Then there was a collective gasp from the audience, and Elayne shot her head up again. The crowd fell silent as Frederick and Quilliam fell against one another. Their teammates lay scattered across the field in mock loss or triumph, two from either side standing or sitting atop their opponents, all looking on. For a moment, Frederick seemed to have the upper hand, his shining green blade darting about the prince in a hypnotizing pattern, but then the prince struck out, a flash of blue coming off his sword and sending the knight skidding on his back across the dirt. With a flourish, he flipped back up onto his feet, bringing his shield before him and hunkering down behind it. His back raised and fell with deep breaths, and he flipped sweaty, brown strands from his eyes.
Quilliam raised both of his arms then and abandoned his own shield, taking up his hilt in two hands and leveling it before him. The highborns hollered praise for the prince, citing his impressive bravery, and Elayne cocked her head: wasn’t this all going to plan? Still her heart thumped a bit harder when she saw Frederick toss his own shield to the side as well.
The men ran, their swords coming together with a clang. The sound echoed across the tourney field and the crown called back to it. Over and over the two seemed matched, a thrust here, a parry there, they clashed, they sweat, they threw one another across the dirt, until Quilliam dodged a jab, spun, and brought his own sword down on Frederick so hard that the knight fell to one knee and braced his weapon above his head with a gloved hand around his own blade.
Elayne found herself on her feet at the sight, her book abandoned, and had clasped Rosalind’s hand in her own. The prince forced Frederick down further until the knight had fallen onto both knees. Both men’s chests heaved, they pressed against one another, and the colored flames of their swords had gone out. This was simply steel on steel now, and Elayne held her breath.
With a flash and a slice, Quilliam’s sword slid down Frederick’s, knocking the knight onto his back and his weapon dancing across the dirt. The prince slammed a boot firmly down onto the knight’s chest, and he leveled the point of his sword at his neck. The Crowned Prince Quilliam of Yavarid had won.
A roar rose up around Elayne as she sighed, falling back down onto the stands. Placing a hand on her chest, she felt how her heartbeat had quickened and screwed up her face in disgust. She rolled her eyes and focused on the sky instead where a group of hawks were circling high above in the clear blue. Elayne cocked her head, watching the birds with a suddenly sharper gaze, not sure if the odd feeling in her gut was annoyance at her own reaction or—
“Amazing!” Rosalind slapped Elayne on the back, and the girl nearly went flying forward into the cheering crowd below.
Steadying herself on the bench, she glanced up to her friend. Her eyes were sparkling, and a smile was spread across her face. “I’m glad you’re happy, Ro,” she managed, catching her breath.
With a quick look back out onto the field, she could see Prince Quilliam offering a hand to Sir Frederick and the two throwing an arm around one another before the prince’s horse was brought to him. He mounted the steed, muddying the embroidered dress the animal wore, and lapped the tourney field to wild applause.
“Grieg will be sorry he missed this.” Rosalind propped her fists on her hips, nodding out over the field.
“I’m sure there will be another.” Elayne stood again, clutching her book to her chest. “And another…and another. It’s Quillie’s naming moon, and he’s getting the crown at the end of it.”
Rosalind looked around conspiratorially though they had been sitting quite apart from the others who were already exiting the stands. “I don’t…I don’t think you should call him that.”
It was a hard habit to break, dropping the nicknames they’d known one another as in childhood, but as they entered adulthood, and especially as Quilliam prepared to take the throne, slip ups couldn’t happen. Not that it mattered much, she thought, as she watched a gaggle of unwed highborn ladies clamor about at the edge of the tourney field: she’d barely spoken a word to the prince—or to any of them—in almost a decade. Elayne cocked her head. “I suppose not.”
CHAPTER 2
Frederick wiped the sweat and dirt from his eyes as a heavy hand fell on his shoulder. Sir Voss was there, flashing him a dazzling smile. How he managed to come away from these things practically unblemished, Frederick would never know, feeling the beginning of a bruise on his own temple, but then Voss was always happy to take the fall so long as his face went untouched. “Great show.”
