Magic's Pawn

It's awful wine - but it is wine. I suppose I could get good and drunk. There certainly isn't anything else to do. At least nothing they'll let me do. Gods, they think I'm some kind of prig. 'His Majesty' indeed.

He shook his head. What's wrong with me? Why should it matter what a couple of armsmen think about me? Why should I even want them on my side ? Who are they, anyway ? What consequence are they ? They 're just a bare step up from dirt-grubbing farmers! Why should I care what they think? Besides, they can't affect what happens to me.

He sighed again, and tried to summon a bit more of the numbing disinterest he'd sustained himself with this whole, filthy day.

It wouldn't come, at first. There was something in the way -

Nothing matters, he told himself sternly. Least of all what they think about you.

He closed his eyes again, and managed this time to summon a breath of the chill of his dream-sanctuary. It helped.

After a while he shifted, making the chair creak, and tried to think of something to do - maybe to put the thoughts running round his head into a set of lyrics. Instead, he found he could hear, muffled, and indistinct, the distracting sounds of the common room somewhere a floor below and several hundred feet away.

The laughter, in particular, came across clearly. Vanyel bit his lip as he tried to think of the last time he'd really laughed, and found he couldn't remember it.

Dammit, I am better than they are, I don't need them, I don't need their stupid approval! He reached hastily for the bottle, poured an earthenware mug full of the thin, slightly vinegary stuff, and gulped it down. He poured a second, but left it on the table, rising instead and taking his lute from the corner. He stripped the padded bag off of it, and began retuning it before the wine had a chance to muddle him.

At least there was music. There was always music. And the attempt to get what he'd lost back again.

Before long the instrument was nicely in tune. That was one thing that minstrel - What was his name? Shanse, that was it - had praised unstintingly. Vanyel, he'd said, had a natural ear. Shanse had even put Vanyel in charge of tuning his instruments while he stayed at Forst Reach.

He took the lute back to the bed, and laid it carefully on the spread while he shoved the table up against the bedstead. He curled up with his back against the headboard, the bottle and mug in easy reach, and began practicing those damned finger exercises.

It might have been the wine, but his hand didn't seem to be hurting quite as much this time.

The bottle was half empty and his head buzzing a bit when there was a soft tap on his door.

He stopped in mid-phrase, frowning, certain he'd somehow overheard something from the next room. But the tapping came a second time, soft, but insistent, and definitely coming from his door.

He shook his head a little, hoping to clear it, and put the lute in the corner of the bed. He took a deep breath to steady his thoughts, uncurled his legs, rose, and paced (weaving only a little) to the door.

He cracked it open, more than half expecting it to be one of his captors come to tell him to shut the hell up so that they could get some sleep.

'Oh!' said the young girl who stood there, her eyes huge with, surprise; one wearing the livery of one of the inn's servants. He had caught her with her hand raised, about to tap on the door a third time. Beyond her the armsmen's room was mostly dark and quite empty.

'Yes?' he said, blinking his eyes, which were not focusing properly. When he'd gotten up, the wine had gone to his head with a vengeance.

'Uh - I just - ' the girl was not as young as he'd thought, but fairly pretty; soft brown eyes, curly dark hair. Rather like a shabby copy of Melenna. 'Just - ye wasn't down wi' th' others, m'lord, an' I wunnered if ye needed aught?'

'No, thank you,' he replied, still trying to fathom why she was out there, trying to think through a mist of wine-fog. Unless - that armsman Garth might well have sent her, to make certain he was still where he was supposed to be.

The ties of the soft yellow blouse she was wearing had come loose, and it was slipping off one shoulder, exposing the round shoulder and a goodly expanse of the mound of one breast. She wet her lips, and edged closer until she was practically nose-to-nose with him.

'Are ye sure, m'lord?' she breathed. 'Are ye sure ye cain't think of nothin'?'

Good gods, he realized with a start, she's trying to seduce me!

He used the ploy that had been so successful with his Mother's ladies. He let his expression chill down to where it would leave a skin of ice OB a goblet of water. 'Quite certain, thank you, mistress.'

She was either made of sterner stuff than they had been, or else the subtler nuances of expression went right over her head.

Or, third possibility, she found either Vanyel or his presumably fat purse too attractive to let go without a fight.

'I c'd turn yer bed down fer ye, m'lord,' she persisted, snaking an arm around the door to glide her hand along Vanyel's buttock and leg. He was only wearing a shirt and hose, and felt the unsubtle caress with a star- tlement akin to panic.

'No, please!' he yelped in shock; the high-pitched, strangled shout startled her enough so that she pulled back her arm. He slammed the door in her face and locked it.

He waited with his ear pressed up against the crack in the door; waited for an explosion of some kind. Nothing happened; he heard her muttering to herself for a moment, sounding very puzzled, then finally heard her