Crown of Stars (Crown of Stars #7)

“Past time! You must be all of—eighteen!”

“As if you’re so much older,” he retorted, and at once hated himself for the way it sounded.

“A world older!” she said with that laugh that always made him feel a child. “I might as well be your aunt.”

“But you’re not,” he added recklessly, and blushed at his boldness.

The rest of the company guided their horses to level ground, greeted the other messenger and folded him into their ranks, and waited while four men lit torches.

“Well met, Captain,” she called.

The captain of Fulk’s company lifted a hand in greeting, smiling a little.

What man would not!

As they rode back, she chatted easily with the men she knew among his retinue, soldiers she had spent many years with when she was fostered at Lavas Holding. The new men looked at her askance because she had not the look of his own lineage, which they had become accustomed to, but of something stranger. She was the daughter of the Hidden One, yet in her the blood of the uttermost east mingled in equal portions with the blood of the west.

“How long have you been back with the queen’s progress?” she asked him as they reached the road and she abandoned the soldiers to move up alongside him.

“Two years now.”

“You must have come to the progress, then, right after—”

“I don’t want to talk about it, I pray you. I was there when it happened.”

She shrugged. For a while they rode in silence, serenaded by the steady clop of hooves. Two men walked before them, carrying torches, and two a few ranks behind. The road wound away into the trees, slipping in and out of drifts of rising mist.

The torchlight made the gold-work shimmer around her face. Her expression lapsed into a blank absence, as if she were thinking of a lost lover or some particularly intriguing mathematical problem, but after a moment she shook herself and indicated the young man riding to his right.

“Who is this? We haven’t met.”

“This is my best companion, Henry.”

“Henry?” She seemed about to smile, but did not. “I am named Chabi, although you may call me Judith, after my father’s mother, if you wish. My mother was Sorgatani, princess of the Kerayit.”

“How could I have guessed, when it is all Fulk has been speaking of this past month?”

“Henry!”

She laughed.

The youth nodded in his quiet way. “Well met.”

“You’re new to the progress, aren’t you?”

“He’s been with me for almost three years now,” said Fulk. “He came to Lavas just after you left that last time.”

But she did not look at him. “Where are you come from?”

“Rikin Fjord,” said Henry.

“He’s a great grandson of Stronghand,” said Fulk.

“Are you so?” she said with renewed interest.

Henry was leaner and shorter than most of the Eika, with a pure golden color of skin, although he wore Wendish clothing that mostly covered his body and limbs. His claws were politely sheathed, and he had such an easy seat on a horse that Fulk had a difficult time believing that in the old days all horses had shied from the Eika smell.

“Yes,” Henry added. “Some say I resemble him, but of course I never met him. Originally I was to become a cleric in the queen’s schola.”

“A cleric?” She seemed about to sputter, as if she found the notion of an Eika male praying and kneeling quite funny, but then caught herself. “But not anymore?”

Henry shrugged. It was a gesture that looked both strange and familiar in him, but he had been raised as much among humankind as among his Eika brothers.

“My sister’s husband died of the lung fever this past spring,” said Fulk quickly, eager to draw attention. “So now it seems the queen has remembered the old contract between Queen Theophanu and Lord Stronghand, and she’s talking of marrying Henry to Constance to fulfill the agreement that an Eika prince be married into the royal family once in every generation, to renew the alliance.”

“It will happen only if the succession is secure,” said Henry calmly.

“Well!” she said. And then, “Well!” She looked keenly at Fulk. “Is the succession secure?”

He grimaced. He couldn’t help himself. “I’m still the horse kept in reserve. Constance is pregnant—was already, of course, when Thietmar died—but we’ve heard nothing yet. Pray God nothing happens to her! She’s near her time.”