TheKingsViper

by Janine Ashbless

  Eloise bit her lower lip. His words had insulted and upset her and frightened her all at once. She didn’t want to show it though. It would only confirm his superiority. So she snapped, “You are a snake, of course.”

  “I am the King’s own snake. Which makes me a little different.”

  “In what way?”

  “I’m loyal to him and only him.”

  “So I am to trust you?”

  He sighed. “You may trust me as you trust the King himself.”

  “And I am to trust the King?”

  “Yes. Of course. And if he betrays you and hurts you and destroys you then you still trust him, and you still obey him. He is the King.”

  She wrinkled her nose, baffled as well as nervous. “That’s sounds an idiotic thing to say. And I’ve never heard anyone say you were a fool.”

  “Ideals must be suffered for.”

  “Or an idealist.”

  “Ah.” He looked away at a hawk hovering over a crag. “You’re too young to remember when Arnauld’s uncle was on the throne, aren’t you?”

  He made her sound like a child, she thought. “I’ve heard about him.” Everyone knew the tales—the seizures, the midnight raids by uniformed men, the famine wrought by the insane taxes raised to fortify Kingsholme. The blistering border warfare with Mendea that was still not healed, though cooler now.

  “Well. Let me tell you, I remember Henrick’s reign with no fondness. He was a tyrant. No subject of his was safe. Arnauld though… He’s a good man and a good king. He thinks of his kingdom and his people, not simply of himself. You can appeal to his sense as well as to his pride. He’s not always merciful—no one in his position can afford to be—but he is just, when he can be. He is worthy of my loyalty.” His gaze switched from the bird to her. “He is worth the things that have to be done to safeguard him upon the throne of Ystria.”

  “Even killing off the last heir to Arrendale?” she said rashly.

  “God’s balls, girl.” He sounded only mildly exasperated. “What is it with you nobles and your damn bloodlines? Is that the worst you’ve heard of me? I put a crossbow bolt through the heir of Arrendale because he was too proud to surrender, and he’d just cut down two of my men who were trying to subdue him. I’d do it again too, in the same circumstances, and I really don’t care how pure the seed in his scrawny plums.”

  Eloise’s fingers knotted themselves together. Her mental picture of Severin de Meynard had abruptly shifted, no longer so simple. He’d taken her by surprise. Her mental picture of the Court, too, had changed, though in that case it had grown considerably darker. She felt tiny and lost and exposed to a world she had no place in. Like a mouse.

  Could she do this? Could she learn to live at Court? Could she find a place in Arnauld’s regard? From Severin’s description, the King was her only hope. “Will he like me, do you think? The King, I mean.”

  “How could he not?” Severin’s voice was so dry that she knew he was mocking her.

  Then there was a noise from behind him, a sort of moaning, and Severin shot to his feet. The place where they’d stopped to eat was backed by woodland, and from the trees had emerged a bear cub, gingerish and fluffy and about the size of Ruda’s dog. It sniffed toward them and opened its pink mouth to make that yowling noise again.

  Eloise smiled in surprise at the bold little thing.

  “Damn,” said Severin, his gaze tracking the edge of the woodland. Reaching toward Eloise, he took the heel of the loaf from her hand and threw it—not at the cub but well beyond it.

  The young beast turned at the noise, sniffing, and then looked back at them again, its round ears cocked forward.

  “Get up,” said Severin. “Walk that way.” He pointed along the edge of the drop, in the opposite direction to the flung bread. She grabbed her blanket roll to obey and he almost trod on her heels as he followed her.

  “Are you scared of a cub?” she muttered.

  “No,” he answered, just as something much bigger lumbered out from the undergrowth. “That.”

  That was, she realized with a painful clutch of her heart, a bear that was almost certainly the cub’s mother. She’d never seen a wild bear, only once a tame one trained to do an ugly, limping dance—and even muzzled and mangy, that animal had been alarmingly strong. This one’s shoulders were humped with muscle. And when it rose on its hind legs, casting its head from side to side, sniffing shortsightedly toward them, it was taller than Severin and bulkier than both of them put together.

  An acrid, meaty smell of bear fur and breath reached her nose. Eloise’s belly felt like it had turned to water.

