Lady Behnaz’s gaze swiveled over to them. Her expression, at least, was not amused in the slightest. She gave each of my friends an individually crafted scowl.
“Enough, sirrah! What do you three find so amusing about this?”
Although Galen normally took the lead when it came to explanations, this time Liam stepped in to field the question. He bobbed his antlers respectfully as he answered her.
“Lady Behnaz, we meant no insult,” he said. “It’s just…we have learned that Dame Chrissie is, shall we say, ‘touchy’ about disrobing in front of others. Having others bathe her might be a bit too far along the path for her to accept.”
“Fie on all of you, then! Out! Out!” Behnaz imperiously waggled a finger at them. Reluctantly, the centaur, griffin, and fayleene bowed to me and left the room. “There we go! What a ridiculous notion, that a lady of stature would have such qualms.”
“Actually…” I ventured, “they’re right on the money.”
Behnaz looked at me, confused. “Right on the what?”
“I mean, they’re correct.”
“That having servants bathe you is somehow embarrassing? Ridiculous! And after all the time I’ve taken to get the tub set up, the water heated–”
“Come to think of it,” I said, as I tried to forestall the inevitable, “how did you set up the bath in my private necessarium? It’s supposed to be…well, for my use only. I keep the key hidden here, in my office.”
Percival blushed. He held up his hand. “I found where you’d stashed it next to Grand Master Mothball.”
“You found it–” I stopped, doing my best to hold back my temper by sheer force of will. “Percival, we’re going to have to have a talk about ‘privacy’ sometime.”
His bright face fell. “Yes, Dame Chrissie.”
Lady Behnaz tapped her lips with one finger as she listened to us. She nodded to herself as if she’d come to some conclusion. Then she asked the little page a question of her own.
“Percival, is it?”
“Yes, as it pleases you, my Lady,” Percival replied, with a humble bow.
“You have served me in the past, have you not? Helping me dress, fix my hair, or clean my chambers?”
“Many times, Lady Behnaz.”
“Have I ever asked your name before?” The young boy shook his blond mop of hair back and forth in the negative. “Very well. You and the other servants are dismissed.”
She clapped her hands a second time, and the four royal pages vanished in the twinkling of an eye. Behnaz eyed me critically. Finally, she spoke in a surprisingly wistful voice.
“I rarely speak to servants, but I do listen,” she began. “They talk of Dame Chrissie with equal parts amusement and respect. I believe that this comes from your upbringing, which is not Andeluvian, though you hold a title of the highest rank.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” I said honestly. “I did intervene on Percival’s behalf a while ago–”
“Stop,” she said, holding up a hand. “That is what I am referring to. You view Percival as an individual worthy of referring to by name.”
Lady Behnaz hadn’t phrased her statement as an accusation, but somehow it felt offensive to me. “Yes, and why wouldn’t I?”
“Because Percival is a servant, and you are a noble. Percival is no more a ‘he’ or a ‘she’ than a goblet of wine, a glowing hearth, or a well-stocked chest.”
It took me a moment to see where Behnaz was coming from. She was right, in so far that she’d been raised in a world with much higher and absolute divisions of social status. Me, I’d carried the warm and fuzzy idea that ‘everyone is an individual’ into this world without realizing it.
Even though I found her viewpoint primitive, at least I understood what she was getting at. Servants were not to be seen or heard. In my world, say that someone started carrying on conversations with their dishwasher, microwave oven, or clothes dryer. They’d be seen as strange, if not demented. So my objection to being washed by people who were, literally, beneath notice looked equally strange to Behnaz.
“All right,” I conceded. “I get it. Really, I do. But…can we at least use female servants for my bath?”
Behnaz rolled her eyes, but she nodded assent.
A few minutes later, I sat in a waist-deep tub of steaming water. Now, every representation of a hot bath performed by servants that I’d ever seen made the experience look unimaginably luxurious. However, the reality fell far short.
