Indomitus Oriens (The Fovean Chronicles) (24 page)

             
“Tell you the truth, I think it was a draw,” the Mountain said, as his woman ran to his side and give him a wet kiss.

             
“I guess that is one truth,” Lupus said.

             
“You think you took me?” the Mountain asked him. He’d become excited and forgotten whom he was talking to.

             
“It was a draw,” Shela said. She already knelt in front of Little Storm, inspecting his fetlocks and hooves. As always, five minutes in the stables and she’d covered herself in horsehair.

             
“No, mama,” Vulpe said. “Little Storm won. I
saw
it.”

             
“Blizzard won,” Lee said. Probably defending her father like a good daughter.

             
“Looked like a tie to me,” the new female said, returning to the Empress’ side. Seeing them together like that, J’her would have believed they could be sisters.

             
“If I may, Lord Emperor?” Glynn said to Lupus.

             
“Please,” Lupus said, dismounting. “I can’t think of any party more disinterested than the Uman-Chi.”

             
She smiled politely. “And so,” she said. “My interest aside, I think there is no doubt that Uman-Chi eyes are sharper than those of Men and Uman.”

             
Many people nodded. J’her knew it to be true. Of course, you never knew where those eyes might be looking.

             
“If your mark is the beginning of the gate,” Glynn said, “then the victory is to the black. If it is the gate’s far side, well then the white finished victorious.”

             
Lupus looked at the Mountain. “Well, we didn’t say, now, did we?”

             
“I was only guessing we were racing here,” the Mountain said in Uman. He had an odd accent but J’her could understand him.

             
“Call it a draw,” Lupus said. “The Emperor has spoken.”

             
There followed a good deal of swearing from those gathered outside of the royal party, the stable help being notorious gamblers.

             
“He is perfect,” Shela announced. Even she wouldn’t inspect Blizzard. And after a race like that, the stallion would be particularly excited. She went right up to the Mountain, the focus on her face almost terrible to those who knew what she was capable of. “How did you get him to do that?”

             
“Before you answer,” Lupus said, placing a hand on the Mountain’s shoulder. “An Andaran takes talk of horseflesh seriously.

             
“We will walk and talk,” he added. “I am hungry and I am sick of Uman-Chi fare. I want steak and potatoes and plenty of beer.”

             
“Uck!” Shela complained. “You eat like the wolf you are.”

             
“Why change what works?” Lupus said.

             
“He had the wrong bit,” the Mountain said.

             
J’her listened as he sent two Wolf Soldiers to alert the house staff. He sent two more to ready rooms for the Men, and walked up next to Glynn.

             
“Baroness,” he said, “will you be shown to your rooms?”

             
“An it please you, Sirrah” she said. “I must meditate.”

             
“Your brother is in the city,” J’her informed her. “Ancenon now calls himself an Escaroth? He asked I let you know he’ll meet with you.”

             
Glynn nodded, her face expressionless.

             
A squad of ten escorted her. She left without a good-bye.

             
“Who had the wrong bit?” Shela demanded.

             
“Little Storm,” Bill said. He picked up Vulpe and put him in the stallion’s saddle. Lee immediately started bouncing up and down, and he reached for her beside him.

             
The Mountain didn’t see the dagger appear in Nina’s hand. J’her intervened discreetly, pulling the Aschire body guard back from the group and informing her of Lupus’ orders. She just snarled. Even Wolf Soldiers didn’t touch Lee without Nina’s permission. Certainly no strange Men could be allowed.

             
Shela had the headstall off of Little Storm, and the Mountain guided the stallion by a fist full of mane. Little Storm stood almost as tall as Blizzard, and had that same arched neck, the difference being Little Storm didn’t rip the Mountain’s arm off at the shoulder for touching him.

             
“Draft horses use this bit,” she said. “You can’t control him with this, he won’t know when to turn.”

             
“I think he would prove you wrong,” Lupus said. “We took three turns and he beat me every time.”

