my conscience, Malinda." He released her, but
carefully, for the ship was pitching as it cleaved the
swell in the open river, heading toward its two
sisters. "Such fire can only be honored with
fire." From a pocket he pulled a rope of
rubies like a snake of flame. "I am sure
these were stolen from somewhere, but they have been in my
family longer than the crown of Chivial has
been in yours."
"Oh, they are magnificent!" she said,
completely bewildered by this extraordinary man and
also annoyed that there was something niggling at the back
of her mind that she could not quite put a finger on ...
something she must at all costs remember. ... But
whatever it was, it was good. Mostly good.
He hung the rubies around her neck and
kissed her again. Evidently he wanted more of the
tongue contact and hands-on-the-back procedure,
so she cooperated hungrily. The crew cheered
even louder.
Radgar paused in his wooing to glance back at
the vanishing shore. "If you want to wave
good-bye, Wife, you had better do it now."
"No! If you will grant me a single wish in
all our marriage, Husband, it is that I need
never more have anything to do with Ambrose of Chivial.
I have paid any debt I owed him a thousand times.
I despise him!"
"Well, that's certainly something we have in
common," the pirate said cheerfully. "But
you don't need my permission for that, my lady.
Short of bearing children for the wrong man--and even that can
be negotiated sometimes--a Baelish wife can do
pretty much anything she pleases. I have far more
important worries than making my wife
answer her father's letters."
He hugged her to him and beamed at her. He was
taller, but not by much, just right. A powerful man.
"There's a wind coming, or I'm a Thergian. I
have a carousel standing by off the mouth. We can
transfer to it for the trip home."
"I don't mind a longship!" she said
bravely, although the prospect was more daunting when
seen firsthand.
Radgar chuckled. "I do! I was conceived in
one, but I don't intend to subject you to that."
He regarded her quizzically. "There is an
alternative. If the weather does as I
expect, we can be in Thergy before midnight."
"Yes?"
"Then ..." He laughed and shook his head as
if changing the subject. "Taking a girl
home? You know, you make me feel like a boy
again, my Malinda? Mael-lind! You shall be my
Mael-lind!"
"Meaning?"
"Mael is "time" and lind "a
shield." You will keep me young."
He was certainly not acting as if old age was
a problem yet.
"What were you going to say about Thergy?"
"Ah. My consul in Drachveld has built
himself an emperor's palace there--at my
expense, of course, but he did a fine job of
it."
"Seahorses!"
The coppery eyebrows shot up. "What about
seahorses?"
"I don't know," she said, confused. "I must
have dreamed about ... It's nothing. It's gone.
Carry on." It had felt like relief so perhaps
it was just the knowledge that this bridegroom she had been
dreading for so many months was turning out to be a very
pleasant surprise.
"As it happens, I just wish his wife wasn't
quite so crazy about seahorses, but it's fit enough for a
royal honeymoon. We could spend a week or
two there--incognito, of course." His tone was
wistful, almost pleading. His arms were iron bands
around her. "Let you learn to be a wife
before you have to practice being a queen as well.
Drachveld's a fair enough town, a bit dull,
but we could have a few days there to get to know each
other and then perhaps have a proper wedding, with both of us
present. King Johan and Queen Martha are
wonderful people; I'm sure they'd love to be
witnesses."
She studied his angular face for a moment, that
eagerness never failed, and no one was going to question his
virility. Built like an oak keel, her father
had said. He felt like an oak keel.
"I thought we were married this morning," she said.
"Do we have to waste time going through it all again?"
That was definitely the right answer.
"Helmsman!" Radgar roared. "Can't you
move this bathtub any faster?" He kissed his
bride again, even more thoroughly than before.
Yes, she could probably learn to enjoy this.
Tonight she would find out what all the rest of the fuss
was about.
Aftermath
The reading is that you will be Queen of Chivial,
Your Grace, although not for very long.
IVYN KROMMAN, PERSONAL
COMMUNICATION TO PRINCESS MALINDA
It was a fairly typical Firstmoon day in
Baelmark, which meant that the sleet moved
horizontally, stung like needles, and tasted salt
even far inland. The Queen's route home led her
right into the teeth of it, so she could barely see the
front of her horse.
Hatburna was set high on the slopes of
Cwicnoll--a good summer home, but not the most
comfortable place in midwinter. The family
celebrated Long Night there only because it was more
intimate than any of the formal palaces. This
year, the weather had been so excessively
horrible that they had lingered longer than usual, no
one wanting to face the ride back to Catterstow.
