Nina was mostly watching Tuck sitting on the edge of the little stage, half turned in her bench so that her back was against the window ledge. She had one arm resting on the table. Her fingers were loosely around the tall pint of frothy ale, bouncing to the man’s strumming.

  It wasn’t him that fascinated her more than Enya, who sat opposite her at the table, getting impatient with Freider’s wife at how long their meals were taking. It was the woman who was plucking a violin on her shoulder with him, dancing across the stage with thin legged kicks and whips of colorful ribbons braided into her hair, her multi-layered dress a sea of colors swishing around her like a stormy ocean.

  “I bet it’ll be colder than the beer when we finally get it,” Enya twisted around to take a gulp of her pint.

  Nina shrugged. She was beginning to sway to the music.

  Enya wiped her mouth with the bavk of her wrist, “The native folk aren’t known for being friendly.”

  Nina could see on Tuck’s face that he was enchanted by the violinist as much as most of the men within the pub. The tables around them were full.

  She knew the fathers of the marriageable youth were at the bar—friends of the barkeep—but the migrants and soldiers filled the rest from end to end. Clerics and their men, a few guildsmen, a young family bouncing their youngest on their laps to enjoy Tuck’s perfect pitch and rhythm. But his pitch was going high enough that the friends of the barkeep were making faces. He was hitting notes that even Nina could hear strain in—not off pitch, but strained—whenever the dancing violinist turned her eye in his direction. And she was pretty. Olive skin, doe eyes, dark hair, and long neck, wearing a dress that was mismatched colorful patches.

  “He has a pretty voice,” Enya said with a chop of her lips at the taste left from the ale. “Terrible beer, but good music.”

  “Just wait,” Nina didn’t look away.

  She knew what the dancing violinist was waiting for. She wanted him to grow tired of trying to impress her. She was already impressed. She wanted her turn. As she plucked the beat to match his rising tenor, his voice going higher and higher, Nina saw her cheeks filling with a wanton grin.

  “She’s about to take over for him.”

  “Who?” Enya leaned to see. “Oh,” she sighed and sat back down. “What, is she your kin or something?”

  Nina shook her head before taking a sip of her ale. Enya was right. The beer was terrible. But it was better than nothing.

  Tuck’s voice finally broke from the strain. The men at the bar began laughing. People at the tables were mostly silent or trying to hide their own want to laugh. The woman met Nina’s eyes with a glare before turning it on everyone within the pub. Tuck started to pull his guitar strap from his shoulder in defeat.

  “I know that feeling better than anyone,” Enya took a longer gulp of her ale.

  Nina nodded, “Me too.”

  The woman squatted on the stage beside Tuck and pushed the guitar strap back on his shoulder. Then, she kissed him on the cheek and stood. Her foot stomped on the stage, making a loud snap. A smile spread across Nina’s face.

  “Now, we’re going to get a show,” Nina tapped Enya’s arm. “Let’s see if he can keep up. She’ll match him if he can’t, but if he can…he’ll never be rid of her.”

  The woman lifted her violin bow over her head and stomped her foot again. No one but Nina and Enya had turned to her. Her dark eyes narrowed. She brought the bow down across the strings of her violin in a shriek that made everyone wince, including Tuck. The woman raised the brow at each of them, slowly lowering her bow to her violin once more. One long, weeping note across the violin. Flawless.

  She nudged Tuck, who gave her a confused upward glance. She winked at him. Her feet began moving, not just in her dances across the stage, but beating like drums of different sizes as they moved. Her bow swooped across the violin, wrapping the air in a bouncing melody that flowed around her colorful swirls. And then, she began to sing.

