Her secrets keep
Though wolves dare
To hunt her down
To have her life
To taste a crown
Nobles have a certain spice.
Nobles Have A Certain Spice minstrels’ ballad, first popular in
The Year of Silent Steel
The world wafted back to her on woodsmoke. Sharp and thick, from a fire that was snapping a little… sloth of sleeping dragons, would she never find capable servants? Oh, but Khalandra was being unforgivably careless this morning! No bedchamber fire should ever snap like that, spitting sparks on what could be a priceless Athkatlan rug! Why, the room’d be ablaze in a breath or two, if Someone touched her feet, gently. The light, deft handling made pain stab through her, jolting the Lady Narantha Crownsilver rudely awake.
She blinked up at green leaves blazing emerald in bright morning sunlight, and a blue and cloudless sky above them, over her head. Where by all the watching gods-?
In a wild forest somewhere, it seemed, but how…?
A forest stream was chuckling softly past, somewhere beyond her pain-wracked feet, the smoke she’d smelled was wafting from a small fire yonder, mingled now with smells of cooking meat and fish, and-and one of the most handsome young men she’d ever seen was washing and bandaging her feet.
Her bare, scratched, and cut feet!
In a sudden rush the night came back to her: the fear, the horrible growls, her frantic flight into menacing darkness, crashings close behind her, being cruelly bound and carried, blindfolded as men lugged her like a sack, pawing her-she was unbound now, thank the Dragon! — and some sort of fight around her in the dark, between outlaws and the king’s men…
Outlaws would be cruel, murderous rapists, unshaven and filthy, hardly likely to wash anyone’s feet. Nor would they untie a captive.
So this man had probably rescued her, and must serve the king. Or did he?
He’d not looked up at her, though her sudden fast and hard breathing as she remembered it all must have told him she was awake. The Lady Narantha raised herself on one elbow, suddenly acutely aware that she was wearing only her crumpled and torn, once-splendid nightrobe, and a strange man was kneeling at her feet, where he could see more than enough of her!
Fear and fury surged in Narantha, and she wanted to kick him and shriek at him for being the lustful villain that he was… but he wasn’t done binding her feet yet, and… gods, yes, her back was aching. Oooh. Worse, she was beginning to feel bruises and stiffnesses all over herself. Gods above, she probably couldn’t even stand without his help.
Narantha clenched her fists until she felt the sharp twinges of her own nails digging into her palms, and choked down the furious words she’d been about to spit. She needed this peasant, whoever he was, just to find her way back to a road and some Purple Dragons to escort her to Lord Hezom-that thrice-cursed, stinking backwoods lowlife that Father had for some insane reason decided she needed to be tutored by! Why, the only tutoring she’d allow A particularly strong stab of pain brought her attention back to the here and now. Wincing, Narantha looked around.
She was lying on a fern-cloaked sandbar beside a forest stream. A snared-she sniffed; yes, rabbit and two river brownfin; those were smells she knew-were roasting on arched-over saplings, tied just above a small fire that had been lit on a bare rock.
Beside the fire lay the largest leaf she’d ever seen, heaped with fresh-picked buds of some sort that small brown birds were swooping and darting at. The man at her feet was shooing them away with long sweeps of one brown-tanned hand, without seeming to even look their way. A long white scar cut across the palm of that hand.
He wore dusty, dirt-smeared leather armor-foresters’ garb-yet looked like a king. Not like a blood-son of King Azoun, Narantha told herself hastily. Rather, he had the same quietly commanding manner and air of alert intelligence as Duke Bhereu or Baron Thomdor… or the king himself.
Then he looked up at her, this dirt-smudged stranger, and Narantha was lost.
Fearless yet friendly blue-gray eyes gazed at her out of a square-jawed, quietly regal face-that split suddenly with a warm, welcoming, kindly smile.
A smile, somehow, that she wanted to earn again and again. Her heart started to beat faster.
“Well met, Lady Fair,” he said quietly. “I am Florin Falconhand, son of Hethcanter and Imsra of that name, of Espar.”
He looked aside, and made a swift lunge that sent a bird whirring away with a bud falling from its beak. Deftly he caught the little green orb out of the air, and put it back on the leaf. “Forgive me,” he added, “but the wood-riskins are intent upon stealing our morningfeast.”
“Where’s Delbossan?” she blurted. “And where am I?”
Florin looked back at her and spread his hands. “As to your first, I know not, though if you mean the Master Delbossan who is Horsemaster to Hezom, Lord of Espar, I know him. As well as any Esparran does; Espar is not so large a place. A good man. As to your second: here. In the forest. The King’s Forest, to tell larger truth, hard by the stream called the Dathyl.”
“Wherever that is,” she snorted. “The King’s Forest covers half the kingdom!”
“So it does,” he agreed with a smile, reaching out one hand as swift as a striking snake to grasp a diving riskin, turn, and throw it out over the stream. The bird chirped shrilly, obviously astonished to find itself no longer racing at a tempting heap of buds, but headed in quite a different direction.
Florin gave it a bright chirp in return, and it answered him, sounding almost rueful, as it vanished across the Dathyl into a dark stand of trees.
Narantha stared at him. Could he speak with birds? Or was he crazed-headed, and Then this Esparran forester brought the same hand that had just caught a bird-the same unwashed hand-down on her own ankle. “You’re fair cut up, and no doubting,” he said, and shifted aside on his haunches, as graceful as any dancer, to reach behind himself and pluck something from a pack.
“ ’Tis unwise,” he added gently, “to go out into the forest-into any woods-without good boots on your feet, Lady. Yet fair fortune is with you this day: I never travel without a spare pair.”
He was gently pulling boots on over her bandaged feet: great horrible heavy man’s boots, made for feet half again larger than hers. His feet, of course. And what was he doing now?
Stuffing… yes, stuffing more bandages into the boots! Wadded roll after none-too-clean-looking roll, into the open, gaping tops of the boots, thrusting them firmly down around her feet (fresh pain). Whereupon he started bending her feet with his hands “Owww!”
— twisting them around, his fingers sliding past her aches and bandages like deft talons, shoving wadded cloth here, and there, and everywhere around her ankles and calves “What’re you doing? ”
“Pray pardon, Lady, but the boots are too large for your feet. They must be packed tight so you don’t wobble as you walk, or they’ll rub you raw and you’ll probably very swiftly step right out of them, or turn an ankle and fall.”
The forester shoved a last rolled-up bandage in, thrust it down with two firm fingers, and sat back, satisfied. She need never know that boots, pack, and bandages had all come from the foresters’ cache. Not that there was much worry, that oh-so-high-and-mighty Lady Narantha Crownsilver would know anything at all about foresters’ caches-to say nothing of foresters. Still, even if she’d already deemed him a faceless servant, that was no call for him to give her rudeness. “I must warn you further, Lady. Don’t keep walking if your feet begin to hurt in one place repeatedly. We’ll be stopping betimes; I’ll have to wash and dress them often.”
The Lady Narantha’s eyes blazed. “You expect me to walk? With my feet all cut up?”
Florin shrugged. “You must,” he told her quietly. “Once the wolves and owlbears catch your scent, they’ll follow you. If you can’t keep ahead of them, they’ll eat you. Slowly, if it’s an owlbear that catches you. They like cruel sport with their food.”