Carol Berg - Flesh and Spirit

Perhaps. I’d met those who honored Bayard as Eodward’s eldest child, and thus, lacking evidence to the contrary, Eodward’s rightful heir. Even in the king’s lifetime, Bayard’s ruthless campaigns against the Hansker were revered by those who lived in the vulnerable riverlands. But I’d met neither man nor woman, common nor other, who professed to love the man.

“Who has passed here, priest?” Prince Bayard’s horse was at noses with the abbot. “I would know what men have sought your hospitality this night.”

“Your Grace.” The abbot inclined his head and spread his palms. “Alas, only the dead have entered our gates this night. I granted all these men holy sanctuary, but they chose to fight instead. How will Iero judge those of us in authority who fail to avert such horrors?”

Hypocrisy among the powerful, even the clergy, did not surprise me. But I was shocked at the abbot’s blatant lie, especially in the absolute sincerity of its delivery.

Prince Bayard, of course, was experienced with both lies and hypocrisy. “Prove to me that no one has passed. My men were certain they saw knights at your gate. Surely your holy brothers have not been hiding swords or lances in their trews.”

The squires in his party snickered.

The abbot ignored the crude jape and swept an arm in welcome. “Enter as you will, Your Grace, though I must insist you leave your weapons behind. Your noble father’s grant specified Gillarine as neutral ground.”

Was that it? Had the abbot and his prior kept the Ardran soldiers outside the walls apurpose so Luviar could maintain his claim of neutral ground and thus retain King Eodward’s grant of this fruitful valley? He’d had an Evanori nobleman ensconced in the abbey guesthouse. But then why hide Perryn?

“Interfering with the capture of a traitor is hardly neutral!” Prince Bayard snapped, voicing my own thought. “All your pious mouthings these past months, bidding me negotiate with this poltroon my father sired…Now your true loyalties are revealed. You’ve set yourself and your holy brothers square in the sapless dandy’s camp, and if you’ve sheltered him, I’ll take this house down stone by stone while you hang by your bowels and watch.” Bayard’s destrier snorted, blew, and sidestepped. The prince drew rein with a heavy hand.

“Iero bids us open our doors in peace to those who request it, and we ask no questions as to past sins or future plans.” The abbot yielded no ground, his every syllable precise and clear. “We would welcome either of your royal brothers here as we would welcome your own honored self or the lowliest of your warriors or even yon priestess, your ally, who denies king and god and human soul. I assert that no one has passed this gateway to my inner precincts save those of my own flock and the dead. Leave off your weapons and come see for yourself, or send one of your men. But I would remind you that to violate our precincts lays an interdict upon the soul, unworthy of a man who would be Eodward’s heir and awkward for a man who desires the Hierarch of Ardra—my superior—to affirm his crown.”

“You presume much, priest.” I would not have been Bayard’s horse at that moment. Surely the prince’s ruthless hand on the reins must shred the poor beast’s mouth.

Bayard flicked a gloved finger at those behind him. A man dropped from his mount, bowed to the prince, and strode through the tunnel toward the Alms Court. My heart stuttered when the shifting lamplight revealed his cloak to be the color of claret—the color mandated for a pureblood working among ordinaries. And there was something else…

I stared after him as he passed by me. A short, broad-shouldered man with thick black hair and beard, his face half obscured by a silken mask. His walk so like a cat’s…smooth, confident, a touch of swagger…so familiar…Once inside the courtyard, he knelt and touched one hand to the earth, then rose and moved out of sight.

My feet shifted as if to follow. Brother Victor jerked hard on my gown. I came to my senses and shrank deeper into our niche behind the gates. Gods, if he saw me…I closed my eyes, not daring to so much as think until the firm footsteps passed us by again. Then I peered around the edge of the gate.

“The priest speaks truth, Your Grace.” The pureblood’s arrogance rang through that tunnel like struck bronze, his words properly blunt and formed entirely without passion. I would recognize Max’s voice anywhere. This was business. “The only Ardran soldiers in the courtyard are dead—six of them. I verified their state. Only one set of footprints in the courtyard beyond this tunnel is aught but monks’ sandals. That pair of boots walked out the gates, not in. No path beyond the three inner gates showed evidence of either passing soldiers or princes. Your royal brother certainly escaped Wroling with this rabble, but he either abandoned them along the way or is out there with them yet.”

Unsubtle, Prince Bayard wheeled his mount and charged back to the field. My brother, Max, swung his compact and brawny bulk onto his horse and rode after him with the rest of the party.

Slowly I relaxed fists and shoulders. It was more difficult to banish the echoes of taunts and mocking laughter that would forever taint the air about my brother like the stink shrouds a midden.

How logical that Max called the Duc of Morian his master. My father was shrewd enough to bind his children into the most prestigious contracts offered, unswayed by sentiment or relative virtue or even hard coin, come to that. Max prided himself on his wit and intellect, and ever ambitious, would have made certain that the contracts offered for his service were to his own taste.

“Come on, then,” said Brother Victor, tugging at my sleeve. “No need to watch what they’ll do now. We must pray for mercy and for the souls of captors and captives alike.”

No. No need to watch the macabre dance of victors and vanquished. Screams followed us into the now deserted Alms Court. I knew what Max had done here: crouched down and touched the stone, then let flow a bit of magic, calling on our family bent for a simple test we had learned as we learned to walk. Whereas roads and portals held the remembrance of all who had traveled them for a very long time—the abbey gates likely would reveal traces of Eodward himself—the lingering footsteps in a paved courtyard would tell the tale only of those who had passed this night.

I dared not read the footprints for myself, even assuming I could draw any magic on the day after a doulon. I dared not work any sorcery with Max nearby. My brother, a pureblood with more than ten generations of scouts and cartographers in his lineage, would not miss the residue of pureblood spellworking any more than he would have missed the invisible traces of soldiers’ boots or a prince’s tread.

So where were Prince Perryn and his lancers? As Brother Victor and I crossed the Alms Court and passed through the Porter’s Arch, I whipped my head around to look back at the gatehouse and the tiny windows of the sanctuary room, tightly shuttered now. A pulse of satisfaction left me smiling. Of course, the monks would need access to the sanctuary room from inside the gate tunnel, somewhere in the dark nooks and niches along the walls behind the gates, so that the watcher could descend swiftly to open the gates for a supplicant. Brother Gildas would know. And I’d wager my arm that a second stair would lead to the sanctuary room by way of the outer wall walk, so a monk would not need to cross a busy Alms Court to take up his watch.

“Please go on ahead,” I said to Brother Victor, slowing my already snaillike trudge. “My leg tires, and I’d like to…pray…as I walk. I can find my way to the infirmary on my own.”

The small monk vacillated. I argued. He yielded. “Well, if you’re sure, then. I do have duties. We must prepare to rescue those we can.”