“Now just one…” Lord Broward began again, only to be interrupted by Lord Corsair Wellington.
“Bravo! Well said, scout.” Lord Wellington stood and applauded slowly, looking at Java and Lord Broward where they stood in front of the council. “That is a real woman, my friends. A respectable woman. A woman with character. A woman with principles.” He grinned and winked at Java. “And a fine-looking woman at that. Lord Denver’s accusation that she and her friend are anything but friends is a crock of horse manure, and he’s fully aware of it. Princess Java may not have been seen taking any men to her rooms, but Mage Robin has. That the princess is choosy is to be applauded, not criticized.”
A number of lords and ladies joined Lord Wellington in applauding Java, much to Lord Broward’s evident chagrin. Lady Aribel Cannard took up where Lord Wellington left off.
“Do we criticize our daughters for being discriminating as to who they are seen with? Much less who they are playing with? I would dare say my own Perrin would refuse most of the young men in court these days.”
“Now, just one…” Lord Broward began again, only to be silenced by Duke Arten.
“Shut up, Denver. All of you, just shut up. Java, return to your seat.” Duke Arten stood and glared at Lord Broward. “I have had enough, and more than enough of you, Cousin. You have gone too far this time. You pompous ass!” he shouted, drawing startled gasps from many of the nobles.
“How dare you insult my daughter in open court! Naria and I have been searching for someone like Java for seven years. Seven long, fruitless years. We looked long and hard, considering a dozen candidates, but none lived up to what we expected of our chosen successor. None until Java. And you have the gall to accuse her of not being fit because she doesn’t sleep around with men like your nephew? Get out, Denver. Get out of my city. Get the hells out of my county. If it were within my power, I would throw you out of my duchy. You’ve threatened to never set foot in Whitehall again. Well, now you don’t have a choice. If you darken my city again, you will be arrested and charged with treason.”
Lord Broward began backing away, his hands out in front of him. “Arten, cousin, you can’t mean that. Why, we are of one blood. Your father and my mother were brother and sister.”
“I do mean exactly that, Denver. You have used your relationship to me as a license to attack me, my friends, and everything else that you disagreed with. But this time you went too far. Get out, and don’t come back.” Duke Arten faced his cousin squarely. “You are hereby, and forever more, named an enemy of the duchy.” A gasp ran through the room as Duke Arten uttered the words that made Denver Broward a pariah.
Two Royal Guards came forward and grabbed Lord Broward by the arms. “Come along,” one said as they forced the disbelieving lord from the room.
Duke Arten motioned for Naria and Java to come and stand beside him. “My friends, I want you all to remember this. Java may not be our daughter by birth, nor a noble, but she is now, and forever more, our child. We will meet any attacks against her as attacks against ourselves, and will take any action we deem necessary and appropriate to defend her.”
Naria placed her hand on Java’s shoulder. “You have all seen part of Java’s pain, the arrow wounds that almost ended her life. You’ve heard rumors about her back. They’re true. She has many scars. Scars obtained by being herself. She stands here because she has never backed down, never faltered, and never failed to do the right thing, no matter the personal cost. She is an example of everything I admired in my fellow mercenaries when I walked among them.”
Duke Arten placed his hand on Java’s opposite shoulder, squeezing gently. “She is our daughter,” was all that he needed to say.
Java cleared her throat, trying to ease the lump that had formed. “My Lords and Ladies, today has been a trial for us all, but there is important business of the duchy that must be attended to. Please, let’s continue with the relevant, and leave the irrelevant alone.”
Scattered applause turned into full approval as the royal family returned to their seats. Duke Arten said, “The first order of business…”
*
Robin slipped out of the council session as soon as she was sure everything was settled. Java’s speech, and those of the others, had reminded her that she was not a member of the council, and did not have to be there.
Returning to their suite, she began rearranging things to look more like she was sleeping in the servant’s room, rather than with Java. A knock at the door caused her to pause. A quick scan revealed that it was only a page. “Enter.”