  “Keep walking,” he said. “Don’t run. Don’t stop.”

  She did exactly what she was told, at least at first, the breath hissing through her nostrils in fear as she turned and stumbled away over the tussocky grass. But within forty paces she realized there was no sound of Severin following. Without reflection, she reached out to grab a tree trunk and swung herself around behind it. Peering out, she saw that Severin stood just where she’d left him. He had one hand out and raised toward the bear, as if he was trying to calm a mob. In the other hand his knife glinted.

  The bear fell forward onto all fours, huffing loudly and turning to look at the cub, which was bumbling about sniffing the spot where the two humans had sat and ate. Then the adult beast smacked at the earth with its great paw, opened its jaws and charged straight at Severin.

  He stood his ground. He didn’t move a muscle. The bear got to within a body- length of him before it stopped dead, veered away with startling abruptness, and chased back to the cub, huffing like a bellows. The smaller animal bolted, scurrying back toward the tree line, and the big one went with it. As quickly as they had appeared, they were gone again.

  Slowly, Severin’s posture thawed. He stood with head cocked for a moment, then turned and saw her. Throwing his pack over his shoulder, he caught up. His face as he approached was ashen gray, but seemed calm enough; she didn’t realize how agitated he was until he gripped her shoulder hard enough to make her flinch. He let go at once, recollecting himself, but stabbed the air over her breastbone with stiff, accusing fingers instead.

  “I told you not to stop.”

  She saw the sweat beaded on his temples and in the hollow of his throat. “You could have been killed!” she protested.

  “And you’d have rushed in and saved me, would you?”

  Her heart was galloping faster now than it had done when she saw the bear. “You’ve only got a knife!”

  “And what do you have? For God’s sake, Ella—”

  “Why did you stand there? It could have eaten you!”

  He let all the air out of his lungs in an exasperated huff that sound much like the bear’s. “She didn’t want to eat me; they’re well fed at this time of year. She was only startled and trying to protect her own—as was I. You must not put yourself in danger, Ella. Ever! Do you understand?”

  Biting her lip, she nodded.

  “And you do what I tell you—even if that’s to walk away. It’s my task to look after you, not the other way round. Is that clear?”

  As was I. The words hung in her ears. Their implication seemed to tangle up the workings of her heart and her breath and her lower body in a very physical way. You’re mine. The thought filled her with a secret, guilty excitement.

  Mutely, she nodded again.

  * * * * *

  “And there’s a chamber pot in that cupboard at the end there, lass, if you need to get up in the night,” said the farmwife.

  “I can’t get up in the night,” Eloise said with a laugh. “I’d have to break his arms.”

  Severin went cold. He forced a smile, because everyone else in the kitchen was grinning at this mild revelation of uxoriousness, but he felt the bottom drop from his stomach.

  It hadn’t occurred to him that she knew. He always woke earlier than her and made sure he was gone from the bed they shared.

  Eloise caught the frozen glint in hi
s eye and looked abashed.

  He cornered her as she was helping put crocks away in the pantry. He hardly knew what to say. He was treading on terribly dangerous ground.

  “If I’ve offended you…”

  “I’m not offended. You keep me warm, don’t you?” But she did not meet his eye. Would not, even when he laid a hand on her arm.

  It’s not deliberate, he wanted to say. But couldn’t. It had been an indulgence on his part, and inexcusably so. “We’ll sleep separately from now on,” he whispered.

  “Why? Do you think I’d be safer alone?”

  He didn’t answer that; he was too startled. Did she mean that she wanted it? The world seemed to come loose from its moorings and rotate around them.

  But she pressed on. “If I’m not safe with you, then who am I safe with?”

  She’s innocent, he thought. That’s good, but not for her. She must learn better before it destroys her. And the potential for betraying that innocence was so immense that he felt dizzy.

  * * * * *

  “Tell me about the King,” she said to him as they camped in the angle of a ruined field-barn one night. She was feeling oddly fractious, despite the long hours of walking. It always made her feel jumpy when one of Severin’s silent phases went on too long.

  He fed sticks to the fire. “What about him?”

