The room I met King Manfred in for the second time was simple, nearing dull. A long, low table, with countless chairs lining it on both sides, all carved after quite the same fashion, was the main and almost only attraction. An enormous tapestry covered the entire right wall, from where I stood at the door, and on it was stitched the Corriaem coat-of-arms. A jorti, the mythical half-dragon, half-unicorn, with its black wings unfurled and a long, twisted horn of sapphire-blue jutting from its scaled forehead, stood crouched, as though in anticipation of battle. I recalled, from the faraway reaches of early childhood, the story of the jorti’s origin, and shivered. At the moment, I felt awfully like Yargiemma, the unfortunate unicorn of the old folktale.
“Their Majesties shall be here within the half-hour. Do make yourselves comfortable, milord and milady,” murmured the butler, bowing himself out hastily. I wondered if he were more frightened of the duke, or me, but soon gave up such idle thoughts as the duke himself decided the silence was much too heavy.
“I see by the direction of your eyes and the, ah, rather unpleasant grimace upon your face that you are thinking of Oriare and Yargiemma? Yes, yes, of course. You know, when I was a boy, I could never quite sympathize with Oriare. Lately”—and here he gave me a most unsettling grin—“things have… changed.”
I sat down and pretended not to have heard him, or if I had, I’d failed to realize what he might be insinuating. “Is there any small this or that which you might be obliged to inform me of before Their Majesties arrive?” I asked quietly, fingering the lace ‘round my wrist.
“Only to tread carefully, milady, for neither Manfred nor my brother is terribly pleased with you.”
As though to save me from the blunder my retort would have been, the door swung open, and King Manfred marched in, pale green eyes – so like his son’s, as I had noted before – already focused quite determinedly on me. I stood and curtsied to him, and to the dark-haired King Orendell as he entered behind.
“We are here, I believe, to decide the fate and punishment of Mariadelle Tadstreet, Grand-Count’s-daughter,” King Manfred said, after we had all taken our seats. I stared, shocked, across the table at Duke Warrington, but he merely smiled in a very secretive way, and turned his eyes towards his elder brother.
“I’m sorry if I interrupt, Your Majesty, but I believe the lady’s fate – and punishment – has already been decided,” the duke said, and King Manfred’s face showed honest surprise.
“Had we?” he asked, and I saw new lines around his eyes and mouth that had not been there at the prince’s ball.
“Yes. As her fiancé, and soon-to-be husband, I claim it within my right to allot punishment to her in the way I see fit.”
King Orendell gave him a most sharp look, as though to say silently, Why did you not tell me this before?
“Well, then, I honor this right, Percival, and now, if you, Ore, have no objections, I see no reason why we cannot adjourn the meeting. My goodness, but that did not take much time, did it?” He smiled in a most relieved fashion, and for a moment the careworn quality of his face faded a little.
“I have no objection, Manfred. But before we depart for dinner, I am curious as to why Miss Tadstreet wears such a scandalized expression on her fair face. I must say, it does not fit you so well as a smile,” Orendell chuckled, and I blushed deeply, looking down on the pretense of righting my skirts.
“I – I… ‘tis nothing, Your Majesty. I but worry after my family, and it is nothing short of rude to concern you over such trifles.” My voice was hushed and all a-tremble, and I did not take my eyes from my lap as I said it.
“Percival,” said King Orendell sharply, “if I may have a private word.”
“I will see you at dinner, then?” King Manfred queried, and the King of Jharrim nodded sharply before all three men exited the room. I heard three sets of footsteps, and then two stopped and the last continued its way down what must have been a very long hall. At last, a door creaked open, and shut with a loud whump. All was quiet, until the two brothers just outside the door began to argue. I caught only snatches of the private word, but they were enlightening, much more so than I had expected.
“Lost, alone – you call this chivalry?” came King Orendell’s furious voice, and I fidgeted uneasily.
“I call it nothing, brother, but marriage,” the duke growled, and then grew suddenly much quieter, as though he knew how hard I was straining to hear his words.
“Percival, but she is…”
“My wife, as far as you’re concerned.”
“She is only a child!”
“She eluded the attentions of the majority of spies from both Jharrim and Ape’erafer for more months than I care to remember. Is that child’s play?” barked the duke, and my stomach clenched. To imagine spies at The Troll’s Eye was quite beyond unsettling.
