In Treachery Forged (The Law of Swords) (14 page)

“Intellectual growth,” Rykeifer proclaimed. “Stability and security, prosperity, the rights of your people to live life as they desire. Those are noble goals, and those are the goals we Sviedans have shared for our nation’s entire existence. We launch few wars of aggression, but we have been known to start a fight when those things have been threatened. It is one of the reasons I feel our nation is worthy of my service.”

“Agreed,” came Euleilla’s voice, coming up from behind Maelgyn. He almost jumped; usually, he could sense her approach. She, however, seemed so weary her usually strong magic aura was quite dimmed. She was stumbling around almost drunkenly, except she wasn’t drunk, and didn’t look well at all.

“I’m going to go take a bath. Are you coming?” Maelgyn asked, watching her.

“Please,” she nodded.

He saw her stagger again, and immediately was at her side holding her up. Nodding farewell to Rykeifer, he half-carried her away. “Come on, let’s go.”

She sighed. Once they were out of everyone else’s hearing distance, she said, “I don’t think I can muster the strength to blindfold you this time. Can I trust you not to take too much advantage of the situation?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I suspect I’ll be too tired to do anything but sleep in the baths, myself.”

Chapter 9

Once more, Maelgyn and Euleilla were on the road. Elm Knoll had been busily digging graves as they left, but at least all of the bodies had been sorted. In the end, there were a hundred and thirty four killed with forty-three wounded. Seven of the wounded would likely be dead in a few days, but the rest of them would live... and within a couple of weeks would be marched down to a nearby city that could afford the manpower to imprison them.

The stop at Elm Knoll was probably the last chance Maelgyn would get to hear anything about the war for quite some time, so he hoped to get a last report on the situation along the front before leaving. There was the threat, however, that the raiders would make a second assault on the village. With that in mind, Maelgyn could not afford to risk capture by staying, even if his presence would increase Elm Knoll’s chances of surviving an assault.

So, he and Euleilla had discussed the matter as they soaked in their bath after returning from the battlefield. He hadn’t exactly kept his eyes closed on that trip into the hot spring, but only because he didn’t want to stumble face-first into the water. The way he’d been feeling, he doubted he’d have been able to keep from drowning if he had. He figured she knew, anyway – he could sense she was amused by his embarrassment over the whole thing.

They had talked extensively about whether to stay in town or leave. Or rather, he had talked extensively, and she had offered the occasional encouraging word or bit of advice here and there. The end result was that the two of them would be moving on towards Sopan even sooner than Maelgyn had originally planned.

He was a bit worried about how Euleilla’s presence – and position – would be taken upon reaching Sopan. That she was ‘married’ to him would probably be excused, given the way it happened – it would be embarrassing how it came about, but he was fairly certain that wouldn’t be the big issue. If he decided to
stay
married to her, however, that would be another matter.

Most marriages between royalty and peasantry were unpopular. Why this was so, Maelgyn never understood, but they were. Historically, many of them came about from a romance between a household guard or servant and one of the princes or princesses they protected. On rare occasions, a peasant marriage may mean a marriage between a royal and someone of heroic stature, or of great wealth, and these occasionally were well-thought-of in the public eye. Perhaps the most celebrated peasant-royal marriage was a combination of several of these.

Sword Prince Agaeb, who would later become Sword King Agaeb IV and one of the longest-reigning monarchs in Sviedan history, had in his employ a female guardsman – a rarity in that day, but more common now. That guardsman, the future Queen Amberry, had been the daughter of a wealthy merchant. She had run away from home to join the army, and had worked her way into position in the Royal court as a guardsman after many heroic acts on the battlefield.

Six assassins came, incapacitating all of Sword Prince Agaeb’s protectors but her. She fought them all off single-handedly, and nearly died of her wounds in his arms. He nursed her back to health, and by the time she had fully recovered they were betrothed.

