The Warlord and the Bard

by Eric Alan Westfall

  Is he aware of where I am looking while I make sure no one else knows where I am looking? Is he planning on letting that hair and body and...Goddess damn him...impressive cock distract me, thinking he can avoid the consequences of what he chose to do?

  And it was a choice. I know the servitor’s touch was intentional but even a prince can err, and so it might still have been an accident. This man’s touch? Fingers do not caress and lightly squeeze a man’s cock and balls without their owner’s volition. My cock lurches at the memory of even that brief contact. Is he watching through that mane of hair? I have always enjoyed the fact, as have many men, that I both show and grow. And my damned cock is suddenly interested in growing. Exponentially.

  I rein it in, but not all the way back.

  His hands are elegant, too, the fingers long. He wears a heavy bracelet of gold links on his right wrist, the one belonging to the guilty hand. He inspects his innocent left hand, which is adorned by an unusually large Imperial topaz set in white and yellow gold. No other jewelry.

  This inventory of the body of a man I am about to destroy, whether literally or merely by a public humiliation from which he will never recover, is ridiculous. If he is too afraid to face me I will make him. I open my mouth to command....

  I forget what I was going to command, forget even the intent to command, and the forgetting has nothing to do with all the wine I have consumed.

  The man lifts his head.

  The monitor completes its evaluation of the offender in this sliding moment of head-raising, and with icy arrogance waits to see the utter dismay on his face when he recognizes me.

  The upward motion of the stranger’s head stops, and he looks at me. His eyes are...brilliant green, a shining incredible green somehow the color of all the lush deep green of spring, set above high cheekbones in a narrow, marvelously sculptured face. His eyes are....green with the warmth of high summer as he looks up to meet mine.

  I melt.

  The monitor has time only for a brief despairing wail before it vanishes. Not...gone, but still, not here. I almost stagger, but some princely precept or other prevents me. I have never been without the monitor. At least, not since...before. When there was no monitor. What...?

  Jerril

  His face, far enough above I have to tilt my head to see clearly, is carved stillness, all planes and angles. The scar I saw earlier is an old one, on the right side of his face, a dueling scar they say. It is long, deep, twisted; purple-red against skin that is as pale as though he never goes outside the walls of the White Palace, yet he is renowned for his skills in battle. Broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped, with hair the color of night, the color of caverns where no light has ever been, where light is only a myth. It is unbound this evening, a rippling waterfall down to his shoulders, past them, perhaps mid-back. So close now, I can see that the silver circlet holding back his hair is not plain, but carved in a complex design. I somehow know that no matter how he moves, the circlet will not dare to slip, whether merely askew or off.

  His clothes are all Imperial black and silver, a sharp contrast to the brilliant colors of the rest of the guests. The design is what a fashionable, comparatively young man of a High House and Family would wear, though I am certain he doesn’t give a good Goddess damn whether he is fashionable or not. He wears it because he likes it. And, I am equally certain, for what it blatantly flaunts. I am wearing the same style, although his clothing is vastly more expensive than mine, which is, of course, not a surprise at all. But at least in certain respects I have as much to flaunt.

  What the Hells.

  I risk a quick downward flick of my eyes and back up, because before, when I was contemplating the wickedness of my hand, I had not been contemplating what there was so very much of to contemplate about him.

  I’ll match your flaunt, your Highness-Warlordship-Presumptiveness, and add an inch. Perhaps more. But that is a thought and a smile to keep inside my head. Though I suspect that he caught me contemplating, if that little glare is any indicator.

  I rush on with my inventory of the Royal and Imperial assets. With, unfortunately, no emphasis at all on the first syllable, since he is so disobliging as not to spin slowly in front of me to let me view everything far more closely than I had with our balcony scene. Or at least what can be seen when what is important is for the most part covered with cloth.

  The sleeveless jacket that frames his wide chest and falls to his knees is a flat black, with a complex design woven in shimmering black threads. Fine silver filigree edges the stiff collar that rises nearly three inches above his shoulder; a similar silver adorns the edges of his coat and circles the bottom. His collarless shirt is a brilliant glowing black, with loose sleeves and three small silver buttons at the cuffs. The carefully unbuttoned vee of the open shirt stops a single button above his waistline. The shirttails disappear into black trousers so tight it is clear that had there been another layer of cloth beneath them, no matter how sheer, he could never have gotten them on. His skin is pale, hairless, so very, very muscular, with just enough of a hint of two large dark nipples in that opening that I have to force my mouth shut, to prevent incipient salivation from becoming actual drooling.

  I force my eyes back up...to look into his eyes. That moment of possible humor in that brief, heated glare is gone. His eyes are as black as his clothes, eyes that in this first moment of actually looking at each other are not merely glacial, but cold with the coldness of space. His soul seems empty with the emptiness of the Long Dark between the galaxies.

  I am no longer looking at the Heir Presumptive alone. I am looking at an amalgamation of Crown Prince, Heir Presumptive and Warlord, with far more of the angry warrior in control.

  Why am I not afraid?

  His eyes change.

