The Everlasting — Chapter 6

6

I MADE A dismaying discovery that day: A journey which takes only a few paragraphs in a book takes considerably longer on horseback. Especially if the horse is old enough to draw a pension, and the woods are thick enough that there are no straight or obvious routes, but only slim game trails that weave and curl among the trees.

After a long day spent either clinging grimly to the horse—who was not actually a horse, but a clever device for flaying the insides of one’s thighs— or limping grimly alongside it, we had not even reached the edge of the Queen’s Wood. I lay on my back that night, shivering and aching beneath my bad-smelling fur, trying not to whimper every time I moved my legs.

You rose before dawn the next morning to saddle the gelding, who scrubbed his jaw affectionately against your shoulder, apparently unbothered by a full day’s hard travel bearing two riders. I approached, bowleggedly, and did not quite dodge the edge of his hoof as it descended on my left foot. By the time I was done cursing him and all his ancestors in the foulest language of the 2nd Battalion, you were mounted and waiting.

You reached out your hand. I took it. We rode on.

You seemed content to pass the hours in knightly silence, speaking only to suggest one of us walk for a while, but I found myself fidgeting after the first quarter hour. Eventually I gestured down at the gelding. “What’s his name?”

Perhaps I would write it down in the book; perhaps with a little patriotic editing he could be transformed from what he was (a mean fossil) into what he ought to have been (a proud warhorse).

“He’s no pet,” you answered, as if you didn’t feed him grain from your palm every evening. And then, in gruff apology, “He doesn’t mean any real

harm.”

“Truly?” I could already feel my left foot ballooning gruesomely in my boot. “I have convincing evidence to the contrary.”

“As do I.” I made a doubtful noise, and felt you shrug behind me.

“You’re still breathing.”

“Oh,” I said.

Another hour or two passed. My vertebrae jostled against one another.

The trees repeated themselves. I had the slightly hysterical thought that you might be riding in circles, just to torment me.

“How far is it to the Northern Fallows?”

“Far.”

“How far to the edge of the wood?”

“Less far.”

Was it blasphemous, I wondered, to swear at a saint? What if they hadn’t been sainted yet? Instead, I observed, with forced cheer, “I’ve never seen anyone with hair quite like yours. That strange color—where does it come from?”

I felt you stiffen at my back. “Where does your hair come from, madman?”

I flushed. I knew my appearance must be odd to you—this was the old Dominion of Vivian Rolfe’s speeches, free of foreigners—but I’d been hoping you didn’t know what it meant. My answer was a weary one, learned by rote. “My father was born and raised in Dominion, I assure you.”

There followed a somewhat baffled silence. Then: “I meant no offense.

The geweth make their homes where they will.”

“The—what?” It was the second time you’d used that word in reference to me.

Your bafflement deepened. “Geweth. Are there no Roving Folk in the future, save you?”

“Oh. No. Or yes, but they keep to the Hinterlands. And I’m not—that is, I suppose my mother may have been, but I never knew—”

You interrupted, mercifully, “I never knew my birth mother, either. And my fathers thought my hair—strange, as well.” God, I was an ass. “Little Dragon, Father Foy called me.”

“What else were you called? Before the queen found you, I mean.”

“I don’t remember,” you answered, coolly, and would answer nothing else the rest of the day.

I spoke to myself, instead, and to your awful horse. I prophesied to him, speaking of the rosy future when everyone would ride streetcars and automobiles instead of horses, and all the nasty oversized nags would be turned into canned meat and boots. Do you know what a knacker is? I asked, and his ears swiveled back and forth, as if I were a gnat.

We left the Queen’s Wood on the third morning. The sky opened like a cold gray sea around us, so vast that I had the dizzy sensation of falling upward into it. I found myself clutching at the horse’s mane, fighting the sudden conviction that we should turn back. That we should remain forever in the shadow of the wood, safe and secret, rather than take a single step forward.

“Easy,” you said, at my ear, and it was only then that I realized I was breathing in uneven, absurd gusts, that my muscles were seized and shivering. God, I thought, not now.

I said, “S-sorry. It’ll pass.” But if you answered, I couldn’t hear it. My pulse was rushing in my ears as if I were back at the front, as if there were something terrible waiting just over the horizon.

