She jabbed the morsel in her mouth and chewed. “Am I lucky? Dariel is lost, probably dead. My child has no father. What it does have is-” Glancing around the table, she backed away from whatever she was about to say. “I live with uncertainty. That’s all. I know you know what I mean.”
She directed this pointedly at Delivegu, but the senator said, “We all do. Trying times test us all.”
T he later hours of the night found Delivegu entertaining the serving girl Bralyn. It turned out she was the warden’s daughter and therefore granddaughter to the first Peter, the one who had overseen the lodge since King Leodan’s youth. He had died only recently, and the girl spoke fondly of him. It seemed to be the only thing she had ever liked about living at Calfa Ven.
“Will you take me back with you to Acacia?” she asked.
Delivegu lay on his back, with his head resting against her shoulder, enjoying the sweaty press of her breast against cheek. “Oh, that’s a tempting possibility.”
“Take me with you, and you can have me whatever way you want. Whenever you want. Are there courtesans at court?”
“So many it’s hard to miss them.”
“They’re all better than me, aren’t they?”
Not the sort of question Delivegu would ever answer honestly. He sat up and studied her, to look as if he were giving the question due consideration. The girl pouted as she awaited his answer. In truth, most of her appeal was the raw stuff of youth. She kissed with a sloppy abandon that he had not been able to make sense of. He had liked her best when he got behind her and did not have to duel with her tongue. She was country, and would remain so for the few short years of beauty she had left. He said, “You’re gorgeous by any standard. A lover of infinite talents.”
She swatted at him, clearly pleased. Delivegu surged in on her, growling. The two of them wrestled a moment. He found a fleshy place to press his mouth and blow skin blubbers. A strange habit of his, he had to admit. But when he was not yet ready to perform sexually he often played in such childlike ways. Nobody had yet complained. Not really.
“Why do you want to leave?” he asked a little later. “Your life is good here. Better than most. You work is guaranteed for life. You get to serve the queen. Many would trade places with you.”
“When the queen is here, it’s grand,” Bralyn said. “But she hardly ever is. It’s boring most of the time.”
“Somehow I doubt that. You have guests of some sort here constantly. Men to seduce…”
She swatted at him again.
“You must know the queen intimately.”
“A bit,” the girl admitted.
“Have you seen her work magic?”
Bralyn considered him but then dropped any reticence the moment she began answering. “We’re not supposed to, but it’s hard to miss. She sings all the time when she’s up here. Prince Aaden is always on her to create things.”
“Like what?”
“All sorts. Animals you’ve never seen before. She created these bird things and set them flying over the archery meadow. Those she didn’t hide in the slightest. She and Aaden used them for target practice, and some of the staff ran about retrieving the fallen ones. They were strange things, birds with feathers, aye, but with three and four sets of wings, stiff ones like dragonflies. Strange… but beautiful, too. I saw her once blow life back into a slain stag. My father had just come in from a hunt and had a wagon stacked with dead deer. The prince didn’t like the sight and got upset, and the queen just went over and worked a spell and then kissed the stag on its nose. A moment later it got up and looked around, and then bolted from the wagon like it never had an arrow in its side. She did other stuff, too, things she really didn’t let us see.”
Delivegu considered that a moment. With all the things Corinn was letting the world see these days, what sort of sorcery might still merit secrecy?
“I’m hungry,” the girl said, stretching back across the cot and sliding one leg over the other, as if this were what one did to combat hunger.
“Of course you are. How about I get you something?”
“Are you serving me?”
Delivegu leaped to his feet and looked around for his robe. “Exactly. What would you like? Bread and cheese? Some of that roasted venison?”
She puffed out her cheeks. “Cheese gives me nightmares. And venison? I’m sick of the stuff. I could never eat another deer in my life.”
“Ah, what then?”
“You’ll get me in trouble.”
“Nobody in this place can say a word against me, or against you, if that’s my pleasure. What will you eat? Be quick. I feel a stiffness coming on.”
“Custard. Bring me custard. Do you know how to find it? I should show you.”
“What would be the use of my serving you? Just lie there looking ravishing.”
The notion did not seem nearly so romantic as he scurried down the exposed passageway toward the kitchens. The wind batted his robe around, thoroughly shriveling his sex in the process. He paused at the kitchen door, first to check that he was alone, and then a moment longer to listen to a wolf’s lonely call floating up from the valley. “Hello, brother,” he whispered, and then opened the door and entered.
A single oil lamp burned in the center of the preparation table, and by its light Delivegu began his search. He was not looking for custard. It did not take him long, for the servants had left the bottle in easy reach. It stood aligned with the condiments and relishes that had earlier been cleared from the table. He picked up Wren’s bottle of palm wine, uncorked it, and sniffed. Just as foul as before. Strange girl, Wren. Something about the fact that she drank this stuff without flinching brought the blood back to his groin. In different circumstances, he would have loved to have a drinking contest with her. Another life, maybe.
He stood still a moment, listening, letting his eyes roam the dark corners of the room. Satisfied that he was alone, he slipped a vial from his robe’s inside chest pocket. He plucked out the vial’s little cork and measured a few drops into the mouth of the palm wine bottle. Wren’s little poison indeed.
A few minutes later, bottle set back in place, Delivegu slipped into the chill air of the corridor again. He carried a large bowl of custard, enough for two. He would enjoy the night and be on his way in the morning. The queen would want a report.
Bralyn would, alas, not be going with him.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The view over the rooftops of Avina had always transfixed Skylene, never more so than now. From where she stood on the balcony of the offices that had once belonged to the Lvin Herith, the city looked endless. It thrust up to the south in a jumbled bulk that went on for miles, farther than she could see: all the towers with their sun-bright colors, flags of the clans hung now just as they always had, lines of smoke rising to a certain height, at which point the wind bent each column and sent it off to the west. Seabirds and starlings and pigeons cut arcs through the sky and filled the morning air with their calls.
“The only city I’ve ever truly known,” Skylene said to herself. A child of the Eilavan Woodlands, she had only ever seen Aos from a distance, on the march that took her to the league transport that began her life in bondage. Her memory of that city was that it was vast, but she suspected that was not true. A child’s perception of things. This city, Avina, truly was vast. It had been too large to occupy entirely even when the Auldek lived in it. Now, with them and their chosen servants and the divine children gone, the dead haunted the city as much as the living. It did not have to be that way, but the glory that could have been a free Avina had already started to fracture.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a person emerge through the archway that led onto the rooftop. Tunnel strode toward her, moving his bulk with a heavy, muscular grace. Standing beside her, he touched the metal tusks curving up from his face. “We should go now.”