Summerblood (21 page)

Avall blushed in spite of himself. For all the intimacy they'd shared, of body—and mind, through the aegis of the gems— Strynn could still make him feel like the beardless boy who had been so enraptured with her when he was fourteen. And, in spite of three seasons of marriage, he was not yet reconciled to the fact that she
was
his, to touch when he would, where he would, and that she had the same—and oft-claimed—right to
him. At times like this he could almost forget that he was a reluctant King, a political father, and a smith denied his craft. He could almost forget he had a bond-brother he loved as much as anyone alive, and live only to be with Strynn. He wondered if all married men felt the same. Bond-mates were usually taken young, the bond born of adolescent pain, insecurity, and passion. Marriage was an adjunct of adulthood, and—typically— the result of much more careful consideration, for marriage forged links between clans as well as people. Who would Strynn have wed, he wondered, if left to her own volition?

“What are you thinking, Vall?” she murmured, taking his hand. With the query came a nuzzling around his mind— which didn't surprise him. She would never invade his thoughts without permission, but the mind sometimes did its own wanting, and one had now and then to rein it in, lest curiosity satisfy itself unasked.

“I'm just tangled in the complexity of it all,” he replied, not moving. “Love, sex, and friendship, and how they can all merge and mingle; and how trying to set priorities among them is much more involved than trying to run a kingdom— and just as scary.”

“Dangerous, too.”

Avall nodded vigorously, then took a deep breath, not looking at her. “Which brings up a dangerous question. One I keep finding myself having to ask again and again, though I don't know why, but … are you ever jealous of Rann?”

Her grip tightened ever so slightly. “Are
you
ever jealous of Merryn?”

“Merry's my sister!”

“And my bond-mate. Which means that we're allowed to be closer than you and she could be.”

Avall shook his head. “But you and I have been as close as Rann and I have been …”

She regarded him frankly. “But you two have been that close longer. I knew your bond existed when I agreed to marry you. I knew you … liked me and I knew you'd wanted me at
one time, and I knew you'd try as hard as any man alive to love me, and I knew you were a man I could love. But I wasn't sure you were the
only
one I could love, because that choice was stolen from me.”

“It's so easy to forget that.”

Strynn gnawed her lip. “I forget it myself, sometimes. I no longer feel his touch, when I'm with you. I no longer look at Averryn and think at once that he's Eddyn's child.”

“Nor do I,” Avall admitted. “It's not hard for me to think he's mine—for now. But I … I guess I'm afraid that, though I love him now, I … might not as he grows older. He
is
made from Eddyn's seed, and that seed will manifest one day. Maybe he'll be taller, or more reckless, or more vain, or—”

“More talented than you?” Her voice had gone sharp and cold. “You're afraid of that, aren't you? That he'll surpass you the way you surpassed Eellon.”

A snort. “I didn't surpass Eellon.”

“Yes, you did. And Tyrill. There's no point in denying it.
I'm
accounted Tyrill's equal, and I wasn't even born a smith.”

“But if two mastersmiths have a child, that child is bound to surpass either of its parents …”

Strynn's harshness succumbed to a wicked grin. “And if another smith, better than the first, should sire a child on that same mother … ?”

“It would be the best smith ever.”

Strynn chuckled. “Would you risk it, Avall? Would you dare sire the child of legends?”

His smile gleamed even in the half-light. “You're saying we're legends?”

A shrug. “We don't seem to have much choice.”

“And now might be a good time to try?”

“I'm saying that, King or no, you're required to give Eron three children, and that I would be honored to bear them.”

Avall felt a stirring in his loins which he didn't try to suppress. Yet something still gnawed at him. Maybe it was the environment: the softness of the shadows shaping a kind of dreamlike
otherworld in which it was safe to say what could not be said under harder light. And so he asked that which could shatter it all.

“What about Kylin?”

She didn't falter, though something like pain flickered in her eyes. “He … loves me, I think. And I'd be lying if I said I didn't … care for him. But, believe me when I say that I would never, ever put him above you.”

“But do you
love
him?”

A long pause, then: “I love different things about him. And—” She paused again. “And you and he love different things about me, I think.”

