Unless Niallan blurts something out to the man who set this up. Or in front of one of the other traitors he doesn’t know about.
Damn him.
I finish the drink. Turn. Lean my fine Imperial ass against the railing. A probable breach of one of Heran’s four hundred and thirty-eight (or is it thirty-nine?) prince in public precepts. And.... Well, well, well. I should have paid attention earlier to what...who...was behind me, serving me, though not in the way I would prefer him to service me.
Jerril
This is so very much not a good idea, but I can’t seem to help myself. Subtle clues, like clothing with the Imperial black and silver-edged color combination none but Royal and Imperial House and Family are allowed to wear; the scar on the right side of his face, and oh, yes, the circlet holding back his hair, confirm that is my employers’ son. Crown Prince, Heir Presumptive, Warlord, Bearer of the Sword of Souls, battle mage, and probably more titles than that. He is also a man with a truly fine Royal and Imperial ass that I should not be noticing, much less admiring, as he briefly puts it on display by turning away, and then resting it on the railing.
I wonder why he was thinking about sex just now, though nothing in that impressive bulge I should not have noticed, betrayed him.
I wonder how I know that, how I am so certain.
I wonder at the pain he must feel to nearly crush that goblet, and yet not, apparently, feel that pain.
I wonder why he is drinking so much.
I wonder why I find all this troubling.
I wonder why I care.
I wonder just what in the Nine Hells is happening.
DarkFire
A damnably handsome servitor in close-fitting House livery—shorter than me, but then, who isn’t, Tanil-reminiscent muscles in his upper body, a more than enticing bulge between his legs, thick auburn-heading-toward-flame hair precisely styled, and Goddess-given provocative blue eyes that unquestionably show a willingness to bend and bare—is standing not quite within “let’s fuck” reach, but also not quite at the precisely correct “how may I serve you?” distance.
He has two bottles in his hands, with the beginnings of condensation from being removed from a nearby but not noticeable chiller. “The same wine, your Highness?” a gesture with his right hand, “or if I may I recommend...?” a left hand gesture.
It’s unusual for a servitor to offer suggestions without being asked. To do so to me is audacious.
The easiest solution is to just drink what I am currently drinking, whatever the Fifth Hell that is. That blank means I am making progress towards my amnesia solution. But my cock finds him intriguing, and is making its interest known.
My lifted eyebrow asks “What?” about the wine. When that gets no response, a not at all subtle cough pulls his attention away from where it definitely shouldn’t be, but my cock and I are pleased it was. He flushes. I wonder briefly if he would blush like that, full body, as I drive my cock into him.
I hope he has excellent peripheral vision since he is forced by his own servitor serving precepts to look up and away from temptation, and there is a great deal of temptation to look at. There is just a faint flush in his cheeks as he looks up at my face. “An Eilinkir Blue, my lord, a fine ‘22 vintage.”
It is not as if my birth year is a secret, but it is a subtle compliment that he has done his research and prepared for this moment, even though he would have had no way of knowing it would ever occur. It’s an even more subtle compliment that he has identified it in House years, and not by the ‘049 of the Serenite calendar. Now, if he had offered me a ‘36 vintage (or a Serenite ‘063), he would presently be on the floor, most likely bleeding profusely, certainly unconscious, and the bottles would be shattered. Then we would all be in the midst of a more memorable than most DarkFire party.
I nod toward the Blue. I actually prefer the thick, dark-gold depths of a Gaerenheth lager. There is a place that serves it in the tavern and warehouse district which surrounds the Gate to Tanyth. There I can dress in disreputable gear, be just another disreputable warrior getting disreputably drunk, while those who know or suspect I should be elsewhere—perhaps in a “better” district farther up in the tiers of the City, closer to the walls of the White Palace—also know better than to open their mouths. at least for speaking, to me or anyone else. But here, there is no beer. Is that princely precept one twelve?
