He shrugged. “Wine. One thing at least; I know you will not poison me.”
Ludis laughed and pawed at his beard. “No, no indeed! A waste of a valuable prize, that would be!” He flicked his hand at the servant. “You heard him. Go.” He settled himself, pulling the furry mantle close around his shoulders. “It is cold, this sea wind. We plainsmen never get used to it. Are your rooms warm enough?”
“I am as comfortable as I could be any place with iron bars on the doors and windows.”
“You are always welcome at my table. There are no bars on the dining hall.”
“Just armed guards.” Olin smiled a little. “You will forgive me. I cannot seem to lose my reluctance to break bread with the man who is holding me prisoner while my kingdom is in peril.”
The servant returned. Ludis Drakava reached up and took a goblet from the tray. “Or would you like to choose first?”
“As I said.” Olin took the other goblet and sipped. “Xandian?”
“From Mihan. The last of the stock. I suppose they will make that foul, sweet Xixian stuff now.” Ludis drank his off in one swallow and wiped his mouth. “Perhaps you scorn my invitations because you are a king and I am only a usurper —a peasant with an army.” His voice remained pleasant, but something had changed. “Kings, if they must be ransomed, like to be ransomed by other kings.”
Olin stared at him for a long moment before replying. “Beggaring my people for ransom is bad enough, Drakava. But you want my daughter.”
“There are worse matches she could make. But I am told her whereabouts are...unknown at the present. You are running out of heirs, King Olin, although I also hear your newest wife has whelped successfully. Still, an infant prince, helpless in the hands of...what is their name...the Tolly family...?”
“If I did not have reasons already to wish to put my sword through you,” said Olin evenly, “you would have just given me several. And you will never have my daughter. May the gods forgive me, but it would be better if she truly is dead instead of your slave. If I had known then what I know about you now I would have hanged myself before allowing you even to suggest such a match.”
The lord protector’s eyebrow rose. “Ah? Really?” “I have heard of what happens to the women brought to your chambers—no, the girls. Young girls.”
Ludis Drakava laughed. “Have you? Perhaps as you curse me for a monster you will tell me what your own interest is in girl-children, Olin of Southmarch. I hear you have developed a...friendship with the daughter of Count Perivos.”
Olin, still standing, bent and put down his goblet on the floor, sloshing a little wine onto the marble tiles. “I think I would like to go back to my rooms now. To my prison.”
“My question strikes too close to home?”
“All the gods curse you, Drakava, Pelaya Akuanis is a child. She reminds me of my own daughter—not that you would understand such a thing. She has been kind to me. We talk occasionally in the garden, with guards and her maids present. Even your foul imagination cannot make that into anything unseemly.”
“Ah, perhaps, perhaps. But that does not explain the little Xixian girl.”
“What?” Olin looked startled, even took a step back. His foot tipped over the goblet and the dregs pooled on the floor.
“Surely you don’t think you can meet with a chambermaid, or laundry-maid, or whatever that little creature is, let alone my castle steward, without my knowing it. If such a thing happened I would have to poison all my spies like rats and start over.” He brayed a laugh. “I am not such a fool as you think me, Southmarch!”
“It was curiosity only.” Olin took a deep breath; when he spoke again his voice was even. “She resembled someone, or so I thought, and I asked to meet her. I was wrong. She is nothing.”
“Perhaps.” Ludis clapped for the servant again, who came in with an ewer of wine and refilled the lord protector’s cup. He saw the goblet on the floor and looked accusingly at Olin, but did not move to clean it up. “Tell the guards to bring in the envoy,” Ludis ordered the man, then turned back to his captive. “Perhaps all is as you say. Perhaps. In any case, I think you will find this interesting.”
The man who came in, accompanied by another halfpentecount of the lord protector’s Rams, was hugely fat, his thighs rubbing against each other beneath his sumptuous silk robes so that he swayed when he walked like an overpacked donkey. His head and eyebrows were shaved and he wore on his chest a gold medallion in the shape of a flaming eye. He paused when he reached the foot of the throne and looked at Olin with casual suspicion, like someone who had spent most of his life making quick decisions on court precedent and disliked seeing anyone he could not quickly put into an appropriate list in his head.
“Pay no attention to my...counselor,” Ludis Drakava told the fat man. “Read me your letter again.”
The envoy bowed his huge, shiny head, and held up a beribboned scroll of vellum, then began to recite its contents in the high tones of a child.
“And it is signed by His sacred hand, and stamped with the great Seal of the Son of the Sun,” the eunuch finished, letting the vellum roll closed with a flourish. “Do you have an answer for my immortal master, Lord Protector?”
“I will give you one by morning, never fear,” said Ludis. “You may go now.”
The huge man looked at him sternly, as at a child who seeks to shirk responsibility, but allowed himself to be led out again by the soldiers.
Soon the throne room was empty again of all save Olin and Ludis and the bodyguards. “So, will you give him what he wants?” Olin asked.
Ludis Drakava laughed hard again. His cheeks were red, his eyes only a little less so. He had been drinking for much of the afternoon, it seemed. “He is readying his fleet, the Autarch—that poisonous, eunuch-loving child. He will be coming soon. The only question is, why does he want you?”
The northern king shrugged. “How could I know? They say this Sulepis is even more of a madman than his father Parnad was.”
“Yes, but why you? In fact, how did it come to his attention that you are my...guest?”
“It’s hardly a secret.” Olin smiled in an ugly way. “You have made sure that all of Eion knows I am your prisoner.”
“Yes. But it is also interesting this should come so soon after you spoke with that Xixian girl. Could your innocent meeting have been an opportunity for you to...send a message?”
“Are you mad?” Olin took a step toward the Green Chair.
The two huge guards unfolded their arms and stared at him. He stopped, fists clenched. “Why would I want to put myself into such a madman’s hands? I have fought him and his father for years—I would be fighting them now, if you and cursed Hesper had not conspired to take me prisoner in Jellon.” He slapped his hands together in frustration. “Besides, I spoke to that girl only a few days ago—how could any message go back and forth to Xis so swiftly?”
The lord protector inclined his head. “All that you say seems reasonable.” He seemed satisfied merely to have angered Olin. “But that does not mean it is true. These are unreasonable times, as you should well know, with your own castle attacked by changelings and goblins.” He looked up, fixing Olin with his reddened eyes. “Let me tell you this— you belong to Ludis. I bought you, and I will keep you. If I sell you, I alone will profit. And if the Autarch of Xix somehow manages to knock down the citadel walls, I will make sure with my last breath that he does not get you. Not alive, anyway.” The master of Hierosol waved his hand. “You may go back to your chambers now to read your books and flirt with the chambermaids, Eddon.” He clapped his hands and the prisoner’s guards appeared from outside the throne room door. “Take him out.”
