The moonlight—such bright moonlight. Where was it coming from? “Thank you for bringing out my sister,” she managed to say to Orléans.
He bowed silently in answer. He wore only his shirt and hose, his long, dark hair tangled.
“Are you all right?” he said.
“Certainly,” she said, making her voice brisk, wondering what he’d read in her face. She blinked the moonlight from her eyes. New cries rose from the courtyard and they both looked round.
The wash of moonlight was gone. The fires had winked out in the windows of the château above. It lay as empty and quiet as before.
All Anne’s limbs went cold.Is this the retort of the korrigan-king, when I said I would not tremble at shadows? Does he watch us now unseen?
Louis and Henri certainly thought so. They’d paired up, the way knights did in combat, each covering the other’s weaker side, searching for danger in the courtyard. De Rieux had his sword, though he was well past his prime, and he too searched the courtyard, white-faced.
Marguerite approached her without fanfare. She must have seen the fires vanish, Anne thought with despair. Marguerite said, “We can instantly rejoin the army under La Trémoille and they will escort us to the border. It is not safe here for you or your sister. We can leave tonight.” She really did look uneasy.
“May we take counsel in the morning, please?” said Anne, forcing her voice to smallness. “I will post guards—many guards—but I am so weary now. And so is my sister.”
Isabeau leaned on Anne, shivering. Elesbed’s cat sat bristling on the child’s shoulder, hissing at anyone who came near.
Anne remembered the look on Julien Moreau’s face when he told her his history.Lost for two hundred years,she thought with sinking fear.Lost to all he loves. And not a single memory to show for it. This is malice beyond my ken, and it has come here to my father’s castle and demanded my hand in marriage.
In the black hour of Matins, on the night of the fire that was not, Marguerite of France was awakened by the sound of stealthymovement and the smell of a renewed fire in her bedchamber. She was restless after that evening, and when she heard the noise, she pushed back the hinged doors of her bed, her heart beating fast. With a wrench of terror she saw an unfamiliar head silhouetted. Then she recognized him and said in outrage, “I will call the guard.”
Julien Moreau whispered, “I had no other way to come to you unseen. I am sorry. You did wish to speak to me in private?” He did not rise from his chair.
“Villain. How did you get in here?”
“Does it matter? I came to help you. I am a child of France, after all.”
“How can you help me?”
“In more ways than you know, my lady. I escaped my gaolers to come to you.”
She weighed that, startled. “Do they know you have come?”
“They will never know I left.”
At that she put her stockinged feet on the floor, wrapped a mantle around herself, and went to the fire. She watched his face carefully. “How much do youreallyremember of your own history?”
He hesitated, smiled just a little, and then gave her his answer like the fairest of secrets. “Everything.”
She reached out and turned his face so she could see his expression in the firelight. His skin was cool. “Who, then, is the king of the korriganed?”
He raised his eyes to hers, his gaze unveiled, sharp with a delicate cunning. She dropped her hand abruptly. He said, “I myself, if anyone.”
His eyes were yellow in the firelight. Was it his time in the Lost Lands that put that color in them? She seized the iron fire tool, but he put out a hand and touched it. He was not burned. “No,” he said. “I am a man, to be sure. I can say the ‘Our Father,’ if you like, or touch the chrism, or any iron you like. I am not a korrigan. I was a diviner in the court of Philip the Fair.”
“Explain, then.”
“My mirror was stolen.”
“What?”
He shrugged. “No matter. The korriganed had nothing more to teach me and I wearied in their dreamlike country. I have come out because I wished once more to hear the speech of men, and lend my power to a worthy cause. And what better cause than this? I am a loyal son of France.” A brief sadness. “I didn’t know so much time had passed.”
“You wish to help us?” She was still wary. “Were you responsible for what happened today? The—the barrel in Nantes and the contretemps tonight?”
A flick of three fingers dismissed the question. “Flummery tricks, no more. I could not do anything else without my mirror. But I have regained it this night, and so I came to you, my lady. No one will know I was here.” He lifted a small, exquisite mirror in one hand. It was the size of his palm. The back was jeweled with some kind of red flower. He caressed it with a tender hand.