Avall cocked his head, genuinely curious. “How so?”

“You love the hard things in me: my strength, my skill … my honor. Kylin—loves the soft things. But you know what's really funny?—which I only just realized. I love you two the other way around. I love the soft things in you—the part you let me see that you reveal to no one else except Merry and Rann—the boy that's still in you, I guess. But Kylin—I love that solid core in him he doesn't know he has: the fact that he just goes on. He's blind, and people want to feel sorry for him and make allowances for him, but he doesn't let them. He's iron sheathed in sylk, I guess. You're sylk sheathed in iron.”

Avall exhaled a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. “That's as much as I dared hope,” he conceded. “Though I'm just as glad he's far away tonight.”

“So am I,” Strynn smirked, “because I've got some
very
interesting ideas about how we should spend the rest of the evening, and I want
no
interruptions.”

Avall grinned back. “I think we can manage that. It's one of the advantages of being King.”

“Maybe I was wrong about Averryn,” Avall murmured into the nape of Strynn's neck, an indeterminate but very pleasant while later. He was curled around her on a fur rug they'd dragged onto the north balcony of their suite. She lay before
him, naked, as was he, and utterly exposed to the cool night breeze that made her skin shiver and her nipples tense even when he didn't touch them. It was other skin he touched now, palms cupping the fullness of her breasts when fingers didn't venture lower.

She stopped one such foray with a hand, yet not so much as to forestall caresses. “What do you mean?”

“That parts of you are at least as smooth as parts of him.”

Her hand found his upper thigh—all she could easily reach, the way they lay—and stroked it in turn, first sensually, then critically. “You're in need of waxing.”

“I haven't had time since the war,” he whispered into her hair, as he freed his fingers again.

“You haven't
made
time. You and Rann should do each other. I'll watch. That way we could all learn something.”

“So now I have to worry about him as well as Kylin?”

“You have to worry about no one, love,” Strynn gave back seriously. “But he does have to sire his three sometime, and Div can't give them to him.”

“Do you have any suggestions?”

Her hand guided his a certain way.

“Not
that
kind of suggestion—though that one's interesting, too!”

“Foolish boy! You're as full of questions as—”

“As you were full of me a while ago? We didn't talk then.”

“We'd no need to. Even without the gems there's that incredible closeness they give us unaware. I am so sorry, Avall, for all those other lovers who can't know that. It—Oh! Do that again!”

He did, and for a fair long while they spoke with their bodies alone. Eventually, however, they fell apart, sweaty and sated.

“Mates for Rann,” Strynn recalled abruptly. “I'd give him a child if you consented—once I've provided your three.”

Avall leaned up on his elbow. “And maybe one for Kylin? You're expecting a lot of your fertility.”

“My fertility owes me after what it got me into with Eddyn.”

He laughed in spite of the reference.

“As best I can figure,” she continued loftily, “there're at least two others, whom I suspect Div would also approve.”

“And who might they be?”

She rolled onto her side to face him. “Don't tell me you can't guess.”

“Humor me.”

“Someone you're very close to.”

He tried to shrug. “But I'm not close to any women except you, Div, and … oh, Eight, Strynn, you don't mean Merry?”

“They could both do worse, given that she's unlikely to wed. And it shouldn't bother him overmuch, seeing how she looks so much like you.”

Avall blinked back surprise. “Well, maybe … And the other?”

“Elvix, for variety.”

“I thought she and Krynneth—”

“For variety.”

“Speaking of which, what about Myx and Riff ?”

“They're the closest set of bond-brothers I've ever seen, except for you and Rann. They're also both betrothed, though I've never met either of the very lucky ladies in question— thanks, in large part, to the Fateing, which seems determined to keep them apart. They—” She broke off, cocking her head. “Avall, I thought you gave orders.”

“What?”

“Someone's at the door.”

He sat up quickly, the wind cool against his bare skin. At first he heard nothing, but then he caught it: two doors away, faint but clear, and in the cadence that signaled emergency. “Eight!” he spat, and rose, snatching up a maroon wrap-robe as he strode through the adjoining bedchamber. By the time he'd reached the common hall, the cadence was sounding again, this time accompanied by a voice.

