Trusted (20 page)

“You may have to. I want to know if Gersa was behind this. Stopping the threat to Sarea is paramount to the loyalty of a few servants.” He frowned. “I do not like this idea of us being out in public where anyone can attack her at will.”

“There’s still time to change to a private, indoor ceremony.”

“Sarea will not have it. She says she will not hide in fear. That we must give the people what they want or risk unrest.”

“She’s not wrong. Very well…to night’s meal then. Lead the way.”

“Should I bother to ask you to skip all the shenanigans and frivolity that usually comes with night’s meal with the Trusted?”

“You mean no wine, no women, no song?” Jesso scoffed. “Now there would be a risk of unrest!”

“Very well. But keep the women away from me. I’m not interested in sullying myself the night before I take my virgin bride.”

“Consider it done. Besides. She’s your trumate. No other will do for as long as either of you lives.”

“Trumate or no, I think I’d feel the same.”

“You know, I have no doubt that that is true,” Jesso said. “She’s a very lucky woman.”

“It is I who is the fortunate one,” Garrick insisted. “Who could ask for a better queen?”

“I could wish for nothing better than that my king find his trumate in his queen,” Jesso said. “It is a good day for this kingdom.”

“A very good day. Now, all we have to do is get through it intact.”

Garrick frowned as he reminded himself of all that was at stake.

“Why has he not tried again?” Gersa asked shrilly.

“She has been heavily guarded by the Trusted day and night and has hardly left her rooms. The castle guard is more then doubled.  He will have a very difficult task getting to her now. We will have to come at it another way.”

“I could poison her food,” Gersa said eagerly. “Something quick and brutal and painful!”

Tyron smiled at his bloodthirsty daughter.

“I was thinking more along the lines of a very public execution. On her wedding day. All it will take is a crossbow and single bolt. This time when he aims for her heart he will not miss. That is…if I can get him to agree to it. Working in public is not his usual venue for these things. He prefers to stick to shadows. But I’m certain if the price is right he will do anything required of him.”

“We’ve already paid him to kill her and he hasn’t done that yet!”

“Then we will pay him more!” her father thundered, making her shrink back a little. “Damn, girl, you test my last nerve with your whining!”

“I wouldn’t be whining if he’d gotten it right the first time!” She sat down and slumped in her chair. “The only satisfaction was that her little brat of a friend was killed in the process. Now the girl hasn’t a friend in the world.”

“There are others. That is why the bridal party is well rounded. But it was so good of her to ask you to be a maid.”

“She only seeks to rub my nose in it!” Gersa growled.

“She seeks to mollify me. By paying respect to you she thinks I can forgive her future husband his criminal act of deeding away my lake. Well, it’s not going to work. Nothing is going to work. This reign will fall. It is only a matter of time. Veddig is increasing the incursion in the southlands, coming up further north. As they become more frightened of the Umam, the people will begin to turn on Garrick for his inactions. They will need a king who can command an army and fight the Umam back! Well, to a certain distance anyway. We will lose the Red Forest entirely to the Umam and a great deal of the southlands, but that is the bargain I have struck to gain us the city.”

“But remember, I am to wed Garrick once the upstart is dead. I am going to be the mother of a king if it’s the last thing I do!”

“You shall have your stud. Never fear, daughter. Now get you to bed. You have a bride to attend to in the morning.”

“Thank goodness I came up with the idea of having a headache and being too ill to join her at night’s meal with the rest of her simpering, scrubby little friends. I wouldn’t have been able to bear it.”

“You will behave the perfect and gracious maid tomorrow. None of your nastiness. You must appear innocent of all wrongdoing.”

“If I am nice to her then she will know something is wrong. But I will restrain myself as best as I am able,” she said. “You just make certain that man is there to put an end to this farce of a marriage.”

“He will be. You have my word on that.”

Chapter Eighteen

The wedding was perfect.

The bride’s dress, a brilliant apple red, had a train as long as a banda snake. She wore her veil of beads across her face to signify her demur state. Her hair was dressed in a more elegant version of the virgin’s noose, flowers woven throughout and a tail of sparkling beads at the end. In her hand she held a small sheaf of fasa wheat, to signify her fertile state, for fasa wheat only grew in the most fertile of lands. She was barefoot and bare faced beneath her veil, not a drop of paint to be found anywhere. To wear paint would be akin to showing a false face to her groom and it would be akin to an insult.

The groom was dressed entirely in white. He was bare-chested save for a white vest, showing the world the healthy musculature of a man in his prime. A man worthy of a fertile woman. He wore white breeches tailored snugly to his body, again showing fine form. His hair he wore loose, the length of it blowing gently in the chill breeze. He too was bare of foot, as was tradition. Although, if he were to stick with true tradition, he would have come to the altar naked, able to prowl around his bride in his truform. He might still have done, making certain everyone knew she was his trumate and none dare touch her, but something stayed him…he knew not what. Besides the fact that Sarea wasn’t ready yet to recognize their mating to be that of trumates, he did not want to share the information with the world.

