The Falcon Throne (The Tarnished Crown Series) (14 page)

“So, my lord Vidar,” she said, as soon as they were alone. “Have you really come to see my father?”

Vidar grinned. “Given I know full well where Humbert hides himself, what do you think?”

She nearly tripped in her haste to reach him. “I think you’re a cat-hearted knave! It’s been
days
since you returned from Heartsong and this is the first I see of you? For shame!”

“Lindara, wait,” he said, catching her hands in his. “We can’t risk—”

“Peace,” she whispered, and swiftly kissed him. “Eunise will be an age. The only Evrish in the house is buried deep in the cellar, still a-barrel. Vidar, Vidar, where have you
been
? I thought you’d forgotten me.”

“Forgotten you?” He grasped her hips and pulled her close. “And will I forget to breathe, too?”

“Yes,” she said, kissing him again. Reckless, this time. Hungry. Laughed softly as his right hand left her hip to find a new home upon her breast. When they finally parted, too soon, she was flushed and aching. “What news, my love? Has Roric kept his word?”

Vidar turned away. Limped to the dayroom’s expensively glazed window, with its painted wooden shutters folded back, and looked into the budding Knot Garden below. “Not yet.”

“I don’t understand,” she said, staring. “Why the delay? Without you he’d never have toppled Harald. Without you, Vidar, he’d likely be dead!”

“You know what happened at Heartsong?” he said, glancing over his shoulder.

“My father told me. You should know he praised your part in it.”

“Grudgingly, no doubt.”

“Praise is praise. And harder wrung from Humbert than blood from a stone.” She crossed to him and pressed her palm to his chest. His grey velvet doublet looked worn, the gilded pearls once stitched to it cut off for easy pawning. Not that she’d ever tell him she’d noticed. His pride mightn’t survive it. The thought pricked her temper. “Roric promised to reinstate you. You must demand he keep his word, Vidar. And if you won’t, I will.”

“No, Lindara.” Vidar’s hand covered hers, fingers folding, holding tight. “Roric made it plain on the ride home that he can’t restore my lands till he’s formally proclaimed duke.”

“And when will that be?”

“No bastard has ever been made a duke. Your foster-brother’s courting every baron and purse-heavy merchant and even some of the Exarch’s priests, to be sure of his welcome.” Sighing, Vidar captured her face between his hands and rested his forehead against hers. “My love, we
must be patient. If I make a nuisance of myself I’ll turn Roric from ally to enemy. Is that what you want?”

“I want what was taken from you restored, Vidar. I want you as my husband. By my side. In my bed.”

“Soon, Lindara. We’ll have everything we want soon.”

She broke away from him. “Why must it be
soon
? Why isn’t it
now
?”

“Because of politics,” Vidar retorted. “You know that. You’re Humbert’s daughter.”

She couldn’t care less about politics. The politics of Clemen were ruining her life. “Then will you at least make formal approach to my father?”

“Of course. As soon as the ink is dry on my inheritance papers.”

“Before then, Vidar! Tonight. Or tomorrow morning. But no later.” She lifted her chin. “Else I’ll think you’ve changed your mind.”

He gaped at her. “Why would you think that?”

“With you so full of excuses, what else can I think?” She was tempted to slap him. “Perhaps your conscience pricks you. You told me yourself how Godebert didn’t want us matched, how he hated Humbert for not defending him to Harald. And when it comes to marriage you’ve never defied your father.”

“How could I?” Vidar said, incredulous. “I was a boy of seven the first time he betrothed me. Eleven when the girl died and he chose another. But she’s dead too and this time the choice is mine. Even if he still lived, Godebert would have nothing to say about it. Do you believe me? Lindara, say you believe me.”

She felt her eyes fill with tears. “I want to.”

Like every lord in Clemen, Vidar wore a dagger on his hip. Not taking his hurt gaze from her, he pulled it free of its sheathe. The sharp blade glittered in the sunlight shafting through the casement window.

