Vespertine (Vespertine #1)(33)
My shoulders tensed. Maybe if I ignored him, he would go away.
“Lady? Are you injured?”
It had been worth a try. Reluctantly, I lifted my head. Peering sidelong from the shadows of my hood, I saw that it was the knight who had led the soldiers in battle. As I watched, he pushed up his mud-spattered visor with the back of his gauntlet, revealing a brown, careworn face. There were exhausted-looking pouches beneath his eyes, but his gaze was kind—too kind.
I wished he would stop looking at me that way. It made me feel flayed open and pinned, like one of Sister Iris’s anatomical specimens.
“No,” I said hoarsely, sounding uncertain.
A murmur went around. “You see,” a child’s voice declared with authority. “That’s Artemisia of Naimes. I told you. She’s a saint.”
I flinched. After an awkwardly long pause, I lifted my head higher, expanding my field of vision beneath the hood’s ragged fringe.
Immediately, I wished I hadn’t. A crowd encircled me, soldiers on the inside, refugees on the outside—hundreds of people, dusty and bedraggled in the midday sun, all staring in wide-eyed silence. Seeing me looking, several quickly signed themselves. The rest joined in, and a flutter of motion passed through the crowd, hands touching foreheads in the sign of the oculus, accompanied by hushed and reverent whispers. One old woman started weeping.
I didn’t know what to do. Granted, I was used to making people cry, but it usually happened for different reasons. These people—I had nearly killed them all. None of them had any idea how close I’d come to slaughtering them instead of saving them. If they did, they would be fleeing in the opposite direction.
Why did they all have to stare like that? Even the baby hoisted up in its mother’s arms was staring at me. I doubted anyone could see my face beneath the hood, but the knowledge didn’t help. I just wanted to get away.
I was wondering if I could drag the revenant out of wherever it was hiding and use its power to immolate myself like the saints of old when the knight said “lady” again, and I realized he was holding out his water skin. I had my own, courtesy of Leander, but I had forgotten to use it. My throat suddenly felt so parched that I didn’t hesitate. I took the skin from his hand and swallowed the warm water in thirsty gulps, briefly forgetting about the crowd.
“I’m Captain Enguerrand,” the man said gently. “Lady, this isn’t the first time you’ve saved my men. I heard what you did for the soldiers in Naimes.”
I wiped my mouth on my sleeve. “They survived?”
“All but four. And today, before you appeared, we had nearly lost hope—”
He ceased talking abruptly, his gaze fixed on my sleeve. My mouth had left a smear of blood on the fabric.
“It’s nothing,” I croaked, handing back the skin. “I had a nosebleed.”
The movement shifted my cloak. The light slanted beneath my hood, and Captain Enguerrand’s eyes widened in surprise. “You’re young,” he said, sitting back. “You can’t be any older than my daughters.”
Just then, a commotion came from the direction of the river. The giant drawbridge was being lowered over the Sevre. Riders had gathered on the other side to cross it: knights, their armor blinding in the sun, and a handful of robed clerics. They were so far away that they looked like toys.
As the bridge touched the bank and the procession stepped onto it, a single figure separated from the rest to ride forward, cantering toward us across the valley. I didn’t recognize him until he drew the horse up short a distance away, the sun bright on his golden hair.
“That girl has stolen the relic of Saint Eugenia,” he called in a clear, carrying voice. “She is in danger of being possessed. Seize her, by the order of Her Holiness the Divine.”
NINE
The silence that fell was so profound I could hear the distant flapping of the pennants over Bonsaint. Everyone seemed to be holding their breath.
“Revenant,” I muttered, too quietly for Captain Enguerrand to hear. It didn’t reply.
The soldiers traded glances. They looked battered and filthy compared to the polished splendor of the knights on the bridge. Behind them, a discontented murmur ran through the crowd. I stole a wary look at Enguerrand under my hood, only to find him watching me with a complicated expression—resignation, unhappiness, determination. He looked like he was steeling himself to make a decision that he knew he was going to regret.
“Sir,” pleaded one of the soldiers.
Enguerrand sighed. He turned to his men and nodded.
Everything seemed to happen at once. The soldiers moved. I tensed. At the same time, the old woman collapsed, wailing. One soldier immediately swerved to help her, tripping a second, who was making a halfhearted grab for my stirrup that already seemed calculated to miss. The cry spooked Enguerrand’s horse, which jostled sideways into its neighbor. Except I was close enough to see that it hadn’t really spooked; Enguerrand had jabbed his heel into its side.
The results were dramatic. Suddenly there were horses rearing and whinnying. The baby turned red as a beet and started howling. The little girl who had identified me as Artemisia of Naimes took one delighted look at the mayhem, clenched her fists at her sides, and exuberantly began to scream.
A young soldier approached me in the chaos, ducking to avoid a rotten turnip flying through the air. Fervently, he signed himself. “Lady, run,” he said, and slapped Priestbane across the flank.