The Charnel Prince - J. Gregory Keyes [33]
But Anne’s reflection in the river looked as cold as the long, bleak nights of northernmost Nahzgave. Even the red flame of her hair seemed a dark shadow, and her face as pallid as the ghost of a drowned girl.
The river saw her heart and gave her back what was in it.
“Anne,” someone behind her said quietly. “Anne, you should not stay out in the open so.”
But Anne did not look up. She saw Austra in the river, too, looking as spectral as she did.
“I don’t care,” Anne said. “I can’t go back to that horrible little place, not now, not like this.”
“But it’s safer there, especially now . . .” Her voice faltered as Austra began to cry, too. She sat next to Anne, and they held each other.
“I still can’t believe it,” Austra said after a time. “It seems impossible. Maybe it’s not true. Maybe it’s a false rumor. After all, we are far and far from home.”
“I wish I could believe that,” Anne said. “But the news came by the Church cuveiturs. And know that it’s true. I can feel it.” She wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. “It happened the same night they tried to kill us, you know. The night of that purple moon, when the knights burned the coven. I was meant to die with them.”
“Your mother lives yet, and your brother Charles.”
“But my father is dead. And Fastia, Elseny, Uncle Robert, all dead, and Lesbeth is missing. It’s too much, Austra. And all the sisters of the coven Saint Cer, killed because they stood between me and—” She shuddered back off into sobs.
“Then what shall we do?” Austra said after a time.
Anne closed her eyes and tried to sort through the phantoms that whirled behind her lids. “We have to go home, of course,” she said at last. It sounded like a weary stranger talking. “Everything she said . . .” She stopped.
“Who?” Austra asked. “Who said? What’s this, Anne.”
“Nothing. A dream I had, that’s all.”
“A dream?”
“It’s nothing. I don’t want to talk about it.” She tried to smooth her cotton dress. “I don’t want to talk about anything for a while.”
“Let’s at least go someplace more private. A chapel, perhaps. It’s almost three bells.”
The city was already waking up around them from its daily siesta. Traffic along the riverside was picking up as people returned from naps and long lunches to their shops and work, and the illusion of solitude was wiped away.
The Pontro dachi Pelmotori spanned the Za a few tens of perechi to their right. Quiet a few moments before, it was already humming with activity. Like several of the bridges in z’Espino, it was really more like a building, with shops of two and three stories lining both sides, so they couldn’t actually see the people walking on the span. All that was visible was the red-stuccoed outer facade with its dark mouths of windows. The bridge belonged to the butcher’s guild, and Anne could hear their saws cutting, their boys haggling prices. A bucket of something bloody flew out one of the windows and splashed into the river, narrowly missing a man in a boat. He began shouting up at the bridge, waving his fist.
When another bucket of the same stuff came even closer, he seemed to think better of it and returned to earnestly rowing.
Anne was about to agree with Austra when a shadow fell across them. She looked up and saw a man, dark of complexion—like most Vitellians—and rather tall. His green doublet was faded and a little threadbare. He wore one red stocking and one black. His hand rested on the pommel of a rapier.
“Dena dicolla, casnaras,” he said, with a little bow. “What makes such beautiful faces so long and sorrowful?”
“I do not know you, casnar,” Anne replied. “But good day to you and the saints bless you.”
She looked away, but he did not take the hint. Instead, he stood there, smiling.
Anne sighed. “Come,” she said, plucking at Austra’s dress. The two of them rose.
“I mean you no harm, casnaras,” the man said hastily. “It’s just that it is so unusual to see hair of copper and gold here in the south, to hear such charming northern accents. When such treasures of the eye