Indomitus Vivat (The Fovean Chronicles) (29 page)

BOOK: Indomitus Vivat (The Fovean Chronicles)
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     I stopped next to it – that wasn’t right!  Leave the leather harness attached and the weather would get at it and ruin it, or stiffen it so that the animal pulling it would be miserable.

     I shook my head and smiled.  Here I was, the King of friggin’ Eldador, and I was sweating the treatment of a harness that probably cost less than my boots.

      “There’s a rare sight from his Majesty,” I heard from ahead of me.

     I reached for my
sword and then found the source of the statement, the red-haired sister of Ceberro’s lady-friend, Jameen.  She’d changed her gown with the plunging neckline to skin-tight trousers, black leather riding boots and a white cotton top with a plunging neckline.  She’d wrapped her hair into a thick braid woven with baby’s breath, and draped it over her left shoulder.

     Her green eyes sparkled like Genna’s had, and I immediately felt the same hunted feeling that Genna had inspired in me.
  I had to assume she was younger than Genna, although older than Shela.  Closer to my own age or maybe just turned twenty.

     “I mean you no harm,” she purred,
raising her hands up behind her head, of course accenting her figure.  It wasn’t lost on me.

     I sheathed the sword.  “My apologies, my Lady Shellene,” I informed her, much as I wasn’t supposed to apologize to anyone for anything as a king.

     “Mine,” she countered me, slowly lowering her hands.  She moved gracefully, I had to give her that.  Every motion seemed choreographed, as if we were all in some play and she was the only one who knew the lines.

     I stepped past the cart to
the aisle between the stalls and extended my left elbow for her to latch on to.  She did so with a wide, toothy smile, making sure to rub her breast on my forearm.  I couldn’t help thinking, “Wow, Shela is going to see this and kill you dead.”

     We walked arm-in-arm past the stabled war horses to the paddocks where only Blizzard could be.  We’d put mares around him but he shunned them.  I couldn’t help but notice that those two Andaran mares were here now, one on either side of him, as I approached.

     Blizzard saw me and shook his head, pawing the straw beneath him with an iron-shod hoof.  I felt glad to see that a mandate of mine – that fresh carrots be left in leather bags throughout the stables – had been followed, and I reached into one and pulled him out a huge one.

     “Oh, may I, your Majesty?” Shellene begged me,
meeting my eyes and rubbing my forearm again.  “I admire him so.”

     I shrugged.  “He probably won’t take it,” I warned her, handing her the carrot, “but he bites, so be careful.”

     “I promise,” she said, snatching away the carrot and approaching the steel gate to Blizzard’s stall.  Like any valuable horse, he was housed in a stall which had an outer, gated arena, or paddock, to let him stretch his legs while he was put up.  Larger than most draft horses, Blizzard’s stall was made from two smaller ones, and his paddock measured about fifteen feet by twenty-four, which is very large.

     Blizzard took one look at Shellene, then one at me, and then pawed the ground and mule-kicked the outer wall to his stall.  The mares on either side of him started circling in their own, smaller paddocks
with their tails raised, trying to find out what had agitated the stallion, and the boom from his hooves against the double-reinforced wall rang through the stables.

     “I’d better –“ I began, not wanting her to whip him up into a frenzy and have him jump the paddock fence.  He’d proven before that he was capable of it.

     “A moment, if I may, your Majesty,” she begged me, and I stopped.  She reached into a pouch on her wide, brown leather belt and pulled out a clear vial with some green liquid in it.  I immediately recognized wintergreen oil.

     I smiled.  “Where did you get that?” I asked her.

     “There is a brotherhood of woodsmen,” she informed me, as she dabbed a little of the oil on her pale, freckled left wrist, “who now collect this where they can find it.  They are friends of your Free Legion ally, Arath, I am informed.”

    
I nodded.  Arath had spilled the secret.  Aileen had been right – I needed to watch that kind of thing.

     She rubbed her wrists together and she tucked the vial back away, then she reached her hand out again to the stallion with the carrot pointed at him.

     The stallion snorted and pawed, then pranced over and sniffed at her.  He craned his neck as far as it would go, trying to reach the carrot. 

     When he almost had it, his lips reaching the last few inches, Shellene withdrew the carrot ever-so-slowly, back to herself, bringing in the stallion with it, until he was in petting distance, and she let him have the top fourth of the carrot.

     He clipped the carrot; she stroked the stallion’s mane, grown out long enough again where it folded over to his left.  He sought the rest of the carrot but he didn’t pull away, his nostrils flaring, taking in as much of the wintergreen oil as he could.

     “Clever, clever,” I informed her.

     She didn’t look away, which impressed me.  A stallion is a precocious beast, and right when you think you’ve made a friend he’ll get it into his head that maybe he should kick you, or stomp you, or bite.  A breeze could change and he might get a whiff of estrus, and then tear apart everything between him and the source.

     He took the rest of the carrot, and then retreated across the paddock back into the shadow of his stall.  Shellene watched him for a moment longer, then returned her attention to me.

     I stepped up to the steel gate and whistled for him.  Blizzard trotted back over and immediately batted me with his giant head, trying to get me to hold him.  I held his forehead against my chest and would scratch his ears, and he seemed to love it.

     “And this is the terrible white beast whose very mention terrifies the Confluni,” Shellene cajoled me.

     I stroked the side of his nose.  “This is the warhorse who charged ten thousand Confluni infantry with me on his back,” I informed her.  “The Confluni fear him because he’s killed more of them than the most seasoned warriors you may know.”

     I guess the whole thing pissed me off a little.  Shellene nodded with due deference and let me have my interpretation.  For all the world, Blizzard was like a big puppy right then.

