Ulath cuffed him across the back of the head. ‘Your Majesty,’ he prompted.
‘What?’
‘You call the queen “Your Majesty”,’ Ulath said, cuffing him again.
‘Y-your Majesty,’ Lycheas stammered.
‘There’s something else too, My Queen,’ Sparhawk continued. ‘Lycheas is Annias’s son, you recall.’
‘How did you find out about that?’ Lycheas exclaimed.
Ulath cuffed him again. ‘He wasn’t talking to you. Speak when you’re spoken to.’
‘As I was saying,’ Sparhawk went on. ‘Lycheas is Annias’s son, and he might be a useful bargaining chip in Chyrellos when we go there to try to keep Annias off the Archprelate’s throne.’
‘Oh,’ she said petulantly, ‘all right – I suppose – but as soon as you’re done with him, turn him over to Sir Ulath and Sir Kalten. I’m sure they’ll find a way to decide which one of them gets to send him on his way.’
‘Draw straws?’ Kalten asked Ulath.
‘Or we could roll the dice,’ Ulath countered.
‘My Lord Lenda,’ Ehlana said then, ‘why don’t you and Lord Vanion take this wretch somewhere and question him. I’m getting sick of the sight of him. Take Sir Kalten, Sir Perraine and Sir Ulath with you. Their presence might encourage him to be more forthcoming.’
‘Yes, Your Majesty,’ Lenda said, concealing a smile.
After Lycheas had been dragged from the room, Sephrenia looked the young queen full in the face. ‘You weren’t seriously considering that, were you, Ehlana?’ she asked.
‘Oh, of course not – well, not too seriously, anyway. I just want Lycheas to sweat a bit. I think I owe him that.’ She sighed wearily. ‘I think I’d like to rest now,’ she said. ‘Sparhawk, do be a dear and carry me in to bed.’
‘That’s hardly proper, Ehlana,’ he said stiffly.
‘Oh, bother proper. You may as well get used to thinking of me and beds at the same time anyway.’
‘Ehlana!’
She laughed and held out her arms to him.
As Sparhawk bent and lifted his queen in his arms, he happened to catch a glimpse of Berit’s face. The young novice was giving him a look of undisguised hatred. There was going to be a problem here, Sparhawk saw. He decided to have a long talk with Berit just as soon as the opportunity presented itself.
He carried Ehlana into the other room and tucked her into a very large bed. ‘You’ve changed a great deal, My Queen,’ he said gravely. ‘You’re not the same person I left ten years ago.’ It was time to get that out into the open so that they could both stop tiptoeing around it.
‘You’ve noticed,’ she said archly.
‘That’s part of it right there,’ he told her, reverting to his professorial tone. ‘You’re still only eighteen years old, Ehlana. It’s not becoming for you to assume the worldly airs of a woman of thirty-five. I strongly recommend a more innocent public pose.’
She squirmed around in the bed until she was lying on her stomach with her head at the foot. She rested her chin in her hands, wide-eyed and ingenuous, her lashes fluttering and with one foot coyly kicking at her pillow. ‘Like this?’ she asked.
‘Stop that.’
‘I’m just trying to please you, my betrothed. Was there anything else about me you’d like to change?’
‘You’ve grown hard, child.’
‘Now it’s your turn to stop something,’ she said firmly. ‘Don’t call me “child” any more, Sparhawk. I stopped being a child the day Aldreas sent you to Rendor. I could be a child as long as you were here to protect me, but once you were gone, I couldn’t afford that any more.’ She sat up cross-legged on the bed. ‘My father’s court was a very unfriendly place for me, Sparhawk,’ she told him gravely. ‘I was dressed up and displayed at court functions where I could watch Aldreas and his sister covertly fondling each other and Annias smirking in the background. Any friends I had were immediately sent away – or killed – so I was forced to entertain myself by eavesdropping on the empty-headed gossip of the chambermaids. As a group, chambermaids tend to be quite wanton. I drew up a chart once – you taught me to be methodical, you’ll remember. You wouldn’t believe what goes on below stairs. My chart indicated that one aggressive little minx had very nearly outstripped Arissa herself in her conquests. Her availability was almost legendary. If I sometimes seem “worldly” – wasn’t that your term? – you can blame it on the tutors who took up my education when you left. After a few years – since any friendship I displayed for the lords and ladies of the court was an immediate cause for their exile or worse – I came to rely on the servants. Servants expect you to give them orders, so I give orders. It’s a habit now. It worked out rather well for me, though. Nothing happens in the palace that the servants don’t know about, and before long, they were telling me everything. I was able to use that information to protect myself from my enemies, and everybody at court except Lenda was my enemy. It wasn’t much of a childhood, Sparhawk, but it prepared me far better than empty hours spent rolling hoops or wasting affection on rag dolls or puppies. If I seem hard, it’s because I grew up in hostile territory. It may take you some years to soften those sharp edges, but I’m sure I’ll enjoy your efforts in that direction.’ She smiled winsomely, but there was still a kind of pained defensiveness in her grey eyes.
