyotr. Taking the seat proffered him at the small table in the
corner, he stretched his legs out with a contented sigh as the
kitchen maids scurried about, sorting what little had not been
consumed during the evening meal and starting preparations for the
next morning’s. It was impressive how efficiently the kitchen ran
under Anya’s stern but fair hand, for it was no small feat feeding
all of the riders and the hundred or so visitors and royal
household two meals a day, as well as keeping a good stock of food
and drink available for the noon repast for those so inclined.
“Thank you, Anya,” Aleksi said as she placed
a sack of leftovers on the table for him. “Serge and Pyotr wish me
to tell you how grateful they are for the extra food. They want to
be sure you will not be in any trouble for it.”
“None at all,” she assured him. “The queen
has always shared the palace’s bounty.” She nodded at two kitchen
maids packing sacks with scraps of meat and uneaten loaves of
flatbread. “We set our daily leftovers out every evening at the
palace gates for whoever needs them.”
“Why am I not surprised?” Aleksi shook his
head. “Queen Theodesia would never support, much less allow, such a
thing. She claimed it was the poor’s duty to pull themselves up,
not royalty’s duty to give them a hand up.”
Anya tsked. “That sounds like her.”
“As you said, she was a right bitch.” He
chuckled low, for Anya had summed up his father’s first wife quite
well. He met Anya’s kind gaze, so unlike Theodesia, who had never
looked on him with anything but hate and derision. “It was she who
demanded my mother leave.”
Anya laid a hand on his shoulder and gave it
a gentle squeeze. “Since you have come,” she said, “I have
remembered a little of your mother.”
“You have?”
She sat down at the table, her soft gaze
holding his. “I remember that she liked to sing as she cooked, that
she always had a kitchen cat at her feet, and that she prayed to
the gods you would be born a girl so that she would not have to
give you over to the king.”
“Why did she not leave before I was
born?”
It was a question Aleksi had asked himself a
thousand times, but one he had never asked of another. Maybe it was
because of Anya’s kind eyes, or the fact that she was the only
person who had known his mother and was willing to speak of her to
him. His father never had, and all the queen had ever said of her
was that she had been a harlot who had enticed the king into her
bed.
Anya spread her hands flat on the table. “As
I remember it, your mother was alone in the world, having no family
to go to, and there was no one in the palace allowed to help her.
As a young, pregnant woman on her own, she had little chance of
giving you the life you deserved.”
“The life of a stable boy?”
“The king promised her you would be raised a
prince.”
“A promise he kept only until he had a
legitimate heir.”
Anya nodded sadly, and then she smiled. “But
look at the man you have become,” she said. “A fine, strapping
young man with loyal friends and a string of his own horses.”
“Who will return to his home having won the
next two races, with enough coin to build his own stables and the
breeding rights to improve his line of horses ‘til they rival even
the legendary Black Mane’s.”
“And what of a wife and children to share
this dream with?” Anya teased.
Aleksi made a show of taking in the maid
servants bustling about. “Is there an especially pleasing, easy
tempered, hard-working maid servant you care to recommend?”
Anya laughed. “I am no matchmaker. Besides, I
would have sworn you already had your eye on a certain
princess.”
“I am done with princesses,” Aleksi scoffed.
“Spoilt, selfish creatures, every last one of them who care not
what a man truly is, only that he be a prince.”
“Be careful of your words, Aleksandr, for you
and I both know that is not true and speaks somewhat of soured
hopes.”
Aleksi shrugged.
“However,” Anya lowered her voice, “the
palace gossip says that Yago the Wolf has not only been keeping
company with Princess Sahar, but with your half-sister, Princess
Anastasia, as well. I would be careful if I were you.”
“Don’t worry about me,” he said, making light
of the matter, though Anastasia was easily as vindictive as her
mother, Queen Theodesia. “I sleep with one eye open.”
“Princess Sahar says you sleep with Kiska
tucked under your chin.”
“Does she now?” Aleksi spied Sahar hovering
at the door to the kitchens.
He grinned and winked at a pretty serving
maid who had been trying to catch his attention since he sat down
with Anya. The maid’s plump cheeks reddened as her high-pitched
giggle filled the kitchen. Sahar’s glare could have frozen ice as
she stiffened and spun on her heels, giving him her back yet again,
a not altogether unwelcome view.
