by Sharon Green
"Lorand, the poor man was floundering," she answered with a sigh. "I needed something to take his mind off how devastated he felt, and the idea of giving him a different name was pure inspiration. Clarion is the one who blundered so badly that he shamed himself, but Rion is shining and bright and entirely guiltless. It's a new beginning for him, which I'm sure you'll agree he desperately needs."
"More than you know," Lorand said with a nod. "And now that you mention it, giving him a new name was pure genius. I used to think Lorand was bad, but compared to Clarion it's better than gold. He must have been a laughing-stock wherever he went."
"Which worked even more against his coming out into the world," Jovvi agreed. "And very frankly, his request surprised me. Only yesterday I had the distinct impression he had no idea what men do with women."
"Yesterday he did have no idea," Lorand admitted, trying not to blush. "We – ah - visited a tavern last night, and I adjusted the alcohol in his bloodstream to make his first – experience - less awkward. Apparently it was an overwhelming success, maybe too much so. And you haven't yet explained about the compliment business. Was that just more of the soothing you were trying to do?"
"Not at all," she said, now looking surprised. "I happen to know men well enough to have learned it is the greatest compliment they can give. Contrary to popular opinion, most men are quite meticulous about who they share intimacies with. Don't tell me you're not like that. Do you feel any woman will do, or do you have certain standards?"
"Of course I have standards," Lorand returned, trying not to feel that the conversation was getting out of hand. "But that's not a subject I'm used to discussing with ladies - even if they do seem to know more about it than I do. And while we're on the point, how do you know so much? You aren't - married?"
The possibility hadn't occurred to Lorand before, and not only because she wore no marriage band on her middle right finger. She didn't act married, but before Lorand could worry over the point, she laughed and shook her head.
"No, I'm certainly not married," she agreed with her usual amusement. "That would make my experience rather limited, which it doesn't happen to be. In Rincammon, my home city, I'm a fairly well-known courtesan. Some insist, if you will excuse the immodesty, the best known. Now, what were you saying earlier about my plans for this evening?"
She moved very close to Lorand again, and although his arms went around her automatically, his mind reeled so hard he nearly staggered. She was a courtesan, one of those women they refused to allow in Widdertown? Everyone had always insisted that the rest of the empire was evil for encouraging such goings-on, morally blighted the way they would never be.
But that didn't mean there were no liaisons in Widdertown, just none that were conducted out in the open. Someone had once suggested - before leaving the area only a year after having moved there - that there was more sneaking around in that supposedly morally rich town than in any of the ones they looked down on. No one had believed that, of course but Lorand had wondered. And hadn't he decided that the values of his former home were no longer his?
Yes, yes he had. Lorand felt a rush of relief, only slightly tinged with lingering guilt. The old ways were no longer his and there was no reason not to be charitable. He'd heard stories about how badly used all those girls were, and that none of them really wanted to do what they were doing. They were just never given a way out, but that could be changed in Jovvi's case.
"So you were a courtesan," he managed to say after only a brief hesitation, his smile trying to be warm. "That must have been terrible for you, but it's all over with now. After we get through all these tests, we should be free again to lead relatively normal lives. When that happens we can celebrate by planning our marriage."
"Marriage?" she echoed, raising her brows. "Why would I want to get married? And being the most famous courtesan in and around Rincammon wasn't terrible at all. Quite the opposite, in fact, not to mention enriching to the purse. If things don't work out with this High practitioner business I mean to open my own residence here in Gan Garee. But that doesn't mean I can't have a … special patron, one who will never be required to pay. You aren't too shy to accept something like that, are you?"
"No, no, of course I'm not," Lorand got out, melting again to her smile while writhing inside. "We'll just have to talk about it."
"Talk will only take us so far," she responded with a laugh, putting her arms around him. "The rest will have to wait for tonight, but at least you can kiss me again."
