Ba’al body relaxed. “What are you getting at?”
Sadaf spoke Tsaazaari to his men. Then, in Messaii to the bishop, “Well friend. How about a proposition? I’ll take you and these ones,” he gestured to exclude the apostles and Jordan, “in one of my very own vessels. Where ever you wish to go…if you will teach me and mine how to make our own iron arbalests.”
“What if I refuse?”
“Then you’ll have to risk the King’s justice, though I doubt he is as reasonable as Sadaf.”
Ba’al took another drag of opium. “Where ever we want to go?” He looked over his shoulder at Jordan helping Zachariah to his feet. The scholar’s clothes were blood soaked down the front. It took a moment for Adam to realize what he’d seen, and by then the bishop answered. “Fine, you have a deal. Get us away from these freaks. As far west as west leads.”
Twenty-Fourth Verse
Clank! clunk, clunk, Clank! clunk, clunk, Clank! clunk, clunk.
Jael’s toes rapped the coach floor to the rhythm of wheels rolling over the Valley Road. They were two days departed from the grounds of Castle Aestas, travelling south once more toward Pareo. It was slow going by carriage in the snow despite the loan of Stoltz’s personal coaches; though perhaps that was only Leonhardt’s yearning for the warmth of the capital and the company of friends if even tyres built for the Hibernis climate couldn’t carry them fast enough. We could ride off ahead, recurred the thought in the pits of her loneliness, just me and Trey out on the open road. In her mind’s eye the scene showed, two white knights on black Aestas coursers galloping red-cheeked against the crisp winter wind. In truth, it was a death sentence. Even protected from the elements inside a coach cabin lined with fur, Jael required all eighteen linen layers of her arming doublet and leather riding breaches over stockings and shift under her new plate harness and woolen surcoat. Her every breath steamed white as the lion on her breast. Watching it brought her back to the Aestas’s great hall, to the duke’s deserted tower and its enveloping darkness.
For two days, she would have preferred that vacant, frigid place to the plush coach benches and cold inn mattresses, if only she’d be there with him again. Since that night, Trey had become her captain only, and she merely his knight. His last words before departing Castle Aestas, “I’m sorry, but I think we should keep distant for a few days, maybe till we’re back in Pareo—I know, but you’re not my squire anymore, and we were suspicious enough when you were.” After that, they roomed and travelled separately, and he all but ignored her during meals, electing instead to talk with Ogdon. And though he avoided her, Jael chose to watch him, skeptical. He’d never cared about their suspicions before.
Imagining Trey’s face, her flight-fantasy recurred—a childish dream. If what Trey said was true, that there was risk in their closeness, then—weather be damned—what foolishness was her desire that would expose them. And if he spoke falsely, what then? She did not want to think about what that meant, yet she couldn’t help but notice the captain’s mirth every chance she saw him. He was animate, whether they were boarding for the eve or loading in the morn, his cheeks flushed pink and his lips up-curled, and his whole countenance lightened as he glance passed her for something beyond the southward road—no hint of suffering as she suffered this loneliness.
Does that mean he doesn’t want me anymore…now that I’m soiled? The thought wrung her entrails worse than the black wood demon. She could still feel where her ribs had broken, soft lumps of scar tissue, and wondered if he’d noticed them, thought them repulsive. Or worse, perhaps he hadn’t and thought so regardless. Possessed by the question, she asked herself, is that how he saw her, a boarish whore in armour? She should have fought him more. Had she put up any resistance at all? Leonhardt remembered naught but the bitter cold and Trey’s fast embrace and how badly she’d wanted it.
Her eyes drifted to a chest stowed below the coach bench, one of three parting gifts from the Stoltz family. This particular present was from the duke; Jael thought it appropriate. She knelt down and dragged it out. Silver inlay of flowers filled its whitewood surface while inside was silk lined and hollow save for others’ gifts. Folded, wrapped, and tied in silk rested the gown she wore the night of her ceremony, Sofia’s design, a miracle of needlework to make Leonhardt yearn to wear it once more. It lay atop her old surcoat so ragged and stained that no matter of washing could ever remove the stench of blood. Even in the cold, it rankled her nose, made her wonder if she wanted it anymore.
The last gift was Ariel’s, a queer kind of dagger making its way from the Hibernis north. Jael drew it out now. The blade was long, nearly the length of a sword, and toothed but near the tip. She’d heard of these before. They did not cut but instead catch an opponent’s blade in the thrust—useless outside the context of the Hibernis duelists. It left Leonhardt curious as to what the duchess meant to suggest by the gift. She stared at it awhile, listening to the clatter of the wheels on the frozen road, feeling the weight of her amour grow heavy on her shoulders.
Jael returned Ariel’s dagger to the chest then began to process of stripping of her harness. It was harder to do to oneself than to another. Once her gauntlets were off, her numb fingers fumbled with the pauldrons and the straps along the side of her cuirass. More than a few times, her skin brushed against the metal, stuck, then peeled away
