Page 98 of The Champion

Zenobia looked as surprised as she felt. “How unlike him to apologize for anything.”

Rowena frowned at her. “Do you know him?”

Zenobia looked away guiltily.

“What?” A bad feeling came over her. There was something bad in the way Zenobia looked about.

“I know many things about those my father held in his prison and it shames me to no end,” she whispered. “Not so much the stories the Brotherhood tells which are bad enough, but the ones I heard from my father’s men who oft bragged over their cruelty to the ones they ‘guarded’.”

Rowena touched her arm in sympathy. “Is that why you helped them escape?”

Zenobia nodded. “My father forgot that my mother’s people were different from his. We are not ornaments to sit quietly at a man’s side, especially when we see injustice. The Ayasheen are descended from the Amazons. It is our birthright and duty to fight, and I can still hear my mother’s voice in my ear that no one should be deprived of their dignity. Her people believed that enemies should either be respected or executed. If you execute them, then they worry you no more. If you allow them to withdraw with dignity, then they will do so. But when an enemy is held down and made to suffer continuously, sooner or later he will strike out and woe to you when he does. For there is no more fearsome a power than that of long-festered vengeance.”

Rowena nodded. “Your mother was very wise.”

“Aye, she was indeed. You remind me a lot of her.”

She was surprised by Zenobia’s comparison. “Me?”

“Mmm. My mother used to call me Karima. It means ‘little monkey’ in her language. She would say that I run about and shriek, throwing things and aggravating others until I get my way. She was quiet and steady, like an unmovable wall, firm in her convictions and herself.”

Rowena smiled at her. “That sounds much better than ‘stubborn as an ass’ which is what my uncle calls me.”

Zenobia laughed at that. “Stubborn is only bad when it causes you to act against your best interest.”

“How so?”

“Remember I told you of the man I love?”

“Aye.”

“‘Tis his stubbornness that keeps him from me. Rather than accept what I offer him, he travels the world forever seeking a peace that will never come to him. Sometimes what we want and what we need aren’t compatible.”

“What are you saying?”

“If Stryder wins this troubadour contest and you are given your choice of husband. Who will you choose?”

That was easy enough to answer. “I will choose my freedom of course.”

“Because you need it or because you want it?”

Rowena looked away as truth struck her. “Neither. I will choose it because the man I want is much like yours. He won’t stay with me and should I force him to it he will resent me. Better I should grow old alone, than married to a man who will only learn to hate me for binding him to me against his will.”

To her surprise, Zenobia laughed again. “You are my mother, patrulla.” She took her arm and led her toward the stairs. “Come with me, Lady Rowena. I lost the man I love, but you...you have me, and together let us see what we can do with yours.”

“Do you think we can win him over?”

Zenobia let out a long, measured breath. “All we can do is try.”

Thirteen

Stryder walked through the tournament field of knights feeling much like a leper at banquet. The morning’s battle might have acquitted him in the eyes of the law, but in the eyes of everyone else, he was a murderer.

Whispers of gossipmongers, both male and female, followed him everywhere he went. There were no ladies mobbing him. For once, he could probably strip himself bare and no woman would dare come near.

Perhaps murder did have some advantages...

Sighing, he saw his brother sitting underneath a tree, alone, plucking at his lute while he made notes on a piece of vellum.