Honor among thieves

Chapter Fifteen

After darkness fell, Malden and Croy headed back into the outer bailey. The air was crisp with autumn’s chill, but Helstrow’s streets were full of people heading this way and that, as if they didn’t know where to go but didn’t dare go to their homes. The kingsmen were out in force, hauling away anyone they could find who could be legally conscripted. Even the slightest offense was enough to get a man arrested that night. Public drunkenness, failure to keep a pig off the street-things that were commonplaces in peacetime had become hanging offenses, it seemed. Nor were the women of Helstrow left unaccosted. They were herded toward churches and public houses, where they would be put to work making bandages and bowstrings.

Malden still wore his old green cloak, but Croy had put on a tabard with the colors of the king, green and gold, and the people they passed gave them a wide berth. The swords on their hips probably made room for them as well.

The two of them passed a bloody-handed preacher standing on the lip of a well, shouting for all who would hear it the old religion of the Bloodgod-heresy in a fortress-town dedicated to the Lady. More than a few young men had stopped to listen, perhaps thinking Sadu could save them from the coming barbarians. When the crowd saw Croy’s colors, though, they ran off into the night.

“They’d do better putting their faith in the king,” Croy said through clenched teeth. He found the piglet the holy man had sacrificed hidden in the well’s bucket. He tossed it angrily into the street.

“They’re terrified,” Malden told him. He could sympathize. “They’ll turn to anything that offers some hope.” He looked ahead into the dark street, lit only by the moon. “Is it much farther now?”

“The conscripts you want are being held in a churchyard by the outer wall,” Croy told him. “It’s only a few streets from here. Once you find these men-”

“It’s better if you don’t know what I’ll do after that,” Malden told him. “We’ll part ways as soon as they’re freed.”

Croy nodded. “Malden,” he said, “this may be the last time I have a chance to talk to you about… something that has been troubling me.”

Malden tensed, wondering what the knight was talking about. Was he going to change his mind now, and demand that he stay and help with the defense of Helstrow?

“There is no time for Cythera and I to be wed before you leave,” Croy went on, looking away from Malden’s face. “I have her promise, but… Malden. I’ve never doubted your friendship. Yet I saw something, under Cloudblade. Something I cannot explain.”

Malden’s heart stopped beating for a moment. “You saw her kiss me.”

Croy couldn’t seem to speak.

This might be the moment, Malden thought, when he tells me he’s going to have to kill me. He considered which way he would run.

But Croy lived by a code of honor. And that meant he had to give a man a chance to defend himself. “Why did she do it?” he asked.

The thief licked his lips. What he said next would have to be very carefully worded. Cythera had said she would tell Croy everything when they returned to Ness. Implicit in that was that he shouldn’t tell Croy himself. He couldn’t tell Croy that he and Cythera loved each other. That the betrothal between the knight and Cythera was already broken.

There was good reason for that silence. Still, Malden burned to have it all out in the open. It would make life so much simpler. In all likelihood, it would also make his life much shorter. Yet he found he couldn’t quite lie. “Allow me to explain. At that moment-the moment of that kiss-I was moments from certain death. The assassin, Prestwicke, was going to kill me. I was a condemned man and I had no hope of survival. I begged her for that kiss, as the last request of a dying man. In such a case, what woman could refuse?”

Croy’s eyes were wide and his face had turned bright red. He was embarrassed, Malden realized, to even have to ask. If another man had caught him kissing his betrothed, a lesser man than Croy, he doubted that explanation would have sufficed. Yet Malden saw other emotions in Croy’s face. Gratitude. Relief. Croy had wanted so badly for there to be a simple, innocent explanation that the knight probably would have accepted anything he said. Anything other than the full truth.

“Surely you don’t doubt her constancy,” Malden insisted. “Her honor-”

“Her honor is my honor, and I would die to defend it. And you’re right, she could not refuse you in a moment like that. She is such a compassionate woman. You see why I love her? Do you understand the strength of my feelings?”

“I think I do,” Malden said softly.

“But that very quality I love makes her vulnerable. Men can be schemers. They can take advantage of woman’s gentler nature, and women aren’t always wise enough to resist their charms.”

Not for the first time Malden remembered that Croy had never spent much time around women. In comparison, Malden, who had been raised by harlots, thought he might know the female mind a little better. He also knew just how well women could resist men’s charms-when they chose to. He decided not to share this knowledge just then.

“Someone else, someone with a less noble heart than yours, Malden, might have taken advantage of that situation. They might have asked for more than a kiss. If she were in a situation where she had to compromise herself, she might question the promise she made to me.”

“Put these thoughts from your mind! Croy, you have enough to worry about!”

Croy shook his head. “I need to ask your aid, Malden, and please, don’t refuse this. I need you to watch her. Make sure she stays safe. And… and pure. I-” Croy let out a little gasp. His fists were clenched before him. “I would die, my soul would shrivel, if I ever learned she did not love me any longer. It would pain me more than arrows through my vitals, Malden!”

“I swear this, Croy,” he said. “No new lover will come near her. I won’t so much as let her be alone with any man but me.”

There were tears in Croy’s eyes when he grasped Malden in a crushing embrace. “You are my friend, after all. I doubted it sometimes-but you are my true friend.”

“Put all your trust in me,” Malden told him. And for the first time in his life, he felt the pangs of conscience for deceiving someone. But he knew he would feel pangs of another sort-the sort one feels with two feet of steel shoved through one’s belly-should Croy ever learn the truth.