“And as always, you too,” Frederick told him and meant it. At one point the two had been back to back and managed to play off one another completely unscripted. It was the only rush he’d had the entire tourney.
They made their way across the field to where the highborn ladies were crowded at the fence. Sir Legosen was already there, a whole head and shoulders above the rest, stoically looking down on the human women. He’d confided in the knights before that he didn’t find humans particularly attractive; however, they were, to put it politely as he always did, quite enthusiastic, and for reasons none of the rest of the knights could understand, the ladies couldn’t get enough of him. He insisted it was due to his height.
“Ladies!” Voss cried out with a broad smile as they came up behind the elf, “Some pity for a poor loser!”
Frederick shook his head at Voss as they gathered around, hopping the fence, and slipping around the crowd, only interested in one lady. Vyvyan had been away in Comerant for nearly an entire moon while her mother remarried, but knew she’d returned with Voss three days prior, and yet she’d not even sent him a dinky which was particularly odd for being the most prolific dinky conjurer he knew. Voss had been unhelpful in regard to her whereabouts, but Frederick didn’t expect much from him: the man’s brain was too focused on the location of every other available woman in the castle to remember that of his sister as well. But she had been at the tourney—he spied the sun glimmering off her honey-colored locks and heard her sweet voice encouraging him from the stands.
Finally he found her sauntering away from the group and up the path back to the castle and flanked by her closest companions. She clearly hadn’t noticed him for, if she had, certainly she would have run to him, wrapped arms around his neck, and pressed her lips firmly against his own. He called out as he managed to get past the rest of the ladies, “Vyv!”
When Vyvyan turned, her flawless face was so cold and stony, he froze at the head of the muddied path. But then her eyes, deep pools of lake water kissed by moonlight, fell on his, rosy lips curling into a smile, and she sighed. There it was, that look—how could she forget, after all, the evenings on the terrace, in the garden, at the edge of the wood—there was her pure adoration.
“Oh, Fred. Hey.”
He had started toward her, then faltered. “Welcome back,” he offered, a bit more bite to his voice than he meant, “Long time, no see.”
“Right.” She nodded slowly, her eyes darting to Cici and then Buffy, the two women who were constantly attached to her hips. “I’ve been, uh, well, busy.”
Vyvyan shrugged and turned away. Cici blinked large, nervous eyes between the two, and Buffy bit an already too-short nail. Something was amiss.
Frederick brushed between them and caught up to Vyvyan as she continued off away from the field. “What’s going on, Vyv?”
“I’ve been meaning to talk to you,” she said hurriedly, her eyes cast down.
“Just haven’t found the time?”
Vyvyan made a noncommittal noise in the back of her throat. “Mother’s wedding was just beautiful.”
“More beautiful than the other four?” He wasn’t entirely sure why he chose such cruel words, as if she’d already done something horrible to him and he just didn’t know it yet, but he chose them nonetheless.
“Well, I certainly never saw the first,” Vyvyan snarled back, “I’m not the bastard here.” Cruelty had never been difficult for her, but then it was always easier to forgive the insults of some
one who insisted that, logically, others shouldn’t be so sensitive about the truth. In that regard, Vyvyan was very logical. “Listen.” She stopped suddenly, turning and placing a hand on his chest so that he abruptly halted as well. “I’ve been thinking, and I just feel as though we’ve grown apart.”
Frederick narrowed his eyes at her. There was a coldness reflected back in her own, familiar, but reserved only for others. Until now. “We have?” He cringed at the crack in his voice.
She sighed, her hand still pressed against his clunky armor though he couldn’t feel it on the other side of the plate. “Don’t feel bad, it’s not you, it’s…well, I guess it is sort of you, but it’s not like that. I just can’t be with you anymore, Fred.”
Cici and Buffy had silently sidled up to either side of Vyvyan, looking as though they might burst into tears at any moment making Vyvyan’s stoic delivery of the news all the more merciless. He dropped his voice to a whisper and leaned toward her, “You know I was supposed to lose out there, right?”
