The Maiden Read online

  “You bastard!”

  He mounted behind her and took the reins. “My parentage is well documented. I think ‘fool’ is a better choice of name for me. That I may be, for all I know.”

  He kicked his horse forward and hoped Brita could not feel the pounding of his heart. If this woman made one wrong move, he would have to kill her, and any hopes he ever had of peace would be lost.

  Jura rode out to meet him with Cilean and Daire behind her. “We are ready,” she said, her eyes cool.

  “Where is Geralt?” Rowan asked.

  Jura pointed to the ridge just behind them. Geralt sat on his horse beside a Vatell guard—a dead Vatell guard that from this distance looked alive.

  Brita’s announcement that she was leaving with Rowan to go into Fearen country was met by disbelief and protest from her guards. The protest was what saved Rowan. She was angered that her guardsmen seemed to believe she could not take care of herself.

  “I taught you how to fight,” she said to one twenty-year-old guard. “Do you tell me now that I know nothing of weapons?”

  “You are our queen and we value you,” the young man said, “and it is a long way to Yaine’s village.”

  “You are saying I am too old to make the journey?” she half whispered. “I am too old?”

  “Forgive me, my queen, I did not mean—”

  Brita turned to Rowan. “We will ride now and I will meet this Yaine and we will see who is old.” She swept from the room, leaving her guard standing in stunned silence behind her.

  Jura rode third in line up the narrow, rocky mountain path. Rowan was first, then Brita, Geralt behind Jura, then Cilean and Daire at the back. Jura watched Rowan’s back even while she watched Brita for any sign of foul play. It had been a harrowing few hours since Geralt had delivered a bound and gagged Brita to the tent.

  Jura smiled at the thought of that tent and the two nights they had spent there. But then she wiped the smile from her face, for she could not afford to allow bed pleasure to influence her decisions regarding her country.

  Geralt had been rash and impetuous in his kidnapping of Brita, but Jura did not see what else he could have done, except, perhaps, do as Rowan said and give warning first. Jura shook her head to clear it. She didn’t know who to believe. But Geralt was Lanconian and Rowan was not.

  They rode for hours, putting as much distance between themselves and the Irial village as possible. No one spoke since the horses moved in single file. They would spend two days on Vatell land before reaching Fearen territory, but they did not travel in the open because, except for Brita, they wore clothes of the Irials. The Vatells in the southern part of the country would not have heard of the new peace and Rowan did not want to risk their lives to someone shooting them as intruders.

  It was nightfall when they finally stopped, and only Brita looked tired. She had led a soft life over the last few years and the softness was telling on her.

  Brita started off alone in the darkness, but Rowan caught her arm. “You do not leave our sight.”

  “I am a queen and—” She paused and her expression changed from haughty to seductive. “You will go with me?”

  He released her arm. “Jura, go with her, see that she stays near us.”

  Jura left the horse she was unloading and went to accompany Brita into the darkness.

  “He will not give me to Yaine,” Brita whispered the moment they were out of sight of the others. “He will want a queen beside him while you are—”

  “Young and healthy and capable of giving him children,” Jura said tiredly. “You can use your wiles on someone else. If my husband had wanted you, he would have taken you. Can you not see that he wants, above all else, to gain peace for Lanconia?”

  Brita was quiet for a moment as if judging her adversary. “To rule all of Lanconia…Even I had not thought on so grand a scale. How does he plan to kill those of us who had power before him?”

  “He does not plan to kill anyone as far as I can tell. The man has an irrational distaste for death. He does not even kill the Zernas.”

  This bit of news shocked Brita so much that the coaxing little whine dropped from her voice. “He thinks to unite Yaine and me and that there will be no deaths?”

  For a moment, Jura felt a kinship with Brita. “He is an Englishman and he has a head made of stone. He also believes God talks to him. I do not understand him at all, but Thal made him king and Rowan has the power until…until—”

  “Until someone kills him. He is not long for this world,” Brita said with finality. “It is good I did not marry him.”

  She was once again Jura’s enemy. “He did not want to marry you. Now let us get back. Tonight you will be watched, and while my husband hates death and my brother ties women up, I have been wanting to try a new knife trick I have just learned. I will kill you if you try to run.”

  Brita did not reply to this as she made her way back to the camp. She sat to one side while the others built a fire and began preparing the simple meal. She watched this Rowan who was called King of Lanconia but was in truth king only of the Irials. He watched Jura constantly and Brita thought him a fool. He had fallen in love with the girl and thus made himself vulnerable. To be in power one must never love. She knew that all too well. Daire’s father had taught her that lesson. She had loved a young man, loved him with all her heart—and Daire’s father had ordered him killed. What had enraged Brita so much was that her husband wasn’t jealous, he was merely teaching her a lesson. When one loved, one was weakened. Brita had learned from that and she had never loved again, not her husband, not her son who was taken from her, no one.

  Now she saw how this Rowan’s eyes followed Jura and she saw where his weak point was. He would never accomplish his goal because he was weak.

  She looked at the other people in the group. The woman Cilean she dismissed. She was a “good” woman, fair, kind, loving—worthless. The woman Jura had possibilities as a source of conflict. She did not yet know she loved this Rowan and her mind was therefore clearer. And she had no compunction about killing. She had been trained to kill. Brita knew she would have to be on guard against Jura.

  Brita looked at her son Daire a long time. He was a handsome young man and she could see some of his father’s physical features in him, but she saw none of his father’s detachment. Nor did Daire seem to have any of his mother’s ambition. Brita did not think she could get her son to join her against this English usurper. No, Daire was as much Irial as he was Vatell.

  At last her eyes rested on Geralt, and there she saw what she wanted. He was a man filled with hatred. Brita had to hide a smile when she thought of the simplicity of the boy—for boy was what he was. He had come to Brita on the night of the marriage ceremonies looking rather like a puppy pleading to be liked. He had swaggered a bit and bragged a bit, but he couldn’t conceal his fear of rejection.

  At first Brita had been furious that Rowan had presumed to send her this boy as if she were a mare in heat and any stallion would do, and then she had looked at Geralt and seen the lust in his eyes and she had thought perhaps she could get information from him.

  She had allowed him to think he seduced her. He was an energetic if unskilled lover, and later Brita realized he needed a mother more than a woman. Geralt began to pour out his heart to her when she cuddled him and made sympathetic little sounds. He told of his hatred for Rowan because Thal had always held Rowan up to Geralt as an example of what he should be.

  “And he had never met him!” Geralt had shouted. “He compared me to a boy he had never met. This Rowan was better than I was because of his weak, English mother. But I was the rightful King of Lanconia and I would have been chosen except for…” He had looked away.

  “Have some more wine,” Brita had said. “Why was the Englishman chosen over you?”

  Brita had listened with some awe when told of St. Helen’s Gate that Rowan had opened.

  Geralt had talked to her most of the night until at last he had fallen asleep. B