by Robert Brady
When I withdrew from her, Little Bird cleaned me, stroking me at the same time. Sings Softly lay panting for several minutes, then rose up off of the bed, holding the bloody linen to her, and made her way to the bathroom.
I stood there, watching Little Bird, who stayed kneeling, her knees apart, her head down.
“What happens with you now?” I asked her.
She looked up at me. “Your Majesty?”
In the bathroom, the water started running.
“Is this great coup for you?” I asked.
She smiled and looked back down. “Great coup,” she said. “If I bear a son, perhaps a war chief’s son will want me. Even should I not quicken, men will fight for what White Wolf has had.”
The water turned back off. I heard Sings Softly hiss in pain.
“Were you well pleased, your Majesty?” she asked me from the bathroom.
Little Bird looked up and then back down.
I sighed.
“You were sent here by your fathers, with your fathers’ horses, because you thought this would get you time with my stallion?” I asked them.
Little Bird looked up alarmed, searching for my eyes. Sings Softly opened the drain in the bath and emerged back into the bedroom, her eyebrows knit over her pretty brown eyes.
“As Kills With a Glance did with She Runs Swiftly,” she said, quoting Shela’s former name.
“And what happened with that girl?” I asked them.
They exchanged a glance, then looked back at me.
If I didn’t like the deal, I should have rejected the girls. It would have shamed them, but their fathers didn’t offer me the right price, and no one could doubt it.
I had no doubt that, if I wanted to just keep them and send back the pregnant mares, then there would be no questions asked, no raiding party from Andoran come to challenge The Conqueror in his home, no matter what Kills might have thought. Daughters weren’t that much of a prize to the Andarans.
This could have been settled more amicably, but that isn’t what I needed to do.
I appeared at dinner, the four Oligarchs waiting with Tartan Stowe outside of the dining hall doors for me. I’d kept them waiting longer than they probably liked, but then I’m the King.
“Is all well, your Majesty?” Oligarch one asked me. Even Tartan looked concerned.
“Nah,” I said. “It’s pretty well screwed up now, but not a lot we can do about it.”
“You’re – you’re serious?” Tartan stammered.
I looked Tartan in the eyes. “Did your father ever take you campaigning with him?” I asked him.
“Um – well,” Tartan searched my eyes, looked down, then tried to find them again and looked down again.
I felt like real crap and I wasn’t hiding it. The Oligarch I’d assigned to him – I’d already forgotten his name – came to his rescue.
“Glennen thought to,” the old man said, “but Alekanna wouldn’t have it. He’s been trained to spar but he’s never actually fought for his life.”
I nodded. “I’m campaigning soon,” I informed him. “You’re coming with me.”
“Of course, your Majesty,” he said, and lowered his head.
“Find Shela in the morning and pick out a good warhorse with her,” I said.
He nodded but didn’t respond.
I sighed. Normally one of the Oligarchs would open the door, but I popped it open on my own and walked through, the rest of the entourage trailing after me.
The court barons were few in attendance. We had visiting dignitaries and of course the daughters. The Andarans were present – Kills and Two Spears and Shela sitting with them, looking away from me, Lee in a high chair beside her. Neveratta sat where Shela normally would be and Shellene next to her, beside Ceberro and her sister. I moved to my normal seat and Tartan took the Heir’s position, although I hadn’t declared him.
Let the world wonder.
I took my seat and the rest took theirs. I raised a bowl for mead so that the rest could start drinking.
Even the thought of the alcohol turned my stomach. I wanted Shela next to me, and I wanted the rest of them to be gone, but that wasn’t going to happen. Glennen had worn the mantle and the weight had killed him, and I was seeing the tip of that giant iceberg right now.
I drank. Dignitaries around the table raised their bowls for mead. Servants scurried to serve them. Kvitch caught my eye down the table, his long grey eyebrows and flat nose peaking over the table edge. He didn’t need a booster seat like Karel did, but he couldn’t reach everything, either. There was a Toorian sitting next to him who was helping him out.
To my right, close to the corner, the Confluni contingent left their bowls on the table. The delicate Princess sat closest to me – it occurred to me that I hadn’t learned her name. That wasn’t good.
“Is the drink not to your liking?” I asked the Princess.
She lowered her eyes and smiled bashfully. The rest of the Confluni exchanged glances but didn’t say anything. The other daughters straightened and watched.
“I do not drink, your Majesty,” she informed me, throwing me a shy glance and then returning her gaze back to her plate. “It is unbecoming a lady.”
I smiled. Not the ones I knew, but that was an interesting outlook.
“Then what can I have brought to you, gracious daughter, which is to your liking?” I asked her.
Glances were flying around the table now. This was screwing up everyone’s logistics. The Volkhydran was sitting right next to me, after all, and the Confluni and the Volkhydrans really hated each other.
She smiled again. “Your fare is mostly red meat,” she informed me. “I would enjoy something from Tren Bay, an’ it please thee, your Majesty.”
I nodded and made eye contact with O’spiree, who stood in a corner of the room next to the bay windows. He nodded and was out the door. As a port, Eldador’s capitol didn’t want for sea food.