             
“With this?” Shela’s expression told J’her where this would end. He would have an Empress in bloomers and no top shortly.

             
“Get the Empress’ riding gear, and double time,” he told Hennethen, an Uman Sergeant. Hennethen could run a daheer in four minutes. He left before J’her could explain why.

             
“He gagged on the straight bit,” the Mountain said, “and took it in his teeth. I thought he was just mean, but he was confused by it.”

             
“We want to ride him, mama,” Vulpe said.

             
“I will be the next to ride him,” Shela informed him.

             
“You better ask his owner first,” Lupus said. That surprised even J’her. Lupus casually led Blizzard into his private stall, with the reinforced walls, and the ceiling high enough for him to rear, which he did frequently.

             
“What?”

             
“You were going to geld him,” Lupus said. “The Mountain earned him. It’s the Andaran way, and you know it.”

             
“I’m the only Andaran here,” Shela said. “I’ll decide what—”

             
Lupus turned on his heel. He stared her down, his eyebrows knit in anger. She stopped as if she had been pole-axed.

             
“Was I unclear?” Lupus asked his wife.

             
“No, my Lord,” she said, and lowered her head.

             
J’her had been married once. She’d left with his family. He had been married only four years, but he’d never struck her. Not so, Lupus the Conqueror. From a pat on the bottom to a backhand that spun her completely around, Lupus thought nothing of striking the Empress.

             
The Empress had blown the gates off of Outpost IX when Lupus had sacked the city—J’her had seen it with his own eyes. A Bounty Hunter had broken into the Imperial nursery and Shela had caught him. J’her had ordered the man cleaned up with a dustpan. If Shela didn’t see eye-to-eye with Lupus, as he often put it, there wouldn’t be enough left of the Emperor to bury.

             
But this one thing he wished Lupus didn’t do.

* * *

              “Bill, share,” Melissa said, trying to make a joke of it.

             
Mike had never hit her, but Melissa knew it had been close. She had discussed this with Shela; she knew the Empress felt that Lupus not only had a right, but a responsibility to hit her. Melissa still didn’t want to see it.

             
Bill grinned, his beard bristling. He had just led Little Storm into a stall opposite Blizzard. The mood had gone quiet and everyone seemed uncomfortable.

             
“If it is my decision, your Imperial Majesty?” he said, deferring to Lupus. That was smart, Melissa thought. She would have just said, “Of course you can,” and possibly made matters worse.

             
Lupus nodded to Bill and turned his back on all of them, unbuckling the cinch and pulling the saddle from Blizzard’s back.

             
“Empress Shela,” he said, “I ask that you please ride my horse, and give me your opinion, if and when it is convenient for you.”

             
“I am hardly dressed for it,” Shela said, and slapped at the skirt of her dress, already covered in horsehair. “Of course, it isn’t like I am going to ruin this outfit.”

             
“Your riding apparel is on its way, Empress,” one of the Wolf Soldiers said; one so big and strong, he could almost be mistaken for a Man, Melissa thought. She’d seen him leave with Lupus and Bill.

             
“J’her, you know me well,” Shela said, and smiled. Right on cue, another Wolf Soldier ran up to them all, made a fist over his heart, and handed the Empress a pile of neatly folded clothes, and boots.

             
“
He
didn’t forget the shoes,” Shela noted, looking pointedly at her husband.

             
“That’s it,” Lupus said, and reached for a riding crop in Blizzard’s stall.

             
“No!” Shela protested and, grabbing her clothes from the Wolf Soldier, took off down the row of stalls, her husband right behind her.

             
Melissa could hear her giggling, even when she heard the crack of the crop.

             
Vulpe looked at Lee. “Do you think she’s telling him about the plums,” he asked.

             
“You’re stupid,” she answered.

             
“
You’re
stupid,” he countered.

             
“Enough,” Bill said. Again, he reached for them, and again they leapt into his arms, allowing themselves to be lowered to the ground.

             
“Stay away from behind him,” Bill warned. “He’s excited still. He might kick you.”

