She must not give in to the old fear. She touched the hilt of her sword, her “good friend,” and shifted her shoulders to feel the comfortable weight of her bow, Seeker of Hearts, and her quiver full of arrows.
She braced herself against the wall, then thrust forward into the storm, dashing as fast as she could across the sloppy ground. She reached the other side without being too thoroughly drenched, and a Lion standing guard under the protection of the eaves gave her a smile for her trouble and opened the door. Warmth and smoke roiled out. She stepped up to enter the hall.
It was much changed now. The industrious clerics had been overwhelmed by loud, wet, laughing, bragging courtiers, noble folk newly ridden in from the hunt. Though a large chamber, the hall seemed cramped, reeking with the smell of wet wool and sweaty, jovial men and women. Liath weaved her way through them toward the hearth at the other end of the hall, where the king’s chair stood. With each step, dread clawed in her, a sharp-fingered hand digging through her soul, groping up the paved streets of her city of memory on the track of her sealed tower. She had to force each foot forward, one step after the next.
What was wrong with her? Why had this fear come on her?
How much easier it would be to turn and flee. But that was what Da had done, and in the end it hadn’t saved him. In order to live, she was going to have to do better than Da.
They parted before her, making way for the King’s Eagle. Henry sat in his chair, looking tired. With one hand he toyed with a hound’s leash, knotted and tangled. His other hand rested on a thigh; he opened and closed it over and over. He looked distracted, staring without seeing toward his two younger children who sat on stools beside the fire. Sapientia stood beside him, shifting restlessly from one foot to the other, glancing again and again toward a knot of people kneeling to her left. These, her courtiers, stooped over a finely carved chest in which she probably had stored her fine clothing as well as mementos of her sacred progress, whose successful outcome would mark her as fit to rule as Queen Regnant after Henry’s death.
Thunder boomed, rattling the timbers and shaking the barred shutters, and hard on top of that came a second crash, resounding through the hall, stilling their chatter. The princess’ courtiers rose and transformed themselves into a new pattern, one made bright and focused by the man who stood at their heart, the man at whom Sapientia stared, her gaze fixed avidly and jealously on his face.
His beautiful face.
As the thunder faded, Liath heard the gentle snap and rustle of the hearth’s fire.