Sworn To Defiance (11 page)

Vana leaned forward and said with deadly seriousness, “Exactly how much of the Companions’ Guild handbook did you read?”

“All of it,” Ciardis quickly said.

“Most of it,” she amended when Vana raised an eyebrow.

Vana snorted. “There’s your problem. It’s designed to be read from the first page to the last. We haven’t been the empire’s preeminent guild for over a hundred years by welcoming slackers into our fold.”

Ciardis sighed and said, “What did I do wrong
this
time?”

“I can’t tell you here. But you’re going to need to know this.”

Ciardis sat back with a groan and hugged a pillow to her chest. Whatever it was it didn’t sound fun. Life had been so much easier trapped in the north and battling demonic hordes.

I
t wasn’t long before Ciardis heard the gates of the imperial palace open to her traveling group of soldiers and friends. It would have been hard to miss as the sound of the massive iron doors swinging open was like a trumpet piercing the quiet morning air. Curiosity overcame her for a moment. She had seen the imperial palace many times. But never from this entrance. It was the entrance to the quarters of the second-most powerful person in the land.

The husband or wife of the current ruler.

The last person to call these quarters home was Sebastian’s mother. Empress Ryana, long may she rest in peace, had died in childbirth while bearing Sebastian into the world. His father, Bastien, after losing two wives successively in less than a decade, had declared he didn’t wish to lose another. So he refused a third marriage. It had been over fifteen years and he had kept that promise. As they passed through the gates, Ciardis wondered if the emperor’s choice to not marry again had more to do with the fact that Maradian had taken his place than personal problems about having a third wife.

Then she shivered. Because if that was true they had all been paying obedience to a man masquerading as the true emperor for almost as long as she had been alive.

As the palanquin was set down on the ground, she climbed out and thanked the soldiers for bearing them.

She may have been a noble woman and the future wife of the emperor, but Ciardis still showed respect and gratitude when someone did a task for her. She couldn’t imagine it had been easy bearing the palanquin. She knew from experience what a heavy load could do to the upper body. She remembered with an uncomfortable twitch of her shoulder blades, the aches and pains that would settle in the muscles of her shoulders after a long morning bearing a heavy load of wet laundry over to the drying lines in the village of her youth. This was no different.

The soldiers murmured their gratitude with surprise in their deep voices.

She smiled, curtseyed, and went to speak with their captain.

Staring into his hard eyes, she said, “Well, we’re here.”

He crossed belligerent arms and she swore a tic appeared in his right eye. “So we are.”

“So you can leave,” she said sweetly.

He raised an eyebrow, looked her hard in the eyes and slowly signal with a loop of finger to his men that they were to pack-up and leave. She noticed that all of his wounded were gone, so the rest were quick to trot back into formation and head out of the palace gates. Their leader following shortly behind on a stallion with one last lingering look at Ciardis Weathervane.

Then Ciardis thought to take care of her own wounded.

She heard Skarar crying from inside the palanquin. His father had poked a ruffled head in between the curtains to soothe him but she knew he needed medical attention first. A woman came out of the palace wearing a linen maid’s uniform. She looked to be on her way home rather than toward Ciardis’s group for service.

“Please,” Ciardis shouted out frantically, “we need help.”

The woman looked at them, muddied, broken and obviously of ill repute, sniffed, and walked away toward the gate.

Then Sebastian stepped in her path. He was five feet away from the woman, but his face was like rolling thunder. Dangerous and deadly. He said something and whatever it was had the darker-skinned woman so frightened that she turned and ran back into the palace. Less than two minutes later she was back with a woman in healers’ robes, two guards holding a stretcher, their wary palace guards with swords held out, and a gaggle of servants that only seemed to grow.

The healer with skin like a summer mink’s coat did her job with little fuss and asked the soldiers to transfer Skarar to her infirmary. Before they could move him, Ciardis said, “He’ll be able to leave of his own free will, yes?”

The woman looked up at her shocked. As if by asking Ciardis had implied she would imprison the griffin herself. Ciardis was just being careful. She didn’t want the young griffin further harmed or imprisoned because of her. Skar or his father.

