by Melanie Rawn
Pierigo bowed his apologies, and waved at his cousin Deiken—Master Torturer, former drill instructor for the Ryka Legion, six years Collan’s senior, and still looking as if he could break a horse’s jaw with one finger. Deiken left off bawling insults at a sweating torturee, ran his gaze down Collan’s fully clothed body, and gave a broad grin.
Col thought of Sarra. He thought about the difficulties Sarra was going through to ascertain who had legal guardianship of the boy, and whether marriage negotiations had begun, and whether or not Ellus Penteon wanted Mirya Witte to divorce him. He thought about the strain she was enduring, putting pen to paper to write letters to the Census Bureau, the Justiciary, and the Dean of St. Caitiri’s that would accomplish these objectives.
He thought about poisoning Sarra’s soup.
Gritting his teeth, he told Deiken Wytte that he didn’t mind being here at the same time as the bower lads. Yes, sight of them would provide ample motivation for whipping his sorry old carcass back into shape. Of course he was looking forward to it.
Poisoning Sarra’s soup was too merciful.
Forty gruesome minutes later, he limped to the pool enclosure and collapsed into the huge soak-tub, newly tiled in soothing deep blue. What little was left of his strength after the workout was drained away by steaming water stinking of supposedly healthful minerals. With his head cushioned by a rolled towel on the pool’s edge, he floated insensate for an unknown length of time until the entry of another body washed a tinny-tasting wave onto his lower lip.
“Sorry,” said a deep, musical voice. “Didn’t mean to splash.”
Col grunted and cracked one eye open. Blue was definitely this boy’s color. So, Col suspected, were green, red, yellow, purple, orange, and any other damned shade in the rainbow.
“You look like you can still lift an arm—call the boy over and order me the biggest, coldest apple juice they ever served, will you?”
A tentative smile from that glorious face, a nod of that damp curly head, and it was done. When Col had drink in hand, he shut his eyes again and waited for the boy to talk.
The boy said exactly nothing.
It would be at least two weeks before the Dean of St. Caitiri’s got Sarra’s letter, another two before a reply returned. But Mirya the Mare’s plans for this boy did not depend on her husband’s willingness to be divorced—although the process required at least a show of consent on the husband’s part, and if it had been Collan, he would have taken the children and vanished long ago. But the three Witte daughters were with Ellus in Brogdenguard, and wouldn’t finish their education for several years yet. Col doubted their mother would want them to come home while she disported herself with a new young husband. Still, she didn’t have to marry him—she might not even intend to, although Col had learned to trust Taigan’s instincts almost as much as he trusted Sarra’s. What he was supposed to find out was if the boy was willing, whether to be husbanded or kept.
He could be subtle about it. He could slowly get to know the young man, sound him out with casual, disconnected questions over the course of a few weeks at Wytte’s. He could then invite him to lunch or dinner at the Residence with his guardian, let Sarra and the twins form opinions, and wait for the word to come back from St. Caitiri’s about Ellus.
“So,” he said, not opening his eyes, “you’re Mirya Witte’s new boy.”
7
“IT was pathetic,” he told Sarra that night as they lay in bed.
“Your performance in the Torture Chamber?”
“I could’ve gone another hour and still run fifty laps—” Then he stopped, a sore back muscle twingeing rebuke for the lie. “Who am I trying to fool? I’m not thirty anymore. I’m not even forty anymore.”
“Couldn’t prove it by me,” she murmured, stroking his ribs.
“Stop that.”
“Why?”
“It does things to me that make me want to do things to you that right now could be the death of me.”
Sarra laughed softly and kissed his ear. “Tell me about the boy.”
“He’s called Josselin Mikleine. But it’s not his real Name.”
“He has no idea who he really is?”
“None. Truly told, Sarra, it is a pathetic story—what little there is of it. His mother died birthing him. Some Mikleines took him in, gave him their Name, then they died when he was about three, and he got passed around for years, family to family. He doesn’t remember half the places he’s lived in—doesn’t even know his own Birthingday. Sometime in 969, but that’s all.”
