The Sacred Band

CHAPTER TWELVE

On the night he arrived at Calfa Ven, Delivegu Lemardine lingered a while over the scene rolling out beneath his private balcony. The King’s Preserve, a vast stretch of woodland deep in the mountains of Senival. Unending crowns of trees crowded the entire view, broken here and there by granite protrusions. Plumes of orange and brown, some bursts of yellow: the leaves still displayed their late autumn brilliance.

Why he stood so long watching the night creep over the landscape he could not say. Perhaps it was nostalgia for some aspect of his forgotten childhood. It was not that he remembered a view like this, or had any particular fondness for the notion of roaming the wilderness beneath that canopy, but he was Senivalian by birth. He had spent his first years in some village or another near here. Perhaps the memory was in his blood. Perhaps he should spend more time here. Not this trip, though. This trip had a particular purpose and would be brief.

That evening’s banquet had a rustic charm. Delivegu went to it dressed in a manner he felt fit the occasion. He wore a shirt of thick Senivalian cloth, its collar a tall ring around his neck. He squeezed his private parts into tight black trousers. He was particularly fond of his crimson leather boots, strapped snug all the way up to the knee. One should always take care with one’s appearance, Delivegu believed, even when far from court.

The lodge’s guests gathered in the winter dining room, a crowded space centered around a single oval table. Wall lamps lit the place, but something about the dark wood walls, the pelts pinned there, and the heads of several stags and a boar jutting from them gave the room a somber air. Two fires roared in large fireplaces at either side of the room. That was another thing Delivegu had noticed about the lodge. Many corridors opened to the outside air. Windows often sat crooked with age in their frames, rattling in the wind and spilling warm air and letting in cold. Instead of correcting these things, the servants set blazing fires in every room. Inefficient. Wasteful, really, but there was a certain style in this rugged excess. Delivegu approved.

He did not, on the other hand, much approve of his dinner company. Nothing wrong with them per se, but not one seducible maiden among them: Gurta, so fat with Rialus Neptos’s pup she would have been better off rolling than waddling around as she was; a senator from Aos, his middle-aged wife and several other relations; along with an old merchant and his two teenage sons, the latter flushed from the day’s adventures. Adventures that featured Wren, Dariel’s mistress. She was pregnant with the prince’s child, though from the story the two sons told she was not much hindered by her condition.

“Mistress Wren warned us it would be a long ride in any event,” one of the sons said. The guests stood in a loose circle, sipping the mint liqueur that was customary for early winter evenings at Calfa Ven. “We rode north through the valley and then up along a ridgeline she called Storneven. Wren knew the route well.”

“Or the horses did,” the other son, slightly younger, said.

“No, she knew it. She’s ridden it several times during the weeks she’s been caretaker here.”

Caretaker? That was a clever way to describe her situation. Better than she who is banished until the queen decides what to do with her. “She rides so often?” Delivegu asked.

“Every day,” Gurta said. “Keeps her from going insane with boredom.”

“There was no chance of that today,” the younger son piped. “We had a run-in with a wolverbear!”

“An old wolverbear,” the other corrected. “Peter, the warden, said so. It picked up our trail about halfway around Storneven, spooked the horses. It followed us for a good hour, sometimes right out in the open. It loped along as if it were just biding its time until one of us fell off our horse or something.”

“Peter said that’s what it was doing. Said if any of the horses had gotten lamed-or if one of us had fallen-the thing would have been on us like a flash. He got it off us by tossing down two of the squirrels he had shot. When the wolverbear couldn’t resist them, we took off as fast as Wren could ride.”

“Dreadful,” the senator’s wife said. “Those creatures are beastly. They should hunt every last one of them.”

“Oh, you don’t mean that,” Delivegu said, finding himself drawn to flirt. Force of habit. “There need to be wild things in the world. Things to give you chills at night thinking about them.”