Aunt Sylvara’s servitors are so very well-trained, and this one is proving to be a bit more audacious than merely making a wine recommendation without being asked. The gloved fingertip that touches the back of my hand is fleeting—an accident, your highness, an accident, he’d protest if accused. He backs away a step, not yet at the proper distance for turning his back on the Heir Presumptive in a social setting, and says, “If there is anything else you require, your highness, I am most willing to supply it.”
He is not talking about another drink.
For a moment, only a moment that never shows on my face, although my body makes its opinion even better known than before, I am tempted to show him precisely what I require of a man I use, in the nearest space with even a modicum of privacy. I wonder if he will be able to swallow all of my cock easily, or if he will have to be persuaded to allow me into his throat. Will I have time to train him; give him time to learn the contours of my cock, adjust to its length and thickness, or will I just hold his head and fuck his face?
The face-fucking images in my head splinter, and dissolve. Is it paranoia if someone wants to destroy you, whether by killing you or controlling you? Is it paranoia to wonder if this...servitor subtlety...is planned? Given the reputation as a cock hound I have cultivated for so long, it would not be unreasonable to believe that a man who so well fits the physical type I am known to enjoy could entice me away. Although leaving with me would not be enough. Proof would be required, so we would have gone somewhere private, or seeming so, where he could be used.
We would not even have to be discovered. His word, and a simple test by a forensic Healer to confirm that the seed in his throat, or up his ass, is from me, would be enough to let him...them...know that earlier events had not worked as planned.
Better to be paranoid and alive, than trusting and dead.
The servitor’s eyes gleam. It is satisfaction that I am considering his silent offer, or lust for a princely fuck? Or both, as part of a traitor’s test? I close my eyes, then look at him again. This time I look through him, abruptly dumping him into the customary invisibility of servitors. He has his answer to test or lust and turns away.
I drink a third of the wine. Thank Goddess again for large goblets, even slightly damaged ones.
I turn back to the railing, this time not looking down, but out and across the ballroom toward the gardens and the maze beyond the wall of three-story windows. Out there, in the near dark, some of her guests, but not yet a lot, will already be paired off, trying to find their way to the heart of the maze. Mostly two by two, or the occasional trio, but never a single. Trying to find the heart of the maze alone would be...pathetic. Princes are not allowed to be pathetic in public, perhaps not in private. That should be precept the first.
Jerril
He is looking out over the ballroom again, not down. I follow the line of his eyes. He is looking out toward the maze. If only a quarter of the tales of his love life, no, it can’t be said the tales tell of a love life, just an active and varied sex life—if even a quarter of the tales that have spread through the Empire are partially true, he has been to the maze many times, with many men.
So I wonder why he looks...wistful. In a face that is utterly still, a face that shows nothing at all. In a face I can only see by looking up at him.
I wonder how I know. And how I am so certain I am right.
Again.
What in the Hells?
DarkFire
I will acknowledge wistfulness to myself about the maze. But to no one else.
Aunt Sylvara doesn’t allow the use of Gifts or Power to make the at
tempt. Everyone knows this, and there is a clear warning posted at each entrance to the maze. The consequences of ignoring the warning are not stated, but everyone has heard the story, which has never needed any exaggeration, of what happened some years ago to two very young, very stupid, not-very-talented High House mages. House and Family Rellin-Delat have not yet lived the tale down. Perhaps they will in a century or three when all the actual participants are dead.
The foolish pair tried a seeker spell, just a little one, so subtle it was hardly there at all, no one could possibly notice.
They woke three days later and when somewhat smugly questioned by my aunt, admitted to feeling three, no, four, no, eight orders of magnitude worse than the morning after an eight-day drunk—an event with which both apparently had some experience. That feeling was compounded by being unable to cast a spell to remove the aftereffects, and no one would do it for them. Then, of course, there was the herd of unicorns which had slowly and carefully trotted through their mouths, dropping many gifts behind. And while the king stallion hadn’t used his horn on them they were certain they felt unusually large hooves on their arrogant asses.