So why was she out in it now? Probably just because it
made coming home feel so good. A plunge in the
hot spring would definitely be in order, followed
by a toasting at the fire, a steaming mug
of hot mead and honey, and then perhaps roast boar with
apple sauce.
She was returning from visiting Fosterhof, mother
house of the many Queen's Orphanages she had
established throughout the archipelago. She sometimes
complained to Radgar that she had a thousand children
to worry about. He usually replied that he found
their own three more than enough and she shouldn't try
to solve everybody's problems. But he never
stinted when she asked for money for any of her
causes.
Hands came running to take her horse as she
slid from her saddle in the stable yard. She
splashed over to the door, stamped in the porch,
shook herself like a wet dog--of which half a dozen
were presently trying to paw and lick her dry.
Usually a servant would be there to take her
cloak, but not today.
"Here you are, Mother," proclaimed a husky
treble. "Hot mead and honey, just the way you like it.
I put cinnamon on top--that's right, isn't
it?" Sigfrith thrust a steaming mug at her.
Atheling Sigfrith was her youngest, five feet of
juvenile
cunning clad in armor of pure charm--
red-gold curls, huge eyes of emerald
green, a million freckles.
"Well, thank you!" Malinda accepted the
drink; it was much too hot to sip at, but the
pottery warmed her hands nicely. "You think I
will feel better able to cope with your confession after
I drink this?" Why was the young rascal wearing a
leather rain cloak that showed no signs of wet?
Why had he chased all the servants away?
"Confession, Mother? Me?"
"Well, I admit that you usually manage
to make it seem someone else's fault, but I
really would prefer to be sober when you tell me.
You wouldn't want me to fly into a murderous
drunken rage, would you?"
"Would you?" he asked with interest. Innocence
shone in the jewel eyes. Maybe it was someone
else's fault this time, whatever it was.
"Probably not. Where are we going?"
He pouted at being outguessed. "Over to the
Old House. Would you like me to carry your drink for
you, Mother?"
"Yes, please. We old folk are so
clumsy." She resigned herself to postponing that
appointment with the hot spring. "Let's go. I am
getting more worried by the minute."
The Old House was officially used for
infested by the ragamuffin poets, artists, and
musicians who swarmed around the throne. As she
followed her hurrying guide through the storm,
Malinda realized that it would also make a very good
hideaway for a young atheling wishing to get up
to mischief without his parents' knowledge. Fortunately,
Sigfrith was too young to be molesting the servant
girls. She thought he was. She certainly
hoped he was. His brothers were quite bad enough.
The building seemed deserted, as it should at that
time of day. By the time she had struggled out of her
cloak and hat and boots, he was offering her the
mead again and her favorite slippers, too, which
normally remained in her bedroom. This was becoming
serious!
The great hall there had never been very great, and
after New House was built, it had been mostly
hacked up into sleeping cubicles. All that
remained was an artists' studio with a gigantic
hearth and some large, glass windows providing a
spectacular view of the volcano.
Spectacular on good days. Today the prospect
was of fog and a few misty pine trees. She could
smell linseed oil, although she was not aware of any
painters battening on the royal hospitality at
present. She had certainly not authorized the
enormous and extravagant fire in the great
hearth. There was a painting on an easel.
"Like it?" her youngest son said gleefully. It
was a portrait of Sigfrith himself, curled up
small in a chair with two puppies and a kitten.
"Surprised?"
"Astonished! It's superb. I don't
recognize the artist."
"Thomas of Flaskbury."
She had never heard of the man and felt warning
prickles on the back of her neck. There was more
than a boyish prank involved in this.
"It drowns me in cute. Who planned the
composition?"
"I did," Sigfrith said proudly. "We
all did. See over here?"
He led her to two more easels, and
predictably they bore portraits of
Aethelgar and Fyrbeorn. Someone had gone
to considerable trouble and expense. Aethelgar had the
money, but only Radgar himself was capable
of pulling this off without her finding out. This was not just a
belated Long Night gift for her.
"They chose their own designs, too, did
they?" she asked while her mind raced. She
took a sip of the scalding mead.
"Oh, yes," Sigfrith said eagerly, too
young to catch all the implications. "Master
Thomas said he wanted to make us look just the
way we wanted to look. He is good, isn't
he!"