  The pub was motionless at the sight, at the sound, at the music. Nina smiled. Enya gaped, along with everyone else, except for those who must have heard her before. Her voice was high, then low, high again, middle, fluctuating with every word, every syllable, swaying with her bow without breaking, without flinches or flaws, as if the air itself were bending to her will. And she was moving across the stage as she had before, kicking and spinning, whirling and sliding, all while her feet tapped the beat, her hands swayed the notes of the instrument, and her fingers pinned the chords. And Tuck, once he caught the rhythm, once he was able to follow the beat of her heels, fell into it just as naturally. His hands strummed and plucked his guitar, sweat beading off his brow as the smile spread over his face and his head bobbed.

  When it finally came to an end, the pub filled with cheers. There were a few from those at the bar, lifting their spilling mugs with shouts of, ‘Best marry her while she’s drunk this time!’ But what Nina was able to pick out of all the cheers was Tuck saying with a heavy heart to the woman, “I’m a drunk.”

  The woman only winked and kissed him, “I know.”

  “You ever love someone, Pally?” Nina turned to face Enya, who looked like she had just thrown a diamond into her tosspot.

  Enya coughed down a gulp of her ale and set it down, blinking at her. “Have you?”

  “I think so,” Nina regarded her. She shrugged, “I think so.”

  “If you’re thinking that you’re in love with the King, you’re not,” Enya held her empty stein for Freider to see. He nodded to her and she grinned her thanks.

  “How do you know that? I might be.”

  Enya chuckled. “Because there are only two people in this village who actually know the King. One is a fresh faced boy who arrived yesterday and the other is the potbellied Captain. Everyone else only knows the man who doesn’t have the time to say what he really wants to say. Trust me, I can see the frustration whenever even I try to have conversations with him. So, no, you’re not in love with him. You’re in love with the idea of him, if it’s love at all.”

  “Probably right,” Nina took another drink. Then, with a squinty-eyed challenge, she said, “You think the Regent’s in love with him? Cause, she seems to have staked her claim.”

  Enya met the challenge with her own narrowed eyes. “You’re really going to push this, aren’t you? No, I don’t think she’s in love with him, either. I think she has no idea how she feels about him except that she’s…a bit…territorial.”

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  “A bit?” Nina began laughing. “She would’ve gouged my eyes out. Look, I may not be in love with him—yet—but one thing I know is that when I was certain that I was going to die, I had one thing on my mind—just one. And it wasn’t God, it wasn’t whether or not I did my duty for the Church or any of that. It was him. It was…that I got to kiss him at least once.”

  “If you’re trying to convince me to allow you to stay, you’re doing a piss-poor job of it,” Enya cocked her brow at her.

  “I’m just saying,” Nina leaned onto the table. “None of us know him. Don’t you think it should be up to him? Plus, I’m supposed to be his spymaster and he has yet to come through on that.” She leaned back with pride, “He owes me.”

  “He said you would be his spymaster?”

  “Yeah,” Nina crossed her arms. “But you and the powers-that-be sent me to Geneva before he woke up, remember?”

  “You kissed the man in broad daylight in front of everyone in the Cathedral nave! We had to do something! You’re a liability.”

  “To who? Just because I kissed one man doesn’t mean I’m going around kissing all of them,” Nina slammed her hand on the table. One of the men near the table turned toward her. She held up a hand at him, “Move on if you don't want to be a eunuch.” The man’s eyes bulged and he turned back around.

  “I wasn’t saying that, either, though it was implied,” Enya shrugged at her. “Most women don’t just kiss a man like that, in church. I certainly never have.”

  “I was on a suicide mission, Pally,” Nina’s eyes were beginning to water. “I knew I wasn’t going to survive. If it wasn’t for Cleric Marion, I wouldn’t have. And neither would my King. So, yes, I kissed the only man I have ever kissed before I was going to die and I got sent away before anyone even told me he lived for it.”

  “The what now?” Enya’s eyes were wide, her ear aimed at her.

  Nina rolled her eyes to keep from letting any tears fall. “Nothing.”

  “Oh no, that was something. There was definitely something in there—sounded like…only man? Was he the first man you ever kissed?”

