The Time Weaver

Chapter Fourteen

I had fallen asleep. I hadn't noticed when, or even dreamed. I had blinked, that's all, but when my eyes opened it was daylight, not night, and the prince lay behind me instead of above. I was on my left side, curled up, and he was spooned to my back, his upper arm a pillow for my head, and the blanket that had been spread beneath the food was now covering us both.

A blade of grass was brushing my nose. I think that's what woke me. I lifted my hand to wipe it away but it sprang right back. I mashed my hand over it to keep it flat.

Daylight. A warm, masculine body curved into mine, and his other arm slung across my waist. I blinked again, and this time everything stayed the same. Sandu behind me. Sunlight above. The grass at eye level such an opulent and vivid green it didn't seem real, like such a wet, heavy color could not even exist except in fevered imagination.

The stream at the other edge of the meadow kept up its steady babble. In any other place in the world, except one, there would be birdsong rising from the woods to celebrate the day. Not here, though. Not with the two of us nestled here.

"Jo reggelt,"rumbled a deep voice behind me.

"Bon mati,"I replied, and eased my way upright to sitting. I lifted a hand to my heart—the dragon there awake too, for now content—examining the surrounding forest, the misty beams of eastern light slanting through. "Isit morning?"

"Yes."

I looked down at the badly creased shirt covering me, that bed of meadow grass with its unreal saturation of green.

I had been intimate with Sandu. I had had carnal knowledge of the prince of the Zaharen. Out here, in the open, without even birds to sing over the dried smears of blood on my inner thighs.

The silver below us, though—that sang. And the crystal lustres too, spinning brighter than ever from their boughs.

I waited for the usual blush to heat me; I could never seem to control it. But slowly I began to realize that I wasn't embarrassed or ashamed. Far from it. I felt ... liberated.

Sandu traced a finger down the length of my spine. He lay otherwise unmoving, only watching me when I turned my head to glance down at him.

He was more tan, not just his face but his body as well. It made his eyes paler, his gaze even more mirror-clear. His hair fanned out from under one bare shoulder, a rich smoky shadow across the green.

"When are we to wed?" I asked.

"December. You hoped to give your parents time to come."

I looked around at the fragrant summer meadow. "Lia and Zane don't live a season away." "No. The other ones." "What, the English ones?"

"Aye. You thought it might be something of a peace offering, to invite them here. Things have—changed for us, Rez. I've promised not to tell you how. But we both thought your parents back in Darkfrith might have cause to celebrate our union. You've gone there now in a Weave, to see them."

"But—how could I—"

"Believe me,l wanted to send a letter. But you're good at your Gift, despite the consequences. You were certain you could manage to be there just a few days ahead or behind today, and you gave me your word you'd go directly to Gervase and Josephine, and see no one else in your tribe. In and out. It was so important to you. You swore you'd stay safe." He sat up, examining the slanted light. "And now, love ... there's not much time left."

"What do you mean?"

But as soon as I uttered the words, I knew what he'd meant. I felt the slow gathering pull of the Weave that wanted to come.

I looked at him with wider eyes.

"Thank you," he said. "Thank you for coming to me. Thank you for staying."

"Sandu—"

"No, Honor. Listen now. These are the things you must remember. Yesterday was the eighteenth of August, in the year 1790. This meadow is called Sanctuary. You named it." He rolled to his feet in a quick, graceful movement, found his breeches crushing some wildflowers nearby. He dug into one of the pockets. "Take these with you."

I stared down at the rings he placed into my open palm. Two of them, gold, unadorned. Just like wedding bands. A folded slip of paper beneath them.

"I can't," I said, and tried to give it all back. "I can't Weave with metal, not even paper, I think."

He rebuffed me gently. "You can, actually. I know that you can, because you already did." He broke into a grin. "Notice how I said that so well? No fumbling at all, no tripping up on the past and present. I'm getting better at this. You can take the rings and the note, Rez, because you already did take them."

