Toinette blinked, and smiled before she realized she was doing it. She’d known Franz for many years, long enough to tell that he was being sincere. She cleared her throat. “Well. Nicely done. That should set people’s minds at ease a bit about food, and it’ll make a damned fine change from fish.”
“That it will,” said Franz. He knelt, clasped his hands together quickly, and said a brief prayer in German. Toinette caught the name of Saint Hubert, patron of hunters, and she echoed Franz’s “Amen,” though the rest of the prayer was unfamiliar and her German spotty at best and mostly fit for taverns.
“I think our plans for today just shifted a touch,” she said, when he stood up again. “Do you know how to clean this thing? And can you tell me how to assist you?”
“Gladly so,” said Franz.
They were moving forward. It wasn’t in the direction Toinette would have liked, and she had to admit that it might not be for a long time, if ever, but it was forward all the same. She took comfort in that.
Twenty-Two
“Wind’s in the west,” said Erik. It felt good on his face: a fresh breeze after the close, clammy scent of the far forest. He and John stood on the edge of the cliff, looking out to sea and waiting for Toinette and Raoul to join them. “Autumn soon.”
He didn’t expect the other man to answer, not in more than a grunt or a dispassionatemmm. John took instruction well enough, but he’d never sought Erik out, nor started conversations. As far as Erik knew, the Englishman was as hostile as he’d been the first day aboard.
Therefore, when John spoke, thoughtfully and at length, it took a moment for the actual words to take shape in Erik’s mind: “The harvest will be coming on well, back home.”
“Aye. I’d give much for a ripe apple, or a loaf of fresh bread.”
John actually smiled. “It’s bread I miss when I’m away. That and my wife, of course.”
“You’re a good man to say it, and rare.”
“She’s a patient woman.” John looked from the sea and the clear sky to Erik. “You don’t know the thing you’re here after, do you? Not in any specific.”
“No.”
“But you’re hoping it’ll give your lord power.”
“My land, rather.”
“Your side, let’s say.” John rubbed at his beard. “If you do get back, say, and the treasure’s as powerful as all that, what do you imagine you’ll do with it? What would your lot do if they won, and could keep on? Would David take London?”
Shades of Artair came back to him, and easy words died in Erik’s throat. “I’d think not,” he said after a long time had seemed to pass. It was the best he could manage. “We didn’t before. I’d say we’d settle back to the borders we’d had. The men I led are tired of war. So am I.”
“Kings don’t tire so easily as other men.”
“Yours didn’t, that’s for certain,” Erik replied hotly.
“Well—” John began to respond in similar temper, and Erik had to admire him in that moment. Not many would speak that way to a dragon, no matter how provoked. Nor did he think it was fear that stopped John’s tongue, but a wiser, more worldly emotion. “No. No, and there’s not much honor in what he did, in the end. But honor’s for your sort. For me, I want to know that my home will be safe, and my family.”
“I think they will. From us, at any rate. A king will find it hard to fight a war if his lords are against it, and mine wishes no more fighting than I do. We’ll claim our own again, and that’ll be an end of it.”
“And if you’re wrong about your lord?”
“Then I’ll do my best to change his mind,” Erik said, though he winced inwardly at the notion of trying to change Artair’s course once he’d set it. “This thing, if it exists, might keep our sons from killing each other. That’s my hope.”
John nodded slowly, then as slowly asked, “Do you have any?”
“No. It’s…difficult, for us, with mortals.”
“I keep dreaming of mine,” said John. “Not good dreams.”
“I don’t think anyone has good dreams here.”
* * *
Darkness, death, and a voice: “This is what waits.”
