She stared at his calm face through fresh tears. 'You make it hard for me to despise you.'
Korvaun's mouth traced the wry beginnings of a smile. 'I suppose that's a beginning.'
'A beginning?' she asked suspiciously. 'A beginning of what?'
'Friendship, at first. In due time, love and marriage-if you'll have me. And after marriage, gods willing, children.'
Naoni stared at him, mouth agape. He added quickly, 'I know things can only happily befall if they're also your desire, and we come to know each other well and trust each other fully. Don't fear that I'll take the one without offering the other. Nobles are good at vows, and I make one to you here and now: if I get you with child, it will only be as my Lady Helmfast.'
She shook her head incredulously, tearstained face bone-pale. 'Marriage… children… Lady Helmfast! You're crazed!'
'Quite possibly. Nevertheless… the words are said and I mean them.'
Naoni stared into his eyes, breathing fast. 'I believe you'll stand by your vow, Lord Helmfast, and I give you one of my own: I'll no longer be ridden by the ghost of my mother's pain. I'll not judge you by he who wronged her. And I'll no longer pretend I don't love you.'
Her lips found his, and they were warm and sweet and willing.
When at last they broke apart, breathless, Naoni murmured, 'Now, that, my lord, is a beginning!'
Korvaun chuckled and stroked her cheek. 'Nay, love, let it be an ending-for this night. Let the priests chant their prayers first, so you never have reason to fear dishonor or scandal.'
'Haven't I vowed an end to such fears?' she replied. 'Morning's not far off, and the ghosts fade. There are none to see the promises we make, or judge how we seal our vows to each other.'
Korvaun shook his head. 'You need prove nothing to me.'
'Have I reason to fear dishonor or scandal?'
'No. Not while I live.' As this was simple truth, and because she gazed at him with such shining trust, Korvaun took a ring from the smallest finger of his right hand and slid it onto her finger.
'You have my pledge and my heart-and I'll give you my name as soon as the ceremony can be arranged.'
Naoni's smile was dazzling. 'Give me your love, and I'll be content.'
Echoing sighs faded at the back of the tomb as the last wan ghostlight winked out-and there were indeed no witnesses to the promises made in the last hours of that night.
Yet when bright morning came, neither lord nor lass doubted that the whispered promises between them would be well kept.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
For the first time in his life, Taeros Hawkwinter held vigil for dawn. All night he'd paced the mooncast shadows outside the City of the Dead, praying to every god he knew to hasten the coming of morning, and dreading what dawn might reveal. The stern line of Guardsmen had been unmoved by his pleadings and use of the Hawkwinter name. Scores of times he'd cursed himself for noticing Varandros Dyre striding out of that inn. If they hadn't found Faendra to ask her where her sister had gone, Korvaun would never have gone sprinting off to find his Naoni, and Enough. 'Twas done, as surely as Malark's entombment, the gods save us all.
Taeros wasn't alone in his fearful restlessness. A throng had gathered outside every gate of the cemetery, anxious to learn the fates of friends and loved ones locked within-or to reclaim the dead and dying who were only too visible through the high iron gates. A veritable army of Guardsmen, Watchmen, and Watchful Order magists grimly barred passage, unmoved by threats, brandished blades, and sobbing pleadings alike.
Throughout the night several frantic folk had tried to scale the walls, only to be hurled off by warding magics. Others had wept helplessly as they recognized a familiar voice, inside the walls, raised in terror or pain. The cries soon died away, leaving only ominous silence, and still the citizens waited, shivering in the chill grey damp of the night-mists.
At last the darkness started to lighten, and men started to call, 'In! In!'
Others took up the cry, and it quickly rose into a chant. Taeros stood nose to nose with the Guardsman who'd firmly denied him several times and saw the man's eyes change as someone spoke inside his head.
The officer turned and said curtly, 'Open the gates.'
Binding spells wavered and sighed away, locks were undone and great bars hurled aside, and the great iron gates swept silently open. With a collective sigh, the waiting throng streamed inside.
Taeros jostled with dozens of robed priests and heard the rattling progress of many haulcarts behind him. The carters would convey the known dead to their grieving families and haul the unclaimed to The Last Bath in South Ward, the grim house where unknown dead were laid out in hopes someone would miss them and come looking. Taeros prayed silently that this day wouldn't include a trip there to seek Korvaun Helmfast among those ever-quiet faces.
He pushed his way through the growing thunder-rumble of carts, looking this way and that for some sign of his friend. Heartsick, he saw nothing, nothing… no gleam of blue gemweave amid the sprawled bodies.
And then, in the far tree- and tomb-studded distance, above the heads of the milling crowd of searchers, he caught sight of disheveled fair hair. Korvaun was taller than most-it could be…
Taeros broke into a run, dodging and darting.
Yes! Korvaun alive, by all the Watching Gods! And beside him, both clinging to and supporting the rather bedraggled Lord Helmfast, was a slender, flame-haired lass who could only be Naoni Dyre.
Relief flooded the Hawkwinter. Laughter welling out of him, he raced forward and threw his arms around them, and the three clung together, laughing and crying, as carts rumbled by and others wept.
Finally, starving for air, Taeros pulled away. 'Thanks be to Torm for friends too bloody stubborn to die!'
A shadow passed over Korvaun's face, and Taeros winced. For what were the ghosts that so swarmingly haunted the Deadrest, but folk too stubborn to die?
'Do you count me among your friends, then, Lord Taeros?' Naoni Dyre asked quietly. 'On such short acquaintance, and me a common-born lass?'
Her stare told the Hawkwinter that his answer really mattered to her. Glib phrases rose readily to his tongue- and there stopped. Taeros blinked, realizing that what he was about to say was simple truth.
'Strangely enough, I do,' he marveled.
Before he could chastise himself for that slip of the tongue, both of his friends, the old and the new, burst into laughter.
Taeros heard the high, wild edge to Naoni's mirth and told her quickly, 'Let's begone from here. I saw not your father nor sister outside the gates, but in all candor, I wasn't looking for them.'
'Nor would you have found them. Father told us not to expect him in at all last night-New Day work, I've no doubt-and I took his room, so I could sleep while Faen slipped out to a revel. She's probably not back even yet, and neither of them knows I came here. But they'll soon find me missing, and worry.'
'I've a coach waiting, if you can walk four streets west.'
Relief and gratitude shone on Naoni's face, making her look like a lamp lit from within, and Taeros wondered why he'd ever thought her plain.
The three lost no time in departing the City of the Dead. Handcarts laden with corpses were already rumbling past. Naoni winced as an arm slid off its chest to sway and dangle, but Taeros gazed at smeared lip-paint on the dead man's face and said softly, 'I'll wager that one never thought, hurrying to an afternoon tryst, that he was rushing to his grave.'
'Few think of their own deaths until they lie dying,' Korvaun replied. He looked down at Naoni with the future in his eyes and added, 'Much less what comes after. I'd never had reason to do so myself, ere last night.'
Taeros stiffened in enlightenment. First Roldo, now Korvaun! With Malark gone and Beldar so troublingly preoccupied, he'd soon be reduced to drinking and wenching with just Starragar. And Lord Starragar Jardeth was certain to wed young, for what better way to maintain his customary ill spirits?
Leaving him alone, with his books and inkpots.
Another handcart rumbled past, bearing a lone dead man. It was followed by a sobbing, staggering woman.
