by Amanda Fleet
The shouting started immediately and the massed throng appeared ready to tear me limb from limb. Faran’s hand shifted to the dagger in his belt, his eyes scanning the room. Lord Eredan held up his hand, and the room fell silent, instantly.
“We also voted to re-admit her,” he said. “Once she has sworn the oath of allegiance to The Realm. Guardians of The Realm, you have been summoned to bear witness to the swearing of oaths of allegiance and obedience.” His voice rang across the room. “The Council expects everyone to abide by any decision it makes and any conditions attached. Aeron. Are you ready to swear your oaths?”
No.
I nodded. Faran stepped forwards, unfurled the paper and held the page so that I could read it. I half expected some trickery at this point; that the scroll would be a different one, that I wouldn’t be able to read it, something, anything, to make me stumble and jeopardise my life. With relief, I saw that the paper was the one we’d just studied. Faran touched my hand, reassuringly, urging me to read. As I glanced around the Great Hall, I could see few other than Faran looking in the least bit supportive of me. I shook so hard that the bench made a light knocking sound on the wooden floor and Faran shifted so that his foot steadied it. He nodded again. I peered down at the paper, my vision threatening to swim.
“I, Aeron, of the houses of Wymond and—” I started, my voice nowhere near loud enough to carry beyond the first row of Guardians arrayed before me.
“Speak up!” snapped Lord Eredan. “The hall needs to hear you.”
I gripped the bench even harder and began again, keeping my focus on the page and speaking as loudly as I could. “I, Aeron, of the houses of Wymond and Hadwen, do swear allegiance to The Realm, its people and its estates. I swear fealty to the First Lord of the Realm, the Elected Successor and to the Council. I swear to be bound by the decisions of the Council and the First Lord and to uphold the laws and customs of The Realm. I swear to protect and defend The Realm, its peoples and its estates, unto death, against all threats, known and unknown. I accept that all of these oaths I make are binding unto death and if breached, will be punishable by death.”
Lord Eredan handed me a pen. Just in time, I remembered to write Aeron rather than Reagan. My gaze sought Faran’s.
“Do I need to write my houses as well as Aeron?” I whispered.
He nodded impatiently. “Write Aeron, houses of Wymond and Hadwen, like it says.”
I trembled so much I dropped the pen and Lord Eredan tutted and handed it to me again, full of disdain. I scribbled the words and handed the pen and the paper back to Lord Eredan. If my attempt at Realm script was terrible, he didn’t indicate it. He signed beneath my signature and passed the paper to Faran to sign. Lord Eredan then took the paper back and held it up to the throngs.
“I confirm that Aeron has sworn oaths of allegiance and obedience to The Realm which are binding until death. Breach of these oaths is punishable by death.”
His mouth twisted as if he had a mouthful of wasps being washed down with a side order of limes. I bowed my head to the Council members and to him. “My Lords and Ladies, I am grateful for your considerations.”
Faran’s mouth hung open, and I wondered what faux pas I’d made now. Mirth danced in his eyes and he stopped catching flies and poked his tongue into his cheek, obviously trying hard not to laugh. Blood poured into my cheeks.
Lord Eredan furled the scroll again. “The Council will reconvene in ten minutes. I thank the rest of you for your time. Return to your duties.”
The assembled Guardians drifted away. I was left alone with Faran who let out a belly laugh, the moment the door closed on everyone.
“My lords and ladies, I am grateful for your considerations? Since when have you been so meek and mild?”
I wasn’t laughing. “Probably since I had the threat of being hanged looming over me.”
That wiped the smile off his face.
Someone cleared their throat behind him and we both turned. Orian stood next to the woman who’d been giving me death stares. Faran blushed. Taller than me, she was about the same height as Orian, but still a few inches shorter than Faran.
“I see you two are reconciled,” she sneered. She made a fine impression of Medusa with the looks she gave both me and Faran.
“Lady Morgan.” Faran jutted his chin up. “Orian.”
Her eyes glittered dangerously as they skipped over me.
“Lady Aeron,” said Faran. “This is Lady Morgan.”
