by Robert Brady
Now Groff looked truly concerned.
“More of your chem-stree?” Ceberro asked me.
“For lack of a better term,” I informed him. “Think of it as the full force of my ‘chem-stree.’”
They didn’t like it, but they were vassals, not citizens. If I wanted them to think or behave a certain way, they were beholden at least to try. Of course, vassals had an uncomfortable habit of doing things like revolting and overthrowing the new guy if he was weak, too oppressive or both.
As we stood and took each others’ wrists in congratulations to our ability to have a simple meeting, I didn’t think I was perceived as weak, or as overly oppressive. Groff had jumped onboard the Empire train a little quick for my tastes, and I had no idea where Ceberro was coming from, but I think I had their curiosity enough to keep them watching until they saw what I did with these Sea Wolves.
If that failed, quite frankly, whatever they wanted to do to me had nothing on what I’d likely do to myself.
My rooms in the palace at Andurin included a large bed, a sitting room with books and overstuffed chairs and a thick-piled rug, a side room for eating and a tub for bathing if I wanted it. I smelled pretty bad so I’d ordered hot water brought up, and I was thinking about which book I wanted to look into while I soaked and brooded.
A knock at the door was answered by one of my over-alert Wolf Soldier personal guards. A trip outside of the capitol was a perfect opportunity for the Bounty Hunters to get at me, and of course no Wolf Soldier wanted that to happen on their watch. D’leer had been pretty happy to tell anyone who’d listen that the sergeant whose job she’d taken was on that ship that sank, and no one wanted to be on the next mission like that.
D’leer was actually assigned to Lee now. A Man from Volkhydro named Greggor opened the door, a hand on his sword, and the rest of his squad poised to strike if he told them to.
In trooped a caravan of Uman bearing steaming buckets on yokes across their shoulders, from the door to the bathing tub, a few of them slopping water on the carpet.
Greggor shot me a look. Did I want them to stay in the room when I bathed? Foveans were notoriously free displaying their bodies, especially among subordinates, and I was just as notoriously shy about stripping for a crowd.
A jerked my head at the door and went back to looking for the right book. Mostly Groff had treatises on theories like how to invest a copper and get back a silver, or why peasants can’t run their own lives, and other stuff that I’d consider if I wanted to fall asleep, but not if I wanted to get my mind off of my troubles.
I heard the door close. I could smell evergreen oil, which is what passed for the local shampoo.
“Your bath is ready, your Imperial Majesty,” a woman’s voice purred.
I almost ripped my sword from its sheath. Greggor would not leave the room empty of Wolf Soldiers with another person in here. That meant she’d sneaked in, and I knew what that meant.
Shellene stood in front of the entrance to the bed chamber, dressed in a white robe with her red hair long and free around her shoulders, an unstoppered bottle in her hand and a smile on her lips. Her hunting green eyes reminded me of Genna’s, although as far as I could tell she didn’t have a weapon on her.
I had the idea she would let me search her if I wanted to.
I felt my eyebrows knit over my eyes. “How did you get in here?” I demanded.
She sighed. “Groff’s palace is full of back doors and tunnels between the walls. They aren’t hard to find if you know where to look.”
I placed my feet apart. “And how did you learn where to look?” I asked her.
She looked over her shoulder and back at me. “Your bath is getting cold,” she informed me.
“So’s my mood,” I answered.
She wanted to cross the room to me; her body kept making little moves forward. However she had to know I’d be on edge and she didn’t want to press me.
I had a strong suspicion this woman was either a Bounty Hunter or worked with them. If she wanted me dead I think I’d be dead twice over now. If she wanted to help someone to kill me then she didn’t want to let me know how easy it was for them to come after me.
“My Lord,” she said, “if you will let me bathe you, then in gratitude I will tell you what you need to know, as well as a few things I think you’d like to know.”