“Shall I open a vein like the pagans of old and call upon Voss the Unforgiving to witness my honour?”

Suddenly she felt ashamed. The pain in him now had nothing to do with old wounds. “Of course not.”

“Lindara.” Lowering the blade, he shook his head. “That you could
doubt
me…”

“I don’t,” she said, snatching the dagger. “And I’ll prove it. Here’s my oath to you!”

Before he could stop her she plunged the dagger-point into the heel
of her hand. Blood welled, daubing her fair skin scarlet and staining the lace on her sleeve.

“
My lady!
”

Startled, she turned. Eunise stood in the open doorway, whey-faced and shaking. The tray she held slipped from her unsteady grasp. Wine, sugar wafers and red glass goblets crashed to the floor.

“Oh, Eunise! Clumsy creature!”

In the ensuing confusion, as Gillie remonstrated with Eunise and another servant cleaned away the mess, Lindara slid Vidar’s dagger back in its sheathe then nudged him aside. The look on his scarred face pricked her eyes with guilt.

“Vidar—”

“Hush,” he said, tenderly scolding. “Lindara, I love you. Naught matters beyond that.”

She swallowed a sob. “I know. And I love you.”

“I wish I could kiss you,” he murmured. “But I think I should go. If your Eunise was a faery I’d have turned to stone by now.”

“Stupid woman,” she said, with a glance at her glaring maid. “I swear, I’ll marry you for no better reason than to be rid of her!”

That made him smile. “How touching. My lady, see to your wounded hand.”

After Vidar was gone, the townhouse felt twice as empty. Desolate, she let Eunise scold her for playing with daggers. Suffered the woman to smear ointment on her small hurt and bind it with a strip of linen.

Then she returned to her embroidery… because there was nothing else to do.

T
he Pig Whistle’s battered oak door banged open, letting out the heat, letting in the night’s bluster and a tall, shambling figure wrapped neck to knee in a leather travelling cloak. Standing just inside the public room, the figure shook itself like a roused bear and stamped its booted feet. Raindrops spattered. Clots of mud smeared the uneven flagstoned floor. Nat Bevver and his brother Tid, seated at their ease nearest him, looked up from their tankards and cursed the newcomer in the way that invited trouble.

But Iddo, ever mindful, rapped his cudgel on the inn’s wide, scarred oak counter. “Shutten the bloody door, ye feggit! Do it look like ye done wandered into a byre?”

“Iss, iss, see me shutten yer feggit door!” the bear shouted back, ignoring the offended brothers, and made his point by kicking the door so hard he came near to knocking it off its hardy iron hinges. “And now I’ll be having ale off ye, Iddo, since this be an alehouse and I got m’self a powerful thirst.” Gloved fingers unlaced the leather cloak, then with a flourish and a fresh raindrop spatter whirled it free of his broad shoulders. “So where be m’sweet Mollykins? Mizn’t I standing here pining for a buss?”

With a shake of her head at Iddo, Molly stepped out of the shadows beside her inn’s heat-billowing fireplace. “I’d buss a farmer’s bristled hog afore the pressing of my lips to yon muggy cheekin, Trader Culpyn!”

Dropping the leather cloak, Culpyn let out a pleased roar and spread his arms wide. “Mollykins! M’sweetie honey posset, m’tossy love! Come to Denno! Mizn’t he been dreaming of ye since the last time he was here?”

Smiles and chuckles from her customers. Even the cross-grained Bevver brothers snickered. Molly pinched her lips tight to keep her own smile private. Denno Culpyn of Maletti was a rogue, but charming with it. Made him double dangerous. But money was money and no need to feckle a man with an appetite like his and a purse just as generous. To keep Culpyn amenable and herself undisputed mistress of the inn, she insinuated her broad hips between the public room’s close-packed stools and benches to pinch his bearded chin before scooping up his rain-soaked cloak and hanging it on one of the stout wall pegs by the door.