             
“That is the second time you did that,” Nina said, stepping up to face Bill.

             
“What?”

             
“Don’t touch the Princess,” she said, her eyes flat, looking right at Bill. She held Angry at the Sun in the crook of one arm, but left no doubt in Melissa’s mind that Nina could have one of her daggers into Bill without dropping the baby.

             
“Nina,” J’her said. “You may not touch him.”

             
“No one touches the Princess,” she said, and didn’t take her eyes off of Bill. “I won’t have it.”

             
“Lupus asked me to treat them like my own grandchildren,” he said. “Grandfathers pick kids up. You don’t like that, take it up with him.”

             
“Chose your words better, Mountain,” J’her warned him.

             
“I’ll take it up with the priest at your funeral,” Nina said, and raised her left hand, glowing with some light that seemed to come from within it.

             
Without thinking, Melissa took her by her shoulder. She had meant to spin her around, to tell her to think, to ask her to let the Emperor handle it.

             
She had no idea what happened instead, but the glow died out of Nina’s hand, and the young girl fell to her knees. J’her snatched the baby from her arm as she fell face-first into the straw.

             
They all stood there, stunned. Even the kids went quiet. Melissa’s fingers tingled like her hand had fallen asleep. She stood there looking at her hand like it had done something and forgotten to tell her about it.

             
Shela emerged from a stall, dressed in brown leather riding pants, boots and a laced-front, red leather top. She had a grin on her face and a hand on her butt, accentuating her walk.

             
Everyone turned to look at the Imperial couple, except for Nina, who still lay face down on the floor.

             
“Now, what?” Lupus asked.

Chapter Thirteen:

              A Hero, Fate Foretold

              Ancenon Escaroth met with his new sister and his Daff Kanaar ally in the suites assigned to her. Glynn looked a little thinner but she’d been through much. Black Lupus looked like he always did.

             
“You’re well, my sister?” he asked her.

             
“I am, brother,” she informed him. She’d dressed in her white Caster robes to receive him. She forewent the usual Uman-Chi greetings—Lupus was abnormally aware of such things and no one wanted him affecting their traditions.

             
“His gracious Majesty has seen fit to bestow upon me the rank of Baroness, and the duties of a villain,” she added.

             
Ancenon raised an eyebrow at the Emperor.

             
The latter’s lips twitched in a smirk, the scar shifting under his eye. “Your sister—which I don’t understand—decided to smart off to the Empress, so she’ll be cleaning dumpsters tomorrow.”

             
Ancenon sighed. “Black Lupus,” he said, “this is intolerable.”

             
The Emperor raised his hands, palms up, and said, “Take it up with my wife if you don’t like it. She made the decree and I’m not going to undercut her.”

             
“Surely you’d need not resort to violence,” Ancenon argued.

             
Black Lupus sighed. Ancenon was familiar with the term, but it irritated Lupus no end when he made these comments and they were misunderstood, and Karel of Stone had affected the practice of tormenting him this way. Ancenon didn’t care for Karel of Stone, but Lupus was due his share of unprovoked torment.

             
“Perhaps if we traded services…,” Lupus said, turning his eyes to one side.

             
Eyes—the weakness of all other races. Ancenon knew that Uman-Chi eyes were unreadable to any but other Uman-Chi. The eyes of Men were imminently readable, however, and usually betrayed them. They did Lupus now.

             
“Which services?” Ancenon asked.

             
“First of all, for all who care to ask, she’s out cleaning dumpsters tomorrow,” Lupus said. He regarded Glynn, who stood by with her hands holding one-the-other at her waist. “However if only one Wolf Soldier guards her, then I don’t imagine she’ll get to very many.”

             
“Very well,” Ancenon informed them.

             
“Then, I ask you to recall a day, about thirteen years ago, in Outpost IX, when you and I and a Scitai named Xinto had a meal together.”

             
Ancenon felt the smile cross his face. “Our first meeting,” he said. “How could I forget?”