The smell of primrose overwhelmed my poor nose. The fragrance came from the bath water, the steam, even the pink soap used to bathe me. I was sure that the point of all this was to ensure that scent seeped into my every pore. My sweat would smell like potpourri for the next month.
Then there was my choice of servants. Apparently, in Andeluvia it was custom for the male pages to assist in both genders’ bathing rituals. The female servants around the castle performed the duties of maids, meal servers, and kitchen workers. So while the women summoned were kind enough, they normally handled the scullery duties. They dunked my head in the soapy water and scrubbed me down like a greasy pan until my skin turned bright pink.
Which was appropriate, now that I thought of it.
I was dried, wrapped in a plush robe, and escorted back to my tower room. Behnaz beckoned me over to where she’d set up a chair and small folding table in front of yet another full-length brass mirror. The Dress of Pink Horror remained on its dress mannequin off to one side, its long train carefully folded up on the floor behind it.
“Okay,” I sighed. “Let’s put this dress on.”
“The dress is for tomorrow morning,” Behnaz corrected me. “I shall be here with my servants to help you. Oh, and one more thing: you do not ‘put this dress on’. Rather, my maids will be sewing you into it.”
I suppressed a groan. Somehow, that just made it worse.
“For now, I need your hair a little less moist,” she continued.
Lady Behnaz pulled out a cloth and began toweling my hair dry. As she did so, I eyed the objects that she had laid out. A metal bowl filled with something that smelled like varnish sat on the table. Next to it was a bristly basting brush and a sizeable pile of linen strips.
“What are those for?” I asked, worried.
She picked up the top strip as she eyed the wild shag she’d made of my hair. “You’ll wear these overnight once I’m done with your preparation. These shall help create the ceremonial sausage-shaped curls for the Primrose Lady of Spring Beauty.”
Sausage curls?
Oh, this just got better and better.
I started to get out of the chair. “Maybe we could compromise on this? How about I let you shave me bald instead? I’m supposed to be a female knight, maybe it’ll make me look tougher.”
“Dame Chrissie,” Behnaz said, in a voice just above a griffin-like growl. “I have been more than patient with you this day. Yet my tolerance is about exhausted by now.”
“But–”
“Sit. Down. Now!”
I sat.
Knowing I was beaten, Behnaz spent the next two hours on me without a lot of chit-chat. Which was my fault, I guess, but I don’t think we’d have talked much anyway. She had enough to concentrate on as it was.
She grabbed hanks of my hair and expertly wove the strips of pinkish cloth around them. After Lady Behnaz was satisfied with each wrap, she dipped the basting brush in the bowl of liquid and slathered it on that tied section.
My nose wrinkled the first time she used the brush.
“What is that stuff?” I asked.
“My own variation of something we ladies use for formal hair styling,” she explained. “It’s three parts extract of willow bark, two parts the white of an egg, and one part something else.”
“That’s the part that I’m worried about,” I muttered, but she ignored me.
I kept my eyes downcast and tried not to look at myself in the mirror. However, my self-esteem rose to just slightly above zero as Behnaz
finished tying up my hair and coating me with homemade hair varnish. She brought out a loose yarn bag and carefully snugged it over my hair, hiding and protecting the curls.
“This is a ‘snood’,” she explained. “You shall be keeping this on until I arrive tomorrow morning to remove it. It shall allow you to go about today and sleep through the night without destroying the work I have done.”
“Thank you, Lady Behnaz,” I said humbly. I wasn’t thrilled with this whole business, but she had been patient with me. And she was impeccably skilled. Had she been born in my world, she’d have made a top-notch hairdresser.
I finally got up the nerve to look at myself in the bronze mirror. The fuzzy image didn’t show all that much detail or true color, but at least I didn’t look truly frightful. If anything, the sock-like protrusion of the snood sort of stacked my hair up and made it stick up towards the back in an angular column.
It made me look more than a little like the Bride of Frankenstein, only without the neck bolts and green makeup.
A hurried knock sounded at the door just as Lady Behnaz stowed away her tools. I looked over my shoulder as Percival entered the room at a run. He skidded to a stop before me, almost tripping over my rugs in the process.
