Chapter Four
Inquisitions
Talon
Carrying a pitcher of wine and two
cups in one hand, Talon tried the door to his chamber with the
other, not at all surprised to find the inside bolt shut. “Open the
door, Lara.”
He heard the bolt slide and then the
door creaked open. He stepped into the chamber, and his senses were
instantly assailed by the sweet yet spicy fragrance emanating from
Lara’s freshly washed hair, its long, loose tendrils starting to
dry and curl. She wore a clean tunic of yellow linen and a skirt of
ocher, her waist belt, minus its knife, cinched around her slim
waist, her feet bare. He coughed and turned and slid the inside
bolt shut. “So we won’t be disturbed,” he told her, hiding his grin
as her hazel eyes sparked amber.
He set the pitcher and cups down on
the table and pulled a chair out, indicating that Lara should sit,
admiring the sway of her skirts as she approached. Her eyes weren’t
the only thing catlike about her. Even as stiff and sore as she
must have been after yesterday, she moved with an ease and a grace
that the practiced women of Charles’s court strove for and seldom
attained.
She took her seat, and he sat across
from her and filled both cups with wine. “We will sit and talk
awhile.” He pushed a cup over to her.
She picked the cup up left-handed,
sniffed the wine, and took a sip. “What are we to talk
about?”
He took a long swallow of his wine.
“You.”
“A jailer’s curiosity
about his prisoner?”
“Precisely.”
She took another, longer drink of her
wine, set her cup down, and folded her hands together on top of the
table. “Let the inquisition begin.”
Talon grinned despite himself. He’d
determined to be very captain-like, though it wasn’t easy when his
mind kept straying to the fullness of her pink lips and the
stubborn tilt of her patrician chin. “You’re lefthanded,” he
said.
“I am.”
“In the Saracen lands to
the east, they would call you sinister-handed.”
Her eyes challenged him. “Here they
call me witch for it, among other things.”
Talon took a drink of his wine. Being
a witch wasn’t a crime, though he’d never had a woman claim to be
one so blatantly. She was testing him, trying to find out if she
could gain any advantage over him, but he was neither a
particularly religious or superstitious man. He tended to believe
in things he could see and hear and touch. “Are you?”
She gave a little half smile and
shrugged.
Talon gave a dismissive laugh. “How
old are you?”
“I will be twenty-three
this autumn. How old are you?”
“I turned thirty last
month. I thought we were to talk about you?”
“We are, are we not? Is it
against the king’s law for us to talk about you as
well?”
“No.” Apparently, she
wasn’t going to let Talon’s professed fealty to the king’s laws go,
and he didn’t want to keep hearing about it for the next twelve
days, which was when the next Mallus would be held. A special
hearing to decide her case. That was the answer sent by Nithard
Midered, Count of Oloron and magistrate to the province, in answer
to the message Talon sent him this morning. The same count whose
name had made Lara pale and the old healer break into the clerics’
Latin and make plans to help Lara escape and send her into hiding
at a place called the Hollow.
The second son of a landed nobleman,
Talon had been meant for the church and had studied under the monks
from the age of twelve to sixteen, when he’d run away from the
monastery, stole his father’s favorite horse, and spent the next
two years making his way competing in riding tournaments. It was at
a tournament in Tours that he’d caught the king’s attention, and
when Charles found out Talon knew how to speak, read, and write not
only in the Frank language, but in Latin as well, he’d made him a
royal courier. The youngest ever.
He’d heard and understood every word
spoken between Sophie and Lara and had only acted ignorant and
uninterested. Even if he hadn’t known what they were saying, he
wouldn’t have let Lara go to the bathing house. He’d bathed there
daily since being garrisoned here. He knew of the westward window
facing the river, as he knew she would shimmy out of it before
getting so much as a toe wet. Still, he was impressed that she’d
seriously considered it. The high ladies of court would’ve simply
sat on his bed and cried, trying to win his sympathies. Or tried to
get him into bed and then demand his favor for theirs. Not Lara.
She was as different from the ladies at court as a wildcat to a
house kitten, and he was curious as to her breeding.
“What is Sophie to
you?”
“She’s raised me since I
was a swaddling babe abandoned at the gate of the Abbey St.
Marie.”
“You’re an orphan?” And
likely a bastard.
“I am.”
“How did Sophie come to
raise you?”
“The Abbot Rogert asked
her to.”
Talon clamped down on his grin. “I
meant why Sophie and not a childless couple or a family with
children?”
“You would have to ask the
abbot.”