             
“Our second,” Lupus corrected him. “You’d seen me two days before at the Fovean High Council.”

             
Ancenon frowned, not liking to be corrected. “I won’t argue that,” he allowed the Man.

             
Lupus smiled. “Remember when you called me a Bounty Hunter?” he asked.

             
Ancenon thought about it. An hour out of forty-five decades didn’t merit much space in one’s memory.

             
“I could believe I called you that at the time,” he said. “Your existence in Trenbon, your armor, your command of
many
languages, and your association…”

             
“My association with Xinto, whom you
knew
was a Bounty Hunter,” Lupus pressed him.

             
Ancenon sighed. The Emperor had enjoyed more than his share of the attentions of the Bounty Hunter’s Guild after that night. Likely he wanted to know why Ancenon hadn’t defended him more vigorously.

             
In fact, Ancenon had gone to great lengths to do just that. It was an incredible inconvenience to him to be associated with someone whose every third thought was either defending himself from or hunting down Bounty Hunters. However, he’d invoked the Guild, calling himself a Bounty Hunter for whatever bizarre reason, and touched off a war.

             
Despite the reasons, he’d walked away victorious.

             
“Then you remember my then informing you that I
wasn’t
a Bounty Hunter,” Black Lupus said.

             
Ancenon frowned and looked sideways at his adopted sister. “In fact, I do remember this,” he said.

             
Lupus smiled even wider. “There’s someone whom I’d like you to share that with,” he said.

* * *

They served dinner in the palace hall. A gigantic bay window ran the length of the northern wall overlooking the city and Tren Bay beyond it. A long, heavy table set for dozens of people, all of whom apparently had decided to attend, ran down its center. Lupus sat at the table’s head, his Empress to his left, a Man to his right, his children next to Shela and three old Men in white robes next to the Man.

             
The Man’s name was Hectar Gelgelden, the Duke of Eldador the Port, chief advisor to the Emperor, an elegant man with long gray hair and a widow’s peak. They called the old men ‘Shem Hannen;’ Lupus called them, “Oligarchs” when he spoke English. They advised him as well.

             
Down the right side of the table sat what Lupus called, “Palace Barons,” members of the nobility who held only title and no lands, and who mooched off the Eldadorian state. Lupus had informed Bill he considered them mostly useless, although once in a while they could surprise him.

             
Glynn sat among them now, frowning all around herself as greasy hands reached into platters stacked high with food. Meats and fish and bowls of cooked vegetables, pots of foamy ale and carafes of wine; Bill sampled from a wheel of cheese so sharp it made his eyes water, and the style for feeding appeared to be to just reach out and grab.

             
Bill could find himself remembering how thin he used to be when he got here, if he didn’t control himself. He also knew how much he loved to eat. Instead, he leaned over to Melissa and gave her a gentle bite on the ear.

             
“You need to ride horseback more often,” she said, kissing his cheek.

             
“Will you do something for me?” he asked.

             
“Right here?” She opened her eyes up wide and innocent, looking stunned for all the world.

             
“Goofball,” he told her. “Fill my plate for me, okay?”

             
“Do what?” Her pretty eyebrows knit. “You mean, feed you?”

             
“Make sure I don’t eat too much,” he said. “You know how much weight I’ve lost here?”

“Yeah, in fact,” she said.
“I give myself a lot of credit for it.”

             
Bill grinned an evil grin. “As do I,” he said. “And I know if I take what I want, I am going to put it right back on.”

             
“Say no more,” she said, taking his plate from him. “I told you I was going to flatten that belly.”

             
“What is this now?” Lupus said. They had spoken in English. He had apparently been listening.

             
“She doesn’t want him to get fat,” Shela said in Uman. “He needs to lose weight so he can race you and win.”

             
“Ho, ho! I heard of this,” Hectar said, stabbing into a pile of pork with a long, two-pronged fork. “Seems to me Blizzard’s ready for the pasture.”

             
“Not likely,” Lupus said. He turned his attention to J’her, eating on the side of the table opposite the palace barons. “Lord Supreme Commander, when did you lose sight of Blizzard?”