     “And of course you’re breeding him,” she said.

     “We’re trying,” I informed her.  I had no idea why I was opening up to her at all.  This woman had come here with Ceberro and she
clearly
had her own agenda. 

     “He doesn’t seem interested in regular mares,” I said.

     She knitted her pencil-thin eyebrows.  “Interesting,” she informed me.  “And yet, there was Shela’s slave price – a price that those Andaran daughters are here to collect.”

     I smiled.  I guess that
was
a pretty famous story at this point.

     “That night was an exception,” I informed her. 

     “If I might inquire,” she pursued, stepping up closer to me, so that I could smell the wintergreen oil, “was that night your first time with your slave?”

     I frowned.  Her green eyes sparkled.

     “I propose,” she said, “that the stallion is incentivized, if not by the act itself but then by its connection to you.”

     Now, why the heck didn’t I figure that out?

     I nodded.  “I appreciate that,” I informed her.  Even if it didn’t work that way, I’m sure Shela would have no problem after today if I took her in the stall.

     “I am here but to serve my King,” Shellene informed me, and curtsied.  Then she smiled, “Think of all of the work involved for poor Shela, if this turns out to be the solution.”

     I laughed.  “Shela won’t be bothered by that at all,” I informed her.

     “Fortunate girl,” she said.  She stepped back from me, regarded me as she would any other horse she might be bidding on and, crossing her arms under her breasts, said, “
Your love for her is the stuff of legends, and yet you realize that you’ll have to take another to wife.”

     I sighed.  Here it came.

     “I’ve been reminded of that a lot lately,” I informed her.

     “Duke Ceberro, of course, would have you find that woman in me,” she informed me.  “I supposed I’m a prime woman for you – my father is an Earl in Ceberro’s fealty and, before arriving, my virginity was certified.”

     I raised an eyebrow.  “Was it now?” I asked her.

     I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again.  It had to suck sometimes to be a girl.

     She nodded.  “And, of course, where the first King had eyes only for his Alekanna, I’ve been warned that I’d likely have to share you with this other woman.”

     “This other woman,” I repeated, and then added, “who blew the gates off of Outpost IX, and once turned two rapists to dust.”

     “And is jealous,” Shellene said, pressing the issue.  “One look at her as she watched you, and one knows her intent.  There is actually wager on the life expectancy of Jing-Wei of Conflu.”

     I grinned and nodded.  “I would give her about three more days if she doesn’t watch herself.”

     “I don’t see how she could watch her actual person,” Shellene said, looking down.  “Perhaps with mirrors – and I don’t think this would confuse your Andaran slave girl.”

     It was just too hard to keep up with
the slang misinterpretations sometimes, so I didn’t correct her.

     She turned her gaze back up to me, and let me have the full effect of the eyes and the cleavage and the wintergreen oil.  “If you seek a woman who is understanding of your predicament, however,” she informed me, “then it is me.  I would want
a child, of course – what woman would not?  But that mission achieved, I would accommodate the two of you as needed.”

     And there it was – laid out like a business deal.  I don’t know if she realized it, but she’d told me a lot more than she thought she had.

     Because that woman knew a
lot
more about me and what I liked than any normal person, and even most of my friends would have.

     Also, someone should have put in an appearance by now, because this was the longest time that I as monarch had been allowed to my own devices, even if I
might
be chatting up some honey for a little extra-slavery affair.

     “That is an exceptionally generous offer,” I informed her.

    
Coming from the Bounty Hunters’ Guild
, I added in my head.  Nothing else made sense.  I had quite cleverly put myself alone with her, and if I wasn’t mistaken they’d already diverted or removed any Wolf Soldier guards who might be protecting me.

     Crap.

     “In all honesty,” she informed me, “there is a selfish aspect.” She stepped up to me again and, just as Genna had before, put her fingernails on the front of my white cotton shirt. 

     “You
are
an attractive man,” she continued, her eyes cast shyly down, “and there are worse unions than to a king.”

     Trying not to l
ook like I was looking, I searched the stables for some sign of anyone else being there.  Stalls, lofts, spare wagons and a few empty saddle stands – nothing.  No Uman, Men or Dwarves, not another living soul in sight, and
that
was plain strange because the stables were one of the most popular places in the palace.

     I only took a second or two to look, the
n returned my attention to Shellene, just in time to catch her looking back up at me.  I needed an escape plan, and I needed it not to
look
like an escape plan, and I needed it about ten minutes ago.

     “This is interesting to me,” I informed her.  I forced a little smile and made myself look over her head, toward the palace walls, as if I were imagining what she offered.  “I’d be a liar if I were to say I’m not attracted to you.”

     The fact that I didn’t burst into flames told me that Shela wasn’t within earshot.

     She kept tracing the front of my shirt.  “And your slave girl?” she asked me.  “I have no desire to be cleaned up with a dust pan.”

     Definitely a spy, I thought to myself, and not a very good one, unless she was specifically trying to light off my radar.  Why dump so much information?  Anyone would bite at that.

     “How do you know about that?” I asked her, looking into her eyes.  Her choice to cover up or to reveal herself; mine to pursue it or to accept what she said.

     She didn’t even blink.  “Ceberro meets regularly with Rennin,”   she informed me, meeting my eyes, reading me.  “Rennin tells that tale as well as others.  Ceberro confides
everything
to my sister.”

     “Who shares with you what you need
to know,” I added.

     “And so,” she informed me, with a smile.

     “Your parents did an excellent job with you two,” I said with a smile.  “Imagine, a Queen of intelligence, beauty
and
breeding.”

BOOK: Indomitus Vivat (The Fovean Chronicles)
13.22Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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