Lovers and Beloveds

by MeiLin Miranda

  Emmae’s eyes flew to the gallery. An archer in the red and gold uniform of the Guard stood hidden in the shadows; he looked not at her face but at her heart, and she knew the next arrow was meant for her. She closed her eyes.

  A thud against her chest, a sharp stab, a weight that fell into her arms and dropped her to the floor. She opened her eyes.

  She held Gian. He had taken the arrow meant for her, through his heart, through his back, through her dresses, the tip just piercing her skin. "No more death, not even...for him," he whispered. "I loved you." Gian groaned once; blood bubbled from his lips; and he died.

  "Gian! Damn you, I have need of you..." said Hildin in a rough, low voice, though his eyes filled with tears. "No matter. No matter. I'll kill you myself when this is over, bitch." He returned his attention to the melee. Flames licked weakly at his fingers as he tried again and again to summon his spent magic, but the great wind and the destroyed ward on the door had taken too much.

  Emmae held Gian's body, shock, triumph and a confusing grief mixing with the blood running over her hands and dress, some of it her own. Dimly, she realized the men around her had no thoughts of her body, perhaps for the first time. She collected herself and slipped Gian's long ceremonial dagger from its sheath. "Thank you," she whispered, and closed his eyes.

  A howl rose up from the Leutish lords; they launched themselves at Warin and his men, including the much better-armed Brothers, who did their best to defend themselves without killing their attackers. "Emmae!" cried Warin above the din. "Emmae! Teacher, can you see? Is she dead?"

  "I see her moving, but your cousin is dead," Teacher replied. Warin and Teacher set their shields before as many of the men as they could reach, and pushed forward against the fighting, but the air before Warin quickly began to tremble. "Your Majesty," said Teacher, "you are exhausting yourself--behind me! You must stop using your magic!"

  Warin gave up his shield and fell in, gasping in pain but still calling out to as many as could hear him: "Leutans!" he cried, "Hildin betrays you! He killed Fredrik and means to kill your Princess--see where he hid the archer!" He took a flame from the branches of candles lining the Temple, and threw the resulting fireball into the galleries. Every head turned to see a Guardsman illuminated in the shadows, arrow nocked. He let fly at Warin, but Teacher gestured; the arrow quivered in the air, stopped, and turned. Flying faster than it had left the bow, the arrow sank itself into the archer's heart up to the fletching.

  A new, stronger howl arose from the Leutans, who turned from the Brothers and attacked the Tremontines, Guardsman and noble alike. A Leutish lord took up a Guardsman's dropped spear, brought it to his massive shoulder, and sent it straight and true toward Hildin. Teacher cried out, and ran toward the altar; the spear stopped as the arrow had, but did not return; instead, it fell at Hildin's feet.

  "Why stop you me?" shouted the Leutan. "Kills he our King, kill us he will! Kill him you must! Damn this Tremontine tongue!" he added in Leutan.

  "Because he is of the blood," answered Warin in Old Sairish. "Do you recognize me, sir? You are Hendas Baron Holset. You fought with me at Dordemon."

  Lord Holset squinted. "You are much changed...but yes, you are Warin of Tremont."

  "I swear to you, Tremont is not your enemy, only Hildin," said Warin. "Help me. I would take your hand, but I cannot."

  Holset pondered a moment, then hoisted Warin up on one of the richly padded benches that hadn’t been knocked over in the fighting; Warin nearly fainted from pain. Holset set himself at Warin’s back and shouted in his own tongue, "Leutans, to me! We stand with King Warin! Leave off those nobles who support him!"

  "Lords of Tremont!" Warin called, strengthening the sound of his voice with the last shreds of his magic, "leave off our guests! Guardsmen, if you cannot bring yourself to act against the crowned king and follow me, then drop your weapons! I swear to you, you will be protected!"

  The first to drop his sword at Warin's feet was the broken-nosed commander, with a "Gladly, sire"; the remaining Guardsmen quickly followed suit, the only sound now in the Temple the clatter of swords and spears falling into the growing pile. "You have no one left, Hildin," said Warin into the new quiet.

  Hildin pulled his jeweled knife. "I have my Queen, which means I have you. Oh, yes, I think with her at my side, I might do anything." He glanced briefly down at the bleeding Emmae, still crouching by Gian's body with the dagger hidden in the great folds of her brocade overdress. Emmae felt nothing from Hildin, though a desperate, searching desire flowed into her that she recognized as Warin's.

