Sit Pretty

by R. J. Price

  “I knew, how did you know?” Jer asked. “More importantly, does she know?”

  “I made a guess and the answer to the second question is a little more complicated than yes or no,” Perlon said, wavering slightly on his feet. “As you know, sometimes her fair rank says something that sounds completely benign, but is really the truth and they don’t know that they’re speaking the truth, but they are, and anyone with half a mind can figure out what they really mean.”

  “What did she say, that makes you think she knows, but doesn’t know?” Jer asked.

  “She said, ‘You are older than my father,’ and then corrected herself,” Perlon responded. “Of course for all she knows her father was some doddering old fool. She shouldn't have been able to guess that of all things. Especially given how young the pair of you were when she was conceived. You’re the reason why mating age should be sixteen or higher, don’t you know?”

  Jer pulled Perlon along. “We need to get you in a bed before you start singing bawdy songs.”

  “Did you say songs about bodies? I love those songs!” Perlon said quickly. “What’s that one, the one where the narrator slept with his brother’s mate on accident? I like that one the best. How’s it go again?”

  “Sleep, that’s how that goes,” Jer responded. “Try to get a hold of yourself. You’re a mated man.”

  “Just because I’m mated, doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate a good song about a good body,” Perlon grumbled in response. “At least then I’d have my imagination to keep me warm at night.”

  “Give it time.”

  “I know. I know to give it time. Not stupid. Should have mated her for a year, is what I should have done. Should have—“

  “Need,” Jer stopped suddenly and gave Perlon a shake. “Need to focus and, if you want to keep her, court her quickly. Aren’s declared all arranged matings done by Em to be up for inspection, so she can void the mating.”

  “Stupid Em making stupid choices, but I want her, I do.”

  “Then focus.”

  “You make such pretty daughters,” Perlon said, patting Jer on the head, “such pretty, pretty daughters. Mine’s beautiful. Not my daughter, the child of yours that I’m mated to, is what I mean. Gorgeous and she’s such a delight to be around. There she is!”

  Mar approached them cautiously, suspicion creasing her features as she looked from Jer, to Perlon, then back to Jer. “Did you get him drunk?”

  “No, this is how your mate gets when he doesn’t sleep,” Jer said steadily. “I was just escorting him to bed. How is Aren?”

  “She ordered me to find Perlon, wash, eat, and sleep, then return this evening if I wake up before tomorrow morning,” Mar responded. “She seems to think I’d have better luck getting him into bed.”

  “Oh, bed is it?” Perlon said.

  “No, you’re going to bed, not her,” Jer said quickly and loudly.

  “But I want to go to bed with her,” Perlon grumbled.

  “Oh dear,” Mar said, giggling into her hand. “What am I going to do with him?”

  Chapter Eleven

  Av walked into the trades room and looked over each of the tables. He had been in the room only once before, to fetch the tailor for Jer. Focusing on the tailor’s desk, Av found it empty. He pointed a finger to the desk and looked at the closest tradesman.

  “Where did he go?”

  “It hardly matters where,” the man responded. “This is court, he sees to many lords and ladies. If you need him, have a seat and wait.”

  Av worried that Aren’s parents may have already decided to help themselves to the treasury. Para’s mating to Cerlot had been entirely too expensive, as had most of her stay at the palace.

  “I think it is very important where he has gone to. Where?”

  “You aren’t master anymore, boy,” a tradesman beside Av guffawed, causing his glasses, perched on the end of his nose, to fall off and clatter across his work desk.

  Av looked over the rings, scattered across the top, at the finer jewelry on display and decided that this was the man who he had come looking for in the first place.

  “Word travels fast,” Av muttered.

  “He was at court,” said the tradesman from behind Av. “He noticed the one sitting the throne, ehm, what’s her name this week? Aren? Aren. Noticed she’s worn the same dress each day. He’s gone to take her measurements and do something about that.”

  “Seeing to Lady Aren is fine,” Av said, turning his attention back to the jeweller. “I’m more concerned about her parents, Lady Para and Lord Cerlot.” As he spoke the second name all the tradesmen chimed in an irritated fashion.