“Of course,” said the woman huffily.

“On your oath as a healer?” said Vana softly.

The woman looked back and forth between them, and then stroked the shivering young griffins head feathers. “On my oath as a member of the Healers’ Guild, no harm will come to this lad.”

Ciardis nodded and the woman with her two guards bore Skarar away followed closely by Skar and the golden griffin. Ciardis could see Seraphina straining to go with them, but her father held on to her little hand tightly.

He looked from the stretcher being borne away to Ciardis.

Then Jason said, “Skar has been my oldest friend since childhood. I must see to him and his young one.”

“We would expect no less,” said Sebastian solemnly. “We’ll speak about your...theories later.”

The man nodded and with the firm yank of his daughter’s hand to prod him, they moved on.

Ciardis turned away to see palace servants hurrying towards them out of a cavernous hallway entrance. Nervously, they gathered in front of Ciardis. At least two dozen scurried to take their places until she lost count.

Then a large matronly woman came forward. She wasn’t meek and submissive like the giggling girls and whispering palace boys that arrayed themselves behind her. Her eyes were sharp, her hands were on her hips, and she looked downright belligerent. If Ciardis had imagined a welcoming party into the palace walls, it hadn’t been one of young, untrained servants and a woman who looked more ready to kick them out than allow them entrance inside the hallowed halls.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Sebastian standing back in the shadows with Vana beside him. She sensed that he was faintly amused but couldn’t fathom why.

The woman in front of her didn’t give her a chance to discern why. “I am Mary Marlstone.”

Ciardis smiled and dipped into a curtsey. It was an honor that she didn’t have to bestow on the woman, clearly not a noble or a mage, but she did it anyway. Perhaps it would earn her some goodwill.

Straightening she caught an even deeper frown cross the woman’s face. Or maybe not.

In the shadow of her cloak, she heard a girl stifle a giggle at the woman’s expression.

Ciardis wiped the smile off of her face. This wasn’t going the way she wanted and she was done being pleasant while covered in blood and being whispered about. 

“Who are you?” she asked.

The woman looked down a ruddy and splotched nose that looked like it had been broken in two places and had her hair tied back into a neat bun that didn’t hide the fact that if was freed her face would be framed in riotous curls.

Well, we have that in common
. Ciardis thought to herself morosely.

“Head of the empress’s household,” the woman said flatly.

Ciardis shifted uncomfortably and raised her chin. “I wish to claim residence here alongside my companions and the prince heir.”

The woman let an eye wander over to Sebastian, who didn’t twitch a muscle.

“It’s been a long time since the boy was here.”

“The boy?” spluttered Ciardis, indignant on her future husband’s behalf. “That boy is your future ruler and a tad more of a man than any of the whispering idiots you have arrayed behind you.”

Finally the woman cracked a smile.

“Well now, you’re not such a sopping princess as I’ve heard, then,” the woman said with a curious inflection in her voice.

Ciardis’s back stiffened. She wanted to lay into the woman. Fortunately, for Ms. Marlstone, Sebastian stepped forward at that moment and put a hand on the back of Ciardis’s waist. It was probably supposed to be a reassuring presence. Ciardis preferred to think of it as proprietary rather than the warning it was for her to be nice. She didn’t need him telling her to be nice. Besides, this woman had started it.

Head of the empress’s household, indeed.

“What kind of head of household challenged the presumed mistress of the home?” she muttered to herself.

“The kind that’s interested in the well-being of the master,” said the woman snidely.

Ciardis jumped a half a foot and flushed. She hadn’t realized she’d said that aloud.

Before she could respond, the woman reached forward and enveloped the prince heir in the largest hug Ciardis had ever seen.

To her surprise, proper and careful Sebastian let the woman do so. When he stepped back he was grinning. “Ciardis Weathervane, may I introduce you to the woman that cared for me and kept me alive for the first ten years of my life?”

“As well as the next ten, if I have anything to say about it,” the woman said with a quick pinch of Sebastian’s cheeks, leaving him flushed.

