by Ellyn, Court
Kelyn turned abruptly, and the ladies scurried away, skirts swaying fast, like startled chickens fleeing the fox. He’d sworn under his breath and kept his ears open for any more gossip concerning the duchess or his brother, but the little birds were silent. Or perhaps they merely ceased their clucking when they saw him approach. Regardless, Kelyn’s belly was in knots by the time his relief arrived. What if Lissah heard the rumors? Of course, nothing he’d overheard connected him to Rhoslyn’s “illness.” Even if Lissah caught wind of them, she’d have no reason to suspect him. Would she?
He had to forget about it and try to get a couple hours of sleep before the royal couple rose for breakfast. In the dark, he nudged Laral with his toe. The boy groaned and turned up a lamp. Squinting in the dim light, he hauled himself out of his warm bedroll to unbuckle Kelyn’s shoulder-guards. Damned impractical things that a knight couldn’t undress himself at such an hour.
“When you dined with the other squires,” Kelyn whispered, hoping not to wake little Eliad, “did you happen to overhear anything concerning my brother?”
Laral’s fingers stopped. He was awake in an instant. “Overhear, nothing! All the squires from Westport and Brimlad were laughing about it.”
“It?”
“That stupid Rodgar. It was his fault. He’s Lord Erum’s squire and an ogre’s arse. At supper he started telling everyone how Lord Kieryn got Rhoslyn pregnant and ran off, and the shock is what killed the duke.”
“Oh, shit,” Kelyn hissed.
“I gave the little bastard a sound thumping and he finally shut up. But who knows who else heard and who they told, m’ lord. Kieryn wouldn’t do anything like that, would he?”
“Course not!”
“How’d you find out?”
“The titillating conversation of noblewomen.”
It was not Lissah who came to him about the rumors; it was his mother. Lady Alovi begged for an afternoon with her son before she had to return home, and Jareg graciously granted it. She poured tea for Kelyn in the parlor of the suite that had once belonged to the War Commander. “I thought Rhorek might cry like a babe when he clapped eyes on me,” she said, offering him milk.
He waved it away, preferring his tea black and bitter. “He feels to blame for Da’s death.”
“He all but said as much and promised he would look after me. Isn’t that nice? As if the man hasn’t enough women to look after.”
Kelyn laughed.
“Who else knows the truth behind these rumors?” The shift in her conversation struck Kelyn like a thump to the ear. She glowered at him over the delicate rim of her teacup.
“This is the royal castle, Mother. Which rumor?”
Her lips pursed irritably.
He surrendered the game before it became one. “Just you and me.”
“You still haven’t told her?” Alovi set aside her tea. “I’ve seen your lieutenant, Kelyn. She’s a formidable woman. Not your usual fare at all.”
“Usual fare, Mother?”
“A few weeks of faithfulness does not make you a chaste man.”
“For the Goddess’ sake, Mother!”
“Don’t you swear at me.” Her jabbing finger carried the authority of a queen’s scepter. “You’ve heard, I suppose, that Kieryn is the one they’re laughing at. You mean to let him take the blame?”
“They’re just rumors! The duke was dead before—.” He stopped and buried his face in his hand. “People will forget about it in a few weeks and find someone new to gossip about.”
“But not you, is that it?” Though she was more than a foot shorter than her son, her green eyes seemed to be glaring down at him from a throne’s height. “Not the Falcon of the Guard, not the Swiftblade. No, that would be unsuitable. But the avedra, now, why not laugh … ?”
“Stop!” He stood. “I will not be bullied by you, Mother. That is unsuitable. Lissah is my concern, not yours.”
“Your brother is mine.” Those green eyes welled, and the queen-like façade came tumbling down.
“No, he left us and removed himself from your concern.”
“What if he returned tomorrow and set the story straight?”
Kelyn snorted. “I’m sure he’d like to do just that. Quite the revenge that would be. But he won’t. Your sons are cowards, Mother. They run and hide.” He did not wait for dismissal but hurried to Jareg’s headquarters and begged for assignment in some distant tower.
