TheKingsViper

by Janine Ashbless

  But in fact it was the dress that finally caught his eye; that full skirt swollen like a bladder with trapped air, bobbing about in the shallows. He broke into a shuffle to reach her where she lay right on the edge of the water, half-buried in the sand, the barrel still roped to her chest. It was only the barrel that convinced him it was her; with her ridiculous wriggly hair flattened to a wet rag she was hardly recognizable. She was motionless, but he rolled her onto her front over the barrel and, hugging her about the waist like a man bent on buggery, squeezed her stomach until she vomited up sea-water and began to cough. Quickly he cut the ropes. Her eyes fluttered open then shut again, as gray as the wings of the gulls of Venn harbor. He took the knife to the front of her dress, slicing down the line of elaborate tiny buttons until he could peel her from her sodden brocade like a pale oyster from its shell. The effort made him dizzy, but he lifted her in his arms.

  She was a slight girl, and no taller than average. At any other time her weight would have cost him nothing at all. Her skin was cold against his and looked almost blue in the dawn light. The orbs of her breasts pressed against the fine wet linen of her undershift, which had gone transparent, but her flat nipples were colorless, and he observed this with far less interest than he would normally have felt, little more than a pang of anxiety. Her head lolled against his shoulder.

  One last glance up and down the beach reassured him that they were still unobserved. With his King’s betrothed in his embrace he struck inland.

  * * * * *

  Eloise was dimly aware of the beach and of being carried, but it took a long time for her mind to surface from the salt depths to which it had been thrown, and as she rose she became confused, thinking that she was being carried to bed as she had been as a child, exhausted from ceremonies she did not understand. She couldn’t work out why her bed, when she reached it, was so cold or so hard.

  There was rock under her cheek.

  When she finally opened her eyes, she saw Severin de Meynard sitting near her, facing away, his head in his hands, his black hair all knotted to rats’ tails and his dark shirt stained gray with salt. Beyond him were trees, a hillside, a blue sky.

  Eloise sat up, swallowing gummily. Her mouth was dry and tasted metallic. She’d been laid out on a piece of rough ground under stunted oleander trees, and she was barefoot. All she was wearing was her undershift, a plain but thicker middle skirt, and a man’s leather jerkin, all of which were damp.

  Severin looked at her, his eyes widening. “Slept well?” he asked, his voice hoarse.

  “Did the ship go down?” It wasn’t the most incisive of questions, but she was feeling horribly queasy.

  “I imagine so. We jumped before the end.”

  “Then where are we now?”

  He rolled his head. “The coast of Mendea, somewhere.”

  “Mendea!”

  He didn’t answer that. Relations between Ystria and Mendea had been one long scrabble for domination ever since the two kingdoms were established. They shared religious practices, but that was about all they had in common and it had never stopped them going to war with each other, on and off, over the years. Mendea was the worst possible place for them to have fetched up.

  “But…oh God.” For a second, panic was worse than the ache of her body. She ground her teeth together until the moment passed, her eyes searching the upland hill slopes. “Where’s everyone else? The coast?”

  “There were no other survivors that I saw. I brought you away from the beach before any of the locals turned up for salvage. We’re lucky we hit the rocks at night and weren’t seen—otherwise we’d both have had our throats cut by now.”

  “Oh.” She knew the line between shipwreck victims and captured pirates was generally considered an unclear one. She thought of her womenservants and flinched from the guilt. For a while she stared at her hands, which were stiff with salt. “Do we surrender ourselves to the local lord?”

  “No.”

  She took a deeper breath. “Why not?”

  “You might risk it if you were a man,” said Severin evenly. “But supposing you could convince him that you are who you are, and worth ransoming, I think the chances of any Mendean resisting the temptation to humiliate the King of Ystria in a most…personal manner…are slim. That would mean war, whether you were handed over in the end or not. And I’m not in the business of starting wars.”