  She gathered her strength, and sprang, clutching at Hildin's leg. A quick, calculated slash down his inner thigh, as she'd once bled a rabbit with Warin. She heard Teacher's shout, and the dagger grew too hot for her to hold, but by then she knew she'd aimed true. Hildin's blood covered her, pouring from the severed artery. She scrambled backwards; Hildin stumbled after her with an ineffectual stab of his dagger, then fell to his knees. "Warin's whore has killed me...Gian, Warin's whore..."

  "As a rabbit, so a man," spat Emmae. She crawled further away, but Hildin already lay in his gore, eyes rolled back in his head.

  Teacher was at Hildin's side then, ineffectually trying to stanch the bleeding, pale white fingers dyed red and shaking. "I cannot stop it. I was not fast enough to stop her. Your Majesty, I cannot stop it!"

  "Let him finish dying, Teacher," said Warin, running up the altar stairs. "You can't save him, and I don't want you to."

  "I do not want to either, but I must!" A moment longer, and Teacher's trembling increased as the river of blood subsided. "He's dead. Your Majesty, you must forgive me now, or--" A spasm, and Teacher folded inward, crooning with pain.

  "You're forgiven, Teacher, with all my heart!" said Warin. Teacher uttered a deep, relieved sigh, and the pale face relaxed.

  "He's dead?" murmured Emmae into the shocked silence. "He's dead." She stood up. Hildin's blood covered her head to foot, soaking through her heavy clothes, thick and clotting in her hair, coating her hands, trickling into her face, warm blood that seemed to grow hotter.

  Warin didn't care about the blood. He took her as best he could in his uninjured arm, but the blood grew hotter still and forced him back. "Emmae! Teacher, what's happening to her?"

  "The spell is ending."

  It seemed so long since the silver smoke had entered her--silver smoke? When had there been silver smoke, she wondered. It seeped out of her bones, trickling up through her flesh, to seep from her skin in long tendrils rising toward the high stone arches above the altar. As the smoke left her, air rushed in; she gulped great breaths. With each one came a rush of memory: her mother's beautiful, loving face; oh, her mother's death, and the tears she wept, tears that never completely ended; her distracted father; the long, lonely days with stupid Olka and the rest of the simpering servants; her horrible stepmother; the carriage--the Travelers. Their Queen. The cards. The spell. Connin.

  "I remember," she said. "I remember everything." She looked past Hildin to Fredrik's body, and ran to kneel at its side. "My father--oh, no, oh, Father!" she sobbed in Leutish. "And I didn't know you! Why did you send me away? How could you marry me to that horrible man? How can you be dead!" She cradled his cooling hand against her cheek.

  Warin moved toward her, but Teacher stayed him. "Let her grieve."

  Wincing, Warin shook the pale hand off his shoulder, and crouched beside Emmae. "Emmae, my love, are you all right?" he said, his voice breaking. "Oh, how I've worried! When I discovered you'd been taken... You--you remember who you are now?" She nodded and cried into her father's hand. "I'm so sorry for your father's death, truly. We will wait as long as you wish to be married, even the year and a day for full mourning."

  The spokes of fear, loneliness and horror spun before her eyes, spokes not knowing who she was, or why her body answered anyone's call. Her throat constricted with anger, and she snarled it open. "Married?" she cried in Tremontine. "And who am I marrying?"

 
"Why...Emmae, we're promised to one another!"

  She sprang to her feet. "I was promised to a woodsman, not a king, and as it turns out, both are false men!"

  "How have I been false to you?" he said, staring up at her. He rose to his feet, face an appalled red until he jostled his broken collarbone and paled again. "Emmae, I have given up everything to come for you."

  "Giving up a tiny cottage and a hard life for a throne--what misery!" she jeered.

  "We were happy there," he said, his voice dark with yearning and anger. "You were happy there!"

  "Who was I then?" she shouted. "I didn't know, but you did!"

  "No, I didn't!" he shouted back. "I knew you were Leutish, and likely from a wealthy family but I never guessed you were the princess!"

  "Harla take you, you knew about my enchantment!" she said, breaking into sobs again. "You knew, and you didn't tell me, and you--you used it!" His face crumpled; a bitter triumph rose in her throat.

