"I'll go now, Captain," said the girl in a choked voice. She swept up her skirts in one hand and clambered down the ladder.
It took all Liath's courage to look Thiadbold in the eye. Would he reject her as well?
His gaze remained steady. He brushed a finger along the dimpled scar where he had lost part of an ear. "You fought with us. We Lions don't forget our friends."
"I thank you." It was difficult to get the words out without bursting into tears.
He nodded gravely, and left to follow Lady Theucinda.
Liath rested her elbows on the railing and studied the beauty of the land and the hazy pearllike glamour of the early morning light. Maybe the clouds had lightened. Maybe the sun would break through soon. But her pleasure in the day had vanished.
How could Sanglant ever hope to make her his queen when such rumors spun through his own retinue? Especially when many, even most, were true. And did she really care? She had no wish to be queen, to be saddled with the burdens, duties, obligations, and intrigues that any consort must shoulder. Yet to be his concubine, to share him with another woman—because the regnant must wed— Was unbearable. To leave him was unthinkable.
What a fool Theucinda was! That girl could never understand that it had been easy to leave the Eagles and ride away with Sanglant, back when Sanglant had been nothing more than captain of the Bang's Dragons.
"I will not be defeated by this," she said, and she listened, hoping the wind had an answer for her, but naturally it did not.
IV
FOOL'S ERRAND
1
WHERE they first caught sight of the cathedral tower the road bent through the remains of an old oak wood, now eaten in from all sides by clearing and felling.
"God spare us!" Atto exclaimed. "Mara! Look!"
She stopped obediently and lifted her head. Midway through pregnancy, she was also weary and dirty. 'Are we there yet?" she asked as she squinted into the distance.
"Look how tall!" exclaimed Atto. "How can a person build so high and not have it fall? All of stone!"
"Yes, truly," she said in a bright voice as her gaze tracked over the tops of trees and the wash of sky without stopping on the tower. Finally she looked at Atto, waiting for him to give the word to start walking.
The cathedral was easily seen in a gap between trees. Smoke drifted out of the cover of wood, but those streamers could not conceal the massive block of stone that marked the bell tower, fully three stories tall. The clouds lay in a high gray-white sheet across the heavens; maybe it was brighter today than it had been yesterday, although it was certainly no warmer.
"Can you see the tower, Mara?" Alain asked in a low voice that Atto, still exclaiming, would not notice.
She shrugged, but he had learned enough about her in the past few days to understand that she never contradicted Atto and never said one word that might displease her betrothed. It was strange to Alain that Atto took no notice of the way she could not see things far away.