Wolfblade

by Jennifer Fallon

  So, full of wine and good intentions, determined to do what she must to honour the bargain her brother had made in her name, Marla let herself into Laran’s room. She draped herself alluringly over the chaise near the fireplace, her long hair unbound, dressed in a sheer gown that offered a tantalising glimpse of the bare flesh beneath, and waited for her husband.

  Laran arrived a few moments after Marla. He looked at her in surprise. “You’re conscious,” he remarked coolly. “And appear to have kept your dinner down, as well.”

  “I’m sorry about . . . last night,” she said. “And about the night before.”

  Her apology probably would have sounded more heartfelt if she hadn’t hiccupped loudly at the end of it. Laran took the chair opposite the chaise near the fire and studied her curiously.

  “How much have you had to drink tonight, Marla?”

  She shrugged. “One or two . . .”

  “Glasses?”

  “Decanters.”

  He shook his head. “And this drinking problem you appear to have developed in the past three days. Is this something you’re planning to continue, or can we expect you to sober up any time soon?”

  “I’m not a drunk!” she protested.

  “No?” he asked with a raised brow.

  “It’s just . . .”

  “You can’t bear the thought of sleeping with me?” he concluded.

  Marla couldn’t tell whether he was angry or disappointed or simply making an observation. Laran was good at not giving away things like that. “You’ve had two court’esa at your disposal for months, Marla,” he pointed out, a little puzzled by her reluctance. “Surely there are no surprises awaiting you?”

  “I know . . . but . . .”

  “What?”

  “Well, Elezaar might be a court’esa, but you really don’t think that I . . .” Her words trailed off as she squirmed uncomfortably under his gaze. “Anyway, Corin was . . . helpful, but I was so angry at Lernen for promising me to Hablet, I only used him . . . a bit.”

  “So what’s the problem?”

  “I’m afraid you’ll think me . . . I don’t know . . . stupid, or something . . .”

  “Coming to my bed drunk each night is going to convince me of your stupidity, Marla, much faster than you admitting you’re afraid or inexperienced.”

  She hadn’t thought of it like that. “I’m sorry, Laran, truly I am. It’s just . . . I don’t want to let anyone down. Not you, or my brother. Even your mother and the High Arrion. I know what everyone wants of me. I understand what’s riding on it. I can even see the logic of it—”

  “When you’re sober?” he cut in, with the ghost of a smile.

  She pulled a face at him. “All right . . . when I’m sober. I’m just so afraid of not being what everybody expects of me. Suppose I don’t have a son? What if I’m barren? Or suppose—”

  “Marla!” Laran said sharply, cutting her off mid-sentence.

  “What?”

  “Go to bed,” he ordered. “Your own bed. Tomorrow, when it’s you talking and not the wine, we’ll talk again. I’m sure we can work out a way to deal with this then.”

  “You’re not angry with me?”

  “Not this time,” he assured with a smile. “Too many more nights watching you stagger inebriated from the dinner table, however, might start to wear on my patience a little.”

  Marla smiled in remembrance of his words, thinking that was the moment she began to like Laran. She didn’t love him. She loved Nash. But Laran was likable and, when all was said and done, if you had to be married to someone, it rather helped things along if they were tolerable company.

  “Well,” Jeryma announced, putting an abrupt end to Marla’s reminiscing as she dismissed the physician and walked back out into the courtyard. “Delon says you’re fit and well.”

  “I suppose I’m to be packed away now,” Marla sighed. “And coddled like an invalid until it’s born?”

  “Gracious, child, whatever makes you think that?” she exclaimed. “You’re pregnant, not suffering some terrible disease. Besides, how do you expect your child to become vigorous and healthy if you’re spending the next few months lying about like a slug?”

  “I thought that’s what happened when noblewomen get pregnant. They’re confined like well-kept prisoners until their child is born for fear of damaging the precious heir they carry.”

  “And it’s half the reason so many of those precious heirs don’t thrive,” Jeryma said, sitting beside Marla on the edge of the pool. “If you were a farmer’s wife, Marla, you’d be out working the fields until your water broke and be back at the planting the very next day, your baby strapped to your back.”