“Easy Lasair, easy.” Sahar patted the mare’s
arched neck. “We’ll be off and running soon enough.”
The riders were lined up and waiting for the
signal to start the race, the horses dancing and shaking their
heads against their tight reins, eager to be given their heads.
Yesterday had been a day of rest for both the horses and their
riders in preparation for today, though for Sahar it had been a day
of poor rest and a restless night.
After breaking her fast and tending to
Lasair, she had spent the better part of yesterday morning pacing
her bed chambers trying to contain her thoughts and put them to
some kind of order. She should have been concentrating on the
race’s course, but her mind kept wandering to Aleksandr and Yago,
to all of the words spoken between herself and them, from
Aleksandr’s bold marriage proposal and his heated kiss to Yago’s
cool, dry lips on her hand after his apology, which had only served
to revive the awful memory of Ommar.
She wanted to believe Yago sincere almost as
much as she wanted to believe Aleksandr a brutish oaf who had
kissed her with as little forethought as he had knocked out Yago.
But try as she might, she couldn’t rid herself of a niggling
feeling in her gut that told her there was more to both of them
than either was letting on. It angered her to no end that they had
taken over her thoughts. She had meant what she said about neither
wanting nor needing a husband, or a man.
Unable to rest in the confines of her
bedchambers, she had strolled through the palace garden and then
returned to the stables, where she had brushed Lasair ‘til the
mare’s coat shone like polished rubies, then she combed and braided
Lasair’s mane in an intricate pattern laced with gardenia buds and
flowers in full, fragrant bloom. After, she’d lain down on Ratter’s
cot and had fallen asleep only to wake with Kiska snuggled under
her chin, and the sun setting. She’d a vague memory of warm lips on
her forehead and a low, deep voice whispering soothing endearments
into her ear. When she returned Kiska to her box, Aleksandr wasn’t
there.
Now, she glanced down the line at Aleksandr,
his corded forearm holding his dancing stallion’s reins close, his
sun-bleached hair falling over his forehead as he leaned into the
horse’s neck and whispered into the golden stallion’s ear, which
twitched back and forth as the steed snorted and pawed at the
ground. He turned his head and caught her watching him and gave her
that cocksure grin that made her grind her teeth and her belly flop
like a fish caught on dry land.
On the far side of the line, Yago yanked on
Tor’s reins as the black stallion reared and struck out at the
horse beside him.
“Control your mounts,” Brawn called out
loudly. Yago brought Tor to earth, and then pulled a riding whip
from the side of his saddle.
Her father, whose own father had been
renowned for the cruelness of his whip hand, glowered at the whip
in Yago’s, and then he raised his banner and held it high for a
long, interminable moment before swinging it down with a great
swoosh. Sahar gave Lasair a quick squeeze of her knees and the mare
leapt forward.
Though tall and leggy and deep chested,
Lasair was not as large as most stallions, but she was faster,
especially for the first ten paces when speed mattered more than
power. She was a good three paces ahead of the others and holding
her lead as first Zolotoy, then Tor, and then Munir’s sorrel
gelding, Kedar, charged out from the cloud of dust that was the mob
of horses and riders behind them.
Sahar kept Lasair to an easy gallop, staying
ahead of the crowd as they raced past a field of drying sunflowers.
She knew her mare, and she knew Lasair could keep the same pace for
the entire three leagues, the only thing she did not know was how
hard and fast a pace the others could keep up. She would soon find
out.
They approached the river crossing and Sahar
slowed Lasair to a trot, eyeing the swift moving water with
trepidation. She had crossed it without incident in the two
practice runs, but she had had Brawn by her side then. Now…
“Hold on.”
She heard Aleksandr’s warning at the same
time she heard the slap on Lasair’s rump and the mare jumped
forward into the river. She hugged Lasair’s sides tight and gripped
her mane as they splashed into water that instantly rose up to the
mare’s belly. When she could take a full breath again, she realized
that Aleksandr was keeping Zolotoy at Lasair’s downriver side at
her pace. The cursed stallion could swim almost as well as he ran
and could easily have taken the lead.