Noticing that Ulandra’s small, shaggy dog was squirming in her grasp, Eregard reached over to cautiously pat the creature’s head. The dog eyed him warily, but used to being fussed over, tolerated the caress. “Poor little fellow,” Eregard said. “Always having to put up with strangers petting him. What’s his name?”
One part of his mind was shouting that he should give her leave to go, that keeping her talking was an invitation to scandal. But he was drunk on being so close to her, close enough to smell her sachet, close enough to touch her, if he but dared.
She gave a breathy laugh. “You’ll laugh if I tell you, Your Highness. His name is Wolf. But it’s actually an apt name, for he thinks he’s the size of the King’s mastiffs.”
Eregard chuckled. Ulandra bent over and deposited Wolf on the gleaming marble floor, letting him sniff at an urn filled with lush blossoms from the King’s conservatory.
I
should let her go … but what if we never meet again?
He pointed at the small book that protruded from the top of her reticule. “Poetry, lady?”
She laughed a little and colored. “Yes, Your Highness. I adore Rimbala. He’s so …” she hesitated, casting about for words.
“Passionate?” Eregard suggested.
Her blush deepened and she dropped her eyes. “Yes, I suppose that is the correct word, Your Highness. His words, they make my heart beat faster. Do they affect you so, Your Highness?”
With all his being he longed to hear his name on her lips, but court etiquette forbade such informality. He smiled at her. “Yes, they do, my lady.” He hesitated, then added, “I have set some of Rimbala’s most passionate verses to music.
Would you like me to play for you sometime?”
Immediately he knew he’d erred, been too familiar. Lady Ulandra did not look up as she whispered, “Perhaps, Your Highness. Perhaps I might go along when you visit your mother the Queen, and we could both hear your artistry, my Prince.”
Eregard knew he’d been rebuffed with exquisite delicacy.
He admired the lady’s virtue, even as he sighed inwardly.
Glancing up at the clock in the wide hallway, he saw that they had been talking long enough to raise eyebrows.
I must
let her go.
He nodded formally at her. “Lady Ulandra, you often walk at this time of day?”
“Yes, Your Highness, often.”
Eregard inclined his head slightly, first to her, then, jokingly, to Wolf. “Then I shall hope that our paths may cross again, and soon. It would be a pleasure to have such excellent company on my daily constitutional.”
Ulandra blushed becomingly and sank into a deep curtsy.
“You do us too much honor, Your Highness. But Wolf and I thank you.”
Turning and walking away from her was one of the hardest things Eregard had done in his short life, but he knew it
was the right thing to do. He was tempted to turn back and wave, but royal dignity would not permit such a common gesture.
The Prince made his way back to his apartments in the west wing of the palace, alternating between despair and elation. He had never before spoken to Lady Ulandra alone, and that was enough to set his heart leaping. But what if this was the only time? Remembering the faint perfume of her sachet, his head swam.
When he reached his bedchamber, he gestured impatiently at his manservant and the guard. “Leave me!”
They bowed themselves out, and Eregard sank onto a sofa to brood.
The Prince’s apartments were cozily cluttered and a bit shabby. He never entertained there, so comfort was his main concern. The bed boasted only a small fabric canopy, and bookshelves occupied every wall. The royal arms were carved into the footboard of the bed, but the rest of the furniture was unadorned. Chairs and sofas were overstuffed and comfortable, with mirrored candelabras providing light for reading at night.
After a few minutes, the Prince opened a chest and removed a stringed balankala. He fiddled with it for a few moments, tuning it, then began to strum a plaintive melody.
Words … what words?
He glanced down at the sheet music he’d begun scribbling yesterday.
Ulandra, not an easy name to rhyme, ’tis true …
After a few minutes of adding in and crossing out, the Prince began to sing in a trained, resonant baritone.
“The world is hard, the world is cruel
It treats me as a lowly fool
I cannot have my own true love
Aside I am unfairly …”
He paused. “Shoved?” he ventured finally.
No! It rhymes, but ’tis an inelegant word.
After trying “moved,” and finding that it was completely wrong, the Prince abandoned the first verse for the second.
“The world treats me like a clown …
’Twere better if I were struck down
If I can’t have my destined love
By lightning bolts shot from above.”
