Chapter Eight Let the Tournament Begin
CHAPTER EIGHT
LET THE TOURNAMENT BEGIN
I turned down a parallel row of tents, Maude hissing after me.
Sybil moved more slowly than the other knights, her gait stiff, and the party soon outdistanced her, but one knight remained. She had a round face, small lips, and dark beady eyes. Weasel Face, I named her. They spoke in low voices. I crept between tents to hear.
“Would you like me to help you get there faster?” Weasel Face asked Sybil.
Sybil’s answer came slowly, her voice half-rough, half-melodic, its sound lighting sparks in my body. “The others are already celebrating in the arena, and you’re stuck being my bodyguard.” She scoffed. “Must be difficult, drawing the short straw.”
“There was no short straw, Diviner,” Weasel Face said. “I volunteered.”
Sybil’s laugh was cold. “Out of the goodness of your heart and not at all because of that stone around your neck, I’m sure.”
Weasel Face kept her gaze forward. “If the king did not think you needed help moving about the castle, he would not have permitted me to keep it.”
Sybil ran her fingertips over the canvas of a nearby stall and kept walking. “I’m fine.”
Two seconds later, Maude and the gargoyle caught up with me, plastering themselves against my back and whispering in my ear.
“Pith, Rory, we need to get into the arena.”
“Damn these slippers.” The gargoyle was trying to balance on his toes.
“I want to see Bartholomew!” When I put a finger up, silencing them both, unable to rip my gaze away from Sybil, he gave my arm a pinch.
“You think she’s pretty,” he said, matter-of-fact.
“So pretty you don’t even know how to tell her. ”
My breath quickened as I watched Sybil move through the crowd.
I couldn’t see her face behind that veil, and yet I was overcome.
What an unholy place my mind was—I couldn’t escape from thinking how perfect she might look if she plunged her hand into my chest, removed my heart, and gnawed its toughened tissue between her teeth until her clothes were stained red. “She’s… so…”
The gargoyle consoled me with a pat on the back. “You’ll get there someday.”
On the walkway, folk were gazing at Sybil, eyes wide, jaws slackened by awe. She ignored them, her conversation with Weasel Face ongoing. “You put my things in the room at the back of the stables, yes?”
“Yes,” Weasel Face replied. “Though you’ll find no need for the hammer. Not for the joust.” She paused. “Forgive me, Diviner. I was under the impression that you did not know how to ride.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“If you aim to knock Benedict from his saddle, you will not succeed. He’s been training these last several weeks. You have been inactive in that room atop the castle.” Weasel Face’s dark eyes lowered to Sybil’s body. “You should not fight in the tourney, Diviner.”
Maude and I shared a glance.
“Swords and armor,” Sybil said flatly, “are nothing to stone.”
“And yet even stone falters,” Weasel Face bit back, imploring.
“You know it as well as the rest of us do—the cathedral fell. It will join Der ewige Mond in the annals of time as another looming creature whose power, whose lore, was made all the more fantastic for being conquered.” Her voice tightened.
Again, she said, “You should not fight. It would not be worthy of you to be conquered in something as senseless as a tournament.”
The conversation shattered with a crash. Maude jumped, and so did Sybil and Weasel Face. I put a steadying hand out for the gargoyle—
And found he wasn’t there.
“Shit.”
Maude’s head whipped right, then left. “Where’d he go?”
Shouts echoed ahead. When I peeked out from behind the tent, two figures appeared in the grassy walkway—a merchant, hands waving wildly, and a stout figure in pink robes. “Thief!” the merchant cried. “He’s stolen my wares!”
The gargoyle, who’d stolen a vase full of flowers, zigzagged through tents, throwing marigolds as he went. Meanwhile, the merchant, who was still shouting, spotted Sybil and her escort. “Well?” he shouted. “Aren’t you going to defend my honor? My stall has been assailed!”
Weasel Face rolled her eyes. “I’ll be right back, Diviner.” She reached for something tangled in her coif.
That’s when I saw it. A small stone with a hole in its center, hung on a silver chain around Weasel Face’s neck.
Maude and I leaned forward, watching as Weasel Face put her finger through the stone, smooth side down. A moment later she vanished, then reappeared thirty paces in the distance, darting between tents.
“Aisling’s motherfucking waters.” Maude was holding in a laugh. She patted my back. “That’s it, my boy. The loom stone—and your mark. Wait for her to come back. I’ll get Bartholomew.”
“What about Sybil?”
“Not yet.”