  I might as well, she thought, ask the difficult questions. It isn’t as if I can shock him. “Does he have a mistress?”

  Severin’s lips thinned, and he looked at her thoughtfully before replying. “He does. The Lady Katrine of Tockforton. She’s lady-in-waiting to the King’s own mother, and a woman of excellent lineage, though her family is not what it once was.”

  Eloise stretched out her hands to the flames and affected nonchalance, despite the churning in her blood. “Will he put her aside after marrying me?”

  “I don’t know.” Severin’s voice had that clipped, cold sound it got when he was unhappy with a conversation. She’d gotten to know his habits of speech. “He might do, if he were to become taken with you.”

  “Am I…attractive enough for him? To become enamored of me, I mean?”

  “Well, you certainly don’t look much like a queen now.”

  She grimaced, acknowledging that she was bundled up in layers of peasant clothing, that her hair was uncombed and her cheeks rough and freckled from exposure to the weather. Then she jumped at the next question before she could think better of it and lose her nerve. “Do you think I’m attractive?”

  “This is not a conversation we should be having,” he growled, holding up a warning finger.

  “But do you?” It mattered to her, somehow. Oh God, it mattered.

  “I can hardly judge. Given how long it’s been since I’ve had any female company,” he said sourly, “I confess that even the sheep around here are starting to look appealing to me.”

  The coarseness of his words took her breath away and she blushed, momentarily flustered. But a moment’s pause and then she wasn’t fooled; she realized that his brutishness was calculated to put her off questioning him. She narrowed her eyes. “And I thought you were a man who wasn’t scared to tell the truth.”

  “The truth?” His dark eyes looked like holes in a fire-lit mask. His voice grew no louder, but audibly darker. “You think you want the truth, girl?”

  She blinked. Too late, she realized that he was really riled. Why had the subject prickled him so? “I—”

  “The truth is that women will do anything for status in the eyes of other women, and that men will do anything to get inside a warm cunny—and both will do anything for gold. The truth is that people are selfish and lazy and would rather die than think for themselves. The truth is that God never helps the weak, that love and justice and honor are stories we tell to comfort ourselves, and that we live and die alone. Don’t ask me for the truth. You don’t want to hear it.”

  She sat as if frozen, though her skin was hot with shock and shame. His bleak and bitter litany, coming almost out of nowhere, horrified her. She wanted to shout “That’s not true!” but she could only think how childish it would sound. So she stared and stared, and Severin held her gaze over the fire.

  “That’s not the whole truth,” she whispered at last.

  “Oh?” he cocked an eyebrow.

  “You’re proof of that yourself.”

  Something strange happened to his expression, a near-unreadable shift that might have been only the flicker of cast firelight. But he looked away, no longer challenging. “You’re right,” he said hoarsely. “It’s not the whole truth. Nothing is the whole truth. There are always complications.” Then he sighed. “Listen, you have no need to worry about the King’s mistress. A mistress…has no authority. No power, unless the man is weak. Do you think the Lady Katrine might threaten a queen? Arnauld is not such a fool and, believe me, the Lady Katrine has no talent for politics.”

  “Like me, then?”

  “As you say.”

  They sat in prickly silence for a moment. Then Eloise gathered herself, thinking, Now or never, and ventured, “Do you have a mistress?”

  Severin went still, and she wondered if her second foray into the wyrm’s lair was once too often. Bait a dragon and get burned, went the saying. Would he snap again? His eyes seemed to be eating into her. “I do, I suppose,” he said at length.

  Eloise felt lightheaded with daring. “Who is she?”

  “Well, not counting the servant lass who makes up the fires, to whom I have fairly regular recourse, I imagine the Baroness of Eltingham would be the lucky woman to bear that title. She has no great lineage, but she is a most excellent fuck.”

  He was doing it again, trying to repulse her. Eloise’s irritation rose in response to his dishonesty. “She’s married?” she snapped.

  “Yes. Her husband is elderly though, and knows when it’s wise to be tolerant.”

  “Do you love her?”

  “No. Of course not.”

  Why Of course not? Eloise wondered. “Poor woman.”

  Severin raised a black brow. “Why do you pity her?”

