“I want you to take responsibility—”
I braced myself. I just wanted a quiet meal. Walking into the Magnar storm was a little much right now.
“We’re not going in there.” Everard steered me toward the door.
“Oh good.”
He led me outside to the stairs leading onto the wall. Yes. We were heading to my favorite spot.
“Shall I carry you again?”
“No, thank you. But please catch me if I take a tumble.”
He offered me his arm again. I climbed the stairs. It hurt but they finally ended and then we were on the wall. Someone had tilted the sail by the little table so part of it shielded us from the street. We could sit in private and watch the river. I spied a teapot, two cups, a platter of sausage, eggs, and the familiar golden pastries.
I sped up.
“Maggie?” he asked.
“Sambocades,” I told him.
He smiled and helped me to my chair.
I was full and happy. Shana’s sambocades were the stuff of legends.
Everard reached to refill my teacup. I took the teapot from him.
He raised his eyebrows.
“It’s not appropriate, Your Grace.”
“I’ve poured your tea more than once.”
“That was when you were Reynald. You’re not him any longer.” And he would never be Reynald again.
He reached into his jacket, pulled out a folded piece of paper, and offered it to me. I unfolded it. A middle-aged man, brought to life by a talented artist. He had a long face with hollowed cheeks, a full mouth, and a broad nose. A short curly beard, black touched with gray, hugged his jaw. His eyebrows were thick, and his eyes were a startling light gray. He looked intelligent and grim; a worn-out knight tired of fighting for causes he didn’t believe in.
The books had tried. There were only so many ways to describe a man and they had hit all of the important points. Both Everard and Reynald had strong features and square jaws. Both had light eyes under dark eyebrows. But they couldn’t have looked more different. Reynald was solemn and hardened by the years, while Everard in front of me was magnetic and brimming with power. Also, the books described Reynald as keeping his hair in the style of the men from the Highlands. I had pictured him with a longish mane, but his hair was cut so short, it was barely a dark trace against his brown skin.
Why was he giving me this? A gesture of good faith?
“I had it made for his son.”
I touched Reynald’s portrait. I never got to meet him.
“I was seventeen years old when the Okula invaded for the third time,” Everard said. “I’d been a duke for a year at that point, long enough for Sauven to get over his shock and start plotting to kill me. He issued a royal edict demanding Selva respond to the threat and promised the backing of the royal army. I followed through. He didn’t. He fucked around, he delayed, he puttered. He mulled over the rations and the routes. He used any small excuse to be late to the fight. He hoped the Okula would gut me, and he would arrive just in time to mop them up. Heroically, of course.”
He smiled. There was no humor in it.
“Midway through the campaign, I found myself pinned down in a mountain pass. It didn’t look good for us. The Okulan vanguard kept charging our position, wave after wave, endless. When they came, they looked like a human sea. I was running out of arrows and soldiers. When it looked like the next charge would break us, Reynald’s company smashed into them from behind.”
Oh! “He was the ‘Fuck ‘em’ knight.”
Everard nodded.
“He’d been given written orders to reinforce us and verbal orders to delay. Instead of meandering as he was instructed, Reynald advanced in the middle of the night and marched his knights through a mountain trail that was passable only for goats. His charge threw off the Okula’s strategy. We crushed their vanguard between us. Their main force pulled back to regroup. When we met on the field, among the corpses, I told Reynald that if he ever needed a favor, he had only to ask. I considered him my friend.”
At seventeen, Everard was probably on his first major campaign as the duke. Reynald would’ve been a seasoned, war-tempered twenty-five, already in command and expert with a sword. Adolescent Ramond must’ve looked up to him.