She had an agenda, and likely it was Ceberro’s. I didn’t trust him either. In fact my list of people whom I felt like I could trust was getting shorter all the time.
This had all seemed easy once.
She must have seen my shoulders relax or something, because she crossed the room and took my hand in hers. Shela’s hands were soft but strong – you knew she handled leather reins and did her own cooking. Shellene’s skin had never known anything harsher than silk, I think, and her skin’s caress was like a whisper.
I wasn’t wearing my armor or my boots so once she brought me into the bedroom she had my clothes off pretty quickly. I sank down into the tub and into the hot water, room enough for one if I bent my knees. She took a position behind me and I saw her white robe fly across the room and land by the doorway.
The memory of what I’d done to the Andaran girls was like a crow that haunted my mood and pecked at it, become more bold in Shela’s absence. While I was sure there were men and especially nobles who would welcome a dalliance when their wife or woman wasn’t available, I wasn’t one of them.
She dipped a copper pitcher into the water between my legs, leaning over my shoulder to ensure that her breast stroked the side of my cheek, then leaned back, dripping water on my chest and face, and poured it into my long, blonde hair.
A flow of water and dirt flowed down my chest and stomach.
“You’re a long time between bathing, my Lord,” she informed me.
“Life on the road,” I said.
I felt the evergreen oil as she dribbled it onto my scalp. “Was I a pleasant part of your coronation?” she asked.
“I enjoyed getting to know you,” I answered.
“I’m happy,” she said, and began to work my scalp with her fingernails. “I dared to believe you would take advantage of my offer.”
“I considered it seriously,” I said. “I didn’t think you were the kind of woman who should be treated that way.”
Her fingers stopped in my scalp. “Your Ma–your Imperial Majesty?” she said.
I leaned back and looked up at her from the tub. I could see the undersides of her firm breasts and her nipples, and her curious eyes and delicate nose past them.
“You’re too amazing not to have a man whose heart is all yours,” I said to her.
Okay, that was pretty much a line, and as a line, it was a pretty obvious one. But at the same time, when a woman has to justify the idea she was thrown over for another woman, especially one who is in no way her social equal and arguably no prettier, a line can be a good thing to hear, not because she fell for it, but because the man who jilted her had class enough at least to come up with it.
Her eyes actually welled up and she pushed my head forward, rubbing my scalp and hair. I sat quiet for a moment, letting her fingers work on my skin.
The water around me was already tinted by the dirt from my body.
“You know the Bounty Hunter’s Guild is here,” she said to me, finally. There was a catch in her voice, but just a tiny one.
“They’ve been pretty hot after me,” I said. “I had to think they’d be here.”
“I work with them from time to time,” she said. She dipped the copper pitcher again and poured it over my hair. Once again, she made sure her breasts rubbed my face and shoulder.
She smelled like green apples. I didn’t know if that was perfume or just her.
“I’m not one of them,” she said. “I don’t have the skills; I certainly don’t have the will to do what they do.”
“So how do you?” I began to ask, but she interrupted me.
“I do things, I know things, my fathe
r is an influential man, as is Ceberro,” she said. “A woman in a society that trades women for power does well to know where the power is. Bounty Hunters have a lot.”
That made sense. I think Shela thought that way, even if she didn’t say it.
“They will not be making further attempts on your daughter,” Shellene continued. “Of this I’m sure. It isn’t that the idea is beneath them, because it’s not. There is a general consensus that you’re under considerable stress from the loss of your wife, and if the loss of your daughter were added to that, then you would go insane.”
I barked a laugh. She dipped the pitcher again from over my shoulder.
“And here I thought they wanted to drive me crazy,” I said.
“They want you off balance,” Shellene said, and pushed my head farther forward so she could get at my back. I felt the water spill across my shoulders. “But Fovea knows the Ballad of the Battle of Tamaran Glen. The insanity that drove you when you thought your wife fallen – no one wants that directed at them, with the resources you have now.”