“Ugh, yes, I know that.” Vyvyan whirled around and started off again toward the castle.
He threw his hands up, balking at the back of her head. “Then what in the godless gorge are you going on about?”
She grunted over her shoulder, “My mother married a duke, Fred.”
“How hard did I hit my head out there?” Frederick blinked a few times, still finding himself following her. “What does that have to do with—”
“I’ve finally got a real shot.” Vyvyan spun toward him again, lowering her own voice as some of the rest of the crowd was breaking up and passing them by. She spoke so quickly he almost couldn’t follow. “I used to be The Honorable Vyv, just a dead baron’s daughter, but mother’s new husband, Duke Comerant, never had any children. He’s given me and Voss titles, and now I’m Lady Vyvyan of Comerant. With this face, this body, and now this title, I practically have the crown all sewn up. There’s no reason Quilliam won’t choose me at his nameday coronation.” She closed the gap between them then and placed her hands on his shoulders, looking him in the eye. “No reason but you, Fred. Don’t you get it? I could be the next queen.” She cocked her head, her honey locks cascading over her shoulder, away from her radiant face, so full of hope and excitement. Even when she was twisting the knife, she was utterly gorgeous. “I know you, of all people, must understand.”
Frederick stood in the center of Yavarid Castle’s grounds feeling like a fissure to the aether had opened up underneath him, and he was falling, down and down he went, never to hit the bottom. And yet her words sunk even deeper than that into his brain: indeed, he understood.
Frederick had risen higher than any of the courtiers that passed them now on the pathway back up to the castle. He was born the lowest of them all, quite literally in the gutter, his mother had told him. She’d felt labor pains while walking to the market on the wettest day that fall, and he popped out right there in front of the gods and everyone. He’d come so fast, she said, she’d barely had time to squat down before he shot out, face-first into the mud.
His mother couldn’t remember a lot of things exactly, including her own age, but Frederick had been mistaken for her baby brother on too many occasions as a child for her to have been far off from the fifteen years she estimated she was when she realized he was in her belly. Of his father, she certainly couldn’t remember a name, only that he’d been very handsome, very charming, and of course that he must have been a wizard seeing as she had never shown any penchant for magic and Frederick turned out to be nothing if not a ball of chaotic enchantments that often came spewing out at exactly the wrong time.
After she died, Frederick had gotten lucky—they all said so, at least—stealing from someone who recognized his talent was more valuable than the satisfaction of his death and sold him off to the first soldiers who came along. He’d make a fine sparring companion for the little prince, someone else thought, and so Frederick trained with the young heir. Until his seventh nameday, Quilliam never really had a friend, and even so young Frederick saw the opportunity to win his favor. It could have gone sideways on a lot of occasions, but Frederick was smart, and, as it turned out, even the gutter-born could grow up to marry a baroness given the right talents, friends, and luck which were exactly what Frederick had. Until now.
And of course Vyvyan knew every detail—if he couldn’t tell her than who? And here she was, twisting it around like melting a sword down into a broach and insisting it offered the same protection because the metal was no different. He felt sick, his blood boiled, and he wanted to crawl under a rock and die, but he simply stood there and stared back at her. “Oh.”
“See,”—she smirked—“I knew you’d get it.” And with that, Vyvyan gave his shoulder a little pat and walked away.
“Whoa.” Voss exhaled sharply through his nose. How long the knight had been there, Frederick didn’t know, but the world came screaming back at him when he felt the man’s hand fall on his shoulder. “By Oh’oa’s Right Hand, I didn’t know she was going to do that.”
Frederick turned back toward the field, the ridiculous, flashy armor suddenly ten times heavier than when he was swinging around enchanted steel on the tourney grounds. He pushed passed Voss and Legosen who’d crept up in his stealthy, elven way and began to drag himself back to the stables.
“Say something,” Voss’s voice encouraged in a whisper as they followed.
