The War Saint

"Easy, my lord. Easy." —— Corin crouched under the bedroom window of a small walled house on Sweetwater Lane. He poked a twig at the ants on the flagstones and tried very hard not to listen. He listened anyway. The woman's voice climbed and broke, climbed and broke, like something being torn slowly in two. Under it, a man's voice, low and pleased. Corin's mouth went dry. He swallowed, and swallowed again, and the dryness stayed. He was eighteen. He knew what those sounds were. What he didn't know was why a beautiful woman would cry out as if she were being hurt — or why listening to her hurt *him*, somewhere he had no name for. By the end his skin was crawling with ants of its own. Thousands of them. None of them real. He got up, gathered an armful of fodder, and went to the horses. Out of earshot, out of mind. —— He hadn't always been a t****l. His father had been a comfortable man once, with a house and land and a name people nodded to. Then a game of dice went wrong — not wrong, *arranged* — and by the time the dust settled the land was gone, the house was gone, and the man himself walked into the river one morning rather than face the neighbors. That left a widow and two boys and nothing else. The money ran out fast. His mother went to a flesh-broker, struck a bargain, and sold Corin to Ashvale Manor for the price of a decent mule. A *stable t****l* — the lowest rung on the lowest ladder in the house of a marquis. "You mind your master," she'd told him at the gate, wiping her eyes with one hand and counting the silver with the other. "A servant who climbs high in a great house lives better than a county magistrate. And your brother — your brother's the clever one. He stays home. He studies. One day he sits the Trials and lifts our name out of the mud." Corin had nodded. He'd believed her, more or less, the way a boy believes anything he's told often enough. The stable thralls slept in the stables. Two hundred copper a month, most of which went straight into other men's pockets before it ever reached his. Mares and geldings worth ten silver marks apiece, and Thoroughbreds worth more than his entire life — and if one of them so much as went off its feed, the whip came out. Today, the young lord of the second house had gone out visiting. His body-servant happened to be elsewhere, and Lord Lucian — being in a hurry, and being the sort of man who points at whatever is nearest — had pointed at Corin. Corin had assumed he was going to hold a horse. He was not holding a horse. *If Lady Rowena ever hears a word of this,* he thought, forking clean straw into the manger, *there'll be blood on the walls.* Rich men kept wives and kept mistresses and did as they pleased. Nobody said a word about it. But every soul in Ashvale Manor knew two things about Lord Lucian's wife: that she was beautiful enough to stop a man's heart at ten paces, and that she was the most dangerous woman in the prefecture. Lord Lucian couldn't so much as look at a bed-maid without first checking which way the wind was blowing. Setting a woman up in a house of her own, on the far side of town, was not "checking the wind." It was walking into the fire and daring it to burn. Corin sighed and told himself it wasn't his business. He was a t****l with a straw fork and two hundred copper a month. Let lords and ladies tear each other apart; he only wanted to reach the end of the day with his ribs intact. "My lady — *that* house! That's the one!" "Seal the lane. Both ends. I don't want a rat out of it." "Move! Move, all of you!" Corin's hands went still on the fork. Down at the mouth of the lane, a woman was coming fast — a beauty wrapped in silk and cold as winter, with a small army at her heels. Maids, matrons, menservants, all of them trotting to keep up with her. *Lady Rowena.* He had only just been thinking about her. Of every moment she could have come walking up that lane, she had picked this one. She *knew*. She knew about the house, about the woman, about all of it. And she'd come to catch him in the act. And if she caught him in the act, Corin was dead. Not whipped. Not dismissed. Dead. Lord Lucian would shed a few layers of skin; Corin, who had carried the message that put his master in that room, would be beaten to death in a courtyard and forgotten by supper. That was how it went for men like him. The lord sinned; the t****l paid. He dropped the fodder and ran. The yard gate first — bar down, bolt home. Then the house. He hit the door with both hands and went through it shouting. "My lord! *My lord!* Trouble—" "*Ah!*" The woman in the bed shrieked and hauled the quilt up to her chin. Corin caught a flash of shoulder, of hair spilling loose, and yanked his eyes away out of habit, one heartbeat too late. "*You* —" Lord Lucian surged up off the mattress, red-faced, snatched a pillow, and threw it. It caught Corin square in the chest. "You dog! You *dog*! What do you think you're —" "My lord, get dressed! Lady Rowena's here!" The rage went out of Lord Lucian like a lamp being blown out. He went gray. His mouth worked, soundless, twice. "She *what?* How does that viper know about — no, no, no —" He was up, staggering, snatching at clothes that weren't where he'd left them. "Where are my — *where are my breeches?