of yonder tavern. Sera smiled, but turned her face to Gryphon’s flank so the squire would not see such emotion.
“Shall we get a room?”
“Is there one available?”
“I believe there is.”
“You have my coin stashed safely?”
“I do.” He patted his hip where a conglomeration of baldric, gauntlets, leather bone-bag, and wool cape made it impossible to determine just how slender the man really was. He kept her coin in his codpiece, Sera knew, from the rhythmic tink that accompanied his strides.
“We’ve enough to see us through many months.” Though she prayed this quest would end much sooner. “Go ahead. One room. I shall sleep on the floor.”
Already eagerly on his way to make arrangements, Baldwin stopped in the doorway. He turned with a pained moan and pinched grimace. “Sera, you know I will not sleep a single wink should you be lying on the floor while I have a straw pallet to cradle my weary bones.”
“Are you propositioning me, squire?” Sera peeked under her arm to catch his reaction.
“Why no!”
He blushed a deep crimson. The two of them had never shared more than a brief nod in passing through her father’s castle, or whispered morning prayers in the chapel. But she had heard of his former profession, the very reason that pressed him to seek atonement by applying to the church. Baldwin Ortolano had done things to survive—cheating, lying, stealing—acts that branded him a criminal. Those same acts also fashioned him imperfectly human. And she certainly needed human right now, imperfections and all.
“If the bed is wide, we can share. We shall lie so our heads are opposite one another’s feet. What say you?”
Baldwin lifted a suede-booted foot and rubbed it along his opposite ankle. “I’m not sure…”
Sera gestured through the air with the brush. “I’ve smelled worse than your feet in my lifetime. Now be gone with you. Run up and find us a room with a fire and have it blazing for me when I return.”
“Yes, my lady—er, my lord.”
A while later, Baldwin strode out of the Dragon’s Eye, pleased that his mistress’s coin had purchased them a fine room with a wide bed, fresh water (melted-down snow for washing), and clean straw.
Sera hadn’t come in from the stables, and an odd twinge of foreboding had prompted him to seek her out. She was, after all, a woman. A young female of four and twenty who should not be left to defend herself against any danger that should approach.
Oh, he knew Sera was not your average amiable, submissive female. He’d lived at the d’Ange castle for nine months, and in that time had learned Sera had taken over chatelaine duties when she was but twelve. Elsbeth d’Ange, Sera’s mother, had developed twisted joints that would not allow her to do anything with her hands, save brush aside the bed curtains to receive her maids.
He now knew that affliction had come following the abduction of Elsbeth’s newborn daughter. Faeries, eh? Fine enough, the little winged creatures. But the idea of a changeling, mewling in a newborn’s crib…well, it just gave Baldwin the shivers.
When Sera could not be found taking accounts in the larder, or purchasing food and fabric at market, or mending clothing, or shearing sheep, she stole a free moment here and there to practice in the lists with her father and brother. An unusual female, Seraphim d’Ange, in that she wanted to do it all. If her brother Antoine could do it, she could as well.
And her father had encouraged her masculine pursuits. Marcil d’Ange, a stalwart lord possessed of a compassionate but fierce heart, had treated Sera as if a son, but not without the occasional gentle smile and knowing wink.
Beyond such knowledge of her abilities, the fact that Sera had beheaded two of France’s most notorious villains still troubled Baldwin. When ensconced in the black armor and charging through the roar of battle cries with a steel-clashing sword, Sera rode a strange sorcery that tricked her mind into believing she would succeed.
Baldwin prayed that sorcery would keep its hold on her until this quest was finished. For if and when she did fall, it would be a hard fall, indeed.
Just as he had suspected! A strange man leaned over a figure lying on the freshly spiked straw at the end of the stable. Long, narrow legs and wide hands splayed over the nest—he stood over Sera!
In a cacophony of tinking coins, jangling bones, and breathy huffs, Baldwin dashed through the stable door. He tripped up his feet on a block of wood, righted himself with the expert skill he’d developed since his teen years had seen to stretching his limbs to ridiculous lengths, then scrambled to the end stall where Gryphon was tied.
Before Baldwin could blurt out an angry shout, the man turned and backed away from Sera, acknowledging the squire with a nod. ’Twas the dark-haired knight that had set Sera to a swoon.
“That is my lord at rest, and I shall thank you to leave her—er, him at rest.”
Baldwin knew his eyes bugged at that slip, a response to mistruths he had never been able to tame. Indeed, he’d played a blind toad-eater, wearing a scarf over his eyes to keep the innocents from reading his grift.
He clutched the bag of bones tied at his waist. For strength. “Pray, tell what you think you are doing, sir?”
“Forgive me.” The man raised his hands briefly to show he had no ill intentions, then stepped back. “I was just seeking my own resting place for the night. All the rooms are taken.”
Baldwin took a moment to look over Sera. On her back, the heavy mail tunic pressed her body into a snug nest of straw. Her hood was still up and her eyes were closed, a soft snore purring from her mouth. So tired, she hadn’t even made it to the room he’d rented. But, thankfully, curiously androgynous under cover of sleep.
“What is wrong with him?”
“Hmm?” Baldwin turned and looked over the man. Two black eyes beamed at him. Dark hair slicked over his ears, and a shadow of a beard progressed dash-and-scatter from his cheeks to his jaw. There lived an eerie peacefulness in the depths of those eyes. Perhaps he was a little handsome—ah, hell! What was he thinking?
“Your master.” The man gestured to Sera. “To look over his face one would wonder…”
Sweet Mother of Wonder, did the man suspect?
“Is he ill?”
“Ill?” Not the suspicion Baldwin had feared. He swallowed a melon-size gulp and tried to act nonchalant. He pressed his hand to the stable wall, crossed his legs at the ankle—and winced at the pinch of coin digging into his delicates. “Wh-why do you say that?” He quickly uncrossed his legs.
“It is only because he looks it. Those dark crescents under his eyes and the gaunt flesh over bone… Mayhap he is frail?”
“He is no thinner than I, my lord.”
The obsidian eyes of the stranger took in Baldwin’s lank frame. Dressed in squire’s tunic and the tight-fitted brown leggings borrowed from yet another dead man, Baldwin felt awkward and exposed. But better
