‘You have no furs?’ asked Messire Amato.
Muriens laughed. ‘Fucking Etruscans. Of course I have furs. Why don’t you all come out of the cold before we start dickering like a man with a whore on a cold night – beg your pardon, sister,’ he added with a smile. ‘Although, sweet Saviour, you can come and take my confession anytime.’
Amicia smiled right back at him. ‘That will be enough of that, Your Grace,’ she said.
His mouth moved in a way – a sort of self-aware wryness, an appreciation of his own failures – that she knew so well it almost melted her heart. Then his face cleared and he bowed. ‘My apologies, sister. It is just my wicked way!’
Amicia allowed herself to be steered inside, even as she felt the very edge of the zone that surrounded beings with great power. She cloaked herself as carefully as she could, using what she had learned from both the Red Knight and Harmodius during the siege, and she kept her eyes down and thought of mice.
This was a mistake, she thought.
A pair of servants led her into the Great Hall and then up a winding stair and along a corridor that went up and then down.
‘Ma soeur, do you have a maid?’ one servant asked.
‘No,’ she answered.
The woman nodded. ‘I’ll send you a woman to help. This is the portmanteau from your horse – is there more?’
Amicia looked at the narrow bed with something close to lust. The air of the castle was cold, but not like the open marshes of the Adnacrags. And there was a stack of wool blankets waiting to serve her.
‘No more, I thank you. That’s all I have.’ She smiled. ‘I was very much a last minute addition. Goodwife, I am spent. May I lie down?’
The other woman nodded. ‘I doubt that Lady Ghause will receive you until after evensong. It is Christmas Eve.’ Despite being a senior servant, or perhaps even a lady-in-waiting, the older woman took the time to help Amicia strip.
The moment her soaked undergown was off, she was warmer, despite the frigid air. A pair of servant girls came in, and brought her a wool flannel gown – floor-length, and a lovely blue.
The younger bobbed a curtsy. ‘Lady Ghause sends this with her compliments, and says that religious women are all too rare here. She hopes that it suits you.’
The wool was soft and very fine and held a healthy charge of potentia like musk.
Amicia pulled it over her naked body, and the older maid pulled the covers over her, and she was asleep.
She awoke flushed and breathing hard, after the most erotic dream of her life. A dream with a very particular focus. She lay in her bed, calming her breathing.
The old Abbess had taught her to make a virtue of necessity. To meditate when only meditation could help. She imagined her knight – still very fresh in her traitorous memory, so she clothed him and armed him and placed his image, kneeling, in a nativity scene – a guard for one of the three great kings who had come to visit the newborn babe.
The nativity played out – the kings gave their gifts, and retreated, and he went with them, his steel sabatons crunching through the snow, and she watched him mount his horse with his usual grace, his annoying, ever-present grace. And she looked back to see the Virgin take up her child from the manger.
She breathed, calm, and centred-
‘Time to wake, sister! Time for mass!’
She stretched, at peace with herself, and smelled – perceived – the musk in the real and the touch of ops in the aethereal. The gown had been ensorcelled.
Honi soit qui mal y pense, she thought and stripped the thing off. She handed it to the maid, who was more than a little shocked at her nudity – and her tattoos.
‘Have this washed,’ Amicia said. ‘It stinks.’
After mass, she followed the housekeeper – the older woman who had led her into the castle – into the Great Hall and up a short set of steps.
Amicia could feel Ghause from across the fortress, and so she was prepared when the housekeeper opened the door.
The woman who sat on the tall chair of dark wood had no embroidery in her lap, and she held her head as few women did – up, with a direct gaze.
‘Ah – the nun. My dear sister, it is all too rare to receive a religious vocation here. Are you permitted to speak?’
Amicia thought so this is his mother. She burns in the aethereal like – like-
‘I have no vow of silence,’ she said.
‘You are the most remarkably attractive nun I’ve seen in many a day,’ Ghause said. ‘Watch out for my husband. He doesn’t like to take no for an answer. And he likes to break things.’ She smiled. ‘And people.’
Amicia felt her face burn hot. ‘My lady,’ she said softly. What else could she say to such a remarkable introduction?
‘Are you a virgin, girl?’ Ghause asked.
Amicia realised – just in time – that she was in a contest as surely as if she were fighting in the snow. ‘That is a rude question, my lady.’
‘Oh, I’m a rude woman. You do not fool me, sister. You seek to hide your powers, and I can feel them – sweet Christ, girl, you lit the very moon with your sword of light. You are a witch – a very powerful witch. Why are you here?’
Amicia made a good straight-backed curtsy. ‘My lady, I am here to help Ser John escort his convoy. As you have apparently seen, I have some skill in working the hermetical.’
Ghause watched her.
Amicia resisted the invitation to talk further.
‘You are from Sophie’s convent? Eh?’ the older woman asked.
Amicia winced at her own foolishness. When she had volunteered to come, she had imagined herself secure. She had imagined that she might look at his father and mother and see the source of his revolt against God. Learn things to his good.
In her pious arrogance, she had assumed that she would be secure and powerful here.
Ghause Muriens wore the aethereal not like a cloak or a fog, but like a garment of regal splendour. It was part of her. She lived in potentia.
Amicia felt naked before it. ‘I serve the Order of Saint Thomas,’ she said.
Ghause licked her lips. ‘At Lissen Carrak?’ she said softly. She was beautiful. Amicia had never seen a woman as beautiful. And what she manipulated was not as simple as air or darkness or light or fire.
Amicia nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said.
‘So – you know my son, perhaps?’ Ghause asked again. She rested a hand on Amicia’s arm, and the nun warmed to the touch. She warmed to her navel, and to the tips of her fingers.
The ring on Amicia’s finger flared. Ghause spat – like an angry cat – and started back and Amicia recovered control of her own body and mind. And was only then aware that Ghause had been overwhelming her. Seducing her.
‘Bitch,’ Ghause said. ‘That was unnecessary.’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘A mere mind your own business would have sufficed.’
Amicia’s mind reeled. The ring had saved her. She took a deep breath, and then another.
Ghause smiled. ‘You do know him!’ she said. ‘Ah – sometimes, I wonder if there is a God after all.’
Amicia had recovered her control. ‘Madam, I nursed two of your sons in my place as a novice. And both were fine knights and gentle men.’ Her voice was steady as rock, and she had her version of events prepared. She fixed it in her palace, and banished all the rest to the locked box where she kept the Red Knight.
‘I am a proud mother, and I was led by false rumour to fear that Gabriel was dead. What can you tell me of him?’ Ghause asked.
Amicia shook her head. ‘Madam, he was the Captain of a fortress under siege by the Wild, and I was a novice serving in the hospital. Twice when he was wounded, I used my powers to heal him, and I stood by your younger son – Ser Gavin – and saw him fight. Brilliantly.’