“Welcome back, Denno,” she said, letting her smile show. “Been a gormful long time since ye raised my roof with yer bellowing.”

Culpyn nodded, mournful, as he stripped off his battered gloves. “And it’s broke m’heart, Moll, not pressing my arse to a Pig Whistle bench these many moons.” He tucked the gloves into his wide leather belt. “Haven’t I missed yer good ale and yer good mutton pies?”

Could be he did. But she’d surely missed the way he carried letters into Harcia for her and her most trusted customers, asking no more for the favour than a free pie here and there. She’d found others to play messenger while he was gone, but not a one of them was reliable–or discreet–like Denno Culpyn.

Needing that certainty again, she widened her smile. “I be right glad to hear it.”

There was an empty stool up by the far end of Iddo’s counter. With a crook of her finger she led Culpyn to it as the rest of her customers, losing interest in the trader, returned to their tankards and pies, their dice and cards, lively conversations and guarded privy dealings. All kinds came to the Pig Whistle, from every corner of the Marches and far beyond, to do all manner of things. If they raised her no ruckus, and were careful not to bring any Marcher lords’ men to her door with swords drawn, she made sure to mind her own business and not theirs.

“Press yer arse there, Denno,” she said, jerking her thumb at the stool. “I’ll fetch yer ale and pie.”

“What be he doing back in the Marches, after no hide or hair of him for months?” Iddo muttered as she tapped a fresh keg of ale to fill one of her large tankards.

She shrugged, used to his crotchets and jealousies, and loving him no less. “Not to fret. I’ll find out.”

Her famed mutton pies kept warm in the kitchen out back. Leaving
Iddo to his guarding of the Pig Whistle’s public room, she pushed aside the heavy leather curtain and went to fetch one. First, though, she looked to be sure her son was still sleeping righty-tight. And he was, tucked into his kitchen truckle by the ovens. Grown so big now, it surprised her every time she smiled down at him. Her Benedikt. Nigh six months old, and all she had left of the man she’d wedded and bedded. And poor dead Diggin was his father, she wouldn’t think elsewise. The trouble that saw her raped and widowed in one foul night, she’d not have it touch her lovely son. His raven-dark hair and brown eyes came from Diggin, not that other man. The one Iddo had killed for her, and axed to pieces, and scattered for the wolves and ravens from one side of the Marches to the other.

“Molly!” Iddo’s raised voice stirred her out of bleak memory. “Another mutton and a chicken pie, hoppish!”

She tucked sleeping Benedikt’s blanket a little closer, stirred the iron pot of beef and barley stew on the hob, then slid three pies out of the warmery oven and onto a wooden paddle and carried them out for eating.

With an eager chortle Denno Culpyn rubbed his wool-covered paunch as she put his pie and ale before him on the counter. “Mollykins, yer a queen among women.”

“Then ye’ll not refuse a royal demand for one shiny silver ducat, Trader Culpyn,” she said, holding out her hand.

“A ducat?” His astonishment wasn’t all pretend. “When y’asked me for copper nibs the last time I was here?”

“We had ourselves a hard winter, Denno.”

His fingers fumbled in the purse laced tight to his belt. “That’s what I be hearing, Moll.”

“And I heard whisper ye’d forsaken us poor folk of Clemen and Harcia to make yer fortune elsewhere.”

“So I did, Moll, so I did,” said Culpyn, with a heaving sigh. He dropped a silver ducat onto her palm then picked up his tankard. “For as much as I love ye, there looked to be tidier profits elsewhere. All set I was, to spend what’s left of m’years trading m’wares around the west coast of Cassinia, the Quartered Isles and the old kingdom of Zeidica, and even the Treble Kingdom too. Had m’self a doughty little cog, a gullish wave-skipper if ever I saw one.”