‘My poor Ehlana,’ he said, his heart in his throat.
‘Hardly poor, dear Sparhawk. I have you now, and that makes me the richest woman in the world.’
‘We’ve got a problem, Ehlana,’ he said seriously.
‘I don’t see any problems. Not now.’
‘I think you misunderstood when I gave you my ring by mistake.’ He regretted that instantly. Her eyes opened as wide as they might have had he slapped her in the face. ‘Please don’t take what I just said wrong,’ he rushed on. ‘I’m just too old for you, that’s all.’
‘I don’t care how old you are,’ she said defiantly. ‘You’re mine, Sparhawk, and I’ll never let you go.’ Her voice was so filled with steel that he almost shrank from her.
‘I was sort of obliged to point it out,’ he backstepped. He had to ease her past that dreadful moment of injury. ‘Duty, you understand.’
She stuck her tongue out at that. ‘All right, now that you’ve made your genuflection in duty’s direction, we won’t ever mention it again. When do you think we should have the wedding – before or after you and Vanion go to Chyrellos and kill Annias? I’m rather in favour of getting right on with it, personally. I’ve heard all sorts of things about what goes on between a husband and wife when they’re alone, and I’m really very, very curious.’
Sparhawk turned bright red at that.
Chapter 5
‘Is she asleep?’ Vanion asked when Sparhawk emerged from Ehlana’s bedroom.
Sparhawk nodded. ‘Did Lycheas tell you anything useful?’ he asked.
‘A number of things – mostly verification of things we’ve already guessed,’ Vanion replied. The Preceptor’s face was troubled, and the strain of bearing the swords of the fallen knights still showed on him, although he looked more vigorous now. ‘My Lord of Lenda,’ he said, ‘is the queen’s apartment here secure? I’d rather not have some of the things Lycheas told us becoming general knowledge.’
‘The rooms are quite secure, My Lord,’ Lenda assured him, ‘and the presence of your knights in the corridors will probably discourage anyone who’s afflicted with a burning curiosity.’
Kalten and Ulath entered, and they both had vicious grins on their faces. ‘Lycheas is having a very bad day,’ Kalten smirked. ‘Ulath and I were recalling a number of lurid executions we’d seen in the past while we were escorting him back to his cell. He found the notion of being burned at the stake particularly distressing.’
‘And he almost fainted when we raised the possibility of racking him to death,’ Ulath chuckled. ‘Oh, by the way, we stopped by the palace gate on our way back here. The church soldiers we captured are repairing it.’ T
he towering Genidian Knight set his axe in the corner. ‘Some of your Pandions have been out in the streets, Lord Vanion. It seems that quite a number of the citizens of Cimmura have dropped out of sight.’
Vanion gave him a puzzled look.
‘They seem a bit nervous for some reason,’ Kalten explained. ‘Annias has been in control of the city for quite a while now, and some people, nobles and commons alike, always have their eyes open for the main chance. They went out of their way to accommodate the good Primate. Their neighbours know who they are, though, and there have been a few incidents, I understand. When there’s a sudden change of power, many people want to demonstrate their loyalty to the new regime in some visible way. There appear to have been several spontaneous hangings and a fair number of houses are on fire. Ulath and I suggested to the knights that they put a stop to that at least. Fires do tend to spread, you know.’
‘I just love politics, don’t you?’ Tynian grinned.
‘Mob rule should always be suppressed,’ the Earl of Lenda said critically. ‘The mob is the enemy of any government.’
