Sword Catcher (Sword Catcher, #1)

Conor, who had been slumped in a corner of the carriage, sat up, looking at her with what seemed to be genuine puzzlement. He was as plainly dressed as she’d ever seen him, in gray trousers and a black linen jacket with frogged silver clasps up and down the front. He wore no circlet, no crown; he could have been any merchant’s son, if he had not had one of the most recognizable faces in Castellane.

“You’re dissatisfied with the book?” He was frowning a little. He rubbed at his neck, and she realized he was wearing none of his usual rings. She could see the shape of his fingers, long and delicate, his palms lightly callused. Couldn’t anything about him be ugly? “You said it was what you were looking for—”

“I’m not dissatisfied with the book.” She took a deep breath. “Today, your Ascension Day, is also an important day for my people. It is the day of our Goddess Festival. I should not be here with you; I should be in the Sault. So if you please, Monseigneur—why are you here? Is there something you require from me?”

He sat up straight. Leaned toward her. His gaze flicked down, briefly; he must have noticed how hard she was breathing. As if she’d run a mile. He said, “I wish to consult with you. As a physician. As someone who I know can be trusted to keep a secret.”

A weariness went through Lin. More concealments, she thought, more secrets she could not tell to Mariam, or to anyone in the Sault. And there was no concern for the weight of them on her, or what they might cost her. She was only a useful tool: a physician who would not, could not, speak. “You are ill?” she said.

He shook his head. There were shadows under his eyes, dark as the linen he wore. They made her think of candlelight and poetry, of long nights spent studying old books, though she knew better. He was probably hung over.

“What do you believe madness is?” he said. “Is it a question of illness, or is it, as the Castellani believe, a weakness or corruption in the blood? Is there such a thing as a medicine that might treat it?”

Lin hesitated. “There could be,” she said. “I do not believe madness, as you call it, is corruption. Often it is a wound borne by an injured mind. Sometimes it is indeed an illness. The mind can be sick just as the body can. But medication—I have never heard of treating an illness of the mind with medicine.”

“But there might be something in all those books of yours,” he said. “All those volumes the Ashkar have, that we lack access to—”

All those books of yours. It was as if the freezing-cold ball of anger in her belly was melting in his presence, sending icy slivers of unthinking rage through her veins.

“I have no books,” she said.

He flushed, his eyes darkening to pewter. “Do not toy with me,” he said. “What I am asking of you, it is important.”

“Is someone dying?” Lin said. “Are they desperately ill?”

“No, but—”

“Then it will wait for another day.” Lin reached for the carriage door.

“Stop.” He sounded furious. “Lin Caster—”

She whirled on him. “Are you giving me a royal order to stay and speak with you about whatever you wish to discuss? Regardless of my duties, my responsibilities?” My only and single chance to take back what is mine? “Is that what this is?”

“Do I need to?” he said, in a voice as dark as bitter syrup. “After I gave you that book? Are you really so ungrateful?”

Lin looked at her hand, where it rested on the carriage door handle. She felt detached from it, as if it did not belong to her. As if she were looking at her own body from the outside. She said flatly, “That book. Yes, you brought it to me. You walked into the Sault with a bevy of Castelguards, making sure to attract as much attention as possible, making sure every eye would be on you, and you brought it to me.”

“It was an honor,” he said. There was something in his voice she could not identify. It was not anger, which she would have expected, but something else again. “I was honoring you. As your prince—”

“All these years you have known my grandfather,” she said, “and still you do not see or understand his people. You are not my prince. You are the Prince of Castellane. A city I do not live in—a city I am forbidden to live in, save I keep myself walled off from it. You came into the one part of Castellane in which I am at home, and you brought the worst kind of attention upon me. You could simply have had a messenger deliver that book, but no, you had to show off, prove that you were being gracious to someone so far below you.” Her voice shook. “And the moment you left, the Maharam came and took the book from me and confiscated it, because it came from you. And now—”

She stopped before she could say And now I will lose Mariam. Unless . . . The tears that had not come the night before were threatening now, her eyes burning painfully, but she would not cry in front of him. She would not.

She reached for the handle of the carriage door and tugged on it. To her horror, it stuck. She felt herself freeze as he reached around her, his gloved hand sliding over hers as he grasped the handle. She could feel the strength in him, the lean arch of his body.

He had not moved to open the door. She was in the circle of his arm: She could feel the rough softness of his linen jacket against her. Feel him breathing in short, caught breaths. He wanted to touch her, she knew. She could not help but remember kissing him at the Roverge mansion; even now, in the depths of her rage and despair, she knew that whoever had interrupted them had been all that had prevented her from doing anything he wanted that night. She had wanted it, too.

“I thought,” she whispered, “that you were going to forget me. Forget all about me.”

“I can’t.” His voice sounded as if it were being pulled taut. “A malady. Which is ironic, since you are a physician. If you had medicine that could make me forget you—”

“No such thing exists,” she said.

“Then I am cursed,” he said, “to think only of you. You, who think I am a loathsome person. A vain monster who could not resist showing off, and in doing so, has made you wretched.”

Lin stared at the carriage door handle. It appeared to be growing and shrinking in size, as her vision blurred. “I think you are a broken person,” she whispered. “Since you have been given whatever you wanted, all of your life, and never been told no, I don’t see how you could have been anything else. I suppose it is not your fault.”

There was a short silence. He withdrew his arm from around her, moving stiffly, as if he were recovering from an injury.

“Get out,” he said.

She fumbled for the door handle, nearly falling when the carriage door swung open. She tumbled out into the street, and heard him call out, hoarsely—but he was only shouting to the carriage driver. The carriage lurched off, the unlocked door swinging. A hand emerged, caught the door, slammed it shut; the carriage vanished into the traffic on the Great Southwestern Road.

Heart hammering, Lin made her way back to the gates, where Mez was waiting. He looked at her in concern. “You’re awfully pale,” he said. “Someone really ill?”