But Dori understood better than most the manner in which people often sought to fool themselves.
He didn’t appear to be an enforcer of the king, or anyone employed by Glayer Felsteppe, although he wore a sword on his belt. Probably home-forged and worth little, she thought. Even a large-framed man such as he could be easily overtaken by a group, and he would be weary and weakened from his travels. He likely posed little danger to her, but she couldn’t let him out of her sight until she knew in which direction he would depart. She expected him to return by way of the village to beg shelter and food, now that he saw the ruin was deserted.
Well, deserted save for Theodora Rosemont.
Her foot slid the tiniest bit on the silty walk, sending a tinkling of sand and small pebbles down the side of the wall. Dori froze against the battlement, fearing the man would look up and notice the slightest movement in this place of still death, but he didn’t so much as twitch. She exhaled slowly, silently, as she continued to watch his bowed form.
The man raised his head from his forearms at last, but he continued to stare at the level of the barbican gate, as if mesmerized by something there. The evening cold was beginning to affect Theodora now, standing as still as she had been, and her back ached. Yet the strange traveler remained seated on the road. Perhaps he was scarred or obviously deranged. She wouldn’t know unless she got closer.
Dori eased herself away from the merlon on silent feet, backing away slowly until she felt the corner of the keep behind her. Then she turned and tiptoed carefully down the set of leaning stone steps that led to the main ward, throwing out her arms for balance, her eyes straining in the growing dusk to make out the gaping chasm where the stairs had pulled away from the keep.
She turned again as she stepped onto the wet grass, the calf-high vegetation tickling her cold, bare skin above her slippers and raising gooseflesh on her legs. She traversed the slope of the ward quickly, descending to the level of the barbican and slipping behind the slide of fallen rock into the narrow space left in the tunnel. Once she reached the barricade of collapsed stone, she hitched her skirts with one hand and reached up with the other, finding her handholds easily in the darkness of the passageway and climbing from memory toward the slivered arch of dusk near the top. From that vantage point, she should be just above the man on the road.
She inched her head slowly above the topmost crumbled stone and looked through the archway.
The road was empty.
Dori’s heart froze in her chest and her spine stiffened. For a moment she was unable to move at all, unable even to breathe. There was a stranger about Benningsgate and now she didn’t know where he was. Perhaps he’d risen and turned on the road to head back to the village. But perhaps not. And if he found her here alone . . .
Her courage returned to her in a rush and she quickly scrambled back down the pile of the collapsed tunnel ceiling. By the time her slippers touched down on the littered ground, she had freed the little knife from one side of her belt and checked the other for the presence of her larger weapon. The she turned in the darkness, her eyes scanning the shadows of the ward beyond the sloping pile of rubble of the fallen wall. She saw nothing but crept forward in the narrow, treacherous space, rolling heel to toe silently, listening until her ears ached.
She came to the end of the tunnel and raised up on tiptoe to see over the cusp of the rock. Nothing but grass and growing darkness moved beyond, and yet she trod on soundless feet, each step measured and careful. Dori moved around the frozen wave of rock washed out into the ward and again crossed to the set of steps leading to the curtain wall. Not so much as a shadow twitched, nor did even a bird swoop through the space. Dori skipped up the stairs lightly, eager to gain the top of the wall and to see the black form of the man growing smaller as he walked away from the castle toward the village.
She dashed to the nearest embrasure, catching herself on the chest-high stone gap and looked, The road was as empty as it had been moments before.
Dori knew a thrill of cold fright as she pulled herself partway up on the stone and peered over the battlement toward the ground, her eyes darting from shadow to shadow along the base of the curtain wall. Where was he?Where was he?
She felt the hard point dimple her skin painfully over her right kidney before she heard the even harder voice behind her.
“Leave the blade on the stone and turn around slowly.”
Chapter 3
It didn’t matter to Constantine that the slight form turned away from him belonged to a woman—a small, stooped woman whose blade he’d seen as she passed him was nothing more than a broken eating knife of the sort little children were first given. She was a trespasser, an interloper who had intruded upon Constantine’s deepest grief and was even now standing upon the sacred ground that had at one time been the center of his world. She trod uninvited on his memories, his pain. Her very presence was an affront.
But the woman had neither moved nor responded at all to his command, and so Constantine pressed forward with his sword until she gave a warbly, frightened cry. “I said, leave the blade on the stone and turn around.”
He heard the tinny scrape of the knife against the shelf of the embrasure. The sides of the woman’s faded and threadbare cloak lifted even as the deep hood cocked, and Constantine saw that she had raised her hands before her face so that her palms were toward him, shielding her lowered countenance as she turned.
“Please,” she whispered. “I beg you, harm me not. I have nothing of value.”
“What are you doing here?” Constantine demanded, still leveling his weapon at her as she cowered against the wide merlon. He tried to see past her raised hands in the gloom.
“Only exploring the ruin.”
Constantine’s eyes narrowed as he took in the details of the woman’s costume, illuminated by the misty dusk. The slippers poking from beneath the ragged and filthy hem of her skirts were so thin that Constantine could see the outline of her toes even in the shadows. These were no sturdy peasant shoes; at one time, Constantine imagined they had been quite fine. It appeared that part of her outer skirt had been torn off near the bottom, revealing only one thin undergarment and bare, sticklike calves above white, bony ankles. Her sleeves were also jagged and frayed, and the protuberances at her wrists seemed like bolts, her fingers like thin, trembling twigs glowing in the twilight. And yet they served to hide what little of her face Constantine could have seen in the black recess of her hood.
“You live in the village?” he asked.
“Yes. Yes, I live in the village.” She paused. “My . . . my husband will be expecting me home. He likely seeks me now.”
Constantine felt his brows lower. “Liar.”
The hood twitched up as if surprised at his accusation, but she didn’t insist upon perpetuating the untruth. “Please don’t hurt me,” she whispered again.
“Lower your hands so that I might see your face,” he commanded. “And step away from the battlements lest that sliver of metal behind you tempt you to foolishness.”
She sidled away from the embrasure obediently, her hands falling beneath her pitiful cloak once more, but she angled her face toward the walk so that the soft hood fully concealed her features. Constantine glanced over to be certain she had indeed left the blade on the stones and was reassured to see its pathetic length.
