Stonehill Downs, page 1
Dedication
For Willem’s Hobblings.
Contents
Dedication
Dusk
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Dawn
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright
About the Publisher
Dusk
ANDREW STRUGGLED.
Mal held him down. The old man’s skin burned, and sweat turned his mottled flesh slick, but still he shuddered as if chilled. Where Mal’s long fingers encircled his wrists, bruises blossomed.
Perspiration dampened Mal’s own brow, running in rivulets along his nose and into the corners of his eyes, stinging. He didn’t move to wipe them away. All of his strength was focused on the man convulsing beneath his hands.
“Let him go, Mal.”
“No.” He refused to spare Siobahn a glance. He refused to acknowledge the disapproval he felt vibrating across the room.
“Malachi. You mustn’t keep him back. It’s too painful.”
“For him? Or for you?” He knew the words were unkind. He didn’t care.
The air moved as Siobahn shifted. The candles in the close room flickered, shedding plumes of smoke. Her breath stirred the hair on the back of his head.
Still, he wouldn’t look around.
The dying man twisted on silken bedclothes. His mouth gaped open, showing yellow teeth, and his eyes rolled in his skull.
Mal knew the old man was all but senseless, but he couldn’t help himself; he bent forward and peered into the wizened face.
“Andrew,” he whispered, willing the other man to hear.
“Mal.” Siobahn forced the issue, stepping away from the shadows and into his line of sight.
Her gown rustled. He could hear the soft pad of her slippers along the stone floor. She slid through the haze of incense, and set her palms flat on the edge of the bed, leaning across the mattress until he was forced to meet her gaze.
“Let him go,” she said again. This time she put just a touch of ice into the words.
Mal no longer took orders, not even from the young woman who had once been his wife. But she could still pierce him through with her deep blue eyes, and she knew it.
No matter how often he wished it otherwise, Siobahn never failed to move him. She knew that, also.
So he looked away from Andrew’s gaping mouth, and let her rake him with her gaze. She was angry, he saw, and disappointed. Maybe she was frightened, but she kept her smile sweet.
“You’re holding him back,” she warned. “Don’t make him struggle.”
“He might still be saved,” Mal argued, even though his heart knew better. Already the bitter tang of grief roughened the back of his throat.
Andrew was the last, and Mal didn’t want to be alone.
Siobahn lifted one hand from the mattress, and set it on Mal’s arm. His tendons quivered at her touch. Beneath his own fingers Andrew’s muscles convulsed in response. The ravaged body arched up off the bed, then snapped back onto the bedclothes.
Blooded scented the air; a trickle of the dark liquid stained Andrew’s chin. The old man had bitten through his tongue.
The violence of the struggle touched Mal at last. He flinched away from the bed, releasing frail bones. The moment his fingers left Andrew’s flesh, the old man convulsed again, as though plucked off the mattress by the hands of the gods. Mal heard bones in the tortured spine snap.
“He’s on his way,” Siobahn whispered, relieved.
Mal shuddered. The gods were never gentle with the ones they favored.
He bent over the bed, and took Andrew’s right hand in his own. There was no response. The old man was well and truly gone.
Mal stroked Andrew’s cooling palm with his thumb. Tears still scratched at the back of his throat. He forced them down, waited until he knew his eyes were dry, and then he reached over and wiped the blood from Andrew’s mouth with the edge of his sleeve.
The blood disappeared into the grain of the dark leather he wore. Mal studied the cuff, searching for a stain that didn’t show. Then he straightened his shoulders and set Andrew’s hand back onto the silks.
He turned from the canopied bed and stepped off the sleeping dais. The suite was gloomy, the air too thick. The smoke from the massive candles Andrew had so loved twined with the fumes of eastern incense.
Mal stumbled over the flagstones, intending to wrench open the windows. He wanted to breath in the night air, to clear away the headache lurking behind his eyes.
“Malachi,” Siobahn warned, just as his hand settled on the window latch. “Tradition. Renault would not be pleased . . .”
She broke off, sensing his silent fury.
She was correct. He almost lifted the latch anyway. If only he could get a taste of fresh air. He needed the breeze across his face to cool his growing rage. And Renault would never know.
He pulled his hand back from the latch and curled his fingers carefully behind his back. Standing alone in the hazy darkness, he could almost feel the chill of the night through the windowpane.
Glass was dearly bought. Only the king’s most beloved were lucky enough to have paned windows. Mal had glass in his own rooms, but not so much.
Andrew had been Renualt’s most beloved.
“And now he’s dead.” Mal forced himself to say it aloud. Briefly, he set his brow against one cool pane.
“You need to tell him,” Siobahn said from somewhere over his left shoulder. “You’ve already waited too long. Renault should have been here earlier. To order the windows covered and—”
This time he stopped her words with a snarl. He heard her teeth click as she bit back the rest of her lecture. He sighed. Again, she was correct. She almost always was.