He turned and caught Ciardis’s hand in his own as he said, “When my mother died it was Mary who was my wet-nurse, my caretaker, and eventually my surrogate mother.”

Ciardis’s mouth opened in surprise as she looked at Mary with new eyes.

Unfortunately, Mary didn’t look too pleased with her as she eyed the Weathervane in front of her.

With a grunt, Mary said, “Bit on the dirty
and
skinny side, don’t you think, lad?”

This time it was Ciardis who flushed in absolute mortification. It was odd how one comment from this woman could bring her to her knees, but appearing in front of the emperor in a dirtier state hadn’t deterred her normal confidence.

Finally, Sebastian recognized that Ciardis had had enough. “She’s had a rough time and needs a healer. We all need a bath and some food. Will you guest us in my mother’s quarters before our meeting with the nobles this afternoon?”

Mary sniffed. “Of course, lad. You should have come here first instead of staying in that dratted lord chamberlain’s manor.”

Sebastian said, “Well, it was a matter of circumstances then.”

“Nonsense,” Mary tutted. “He can’t protect and care for you the way I can. Bring your friends with you. We’ll get you fixed up.”

Under Sebastian’s hold, Ciardis stiffened. She did
not
like the way Mary had addressed her.

Mary noticed the change in Ciardis’s expression. Turning back from the instructions she was giving to her followers, she said, “Unless that will be a problem?”

“No, no,” Sebastian hurried to say. “We appreciate you opening the guest rooms on such short notice.”

He almost ended that sentence in a yowl when Ciardis dropped the heel of her boot on his foot.

A
n hour later Sebastian and Ciardis were facing off in one of those sumptuous guest quarters. They had already been attended by healers and relaxed in the baths. But she was still bothered by their treatment at the hands of the head of the household. Being given a sponge and a small bar of soap in a private bathroom hadn’t helped matters, either. She should be grateful, she knew. Hell, she’d been bathing out of buckets for months. Ciardis knew how to be humble. She knew how to accept a token with grateful pride. But this? This was a slap in her face by a woman who thought she didn’t know enough to know she deserved better.

It was that gall that stuck in her throat like an undigested piece of meat that wouldn’t go down the right tract. Ciardis didn’t mind bare amenities and this certainly didn’t qualify as bare. What it was however was the palace servants’ way of thumbing their collective nose at the prince heir’s retinue. They thought Ciardis and her group were too stupid to realize how much of an insult it was that they were housed in guest quarters, given only the luxuries due a minor noble, and allowed no servants in attendance aside from the butler outside their door.

Ciardis would have turned the servants away anyway except for the basic requirements like cleaning the room. She didn’t need someone to help her dress or bathe her. But Ms. Marlstone didn’t know that and what’s more she shouldn’t have
assumed
that she could get away with snidely withholding the services. That and more was why Ciardis was ticked. She was trying to save the world and the woman was doing everything in her power to show her contempt for the prince heir’s guests without slipping into overt nastiness. Well, she had certainly succeeded in riling Ciardis Weathervane up.

“The guest quarters? The guest quarters!” Ciardis shrieked.

Sebastian had backed up against a writing desk and held out his hands as if pleading for his life, “Now Ciardis, it’s just a temporary measure. Much easier for us to protect ourselves if assassins have to search half a dozen rooms before finding the right one.”

A vase flying past his head was her answer to that idea.

“Who does she think she is?” Ciardis fumed to no one in particular as she paced the room.

Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Sebastian slumping in relief. No longer the focus of her ire, he thought he was safe.

Ha! Not a chance.
Ciardis thought to herself.
He let this happen!

“I don’t see what the problem is,” Sebastian murmured weakly.

Ciardis whirled to him, her mouth agape. “How are we supposed to convey a show of strength if the
servants
think they’re better than us?”

Confusion reigned on Sebastian’s face as he looked around for someone, anyone really, to save him.

And that led to Ciardis’s thinking more rationally than she had for the past five minutes. He looked like a lost little boy who didn’t know what he’d done wrong. How could Sebastian confront the emperor with impunity but quail at the thought of making a servant woman mad?