The Red Knight

She used to say that the mind was a temple, an inn, a garden, and an outhouse, and that casting with another magus partook of worship, intimate conversation, sex, and defecation.

But as his power reached to hers, hers accepted it, and they were linked.

He winced.

She winced as well.

And then they were in the dormitory, standing in a small hall where, on his former visit, older nuns had sat to read or to do needlework. There was light here. Most of the nuns were out in the yard, but two still sat quietly.

‘Look at them,’ Amicia said. ‘Look.’

He didn’t have to look too hard. Tendrils of power played about them.

‘All of you have the power?’ he asked.

‘Every one of us,’ she said. ‘Come.’

‘When will I see you again?’ he managed, as she led him along the northern curtain behind the stable block. An apple tree grew there, in a stone box set into the wall. There was a bench around it.

Amicia settled onto the bench.

He was too befuddled to seek to kiss her, so he simply sat.

‘All of you are witches?’ he asked.

‘That’s an ugly word for you to use, man-witch,’ she said. ‘Sorcerer. Warlock.’ She looked out over the wall.

Far to the east he saw the barest smudge of orange, and it instantly recalled him to his duty. ‘I must go,’ he said. He wanted to impress her – he wanted not to seem to need to impress her. ‘I’ve sent people to do something I should have done myself,’ he blurted.

She didn’t seem to pay him any heed. ‘I thought that you needed to know what the stakes were,’ she said. ‘I don’t think she is going to tell you. This is a place of power. And the Masters of our Order have filled it with women of power, and with powerful artefacts. Now it shines like a beacon.

He felt blind and foolish at her words. But Prudentia’s rules – on the use of power, on using the sight of power – which were wisdom in a world that distrusted the magi, had deprived him of this insight.

‘That, or she meant me to tell you,’ Amicia added. Her head slumped for the first time that evening.

‘Or she expected me to reason it out for myself,’ he said bitterly. He felt the time flowing away as if he had an hourglass in his hand – he felt tonight’s raid slipping west into the trees, and he felt the lack of alertness on his watch, and sensed a thousand forgotten details, like a tendril of power attached to his soldiers that was pulling him from her side. And the glow far in the east – what was that?

And then he felt her, and it was like a chain that tethered him to the bench.

‘I must go,’ he said again. But youth, and his hand, betrayed him, and he was again in her arms or she in his.

‘I do not want this,’ she said as she kissed him again.

So he broke free. Broke the binding between them with a thought, and stepped away. ‘Do you often come here?’ he asked, his voice hoarse. ‘To the tree?’

She nodded, barely perceptible in the odd light.

‘I might write to you,’ he said. ‘I want to see you again.’

She smiled. ‘I imagine you’ll see me every day,’ she said. ‘I don’t want this. I don’t need it. You don’t know me. We should walk away.’

‘If I strike you now we can end as we started,’ he said. ‘With a kiss and a blow. But you want me as I want you. We are bonded.’

She shook her head. ‘That sort of thing is for children. Listen, Captain. I have been a wife. I know how a man feels between my legs. Ah! You wince. The novice is not a virgin. Shall I go on? I lived across the wall. I was an Outwaller. No, look!’ She peeled back the collar of her gown, and her shoulder was covered in tattoos.

Bathed in the distant firelight her shoulder gleamed, and all he felt was desire.

‘I was taken young, and grew to womanhood among them. I had a husband – a warrior, and we might have grown old together, he as war chief and I the shaman. Until the Knights of the Order came. They killed him, they took me, and here I am. And I do not need rescuing. I live in the world of spirit. I have come to love Jesus. Every time I kiss you, I hurtle backwards in my life to another place. I cannot be with you. I will not be a mercenary’s whore. I sacrificed myself this evening so that you could see what you are so obviously blind to – because you are so very afraid of your power.’ She turned her head. ‘Now go.’

The lines of power to his soldiers were taut as cables. He was ignoring his duty. It was like a broken bone – a scream of pain. But he couldn’t let what was between them rest.

‘You wanted me as much as ever I wanted you, from the moment your eyes met mine. Don’t be a hypocrite. You sacrificed yourself this evening? Rather, you craved this evening and built yourself a reason to let yourself have it.’ Even as he spoke the words, he cursed himself for a fool. It was not what he wanted to say.

‘You have no idea what I do or do not want,’ she said. ‘You have no idea the life I have led.’