In the House of Five Dragons
18. Beloved
“What is it about us that the Alterra need? Their power here in Terra is profound and strange. They can stop a man’s heart or summon lightning from a clear sky. We don’t understand why or how, only that it is true. So we must ask — what is our influence in their world?”
— From Beyond the Veil, by Aelus Kar
Laurael had expanded their home hugely over the years. She must have bought a quarter of the Everstones and the tour she gave Rikard was staggering. There were several buildings now, including an entire longhouse for guests, another one for servants, a private shrine, three storehouses and two heated baths. Every one of them was lovely, with carved friezes and painted murals, many depicting various artists’ renditions of the battle of Njorn Pass.
When it became apparent that Rikard was tiring, his wife led him back to the largest house.
“Are you hungry again?” she asked.
“Hae,” Rikard answered.
Ravenous, in fact. The foster girl was right — he felt ill if he ate too much. But less meant he would be hungry more often.
“Is it too soon?” he asked.
“No, it’s just about time for lunch.”
She led him to a different patio than the one they had used for breakfast. Wooden arches surrounded this one, all wound in green vines with little white star-shapes that smelled almost overpoweringly sweet. Jasmine. Rikard spent a long time just inhaling their sugary scent, until Laurael called him over to sit beside her on a divan.
A woman in a bright green tabba served them chilled wine and fruit juice with chunks of ice floating in it. There was more fruit and fluffy rolls of freshly baked bread smeared with sweet butter. Laurael ate very little of it. Rikard reminded himself to eat slowly.
“More,” he said when he had blunted the edge from his hunger.
“There is plenty of food, my husband,” Laurael told him. “Don’t worry about that.”
“No, not that. Tell me more, Laura. Gods, thirty years fell since I saw you. Since I held Gaius. Tell me, please. Does he have a you?”
“A me?”
Laurael was obviously confused and Rikard cursed the clumsy Terran speech again.
“A… a wife,” he said. “Did he make a marriage? Children?”
Laurael raised her chin proudly. She was so very fine, so pristinely beautiful even after the three decades that lay between them. Rikard burned for her in a way words would never describe. He took her hand — so lily-pale that she might have been wearing a pair of the foster’s gloves — and kissed it. Laurael smiled at him.
“No, Gaius hasn’t married yet. He’s been so busy,” she answered. She squeezed Rikard’s hand gently in hers and then released it so she could pick up her wine again. “I’ve arranged a wife for him, but he keeps putting off the wedding.”
“Why?”
“Gaius is a captain in the Star Court — just like you were — and a consul in the Lyceum, the ruling council. There are a great many demands on him, my lord. Gaius spends time with the emperor, too. They’ve grown quite close.”
Rikard choked on a mouthful of raspberries and clotted cream. He leapt to his feet.
“Emperor Tychon?” he snarled. “My son is a friend to Castum Tychon? Is that where he is now?”
“Perhaps,” Laurael said slowly, frowning. “I expect the emperor is curious about you, my lord. Of course, the Lyceum met last night to answer such questions, so perhaps not.”
Rikard was on fire again, but this time with fury. His son and Emperor Tychon? He clenched his hands into fists so tightly that his fingernails bit into his palms and drew crescents of blood. Rikard stalked back and forth across the patio like a caged beast. The blood filled his clenched hand and dripped down between his fingers.
“What are you doing, my lord? What’s wrong?” Laurael was on her feet now, wine forgotten.
Rikard couldn’t hear her. His blood roared far louder than his wife’s voice. Rikard opened his hand and flicked his wrist, spattering blood onto one of the flower-wound trellises.
Break, he thought. Commanded. Fall! A dream on waking. For this, I trade the scent of jasmine. White-blooming stars. For a moon.
Dark lines shot out from around the bright spots of blood on the wood, crackling and cracking. The wooden trellis twisted and warped, knotting in terrible, unnatural shapes, and then exploded into splinters. Jasmine vines tore and filled the air with a snowfall of drifting white petals, suddenly as scentless to Rikard as snow.
“My gods,” whispered Laurael.
Her kohl-lined eyes were round. With her hands pressed to her mouth, she took a small step away from Rikard. There were flowers in her hair.
“What have you done?” she asked.
“My son is a friend to the emperor!”
“Not as close as I would like, but hae,” said Laurael, collecting herself. “And it’s a blessing upon our family. Emperor Tychon never married, never fathered any blooded children. Gaius is the only heir left to him.”
Another thought swam beneath Laurael’s words, like a beaked crowfish under deep, still waters, but Rikard couldn’t bring himself to reach into his own wife’s mind. Furious, he stalked back and forth, crushing fallen leaves and flowers beneath his feet. Laurael sat again, trembling. Spots of bright color shone in her cheeks. She plucked a jasmine flower from her hair and rolled it between her fingers.
“Why such anger, my husband?” she asked in a clipped voice. “You should be proud of our son. He will be the next emperor of Carce.”
