“You can tell him now,” Bjorn said, “or I can break every one of your fingers first.”
The boy’s nostrils flared as he breathed harshly a moment, the tension in him building – and then the words came tumbling out all at once, furious, harsh with an accent much stronger than that of anyone here in Aeres. “I’m here because you’re a traitor!” he hissed. “The mighty Erik Frodeson, King of Aeretoll – a traitor to the whole of the North! To your own ancestors!”
“Traitor?” Oliver blurted. He glanced at Bjorn and Erik, but both looked baffled. “A traitor how?”
He half-expected to be reprimanded for interfering, but he wasn’t. And the boy’s wild gaze rolled toward him and he sneered.
“Southerner,” he said like the worst sort of curse. To Erik: “You scheme with the South – you promise them our lands, our birthright, in exchange for silk, and honey, and pretty places to put your cocks.” The last was said with a hateful glance toward Oliver.
Erik stabbed the torch at his face, and the boy’s smirk disappeared as he flattened himself back against the wall. “Did your leader send you here to spy on us? Or are you just an enterprising little fucker?”
He refused to answer.
Erik stood, expression closed-off, and left the cell.
Oliver looked to Bjorn, who nodded and waved him out as well.
In the hallway, the guard locked the cell, and took the torch.
“Don’t feed him ‘til morning,” Erik instructed. “I’ll send someone down with a tray to question him.”
“Yes, your majesty.”
Erik didn’t speak again until they were out of the dungeon and back into the main tunnel. His expression, bathed in the light of the cressets, was tense and set. “We can’t talk here,” he cautioned.
Which was how Oliver found himself occupying an armchair in Erik’s study, while Erik paced back and forth in front of the fire, fiddling with the rings on his long fingers, and Birger and Bjorn stood with hands braced on the backs of their respective chairs. Oliver had a cup of wine in one hand, and a distinct feeling that he didn’t belong in this conversation, but he wasn’t going to get up and leave until someone made him.
He also wasn’t going to make more eye contact with Bjorn than he had to, given what the man had seen less than an hour ago.
“The Beserkirs have no way of knowing about our dealings with Drakewell,” Birger said, troubled. “Not unless someone here is passing information along to them.”
“My point exactly,” Erik muttered, and kept pacing.
“It’s no business of theirs regardless,” Bjorn said. His jaw was clenched so tight it left his beard bristling. He had the distinct look of a man who would enjoy bashing heads at the moment.
“The Beserkirs,” Birger said, addressing Oliver, “have long held the territory north of the Wolf Mountains.”
“They’ve been spreading,” Bjorn grumbled. “Crawling down south, like a disease.”
“They are the wildest and most martial of the Northern clans,” Birger continued. “They worship no god but war, and when they go raiding, they’re just as likely to kill the women as rape them. They plunder riches only so that they may take trophies; they can’t be reasoned with, or conduct any sort of real business.”
“Then why would they care what Aeretoll does?” Oliver asked.
“They think we’ve gone too soft, here on the coast. That we have forsaken our heritage as Northmen,” Erik said.
The Wall Between Worlds, Oliver remembered.
Birger said, “The enmity between Beserkir and Úlfheðnar runs old and deep.”
“And the royal family is descended of Úlfheðnar lords.”
“Aye, just so. The bear-shirts have long anticipated a day when Aeretoll would march on them in force, and claim their lands, and press them into servitude – the same way they treat their own enemies. If they think we’ve become even cozier with the South, they could well be thinking a united army is headed their way – and they can’t ever face us head-on in proper battle.”
“It’s nothing but raids and assassinations for them,” Bjorn said, disgusted.
Assassinations like that of Revna’s husband.
Erik paused, and gripped the mantelpiece, rings winking as his hands flexed. He glared into the flames and said, “Someone’s told them about our Drakewell visitors. It’s the only possible explanation.”
“And we shall find out who,” Birger said.
“In the meantime, I’m going to question the little shit personally,” Bjorn said, cracking his knuckles.
