Scarlet and the White Wolf [02] - Mariner's Luck (25 page)

Nenos chuckled.

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"It is all very well for you to tease. You have had a wife for ninety years."

"Ninety-two."

"Pardon me."

They grinned at each other and drank their che.

"You know," Nenos continued as he stacked the che utensils in the basin, to be carried away with the other dishes to the great kitchens below in the palace. "I have had much experience with willful young men who don't know how to stay put." His old eyes met Liall's for a moment, and there was a mist over his gaze. "I do not think I have said how good it is to see you again, Nazheradei."

Liall bowed his head over his cup. "I did not mean to abandon so many. I had no choice. You know that."

Nenos quickly looked away to hide any emotion. "Your che is getting cold," he said gruffly.

Liall took another sip. It was stronger than most Byzan blends. He had missed it, and Nenos. Probably one of the few people he would ever miss from Rshan. "You never did find me that day," Liall said suddenly, a hint of a teasing smile on his lips.

The old man huffed in amusement. "I would never have found you the next time either, if Nadei hadn't..." Nenos trailed off, his face falling into lines of sorrow. "Forgive me, my prince. It was an accident. I did not mean to speak of him."

"There's nothing to forgive." The cup was clenched hard in Liall's hands. Liall put it in the basin before he broke it, mindful of Nenos's regretful expression. "Thank you for the 217

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che," he murmured, before leaving the kitchen and pulling the door closed softly.

* * * *

Liall could have walked through the Nauhinir and gotten to the Queen's tier faster, but his nerves were raw. He did not feel like ignoring stares or pretending to ignore them in the palace corridors, and there would be many today. Exiting the palace through the enclosed north gardens, he turned east toward the stables, passing the Shining Tower, where the death knell tolls for fallen kings and one day would toll for his mother. From there, he planned to cut back through the greenhouse and thence the kitchen and into the stairs, where he was unlikely to cross paths with anyone this time of day.

His assumption was that there had been no structural changes to the palace in the last sixty years, and in this, he was correct.

The stables smelled of dung, sweet hay, sawdust and healthy, well-tended animals. A few soldiers milled about, and there were guards and grooms as well, but they were busy at their own tasks. After the first disbelieving stares and whispers, they spared Liall little attention. Walking briskly through the vast, vaulted building, he spied in a line of tethered horses a blue-black stallion that was a hand higher than the rest. The mount was caparisoned in silver with a bridle made of strong blue silk, tough as leather. Liall stopped and ran his hand through the mount's thick mane, marveling at the softness. The stallion whinnied and gave Liall a 218

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knowing look from his dark, wet eyes, and a bolt of recognition hit the prince.

"You can't be ...
Argent?
Oh Deva, you can't be."

"He is not, but Argent was his grandsire."

Liall turned at the voice, and his jaw dropped. "Jarek!"

"Hello
, iaresh."

Khatai Jarek, the Queen's Champion, whom her younger recruits affectionately referred to as the Lion. The title
khatai
is like a general, one who leads the armies, and she was a few inches taller than Liall. Her hair—she still gathered it in a thick braid on her neck, Liall saw—had gone to gray, and there were new lines around her beautiful indigo eyes and her generous mouth, but her smile was the same. His heart leapt when she simply gathered him up in her great arms, muddied and burdened as she was with armor and weapons, and hugged him fiercely. It was like being fifteen again. He was so startled and pleased to see her that when she laughingly drew back and cupped his face in her rough hands, Liall grinned foolishly at her and pounded her shoulder. Perhaps she took it for encouragement, for she tugged her face forward and kissed him full on the mouth, somewhat longer than was proper even for old friends. When she released Liall, he almost scurried backwards. She laughed again.

"I was happy to see you. Please do not take offense, my prince." She sketched a short and choppy bow: a soldier's obeisance.

Liall made a noise of disgust. "Stop. There has never been any of that between us. I am glad to see you, too."