‘By the way,’ Kalten said curiously to Sparhawk, ‘did you really propose to the queen?’
‘It’s a misunderstanding.’
‘I was fairly sure it was. You’ve never struck me as the marrying kind. She’s going to hold you to it anyway, though, isn’t she?’
‘I’m working on that.’
‘I wish you all the luck in the world, but quite frankly, I don’t hold out much hope for you. I saw some of the looks she used to throw your way when she was a little girl. You’re in for an interesting time, I think.’ Kalten was grinning.
‘It’s such a comfort to have friends.’
‘It’s time you settled down anyway, Sparhawk. You’re getting to be too old to be running around the world picking fights with people.’
‘You’re as old as I am, Kalten.’
‘I know, but that’s different.’
‘Have you and Ulath decided who gets to dispose of Lycheas yet?’ Tynian asked.
‘We’re still discussing it.’ Kalten gave the big Thalesian a suspicious look. ‘Ulath’s been trying to foist a set of dice on me.’
‘Foist?’ Ulath protested mildly.
‘I saw one of those dice, my friend, and it had four sixes on it.’
‘That’s a lot of sixes,’ Tynian noted.
‘It is indeed.’ Kalten sighed. ‘To be honest with you, though, I don’t really think Ehlana’s going to let us kill Lycheas. He’s such a pathetic lump that I don’t think she’ll have the heart. Oh well,’ he added, ‘there’s always Annias.’
‘And Martel,’ Sparhawk reminded him.
‘Oh yes. There’s always Martel.’
‘Which way did he go after Wargun chased him away from Larium?’ Sparhawk asked. ‘I always like to keep track of Martel. I wouldn’t want him to get himself into any trouble.’
‘The last time we saw him, he was going east,’ Tynian said, shifting the shoulder plates of his heavy Deiran armour.
‘East?’
Tynian nodded. ‘We thought he’d go south to Umanthum, but we found out later that he’d moved his fleet to Sarrinium after the burning of Coombe – probably because Wargun has ships patrolling the straits of Arcium. He’s most likely back in Rendor by now.’
Sparhawk grunted. He unhooked his sword-belt, laid it on the table and sat down. ‘What did Lycheas tell you?’ he asked Vanion.
‘Quite a bit. It’s fairly obvious that he didn’t know everything Annias was doing, but surprisingly, he’s managed to pick up a great deal of information. He’s brighter than he looks.’
‘He’d almost have to be,’ Kurik said. ‘Talen,’ he said to his son, ‘don’t do that.’
‘I was just looking, father,’ the boy protested.
‘Don’t. You might be tempted.’
‘Lycheas told us that his mother and Annias have been lovers for years now,’ Vanion told them, ‘and it was Annias who suggested to Arissa that she attempt to seduce her brother. He’d come up with a rather obscure bit of Church doctrine that appeared to permit a marriage between them.’
‘The Church would never permit such an obscenity,’ Sir Bevier declared flatly.
‘The Church has done many things in her history that don’t conform to contemporary morality, Bevier,’ Vanion said. ‘At one time, she was very weak in Cammoria, and there had been a tradition of incestuous marriages in the royal house of that kingdom. The Church made allowances in order to continue her work there. Anyway, Annias reasoned that Aldreas was a weak king, and Arissa would be the real ruler of Elenia if she married him. Then, since Annias more or less controlled Arissa, he’d be the one making the decisions. At first that seemed to be enough for him, but then his ambition began to run away with him. He started eyeing the Archprelate’s throne in Chyrellos. That was about twenty years ago, I gather.’
‘How did Lycheas find out about it then?’ Sparhawk asked him.
‘He used to visit his mother in that cloister at Demos,’ Vanion replied. ‘Arissa’s reminiscences were rather wideranging, I understand, and she was quite candid with her son.’
‘That’s revolting,’ Bevier said in a sick voice.
‘Princess Arissa has a peculiar kind of morality,’ Kalten told the young Arcian.
‘At any rate,’ Vanion said, ‘Sparhawk’s father stepped in at that point. I knew him very well, and his morality was much more conventional. He was greatly offended by what Aldreas and Arissa were doing. Aldreas was afraid of him, so when he suggested a marriage to a Deiran Princess instead, Aldreas rather reluctantly agreed. The rest is fairly well known. Arissa went into an absolute fury and ran off to that brothel down by the riverside – sorry about that, Sephrenia.’
