The Blood Knight - J. Gregory Keyes [57]
In any event, she didn’t have time to consider what her sister had or hadn’t done with this young knight. She had other priorities.
“Now that you mention her, has there been any word at all from Lesbeth?” Anne asked.
“No,” Elyoner replied. “The rumor is that she was betrayed by her betrothed, Prince Cheiso of Safnia, that he gave her over to some ally of Hansa so they could blackmail William. That was the reason your father went to the headland of Aenah: to negotiate her release.
“I suppose only Robert knows what really happened there.”
“Then you think Uncle Robert had something to do with my father’s death?”
“Of course,” Elyoner said.
“And Lesbeth? What do you think really happened to her?”
“I do not—” Elyoner’s voice caught for an instant. “I would not imagine that she still lives.”
Anne took a few breaths to try to absorb that.
The snow had begun again, and she hated it. She felt as if a bone had broken in her someplace. A small one, but one that would never quite heal.
“You really think Uncle Robert would kill his own twin sister?” she finally posed. “He loved her more than he loved anyone. He doted on her. He was silly about it.”
“Nothing can bring down bloody murder more readily than true love,” Elyoner said. “As I said, Robert was never made of the finest stuff.”
Anne opened her mouth to reply but found she had nothing to say. The snow came a bit harder, numbing her nose with cold and wet.
Where have I been? she wondered. Where was all of this when I was growing up?
But she knew the answer to that. She’d been racing horses to spite the guards, stealing wine and drinking it in the west tower, sneaking off to play kiss-and-feel with Roderick in Eslen-of-Shadows.
Fastia had tried to tell her. And her mother. To prepare her for all of this.
Mother.
She suddenly remembered her mother’s face, sad and stern, the night she’d sent her off to the Coven Saint Cer. Anne had told her she hated her…
Her cheeks were wet now. Quite without knowing it, she had begun crying.
Realizing that only made matters worse, and great sobs began to choke up from her belly. She felt exposed, like the time all her hair had been shorn from her head, like the time as a little girl she’d been caught naked out in the hall.
How could she be queen? How could she even have imagined it? She didn’t understand anything, couldn’t control anything—not even her own tears. All she had learned in the last year was that the world was huge and cruel and beyond her comprehension. The rest of it—the illusion of destiny and power, the determination that had seemed real only a few days ago—now seemed stupid, a pose everyone could see through but she.
A hand fell on her thigh, and she started at the warmth of it.
It was Austra, her own eyes brimming. The other riders had cleared a bit of a space, probably so they could pretend they didn’t see her pain. Neil rode just behind her, but out of whispering earshot. Cazio was up with Elyoner.
“I’m so glad you’re alive,” Anne told her friend. “I tried not to think about it, to keep my mind on other things, but if you were dead…”
“You’d go on; that’s what you’d do,” Austra said. “Because you have to.”
“Do I?” Anne asked, hearing the rancor in her voice, knowing it was petty and not caring.
“Yes. If only you could have seen what I saw from the forest, back in Dunmrogh. When you stepped out, bold as a bull, and told those murderers who you were—if you had seen that, you would know what you were meant to do.”
“Have the saints touched you?” Anne asked softly. “Can you hear my thoughts?”
Austra shook her head. “I’ll never know anyone better than I know you, Anne. I never know exactly what you’re thinking, but usually I can see the general way the wind is blowing.”
“Did you know all this? About Robert?”
Austra hesitated.
“Please,” Anne said.
“There are things we