I
t was after dark before Damin was able to make sense out of anything going on between Narvell, Lord Warhaft and his errant young wife, Kendra.
With the challenge between the two brothers no longer an issue in light of these new developments, Damin had arranged for Tejay to watch over the young woman and tend her cuts and bruises. He then commandeered the village inn while he tried to sort everything out. Almodavar and Adham were taking care of both the Krakandar and Elasapine troops, but he’d kept Rorin close by. As a member of the Sorcerers’ Collective, he made an impeccable witness and Damin had a bad feeling he’d need an impartial point of view before this was done with.
Listening to Lord Warhaft’s pompous recital of his woes, however, Damin began to wish he’d flattened his younger brother when he had the chance. If Stefan Warhaft was to be believed, Narvell certainly deserved it.
The trouble started some months ago, according to Warhaft, when Charel Hawksword sent his grandson to Zadenka to keep him safe from the plague that was ravaging Byamor, as it was every other city in Hythria except Krakandar. Stefan was a distant cousin of the Hawksword family and more than happy to do his liege lord a favour by offering the heir to Elasapine sanctuary in his isolated manor house on the border of the two provinces until the danger was past. Narvell had arrived in Zadenka with as many troops as Charel dared spare from the city. He was a wily old warrior, Charel Hawksword, Damin thought, obviously determined to protect more than his grandson. Once this crisis was past, the strongest Warlords would be those who still had some sort of army intact.
Narvell and Kendra had known each other since they were fifteen when Kendra was sent to court by her parents, looking for a suitable husband. She’d spent a summer in Byamor before Stefan made an offer for her hand and the following winter, when she turned sixteen, she’d been married to the Baron of Zadenka, a man thirty years her senior, and brought here to Zadenka to live. She had borne him a daughter a bare nine months after the wedding and then a son two years later.
Unconcerned, at first, about his wife renewing her acquaintanceship with the young heir to Elasapine, Lord Warhaft had seen little danger in their friendship. But it became clear, over time, that his wife and Lord Hawksword were sharing much more than old memories. The situation had come to a head, so Warhaft informed Damin, when Narvell left the manor two days ago with his troops to intercept his brother’s forces coming in from Krakandar. Damin had sent a letter to Charel Hawksword before they left, advising him of the situation with Fardohnya. Charel, in turn, had written to Narvell and told him to take this opportunity to publicly establish who was going to be calling the shots in Elasapine, once the old man was dead.
It was that letter which had brought Narvell to this place, and his absence that gave Stefan Warhaft the opportunity to beat the truth out of his errant wife. He’d locked her up two days ago, he told Damin, obviously expecting sympathy for his plight, after chastising her severely for her infidelity with a horsewhip.
Kendra, however, wasn’t nearly as chastened as Stefan believed. The moment his back was turned, she’d broken a window, climbed a trellis two storeys down to the ground, stolen a horse from her husband’s stables and fled the manor, hoping she’d find Narvell before her husband found her.
Unfortunately for Kendra, her husband got to her first. He’d dragged her back to the manor in the early hours of this morning, ready to do his worst, only to find he had a visitor from the Sorcerers’ Collective waiting for him, looking for Narvell Hawksword. Figuring she had nothing left to lose, the young woman had thrown herself on Rorin Mariner’s mercy and begged him to protect her.
At this point, their stories diverged. If Warhaft was to be believed, Rorin began throwing his weight around like he owned the place, demanded Kendra be turned over to him and rode out of Zadenka Manor with Kendra at his side, gloating over his prize. Warhaft had naturally followed them, with the perfectly understandable desire to retrieve his wife.
According to Rorin, he’d done nothing of the kind. He claimed he’d made a point of not getting involved in the Warhafts’ domestic dispute. It was only when Warhaft struck Kendra with a horsewhip in his presence that he’d decided to intervene. His idea of intervention was to get the poor woman out of the manor until her husband calmed down. Warhaft had given chase, so Rorin claimed, which had resulted in their rather dramatic arrival at the village and the end to any argument Damin and Narvell might be having over who was subordinate to whom.
Given the manner of their arrival, Damin was inclined to believe Rorin’s version of events over Stefan Warhaft’s.
“So you see, your highness,” Lord Warhaft declared as he finished his version of the tale, “your brother has acted most shamelessly in this matter. And that Sorcerers’ Collective lackey you sent to my house had no right to steal my wife from me.”
“Sounds to me like she was running away, Lord Warhaft, not being stolen from you.”
“A situation that would never have arisen, but for your brother’s reprehensible behaviour! I demand my honour be restored!”
Damin shook his head. This fool had picked the wrong time to proudly announce he’d beaten his wife into submission with a horsewhip and expect any sympathy from Damin Wolfblade.
“And how do you propose to have your honour restored, my lord?” Damin enquired, his voice flat.
Warhaft didn’t know him well enough to recognise the danger signs, but Rorin certainly did. “Perhaps we can discuss that later,” the young sorcerer suggested, looking pointedly at Damin. “
After
you’ve spoken to Lord Hawksword, your highness?”
I must have really frightened Rorin in Krakandar,
Damin thought, as he met his friend’s eye.
He looks like he’s afraid I’m going to run Warhaft through.
“Perhaps you’re right,” Damin agreed, more to reassure Rorin he wasn’t on the verge of uncontrollable rage than any desire to see justice done.
“I demand satisfaction!” Warhaft called after him.
Damin slammed the door, cutting off the irate voice, without bothering to answer.
Narvell was in a room down the dingy hall, watching over Kendra while Tejay tended her wounds. He opened the roughly finished door when Damin knocked and slipped outside into the hall, leaving the women alone.
“How is she?” Damin asked, catching only a candlelit glimpse of the two women as Narvell pulled the door shut behind him.