“My wife has far too many chills already,” the senator said. “Goes to sleep wrapped in three layers of undergarments.”

“That’s a pity,” Delivegu said. “A crime, I’d say. No woman should go to sleep so encumbered.” He flashed her a smile and sipped his liqueur. Then he wondered why he had bothered. He had no interest in her. And then he realized that without knowing it his senses had picked up on a person of interest. The sudden rush of vigor he felt was not for the senator’s wife at all. It was for one of the girls setting the table for dinner. Oh, yes, that was it. He watched her bend over the table, arranging cutlery. What is it about youth? he wondered. Even though her body was half hidden beneath her simple frock, unadorned and meant to go unnoticed, Delivegu saw the contours beneath the fabric. No Acacian beauty, this one. She was of Senivalian stock, clear enough in her short stature, with hips that would go wide in a few years, breasts that stood at attention for the time being, and dark hair she wore clipped at the back. He decided he would see those locks flow free. Reconnecting with his ancestral roots. That’s what it would be.

When he caught the flow of conversation again, the senator’s wife was saying, “If you ask me, it’s just reckless. Why put the child in danger like that? I enjoy a good brisk ride myself, but there’s a time for all things.”

Delivegu tried to imagine her enjoying a brisk ride. It was not a pleasant imagining, too full of jiggling flesh for his liking. He glanced at the serving girl again and caught her watching him. Oh, good. She’s noticed.

“Mistress Wren!”

She walked in with a careless air, as if she had happened on the place by accident and was not entirely sure she would stay. She was pretty enough. Small and lithe, she had the body of an acrobat. “Ready to eat?” she asked. “I could eat an entire wolverbear.”

Delivegu managed to secure a place across the table from her. Despite her reckless riding and adventures with wolverbears, she did seem fully aware of the child growing inside her. It was a small bump yet. She rubbed it often, making him wonder what it felt like. It was sensual in a way he had not considered before. As was the way she ate, heartily, without any courtly reticence. He was not sure why Dariel would invest so much in her, but such things were often hard to explain.

“To what do we owe the pleasure of your company, Delivegu?” the merchant asked.

“Yes,” Wren asked, slicing through her roasted boar, “why are you here?”

“I conducted business for her majesty in Pelos,” Delivegu said. “She asked that before I return I stop in and check on the preparations for winter. She’ll not be able to make a last visit herself this season. I know very well that the staff here has everything in hand, so it’s an easy assignment for me. A pleasing one. She asked me to look in on you as well”-he nodded at Wren-“to see how you were settling in here.”

“I’m so disappointed,” the senator’s wife said, “that the queen couldn’t make it! When we received the invitation, oh, months ago, I so hoped the queen would be here enjoying Calfa Ven as well. I love her so, you know? She’s just magnificent. I’d devour her if she were here.”

Somehow I think not, Delivegu thought, wondering if Corinn arranged to schedule certain visitors to the lodge when she planned not to be there. This woman might qualify. No doubt she complained mightily to her husband when they were alone. Hoping for a retreat with the queen, getting one with two pregnant discards instead.

“This horrid invasion!” she said. “I’m sick of hearing of it already. I hope the whole business is over by the spring.”

Surely she was old enough to remember the last two wars that had ravished the empire. Some forget so quickly. Delivegu said, “That’s my hope as well. By the queen’s grace, so it shall be.”

The attractive servant appeared at Wren’s side. “Mistress?” She offered an orange glass bottle, half filled with a clear liquid. Judging by its consistency, it was not water. Wren nodded, and the girl set the glass down, along with a tiny snifter of the same glass.

“What’s this?” Delivegu asked, once he had made eye contact with the servant and held it long enough to establish an intimacy.

“Wren’s little poison,” Gurta said.

“Palm wine,” the younger teen said. “It’s so tasty she won’t let us have any. See if she’ll let you have some, Delivegu.”

