The Black Prince: Part I Read online

  He’d left the glen with a head like lead, barely able to stand. He’d made the trek back to his horse through sheer force of will, swinging into the saddle without ever really feeling the beast beneath him. He hadn’t known how he was going to ride but, of course, he hadn’t admitted as much to Callas. He supposed there was still some part of his old self remaining, after all.

  That thought had brought a rueful smile.

  The ice-cold wind had done much to sober him, buffeting their small party as they’d ridden across the exposed tor. When he’d arrived at the inn, he’d felt almost normal. There was still a faint halo around everything, especially near the fire. He’d learned the trick of appearing sober, though, over the years, a trick that came in handy now.

  If Callas was any the worse for wear, he gave no sign.

  Callas had drunk. They’d all drunk. The poison was the gift of life, a gift from their lord and He would—or so their lore claimed—protect the worthy. Only those who should not be there, who’d earned his disfavor, need fear the cup.

  In summer, these rituals were followed by another kind of ritual: that involving women. Maidens, mostly willing, were to borrow the local parlance put to the cock. Veteran mares, eager for the game, were exercised under a number of stallions. Their identities didn’t matter, only the pleasure they brought. The kind of thing that until recently would have turned Hart’s stomach, as lusty as he was.

  What protests occurred, Callas assured him, were staged. The women enjoyed a little struggle as much as the men, making the ultimate pairing that much sweeter. No woman was brought to the glade against her will, although Hart could imagine that more than a few had gotten cold feet on arrival. He’d only been involved in one orgy, for all his claims of conquest, and it hadn’t been much fun. He’d wanted to leave but couldn’t, as he had a reputation to keep up. And so he’d manfully pressed forward, even though he’d rather have been sleeping off his earlier carousing in the stables with his pet pig.

  Their libations to Freyja, Goddess of Love, bonded them. Just as this different kind of sharing had, tonight. A brotherhood like none other, with more love between them than was lost between most brothers. Or sisters. Hart thought of Rowena briefly, but his expression betrayed no emotion.

  He’d heard stories of these frolics, far less secret than the rituals preceding them, and heard too that any children conceived from them were considered blessed and taken care of well. He’d assumed, at first, that the women involved were harlots but had come to learn that many came from the best families in the region. Many were wives.

  There was no shame in what they did, and their having chosen to honor the Gods—and their own appetites—in their own fashion was no bar to courtship or marriage. Hart wasn’t certain if the same permissiveness applied to tumbles taken outside the glen but a casual liaison this was not. Even so, this attitude was so different from what Hart had grown up with that he found it difficult to credit. He’d always disagreed with the notion that a woman should be shamed for taking the same sport as a man, where a man was lauded, but…to consider an issue in theory was one thing.

  Northerners were, oddly, more reserved in public than their Southern counterparts. There was none of the half-dressed barmaids being dandled on laps and bawdy talk so common to inns in Ewesdale. The servitors were, indeed, mostly men. The innkeeper’s sons, here, Hart had surmised. Rather, the women sat quietly by the fire. Some conversed in low tones, either with patrons or each other, while some appeared deep in meditation.

  A woman waited for an invitation, to join the table. An invitation that was politely given, or the would-be patron was excused. And handily. Hart had seen it happen. The innkeeper—or pimp, he supposed, what did it matter—liked to keep a certain air of decorum.

  As all Northerners did. Was he a Northerner now? He supposed so.

  His lips quirked in a small smile.

  “What?” Callas asked.

  “Nothing.”

  And then Callas summoned over the girls. Hart hadn’t seen them before, but that wasn’t surprising. There were always new faces in the Northern capital. One of the girls was particularly lovely, young and slim-hipped, with the flaxen hair of the far north. Her breasts were enticing, beneath her wool shift. His breath caught. And she, seeing that, smiled.

  Their conversation was easy, as she supplied most of the words. She was used to soldiers, he’d imagined. He studied his beer, and then her, and then finally he’d taken her upstairs.

  And now here they were.