~~~~
The king and queen sequestered themselves for the next couple of weeks. They allowed only a select few into their presence and made it expressly clear that they would not hear news of the war during that time unless Shadryk surrendered or was upon Bramoran’s doorstep. When the two weeks were over, however, the press of correspondence could no longer be ignored. Rhorek met with Kelyn, Jareg, and Master Dinél in the privacy of his study.
Heavy snow drew a veil over the window and Rhorek warmed his hands at a snapping fire as Kelyn read through the stack of parchment. Though the land armies were snowed in, the blockade persisted, more determined than ever. “Bano’en’s spies report bread riots in the ports of Brathnach and Gildancove, and Admiral Beryr writes that the Zhiani ships have stopped arriving.” He flipped through the rest of the letters. “These are complaints from village fathers, requesting aid in food and building supplies. The villages all laid in the path of the shavers. Leshan requests more silver for timber, but Dagni,” he waved the last parchment, “writes that her miners and minters have gone on strike.”
“Can they do that during wartime?” asked Jareg.
“She writes, ‘The wives and daughters of our warriors thus refuse to perform the same labor for less compensation. They claim that until their demands are met, not one more coin will be minted to restore the treasury. Sire, I beg permission to grant their wishes.’” Kelyn glanced up for a response but found Rhorek staring into the fire, a wistful smile on his face. Kelyn crossed his arms and rolled his eyes at Jareg, who swallowed a chuckle and shook his head. Dinél glanced up from his books, pen poised just-so in his disciplined hand, waiting for the decision that did not come.
At last, the silence broke Rhorek’s reverie. “Ah, read that again.” He saw Kelyn’s ill-repressed grin, wadded one of the parchments littering his desk, and flung it at him. It bounced off the silver falcon on Kelyn’s chest, and the king let out a miserable sigh. “My apologies, gentlemen.”
“Newlyweds, hnh!” Dinél exclaimed. “They should never be held accountable for neglected tasks or wasted time, for a month at least.” Had the man ever voiced a personal opinion before? His outburst elicited a round of chuckles.
“Should we continue later?” asked Kelyn.
Rhorek rapped his knuckles on the desk. “Why shouldn’t she be here?” His three advisers exchanged witless glances. “You’re right, all of you. There’s no reason at all. She’s Aralorr’s queen, all of this business concerns her as well.”
“Sire, are you sure?” asked Dinél.
“You think her mind not subtle enough?”
“Not at all. I think her opinion very well voiced.”
Rhorek laughed so hard he had to sit down. “Indeed, it is. Jareg, fetch her.”
The guards captain hurried out the door. When he returned, Briéllyn was not with him. He cleared his throat and said, “Sire, there is some sort of … disturbance in the ladies’ wing.”
Rhorek hurried through the corridors until he came to the floor reserved for his mistresses and their children. Servants rushed up and down the stair, carrying bundles and bags, chests and items of furniture. A large, ornately painted bureau with four human legs unduly crushed him into the wall. He bellowed in outrage, and a pair of heads popped around the sides; in their fear and attempts to apologize, the servants dropped their burden. The bureau crashed end over end down the stairs. It was little more than splinters by the time it reached the landing.
“What is this?” Rhorek demanded. One of his younger, newer mistresses came tripping from her suite,
hands over her face. She was sweet, docile Rosella of Briar. Rhorek caught her by the arm and repeated the question.
“She’s horrible, sire!”
“Who?”
“The queen! She’s kicking us out!”
His face hot, his stride enough to send servants scurrying, Rhorek topped the stairs. Briéllyn stood in the center of the corridor, supervising the emptying of each of the mistress’s quarters. When she saw him coming, she faced him with the immovable stance of a force of nature.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Rhorek demanded.
She fluttered not an eyelash. “When you took me to wife, your bed became my province alone. I am removing all temptation from you. Any child got in the future will be mine. I am, however, allowing Eliad’s mother to remain, for his sake, because I like him. But if you should decide you desire her … entertainment … I will return my crown, and you can give it to her instead. The others are not welcome, so I’ve dismissed them.”
“They live here. Where will they go?”