Narvell’s voice was choked with barely contained fury. “He horsewhipped her, Damin.”
“I know.”
“I’m going to kill him,” Narvell announced, turning toward the taproom where Rorin waited with Stefan Warhaft.
Damin blocked his way. “No, you’re not.”
“You’re
defending
him?”
“Of course not.”
Narvell seemed unconvinced. “Do you have any idea how much damage a man can do to a defenceless woman with a horsewhip?”
“More than you realise,” Damin assured him bleakly. “Let’s go outside. I need some fresh air.”
Reluctantly, Narvell agreed and followed Damin down the gloomy hall. They stepped out into a crisp night, the stars lighting the small yard at the back of the inn with faint, pearly light.
“Is what Warhaft told me true?” Damin asked, as Narvell took a seat on an upturned keg by the woodshed.
“I don’t know,” Narvell shrugged. “What’s he telling you?”
“That you came here to wait out the plague and decided to amuse yourself with his wife.”
Narvell laughed sourly. “Well, I suppose he would see it like that.”
“This is serious, Narvell.”
“That’s an odd thing for you to say,” his brother remarked, looking at him curiously. “What happened to the man who refused to take anything seriously?”
“I buried him in Krakandar,” Damin replied grimly. “Alongside Leila.”
Narvell’s expression darkened. “Tejay told me what happened. I can’t believe Leila’s dead. Or that you didn’t kill Mahkas.”
“It doesn’t suit me for him to die right now,” Damin informed his brother. “It doesn’t suit me for Warhaft to die, either.”
“It’d suit me just fine.”
Damin sighed. “If you had to fall in love, Narvell, couldn’t you have found somebody less dangerous than another man’s wife?”
“When I fell in love with Kendra, she wasn’t another man’s wife, Damin. She wasn’t anybody’s wife.”
“Warhaft said something about you knowing her before they married.”
The young man’s eyes glazed over in remembrance. “She came to Byamor when I was fifteen. The first time I saw her, I couldn’t breathe.”
Having never been in love, Damin wasn’t all that sympathetic, given the trouble his brother’s love affair was likely to cause at a time when they could least afford the distraction. “I suppose she feels the same way?”
“We’re soul mates, Damin. Two sides of the same coin.”
And a pair of hopeless romantics
, he amended silently. “Why didn’t you say something to Charel? If Kendra was sent to Byamor to find a husband, surely the Warlord’s heir would have been good enough for her parents?”
“I did talk to my grandfather,” Narvell replied. “I begged him to let me marry her. He laughed at me. He said I was only a child so I couldn’t possibly know what it meant to be in love. A month later he gave permission for Warhaft to marry Kendra and she was shipped off to Zadenka. I never even got a chance to say goodbye.”
“And seven years later Charel just happens to send you here to wait out the plague?”
Narvell smiled faintly. “Actually, he wanted to send me to Krakandar. I convinced him I needed to be closer. Zadenka was as far as I could get from the plague in Byamor and still be in Elasapine Province.”
“Well, that turned out to be a capital idea, didn’t it?”
“You’d have done exactly the same thing in my place, Damin.”
Damin found himself losing patience with his younger brother. “I’d never be stupid enough to sleep with another man’s wife, Narvell. They’re not worth the trouble.”
His brother looked unimpressed by Damin’s naive declaration. “You say that now. But you’ll meet a woman someday, Damin, who’ll steal your breath away. And you won’t care who she is or who she belongs to. Then you won’t be nearly so damned self-righteous.”
“I’m not being self-righteous. I’m being practical.” He smiled sourly. “Anyway, it’s not like I’m going to have a choice. Any woman I marry is going to have to get past Marla first, and meet her exacting standards of what constitutes a suitable consort for a High Prince. As that narrows the field down to nobody who actually exists, I figure I’m not going to have to worry about it for a long time yet.”
Narvell grimaced sympathetically. “You may have a point, brother.”
Damin sighed, wishing he had some idea of how to handle this mess. “What am I supposed to do about this woman of yours?”
“She’s not going back to him, Damin. I won’t allow it.”
“It’s not your decision.”
“I’ve made it mine, nonetheless. Anyway, I can’t believe you’d let that savage bastard near her again, given what you did to Mahkas after he whipped Leila.”
“I loved Leila like a sister, Narvell,” he pointed out. “I don’t know this Kendra of yours enough to care.”
“Then do it for me.”
“Do
what
, exactly?”
“Speak to Uncle Lemen. Ask him to annul Kendra’s marriage.”
“On what grounds?”
“Warhaft beat her like a dog!”
“Which is appalling,” Damin agreed, “but not against the law. A woman is a possession, Narvell. A man can do what he wants to her. It might be barbaric, but it’s not grounds to annul a marriage that’s lasted seven-odd years and produced two children.”
Narvell glared at him. “I dare you to repeat
that
little pearl of wisdom in front of our mother.”
“It was Marla who pointed it out to me.” He smiled thinly. “It’s on that secret list she insists she doesn’t have.”
“What secret list?”
“The list of things she expects me to fix when I’m High Prince.”
Narvell didn’t seem to get what Damin was talking about. Neither was he interested in anything not directly related to Kendra’s plight. “You have to help me, Damin.”
“Why don’t you ask Lernen yourself? You’re his nephew, too.”
“But you’re his favourite. You’re his heir. He listens to you.”
“Only when he’s in the mood.”
“Then
ask
him when he’s in the right mood.”
Damin wished he could make Narvell understand that it wasn’t as simple as he wanted it to be. “Even if I do speak to him, it doesn’t solve the immediate problem of what to do with Kendra Warhaft. It might be months before I see Lernen again. What do you propose to do with your beloved in the meantime?”