TheKingsViper (4 page)

“You might pass for Boscian,” she pointed out, “but I don’t
think I will.”

He tilted his head. “Then you’re my new wife, Ella, from
eastern Mendea.” He felt a momentary twinge of conscience at the words
my
wife
, as if it somehow constituted disloyalty, but he was too practical a
man to listen to it. “You can speak Mendean, can’t you?”

“Of course. But not with a local accent.”

“You won’t need to. You think the people round here know
what someone from Erevaine or Yeveaux sounds like?”

She sucked in her lips, like a serious child, then said,
“It’s a pity you lost your sword.” He didn’t miss the sudden flash of wariness
in her eyes as she realized that her words might be taken for a complaint. “I
just meant…I’m sorry—”

He shook his head. “Perhaps. Perhaps not.”

“It’s going to be dangerous.”

“And nothing says
nobleman
louder than a fine sword.”

“Oh. Yes. I’d better not wear this then, I suppose.” She
slipped the royal engagement ring off her finger and held out the heavy gold
band to him. The ruby stared like a red eye from between the winged heraldic
bulls that were its setting.

Disloyalty. I put that ring on her hand in the King’s
name; it binds her to him until they are wed.
He nodded, wryly, and dropped
it among the useless coins in the belt-purse. Prising up a rock, he consigned
the pouch to the keeping of the earth beneath, wondering idly if it would see
daylight again before the world’s end.

They worked on their story for a little while, until
satisfied it was as good as it could get, then set off again. It was a long,
slow day’s trudge across the open heathland, following sheep-tracks or pushing
through brush. They did spot some sheep, but at too great a distance to be of
any use. They saw rabbits too, bounding away across stretches of nibbled sward,
their tails flashing.

“What are they?” Eloise asked.

“Coneys. You don’t have them on Venn?”

“No. Are they like rats?”

“Not at all. They’re common on the mainland. Good eating, if
I had a bow.” His stomach, reminded of the delights of rabbit and prune pie,
cramped uncomfortably. Their bellies had been temporarily bloated with water,
but it was swiftly becoming clear that they were empty again. He felt frustrated
by the proximity of so much meat, so unattainable.

It was in fact Eloise who found them the only food of the
day, when she floundered off suddenly uphill toward some low rounded bushes.
“Bilberries!”

Severin was dubious. “You’re sure?”

“Yes! They have these on Venn—in the hills.” She held out a
scattering of dark berries to him, popping one into her mouth. It left a dark
stain on her lips when she smiled at him. He shrugged, accepting her knowledge.
The fruit had an agreeable if subtle taste and they gorged for a while on as
many of the ripe berries as they could find on the springy twigs, and walked on
with renewed energy.

It couldn’t last; a few handfuls of fruit could not keep a
body going all day. As evening approached, without warning Eloise—who had been
trailing farther and farther behind, her steps painfully slow—said, “I have to
sit down,” and did so. Severin turned back to her, irritated, but he caught
sight of her feet just before words slipped from his mouth and he bit back on
his exhortation. Not because he felt less annoyed, but because he felt worse.
The girl was barefoot. He had some vague memory of jeweled slippers on the
ship, but of course those were gone. Now the soles of her feet were both filthy
and raw; a mass of blisters and cuts accumulated, he realized with a sick
feeling, over many hours walking.

He should have noticed, he told himself.

He knelt before her and picked up one of her feet, trying to
see past the blood and the grit. There was no way she should be walking on
those, he knew. He was astonished she’d kept going this long. “Made a mess
here, I see,” he said quietly.

She winced under his fingers.

He needed to bind them, he knew. She was wearing two layers
of skirts, so he threw the outer one up over her knees and with knife and hands
tore strips off the thinner linen hem beneath, exposing her shins. She didn’t
protest. He glanced up at her and saw that her eyes were shut, her head sunk on
her shoulder. He felt a sudden plume of ire, and even though he knew the anger
was mostly due to his own hunger he couldn’t dismiss it. This girl was supposed
to become Queen, and she sat there with her shins bared, her foot in a
stranger’s lap, without modesty or even wariness. She should not be accepting
his hands like this. King’s man or not, her trust should not be given so
easily.