“It can wait until morning,” Birger told his brother. “Let the lad stew awhile, and he’ll be more talkative with an empty belly.”
Bjorn sighed, but nodded, reluctantly. “I’ve doubled the guard, and we’re running patrols outside the walls, every hour.”
Erik nodded.
“We should get some sleep,” Birger said. “Tomorrow’s to be a long, grand day and we’ll all want to be fresh for it. We’ll be awakened if there’s an emergency.”
Oliver contemplated his solitary chamber, with firelight shadows dancing up the walls and frost on the window panes. Near enough to the royal apartments that a shout would bring a guard running, should anything threaten him.
And, judging by the sneer the young Beserkir had shot him in the cell – pretty places to put your cocks – he did feel threatened.
Earlier, down in the baths, he knew that, if not for Bjorn’s interruption, things would have progressed farther. And where would that have led? To Erik’s bed? Or, perhaps, more accurately, to going their separate, though satisfied ways after a hot springs tryst?
Either way, there could be no question of sleeping alone, now, not with doubled guards and the potential for a midnight alarm.
He cleared his throat and said, “Are we safe? In the palace, I mean,” he explained, as all eyes turned toward him. “If there is a traitor in your midst – if there are others waiting to pick locks and slip into doors…”
Bjorn puffed out his chest and said, “My men have it handled.”
But Erik’s expression softened, fractionally, and his head tilted to its earnest angle. “I promise that you are quite safe within these walls, Mr. Meacham. No harm will come to you, or to Tessa.”
Oliver held his gaze, skin alive with the fresh memory of his touch; he would have known his hands by feel alone, in the dark, at this point. “And what about you? Will you be safe?”
His lips curved, faintly. “If a man makes the mistake of coming at me with a knife, it will be his last mistake.”
Oliver wanted to believe him.
~*~
Bjorn personally escorted Oliver back to his room, with promises of stationing extra guards in the corridor. Erik offered him a smile, before he turned away and slipped out, hating that he could not do more to ease the worry in his gaze.
An ache started up in his chest, and he cursed their prisoner to every level of hell, because he’d had him, finally. Had him soft, and sweet, and eager in his arms, under his mouth, and if not for Beserkir machinations, Erik would be even now–
Birger cleared his throat. Unobtrusively, but it cut off Erik’s line of thought, and brought him back to the present – revealed to him that he gripped the mantel so hard that his rings were gouging the wood. He released it, shook out his hand, and turned to his old friend and advisor.
“Something you’d like to say?”
Birger looked chagrined. “No. I was encouraging you, after all.
“But…”
Erik sighed.
Birger took the chair Oliver had been using, and nodded to the one across, until Erik finally sat, hands forced flat on his thighs to keep from fidgeting.
Birger said, “When the first break-in happened, I had my suspicions. It was no surprise, in all honesty, to find a Beserkir creeping into our halls.”
“Nor to me.”
“But I thought it would be the old petty grievances. A bit of mischief, even, them wanting
to botch our yuletide plans.” His expression grew more troubled. “But they know about Drakewell.”
“He said ‘South.’ Generically.”
Birger sent him a sharp glance that said you know better.
“What would you have me do? Have the clans approve every one of our alliances?”
“No. But. Erik. I was in the solar today with Rune. And I saw the beads and gems set aside for tomorrow. For the Drakes.”
Erik’s throat went dry, and his stomach tightened unpleasantly. “What of them?”
“Tomorrow night, everyone in that great hall will know that Tessa and Oliver are being formally courted by members of the Aeretollean royal family.”
Erik fought not to grind his teeth.
“Strategic political marriages are commonplace enough. Many will see the wisdom in a Drakewell bride for Leif.
“But Oliver…”
“Speak plainly,” Erik ground out.
Birger offered him a small, sad sort of smile. “Know that I have nothing but affection and respect for the lad when I point out that he is an illegitimate bachelor, and that there can be no political gain to braiding lover’s beads into his hair. Your lords will see that, tomorrow. Your lords will know that it is your affection that has granted him a place at your table.”