So you search with your eyes and heart and soul, and all the while you search, the truly subtle magics woven into the maze work on your senses, seeming to shift the paths at the edge of your vision, teasing you with hints that another way is a better way than the one you are about to choose.
Or so I have heard.
Another gulp, another third gone.
By now the maze will be lit only by the pale silver light of the three moons that are up and a few, a very few, softly glowing mage-globes. All that warm and welcoming darkness.
I have always suspected that the only ones who succeed in reaching the maze heart are the ones she wants to succeed. Battle mage or not, dar Andrae with all the titles or not, nephew or not, I am neither reckless enough nor stupid enough to make that accusation to her face or behind her back. She is the kind of matron of a High House you are certain could face down an invading army with a glare and make it retreat through the Gate it just used. Yes, I can indeed picture her doing precisely that, though with the added twist of power from her Imperial status as the King-Emperor’s great-aunt. Rumor has it that while she has never fended off an invasion, she has in fact faced down the last two King-Emperors, and various heads of state from star nations inside and out of the...what do the paid linkers call it? Ah, yes, the grand and glorious Kingdom and Empire of Illoraen. What that stare might have done on occasion to the lower ranks isn’t part of the tally.
But for those who don’t succeed in the quest for the maze heart, there are always the discreetly placed bowers and the musky scent of cinnaeri blossoms to help them forget—or perhaps not—what they were looking for. And still find at least part of it.
Or so I have heard.
The goblet is empty? How did that happen?
I have never had anyone to share the challenge of the maze. It is unlikely to the point of absolute certainty that I ever will, despite Father’s best and usually infuriating efforts. Those efforts are not actually directed at finding someone to share the maze with me, but are more on the lines of a spouse whose home world is a year or more away from here.
Perhaps, even alone, pathetically alone, if you swallowed your pride and tried, the maze would be a nice place to hide. If you want to hide.
As I do.
A different servitor approaches. Has there been a changing of the guard, or was my interest in the last one sufficiently obvious for a superior to remove him from my vicinity? The new one is short, plump, and efficient. Sometimes I regret my aunt’s obsession with performance over appearance.
“Something different,” I tell him. I had just a glimpse of how superb the Eilinkir Blue might be if my taste buds weren’t already compromised, so why waste a vintage like that?
There is nothing but duty in his eyes, and no accidental touch as he trades old wine for new. An eminently proper backing away, a precision turn, then back to his post. A sip. I don’t think it is whatever it was I was drinking earlier, but how would I know if it was? I gulp it down.
Ah, so that is how the previous one got empty.
Damn Niallan to each and every one of the Nine Hells. In sequence. Repeatedly. Endlessly.
Far away, yet not nearly far enough, I feel the soft buzz of anger. I quash it firmly.
And then proceed to think about Goddess-damn-him Niallan, and earlier today. Which will bring me back to the anger eventually.
Jerril
I don’t think he realizes how tightly his hand is clenched on the railing, or he would not be doing it.
I have the oddest urge to go up there and comfort him. Touch that hand, soothe the tension away. Hug him. To softly sing him silly love longs, to fill his world with silly love songs.
And what’s wrong with that, I’d like to know.
What’s wrong is that urges like this can get me killed. Perhaps there are a few people, say, someone who lives a year or two or three of travel away, at the farthest edge of the Empire, who do not know, but everyone else does. You touch this man at your peril, even if the touch is by merest accident.
But still....
DarkFire
Fuck. I might as well get it over with. Remember. And then move on with the plan. I call up the memory crystal in my head. Thank Goddess remembering does not require the same amount of time, as the actual time that went by when what I remember happened.
