The Burning Stone (Crown of Stars #3)

“Nay, Your Highness. They live far to the east, beyond even those peoples who pay tribute to the Jinna emperor. It is well enough that his first wife is dead, for she’d not have given him up. She’d have hexed you.”

“Hexed me!” Sapientia pressed a hand over the gold Circle of Unity that hung at her throat, and glanced sidelong at the palanquin. The gold silk walls did not stir. There might have been no creature inside at all, only air.

He bent closer. His breath smelled of exotic spices. “They are terrible witches, the most unrepentant of heathens.” He bent his elbow to display the stump of his right wrist. “They thought writing was magic, so they cut off my hand.” He faltered, glanced like Sapientia toward the motionless palanquin as if he thought that the hidden mother could hear his words even at such a distance and over the howling of Bayan’s warriors as they called out the refrain. “That is how I came to Prince Bayan’s service. He is a good man, Your Highness, I have nothing but praise for him.”

“Is he truly faithful to God’s word, Brother?” asked Biscop Alberada, who was not afraid to listen in to her niece’s most private conversations.

“As faithful as any of the Ungrians can be.”

“And his mother?” asked Sapientia without looking again toward the palanquin. But the frater only gave a tiny shake of his head. “She is a powerful woman. Do not anger her.”

Hanna could not help but look, but the palanquin remained undisturbed both from within and from without. How the slaves could stand for so long without staggering amazed her. And wouldn’t the woman inside begin to feel cramped, closed up in a sitting position for so long? Hanna wasn’t sure she could stay still for such a long time. Even waiting on Princess Sapientia, she had freedom of movement; she could excuse herself to go out to the privies, could pace, laugh, sing when appropriate, and eat and drink what the princess herself did not want. The leavings off a princess’ plate were far better fare than anything she had eaten in Heart’s Rest.

No, indeed: being a King’s Eagle was a good life, even with the dangers involved. Danger walked beside every woman and man no matter what their circumstances. It wasn’t often that you could walk through life well fed, well shod, and with new things to see ’round every corner.

Prince Bayan was still going on, stamping one foot for emphasis with each line of verse; cups and platters rattled. As the volume of noise in the hall increased, the frater had to bend close to explain: “He is singing the death song of his son, to remind his men of the boy’s glorious death, and of the unavenged spirit that still walks abroad.”

“A heathen belief,” observed Biscop Alberada.

“To get to any place, Your Grace, we must still take one step at a time.”

She chuckled. “Brother Breschius, you have gained wisdom in your time among the heathens, despite the suffering they have caused you.”

“I have learned to be tolerant, which comes to the same thing. God will be victorious in the end. We need only be patient and trust to Their power.”

“War!” roared Prince Bayan, a word echoed by his men in their own tongue. “Swear to this battle we will ride!” he called out, then repeated himself in his own language.

His men clamored in answer. Hanna had to clap her hands over her ears.

That quickly, they drained their cups and with a flood of movement the hall began to empty.

“Where are they all going?” demanded Sapientia. Biscop Alberada had also risen, watching the milling crowd intently for any sign of trouble. Drunk and excited young men were likely to get into fistfights, or worse; Hanna knew that well enough from evenings at her mother’s inn.

“We ride in the morning,” cried Bayan enthusiastically. He jumped down from the table, still remarkably agile for a man who was close to Sapientia’s father’s age. “Now, to bed we go!

Sapientia smiled sharply. Their escort to the bedchamber set aside for them this night was ample: fully thirty people of various stations, but in the end Hanna found herself together with two servingwomen alone in the room with Sapientia, Prince Bayan, and a single male retainer, a sleek, unbearded young man who wore a thin iron torque at his neck that looked suspiciously like a slave collar.

Bayan drew his sword, and for an instant Hanna grabbed her own knife while Sapientia stood, frozen, at her side of the bed.

“No woman,” proclaimed Bayan as he laid the sword down the center of the bed. “I swear before my men to have no woman until I kill a man in battle. This the men of my people swear, to give ourselves strength. If we break the oath, then we lose our luck. If it is hard with you to have no man, I have this one—” He gestured to his manservant. “He is one of these majariki men who have no, what do you call it? They have the man part but not the seed. They can give you this pleasure without the seed, for now that we are betrothed, you may take no seed but that I give to you. Yes?”