The Reckless Oath We Made(76)

“Yep. She’s still here,” Sir Alva said. “Still my house. Still ain’t your business.”

“You taking off tonight?” Dane spake without heeding his father.

“Boy, leave your cousin alone.”

Once I saw Dane would keep peace, I set myself again beside Lady Zhorzha. Her hands lay together upon her lap, one holding fast to the other. The cloth of her trousers was worn through at her thigh, shewing the milk white of her skin and the blood black of her fire bird.

“Thine heart is fouled with lust,” Hildegard said.

“’Tis not his heart,” Gawen said, and then to me: “Thy touch affronteth her not. Last even she was eager to open her thighs to thee.”

Sooth, she had received my touch tho I asked not, but I presumed not she should again, so I reached not for her hand. Hildegard believed I had naught but lust in my heart, but in truth I was much concerned with how I might serve my lady. While I pondered it, Sir Alva rose from the couch and walked up and down in a manner most uneaseful.

When first I met him, I thought of him as a hermit, alone in some high place, deprived of company and comfort. Now I bethought myself of Raymondin, who pined for Melusine but never again saw her. Like Sir Alva, he was a man bereft of his wife, left to raise up two sons. Tho Sir Alva’s castle was in decline, it remained, mayhap a testament to the labors of his wife. Mayhap also a prison for a man whose heart was sore wounded.

Sir Alva stopped and took his phone from his pocket.

“This peace cannot last,” the black knight said. I rose to my feet, my hackles abristle. Dane’s shoulders weren tight, his hands fistwise at his sides.

“I’ll take this in my room,” Sir Alva said.

“What the fuck are you doing, Dad?”

Sir Alva answered not and, after he departed, Dane wandered the floor and slapped his hands upon his shanks.

I kept watch, and Dane came anon to stand before my lady.

“We had a deal. You said you were gonna talk to Dad and then you were gonna go,” he said. “But you’re still here, sitting around like you don’t plan to leave.”

“Uncle Alva is helping me with something,” Lady Zhorzha said. “I’ll go when it’s done.”

“You’ll fucking go now.”

He stepped closer so that we stood nigh toe to toe. I watched his hands and set my shoulder that I might be ready for him. Ere we came to blows, the kitchen door opened and Dirk called out.

“Hey, where are you all?” He entered the room and observed we three. “What’s going on?”

“What’s going on is Zhorzha’s getting ready to leave,” Dane said.

“Already?”

“She ain’t going nowhere,” Sir Alva said. He came from the hallway, his phone yet in his hand.

“I think maybe I better go,” my lady said. She made to rise, but could not. When I put out my hand to her, she took it, and I pulled her to her feet. Once aright she was unsteady and leaned upon me.

Sir Alva inclined his head toward the hall, and he alone among us in that room held no tension in his body, for methinks he was weary to his bones.

“Come on back to my room,” he said to my lady. “I got some news for you.”





CHAPTER 38





Zee



He ain’t nobody to us, and I aim to keep it that way,” Uncle Alva said, when I asked what the guy’s name was. The Fury, that’s what Uncle Alva kept calling him, and it took me a couple minutes to realize the guy with no name was a Klansman. Whatever relief I’d felt finding out my father wasn’t a murderer, it was watered down by knowing that my grandfather had seen nothing wrong with lynching and cross burning.

“How do we know we can trust him? That he’s not just scamming us for ten grand?” That was what the Fury wanted: ten thousand dollars in exchange for information on where Tague Barnwell and Conrad Ligett were hiding out.

“No way to be dead certain, but he was sent to me by a man who knows him, and wants to see we’re dealt by honestly.”

“And what does that guy expect to get out of it?” I said, because I was still choking on the thought of giving somebody ten thousand dollars for information.

“Debt paid. He owes me.”

I might have felt bad that he’d called in that favor for me and LaReigne, except right then Uncle Alva didn’t look like he had much longer to get paid. He was sitting on the edge of his bed, bracing his hand on his knee like he needed it to hold himself up. Someone banged on his bedroom door.

“What the fuck are you two whispering about in there?” Dane yelled.

“Mind your own goddamn business!” Uncle Alva answered.

“How is this going to work?” I said, since we were out of time. “Is the Fury going to call us? How does he get his money?”

“He’s coming here.”

“It is my goddamn business, whatever you’re getting up to.” Dane rattled the knob, but Uncle Alva had locked the door.

“Here? Because that doesn’t seem like a good idea to me. I promised Dane I was leaving, and I think I better.”

“You’re fucking around with this because you don’t know how dangerous it is,” Dane said. “You need to come out and see what’s on the news.”