Never had Ricard met a knight he did not hate nor one he could not defeat. They were everything he wasn’t: proud, rich, and weak. He deserved their success, their horses, their estates, their jewels, their women, their fame more than any of them—more than a hundred contracts under his belt and not a single a blunder. How many battles has any one knight fought? Two? Three at the most? And so Ricard thought to himself when he came to face his third opponent. He was Saint Lucius’s man, Temple Guard Captain Sir Fredrick Himmelriser.
The cheers from the crowd pounded unbearably against the sellsword’s ears. His opponent had chosen to discard his helm and shield, “For the sake of justice. My opponent has not the arms nor armour to match. It would be dishonour to bear mine own against him!” Ricard seethed at the sanctimonious arrogance, could see only the object of his rage taunting him with this veneer of stoicism. Those clear-blue eyes and unruffled forehead sent the sellsword into a frenzy. His first cut was a lunge for Himmelriser’s head, no grace or technique, no consideration of what came after, just anger and aggression faster than the knight could slip. There was a flash of frosted steel. Within a hair’s width, Himmelriser’s sword bit into the thinner edge of the sellsword’s messer. A split second of pressure. Ricard wound his blade around to the gasps of the crowd, and he thought he heard Dahilla shout as the two weapons separated. There was no space for the broad-tipped Temple blade to accelerate. Harmlessly it slid against the sellsword’s maille and linen while his over-sized knife sliced Himmelriser’s throat.
†††
“Stop this! Both of you!” begged Leonhardt. The kitchen door clapped open and closed, and she felt her parents’ presence behind her. She dropped Trey’s rondel at her feet. “Father, say something to stop them, please.”
“Can’t be done,” he shook his head, breathing steam from his nostrils.
Jael glanced back to the scene with a stinging in her eyes as the men squared with one another, shadows wavering in the residual kitchen light. Then a softness touched her hand, and Leonhardt’s mother knelt beside her. Jael recoiled, but only slightly. Her body did not recognize the gentle touch as Dahilla’s, nor did her memory believe such remorse could be her mother’s. “God, how wrong I was when I said all those horrible things. I could only see myself in you. But now—even after all that adventure, you’re still innocent—to not know the nature of men. I’m sorry, Jael. You’re father is right; you can’t stop them.”
There was a grunt and a fleshy thud—the first punch. She turned and saw Zach reeling across the yard. “Please, stop! This is all my fault!”
“I don’t get it,” the goatherd’s shadow spit onto the snow. “Why are you defending this jack ass?”
Gildmane scoffed, “What I don’t understand is how a man could be so dense. Unless…” The captain’s shade looked her way, “That’s it, isn’t it? Another Ogdon Sylvertre.” Turning back to Zach, “Do I say it true? Has an angel flown away with your senses?”
“We made a promise.”
Jael’s heart sank into her stomach. How juvenile the words sounded coming out of his mouth—innocence to the point of embarrassment. “A promise,” as if oaths had not been broken, as if she had not manipulated him in fear and shame, pretending now to stand unstained before him.
Trey’s voice pitched in genuine surprise, “You don’t know, do you? Has no one told you?”
“Told me what?” asked Zach, baffled. She couldn’t see his face, but Jael knew he was staring at her, a shape in the dark, its features strange.
“Tell him, Leonhardt.” Words like razors that flayed her sins exposed.
She withdrew a step and bumped into her mother and the soft, new life growing within. It was a gentle collision, almost an embrace as Dahilla caught her daughter in her arms, driving the daggers of Love and Hate together with Shame deep into her entrails where her heart sank lower.
She felt her body revolt, shoved away from this woman she couldn’t forgive, You are not my mother, then disappeared into the darkness. Trey called after her, then her father, and then Zach and Dahilla ran inside for lanterns as her feet fell faster on the hard-packed snow. She was in the stable and mounted on her courser when the kitchen door slammed open. On the road, she heard them calling for her, blinded by lantern light. They would find nothing but her footprints until sunrise.
Twenty-Fifth Verse
There, on the horizon, rose cyclopean blocks of lustrous black stone out of the golden sands of the motherland. Eemah and the Walls of Barzakh. Never before had they felt so close yet just beyond the reach of The Ashen Maid. She was captain Sadaf’s fastest vessel, named for King Solomon’s Hibernis bride, Princess Yuria, who died not a year into her marriage. There was no truer tragedy, according to the crew; in her honour, the ship had been built with a hull of whitewood and outfitted with oars like the slave vessels of the north—for this, Adnihilo was thankful.
The half-blood’s body had withered since Gautama, and wandering starved through the desert had only made that worse. So when the foul winds started not a day into their voyage, he found himself overjoyed that Ba’al volunteered him and Adam for the oars. Morning until midday, thighs and back and blistered hands burned, but it was worth it to feel the return of his strength. And if it sped along their journey, all the more reason to celebrate come supper: dried beef and salt fish, hard bread and hard cheese, and a cup of lime grog—sometimes two if Adam was fasting. The Messah had taken to the practice every odd day of the voyage. When Adnihilo asked why, he’d replied, “I don’t know it’s true, what