  “We won’t be seeing to those ones again,” the jeweller grumbled, bushy eyebrows dancing up and down. “We were here when they mated. Then she comes waltzing in right after court today and informs us that some changes will be made. As if we need changes.”

  Av stepped up to the jeweller’s desk. “Obviously you know who I am?”

  “Lord Av Marilton, son of Ervam Marilton and Mirmae Hue, ranked warrior,” the jeweller said and nodded, searching for his glasses. He ducked under his desk and reappeared a moment later with an entirely different pair. “These will do, they’ll do quite nicely.” Blinking at Av through the glasses, the jeweller frowned. “Where are my manners, my boy? Allow me to introduce myself! Ulter Dez, court jeweller by trade.”

  “Your whole bloodline are jewellers?” Av asked.

  The bushy eyebrows, white as could be, raised in surprise. “How did you know that?”

  “I learned recently that ‘dez’ means stone, doesn’t it?” Av asked in response.

  “Yes, my boy, yes it does. What can I do for you?” Ulter asked, clasping his hands to stop them from twitching over his desk.

  “I need a ring,” Av said, frowning.

  “A gift?” Ulter asked. “I have plenty of gift rings that the ladies returned, let me tell you. All of them said the work was shoddy, but it was my very best. I’ve got a bag full of rings. You want one, you can have it.”

  Av looked down at what the man had been working on. An ornamental tree made entirely of stones and metals. Impressed, he took a step closer.

  “No, this is simply a ring to let everyone know that someone is mine.”

  “Sounds like marriage,” muttered a tradesman from across the hall.

  Ulter’s nose scrunched up at the suggestion. “Don’t be daft. Did you know, Lord Av, —I bet you didn’t—but did you know that what was once marriage is now mating? Not a man’s insistence at all. See marriage meant what a life of mating now means. No divorce.” The jeweller shuddered at the mere word. “All that love and fun. Mating came about to give a quick title to those who had been arranged to marry. Because, like animals, their union was only meant to procreate. Amusing. Isn’t it? What the ladies claim was their way of taking back control was actually, yes, very much so, actually done by the lords. Because only a man could arrange a mating, you see?”

  “Interesting fact,” Av muttered, frowning.

  “I know a great deal of interesting facts,” Ulter said, opening a drawer. “Especially about mating and rings. Isn’t that just fantastic? One learns one’s trade, that’s what my father used to say. Now. What have we here? Ah. My bag of rings.” Ulter peered at Av over his glasses. “No, those won’t do. Will they?”

  “No, they won’t,” Av said with a shake of his head. “I’m hoping for something that no one else at court has. Something I don’t want you to make for any other lady at court. Hence the claiming. I need people to realize she is mine.”

  The nose twitched. “No doubt that lady you’ve been snuffing about after.” The jeweller stopped, looked at a little black box on his desk and then gave his head a shake. “What design would you like? Stones? No stones? I have just the thing! No other lady has one like this.”

  The jeweller disappeared under the desk and reappeared with a velvet tray sprinkled with opals. Ulter grinned at Av, showing off crooked teeth. Av peered clo
ser. The opals were blue, so many shades of blue that Av couldn’t put a name to them all.

  “Queen’s stone,” Av breathed out. “Can you cut this?”

  “These?” Ulter muttered with a heavy sigh. “Yes. Anyone could, really. I can’t take it from the living rock, sadly. These have come into my possession from the bottom of my father’s drawer, who told me the same. No one knows how long they were there. Ladies never want this stone. Take one look at it and call it ugly. They ask for opal instead.”

  “That might do, given whom I plan to gift it to,” Av murmured, looking down as his eye caught movement. He swore, was absolutely certain, the ornamental tree had moved.

  “Admiring that, are you?” Ulter asked, picking up the tree to give Av a better look. “I’m reattaching a leaf, but cannot for the life of me figure out where it came from.”

