Prince of Dogs

At first she thought they were alone in the pavilion, and in that instant a sudden wave compounded more of adrenaline than fear washed through her. What did he want of her? It was very late. The feast had just ended.

The hounds ranged around his chair growled and slunk back to keep their distance from her, and she saw how he raised his eyebrows, surprised at their behavior. Then his captain stepped out from the shadows to attend his lord.

“My lord count,” she said. “I have come, as your steward directed me.” Still rumpled from being woken out of sleep! She did not add that thought, knowing he would judge it as impertinence. He did not tolerate impertinence.

“Sit, Terror,” he said. The old hound, a handsome creature despite its fearsome size and disposition, sat obediently. He called the others to order as well, firmly but without cruelty or roughness. From his tone she could tell he regarded them not with the loving care one bestows on a beloved child but with the absolute unthinking consideration one has for one’s own limbs.

Two lanterns illuminated the tent, just enough for her to see a wide pallet in one corner of the tent, draped with a gauzy veil, a camp table with pitcher and basin atop it, and his mail shirt glittering faintly where it draped from a wooden post and cross post in another corner. A servant hustled in through the entryway, bearing a candle that flashed and flamed in her eyes. The count lifted a hand and at once the servant licked two fingers and pressed them to the wick, dousing the flame. The servant took up the pitcher and retreated outside.

The count looked up at her then. His expression disconcerted her. She had come to recognize that look in a man’s eyes, the one that betrayed his interest in her as a woman, but it flashed and faded as quickly as the candle had been extinguished. This was not a man who acted upon impulse, or who let his desires or obsessions get the better of him. She had never met anyone quite like him. Had Da had such qualities, perhaps they could have stayed in Qurtubah instead of being forced to flee because of his folly; perhaps his temper would not have gotten them into so much trouble in Autun that they had been driven out; perhaps he could have covered his tracks better, seen the assassin coming, and saved himself—and her—in Heart’s Rest.

At once she felt miserable for thinking such traitorous thoughts toward Da. Da was who he was. He had done the best he could. He had protected her for as long as he was able.

And if all had not happened as Lord Fate and Lady Fortune and God Themselves willed, then she would never have met Prince Sanglant—however brief that time had been.

“Eagle.” The count beckoned her to step closer. “What do you want from my son?”

Too startled to take a step forward, she gaped at him. “I want nothing from your son, my Lord.”

“But it is clear to me that he has put you under his protection.” Now the count leaned forward, gaze hard. “I do not want his situation complicated by a bastard of his making!”

A fish might have bubbled so, mouth popped open.

One of the hounds yipped. “Hush, Ardent,” he commanded. He turned his gaze back on her. “My servants report that he gave you coin earlier.”

“It isn’t for me!”

He lifted a hand, as if to say: “Then for whom?”

She flushed. “It is for Mistress Gisela’s niece.”

“She is Lord Wichman’s lover, is she not?”

“Not by her own choice!”

Terror growled, and the count set a stilling hand on the hound’s white mantle. “Ah,” said the count, enlightenment dawning. “It reminded you of your own situation at the king’s court.”

Shame made her angry, and reckless. “Your son is as honest a person as I have ever met. You shouldn’t suspect him of concealing from you what you have already forbidden him. You have nothing to fear from me in that regard. I have long since pledged my heart to a man who is now dead. And I have sworn the oaths of an Eagle.”

“That will do,” he said with an edge on his voice so quiet that she almost didn’t hear it. But she understood its intent and inclined her head to show she meant to speak no further—on that subject, at least.

“We haven’t much time.” He looked toward his captain. “Alain will return soon, and we must finish before he comes back. This tunnel, into Gent—” He beckoned the captain forward. The soldier had certain small blocks of wood in his hands. He knelt before his lord and arranged them: here two towers to represent a city; a strip of leather cord stood in for the river.

“Now, Eagle, come forward and place the tunnel where it would lie in relation to the city, as far as you remember. Lord Wichman says there is a line of bluffs here—” The captain set down sticks in a ragged line to demark the bluffs. “And the river’s mouth, so, with two channels but only one of them navigable and perhaps vulnerable …”