  He touched one breast. Even more perfectly formed than he’d imagined. She was little more than a child, but no stranger to the art of love. Still, he didn’t think her reticence was feigned. She seemed pleased that she was pleasing to him.

  He was horribly conscious, in that moment, of his power. She knew who he was, of course. Everyone did. As new to Tristan’s inner circle as he was, he’d already become a figure of dread. What wasn’t known was speculated, and rumor followed him like a shadow. Of his lovemaking. Of his cruelty. Of his devotion to the Dark One.

  She undressed him carefully, her small hands deft on the buckles of his quilted vest. He waited, patient. Studying her in the low light. Where once he’d smelled of pig, now he smelled of valerian. She smiled slightly, a quirk of the lips that was there and gone. Her eyes weren’t on his but on her task; the faint expression hadn’t been for him.

  Removing first his vest, and then his shirt, she placed them carefully on the chair. And then she touched the brand over his heart, gentle fingertips questing. He gave her no explanation, only waited. There was no explanation he could give, that she’d be allowed to hear.

  “You’re handsome.”

  He favored her with a small smile of his own. Lissa, her name, meant honey in one of the northern tongues. He wondered if she’d be as sweet as that suggested.

  “And dangerous.”

  “Are you frightened?”

  She paused. “Yes.” And then, “I’m glad its me. I saw you arrest that man. The tailor. I was across the street.” There was a perfume shop across the street, he now recalled. “I…men like that deserve….” She dropped her gaze, studying some spot on the floor.

  Sliding a finger under her chin, he tilted her head up. Her eyes were a pale gray-green, the color of lake water in fog. “Thank you,” he said.

  “I want to please you.” Her words were barely above a whisper.

  He lowered his lips to hers. His touch was light at first. Gentle. Just the merest press of lips. He gave her time to consider him. To respond. Gradually, she opened her lips to his. She did taste of honey, and smelled of roses. He was paying, he knew, for the full experience. For the best. Still, she was a woman and he a man. She hadn’t eaten much since the snow had fallen and he’d sold his soul to the Dark One.

  He parted her lips with his tongue, exploring. Claiming. He caressed her supple flesh, like silk under his work-roughened hands. She shuddered, once, within the prison of his arms. And then her hands found his belt buckle. He’d already removed his boots. She slid his breeches down over his hips and with them, his braies. Her mouth opened wider under his, accepting him. Underneath her fear was need. A need that matched his own.

  Roughly, he swept her up and carried her to the bed. She made no sound as, with his free hand, he threw back the covers and all but dropped her onto the mattress beneath, coming down on top of her as he ravished her with his mouth. She twisted her fingers in his hair, hair he’d just had cut that morning. She felt so small beneath him, so fragile. And yet there was a fire there, deep within.

  She was as much a stranger to him as he to her, their coupling one of expedience. He doubted that she’d look twice at him but for the fact that she was obligated to accept all comers. Might indeed cross the street to avoid him. But she was his now and under his power and the knowledge drove him wild.

  He stroked her flank, the rounded ridge of her hip bone, as he nuzzled her neck. She gasped, parting her lips slightly. He took one nipple in his
mouth, flicking his tongue back and forth over the small nub. Feeling it grow hard, swollen from his ministrations. Moving his hand down, he discovered that she was wet. Ready for him. That, a woman could neither forge nor disguise.

  He bit down slightly and she moaned. Another little shudder ran through her, this one quite different. She was completely open to him in that moment, her eyes half closed as she absorbed her pleasure.

  Returning his lips to hers, he slid his hand under her flank and lifted her to him as he impaled her. She clung to him, wrapping her legs around his waist. The last dregs of the drug were still in his system, giving him stamina even as they propelled him to new heights. He understood finally—to the extent that he understood anything at all—what Callas had meant, about the orgies in the grove.

  Lissa proved a more than willing partner in the game, thrusting her hips up to meet his as she bit him, hard, on the shoulder. He bit her back and she laughed. He thought he might be killing her, but he didn’t care. They finished the night in a tangle of covers, Lissa sound asleep and with a satisfied smile on her face.