“Dame Chrissie!” he squeaked. “Come quick! The King needs you!”
“King Fitzwilliam can go hang, so far as I’m concerned,” I grumbled irritably, as I jabbed a finger at my be-snooded head. “Can’t you see what I look like right now?”
“Please!” he urged. “It looks like blood will be spilt any moment before the throne!”
I gritted my teeth until my jaw ached. It didn’t sound like I had a choice.
“He’s going to have to wait for one more minute,” I said, as I jumped up and took the stairs down to my bedroom, two at a time. I ditched the robe, snatched up a pair of panties, and found my favorite violet doublet to slip into. I quickly paired that with jeans, boots, socks, and shoulder holster. The holster was hidden, as always, under my charcoal gray, fur-trimmed Andeluvian cloak.
I pounded my way back upstairs. Percival waited anxiously for me, fidgeting as Lady Behnaz watched in detached amusement. His face shone with relief as he spotted me.
“Come on,” I said, nodding to him. He fell into step beside me as I headed for the door.
“Good luck,” Behnaz called out, as we left her behind.
Yeah, I thought, as we headed towards the throne room. It sounds like I’m really going to need all the luck I can get.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
I didn’t even have time to ask Percival what was going on.
No sooner had we drawn close to the throne room’s antechamber than I heard the ominous sound of shouts and curses from within. I didn’t slow down as I pushed on through the heavy double doors. That was probably rash, but I was counting on Fitzwilliam’s backing over whatever row had brewed up in my absence.
No one noticed my entrance, which was fine by me. Almost every lord or knight stood behind their respective tables, yelling or shaking their fists. I was amazed that the King had allowed the Royal Court to work themselves up into this degree of lather. But the reason became evident as I drew closer.
The throne was empty. So was the area around it.
Fitzwilliam wasn’t holding court. Commander Yervan wasn’t standing behind and to the side of the throne as its silent, golden-plated guardian. And a centaur-sized space remained where Galen would normally reside as the all-knowing counselor and Court Wizard.
And speaking of centaurs, there was one present. A centauress, to be precise. Only she stood at the front of the room, confronting the raucous assemblage of lords and knights.
My breath caught as I recognized Galen’s younger sister, Rikka.
Rikka had a broad face, sharp jaw, and dark eyebrows that stood out against her fire-bright red hair. The exposed parts of her equine body had an autumn-leaf chestnut sheen. And I did mean the ‘exposed parts’. Her body, from neck down along her torso and equine body was almost completely hidden under a mass of silver-gray scale armor.
A pair of bulging leather saddlebags hung at her flanks, each one crammed to bursting like overstuffed travel suitcases. Handles of various weapons jutted out of the tops of the bags, many within easy reach. The centauress’ eyes gleamed in the same ominously hard way as she regarded the humans before her.
In fact, her entire stance and expression said: Do not touch.
“How dare you lay claim to honor on the battlefield of the Oxine!” Lord Alvey sputtered, the cords in his neck standing out as he did so. “Our people sacrificed more than yours to stop your own kin from ravaging this land!”
“They were not our kin when they invaded,” Rikka gritted back. Her fingers flexed the way her brother’s did when he was angry and contemplating casting a spell. “They were hosted by the Ultari.”
“She speaks truth!” shouted Lord Ghaznavi. “They were mindless puppets of the demons when they crossed the Oxine!”
“Or so this one says,” Alvey shot back. “A remarkably convenient thing, that.”
“The truth is rarely so convenient,” I said, as I joined Rikka before the gathered assembly of men. “Yet I and many others can verify it. We were there, Lord Alvey. You were not.”
The old man glowered at me hatefully. His sons gathered around him protectively as abuse was hurled back and forth, both for and against the centaurs. Amazingly, the fights that seemed to be about to break out weren’t between the tables of the Eastern Reach and the Western Reach. Instead, the angry words were cast between lords who sat at the same table.
