The Blood Knight - J. Gregory Keyes [100]
Cazio pushed himself up on one arm and leveled his gaze at the knight. “What are you saying? That you would rather they had both died? Acredo killed the guards. If I hadn’t been nearby, how do you imagine it would have ended?”
“I know,” Neil said, rubbing his forehead. “I didn’t intend to insult you, only to understand why…what happened.”
“And now you know.”
“Now I know.” The knight paused, and his face grew almost comically long. “Cazio, it is very difficult to protect someone you love. Do you understand that?”
Cazio suddenly felt like taking a sword to the knight.
“I know that very well,” he said evenly. He meant to say more, but something in Neil’s eyes told him he didn’t have to. So rather than pushing it further, he just said, “Join me for a drink.”
Neill shook his head. “No. I have too much to do. But thank you.”
He left Cazio to increasingly more colorful memories, imaginings, and, soon enough, dreams.
When Neil left Cazio, he felt vaguely unclean. He had suspected from their first meeting that the Vitellian and Anne might have developed some sort of relationship; he remembered Anne’s reputation. Her mother had sent her away to a coven in Vitellia precisely because she had been caught in a delicate position with Roderick of Dunmrogh.
Thus, it would be no surprise if, traveling together all this time, something had happened between the princess and the swordsman. Nor could Neil condemn Cazio for that; he himself had engaged in improper relations with a princess of the realm, and he was less well born than the Vitellian.
But he’d had to ask, hadn’t he?
Still, he didn’t like it, this role. It did not suit him to question grown men about their intentions, to worry about who was naked in bed with whom. These weren’t the things he wanted to be interested in. It made him feel old, like someone’s father. In fact, he and Cazio were about the same age, and Anne wasn’t much younger.
He remembered Erren, the queen’s bodyguard, warning him not to love Muriele, saying that loving her would get her killed. Erren had been right, of course, but had misplaced the person. It had been Fastia he loved, Fastia who died.
He suddenly missed Erren powerfully; he hadn’t known her well, and when they had spoken, it had been mostly her putting him in his place. But Anne needed someone like Erren, someone deadly, competent, and female. Someone who could protect her with a knife and with wise words.
But Erren had died defending her queen, and there was no one to take her place.
He looked in on Anne. The duchess had moved her to another room, and though Neil couldn’t remember the reasoning behind the change, he felt certain that it was to make her safer.
He found Anne apparently asleep, and Austra was sitting with her. The girl looked as if she had been crying, and her cheeks flushed brilliantly when she saw him.
Neil entered the bedchamber and walked as softly as he could to the far side of the room. Austra got up and followed him.
“She is sleeping?”
“Yes. The draft the duchess gave her seems to have worked.”
“Good.”
Austra bit her lip. “Sir Neil, I would talk with you for a moment, if I may. I have something I must confess. Will you listen to me?”
“I’m not a sacritor, Lady Austra,” he said.
“I know that, of course. You are our guardian. And I fear I abandoned my lady when she most needed me.”
“Really? You think you might have stopped the killer? Do you have resources that I don’t know about?”
“I have a knife.”
“The assassin killed two men who had swords. I can’t imagine that you would have fared better than they.”
“Yet I might have tried.”
“Fortunately, that was not tested. I wasn’t here, either, Austra. We are all very fortunate that Cazio happened by.”
Austra hesitated. “He did not just…happen…by.”
“Doubtless the saints guided him,” Neil said, gently. “That is all I need to know.”
A small tear began in the corner of Austra’s eye. “It is too much,” she said. “It is all too much.”
Neil thought she would collapse into weeping, but instead the girl dried her eyes