The tide of my Weave was a vast, airless vacuum reaching for me. It would suck me in.

Alexandru crouched down to kiss my forehead, his fingers splayed in the tangled mass of curls that clung to my cheeks.

"Give the note to me when you return," he murmured. "You can read it if you like, but it's for me. The rings are for us both."

"I—"

"Good-bye, river-girl." And I was gone.

He waited for her. He waited all that morning, as the sunrise faded into gloom, and the storm clouds puffed and receded, and then switched direction again to begin a swift, more menacing rolling in from the sea. He left her bell tower only once, to return below stairs searching for food; Alexandru was ravenous still, most likely from all the days of constant flight—not to mention last night. He went back to the room where they had supped but the table had been cleared, down to the last speck. The chamber stretching before him was stained with colored glass and decidedly lacking in food.

When a girl slipped in behind him he turned to face her, very much aware of his missing shirt and stockings and shoes, finding her watching him with her back square against the wall.

Pansy-purple skirts, a cinched bodice, a bulky cloth napkin folded up in her hands. She had to be about fifteen or sixteen, with dark eyes like the fiddle-boy, artfully arranged ringlets of powdered hair ... yet she looked like nothing so much as one of the peasants from his own mountains, a child of the sun and fields.

Perhaps it was only her frock. His people wore bright colors, too.

They regarded each other in silence. Then the Roma maiden thrust out her hands, offering him the contents of the napkin: a handful of pistachios, a crusty heel of bread and a chunk of hard cheese scented of marigolds, still in its rind.

Sandu nodded his thanks. Carrying the bundle with him, he climbed back up to the bell tower.

The promised rain of last night swept closer. He followed it as he ate, the slate-gray diagonal smear that bridged the sky and sea, pushing winds ahead of it, churning up the dead leaves in the gutters along the streets, plucking a host of golden-orange ones from the city trees.

He deliberated going to smoke to fetch his satchel before it hit. He had more garments there, a shaving kit, dried fruit, his boots. The temperature was dipping lower and while he didn't mind yet, it was going to be a true autumn storm, and he'd rather be garbed for it than not. He could get dressed at the palace,

find a way to steal out past the guards, and walk back here again.

But what if she came while he was gone? What if she thought he'd left too, for home, and attempted to follow?

Now that he considered it, would she even return here, to this little tower she'd Woven from? He'd seen her leave him on a handful of occasions, but he'd never once seen her return to her place of origination, her—what has she called it? Her Natural Time. It was possible she'd Weave back to some new site entirely. She'd never said how that part of it worked.

Sandu scowled at the floor, eyeing the pistachio shells he'd dropped in a pile, the crumbling lime mortar laid in lines between the pavers.

No. He'd wait here. She'd come back here. He didn't know how he knew that, but he did.

He perched a hip along the balustrade and watched the storm devour the curve of the horizon, all prospect of the sea and sky erasing into blank gray.

It looked, to his eye, just exactly like an impending obliteration.

The Weave sucked me back. I stood immobile for a moment to adjust to it; the first seconds were always the most disorienting.

I was in my bell tower, with the wind gusting. I was looking inland, at the long, low roof of the row of shops next door: a watchmaker, a haberdasher, a mercer. A clutch of women stood in front of one of the windows below, chattering brightly in Spanish about a hat one of them had bought, the quality of its plumes.

I whirled about. Alexandru was there, sooty clouds looming beyond him. He had balanced atop the railing with one foot up, his back against a pillar; his head had slumped forward and his eyes were closed. That's all I had time to take in before the headache hit me.

I went to my knees. Through the vicious pain I saw my blood splattering the floor, great big circles of red that splashed back up to fleck my legs.

I don't know if I made any sound. I couldn't hear.

But the world tilted suddenly, a nauseating slur of color and light. I glimpsed the clouds again, the inner bowl of the tower ceiling. The cracked wooden beam that had once supported a bell.