Lord Behnaz looked ready to sic his men on Ghaznavi for his verification of Rikka’s claim. Across the way, Sir Ivor and his supporters rested their hands suspiciously close to their swords as they argued with Alvey and his backers. Through it all, Rikka made a step to one side to stand next to me. Her eyes didn’t leave the commotion before us, but her voice was warm with gratitude.
“Thank the Gods that you arrived when you did, Dayna!” she murmured. “Never had I thought to receive a welcome in this manner! Centaurs may not be loved in these parts, but I came as a fellow warrior for the Spring Tournament. And as favored Champion of the legendary Dame Chrissie!”
“Well, I’m legendarily hated around here too, at least by some people,” I replied wryly. “But it’s good to see you too, Rikka.”
“Who is the elder one who spoke so rootedly to me?” she asked. Rikka caught herself and tried again. “That is, who is it that spoke so ‘rudely’ to me? The one with no teeth left in his head, I mean.”
“That’s Lord Alvey,” I answered. “He’s the oldest, richest man in the human kingdom, I’m afraid. He doesn’t like centaurs, and that goes double for me. Those three around him are his offspring.”
Suddenly, Alvey’s oldest son, Sir Kagin, pointed at Rikka as he shouted at Sir Ivor. “Your father would be ashamed if he saw you defending this creature!”
“Unlike you,” Ivor shot back, “I have seen her in action. This ‘creature’ as you call her, does not need me to defend her. Even a skilled duelist like you would be hard pressed to deal with her raw power and considerable talents.”
Kagin snorted. “As if this one would duel me!”
“Absolutely not!” Rikka said, sounding offended. “I would have to duel both you and your two brothers at the same time. Otherwise, it would not be a fair fight.”
Rikka’s announcement cut through the general din. A round of hearty laughter erupted from around the room. The eldest of the Alvey boys turned beet red in anger.
“Watch your tongue, horse-woman!” he spat. “I too am a warrior in the Spring Tournament. Should I duel you in the final round of the Grand Duel, then I shall defeat you and have your flank branded with the sigil of my house!”
This got a round of ‘oohs’ from the surrounding lords and knights. Again, I couldn’t believe how this ‘court of nobles’ acted like a bunch of drunken frat boys. And that was without any alcohol whatsoever
. God only knew what it must have been like during one of the Good King Benedict’s drinking sessions. Poor little Percival must have been running and emptying buckets as fast as they could be filled.
But Rikka wasn’t about to cede the field, verbal or otherwise. She waited until the rowdiness had settled down a bit before replying. Her mouth smiled, but her eyes did not.
“Perhaps it is not my tongue that needs watching,” she replied. “Is your courage as big as your talk? Or as small as a human child’s flaccid member?”
This gibe went beyond ‘oohs’ and up into a round of guffaws. Before Sir Kagin could reply, Rikka spoke up again.
“My name is Skallgrym Serikkaylen, and my word is my bond,” she said, her voice ringing across the wide hall. I envied the power of her lungs in doing that. “Should we meet in your ‘Grand Duel’ and you defeat me, my flank is yours to do with as you wish.”
She flicked her equine tail to one side in a coquettish manner. An even louder round of guffaws resulted. Kagin flushed even more deeply, until his skin had gone the shade of cooked lobster.
“But,” Rikka concluded. “Should I defeat you, then I claim the same privilege. It is your rump that shall be branded, and I doing the branding. I shall use the sigil of the Lady of the Tower when I do so. So that your tender bottom shall always know the might of Dame Chrissie and her Champion!”
With that, Galen’s sister brought the house down. Guffaws gave way to cheers. A few still booed the centauress, but many more cheered at the boldness of the challenge. I stood next to her, astounded.
“And here I thought I was coming to your aid,” I said, stunned. “Maybe you ought to be teaching me how to deal with the lords and knights here.”
Rikka made that uniquely equine shrug. “Males are males and warriors are warriors, no matter the species. Boast and counter, bluff and gibe, it is much the same.”
The cheering and booing had just begun to subside when a familiar bellow sounded down the length of the throne room.
Trafficking in Demons Page 15