They were wed in the city square. Once the vows were spoken, Garrick felt a sense of relief wash over him. She was his now. No one would be able to take her place and no one dare try he thought at he cast a baleful eye to Gersa. She seemed to feel his stare and grew discomfited by it. Good. Let her know the displeasure she would feel if she crossed him in any way.

The marriage entertainment took place next. The king and queen watched from a dais with a large crowd surrounding a cleared area of the square. Jongleurs played. Jugglers and circus performers performed great feats of strength and agility. The king’s fool told jokes and mocked the crowd.

Then the play actors took the square, acting out the story of the king and queen’s meeting and subsequent romance. It was full of declarations of love and much kissing behind the backs of others. Garrick chuckled, wondering how much of the play had been written by Jesso.

Sarea was seated to Garrick’s left, as was proper, and he often leaned her way to whisper something in her ear. Some of those whispers were remembrances of this kiss or that kiss or the time he had touched her on the terrace…and speculations about what the night held for them.

“When I have you alone, do you think I should kiss you from head to toe?” he wondered into her ear.

“I fear that would take an awful long time,” she whispered back.

“Are you in some manner of a rush?” he asked.

“I…” She flushed. “I only meant to say—“

She was cut off as a sudden whistle of air could be heard. Then she was thrown back in her chair as if something had struck her and an unimaginable pain, like the pain of when she had been stabbed, blossomed across her shoulder. She looked down in a panic, expecting to see she had been stabbed again, but was shocked to see there was nothing there.

“The king!” someone screamed suddenly. “The king!”

Jesso and the Trusted were suddenly on their feet and Sarea looked to her right and saw Garrick was slumped forward in his chair, clutching his right hand to an arrow bolt protruding from his left shoulder.

Killium, Jun and Xan quickly put their bodies between Sarea and the king and the crowd. Hannibol and Jesso turned to peer into the crowd.

“I saw him! Out of the way!”

The command was given by the king who lurched up out of his chair and with a great leap changed to turform on the fly, kicking away his pants, the arrow still penetrating his shoulder. The crowd screamed as one and went sprawling in the opposite direction the king was bounding in. Jesso and Hannibol stripped out of their clothes in record time and leapt after the king.

Garrick had seen the shooter. It had been only an instant, the gleam of sunlight off the metal of a crossbow from the balcony of a home set directly across from the dais. Garrick bounded through the crowd and then up onto the balcony, he ripped the door leading into the dwelling off of its hinges and tore into the living area. The door to the other side of the dwelling stood open. Garrick took a moment to breathe in the scent of the man who had just run through the room, obviously discarding his clothing as he went. He would remember it. He would know it when he caught him.

He raced out of the room on his trail. He had no doubt that this had been an attempt on Sarea’s life again. All he could do was thank the Joyous One for the breeze that had sent the shot wide and to her right. He felt the arrow grinding into his shoulder as he ran, but he didn’t care. It was more important that he catch this would be assassin.

He knew Jesso was hot on his trail, so he ran heedlessly, following the scent back out into the street and down an alleyway. He rounded a corner just in time to see a cat, small and sleek, running around the bend. Garrick poured on speed and caught up to him, pouncing on him with a snarl of rage. The smaller cat went sprawling and Garrick caught him by the back of his neck with his jaws, pinning him effectively to the ground.

The golden cat he knew to be Jesso came around the corner and found them like that, Garrick’s claws digging in deep. The smaller cat screeched and tried to wriggle its way free, but Garrick had too tight a hold on it.

Jesso turned into a man once more, as did Hannibol who had also appeared.

“Garrick, let us take him,” Jesso said.

Oh, but it would be so satisfying to crush the villain’s neck between his powerful jaws, Garrick though savagely. The horta lion mentality was strong in him, almost blinding him to the higher needs of the man.

“Garrick,” Jesso said soothingly. “We need him alive. Let us take him and find out who is behind this once and for all.”

Garrick released his jaws. He chuffed out a breath, then roared in the smaller cat’s face, letting the full measure of his rage be heard and felt. Then he backed off of the cat, letting Hannibol and Jesso come forward to seize him.

Though he was clearly caught, the cat remained in truform, refusing to turn into a man again. But that did not faze Jesso or Hannibol. They knew they could make him take manform again. All it would take was time, ingenuity and determination.

Once the smaller cat was in custody, Garrick made his way to the castle, where he knew the others would be bringing Sarea. He padded into the castle then transformed from his truform to the man. He grabbed the arrow in his shoulder and, without thinking, he ripped it out. He shouted out, dropping to his knees with pain as he did so. Sarea and the remainder of his Trusted walked into the vestibule at the exact moment, seeing him fall to his knees.

“The king!” Sarea cried. “Get a medic for the king at once!”

She was on her knees beside him in an instant, holding his big body tightly from the right side. He had blood pouring from his shoulder, down his chest and on to his abdomen.

“You stupid, stupid man! What were you thinking? Chasing after him on your own? I was terrified!”