My body clenched, another bout of agony ripping through me. My breasts felt warm and wet, warmer than the rest of me, and I realized it was because the blood from my nose now ran down my front.

I was held. I was being carried. More awful shifting light—my head limp against a cool, firm surface. Sandu's chest.

I didn't hear his heartbeat but I felt it. It pounded through him and into me, its rhythm carving into me like a path, a deep steady drumbeat that led to merciful darkness.

I followed it so that I wouldn't have to feel the pain a moment longer.

There was blood everywhere. It soaked the shirt she wore, and her hair, and his stomach and breeches, slipping slick between them. It was an appalling amount, and at first he thought she'd been shot or stabbed, but a frantic quick search of her body showed him no wounds.

It was all a nosebleed. But by the stars, he'd never seen a person lose so much blood from such a thing.

Sandu kicked open the door at the base of the stairs; the hinges failed and the wormy wood crumbled apart. He ducked through the threshold with her, dribbling a trail of crimson through the fresh dust.

Before he'd gone more than ten feet, the Roma emerged from their unknown places to surround him, to touch her sleeves and face, to prattle in their staccato, unknown language and try to pull her from him.

He ignored them, walking more briskly. He made his way to her chamber and laid her carefully atop her bed.

"Aigua," he commanded, but they were already there with basins and towels.

The bleeding slowed a few minutes later, then stopped, although Honor didn't wake. Her body was boneless as a doll's as he lifted her and removed the shirt, mopped the blood from her chest and stomach, careful, so careful with the towel around her face.

From the corner of his eye he spotted the boy pretending to be invisible by the armoire, thin and avid. When he noticed Sandu's impending snarl, he ducked swiftly back into the hall.

The women found a chemise for Honor, snapped fresh sheets beneath her while rinsing out her hair, for all the world like they'd done this countless times before. One of them had lifted Honor's arm, was rubbing a damp cloth up and down it to clean the last of the blood when she made a surprised exclamation.

Honor's hands had fisted with her faint. It was more than a faint, he imagined, it was nearer to a seizure, but now her fingers relaxed enough to show that she was holding something.

It was made of gold. He heard the metal, didn't see it, until the Roma scowled at it closely and then held it out to Sandu.

A pair of golden rings. A crumpled piece of paper with writing, speckled red on one side. He didn't know the rings, but he knew that handwriting anywhere. She'd been to see him, after all.

Alexandru blew a breath through his teeth, his gaze drawn back to the bone-white mask of her face. Lips of lavender ice.

What the hell had he done to her?

Worth it.

Two words circling me, repeating themselves, and I didn't know what they meant but there they were, blooming and circling, persistent in the dark empty stage of my mind.

Worth it.

What was? I wondered groggily. Had I purchased something? Done something? I couldn't quite recall.

But I was cold. I realized that. So cold I wanted to shiver, but for some reason could not. A whisper began to reach me beyond those words, which were fading now in any case, distant, like they no longer mattered. The whisper grew louder, became a rushing patter of water striking rock and ... glass? Rainfall. On walls. On windows.

I opened my eyes. Everything was gray. Even the man seated beside me.

"That," said this younger, somewhat harder-looking version of Prince Alexandru, "was bloody frightening. Forgive the pun."

I was in my own bed at the cathedral, and the rain was stinging down hard. Sandu had taken a chair from the corner and pulled it close by. He was wearing Roma clothing and looked extremely fine in it, a tight shirt and wool breeches and a kerchief tied around his neck. In both posture and demeanor he presented a portrait of a rogue at his leisure: eased back in my paisley-striped chair with one leg crossed casually over the other, his hands folded over his stomach. But for the paleness of his skin and the truly inhuman beauty of his face, he might indeed have been one of the Gypsies, those lanky, freeborn men made of sinew and laughter and dark polished glances.

When Sandu turned his head to regard me more directly, however, his expression was far from laughing. It was frozen and fierce.

