~ 8 ~
The Master returned
Music drifted across the bailey, the familiar heartbeat of drums as the musicians struck up the chords that called the women to join the Maiden Flower dance. From Radimar’s lofty vantage point on one of the palace loggias, the dancers looked like flowers blooming, their silk petals of crimson and yellow, blue and violet, gilding or darkening by turns as they moved in and out of the light and shadows painted by the fire.
Many believed the tune’s composer had been a sorcerer who wove magic into the notes, an insidious seduction that beckoned until the most reluctant person found themselves swaying and spinning to its tune. Radimar was a believer. The music drew the women to the dance like moths to a flame, all save one. Jahna Uhlfrida had never succumbed to the enchantment of the Maiden Flower dance though she always watched it with an avid expression from the perimeters.
His gaze swept the edge of the dancers’ circle, where the crowds not dancing had gathered to watch. He searched for a small, cloaked figure and found a few, but none were built like the woman he remembered, the woman who still made his heart beat heavy after all this time.
A flicker of motion teased the corner of his eye and he turned his head, spotting what he sought. She was cloaked and hooded as he expected, and he couldn’t see her face from this vantage point, but he knew it was her. He knew.
She wove adeptly through the horde of people, moving away from the thick of the celebration toward the place one could find some semblance of privacy and peace during chaotic Delyalda.
Radimar strode past the celebrants who packed the loggia, the nobility of Belawat in all their silk, furred and jeweled glory. He was nobility himself, but much farther down the chain of hierarchy and considered as much a peasant by these people as the ones who thronged the bailey below them. He had come at Sodrin’s behest, suffered through introductions and made small talk with people in whom he found little interest and nothing in common.
His long strides ate the distance between the palace and the forgotten garden. One of the garden’s gates was open just enough to allow someone to ease through, and he sidled in on silent feet. If it wasn’t Jahna who had come here, he could turn around and leave without the other person knowing. He prayed to the gods that his instincts proved accurate and it was she who had come here.
By the look of it, someone remembered this patch of land during the eight years he’d been away. It was still wild and mostly overgrown, especially at the perimeters where even the hint of once-manicured verge had disappeared in a tangle of bramble, ivy, and roses. A part of the garden though, where he had once led Jahna through the intricate steps of the Delyalda dances, had been cut back enough to reclaim a small square of cleared space. In its center, a familiar figure spun and pirouetted to the faint strains of a Delyalda song played beyond the garden’s enclosure.
Silver-plated light, softened by snow, spilled across the landscape. For a moment, the dancer pivoted through the luminescence, and Radimar’s heart jumped in his chest. Jahna—supple, disfigured, indescribably beautiful—danced alone in the moonlight.
She had shed her cloak. It lay draped across a nearby bench, leaving her bare-headed and unshielded from the cold. Lost hairpins glittered in the snow under her feet, and her unbound hair whipped around her like a flag as she spun and arched and danced the steps with effortless grace. The gown she wore covered her from neck to ankles, leaving only her hands exposed, but it hugged her body, emphasizing the sleek length of her waist and curve of her hips and breasts.
When the song ended, she came to a slow, twirling halt, her skirts setting around her like flower petals closing against the sunset. As if she’d been expecting him and simply waited for his arrival, she turned and met his eyes, regal as any queen. “Welcome back, Sir Velus,” she said, using the most formal address.
More than a decade earlier, Radimar had looked beyond the chubby remnants of awkward girlhood and the violet birthmark and seen the potential of the woman Jahna might become given time, maturity, and a greater awareness of her own strength. The woman standing before him now not only confirmed that belief, she had surpassed it.
He wished he might call her by her given name and have her call him by his, but she had laid down the boundaries of address at the outset of this conversation, and he abided by her unspoken rule. “Hello, Lady Uhlfrida,” he said, drawn to her and the solemn dignity she exuded from every pore. “It’s been a long time.”
“It has.” Her gaze traveled over him, revealing nothing of what she thought. “You look well, much as I remembered you.”