He played along, tilting his head questioningly. Wren pushed the bottle toward him, the glass just after it. The liquid smelled of palm nut flesh and more strongly of straight alcohol. Compared to the liqueur from earlier, there was little tempting about this. The eyes of the group were on him, though. He smiled, saluted the room, and then tossed back the glass.

Instant regret. Searing heat. A gag reaction so torso convulsing that he shot away from the table. His chair slammed into the wall behind him and for a few horrible moments he was sure he was going to spill his dinner onto the floor. A string of curses, muttered all the louder because the room had erupted in laughter. It wasn’t just the raw alcohol content. It was that-that… “Agh! That’s foul!”

“It is. It is,” they all agreed.

“Only Wren drinks it,” the senator said. “She says it reminds her of what they used to brew on the Outer Isles. Reminds her of her brigand days, apparently.”

Wren did not deny it. Grinning, she reached over and hooked the bottle back. She poured and, with a nod in imitation of Delivegu’s salute, she drained the tiny glass. She did not so much as blink. In fact, she licked her lips with the tip of her tongue and looked as if she had drunk nothing stronger than sweet tea.

Delivegu regained his seat. “You don’t drink much of that, do you? It’s poison. I doubt very much the baby is well served by it.”

“But a short glass a day,” the older teen said. “That’s all I’ve seen her take.”

“Good. That’s all right, then. I guess…” Leaning forward, he said to Wren, “I do insist that you stop riding. You’re putting the child at risk.”

“Is that an order from the queen?”

“No, just an expression of concern from myself. I’m confident she would say the same, though.”

“You care about my baby?” Wren asked. Her Candovian features could have been classically beautiful had she been raised with any sense of courtly decorum. She had not, and her facial expressions-when she made any-were as blunt and straightforward as a tavern owner’s.

“Of course. Why wouldn’t I? A royal child is a royal child.”

“A royal bastard, you mean.”

“Surely you don’t mean that. It’s… just the pregnancy. It affects women’s moods, I’ve heard. Mistress Wren, do you think me so crude?”

“Of course I think you crude. Look, neither of us was born to royalty. I never planned to be mistress to a prince, let alone mother of a royal bastard.” She speared a morsel of meat and brought it near her mouth, waiting for a retort.

“You should be overjoyed,” Delivegu said. And for the moment he said it, he lost sight of the irony of the statement. “You’ve been lucky. I know what that’s like.”

She jabbed the morsel in her mouth and chewed. “Am I lucky? Dariel is lost, probably dead. My child has no father. What it does have is-” Glancing around the table, she backed away from whatever she was about to say. “I live with uncertainty. That’s all. I know you know what I mean.”

She directed this pointedly at Delivegu, but the senator said, “We all do. Trying times test us all.”

T he later hours of the night found Delivegu entertaining the serving girl Bralyn. It turned out she was the warden’s daughter and therefore granddaughter to the first Peter, the one who had overseen the lodge since King Leodan’s youth. He had died only recently, and the girl spoke fondly of him. It seemed to be the only thing she had ever liked about living at Calfa Ven.

“Will you take me back with you to Acacia?” she asked.

Delivegu lay on his back, with his head resting against her shoulder, enjoying the sweaty press of her breast against cheek. “Oh, that’s a tempting possibility.”

“Take me with you, and you can have me whatever way you want. Whenever you want. Are there courtesans at court?”

“So many it’s hard to miss them.”

“They’re all better than me, aren’t they?”

Not the sort of question Delivegu would ever answer honestly. He sat up and studied her, to look as if he were giving the question due consideration. The girl pouted as she awaited his answer. In truth, most of her appeal was the raw stuff of youth. She kissed with a sloppy abandon that he had not been able to make sense of. He had liked her best when he got behind her and did not have to duel with her tongue. She was country, and would remain so for the few short years of beauty she had left. He said, “You’re gorgeous by any standard. A lover of infinite talents.”