             
“At the first tower, Lupus,” he said.

             
“And when did you see him again?”

             
“At the stables.”

             
Lupus turned back to the Duke. “Faster than fast, your Grace,” he said. “Doesn’t mean anything about Blizzard.”

             
“I can’t believe I didn’t just change bits on him,” Shela said. “That should have been the first thing I did.”

             
“Well, not the first thing,” Bill said, watching Melissa. “I would have reshod him first, then looked to the person who broke him to the saddle. I didn’t pick up on the bit until one of the Wolf Soldiers told me that he was taking it in his teeth.”

             
“I didn’t see him doing that,” Shela admitted. “When he killed his second rider I should have.”

             
“Second rider?” Melissa exclaimed. She dropped the plate down in front of Bill. “How many did he kill?”

             
“Um—am I Bugs Bunny here?” Bill looked into a plate more fit for Little Storm than for him.

             
“He killed four,” Lupus admitted. “But he didn’t stomp them, they just fell off and were dragged.”

             
“Whoa—when were you going to tell me?” Bill asked.

             
“Never,” Lupus said. “You’d have been afraid of him.”

             
Melissa took Bill’s beer out of his hand and replaced it with wine. He scowled and she said. “Empty calories.”

             
“He was right not to tell you,” Karel of Stone said. He’d been seated on Bill’s other side. “It would have made you shy of him.”

             
“Power help you if the horse smells that,” Shela said.

             
“Grandfather is going to let me ride him,” Vulpe said.             

             
“I get to ride him, too,” Lee protested. Vulpe stuck his tongue out at her—Shela put something that looked like yellow mashed potatoes on it.

             
“Eat,” she warned.

             
Lupus looked to the corner of the room where Nina stood, back on duty. “You’re clear as to that, right?”

             
She nodded, then resumed her vigilance.

             
“You handled your time at sea passing well,” the Scitai said to Melissa, looking over Bill’s belly. He had to sit on a board that crossed the arms of his chair, much as a young child would. His blue eyes seemed almost hawkish as he assessed the girl. “Are you of a sea-faring people?”

             
“I grew up in a port,” Melissa said. She picked greens for Bill, and he started to think this had been a bad idea.

             
“We had a skiff,” she said. “One-master, low and fast.”

             
“A—I’m sorry, a what?” Karel said.

             
Shela said the word in the language of Men, then in Uman for Bill’s benefit. “Like Volkhydran raiders use.”

             
Karel smiled. “In with the wind, out with the tide,” he said. “You weren’t the daughter of a pirate, I hope?”

             
Melissa smiled. “Not much of a pirate, no,” she said.

             
“Perhaps of a Wizard?” Glynn asked, picking pieces of meat and vegetables from where the court barons had raided the platters on her side of the table. “That would explain the incident in the stables.”

             
It turned out Lupus had ordered that no man touch the Princess. Some males, such as Karel of Stone, one of the palace wizards and other members of what he called ‘the Free Legion’, and what others called ‘Daff Kanaar,’ had been excluded from that. Nina had sworn a blood oath to protect the girl, and she took it seriously.

No one knew what had happened in the stables.
Nina’s energy had been drained to only a sufficient amount to keep her alive. She hadn’t passed out; she had been sleeping, regaining her strength. Even now she could do almost nothing magical.

Bill didn’t understand it entirely.
It seemed to him as if these people who cast spells had batteries.

             
“I had never seen a Wizard before—” Melissa began, and Bill nudged her. She caught a look of warning on the Emperor’s face, and Bill had already been told not to talk about their home planet.

             
Glynn seemed willing to let it pass. “I wish I had been there to observe their exchange,” Glynn said. She wore a gorgeous green dress, strapless, its neckline plunging down almost to her navel and the back up past her neck, fanning out into a starched collar that expanded past her ears. Its skirts billowed out, in the current fashion. Her hair hung green down to her shoulders, curling inward.