Lorand couldn't have refused if his life had depended on it, but even as his lips took hers again his mind worked furiously. She was the most wonderful woman he'd ever met, but she was terribly confused about what was right. He would talk to her, and explain things gently, and eventually everything would work out. But in the meantime, he no longer had to worry about finding a roundabout way to entice her into his bed…
* * *
Clarion - no, Rion! - walked into the dining room for dinner a bit early. He'd managed to miss lunch entirely, so taken had he been with the wonder of his new name, and now he was starving. Yes, starving, rather than quite hungry, the namby-pamby phrase Clarion would have used. Clarion had been a cripple too twisted even to see straight, but Rion was a man who simply had a few things yet to learn. It had surely been the Rion part of him which had become determined to learn, and now all of him was the same and under the proper name.
No one was at the table when Rion took his seat, which was disappointing even though expected. But the others were fairly prompt, so there shouldn't be too much of a wait. In the interim he took one of the fresh-baked rolls placed on the table by a servant, something else that poor fool Clarion never would have done. He'd been taught not to ruin his appetite by nibbling before a meal, and that no matter how hungry he was. Rion, however, was free to think for himself, not to mention satisfy part of his hunger with a roll.
Rion had been looking forward to the others arriving, but unfortunately the first to walk in was the liar Drowd. Rion gave the man a cool appraisal as he approached the table, making no effort to avoid the other's gaze. Drowd no longer disturbed him, not in any way at all.
"Well, how pleasant to avoid the boorishness of being first to arrive," Drowd murmured as he took his seat, his previous spitefulness apparently fully returned. "I see you do have your uses after all, Mardimil."
"I find it better to be useful even at something small, Drowd, than to be useless like you," Rion returned with an amused smile. "If I weren't so hungry, having you seated next to me would turn my stomach. Do us all a favor and just sit there quietly. You have nothing to say that any of us care to hear."
"My, my, look who thinks he's actually part of the group," Drowd returned, obviously struggling to keep to a languid drawl. "Your comment makes the situation laughable, Mardimil, because I happen to have something to say that would interest you. A short time before lunch I happened to be looking out a window over the gardens, and saw the most fascinating thing."
Rion gave the man silence for an answer, which would hopefully silence him as well. He must have witnessed the way Clarion had made a fool of himself, and now intended to use it for purposes of humiliation. But Clarion no longer existed, so Rion didn't care.
"I really had no idea Coll had it in him," Drowd continued in spite of the lack of a reply. "He was actually kissing that delightful Dama Hafford before you arrived, and did it again after he'd gotten rid of you. For a muck-footed farmer he has a certain … élan. Another man probably wouldn't have been able to get rid of you quite that fast."
"Stop talking to me, liar," Rion growled without looking at Drowd, suddenly more than upset. Coll was his friend and would never treat him badly, but … he'd been kissing Jovvi? Both before and after his appearance? Could that be why his invitation to the lady was so inappropriate? Because Coll had meant to make the same invitation himself?
"Consider me a liar if you will, but you can't doubt the evidence of your own eyes," Drowd said, as if from a
far distance. "Watch the two of them during the meal, and then you tell me how Coll feels. He wants the woman for himself, and had no trouble pushing a bumbling oaf like you aside. For a muck-foot, he's really quite facile."
Drowd fell silent then, but that didn't matter since Rion was no longer listening anyway. He now waited for the others with a different purpose, and when Coll escorted Jovvi into the room, a bolt of pain flashed through Rion. From the way Coll looked at Jovvi, there was no possible doubt. He wanted the woman and planned to have her, even though it was Rion she'd given that marvelous gift to. If not for Coll, he would be the one she smiled at so beautifully…
Rion ate the food put in front of him, but the details of what it was blurred behind his thinking and planning. If Coll were put out of the way somehow, he would have a clear path to Jovvi. Disappointment in Coll let Rion do that planning, a painful disappointment he hadn't expected to experience. Muck-foot or not, Coll had started to be a friend, but friends weren't supposed to behave the way he had. Rion had never had a friend, but even he knew that much.