She had nice slim calves too.

With an effort he wrenched his attention back to her wounds.
He bound them firmly with the cloth strips, but he knew she couldn’t walk far.
He turned his back on her. “Up you get,” he said, pulling her onto his back.
She furled her thighs around his waist and he tucked his wrists under her
knees. “Keep your weight high,” he warned, as she slid her arms around his
shoulders.

Her body felt soft and warm and already far too heavy.

He carried her on his back into the deepening dusk and then
into darkness. It was the darkness that saved them; he saw lamplight and turned
toward it, and even as the weariness and the pain of his burning muscles became
a blackness in his head thicker than the night outside it, trudged into a
stone-cobbled farmyard. A dog barked from within the small building. He let
Eloise slide to the ground behind him, and as he did so realized with a rush of
renewed consciousness that somewhere in the dim ache of the journey he’d
transferred his grip to behind him, and without being aware of it at all had
been walking along with her rump nested on his interlocked hands.

His one comfort was that she was barely awake herself. He
had to grab her to stop her slumping onto the cobbles.

“Anyone home?”

A small square high in the cottage door opened and he
glimpsed firelight before it was occluded by a head. The dog sounded louder. No
one replied though.

“We’re travelers and lost. Myself and my wife. We need a bed
and food. I can work to pay for them.”

“Your wife?” It was a woman’s voice, which explained why it
had been silent until now. Severin pushed Eloise toward the door, hoping her
gender was obvious even in this light.

“We’re exhausted.”

“You can sleep in the barn. There’s a trough by the door for
water. I’ll feed you in the morning.” The hatch closed.

It would have to do, he thought. It took awhile to locate
the entrance to the barn, which was across the yard. He was glad of the
moonlight that peppered the interior through the broken shingles. Inside there
were two agitated cows, both penned, and a heap of hay. There was also a coarse
blanket hanging behind the door, which smelled strongly of sheep. He spread it
out over the hay pile, in a corner.

“Lie down.”

Eloise, swaying as she stood, hesitated.

“If fleas are the worst thing we get in Mendea we’ll be
lucky,” he told her, deliberately not thinking about why she should hesitate.
He watched her stretch out on her side, then laid himself next to her, his back
to hers. “Pull hay over yourself,” he instructed, and was unconscious before
his next breath.

* * * * *

When he awoke with the dawn, he’d turned in the night and
was lying on his other side. His back was a little cold, even under the blanket
of hay. His front was warm because he had pulled Eloise up against him and had
his arms tightly around her, his left under her waist. Her bottom was tucked up
against his crotch. Worst of all—so bad that even as he adjusted from sleep it
hit him like a blow—he had a full on, pride-o’-the-morning erection.

For a long while he did not dare move.

Let her still be asleep
, he prayed desperately.

His cock stirred like a living animal between him and her.
She was so soft, so warm, her body so accommodating to his. Even her tangled
salt-coarsened hair smelled sweet under his nose.

This is not appropriate behavior for the King’s man.

His balls felt heavy, overloaded. They were pulling on his
insides. The swell of her breast lay against his thumb. He could feel the faint
rise and fall of her breath. He could feel the full round curve of her rump,
begging him to press into it.

He had to do something. Of course he had to. If he lay there
long enough she would wake and then she would know. At least right now her
breathing was soft and even.

There is a part of a man’s mind loyal to no one, and that
part was telling him,
She is so sweet, and so easy for you to have, right
now…

He slid his arm from under her, rolled away and was on his
feet in one movement, slick as a cat. Then he paused, waiting to see if she had
woken, but the girl only whimpered a little and curled up tighter.
Thank all
the saints
, he said to himself.

It was colder out from under the hay, but his erection was
undiminished. He felt the hungry ache of it through all his bones, worse even
than the gnawing in his stomach. Shaking his head, he gripped the stiff flesh
pushing out against his hose. God damn—he had to do something about that.
Shipwrecks and starvation might not be able to quell it, but he knew what
would.

