by Lee Abrey
What happens, Mother, when you’ve poisoned everyone against me? Is that when I come running back to you? It won’t happen. I’d rather die than have to cope with your histrionics.
It occurred to me that was possibly overly dramatic but I figured as a teenager it was permissible. Besides, Mother was acting like a teenager and one should fight fire with fire. She didn’t understand unless you were dramatic back at her. I added that I would rather be on good terms with her but she didn’t seem to be offering that as an option, so staying away from me was the only other choice.
I had Bernard copy them both while I sipped coffee and let the throbbing in my arm die down to acceptable levels.
“You’re becoming quite the courtier,” said Bernard as he filed the copies, “remembering to keep a record of letters.”
“It’s all part of the plan, Bernard,” I said, smiling. “Remember, I’m going to have a pension with my journal? Which reminds me, I better put in some entries. I have some from while I was in the infirmary, they need sticking in the book.” In the end, Bernard took notes while I dictated then produced a wheelchair when I said I was going back to the infirmary.
“It’s a long way to walk, lordship,” he said, “thought this might be handy.”
“Thank you, Bernard,” I said, “and really most welcome. I’ve had a long day and done too much.”
“You are looking pale, lordship. I’ll roll you. It’s nearly time for the post. I’ll drop these off once I drop you off.”
In the end, we went to see the king and Bernard did the post downstairs while I waited to see Theo. The king was only a few minutes, and came to the door.
“You’ve had a bad turn, Polo?” he said, seeing me in the chair. I shook my head, explained about all the walking, and that I only wanted to know if he had any news of my father.
“I can find out for you,” he said, “leave it with me.”
****
Chapter 29 – Family Trouble
I was happy to do just that, because just thinking about either of my parents was, as Anna the redheaded nurse said, bad for my blood pressure.
“Maybe that’s you,” I said.
“Me?” Anna said. She gave me one of those looks a woman gives when she is immune to you. I wasn’t giving up.
“Maybe you’re bad for my blood pressure,” I said, trying to sound sensual. She laughed.
“You were muttering about your parents when I walked in,” she said, “you can’t blame me. Now you take it easy.” She pushed me gently back on my pillows.
“I could lie down much more easily,” I said, “with you on top of me,” but she didn’t do more with that suggestion than laugh again as she left. I sighed. I’d lost my touch. Fenric came in.
“Heard you were out riding,” he said, so I explained it wasn’t quite out, and what had happened with Mother, while he sat down on one of the chairs next to the bed. He nodded.
“I was coming to talk to you about that,” he said, and grimaced. “In hindsight, of course, I think I’ve been had.” I blinked. A big man with dark hair and a black horse.
“You were the one with Mother,” I said. Fenric nodded.
“Aye and I’ll not say she forced me. That would be a lie. But she did trick me. She told me her family abandoned her and she lived alone.” He rubbed his forehead. I snorted.
“But you knew I was only in the infirmary!” I said.
“Aye,” he said, “of course. But Tess didn’t tell me who she was.”
“What do you mean?” I was flabbergasted. “How did you not know?”
“How would I know?” He spread his hands. “She was Tess. I’d never seen her before. Some rich scabbard-humper I met in a bar last night. She out-drank nearly everyone in the bar.” I winced. Mother a scabbard-humper? Was that how she ended up with Father?
“She’s got an excellent capacity for alcohol,” I said. “Don’t tell me, then you tried to outsmoke her?”
“Aye,” said Fenric, “I like a challenge. She’s tall too, last few girlfriends I’ve had were so short they gave me a crick in my neck.” He shrugged, looking embarrassed. “Then she told me she could outsmoke me. She had some excellent mindweed. I accepted the challenge.”
“Dangerous,” I said, “to try to outsmoke Mother. She never seems to get to the point of overload.”
“Now you tell me,” Fenric said, “I had no idea who she was until you turned up today. She doesn’t look like you. Well, she does, but not when you see her by herself.”
I remembered Fenric saying the previous night he was having his first night off in a month and planned to get drunk and laid. At least one of those aims had been accomplished. “I think she knew who I was,” he said.