Despite the general feeling of goodwill among the citizenry for Queen Amberry, some of the nobility resented her. Over the course of their life together, she had to put up with numerous assassination attempts on herself while still defending her husband’s life, much as she had when she was still his guardsman. She outlived her husband by a grand total of one week, for she was killed during his funeral; it was said she hadn’t even tried to defend herself, though many believe she could have fought the assassins off even in her old age. That outrage had caused the people of Svieda to riot, and the nobles who had opposed the marriage throughout its duration were deposed, in many cases unfairly, in the belief that they were involved in the assassination.

Most peasant-royal couples didn’t have nearly as much popular support as Agaeb and Amberry, however. A little more than a century before Maelgyn was born, Sword Princess Ivari married Merchant Prince Laimoth. In Svieda, unlike among the Dwarves, a ‘Merchant Prince’ was not a royal title but instead one given to a man with so many funds and assets that he could match the financial power of one of the provincial governments. It was Laimoth’s trading empire that sustained the Borden Isles, and Ivari was the Duchess of the Borden Isles Province. She knighted him a peer of the realm and married him. In the Borden Isles, they were quite the popular couple... but Laimoth’s pseudo-royalty and sudden peerage was not enough for everyone.

On the mainland, Laimoth was resented for what many people regarded as ‘unfair’ trade practices. Maelgyn had studied the historical evidence, and saw nothing but a fair businessman who just happened to have a near monopoly over trade with the Borden Isles. Given what he now knew about the Sho’Curlas’ influence in the rebellions and unrest throughout Svieda, he wondered if Laimoth’s unpopularity was brought about by their malfeasance. It was all too easy to make the less fortunate resent the wealthy just by claiming they weren’t doing enough to help the poor, the government, or whatever sympathetic cause the inciter could come up with. Or more insidiously, to manipulate dealings and give the claims of unfairness some hint of truth. Whatever they did worked, for it was Laimoth and Ivari’s son, Elaneth, who wound up leading the Borden Isle rebellion, eventually forcing Svieda into the unwanted alliance with Sho’Curlas.

That was an extreme case, but most peasant-royal marriages were treated closer to Ivari and Laimoth’s than they were Agaeb and Amberry’s. Jealousy and resentment by the citizenry, arrogant bigotry by the nobility, and ambivalence at best from the priests, pages, squires, military officers, and others who were somewhat in-between. Would he be able to stay married to Euleilla, knowing how poorly she would be regarded by so many people who never even saw her? Especially considering how hard a life she already had?

Maybe he should talk to her about it. But not yet... not until he was more certain of his feelings. He wanted to give her the final say, and it was only fair that she know exactly what she was up against.

As far as signs of a growing romance between them was concerned, well... they were there. Even he could see them. They had been walking to the baths, for example, he noticed how her own sweet scent had been obscured by the stench of blood. It was only after he noticed that peculiarity that he realized he’d already memorized her natural scent, and found himself enjoying it and missing it when it wasn’t there. Cora, their maid, had remarked something about how she wished she had a man who would look at her the way he’d been looking at Euleilla when they were at breakfast the morning after the battle – the maid hadn’t meant to speak loud enough to be heard, but both he and Euleilla had heard her nevertheless.

Still, he believed it was more of a fondness combined with physical attraction than love that he felt. Being battle partners in two separate battles and traveling companions for several weeks, that fondness was bound to exist by now, and the physical attraction had been there since he first saw her. It meant nothing, though; it was too soon for him to be in love. He didn’t think he was. Was he? He wondered, vaguely, how he would know.

Perhaps the other question should be did he – or would he – want her as a wife? What were the qualities he wanted in a bride?

He would need someone with a level head. Euleilla had broken down, emotionally, twice that he’d seen her... but both of those times were definitely for just cause: Once because he had learned her secret, and once because he hadn’t understood that he’d made their supposedly pretend marriage into a real one. In crisis situations, however, she had proven herself unflappable: She hadn’t even flinched when those thugs had cornered her back when they first met. She carried herself brilliantly in battle here and when they intervened to help El’Athras – both times, she was the key to victory and his own survival. Even when searching the dead for survivors, she remained in control and in command. Euleilla qualified, there.

