Banner of the Damned (26 page)

Kivic whistled. “Now, that’s a swindle. Is the pay bad? It is for gear men, though I’ve ambitions. I’m learning from the farrier.”

The storm broke right then, lightning reflecting so brightly through the tiny window it was almost blinding. Before the thunder died away the rain began, a steady roar on the roof.

Torsu looked up apprehensively, and Kivic said, “You watch. It’ll be over before your third cup is drunk.”

The wine, its sweetness and warmth, the coolness rain brought after the relentless heat, all conspired to make Torsu very well satisfied with her place now, in contrast to her lonely bed up in the dressers’ dormitory, surrounded by chattering hummers to whom she could not speak.

Kivic poured out more wine and made a motion as if refilling his own cup, though he hadn’t yet finished his first.

“They pay us well enough,” Torsu admitted, shrugging sharply. “But it’s not what a person could make who has ambitions.”

“I take it that means you’re saving your wages?”

She grinned, bumping her cup against her teeth. “Someday, when I have all the secrets of the royal wardrobe, I’ll move to a wealthy town where the women have pretensions, and I’ll be rich in a year. But I’ll need stock.” Torsu had never told anyone that.

“A fine ambition,” Kivic said.

The rain ended as abruptly as it had begun, except for steady drips from the cornice outside Kivic’s room. She’d drunk too much. She’d better go.

“Now, I bet you have to pay extra for a simple massage,” Kivic said. “I know we do. And what a shame. Because, if you were a horse, I’d say you had tension here and here.”

He set aside his cup and stepped behind her. Finger pressed on her shoulders either side of her neck—the very muscles that got so tired sewing the fine stitches that had earned her her position. “Oh that’s right on the spot,” she breathed.

He chuckled. “You know, this is good practice. I could pretend you were a horse, and you don’t even have to pay, like you would at the pleasure house. How’s that?” As he spoke he pressed his fingers into her muscles. He wasn’t as adept as the pleasure house men, but she was a little drunk, and she liked the slow circles that sent sparks of pleasure down her back, to pool, like warm wine, in her belly.

“It’s good,” she muttered hoarsely.

The fingers moved outward along her shoulders, to the muscles inside of her shoulder blades, and she breathed in, leaning into his fingers.

“So many knots. A race horse doesn’t get so many. They must work you girls a whole lot harder than anyone knows.”

The fingers shifted down to her collarbones. She winced when he dug in too hard. He shifted to light caresses outward, and the tingles spread before them. She knew by now that he was seducing her—the massage was clumsy, but the slow approach to the places that tingled was so… so different from the pleasure house men who gave expert massages before sex, always so matter-of-factly, always with an eye to the sand glass. Kivic seemed to be in no hurry, and her muscles melted into warm wax. She closed her eyes, scarcely aware when a hand lifted, nipped the cup from her lax fingers, and set it aside, while the other smoothed and smoothed at the base of her neck.

Scarcely aware when a piece of cloth was cast over the glowglobe, so the light on her eyelids cozily dimmed, and when, at last, slow fingers moved to her bodice strings and untied them, one by one, she welcomed the shivery feeling of air on her flesh as she stretched out on the bed that she discovered was conveniently nearby.

The storm boiled furiously overhead then diminished into the east, taking the thunder with it. The single toll of the third-hour bell echoed through the rain-washed night air as Torsu hurried back to the dormitory, smiling with pleasure at the dripping trees, flowers, plants.

Kivic had asked nothing about the princess, nothing at all. Dessaf was an old Gruska, and meanwhile, a girl had a right to pleasure, hadn’t she?

Kivic stood at the top of the barn and watched as she skimmed along the pathway, holding her skirts up. He stretched, laughing to himself, then returned to his room, and hastily straightened up. Not long after, he heard voices as the rest of the hall’s inhabitants returned in a group, now that the rain was gone. He snuffed the light, lay down, and pretended to sleep.

Sure enough, a rough hand banged his door open, a drunken voice muttered, “Oh, he’s dead to the world.”

“We better be, too. Dawn bells next, high-steppers!”

Raucous laughter echoed down the flimsy wooden hallway as doors slammed.