  “What? Is that such a big surprise for you?” Nina shook her head. “I’m always excited to find out people’s opinions of me. It’s always so flattering.”

  “I mean, I knew you grew up on the streets and all.”

  “Doesn’t mean I sold my body, weaver. I was a novice nun-to-be, remember?”

  “Not all nuns are virgins. Trust me,” Enya gave a smiling thanks when Freider set a frothy-topped mug in front of her. “I’ve met plenty that had their fun about their home villages before devoting themselves to God. Usually that was the inspiration, to be honest.”

  “Mine was watching my brothers get gutted by the bailiff for stealing bread,” Nina said flatly.

  Enya took a long breath and nodded. “Sorry. Good reason as any. So, you’ve really never kissed anyone…ever…except him? That once?”

  Nina bit the side of her lower lip with another shrugging roll of her eyes. “Yeah. I just want to speak with him about what he promised me for what I did in Strasbourg. I’m supposed to be a member of his council. I’m supposed to be his spymaster. Not his wife-to-be or any of that. But he needs me to help protect him. And not in plowing Geneva.”

  “Okay,” Enya nodded. “Fine. I’ll get you more permanent housing. But,” she pointed a finger from her cup, “This fawning over him needs to stop. If he wants you hanging over him, he approaches you. No more of this ‘my king’ business and trying to mount the man at every opportunity. The last thing I need is to have Aurie confess to skinning you alive.”

  “That’s what you’re worried about? Her?”

  “And you’re not?”

  “Not really, no,” Nina finished her own cup and held it up for Freider. She got a smile from him as an answer. She smiled back. “Why, should I be?”

  “She’s powerful.”

  “In what way?” Nina tipped her head sideways, regarding Enya playfully.

  “She has the Gift of Tongues and I think she may already have her second gift,” Enya tipped her drink for another sip before finishing, “Normally they appear in the opposite order. Take a look around. What do you see, yourself included? And look past the faces and names.”

  “Masons, carpenters, soldiers,” Nina turned to Enya, “This place is about to be hit hard and we’re running out of time to build our defenses.”

  “I estimate we have the winter, at most,” Enya nodded. “Father Hagen is taking Aurie off my hands for a few days for that reason. I need to organize the Abbey’s siege with the cohorts that are arriving next week. So, you want to stay and play spymaster, you best figure out how to become a bit more righteous. Because you won’t be stopping politicians and assassins sent by kings.”

  Nina’s eyes fell to the cup in front of her. As Freider brought her another, she looked up to him with fluttering lashes, “Would you happen to have something stronger? Like, your strongest? Whatever it is, I need a shot of that, too.”

  “Really?” Enya raised a brow at her.

  “You sure, miss?” Freider eyed her.

  Nina turned to Enya, “I’m safe with you.” She took a deep breath, “And if this is the last time I’m going to get drunk, then I might as well make it worth it.”

  “You’re serious?” Enya chuckled.

  Nina nodded, “You can’t fight the devil with a mind mudded by impurities. Who knew my interest in the celestial texts would pay off.”

  Enya only lifted her pint when Freider handed Nina the shot of clear liquid. Nina could taste the alcohol wafting from it. She thanked him as she tipped it against Enya’s stein with a wince.

  “Oh, I’m going to regret this,” She tipped her head back and dumped it down her throat. It burned all the way to her stomach. Her eye twitched.

  Enya pointed and laughed at her.

  “Not.” She burped. “Funny.”

  Enya snorted, a wrist to cover her mouth as she slapped the table. “It is, though. It really is.”

  Nina swallowed a little. She breathed a little. “That was disgusting.”

  “Looked like it,” Enya was still chuckling as she lifted her ale for another drink.

  Nina raised her hand in the air, “TWO MORE, MISTER FREIDER!”

  “You really think you can handle two more of those?” Enya set down her cup in disbelief.

  “No,” Nina waited until Freider nodded his answer before turning to her. “One is for you.”