"You've arrived just in time."

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Jarek always was predictably to the point. "The army has not been called out yet, surely?"

She looked around quickly, her eyes darting to the corners. "Not here," she said lowly. "Follow me."

Jarek was housed in a solitary, guarded room next to the large and bustling soldier's barracks upwind of the stables.

She waved away the soldier who stood post by her door and motioned Liall to come in, and then stripped off her gloves and tossed them to her waiting aide, a young, pretty man who discreetly stepped out. There were maps unrolled on her desk and a crude, scaled model of the Nauhinir Palace.

"Wine?" she asked.

"Che, if you have it."

"We do." She snapped her fingers and her aide reappeared. He was a young soldier with the braided hair of the northern clans, and he had a red scar over the bridge of his nose that marred his pretty looks a little.

"Me'em?"

"Bring us che, Yveny. Not the grass-squeezings they serve the troops either."

"Aye, me'em."

Yveny ducked out, off to find the che. Liall gave Jarek a knowing look which she returned blandly.

"There are many rewards to risking your life for the Queen, such as handsome young men who do not simper at sharing the bed of a khatai," she said.

Liall bit his tongue on the reply that rose. No. Best to leave that bit of personal history to rumor and memory. Liall traced his fingers on the map, drawing a line from Fanorl to Na 220

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Karmun. There were other maps, most notably ones of Uzna Minor, Vladei and his brother Eleferi's province, and Jadizek, who owed its hereditary loyalty to Shikhoza's family.

"Are these coincidences?"

She snorted as she poured wine for herself. "You know me better than that."

Liall sighed. "This goes all the way to the eastern shore of Kalas Nauhin, I see."

"You see clearly. Vladei has been making preparation for this time since the day Cestimir was born. The apple has rotted deep, my prince."

"What will you do?"

She shrugged. "I will obey my Queen, and put a halt to them. The distaff line of Druz, your mother's house, ruled here for a thousand years before your father's. Cestimir's claim through his mother's bloodline is ten times as valid as Vladei's, whose claim stems from your uncle, the half-royal.

Yet," she finished sourly, "we must thank your father's half-brother, for without him we would not have Cestimir."

"Did my mother see Lankomir that way?" Liall asked sharply. "As a stud to serve the line of Druz?"

"She is a prudent ruler," the khatai evaded, which was answer enough.

"Jarek..."

She gave him a long, measuring look. "Nadiushka is a Queen first. Second, she is Rshani. Third, a mother. Last, if ever, she may have leisure to be a woman, but I do not believe she has given thought to that in a long time. She has 221

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Bhakamir, who reminds her that she is a woman sometimes, though even he knows she is well past such pleasures."

Nadiushka had never liked Lankomir, and Liall had marveled when the news came to him in Byzantur that she had consented to marry him, yet now many things were clear.

Her dead husband's half-brother had been a scantling, used only to provide an heir for Rshan that held claim from both houses. Whatever else Nadiushka might have felt in her secret heart, publicly she declared for Rshan first, herself after. A throb of sympathy and guilt passed through Liall: How utterly alone I left her. How abandoned she must have felt, and angry.

He did not press Jarek further on the matter, turning instead back to the maps. "Is there a plan?"

"When is there ever not? Uzna has been a breeding ground for unrest for the past two centuries. Now these vermin, these rebels loyal to Vladei," she stabbed a finger at the maps of Magur and Uzna Minor "have taken hold here and they must be stamped out. An example will have to be made."

That alarmed Liall. "Of whom?"

Jarek drank the small cup of wine in one swallow and wiped her mouth with her hand. "Not who, what. Magur."

"Oh," he said with sarcasm. "And there are no people in Magur, I gather."

"There are, but not very many and we can't afford to think of them as people. Magur is a thing that threatens the safety of the empire, so Magur must go. It's a town, not a city like Uzna or Jadizek, so the outcry among the nobles will be small. The routing will not be tied to this business of Vladei 222

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and his claim to the throne, not publicly. We will blame it on failure to pay taxes and inciting the garrison there to disaffect, which will fool no one. But ... we will get our message out loud and clear: challenge further, and regret."