  “Do you think Laran will be pleased?” Marla asked. “Or just relieved?”

  Jeryma smiled. “Both, I suspect. Once he gets my letter informing him of our happy news, I’m sure he’ll come straight home from Winternest. And he’ll bring Riika back with him. It will be good for you to have a friend your own age here.”

  “I hope she likes me. I’ve never had a real sister before. It’d be a bit tragic if we discover we can’t stand the sight of each other.”

  Jeryma looked at her with concern. “Are you unbearably lonely here, Marla? I could send for your cousin, Ninane, if you wish.”

  “No,” Marla replied hurriedly. “I’d really be quite happy if you didn’t send for Ninane.”

  “Well, if there’s anything you need . . .”

  “Was it difficult for you, Lady Jeryma?”

  “Was what difficult, dear?”

  “You’ve had four marriages to men you never knew. Didn’t you ever wonder what it was like to be in love?”

  “All the time,” Jeryma admitted with a rueful smile. “I don’t think I ever was, although there was a young man once—”

  Marla was shocked. “Really?”

  “It was while I was married to Mahkas’s father. My husband was much older than me, forty years older, actually, so we didn’t have much in common. Thelen was one of the Krakandar Raiders the Collective assigned to protect Laran when he was a small boy.”

  “Were you in love with him?”

  Jeryma chuckled softly. “In lust with him would be a better description, I think.”

  “And you actually had an affair?” Marla found the idea that the perfectly proper Lady Jeryma had ever done anything so . . . risky . . . almost beyond comprehension.

  “For a while. It was after Mahkas was born and I was feeling rather . . . unattractive, I suppose. Thelen made me feel like a goddess. It didn’t last long; couldn’t last, realistically. Affairs like that are doomed to fail. Phylrin could turn a blind eye for a time, but if the news had ever leaked out, the scandal would have been much worse than the few moments of pleasure that precipitated it. Trust me, Marla, if you need that sort of comfort, stick to a court’esa. They’re actually better at it and they don’t come with all the risks attached to one’s own class.”

  “Do you think Laran would turn a blind eye if I took a lover?”

  Jeryma looked at her in alarm. “Are you planning to?”

  Marla smiled. “Hypothetically.”

  “Let’s not find out, shall we?” Jeryma suggested.

  “I was only joking, Lady Jeryma.”

  “I’m sure you were, my dear,” her mother-in-law agreed. “But right now we’ve just confirmed that you are pregnant with the next High Prince of Hythria. Let’s not muddy the waters by wondering aloud about what your husband’s reaction would be to you having a lover, yes?”

  “Yes,” Marla agreed with a smile.

  Jeryma patted her hand, looking rather relieved. “There’s a good girl.”

  There’s a good girl, Marla repeated silently with a sigh.

  I wonder if she’ll still be saying that if I don’t give birth to a son.

  chapter 53

  B

  y the time her captors removed the hood, Riika knew she was well over the border into Fardohnya. She had been bundled away to a place
some miles from the picnic site where Mahkas and the others lay dead, and then thrown over the back of a sturdy mountain pony. The three men responsible for her kidnapping had ridden hard through the forested slopes for the rest of the day, their efforts at concealing their tracks helped considerably by a short, savage snowstorm that obliterated all evidence of their passing. They sheltered in the lee of a shallow cave while the storm blew itself out and then moved on until they finally entered the Widowmaker Pass about two miles from Westbrook. Once they were on the road, their speed increased considerably and they were safely behind the walls of Westbrook before nightfall.

  Just on sunset, Riika was handed over to the Plenipotentiary of Westbrook, confirming her suspicion that this was no random attack by slavers. These men were too well prepared, too organised and too nonchalant about their fate to be acting without high-level government sanction.

  “Your highness,” he said with a bow, as her hands were untied and she was lifted from the back of the mountain pony. “I am Symon Kuron, the Plenipotentiary of Westbrook.”

  “I demand you return me to Hythria at once!”

