A Knight Most Wicked

“We have time to stop, don’t we? It is all so colorful.” Arabella tugged on Mary’s sleeve as she asked their driver to stop. She jumped from the small conveyance they had been given for their expedition. Briefly, she wondered whether exploring the market was a suitably ladylike pursuit, but she pushed her reservations about her place at the Bohemian court from her mind. Surely Zaharia would approve. Arabella could almost smell the herbs at a local wise woman’s stall.

“I don’t know, Arabella. Our driver wishes to take us home before dark.”

“We won’t stay long. And I would remember this bazaar more than the university or the city palaces, long after we depart.” Her gaze already roamed the marketplace for anyone selling unfamiliar tinctures or medicinal oils. “Please?”

Mary bit her lip, clearly unsure of herself in the raucous setting.

“If you promise we won’t stay very long—”

Arabella gave her friend a quick hug before pulling her to a booth overflowing with fabric samples. Perhaps that would be more to Mary’s liking.

“Feel this. Isn’t it sumptuous?” she exclaimed over a piece of brightly colored silk with an exotic Eastern design. Mary chose two bolts, giving the merchant her name to have them delivered.

Moving away from the cloth merchant’s booth, Mary soon engaged another merchant in haggling over a jeweled comb. Now that Mary was enjoying herself, Arabella hoped she might find the local herbalist. She was searching through the crowd when a large figure garbed in black caught her eye.

Tristan Carlisle.

Arabella was not ready to face the familiar figure striding among the Gypsy booths, speaking briefly with several of the peasant families who ran them. Ducking behind a pie-maker’s stand, Arabella watched the English knight as he perused the items of a silversmith.

Observing him while he was not looking at her, she decided his face was handsome enough when he did not have a glower set upon his brow.

His eyes, however, were nothing short of beautiful. A silvery shade of gray rimmed with long, dark lashes. After her few days at court, she already understood the ladies of that realm would have done crime to possess such lashes. The slash of the knight’s brows, however, gave him a slightly fearsome aspect even when he did not scowl. The rest of his face could only be described as angular, with a hard, square jaw and prominent cheekbones.

She blushed to realize how carefully she studied Tristan Carlisle when he failed to hold women in high regard. She guessed he was the kind of man her family had warned her about before her trip.

Pausing to finger a delicate bit of silver that he had picked up off the cloth full of wares, Tristan spoke to the boy behind the counter. Arabella could see the knight held a small knife in his hand.

It was ridiculous to stray near him. Yet she found herself walking closer, avoiding his notice but suddenly curious to hear what he asked the Gypsy boy about the blade.

“…from India,” Arabella overheard the boy telling Tristan. “I brought it all the way here myself.”

While the boy boasted, Tristan took the flat-handled dagger in his palm. Arabella looked longingly at the little weapon, thinking it looked similar to the one she lost before she came to Prague.

“Is that why you can charge an exorbitant amount? Because it weighed you down on the long journey here?” Tristan reached to give the boy’s arm a gentle pinch. “You might swing a sword more often. Then mayhap a little knife wouldn’t seem like such a burden.”

Puffing out his chest, the lad defended himself with the courage of youth.

“It is not exorbitant because it was a burden. It costs much because it is a witch’s knife. It is used to draw magical rings for worshipping demons.” The boy almost whispered the last words, as if imparting great wisdom to the knight.

Arabella scoffed at the tale. Demons indeed. According to Zaharia, other healers used the weapon in a symbolic way, as if to cut away the world and focus inward to pray.

Tristan laughed at the peddler’s ploy. “You may keep your wondrous weapon. I believe I already have a knife that is similar to the one you sell.”

The knight produced something from his pocket and held it up for the boy to see.

Arabella’s herb-cutting knife.

“Saints!” the boy cried, his dark eyes wide. “I hope you had it blessed. That blade surely came from a powerful sorceress.”

Arabella was tempted to run up and snatch it out of the warrior’s big hands. How dare he steal it?

“A powerful sorceress, eh? Mayhap she was.” Tucking the dagger back in his pocket, he tossed a coin up in the air for the boy to catch. “Thanks, lad. You’ll make a fine storyteller one day with tales such as those.”

Mayhap she was? What was that supposed to mean?

Arabella wondered if the knight was teasing the boy or if he indeed thought he had come across a spell-casting sorceress in the forest. Thinking back to their strange encounter in the oaks, Arabella imagined she had looked a fright with her hair covered with twigs and leaves, and her eyes wet with tears. Indeed, she had been wailing at the top of her lungs as though the skies were falling, but only because she thought she was alone.

Yes, she’d probably made quite an impression on the English knight.

Thinking she would look at the boy’s knives herself, Arabella was about to ask Mary to come with her. But when she turned to look for her friend, the emperor’s ward was nowhere to be found.

Arabella tried to remain calm, but she could not see Mary anywhere. All at once, the rumors of stolen women assailed her. She should not have left Mary’s side for even a moment. Running down the row of Gypsy wagons, she searched and called for her friend.

Frantically peering into every conceivable corner, Arabella came to a noisy row of Gypsy booths before she turned around.

“May I help you, my lady?”

A man touched her arm.

Stay calm. Arabella bit her lip, hard, to prevent herself from giving in to full-blown fear.

“No thank you, sir.” Jerking her arm out of his grasp, she stepped away from him.

“A woman alone must need some assistance.” The stranger was a well-dressed Bohemian, but Arabella did not appreciate the steely glint in his eye.

Beyond caring if she attracted attention, Arabella lifted her skirt to run and was yanked back so hard she cried out.

The man’s demeanor changed as he shoved her with unexpected force behind a large tapestry for sale at a merchant’s booth.

“Help!” Arabella shouted at the top of her lungs, a moment before the brute pushed her to the ground and clamped a ruthless hand over her mouth.

Tristan and Simon were already atop their horses and ready to leave when a cry pierced the din of the marketplace.

Requiring no words, the men sprang forward.

Tristan steered his horse through the crowded bazaar, ignoring protests from people forced to clear a path for him.

With a sweeping scrutiny, he quickly narrowed the possible places the scream could have come from. The two most likely spots were either in the back of a Gypsy wagon in a quiet corner of the bazaar, or behind an arras right next to it. Tristan held his horse motionless as he watched the two places simultaneously and listened with the finely tuned hearing of a man used to stealth in battle.

He heard not a sound aside from the shouts of disgruntled merchants in his wake, but he soon saw the tapestry move a fraction of an inch near the ground. Drawing his sword, Tristan slashed it down and watched it fall on top of two struggling forms.

Dropping to his feet, he turned aside the heavy arras to reveal a middle-aged Bohemian man and a rumpled pile of green velvet and dark hair.

A noblewoman.

“Move away from her now.” Though he spoke calmly, he felt the fury of growing bloodlust in his veins. The man wisely scrambled to obey his command.

The villain stuttered his protests as Simon yanked him away from the commotion, but Tristan paid no heed. His eyes were fixed on the woman before him.