“What I ask is this, then: do not discipline her as you would a slave, Percival – she does not deserve that,” the king said, and then their voices lowered again to inaudibility. I sat for a while, stock-still, struggling not to think overmuch of the argument.
I studied again the coat-of-arms across the table, now wondering what had driven Duke Warrington to lie to me. If I would have known they were actually gathering to pass a verdict on the crime of my escape to Earlkone, what other preparations could I have made? Surely he did not think I would have tried to flee again… but then, why not? I was no longer to be trusted, it appeared, and that by my own fault.
The door swung open, and Duke Warrington leaned casually against its frame, a little smile flickering ‘round his lips. He made no move to speak, at first, and so I could hear the sounds of another set of footsteps thudding down the long hallway. Whomever it was that chose to make such a ruckus, he mustn’t be in an awfully good mood.
Finally, the duke spoke, and his words offered little comfort to my troubled heart. “Yes,” he said, “I do believe I can understand Oriare, mon petit.” His eyes glinted mischievously, and I saw the triumph of a recent of a victory within them.
The Sovereign’s Crown was a mere minute from the castle itself, a three-storied, well-kept and yet rather homey sort of place, although not in the way The Troll’s Eye had been. The entry hall was small and had a desk at the far end of it, opposite the front door. Duke Warrington hardly gave the desk, or the man behind it, a second glance. He turned sharply right almost as soon as we stepped inside, and where I had thought there was only wall, a set of thick brick stairs stood suddenly before us. The duke gestured for me to go first, and I heard his footsteps echoing up the stairwell as we trudged along. The landing I reached quickly, and turning around, found another set of stairs to a little forward and to my right, and beyond that, a long hall, completely red from its walls to its ruby-red carpet. Doors lined it all the way to the distant end, and in this, I suppose, it was rather like The Troll’s Eye.
Duke Warrington came up beside me, and took up my hand in his. He began to walk down the long corridor, and I followed suit. There seemed a strange air about him, as though he held something back, or perhaps that was the silence that seemed so eerily to fill the inn – if inn, and not some sort of minor palace, it could be called.
A few steps past the middle of the hall, he stopped before a large red door, with what looked to be golden doorknob, and pulled a key from his coat pocket, sliding it into the little hole within the knob. The door, without so much as a nudge, swung open.
It was beautiful. I slipped inside with a careful step that was nothing short of reverence, staring with wide eyes at the intricate tapestries of strange sea creatures, at the huge, silky blue bed that reminded me of nothing more than my own at home. Even through my small, rather worn brown slippers, I knew the carpet must be soft as a quiet lake in midsummer, and the calming dark and light hues of a green and blue were just they way I’d always liked them best.
“Is it to your satisfaction, Mademoiselle Mariadelle?” the duke asked through what sounded dangerously like clenched teeth; I looked curiously up at him. His eyes were uncharacteristically readable, and that was not, by far, the worst part of it. For there was anger in those eyes, deep, unquenchable fury, and I knew, quite certainly, whom he was angry at.
“Yes,” I mumbled, hoping against all hope that he did not really mean to punish me, but had only told Their Majesties such so as to placate them. “Yes, it’s all quite beautiful. Did you know that these are my favorite colors?”
I started to move from his side, in hopes of exploring the room better, but his grasp on my hand tightened, and I was nearly jerked backwards again. I looked, this time fearfully, up at him, and now all those bits and pieces of calm that had belonged to his face seemed to have fallen away. He met my eyes, and I felt very much like a hare trapped ‘neath the claws of a lion.
“Imagine,” he said quietly, “imagine yourself in my place, assez un. One night, life is going perfectly – your wedding is nearing, and your bride beautiful.” The bitterest smirk caught at his lips, and I blushed, looking away. “You wake the following morning, and your entire household is in an uproar. It takes you some time merely to extract anything but disjointed babbling from your servants, and when the truth finally comes, it is not something to be relieved about. Your fiancée has fled from her home, and exactly where she has gone, no one knows. You and all the men within your power to command are searching, searching everywhere, yet weeks, months pass, and no one finds a single hair belonging to your bride. She is gone.”
I searched his face, and I saw no mercy there, no pity. He was angry, yes, and whatever he chose to do to me, no one would be there to prevent it.