By the arrival of dessert, Rion had decided what he would do. Once Coll was asleep he would be easy to reach, and despite certain misgivings, Rion was determined to do that reaching. It would be-
"Excuse me," a voice said, cutting through thoughts and table conversation alike. "I have an announcement you all need to hear."
Rion looked up along with everyone else, to see Lady Eltrina Razas standing just inside the dining room doors. The representative of the testing authority looked as cool and distant as ever, with a gleam of some kind of satisfaction in her eyes that Rion found vaguely familiar.
"Thank you," she said when everyone had given her their attention, then she held up a sheaf of papers. "I have here your first session assignments, which I will shortly distribute to you. Your new clothing was delivered today, I know, so be sure to dress in it and be ready bright and early tomorrow. Coaches will be here to take you where you must go, and I wasn't joking about how early it will be. For that reason you will all go to bed as soon after dinner as you may, so that you'll be well rested. Believe me, tomorrow you'll need every bit of strength you can gather."
With that she came forward to distribute the sheets of paper, leaving Rion, at least, undecided. Tomorrow they would all be tested again, so maybe he would do well to change his plans. It would be foolish to do away with Coll tonight - foolish and hard to force himself to actually do - when one of the tests tomorrow could well do the job for him. Yes, that was the ticket, he'd let the tests kill Coll for him, and do it himself only if Coll survived.
Feeling much happier, Rion accepted the sheet of paper handed to him and left the dining room - but not before taking a last, anticipatory look at the incredible Jovvi.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The following morning wasn't just early, it was also raining. I stood with everyone else in the entrance hall, waiting for the coaches to pull up closer to the front door. I hadn't expected to fall asleep quickly last night but I had, and strangely enough I hadn't even been bothered by bad dreams. I felt well rested and had eaten a good breakfast, and was more ready to face what came than I'd thought would be possible last night. Maybe the nice but useless offer I'd had had done more good than I'd realized…
I looked over at Vallant Ro where he stood with the men, dressed exactly the way they were and almost indistinguishable from Lorand Coll and Clarion Mardimil. All three were tall and broad-shouldered and blond, but Vallant Ro wasn't really like them. He had no intentions of making the most of the opportunity he'd been given, and would be gone as soon as he was allowed to leave. That was what had made his offer to protect me so useless, but I hadn't had the heart to say so.
"They do look rather impressive, don't they?" Jovvi murmured from my right, amusement in her voice. "Lorand without those ill-fitting bags is even more attractive than usual, Rion looks positively handsome without one of his costumes, and Vallant looks more like the dashing sea captain than ever. Did you enjoy how concerned he was about you yesterday?"
"Who's Rion?" I asked, ignoring what she'd said about Vallant Ro. He was someone who would best be forgotten, even though some part of me insisted on remembering how gently those big hands of his had been holding mine…
"It's Rion rather than Clarion now," Jovvi said with obvious approval. "I suggested the name change, but he was the one who embraced the idea wholeheartedly. It will hopefully take him out of the narrow confines of his previous life, and let him expand and grow as a person should. I take it you'd rather not talk about Vallant Ro."
"Not here, certainly," I answered with a sigh, very aware of the lack of privacy. "And especially not now, with the coaches pulling up."
She turned to look at the first coach, whose driver was climbing down from the box after tying off his reins. He wasn't one of the drivers we'd had previously, and he strode toward us, ignoring the rain which had turned his cape and hat sodden.
"First coach is for Domon, Hafford, Lant, and Mardimil," he announced briskly without coming inside. "The rest will take the second coach. Step lively, if you please."
Beldara Lant made a sound of annoyance, but whether it was because she had to travel with Jovvi and me again, or because she'd been told to hurry, I didn't know. Two of my servants stood ready with very large rain-shields to escort us to the coach, so we four who had been named stepped lively. Beldara pushed forward to climb into the coach. first, but neither Jovvi nor I cared. We let Clarion - no, Rion - help us in, then sat back for the ride.
