Evermore

"If Beau were still angry with you, he would beat you into a smear on the floor, not hang you like venison to be smoked." Jayr came around him and saw how he was holding his left arm. "Take off your shirt."

"Why, my lady." He attempted a leer. "You should have mentioned that you fancied me long before this."

"Modesty demanded my silence." The lightness of his voice didn't quite disguise the pain beneath it. "Are you going to show me, or am I going to strip you?"

He sighed. "As much as I wish I could display myself for you, I fear it is beyond me."

Jayr brought the lamp over, holding it so that the light illuminated his body. She took in a quick breath when she saw that his left arm appeared bent at right angles, impossibly, in four different places.

"Oh, Rain." She set the lamp aside. "Why did you not call out for help?"

"I have been contriving to release myself. Had I two good arms and a blade within reach, I would have." He tried to lift the twisted limb, failed, and sighed. "My return to the lists must again be postponed. Do you think Beaumaris will miss me?"

"I will tell him and the others not to celebrate too much." Jayr lit two more lamps and made a circuit around the room, but found nothing to indicate who had attacked the warrior. "You truly don't remember anything that happened?"

"Truly, no." He rubbed the back of his neck with his good hand. "I fed, I went to bed alone, and I woke up a bellpull."

The way he refused to look at her, the ceaseless jests, his eagerness to send her away all told Jayr one thing: He was lying. But why?

She crouched by the side of his chair and ripped his sleeve away from the cruelly distorted arm. "Is this all, or were other parts of you broken?"

He answered her through gritted teeth after he hissed a curse. "My dignity is in rather sorry condition. Perhaps I offended this intruder, or he simply happened upon my rooms and disliked my decor."

"No one likes your decor," she assured him. "Does it look as if anything is missing?"

He shook his head. "Everything valuable appears to still be here." He nodded toward a scattering of small red balls. "Even my collection of clown noses."

Jayr studied the new angles injury had made in his limb. It appeared as if all of his arm bones as well as his elbow joint had been broken. "I cannot repair this as it is."

"Never mind it." He patted her shoulder and then hissed. "Harlech will gladly put it to rights."

She carefully felt the bulging flesh over the healed breaks.

"The seigneur and his lady have arrived. When Lady Alexandra is able, I will have her see to it."

Rainer stiffened. "I have no need of a human leech."

"Your arm is badly broken, and she is not human anymore." Jayr watched him avoid her eyes. "Rain, if you're in any sort of trouble, you can confide in me. You know that I will say nothing to our lord or the others." She waited. "Did Farlae do this?"

"Farlae? God, no." He chuckled. "He does not enjoy my brass ooh-gah horns, of course, but I have ceased playing with them in his presence. Would you like to hear them, Jayr? I have them in sixteen different ooh-gahs."

"Rain."

He sighed heavily. "No one likes my ooh-gah horns either. Pity." His expression, open and guileless as it was, told her who had done this to him. Rain was never so winsome and charming as when he was in trouble. "I know how occupied you are with the tournament. Leave me."

"As soon as you agree to permit the lady to repair your bones." When he began to protest she glared. "Or I will see to it that Lord Byrne visits you next."

He sat up quickly, jolted his arm, and winced. "Very well."

Reluctantly she left him, but before she exited the keep she sent two guards back to Rainer's quarters: one to deliver blood, and the other to stand guard.

"Jayr." Harlech trotted out of the stables and caught up with her just outside the smithy. With him came the scent of white carnations, which almost blocked out the smell of manure and horses. "How fares Cyprien's lady?"

"She's resting." Jayr knew Harlech would not have used his talent for hearing voices from a distance to eavesdrop on the seigneur and his sygkenis. His expression, however, told her he was extremely agitated about something.

Had Harlech taken out his temper on Rainer? Was that why he was shedding scent like one newly turned? "Where were you earlier tonight?"

"After sending the men to greet the seigneur, I came here to see to the horses being delivered." He gestured toward the stable. "Why?"

"It doesn't matter." Jayr deliberately turned to inspect the jousting field. The colder weather had turned the turf brown, but that could not be helped. She would have to check the soil to assure that the rain had not left it too soft under the dead grass.

That reminded her. "Have the new tilt barriers been painted?"

"They're drying in the barns now." Harlech used a rag from his back pocket to wipe the perspiration from his brow. "Jayr, Beaumaris said that when the seigneur arrived, his lady behaved as if delirious, spoke nonsense, and then collapsed. Is this so?"