She swatted at him, clearly pleased. Delivegu surged in on her, growling. The two of them wrestled a moment. He found a fleshy place to press his mouth and blow skin blubbers. A strange habit of his, he had to admit. But when he was not yet ready to perform sexually he often played in such childlike ways. Nobody had yet complained. Not really.

“Why do you want to leave?” he asked a little later. “Your life is good here. Better than most. You work is guaranteed for life. You get to serve the queen. Many would trade places with you.”

“When the queen is here, it’s grand,” Bralyn said. “But she hardly ever is. It’s boring most of the time.”

“Somehow I doubt that. You have guests of some sort here constantly. Men to seduce…”

She swatted at him again.

“You must know the queen intimately.”

“A bit,” the girl admitted.

“Have you seen her work magic?”

Bralyn considered him but then dropped any reticence the moment she began answering. “We’re not supposed to, but it’s hard to miss. She sings all the time when she’s up here. Prince Aaden is always on her to create things.”

“Like what?”

“All sorts. Animals you’ve never seen before. She created these bird things and set them flying over the archery meadow. Those she didn’t hide in the slightest. She and Aaden used them for target practice, and some of the staff ran about retrieving the fallen ones. They were strange things, birds with feathers, aye, but with three and four sets of wings, stiff ones like dragonflies. Strange… but beautiful, too. I saw her once blow life back into a slain stag. My father had just come in from a hunt and had a wagon stacked with dead deer. The prince didn’t like the sight and got upset, and the queen just went over and worked a spell and then kissed the stag on its nose. A moment later it got up and looked around, and then bolted from the wagon like it never had an arrow in its side. She did other stuff, too, things she really didn’t let us see.”

Delivegu considered that a moment. With all the things Corinn was letting the world see these days, what sort of sorcery might still merit secrecy?

“I’m hungry,” the girl said, stretching back across the cot and sliding one leg over the other, as if this were what one did to combat hunger.

“Of course you are. How about I get you something?”

“Are you serving me?”

Delivegu leaped to his feet and looked around for his robe. “Exactly. What would you like? Bread and cheese? Some of that roasted venison?”

She puffed out her cheeks. “Cheese gives me nightmares. And venison? I’m sick of the stuff. I could never eat another deer in my life.”

“Ah, what then?”

“You’ll get me in trouble.”

“Nobody in this place can say a word against me, or against you, if that’s my pleasure. What will you eat? Be quick. I feel a stiffness coming on.”

“Custard. Bring me custard. Do you know how to find it? I should show you.”

“What would be the use of my serving you? Just lie there looking ravishing.”

The notion did not seem nearly so romantic as he scurried down the exposed passageway toward the kitchens. The wind batted his robe around, thoroughly shriveling his sex in the process. He paused at the kitchen door, first to check that he was alone, and then a moment longer to listen to a wolf’s lonely call floating up from the valley. “Hello, brother,” he whispered, and then opened the door and entered.

A single oil lamp burned in the center of the preparation table, and by its light Delivegu began his search. He was not looking for custard. It did not take him long, for the servants had left the bottle in easy reach. It stood aligned with the condiments and relishes that had earlier been cleared from the table. He picked up Wren’s bottle of palm wine, uncorked it, and sniffed. Just as foul as before. Strange girl, Wren. Something about the fact that she drank this stuff without flinching brought the blood back to his groin. In different circumstances, he would have loved to have a drinking contest with her. Another life, maybe.

He stood still a moment, listening, letting his eyes roam the dark corners of the room. Satisfied that he was alone, he slipped a vial from his robe’s inside chest pocket. He plucked out the vial’s little cork and measured a few drops into the mouth of the palm wine bottle. Wren’s little poison indeed.

A few minutes later, bottle set back in place, Delivegu slipped into the chill air of the corridor again. He carried a large bowl of custard, enough for two. He would enjoy the night and be on his way in the morning. The queen would want a report.

Bralyn would, alas, not be going with him.