‘Flitting all over the city with that vagabond doxy hanging off your arm!’ The mate to the first candlestick came flying across the room. Mandred yelped as it careened off his thigh and went rolling under a wardrobe. Hopping on one leg, he tried to muster an ingratiating smile. So long as Sofia didn’t employ formal address, he knew he could calm her down…
‘What charms has that whore favoured you with? The same perversions she used to seduce Prince Sigdan? And you, marching along to join her collection of princes!’ Venom crept into her tone as she added with a spiteful hiss, ‘Your grace.’
Mandred hobbled forwards as quickly as he could manage, hurrying to keep the enraged woman from reaching a heavy looking crystal decanter. ‘It isn’t like that…’ he protested.
Burggraefin Sofia von Degenfeld spun around with the speed of a viper, her dark tresses hanging across her face, her slender hands splayed into claws, each painted talon poised to wreak havoc. The breast of her gown trembled with the sharp, short breaths sneaking past her fury. With an angry shake of her head, she threw her long hair away from her face, exposing a pretty vision of forest-green eyes and delicately upturned nose. Even in her anger, Sofia’s skin possessed a soft, milky colour, like polished alabaster on a crisp winter morning.
‘Don’t you dare lie to me, Mandred,’ Sofia snarled at him. She flung her arms out in an exasperated flourish. ‘The entire court is talking about it!’ Her eyes narrowed to malicious pinpricks. ‘Though I can understand, stumbling on her in such a condition. She must have kept herself very trim, a hag of her age!’
‘Lady Mirella isn’t that old…’ Mandred started to say. He heard a snort of laughter from the hallway behind him. Even Beck knew it was absolutely the worst thing that could have rolled off his tongue. Yes, Mandred was certainly going to have a few words with his errant bodyguard. If he survived that long.
Sofia glanced over at the decanter, then turned a withering glare on the prince. ‘So the dashing young knight is going to sample the favours of his damsel in distress?’ she snapped. ‘Oh, I understand quite well her point of view! Coming to Middenheim without a stitch to her name, the son of Graf Gunthar must present quite a catch. After she seduces you she must remember to light a candle for the Kineater!’
Mandred could feel his temper rising. ‘Yes, I’m sure getting herself scalped and eaten by beastmen was all part of a grand plan to put herself in the Middenpalaz!’
‘Well, it worked, didn’t it!’ Sofia accused.
The prince glared back at her. It was three years ago that he’d first become infatuated with the beautiful burggraefin. If not for the difference in their social class, they would have been married by now. Of course, as the son of the graf, such a decision was beyond his control. When he wed it would be a matter of politics, not mutual affection, one of the sacrifices a ruler made for his subjects. It was an understanding between them, the knowledge that whatever love and happiness they shared could never last. Perhaps it was that knowledge that had inflamed their passion and their devotion.
Except when she got like this, Mandred thought, listening to another harangue from his lover. When Sofia fell into one of these jealous fits, she was deaf to all reason. She couldn’t be talked to, only endured until her temper cooled. Today, he decided, he didn’t have the patience for such theatrics.
‘I’m going,’ the prince told her, turning on his heel and marching towards the hall.
‘Where?’ Sofia demanded. ‘Back to your slut?’
‘That’s none of your concern,’ Mandred answered without turning around. He reached the doorway just as the decanter came hurtling towards him. Nimbly, he swung the door to block the heavy missile, suppressing a slight shudder when he felt the crystal shatter against the panel. He stood behind the door for a moment, letting his own anger drain out of him. It wouldn’t do for the Prince of Middenheim to go stalking through the streets of his city looking like he wanted to murder every person he saw.
Faintly, from behind the door, Mandred could hear Sofia crying. A twinge of remorse had his hand reaching for the handle, but the magnitude of her unreasoning rage stayed him. Let her sob, he decided. Maybe it would teach her to curb her temper in the future.
‘Everything all right?’ Beck asked, finally stepping away from that pot he’d found so interesting. Mandred shot his bodyguard a black look.
‘For me,’ the prince said, snatching his hat from Beck’s fingers. ‘I can think of an inattentive guard who won’t be able to say the same.’
Sheepishly, Beck followed his master as Mandred stormed from the von Degenfeld manse. ‘Where are we going, your grace?’
‘To the Middenpalaz,’ Mandred told him. He glanced back down the hall at the room he had so recently quit. ‘I think I’ll pay a call on Lady Mirella and inquire if she would like me to show her the rest of the city.’
‘You should have seen it before the plague,’ Mandred declared, waving his hand as he gestured towards the wide expanse of farmland that stretched away to the west. The tall stalks of wheat swayed in the mountain breeze. They were of a hardy strain that thrived in colder altitudes and possessed a magnificent coppery colour. Under the right conditions and with the right amount of sunlight shining down on them, the effect was like gazing upon a sea of gold. Indeed, the dwarfs who had first cultivated the strain had bestowed upon it a name that evoked gold somehow. Mandred’s familiarity with Khazalid and dwarf customs was sketchy at best, so he couldn’t remember the particulars of the name.
Beside him, one of her slender arms closed around his own, Lady Mirella gasped in admiration as a stronger gust of wind set the entire crop dancing. ‘It is beautiful,’ she declared.
Mandred shook his head. ‘In a few weeks the crop will be harvested, then there’ll only be empty black earth clear to the wall.’ He sighed, regret catching in his voice. ‘This used to be the Sudgarten and it was filled with trees and shrubs. Songbirds used to flock here and there would be rabbits and squirrels capering about in the brush. We even kept herds of deer and only hunted them on Ulric’s holy days.’
The grip on Mandred’s arm tightened in an expression of sympathy. ‘Nothing lasts forever,’ she said.
‘Some things should,’ Mandred answered, still seeing in his mind’s eye the forest that had stood where only crops now grew. ‘Those trees had been there since before the first Teutogen crawled up out of the tunnels and reached the top of the Ulricsberg. Losing them felt… felt like betraying a trust.’
‘You kept your people alive through the winter,’ Mirella reminded him. ‘How strong would Middenheim be today if you didn’t have the resources to provide for yourself?’
Mandred turned away from the Sudgarten, and led Mirella back into the narrow confines of the Westgate, the densely populated district at the extreme edge of the city. Many of the refugees who had been permitted to settle atop the Ulricsberg had built their homes here, simple buildings of timber and thatch. The Middenheimers had struggled to impose some degree of order on the confusion of shacks and huts, but had eventually abandoned the effort as causing more trouble than it was worth. The resentment engendered by the programme had left a lingering mark in the hearts of the settlers. Indeed, it was considered inadvisable for any of the Middenheim nobility to wander about the Westgate without an adequate guard.
The prince, however, was the one exception to that rule. The people here might resent the high-handed authority imposed by Chamberlain von Vogelthal, but they also remembered Prince Mandred’s bold ride to save Warrenburg from the beastmen. It was ironic that an event that had brought him such severity from his father, an act that had cost the lives of many brave men, a thing which he himself regarded with guilt and regret, should have earned him a hero’s welcome among the settlers.
‘Yes,’ Mandred said as he and Mirella walked back along the edge of the Westgate, ‘we are strong. But what has been the price for that strength?’