“How did Mirya latch onto him?”
“He’s been with a family up in Sleginhold for about a year—they took him in when the last family’s daughter wanted to marry him, and of course he’s got less than nothing. They were in Pinderon this winter to arrange a marriage for one of the sons. Mirya was on one of her begging visits to her mother.” He snorted. “When I think what the Ostins paid for Shore Hill only four years ago, and she’s already out of money! Anyway, she sees him on the street and falls over weak-kneed. I bet most women do.”
“Not all. Of course, it helped that I was already sitting down. . . .”
“I’d make you pay for that one, but I’m not up to the effort just now.”
“I’ll make sure to repeat it when you’re feeling stronger. I think I can finish the story from here. Mirya found no financial joy at her mother’s, so when she got back to Roseguard she sold her furniture store over on St. Oseth’s Lane.”
“And bought Josselin with it.”
“How does he feel about it?”
“I get the impression he doesn’t talk much to other people, but he sure didn’t shut up once he got going today. He knew my name, so I think he also knows I can help him.”
“Then he wants help.”
“Sounded that way. Not that he said a word against her—just how lucky he is, how generous she is, and suchlike drivel. As if somebody’d told him so many times he memorized it.”
“But you think he doesn’t want to marry Her.”
“I’m sure of it.” He paused a moment, remembering the young man’s face as he spoke about his good fortune. “A lot of men would brag about all the money and being called a Lord and so on. He doesn’t seem to care. But he’ll marry her because he can’t see any way out of it.”
“He can’t until he’s eighteen,” Sarra mused. “If he’s not sure of his Birthingday. . . .”
“He thinks it’s one of the Equinoxes. He’s not sure which.”
“Well, the autumn one isn’t for another eleven weeks.” She was quiet for a moment, then said, “I saw the preliminary contract in Mirya’s Advocate’s office this evening.”
He snorted. “Leaving aside the question of how you got into a private office after hours, let alone got a look at private documents, are you saying she’s providing the dower?”
“No, I’m saying she’s buying his Mikleine guardian’s cooperation.”
Collan snorted. “Bet the former guardians are furious at missing the money.”
“They would be—if they weren’t all Mikleines. First time a man’s dower is going into his family Web instead of out of it.”
“You can’t blame any of them, really. Look at the advantages.” After years of experience, he could sense when Sarra’s rescue instinct was blossoming. He shifted to ease a sore shoulder, settling Sarra’s head more comfortably on his chest. But she was out of his arms and sitting up in bed, clad only in her long golden hair that had not even a hint of silver.
“Advantages?” she echoed incredulously.
“Mirya’s a Blood—your pardon, Lady—former Blood. He’ll husband a First Daughter and be called a Lord. When her mother dies, she’ll have shiploads of money. Land, title, wealth, prestige, a big house and a Web to run—”
“And no children.”
“Maybe he doesn’t want any. Even if he does, her three daughters will ev
entually marry and he can help raise the grandchildren. Besides that, the Mikleines will be comfortably settled. He must feel some kind of obligation to them—”
“They’re pushing him into it for the money,” she protested.
“Reconciling him to the inevitable,” he corrected. “After all, if not Mirya Witte, then some other woman. So they’ll sing sweet songs about what an honor it is, that his future’s made, that he’ll have the kind of life he deserves, that he couldn’t have been born so beautiful for nothing. Getting him to think of it that way, it’s only a kindness.”
“It’s barbaric!”
Collan swallowed laughter: full bloom. “Lenfell is full of savages. Happens all the time, one way or another. This is just a little more blatant than usual.”
“Col—doesn’t it bother you?”
“It’s not as if we have to choose that path for Mikel.”
“But it’s one step removed from slavery!” She fumed for a couple of minutes, then burst out, “I still say it’s barbaric! And I don’t care how many boys it happens to, it won’t happen to this one—or any others when I’m through with the Council next session.” Black eyes narrowing, she snapped, “And stop looking so smug. You didn’t have to rub my face in it, I was going to do something. I’m not as blind as I used to be, and I don’t need things written in letters twelve feet high and shoved under my nose.”
