by J F Rivkin
Seeing Corson receiving the attentions of the nobility with seeming ease, Steifann felt more desolate and heartsick than before. He couldn’t get near her through the crowd that pressed around her; Annin had disappeared, and Trask was busy explaining to someone how very well indeed he knew the Lady Cori-sonde.
Steifann went in search of more wine, and found a great deal of it. By the time Corson had escaped from the circle of her admirers and sought him out, he was drunker than she’d ever seen him.
Trask and the page between them had managed to convey him to a small, empty antechamber, where they left him sprawled on a couch, senseless and snoring.
When they led Corson to him an hour later, he hadn’t moved a muscle.
She shook him indignantly. “Steifann, you rutting pig-where have you been?
You’re the only one I wanted to see, you bastard, and I couldn’t even find you!
You could have stayed in Chiastelm to get drunk and sleep all morning!”
Steifann opened his eyes on a vision of a golden goddess bending over him and cursing at him in a decidedly unladylike tone. “Corson,” he said thickly, “thank the Hlann-!”
Reaching for her, he tried to rise, misjudged the whereabouts of the floor, and fell heavily against her, nearly knocking her over.
Corson pushed him off. “Let go, curse you! You’ll tear the sleeve.”
Steifann sank to his knees and embraced her clumsily. “You’re so rutting beautiful, Corson,” he said brokenly, almost sobbing.
Corson’s resentment suddenly lost much of its force. Steifann had never said anything of the sort to her before, and his rather inelegant compliment was more welcome than all the polished praises of the courtiers. But she didn’t mean to let him off so easily as that. Not yet-“Well, why didn’t you come to congratulate me, eh?” she demanded, giving a spiteful tug at his hair. “Everyone else did, and they don’t even know me. They weren’t off somewhere getting stinking drunk while their friends were being presented at court.”
But Steifann wasn’t listening to her tirade. “Every time you go away, I’m so afraid you won’t come back,” he mumbled, burying his face in her skirts. “… so afraid… I thought I’d lost you to those lordly folk. You’re my treasure, Corson, you’re my jewel…”
Carson’s bodice seemed somehow to have grown even tighter. Her heart was so filled with joy and gratitude that for a moment she couldn’t breathe or speak.
Steifann would probably deny it all when he was sober, she thought, but she would remember every single word. Forgetting to be careful of her costly gown, she leaned down and helped Steifann to his feet. “Up you get, you sotted swine,” she said cheerfully. “You can’t lie about here all day-it wouldn’t be seemly.
You smell like you fell into the wine-press at harvest time.”
Steifann looked around the unfamiliar room, which seemed to be turning and moving away from him. “Where are we?” he asked suspiciously, swaying.
“Asye-!” Corson held him around the waist and pulled his arm over her shoulders.
“You’re worse than Nyc when she was drunk in Hlasven, and tried to raise a demon. And you’re a deal heavier, that’s certain. Come along, then, we’ll take the back, stairs. I’ve rooms of my own here now-you’d not believe how grand.”
Steifann leaned against her all the way, keeping his eyes closed much of the time, because of the unpleasant way the stairs were shifting. He trod on Corson’s train several times, nearly tripping her, but somehow she dragged him up the narrow stairway and reached her own bedchamber with only one strand of pearls broken. “Look!” she said proudly. “All this space just for me. I have plenty of room for you. Did you ever see such a bed? Nyc’s is even bigger.”
Steifann muttered something disrespectful about Nyctasia’s personal habits, adding sanctimoniously that everyone knew the aristocracy were nothing but a pack of brazen wantons and whoremongers. Then he collapsed on the bed, pulling Corson down with him.
Corson chuckled and kissed him. “They sewed this gown onto me-I don’t know how to get the thing off. But maybe you can help me, hmm?”
Steifann’s only answer was a thunderous snore.
He didn’t wake when Corson pulled off his boots and breeches, unlaced his shirt, and drew the bedclothes over him, laughing to herself. “Sleep well, love,” she said, kissing him again, and closed the curtains about the bed. Then she summoned a maid to set her gown to rights again, and went back downstairs to the celebration for a while, to garner more flattery and admiration.
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