  Bright green leaves and little blue flowers attached to an almost black trunk. All in a rather plain vase. Av looked over the tree and poked the leaves, surprised when they gave way to his finger. Removing the finger, he watched as the leaves settled back into place.

  “Brilliant,” Av said.

  “Magic, from the artefacts section of the treasury.” The jeweller pointed to the leaves. “Jade leaves, difficult stone to work but worth every hour of frustration.” A finger to one of the flowers. “Queen’s stone, as you called it. Appropriate enough as that is the basic translation.”

  Av leaned in closer. “But those flowers are all the same shade of blue.”

  “Trust me, it’s queen’s stone,” Ulter responded.

  Breathing out, Av watched the leaves shudder on their branches, threatening to blow away.

  “What’s the trunk made out of?” Av asked Ulter.

  “No damned idea,” Ulter said, setting the tree onto the desk. “My father saw to the same tree. Said something about it, but I can’t find his journals to discover the trick of it.”

  The tree was set back down and a small green leaf presented to Av. He turned the leaf over in his hands and peered closely at it before he handed it back to Ulter.

  “There’s no hole drilled into that,” Av said.

  “Must be a hole, else how does it attach?” Ulter asked, making a motion to the tree. “Both our eyes must be going.”

  “My eyes are quite well, thank you.”

  “Yes, yes, that’s what they all say,” Ulter responded.

  “About the ring,” Av said hesitantly, waiting for Ulter’s attention. “The lady in question has no other jewellery, or much in the way of possessions. She’s never been rich, or even spoiled.”

  Ulter made a sound at the back of his throat. “What’s the lady’s name? Perhaps one of my friends here has worked with her and knows her tastes.”

  “Lady Aren Argnern.”

  The room went silent. Every tradesman stared at Av with wide eyes. Ulter was the first to pull back to himself, to straighten and stick his nose into the air.

  “The Lady Aren Argnern? The one who sits the throne? Daughter to Para and Cerlot, inheritor of the Bilgern Vineyard, ranked queen? She’s the one you’ve been sniffing about after?”

  “If that’s what you want to call it, then yes,” Av said.

  “Does she know that you’re making her a ring?” Ulter asked.

  “No, she doesn’t know.”

  “Why ever not?” Ulter countered.

  “Because…” Av said, setting his hands on the work desk to keep from reaching for the jeweller, “she is mine and I will do with her what I please.”

  “Does she feel the same way?” Ulter asked, nose twitching in such a way that his glasses toppled off and clattered to the floor again.

  Av growled. “It doesn’t matter what she feels, she is mine.”

  “In order to have a successful relationship with one’s mate, both must be equal in all ways,” Ulter said to Av, daring to shake a finger close enough that the younger man could have bit it, had he so chose. “It is the job of the man to make the woman see that he is best for her. Or, make her see that she likes you enough to venture such a thing.”

  “She is mine. That is the end of the conversation.”

  “She’s not a toy,” Ulter said, shaking his head. “Lady Aren is a queen. And a woman, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

  “Mine!” Av shouted. “Make the damned ring!”

  He left the room, only to find himself confronted by an annoyed Mar. She crossed her arms and glowered at him as he closed the door as quietly as he could.

  “You were just upsetting a room full of tradesmen,” Mar said pointedly.

  “When did you arrive at court?” Av asked.

  “A little while ago. Jer is tucking Perlon into bed. Is it true he gets…?” Mar trailed off for lack of words.

  “Drunk when overly tired?” Av said helpfully. “Yes, he does. If you’ll excuse me, I need to see Aren.”

  “Does the court know about you two?” Mar asked as Av attempted to flee.

  Cringing to a halt, Av turned ever so slowly to Mar. “N—no, I don’t believe they do. But from what I’m hearing, I’m a terrible, horrible person for saying she is mine and not giving her enough time to run screaming for the hills.”

  “Lord Av.” Mar ran her hands down her riding shirt, as if that would smooth out the wrinkles and clean off the dust. She was quiet as she adjusted her clothing, as if no one could take her seriously unless she were presentable. “Let me be very clear. The moment you cross a line with Lady Aren, I will end you. Until then, carry on.”