I became aware, distantly, that you had dropped the reins. You bent yourself around me, your arms hard across my chest and ribs, your chin notched over my shoulder, your touch firm but careful, as if I were a cracked glass in danger of shattering. I could feel your heart against my spine. It beat steadily, sanely, a simple lesson mine couldn’t seem to learn.

Another ragged breath, and another, and my muscles began to slacken.

Shame arrived, then. That I had disgraced myself so thoroughly before the Drawn Blade of Dominion—that the Virgin Saint had been obliged to hold me so intimately and improperly—even now your left hand was wrapped around my hip, low enough that my pulse picked up for an entirely different and more sordid reason. Your thumb began to move in a manner you must have imagined was soothing.

I flinched upright, flushed and ashamed. “Sorry,” I said.

Perhaps you’d spent enough time at war to see every kind of malady and madness, because you asked no questions. You only cleared your throat and said, “No need,” in a strangely rough voice.

I spent the rest of the morning ridding myself of impious thoughts. It was difficult; in your innocence, you had not realized that your left hand was still on my hip.

It was colder, beyond the trees.

The wind rushed freely over the heather, landing like an open palm on my cheeks. My blisters wept and froze against my thighs.

You hardly seemed to notice the cold or the terrain or the long days in the saddle. It didn’t strike me as toughness so much as an odd divide between you and your own flesh. As if your body was merely something you owned, like a sharp knife or a good pair of boots, which you might use hard and tend only when it showed signs of weakening.

You commented, irritably, that I was shivering, and I said, “Well, so are you.” After a brief, surprised pause, you wrapped your matted brown cloak around both of us.

That night you made a fire, though the only fuel was willowy green brush. I fell asleep curled around the coals.

I was awoken by your voice. The fire had smoldered down to ash and smoke, and you were visible only by the lunar glow of your hair. You were twitching and thrashing, but I was sure you were still sleeping; awake, you would never have let me hear you weep.

I called your name, softly. You settled.

The second time you woke me, I had to shout before you fell quiet.

The third time, I crawled to your side. Your expression was desperate, so twisted with grief I felt my eyes sting in sympathy.

“Una,” I said, softly.

Your eyes snapped open, wild, unseeing. Before I could say anything else, before I could blink or flinch, your hand was at my throat, thumb pressed into the hollow beneath my jaw, fingers wrapped around my neck.

I went still and oddly slack, as prey animals do in the mouths of wolves.

I waited patiently as reason leaked back into your eyes, and your expression soured from grief into guilt, and then bitter fury.

Your hand spasmed away from my skin. You shoved yourself backward, away from me, clutching the cloak to your chest. “I told you not to come near me, boy,” you said, roughly. “I could have killed you.”

I rolled my jaw. I suspected you could have ripped out my trachea bare- handed, but you hadn’t even applied enough pressure to bruise. “You’ve called out twice in your sleep already tonight,” I observed. “You haven’t killed me yet.”

“I still might,” you said, with such sincerity that I retreated to my own side of the fire. Your shoulders unknotted, fractionally.

After a long silence, you said, with effort, “Forgive me. I dream often of things I would rather forget. Old battles. Old wounds.” Then, a little defensively, “Many soldiers suffer so.”

It hadn’t been battle you were dreaming of, I was nearly certain. You hadn’t yelled or cursed or screamed in terror. You had begged, in a voice like two halves of a heart scraping together.

But I said, as lightly as I could, “So I’ve heard,” and resettled beneath the furs, head propped on the book.

You looked as if you might say something else, but your eyes fell to the book, and the scars pulled taut across your face. You said, harshly, “Keep to your own side of the fire,” and turned your back to me.

I did as I was bade.

When you called out again—that night and on the nights that followed —I did not go to you. Sometimes I pressed my palms flat to my ears, so that I could not hear the words you said, over and over, in that funeral of a voice: Please, you begged, come back.

On the sixth day, we passed through our first township.