  Eloise hadn’t thought she could feel worse, but now discovered there were depths of emotional nausea she had not plumbed.

  “Besides,” he added, “I won’t be worth nearly as much in ransom as I am to their spymasters. I suspect it might take them many, many months to kill me. I’d prefer to avoid that.” His eyes glittered.

  He’s making it a joke, she thought, astonished. She tried to lick her lips, but her tongue was like a piece of felt wadding. “Then what do we do?”

  He pointed to a crease in the hillside. “We find water first of all, in there somewhere. We have to drink. Then…we head home.”

  “To Ystria? On foot?”

  “If we head north far enough we can hardly miss the border, I’d have thought.”

  She opened her mouth to protest that it was impossible, then shut it again, struggling to think. She wanted to shout at him, but what good would that do? This dark, ragged-looking man was the only thing that stood between her and abandonment. She’d found him far from likable until this moment, but he was the last remaining bit of Ystria, the only link back to all that was familiar. His presence was the nearest thing she had to hope. She knew with a vertiginous clarity that she needed him. “I see. All right then.”

  He heaved himself to his feet, swaying just a little, and held out his hand to her. “Can you walk?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s good.” The look in his eye said more than his words.

  She wasn’t sure if she’d been telling the truth, but once he’d pulled her upright her legs proved just about strong enough to support her weight. “I feel sick,” she muttered, more to herself than to him.

  “You’ve swallowed a lot of salt. Come on. Let’s walk.”

  * * * * *

  They found water eventually—a narrow iron-red trickle in a rocky valley—which allowed them to slake their thirsts and wash the salt from their face and hands. They sat in the sunshine and Severin laid their assets out upon a stone—the knife, a pouch with flint and steel, a purse. They’d all come from bodies on the shoreline, but he wasn’t telling her that. He fluffed the linen tow out, hoping it would dry enough to eventually take a spark.

  “We have some money then,” she ventured.

  “It’s from the Ystrian mint. Not safe to spend around here without drawing attention.”

  The girl put her hand over her mouth and was silent. He wondered if she was going to cry, but when a moment’s wait had brought no tears he relented a little and expounded on his plan. “We’re going to head inland.” The farther they were away from the coast, the less obvious it would be that their presence in this country was accidental. “We’ll hit a road eventually, and if we find a road we’ll find houses of some sort. I’d rather keep out of sight, but we’ve no food. We have to have food and shelter. It’s summer still, but—” He glanced around them at the heath. “The nights won’t be that warm.”

  She nodded, her eyes wide and serious. “Can you really get us home?”

  “I’m the King’s man, Lady of Venn. I will do everything in my power to get you home to him. That I promise.”

  She smiled. “Then I believe you.”

  He was touched by her easy faith, and ever so slightly dismayed. He changed the subject. “We need a cover story. I think we will be Boscian saffron merchants, robbed and abandoned by our hired guards. We’re trying to make it north to Rounay on the border, where I have credit at my guildhouse that I can draw upon. Don’t worry; I can talk the saffron trade confidently. And Severus is a good Boscian name.”

  “You might pass for Boscian,” she pointed out, “but
I don’t think I will.”

  He tilted his head. “Then you’re my new wife, Ella, from eastern Mendea.” He felt a momentary twinge of conscience at the words my wife, as if it somehow constituted disloyalty, but he was too practical a man to listen to it. “You can speak Mendean, can’t you?”

  “Of course. But not with a local accent.”

  “You won’t need to. You think the people round here know what someone from Erevaine or Yeveaux sounds like?”

  She sucked in her lips, like a serious child, then said, “It’s a pity you lost your sword.” He didn’t miss the sudden flash of wariness in her eyes as she realized that her words might be taken for a complaint. “I just meant…I’m sorry—”

  He shook his head. “Perhaps. Perhaps not.”

  “It’s going to be dangerous.”

  “And nothing says nobleman louder than a fine sword.”

