“An old wolverbear,” the other corrected. “Peter, the warden, said so. It picked up our trail about halfway around Storneven, spooked the horses. It followed us for a good hour, sometimes right out in the open. It loped along as if it were just biding its time until one of us fell off our horse or something.”
“Peter said that’s what it was doing. Said if any of the horses had gotten lamed-or if one of us had fallen-the thing would have been on us like a flash. He got it off us by tossing down two of the squirrels he had shot. When the wolverbear couldn’t resist them, we took off as fast as Wren could ride.”
“Dreadful,” the senator’s wife said. “Those creatures are beastly. They should hunt every last one of them.”
“Oh, you don’t mean that,” Delivegu said, finding himself drawn to flirt. Force of habit. “There need to be wild things in the world. Things to give you chills at night thinking about them.”
“My wife has far too many chills already,” the senator said. “Goes to sleep wrapped in three layers of undergarments.”
“That’s a pity,” Delivegu said. “A crime, I’d say. No woman should go to sleep so encumbered.” He flashed her a smile and sipped his liqueur. Then he wondered why he had bothered. He had no interest in her. And then he realized that without knowing it his senses had picked up on a person of interest. The sudden rush of vigor he felt was not for the senator’s wife at all. It was for one of the girls setting the table for dinner. Oh, yes, that was it. He watched her bend over the table, arranging cutlery. What is it about youth? he wondered. Even though her body was half hidden beneath her simple frock, unadorned and meant to go unnoticed, Delivegu saw the contours beneath the fabric. No Acacian beauty, this one. She was of Senivalian stock, clear enough in her short stature, with hips that would go wide in a few years, breasts that stood at attention for the time being, and dark hair she wore clipped at the back. He decided he would see those locks flow free. Reconnecting with his ancestral roots. That’s what it would be.
When he caught the flow of conversation again, the senator’s wife was saying, “If you ask me, it’s just reckless. Why put the child in danger like that? I enjoy a good brisk ride myself, but there’s a time for all things.”
Delivegu tried to imagine her enjoying a brisk ride. It was not a pleasant imagining, too full of jiggling flesh for his liking. He glanced at the serving girl again and caught her watching him. Oh, good. She’s noticed.
“Mistress Wren!”
She walked in with a careless air, as if she had happened on the place by accident and was not entirely sure she would stay. She was pretty enough. Small and lithe, she had the body of an acrobat. “Ready to eat?” she asked. “I could eat an entire wolverbear.”
Delivegu managed to secure a place across the table from her. Despite her reckless riding and adventures with wolverbears, she did seem fully aware of the child growing inside her. It was a small bump yet. She rubbed it often, making him wonder what it felt like. It was sensual in a way he had not considered before. As was the way she ate, heartily, without any courtly reticence. He was not sure why Dariel would invest so much in her, but such things were often hard to explain.
“To what do we owe the pleasure of your company, Delivegu?” the merchant asked.
“Yes,” Wren asked, slicing through her roasted boar, “why are you here?”
“I conducted business for her majesty in Pelos,” Delivegu said. “She asked that before I return I stop in and check on the preparations for winter. She’ll not be able to make a last visit herself this season. I know very well that the staff here has everything in hand, so it’s an easy assignment for me. A pleasing one. She asked me to look in on you as well”-he nodded at Wren-“to see how you were settling in here.”
“I’m so disappointed,” the senator’s wife said, “that the queen couldn’t make it! When we received the invitation, oh, months ago, I so hoped the queen would be here enjoying Calfa Ven as well. I love her so, you know? She’s just magnificent. I’d devour her if she were here.”
Somehow I think not, Delivegu thought, wondering if Corinn arranged to schedule certain visitors to the lodge when she planned not to be there. This woman might qualify. No doubt she complained mightily to her husband when they were alone. Hoping for a retreat with the queen, getting one with two pregnant discards instead.
“This horrid invasion!” she said. “I’m sick of hearing of it already. I hope the whole business is over by the spring.”
Surely she was old enough to remember the last two wars that had ravished the empire. Some forget so quickly. Delivegu said, “That’s my hope as well. By the queen’s grace, so it shall be.”
The attractive servant appeared at Wren’s side. “Mistress?” She offered an orange glass bottle, half filled with a clear liquid. Judging by its consistency, it was not water. Wren nodded, and the girl set the glass down, along with a tiny snifter of the same glass.
“What’s this?” Delivegu asked, once he had made eye contact with the servant and held it long enough to establish an intimacy.
“Wren’s little poison,” Gurta said.
“Palm wine,” the younger teen said. “It’s so tasty she won’t let us have any. See if she’ll let you have some, Delivegu.”
He played along, tilting his head questioningly. Wren pushed the bottle toward him, the glass just after it. The liquid smelled of palm nut flesh and more strongly of straight alcohol. Compared to the liqueur from earlier, there was little tempting about this. The eyes of the group were on him, though. He smiled, saluted the room, and then tossed back the glass.
Instant regret. Searing heat. A gag reaction so torso convulsing that he shot away from the table. His chair slammed into the wall behind him and for a few horrible moments he was sure he was going to spill his dinner onto the floor. A string of curses, muttered all the louder because the room had erupted in laughter. It wasn’t just the raw alcohol content. It was that-that… “Agh! That’s foul!”
“It is. It is,” they all agreed.
“Only Wren drinks it,” the senator said. “She says it reminds her of what they used to brew on the Outer Isles. Reminds her of her brigand days, apparently.”
Wren did not deny it. Grinning, she reached over and hooked the bottle back. She poured and, with a nod in imitation of Delivegu’s salute, she drained the tiny glass. She did not so much as blink. In fact, she licked her lips with the tip of her tongue and looked as if she had drunk nothing stronger than sweet tea.
Delivegu regained his seat. “You don’t drink much of that, do you? It’s poison. I doubt very much the baby is well served by it.”
“But a short glass a day,” the older teen said. “That’s all I’ve seen her take.”
“Good. That’s all right, then. I guess…” Leaning forward, he said to Wren, “I do insist that you stop riding. You’re putting the child at risk.”
“Is that an order from the queen?”
“No, just an expression of concern from myself. I’m confident she would say the same, though.”
“You care about my baby?” Wren asked. Her Candovian features could have been classically beautiful had she been raised with any sense of courtly decorum. She had not, and her facial expressions-when she made any-were as blunt and straightforward as a tavern owner’s.
“Of course. Why wouldn’t I? A royal child is a royal child.”
“A royal bastard, you mean.”
“Surely you don’t mean that. It’s… just the pregnancy. It affects women’s moods, I’ve heard. Mistress Wren, do you think me so crude?”
“Of course I think you crude. Look, neither of us was born to royalty. I never planned to be mistress to a prince, let alone mother of a royal bastard.” She speared a morsel of meat and brought it near her mouth, waiting for a retort.
“You should be overjoyed,” Delivegu said. And for the moment he said it, he lost sight of the irony of the statement. “You’ve been lucky. I know what that’s like.”