The Dagger and the Cross by Judith Tarr Read Free Book Online

There’s
no human in her, to take the edges off.”
    “She frightens people,” Akiva said.
    “Even you?”
    He grimaced. “Even me. I tried to slip around a corner and
see what she was thinking, and she almost took my thought-finger off. Not even
thinking about it, mind. Just swatting me like a fly. I’ve still got the
headache.”
    “No wonder, if you were that stupid.”
    He twitched, offended.
    She bit her tongue. If he had been one of her brothers, it
would not have mattered. Brothers were for driving wild. But he was certainly
not her brother. “I mean,” she said, “nobody tries that with Morgiana twice.
Even my uncle had to learn the hard way.”
    He accepted the peace offering, after a little thought. He
held out his hand. “Friends?” he asked.
    She wiped her own hand hastily on her skirt and gave it to
him. “Friends,” she said.
    o0o
    Aidan was well aware of the spy behind the arras. Something
would have to be done about her, he reflected, not for the first time. Perhaps
if she were granted a woman’s privileges, made a part of everything, given what
she persisted in taking: that would put paid to her rebellion.
    He would speak to her mother. Which was never as easy as
Joanna might think it was. Blessed humanity; it made her blind to what it cost
him, to keep the distance he must keep.
    She was pregnant again and happy in it, her rich body grown
richer with years and childbearing. After the first, which had been bitterly
hard, she had settled to it. She bore well, and as easily as a human woman
could.
    Maybe he had a little to do with that. Some of his magic was
in her still, woven with her substance, from a time when she had almost died,
and he had given her all the power he had, to make her live.
    The one who had almost killed her sat beside him, a faceless
figure in swathes of green veils, but under them she was thrumming with joy.
Morgiana ran a teasing hand up his thigh. He caught it, twining his fingers
with hers. “What, madam! Can’t you wait until the Church hallows it?”
    “No,” she said, clear and definite, as Morgiana always was.
Even when she doubted, she made no bones about it.
    He raised her fingers to his lips. He heard the slight catch
of her breath. When they were the most notorious sinners in Outremer, they had
been less circumspect by far than they were now, with their wedding before
them. It changed things. It made them matter more.
    Sometimes they forgot that there was a world outside of
them. Aidan woke to it with a guilty start, as he often did of late. People
were indulgent. It was a new thing, to be predictable. He did not know that he
liked it.
    There was a stir at the entrance to the hall. A latecomer,
and one of rank, from the magnitude of the flurry. The steward hastened toward
the high table and bent to Ranulf’s ear. Aidan eavesdropped shamelessly. “A
guest, my lord,” the steward said. “Messire Amalric de Lusignan.”
    Ranulf’s expression altered not at all. “Let him in,” he
said, “and clear a place for him.”
    “At the high table, my lord?”
    Ranulf hesitated the merest instant. “Yes,” he said.
    Aidan had to admire his aplomb. Ranulf de Mortmain would
greet the devil himself with quiet courtesy and offer him a place at his table.
    Messire Amalric was hardly as illustrious a personage as
that. Merely the brother of Jerusalem’s upstart king, and Constable of the
kingdom in his own right, and no friend to the house of Mortmain. Ranulf, like
any other baron with a brain in his head, had resisted Guy’s regency when the
child king was alive, and stood with the Count of Tripoli: firmly enough that
his eldest son was Raymond’s page, and soon to be made his squire.
    Amalric had gall, Aidan granted him that. He advanced as
calmly as if this were a friend’s hall and he an invited guest. His eyes
scanned their faces, flickering from Aidan to Gwydion and back again. For a
moment he was hard put to choose; but he, unlike his brother, was no fool.