“Fool, dear fool. I am soon to be a queen. I cannot show people my thoughts in the construction of my face. I would be dead today if I could not hide my feeling from others.”
“But there are no others here now,” he said, and lifted her chin until he could look into her face, the face he had been able to see only in memory for so long; for a moment it all seemed a dream again, but the feel of her reassured him. “No others. No one but us.”
“Then you will see what our love is truly made of,” she said, and brought her lips to his.
“Are you well, my love?”
She stirred. “Well, indeed. A little pain, that’s all. They say the first time is always that way.” She smiled. “You are my man now, forever and ever—the only husband I will ever have, even if a temple never hears our vows. Do you know that?”
“I would be nothing else.” He traced circles on the skin of her belly, but could not do so for more than a moment before the urge to kiss her there became overwhelming.
“Stop!” Briony said, laughing. “We cannot! Just think of my ladies-in-waiting, who will be spreading this story all over Southmarch tomorrow morning if I do not bring them back from Merolanna’s rooms before midnight.”
“I told them it was a matter of grave importance,” he said. “Did I lie?”
She smacked at his head and then rolled over so she could kiss him. “Oh, I wish we could be like this forever, Vansen.”
“My first name is Ferras,” he told her, almost shyly.
“Do you think I don’t know?” She laughed again. “I know everything about you that I could discover. At first because I thought you the worst man ever. Later… well, my feelings changed… or at least became clearer.” She looked at him, her face suddenly earnest. “Would you prefer I call you by your first name?”
“I don’t care which you choose as long as you speak it with that look in your eyes, always,” he said.
She rolled onto her back. “But I can’t, you know. Not in front of others. You know that, don’t you? Please say that you do.”
“I suppose,” he said. “But how can you love someone so much lower than yourself, that you must hide that love from everyone?”
“Foolish Captain Vansen! I could make you a noble in an instant. I will make you a noble—otherwise, you cannot be my lord constable. But even so, the way we feel for each other must stay a close-held secret.”
“There are no secrets in a place like this—the servants and guards know everything, always.” He shook his head. “I can live without marrying you, Briony, although I will die if you marry another… but why must our love stay hidden? Don’t you feel the same for me?” He suddenly felt stricken. “You do, don’t you? Feel the same?”
“Of course, you wonderful, truehearted man—but I have more than my own happiness to think about. If Kendrick or my father had lived, things would be different. Even if Barrick had not changed so greatly ...” She shook her head, her expression darkening like a sky clouding over. “But an ordinary life is not what Fate has given me. I must keep myself aloof, or seem to. I’ll have to pretend no man has won my heart… but that any man might, if he brings a useful alliance to Southmarch. That’s how I’ll make policy. That’s how I’ll keep our country free from the influence of powerful neighbors.”
“Even Syan?” he said suspiciously.
She smiled, but it was a sad one this time. “Even Syan. Especially Syan.”
He crept closer to her. “Let us not talk of Syan any more. Kiss me.”
When they had done that and more for a while, he sat up.
“Don’t go,” she said, her voice growing a little slow and sleepy. “I take back what I said. The ladies can find beds in Merolanna’s chambers. Tell me more of what you saw down in the caverns. I can scarcely believe any of it. Did you truly fight a god?”
“Not me, no. Not even your brother did. The creature was too far beyond any of us.” He shook his head. “I don’t want to talk about it. It is still too close.”
She shook her head. “It’s hard for me even to understand. You say my brother this, my brother that—he fought a hundred men! He swung down on a rope! Some powerful magic must be at work—that is not the brother I knew, who couldn’t even cut his own meat without falling to cursing and knocking his trencher on the floor!”
Vansen smiled, but there was a touch of puzzlement to it. “Magic indeed. It’s as if he aged ten years in a few months. And his arm is healed! He’s changed so much that I hardly recognized him. When the stone-swallowing demons came at us, every last one of us would have died if Barrick and the Qar had not shown up ...”
“The stone what?” She had a strange, troubled look on her face now. “Stone-swallowing… ? I have not heard this tale before. Tell me.”
He pulled her closer. “Your maids and ladies… ?”
“Leave them be a little longer.”
He described the final battle in the Maze in detail now, of how he and the Funderlings gave ground until there was no more ground to give.
“So brave!” she said. “And not just you, dearest Captain Vansen. Chert’s people have astonished me.”
“All of us,” he said. “We did them a disservice for many years, it seems. But even they could do nothing when the Stone Swallowers came. I don’t know what they were truly called—there were three of them. But each one placed a stone in his mouth and… and then began to change ...” He hesitated, feeling her body grow rigid beside him. “Briony?”
“Are you certain they were men?”
He considered. “To be honest, I never saw them before they had already become those… things. ...”
“Tell me again. Tell me what the stones looked like.”
“I don’t know,” he said, laughing a little. “Perin’s Hammer, girl, we were in almost complete darkness… !”
“Tell me all you remember!” There was nothing of the sweet young woman in her voice now.
And Vansen did, marveling to find that all this time he had been kissing not just his beloved, but also a queen.
Steffens Nynor was wrapped in a heavy wool cloak, but his ankles were bare of hose and he was clearly feeling the cold. “Is it truly necessary to do this now, Highness?” he asked.
“I have learned a lesson.” Briony motioned for one of the guards to knock on the tower’s heavy front door. The booming sound echoed and died. She was just about to order him to do it again when a quavering, childish voice from behind the door said, “Who goes there?”
“It is the Princess Regent, to see Queen Anissa,” the guard said.
The door opened enough for the boy to peer out at the visitors, then the door swung wide. “But the queen is sleeping!” he said, as if the people knocking might not have realized that the time was well after midnight. “She is in mourning,” he offered next, but the guards had already pushed past him and he was left talking to Briony, Vansen, and Lord Nynor.
“Of course she is,” Briony told him, not unkindly. “And so am I. Do you see my black dress?”
He scuttled off up the stairs to the queen’s bedchamber as if Briony had frightened him. The guards on duty in the reception hall had dropped to their knees; she waved them to their feet. Several of them looked to their longtime captain as though he might explain why this ordinarily sleepy duty had been interrupted, but Ferras Vansen took his lead from Briony and kept his thoughts to himself.
Anissa and her retinue were long enough coming down that Briony had begun to consider sending the soldiers up to get them when she heard the queen’s voice preceding her down the stairs. “But why? Why should she want to come here in the night this way? It frightens me!” Now she appeared, accompanied by half a dozen women, one of whom held her little son, Alessandros.