Beast steers his horse to the miller. “Peace,” he says. “We will not harm you. We merely wanted to stop trouble in its tracks.”
The miller’s relief is tempered with wariness and he begins talking fast, proclaiming his own innocence, telling how these soldiers, these thugs, showed up at their door and began beating and questioning them. “They had just gone into the mill to cut open all the sacks of grain when they heard you coming.”
It would, I admit, be a good place to hide. I let Beast deal with the outraged man and turn to the daughter. Her blouse is torn and she is breathing fast, too fast, as if she has run some great distance, and I can still feel her heart beating frantically in her breast, like a small, frightened bird. “Did they harm you?” I ask quietly.
She looks at me, her eyes wild with barely checked terror, then shakes her head no.
But I know it for a lie, even if she does not. Those men have destroyed her sense of safety for months—possibly years—to come. Unable to stop myself, I reach out and grip her shoulder. “It was not your fault,” I whisper fiercely. “You and your father did nothing to deserve this except be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was not a punishment from God nor any of His saints—it was simply brutish thugs who happened upon you.”
Something in her frightened eyes shifts slightly, and I can see her grasp my words like a drowning man grabs a rope. I nod, then turn to retrieve my crossbow bolts.
We do not tarry long. Between Yannic and the miller and myself, we hoist the three dead bodies back onto their horses, and take the horses with us when we go.
“We will have to veer farther west if we wish to avoid d’Albret’s men,” I tell Beast as we ride away.
Beast nods in agreement, then grins. “I’ve never met a lady who enjoys her work as much as I enjoy mine.”
“My work?”
“Killing. Assassin-ing.”
“What are you implying?”
He looks puzzled at the anger in my voice. “That you are very good at what you do. It was a compliment, nothing more.”
Of course, he would mean it as a compliment. “Just how many other lady assassins have you met?”
“Other than you? Only Ismae. And she seemed to approach her duty with more earnestness than true joy, whereas you come alive with a knife in your hand.”
Hotly uncomfortable with his assessment, I fall silent.
Do I enjoy killing? Is it the act itself that brings me joy? Or do I embrace the sense of higher purpose it gives me?
Or do I simply enjoy having something at which I excel, as there are few enough skills that I possess?
However, if I do enjoy killing, how does that make me any different from d’Albret?
It is only Mortain—His guidance and blessing that separates us. And I have rejected that.
But Beast kills as well, efficiently and expertly, and does not seem tainted by the same darkness that colors d’Albret and myself. I have never seen anyone kill so cheerfully or eagerly, and yet he is light of heart. “How did you come to serve your god?” I ask, breaking a long silence.
Beast grows quiet, grim even. Just when I have decided that he is not going to answer, he speaks. “It is said that when a man rapes a woman while the battle lust is still upon him, any child that results belongs to Saint Camulos. I was such a babe. My lady mother was assaulted by a soldier while her own husband was off fighting against King Charles.”
“And yet she loved you and raised you as any of her other children?” I ask, somewhat in awe of her charitable nature.
Beast snorts out a laugh. “Saints, no! She tried to drown me twice and smother me once before I was one year old.” He falls silent. “It was Alyse who saved me, usually toddling in at just the right moment.”
“You remember that far back?”
“No, my lady mother was wont to throw it in my face at every opportunity. She was afraid of explaining my presence to her lord husband, but in the end, he never returned—he was killed on the fields of Gascony, pierced through with a lance.
“By then, I was nearly two years old, and little Alyse had grown fond of me. She rarely left my side in those years. I think she was afraid of what would happen to me if she did.” He grows quiet for a long moment before speaking again. “I owe Alyse my very life, and I failed her.”
I dare to ask the question that has been haunting me since I learned that Alyse was his sister. “Why did your mother wish for the marriage? Why did d’Albret, for that matter?”
“D’Albret pressed for the marriage because part of Alyse’s dower lands abutted one of his lesser holdings that he wished to expand. And she was young and healthy and able to bear him many sons. Or so our lady mother promised him.”