Myx, by the sound of it, and very, very agitated.

“Majesty!” Loudest yet, and barely muffled by oak. He'd
have to have a word with the man about discretion. Scowling, Avall wrenched the door open.

It was indeed Myx. But Riff was with him, and between them was a boy Avall had never seen. Clanless, to look at him, fourteen at most, and frightened out of his mind.

“They told me they'd kill me if I didn't …” the boy wailed. “They told me—”

“Who told you
what
?” Avall demanded furiously.

Whereupon the boy flung himself flat on the floor, sobbing wretchedly.

Taking a deep breath, Avall sank down beside the boy and laid his hand gently on his back, to comfort, not condemn. And though he'd never bonded with the lad before, some of the boy's emotions found their way through that link. Fear.
Raw
fear. Fear of what was and what had been and what would become, all three.

Riff joined Avall at the boy's other side. “Veen said he approached her at the main gate, scared out of his mind, but that he had something with him that alarmed her more than the boy's fear did. She didn't dare leave her post, so she sent for me.”

“And what was this thing?”

“I don't know,” Riff retorted anxiously. “He wouldn't tell me, nor would Veen, beyond the fact that it was important. She simply told me to see that he reached you at once.”

“There's something in his hand,” Myx noted.

“Lad,” Avall prompted softly, “you've done your duty now. Whoever gave you something to give me—I'm here to receive it.”

“It's two things, Majesty,” the boy sobbed, slowly sitting up.

“Two things?”

“I only showed the lady guard what they told me to show her so they'd let me in to see you.”

“Who is ‘they’?”

“The men who said they'd kill me
and
my family if I didn't do what they said.”

Avall took the boy by both shoulders, trying to resist the temptation to give him a good shake. “What did they look like? Did they have on any livery?”

A helpless shrug. “Men. It was dark.”

Avall bit back a sharp reply. No point terrifying the boy more than he already was. “Let's see what you showed Veen. I'm interested to see what could make her countermand a royal order.”

The boy wouldn't look at him, but he finally opened his hand far enough to reveal something that gleamed gold in his grimy palm.

A ring.

A Hold-Warden's ring, by the configuration. But whose? Avall plucked it gingerly from the grimy palm and held it into better light.

“Gem-Hold-Winter,” he said dully. Strynn was at the door, he noted, wondering when she'd joined them. He passed the ring up to her. “I don't want to know what this means.”

“I have a message that tells,” the boy replied, patting the front of his filthy tunic.

“I'll take it, then,” Avall told him softly. “With thanks.”

The boy promptly fished a sealed copper message cylinder from within his ragged clothing. “They said they'd watch until I went in the Citadel,” he volunteered. “So I had to, Majesty. I
had
to.”

“No one here will harm you,” Avall assured him, rising. “But I may have to do some harming sooner than I thought.” He eyed his companions speculatively. “Riff, go find Rann and Lyk, then take this lad to Bingg and tell him to get him fed and pampered, but not to let him go until I say so. Myx, get Veen and send her here at once, while you relieve her. She ranks you, I'm afraid, and I need her level head just now. Have her pick up Vorinn, if she can find him. I'll tell you everything when I can, I promise.”

“As you will, Majesty.”

Riff was hesitating. “Anyone else, Majesty?”

Avall rounded on him. “Whom would you suggest?”

“Given that's the Warden's Ring of Gem-Hold-Winter,” Riff replied bravely, “I'd say the Chiefs of Myrk and Gem.”

“Tomorrow,” Avall grunted. “Someone needs to get some sleep tonight. Now, if you don't mind, I've got a message to read.”

And with that he and Strynn returned to their suite and locked the door. Only then did he realize that he'd left no one on watch outside.

But he forgot about that entirely when he read the message the boy had brought. And he almost forgot the message as well when he found what was inside a smaller cylinder within the roll of parchment, attached to it by a ribbon as though it were a pendant seal.

A finger: tan, slim, and of indeterminate age—but female, by the carefully shaped nail, and with a pale band around it that exactly matched the ring.

“Crim,” Strynn breathed. “Oh, Eight.”