Destiny

"That's because I don't have one." Scooping up her own plate and orange juice, A

"Not the lifestyle I now have," he agreed. "But this is a lot better than I started out with."

A

"One of the city-states in Germany. A backwoods place. Its name is long forgotten now." Garin sat and ate his food. "I was the illegitimate son of a famous knight."

"How famous?"

Garin shook his head. "He's been forgotten now. But back then, he was a name. Famous in battle and in tournaments. I was the only mistake he'd ever made."

For a moment, A

If Garin could be believed.

"I like to think that my father cared for me in some way," Garin went on. "After all, he didn't give me to a peasant family as he could have. Or let my mother kill me, as she'd tried on a couple of occasions."

A

"Instead," Garin went on, "my father gave me to a wizard."

"Roux?" That news startled A

"Yes. At least that's what men like him were called in the old days. Once upon a time, Roux's name was enough to strike terror in the hearts of men. When he cursed someone, that person's life was never the same again."

"But that could simply be the perception of the person cursed," A

"What makes the sword disappear?" Garin asked, smiling.

"We weren't finished talking about you." A

"I was nine years old when I was given to Roux," Garin went on. "I was twenty-one when he allied himself with the Maid."

"He allied himself with Joan of Arc?"

Garin nodded. "He felt he had to. So we traveled with her and were part of her retinue."

"Fancy word," A

"My vocabulary is vast. I also speak several languages."

"Joan of Arc," A

"Roux and I served with her. He was one of her counsels. When she was captured by the English, Roux stayed nearby."

"Why didn't he rescue her?"

"Because he believed God would."

"But that didn't happen?"

Garin shook his head. "We were… gone when the English decided to burn her at the stake. We arrived too late. Roux tried to stop them, but there were too many English. She died."

A

"Are you all right?" Concern showed on Garin's handsome face.

"I am. Just tired."

He didn't appear convinced.

"What about the sword?" A

Garin balanced his empty plate on his knee. "It was shattered. I watched them do it."

"The English?"

He nodded. "Afterward, Roux and I realized we were cursed."

A

Then she remembered how Bart McGilley had told her that the fingerprints – friction ridges– she'd pulled from the euro Roux had given her belonged to a suspect in a sixty-three-year-old homicide. She thought about the sword.

"Who cursed you?" she asked.

Garin hesitated, as if he were about to tell her an impossible thing. "I don't know what Roux thinks, but I believe we were cursed by God."

Chapter 23

AFTER GARIN FINISHED his story, A

"You helped Roux look for the sword?" A

Garin shook his head. "No."

"Why?"

"I was angry after Joan's death and I had no idea there would be consequences if the pieces of the sword weren't found."

A

"About twenty years later."

"When you didn't age?"

"No," Garin answered. "I aged. A little. It was when I saw Roux again and saw that he hadn't aged. I began to believe then. I'd thought he would be dead."

"So he has looked for pieces of the sword for over five hundred years?"

Garin nodded. "He has."

"And you didn't help?"

"No. I tried to stop him. I tried to tell him that as it stood, we could live forever. I was becoming wealthy beyond my grandest dreams."

"That was when you started trying to kill him."

Gri

A

"I'm still interested in what happens to the sword." Garin shrugged. "Now that it is whole again, does that mean I no longer have untold years ahead of me?"

"Noticed any gray hairs?" A

He smiled at her. "Your humor is an acquired taste. When you were in Roux's face, I found you delightful. Now I feel that you have no tact."

"Good. But keep in mind that I fed breakfast to a man who broke into my home." Trying not to show her anxiety, A

"Tell me about the sword," Garin said.

Turning, A

"Mostly whether it can be broken again."

A

"I've neverthought it was."

She gri

"If I had lied," he asked, "would you have known?"

"About this? Yes."

"I already know about the sword," Garin pointed out. "I could have left before you returned."

"After you happened to arrive while I was out."

"Of course."

A

Garin's eyes widened as he got to his feet and came toward her. "Let me see it."

"No." A

In a move that caught her totally by surprise, Garin tried to grab the blade in his left hand and slam his right forearm down to break it. Instead, his hand and arm swept through the sword as if it weren't there.