Child of Flame (Crown of Stars #4)

“I am not ready to take so bold a step.”

“Do not wait too long, Prince Sanglant.” Her voice roughened, and not only from passion. “Your child is precious, but children are easily lost in times like these.” He turned back, startled, to regard her. Tears shone in her eyes. “Our daughter was but two years of age when she died.”

“I was never told. She was to be placed in a convent. That’s all I heard. My father made it clear that was to be the end of it, as far as I was concerned.”

“And so it was the end of it,” she said bitterly. “Is the church not the proper place for an illegitimate child? When a stallion is brought in to breed a mare, isn’t he returned afterward to his master?”

“What happened?”

Anna feared to breathe, seeing how still the prince stood and knowing how well he could hear.

After a moment, Waltharia continued. “Bandits fell upon the party that was escorting her to the cloister at Warteshausen. I had them hunted down and hanged, and let their corpses rot to nothing on the walls. But that did not bring back the child.” She smiled bravely, wiped her face, and downed another cup of cider. “There,” she finished, setting down the cup. It rang lightly on wood. “I had done grieving, until you reminded me. It happened four years past, not yesterday. I lost my second son to fever two winters ago, and I pray to God every dawn and every night that I shall not lose the other three.” Anger made her tears wither and dry, a heat that wicked them away. “I will not risk Villam lands and all that my father has left in my care so that Henry may run to Aosta seeking an illusory crown among foreigners.”

“You risk Henry’s wrath if you counsel rebellion. You could lose everything, even your life.”

The fever had passed, leaving her calm again, the kind of woman who rarely lost control and then only when she really, really wanted to and was prepared for the consequences. She displayed the gold torque again, tracing the curve of the braid sensuously with her finger. Sanglant, shuddering, shut his eyes. His hands, lying open against the stone ledge, curled into fists.

She smiled as at a challenge offered and accepted. “We march lords must be prepared for anything.”

He stirred at the window, opening his eyes. “Is that an invitation, or a proposal?”

“It’s whatever you take it to be. Will you wear the gold torque, my lord prince?”

5

THE Eika fleet sailed out of Rikin Sound before a fair wind, two hundred and twenty-three longships and forty-six knarrs, the big-bellied cargo ships that plied the northern seas. Behind them came eight ships of various size and shape, captained by human allies. These were mostly young men from the merchant colonies that now paid tribute to Stronghand, restless youths eager to make a fortune looting Alba’s rich towns and heathen temples.

At first the weather favored them, but they had no sooner seen the shorebirds flying overhead, they had no sooner heard the first shout from the foremost ships, sighting the green hills of Alba, than a gale blew up from the southwest and scattered the fleet north and east.

Stronghand ordered his men to shorten their sails and they rode out the storm with ease, but it took six days for their merfolk allies to track down the scattered ships and escort them back to a rendezvous at the Cackling Skerries off the rugged northeastern coast of Alba, far from the southern lands where lay the most prosperous towns, fields, and temples.

He met with his commanders on Cracknose Rock. Their skiffs were beached in a narrow strand strewn with coarse rocks as grainy as pumice. Cracknose Rock lay at the center of the Skerries, a fist of stone thrusting up defiantly out of the sea. Climbing to the top, scrambling on rock split and cracked and seeping water from every crevasse and depression, Stronghand could see the fleet riding at anchor in the choppy waters, most of the ships pulled well back from the scatter of rocky islets. Spray whipped off the sea. Breakers surged and sucked among the smaller rocks crowding like children about the foot of Cracknose. Dark clouds made iron of the sky. A pale promontory flashed in and out of view on the western horizon as a rainstorm occluded it at intervals.

The storm had made a few of his allies timid.

“What if it’s true that the Alba tree sorcerers raised that storm?” said Isa’s chief. “Our priests don’t have the power to call wind and make the waves into mountains.”

Stronghand set his standard pole at the center of the gathered chieftains. He pivoted around, gripping it, looking each of his commanders in the eye. None looked away. They had more pride than that. But he knew he could not trust them all.