Maude left me hiding behind the stall. Paces ahead, Sybil remained on the walkway, rolling her shoulders, then her neck, popping the joints.
When the wind pushed against her, her robes pressed over her body as if sculpted there.
I wanted to twist the fabric in my fist. Touch the thing that was touching her.
The merchant clearly felt the same. He eyed Sybil sheepishly, then grew bolder, approaching with his hands behind his back.
“I went to Aisling Cathedral every year,” he told her.
“I never had enough coin for a Divination, but I prayed, Diviner. To the Artful Brigand. For fine portents and finer profits.” His voice hitched.
“I wept to hear that the cathedral had fallen.”
Sybil spared him a glance, then moved down the walkway.
“Pray,” the merchant said, catching up, “could you tell me if the Artful Brigand favors me still? I’ve fallen on hard times and need…
” He blinked, and the next moment he was on his knees in front of her.
“Please, Diviner.” He wrapped his arms around Sybil’s abdomen, squeezing her stomach. “I need something to believe in.”
She gasped. A visceral sound of pain.
My body was already in motion. Next I knew, my fingers were locked in a fist around the merchant’s collar. I yanked him back so hard and so fast he didn’t even see me until I was standing over him. “Get back to your stall,” I told him, vitriol searing the inside of my helmet. “Now.”
Peeling himself off the grass, tripping and running, he did.
Sybil’s arms pressed protectively over her stomach. I thought she might say something—pith, say anything—but all she did was stick up her nose, skirt around me, and make her way toward the arena.
Pulse in my ears, I stepped into her path.
She tried a second time to go around me. One step and I was blocking her way.
Hot air shot from her nose. “Move.”
“Are you all right?”
“Excuse me?”
“He grabbed you. It seemed to hurt.”
I couldn’t tell where she was looking through that veil, but I was certain she was combing the slit of my visor, and certain twice over that she did not recognize me.
She looked, but did not seem to see, stepping around me a third time without so much as a bid-you-well and hurrying down the walkway.
I searched for Weasel Face and her loom stone—for Maude and the gargoyle—adrift with limited instructions and no bloody memory.
But then my body remembered, and my feet took me where I needed to go. Unreservedly, as if born to do so, I followed Sybil Delling into the arena.
Like an arrow shot, Sybil’s path was straight.
Paying guards and knights and their nervous horses no heed, and me even less, she marched through the wide corridor on the bottom level of the arena, pushing through doors into emptied stables so newly constructed I could smell the freshly milled oak, the hay on the ground still young and dry.
I thought she might be after a horse, and indeed she found what she was looking for in a stall, but it wasn’t a horse.
It was a suit of armor, set upon the hay. Chainmail. Under armor.
Sybil leaned over, examining it all with a kind of dedication I envied—I wanted her to look at me that way. “A fine suit,” I blurted, pitching my voice lower than usual. “No helmet, though.”
She didn’t answer. She was looking at the under armor, a padded shirt and pants. Atop of them, nestled in the fabric like an iron babe, was a hammer.
Sybil lifted the tool and weighed it in her palm. I could tell right away that she was displeased. Breath hissed out her nose. She discarded the hammer with a flick of her wrist, dropping it into the hay, then snatched up the pants.
I waited like an idiot, watching her.
Robes hiking up to reveal bare feet and ankles and the impressive curve of calf muscles, Sybil slipped one leg into the pants, then the other.
Something in the back of my skull told me there were rules about watching a woman dress.
What did propriety demand if that woman had already fucked you, I wondered.
What did it demand if she didn’t know it was you, and you, to your eternal dismay, had no memory of said fucking?
“If you’re going to stand there panting like a lecher,” Sybil said, making me jump, “be of some use, guard. Fetch me a lance.” She made a hot sound of annoyance. “A horse, too.”
And I might have. Except she’d begun to undo her white silken robe, abandoning it for the padded shirt.
When the robe fell, revealing the thin straps of a chemise, pale skin and bare shoulders and a muscled back—a feast for my eyes—not even the arena falling in around us could have moved me from that spot.
Sybil perked her ear. When she did not hear me hopping to fulfill her demands, she turned, putting a fever in my cheeks.
Her chemise was thin. Even in the dim light of the stables I had no trouble making out the shape of her.
Sternum, breasts, abdomen. But then my gaze snagged low on her stomach.
There, the white of her chemise was marred, a pinkish-orange stain upon the fabric. Not blood, but the ghost of it.
I remembered her hands pressing protectively over her stomach when the merchant had grabbed her. The visceral sound of pain when she’d cried out.