Crown of Stars (Crown of Stars #7)

She tried to stand, but her legs were all pins and needles. Arms steadied her. She sought and found the child who had thrown herself onto the floor of the nave with a ring of troubled onlookers standing carefully back while she shrieked and shrieked, no matter that she was breaking the sanctuary of the holy church and pounded feet and hands on the floor in the throes of a furious tantrum.

“We were too slow! We didn’t get there fast enough!”

“Blessing,” she said.

They parted ranks to let her through. Anna knelt just out of range of those flailing hands and feet.

“Careful, my lady,” she said in a hoarse voice. She had a purpling bruise on her chin, and she was favoring one arm. “She’s gone wild.”

“Does the Brother Infirmarian not have some manner of sleeping draught?” Liath asked to the air at large.

There were so many people in the church, crowding and choking her, that she began to think some were real flesh and others only shadow and light, souls and presences descended from the higher spheres, shifting in and out of existence like a light winking on and off as a hand covers and uncovers its flame.

“Lady? Liathano?” A voice swam past her. A hand brushed her elbow. “I think she is fainting.”

Easier to be the sun, who never says, “I will not rise at my regular time.” Easier to be the moon, who wanes and waxes according to the law that set it in motion. Easier to be stars, who rise and set as they are commanded, and the winds, who blow, and the mountains, who remain in the place they are set. They are instruments of the power that set them in motion.

“Here, lady. Drink.”

She staggered to her feet.

Blessing was still sobbing, lips moist and liquid spattered down her chin. “I shouldn’t have stayed with Uncle! I should have gone sooner! Then I would have gotten to him. I would have saved him! I could have! I could have!”

“You must take more, Your Highness.” Anna was fixed at the girl’s side, holding a cup away and out of arm’s reach. “You must.”

Captain Fulk stood beside Liath, a hand hovering a finger’s breadth from her arm.

“I pray you, my lady,” he said in a low voice, “there’s something I must speak of immediately.” She nodded, because God had given humankind liberty to choose for the good or for ill, for the blessing or the curse. “Princess Theophanu is to become regnant by marrying this Eika lord, called Stronghand. It’s agreed that the princess will adopt Blessing as her heir, and that the girl will marry Conrad’s infant son, if the little lad lives.”

“Become regnant? Blessing?”

The captain was weary, face shadowed, eyes dark, as he considered the girl now dropping off to sleep. “I don’t know what to think of this alliance with the Eika. Yet they did have us outnumbered and surrounded. They could have done great damage to the armies of Wendar and Varre, but their lord, this Stronghand, did hold back the killing blow. There’s a party of them with us, come to escort the witch woman. To make sure she’s not harmed, I suppose, although she’s more dangerous to us than we are to her.”

Words, like stars, swung on their course overhead and passed on into the night. She knew she ought to concentrate, but it was so difficult.

“What of Sanglant?” she asked. “Hanna, bring me the crown.” Then, after all, she remembered he was dead.

“She’s all that’s left of him.” Fulk’s face was wet, and he smiled sadly. “The little spitfire. Thinking she could have saved him! Poor mite.”

“No, he’s not dead,” she said, but when she turned around and saw him lying still and silent within the ring of light, she knew he was. “I can’t bear it,” she whispered.

“Nor can any of us, my lady, but we must. Ai, God! We must.”

5

CAPTAIN Fulk carried Princess Blessing to the guesthouse, where a soft bed awaited her. Anna knelt beside her. As the girl slept, Anna undid the awful topknot and combed out Blessing’s black hair as well as she could. She could not bear to look at the girl with her hair done up in the manner of savages.

Fulk was speaking at the door in a low voice, arranging for food and drink, water to wash, a guard to be set over the girl. Two lamps were lit, one set on a tripod by the door and one hanging from a hook in the corner, so the girl would not wake to darkness. She would be well guarded. Sanglant’s guard would see to that.

She heard them talking: Blessing was to be named as heir to Theophanu. She would marry the son of Conrad and Tallia, now an infant. Someday, God willing, she would be regnant.