“Aye,” I said, “she would have. I can’t believe you didn’t see her here. At the infirmary.”
“I can’t either,” he said.
****
Some investigation with Anna told us why.
“Your mother only turned up that day,” said Anna.
“That day?” I said.
“The day she was thrown out,” said Anna, “that was the first day she was here. Aside from the very first day you and Azrael were attacked. From memory, Fenric, you were here until they both made it into recovery. Polo’s mother didn’t arrive until after that.”
“She was only down in the New Fort,” I said.
“We were supposed to let her know when you woke up,” Anna said, “which is why she was here to be thrown out. I noticed you were waking and sent for her.”
“But I was dying for weeks!” I said, incredulous. She and Fenric looked at me, then at each other. “Why didn’t she come before then?” I said.
None of us had an answer other than the obvious one, she had better things to do rather than hang around my deathbed. I guessed getting her revenge on Father had kept her occupied. Then I remembered how she’d told me I was about to be ennobled. Was that the only reason she bothered to visit? She heard Theo was going to give me a title?
“Well,” said Fenric, eyeing Anna, “at least I feel better about not knowing who she was.” I flopped back on the pillows.
“You calm down, Polo,” said Anna, her fingers cool on my wrist, “your heart rate’s up again. Told you, your parents are bad for your blood pressure.”
If I were alone I’d have flirted with her, but then I noticed her eyeing Fenric and sighed. Everyone was in heat and getting laid, everyone except me.
****
I slept for a while and dreamed of sex, but when I couldn’t remember with who. Or whom. I woke up in a hazy warm state with a hard-on that didn’t want to go away. I imagined doing Anna, which didn’t help, then decided a shower and some quick masturbation was the only cure and limped off down the hall in my dressing gown, clean pyjamas under my arm.
With my experiences of the farm hot water running out suddenly, I washed before giving in to lust. To my intense disappointment I couldn’t do it. Well, I could do it, but if I did it right-handed my arm hurt too much, distracting me from pleasure. If I did it left-handed it began to hurt down my side and I couldn’t quite get the rhythm right. Every time I got close, I tensed and everything hurt. I turned off the water with a sigh, willing the bloody thing to go down.
After regaining control of my body, I was heading back to my room when Azrael called me into his. I wandered in to find Cida Innes, Azrael’s commoner friend, and a sultry-looking blonde woman with a squat dark-haired boy who looked at me as if he hated me. I put on my Court face in half a heartbeat, a polite mask. The woman was blonde but her blue eyes weren’t cat’s-eyes, though the boy had the cat’s-eyes of the Westwych line, dark blue with bright stars.
The woman wasn’t looking at me as if she hated me, quite the opposite. If I was alone I think she would have eaten me alive. I resisted the urge to wink as she smiled at me, a curving wicked smile that promised-
“Polo,” said Azrael, sounding ever so slightly relieved, “come meet some people. You know Cida, of course.” I tilte
d my head in an appropriately sardonic manner to Cida. “And this is my Half Aunt Miz Suzy Jeroboam.” The blonde smiled. “And my half-brother, Perry, ah, Westwych, named for his father, who happens to be mine, the late Crown Prince Perry.”
I managed to keep my polite face on. “Suzy, Perry,” Azrael continued, “this is Polo Shawcross, a good friend of mine. He’s the one who saved me from the dragon.” I tried to smile. Though not ascribing to that school of thought, I wasn’t shocked over Azrael saying I saved him. As I’d already told him, I was an idiot, not a hero, but you can’t stop a myth machine once it gets underway.
However, where in the World had Young Perry, the cat’s-eyed half-brother sprung from? Hadn’t Stefan said that the late Prince Perry’s line didn’t throw cat’s-eyed children? I offered my hand to the half-aunt. She was a very pretty blonde in her early thirties, with a tight red silk dress cut down to show an alarming amount of cleavage for daytime. I imagined men walking into walls and furniture as she shimmied past them.