“Your Majesty is an attentive host,” Shellene noted. I smiled to her and raised my bowl. The Confluni entourage was picking at the beef and cooked vegetables.
Around the table, Uman and Men were stuffing themselves. The Uman-Chi at the far end of the table seemed to be immersed in their own conversations and ignoring the rest of us.
Not a huge surprise there.
Free Legion members were interspersed throughout the group. Thorn sat with the Andarans, Dilvesh oddly enough with the Confluni. Nantar sat among the Volkhydrans and had clearly already started them drinking – it didn’t bug me much. They were still pretty banged up from this afternoon and one of Henekh’s guardsmen was missing. The rest wore bandages and winced when they reached.
Karel of Stone had a seat among the Toorians like Kvitch. They hadn’t plied me with a daughter. In fact, I still hadn’t spoken to a Toorian, and that bugged me, too.
Kvitch had warned me that not just the Toorians, but the Dorkans were conspicuously disinterested in any sort of alliance with me, and were only here to make their presence known, not in support of me. I’d only been a King for a couple of days, but I’d royally pissed them off before this.
This was all really getting under my skin and that wasn’t good. On a battlefield I could release the energy that was building up with the frustration. One might think that the sex I’d just had would alleviate some of this but in fact it made the situation worse, as I found myself barely able to look at Shela.
“Your Majesty seems contemplative,” Neveratta said, arching a dark eyebrow at me. I had to smile.
“My apologies, my Lady,” I told her. “It is not the company, I assure you.”
“I noted that the Andaran women from the Drifters and the Wet Bellies tribes are not in attendance,” she commented.
“They’ve served their purpose,” I answered.
That got a few stares as well, but I wanted it to. This needed to happen in a way that earned a lot of attention.
She lowered her head and shot a glance at the Confluni Princess, who in turn loo
ked sideways at Shellene. Forty percent of the competition had just been kicked off of the playing field, and they still had another day for games.
I wondered if I got to call in sick.
Dinner progressed as dinner would. There were comments on the competitors, and a few speculated that it would have been nice to honor the champion of the games today with a place at the table. Unless we were going to have a kiddy table or boot some of these people out, I don’t see how that would have happened. I grinned to myself when I thought about kicking one of these lot out and replacing him or her with a sweaty athlete.
“Would you share your mirth, your Majesty?” Shellene asked me. She’d come in a really gorgeous, light blue dress cut down almost to her navel, ruffled at the shoulders and her hair done up with white and yellow spring flowers in order to accentuate her neck. If Tartan had looked any harder down her front, I think he might have lost a retina.
“I’m thinking that I’m wasting an opportunity,” I informed her, loud enough for the rest of the room to hear. “In fact, I’m wasting an opportunity to get the information I need, from some of the most learned people in Fovea, in an effort to stop wasting another opportunity, and in that I am twice the fool.
That got even Shela’s attention. She’d spent the meal speaking with her countrymen in Andaran and tending Lee.
“We are ever hear to advise you, your Majesty,” Avek Noir informed me from the far end of the table, his silver-on-silver eyes most likely directed at me. His other Uman-Chi brethren, Ancenon and D’gattis and a young woman I didn’t know, all in white robes, seemed to point their silver eyes at me, too. Around the table a hush fell – it wasn’t every day that The Conqueror went looking for outside opinions.
Much less the opportunity to advise the King of the up-and-coming Eldadorian nation.
“I learned this day,” I said, “of people who are called, ‘barely gifted,’ who have some of magic’s talents, but who aren’t worth training.”
D’gattis treated me to a little condescending smile. “Perhaps the term ‘not worth training’ is miss-used, your Majesty,” he said. “Those with very slight talent are usually trained, but in doing so they are taught not to use their talents at all.”
“This is true, White Wolf,” Shela said, and her father next to her nodded. “The barely gifted are a threat to themselves and to the people around them. Most lack the power to control the spells, but not the power to invoke great magic.”
“Think of a warrior,” Henekh Dragorson said to me, his rusty red beard already awash with beer foam and food crumbs, his ribs wrapped in a clean white cloth under his skins, “who wields an axe too large for him. He can swing it, but not control it. Eventually he’s as likely to hit a comrade.”
“That is a very good analogy,” Ancenon complemented the war lord.
Henekh smiled and nodded.
“And then there’s the black mind,” an Uman from Sental said. They’d come in a congregation, men and women dressed alike, deferring to each other. Sental existed as a collective, a union of workers who owned everything.
They formed the backbone of the Free Legion’s army.
Another Uman, a woman sitting next to the one who spoke first, said, “I myself am barely gifted. I was taught as soon as my power showed itself to suppress it. It’s like an echo of an empty space inside of me.”
“How much have you experimented with it?” I asked her, leaning forward.
Neveratta touched my upper arm. “They cannot experiment, your Majesty,” she said. “That is the danger – that is the point. Even a little is too much.”