He chuffed. “You’re kind. I’ve collected a few more scars, a few more lines.” Clothing covered the worst of the souvenirs he’d brought back with him from the Lobak Valley. The fighting there had been especially vicious. He was lucky to be alive.
“Have you seen Sodrin yet?” At his nod, her expression eased into a smile that made his breath catch. “He’s ecstatic you could make the wedding. Thank you for coming all this way to attend. I hope it wasn’t too much of an inconvenience.”
“I wouldn’t miss it, even if it were.”
He’d found Sodrin earlier buried eyebrow-deep in water rights negotiations with a neighbor and fellow lord. Radimar had waited until their discussion had concluded before making his presence known. Like Jahna, Sodrin had matured in both body and mind. He was taller than Radimar now, and the awkward thinness had become a sinewy strength that showed in his arms and shoulders. Some things hadn’t changed though, and the exuberance with which he hugged Radimar and pounded his back until his spine cracked recalled months of hard training with a bright and eager, if sometimes undisciplined student.
He stretched his arm to indicate the garden as a whole. “It’s mostly as I remember it, though I see you still don’t participate with the others in the dancing, even when you obviously are familiar with the steps.”
She shook her head, still smiling. “No. I’ve resided here on the palace grounds long enough now that the permanent residents don’t pay much attention to my presence, but visitors still think me an oddity. I prefer to avoid all the stares and whispers if I can. There will be enough of that at the wedding ceremony.”
While she might still avoid large gatherings and the attention her birthmark always garnered, he suspected that now she weathered it with a certain quiet aplomb.
He’d been long away, and much wasn’t as it had once been, not the least, Jahna Uhlfrida. He held out a hand to her. “Would you care to dance with me? It’s been more than a few years since I’ve celebrated a Delyalda, so I might step on your toes. Are you brave enough to risk it?”
One delicate eyebrow rose. “Is that a challenge?”
After the disaster of their last moments together years earlier, he’d been afraid she would be cold to him if they ever saw each other again. She wasn’t. Reserved, yes. Cautious, most definitely. He could see it in her eyes. But not cold, and amusement played around her mouth. That soft, seductive mouth that had once shattered all his good sense. “Yes,” he said.
“Then how can I refuse?” She took his hand.
He led her into the steps that matched the rhythm of the song the musicians played. Her fingers were cold in his hands, and ink-stained. “Your brother told me you’re a full-fledged king’s chronicler now with an eye on becoming a Dame in a few years.”
She grasped his forearm and he hers as they tracked their steps to the music. “Sodrin is such a gossip. It’s a good thing I don’t tell him my most private thoughts. They’d be on the morning crier’s lips the next day.”
They both laughed, and Radimar came to his erstwhile student’s defense. “I doubt he’s as forthcoming with others as he is with me. And I suspect he’s decided that as Lord Uhlfrida now, he feels it his duty to advise you on every aspect of your life.”
Jahna rolled her eyes and twirled under his arm before neatly stepping back into the rhythm set. “Oh, Sir Velus, you have no idea.” She grinned. “Maybe once he’s married, he’ll be too busy pleasing his new wife to worry about lecturing me. He’s worse than Father ever was.”
The news of Marius Uhlfrida’s death had reached him almost six months after the event in a hastily scrawled letter from Sodrin. “I was gutted to hear of his death and worried for you and Sodrin.”
Jahna squeezed his hand. “Father didn’t suffer. His heart failed him. He died while on a hunt, his favorite activity. He wouldn’t have chosen a different way. I’d like to think he keeps my mother company now.” Her mouth turned down. “Of course he wasn’t two days in his grave, and the bride finders and matchmakers were rattling the gates to talk to my brother.”
“I’m surprised it didn’t happen sooner. He was your father’s heir.” Had the matchmakers sought out Jahna as well? Sodrin had said nothing about any attachment Jahna might have formed with some aristocrat wise enough to look beyond her birthmark, nor had Jahna mentioned anyone. A small part of him hoped she had found a man with whom to share her affections. A greater part seethed with wordless jealousy. He had no right to the emotion, but that didn’t stop it from plaguing him.