  “Because she loves you, and you don’t love her.”

  His lip curled. “What makes you think she loves me? I’ve never wooed her with flowers or jewelry or sweet words, so why should she?”

  How could she not? Eloise was tempted to answer sarcastically, remembering his words to her. But the answer that found its way to her lips was more considered. “It’s the nature of women to love those they lie with.”

  He laughed out loud at that. “You’re very sure of your facts, for a maiden of not yet twenty summers!”

  Eloise looked away this time, clenching her jaw. Severin must have seen the hurt in her face because he relented.

  “Look. Hilde…the baroness lies with me because it amuses us both, and because I have the ear of the King and she thinks that I might be advantageous to her. She’s quite mistaken about that, in fact.”

  “So you’re using her ambition?”

  “Snakes and mice, Ella.” His eyes reflected the red of the fire. “But I’ve done her no harm, which is more than she might expect.”

  She shrugged angrily, and yet not sure why she was angry except that she wanted him to be better than that. “That’s just mean.”

  “None of us get what we really want in life, Ella. Remember that.”

  * * * * *

  That conversation unsettled Severin deeply. He’d found the young woman’s interest in his personal life rather too pointed for comfort. It suited the goal of rescuing her that she trusted and obeyed him, even that she liked him—but no more than that. He wasn’t blind, and he wasn’t a fool. There was enormous danger here for both of them. She was ripe for marriage but too inexperienced to be a good judge of men, and she’d been all but alone in his company for weeks now. It was asking a great deal of any maiden to fix her mind faithfully on some distant, unknown man, even if he were the King of Ystria.

  Yet he wasn’t sure. She had that self
-contained reserve inculcated into noblewomen that meant she could withdraw at a moment’s notice to some other, inner place, and he might then be ashamed of his suspicions—except that he had more than enough desires of his own to be ashamed of, and they occupied all his attention. He was obsessed by the physicality of the King’s betrothed; by the soft skin on the inside of her elbow, by the glimpse of a breast as she leaned forward in her ill-fitting garments, by the arch of her back when she stretched and the curve of her lips and the gray of her eyes that seemed to change with the weather.

  By the inexplicable way her slender body molded to his, its fit perfect, as they slept together. As if she were made for him.

  By the way she looked at him with those unfathomable eyes.

  Mithras and all the saints—she had a way of getting under his skin, asking all the wrong questions, submissive at one moment and defiant the next. She poked around in his soul, stirring the dust in long-undisturbed corners, and it left him rattled. She shouldn’t be able to do that. No one should.

  But then, he shouldn’t want her the way he did. He shouldn’t knot up inside at the thought of handing her over to another man—and that man his king.

  There were times when he felt like he was being asked to walk up a stake that impaled him through the gut and up under his ribs and right through his heart. Every step northward hurt.

  * * * * *

  Once they were away from the coast the land grew richer and the farms more prosperous and well-ordered, with many servants. Ruda’s little steading began to look in hindsight like a hovel, and her hospitality the more generous in comparison. While they could usually find someone willing to offer them bed and board in exchange for work, such was the time of year, they were never treated with such concern as she had shown.

  Eloise found herself in the back scullery of a large farmhouse one day, pounding and wringing the laundry of a household of at least a score. This was one of the jobs she liked least—it was punishingly hard labor, the weight of the wet sheets making her forearms ache as she wrung them out—and for some reason that day she could not keep her mind on the task but chased it restlessly over a dozen different things—her father back home on Venn, the road ahead, or the pleasing way her feet and legs were growing stronger for the walking they undertook. She wondered how Severin was doing. He’d been sent out with the other menservants to harvest the hay. She pictured the way he’d swung the long-handled rake across his shoulders in the yard and stood with both arms up and resting upon it as he awaited his instructions, his neck back at a slight angle in reaction to that yoke, one hip hitched, his eyes watchful and patient. The ragged line of his hair on his forehead and neck. The gape of his shirt neck, showing the first speckles of hair upon his chest. The thought was distracting enough to make her pause at her labor over the big stone sink and stare through the plaster of the wall, unseeing, her hands resting loose in the water.