‘I’ve heard about it before, Vanion,’ she replied. ‘Styrics are not nearly as unworldly as you Elenes sometimes believe.’
‘Anyway, Arissa stayed in the brothel for several weeks, and when she was finally apprehended, Aldreas had no choice but to confine her in that cloister.’
‘That raises a question,’ Tynian said. ‘Considering the amount of time she spent in that brothel and the number of customers she had, how can anyone be sure just who Lycheas’s father was?’
‘I was just coming to that,’ Vanion replied. ‘She assured Lycheas during one of his visits that she was pregnant before she went to the brothel. Aldreas married the Deiran Princess, and she died giving birth to Queen Ehlana. Lycheas was about six months old at the time, and Annias was doing his best to get Aldreas to legitimize him and make him his heir. That was too much even for Aldreas, and he flatly refused. It was about at that time that Sparhawk’s father died, and Sparhawk here took his hereditary position as King’s Champion. Annias began to grow alarmed at Ehlana’s progress after Sparhawk took charge of her education. By the time she was eight, he decided that he had to get her champion away from her before he could make her so strong that he wouldn’t be able to control her. That’s when he persuaded Aldreas to send Sparhawk into exile in Rendor, and then he sent Martel to Cippria to kill him to make sure he’d never come back and complete Ehlana’s education.’
‘But he was too late, wasn’t he?’ Sparhawk smiled. ‘Ehlana was already too strong for him.’
‘How did you manage that, Sparhawk?’ Kalten asked. ‘You’ve never really been what you’d call a very inspiring teacher.’
‘Love, Kalten,’ Sephrenia said quite softly. ‘Ehlana’s loved Sparhawk since she was very young, and she tried to do things the way he’d have wanted her to do them.’
Tynian laughed. ‘You did it to yourself then, Sparhawk,’ he said.
‘Did what?’
‘You made a woman of steel, and now she’s going to force you to marry her – and she’s strong enough to get away with it.’
‘Tynian,’ Sparhawk said acidly, ‘you talk too much.’ The big Pandion was suddenly irritated – all the more so because he privately had to admit that Tynian was probably right.
/> ‘The point here, though, is that none of this is really very new or surprising,’ Kurik noted. ‘It’s certainly not enough to keep Lycheas’s head on his shoulders.’
‘That came a little later,’ Vanion told him. ‘Ehlana frightened him so much when she seemed on the verge of having him summarily executed that he was babbling at first. Anyway, after Annias had forced Aldreas to send Sparhawk into exile, the king began to change. He actually started to develop some backbone. It’s a little hard sometimes to know why people do things.’
‘Not really, Vanion,’ Sephrenia disagreed. ‘Aldreas was under the thumb of the Primate, but in his heart he knew that what he was doing was wrong. Perhaps he felt that his champion might have been able to rescue his soul, but once Sparhawk was gone, Aldreas began to realize that he was totally alone. If his soul was going to be saved, he was going to have to do it himself.’
‘She might be very close to right, you know,’ Bevier marvelled. ‘Perhaps I should make some study of the ethics of Styricum. A synthesis of Elene and Styric ethical thought might be very interesting.’
‘Heresy,’ Ulath observed flatly.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘We’re not supposed to consider the possibility that other ethics have any validity, Bevier. It’s a little shortsighted, I’ll admit, but our Church is like that sometimes.’
Bevier rose to his feet, his face flushed. ‘I will not listen to insults directed at our holy mother,’ he declared.
‘Oh, sit down, Bevier,’ Tynian told him. ‘Ulath’s only teasing you. Our Genidian brothers are much more deeply versed in theology than we give them credit for.’
‘It’s the climate,’ Ulath explained. ‘There’s not a great deal to do in Thalesia in the winter – unless you like to watch it snow. We have a lot of time for meditation and study.’
‘For whatever reason, Aldreas began to refuse some of Annias’s more outrageous demands for money,’ Vanion continued his account, ‘and Annias started to get desperate. That’s when he and Arissa decided to murder the king. Martel provided the poison, and Annias made arrangements to slip Arissa out of that cloister. He probably could have poisoned Aldreas himself, but Arissa begged him to let her do it because she wanted to kill her brother herself.’