“Lovely to meet you,” I said. She simpered, squeezed my hand, and squeezed her breasts together, which had a mesmerising effect on both Azrael and me, and even Cida couldn’t help staring. Would Half Aunt Suzy pop out of her dress? Then I noticed her son, still looking at me with an expression of undisguised loathing. “And Perry,” I said, smiling pleasantly, “lovely to meet you too.” I offered my hand.
At first he left me hanging, then offered something that felt like a dead fish. I dropped it quickly and resisted the urge to wipe my hand on my dressing gown. I remembered Stefan said only one of the late Crown Prince’s line was cat’s-eyed. I assumed he meant Azrael but of course he hadn’t, Azrael being Stefan’s child and not the late Perry’s line at all. Stefan had known about this creature.
I looked at Azrael. “I didn’t know you had a half-brother,” I said, keeping my tone light. He shrugged, and I caught a touch of eye-roll.
“Neither did I,” he said, sounding hearty, “isn’t it a wonderful surprise?” I agreed politely as Cida grinned and nudged Young Perry, which was horribly like nudging a tub of blancmange. I tried not to stare, wondering when he’d stop quivering. Why was Cida nudging him?
“I hear,” said Suzy to me, in the tones of someone putting on what they think is a more gracious accent, “you were also terribly injured in the dragon attack?”
“Aye,” I said, trying not to talk to her chest, leer, or get lost in the way she was licking her lips. “Never try to pick up a dragon,” I said, smiling and feeling quite warm, “even a small one.” Suzy giggled and ran her tongue over her lips again, taking a big breath. I resolved to stay away from the Half Aunt no matter what. Everything about her radiated a warning to my senses. She was, however, something to see.
“That’s why we came,” Suzy said, taking another breath, entailing another open-mouthed wait from us spectators as her dress was pulled tight over rather delicious, plump- “I was just explaining to Azrael, Polo,” she said, “because of the attack.”
I blinked, completely lost. She paused a moment, favoured Azrael with a special smile then went on. “It was our duty,” said the Half Aunt, with what I would come to recognise as her Noble face, looking off into the middle distance in a dreamy fashion. “If something had happened to the heir, we had to tell the king it was alright, there were more heirs than he knew about.”
“A good citizen,” I said politely, “how marvellous for the king. Must have taken a load off his mind.” She smiled. I turned to her son quickly, before his mother breathed in and hypnotised me again. “And how old are you, Perry?” There was a sullen silence. Suzy elbowed him, which set him wobbling again, but he didn’t speak.
“He’s sixteen,” she said, compressing her full lips in annoyance, and I smiled as if to say I wasn’t offended. “Now, Peregrine,” she said, “you promised to behave.” Poor kid, I thought, to be saddled with Peregrine. It was the late Crown Prince’s name but it was awful. Even if you shortened it to Perry, it was worse than Polo by a million miles.
“I’m hungry,” Young Perry said, looking at his feet. I wondered if he wasn’t fed, would he begin chewing on his own toes? As if in reply, Perry began worrying at the corners of his nails. I pondered warning Cida to keep her fingers away from his mouth.
“Same day as you,” Suzy said to Azrael, as if that was quite a lovely thought.
“Same day?” said Azrael, sounding casual, but I knew him well enough to see he was scared. I didn’t think anyone else noticed. Cida should have been able to tell, but she was so focused on the half-brother she wasn’t seeing anything else.
To my complete horror, I realised Young Perry now had his hand up under Cida’s dress. They saw me watching and Cida pretended to primness, pushing the half-brother discreetly away so his mother and Azrael wouldn’t notice.
“Oh yes,” said Suzy, oblivious, “but he was about twelve hours after you. You were born at dawn, so your poor late father told me. Young Peregrine wasn’t born until after dark.” Port Azrael was almost directly north so on the same time as us. I saw Azrael relax a little. He was still firstborn.
Though pleased for Azrael, I was completely creeped out by Young Perry and wanted to go. I began edging towards the door but an orderly came in, Azrael sent him for an extra chair, and I was pressed into staying. Suzy told us a long story, completely unsuitable for her teenaged audience.