He held my hand firmly, his thumb circling my skin.
Lady Morgan swept her long, dark, wavy hair over her shoulder, her eyes drilling into Faran. “Council is about to reconvene. Lady Aeron has not been re-admitted to the Council.”
I couldn’t work out what was going on, so kept my mouth shut. Faran acknowledged her words with a small inclination of his head and turned back to me. “I’ll see you to our rooms but then I must attend the Council meeting.” He eyeballed his brother, clearly weighing something up. “Orian, will you keep Lady Aeron company until I return? I could ask Cenan if you’re busy.”
A sly grin slid across Orian’s face. “No, I’m more than happy to keep Lady Aeron company.”
The four of us left the hall and walked in an uncomfortable silence until we reached Faran’s suite of rooms. There, Faran ushered me in. “I’ll return as soon as the Council meeting has finished. Orian will sit with you until then.”
He stepped back. Orian joined me and I turned in time to see Lady Morgan slide her hand into the crook of Faran’s arm as they moved away, just before Orian closed the door behind them.
“Sit. Wait for him,” said Orian, indicating the leather sofa.
I really needed a bottle of vodka and some time alone to think, but I was sure neither of these were available. I perched on the over-stuffed sofa, and Orian lolled beside me, his eyes flirtatious.
“Welcome back. I’ve missed you.”
“I can’t say the same. I don’t know you.”
His lips thinned briefly. “Well, we can always rectify that.”
I increased the distance between us. “So who’s Lady Morgan?”
Orian chuckled. “Oh, you really remember nothing. Lady Morgan is Faran’s mistress.”
5
Jesus, what was I doing here? I had no expectations that being forced to stay here as Faran’s wife would be a situation overflowing with love and joy. I’d accepted it only as the least bad option out of a pretty shitty list. The fact I didn’t know him and loved someone else wasn’t a great start. The fact he thought I’d betrayed him in the worst possible way and he had a mistress, made it doomed to failure. My heart ached as I thought of the tiny cottage I’d lived in with Finn and the new job I’d been about to start. Would I ever make it back home?
I hauled my thoughts back to the latest development. “His mistress?”
Orian shrugged. “You weren’t expected to return. He is a man.”
My mind pulled up something from the book he’d given me. “I thought my return was predicted.”
“No one actually believes those writings. They can be fairly oblique and unreliable. It was assumed that you were gone and would never return. Or that if you did return, it wouldn’t be in our lifetime. Another few weeks and Faran would have been free.”
My brow puckered and Orian sighed. “He’s too honourable, or stupid, to renounce your marriage. Not honourable enough to stay celibate though. You’ve been gone for almost two years, Aeron. In another few weeks, the marriage could have been annulled and he wouldn’t need to renounce you. He could remain the betrayed hero and marry Lady Morgan.”
“He’s going to marry her?”
“Well not now! Your return has made that impossible. Unless he now renounces the marriage.”
No wonder she’d looked like Medusa.
“Do you think he will?”
Orian shrugged. “You’d have to ask him that. They’re certainly close. Perhaps he’d prefer a wife and a mistress.”
“Is th
at acceptable here?”
“As long as all parties are discreet. It’s certainly not unheard of.”
I tried to quell my rising panic. I didn’t want any of this.
We lapsed into silence and I let my focus flit around the room. The furniture was rich and comfortable but the room was devoid of personal effects. No pictures on the walls or surfaces; no books; nothing resembling a telly or any other kind of entertainment. Was everywhere as bare as this or was it just that Faran was a no-frills kind of guy?
“I would anticipate that Faran and Lady Morgan are in the middle of a huge row right now,” said Orian, snapping my attention back to him. “I wouldn’t be surprised if we hear it in here.”
“What about?” I said automatically.
He stared at me as if I was an imbecile. “What about? Your return. The fact that he’s already installed you in his rooms.”
I swallowed, suddenly terrified of what the night ahead might entail. There was only one bed, and neither Faran nor I would fit on this sofa to sleep.
I thought back over all the dreams I’d had. Faran had always seemed to love me in them. At least until I betrayed him. There was no inkling of him cheating on me. “Was our marriage a happy one? Before I was banished?”