This time Talon didn’t try to hide his
grin. In truth, he was glad she had wit as well as beauty. Yet as
much as he was enjoying their game, there were questions he wanted
answered.
“I sent word to Count
Nithard today,” he told her. “He sent word back that he’ll hold a
special Mallus in twelve days to rule on your and Fulrad’s
case.”
She sat still, all but for her eyes,
which flashed gold, then narrowed. “The count is all obliging
politeness.”
“So it would
seem.”
She crossed her arms and glared at
Talon. “How is Fulrad?” she finally asked. “I haven’t heard since
this morning.”
“He lives and seems to be
resting easier.”
She nodded and let out a ragged sigh.
“What, exactly, are his injuries? I forgot to ask Sophie earlier,
and she didn’t tell me.”
Because they were too busy discussing
Talon and the count and how to get her free of here. “His knee is
gone, the bone shattered, his shoulder out of joint, and the four
holes from Wolf’s fangs in his throat are still
seeping.”
She pressed her lips together and
looked ready to cry, whether for Fulrad or herself, Talon couldn’t
tell.
“Sophie says he’ll likely
speak again,” he offered.
“And you will be there to
hear him.”
“I will.”
She blinked, her hazel eyes
glistening. Even distraught and on the verge of tears, she sat
stiff and proud: cursed beautiful. Which brought him to his next
question.
“Should I be expecting any
challengers at my gate?”
She shook her head, sending a waft of
spicy sweet fragrance his way. “There will be no challengers coming
to fight for me.”
“Are all the men in this
valley blind fools, then?” he blurted out, confounded by the
perfumed air he breathed in. “Or do your thorns keep them from
trying for the prize?”
“Perhaps they have enough
sense to fear being shredded for their uninvited attempts.” Her
voice was as arched as her brows.
“Or no stones enough to
try.” Talon eyed his bandaged hand. His prize for thinking with his
stones instead of his brain.
“I never said none had
ever tried.” Her voice dripped honey, as it had at the river right
before she’d called him an arrogant ass. “Nor that none had ever
claimed the prize.”
Talon sat back, her words stinging as
smartly as the slice across his palm had yesterday. Her smile
turned smug, and it occurred to him that she’d intended to get a
rise out of him, and it had worked. Too well. He pushed his chair
back, stood, then gave her a stiff dip of his head before he turned
and strode from the chamber, throwing the outside bolt shut. He
should’ve stayed and pretended it didn’t matter to him that she’d
been plucked before. Yet it did, though he couldn’t have said why.
Which pretty much explained everything the red-headed, hazel-eyed
witchy wildcat made him feel.
***
The last of the candles sputtered out
in the common room before Talon stepped over snoring soldiers to
climb the stairs to his chamber. Lara lay in her cot, pretending to
sleep, Wolf on his pelts on the floor beside her. Talon knew she
was pretending because she’d laid her hand on Wolf’s head to quiet
him when he growled at Talon entering the chamber. He stripped down
to his breechcloth, washed up, and, ignoring the big, soft, empty
bed, threw the pelts he’d slept on last night against the door,
then settled into them for the night, grinning as he heard the
sound of her fist hitting her pillow and her loud harumph as she
flopped over on the cot.
He woke up several times to her pacing
back and forth across the chamber, keeping away from him and the
door, and he was up at dawn and out of the hall by daybreak. He
stayed away from his chamber all day, though it seemed every time
he looked up at the open window while about the day’s business,
which was every time he passed by it, she was either pacing back
and forth across it or sitting and staring out of it. After the
evening meal, he sat with his men in the common room drinking and
telling stories they’d all heard and told a hundred times before,
along with a few new ones, most of which had to do with the
captain’s current bewitchment. He let them jape away, only because
Sophie and the house servants all left for their own homes after
supper and weren’t there to hear, and Fulrad was heavily sedated
and floating in and out of awareness.
Talon only drank one cup of ale
himself. He didn’t dare guard the door to his chamber drunk, sure
the caged wildcat would run right over him, claws out and at the
ready if he was impaired in any way. When he entered his bedchamber
a little before midnight, Lara was in her cot, pretending to be
asleep again, but was back to pacing not long after he settled onto
the pelts.
Seven days passed this way, seven days
of watching her pace past the window all day, and seven nights of
having his sleep interrupted by listening to her footsteps in the
dark. Seven days of not a word spoken between them, when Talon
could take it no longer.
He returned to his chamber after a
light noon repast and leaned against the open door as she whirled
around midstride. “Will you give me your word that you’ll swear not
to run, ride, swim, or fly away if I let you out walk
outside?”
“Yes,” she said without
hesitation. “I swear.”