Obviously. Sigfrith and his kitten--
Radgar always said that their youngest would never make a
pirate because he would only have to ask for loot and his
victims would give him everything they owned.
The pirate was their middle son, Fyrbeorn,
shown in full war regalia on the deck of a
dragon ship. At sixteen he was already taller
and wider than his father, and the artist had made him
look even larger. The pink fuzz on his chin had
become a bristling copper beard; his muscles
bulged. This was Fyrbeorn as the throwback
warrior he dreamed of being, sword drawn,
steel helmet, fearful green stare, the terror of
all the oceans. With brawn like that, brains were
redundant. Piracy was out of fashion these
days, but he and a crew of young terrors were planning
to sail off to ravage the coast of Skyrria and
get themselves blooded as soon as the weather turned.
Aethelgar, the eldest, had chosen to be shown with a
falcon on his wrist, standing beside his favorite
horse and hound. In reality his hair was redder
than that diplomatic auburn and his eyes not so
yellow and he rarely chose to dress in such
grandeur. To the best of her knowledge he owned no garments
like that cloak, jerkin, doublet, ruffled shirt. ...
The artist had caught the inscrutable smile
perfectly, though. Clever--or even sly ...
Fyrbeorn would take anything he fancied
by brute force, Radgar said, and Sigfrith
by charm, but Aethelgar would just prove to you he had
been its legal owner all along. The sword at
his side was a gentleman's rapier, a
Chivian gentleman's rapier.
So why was their mother being let into this secret now?
She skewered her last-born with a menacing royal
glare. "Your father put you up to this!"
Sigfrith Radgaring was innocence personified.
"Up to what, Mother? Don't you like the
pictures?"
She eyed the gaping door to the sleeping
quarters. "Radgar!"
He emerged smiling. There were depths to that
smile. He came to her as if intending
to embrace her, and she backed away a step.
"Explain!"
He shrugged, discarding most of the smile. "They
were made for your father."
There were depths to that sentence, too--Firstmoon
was churning the ocean like a cauldron. So why now?
"Shouldn't I have been consulted?"
"Twenty years ago you told me you wanted
to have nothing more to do with him."
Had it been that long?. Close enough. Those
years had been kind to Radgar Aeleding. There were
few threads of silver in his beard; he was almost
fifty, but a stranger would have guessed ten years
short. In all history no man had reigned in
Baelmark half as long as he, and even the
fire-breathing terrors of Aethelgar's set were still
loath to challenge the Ironhall-trained
king. The
moot always voted him a champion to fight in his
stead, but he preferred to do his own dirty work--and the
last contender had lost his right thumb in less than
a minute.
Radgar shrugged. "I never promised that I
wouldn't, though, did I? I have to keep up with
what's going on in Chivial."
She shivered and moved closer to the fire.
"What is?"
Of course she had not been able to remain totally
ignorant. Dian wrote regularly--Baroness
Dian since Bandit became Sheriff of
Waterby--still popping out children with no sign of even
wanting to slow down. Little Amby had died only
a few months after her marriage and Queen
Dierda about five years ago, still childless.
Ambrose would be over seventy now ... in poor
health, the last she had heard. Things must have gone
beyond that.
Radgar shrugged. "He wanted to see his
grandsons. Durendal sent an artist."
"And a good one," she admitted. "That slime
bucket is still around is he?"
"Roland? Still chancellor ... well, he
was."
"Why did you say wanted, not wants?"
Radgar hesitated long enough to convey the news
without words. He did not say he was sorry.
"About a week ago. He'd been failing for some
time, but the end seems to have been ...
peculiar. Worth looking into."
She turned and walked over to the window to study
the fog. She could not mourn Ambrose. After so
long she could no longer find it in her heart even
to hate him. She had done so once, but mainly for
forcing her into marrying Radgar, who had turned out
to be the finest man she knew. She could not
imagine what her life would have been without him.
He was ruthless to his enemies, yes, but
infinitely generous to friends; a doting father and
husband, yet so astonishingly self-disciplined in
his own life that he often seemed indolent or
uncaring. When the time came, he acted as
required, berserk or icily rational.
However sordid her father's motives might have
been, to bear a grudge for her marriage would be
impossibly petty. He had let another man
break the news to her, and that she would not forgive.
Probing her feelings, she realized that what hurt
most at the moment was purely selfish--her life
had passed a milestone. She was next up. She
had become the old generation and her sons the new.
She resented that.
"Peculiar how?"
Radgar was right at her back. She had not