I lifted a hand to my face, my fingers finding my cheek, my lips and nose, all still there. "Was it very bad?" I asked, unsurprised at how hoarse I sounded.

"Very," he said. "Ridiculously bad. I had no idea someone so small could bleed so copiously. I've seen stuck boars bleed less. Are you vampir, perhaps?"

My lips twisted into something I hoped resembled a smile. "Not quite. I've turned out to be a fiend of a different sort."

"Honor," he said, and paused. He seemed to be searching for words. "Did I . do that to you? In the future?"

"What? The nosebleed? No, my prince. That's what happens every time."

"Great God," he said faintly.

"Although this one did seem rather worse than normal." I touched my face again; all the pain was really gone. "It didn't used to be so extreme, but as I've aged—do you mind? There are blankets in that chest over there. I can't seem to get warm."

"As you've aged," he prompted, moving at once with his lithe grace to the Spanish chest. It was pushed beneath one of the windows, and the gray light fell softly pearled across his hair and the breadth of his shoulders.

"The ... physical consequences of the Weaves have grown noticeably more severe. It's one of the reasons why I try to save them up. When the Gift first took me, I could flit here and there without even a suggestion of a headache. But now ..." I had to clench my teeth to stop them from chattering. A shiver wracked me, my body finally waking to the fact of the chilled room and the wet September air.

"Yes, now," Sandu said curtly, shaking out a fleece blanket above me, letting it float down to my body. He tucked in the corners with brisk efficiency, as impartial as a nurse to an ailing child.

I watched him through my lashes. By moonlight and rainlight, the same man, the same lips and eyebrows and tone of voice. The same hands that pushed a fold of fleece beneath my shoulder now, just last night stroking me to heaven, to vibrant, ecstatic life.

Last night. Months ahead.

I'd long since become accustomed to thinking of time as being malleable, and all of us within it as unfixed as toy boats bobbing in the sea. But it was disconcerting, even for me, to know that one day, a year from now, this frozen and savagely handsome male was going to meet me in a forest meadow and feed me paella and kiss me until I melted.

"The rings," I exclaimed, remembering. "Oh—did they make it? The rings and your note?"

"Yes," he said. I shivered again, and he folded one of my hands in both of his, looking restlessly back toward the door. "There's no hearth in here. I want to get a brazier. I think I saw one below."

"No, I'll be better soon. I heal quickly, I promise. What did the note say?"

He gazed down at our hands, that odd, frozen aspect of him intensifying. "Would you like to see it?" he asked slowly.

"Yes. You said I could, in fact. In the future."

He'd kept it in a shirt pocket. The paper had obviously been crushed and then smoothed flat; it resembled a battered leaf. He turned my hand over in his—last night, his palms to mine, our fingers interlocked—and laid the note against my fingers.

I raised it close to my face. Without candles or lamps, the chapel was very dim.

A single sentence, and some unsettling blots of what could only be my blood. But my eyes went straight to that bold, slanted line:True hearts never lie.

A surge of heat took me, nothing at all to do with the blanket.

"What the devil is that supposed to mean?"

I was annoyed. I'd been expecting something along the lines of You Are Destined to Love Her, or She is the One, something grand and romantic. Not this, this enigmatic and frustratingly impersonal remark.

"Shall I tell you what it actually says?" asked the prince quietly, reclaiming my hand.

"Ah! Is it a code, then? Yes. Do tell me."

"It's not a code, Honor."

"Then .?"

"Listen, river-girl. Clearly you don't know everything about me yet. I'll tell you what it says, and you will tell me what occurred when you left me this morning. When you went ahead in time. Have we a deal?"

I had learned during my brief night with Future Alexandru. Every second, every movement and sensation had seared into my memory. So when I brought our joined hands up to brush my mouth, it was deliberate.

Without taking my eyes from his, I kissed his fingers, one by one, and watched his gaze begin to silver.

"I like it when you call me that," I murmured. "Deal."