“Lady, I have a message for you,” the page said, holding out a note on a silver plate.
“Thank you,” Robin said absently as she took the note, looking the it over carefully. “Who is it from?” she asked, but the page had disappeared. Shrugging, she opened the note, and immediately dropped it.
The note was spelled, and she fought against the compulsion the spell carried. She watched in frustrated horror as her hands raised a knife, pointing it at her own throat.
Fighting against her own muscles, Robin began whispering an incantation. As the knife traveled slowly to her throat, she repeated the incantation three times, calling on her own magic to defeat the spell-caster.
Inch by inch, the knife drew closer to her throat, finally pricking her skin. The pain and power of spilled blood gave her the strength to overcome the spell, and she dropped the knife. Dropping to her knees, Robin panted in exhaustion. Drops of blood spattered the floor between her hands, fascinating her with their beauty.
“That’s strange,” she muttered. “Blood isn’t beautiful. Who’s thinking it is?” She began probing her own thoughts, searching for the intruder, and found him.
Robin began an incantation to send back on the link the other mage had forged with his spell. Louder and louder she spoke, finally standing and turning to face the direction she sensed led to the spell-caster as she repeated her own spell for the third time.
*
Master Mage Ansen felt Robin break free of the compulsion, but he still maintained the link to her mind that his spell had forged. He still had a hold on her will, and it was only a matter of time before he could force her to kill herself. Or her lover. Then he sensed her begin her incantation and was suddenly not so sure of himself. She is just a Journeyman. She is no match for a Master. She can’t be. Then her spell attacked him, riding back along the path of his own spell.
Lord Broward recoiled in horror as his most powerful mage screamed in pain and terror just before his head burst, showering the room with fragments of bone and brain tissue.
“Out, quickly!” he shouted in panic to his retainers. “Out of the city! We must escape!” Lord Broward ran out of his manor and jumped into a waiting carriage, fleeing the wrath of a battle-trained and blooded Master Mage.
*
Java returned to her suite late that day to find Robin still sitting on the floor. “Robin! What happened?” Java grabbed her shoulder, seeing the blood that had run from the cut on her throat.
“A spell. They tried to kill me with a suicide spell,” Robin whispered. Even hours after the encounter, she was still drained.
“Who tried to kill you, Robin?” Duke Arten asked as he walked into the suite.
“Lord Broward’s Mage. I think his name was Ansen. They sent a note, a spell. I almost stuck a knife in my own throat. But I broke free of him and cast my own spell. There’s a dead man in Lord Broward’s manor, Duke Arten. He doesn’t have much of a head anymore.” Robin spoke softly, slurring a little in her exhaustion. She looked at Java and smiled. “Sherefin will be so proud. I finally got that one right.”
Arten helped Java get Robin to her bed, and then sent for Naria to stay with them while he accompanied the Royal Guard out to Lord Broward’s manor. He wanted to see for himself if Robin was telling the truth.
*
Naria sat beside Java on the side of Robin’s bed. “She’s going to be all right, Java. The cut isn’t very deep, just
barely enough to break the skin.”
“Lord Broward didn’t believe she was a powerful Mage, Naria. He said as much in council today. Too bad for him he was wrong. I didn’t like the man before, but now he’s my enemy. And I make a bad enemy, Naria. I don’t play by his rules.” Java’s face was bleak as she held Robin’s hand.
“Don’t go too far, Java. We’ll have a hard time proving any of this.” Naria laid a hand over Java’s. “Calm down and think this through.”
“He’s a dead man if I get my hands on him, Naria. You studied me. You know me well enough to know this is the only way I could possibly feel.” Java spoke softly, never looking away from Robin’s face.
“Yes, I’m afraid I do, Java. I’m afraid I do. But pick your battles carefully. Denver has a lot of allies.” Naria lapsed into silence, sitting beside the girl she had chosen to call daughter.