I focused my eyes on the Uman woman. Hers were brown, her hair green, dressed in a plain tan dress, a silver necklace on her slender neck. She looked politely away and then back at me; then away again and back at me, this time clearly alarmed that I hadn’t also looked away.
I didn’t have to be some great prosecutor to know she was lying.
“Once in a while…” she said.
The room gasped collectively.
The man sitting next to her said, “Lendeen, you know full well –“
Shela straightened. “The call is irresistible,” she said, and then she looked at me.
“But you’d guessed this, hadn’t you?”
I nodded. No one knew me like Shela, and probably no one ever would.
“This is punishable –“ her companion was saying, but I raised my hand and he actually winced back, as if afraid I would strike him.
“I think that we are wasting the gifts of the barely gifted,” I said. “I think we shouldn’t be teaching the people who are barely gifted to be happy with smaller magix, leaving more complicated works to more capable wizards and sorceresses.”
Ancenon and D’gattis both leaned forward. “How do you mean?” the latter asked.
“Truth saying, for example, seems to be something that wizards and sorceresses can do without much effort,” I said.
The gifted looked around the table at each other. A fat Dorkan in a purple robe with gold hoops in his ears said, “I think that truth saying is barely magic at all. It is just a little tickle of power – more the experience of the Wizard, than anything else.”
“And you think that this should be taught to the barely gifted?” Henekh asked me.
I nodded. Kills with a Glance shook his head.
“You say this, White Wolf, because you do not know these things,” he told me. “The call of the magic is too great. You don’t teach children to ride wild horses, you teach them to ride tame.”
“But you do teach them to ride,” I argued.
I looked back at Lendeen. “I think that there are thousands of barely gifted who practice in secret, and who learn to control their power and do simple spells.”
“If you want to fund some sort of experimentation,” one of the Oligarchs informed me, “that is certainly within your power. May I only ask that we do it in a place not close to anything – um – “
“Anything you don’t want to lose,” Henekh finished for him. “Volkhydrans don’t play with this power at all, Lupus. You’d be wise not to either. The gods grant magic to control the rest of us – but for a few big snakes you can see, a lot of little ones can be hiding anywhere.”
That was an interesting hypothesis and jibed with a lot of other things I’d seen since I’d come here. We spoke through dinner without coming to any real conclusions, but I resolved that, before I left on the campaign I’d promised Tartan, I was going to set up a school for the barely gifted.
Nowhere near the palace, of course.
Chapter Sixteen
The Party’s Over
I returned to my rooms a little drunk and a little flustered. I admit it – I don’t like it when people disagree with me, especially when I know I’m right. None of them were going to set up the kind of schools I planned to set up, and even my own people were going to resist it.
This wasn’t something that I could do on my own, even if I had the time, which I didn’t. I pushed the door open to my rooms, grateful to see that Shela’s countrywomen had vacated them, and pulled my shirt over my head. I sat down on the divan and pulled my boots off, and then leaned back and wondered if I wanted one more drink before I crashed.
I hadn’t slept alone in a long time and I wasn’t looking forward to it.
I about jumped out of my skin when Nina trotted out of the bath room. She was wearing something like a sun dress that girls around the palace usually wore when it was warm. It was a light, white cotton with a black belt and straps. Nina still had a child’s body and the outfit suited her.
“Where’s Shela and Lee?” she asked me.
She crossed the room and jumped up on the divan next to me. By jump I mean three steps, a leap, a twist in mid-air and then landing on her behind six inches from me to my right. I was impressed but didn’t say anything because to an Aschire, that was as normal as breathing.
“They’re staying with the Andarans in a pavilion outside of the stables,”
I informed her.
She nodded. “Those ladies left,” she informed me.
“They did, huh?”
Nina nodded. “They were crying and complaining to each other in Andaran. I don’t know what they said but the Wolf Soldiers took them from the parlor and they both had a bunch of bloody linens with them.”
My life is hell.
“Um, so, do you understand, I mean – do you know…?” I sputtered out.
Nina sighed. “I figured you did babies with them,” she informed me.
As honest an assessment as I would have been capable of, anyway.
“What do you think of that?” I asked her.
Her people considered Nina a woman now. More importantly, adults tended to tell children what to think rather than get their opinions, and I think that made for a disservice for both parties.
Of course, I had no friggin’ idea what to tell Nina to think, and that helped.
She screwed up her face and looked up at the ceiling for a moment. “I think you’re going to make Shela mad with that,” she said, finally. “Krell taught me how some Men have more than one wife, and that’s fine, but Aschire only have one, and I think that’s better.”
I smiled. “I think that’s better, too,” I told her. “I think from now on it’s just Shela and me.”
“And me,” she informed me, laying her little purple head on my forearm. My heart skipped a beat.
“I’m going to watch all the babies,” she concluded.
Oh, thank you, whichever god straightened that out.
“I need to go to sleep,” I informed her. “Have you picked out rooms in the wing you were looking at this week?”
She took my forearm in both hands without looking up at me. “Yes, but they aren’t ready.”
Nina did not like to sleep alone. “Do you want to bring in a pillow and a blanket and sleep on the divan?” I asked her.