“I’ll go to him now,” he allowed, turning away from his reflection in the glass.
Siobahn lingered over the bed, poised as though in mid grasp, her fingers still hovering over Andrew’s face. Mal followed the drift of her unnatural blue gaze to the glitter of yellow on the dead man’s thumb.
Now it was his turn to use the power of their connection, to twist her guilt into a weapon. He strode back across the room until he could pin her with his frown. She flinched beneath his stare. Her cheeks pinked soft rose in embarrassment or fear.
“I thought you had forgotten,” she said.
He loomed at her side, towering four full handspans above the crown of her head, and regarded the yellow stone in Andrew’s ring with distaste.
“And you hoped to remove it for me?” His laugh was bitter, his mouth hard.
“You know better.”
She stood in the soft gown she had worn on their wedding day and faced his fury with dignity.
He set his hands on her small shoulders and shook her once, gently, but with passion. Siobahn allowed his touch for a heartbeat. Then she slipped from under his grasp. Mal almost went after her, but something in her half smile stopped him.
He watched as she moved to stand before one of Andrew’s giant candelabras. The flames bowed, drawn by her very breath.
For an instant Mal heard as she did; the king’s heavy footsteps echoed between his ears, pounding with the headache behind his nose.
He swallowed hard, blinked the pain away, and lifted Andrew’s fingers.
The ring slid easily over a bony knuckle. The true gold was warm in Mal’s hand. The yellow jewel burst to life, sending a scattering of starbursts across dead man, bedclothes, and wall.
“The king!” she whispered, starbursts glittering in her hair. She let him hear again. Renault’s footfall almost punched holes in Mal’s tender skull.
He shoved Andrew’s ring into the small pouch he kept on his belt. Then he moved away from the canopy, standing where he could be seen from the massive wooden door Andrew never barred.
He could hear the march of booted feet in truth, now. It sounded as though Renault had gathered his entire guard.
“He knows,” Siobahn murmured from her place among the candles and smoke.
“How?”
“He slept,” she replied. “He dreamed, as Andrew died. I sent him a vision.”
Mal heard regret in her admission. No doubt she feared he would be angry.
He was too exhausted to fume any longer, weighed by grief. He looked over his shoulder, thinking to reassure, but at that moment the footsteps rolled to a stop in the corridor outside Andrew’s suite. The heavy door slammed open, rattling the antechamber.
A gust of cool air made the candles gutter and go out. Smoke wreathed the room. Mal’s eyes watered in response.
He blinked. When his vision cleared, Siobahn was gone, snuffed out along with Andrew’s pretty tapers.
Mal rubbed his throbbing brow. Then he set his shoulders, touched the pouch at
Chapter One
AVANI FOUND THE corpse two days after first snowfall.
Enough slush remained on the ground to stain the Downs gray in the early morning light. The cold made her bones ache even though she’d wrapped herself from head to toe in an old cape she had traded from the Widow. Fashioned from mismatched animal pelts, the cape fell nearly to her knees.
Avani disliked the smell of death that lingered still on the cape, but she disliked the cold even more, and she could be grateful for the wolf, and weasel, and squirrel that had fallen to the Widow’s traps. The patches of mottled fur still clinging to the cape kept most of the bitter air from her skin.
Avani’s feet were another matter. Her sheepskin boots were worn and thin. She’d meant to fashion a new pair over the summer, but time had slipped away.
Only a few moments out on the Downs, and she could barely feel her heels. Her toes were pinpricks of icy pain.
Jacob fared somewhat better, but even the raven disliked the slush that clung to his claws and the frost that gilded his tail feathers. The ice made it difficult and uncomfortable to fly, so the bird rode on Avani’s shoulder, growling complaints low in the back of his throat.
As it was, they made slow progress over the Downs. The morning sun had nearly peaked when Jacob launched himself into the sky. He flapped hard, buffeted by the wind, and then began to circle in large, endless loops. Soon after, Avani spotted a huddled lump on the frozen grass.
At first she thought it was one of her sheep and made a sound of distress, unwilling to give up another of the valuable creatures as lost. But then Jacob began to call, and she knew something different had died on her borrowed land.
Avani’s pace slowed to a near crawl. She almost went back to Stonehill for help. She had seen enough death already in her lifetime. She wasn’t eager to witness another. She stopped once, glancing back across the rolling hills in the direction of the village, but Jacob swooped and called until she heaved a sigh and forced herself to continue on.
The dead man lay in a hollow, sheltered from the wind. His arms were stretched out along the grass at odd angles. It looked as though his limbs had been twisted until his bones had shattered.
Frozen blood caked his tunic, staining the hard ground beneath his torso. He had neither face nor throat. Something had torn open his belly and left his entrails spread on the Downs.