Liall nodded, though his gut clenched with distaste. Jarek knew her business. Far be it from him to dictate to a general the affairs on her own field. He had learned his lesson on that account. "You never change," he said.

"All people change." Jarek loosened her armor and laid her sword across the narrow bunk. "You have." Then she grinned.

"Where is that delicate prince who traipsed into my unit, fresh from the palace, wanting to learn to be soldier? Eh, you were so soft I could still see the silk cushion attached to your ass."

They laughed together. It was more than a little true. "I was fifteen, what did you want?"

"Oh, a legend at the very least. That's what you thought anyway."

"The Tribeland campaigns taught me better," Liall chuckled, and then sobered a little. It was not funny. Those brutal campaigns had stripped away the youth in him, left him feel burned in his soul and hurting for years, and Jarek had been there to see it.

Jarek waved her hand. "Ah, lad, that was so long ago.

Look at you now."

His mouth curved as he hitched one leg up to sit on her desk and folded his arms. "What do you see, I wonder?"

"Well, not a
lion,
" she said, which made him smile again.

"Or a snow bear, but a wolf at the very least. I hear you are almost a legend among the lenilyn." Jarek stepped closer to 223

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him, her eyes growing hard. "Let me look at you for a moment."

After a full minute of searching Liall's face, she nodded shortly as if satisfied with the silent answer she had gained.

"You're a good man, Nazir. I'm glad to see it."

Liall looked away, shaken. "I am not always so good."

"Here now." Jarek's hand was under his chin, making him look at her. "You were always expecting more from yourself than any five men could give." She shook her head, and her hand turned caressing. "Iaresh," she said lowly. Beauty.

"You're enough to make a woman lose her head and do foolish things."

His heart was beating very fast. Oh, this was too much like being a boy again, which he did not think he truly enjoyed, but the feeling was compelling, her hands holding him still as her fingers began to explore the lines of his face gently.

"Like what?" Liall asked against all sense and reason, his throat dry.

"Like this."

She kissed him. Jarek had always had a rude tongue, but Liall was unprepared for the way she jerked him forward and sealed her mouth over his, how her tongue forced its way so quickly past his lips and plunged almost to the entrance of his throat, then slowed to learn his mouth again, to map every inch of it with fluttering softness as her skin brushed his cheek and her teeth nipped at his lower lip.

Gods, that tongue. He remembered the first time she had bedded him—for that's the way it was; she bedded him, not the other way around—and they had been lying in her bunk 224

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and touching. Liall was a fresh recruit in the khatai's tent, and she was pleasuring him with her hand, calling him beauty, iaresh, stroking his nude body with a skill that made him shudder and writhe and call out in a voice that shamed him to remember later.

Liall had seen her wield a sword and thought she was a demon with a blade, but that skill was only matched by her lovemaking. Scarlet had evinced surprise that he was such a good lover. Well, here is where he learned it.

Only when her hand dropped to settle between Liall's legs did he pull back. "Stop! I..." he gasped, and shook his head,

"I regret, but I cannot."

She smiled but did not remove her hand. "The little one? I heard you brought back an outlander concubine."

"Not concubine. Scarlet is my t'aishka."

He had not thought it was possible to surprise her. "I believed that part was exaggeration: servant's gossip or idle tales. Is he truly your forever beloved, this peasant lenilyn?"

"His name is Scarlet."

"Yes, I heard you." Her hand cupped and caressed him, and he could not hold back a hiss of pleasure as his flesh came alive under her touch, stiffening quickly.

Hells, what was this? He was not a boy to be seduced, he was a man. A man who has just left his lover's bed, he thought with a flush of shame. At least, I was a man before I walked into her room. The past has such power over us.