W
e rode through the night and into the day, alternating between trotting and walking. For a mercy, we were following the curve of the vast lake and were able to pause from time to time to water the cart-horse and ourselves.
Willing soul though he was, I felt our unlikely mount’s strength begin to flag by midday, his steps beginning to plod. He was unaccustomed to carrying such a burden on his wide back. My own strength was failing, too. I was hoarding it as best I could, straining my eyes to catch sight of fellow travellers on the road so that I might shield us at need, but I was tired and hungry, and I began to find myself getting careless.
I daresay Aleksei felt it, too. When I suggested that we turn off the road, conceal ourselves in the pines, and catch a few hours of sleep, he agreed readily.
He watched in perplexity as I borrowed his little belt knife and cut a few long, narrow strips from the blanket in which we carried our supplies. “What on earth are you doing, Moirin? Making some sort of charm?”
I concentrated on braiding the strips together. “Hardly. I’m making a hobble for this big fellow.” I nodded at the cart-horse, who leaned down to lip at my head-scarf again. “I think he’s done in. We’ll turn him loose before we go, but this way he’ll rest without straying far, and we’ll gain a few hours before his return is discovered.”
“Oh. I’d never have thought of such a thing.”
“You might if you’d spent three months in shackles,” I said absently, knotting the makeshift hobble around the cart-horse’s hairy fetlocks. “Sorry about this,” I added to the horse, who responded by pulling the scarf clean off my head with his dexterous lips. I laughed and tugged it away from him, then kissed his velvety muzzle. “What, do you think you’re a goat now? Rest, great heart. I’m sorry I’ve nothing to feed you.” I turned to find Aleksei gazing at me in wonder. “What is it?” Realizing my head was bare, I touched my hair. “This? Aleksei, I will wear the scarf in public, I promise, but is there any chance you might endure it otherwise? It’s very itchy.”
He shook his head. “It’s not the scarf. It’s just… you, Moirin. You’re not like I expected.”
“How so?” I sat cross-legged beside the blanket of supplies and cut myself a hunk of bread and cheese before passing them to him.
“I don’t know if I can put it into words.” He took a modest portion of food for himself. “For all that you tease me, for all the sins you’ve confessed to committing, there’s something oddly… innocent… about you.”
I laughed. “Innocent?”
Aleksei nodded. “Seeing you like this, yes.”
I shrugged. “Mayhap it’s just that you’re seeing me happy and free for the first time since you’ve laid eyes on me.”
“No, it’s something more.” He rolled a hunk of brown bread in his hand, then whistled softly to the cart-horse, who came over to accept it gratefully, his lips nibbling Aleksei’s palm. “They like bread, especially if you roll it like that,” he added. “I expect it’s the salt from one’s sweat. When I was a boy, I used to hide in the stables sometimes.”
I chewed and swallowed a bite of my own. “Oh, aye? So did I when I was younger, when I visited Cillian at Innisclan.”
“Who is Cillian?”
I forgot that unlike his uncle, Aleksei didn’t have knowledge of the vast litany of my sins. He knew I had confessed to them, but he wasn’t privy to all the salacious details. “My oldest friend, and my first lover.”
Aleksei flushed, but he didn’t look away. “Are you trying to shock me because I called you innocent?”
“No.” I shook my head. “I don’t mind it. Only do not mistake me for something I’m not.”
He rolled another pellet of bread. “I don’t think I am.”
I watched him feed it to the cart-horse. “You remind me of him a little. Cillian, that is.”
His flush deepened. “Oh? How so?”
“You’ve a similar build,” I said. “Tall, long-limbed. And Cillian was a scholar, too, although it was tales of adventure and magic he loved.” I smiled sadly. “And he was only a little older than you when he died, I think.”
Aleksei’s face softened. “I’m sorry; I didn’t know. How did he die?”
“On a cattle-raid,” I murmured. “He was thrown and trampled.”
“I’m sorry,” Aleksei repeated.
“Thank you.” I was grateful for the simple gift of his sympathy, grateful that unlike his uncle, he was willing to allow me the privacy of my memories. I hadn’t forgotten his kindness when I was dealing with the worst of my grief at hearing of Jehanne’s death.