There had been a few sad clusters of cottages near the edge of the woods, occupied by nothing now but rooks and field mice. When I’d asked, you told me there had once been people who made their livelihood from the

forest. Huntsmen and furriers, poor crofters who set their pigs loose in the loam, weavers who gathered woad and rue for their dyes. Even the Roving Folk sometimes summered there, when they were not wandering, trading horses and telling stories.

“But no one lives in the wood now?” I’d asked.

You’d answered, neutrally, “It’s the Queen’s Wood, now, and no one else’s.”

The homes ahead of us were not abandoned. Clean, white woodsmoke unfurled from every chimney, and the hum of human voices buzzed in my ears. I braced myself for gawking and muttering, perhaps worse— But the town was not the uniform, idyllic portrait of old Dominion that was conjured by columnists and cartoonists. It looked more or less like any modern city, minus the sewer system. Children darted down the streets, laughing and jeering in languages I didn’t know. A well-dressed man with dark skin led a pair of laden mules. There was even a Gallish temple on one corner, with finely painted alcoves for each of their forty gods, although most of the gods had been defaced.

I decided I would not mention any of this in the book. (An acerbic voice in my head noted that I was accumulating quite a list of things I was not mentioning; the voice sounded very much like Professor Sawbridge’s.) People did gawk—but not at me.

You wore no armor and rode with no complement. You had even covered your shield with old canvas—but still, they knew you. They knew you by your bone-colored hair and your broad shoulders, by the glint of armor in your saddlebags and by Valiance, hanging always at your side.

They knew you, and they watched you. They nudged one another and pointed, twittering like starlings. Except—they were not joyous or reverent.

They did not greet you with cheers or thrown flowers or babies in need of blessing, as they would a hero. They did not even greet you with a hot meal or a spare bed, as they would a weary stranger.

They only watched, as if you were a thing apart from them, neither man nor woman but some third chimerical thing, as likely to break bread with them as a dragon or a lion.

You ignored the stares, or seemed to. I felt the way you shrank inward, tucking your elbows and ducking your head in a laughable attempt to make yourself ordinary. When you dismounted to buy grain from a ploughman you spoke softly, with your eyes averted; his hand shook as he took your coin.

When you turned toward a young woman bearing a basket of sooty griddle cakes, she backed away, her face so pale her freckles looked like pepper sprinkled on a dish of milk. From the saddle, I saw your shoulders sag.

“Wait, miss,” I said, sliding awkwardly from the horse and stumbling on numb legs. “I’m starving, and she’s a terrible cook.” I could feel your glare on the back of my neck. I held my hand up behind me and, after a disapproving pause, you placed three small coins in my palm.

I pulled the girl a few steps down the lane, talking and gesturing.

Five minutes later, I returned to you with five griddle cakes and a half- full flagon of wine.

“And,” I announced, in some triumph, “she says there’s a bathhouse two streets north.”

For a moment—during which I discovered how badly I longed for hot water and soap—you looked as if you might refuse. Then, with a short sigh, you tugged the horse north.

The bathhouse was a lime-washed building that smelled of lye and charcoal. The attendants—businesslike women with substantial shoulders and red-raw hands—led us to a low-ceilinged room with a vast tub in the middle. The water was scummy and grayish, tepid at best; I thought I might weep at the sight of it.

The attendants set a crumbly cake of soap on the sill, bobbed in matching curtsies, and turned away.

“Uh, pardon me, but where should—” I began, but the door snapped shut behind them.

I heard, at my back, the sound of a belt sliding through a buckle. I stood very still. There was the rush and thud of clothes hitting the floor. Then a faint splash, followed by a sigh of sheer pleasure, half stifled, which made

the muscles of my stomach tighten unaccountably. Perhaps your body was not merely a tool, after all.

After a while you asked, in a languorous, amused voice I hardly recognized, “Did you seek a bath only for my sake? Was I so rank?”

You were, I reminded myself firmly, the Virgin Saint. You couldn’t understand the temptations and impurities of the less chaste. I kept my back virtuously turned. “Do—do men and women not bathe separately?”

“They do.”

I asked, haltingly but not entirely facetiously, “And are you—not a woman?”

A sharp sound, not quite a laugh. “Turn around and see.” I did not; this, I thought, was the sort of behavior that ought to earn a man a medal.