This time we were taken to another part of the city, the one that lies across the Magross bridge in what's considered Noble territory. Most of it looks just like any other part of Gan-Garee, but the only people living in the lower-class housing are those who work in the shops and businesses based there. The members of the patrol guard make it their business to know all of them by sight, since anyone they don't know is summarily ejected from the area. And it isn't even possible to claim to be there just to shop. The price of everything is double to nonresidents, and residency has to be proven.
Carriage and coach traffic was, of course, much heavier in that part of town. It would have been fractionally better if it hadn't been raining, but not enough to have made the trip any shorter. The very quiet trip, with Beldara and Rion lost in their individual thoughts, and Jovvi apparently as reluctant as I to break the silence. Logically we should all have been thinking about what lay ahead, but somehow I felt that that wasn't the case. Jovvi might have been considering the coming tests, but I was fairly certain the other two had different things on their minds.
We finally turned off the main thoroughfare into the approach drive of two large buildings which stood fairly close together. A stone awning arched across the forty or so feet between them, providing a shelter for the side doors which opened opposite one another over there. Our coach pulled up to the building on the right, and the second coach, filled with the rest of those at my house, stopped to the left. We four were guided out and into the right hand building, then up five or six steps, with our driver leading the way.
"Fire magic, Air magic, and Spirit magic sessions are he1d in this building," the man said, opening his rain cape against the unexpected warmth of the place. The floor was open all across its length, just like the building where I'd originally gone to register for the first test, but three separate areas contained tables and chairs. All of them were empty of people right now, and the driver pointed to large, draped signs hanging behind the three areas of tables and chairs.
"You can see by the symbols which area is for which aspect," he went on. "Go through the door behind your own aspect, and you'll be told what to do next. The coach will be back to pick you up again this afternoon."
With that he turned and left us, giving none of us a chance to ask how late this afternoon. It was now barely past eight in the morning, which would have made the answer somewhat significant.
"Well, we might as well get on with it," Jovvi said, and I gav
e up watching the departing back of our driver to see that Beldara and Rion had already begun to walk toward their respective doors. "Let's wish each other good luck, even if we won't need it. We have skill and talent, which take the place of a good deal of luck."
"You still won't find me turning down the luck," I said with a smile before exchanging hugs with her. "And you'd probably feel the same if you had Beldara sharing your aspect."
"Not probably, definitely," she agreed, then grew serious. "Be certain you watch your back where she's concerned. If she can ruin things for you, she'll do it."
I nodded to show I already knew that, then parted from Jovvi to follow after Beldara. The woman who shared my aspect acted as if she were all alone in the building, but her pace was faster than your average uncaring stroll. She seemed to want to leave me far behind, but walking wasn't the way she'd be able to do that. I increased my own pace a little, and passed under the flame sign only a moment behind her.
I was able to catch the door before it closed completely, and walked into a fairly large room right behind Beldara. There were four men standing around to the left of the door, all of them wearing the same clothing and identification cards that we did. The room itself was lamplit and separated into sections by walls of what seemed to be transparent resin, with a narrow hall running between the sections both left and right. The area we stood in had been left unpartitioned, and once Beldara and I were in it another man came from one of the sections to the left.
"Well how nice to see that the newcomers have finally made it," he said looking us over with very little approval. He wore expensive trousers and coat in a bright green, a yellow silk shirt, and a very red ascot that didn't go with the rest at all. The way he moved said he considered himself quite important, and he obviously expected us to think the same.
"For those of you who don't already know, I am Forum, High rated Adept, and your examiner in Fire magic for the next few days," the man continued, flicking a finger under his red ascot. "Anyone wearing the color of our aspect like this is the same, so I would advise you newcomers to be on your best behavior. If you anger the wrong person, whatever promise you've shown will end a broken vow."