“Oh, there was a steady trickle of interested mothers with unwed daughters,” she said. “But his duty to the royal guard kept it to a minimum. Once he became Uhlfrida, it was like someone knocked down a dam and the potential brides came flooding in.”
“He did well for himself. The king’s niece as his wife places him even higher in the noble ranks. Is it a love match?”
Her disapproving frown faded to be replaced with one more contemplative. “More like a friend match, I think.”
“That’s a good start.”
She nodded. “A very good start. Even a good finish if they only remain friends.”
When the music’s tempo changed with the start of a different tune, neither paused but fell easily into a new rhythm.
“And you, Sir Velus? How have the years treated you?”
If he didn’t count the ever-present ache at the back of his soul for this woman or the two life-threatening wounds he’d received while fighting alongside the Nazim warrior monks, the years had been fair to him.
“No better or worse than most. After the Ghan died, most of us were dispersed to new assignments. I trained the son of a rich merchant.” He shook his head. “Dismal student. I stood down from the role after a year. After that, I trained and fought with the Nazim monks in the Lobak Valley.”
“Sodrin mentioned that. Did you know of one named Megiddo?”
Her question surprised him. The Nazim were similar to the Ilinfan Brotherhood in that some of their cenobites acted as guards or teachers for high-ranking families. Unlike the Brotherhood, they preferred to be known only by the general term “macari,” which meant monk. The knowledge of true names was typically kept within the isolated confines of the monastery itself and not often used. He wondered how Jahna had come to know this one.
He thought for a moment, remembering a solemn man with the natural air of an ascetic about him and a dignity to match Jahna’s. “I did know a Megiddo. I think he was Beladine. Capable swordsman. A left-hander but could fight almost as well with his right hand. Why do you ask?”
“He was one of the five who defeated the galla.”
Radimar did halt then, bringing Jahna up short with him. He peered down at her. “Are you certain?” How had a Nazim monk ended up fighting the dark demons that had razed an entire city in a single night?
“Very certain,” she said. “I sat with Serovek Pangion earlier today to record his accounting of the galla war. He told me the Nazim monk Megiddo fought alongside him, the Kai regent, a Queresi chieftain’s son, and a Gauri exile.”
A note in her voice alerted him that Megiddo’s bravery had not gone unpunished. “What happened?”
“Of the five, only Megiddo didn’t return to his home.”
Radimar closed his eyes for a moment. Good men died in wars all the time. One had even died in his arms, yet something about this death struck a deeper chord even though he had only known Megiddo as an acquaintance and fellow swordsman. “His fellow monks will mourn him justly and commend his spirit to the sacred fires.”
He wondered at the sadness in her expression before it slid behind a bland, studied façade. She changed the subject. “Do you have a family?”
Her gaze was steady on him and gave nothing away, but he still held her hand, and her fingers twitched in his grasp with her question. “As in wife and children? No. Most swordmasters don’t.”
And you? He wanted to ask but couldn’t bring himself to do so. King’s chroniclers weren’t nuns. Most remained unmarried, though many took lovers, and a few had husbands with whom they lived near the Archives. He didn’t care if Jahna had taken a man into her bed; he just didn’t want to hear the devastating news she’d taken one into her heart.
He avoided it all together and steered the conversation to safer ground. “Any more trouble from…”
Jahna laughed. “Evaline? No, none. In fact, she hasn’t attended Delyalda since she married. Word has it she’s the mother of three now, with a fourth on the way.”
“And her lickspittles?”
“They lost interest in me after our scuffle in the corridor.”
Radimar smirked. “Imagine that.”
Jahna laughed. “Don’t hold it against me for admitting it, but you were right. The balance of power shifted.”
He doubted he’d ever hold anything against her. She on the other hand had something to hold against him. She hadn’t mentioned it yet, nor had he, and it hovered between them like a shadow.
“Come,” he said and drew her toward him as the musicians struck up another tune, this one popular with couples because of its slowness and steps that brought bodies closer. “A last dance and then I’ll escort you back to wherever your destination lies.”