Orian stretched out his legs, his ankles tucking under the low table in the centre of the room. “It was an arranged marriage. It cemented power in both our houses.”
Was that an oblique way of saying, “No”? Did my dreams bear any resemblance to Aeron’s life?
I rubbed my brow, trying to push away the developing headache pounding my skull. “Why doesn’t he renounce me? If he’s close to Lady Morgan, why doesn’t he call things off with me and stay with her?”
“It’s complicated. You’ll have to ask him when he returns.”
I picked at a dead bit of skin by my nail, thinking about Faran’s belief that without his protection, his father would try to have me hanged. “Do Faran and Lord Eredan get on?”
Orian paused for a moment. “Theirs is like every one of Faran’s relationships – stormy. Father has a quick temper. Faran’s marginally more measured. Both of them have short fuses but equally short memories. The only person my brother has ever borne a grudge over is you. But then, not so much so that he renounced his marriage to you, despite the personal cost it caused him.”
I frowned.
Orian rolled his eyes. “You were banished as a traitor. People questioned his judgement. Even if he renounces you now, he’s missed out on some advantageous matches.”
I fingered the edge of the sofa. “Is Lady Morgan an advantageous match?”
Orian sniffed. “She’s as good as he’s likely to get now.”
“A better match than me?”
Orian met my eye and tilted his head as if the answer was ambiguous. “Before you were banished, you were the highest woman in The Realm. By birth you still are.”
“But, as I’m a convicted traitor, no one in their right mind would hitch their wagon to me?” I said, filling in the flip side.
“I would,” he said softly. “But unless he rejects you, I cannot.”
I shifted right to the edge of the sofa, maximising the distance between us. Whereas there’d been a flicker of familiarity when Faran had held me in the cells, something in my belly told me not to trust Orian.
“Can I reject him?” I wasn’t intending to; I was simply curious about how things worked here.
He snorted. “Only if you’re a complete lunatic. He’s Elected Successor. You could be First Lady one day. Trust me, that will wipe out any tarnish from you having brought Aegyir here.”
Above us, light rain pattered on the glass roof. Was the weather here temperate, like the UK? Or were there no windows that opened because it was freezing outside? It was toasty-warm inside.
“Is there underfloor heating everywhere?” I asked.
Orian nodded. “Well, in the city. The geothermals don’t stretch far enough to cover the provinces.”
“Do the geothermals heat the water too?”
He looked at me as if I was stupid. “Mm.”
I turned my attention back to the room. High on the wall above the main door to the suite was what had to be a clock of some kind, but the face was divided into ten and there was only one hand. I had no idea what time it was. My eyes rested nervously on the bedroom door. A wave of nausea rippled through me and I blanked my mind before I threw up. There’d be time enough to worry about all that later.
The silence stretched between us.
Both of us started as the door flew open. Faran glared at his brother. “Thank you for keeping Aeron company. You may go now.”
Faran looked like thunder and I trembled.
Orian stood gracefully. “Good Council meeting? Or is it Lady Morgan who’s ruffled your composure so much?”
“Thank you. You may go.”
Orian bowed to me, a peculiar expression on his face – pity? Before I could worry about that, Faran slammed the door on him so hard it shimmered on its hinges.
“Everything okay?” I settled my posture, ready to spring up if I needed to.
He didn’t answer, instead marching into the bathroom and returning with a cup of water. He stood, legs apart, drinking steadily. At least his face had softened fractionally.
“I’ve arranged for a maid to change the bedding and someone to fit you for clothes,” he said.
“Clothes?”
“Well, you can’t wear those.” He jutted his chin at my jeans and shirt.
“Why not?”
“Because you need leathers, like every Guardian, to protect you from blades. Until they’ve been made for you, I’ll get the seamstress to find something more suitable for The Realm.”
“How come there are none of my old clothes left?”
He drained his cup before answering. “You were banished. Everything you possessed was destroyed.”
“Oh. Okay.”
I remembered the items that had been taken from me or left in the cells. “Can I have my bag back? And the book Orian gave me?”