  DarkFire

  The coldness, the monitor’s protective ice, is gone—not merely as if it had not been here tonight, but as if it had never existed. I feel as hot and breathless as if I have just completed a day’s run, a week’s run, in full battle gear. I feel...I don’t know what I feel...and words cannot get past my lips—even if I possessed the ability to compose an understandable sentence in this moment.

  He takes a slight breath, inhaling through lips that are only slightly parted, lips that I am certain would feel...right...against mine. His skin is so translucently fair I wonder what spell he uses, for he certainly wouldn’t use something so common as a cream, in order to prevent the merest kiss of the sun from burning him. His eyes.... Goddess damn, I am taking an inventory of his assets. And that word starts me wondering what his ass looks like, what it would...what it will...feel like with my hands grabbing it. With my cock plundering it.

  This has to stop.

  I need to speak. Someone needs to speak.

  But the silence goes on. And on. Neither of us seems able or willing to break it, to break the look we are sharing.

  The entire ballroom is in silence as well, a different silence, focused, waiting.

  And then the silence is broken.

  Jerril

  “Will you dance?”

  My voice is hesitant, unlike the assurance with which I normally speak. I am neither oblivious nor impervious to the lake of silence in which we stand, filled with creatures all too ready to rend my flesh, only slightly less eager to rend his, but too afraid of him to take that particular risk.

  Goddess defend me. I have just asked the rightfully upset, thoroughly pissed-off, second most powerful man in the whole Kingdom and Empire to dance?

  But it’s done. I don’t look back. I learn. Like the lesson that the next time I grope an impressive and gorgeous and powerful stranger who can order me executed in the name of any one of what are, I am sure, numerous laws relating to Imperial Security, I will turn and run. I will not suggest dancing as an evasive measure.

  So. That momentary vocal tremor is all they will get. I will not let them see more.

  DarkFire

  My shout of amazed laughter echoes through the ballroom wi
th nearly the same effect as a shout in a still field—a mental flapping of wings as startled bird-thoughts from the watchers dart upwards and circle. No one...absolutely no one...asks any member of the Royal and Imperial House and Family dar Andrae to dance. Asking is forever and always a Royal and Imperial prerogative.

  What is that phrase from that obscure world named Dirt that we have not bothered to acquire? Ah. Lèse majesté. So very fitting. Not quite enough of an offense to engender shouts of “off with his head,” but definitely one requiring an appropriate response.

  Well...to the Nine Hells with Royal and Imperial prerogatives. And equally so to appropriate responses.

  “Yes.”

  I am no less amazed with myself than the rest of the room.

  # Kiri! He doesn’t know who I am! He can’t. Otherwise he wouldn’t have dared. #

  The voice-link conveys her wordless disbelief.

  # Kiri, Look at him. # I let her view-link with me so she can see what I see. And then she lets me ward her as she briefly lets down the shields that protect her extraordinary empathic Gift. The contact with the stranger is swift and thorough. She withdraws behind her own shields, withdraws from the view-link.

  # You’re wrong, brother dear. He knows. #

  The ice begins to form again, the temperature of the soul-remnant I thought just now I had found again, falls rapidly. I look inside myself for the monitor, for its help in controlling my burgeoning entirely appropriate response to that knowing offense.

  Another of Father’s Goddess-damned candidates? I will....

  But...there was something in Kiri’s tone. She has learned something more.

  # Kiri? #

  # What, ‘Fire? # she asks with exaggerated innocence. Smug, knowing, elder sister laughter bubbles beneath her words. # He is a nice man, my dear younger brother, as you would know if you were only older and had more experience with the world. #

  # Five Goddess...blessed...minutes more is all you have. # I wonder if grinding teeth can be conveyed across a link. I wonder if this nameless, shameless man can hear them grinding.

  More silent laughter. # He’s a man, ‘Fire. Just a man. And you’ve had so many men before; he’s just one more. Let him go. #

  # No! #

  There is no laughter now. No reaction to that outburst. Just a quiet, but still slightly amused certainty. # He is a man who has just indicated in a most, ah, delicate way, that he finds a particular man, not the Heir Presumptive, not any of your titles, attractive. And now he feels the opportunity is fading away. There is, after all, no music. #

  She snaps off the link and refuses to acknowledge my request to re-open it. Music? What in all the Hells in infinitely painful detail does music have to do with anything?

  Oh.

  This interlude, too, has passed in no discernible amount of time. Which leaves us still in silence. I guess it is up to me to break it.

  Jerril

  “But there isn’t any...” our voices begin, and with sudden, inexplicable, mutual grins that threaten to become so very unseemly for where we are, who we are, we finish together: “...music.”

  DarkFire

  I look around. “Then we’ll have to rectify that, won’t we?” I catch Heran’s eye, and beckon him over. How the man is always precisely where he is needed, when he is needed, must be a Gift somehow.

  “Yes, Highness?” The Chief Steward appears to be hiding a smile behind the neatly trimmed greying beard and mustache.

  “Heran, tell the orchestra to play.”

  “Certainly, Highness.” Heran turns away, and then, with a certain ostentatious something—almost as though the turn is just for effect, but he would never dare...would he?—he turns back. “What music do you wish to hear, Highness?”