  “Oh. Yes. I’d better not wear this then, I suppose.” She slipped the royal engagement ring off her finger and held out the heavy gold band to him. The ruby stared like a red eye from between the winged heraldic bulls that were its setting.

  Disloyalty. I put that ring on her hand in the King’s name; it binds her to him until they are wed. He nodded, wryly, and dropped it among the useless coins in the belt-purse. Prising up a rock, he consigned the pouch to the keeping of the earth beneath, wondering idly if it would see daylight again before the world’s end.

  They worked on their story for a little while, until satisfied it was as good as it could get, then set off again. It was a long, slow day’s trudge across the open heathland, following sheep-tracks or pushing through brush. They did spot some sheep, but at too great a distance to be of any use. They saw rabbits too, bounding away across stretches of nibbled sward, their tails flashing.

  “What are they?” Eloise asked.

  “Coneys. You don’t have them on Venn?”

  “No. Are they like rats?”

  “Not at all. They’re common on the mainland. Good eating, if I had a bow.” His stomach, reminded of the delights of rabbit and prune pie, cramped uncomfortably. Their bellies had been temporarily bloated with water, but it was swiftly becoming clear that they were empty again. He felt frustrated by the proximity of so much meat, so unattainable.

  It was in fact Eloise who found them the only food of the day, when she floundered off suddenly uphill toward some low rounded bushes. “Bilberries!”

  Severin was dubious. “You’re sure?”

  “Yes! They have these on Venn—in the hills.” She held out a scattering of dark berries to him, popping one into her mouth. It left a dark stain on her lips when she smiled at him. He shrugged, accepting her knowledge. The fruit had an agreeable if subtle taste and they gorged for a while on as many of the ripe berries as they could find on the springy twigs, and walked on with renewed energy.

  It couldn’t last; a few handfuls of fruit could not keep a body going all day. As evening approached, without warning Eloise—who had been trailing farther and farther behind, her steps painfully slow—said, “I have to sit down,” and did so. Severin turned back to her, irritated, but he caught sight of her feet just before words slipped from his mouth and he bit back on his exhortation. Not because he felt less annoyed, but because he felt worse. The girl was barefoot. He had some vague memory of jeweled slippers on the ship, but of course those were gone. Now the soles of her feet were both filthy and raw; a mass of blisters and cuts accumulated, he realized with a sick feeling, over many hours walking.

  He should have noticed, he told himself.

  He knelt before her and picked up one of her feet, trying to see past the blood and the grit. There was no way she should be walking on those, he knew. He was astonished she’d kept going this long. “Made a mess here, I see,” he said quietly.

  She winced under his fingers.

  He needed to bind them, he knew. She was wearing two layers of skirts, so he threw the outer one up over her knees and with knife and hands tore strips off the thinner linen hem beneath, exposing her shins. She didn’t protest. He glanced up at her and saw that her eyes were shut, her head sunk on her shoulder. He felt a sudden plume of ire, and even though he knew the anger was mostly due to his own hunger he couldn’t dismiss it. This girl was supposed to become Queen, and she sat there with her shins bared, her foot in a stranger’s lap, without modesty or even wariness. She should not be accepting his hands like this. King’s man or not, her trust should not be given so easily.

  She had nice slim calves too.

  With an effort he wrenched his attention back to her wounds. He bound them firmly with the cloth strips, but he knew she couldn’t walk far. He turned his back on her. “Up you get,” he said, pulling her onto his back. She furled her thighs around his waist and he tucked his wrists under her knees. “Keep your weight high,” he warned, as she slid her arms around his shoulders.

  Her body felt soft and warm and already far too heavy.

  He carried her on his back into the deepening dusk and then into darkness. It was the darkness that saved them; he saw lamplight and turned toward it, and even as the weariness and the pain of his burning muscles became a blackness in his head thicker than the night outside it, trudged into a stone-cobbled farmyard. A dog barked from within the small building. He let Eloise slide to the ground behind him, and as he did so realized with a rush of renewed consciousness that somewhere in the dim ache of the journey he’d transferred his grip to behind him, and without being aware of it at all had been walking along with her rump nested on his interlocked hands.