“And then, suddenly, Lord Raymond sends word that he has found a maid – a very pretty maid, he adds – who claims to know something about Mariadelle. He says he will keep her with him until I arrive, and I assure you I wasted no time in arriving. Yet, when I finally reach Earlkone, and the somewhat shabby inn Lord Raymond directed me to, he comes downstairs from his room to inform me a very strange thing indeed has happened to Hannah Slate, the all-knowing maid. She is really my bride, hidden for months in some fantastic and magical disguise – and she has begged him to keep her from ever seeing me again.”
I could not meet his eye, for shame kept my head weighted down. His voice was quiet, and broken in its quietness—I did not dare speak.
“Can you, if only for a moment, imagine such an occurrence? No, then, I suppose not. What about me is so thoroughly despicable, petite un? What, I have asked myself all these months, made you hate me so?”
“Never hate,” I whispered, hand aching from how tightly he was holding it. “I never hated you, milord. I… feared you. I still – I still do.”
He smiled, but it was a bitter, vicious smile, and held no warmth. “As you ought to, milady.” Releasing my hand, he stepped further into the beautiful room, across the soft carpet to a bureau by the bed. I watched as he knelt down and pulled open one of its dark wood’s drawers, extracting what looked to be a long cord of thick white rope.
Although I had not seen it before, I saw the door on the far left of the chamber now, as the duke strode towards it. “Come,” he said, and it never occurred to me to disobey as I hurried after him.
It was, this next room, hardly able to be called one. Small almost to the point of claustrophobia, it held very little within its for walls – a door to my right, and to my left, and in the very center of the tiny square of wood, a solid-looking column of black and white-flecked marble that reached from floor to ceiling. Duke Warrington strode directly for the pillar, turning his head when he reached it to look at me.
“Do you see these hooks? I told Their Majesties that I would punish you for the chaos you caused, in trying to flee your fears. I see no reason to inflict such pain upon you, unless you refuse to promise never to be so… cowardly again. The ring I gave you was perhaps less reliable than I first imagined.”
I thought of how the entire escape had been, in a quiet way, his brother’s doing. Knowing that to say this would merely anger him – and keeping in mind that he would not ever believe me – I opened my mouth to agree. With terrifying and quite unwelcome suddenness, I felt Aimthaer’s presence in my mind, snatching the ability to speak, I beg you to excuse the pun, from right under my nose.
“Coward?” Aimthaer said through me, and my voice sounded wry, even incredulous. “Hypocritical excuse for a duke, you are the coward. You were afraid I would run from you, and so forced a ring onto me, a ring that kept me just where you wanted me; lazy, arrogant mutt.”
The expression of surprise on his face soon turned to one of forced calm, and he asked through clenched teeth, “Mutt?”
“As though you think I don’t know!” I cackled, advancing upon him. “As though I hadn’t realized it the moment we met. Bastard, that’s what you are. Mutt, runty little blight upon Jharrim. And Queen Isadora, thinking you were her son! I suppose ‘tis a stroke of luck for you that you took so little after your real mother.”
He continued to look quite calm – even amused, but the rope was gripped so tightly in his hands, his knuckles had turned milky-white. “You speak treason, assez un. Must I warn you of the consequences?”
“Half-treason, dukeling. You forget your peasant-whore mother, as always,” I sneered. “And before you repeat yourself, no, I shan’t consent to your pitiful attempt at enslaving me. I will escape again, you’ll see. And when I do, you’ll not find me again.”
This, above all else Aimthaer had made me say, finally broke him. I was now little more than hand’s breadth from the duke, and he wasted no time in yanking my hand up towards one of the two silver hooks. A few deft twists of rope later, I was tied by both arms to the pillar. I could only see him from the corner of my eye, but his voice, quiet and rasping, told me what my sight could not.
“You try my patience sorely, Mademoiselle Tadstreet. I have saved your life, and pulled you from the brink of ruin. For who would want to marry the prince’s castaway bride? Surely, if her looks are not to blame, there is something wrong with her mind? But I rescued you from that, too. And this, this is my repayment.”
Again, quiet filled the room, and I felt Aimthaer drain slowly from my mind. His work was done.
But milord's was not.
Bad place to stop, I know, but it woulda taken too long for the next real break to come up. No italics 'cause I'm lazy--sorries. No nitpicks, please!
