Lady Knight Read Free

ache
of her old wounds, she felt a hard, sinking coldness that tasted of gall. It was
no less bitter for being familiar.
    “He’s fortunate that I’m in such a good humour,” Berenger said, “or I’d hang
him, too. Now, where is that accursed minstrel? Gast, you’re not drinking? You
there, give her wine.”
    Riannon ignored the offered cup. “My lord, I pledged my word that you sought not
Lord Grammaire’s death.”
    The count waved that aside. “Now that you’re walking again, I expect you to
accompany me to Destan. I’ll hold a tourney there for my son’s knighting. I
expect you to captain my team.”
    Riannon should have been elated to be granted such a prestigious position. But
she inverted her hand and opened her fingers to let the gold ring fall to the
rushes. The soft thud cut off the chatter around them. Damory gaped like a
landed carp. Disbelief and anger tightened the count’s face.
    “With your permission, your Grace,” she said, “I’ll take my leave. My service to
you is ended.”
    “You dare!” he said. “You’ll get not a penny from me.”
    “I did not expect it,” she said.
    His face pinched and his lips thinned to pale, compressed lines. “I could have
you flogged. Hanged. And where do you think you’ll get any other man to take on
a… a female who plays the man?”
    Riannon wanted to kill him. She kept her thoughts to herself and her hands
conspicuously away from the hilts of her sword and dagger.
    As she reached the door, she heard a burst of laughter. She did not look back.
Another failed opportunity that had glittered as brightly as gold but turned to
dross when finally within her grasp. The pattern grew long and dispiritingly
predictable.
    Alan waited with their horses. His face showed dismay in reaction to what he saw
in her expression.
    Riannon took her reins from him. “We’re leaving.”
    “Where do we go?” he asked.
    Riannon settled in the saddle and put a hand to the ache that mounting had
tugged across her stomach. “East.”
    “The war in southern Kardash that the bard spoke of? Aye, there should be work
there aplenty. And good pickings.”
    Riannon saw the body hanging from the branch of an elm tree. She halted her
gelding. Even gently swinging in neck-broken death, Lord Grammaire looked tidy.
He would likely have died had he not surrendered to her. But it would have been
a better death in defence of his castle. Instead, he died like a common criminal
despite her having given her word that no harm would come to him. Would Count
Berenger have held her honour at nought had she been a man?
    Riannon shrugged. Her muscles stabbed with fresh pain. For several heartbeats,
she had to sit with a hand gripping the saddle and her teeth ground down on a
groan. When the crisis passed, she licked sweat from her upper lip.
    “My lady?” Alan lowered his voice, though only the dead man might overhear them.
“Mayhap I should get you back to the tent and fetch the leech-priest.”
    He always reverted to “lady” when he was worried about her.
    Riannon took several uneasy breaths and straightened. “No. We ride. But I’d not
object if we found a grove house to pass the night.”
    The priestess-healers had saved her life once before, when she thought herself
beyond healing and hope. Perhaps they could cure her of this recurrent problem
with those same wounds. She doubted, though, that she would ever find a cure for
the problem of never belonging or being accepted for what she was.

    A few hours past noon on the next day, Alan pointed to the low building of a
small grove house set on the edge of woods. Riannon’s aches had eased enough
yesterday that she had refused to stop at the previous groves they had passed.
Since before noon, though, her scars had come alive again with their stabbing
hot and cold. She doubted her ability to remain in the saddle much longer. The
fact that they were now beyond the lands owned by men who owed allegiance to
Berenger of Tastamont reinforced