We ate together in companionable silence. When I had finished, I folded my head-scarf into a pillow, preparing to settle onto the pine-mast.
“Sleep for a few hours,” I suggested. “We’ll set out before dark, and walk through the night. It ought to be clear enough to see again, and it’s safer.”
He nodded. “If we do, we ought to reach the Ude River by noon tomorrow. I’m hoping we can buy passage on a barge.”
I smiled at him. “Ah, so you have thought this through, my hero.”
Aleksei returned my smile wryly. “It’s a poor excuse for a hero that has to be pushed by his mother into rescuing the maiden, then rely on the maiden to make their escape. But I am trying.”
“Heroes are not made overnight,” I murmured, curling up on the pine-mast and cushioning my head on the folded scarf and closing my eyes. “I think you’re doing very well.”
Worn out by exertion and fear, I fell asleep almost immediately, although it was a restless sleep. I dreamed I was back in Riva, back in chains, scrubbing the temple floor under Luba’s merciless gaze. Every time I thought I was finished with a mosaic square, she would point out ingrained dirt I had missed, forcing me to dip the scrub-brush back into the bucket of lye and begin over again, and it seemed to me in my dream that if I did not finish before the Patriarch came to inspect my work, I would be hauled to the town square and stoned.
I awoke to low, slanting sunlight, the scent of pine-trees, and bird-song, and I laughed aloud for the sheer joy of it.
“What is it?” Aleksei mumbled, pushing himself upright. His tawny hair was disheveled with sleep and stuck about with pine needles. “Moirin?”
“Nothing, nothing. Everything’s fine.” I stretched luxuriously, arching my back and stretching my limbs as far as I could, free and unfettered. “I’m happy to find myself free, that’s all.”
Aleksei gazed at me, his blue, blue eyes wide, his lips parted. Naamah’s gift swirled between us. There was a question behind his eyes, and it was one that made the bright lady smile.
“Ah.” I smiled, too. “Yes.”
He ducked his head. “What do you mean, yes?”
I ran my fingers through my hair, dislodging pine needles of my own. “You are wondering if I mean to honor my offer. I do. Only not here, not now.” I probed my cheek with my fingertips, wincing at finding it still sore and swollen where Pyotr Rostov had struck me. “Later, when we are safer, I will honor it.”
“Naamah’s blessing?”
“Yes, my sweet boy.” I examined the raw, chafed marks the chains had left on my wrists and ankles. “Only if you wish it.”
“You don’t love me, though.” Aleksei’s head came up. “Do you?”
“I care for you,” I said honestly. “It is a gift I would like to give you, if you’re willing to accept it. It is a gift I would gladly accept from you, if you are willing to offer it.” I frowned, searching for words he would understand. “It is a sacrament, Aleksei. I could not offer it without love, although I do not know if it is the kind of love you mean when you ask if I love you.”
He met my eyes. “It’s not. Do you think you could, though? Come to love me?”
A vision unfolded.
I’d caught involuntary glimpses of others’ memories before, but never of their dreams of what might be. Now, here, I
saw
Aleksei’s—and it made me catch my breath. Aleksei and I, together as man and wife, forging a new path in eastern Vralia, preaching a doctrine of love in which desire and innocence walked hand in hand. Aleksei and I, a new Edom the First Man and Yeva the All-Mother, sanctifying a new Garden of Eden.
No
, my
diadh-anam
whispered.
No
.
My eyes stung and watered. “No,” I murmured, wiping at them. “No, Aleksei. Not like that. I’m sorry.”
His throat worked. “You
saw
?”
I nodded.
Aleksei’s head dropped to his knees, his arms encircling them. “I thought… maybe. Maybe my uncle was wrong and this was what God and Yeshua willed after all. I have feared it, yearned for it, struggled against it for so long. Now, now that this has come to pass…” His broad shoulders rose and fell. “I thought if I accepted it… maybe.”
