The Maiden Read online

  He leaned against the window casing and took deep breaths to calm himself. There was more treachery here than he thought, and he, fool that he was, had walked directly into it.

  Tonight he must, somehow, escape these women and go to Jura. And he must figure out a plan to get all of them away from the Ultens safely.

  Chapter Sixteen

  SORE?” CILEAN ASKED Jura softly.

  Jura shrugged in answer but the truth was, her shoulders and back hurt a great deal from the whip strokes of that afternoon.

  They were alone in the little stone house again, this time their guard outside doubled because of what had happened that day. Cilean had fallen under a heavy bag of grain, and when one of the Ultens had cracked a whip over her, Jura had leaped for the woman’s throat. Jura had received a dozen lashes with a whip for that and Cilean had chided her for taking the punishment. They had been worked especially hard the rest of the day and only now, so late, were they allowed to rest.

  But Cilean’s anger, reawakened, kept her awake. “We have to escape. I saw two women talking by the gate today when they should have been watching. If we could find a way to distract them, perhaps we could—”

  She broke off at the look on Jura’s face and she turned. Standing in the doorway, lit from behind by torches, was a ghost—a thick, wide, golden ghost.

  Jura blinked to clear her vision but the ghost remained there.

  “Jura?” the ghost whispered.

  Cilean was the first to recover. In spite of her exhaustion she leaped from the cot and flung her arms around Rowan.

  Sometimes Rowan was angered by the way these Lanconians treated him. He was their king but he got no “Your Majesty’s,” merely argument and challenges about his decisions. But at this moment he was glad for their sense of equality. He’d rather have a woman’s arms about his neck than all the fawning in the world.

  He hugged Cilean back, feeling as if he were touching someone clean for the first time in days. How good it would be to hear the honest opinion of a woman instead of the meek subservience of the Ulten women.

  “You are well? Unhurt?” Rowan asked Cilean.

  She released her clasp on his neck but still kept her arm around his waist. “Tired and bruised but not hurt. It is Jura who was hurt today.”

  Rowan stared across the darkness at his wife, who still sat on her cot. Cilean slipped away from him. “You have nothing to say to me?” Rowan said softly to Jura.

  “Why are you alive?” she asked in an angry tone, her heart pounding in her ears.

  Rowan did not take offense as he smiled and stepped toward her. “You are glad to see me.”

  “We were taken captive and made into slaves,” Jura said angrily. “They use us as oxen to unload wagons full of stolen goods. I had thought that you were dead or else you would have come for us, but you are not dead.” She said the last as if it were an accusation. Somehow, she felt betrayed by him. The last time she had seen him he had been looking at her with hatred, and for days she had done little but cry because she thought he was dead. But here he was, not only alive but free as well.

  Rowan kept walking toward her, and when at last he was in front of her, he put his hand on her shoulders.

  Jura leaped off the cot and flung her body against his, holding on to him with all her might. “You are not dead. You are not dead,” she kept repeating in wonder.

  “No, my love,” he whispered, stroking her sore back. “I am not dead.”

  After a few moments, he pulled away from her. “We must talk. Come, Cilean, sit here by us. I want to have you both near me. We haven’t much time.”

  He put an arm around each woman, as if he feared they might disappear, and began to explain what had happened to him and the other men in the last few days.

  “You believed them?” Jura asked, incredulous. “These women slipped into our camp and put their hideous potion over our mouths and hit me, and you believed them when they said they had left us quietly sleeping? You are a—”

  Rowan kissed her mouth. “I have missed you, Jura. However I got us into this, I must get us out.”

  “You?” Jura said. “You are the cause of this. If you hadn’t—”

  “She thought you were dead,” Cilean interrupted, “and she has done nothing but cry since we were taken. I have never seen her cry before and now she does nothing else. She talks of nothing but how much she regrets never trying to help you unite the tribes and never being able to tell you that she loved you.”

  “This is true, Jura?” Rowan whispered.

  Jura turned away. “One says things in grief.”

  Rowan put his fingertips under her chin and kissed her tenderly. “I tried to make a decision as a king. I went with the Ultens because King Rowan wanted to unite them with the other tribes, but Rowan the man came to regret that decision. I was a fool, Jura, just as you have told me a thousand times.”

  She looked into his eyes. “But you meant well,” she whispered and he kissed her again.

  “As you did the day Keon was killed,” he whispered, and was amazed to see tears in Jura’s eyes. “You gave me strength when I would have failed my country and you let no one see me in my weakness.”

  “Rowan!” came an urgent whisper from the doorway. It was Daire, and Cilean went to him but he motioned her away. Immediately, she became a guardswoman again.

  “We must go,” Daire said. “Even Geralt is failing.”

  “Failing?” Jura asked, pushing away from Rowan and starting to rise. “Cilean and I are ready. We will leave with you.”

  Rowan cleared his throat nervously. “We cannot take you,” he said. “There are too many of them and too few of us. I could visit you only because the Fearens and Geralt are, ah, keeping the guards, ah, busy. Jura, do not look at me like that. I will get you out of here, but you cannot expect me to wage war on a city of women, my own Lanconian women.”

  “Women!” she gasped, standing and glaring at him. “These delicate little women have Cilean and me pulling rocks out of pathways, digging water mills out of mud, hauling great bags of grain, repairing stone walls. We are being used as horses while you men are…are exhausting yourselves trying to impregnate them.”

  “I am not, Jura,” Rowan said pleadingly. “I swear to you that I have not touched one of them. I am sure they will let us live as long as I the king do not give a woman my child.”

  Jura’s eyes bulged in rage. “How much you are sacrificing for us!” she half yelled.

  Rowan tried to take her in his arms but she twisted away. “Jura, please trust me.”

  “Like you trusted the Ultens? You went off with these little women and left Cilean and me and Brita to rot.”

  “That’s not true,” he began, “I—” Rowan was confused and pleased by Jura at the same time. She was hissing at him like a jealous woman. No coolheaded guardswoman was attacking him. She was an angry wife who thought her husband was sleeping with other women. She really did care more for him than for Lanconia.

  “Rowan!” Daire said urgently. “We must go. Marek will hear of this if we do not go soon. He will have all of us killed.”

  Rowan moved away from Jura with regret. Never had he wanted her so much as now. He was tempted to abdicate to Geralt and get out of Lanconia. He’d take Jura with him back to England. Even as he thought this, he knew it wasn’t possible. “Give me two days,” he whispered. “I will have you out of here in two days.”

  He left, and in the stillness he left behind, Cilean tried to talk to Jura, but she was too angry to listen. She felt betrayed one minute and the next she knew Rowan should have gone with the Ultens and left the Irial women behind. She was too confused to sleep. If she had married Daire, she would never have expected their marriage to stand in the way of what was good for Lanconia. So why did it enrage her when Rowan chose Lanconia over her?

  Before dawn she went to the doorway to look at the silhouette of Marek’s great palace, and the thought of Rowan inside and perhaps lying with another woman made