  Hart remained awake for a long time, thinking.

  THREE

  He dressed in silence, before dawn.

  Lissa was still asleep, her small form snug under the covers and her face turned toward the wall. Tonight, she’d share a different room with a different man. Perhaps a fat man with warts, and a wife. This wasn’t Lissa’s room, merely the one Hart had rented. And her along with it. Wherever she slept, on her own time, he didn’t know.

  He’d been careful not to wake her when he rose. She deserved her sleep, and not just because he’d ridden her hard the night before. Which he had. He’d been astonished at himself.

  Now, he felt like he had the worst hangover of his life.

  A hundred evil imps were banging gongs inside his skull while a hundred more danced a chain on his stomach. He drank from the earthenware pitcher on the nightstand, not bothering to use a cup. The water tasted stale, but helped to alleviate the old parchment feeling in his throat. What he needed was a bath—a sentiment he’d never thought he’d hear himself express, even to himself—and another eight hours in his own bed.

  He blinked. Even the grayscale of the false dawn was an affront to his eyes. So profoundly did he wish himself elsewhere. Preferably a cave, where no one could find him.

  He glanced again toward the bed.

  Slipping a hand into an inside pocket, he removed a purse and placed it, without a sound, on the dresser. Inside was more coin than, before he’d come north, he’d seen in his entire life. He was careful not to let them jingle. Enough to keep his father in wine and his stepmother in shoes for the next year.

  Some men had women. Hart didn’t want a woman, not yet, but this was a lovely one and he wanted her to remember him. He thought again of her lips on his, and how eager she’d been once she’d forgotten her fear, and thought of a line from the oath he’d taken: the living light, the seed within. Well, he decided, let her make of the purse what she would.

  He turned on his heel and left.

  He was in the stableyard when he heard the crunch of a heel on the frost.

  Straightening, he turned. Callas. He’d heard the other man because Callas wanted him to.

  He waited. A thin, wan light that seemed to suck the color out of everything was only just now bathing the world. A world that seemed devoid of people, save them alone. Even the stable hands were still asleep, snuggled up in their blankets before the kitchen fire. It was too cold to sleep in the stable.

  “There’s word of unrest in the mountains.”

  “When?” Hart meant, when did they leave.

  “As soon as we’ve been back to the castle. Tristan wants to brief us in person.”

  Sensitive information, then. Hart wondered if this meant that the trouble was related to goings-on in the South. Piers had a tenuous grasp on the throne at the best of times. He wondered what idiot would support the man’s rivals, led now by Brandon Terrowin’s philandering widow. Any fool could look at the boy, Asher, and see that he belonged to Tristan and not the dead heir. And a terrible heir he’d been. The kingdom was better off with Piers.

  Maeve and her cronies talked of destiny, and the divine right of kings. Well, the Gods helped those who helped themselves. Piers was only able to take power, because House Terrowin had made such a right balls up of things beforehand.

  Callas went to retrieve his own horse. Hart was somewhat relieved to see that his friend, too, looked a little under the weather. Dark smudges marked the hollows under his eyes, making him look corpse-like.

  Hart gave his horse a pat. A new horse, a gift from Tristan after he’d put down an insurrection resulting from one of the lakeside hamlets declaring for Maeve. He’d named the horse Cedric, after the leader he’d killed.

  Swinging into the saddle, he wheeled around and quit the place, passing through the gate and into the street beyond. The stableyard walls, like the inn itself, were built from dressed stone. Sturdy. Resistant to fire. Everything in the North was built for defense.

  Callas followed along a moment later, and they rode home through a city only just beginning to come alive.

  They found Tristan in his office.

  This was the man his sister bedded, Hart thought. Entirely without meaning to; he simply couldn’t keep the thought away. It came to him too, equally unbidden, at the worst times: during meetings, or at table. On occasion when he himself was with a woman. That Tristan was capable of the deed he had no doubt. The man had, after all, produced a son if not an heir. And there were too many rumors of his prowess for him to be impotent.