*
Duke Arten looked at the decapitated corpse in Lord Broward’s manor with a deep feeling of disquiet and fought to control his nausea. “Well, she was telling the truth. Gods Below, what a mess!” He stepped carefully over a piece of brain tissue. “Captain Corban, have this mess cleaned up. Denver will never return so long as I am alive.” He looked at the captain and shook his head. “And if Naria and I both died tomorrow, Java would probably kill him the moment she laid eyes on him.”
“Yes, Sir.” Stephen waved some of his men forward. “Duke Arten, what did this?” he asked. The duke had been very quiet during the ride out.
“My daughter’s friend, Mage Robin. They attacked her. She is apparently very close to mastery of her magic.”
Captain Corban looked at his duke curiously. “Little Robin did this?”
Duke Arten nodded. “Little Robin. How surprising that Java would have such a powerful ally. Do you realize what a true Master Mage can do, Stephen? Look around you. She was under attack by a man who, by all accounts, was a Master before she was born. Yet she prevailed.” He began to smile. “Can you imagine what a team she and Java make?”
The captain nodded. “Frightening, Duke Arten. Very frightening. I wonder, though, why they attacked her?” Captain Corban stroked his chin. “What could they have gained by killing Robin?”
“The note wasn’t addressed to Robin. It was addressed to Java. They tried to murder my daughter, and make it look like suicide.” Duke Arten gave a small smile to Captain Corban. “Java and Robin don’t keep secrets, especially about some of the proposals she’s been receiving. Robin probably opened the note looking for a laugh and received the spell that was meant for Java. It’s simple fortune that she did. She had the ability to fight it off, and to strike back.”
“Yes, Sir. But what of Lord Broward?” Captain Corban looked at his duke, his head tilted to the side.
Duke Arten let loose a harsh bark of laughter, but there was no humor in it. “What of him? He’s broken. I named him an enemy of the duchy this morning after he tried to attack Java in court. Let him rot in his county. He’ll find that he’s in desperate need of friends before long, and he doesn’t have any. None who will risk my displeasure by helping him.”
“And this manor? If he’s an enemy of the duchy, what becomes of all of this?” Captain Corban waved his hand in a circle.
“I think little Robin—No, Lady Robin, has just been awarded a manor for saving Princess Java from a magical assassin.” Duke Arten smiled thinly. Turning back, he surveyed the room where the dead man had been. “Have that room thoroughly cleaned, Stephen. We wouldn’t want any stray bits stinking the place up, now would we?” Captain Corban saluted and watched the duke depart, taking his escort with him.
“Captain, sir? Did the duke mean that?” a guardsman asked cautiously. “About Lord Broward?”
“I would think so. In spite of the fact that they are cousins, he and Denver Broward have never been friends. And after this,” he waved back into the room, “they are definitely enemies.”
“There’s going to be trouble over that, sir. Bad trouble.” The guardsman looked around the room nervously.
Captain Corban shook his head slowly. “Worse than having a man’s head explode? When word of this gets out, there won’t be a single person willing to help Lord Broward.” The captain stared into the distance. “Not one single person.”
*
Duke Arten strode confidently into Java’s suite, only to find it empty. Looking about, he saw that everything had been moved. Surmising that Naria had moved Java and Robin to the royal wing, he headed for his own suite. Noise, unusual for this wing of the palace, drew him like a magnet.
“Naria, I will not be smothered!” Java was all but shouting at the duchess. “I am not some hothouse flower that wilts at the first sign of trouble. Neither is Robin.”
“Java, I don’t care what you’ve faced before!” Naria shouted back. “This is different. The enemies we have here don’t play by the rules.”
“Rules be damned!” Java began, but Arten’s laughter interrupted what she was about to say.
Naria turned on her husband, thin-lipped with anger. “Just what in the hells is so funny?”
Arten covered his mouth and pointed at her, then Java. Finally, getting control of himself, he gasped, “You two.” At the look of confusion on her face, he again dissolved into laughter.
“We two what?” Java asked in a hostile snarl.
“You are two of a kind,” he managed. “You’re what I always imagined Naria’s daughter would be like.”