Eventually you sighed a little. Water splashed. “A woman may not dress as I do, or bear arms, or carry any device that is not her husband’s or father’s. Yet I do these things, and I am not punished by church or crown— and so it is easier for most people if I am not a woman.”

“Do you mind it?”

More splashing sounds, the rattle of soap on the ledge. “I couldn’t say.

Yvanne dresses me in fine gowns sometimes, for holy days and feasts. The first time I tripped over my own hem, and the whole court laughed and laughed. I am not sure which I prefer: To be taken for something I am not, or to fail at being what I am.”

A weird shock went through me, as if I’d caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror I hadn’t known was there: I knew what it was, to feel that you were doing a poor impression of what you were. I said, “I would not laugh at you.”

“You would prefer me in a dress, then?” You asked it lightly, as a joke, but there was a bitter edge to your voice that made me turn.

Whatever I meant to say was instantly obliterated by the sight of your bare back: the pale streaks of scars, the ridged muscles on either side of your spine, the shadowed divots behind your shoulders. The white tangle of your hair falling over them, wet and soap-slick. You stretched, carelessly.

I looked away. My mouth was very dry. “I would prefer you—however you chose to be.”

“No one chooses that, boy.” You sounded so sad and so human that I had the wild urge to turn back around, to step closer—but no. You were Saint Una the Everlasting, and I would not profane you.

Instead, I left the room and waited in the hall. I struck up a conversation with one of the attendants, and by the time you emerged—fully dressed once more, no longer talkative or languorous—I had two new tales of the Red Knight to replace the memory of your bare skin.

I made a habit of collecting stories about you, after that.

I was good at it, talking to strangers, pulling gossip from them like twine from the spool. It was not unlike working in the archives: sifting through the various contradictory accounts, plucking threads from each tale and weaving them into a single whole.

I was less good at talking to you. But I found if I repeated what the villagers told me, you might be provoked into correcting them (I had him disarmed in six moves, not three or, fondly, No, never. I’d wager Ancel started that rumor himself), and in this way you, too, told me your story.

You told me of the Brigand Prince and the False Kings, of your first duel and of the happy fortnight you spent in Morvain’s bed, beguiled by nothing other than her dimpled white thighs and clever hands. You were caught together, and Morvain was sent to the convent—where, you had heard, she was not altogether unhappy.

I fell silent for a little while after this last story, thinking of the chastity vows young girls sometimes took in the name of the Virgin Saint, and of the army nurse I’d known who was discharged for possession of unnatural literature, and of Professor Sawbridge’s dictum that if the history you were reading wasn’t filthy then someone had censored the good bits.

Thinking, too, of you: not as a symbol or a saint—pure, inviolate, beyond both desire and desiring—but as a human, with human appetites. I wondered a little wildly if you enjoyed men at all, or if you were like that army nurse I’d known.

I adjusted my collar, which had grown tight and overwarm, and found you watching me with something like amusement. “Have I shocked you?”

“No,” I lied. “It’s just—well, one expects a certain—from a saint—”

The amusement deepened. You said, “I promise you, I am no saint,” in a low, wry voice which told me Morvain was neither your first nor your last such affair, and which cost me several hours of sleep that night.

The one subject you would not discuss was the Black Bastion. Of that battle—your grandest victory, which won the First Crusade and made Dominion the greatest nation of your time or mine—you would say nothing at all. You would only tighten your jaw and watch the fire, with something

red and awful in your eyes.

I ducked my head and kept writing.

It was difficult work, transmuting all the dull indignities of travel—the gristly dinners and the grueling miles, the blisters and the stiff joints and pissing in ditches—into a tale to lift the hearts and minds of a nation. Line by line I made you—shattered and silent, half blind—into Sir Una Everlasting, hero of Dominion.

I could almost see her sometimes, a shining, heroic figure transposed over you. One day, I knew, she would replace you entirely, so that there would be no trace of you left at all.

At this thought I would be overtaken by a wash of inexplicable melancholy and put my work away.

