The Bandit King Read Free Page A

unless she thought something amiss. Which was not comforting. Nor was the thought that followed in its wake.
    I did what I wished to do. It was worth the price.

Chapter Two
     
    The Temple’s courtyard echoed with hoof strikes and ran with ruddy lamplight; I caught Vianne’s waist and lifted her down. Her hood fell back, revealing a glory of intricate braids held together with blue ribbon, and I took the chance to brush at a stray strand, tucking it behind her ear. She wore a pair of emerald ear-drops, longer threads of gem-weighted silver swinging heavy against her cheeks, that I did not recognize. They were not my mother’s.
Mère
had all but fostered her, providing Vianne with dresses, hair-ribbons, jewelry—all the things a man would never think on, as well as sorely-needed gentle companionship. Vianne seemed easier with my mother than with most others, a smile blooming on her lately-solemn face whenever they met.
    I took advantage of the momentary jostling to press a kiss to her forehead, a familiar rush of heat spilling through me as her skirts touched my breeches. I turned slightly, habitually, to keep my rapier-hilt free. She smelled of soap and heavy velvet, of sunlight and of
woman
, a peculiar aroma hers alone. At Court her hair-ribbons were imbued with bergaime and spice; it had taken a few gold coins to persuade the Court perfumier to blend me a tiny crystal bottle of the same mix commissioned by the Duchesse di Rocancheil. The vial had been lost in my room at the Guard barracks, along with all else—except the papers I had taken the precaution of burning the night before conspiracy broke loose.
    I could not bring myself to destroy the tiny fluted crystal. The Princesse and her ladies favored lighter floral scents, but Vianne’s aura of green hedgewitchery would have overpowered those blends. The two times I drank myself into a stupor, with the door securely locked and the window barricaded as well, I had held the crystal to my face and inhaled its bloom between draughts of
acquavit
.
    If a man seeks to drink enough to blind his conscience, tis
acquavit
or nothing.
    She could rest her head below my shoulder if she wished. Yet she did not, gazing past me to the milling horses and the Temple novitiates even now taking Jierre’s mount. My lieutenant tucked his thumbs in his belt as I handed Arran’s reins to a gray-robed novice, accepting the boy’s bow with a slight nod. I had received my Coming-of-Age blessing in this Temple before going to Court, my birth had been registered here, and here I had held Vianne’s hands in mine and pronounced my marriage vows.
    Here, also, I had seen the statue of Jiserah the Gentle blaze with silver light, and my Queen’s face also ablaze as she stared unblinking into that radiance, the Aryx’s three metal serpents writhing madly on their slim silver chain against her breastbone. I had thought the gods were about to strike me down for my effrontery, kneeling at her side. Even now, I could not shake the feeling of being watched within the Temple’s environs by eyes less human than a serpent’s.
    The gods take an interest in Arquitaine, of course. But theirs are not the petty concerns of smaller fleshly beings. They had let the Aryx—the Great Seal that even now hung at my
d’mselle
’s breast—sleep since the death of King Fairlaine and his beloved Queen, and hard-pressed every monarch and Left Hand since had been to hide that slumber.
    Now the Aryx was awake, and the gods had taken an interest again. I will admit I was made uncomfortable by the thought, and by another: that they would not have made me what I was and given me Vianne if they did not expect I would set myself against even their fury to see her safe.
    She slipped past, her cloak brushing me, and I had a moment to admire her grace as she stopped four paces away to tip her head back and look to the sky. A quick glance assured me there were naught but stars overhead, and a slender quarter-moon just