She crossed her arms; the chill was enough to freeze his blood. “I don’t care. Back to wherever you found them, I suppose.
“Some of them are ladies of Bramoran!”
“Then they will need houses. Outside the castle.”
“You should’ve come to me first.”
“I do beg your pardon, sire,” she said, though there was nothing in her tone that implied she was sorry. “I had to do this without your knowledge or it would never have been done.” Gently she took his hand. “It must be this way, Rhorek.”
His heart melted when she called him by name. “I can’t give in to you so easily every time you make up your mind to do something. But I fear I might.”
“I should hope not,” she said with a mischievous grin. “At least not until you reason it out and decide that I’m right.”
Chuckling, he embraced her and reflected on Kelyn’s sound assessment of her character. Keep him in line, indeed.
“There is one other matter,” Briéllyn said with more caution. “One that I cannot ignore.”
Rhorek sighed. “Speak it.”
“I want the key to the north tower. That is where you keep her, isn’t it?”
“Lady Bysana.” He held her at arms length. “She is my prisoner, not my mistress. Nor your patient.”
“I understand.”
~~~~
Drafty and cold were the upper floors of the north tower. Briéllyn climbed the steps in a heavy cloak lined in silver fox fur. A pair of wardens accompanied her, both stout old men who had seen prisoners-of-state come and go. “Please, Your Majesty, pardon the conditions of the room,” said one. “She won’t let no one in to clean.”
“It’s that cat,” said the other. “It mucks up the place.”
“The lady were allowed to keep her cat, ma’am. For a companion, like, since she has no little ’ns and asked for no handmaid. She abused the deaf-mute who served her so severely that she were sent away, too.”
Briéllyn was winded and damp with sweat by the time they reached the seventh floor. One of the wardens indicated the first door on the left, while the other handed her a key attached to a massive key ring. The stink of the cell assaulted her nose before she ever opened the door: stale animal urine, must, and filth. The cell was large, perhaps twenty by thirty, with a rough wooden floor covered sparsely in brittle rushes many months old. The only pieces of furniture were a narrow bed with a straw-filled mattress, and a table and chair where the prisoner might take her meals. Nothing for comfort. Delicate bones of fowl and lamb littered the tabletop, along with wilted salad leaves and dried-out crusts of bread. Along with the stench of cat piss, Briéllyn smelled sour milk and rotting vegetables. A pair of arrow loops let in the daylight and the cold, but were too narrow to allow even the smallest person to escape, and Bysana was a slight waif of a woman. She huddled on the dusty hearth rug, stroking a large gray cat. The instant the animal saw a stranger enter, he hissed and slunk away under the bed. Despite the state of the room, the cat appeared to be fat and well groomed. A far cry from the lady. Bysana’s pale hair hadn’t been brushed in months and hung in long ratty mats. Her day gown and petticoats hung on hooks, powdered with a layer of dust. The prisoner seemed to have settled for her nightgown. And why not, when no one but old wardens came to visit, and them only to bring food and empty the chamber pot?
Briéllyn waved the wardens out. They bowed and swung the door shut. Through her tangled hair, Bysana watched, suspicious, then said, “I hoped he would come himself. Instead he sends the whore he married.” Her voice cracked, weak from lack of use. “Such fortune is mine.”
“The king will not suffer your presence.”
“But you will? Hnh!” She turned her back on the queen and poked at the ashes in the hearth with a spindly twig. Powerless as she was, Bysana still had authority over the hospitality her guests received. “Why you? You’re younger, that’s clear. He’s desperate for an heir, isn’t he. Has he gotten one on you yet? He never got one on me. And Athlem, poor sod, I refused to give him one. He’d come to my room at odd hours, day or night, and when he left, I’d drink a tea that flushed him out.” She giggled. “All those years, he blamed himself for not giving me sons. I’d pat him and hold him and coo in his ear, ‘Soon.’ Or ‘next time.’ Then it became, ‘What can you do but keep trying?’ Got to where the sod was too ashamed to come to me and too afraid to shame himself with any other woman either.”