Kivic rose, touched the door, muttered a sealing spell. Tested it. When it held, he snapped on his light and then pulled out paper and pen, pausing to smile. Almost four months, he’d watched the royal cooks, runners, dressers, cleaners, all. Patience, he thought. Thinking back over the sweetness of the night was its own reward.

He wrote, chuckling,
My liege, I am in.

Wasn’t that the truth! And he’d be in again before week’s end, if he wasn’t mistaken. By the time the princess returned, if he continued to be patient, he would be “in” the princess’s chambers at last, through a very sharp pair of ears.

He put the paper in a transfer case, tapped it as he said the spell-word, and on the other side of the mountains, far to the north, King Jurac Sonscarna of the Chwahir felt the mental alarm that signaled a communication from his most trusted spy.

Jurac rose, snapped on a light, retrieved his transfer case, read the
note, and threw it into the fireplace, where it flared briefly and burned out. Though it was summer, Chwahirsland was seldom warm enough for the fires to be doused.

He got up, though he’d had scant sleep. Events had transpired so rapidly—in a matter of days, and all his way. After years of effort and waiting. He’d always known that old woman would have an heir, but until he’d found Kivic, he’d never been able to get anyone past the layers of invisible barriers in that palace.

Now, in the same year, he had both the perfect spy, and his princess forced out of inheritance.

His princess
. He laughed, walking about the room and rubbing his hands as he remembered her beautiful face, her smiles, all the more brilliant while she was surrounded with those smirking, drawling courtiers. Of course she would want to be a queen, but that had been taken away from her in Colend, as he’d always known it would be.

Now she could again be a queen, and he was going to make her one. Sleep was impossible. Joy and anticipation made his heart race too fast for that. It was time to issue orders and make ready to ride south. Time to claim Lasthavais for his bride.

“S

Tharais studied her beloved, whose gaze mirrored her anxiety, despite his darling smile. She couldn’t see it, but she sensed a question underlying the spoken question.

“I love your home, of course,” Tharais exclaimed. One arm was looped most satisfactorily through his, so she waved her free hand to sweep around his world. “I love your arches and your tiles and all those pretty paintings that run along the tops of rooms.”

“Athanarel is not as large as what you’re used to,” Geral observed.

“I’m not marrying a huge castle, or even a huge palace. I’m marrying you,” she replied and kissed him.

He kissed her back, thoroughly, until they both ran out of breath and broke apart, laughing.

“I dug up an old map soon as I got home,” Geral admitted. “I suspect it’s long out of date, but from what I saw, your father rules a kingdom so large all of Remalna might fit right into your royal city.”

“I’m not marrying a kingdom, either,” she retorted.

Geral’s brow puckered. “Yes, you are.”

Tharais sighed as she guided him out of the upper hallway in the royal residence wing, which he’d been showing her so they could decide
what to get rid of, what to keep, and what to change—always with a mind to the budget.

Tharais had never had to deal with the concept of budget before, but she’d mastered it quickly enough. The royal coffers here were not unlimited. She could see that Geral lived comfortably but not with the extravagance of the Enaeraneth court, or with the unstinting eye for military advantage that she saw at home in Marloven Hesea. None of which mattered a jot to her.

“I love the palace and the kingdom,” she said, before her mind slid back to those cold winters at home and the constant fear she lived with in the royal city, with the ever-impending violence when her father grew angry, or Ivandred grew angry, especially at one another. Yes, the castle in the Marloven royal city was huge, but not huge enough. People had sometimes died as a result of Van’s standing up to the king, but mostly Van suffered savage punishments that he would then pretend had never happened, except he’d go very quiet.

A chill tightened Tharais’s shoulder blades, and she kissed the watching Geral again. She didn’t know that he’d seen that bleak expression again. He’d learned that it meant she was thinking of Marloven Hesea. Macael had once admitted seeing it, too.

I’ve never gone over the mountains to visit my Marloven cousins, though Thar’s invited me
, Macael had told Geral.
But anything that could make her return to us so stiff and jumpy on her first days back in Enaeran is nothing I ever want to see
.
Especially as she never tells us why.