Erik sent him a dark look.
“You’ve never honored anyone like that, Erik, not ever. Doing so could shatter the illusion that you have a heart of winter. There are those who will see it as a weak point – a vulnerability. If they want to hurt you, they can do so by hurting him.”
“Could that not be said of my sister? Of my nephews?”
Birger’s smile deepened, and softened, and Erik hated the sympathy he saw there. “This is different, and you know it.”
Because Oliver was an outsider, was a Southerner. Because while he was expected to love his own blood, rumors would begin to fly when the lords and ladies of Aeretoll saw the beads in Oliver’s hair and began to wonder if their king’s reasoning had been compromised by an agent of the South. Birger was right: he couldn’t blame this on the begetting of an heir, or on a political alliance, not when Tessa was already set to wed Leif. A public declaration of the sort he was about to make could only be read as an act of pure sentiment.
“I’m thinking of you, yes, but of Oliver, too,” Birger said. “This could be dangerous for him as well.”
Erik thought of the vicious glance the prisoner had darted at Oliver, earlier, the contempt and hostility. “Or, one could argue that, the connection already having been made, I would be protecting him. Killing a foreign guest is an offense, yes. Killing a royal consort is an act of war.”
Birger’s eyes flew wide.
“They wouldn’t dare it.”
“Erik…”
“I do not need a lecture, Birger. I think after forty-three years on this earth I can make up my own mind about such things.”
Birger sighed – and then smiled again. “I should think so.” He chuckled, eyes sparking with fondness, and Erik felt some of his tension ease.
Then Birger sobered. “I only wanted you to think it through from every angle. Once a choice is made, it sometimes has to be defended.”
Erik nodded. “I’m well aware of that.”
20
Oliver slept poorly. When he did manage to doze off, his dreams alternated between slippery, heated fantasies that picked up right where real life had left off in the baths, and nightmares about being awakened by fur-clad, painted-faced Beserkirs dragging him out of bed at knifepoint.
He finally gave up just before dawn, wrapped himself in his dressing gown and a fur from the bedclothes and sat in the window ledge, watching the sunrise bloom like a bruise over the mountaintops. His thoughts chased one another round and round, and he was half-asleep sitting up by the time the room had filled with pale, early light, and a knock sounded at the door.
A kitchen boy bearing a tray stood just outside. “Breakfast, my lord,” he said, handing it over. “So you can be ready for the council meeting in an hour.”
That woke him up with an unpleasant lurch. “Right. Yes, thank you.”
He managed to nibble a little of the bread and bacon, and sip his tea, and spent longer than usual on his morning ablutions. He shaved himself with great care, until his cheeks were smooth and gleaming: no sense pretending to be less Southern than he was, he reasoned; he would only look unkempt with scruff on his face, anyway, rather than virile and intimidating. He dressed in his tucked and taken-in hand-me-downs, the house colors unmistakeable, and pulled on his new boots as well: supple, fur-lined leather with a cuff of fur at the top, just below his knees.
An inspection in the mirror proved he looked like a boy playing dress-up at a masquerade back home, pretending to be a Northman. But there was nothing for it. He squared his shoulders, took a few deep breaths, and went to find the council chamber.
The gallery had been layered with even more pine boughs overnight, laced with velvet ribbons, hung with gleaming metallic balls, and bunches of cranberries and dried oranges and cinnamon sticks that perfumed the air. Leif stood at the rail, idly fingering pine needles and watching the crush and clamor of breakfast taking place below in the hall. Like Oliver, he was dressed richly, but in a practical sense, with no ornamentation save the usual beads in his hair, and the stag ring on his hand that mimicked his uncle’s. The true finery would come later that day, when it was time for the feast.
He turned at the sound of Oliver’s approach, and smiled in greeting. “I was just coming to get you.”
“Yes, for some reason, the thing your council is missing is a court jester,” Oliver said, wryly, gesturing to his outfit.
Leif smirked – looking very much like a young, golden Erik in the process – and said, “No, we’ve got Lord Askr for that.”