For all he was a bawdy tale-teller, she could feel the honest regret in him. “Things turned foul on ye, did they?”

“Foul?” Culpyn tipped ale down his throat. “Mollykins, m’love, y’can blame Baldassare for my arse on yer stool, so y’can. Young he might be, scarce more than a stripling, but never was a pirate more curs’t to an honest trader than yon feggit barnacle.”

She’d heard of Baldassare. Most everyone had heard of Baldassare, no matter they lived landlocked and could go their whole lives not catching a glimpse of ocean or sails. A stripling, as Denno said. Rumour aged him at barely sixteen, but so fierce and fearless that men twice his age followed him eagerly into bloody plunder. A demon-sprite, he sounded. She was glad she’d never meet him. She had both hands full in the Marches.

“Sailed yer fine galley into the pirate king and here this night to talk of it, Denno?” she said, slipping his payment into the pocket stitched inside her blouse. “Don’t be telling me yer a man out of luck!”

Culpyn shoved a brimming spoonful of pie into his mouth. “Luck?” he mumbled around pastry flakes and drips of gravy. “It be luck to sail into that rampageous brine-thief three times, Queen Moll? To have every horn button and silver bracelet and garnet earbob and all m’pretty furs and laces plucked from m’fingers three times?
Luck?
”

He looked so aggrieved she had to pat his shoulder. “Luck that yer head wasn’t plucked from yer neck, Denno. Or yer clankit bones thrown into the Sea of Sorrows.”

“Oh, iss?” Indignant, he glared. “So it be luck, y’call it, that y’were robbed of y’man but the Pig Whistle never burned?”

Iddo, wiping ale-spill and listening, put up his chin. Molly waggled a finger at him, not looking away from the trader. “If yer minded to be hurtful, Denno Culpyn, I’ll show ye my door. The Pig Whistle’s done without yer ducats these past months. I’m tolerable sure we can muddle along again.”

Culpyn turned red behind his rough beard. “Mollykins, Mollykins…” He fished a copper nib from his purse and pressed it on her. “That for m’feggit rude tongue, m’darling.”

“Hah,” she said, but she slipped the nib out of sight then cuffed him, lightly. “Yer feggit tongue and yer dribbly manners. That be gravy on my counter!”

A guilty hunching of his shoulders, and he swiped the wood clean with one work-rough finger. “Y’be a scold, m’darling Molly. Can I sweeten y’mood with news?”

News was always welcome. In her own quiet, careful way she traded
in news as much as ale and mutton pie and beds for the weary. “Fill yer belly, Trader Culpyn,” she said, pretending indifference. “I’ve a mort of folk to wink at this night. Eat yon pie, slosh yer ale, and could be I’ll sit and chumble-chop with ye after.”

Ignoring Iddo, who was rolling his eyes at Denno Culpyn’s cheer, she busied herself with Pig Whistle business. Darkness might’ve fallen outside but it was early yet, and her inn sold its ale and pies and stew until midnight. There’d be plenty more bellies to fill before she closed the low-ceilinged, raw-beamed public room and sent her overnight guests to their beds in the travellers’ dormer. Tankards to fill too, and refill with good ale. More cooked pies to pull from the warmery oven, new pies to push into the hot baking oven. Jokes to laugh at, questions to answer, gossip to marvel on, harmless, friendly fumbles to refuse without hurt feelings. She did it all with a smile, never forgetting her luck. Twice she dropped a hint to men prepared to pay her for news she told no other soul. In between serving ale and pies, counting coin and keeping order, Iddo hauled up two fresh ale kegs from the cellar and brought in huge armfuls of logs to keep the oven busy and the fireplace belching heat.