Azrael’s parents had been on their honeymoon, visiting Port Azrael in the Duchy of Starshore, up on the Great Star Lake. The lake was a major source of Sendren’s wealth, a salty inlet of the Western Ocean, giving us salt, fish and excellent positioning on several trade routes. Suzy lectured us on all this and pointed out that for a young woman with no other skills, prostitution was a way out of the gutter, in her case a way that proved permanent. She’d only been working in the business a year and was taking a week off in a place with room service.
“Some lasses do floozying because they like it, not denying that,” she said, “but for all I was in a fine house not too near the Port Azrael docks, I can’t say I did it for anything but the coin. Way I look, I was very successful, and well, it suited my needs then as I was saving to buy a long lease on the little house I rented in town. That’s what I decided I wanted. Both my parents dead and me only seventeen, not much in the way of options to pay the rent.
“With floozying I kept the house, even went to school while I kept working. Once I had enough I was going to switch to something like teaching or nursing but this one week I did my knee in. You can’t keep up floozying without good knees.” Like me, Azrael was completely fascinated.
“Oh?” he said and nodded. “Knees, yes of course. So you were in bed in the evening?”
“Your mother knew when it was,” Suzy said, “after dinner. They’d had a tumble, he went down to the bar for a drink, and never came back until morning.”
Instead of drinking, the late Prince Perry was rogering a floozy in the room directly above Saraia. “I had no idea who he was,” Suzy said, “wasn’t until I realised I was pregnant and tried to find him. Normally, ‘til it was born I wouldn’t have had a clue but he was the only client I had.” She blushed a little, the high colour accentuating every one of her assets. I wondered idly if her nipples were always up like that or was she chilled?
“Only he wasn’t a client,” Suzy was saying, “the hotel told me it was the Crown Prince himself and I nearly didn’t write, but with having to stop work it had to be. Once I got my courage up to tell him, the late Peregrine was such a dear and sent me coin after the hotelier and my madam vouched for me not working, that I didn’t know who he was. Then he saw Young Peregrine. Even as a newborn he was the image of his father. Made me glad I hadn’t billed him for the tumble like I was going to.” She gave a smug smile. “And of course, I made sure he signed the birth certificate. We have papers, letters, and the like. Your father was very generous to us. I never had to go back to work.”
“Isn’t that romantic?” said Cida, with a happy sigh. Suzy be
amed at her while Azrael and I looked bewildered. A prostitute getting pregnant from an adulterous liaison then being a kept woman, in secret, by a married man, was romantic? I was very glad I decided not to do Cida. Young Perry was digging in the corners of his eyes and putting the resultant gunk in his mouth. I tried not to notice but wanted to hit his hand away. I focused on Suzy.
“So you spent a lot of time with the late prince?” I said. Suzy shook her head sadly.
“No, you see, I knew he was in love with Azrael’s dear mother. She got him first, best woman won.” She looked sad again. I wondered if she could cry on cue, and bet she could.
“Ah,” I said politely.
“I haven’t seen him since Peregrine was eight,” Suzy said, “though he did tell me in a letter about a year ago there were no other heirs. Other children, but Young Peregrine’s the only one with cat’s-eyes. Apart from Azrael of course. I kept the letter. So all these women with supposed royal babies, if the brat’s over a year they’re talking sh-rubbish.” I looked at Azrael.
“A dozen women have turned up here since Father died,” he said, “claiming their cat’s-eyed child is next in line. None of them match up to the records kept by my father’s servants, except Perry.” He smiled at Perry. “Perry’s the image of Father,” he said. Young Perry looked sullenly back. Azrael was trying not to grit his teeth but I could see it was hard work.
Finally, after another ten minutes or so, while I contemplated faking some kind of severe pain, maybe even a seizure or a brain aneurysm, as I’d been reading a medical encyclopaedia in the hospital, they left.
****
Chapter 30 - Haka With Testicles
We waited in silence until sure they were gone, then looked at each other.
“Gods,” said Azrael weakly, “did you see them? Her half-undressed, and him looking like a bad-tempered slug.” I laughed.