  His one comfort was that she was barely awake herself. He had to grab her to stop her slumping onto the cobbles.

  “Anyone home?”

  A small square high in the cottage door opened and he glimpsed firelight before it was occluded by a head. The dog sounded louder. No one replied though.

  “We’re travelers and lost. Myself and my wife. We need a bed and food. I can work to pay for them.”

  “Your wife?” It was a woman’s voice, which explained why it had been silent until now. Severin pushed Eloise toward the door, hoping her gender was obvious even in this light.

  “We’re exhausted.”

  “You can sleep in the barn. There’s a trough by the door for water. I’ll feed you in the morning.” The hatch closed.

  It would have to do, he thought. It took awhile to locate the entrance to the barn, which was across the yard. He was glad of the moonlight that peppered the interior through the broken shingles. Inside there were two agitated cows, both penned, and a heap of hay. There was also a coarse blanket hanging behind the door, which smelled strongly of sheep. He spread it out over the hay pile, in a corner.

  “Lie down.”

  Eloise, swaying as she stood, hesitated.

  “If fleas are the worst thing we get in Mendea we’ll be lucky,” he told her, deliberately not thinking about why she should hesitate. He watched her stretch out on her side, then laid himself next to her, his back to hers. “Pull hay over yourself,” he instructed, and was unconscious before his next breath.

  * * * * *

  When he awoke with the dawn, he’d turned in the night and was lying on his other side. His back was a little cold, even under the blanket of hay. His front was warm because he had pulled Eloise up against him and had his arms tightly around her, his left under her waist. Her bottom was tucked up against his crotch. Worst of all—so bad that even as he adjusted from sleep it hit him like a blow—he had a full on, pride-o’-the-morning erection.

  For a long while he did not dare move.

  Let her still be asleep, he prayed desperately.

  His cock stirred like a living animal between him and her. She was so soft, so warm, her body so accommodating to his. Even her tangled salt-coarsened hair smelled sweet under his nose.

  This is not appropriate behavior for the King’s man.

  His balls felt heavy, overloaded. They were pulling on his insides. The swell of her breast lay against his
thumb. He could feel the faint rise and fall of her breath. He could feel the full round curve of her rump, begging him to press into it.

  He had to do something. Of course he had to. If he lay there long enough she would wake and then she would know. At least right now her breathing was soft and even.

  There is a part of a man’s mind loyal to no one, and that part was telling him, She is so sweet, and so easy for you to have, right now…

  He slid his arm from under her, rolled away and was on his feet in one movement, slick as a cat. Then he paused, waiting to see if she had woken, but the girl only whimpered a little and curled up tighter. Thank all the saints, he said to himself.

  It was colder out from under the hay, but his erection was undiminished. He felt the hungry ache of it through all his bones, worse even than the gnawing in his stomach. Shaking his head, he gripped the stiff flesh pushing out against his hose. God damn—he had to do something about that. Shipwrecks and starvation might not be able to quell it, but he knew what would.

  * * * * *

  It was the sudden lick of cold air under the hay as the King’s Viper left her that woke Eloise, but she had no desire to rise. She wriggled deeper into the prickly blanket, hoping that sleep would reclaim her, hoping that she would not have to force her stiff limbs to raise her from the meager comfort of her bed. She could hear de Meynard moving around. She missed his warmth against her back. He’d been pressed against her, though she only knew that because she could feel the great chill imprint of his absence now.

  The thought squirmed through her mind, finally waking her completely.

  She opened her eyes. She was curled up in a corner of a stall, her face almost against the rough wood of an old partition. There were small noises coming from the other side of the wall. Forcing her eyes open, she looked over her shoulder, but in the dim dawn light that leaked into the barn through the holes left by fallen tiles, she seemed to be alone. A board creaked.