“It is not wise to call a king stupid,” Xan said with a smirk as he came up on Garrick’s right, eased Sarea away, and wedged himself under his right arm. He hauled Garrick up to his feet in one solid body movement.

“I am the queen,” Sarea said. “I shall call him whatever I wish to call him! Especially if it’s true!”

Garrick grimaced in pain as they moved forward, but he mostly moved under his own steam. They walked Garrick up to the king’s suite and laid him in the bed just as the medic came huffing and puffing into the room, out of breath from his run across the castle. The medic’s pharmacopeia and private rooms were across the entire castle from the king’s suite.

The medic examined Garrick’s wound, tsking under his breath.

“You should have allowed me to remove the arrow surgically,” he said. “I could have kept the barb from doing much more damage. But…as it is, it’s not a bad wound all in all.”

“Not a bad…he’s bleeding all over the place!” Sarea cried.

“Easily fixed with a few stitches. You’re right-handed, so it shouldn’t slow you down any,” the medic said. “It’ll be painful for a day or two. Do you want some essence of poppy before we start?” he asked as he withdrew a needle and began to thread it.

“It’s not necessary. I don’t want my wits dulled.” He looked at Sarea with a grin. “I have a long night ahead of me.”

Sarea gasped. “You can’t possibly mean to…! You’re injured!” she cried.

“You heard the medic. It’s nothing. The wound is superficial, the villain behind it is caught, and my bride awaits me in her bed. What else is there to discuss?”

“Medic! Tell the king he is not to…to…” She flushed. “Tell him he must take it easy!”

The medic chuckled. “That’d be about as wise as standing in the way of a stallion about to mount a mare in heat! I’m not saying he should be too…athletic…but he’s well enough to get the job done right!” The medic cackled.

Sarea was blushing to the roots of her hair by then. She removed her cap and veil and placed then on a nearby table.

“Very well. I am going to go downstairs and make an announcement as to your health.”

“No. They won’t believe you unless they see it for themselves,” Garrick said. “Stitch me up medic, then I will address my people.”

The medic did as instructed, and Garrick got up out of the bed. A maidservant quickly came up to change the soiled linens and Garrick put an arm around his bride.

Together they walked to the front balcony room, where the balcony overlooked the entire front bailey and grounds of the castle. The bailey was packed full of people who immediately rose up in a cheer the minute the king and queen appeared.

“Vena!” Garrick greeted the crowd. “The man who would assassinate your leaders has been caught! It is only a matter of time before he talks and tells us who is behind this treachery! Until then, know your king is well…and looking forward to his marriage bed!”

The crowd rose up in a wild cheer as he raised up their laced hands together.

Chapter Nineteen

Sarea was missing Isobol terribly.

As Hycinth and her other friends helped her into her bed, strewing flower petals across the covers, she missed her friend’s gentle teasing that would take the edge off of her nerves.

But, as it was, there was only Hycinth and the others and all they kept doing was talking about how promising the king was as a lover, which only served to make her more nervous.

“The king is rumored to be randy as a stallion!”  Hycinth said with a giggle. “He won’t be an easy lover! As it should be! He is the strongest of all our men. He should have strong appetites to match.”

“Thank you Hycinth. You can go now.”

“Tosh! Of course we can’t go! We have to watch him get into bed with you. Tis our duty as your maids.”

“Yes, we wouldn’t want to shirk our duties,” Gersa said darkly.

Gersa had been in a foul mood ever since the failed assassination attempt, which made Sarea very suspicious. But whenever she narrowed her eyes on Gersa, the other woman would offer up a serene little smile and an encouraging word. Except for now…as the time for the bedding drew closer, the more surly she became.

Sarea would have preferred she not be there at all, but Garrick had asked Sarea to do this as a favor, as a means of smoothing over relations with Gersa’s father. To not ask her would be derived as further insult. So she had swallowed her dislike of the other woman and had her as a maid for her husband’s sake.

Her husband.

She was wed to the king!

The idea was astounding. Had someone told her two misra ago that she would be wed to the king she would have laughed and called him an addled fool. But here she was, wed to the king, and fast coming to care for him. She had never known such fear as the moment when she had realized he had been shot. Slumped over, an arrow in his chest, she had thought the worst. And for those brief seconds she had felt her heart tear into two.

She didn’t understand one thing however. For that brief moment right before she had seen him, it had felt like it had been she who was shot! She could almost feel the arrow deep against her bone.

But that had not been the case. It must have been her shock at seeing him. On some level she must have heard the arrow and imagined herself shot instead of him.

When she had seen the king she had known more fear than when she had been under attack herself. In those seconds before he had erupted out of his throne and into the crowd, a force of nature to be reckoned with, she had thought him dead and gone from her life forever.

She didn’t know what she would do without him. He had become such and integral part of her life these past shona that she would feel lost to suddenly not have him there. To lose his gentle teasing, his heated passions, his wise counsel…it would be like losing a part of herself. Not to mention what it would do to the Vena nation.

The door between the king and queen’s suite opened and with gasps and titters of amusement, the women eased back. The king was naked as he strode into the room, as was custom, and he nodded to the women.