Avani crouched in the brown grass. She propped her elbows on her knees and cupped her chin in her hands. Frost crackled beneath the bottoms of her boots, and the cold seeped through sheepskin soles. She considered the dead man’s ruined face, and frowned.
Jacob squawked, plummeting. He settled on the dead man’s chest. The raven walked up and down along the length of the corpse, head tilted, beak working. When at last he returned to Avani’s shoulder, he had blood on his feathers and the gleam of wisdom in his black eyes.
“A Kingsman,” she agreed, noting the remains of the royal insignia on the man’s ripped tunic. “Torn apart on our Downs. And left to rot beneath the winter sky.”
She scanned the grass, but couldn’t pick out any tracks around the body. The Downs were frozen, the soil too hard.
Jacob muttered and hissed. He ruffled his dark wings, and ducked from side to side, and then pressed his sleek head against the curve of Avani’s jaw.
She lifted her hand to his head in resignation, and when she did, her Goddess spoke, and Avani saw.
The man had died brutally, and in terror. That was not a surprise. But the darkness surrounding his death made Avani’s heart clench. It was more than a shadow of sorrow, of a life cut short too soon.
Here was something different; a pitch-black venom tasting of rotted blood, and of the deep earth.
“Murder,” she said. “Nothing so simple as a mad wolf or a wild weasel.”
She looked deeper, trying to understand. There was another, lighter scent beneath the rotted perfume. One that was somehow familiar.
But Jacob moved from beneath her hand, and the vision shredded away to nothing. Avani rubbed the back of her fist across her mouth. Her stomach rolled. She shut her eyes, waiting for her innards to still.
She crouched on the frozen ground, unmoving, until a light snow began to drift from the sky and coat the grass. Avani watched tiny crystals settle across the Kingsman’s bloodied skull. Then she sighed, her breath a puff of smoke in the winter air.
“Ai, Jacob!” She rocked to her feet, calling the raven from where he poked idly at the corpse’s scalp. “Storm is coming. We need to get the sheep in.”
She rubbed her hand across her mouth again, then caught the accusatory gleam in Jacob’s beady eye.
“The sheep come first,” she repeated firmly, because it was true. The wooly creatures were her livelihood. She couldn’t allow the storm to damage their worth.
Avani made herself turn from the Kingsman, made herself leave the corpse alone on the frozen ground.
She walked carefully away down the slippery hill, setting one foot in front of the other. After a moment Jacob joined her, arrowing through the snow until he found her right shoulder. He clicked his beak irritably as she walked. Usually Avani found his small tantrums amusing. Now her heart lay heavy in her chest.
She thought of the shadow over the murdered man all the way across the Downs. She couldn’t let the vision go even as she found her sheep, and began the long process of herding the animals back up rolling hills to the shelter of the village.
Shepherding was not simple work, and by the time Avani had managed to coax every last sheep into the village pen, she was exhausted and wet to the bone. She couldn’t feel her fingers. She thought the tip of her nose had frozen.
Even so, as soon as the final lamb was safely penned, Avani trudged up through the village to Stonehill’s one tavern. There she knew she would find the village lord, and possibly justice for the dead man on the Downs.
AVANI LIVED ON the very edge of town in a clapboard-and-graystone house not far from the sheep pen. It was a small house, but it had a solid roof and a deep well, and a pretty stretch of grass that sloped behind it onto the Downs.
In the summer she spread her fabrics on the grass to dry. In the winter she had to break the rime on the well water with stones, but the water was always fresh. And in the evenings, no matter what the season, if she stood on tiptoe in her backyard, she could see away across the Downs to the River Mors.
Avani’s house was not tightly crafted. She learned quickly her first year how to hang her rugs and blankets and tapestries from the rafters. When tacked up correctly, the heavy fabrics blocked drafts, and kept Avani from succumbing to the cold.
She scattered more of the brightly colored rugs and blankets on the floor, and managed to turn the little house into a warm shelter even in the middle of winter.
The small cellar under the back room belonged to the Goddess. Avani kept a fat beeswax candle burning on Her shrine day and night. She’d loomed a small kneeling rug for the hard floor. She kept the rest of the room bare.
Avani never felt cold in the little cellar. She could spend hours on her knees on the rug, unconcerned and unaware, while the outside world froze.
In the fall the house shuddered beneath wind and rain, and in the winter the weight of ice made the roof whisper and groan. But in the summer Avani’s home was always cool, and in the springtime the slope along the Downs sprouted tiny colored flowers.
Avani hadn’t yet learned to love Stonehill; three years was too short a time to forget her past. But she had managed to nurture a thriving business, and to turn an abandoned graystone house into a home.
Almost, she had learned to belong.
THREE NIGHTS AFTER Avani and Jacob found the dead Kingsman out on the Downs, Stonehill’s lord came calling.
He rapped on Avani’s clapboard door. She welcomed him with genuine pleasure, letting him into the warmth of her home.
