Free Alamut by Judith Tarr

Crusade. Margaret must come before it to proclaim formally the death of the lord of Aqua Bella, and to beg the king’s favor in naming a new lord. It would, inevitably, be Thibaut, but he lacked a year and more of his majority. She would stand regent again as she had in his infancy. “And,” she had said, “it may keep him safer than if I named him lord. Sinan would kill him surely then.”
    Aidan stretched his more-than-senses. The city beat upon them. He made of them a shield, and raised them, and set them on guard. They marked who should be in that house, who meant well and who meant ill, who passed and who tarried.
    It was awkward at first, that warding, like new armor: stiff, unwieldy, flexing strangely against his skin. But slowly, with use, it fitted itself to him. Not even armor now, but another skin, a body that encompassed all within that house.
    He leaned against the windowframe, battling the weakness that always struck in the wake of power. It passed slowly; he straightened.
    Thibaut had neither noticed nor understood. He was intent on his own troubles. Yet those ran disconcertingly close to the currents of Aidan’s own. “It’s as well she’s come, isn’t it? Then if she’s attacked, we’ll be here to defend her.”
    Aidan liked that we . He grinned at the boy and went in search of his cotte. “Well, sir. Shall we see if anyone else is awake?”
    6.
    Ranulf did not even care enough to send a man to fetch his wayward wife. Nor, at first, could she care that he did not. With her mother’s presence, something in her gave way. Her body, drawn taut for so long in resistance, said of its own will, Enough .
    She slept as she had not slept even when she was a child, and ate as she had not eaten since Aimery was conceived. She was let be, and let mend, as much as she might in the grief that was in that house. Even grief was part of her healing. It let her forget what she could not escape: that no word had come from her husband. No pursuit. Not even a rumor of his anger.
    She had given him what he wanted. It seemed that he wanted no more of her.
    For once, it seemed, they had agreed on something. She told herself that she was glad. She forced her mind away from him. He had refused her right to her own child. So would she refuse to be wife as well as mother. She was Hautecourt again, and Hautecourt only. She had forgotten his name.
    She swore it to herself, alone, sitting on the fountain’s rim in the inner court. It was early yet, barely past dawn; the air was cool, the spray cold on her cheek. The bright fish swirled under her hand, seeking the crumbs she cast for them.
    Odd how one could feel a presence, even without sun to cast a shadow, even without the sound of step on stone. She stiffened, but she would not turn. In the three days since he came, she had not seen him. He had been elsewhere, riding out in the city; she had been in her bed or moving slowly about the house, taking her meals alone or, once, with her brother. Who had been full of him, and worthless for talking about anything else.
    She willed him to go away. She did not want him to see her as she was now: pallid, lank-haired, shapeless with childbearing; used and discarded, and sworn not to care. When she was young and full of Gereint’s tales, she had dreamed it all otherwise: she high and proud, a great lady like her mother, and he princely as westerners almost never were, bowing over her hand. He had bowed when he met her, but she had blushed and stammered and been a perfect idiot.
    Great lady, indeed. She had acknowledged long since that she had no beauty. She had no greatness, either. Only obstinacy. With that, she was most richly gifted.
    It fixed her eyes on the fish. Even when a hand filled itself from her bowl, and cast as she had cast, rousing them to a new dance. For him they leaped high, even into the air, as if they would fill his hands with their living gold. Even they knew