“But you’re so adorable when you’re mad,” he teased. “So it’ll go to trial?”
“On charges of conspiracy to enslave? I might make that stick.” She grinned a purely, sweetly, deliriously evil grin. “I want this to be an open warning to other women not to try the same tiling. And this time I want to gore her in public, not in private the way we did last time.”
He forbore to point out that he had done the goring, and she’d been furious with him for it. “I wonder if Josselin knows she’s got a habit of bruising pretty faces.”
She settled back down again, curling at his side beneath the silk sheets. “Remember Maivis Doriaz’s letter?”
He did. Shortly after Ellus Penteon and the three Witte girls had arrived at St. Caitiri’s, the Dean—who was also a Scholar Mage—wrote to apologize for her reluctance to hire the man based on Sarra’s asking Cailet to ask Maivis for the favor. Penteon was a brilliant teacher and an asset to the Academy, the girls were delightful, and she was very glad to have gotten them all away from Mirya Witte.
But it will be a long time—if ever—before he stops feeling guilty at having escaped a situation that I now firmly believe did put his life in danger. He says little about it, but what he does say tells me more than he realizes. Lady Sarra, I thank you for this chance to rescue a fine mind and a man who, with years and distance, may someday come to know that none of this was his fault.
“I doubt Josselin would put up with being knocked around,” Col said slowly.
“Then he has a temper?”
“Lady love, I suspect he has something much worse—a spine.”
8
JUST how stiff a spine, Collan learned five days later.
It was two mornings after the twins’ Birthingday. Col had drunk quite a bit even before the guests arrived, while Taigan and Mikel opened presents from the family. (Cailet’s were particularly admired—enameled cloak pins of Heathering manufacture depicting the black Liwellan Hawk clutching a silver Rosvenir Knife in each set of gold talons.) Proud of his exquisite daughter and elegant son, Collan toasted them, the day, the gifts, and anything else that struck his fancy. Later, as everyone who was anyone in Roseguard danced the night away in the ballroom, he drank not quite enough brandy to dull the poignant ache of seeing his little girl and little boy so grown up so fast.
The next morning he hadn’t even been human. Neither had Sarra. Or Tarise. Or Rillan. Falundir had simply locked his door. Only the twins, who had sneakily imbibed several glasses of sparkling wine through the course of the evening, had risen clear-eyed and hearty. Youth was wasted on the young.
But Mirya’s money had not been wasted on Josselin Mikleine. Collan dragged himself from the Residence to Wytte’s, hoping to sweat away his hangover, just in time to overhear Josselin pronounced flawless by Deiken Wytte. His body was honed to perfection; his stamina was that of a racehorse; his skin from head to toes was immaculate (though if a blemish ever had the temerity to appear on that face, it would die aborning for shame); his teeth and hair and even his fingernails were faultless.
“Now, don’t ruin all my work,” Deiken growled. “Don’t stuff your face, don’t slack off on your exercise, don’t even cut yourself shaving.”
Collan, passing by and overhearing the remark, saw Josselin’s carefully mild expression tense and his quiet gray eyes flash. For the first time, he looked like a seventeen-year-old boy who really, really wanted to do something really, really bad, like gorge himself on chocolates that would ruin both his waistline and his complexion.
In this mood of rebellion he floated beside Col in the blue depths of the hot pool a little while later, a frown pulling his brows down over his long nose. Col judged the expression in stormy gray eyes to be exactly what he’d been waiting for.
“Shame you have to waste it on Mirya Witte.”
Josselin shrugged, sending ripples through the calm water.
“Unless you want her, that is.”
“Of course I want to be married. I’m very lucky. Lady Mirya is generous, and kind, and—” He stopped, swallowed hard, and said, “May I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“What’s it like?”
“What’s what like?”