  Av considered Mar, wondering how dangerous the young woman really was. She had trained for six months under Av, but so had Aren, and Aren couldn’t stop an armed, trained man who was bent on killing her.

  “How would Perlon feel about you killing his warrior?” Av asked, trying to lighten the mood.

  “He’d get used to the idea quickly,” Mar said calmly. “He’d have to, as he’d be helping me bury your body someplace where your family would never find it. A good day to you, Av.”

  He stood rooted in place until she was gone, too afraid to move. Women were quick to defend other women, with many of them having a ‘queen’ chosen long before they mated, one who acted in their best interests until they were. Av shouldn’t have been surprised to find that Mar had chosen to stand as Aren’s queen. He should have expected it.

  Knowing that didn’t make the words any easier to absorb. Cringing, he headed to Aren’s rooms, determined to find at least one situation that day that didn’t end with his being threatened or tormented.

  Chapter Twelve

  Aren stood on a little stool as the tailor did one last measurement. He had brought a few dresses he assumed were Aren’s size. When he found they were not the perfect fit that he thought they would be, he had been upset. He promised a dress for the next morning and several more, created just for her, within four days.

  She stepped off the stool and watched the man pack his tools away hastily.

  “Nothing expensive,” Aren said to him.

  The tailor paused, hand in his bag of tools and a curious look on his face. “My dear, you sit the throne. Of course you can have whatever you want. But why something that looks like a country girl would wear it?”

  “Is the treasury overflowing with coin?” Aren asked.

  Red coloured the man’s cheeks. “No, my lady, the treasury suffers as much as the land does. I will ensure that all is correct as to what the throne can afford.”

  “Thank you, that’s all I ask,” Aren said with a nod.

  There was a knock on the door. Aren turned her attention as Telm answered. The older woman moved to the side, allowing Av into the room. Aren watched Av look over the room and focus on the tailor, a snarl curling his lips.

  The tailor squeaked out. “I apologize, I did not mean to be here when you arrived.”

  “Why?” Aren asked him. “Is there a problem?”

  “I’m no threat to you, or to his claim, but I would have made haste had I known he was visiting,” the
tailor said. “I would have been long gone by now.”

  “Yes, she is mine,” Av said sternly.

  Aren frowned at the two men. “Wait.” She turned to the tailor. “Do you have rank?” The man nodded once. “I think rank should just announce their rank. I can’t tell the difference. Apparently.”

  “That, is a fantastic idea,” Av said. “We don’t need you accidentally insulting someone by not giving them courtesy based on their rank.”

  “I have absolutely no intention of giving courtesy based on rank, but it would make moments like this easier. For me,” Aren said, turning her attention to the tailor. “You may go, and thank you for your work today.”

  The tailor bowed and took his leave, skirting around Av.

  “What would you like, Lord Av?” Telm asked him politely.

  Av went red. He glanced to Aren, looking over the robe she was wearing. “You wore that in front of the tailor?”

  “This was the only clean clothing I had,” Aren said, “It was either this or bare. I’m sure he would have liked the bare option.”

  She watched the red turn to a full blush. Av turned his attention to Telm, deeming her easier to deal with.

  “No other clothing, at all?” Av asked. “Not even a set of training clothing?”

  “No,” Telm said, clasping her hands before her. “Lord Av, you’re stumbling about like a man half your age. What is your reason for calling on my lady?”

  “I…uh,” Av said. “Would… but she needs...”

  Telm frowned at Av, making him stutter off into nothing. “Lord Av, do you plan on taking Lady Aren into public?”

  “Yes, that one,” Av said.

  “Oh, then, I will need you to step out of the room,” Telm said, shooing Av out. She gave him a playful shove at the door and closed it behind him. “The tailor forgot something. He’s standing out there like he’s lost.”

  Aren looked down and picked up the stool she had been standing on. “This is his, isn’t it?”

  “Good, now, into that sample dress he put there for you, in case you have to make an appearance tonight,” Telm said. “I know, I know you don’t like it, but it’s better than waiting another day. Come on now.”