That’s better,
he thought. After a moment’s reflection he scratched out the word “destined” and substituted “one true.”
Now for the third verse, which was only partly completed:
“The world is so unfair to me
I cannot hold her …”
Eregard frowned.
On my knee?
He shook his head.
No! Think!
“The world is so unfair to me
I cannot hold her tenderly
I cannot kiss the girl I love
I’m sure we’d fit—”
Like hand in glove?
he wondered, then shook his head.
For a moment he had a wild impulse to hurl the balankala across the room. But it was an old instrument, and a gift from his mother. Eregard set it down carefully, then just sat, head in his hands.
What am I going to do?
Minutes later he was roused from his wretched musings when he heard the scuff of a foot, then a discreet cough.
“Your Highness?”
Eregard did not turn his head to speak to his manservant, not wanting Regen to see his eyes. “I wanted to be alone,” he said coldly. “Therefore, if you’ve disturbed me, Regen, it must be important.”
“Aye, Your Highness,” the servant said. “It is. Your father
the King has asked to see you immediately. He’s in the conservatory, my Prince.”
Eregard nodded. “I’ll be along directly,” he said. “As soon as I’ve made myself presentable. Go ahead and tell my father I am coming, Regen.”
The man bowed. “Yes, Your Highness.”
Eregard hastily splashed water from the ewer onto his face, then ran a comb through his shoulder-length hair.
Quickly, he changed his padded leather outerjerkin for a padded satin one, and buckled a gold-buckled belt around his chubby middle.
A quick glance in the fine Ventanian mirror that hung opposite his bed showed him that he was ready. Eregard quickly left the room.
He threaded his way through the corridors and down several stairways, then more corridors, until he reached the southern wing. The conservatory was built as an extension on the back of this wing. Eregard saw his father walking alone at the end of the glass-walled annex. The guards at the doors opened them and formally bowed him through.
Eregard stepped into the conservatory, smelling the heady scents of exotic blossoms and rich wet soil. Humid warmth surrounded him as he walked down the shallow steps and headed for his father. Urns of plants and trees were everywhere, interspersed with immaculately tended banks of hothouse blooms. The floor was of green marble, so the plants and flowers seemed to have sprouted from the stone pavement.
The King, hearing the footsteps, straightened up from a tub of blooming alandeors and waited for his son to join him.
Agivir Cosomiso Invictos q’Injaad III was a man who had once been tall, broad-shouldered, and imposing in his battle armor. There were traces still of that man in the King’s craggy features and painfully straight carriage. But his body had sagged and thickened, his lank hair—what was left of it—was gray, and his beard was sparse and untidy. His gaze, once so direct and unflinching, had a tendency to wander.
His eyesight was failing, so he wore a quizzing glass around his neck on a golden chain.
He wore no crown, no sign of his rank, except for a pen-dant that bore the Great Seal of Pela: a sea serpent, rampant, silhouetted against the rising sun.
Eregard walked over to his father and, since this was an informal meeting, bowed deeply rather than knelt. “Sire, you sent for me?”
Agivir smiled at his youngest son. “I did. I have something to discuss with you, then, after we have had our talk, I thought you might wish to accompany me to your mother’s apartments to visit with her.”
Eregard nodded. “I was planning on visiting Mother this afternoon.”
“Good. Adranan comes every week, but you are the most faithful. Your mother the Queen is mindful of it, my son.”
“How fares she today, my Father?”
Agivir sighed. “The weakness grows worse, day by day.
Her hands tremble, and she has pain in her—” the King gestured vaguely at his midsection.
Eregard had been hearing much the same report for the past two years, but it still gave him a pang to hear that his mother did no better. “I shall bring my balankala and play to her until she falls asleep tonight,” he promised.
“Good, good.” Agivir beckoned to his son, and the two royals began strolling along the paths of the conservatory.
Eregard wondered why his father wished to see him, but he held his tongue. Agivir would get to the meat of the matter in his own way, at his own pace.
“Did you see the messengers?” Agivir asked finally.
“Yes I did, sire,” he said. “I am assuming they had just landed off one of the ships?”
Agivir nodded. “Yes, my son. They brought … disturbing news.”