  “We intend to, your highness,” the Plenipotentiary promised. “As soon as your brother pays your ransom.”

  “You’re mad if you think you can blackmail my brother,” she scoffed.

  “We’ll see,” Symon Kuron shrugged. “In the meantime, I’ve made arrangements for your accommodation here. You’ll be moved further inland in the morning. I’m sure you understand how foolish it would be for us to keep you so close to the border until an agreement has been negotiated for your release. I would like your word you won’t try to escape.”

  “And if I refuse to give it?”

  “Then instead of the room we have prepared for you, your highness, with a nice fire and a warm bath, a feather bed and complete privacy other than a guard on the door outside, I will be forced to incarcerate you in the keep’s dungeons among the thieves, murderers, rapists and runaway slaves we normally hold down there. Unfortunately, we’re a bit crowded at the moment, so I won’t be able to offer you a private cell.”

  “You wouldn’t dare throw someone like me in a dungeon full of murderers and rapists!” she gasped, quite certain that nobody intending to collect a ransom on a noblewoman would be so stupid. It was an unwritten but well-understood rule that when you held a prisoner of rank for ransom, particularly a female prisoner, you made certain they remained unmolested.

  “This is the frontier, your highness,” the Plenipotentiary said. “We’re a long way from Talabar and really not renowned for our skill in the niceties of court politics. If you do not give me your word that you won’t attempt to escape—and please note I said attempt, because there is no way you could succeed—then I have no choice but to confine you to the most secure, albeit most dangerous and uncomfortable, place in my fortress. You see, I have orders to hand you over to my superiors. They didn’t actually stipulate you must be unharmed.”

  Riika studied the man in the fading light, wishing she could tell if he was bluffing. Surreptitiously crossing her fingers against the lie, she nodded. “Very well, then. You have my word. And you don’t have to keep calling me ‘your highness’, you know. My lady will do.”

  “If that’s what you prefer, my lady,” the Plenipotentiary replied. “This way.”

  Riika followed Symon Kuron inside, looking around hopefully, but she hadn’t been taken to the northern keep, where, like Winternest, most of the trade of the border post took place. She was led into the southern keep, through the bailey and the dingy main hall, up a dark narrow staircase and into a room that contained—as Symon Kuron had promised—a fire, a bath already drawn and a comfortable-looking feather bed. She stepped into the room and looked around before turning back to face the Fardohnyan. “Am I to be fed, or is starving me also part of your plan?”

  “Your dinner will be brought up shortly, your highness. Once you’ve eaten it, I suggest you get some sleep. You have a long journey ahead of you tomorrow and you’ll be leaving before first light.”

  “Where are they taking me?”

  “I’m not at liberty to say.”

  “You mean you don’t know,” Riika guessed.

  The Plenipotentiary of Westbrook smiled faintly. “Goodnight, your high—I mean, my lady.”

  Riika turned to watch him leave. “You know, my brother is just as likely to declare war on you for this,” she warned as he opened the door. “He won’t want to pay any sort of ransom.”

  Far from worrying him, Symon Kuron seemed to find the threat amusing. “Won’t, or can’t?” he asked. “Still, he can always borrow the money from your husband. The gods know he’s rich enough. Goodnight.”

  The Plenipotentiary of Westbrook closed the door and locked it before Riika had a chance to point out that her brother was probably the richest man in Hythria and she didn’t actually have a husband for Laran to borrow anything from, anyway.

  Three days later, Riika was exhausted but a little less frightened than she had been. No longer tied hand and foot, she had been given a beautiful dun gelding to ride and, with an escort of thirty men—making no attempt to hide the fact that they were Fardohnyan army troops—she was taken west at a hard pace, leaving before first light each morning and pushing on until after dark each night.

  The officers of her escort treated her with courtesy and the deference due the daughter of a Hythrun Warlord. It was clear the Fardohnyans intended to treat her as a prisoner of rank. Riika breathed a huge sigh of relief. Laran would get a ransom demand in a day or two, she supposed. He’d be furious that his sister had been kidnapped, but he wouldn’t hesitate before ordering the gold brought to Winternest and the exchange could take place shortly after. With luck, Riika calculated she would be in Fardohnya no more than a month before she was on her way back home.

