Rhiana

“Rumors be just that,” she said. “I have not counted more than the three we have all witnessed. This morning I killed the one who stole Jean Claude away, and now this one.”

“There is one left! I saw it fly off with a man!”

“They will not stop. And there is the newling,” another villager called. “They are breeding! Soon they will nest below our very feet!”

“Nonsense,” Rhiana quickly admonished to bestill the stir of nervous whispers that moved about like fire catching on tinder. “We mustn’t fear them getting so close as beneath our village. They cannot drill up through solid rock and earth. And the hoard at the edge of the north caves is enough—”

“That hoard is pitiful!”

“It needs to be destroyed,” the goldsmith muttered.

Rhiana stared down the flinching gazes and turning heads. They were worried and frightened, because they didn’t have all the information, and could only make guesses to what all thought a horrible fate. Best to involve them, so they could know the enemy and learn how to vanquish it. “Who volunteers to aid me?”

Many gazes dropped, and the remainder looked off to the sky. Nervous hands claimed a child clinging to a leg or patted a spouse’s shoulder.

Of course, it was a ridiculous request. These men were not warriors or knights, they were simple craftsmen and fathers and sons. They had families to look after. The best protection they could offer was to stay alive themselves.

“What of Lord Guiscard’s knights?” Myridia called. “They spend their days hunting and depleting the food stores and their evenings wenching. Should they not be pressed to aid the village in its most dire need?”

Indeed. And yet, would the baron grant the garrison’s resolve to the village? He wasn’t keen on slaying dragons for a reason unbeknownst to Rhiana. Mayhap if it were his idea, and a woman was not involved…

“Perhaps Lord Guiscard should be approached,” Rhiana offered, “by elders he trusts and with whom he will hold confidence. I intend to set out for the caves this day in an attempt to determine if there be more than the one remaining. But if I were accompanied by knights on horses, wielding weapons, more the better.”

She returned a look to Paul. That he held such pride in his pale blue eyes toughened her strong stance and made what seemed an impossible job a bit less overwhelming. Why could not Lord Guiscard put as much trust in her as her stepfather did?

“We will speak to Guiscard.” The cooper stepped forward, removing his leather apron and handing it back to his wife. “I and Paul, yes?”

Paul nodded and winked at Rhiana. He and Antoine both served on the Hoard Council. Mayhap a few others could join them.

“Excellent.” She handed the sword to Paul. “I know not who this belongs to; I found it in the chapel.”

Paul took it and wiped the remnants of dragon blood onto his forefinger. He rubbed them together in admiration. “Promise you will wait until we return, Rhiana. I will do my best to bring back an army of men for you to lead.”

“Yes!” the crowd agreed eagerly.

And though their enthusiasm was heartening, Rhiana could but nod and walk on. This day would bring her no aid.

A runner had been sent to check the caves. Soon the baron would know what, exactly, occupied the caves and how voracious it was.

Narcisse Guiscard tossed a pheasant bone stripped of tender meat onto the small pile growing on the floor below the high table. The mongrel attending the pile growled and flopped to its back, tail between its legs. Make that leg. The poor mutt had but three legs. No interest in the thin twig of bone after it had consumed enough to equal half a dozen complete birds from all the table scraps combined.

Dragging his fingers across his crimson hose to wipe away the grease, Narcisse then leaned in to nuzzle into Lady Anne’s hair. A scatter of loose dark tresses tickled his nose. She smelled like no thing he had ever known. Rich, sweet, alluring. And damaged. It was that bit of instability that excited Narcisse. For as fragile as she was, her core was powerful. Yet, he knew she hadn’t the awareness to tap the core, so frail was her mind.

She responded to his caress with a kiss to the crown of his head. A lingering sigh fluttered across Narcisse’s forehead.

“You are troubled, my love? Why do you pick so at your food this eve?”

“There is much to wonder about,” Anne said in the drifty, not-all-there voice she often engaged. Her frequent slips to wonder, increasingly more often, troubled him. Soon she would not be his at all. The notion devastated.

She had never truly been his. But whence she had come, he could only imagine. And sometimes he did imagine—to his own great horror.

“I am never so hungry as you, lover.” Another sigh lifted her bosom. The creamy white damask paled in comparison to her daisy-white flesh. And there, where four fine gold chains draped across her throat, did her flesh glitter.

Slurping back a hearty draft of rose-hip wine, Narcisse smacked his lips and gestured to the bottler who stood at post behind him to pour another round.

“Do you imagine,” Anne said, turning into Narcisse and snuggling her head against his neck so they two shared each other and none at the lower table could be privy to their conversation, “she will come to me today?”

“She?” As he’d suspected, Anne wondered after the Tassot woman. While he’d thought their friendly relationship necessary to Anne’s very mental health, now their contact troubled him. The fire-haired woman threatened his ambitions and Anne’s very peace of mind. “Anne, dearest lover, I fear the Tassot wench may have stumbled into some trouble.”

“What sort? Is she ill? Fallen? Have you verified as much?”

“No, but when last I spoke to her she nattered on about chasing dragons. Can you imagine anyone wishing to harm those delightful creatures?”

“They have returned to nest in the hoard?” Anne clapped her hands gleefully. “They are so very pretty. I want one, husband. Please, oh please, I want a pet dragon to chain upon a delicate silver chain, as my own.”

She traced a finger along the fine silver links that circled her waist and dangled to her diamond-bejeweled slippers.

Narcisse stroked his fingers through Anne’s long tresses. Colors beamed down from the stained-glass windows and onto her hair. The glint of sapphire emerging from the dark strands shimmered like stars in a midnight sky.

“A dragon is far too large for your delicate chains, my love.”

“I would be most careful! And I would not send it to fetch me gold or trample my enemies.”

“You have not a single enemy. You shouldn’t tax your head with dark thoughts, Anne. Promise me you’ll spend more time in the solar sitting in the sunlight? It is good for your humors, the Nose says so.”

“The Nose says too much. She doesn’t know everything. She doesn’t know what Rhiana told me. She said….” Lady Anne paused, and in that moment of silence Narcisse could almost hear her mind flutter off tangent. How to understand her hidden thoughts? “Kiss me, lover.”

He did. And Anne’s lips were sweet with wine and unuttered sighs. And menacing with the secrets her mind tightly held. He would discover later, when she lay naked beside him after lovemaking, what she had learned from the bewitching dragon slayer.

“My lord!”

Grimacing at Champrey’s abrupt shout—the man ever approached without warning and did so at such inopportune timing—Narcisse reluctantly pulled from Anne and sat back in his chair. “What is it, Champrey?”

“There’s been an—” he eyed Anne cautiously “—er, altercation.”

“Let me guess,” Narcisse drawled. Hooking a knee over the arm of the chair and lazily sulking back against Anne’s shoulder, he tapped a pinkie ring noisily against the gold-plated arm. “Cecil, the falcon master has been found soused and naked, draped over the well, yet again.”

“Not quite, my lord.” Champrey winced. “A dragon has been slain. Again. Here, in the very courtyard of our village.”

CHAPTER SIX

After checking that Odette had not a clue about the attack in the bailey, Rhiana then sought Lydia. Her mother had heard of the attack, but only afterward—when the fires were blazing in the kitchen, little else could be heard outside her small interior world.

Now Lydia shivered in a way that always made Rhiana want to draw her mother into her arms for a hug. But she never did. How to touch an enigma? ’Twas blasphemous, yet at the same time, so tempting. Would she find the answers to her questions wrapped in her mother’s arms?

Yes.

But not right now.