  I have no knowledge of music and no idea what to ask for. Heran knows it, damn his soul.

  “Stop laughing at me, damn it!” I snap at the glorious man of gold and fire. I realize from the expressions around us that he has not in fact laughed out loud. But he was laughing. And still is, silent or not.

  I smile ruefully. “You want to help me out here? It is, after all, your idea that we dance.”

  Those green eyes sparkle, and I have a sudden, sinking feeling that I am going to regret that request.

  I do.

  Oh, yes. I do.

  Jerril

  I can not resist. Actually, I feel totally incapable of resistance, even had the idea seemed other than what it was and is: absolutely right.

  I look at the Chief Steward and try not to wince at his possible, no, quite probable, new opinions of me. I am tempted to ask it as a question, giving him the option to deny me with a lie that this orchestra—an orchestra selected to play at this particular Royal and Imperial Ball—does not know the music.

  “i’Lyria’s Dance.”

  Two words I neither shout nor whisper, but they are easily heard around us.

  DarkFire

  Oh, Goddess. I allow nothing to show on my face, ignoring the mostly disapproving reactions that immediately sweep the room as word spreads of the man’s choice. At least he compliments me by assuming I know the steps of the most intricate of Illoraeni pattern dances. Except that this pattern is the Tale of Lokar and i’Lyria—a man and a woman—and I only know the steps and movements for the man, for obvious reasons.

  The Goddess-damned dance is also a known aphrodisiac. Even I know the music is extraordinary; it is often played without anyone dancing at all. And even then, men frequently get hard just from listening. Presumably some women get...however women get. I have lived fifty-four years without that acquiring that particular knowledge; I plan on living the rest of whatever time I have left not acquiring that knowledge. And when it is actually danced, by a man and a damned woman who have even the slightest bit of attraction to each other, they might as well be fucking on the dance floor, even though they are fully clothed. For the most part, it is customary for the onlookers to politely ignore the fact that when the dance is done, a fair number of the dancers tend to disappear. Some for a very short time, for which the man is always blamed. Some for very much longer, for which the woman is always given credit.

  Men certainly dance together, but two of them and this pattern is, naturally, grossly offensive.

  All of which explains why the role of i’Lyria in the Tale has never been danced by a man. Will never be danced by a man. Why it is completely outside the realms of rationality and polite princely precepts for the two of us to dance the Tale.

  I nod, not caring if the crowd with the carefully-masked sneers wonders what this odd blend of Crown Prince, Heir Presumptive and Warlord they don’t even realize they are perceiving, is doing, staring off into the distance and then nodding as if in response to something. But it is a response. In the well-reasoned opinion I am about to hand down like a judge at the end of a case, I have conclusively demonstrated it is impossible for this dance to take place.

  Now all I need to do convey this conclusion to... I realize I have no idea who I am going to dance with.

  Am going to dance with? I have just proven to my own satisfaction that this dance is utterly impossible, so why.... Oh. This dance might be wildly inappropriate, but I have, after all, agreed to hold him in my arms, closely in my arms even though we clearly have none of the attraction that so very often makes the Tale foreplay. Holding in my arms, though, just to dance. Only to dance. To something other than the Tale.

  I just need to explain the imminent change in plans. But first I need to know who I am explaining to.

  I lift my eyebrow, plainly requesting an introduction.

  Jerril

  “Jerril, my Lord Prince. Jerril Meikheris.”

  My bow is a full Court bow, elaborate, flawlessly performed, yet I know the bow is not from subject to sovereign prince but is intensely personal. I hope and desperately pray to the Goddess no one else sees the difference, except, perhaps, him. It would be...more than merely nice, if he notices.

  I rise and stand tall. Or a
s tall as possible given the way he towers over me like Tilarin Peak over a small foothill. I have heard of the wonders of climbing Tilarin Peak, and the glorious view from the summit. I wonder what it would be like to climb him.

  Idiot. I mentally slap the back of my head as my father was fond of doing to make the point that I was being an idiot.

  I keep my outward composure and wait. And wait.

  Well, your somewhat unnerving Highness?

  Two men dancing is not unheard of. Two men dancing the Tale is. Indignation and moral outrage have rippled across the lake-silence in which we stand, spawning innumerable, not all hidden, frowns that range from mild disapproval to outright contempt.

  Will you care? And more important, will you dare? Prince and Heir Presumptive and Warlord and Voice of the Sword of Souls, and whatever else you are, will you actually dare?

  DarkFire

  That bow. Goddess-bless, but for all its flourish that wasn’t a bow to my rank. Nor to a single one of my titles. That was a bow to me.

  Does anyone besides me realize just what that bow was?

  Do I care?

  Not when he’s standing there, carefully erect, but unfortunately not actually so where it would count, challenging me.

  Oh, yes. A challenge. Glowing green eyes, his stance, that tiny head-tilt, the steady stare up at me. The little...oh, very well, not all that little, especially not there...shit is mocking me.

  His face shows as little as mine, but I can hear the words inside his head as clearly as if we were linked.

  Do you care, he is asking with an almost contemptuous gesture that somehow includes everyone in the palace who might know what is happening, or who might hear of it later, what they think?