But then, without the work, troubling thoughts would sometimes come to me. I might wonder if I’d ever return to my own time, or if I was lost here, like an arrow loosed into the past and never recovered. Or if dragons could really breathe fire hot enough to melt plate armor, and if you could truly face one alone.

Or, worse, I might imagine what came after the dragon. What was waiting for you at Cavallon Keep, and how you would look laid out on your bier.

At this thought my lungs would refuse to work properly and my hands would shake again, and my ears would fill with a sound like radio static.

You never remarked on such fits. You only folded yourself around me while I shuddered and panted, letting the heat of your skin soak into mine.

It was an impersonal courtesy, a service rendered, but still: I lingered longer than I should have, afterward.

Forgive me—a coward so rarely feels safe.

The farther north we rode, the grayer and more miserable the villages became, until they did not resemble villages so much as wild outcroppings of huts, sprouting like pale mushrooms between the rocks. The people were bent and wind wracked, their faces hollowed in a way that made me think of the Hinterlander children who used to steal our empty bean tins in the war, running their fingers around the edges for the last drops of brine.

The whispers grew sharper, more vicious, and the stares grew colder. We did not speak of it, but you began to guide the gelding more often away from the road, along the gorse-eaten slopes and stone ridges.

But we couldn’t avoid every village. In a narrow pass between two peaks, we came upon a place so desperately poor it was difficult to tell if it was a settlement or an encampment. Several of the structures were nothing but stacked rocks and goatskins, and the smoke that slunk from their roofs smelled of green wood and animal shit.

We had to lead the horse—blindfolded, to reduce civilian casualties— and pick our way through the churned mud between huts. I’d been planning to trade the fresh hare you’d tied over the saddlebow for some ale and a few more stories, but the expressions of the gathering villagers changed my mind. They did not whisper at all, but only stared, mute and hostile.

A stooped old man spat deliberately on the ground as we passed.

A bony young woman dumped her wash water so that it slopped over your boots, leaving them filmed with lye and grease.

A boy contrived to knock a cart of shriveled swedes directly into the path, so that the horse stumbled.

The villagers watched you avidly, but you did not scowl or recoil, or even break your stride.

They reminded me of the crowd I’d once seen in a lion-tamer’s tent. The lion had been torpid and rheumatic, and the less dangerous it seemed the more vicious the crowd became, as if they were owed blood, and were determined to get it one way or another.

We were at the very edge of the village when a man approached at your back. He was thin and nearly bald, the flesh of his head covered in slick pink scars, as from fire.

The gelding tossed his head as he approached, nostrils wide, but you did not turn. The man spat something in a guttural language I didn’t know, and I understood that he hated you. They all did.

Then he grabbed a fistful of your hair, and I thought, fervently: You should not have done that.

You stopped walking, chin jerked upward by the tug of your scalp.

There was a tiny pause, during which the reins slipped from your hand, and your expression turned remote, as if you had gone away and left your body behind. It was the way you looked when you woke from your bad dreams, reaching for my throat, and I knew that very soon there would be a dead man in the street.

Some dark, subterranean part of me—the part of me that saw those dirty knuckles wrapped in the shine of your hair and wanted to put the entire godforsaken village to the torch and salt the ashes—didn’t really mind.

But I thought you might. I should have grabbed your arm—but I hesitated, and then you were moving.

You were so damn fast. You had turned, blade drawn and lifted, already falling downward, by the time I shouted your name. “Una!”

You flinched. Not much, but enough to ruin the perfect arc of the blow.

Instead of falling across the man’s neck, Valiance fell at his wrist, with a sound like a hatchet into wet wood.

All of us—you and I, the scarred man, and the straggling villagers behind us—looked for a moment at the neat pink meat where his hand had been. The white stubs of his arm bones sheered cleanly away. Then the flood of red, and the wailing.

You watched, impassive, as he collapsed. The gelding reared, blind but bloodthirsty, and you made no move to catch the reins.

I said your name again, and you looked at me in a way that suggested there might still be a dead man in the street soon. Who was I to you, after all? A lost scribe, a slightly-above-average fortune-teller, a stray you dragged reluctantly along with you.

I didn’t blink or step back. I only held your gaze, and held it, my fists clenched so tightly I felt my palm crack and bleed fresh.

