Free The Warrior's Game by Denise Domning

midday meal should have been as casual as some family affair. At each meal Ami had waited for the mercenary at the door but unlike the night of the feast he hadn't so much as paused when she called to him.
    “Is it important?” Maud asked in breathless excitement, her voice yet held at a whisper so as not to disturb any of her still-sleeping betters. The arts of writing and reading were conundrums enough to Maud. To find a note, a secret message, this way was almost as great a mystery as the transformation of mundane wine into Christ’s blood at communion.
    “How am I to know when it's still too dark to read what it says?” Ami replied at the same low volume.
    Maud looked toward the hearth and the child whose job it was to awaken last night's embers. “There’ll be a fire in a moment. Here,” the maid grabbed up Ami’s chemise, “let's get you decent so you can go see what it is.”
    A moment later, wearing her chemise and her blankets, Ami started toward the hearth. A few of the rising serving maids glanced her way but there was no one of consequence to notice her as she stepped over a snoring Millicent then around Lady Adelberta.
    The child at the hearth smiled at Ami without pausing as she placed twigs on what remained of last night’s coals. One by one, fiery tongues took life, lapping eagerly at the scraps of wood. When the light was bright enough Ami broke the unmarked wax, unfolded the note and read, giving thanks to the nuns who had tutored her.
    To our ears it has come that Sir Michel de Martigny absent from his duty royal be. To your properties is he bound this day or the morrow. At the goldsmith does he reside. There you must visit him this very day.
    Frowning, Ami read the odd message a second time. That it was written in French, the tongue spoken by England's ruling class, was strange enough. Most folk who wrote did so in Latin and that was the tongue the cadence of these words reflected, rather than French. But still Ami would have expected Roheise to be as fluent writing her words as she was speaking them.
    She read the note a third time and made a face. Roheise expected her to go the goldsmith and arrange the confrontation with Sir Michel that they'd discussed. But why would Sir Michel be residing with the goldsmith? He was a bachelor knight and a mercenary. As such, it was up to his employer to provide him with room and board.
    As Ami understood she dropped the parchment into the newborn fire with an irritated sound. No wondering Sir Michel needed her properties. He was a wastrel who lived beyond his means. Only the wealthiest of John's barons rented private homes while attending their king.
    Ami watched the parchment writhe, browning and curling as it burned. Her own fate wouldn't be much different if she failed the noblewoman. Now that it was proving harder than she expected to connect with Sir Michel, Ami found herself wishing she could be quit of Roheise's plot as easily as she was shed of the note. She shot a glance to where Roheise kept her bed.
    Unlike the poorer of the wards Roheise didn't use a pallet. She had her own bed, albeit one small enough to be easily disassembled for travel, complete with down-filled mattresses and thick brocade curtains to safeguard its owner's privacy. With a sigh Ami turned her gaze back to the fire. She had a bed, too. It had been part of her dowry, and that, not a threat made by some high-born bitch, was why she couldn't fail.
    If the note told the truth Ami had very little time before Sir Michel began his plundering. Although she'd already written her bailiff, telling him what had happened and bidding him to hide all he could, that wouldn't spare the larger items. Closing her eyes, Ami conjured up the image of her precious bed. With it came the recall of Richard's arms around her after they had loved, and how she'd basked in the heat they'd made between them. She wouldn't let another man steal that memory, or the bed, from her. Ami retreated to where Maud