I frowned. This was good to know. “So…no crazy,” I said.
She chuckled. She circled around the tub to face me, put a foot on the edge of the tub across from me, and reached out her hands. I took them and she pulled me to my feet, standing naked before each other, me dripping wet and her with water droplets across her breasts and abdomen.
She squatted down, picked up a wash cloth and a bar of soap, and dipped both in the water. She stood and rubbed them together, saying, “No crazy, my Lord,” she agreed. “Better to kill you than to invoke you.”
“Any idea how that’s going to be done?” I asked her.
She rubbed the cloth on my chest. This wasn’t the regular lye soap that most people used; this was something gentler that smelled like roses. It lathered up like the soaps I’d used on my own Earth.
“I’ve no idea,” she said. “I would recommend you guard the secret entrances to this room and others you might go to. Keep men close to you whom you know.”
So, nothing. But at least I knew something was coming.
“I don’t suppose you can tell me why you’re telling me this,” I asked her. She looked up into my eyes. “I can’t say I’ve earned it from you, you’ve made it plain you have to seek your own sources of power. You could have kept quiet and whether I live or die, you’d be in a better bargaining position.”
She dipped the copper pitcher again and poured the water over me. The water ran up past my ankles, grey and brown with bubbles in it now.
She smiled and looked down. “I don’t suppose I could ask for a night of your favor?” she said, rubbing the wash cloth with the soap again. “An illegitimate heir might still have a bright future whether you live or die.”
She wasn’t shy, that’s for sure. I frowned at her. It was bad enough we were doing this.
“I thought not,” she sighed. She squatted down and started rubbing my stomach and legs.
“However, and while this is no less mercenary, one must deal with a real world,” she said, still not looking me in the eyes. “There is the possibility your Shela will not survive her incarceration. The Uman-Chi will execute her, given the chance.”
“They’ve already offered me terms for her return,” I informed her.
She chuckled. “Stripped of her power–did they mention that?” she said. “Her will broken, all excusable by her frequent attempts to escape of course, though her story will be different.”
“She’s pregnant,” I said. Shellene looked up at me. “I’m told they won’t do anything that would endanger an unborn child.”
She rubbed the wash cloth up the inside of my leg. “So the stories of them say,” she agreed. “And that may save her some of their abuses, but not the binding of her powers once the child is born. And what could you say, Shela returned to you weakened and broken? Would you say that this is not your woman? Would decry a Shela not a sorceress is not the Shela of your heart’s desire?”
No, I thought, as she reached for the pitcher again. It would break Shela’s heart. And yet, Shela without her power would be like a flower clipped from its root. She’d die. She’d look at me and think she was a burden on me, and she would wither away.
The rage that washed over me scared me. Shellene poured the water over my mid section in quiet.
“Your mind races,” she said. “You know the truth of my words.”
“And if that happens, and if she dies,” I said.
“I’d have her place beside you, for my loyalty,” she said.
“I have to think, then, that you’ve plenty more to barter with,” I said to her.
She chuckled, turned and walked to one of the overstuffed chairs in the bedroom, where a pile of linen towels had been laid. She grabbed up a few of them, threw one of them by the side of tub, then crossed back to the tub and took my hand in hers.
She looked up into my eyes. “Your Imperial Majesty,” she said, “consider me a wellspring of more than information.”
She pulled me out of the tub and I stood on the linen towel. She rubbed me down with the towels, tossing them into the tub when she was finished with each. When I was dry, she rubbed herself down, and then without warning she pressed herself against me, her breasts against my chest, her hand in my hair, right at the roots.
She raised her chin as if she would kiss me, and she said, “Have we struck a deal, my Lord?”
I sighed. She didn’t just make a persuasive argument, she gave a brilliant presentation. Who in their right mind wouldn’t want a woman like this?
How would things be different, if I’d met this one first?