“Ah. I met him last night.”
“A giant red blowhard, isn’t he?”
Oliver snorted as he fell into step beside the prince. “I’m afraid he’s rather falling into my formerly-held prejudices about Northmen.”
“I think he enjoys being a stereotype,” Leif agreed. “He holds a vast tract of good mining land, so everyone tends to put up with him. And in the right setting, his stories are entertaining.”
“Is his voice a strong one on the council?”
“Yes. Regrettably. But Uncle Erik has the final say in everything, don’t worry.” He grinned in answer to Oliver’s sideways glance. “Perks of being the king.”
“I should say so.”
They bypassed the grand staircase and proceeded instead to one of the smaller, circular turret staircases that lay in the corners of the palace. Narrow windows let in morning light, the reflection off the snow outside bright enough to leave them squinting. With every step, Oliver’s anxiety mounted.
“Leif.” He halted, finally, and Leif turned back to look up at him in question. “I don’t want to attend this meeting if I’m going to be an imposition.” When Leif frowned, he said, “If it’s…going to look…bad. Untoward, somehow.”
Understanding dawned. His brows lifted. “No, it’s…” He seemed to come to a decision, nodding to himself, expression firming. “It’ll be fine. They all just have to get used to it, that’s all.”
“…used to it?”
“Trust in Uncle. He knows what he’s doing.”
“He…” But Leif was turning and starting down again, and Oliver closed his mouth and followed.
The council chamber was at the front of the palace, in a wide, high-ceilinged room loaded with windows that let in plenty of natural light and offered a view of the snow-covered bailey and front gate. A long table, polished from years of palms and elbows, ran down the center of the room, and, hanging from the walls to either side, banners. All the noble houses of the kingdom, Oliver figured, interspersed with hanging swords, and suits of armor, and the royal banner of a reindeer stag, repeated again and again.
Most of the chairs were already full, and the lords turned to re
gard them as Oliver entered alongside Leif. Some eyebrows shot up; some beards were stroked contemplatively.
“Come sit by me,” Leif said, quietly, and led him down to the head of the table. Leif took the seat to the right of what was obviously meant to be Erik’s chair, and Oliver settled on his right, after, hands clenching tight together in his lap.
“Good morning,” Leif greeted the table. His smile was sunny and welcoming. “I trust everyone slept well? Had a good breakfast?”
Lord Askr, seated across and several chairs down, coughed a laugh. “Now, lad, you can’t come in here trailing a little red fox cub and go asking about breakfast like nothing’s out of place.”
Uncle William had once cautioned Oliver that his flares of temper, and his resultant smart mouth, would get him in irredeemable trouble some day.
But Uncle William was dead. So.
“If you remember, we met last night, Lord Askr,” he said, primly. “Though you were wearing far fewer clothes.”
Silence reigned a moment.
Then a snort – then a laugh, and then the whole table was laughing, Askr smiling in a grudging way, his gaze still sharp.
Leif chuckled and elbowed Oliver, a small, ordinary bit of affection that Oliver found quite touching.
“The thing you forget about foxes,” Erik drawled, sweeping down the side of the table, his voice smug, Birger in tow. His gaze, when it flickered to Oliver on his way, sparkled. “They’re more likely to bite than a wolf.”
The lords all stood, chairs scraping back.
“Sit,” Erik said, doing so himself, in the ornate, carved chair at the head of the table.
The room rang with the noise of everyone complying, and in that space, Erik glanced first toward Leif, with a nod, and then to Oliver, with the faintest hint of a smile.
Oliver smiled back, a little, and the last of his nerves settled.
“All right,” Erik said, as the room quieted, projecting his voice so it could be heard all down the length of the table. “Shall we begin?”
~*~
“I say we stop pussy-footing around about it,” Askr said, a half-hour later. “It’s time we launched a full assault on the mountains and wiped them out for good. It’s nothing but killing and stealing from the fuckers, and no good can come from them being left alone this long.”
Heart of Winter (The Drake Chronicles Book 1) Page 24