I went to him, held him as I had longed to do before. “Sweet boy,” I whispered against his temple. “Why do you struggle so hard to discern your God’s will? Stop fighting, and let him reveal it to you. All will come clear in time.”
Nearby, the cart-horse whickered as though in agreement.
“Truly?”
I kissed his brow. “Truly. Now, please, can we gather ourselves and take to the road?”
After Aleksei went to scout to see that the road was clear, I cut the cart-horse’s hobbles and we set out north on foot. The horse followed us for a while, peering after us through his forelock with great, liquid-dark eyes. I had to shoo him away, reminding him that his stable-mate would be missing him.
“He likes you,” Aleksei commented.
“Animals usually do,” I said. “Though I suspect it had as much to do with the bits of bread you fed him.”
“Can you really talk to them?” he asked.
“After a fashion,” I said. “Not with words, not really. But I can touch their thoughts and feelings.”
“Like you read mine,” he murmured.
I shook my head. “That’s never happened before. Only with memories. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to intrude. I don’t always know what form the Maghuin Dhonn’s gifts will take. It seems to change and grow as I get older.”
He processed that in silence. The sun sank low in the west, gilding the surface of the lake and sending our shadows stretching sideways. I didn’t relish the prospect of a long night’s walk, but at least it was peaceful here, and I felt a great deal better after some food and a few hours of sleep.
I was young, and gods willing, the various aches and pains my ordeal had inflicted on me would vanish in time. The bruises would fade, the welts would heal, the stiffness would pass. In time, I hoped, the memory of the Patriarch’s creamy smile as he heard my confession would fade, too, and the treasured memories he had violated would regain their luster.
I toyed with the jade bangle on my wrist as we walked, thinking about Aleksei’s plight, thinking about invoking Naamah’s blessing on Snow Tiger’s behalf. It was a piece of irony that my effort to protect
that
memory had nearly gotten me killed. If I hadn’t sworn the sacred oath in the Patriarch’s presence, he might never have known what form it took. No one had ever recorded the exact wording, not even Rebbe Avraham. I could simply have lied in the temple and sworn a false oath.
And what if I had?
Mayhap Pyotr Rostov would have kept his word and freed me. And the moment I fled, I would have been in exactly the danger Aleksei had described—alone, utterly dependent on my magic, conspicuous and vulnerable when my strength failed, sure to be pursued.
Instead, I had my awkward, fledgling hero to guide me, and the rudiments of a plan. Mayhap matters had fallen out for the best after all.
“What is that?” Aleksei broke the silence, nodding at the bangle. “Some sort of charm?”
“What is your obsession with charms?” I smiled to take the sting out of my words. “No, Aleksei. It’s a bracelet. It was a gift from the Emperor of Ch’in’s daughter.” I held out my wrist. “Do you see the color? It is the exact hue of a pool beneath the peak of White Jade Mountain, where the dragon gazes at his reflection. We jumped into that pool together from a very great height, the princess and I, and it was there that the dragon’s immortal spirit was freed.”
He eyed me. “Are you teasing me again?”
“Not in the least. You could ask your uncle if he were here; he’s got it all written down. Only he made me say the dragon was a fallen spirit.”
“Was it?”
“No,” I said. “He was a dragon.” It felt good to say it aloud, as though I were reclaiming the first of many truths the Patriarch had stolen.
The sun dipped beneath low mountains on the far side of the lake, and dusk, true dusk, settled over the empty road. Aleksei and I walked side by side, the only sound our steady footfalls and the faint jangling of the chains he carried in our bundle. I listened to the pine-trees murmur in the growing darkness.
“Moirin, why not?” Aleksei asked in a low voice. “Why are you so sure you couldn’t love me? Is it that you’re still mourning the young man you told me about?”
“No, my sweet boy,” I said with regret. “That was a long time ago. The grief never goes away, but it gets easier to bear. And if it were because I was in mourning for a lost love, it would be my lady Jehanne I was grieving for, since that loss is fresh and the ache of it far from fading.”
He stopped stock-still. “The D’Angeline
Queen
?”
I glanced at him in surprise. “I thought you knew. You were so kind to me.”