*" Outside, wood cracked against wood. Not a knock. A ram. Lord Lucian froze with one leg in his breeches, and Corin felt his own blood turn to water. The gate wouldn't hold. It was a garden gate in a rented house, and there were half a dozen menservants out there who'd love nothing better than to be the first one through it. They were trapped. "*You.*" Lord Lucian's head snapped around. "Get on the bed." Corin blinked at him. "My lord?" "On the *bed!*" "On the—" Corin's mouth opened and closed. He stared at the mattress, at the woman clutching the quilt, at his own master, and could not make the words come out in the right order. He was a *t****l*. A t****l does not get into his master's bed. A t****l does not even touch the sheets. "My lord, I can't—" "Shut your mouth and *move!*" Lord Lucian shoved past him, dropped to his knees, and vanished. Under the bed. Corin stood in the middle of the room and listened to a marquis's son panting in the dust under his own mattress. Far too late, he understood exactly what he had just become. The gate gave with a sound like a snapped bone. Lord Lucian's wife came in. She didn't hurry. That was the thing Corin would remember afterward — she didn't hurry at all. Servants poured in ahead of her and fanned out, lighting lamps, dragging the chairs into position. She walked into the middle of all of it and sat down like a woman taking her seat at the theater. The pearl-headed pins in her hair trembled with every step. Her dark eyes swept the room. They went past the bed. They went past the woman in it. They landed on Corin. He'd heard all his life that great lords carried their authority without showing it. He'd never understood what that meant until now. She looked at him the way a butcher looks at a hanging carcass, deciding where to make the first cut, and every hair on his body stood up at once. Corin managed to bow. His knees were shaking. He was fairly sure she could see it. "This slave doesn't know what my lady means." "Don't play the fool with me." Her voice was mild. It was worse than shouting. "You. Where is your master?" "My master?" Corin's throat clicked. "My master isn't here, my lady." On the floor beside the bed sat a pair of brocade boots, side by side, neatly placed. Lady Rowena looked at them. Then she looked at Corin, and smiled. "Isn't he. Then why is his horse tied at my gate?" "The horse—" Sweat slid down Corin's ribs. He dropped to his knees on the mattress, which was the wrong thing to do and the only thing he could think of, and pressed his forehead to the quilt. "Forgive this slave, my lady! The horse is mine. I — I took him out without leave." "Oh? You took him." She c****d her head, unhurried, curious, the way a cat is curious. "You have a great deal of nerve for a boy who smells of the stable." A pause. She let it stretch. "And why," she said, "would a stable t****l ride his master's horse across the city to this house?" Corin's gaze slid sideways, helplessly. Under the bed, in the dark, a man was listening to every word he said. Beside him, in the corner, a woman was curled up under the quilt, shaking. Both of them were waiting for him to decide what the truth was going to be. He chose. "This woman is mine, my lady." The words came out steady, which surprised him. "I rode here to see her. I took the horse to look better than I am in front of her. That's the whole of it. I beg my lady's mercy." A beat of silence. Then Lady Rowena laughed — a small, soft sound, muffled behind her sleeve — and Corin made the mistake of relaxing. Her eyes changed. "Oh, you're a quick one," she said. "I like that. So then. Prove it." The air left the room. "Prove—" Corin's voice came back thin. "How does my lady mean?" "You say she's yours. She's sitting right there." She flicked two fingers at the corner, at the woman under the quilt — a flick of dismissal, of disgust, as though the woman were something stuck to her shoe. "Then I've clearly interrupted something. And I am, beneath everything, a soft-hearted woman. I can't stand to see lovers parted. So go on. Both of you. *Continue.*" "*What?*" "What's the matter? Not willing?" Her voice stayed pleasant, and her face did not. "Then you're not lovers. Which means she's a w***e who beds other women's husbands, and you're a t****l who lies to his mistress. For those two crimes I'll have the skin off both your backs." Corin's blood went cold. She'd put him on a road with one end. There was no argument to make, no truth to tell, no appeal to any court in the world that would hear a stable t****l's word against a marquis's wife. Whatever happened in this room was going to happen with her permission and her eyes wide open. He was still standing there, still deciding, when something warm touched his back. "Young sir," said a voice, soft as a moth against his ear. The woman had come up beside him. She was still wrapped in the quilt, still shaking, but her hand on his shoulder was steady. When she spoke again it was barely a breath, meant for him and no one else. "Please. Help me." "I don't — I *can't*—" She pressed closer. The quilt slipped. Corin stood very still, staring at the lamp on the wall, and felt the whole room narrow to the width of a whisper. "Just close your eyes," she said, "and lie still."