“It was your sister,” Legosen said, making no effort to be quiet.
Voss grunted, then whispered back, “And that matters how?”
“Do you not have a bond forewarning you before atrocities befall your sibling?”
“What?” Voss’s voice raised slightly. “Of course not! Haven’t you lived with humans long enough to know that? Anyway, you’re better at this sort of thing. Go on then!”
Regardless of who was better at sympathy, they were both terrible at whispering, though it mattered much less when they finally reached the relative privacy of the stables.
Legosen cleared his throat. “Frederick, if I might offer my condolences. Though I admired how forward she could be, I never much cared for Vyvyan, but I know you were particularly fond of her and—”
“What’s so great about being queen anyway?” Frederick grumbled, ripping off his gloves and throwing them down onto a bale of hay.
The twins were already out of their armor, and Cayleb stuck his head of ruddy curls out from one of the stalls. “I don’t reckon much.”
“Certainly not finding Harry’s dick under all that belly, I bet!” Jayceb cackled, and when both fell into laughter, Frederick knew there wasn’t anyone else inside the barn.
“Lady Vyvyan has just broken off our good knight’s engagement,” Legosen told them as he began to remove his own gloves. Voss was still standing at the entrance, shooing away the squires that had come to help them. Apparently he wasn’t entirely unsympathetic.
“Vyv wants to bang the king?” The twins looked at one another with mounting confusion.
Legosen said plainly, “To bang Quilliam, I gather.”
“Please don’t talk about my sister banging anyone.” Voss pinched his nose. “It’s bad enough she’s been banging my best friend.”
“We didn’t—” Frederick stopped himself—it certainly didn’t matter now. “All I’m saying is it’s not such a big deal, is it? To be queen?”
“It takes a special woman,” Legosen conceded, “What is it you humans say? She must be loyal and compassionate—”
“And brave,” added Voss.
“Merciful,” said Cayleb.
“And smoking hot.” Jayceb pulled off his sweat-soaked tunic and twirled it over his head.
“Beauty. Correct.” Legosen leaned up against a stable post. “The five pillars of your human queendom, as it were. Vyvyan is clever enough to fabricate those she does not meet.”
Frederick grunted, pulling the heavy breastplate of his dress armor off. He gestured out the stable door and far across the tourney f
ield to where many of the young highborn ladies were still milling about. “That’s any of these women.”
“Any of them?” Voss cracked a sideways smile.
“Any of them,” Frederick repeated, “I’ve known Quilliam almost my entire life. It would be easy to turn any girl with a title into his bride.”
Voss crossed his arms and leaned back against the entrance to the stable. “Oh, I don’t know about that,” he lilted, “Vyv might actually have this one tied up. It would take someone extraordinary to compete.”
“Extraordinary?” Frederick’s brows knit in a way that felt like they’d never come undone. “Quilliam can be convinced of almost anything.”
Voss chuckled darkly. “He did make you into a knight.”
Frederick shot him a look. “And you.”
“You’re not giving Vyv enough credit,” Voss said quickly, ignoring the jab, “You’re just jealous.”
“Shut up, Voss.”
“Though if you could convince Quill to pick someone else, you’d certainly upset her plans.”
Frederick paused with his shin guards in hand hovering over the rest of his armor in a pile. Voss was an idiot, but even idiots had good ideas sometimes. Then he shook his head.
“But no,” Voss sighed, long and drawn out as if he were sorely pained, “I don’t think you could actually do it.”
Frederick dropped the guards with a metallic clang. “Of course I could.”
“Oh really? You’d be willing to make a friendly wager on it?”
“Sure,” he said before really knowing what he was saying. “Put any of them in a low-cut dress, feed her the right words, tell Quill she’s the best, and he’ll propose simple as that.”
Voss’s hand was suddenly before Frederick’s face, and he pulled back away from it. Looking up, he caught his friend smirking, but then Voss never hid that look. “A shake to seal our bet.”
She's All Thaumaturgy Page 2