“Being with a woman you care about.”
Collan felt sorry for him. He was probably the only man on Lenfell who would. Given a choice, what male wouldn’t want to be young, strong, spectacularly good-looking, and have as his only duty in life the expert pleasuring of a woman with an admittedly spectacular body? Truly told, when Col had been Josselin’s age, he would’ve given anything but his lute for the chance. But at Josselin’s age, Collan had been a virgin. He’d made up for lost time since—but he knew what the boy meant, because it had never been real and true for him until Sarra.
“The first time,” he said slowly, “it’s like she’s this amazing new song you’re going to learn, or an incredible lute you’ve been given the chance to play. Then in the middle of it you find out that you’re both music. The same music, the same instrument. You’re inside the same skin—you know how she wants to be touched and what her reaction will do to you both. But at the same time there’s always something new about it. No matter how often you make love to her, it’s always different. Place, mood, time of day, even the color of the sheets—” He spared a reminiscent chuckle for a particular bed draped in black silk that did breathtaking things to Sarra’s golden skin. “Point is, with some women you have to work at making it new. When you love her, it’s easy. There’s always something about her to learn or explore, or just go back over what’s familiar that you’ve learned to love exploring.”
Josselin looked politely skeptical.
“Don’t worry,” Col smiled. “You’ll find out.”
“If my face doesn’t get in the way.”
“And if you ever get the chance to make love to a woman who isn’t old enough to be your grandmother,” Collan finished. “I didn’t ask if you wanted to be married, I asked if you wanted her. Stop repeating what everybody’s told you and think for yourself.”
“And just exactly how much good would that do me?” Josselin asked acidly.
“A lot, if you can get past the money and the chance to be called Lord Josselin and the so-called honor of it.”
“What else does my situation have to recommend it? What choice do I have?”
Col repressed the urge to snarl at him to stop whining. The boy was still only a boy, after all: seventeen, an orphan dependent on charity all his life, with only his beauty to trade
on for advancement in the world.
“Not until I can say I’m eighteen, anyway,” Josselin finished. “I can’t legally sign a marriage contract until then—but I can’t legally refuse to sign anything either.”
The glass of fruit juice nearly slid from Collan’s fingers. Gray eyes glanced at him sidelong. Their flicker of amusement took him aback—and it shouldn’t have. This boy had been secretly giving people this look all his life when they underestimated him.
“Shocked?” Josselin asked blandly.
“Relieved.” He grinned. “I told Lady Sarra you might possibly be in possession of a spine. Glad to find out I’m not a liar.”
“I am, though.” He shook his head. “I’m letting them all believe I’ll go through with it.”
“If I told you there’s a way to keep your word without having to go through with it, what would you say?”
A wry smile curved the corners of the perfect mouth. “I’d say you and Lady Sarra have been plotting, as you are famously rumored to do.”
“Only rumors?” Col asked, disappointed.
“Mirya warned me against you both, you know,” Josselin went on. “Some bilge about your trying to interfere in our happiness once we’re married.”
“And are you aware,” Col asked grimly, “that her idea of happiness includes breaking your ribs?”
“Oh, she already raised her hand to me,” the boy said quietly. “Once.” And only once, hung unspoken between them. After a moment Josselin went on, “I reminded her that I couldn’t allow her to damage the goods before she took legal possession of them.”
Having a new measure of the young man—a measure that had nothing to do with the size of his biceps—Collan asked casually, “How’d you like to come to dinner tonight?”
Three hours later, the persuasions of being Who He Was having liberated Josselin from Wytte’s without his guardian’s permission, Collan stood in the garden doors of the family sitting room and watched his blithely self-possessed daughter get her first look at Josselin Mikleine. Newly turned sixteen, wearing an elegant off-the-shoulder dress, and well aware that the apple-green linen turned her eyes to emeralds, Taigan strolled in late with a casual apology on her lips. It died after three words when Josselin got to his feet, bowed, and shyly expressed belated happy Birthingday wishes.