“A lot of running up and down the stairs for things Magda needs to tend de Sauveterre. Ambrose has been wearing a path in the floor between his chamber and Gavin’s.
“And Papa?” Louvaen would never forget the expression on his face after he’d stabbed Jimenin. One more reason to hate the vile tarse. He’d forced her gentle father to kill.
Cinnia took her empty cup and set it on a nearby table. “Well enough considering. He’s in the kitchen right now with Joan and Clarimond. They’ve taken him under their wings while you’ve slept and I’ve been with Gavin.” She grinned, her eyes sparkling. “Gavin’s himself, Lou. Exhausted but that’s all.” She grabbed Louvaen’s hand, squeezing her fingers. “The curse is truly broken.”
Louvaen kissed the back of her sister’s hand. She was overjoyed for Cinnia who now had a chance to live a happy life with a man devoted to her and to whom she was equally devoted. Her joy, however, carried the taint of envy. She wanted the same with the master of Ketach Tor. Cinnia’s news made her even more determined to see him.
“Help me dress,” she said and stood a second time, more slowly.
“Lou, I don’t think...”
“Don’t argue with me, Cinnia. If it were Gavin in his father’s place, you wouldn’t be lounging in bed either.”
With that, Cinnia bowed to her sister’s wishes. She dressed Louvaen in one of her frocks, scowling at the too-short hem. “You look like you pilfered a child’s wardrobe.” Her scowl deepened. “I can’t believe they brought you here without shoes!”
Considering Jimenin had almost brought her here without teeth, Louvaen wasn’t too indignant about her lack of footwear. “Give me a pair of your woolens. They’ll keep my feet warm until I can borrow shoes that fit.”
They debated briefly over her hair, a spectacular snarl of elf-locked mats.
Louvaen dodged a brush-wielding Cinnia. “It’ll take too long. I’m not attending a royal ball to lure a prince! Just help me pin it up.”
They bickered the entire way to Ambrose’s rooms as Cinnia tried to mother her and Louvaen resisted the mothering. She raised her fist to pound on Ambrose’s door.
“I’ll do it.” Cinnia pulled her away. “Your ham-fisted methods will guarantee he won’t let you across the threshold.” She knocked—three light raps. There were a few quiet moments before the door opened and Ambrose stared at them stone-faced.
Unfazed by his lack of greeting and forbidding stance, Cinnia smiled sweetly. “Good morning, Ambrose.”
Louvaen, desperate to see Ballard, met Ambrose’s gaze. “Please, Ambrose.” Like Cinnia’s knock, it was a simple, restrained request. To her surprise he nodded and stepped aside.
They passed him and entered a cozy antechamber redolent with the scents of spice and candle wax. The room was a magpie’s nest of tables crowded with scrolls and grimoires, glass vials and bottles full of liquids or dried bits of macabre oddities. Small heaps of herbs shared space on a sideboard with mortars and pestles of various sizes. Garlands of garlic and dried violets hung from hooks in the ceiling. Coals glowed orange in a corner brazier, and from that black latten rose undulating wraiths of pungent smoke tinged blue with magic. They had entered a sorcerer’s lair.
Any other time and Louvaen would have trampled Cinnia trying to leave. Now her only concern was getting through the second door near the brazier.
The sorcerer motioned for them to follow as he led them to his bedroom. He allowed the women ahead of him into a room reeking of blood, unguent, beeswax and tallow. Even at this early hour, the chamber was brightly lit by oil lamps and candles, and a fire crackled in another bigger brazier covered by a grate on which a kettle and cauldron heated. Magda bent over the grate and tossed a handful of herbs into the cauldron.
The housekeeper skipped the customary greeting and pointed to the bed. “There’s a stool for you. You can talk to him, but he won’t answer. He hasn’t moved, even when I dug the ball out of his leg.”
Louvaen flinched at Magda’s words.
Ambrose’s bed was a smaller version of Ballard’s—high built with a canopy and brocade curtains on three sides to hold in the warmth. Those had been shifted to the corners, giving her an uninterrupted view of Magda’s patient. He lay along one side of the bed, bundled in covers except for one leg equally swathed in bandages from upper thigh to just above his knee. A circular patch of blood stained the linen where she’d wounded him. He breathed deeply, the covers over his chest rising and falling in slow rhythm. She claimed Magda’s seat next to him so she could hear him breathe and assure herself he still lived.
She had never known him as a ruddy or swarthy man—and winter had washed them all pale—but he was ghastly against the pillows. The curse had given his skin a wan cast. Even with it broken, he still sported the pallor of a man who courted death. Dark smudges bruised the thin skin below his eyes and deepened the valleys beneath his cheekbones. His lips were bleached of color, contrasting with the shadow of a new beard. The runic scars were gone as were most of those that mirrored the roses’ thorny vines. The few remaining had faded to blend with the ones he’d carried home from the battlefield centuries earlier.
“He looks almost as he did when Gavin was a child still tied to my lead strings.” Magda stood beside her, staring fondly at Ballard. “I’ve physicked him through worse things than this. Tournament is as deadly as war.” She sighed. “He’s always been strong, but I don’t know what the curse has done to him after these many years. Made him stronger or weaker?”
Louvaen caressed his scruffy cheek, cool beneath her touch. “I meant to kill him,” she said.
“Well you’re a piss-poor shot, my girl.” Magda smiled at Louvaen’s stunned expression. “You did what needed doing,” she declared. “Besides, Ballard’s spirit would never rest if Isabeau had bested him, and he killed his son.”
“I’d prefer he kept his spirit in his body a little longer so he can share both with me.”
Magda patted her shoulder, and her features grew dour. “I’ll not sweeten the bitter, Louvaen. I got the shot out of his leg, along with bits of bone, but the muscle is shredded. If he lives he’ll limp for the rest of his days.”
Louvaen traced Ballard’s nose, passing over the bony bridge to the flared nostrils and down to his lip. Warm breath drafted across her finger. “He isn’t feverish.”
“Not yet, but he will be. I’ve poured feverfew down his throat until I just about drowned him. Still, wounds like that almost always poison.”
Her words proved prophetic. Over the next four days, fever ravaged Ballard. The deathly pallor of his skin served to highlighted the flush dusting his cheekbones. Louvaen worked frantically with Magda, Ambrose and Gavin to change bed sheets stained with the blood and pus that soaked through the bandages. The room sweltered and stank of rot, and she helped Gavin hold him down while Magda scooped a spoonful of maggots into the wound so they’d feast on the ragged edges of dead flesh and infection.
