“Protection. Time.” Gavin began to pace. “I need the time to court her and keep her safe while I do it. I can’t if Jimenin...”
Ambrose interrupted him. “Who?”
“Don Gabrilla Jimenin. The man who holds Hallis’s markers. I can’t court her with him stalking her and threatening her father every minute.”
Ballard still didn’t understand the problem. “Then just kill him and pay theblot wite.”
Gavin laughed. “If he challenged me I would, but that isn’t how it works. Don Jimenin is a powerful citizen of the town. Influential and rich. He has a private militia of mercenaries and henchmen. The only reason he hasn’t outright abducted Cinnia is he wants to maintain a good name. Besides, blood fines are obsolete. No court in the land will accept one. I’d swing from the gallows instead.”
Ballard snorted. Things had changed a great deal in a few centuries. A man’s reputation had once rested on his prowess in battle and his loyalty to his king, not the manner in which he got his bride to the altar.
Ambrose worried the embroidery edging one of his sleeves. “You could have stayed in Monteblanco to protect her, but you’ve been called back by the flux.”
“Aye. I started feeling the effects last week.” Gavin looked to Ballard. “I couldn’t leave her, Father. Her widowed sister is a capable guardian and a force to be reckoned with but still no match for Jimenin.”
The girl had a sister. Ballard wondered idly if the siblings resembled each other. He pitied their father if such were true. One child with the face of a goddess would be hard enough to defend; two, a nightmare of constant vigilance. “If you’re called back and the flux runs high, then either Ambrose’s conjectures are wrong...”
Ambrose gave an indignant huff. “They’re not wrong.”
“Or Mistress Hallis doesn’t love you. It’s obvious she came of her own accord, but did she do so because she returns your affections or because her father needs money to avoid a prison cell, and she wants to avoid an unwanted bridegroom?”
Gavin shrugged. “All three. They aren’t ignoble reasons, and it was I who offered to pay her father’s debts. She didn’t ask. Even her sister rebuffed me when I made the offer.”
“Can you blame them? Beholden to one man or another, they’re trapped by their sire’s debt, and the girl is reduced to nothing more than ahalsefangto keep him out of prison.”
“I don’t see her as payment,” Gavin snapped. “I want her to wife because I love her. I just need time to court her. Even if she rejects me in the end, I’ve promised her family will hold no debt to us.” His tone turned beseeching. “Cinnia cares for me. Away from Jimenin and without worries that her father will be jailed, I believe she’ll come to love me and agree to be my wife.”
Ambrose stroked his beard. “It might work,dominus. Winter’s set in. No decent roads for traveling, even in this age. She has only a father and sister, so I doubt we’ll have an angry pack of relatives descending on us to defend her honor.
Gavin chortled. “I wouldn’t say that. You haven’t met the sister. Louvaen Duenda is her own militia. Expect her at the gates in a few days to rescue Cinnia from our clutches.”
One of Ballard’s eyebrows rose. It didn’t speak well for Cinnia’s father that one of his daughters would play the savior to the other one instead of him. “When the flux peaks, you’ll have to give your beloved some reason for the noises below the hall and why you’ve taken to your bed. Are you willing to lie?”
“For now yes.”
Ballard clapped a hand on his son’s broad shoulder. “Take what you need from the treasury. Once the flux is in ebb tide, you can return to Monteblanco. If you love this Cinnia as much as you say, be ready to crawl and beg Hallis’s forgiveness for taking his daughter. A chest of gold might sweeten his mood but don’t assume so. Were I her sire, I’d break both your legs.”
“Were Mercer Hallis like you, Cinnia would never be caught in this trap.” Gavin embraced him, pounding his back hard enough to make Ballard’s teeth rattle. “Thank you, Father.” He bowed. “I take my leave of you.” He grinned and took off for the kitchen.
Ballard and Ambrose watched him leave. The sorcerer addressed Ballard without turning. “Did you notice his eyes? They weren’t like that at the last flux.”
Ballard’s gut clenched. He’d hoped it had been a trick of the firelight or his own imagination suddenly turned fanciful, but Ambrose had noted it as well. Gavin’s green eyes glinted yellow in just the right light.
Ballard sighed. “I’m like a bucket filled to the brim. The curse is bleeding over. Once it consumes me, it will take him. If that happens, Ambrose...”
“It won’t,” Ambrose swore in a low voice. “This girl may be the key. He just has to make her fall in love with him.”
“Then pray to your gods Gavin is more charming than I am and wins her soon.” He displayed one of his hands with its black claws and large knuckles. Spirals of dark blood coursed just below the corpse-white skin as if writing spells in his veins. “We’re running out of time.”
CHAPTER THREE
Louvaen pinched the corner of Cinnia’s letter between two frozen fingers as if it were a wild thing with snapping jaws and a nasty bite. The words scrawled on the parchment were unreadable symbols in the growing twilight. She knew each one by heart, had memorized every sentence during her miserable trip to this equally miserable fortress. The letter fluttered in the gusts of snow-laden wind and glowed with the magic mixed into the ink.
She despised magic. The purview of every charlatan, snake oil brewer, and bride-stealing nobleman, it did nothing but cause trouble and create misery. Her own mother had wielded her gift with some skill, or so her father liked to brag. Gullveig Hallis would have been right at home in this gods-forsaken landscape where the air shimmered blue and hung thick with the stench of sorcery. Louvaen wanted no part of it. She opened her hand and watched the wind snatch the letter away, sending it fluttering and spinning like a frantic bird caught in a whirlwind. Curtains of falling snow soon obscured it as it floated across the gorge separating her from the ominous hulk perched on a spike of jagged rock.
Massive, dark with age and the soot of old fires, the fortress gripped the mount with buttressed claws built of stone. Pieces of the curtain wall were gouged from the west corner, leaving the shell of a tower teetering dangerously high above her. Louvaen fancied she heard it creak and rumble in the hard wind howling up from the abyss. A drawbridge stood flush against the citadel’s entry gate, anchored by chains strong as those that anchored ships. This was no gentleman’s estate, with manicured grounds and forests tamed to formal landscapes crisscrossed by level gravel roads. Whatever the de Sauveterres’ wealth—or lack thereof—might be, the family had chosen not to spend coin on a residence to impress the neighbors. This one fended off foes and friends alike with its lattice-barred gate, murder holes and arrow slits. Louvaen shuddered as much from dread as from the bitter cold cutting through her layers of wool. “Gods’ knickers, Cinnia,” she muttered into her muffler. “What have you gotten yourself into?”
The sky’s bleak gray had deepened while she stood on one side of the ravine trying to figure out how to attract the attention of someone in the castle so they’d lower the bridge. “Hello the house!” The wind shredded her hail to silence. She cursed and tried again. “Cinnia! De Lovet!” Glimmers of light appeared then disappeared in the blacker spaces of windows. As inconstant as will-o’-the-wisps, the lights danced from one window to another, from one level to another, never stopping in one spot for longer than an indrawn breath. A more superstitious person might fear they watched the active haunting of this dark place, but Louvaen didn’t put believe in ghosts and haints. She did believe in people carrying candles up and down stairs.
