The Unicorn Hunters: A Novel(60)

The noise rose again outside: thudding and shouting, the scream of splintering wood. “Elesbed, you must come with us,” said Anne. “Moreau wishes you ill. Leave your cat with Hawiz.”

Elesbed started to cry. But she nodded, her chin wrinkled and quivering. She put her fat yellow cat into Hawiz’s arms. The cat made an irritable noise, but she let herself be passed. Elesbed said, “I love you, Butter. I’m ready, Highness.”

The shouting was mounting toward the castle. Anne had bitten her lip bloody. Her eyes fell again on the unmoving Calyx.

“We have to go,” said Louis, and offered her his arm.



* * *





When Anne blinked, she felt her eyelashes clumped wet. “Yes.” She kissed Hawiz. Isabeau and Elesbed were holding tight to each other. “Now.”

The group went fast and quietly, with Anne and Louis ahead, Henri and Madeleine behind with Isabeau, and a dozen of her guard following. Anne and Isabeau had snatched up cloaks and sturdier shoes. Henri and Louis were in court-dress. Any delay, and they’d be bottled up, trapped. She would not think of De Rieux.

“Help me,” she told Louis at the staircase. She was clumsy on stairs. She put an arm around his neck; he took her weight on his shield-arm and they ran down together. She still could not believe he was there.

“Are you sure?” she whispered as they ran.

He looked down into her face. “No,” he said. “But I could not do otherwise.”

She did not ask again. Outside the castle proper rose the sounds of wild confusion now, men at the gate, men fighting on the wall, her Bretons rallying, the furious servants with pikes and cleavers.

Then, with only one more room to cross before the servants’ door, Anne saw the wrongness in the shadows.

She stopped dead, and the others followed suit. There was a faint patch of sourceless firelight on the floor. Where had it come from? She narrowed her eyes, gritted her teeth as another spike of pain went through her head. She saw—could it be? The firelight was from a room in that very castle, Marguerite and Moreau standing together with guards clustered warily.

Anne stumbled back. They were working together, Moreau and the lady of France. This was a trap. She was sure of it. If Anne, half-crazed with the sea-drake’s blood, could pull Elesbed between the layers of the world, Moreau could surely drag her from this light to that. And then she would be made prisoner.

In a rage, she pushed that firelit layer of the world away, bid it be dark and still and ordinary night. To her surprise, the unnatural light on the floor disappeared.

Was the trap then gone? She took a hesitant step forward. Nothing happened.

“Come on,” said Anne.

They went on. Her head throbbed with every step.

Out the door, into the fine starlight, through the postern-gate, across the bridge facing Nantes, into the city, heads down, hurrying. They had not had time to get horses from the castle proper; there was a relais with horses across the river. If they could only reach it.

They came out into the cathedral-square and, gasping, halted.

The square was full of people.

But not one head in the crowd turned. They were walking slowly and somberly, faces lit brightly with the absent sun, pacing toward an end she couldn’t see.

“Who are they?” whispered Isabeau.

Henri said, “Anaon,” and Elesbed said, “Enchantments.”

“They are here to slow us down,” said Louis practically.

Anne’s headache was becoming a red mist. She tried again to find the right layer of the world and separate it out, taking these people with it. They vanished, but she bit back a scream. The pain of the effort had nearly stopped her breathing.

“What in God’s name?” muttered Louis. “Anne?”

“We have to get to the river,” said Anne, sweating and shaking.

Commotion was spilling from the castle; they’d realized Anne and Isabeau had slipped away. But now the tones of shouting citizens mingled with the running feet of soldiers. The Nantais were proud of their independence and they were fond of her. They were spilling into the streets as garbled news spread from the castle. There was a burst of shouting, a clatter of hooves. Henri hauled them down a side street. They were passing the grain warehouse, moving faster now, Louis taking most of her weight. The river was near.

Another incongruous patch of light; Anne saw and cried a warning just before a wild boar stepped out of the shadows between them and the water.

Anne tried to see the beast’s layer of the world, but it was no anaon. It was really there, and she couldn’t fix her mind on the proper light. It was going to charge, and whoever it charged was going to die. Nothing is more dangerous than a charging boar. There was rain on its back, though no rain fell in Nantes. It scraped the earth with a delicate foot. Swords were useless against such a beast.

But Louis took a renewed grip on his sword. “I’ll draw its charge,” he said to Henri. “Get the duchess to the water.”

Henri pulled her away from Orléans; she was in too much pain to argue. She burrowed frantically through the layers of the world like turning the pages of a book, while agonized tears fell.

There it was. A gray cold day, a rain falling fast. She screamed as eerie autumn light burst over that summer night, and the boar charged into nothing.

Anne fell, still screaming from the pain in her head. The city was alight with lanterns, clashing and shouting. Her Bretons were coming out of their houses, crowding the streets. Helping her. But that was an abstract thought, without force. She could not think what to do about it. No. She must not fail them. She must be awake, she must ride. “Anne,” said Louis, into her hair. “Anne!”