"Partly." After the incident with Cyprien and his sygkenis, Jayr had expected some gossip to spread, but not this fast. "Lady Alexandra did become ill, and fainted." She remembered Alexandra's muttering. "But I think the nonsense she spoke was in Scots Gaelic."

"What?" Harlech's eyes narrowed. "She is a woman of this century. An American. How…"

"The seigneur would not say, and it is the lady's private business." She met Harlech's uneasy gaze. "Instruct Beaumaris to say no more on it. The lady belongs to Cyprien and, like him, is our honored guest."

"An honored guest who is going mad?" He glanced at the keep before lowering his voice. "What if Richard used his talent on her?"

Here was the reason for his agitation, Jayr thought, and it had nothing to do with Rain. When their jardin had dwelled in the Scottish Highlands, Richard Tremayne had once visited, and had chastised Harlech for mishandling Lady Elizabeth's trunks. Among other things, Harlech's talent allowed him to hear the voices of humans and Kyn from as far away as a mile, but it also made him acutely vulnerable to the high lord's voice. Richard's rebuke had temporarily deafened him, and the effect had lasted for weeks. Harlech had avoided being in Richard's presence ever since.

"No, it is not that," Jayr said, placing her hand on his arm. "She is as vulnerable to Kyn talent as a human. If he had damaged her mind, she would be like the others—a moving doll."

Jayr saw that she wasn't convincing Harlech. "It matters not. When Cyprien is occupied, I will attend to her personally."

"While you do"—Harlech drew a slim copper blade from his belt and pressed it into her hand, "watch your back."

Chapter 7

Jayr slipped Harlech's dagger into a sheath on her hip, clasped hands with her second, and made her way back to the keep. Only a few hours remained until dawn, and preparations for the annual tournament had reached a critical point. She had yet to see to her master's needs, she would have to do something about Rainer and Harlech, and find a moment to check on Alexandra as well.

She had to move faster.

It could be worse, Jayr thought as she hurried through the corridors to the wardrobe. During her human life, tournaments had included immense feasts that required emptying out the keep's larder and stockyards. Some had lasted for days, even weeks. Fortunately the Kyn's diet limited their choices of nourishment to blood and wine, both of which Jayr had stockpiled for months in anticipation of the demand.

What troubled her was what she could not anticipate. The Kyn driven out of France and Italy had few ties with the American jardins, and were likely eager to set up new territories. Most of their lords were men unknown to her or her master. They might use the tournament as a means to acquire new status from Cyprien and eliminate their rivals.

The last time the Kyn had resorted to achieving rank and status through assassinations, they had touched off the jardin wars.

Jayr went to the north wing of the Realm, where much of the household work was done. There the keeper of the wardrobe, Farlae, ruled over his small band of tanners, fullers, weavers, and seamstresses.

Most of the garment making took place in two large work-rooms. The skilled women of the jardin gathered to ply their needles in the busy, friendly confines of the first chamber, while Farlae's sewing machines, forms, and armoires occupied the adjoining room. Anyone could enter the communal sewing chamber, but few dared disturb the wardrobe master while he worked his magic in his private workroom.

"You look as if a leper were paying you court," a soft, amused voice said beside her.

"That might prove more entertaining than this night, Viviana." Jayr turned to see Harlech's wife dressed in a work gown and scarf. In her arms she carried two bolts of cloth, one gray and one so darkly purple that it seemed black. Stains of the same colors spattered her skirts. "I had thought the dye work finished."

"So did I, until a few hours ago." She handed the bolts to one of the seamstresses, who took them to the cutting table. Viviana rubbed her palms together as if ridding them of dirt. "One of the Italians sent his seneschal to Farlae with orders for purple and gray silks."

Jayr frowned. The Kyn held on to few of the old superstitions, but one they did was the custom of retiring the colors of any fallen jardin. It showed respect for the dead while neatly avoiding any lingering bad luck they may have left behind.

Purple and gray had enormous misfortune attached to them, for they had once belonged to Sherwood.

"A tribute banner is unlikely," Jayr said to her friend. "Who would want to show them?"

"None save a Judas, I daresay." Viviana tucked a strand of her auburn hair behind her small ear, and for a moment Jayr thought she looked angry. "Unless there are other surprise guests come to bedevil me and my women, all will be finished here by morn." She nodded toward the closed door separating the two chambers. "Farlae will have it no other way." ns class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true">