He would need a wife who brought some talent or treasure into his kingdom. Well, there was no doubt Euleilla was both a talent and a treasure, given her magical ability. That, however, was a talent and a treasure he would likely have, at this point, whether she was married to him or not. He felt confident enough in their friendship that she would stay with him, regardless.

As bad as it sounded, he had to make sure his wife wasn’t ugly. She would have to be a symbol that his people could look up to, someone they would remember positively, and physical attractiveness went a long way towards that. Maelgyn had not fears on that front, however. Despite the hair, which even he sometimes wanted to shove out of her eyes, she was very striking. Rykeifer had commented on her beauty, as well, so he wasn’t alone in thinking that.

He wanted someone he could talk with... and, despite her minimalist form of speech at times, she was actually quite conversational. Initially it was a trifle difficult to relate to her, but now he could figure out her moods enough to know when she wasn’t talking because she was hiding something and when she wasn’t talking because she found it amusing to keep him in the dark. And, he noticed, the later reason was much more common... which showed that she had another thing he wanted in a wife – a sense of humor.

So, was there really anything he needed in a wife that she didn’t provide?

Well... perhaps he needed to think about this some more. He’d barely known her a few weeks, which was much too fast to make a decision of this magnitude. Regardless, they needed to talk. By the time he let her know everything she was going to be in for and let her experience just a touch of what being the wife of a Sword Prince truly was like, perhaps he’d feel a little more confident that keeping her as his bride was the right decision. Or perhaps she’d realize the idea was simply too much for her, which would take the choice out of his hands. At least then he wouldn’t be so confused about it all.

“You okay?” Euleilla asked, startling him out of his thoughts.

“Yeah,” he answered. “Why?”

“You’re quiet,” she answered. “Usually, you talk. Or sometimes you hum, or whistle, or... well, usually you make noise when we travel.”

“Ah,” Maelgyn said. He was a bit surprise at that; he never knew that he hummed or whistled. He’d have to consciously avoid that in the future – it wasn’t always safe to hum as you walked, especially in wartime. “Well, I was just thinking.”

“What about?”

He grinned, but made sure to keep his voice as casual and natural as possible when he said, “You.”

“‘kay,” she answered, even more naturally and casually. Her persistent smile twitched in amusement, but she said nothing more.

They continued on in silence for a little bit more, before the silence finally got to Maelgyn. “Aren’t you curious?”

“Maybe,” she said. “But I’d rather you thought about me than explained what you were thinking about me.”

Maelgyn laughed. “Right. Well, I’ll probably think of you some more, later, but right now I’d like to talk for a bit.”

“Sure.”

He did want to talk, but at the moment he did not want to talk about their marriage. This wasn’t the right setting, nor the right time, to have that talk yet. But he always had other questions for her, so there would always be something to talk about. Come to think of it, that was probably a good reason for staying married to her, too.

“Actually, I was wondering just how you sense the latent magic in people. I know it’s something you learned to do because of your eyes, but I was wondering if it was something you could teach, as well?”

“Possibly,” she mused. “Gramps use to try playing hide and seek with me. He let me use any method I wanted, so I stuck a few grains of magic powder on him when he wasn’t looking. Sometimes, when I was following those grains of magic powder, I found myself losing track of it. I repeated the experiment several times, thinking he was using a lodestone or something to help himself hide, but I eventually realized it wasn’t a lodestone obscuring my magic; it was his own body. The human body, itself, generates the same waves of energy as a lodestone does. It’s not very clearly focused, and very hard to ‘see’ unless you realize what you’re looking for, but it’s there. Tell me, could you find a lodestone if you weren’t looking for it?”