Crown of Stars

“But you would never—!”

“Sorgatani would never, would she?”

“She cried, afterward.”

“Yet folk will look at her and see a foreigner. A demon.”

“Yes, truly, so they will.” With a sad smile, Hanna lifted her hand to touch Liath’s dusky cheek. “I am so glad we have found each other again, at last.”

Liath’s throat was choked, and her voice trembled. “At last,” she agreed. It was all she could manage to say without bursting into tears.

2

THE convent hid in a ravine whose entrance was so cleverly concealed that Liath would have walked right past it and kept moving southeast on the trail, on into the wilderness. Hanna turned aside where honeysuckle concealed a path. They made their way down a rocky track between high cliff walls of streaked stone. Two men could not walk abreast; it was barely wide enough for the packhorses to squeeze through. A bird whistled, and Hanna responded with a shout to identify herself. The clop of hooves and stamp of feet threw weird echoes into the air. These ceased when the ravine opened into a neat jewel of a valley. A stream crossed their path, straining its banks. Beyond, a substantial stone wall blocked the valley’s mouth, but it had crumbled in three places where floodwaters had eaten away its foundation. Fence segments woven of branches patched the gaps.

Beyond, a low stockade surrounded a whitewashed long hall and a collection of outbuildings. Chickens clucked. Goats bawled. Fruit and nut trees stood in tidy rows. Freshly turned earth marked a substantial garden.

Everyone turned out to greet them: lean soldiers armed with spears and swords, clerics in ragged robes, and a dozen nuns of varying ages dressed in sober wool robes and holding rakes and shovels and scythes in their hands. A party of Ashioi could have devastated their ranks in moments, had they only known where to find them.

Hanna was so excited that she raced forward, leaving her horse behind with one of the Lions. She was still very much the girl Liath remembered from Heart’s Rest—her first true friend—and yet the years had tempered and molded her to become something different as well: the good nature, the pragmatic eye, and the true heart remained unaltered, but when she wasn’t talking, she pinched her lips together in way that made Liath want to hug her, as if hugging could erase pain. What had she suffered that she did not speak of? Those gathered here might know.

Their joy at seeing Hanna could not be misinterpreted: they trusted and liked her.

Liath dismounted and approached with more caution as Sister Rosvita came forward to greet her. The journey had turned the cleric’s hair to silver, and she was as lean as a scarecrow, but she had a ruddy gleam to her face and vigor in her stride.

“Eagle! Or must I call you otherwise? We are hopelessly behind in our news. How do you fare?”

Liath greeted her in the formal manner, clasping arms in the way of courtiers who do not quite trust each other but hope to by reason of their mutual love for the regnant. “It is a long tale. I have business here with Mother Rothgard. Is she here?”

Rosvita shook her head. “She is gone.”

Disappointment did jab. She felt it under her ribs. “Gone where?”

“Dead.” Liath heard no grief in Rosvita’s voice, only weariness. “So we discover, arriving here ourselves only two days ago. Here is Sister Acella, who stands as mother to those nuns who remain.”

It took time to sort things out. First, Liath greeted those few of Bertha’s retinue who had survived—the sergeant and a dozen or so men. She felt sick at heart seeing so few of them, and yet they greeted her respectfully and with every evidence that they were relieved to be reunited with the woman who had marched them to their doom. Each member of Rosvita’s schola made a pretty introduction; the only one she recalled from before was Brother Fortunatus, gone as lean as he once was chubby. The nuns of St. Valeria watched from afar as Sister Acella led her into the hall and sat her at a table, bringing a pitcher of ale.

“The Lions and the other Eagles will be thirsty, too,” said Liath, noting how only Rosvita and Acella sat with her. Hanna had not come inside. A pair of nuns watched her with uncomfortably intent interest from the shadows at the far end of the hall, but they did not approach.

“They will be taken care of,” said Acella. “Tell me what you have come for.”

“I’ll do so, gladly, if you’ll tell me what became of Mother Rothgard and how she died.”

The tale was quickly told. Autumn’s tempest had torn part of the roof off the long hall. Mother Rothgard had died after falling from a ladder while repairing the thatch. Floods had uprooted the wall, and wolves, growing bold, had killed four nuns over the course of the winter. Weaker souls would have abandoned the site, but few chose the isolated, difficult life at St. Valeria’s in any event and those left had voted to bide in the hall and rebuild rather than flee the onslaught of so many troubles.