Two pairs of angry eyes looked at him through narrowed eyelids.
“They’ve been at this since you left, Arten. I never thought Java would meet her match,” Robin said softly from the side of the room.
Duke Arten laughed some more, then collected Robin. “Come along, Robin. They’ll iron this out their own way. If we’re lucky, they won’t break anything.” Robin suppressed a laugh as Duke Arten took her by the hand and led her out of the room.
“He is right, you know. We are two of a kind,” Naria mused softly.
“Mother and daughter by temperament?” Java asked as she grinned.
“Yes, so we are. But you still have to learn how this game is played. This won’t be the last attempt on your life.” Naria did not look at Java as she spoke. Her gaze remained on the door where her husband had stood.
“No, it won’t. But it wasn’t the first either. I’ve been dodging death on a regular basis for years. Whatever I’ve become, I was a scout first.” Java looked sideways at Naria.
Naria simply looked back and nodded.
CHAPTER 9: LESSONS
Life is a learning experience. Seek out something new every day,
and you will never be bored.
Master Scholar Princess Sharindis Zel’Andral, “Travels with Stavin”
JAVA AND ROBIN BEGAN RECEIVING FORMAL training in government as the weeks passed. Duke Arten drew Robin in against her will. “Robin, no one can do this job alone. Java is going to talk to you about what is happening. As Java’s partner, you will be involved in most of her decisions.”
Java looked at Robin with a thoughtful expression. When I marry Jah’Moke, he’ll have to learn this as well.
Duchess Naria echoed her husband’s statement. “No one can handle all the stress and strain of this job by herself, Robin. Java needs you to be able to help her, and the only way for you to do that is for you to know as much as she does about how, and why, things are done.”
Duke Arten nodded. “The first thing you have to learn is what the duke and duchess really do, under the pomp and ceremony. After the breakup of the old kingdom, the duchies became, for all intents and purposes, kingdoms in their own right. Very small kingdoms, for the most part. The only reason the dukes didn’t claim the title of king was because of the negative associations with the term after King Blackmoore.”
Naria picked up the lecture. “The duchies reverted to a feudal society, with each duchy going it alone for years after the fall. Slowly, as the society stabilized, alliances were formed. Now, after
more than one hundred and forty years, the duchies have formed a loose conglomerate government ruled by agreements and treaties forged through trial and war.”
Duke Arten wore a wry smile as he lectured Java and Robin on some of the finer points of their authority. “The duke is not an absolute ruler, contrary to what you may have been taught. We are, each and every one of us, answerable to the others. That was part of the reason we asked Kaster to ennoble you as well. That makes you answerable to him on a very real and direct level. By the same token, he holds an ancestral title in Hiddendell, which makes him answerable to us. That is why, in spite of everything, I can’t simply throw Denver out of the duchy.” He paused to shake his head, then muttered, “No matter how much I want to.”
“So, we are caretakers of the duchy and its people,” Robin observed. “Not really lords who can do anything they want.”
“Yes. And the lords have similar restraints on their power. Any lord is responsible to his people. Poor management can bankrupt an estate. A lord who fails so miserably will lose his people. And a lord alone on his estate is a man truly alone.” Duke Arten looked Java in the eye as he spoke. “Remember that, Java. You need your people far more than they need you.”
“Yes, sir.” Java looked down at her hands momentarily. “The good of the command above your personal good.”
Duke Arten smiled softly and nodded, satisfied with Java’s understanding.
*
Not all the lessons were classroom and lecture. Java and Robin both needed to learn the manners of the upper class. Naria was sympathetic, but firm.
“You will conform your behavior to that of the court and nobility. Lapses, such as pulling a knife on some crashing boor, will not be tolerated.” She smiled at the expression on Java’s face. “There are better ways to get even, such as dancing with him and stepping on his feet. Or refusing to dance with him. One of the most potent forms of punishment available to us is to snub someone. If you pointedly snub someone, your friends, and those trying to curry favor, will also snub them.”
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