Eventually something flickered in the depths of your eyes. Valiance hissed back into its sheath. You caught the gelding and quieted him. A pair of women came running to the man’s side, tears running down their cheeks.

One of them reached toward the hand—now sticking upright in the mud, as if someone were reaching up from under the earth—but drew back.

You watched them weeping with no expression at all. Then you turned your back on the village and walked on.

After a mile or so you paused and dropped to one knee, head bowed, hands cupped in the shape of a stirrup. I blinked down at you for several seconds before stepping gingerly into your palms. You lifted me into the saddle without effort but did not swing yourself up behind me. You walked instead, apparently too furious with me to bear my company.

It was a long way before we made camp that night.

Long after dark, after the horse had been rubbed down and fed hot mash, after the fire had worn itself down to shadow and ember, I offered, by way

of apology, “Bastard.”

You shrugged without looking at me.

I tried again. “It was—merciful of you. To spare him.”

Your mouth twisted. “You would call it mercy, to take the right hand of the only hale man, in a family already hungry?” You shook your head once, sharply. “The only mercy I have ever shown is that I kill quickly, and I did not even grant him that.”

“He shouldn’t have touched you. None of them should have dared.” The Drawn Blade of Dominion shouldn’t have to hunch and duck among her countrymen, shrinking herself down to mortal proportions. I found myself gesticulating, restless and angry. “They should be grateful. They should be falling to their knees, crawling after you to apologize. They should—”

“Can’t you bind that properly?” You pointed with your chin toward my hand, which was oozing again. “Come here.”

I edged toward you around the fire. You reached out slowly, deliberately, as if giving me time to withdraw. I didn’t.

You turned my wound carefully to the light, the crease deepening between your brows. My hands looked fragile in yours, long boned and ink stained against the cracked callus of your palms. I searched your face for contempt or derision, but found it curiously absent of all expression.

You began to unwind the bandage, with a sound like a boot being drawn out of deep mud. I turned my face hastily away.

I spoke to the low line of hills, their shape visible only by the absence of stars. “They should at least show you respect. They owe it to you, as—as citizens of Dominion.”

“They were not born citizens of Dominion.” You said it mildly, without reproach. “They were Hyllmen, once, and they did not come eagerly to the queen’s banner. Even when they knew their cause was lost, they would not open the gates of the Black Bastion.” I heard the click of your throat as you swallowed. “Those people lost their sons to the war, their gods to the Savior, their land to the crown. They’ll turn to banditry soon, if they have not already, and then they will be hanged, and their children made into beggars.” You tossed the soiled bandage into the fire, eyes flashing red.

“The cost of peace, she tells me. Sometimes I wonder whose peace she means.”

You fell silent, dripping cold water into the mess of my palm and dabbing gently at it, wiping away blood and lymph. Your fingers were so thick with scars they were hard to the touch, like hand-shaped stones, and your motions were uncertain, as if you didn’t trust yourself not to hurt me.

There was a prickling, restless sensation growing just beneath my skin.

Anger, perhaps, because your speech had sounded very much like one of my father’s, or fear, because it hadn’t sounded untrue.

I took a bracing breath. “Still. Yvanne is the rightful queen. She’s their queen—”

“And I am her drawn blade.” The words came quick and bleak as the fall of an ax. “It was I who beheaded the False Kings, one by one, though they cried mercy. I who set the crown on her brow, with blood still crusted around the jewels. I who rode at the front, who struck first and last, who drew every border in red. Do you know what they call me, in the north?

What that man called me before I crippled him?” Your lip curled, and I

couldn’t tell if the contempt was directed at them or yourself. “The Knight of Worms. Because I feed them so well.”

You tore a strip of fresh linen with your teeth and spat it out. “They should fear me, boy.” You bent over the work, hair falling to one side and baring the pale nape of your neck to me. “And so should you.”

I watched you bind the fresh cloth around my hand—clumsily, gently, frowning hard—and thought maybe I would head back to the village and raze it after all. It was a shame, really, that I only had three shots.

You began to draw your hand away from mine, but I caught and held it instead. You looked up sharply, eyes dark as silt.

“Well,” I said, enunciating very clearly. “I don’t.”