“Tell me, sire,” Eregard said. “News of the unrest on the mainland? Or news of the Chonao invasion force?”
Agivir halted and sniffed the sweet-sour fragrance of a blossoming orcjha vine. “Both, actually,” he said. “The
news is not encouraging, and not nearly as detailed as I need.”
“What of the Chonao Redai, Kerezau?” Eregard asked.
“We learned today that Kerezau took the island of Taenareth a month ago,” Agivir said, lapsing into the formal “we” and sounding almost as if he were quoting from the formal dispatch. “Our intelligence sources tell us that the Redai is currently negotiating with the independent trading and fishing fleets of the Meptalith Islands to gain passage to the West.”
Eregard shook his head. “The Meptalith will never grant them passage, sire. They have always refused it to us, and to Amaran, also. The only ones who dare those waters are the Amaranian pirates.”
Agivir ran his fingers through his thinning gray beard. “I would not be too sure of that, my son. Kerezau wields an impressive battle force. The Meptalith may want him occupied with us, rather than them. An alliance is certainly … possible.”
A sudden thought occurred to the Prince. “Father,” Eregard said, slipping into the most familiar form of address, “does the Redai have any daughters?”
Agivir shook his head. “Our intelligence sources say his first marriage was childless, but that he has managed to get a son off his second wife. Why do you ask?”
Eregard shrugged, relieved. “Nothing. Just … curiosity.”
He glanced at his father sharply. “What you have told me is worrisome, sire. If the Meptalith allied with the Redai, they would provide the ships to transport Kerezau’s troops. That could be very bad for Pela and Kata.”
The King nodded. “Indeed so. I doubt they would attempt an assault on Pela; we are too well defended here, and the Royal Navy could make sure they landed few troops. Our island coasts are well patrolled. But Kata is a frontier colony.
The coasts there …” The King shook his head. “Our Pelanese troops are spread thin, and the colonial militia is too ill-trained and untrustworthy to make an effective deterrent.”
“If the Meptalith ships carried the Redai’s army to the coast, they could march north to Amaran, or south to Kata,”
Eregard said slowly, thinking aloud. “Winter is almost here.
If they are on the move now, they would most likely march south. Within a few weeks the snows will close the mountain passes of Amaran.”
His father smiled grimly and nodded. “Good analysis, my son. Yes, if they make an alliance with Meptalith, they will almost certainly march south, to Kata, once they cross the Narrow Sea. If the Meptalith and Chonao allied, Amaran would not be the best target for an invasion. Our colony would.”
“Bloodthirsty as the Amaranian pirates are, they would not let their homeland be invaded without a fight. They may be barbarians, but they look upon us as infidels. Attacking Amaran would start a holy war,” Eregard said.
“Yes, and Amaran has historically proven impossible to invade …” Agivir trailed off.
“Those cursed mountain passes,” Eregard agreed. “And, of course Amaranians claim their god protects them.” The Prince hesitated, conscious of a prickle of unease. “Supersti-tion, of course.”
“Boq’urak’s Chosen,” Agivir muttered. “That’s what they call themselves.”
“Do you think that Kata might ally with the Redai against Pela?” Eregard asked. “Some Katans are fomenting insur-rection against the mother country, or so say the rumors.”
“So say the rumors,” Agivir agreed. “Those two scouts who came in by ship this afternoon spoke of unrest throughout Kata. Ever since I made Salesin Viceroy of the colony, there have been rumblings. Too much taxation, unfair tariffs, always they complain. Nothing overt, mind you. No actual attacks. Boys throwing rocks at the royal governor’s carriage. Speeches and broadsides.”
Eregard shrugged. “Boys and broadsides. So?”
“But boys reflect the attitudes of their elders. A growing number of Katans are listening to a few revolutionary hot-heads, or so they say. They have sent delegations, and each delegation makes wilder demands. This last one had the gall to demand autonomy! When I laughed at them, one of them
actually dared to voice hints of rebellion if Pela does not allow them—” Agivir shook his head, visibly controlling his anger. “Well. Suffice it to say that Kata grows above itself.”
“Assuredly,” Eregard said. “Autonomy? The idea is ridiculous.”