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Only they hadn’t been safe.

“Liath!” The whisper was soft but sharp.Advertisement

Liath started, banging her knees on the hard floor, then scrambled to her feet and whirled. Stood for a moment, registering this stranger. “H—Hanna?”

“You’re so … well, not pale, but so gray.” Hanna strode forward. She wore a frown on her face. Her energy radiated like heat in the stillness of the cool chapel, warmed only by the brazier of coals which Liath had brought out, for she could no longer bear cold. “Old Johan is passing up through the spheres this time for certain, they say. I saw Hugh ride off. He’ll be gone at least ’til evening, so I came over. Mama said I might, and I haven’t talked to you since—” She hesitated. Liath simply stared at her. She was having a hard time understanding words spoken by a voice other than Hugh’s. “Since that day he struck you outside the inn. Do you remember that man who was there that day? He was traveling through to Freelas. He asked about you, after Hugh took you back to the church. He asked about your Da.”

“I don’t remember him,” said Liath tonelessly. Hanna’s words had no real meaning, except perhaps to someone else, someone who was no longer here. “You shouldn’t be here.”

Hanna stiffened. “Do you want me to go?”

Liath shook her head. That wasn’t what she meant, but she hardly knew how to speak anymore, only how to recite aloud words written down by others. “No. But you shouldn’t be here.” Suddenly nervous, she looked back over her shoulder, toward the archway that led into the nave. “He’ll come—”

“He’s ridden down to River’s Bend. He can’t possibly be back until evening.”

“He’ll know. He’ll come back. He’ll know I’m seeing someone. He always knows.”

“Liath. Sit down. You’re shaking all over.” Hanna touched her. That touch was like fire sparking up Liath’s arm. She could move but only found the strength to do so when Hanna steered her toward a bench and sat down beside her, pressing an arm around her back. Liath gave in to sudden exhaustion and rested her head on Hanna’s shoulder. “Lars is gone to visit his old mother, and Dorit is down at the inn gossiping with Mama, so Hugh can’t possibly know. Dorit says you’re silent as a ghost, slipping around this place. Says you never speak unless the frater speaks to you, and then half the time in some devil’s tongue. Or at least, that’s what she says.” Hanna fell silent and stroked Liath’s arm, a rhythmic caress. They sat this way for some time.

Suddenly Liath flung up her head. “What day is it?”

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“Ladysday Eve.”

“No. What month? What day? What season? Is it still winter?”

Hanna gazed at her, and Liath realized abruptly that Hanna was uneasy, even frightened, but by what, or whom? “It’s a month at least to the thaw. Midwinter has come and gone. So has the Feast of St. Herodia. It was a good harvest and there’s none in want even at this late season. Most of the rye sown last autumn survived the winter.”

“Then Mariansmass, after the thaw,” said Liath, struggling to remember something important Da had once told her. Or was it her mother? Yes, it had been her mother. They had been in the garden, on the very day of Mariansmass, pinching off new growth in the garden, thinning, but why were there shoots so early? And her mother, with her pale hair and elegant carriage, a proud woman … but even as she recalled the scene, the memory of what her mother had told her fled. “I’ll be seventeen,” she said, grasping at the only thing she could make sense of.

“Liath. Look at me.” With an effort Liath lifted her head and turned it to look at Hanna, whose expression was torn with anguish. “My parents want to betroth me to young Johan. At Mariansmass. I told them I would think about it.” Now she sounded bewildered. She was pleading. “What should I do? I don’t want to marry him and live out working his land, and bearing his children, every year until I die. I know that is what the Lady has granted us, in our span of years, that I should be proud enough to be a freewoman, but that isn’t what I want. Even though I be marked for it. But I don’t know what else to do.”

Hanna needed her. The shadow door drawn into the great north door in her sealed chamber opened a crack, admitting Hanna past the wilderness, the wasted lands, to her stronghold. “Oh, Hanna.” A sudden fire burned in her. “If Da and—if we could only go back to Autun, that’s where we lived before we came here, or to Qurtubah and the Kalif’s court, or to Darre, where we lived first, then we could take you with us.” pqdm.com