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The Eagle, still beside her, grunted, acknowledging her surprise. “Not quite what anyone expected.”

And yet, after a moment’s consideration, Rosvita realized she was not at all surprised. Henry’s grief had rendered him incapable of sending his eldest legitimate child on her way for her heir’s progress, as was traditional. He had left that duty to another, to Judith, margrave of Olsatia and Austra.Advertisement

This, of course, was the inevitable result.

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SHE jammed the book into the saddlebag, cursing herself under her breath. Why must she continually betray herself? Wouldn’t it be better to stop pretending to be what she was not—a simple, uneducated Eagle? Why not confide in the woman? She looked trustworthy enough, and she was Ivar’s sister.

Yet Rosvita had lived for many years in the circle of the king’s progress. She could not be a simple woman, uncomplicated in the way Ivar was; she might involve herself in many intrigues unknown to Liath, dangerous to Liath. As a good churchwoman, surely she would not be sympathetic to tales of daimones and the forbidden knowledge of the mathematici.

I would never know. I can never know whom to trust. That is why Da told me to “Trust no one.”

Thunder boomed. The entire stables shook under that great crack and rumbling roar. She jumped, startled, hating herself for being scared all the time. If only Hanna would return, but she could not expect Hanna for months. And with Hanna would come Wolfhere and his damnable questions and his watching eyes.

And yet, was not Rosvita more likely to be trustworthy than Wolfhere? Liath liked Wolfhere—that was the worst of it—but she could never trust him. He had known both her mother and father. He knew what she was, and he wanted something from her, just as Hugh had wanted—

But she was not going to think about Hugh. She could not. Hugh looked like someone who could be trusted. Beautiful Hugh. She touched a hand to her cheek, remembering the pain when he hit her.

“You are free of Hugh,” she whispered, if only to stop this pointless endless fruitless speculation.

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Thunder cracked and rumbled on and on and on, directly overhead. She shuddered, seized by a sudden intense wave of fear, as if fear were a living being, a daimone that had set its claws into her and tightened them, drawing blood and entrails and sucking all the spirit out of her. Rain drummed on the roof.

Abruptly the doors to the stables opened and servants and horses flooded in. They talked all at once, chattering, excited, exuberant. She shrank back into the stable where her and Hathui’s gear lay together. Hiding in shadow, she listened: Sapientia, sent off on her heir’s progress after the battle at Kassel, had returned to the king’s progress triumphantly pregnant with the child who, if born alive and healthy, would guarantee her claim to become ruler after her father.

On the heels of their arrival the hunters returned, escaping the full force of the storm. Every stall was needed to stable horses. Liath gathered up her and Hathui’s meager bundles and hauled them up to the loft where she arranged them in a safe corner. It took time. It kept her out of the way. It made her just another anonymous servant, someone who would be overlooked.

But not, alas, forever.

Hathui, wet through, came up the ladder and onto the plank floor. She wrung water out of her cloak. Her hair lay matted to her head and in streaks down her neck.

“You’re back!” she said with surprise.

“I am.”

“You should have been waiting for the king,” scolded Hathui. Then, distracted by the stamp and bustle of folk below, she added, “I hear Princess Sapientia has returned, though I haven’t seen her.”

“I haven’t seen her either,” said Liath. “She and her party must have been riding just behind me.”

“They came in by the western road.” Hathui gathered her saddlebags and bedroll. “I’m off to Quedlinhame to announce the news to Queen Mathilda and Mother Scholastica. You must go now and attend the king. At once.”

Liath nodded dutifully. She nudged her saddlebags into the corner and threw her bedroll over them to conceal them. Hathui hoisted her bedroll over her shoulders and, with a brisk nod at Liath, climbed back down the ladder. Liath followed.

Rain pounded outside. She paused as Hathui got a new horse, freshly saddled. Ducking out by a side door, she hesitated under the eaves as water coursed down from the thatch roof and puddled at her feet, as rain pummeled the dry-packed earth of the courtyard into a shallow sea of mud. Hathui, coming outside by the main stable doors, swung onto her horse and forged out through the open gate into the teeth of the storm. Liath gazed across the courtyard at the whitewashed wall of one long side of the great hall, where all the living and feasting and sleeping went on. It looked no different than it had an hour ago, when she had entered hoping to find solitude there. But now, as if brought by the storm, she felt that wave of fear again, such a hideous swell of dread that her knees almost gave out under her. pqdm.com