The Blood Knight - J. Gregory Keyes [5]
She remembered leaving Dunmrogh with her maid Austra, a free-woman named Winna, and thirty-eight men whose company included her Vitellian friend Cazio and her guardian Sir Neil MeqVren. They’d just won a battle, and most were wounded, including Anne herself.
But there had been no time for leisurely recovery. Her father was dead, and her mother the prisoner of an usurper. She’d set out determined somehow to free her mother and reclaim her father’s throne. She remembered feeling very certain about the whole thing.
What she didn’t know, couldn’t remember, was where those friends were and why she wasn’t with them. Or, for that matter, who the dead man was, lying at her feet. His throat had been cut; that much was plain enough—it gaped like a second mouth. But how had it happened? Was he friend or foe?
Since she didn’t recognize him, she reckoned he was most likely the latter.
She sagged against a tree and closed her eyes, studying the dark pool in her mind, diving into it like a kingfisher.
She’d been riding beside Cazio, and he’d been practicing the king’s tongue…
“Esno es caldo,” Cazio said, catching a snowflake in his hand, eyes wide with wonder.
“Snow is cold,” Anne corrected, then saw the set of his lips and realized he’d mispronounced the sentence on purpose.
Cazio was tall and slim, with sharp, foxy features and dark eyes, and when his mouth quirked like that, he was all devil.
“What is esno in Vitellian?” she demanded.
“A metal the color of your hair,” he said in such a way that she suddenly wondered what his lips would taste like. Honey? Olive oil? He’d kissed her before, but she couldn’t remember…
What a stupid thought.
“Esno es caldo is Vitellian for ‘copper is hot,’ right?” she translated, trying to hide her annoyance. By the way Cazio was grinning now, she knew she certainly was missing something.
“Yes, that’s true,” Cazio drawled, “if taken literally. But it’s a sort of pun. If I were talking to my friend Acameno and said ‘fero es caldo,’ it would mean ‘iron is hot,’ but iron can also mean a sword, and a sword can mean a man’s very personal armament, you see, and would be a compliment to his manhood. He would assume I meant his iron. And so copper, the softer, prettier metal can also represent—”
“Yes, well,” Anne quickly cut in, “that will be enough Vitellian colloquialism for now. After all, you wanted to work on your king’s tongue, didn’t you?”
He nodded. “Yes, but it’s funny to me, that’s all, that your word for ‘cold’ is my word for ‘hot.’”
“Yes, and it’s even funnier that your word for ‘free’ is ‘lover,’” she countered sarcastically, “considering that one cannot have the second and be the first.”
As soon as she saw the look on his face, though, she wished she hadn’t spoken.
Cazio immediately raised an interested eyebrow. “Now we’re onto a topic I approve of,” he said. ”But, eh—‘lover’? Ne commrenno. What is ‘lover’ in the king’s tongue?”
“The same as Vitellian Carilo,” she replied reluctantly.
“No,” Austra said. Anne jumped guiltily, for she had almost forgotten that her maid was riding with them. She glanced over at the younger woman.
“No?”
Austra shook her head. “Carilo is what a father calls his daughter—a dear one, a little sweetheart. The word you’re looking for is erenterra.”
“Ah, I see,” Cazio said. He reached over and took Austra’s hand and kissed it. “Erenterra. Yes, I am approving of this conversation even more with each revelation.”
Austra blushed and took her hand back, brushing gilden curls back up into the black hood of her weather cloak.
Cazio turned back toward Anne.
“So, if ‘lover’ is erenterra,” he said, “I must disagree with you.”
“Perhaps a man can have a lover and remain free,” Anne said. “A woman may not.”
“Nonsense,” Cazio said. “So long as her—eh, lover—is not also her husband, she can be as free as she likes.” He smiled even more broadly. “Besides, not all servitude is unpleasant.”
“You’ve slipped back into Vitellian again,” Anne said, lacking entirely Cazio’s affection for the subject. She was sorry