  "I should have told you, but I didn't know how. I didn't want to frighten you, and I couldn't lift it--"

  "Only the blood of a king, the Traveler Queen said."

  "--And I would have been that king for you!" he shouted. "If the only way to save you from that spell was to bathe you in my own blood, I swear by Pagg right here in His Temple that I would have come back, taken the throne and died for you! Emmae, I love you!"

  The bitterness clawed at her heart. "My name is Edmerka, Princess Royal of Leute, Dowager Queen of Tremont, and I will not marry you or anyone else, ever! I hate men!" She ripped at her dress. "I want that bastard's blood off my body, now!"

  Warin's hooded, dark eyes glittered with a rage so like his dead brother's that she instinctively stepped back. "My lady, as my brother's widow, you will always have an honored place in my court unless you decide to make your home elsewhere," he said. "Little Father, may we beg the use of your baths? The Dowager Queen wishes to use them." The astonished cleric agreed, and Edmerka, Dowager Queen of Tremont, let the servants lead her off.

  Her temper had gotten the better of her. She was angry with him, yes, and she had every right to be, she told herself as the serving women poured bucket after bucket of hot water over her until the red stream eddying down the drain ran clear. She had every right to cry, she told herself as a Sister bound up the wound above her heart: her father had died, right in front of her; she'd discovered the depth of her enchantment; she'd faced Warin's outright treachery. Then why did his hurt and anger stay so fresh in her mind, why did his suddenly hard eyes make her wilt with remorse, why were her tears more for her lost love than her lost father?

  * * * * *

  Temmin came out of the book sobbing. Her years of loneliness, her yearning for love: her father broke her heart, and when she finally thought she'd mended it, Warin broke it again. He felt every ache of it, but unlike Emmae, he knew what Warin had gone through, and why. "Warin loved her! Why didn't she know? She was so lonely and unhappy, how could she turn him away?"

  "A handkerchief, Your Highness," Teacher said, handing it over. "You have seen this story through her eyes. Is it not possible he did betray her? Is it not possible he expected too much, too soon?"

  Temmin wiped his eyes, his tears as much for himself and his present troubles as for Emmae's long-ago heartache. "Because...because it's what she knew?"

  "Which was...?"

  "That men would always betray her--that's what she felt. She had no experience of anything else, and so she saw Warin in the same light. But that's unfair. He wasn't like them. He didn't mean to do what he did."

  "He knew exactly what he did."

  "Then he's evil!" said Temmin. "Except...except he's not evil."

  "Sometimes, good people do evil things," Teacher replied. "They use duty, profit, expediency, desire of all kinds, to justify their actions, and however strong the justification, somewhere inside they know they have done wrong and must make amends somehow. That is the difference between real evil and transitory error. The irredeemable are those who commit evil with no self-justification whatsoever. They commit it because they can. The question is, should good people in error be forgiven? Are some offenses so great that no amends can be made?"

  Temmin's head ached. "I don't know. I don't want to talk about it."

  "Then think about it until our next lesson."

  "I don't want to think about it!" shouted Temmin. "It's all I've done, is think about things, and morality, and gods, and--and what to do for the good of the people!" He jumped up from the couch, and advanced on his tutor. "This was supposed to take my mind off of things, not torture me with them!"

  "What tortures you?"

  "You're torturing me!" he said, clutching his throbbing temples. "This is a horrible day! Just go away!" He stalked into his bedchamber and threw himself on the bed. Teacher did not follow him.

  No matter how he tried to sleep, he kept coming back to "things." Hildin and the woman who'd whored out the Obbys as children--they were certainly irredeemable. Gian made amends with his life, but that was the least he could do. And when he was king, Temmin intended to track down that brothelkeeper and kill her himself, the Obbys and their cavalier attitude be damned. Maybe he'd kill Lord Litta while he was at it. Maybe he wouldn't wait until he was king. He had two years to fill now, after all.

  Harbis entered and inquired after His Highness's preferences for dinner dress. His Highness said his preference was for the substitute valet to piss off because he wasn't coming out of his bedchamber until Jenks came back. "Very good, sir," murmured Harbis, wasting a masterfully outraged twitch of the chin on a young man with his head in the pillows. The valet tiptoed out again.