And that’s the way you wanted it, Briéllyn thought, unable to comprehend such prolonged cruelty. She was glad for the wardens whispering on the other side of the door.
Bysana managed to coax a feeble flame from the ashes and tossed the twig onto it. “I do beg your pardon, Your Majesty,” she sneered, rising. “Isn’t it proper to stand in a queen’s presence? I wouldn’t know, would I?” Her skin was sallow and pasty, the twist of her mouth bitter and ugly. “Shall I curtsy?”
Briéllyn ignored the mockery. “The king has given me permission to supervise daily walks for you. If I cannot come, your wardens will see to it. You will have an hour or so a day to walk the upper gallery.” Briéllyn expected something akin to gratitude or sobs of relief. What she got was a raised nose and stubborn resistance.
“Our Rhorek is becoming generous, is he?”
Briéllyn bristled. “No. He would’ve left you here to rot. The walks were my idea.”
Bysana affected a strange saunter as she approached, like a little girl half-dancing, half-twisting to show off how pretty and proper she was. “Really?” she asked, eyelashes batting. “The queen favors me. How delightful. Why extend your favor to me? Pity?” She spat and sashayed back to her hearth rug. “Your pity is the last thing I want.”
“You won’t have his. You might as well accept mine.”
Bysana squatted down again and put her hands to the struggling flame.
Briéllyn refused to be dismissed, nor did she believe that this lonely, half-mad woman truly wanted her gone. Was she really so stubborn that she would refuse the invitation to leave her cell? Hmm, how to coax her out? Or was it a waste of time? Briéllyn decided to go for the wound. “Why did you want him dead?”
For a long while, Bysana rocked back and forth on her haunches, then said, “For the same reason you ask such a question. To get his attention. I lost that, you see. I had it and I lost it, and I don’t know how. What a splendid creature he was in his youth. He loved the ladies, and they loved him. I wasn’t his first, and I didn’t expect to be his last. I was willing to endure his attentions to other women, if only …” The rest wafted away with the thin tendrils of smoke.
“I see. After all this, it wasn’t really Rhorek you wanted.”
“No. It took being locked in here with the silence and the darkness before I could admit that to myself. Anyone wearing the crown would’ve served. You have what I wanted. If I had just bided my time, would he have chosen me instead? My assassin started the war that saw me widowed at last, but too late. It w
as never to be. He won’t come.”
Only now was she reconciling herself to that fact? All this while she’d been hoping, waiting? That kind of obsession was a mystery to Briéllyn.
“And you,” Bysana sneered, “you must think highly of yourself, snagging the one who couldn’t be snagged. Tell me, how often did you have to bed him to win him?”
“Not once. Did you think that is a woman’s only tool of persuasion?” Bysana stopped rocking and her head tilted up from the fire, as if the words were as startling as thunder. Briéllyn added, “You’ll want to bring your cloak. The wind is chill, but the sun is warm. Come if you want. If not, I’ll come again tomorrow. The door is open for one hour.”
Briéllyn descended to the fourth floor, where a roofed balcony ran all the way around the tower. She stood at the carved stone railing, looking out over the castle grounds and breathing the fresh sunlit air a good long while before she heard the clink of the key ring and the shuffle of feet on the stairwell. Bysana crept into the light ahead of the wardens, clutching her cloak under her chin. She’d taken the time to put on her dress.
One of the wardens positioned himself before the doorway and watched an hour candle burning down in a glass case; the other followed at some distance behind the prisoner. Bysana turned her face into the north wind and with her hand light on the rail, walked round and round, slowly, savoring.
The view to the east was the most beautiful Briéllyn had ever seen. Snow turned the Drakhan Mountains into a grand row of white teeth biting at the sky. Below them, the brown and yellow moor rolled for miles, splotched with snow and dotted with villages and fields, though most within sight had been devastated by Dragon fire. Bysana didn’t appear to mind.
When her hour was over, the warden ushered her to the stairwell. Briéllyn saw shiny streaks of dried tears on her dusty cheeks. Heading back into the tower, she paused and said, “Don’t … don’t let him take this away from me.”