The Bandit King Read Free

Pleading, delicate, and careful, as if she expected sharp refusal.
    By the Blessed, why inquire now?
But I sought to sound merely weary. “For you, then. I left you in the passage and reached the Rose Room in time to see Henri dying. His pettite-cakes had been poisoned. As his soul left, the Duc’s guard burst into the room. I killed six of them before I was taken to that charming cell, where they beat me until the Duc paid me the honor of a visit. Then, I was left to contemplate my eventual beheading at the Bastillion until I heard your sweet voice through the bars.”
There, does that satisfy you?
I heard my own harshness, bitter as the lie.
    The sharpest sword
, di Halier once wrote after his Queen took him to task over some trifle,
is directed at one’s own soul. Yet what is murder, or worse, if it keeps Arquitaine safe?
    And yet. So easily, she reminded me of the man I should have been, instead of the one I was. When di Halier spoke of “Arquitaine,” twas easy to see he sometimes merely meant the woman who embodied, for him, the country’s rule.
    Had Jeliane embodied far more to him, as my own Queen did to me?
    Vianne examined my face as if I were a scroll or a dispatch. My heart mimicked a cobblestone caught in my windpipe.
Do not ask more. Let the matter remain there.
    “Nothing else?” Her eyes glittered, and she pulled her hood up with an expert movement of her fingers to settle the material just so over her beautiful bowed head. “Tis important, Tristan.”
    You have no idea how important it is.
“Why? Is there a question of my movements? You are perhaps believing the Duc when he accuses me of regicide?” It fair threatened to choke me. The truth will do so, when one least expects it. Di Halier never warned of
that
.
    She hesitated. “I simply… There is so much I do not understand of this, and I would understand all.”
    What more do you need to understand,
m’chri?
The King is dead, you are the Queen, I am the traitor who will keep you safe. If I must lie, and kill, and do the worst a man can do, I will.
    I already have.
    She said nothing else, her head bowed and her shoulders moving slightly.
    We turned onto the processional way, hooves clopping on paving stones. Arcenne rose around us, the white stone quarried from the mountains the province is famous for glowing eggshell-delicate. There is very little as beautiful as my native city at dusk, as she gathers the last rays of the Sun’s beneficence. Even the sinks and fleshpots of the
Quartier Gieron
are well-scrubbed, and the spires of the Keep above rival the peaks themselves for grace. Arcenne is cleaner than the Citté, more tantalizing than Orlaans, and smells far better than, say, Marrseize. In spring, the orchards are a froth of paleness on her white shoulders, and she is a lady of freshness and grace.
    Another held my heart now, but a man never forgets his first. No matter how far he rides, his birthplace will always be at his shoulder.
    “Vianne?” Her name, uttered so many times in the privacy of my room or the secret corridors of my brain. For so long I had kept it a secret pleasure, a fruit to be indulged in late at night.
    She did not answer, but a slight movement told me she had tilted her head, the better to catch my words.
    “I would have you know only this.” I paused as Arran’s ears flicked, noting some sound I could not. When they returned to pointing forward, I continued. “All I have done is for your safety. If you should find yourself in doubt—
any
doubt, for any reason—simply remember that.”
    The declaration earned me a startled glance. More tears, glimmering on her cheeks? In the uncertain light I could not be sure. “You were the King’s Left Hand.” Softly.
    As if she thought I needed reminding.
    “Now I am yours.”
Even before Henri died choking on his own blood, I was yours.
    I was left with a suspicion of my own to keep me company on the remainder of our short journey. There was no reason for her to ask