  Besides, Tristan didn’t seem impotent. Then again, Hart counseled himself, what man did? It was hardly the sort of thing that men advertised on their jerkins. They didn’t grow horns, or other strange appendages.

  He felt the weight of his lord’s gaze. Almost as if Tristan could read his thoughts. Which, of course, was ridiculous.

  He cleared his throat.

  Tristan was preternaturally still. Dressed in black, his sallow skin seemed even more waxen than usual. His eyes, also black, reflected the reddish glow of the flames. He signaled for refreshment from his son—page—without diverting his gaze from the men before him. Any movement seemed surprising, although why that should be Hart didn’t know. It seemed right somehow that Tristan should be still. Like a statue.

  Or a corpse.

  He was handsome, he’d give his sister that. Those lips, that chiseled jaw. And he was fit.

  There was a clicking sound as Tristan tapped his claws on the desk. To the left of his hand sat a skull. Claws.

  “There are rumors,” came the sibilant hiss, “of rebels in Molag. Specifically of the townspeople harboring rebels.” Tristan never raised his voice. He might have been discussing dinner. “This intelligence comes to us from Owen Silverbeard.” Who was, of course, the local tribal chief. The northern tribes remained fiercely loyal to Tristan.

  Refreshments were served.

  Asher glanced at Hart, but said nothing. He was on his best behavior, when serving as a page. And although pages knew everybody, and heard everything, the better part of their duties seemed to be pretending that they did not.

  Then, having finished, he retreated to the shadows behind Tristan.

  “Men are meeting you in the passes. From Clan Wolf. Bjorn Treesinger is leading them.”

  Hart knew better than to ask where in the passes. He’d learned from previous encounters that men from the tribes either showed up—or they didn’t. And when they did, they did so in their own time and after their own fashion. And then he wondered, Treesinger? How was a man gifted with a name like that?

  Unlike in the South, where a man inherited his surname, among the tribes it was earned. Silverbeard he knew; the man had suffered a grievous wound to the jaw in his first battle, when he was scarce old enough to wield a sword. He’d survived, but ever after his beard had grown in with a white streak. But Treesinger? Was the man daf
t?

  His mind was wandering again.

  The remains of the drug, it must be.

  Isla had never complained about her husband. Had seemed, indeed, eager for the union—for the most part. She appeared, too, to accept Asher. Which a rational woman should; by-blows were a fact of life for most men, at least those who didn’t live as monks. That Hart had avoided producing one was his own good fortune.

  She and Tristan shared a room, and shared a cup at table, and seemed for all the world a contented couple. Happy wasn’t a word that Hart would particularly apply to Tristan. Still…did he hurt her, during the act? With those claws?

  Isla herself had changed. Hart wasn’t the only one. And while she still seemed herself she also seemed…different, somehow. More contemplative. Slower, and more deliberate in her movements. She spent hours, who knew where, sequestered from all the world.

  Hart was disappointed that he wouldn’t have the chance to speak with her before he had to leave.

  Tristan placed his hand lightly on the skull, before moving it to his cup. Something almost like a smile moved his lips, and was gone. He seemed fond of the ornament. Hart wondered who it had been, in life. Tristan sipped. Ale mixed with mineral-heavy lake water, what they all had. The traditional morning beverage of the North.

  In the South, people ate rye bread or the horrible soup-stew of oats known as pottage. If they ate anything at all for breakfast, which most didn’t. There was none of the neat round barley cakes and wedges of sharp cheese that decorated this table. All Northerners appeared to eat breakfast—and a good one. Just as they appeared to use the garderobes and wash their hands before dinner. Although the occasional man still did piss into the fireplace.

  Hart supposed that some things were universal.

  He helped himself to a piece of cheese, still listening. He shouldn’t be surprised; nothing in the North was familiar. This room was a perfect example: snugly fitted out in wood paneling with smooth plaster above. The age darkened oak felt warm. There was no hint, here, sitting near the roaring fire, of the wind howling outside. Back in Enzie, he’d always felt like the house was one creak or groan from collapsing around him.