All I wanted was a quiet evening in my wing of the White Palace, with some good sex, followed by a naked dinner accompanied by a bottle or two of chilled meradir, then more good sex, and an interlude of meradir, joined by a fine n’Keran cigar smuggled past customs. (I have always wondered whether it was Father, or some fat Treasury bureaucrat at his desk in the offices on the first tier below the walls, who decided to assess the tax, merely because the cigars come from the far galactic south, passing through more than twenty-seven Gates and generally taking a year to reach the Throne World.) Post-wine-and-cigars sex; an interlude with some century-aged Perlassik brandy, and ending the evening, or night, with another round of sex. Or two. It was an excellent battle plan.
I should have remembered Alain’s lessons and what I knew from experience all too well. No battle plan, indeed, survives the first contact with the enemy. And no plan which involves Niallan ever truly survives first contact with Niallan.
Although the literal first contact with Niallan started well. I was fucking him, getting what I wanted out of the first part of the plan—the good sex—when Niallan sent things directly to the Ninth Hell.
Lean, surprisingly muscled for all his airs and graces, his hands bound to the headboard as he so enjoys, Niallan’s knees were spread wide to brace himself as best he could since there was a thick, long cock pounding in and out of his hole. There was the sound of balls slapping against another pair, flesh slamming against flesh, and the smells of two rutting men. I was close, so damnably close to letting go and seeding the tunnel I was plunging in and out of when Niallan, foolish Niallan, traitor Niallan, gasped out, “I love you.”
“Yes, you’ve said that before,” I answered. My tone was, I am sure, somewhat absent, somewhat cool, since I have no fondness for talk of “love” generally, and especially not when my cock is buried in a very talented ass that is bringing me so very close to what the owner of that ass and I want so very much. Love has nothing to do with fucking.
Niallan’s voice was a close-to-tears whimper, “But that was the seventh time I said it. And you heard it.”
I stopped the motion of my hips.
For the merest sliver of time Rage murmured in the deep dark inside, where my soul should be, and where, perhaps, once upon a long ago time, it had been. I yanked on the Rage, pulling it back and under control, as if it was an angry war horse with the bit between his teeth, who wanted to do something other than what I wanted.
Not quite quickly enough. That sliver of Rage had its own separate effect.
/> There is a long narrow room carved into the heart of Tilarin Peak. It is simply named the Sword Room. There is only one in the Empire and everyone who says the words hears the capital letters. The walls were smoothed by Power long ago, polished to a warm grey glow, and the tiny flecks of a brighter, shining grey, black, silver and white used to reflect the light from the eight torches down the length of each wall. But that was millennia ago. The smoke has darkened and stained the walls and ceiling, and the grey is dull now.
Or it was when I nearly died there. I have had no reason to go back since.
But I remember the room. I have no choice. I remember fucking everything.
On the far wall, the Sword hangs scabbard down, always visible, even when the torches are unlit. It is far from ordinary when it is displaying itself. The hilt lifting out of the scabbard glows with the warmth of intricately Power-carved gold; rubies make a dark red flame against the gold, and on the pommel is an extraordinarily large, clear diamond. The cross-piece is sculptured gold as well, with large rubies carved into brilliantly-faceted globes adorning the tips. The scabbard is even more vulgar, encrusted with jewels of so many sizes, shapes and colors that the eyes are tricked into believing there is some significance to a pattern that is in fact not a pattern at all, but just random placement.
The door that was shattered on my birthday has never been replaced, so anyone inside the White Palace for any reason could just follow the halls and steps down and around and into the mountain and enter the room. No one does, not for a glimpse of the Sword’s outrageous gaudiness, most certainly not to steal. Not when there is a roughly circular, night-black charred depression in the floor, directly in front of the Sword—all that remains of the last thief to try. Not when the Sword, or the souls sealed within, might decide for any reason, for no reason, to do the same with a mere visitor who is not of the blood.
Of all the necessities, and only necessities, which bring anyone to the Sword Room, the most frequent has been the requirement that every member of the blood of House and Family dar Andrae, to be tested at four, eight, twelve and sixteen to determine if he or she is the Bearer.
The Warlord and the Bard Page 3