If he could have everything his way, that destination would be straight back to the tiny chamber Sodrin had managed to secure for him in the palace. Just big enough to hold a narrow bed and small table with barely any room to make a full turn, it would seem the grandest of all spaces were Jahna sharing it with him.
She went easily into his arms, slender as a willow and just as supple. The scent and feel of her recalled a similar moment when she arched into him, her sweet mouth under his, the hesitant caress of her lips driving him mad.
He had liked her from the moment he met her, the shy, lonely sister of his newest student. He had fallen in love with her gradually, by small increments spread across weeks, months, then years. Jahna was beyond his reach. He’d always known it and explained away his growing feelings for her as those of a protective older brother like Sodrin. Even as he inwardly recoiled at the idea and his heart insisted otherwise, Radimar had clung to its questionable veracity. Until he held her while she cried and then kissed her in the darkness.
Unlike the previous songs, they danced to this one in silence. Her hair fell down her back to tickle his hands where they rested against her spine. He bent a little more, lured by the scent of evergreen on her skin She fit within the circle of his arms as naturally now as she had eight years earlier, maybe more so. Her face and her touch had haunted him for so long, it seemed almost chimerical that she was here now, pressed against his body.
Radimar would have held her even longer once the song ended, but she stepped away from him, taking with her a warmth that went beyond body heat. She wore the stoic face that always signaled she was troubled.
“You left without a farewell to me and Sodrin. I understand why with Sodrin, but not me.”
There it was, the unspoken question, until now. Jahna had beaten him to it in bringing it up, and part of him was grateful for the chance to clear the air between them.
“I’m sorry, Jahna,” he said, abandoning formal address for her given name. “I’m a coward. I didn’t just leave; I fled.”
Her mask cracked, revealing a misery that made Radimar’s heart contract. “Why?” she whispered. “There was nothing to fear. It was just a kiss.”
The last part of her statement punched him in the gut. “Was it?”
She skirted around him to retrieve her cloak, her armor against both cold and pain. It shrouded her in folds of wool. The hood hid her hair now and of course the blemished side of her face. “Surely, you didn’t think I’d press you for a union between us or try to trap you into one just because you kissed me?”
He almost wished she had. “Such a thing never crossed my mind,” he said. “Try to understand. I was in your father’s employ. A well-paid servant but still a servant despite my title. In the eyes of Beladine aristocracy, including your father, you are my better and above my touch.”
She gasped, outraged. “I never thought such a stupid thing!”
“I know you didn’t.” This wasn’t going well at all. “It wasn’t just our difference in status. There was a trust between your father and me, and I broke it when I kissed his daughter.” He looked away for a moment before turning back to meet her confused, anguished gaze. “If I had returned to tell you goodbye, either I wouldn’t have returned to Ilinfan alone, or your enraged father would have seen to it I returned in pieces.” Jahna’s mouth fell open, shock in every line of her body.
“Even with your acceptance and his blessing, taking you with me then would have been unfair,” he continued. “You were about to start your apprenticeship with the Dames, become a king’s chronicler in the Archives. I would have robbed you of that chance had I plied for your hand then.”
Jahna blinked, the dark shadows in her eyes slowly clearing as they stared at each other in silence. She touched her birthmark with one finger. “I thought it was this that made you regret.”
The effects of a persecuted childhood still lingered, despite her obvious strength. Radimar caught her hand and brought it to her lips. “No, Jahna. You might always see your birthmark when you look in a mirror. After the first time, I never saw it again.” He tugged her into his arms and tipped her face up to his with one finger under her chin. “I shouldn’t have left the way I did. For that, I have no ready excuse or even a good reason. It was wrong and craven. I hurt the one person I would have battled the heavens to protect. Can you forgive me?”
She eyed him for a moment, the long gaze measuring as if she weighed the benefits and drawbacks of welcoming him back into her confidences and maybe her arms. The slow smile that spread across her face made his breath hitch. She stepped closer into the space of his body, and his arms automatically closed around her. Her fingers threaded through his hair to stroke his scalp.
“Kiss me again,” she said, “And I’ll consider it.”