  Of course, Laran may not be satisfied with simply paying a ransom to get her back. Mahkas might be dead, too, and Laran would demand vengeance for that. Riika clung to the hope that he wasn’t dead. Perhaps he’d just been badly wounded and the Fardohnyans mistook his injury for a fatal one. She kept telling herself that. In between imagining what had become of her nephews.

  Every time Riika closed her eyes she saw those guards lying by the trampled fire, bleeding into the snow. And prayed Travin and Xanda hadn’t finished up lying there beside them.

  Their destination proved to be a large estate in eastern Fardohnya called Qorinipor. It was also known as the Winter Palace, King Hablet’s Summer Palace being his main residence in the capital, Talabar, located on the coast some twelve hundred miles north of this place. Although she was saddle-sore and weary from the long ride, she was impressed by the palace as it came into view, nestled in the spectacular foothills of the Sunrise Mountains.

  Built of polished pink marble on a small island, it rose majestically out of a broad crystal-blue lake, linked to the mainland by a bridge that looked as if it had been crafted of cake icing. The scrollwork was so delicate, it seemed impossible that it had been carved from anything as crude as stone. As they rode across the bridge, Riika couldn’t help but wonder what it had taken to build such a place. Perhaps the Harshini had had a hand in Qorinipor’s construction. The place seemed too beautiful to have been wrought by human hands.

  They rode into the main courtyard of the castle and halted at the foot of a set of broad steps that reached up to a large open area in front of the palace itself. The paving was made of alternating light and dark stones in a pattern that wound around each other like snakes swallowing their own tails.

  There was a man waiting for them at the top of the steps. He wore a long, elaborate robe of red and gold silk and his head was shaved in the manner common among eunuchs. Riika guessed who he was. Even in Cabradell, they’d heard of King Hablet’s chamberlain, the eunuch, Lecter Turon. Riika’s last doubts about her fate vanished as he walked down the steps to greet them. If Lecter Turon was here to meet her, she was right. This plan to kidnap her went as high as it coul
d go. Right up to the King of Fardohnya.

  “Who is that?” the eunuch asked, jerking his head in Riika’s direction as the captain of her escort dismounted. She didn’t know his name. He’d never bothered to introduce himself.

  “That’s the hostage, Lord Turon. The Princess Marla.”

  The Chamberlain stared at the man for a moment and then cursed. Riika stared at him in shock, too. Suddenly it all made sense: the Plenipotentiary of Westbrook’s comments about her brother borrowing money from her husband. Calling her “your highness” all the time . . .

  Oh, by all the Primal Gods! They think I’m Marla Wolfblade!

  “That is not Marla Wolfblade, Captain.”

  “Sir?”

  “I don’t know who you have there, Captain, but I met Princess Marla when I was in Greenharbour and I can assure you, that’s not her.” The eunuch walked over to where Riika waited astride the dun. “What’s your name, girl?”

  “Riika,” she replied cautiously. Until she worked out what was going on, the rest of her name was a secret she preferred to keep to herself.

  “And are you a princess? The sister of Lernen Wolfblade, perhaps?”

  “No.”

  The Chamberlain turned to the captain and shrugged. “There. You see, captain. That’s all it took to establish that this girl is not Marla Wolfblade.” Then he added at a yell only inches from the captain’s face, “All somebody had to do was ask!”

  The captain flinched at Lecter’s tone, but stood his ground.

  “I’m sorry, sir. But this is the girl the Plenipotentiary of Westbrook handed over to us with the assurance that she was Marla Wolfblade.”

  “The gods forbid you’d think to use a bit of initiative and establish that for yourself! Look at her!” he shouted furiously, making Riika wince. “She’s dressed like a galley wench! Didn’t that alert you to the fact that this might not be a princess?”

  “I’m sorry, my lord.”

  “Not as sorry as the Plenipotentiary of Westbrook is going to be,” Lecter promised savagely.