He shrugged. “I can’t see a reason why not. They’re yours.”
I hesitated before my next question. “Is it possible for me to get anything from home? If I have to stay here.”
Faran’s brows rose. “If you have to stay here? Did you not just swear your oaths of allegiance?”
“Yeah.” I flapped my hand as if this could erase what I’d said. “But can I get any of my things?”
He turned the cup around in his hands, staring at me. “You’ll get everything you need from The Realm, in exchange for your service to it. Like everyone else does.”
My heart sank. “Okay. Would it be possible to get a pen or pencil and some paper?”
“For?” he said carefully.
“So that I can make notes on who everyone is. I’m really bad with names and I want to try to learn who people are.”
“Yes, I can get you pen and paper.”
He sat, taking the space Orian had occupied. I forced myself not to yield ground.
“Was your father happy to let me stay?”
He turned to me, a half smile on his face. “No.”
“Are you?”
He drew one knee up, any good humour fading. “I think we have a lot to discuss.”
“No kidding!”
A frown flitted across his brow but I didn’t enlighten him. “How was the Council meeting?”
He grimaced. “You should have been there. You’re the most senior member of your house. You’re more senior than me!”
“Oh. But you brought me back here.”
“Father refuses to have you on the Council, although there’s no legal basis for denying you the position. But perhaps the moral argument carries.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
He faced me. “You’re the most senior member of your house because everyone else is dead. Aegyir killed them when you invited him in. Lord Father is not of the opinion that you deserve
your place since you reached it as a result of everyone else being murdered.”
“When you put it like that, I’m not either.”
He snorted mirthlessly.
There was a knock on the outer door and a maid arrived with an armful of bedding and towels. Faran nodded for her to go through to the bedroom and touched his finger to his lips, indicating to me not to talk.
“When Mya and Flinda come, I’ll wait out here,” he said, adding, “Mya is the Senior Technician and Flinda’s the seamstress. They’ll need to measure you.”
The maid scurried around like a mouse in the bedroom and bathroom and I felt awkward and itched to help her. Almost as soon as she’d gone, a taller woman with a kindly face and a basket on her arm arrived. She smiled warmly and made an ostentatious bow.
“Lady Aeron?” she said as she rose. “I’m Flinda. Faran has asked me to take your measurements for new clothes.”
Faran promised to wait in the outer room to let Mya in when she arrived, and Flinda and I went through to the bedroom. There, Flinda looked gossipy. “Are you really returned?”
“I guess I am.”
“Well. Shall we get started?”
She asked me to undress down to my underwear, giving all of my clothes perplexed glances. She frowned when she saw the array of bruises that still stained my body, but made no comment.
She measured almost every aspect of me from the anticipated hip, waist and bust measurements to the length of my arms, length of my legs, length and breadth of my back, biceps, wrist, thigh, calf, neck and ankle circumferences. Finally, she measured each dimension of my feet with a contraption that reminded me of something I’d once seen in a museum. As she bobbed like a robin around me, I wondered where seamstresses came in the pecking order of The Realm. She wore a woollen tunic with leggings beneath it like the maid had, but Flinda’s were made of a much finer thread and more brightly coloured. I wanted to ask her if only Guardians wore leather clothes but was afraid of demonstrating my ignorance. She saw me as Lady Aeron and presumably, Lady Aeron knew these kinds of things.
She was still taking measurements when there was another knock at the door, and a perky red-head joined us in the bedroom. She made an elaborate bow to me, but not to Flinda, and introduced herself as the Senior Technician, Mya. She waited patiently while Flinda took the last measurements, standing to one side. From her clothes, I judged the Senior Technician to be of a higher standing than the seamstress. She wore neat-fitting woollen trousers and highly polished shoes with a long-sleeved top under a double-breasted leather waistcoat with a collar. All of her clothes were in a deep moss-green which set off her copper hair beautifully. As Flinda finished, she asked for my measurements to be sent to her. Flinda bowed to her, gathered her equipment back into her basket and left. Mya smiled coolly while I dressed. Her eyes raked over the bruises, although she averted her gaze when I turned my head to her.