How, that is, except if I’d met her as a wandering sword for hire and I’d done so much as look at her cross-eyed, she’d likely have had me flogged. Different in that, if my fortunes evaporated and I went back to being that sword for hire, she’d forget she’d ever met me.
This whole act was supposed to make me lust for her, but she didn’t know me. This same line, these same promises, are what had made Genna such a turn-off.
Like any good huckster, she knew when she’d lost the mark. She pushed herself away from me, she looked me up and down, with her hand still on my chest, and then she turned, crossed the room and scooped up her robe.
Next to the bed there was a book stand. Putting the robe back on, she crossed the room again, touched a book on the stand, and caused part of the wall to slide into the passage beyond it. Without a look over her shoulder she slipped inside and the passage closed behind her.
I stood naked in a room suddenly grown remarkably cold.
Chapter Twenty-Five
A Matter of Deceptions
I left Andurin a week later, on the 14th day of Weather, after I received another status report from Wisex that it still existed and a detailed analysis from Two Spears on how the aurochs were calving. He’d picked me out a sub-chief to run things for me while I wasn’t there, and he’d be returning to Thera with his woman, Soft Eyes, whom he’d taken as his own.
He wasn’t real happy about what was going on with his sister, but technically Andoran was in civil war, and during a civil war you didn’t want to go raiding the impenetrable city of Outpost IX. In fact a couple of tribes had turned on each other in the vicinity of the part of Andoran we claimed, but it really didn’t affect us.
When I arrived in Metz again, a week later, I learned further that the Fovean High Council wanted to declare an end to the Andoran Civil War, and would be meeting on the first week of the month of War. It wasn’t the sort of meeting I was supposed to attend and I didn’t plan to – my delegates could handle the idea that we were back to where we’d pretended to have started from.
I and one hundred mounted Wolf Soldiers managed to get back into the gates of Eldador the Port by the 4th day of Earth’s month, taking the commons entirely by surprise. People actually stood open-mouthed when Blizzard high-stepped in through the heavy wooden gates, now under reconstruction, with five columns of Wolf Soldiers b
ehind him.
“He Conquers!” someone cheered. “The Emperor! The Emperor!” cried another.
“Death to Trenbon!” another roared, much to the shock and consternation of a few Uman merchants presumably from the Silent Isle. It wouldn’t be uncommon for nationalist sentiment to spill over into action against the merchants of another country, and it wasn’t likely to turn out well for those merchants.
One of the Wolf Soldiers, a Man whom I remembered as the disgraced son of a baron out of Rennin’s duchy, waved to the crowd. That wasn’t the kind of thing I usually liked to see in my warriors, but I didn’t get an opportunity to say anything about it because an arrow took him under the arm, knocking him from his saddle.
“Dammit!” I swore, and put heels to Blizzard. The stallion reared and pawed the air above the cobbled street to the palace.
The problem, however, is that Earth’s month is when the market place really came alive, and the space after the gates inside the main city was clogged with people come from every nation. While Blizzard could in fact ride them down if I pushed him, it’s really a bad idea to go killing your own people and your sought-after guests while you ran like a coward from a fight. However a man on horseback is no match for archers you can’t see.
People started screaming, and of course started milling around. My Wolf Soldiers tried to surge forward to protect me with their bodies, but there’s only so much you can do when the guy you’re protecting is on the back of a horse a hand and a half taller than the next largest one around him, and that guy is taller than all of the other riders and decked out in Dwarvish armor.
Three arrows stopped dead on my breast plate and another rang my helmet. I’d put Blizzard’s barding on him and it was a good thing, because another arrow rang from that and ended up in a peasant’s shoulder.
That person, and an Uman man in a brown tunic and hose, screamed, and then the crowd just went nuts.
The sound of arrows whipping through the air filled my ears. Horses were spinning on their back legs and neighing, my warriors were cursing and fighting to control their mounts, a few of the commons were trampled as they were pushed in front of us by the swirling crowd.