Your lips parted, and I saw again that phantom smile, berries bursting between sharp white teeth. I had never heard you laugh, but I knew then it would be low and rough and wild.

And I knew, too—from the subtle shift in the air between us, from the catch in your breath—that you were not like that army nurse I’d known, after all.

I permitted myself to imagine it, just for a moment. I would turn your hand palm up, press my lips to the soft, secret center of it. I would reach up and bury my fingers in your hair, pull you down to me. You would let me.

Then you would let me go to my knees and give you what you wanted, for as long as you wanted it, until your thighs were slick and the line between your brows was finally gone, and afterward you would sleep deeply, without dreaming.

The images arrived with such vivid assurance, such fine-grained detail, that they felt more like memories than fantasies. You met my eyes and I felt myself tilting toward you, the woman I had wanted since before I knew how, the woman I was just now coming to want—

The woman I was leading to her death.

I recoiled.

You saw it. I watched the knowledge of that flinch move across your face like an early frost, killing whatever had been in bloom. It wasn’t pain.

It was closer to relief: You had wanted me to be afraid, and I was.

You pulled your hand away from mine and rubbed it hard against your hip. I watched in awful, cowardly silence as you wrapped your cloak around yourself and lay down with your back to me.

I stayed awake most of the night, sick with guilt and want. I smoked three Lucky Stars in a row, heedless of the waste, before I turned to the book.

The words came easily, pouring from the pen in a hot, spiteful rush. It was all lies, but what did I care? If I couldn’t have you or heal you or save you—if I couldn’t love you—then I would make all of Dominion love you, forever and ever.

UNA AND THE GRAIL

When the queen called, Sir Una answered, as she ever had.

She rode out that very night to seek the grail, the holy cup that had resurrected the Savior Himself, that would now pull Yvanne from the very edge of death.

But understand: In that time, the grail was less than a legend, less even than the meanest rumor. Only the most dogged priests spoke of it as any other than a holy gesture, and only the most foolish of men went looking for it. None of them found anything but their own graves.

But see now how God favors Dominion. To all those desperate, greedy grail-seekers, He had said nothing. To Una— whose heart never once faltered, whose faith never once wavered —He said two words: Cloven Hill.

Few people knew that place, then. It was not labeled on any map or mentioned in any myths; it was nothing but a low mountain far in the Northern Fallows, too lonely even for hermits, too barren even for goats.

But the queen’s service had sent Sir Una to every corner of Dominion. She had walked the storm-bitten coasts and ridden down the white streets of Cavallon, chased her enemies through

the north and slept in the cool shade of the western woods. She had eaten of every orchard and drunk of every beck, so that if you plucked her heart from her chest it would be a perfect map of the country, with blood for rivers and red muscle for mountains.

God no sooner spoke the words than Una saddled her horse.

North she rode, as hard and fast as her loyal steed would carry her, stopping only when the falling light risked the horse. Then she wrapped herself in her woolen cloak and slept the deep, untroubled sleep of the faithful.

At dawn she rose with the sun and rode north.

Most often she took the secret ways of hinds and hares, or the dirt tracks of farmers and herdsmen. Only sometimes did she take to the great roads, veering between merchant carts and mule teams until someone saw the device on her shield, and the cry was taken up: Make way! Make way for the Queen’s Champion!

Wherever she rode, the people of Dominion bowed low as she passed, and wept tears of awe and joy, and told their children and their children’s children about the day the Red Knight rode through their village. Little girls tossed torn petals wherever she walked, and boys crossed stick-swords, and their mothers and fathers welcomed her into their homes.

For they knew what she had done for them, and they loved her for it.

—Excerpted from The Death of Una Everlasting, translated by Owen Mallory Six days later, you raised your arm and pointed over my shoulder at the horizon, where the shadow of a mountain now stood. The clouds clung thick and white to the ground, so that the mountain reared up like a broken

molar from pale gums.

“There,” you said.

I asked, “Are you sure?”

You did not bother to answer, and I did not bother to ask again. I knew, somehow, that you were right: We had come at last to Cloven Hill, where lay the grail, and the last dragon of Dominion.

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