Free Betrayal by Jon Kiln Page A

be moving slower. Perhaps the ride had been harder on her than he had realized. He started to feel more guilt on not convincing her to stay home. He understood Berengar’s anger at his failure to do so.
    “What situation of mine do you speak of?” she asked pertly.
    Berengar snorted as Arianne lowered herself into a chair next to him. He waved his hand over and around her belly as he spoke. “This condition here, with the baby growing inside you while we are out playing bandits. That is the situation of which I speak.”
    Arianne filled her plate. “Oh, that situation. I had completely forgotten. Thank you for the reminder.”
    “As usual, still more clever than wise.”
    “Hmm.” She shrugged. “You don’t think they make armor in my particular size for the battles ahead?”
    “Even if they did,” Berengar said, “I wouldn’t be able to get it for you being outside the army. Plate mail is the privilege of those that fight for the King and the wealthiest lords. Like your husband for instance.”
    “Is that what he does? I am learning all sorts of things about my life by being around you, father. We should spend more time together.”
    Berengar smiled wryly. “I will be gone shortly. In the mean time I ask that you remain secluded inside. Wait for me to bring you out once I return.”
    “I’m getting used to that instruction,” Nisero grumbled.
    “Why wait inside?” Arianne complained to her father.
    “Well, the lieutenant is a wanted man and people witnessed you with him. I also want to make certain I wasn’t followed before you reveal yourself. Does that work for you, daughter?”
    Arianne smiled sweetly at him. “As you wish.”
    Berengar looked at her suspiciously, but eventually left the table, mounted his horse and rode southward.
    She rose from the table. “You and my father fought for the King. Why did you never get your plate mail armor?”
    “We did a different sort of fighting for the King,” Nisero told her.
    After she left, he found a pitcher of water and washed the dried blood away from the small cuts on his throat from the night before.
    Nisero remained in the back room most of the day. Gorma returned to offer bread and boiled corn for the mid day meal, but Nisero did not see her husband the rest of the day.
    Arianne entered the storage room later in the afternoon.
    Nisero sat up. “Is there something you need?”
    “No, husband, just bored out of my mind.”
    He laid back down on his pallet and closed his eyes. “Why are you still calling me that?”
    “We are bandits maintaining a disguise,” she said.
    “That did not seem to hold up very well.”
    She laughed. “It seemed like a good idea at the time. We just executed poorly.”
    “That is the definition of all bad ideas,” Nisero lamented. “What seems like a good idea which is then executed poorly.”
    “You and my father have the same sense of humor. You both jest with an air of sadness. Biting and depressing.”
    “Your humor does a fine job of biting at him,” Nisero commented.
    “You noticed that, did you?” She moved back to the doorway and stretched up holding onto the frame for support. “He needs a little ribbing to keep him honest.”
    “Does that come from resentment?”
    Arianne turned and leaned inside the doorframe. “Is this about my mother and brother? Is that what you mean?”
    “I meant nothing.” Nisero let his eyes slide open and he stared up at the uneven boards of the ceiling. “Your humor seems to have an edge, like his… and mine, I suppose, but yours seems to direct that edge at him.”
    “That’s what you see then?”
    He shrugged, lying on his pallet still staring upward. “You had mentioned feeling distant from him in the midst of our escape from bandits all those years ago. I wouldn’t think him isolating himself in the hills to the north would have helped to heal that feeling much.”
    “I’ve grown up a little since then,” Arianne said. “I’m about to be a mother for