Tharais broke into his thoughts. “I know I’ll marry a kingdom, Geral. And I know its size, and the principal families, and what you trade where. The tutor you sent taught me all that, too, while we practiced your tongue. And I speak it well, do I not?”

“With the most charming accent.” Geral’s grin was merry, the first thing she had noticed about this otherwise unprepossessing fellow. Geral was her height, stocky, his thinning hair mouse brown. He’d been easily overlooked at the Enaeraneth court, except that Macael had liked him so much, joking with him until Geral’s quick wit drew her attention and slowly but surely, her admiration.

His wit was not only quick but also kind. He liked everyone, he found everyone interesting, no matter what degree, and it was that aspect of him that had sharpened her admiration into attraction. That and the fact that his military knowledge was negligible—just enough to know who, in his kingdom, to talk to when it came to keeping peace.

“Accent? Me?” she said, tweaking his ear. “I do not have an accent. It
is all of you who do. Ther-r-ray-ezzz. I hear that, and think they are talking about someone else. And Van says it took him the better part of two days to figure out who ‘Yah-vandrath’ was.”

At the mention of her brother’s name Geral pressed his lips together, then he looked away and said, “Why don’t we take a ride while the weather’s nice? You can show off your splendid horse, and I’ll show you the garden. I put in a plantation of fruit trees—”

“Geral.” She stopped him with a hand flat against his chest. “My brother hasn’t… said anything or done anything to you, has he?”

“Oh, no, of course not,” Geral said quickly. “He’s been most polite. To me, to everyone. He never makes demands, unlike some of those puppies Macael insisted on bringing. Life! My steward tells me she had to hire a dozen extra day-servants, just because of those fellows’ constant demands. You’d think they were the heirs to gigantic kingdoms and not—”

“Geral.” She pulled him outside into the lovely sea breeze. She sniffed the enticing salt air. As long as she didn’t have to be
on
the water, she could get used to this proximity to the Sartoran Sea.

They walked down the broad, shallow stairs, past the new wing that Geral’s father had begun and then abandoned, and that Geral was hoping to begin again. When they were on the pathway between the flowerbeds, where she could see if anyone approached, she said, “Something’s wrong, and it has to do with my brother. It would be better if I knew.”

“But he hasn’t done anything wrong—at least, not to any of us. Not that I have a right to comment on.”

“Oh.” She winced. “Don’t tell me someone’s been spying on their drill.”

Geral’s cheery face suffused with color. “Yes. That would be me,” he admitted.

“What happened?”

The young king sighed. “You have to realize that news of what you did up on the Fal River reached us long before you rode in. I mean, for well over a year there’s been rumors about that rascal Denlieff, who calls himself the new King of Lamanca, and how conveniently certain lawless types vanish into his kingdom. I’d heard of Dandy Glamac—bad, horribly bad. No one even
tried
to stop him. But you and your brother, with a handful of boys and girls, put them out like a doused fire.” He paused, looking unhappy.

“Go on.”

“So when you arrived, of course, people toasted you and all that, and
when your brother asked for a garrison court, a private one, so he could exercise his fellows, I had to agree. And I made sure that no one has any business along that wall, though there aren’t any windows. There are peepholes, though.” Now he looked guilty.

Tharais snorted a laugh. “Our castle is riddled with ‘em. Go on.”

“My great-aunt showed me that peephole when I was little. Never mind why—the reason no longer exists. Main thing is, I had heard all that, and I couldn’t help going to watch them drilling to see if rumor had made a tree out of a twig, as it usually does.”

“Not always,” she said in a grim voice.

He searched her face, saw that she was not angry with him, and said, “Well, and so I watched. And they
are
good. So good that I couldn’t even tell you what it is they do, except swing lances until they hum, and throw one another using what seems to be a thumb and a knee, and ride like they were stuck to the horse’s back. I couldn’t see the least error, but they sure could, because at the end, your brother called two of them out, and whipped them himself. He didn’t use a stick, the way the tutors did in my grandfather’s day. He used a short leddas whip, and the boys stood still for it, then went to the ensorcelled bucket to wipe the blood off. Then they put their shirts back on and went right back to work, though I saw one of them faint not long after. I hope he didn’t get beaten for that.”