  And then, Temmin thought, there were the people who might still make up for their sins and restore their honor. Warin might still make it up to Emmae in the story. Yes, he knew they married in the end, but were they happy? His parents weren't. Maybe married people didn't get to be happy. And Emmae was so frustrating! What else could Warin have done? Here was this girl, half-naked in the hedge...no, she'd been naked in the woods...

  "Why does everything lead back to Mattie!" he shouted, and burst into tears again. "Where is Jenks?"

  Harbis the valet, chin still twitching, walked down the short flight of stairs from the Residence Wing to the mezzanine where the senior staff and personal servants lived. There in the hall by his door stood Mr Winmer, the King's personal secretary. "How is the Heir?" said the dapper little man.

  "Indisposed, Mr Winmer," said Harbis after a discreet pause. "I believe His Highness will be dining in his room."

  "It's a perfect evening for an intimate dinner," said Winmer, his smile widening. "Take the evening off after dinner service, Mr Harbis. I've made other arrangements for Prince Temmin's comfort at bedtime."

  "Thank you, sir," said Harbis, his professional facade breaking into genuine pleasure. He opened the door to his temporary rooms. "I am much obliged to you."

  "Not at all," said Winmer. "We are obliged to you for stepping in on such short notice." He watched the door close behind the valet, then turned to his own rooms, set apart from the rest of the floor closer to the King's apartments. By the fire stood a young woman in maid's livery, wringing her hands. "Ah, Miss Dannikson!" said Winmer. "Promptness is a rare quality in the young female. It is one of your many charms."

  "Mr Winmer, sir," said Arta, bobbing a nervous curtsey.

  "Are you frightened? Don't worry, my dear, it's merely time to collect on your little debt."

  "My debt...?" she quavered.

  Winmer circled behind her and unpinned the little starched cap from her hair. "I didn't tell Mr Affton about your very shocking behavior at the Heir's birthday ball, and you promised to do anything I asked. Didn't you?"

  "Yes, sir," she whispered, squeezing her eyes closed.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Yellow and blue banners flying from Lord Valmouth's city residence proclaimed His Grace was in town. The crest of the City's social season began next week at Neya's Day, and las
ted until the season ended on Nerr's Day, the first day of Summer's Beginning; everyone of note in the Kingdom would be in the City for that last spoke of gaiety.

  Tonight, Lady Valmouth held a ball. Partygoers' carriages clogged the street before the hulking, old-fashioned townhouse on Park Square, waiting with varying degrees of patience as the King entered with his entourage of attendants and Guardsmen.

  Harsin climbed the stairs, acknowledging onlookers. Once inside the tall, narrow entryway, he gave over his cloak to the waiting servant and shot his cuffs; he absently admired the three gold triangles inlaid in his dark ruby cufflinks, a symbol of both his family and its empire for a thousand years. An evening's entertainment while his son got over the sulks and cemented his path away from the Lovers' Temple was the perfect thing. Two of his mistresses would be here tonight; which one he favored with his presence afterward would depend on which charmed him more. His favorite was beginning to fade; the second seemed more likely. Perhaps some enchanting new thing might even catch his eye. It was so hard to tell how the evening would go.

  And then he hoped to see Litta. Obviously the conversation with Temmin had gone as expected, but he'd like to know more. The boy so far was completely predictable; his mother's upbringing had left him with an over-abundant idealism and little to no subtlety of conduct. Right now, Harsin found that useful, but Temmin needed training in the ways of statecraft to be an effective king, or even an effective Heir. Harsin resolved to talk with Teacher, and entered the throng to the usual fanfare.

  He entertained himself by taking the youngest daughter of the house onto the dance floor first. The lady was far too inexperienced to interest him, barely out of the schoolroom, but something about a flustered, pretty young girl, blushing and stammering, amused him no end; to boot, the King's attention would fill her dance card faster than her still-unformed looks would, which amused him even more.

  The second dance he gave to his waning favorite, a slender, long-legged woman who realized her sun was setting; an understated desperation lingered in her clasp, the color high in her cheeks as his ear missed every third word. He left her at the sidelines with a dismissive bow. She bored him. He'd set her aside before Neya's Day with a nice present of a costly necklace, perhaps a country house--something that would please both her and her cuckolded husband. His eye roamed over the dancers to land on his rising favorite, the dark-eyed, olive-skinned daughter of an Alzehni merchant, a Miss Selvaci; their eyes met, and his satisfaction with himself grew.