The inn’s door banged open and shut another dozen times after Culpyn’s blustery arrival. She was a queen of innkeepers, she knew all but four of the newcomers by name. Of those four, three she’d not laid eyes on before. Men far from their proper homes in Pruges, with oiled dark hair and inked skin the colour of acorns, they spoke Cassinian with little twists and odd mouthings that told her they spoke otherwise with greater ease. From their sober but well-made wool tunics and hose, she judged them traders, with goods for the selling in both Clemen and Harcia. But she didn’t ask. She minded her business. Their coin was plentiful, their manners polite enough, and that made them welcome no matter where they hailed from.

The fourth man she knew at once for a herald, even if it was his first time at the Pig. Though in truth, he was hardly a man. A youth, stringy with sinew and touched blue by the cold, dressed in mud-splashed leather leggings and battered leather riding boots reaching past his knees and a well-worn leather cloak to keep out the rain. She shoved him onto a stool in front of the fire, pinching him quiet when he tried to protest. Iddo fetched him a hot milk toddy, splashed generous with brandy. Beneath his discarded riding cloak the herald wore a dark red linen tabard over his green doublet, its stitched
device of an arch-backed grey cat announcing to all and sundry that he served Harcia’s Lord Reimond, of Parsle Fountain.

“Pie, young ser?” said Molly, once his teeth had stopped chattering.

The herald handed her his emptied toddy mug. “Pie, yes. I’ve a cavern in my belly big enough for three bears.”

“It be a cold night for hard riding,” she said, flicking a look to Iddo so he’d fetch the pie. “Come far, have ye?”

“Far enough,” he said, grimacing. “I left my lord at first light, and come dawn I’m on the road again. You’ve a bed for me?”

Any duke or count’s herald was found a proper place to sleep in the Whistle, no matter who else had to be pushed out to the inn’s dormer. It was the common law, strictly upheld by the four quarrelsome Marcher lords.

“A soft bed, iss,” she said, nodding. “And a hot breakfast to see ye on the road. A silver ducat’s cost, young ser, as yer duke’s agreed.”

“Your man in the stable swore my horse would be well kept,” said the herald. His lips had coloured from blue to pink, and the cramped, shivering hunch was gone from his slight body. “Oats and hay and a blanket.”

“Gwatkin’s a good man for horses,” she said. “And his lad is the same. Don’t ye fret on that. Now if ye be warmed enough, I’ll set ye at the counter for yer pie and ale.”

Denno Culpyn, eating his steady way through a bowl of stew, gave the Harcian herald a friendly nod. “Ser.”

Returning the nod, the herald eased himself onto a stool beside the trader. “Good eve.”

“Might ye be travellin’ all the way south to Eaglerock, and the duke of Clemen’s castle?” Culpyn enquired, politely enough.

The herald hunched his shoulder. “I don’t speak of my lord’s business.”

Molly caught Denno Culpyn’s interested eye and frowned him to silence. Last thing she needed was word going back to the great men of Harcia that their heralds couldn’t sup ale or eat a pie under her roof without some stranger sniffing and sidling where he had no right. The Pig Whistle stood handy at the biggest crossroads in the Marches, where all four of the Marcher lords’ domains touched borders. Men of every stripe and allegiance passed her front door from sunup to sundown. It was the biggest and best inn for a dozen leagues around, but that didn’t mean she could afford to cause offence.

“Young ser,” she said to the herald, “I’ve mutton pie and chicken. Which would ye like?”

“I’ll take one of each,” said the herald. “And some hard cheese, and your largest tankard of ale.” He slipped off the stool, his gaze insolent and daring. “For five nobles, mistress innkeep. Not a silver ducat.”

She swallowed, hard. “Five nobles. On account of the botheration. Aye.”

“And I’ll sup in my room.”

“Of course, young ser. Iddo?”

“Follow me,” said Iddo, displeased and nearly grunting. As the herald traipsed out in Iddo’s wake, Molly rounded on Denno Culpyn and thrust her hand at him.

“Mollykins, m’sweet!” Culpyn protested. “I was only being friendly!”

“Being nosy is what ye were,” she retorted. “And it’s half a silver ducat ye cost me.”