“I conducted business for her majesty in Pelos,” Delivegu said. “She asked that before I return I stop in and check on the preparations for winter. She’ll not be able to make a last visit herself this season. I know very well that the staff here has everything in hand, so it’s an easy assignment for me. A pleasing one. She asked me to look in on you as well”-he nodded at Wren-“to see how you were settling in here.”
“I’m so disappointed,” the senator’s wife said, “that the queen couldn’t make it! When we received the invitation, oh, months ago, I so hoped the queen would be here enjoying Calfa Ven as well. I love her so, you know? She’s just magnificent. I’d devour her if she were here.”
Somehow I think not, Delivegu thought, wondering if Corinn arranged to schedule certain visitors to the lodge when she planned not to be there. This woman might qualify. No doubt she complained mightily to her husband when they were alone. Hoping for a retreat with the queen, getting one with two pregnant discards instead.
“This horrid invasion!” she said. “I’m sick of hearing of it already. I hope the whole business is over by the spring.”
Surely she was old enough to remember the last two wars that had ravished the empire. Some forget so quickly. Delivegu said, “That’s my hope as well. By the queen’s grace, so it shall be.”
The attractive servant appeared at Wren’s side. “Mistress?” She offered an orange glass bottle, half filled with a clear liquid. Judging by its consistency, it was not water. Wren nodded, and the girl set the glass down, along with a tiny snifter of the same glass.
“What’s this?” Delivegu asked, once he had made eye contact with the servant and held it long enough to establish an intimacy.
“Wren’s little poison,” Gurta said.
“Palm wine,” the younger teen said. “It’s so tasty she won’t let us have any. See if she’ll let you have some, Delivegu.”
He played along, tilting his head questioningly. Wren pushed the bottle toward him, the glass just after it. The liquid smelled of palm nut flesh and more strongly of straight alcohol. Compared to the liqueur from earlier, there was little tempting about this. The eyes of the group were on him, though. He smiled, saluted the room, and then tossed back the glass.
Instant regret. Searing heat. A gag reaction so torso convulsing that he shot away from the table. His chair slammed into the wall behind him and for a few horrible moments he was sure he was going to spill his dinner onto the floor. A string of curses, muttered all the louder because the room had erupted in laughter. It wasn’t just the raw alcohol content. It was that-that… “Agh! That’s foul!”
“It is. It is,” they all agreed.
“Only Wren drinks it,” the senator said. “She says it reminds her of what they used to brew on the Outer Isles. Reminds her of her brigand days, apparently.”
Wren did not deny it. Grinning, she reached over and hooked the bottle back. She poured and, with a nod in imitation of Delivegu’s salute, she drained the tiny glass. She did not so much as blink. In fact, she licked her lips with the tip of her tongue and looked as if she had drunk nothing stronger than sweet tea.
Delivegu regained his seat. “You don’t drink much of that, do you? It’s poison. I doubt very much the baby is well served by it.”
“But a short glass a day,” the older teen said. “That’s all I’ve seen her take.”
“Good. That’s all right, then. I guess…” Leaning forward, he said to Wren, “I do insist that you stop riding. You’re putting the child at risk.”
“Is that an order from the queen?”
“No, just an expression of concern from myself. I’m confident she would say the same, though.”
“You care about my baby?” Wren asked. Her Candovian features could have been classically beautiful had she been raised with any sense of courtly decorum. She had not, and her facial expressions-when she made any-were as blunt and straightforward as a tavern owner’s.
“Of course. Why wouldn’t I? A royal child is a royal child.”
“A royal bastard, you mean.”
“Surely you don’t mean that. It’s… just the pregnancy. It affects women’s moods, I’ve heard. Mistress Wren, do you think me so crude?”
“Of course I think you crude. Look, neither of us was born to royalty. I never planned to be mistress to a prince, let alone mother of a royal bastard.” She speared a morsel of meat and brought it near her mouth, waiting for a retort.
“You should be overjoyed,” Delivegu said. And for the moment he said it, he lost sight of the irony of the statement. “You’ve been lucky. I know what that’s like.”
She jabbed the morsel in her mouth and chewed. “Am I lucky? Dariel is lost, probably dead. My child has no father. What it does have is-” Glancing around the table, she backed away from whatever she was about to say. “I live with uncertainty. That’s all. I know you know what I mean.”
She directed this pointedly at Delivegu, but the senator said, “We all do. Trying times test us all.”
T he later hours of the night found Delivegu entertaining the serving girl Bralyn. It turned out she was the warden’s daughter and therefore granddaughter to the first Peter, the one who had overseen the lodge since King Leodan’s youth. He had died only recently, and the girl spoke fondly of him. It seemed to be the only thing she had ever liked about living at Calfa Ven.
“Will you take me back with you to Acacia?” she asked.
Delivegu lay on his back, with his head resting against her shoulder, enjoying the sweaty press of her breast against cheek. “Oh, that’s a tempting possibility.”
“Take me with you, and you can have me whatever way you want. Whenever you want. Are there courtesans at court?”
“So many it’s hard to miss them.”
“They’re all better than me, aren’t they?”
Not the sort of question Delivegu would ever answer honestly. He sat up and studied her, to look as if he were giving the question due consideration. The girl pouted as she awaited his answer. In truth, most of her appeal was the raw stuff of youth. She kissed with a sloppy abandon that he had not been able to make sense of. He had liked her best when he got behind her and did not have to duel with her tongue. She was country, and would remain so for the few short years of beauty she had left. He said, “You’re gorgeous by any standard. A lover of infinite talents.”
She swatted at him, clearly pleased. Delivegu surged in on her, growling. The two of them wrestled a moment. He found a fleshy place to press his mouth and blow skin blubbers. A strange habit of his, he had to admit. But when he was not yet ready to perform sexually he often played in such childlike ways. Nobody had yet complained. Not really.
“Why do you want to leave?” he asked a little later. “Your life is good here. Better than most. You work is guaranteed for life. You get to serve the queen. Many would trade places with you.”
“When the queen is here, it’s grand,” Bralyn said. “But she hardly ever is. It’s boring most of the time.”
“Somehow I doubt that. You have guests of some sort here constantly. Men to seduce…”
She swatted at him again.
“You must know the queen intimately.”
“A bit,” the girl admitted.
“Have you seen her work magic?”
Bralyn considered him but then dropped any reticence the moment she began answering. “We’re not supposed to, but it’s hard to miss. She sings all the time when she’s up here. Prince Aaden is always on her to create things.”
“Like what?”
“All sorts. Animals you’ve never seen before. She created these bird things and set them flying over the archery meadow. Those she didn’t hide in the slightest. She and Aaden used them for target practice, and some of the staff ran about retrieving the fallen ones. They were strange things, birds with feathers, aye, but with three and four sets of wings, stiff ones like dragonflies. Strange… but beautiful, too. I saw her once blow life back into a slain stag. My father had just come in from a hunt and had a wagon stacked with dead deer. The prince didn’t like the sight and got upset, and the queen just went over and worked a spell and then kissed the stag on its nose. A moment later it got up and looked around, and then bolted from the wagon like it never had an arrow in its side.