* * * * *

It was the sudden lick of cold air under the hay as the
King’s Viper left her that woke Eloise, but she had no desire to rise. She
wriggled deeper into the prickly blanket, hoping that sleep would reclaim her,
hoping that she would not have to force her stiff limbs to raise her from the
meager comfort of her bed. She could hear de Meynard moving around. She missed
his warmth against her back. He’d been pressed against her, though she only
knew that because she could feel the great chill imprint of his absence now.

The thought squirmed through her mind, finally waking her
completely.

She opened her eyes. She was curled up in a corner of a
stall, her face almost against the rough wood of an old partition. There were
small noises coming from the other side of the wall. Forcing her eyes open, she
looked over her shoulder, but in the dim dawn light that leaked into the barn
through the holes left by fallen tiles, she seemed to be alone. A board
creaked.

The planking of the stall partition was old and warped, and
knots had fallen out to leave holes. Instinct made her keep as quiet as she
could, as she raised her head and put her eye to a gap.

It was him, Severin de Meynard. He was sitting in the next
stall, on the other side of the partition. She could see his profile and his
shoulders. He was frowning into the distance, with a look on his face as if he
was trying with great difficulty to remember something. The muscle of his
shoulder was flexing, back and forth.

Eloise realized only gradually what he was doing. She
stifled the breath in her throat as her eyes widened. Admittedly her education
on such matters had been haphazard—mostly consisting, as it did, of the gossip
of servant women who stopped every so often to remind each other, “Not in front
of the lady!” And she’d once walked in by mistake on a footman pressing a
scullery-maid up against a wall, her bare thighs furled around his hips as he
jiggled and thrust ferociously up against her. She’d been as shamed as the two
servants by that indiscretion—yet somehow had never managed to push it far from
memory, and often recalled it in private. Now she recognized the same rhythm,
the same focus, at play silently in front of her.

She knew she shouldn’t be watching Severin. She knew this
was private and a shameful thing for a maiden to see. But she didn’t stop. The
very fact that she was trespassing made it unbearable in some strange way to
tear her gaze from that scene. She felt the blood mount in her cheeks, but she
kept looking. There was something compelling in his expression, but she wanted
to see more than his face. She wanted to know what was going on with his hands.

As if he had heard her silent wish, Severin stirred
restlessly, pushed himself to his feet and backed up against the wall opposite
her. He was now facing her full on, and standing farther away, so that she
could see all of him from thighs to head. For a moment he seemed to be looking
straight at her and she froze in terror, thinking he had spotted the eye at the
planking. But then he tipped his head back against the wall, lifting his chin
and closing his eyes.

He was beautiful. The shock of it hit her hard. He stood
with thighs braced a little apart, throat exposed, both hands at the unlaced
crotch of his hose. His left hand gripped his cock while his right hefted his
stones. He was pulling at his shaft, bouts of ferocious rubbing interspersed
with long lingering strokes. It looked thicker and darker than Eloise had
imagined a man’s member to be, stiffly upright. His balls were big enough to
fill his cupped palm, and were nested in jet black hair.

They said men did this
all the time
. They described
it with giggles and sneers, as if it was undignified and disgusting, so she had
never expected the reality to bring a warm flood rushing to her sex the way it
did now. Nor had she expected those glimpses of a man’s cock, under his moving
hand, to assert such a fascination. She hadn’t been given the words to
anticipate how strong and hard and fierce he looked, and yet how vulnerable. As
if this was the most important thing he could be doing with his body. As if
this was what a man really
was
, under all the posturing and politics and
politesse.

Severin’s hips tilted. His thighs were rigid and quivering
with tension, his neck corded, and his hand a moving blur. Then suddenly he
stopped. There was a flash of white, falling upon the trampled straw. Three
more strokes, slow and firm. Pale rain, its patter barely audible. His breath
suddenly harsh and strangled as he tried to keep it quiet.