“Tychon sent us to die in a war that we could never win!” Rikard said. His bloody hands stung, but not half as badly as his heart. “We couldn’t fight in Fiore. Too much ice, too many spears. It was all death!”
“That’s why you rage against our emperor, my husband? A war that ended thirty years ago?”
Laurael, his beautiful Laura, didn’t understand. She couldn’t reach for his memories, didn’t hear the dying moans of soldiers and knights, smell the copper-salt tang of blood on the snow, feel the tearing, biting cold and ice! All Rikard had were the flat Terran words to tell her. Maybe if he said them loudly enough, he could make her hear.
“They died, all of them!” he shouted. “They were not curse-mock, not… ready for mountain warfare! It was the… ice-heart… the middle of winter!”
“But you won the war,” Laurael told him. She patted the divan beside her until Rikard finally stopped pacing. “Not everyone died. Survivors returned to Dormaen with tales of your bravery. You destroyed or banished the entire Fiori horde, my lord. It was the war to end all wars.”
“Iron as beloved night!” Rikard pulled at his black hair in frustration. He flung himself down on the seat beside his wife. Njorn Pass was casual history to her. “End all wars? Tell me the string-strung, the… stories. What happened?”
“The tale is a short one,” Laurael answered with a small shrug that made her filmy outer tabba drift like mist. “The last of your army returned to Carce victorious against the barbarian Fiori. There were no other wars. The other nations quite willingly joined Tychon’s new empire.”
“Which ones?”
“All of them. Every single nation of the world is now a province of the Carcaen Empire. Word of your victory spread like wildfire, my lord. The Fiori were a fierce people, even more infamous than the Lynceans for their bloody disputes. But they were finally defeated by the glorious deeds of a single man. You, my lord. None dared challenge VEIL after your display of power and no one dared risk not being a part of such a powerful alliance. Even Nian and Lyncea sent envoys to Dormaen.”
“All of them,” Rikard repeated, shaking his head.
“There has been peace for thirty years, my husband. Emperor Tychon founded the Lyceum twenty-five years ago, an appointed council to give a voice to all of the provinces. And to VEIL, as well. The generals of all three VEIL courts sit on the Lyceum. The Lyceum even voted to allow provincials to join VEIL. Numbers have been low ever since the Fiore war.”
“Because they all died!”
“Very few knights returned from Fiore,” Laurael agreed in a soft voice. “And many of those who survived left the order shortly thereafter. The cost for the Carcaen Empire was high, my lord, but it’s been thirty years paid. And look what it bought us.”
She gestured around them, to the houses and gardens of their home. Rikard’s eyes followed her sweeping motion. Carce’s rise had certainly raised her up, too. Money, land, respect and adoration all lavished upon his widow.
And my son, too. Heir to the throne…?
As though summoned by the thought, Rikard saw Gaius picking his way along the hill toward them, red-faced and sweating with the effort of the climb. He waved as he approached, then paused as he stepped over the remains of the shattered trellis. Gaius pushed a piece of wood out of his way with his foot and went to Laurael. He kissed her powdered cheek.
“Good morning, Mother.” He nodded to Rikard. “Father.”
“It’s afternoon, Gaius,” his mother told him.
“Already? It was a late night.”
“Was the emperor at the Lyceum last night? Did he speak to you in particular?”
“Hae and then no. I’m sure he’ll call me in for a more private talk soon, though. Or you, maybe. What happened here?”
Gaius picked up a splinter of wood. It shone red and wet. Gaius frowned and looked at Rikard, then down at his hands. He threw the bloody wood to the ground as though it had bitten him.
“Is that your blood?” Gaius asked Rikard, then whistled when his father nodded. He examined the broken arch and shredded flowers with new fascination. “Where was the pact? I don’t see one.”
“I… star-river…” Rikard struggled with the words.
Laurael was already tired of looking at the mess and uninterested in the answers there. She called for someone to clean it away. A tall Jumaari in a sweat-damp work tabba brought a broom and a large sack to do as she asked.
“There’s blood in that,” Gaius warned before taking a seat and joining his parents’ lunch.
The Jumaari swallowed hard as he got to work.
At Laurael’s request, dinner was light and simple. When it was finished and Gaius had made his farewells for the evening, Laurael took Rikard’s hand, carefully scrubbed clean of blood by nervous servants. She led him through the house, back to her lavish bedroom. It was huge, at least the size of the entire atrium. An entire face stood open to the cool night air, framed by columns carved with vines and flowers, hung between with colorful silk curtains. Dangling strings of shells and glass beads chimed musically in the breeze.
The bedroom was full of soft light from delicate glass oil lamps and flickering candles that burned with a spicy, heady aroma. It smelled just like the pleasantly hot, thick feeling beneath the pit of Rikard’s stomach every time he looked at his wife.
Laurael pulled aside the rippling drapes. The night beyond was incomplete, still touched with twilight violet at the edges but already dusted with twinkling diamond stars. A slender crescent moon hung in the sky, a celestial goddess’ silver smile.
Rikard followed Laurael and circled his arms around her waist. She felt different against him than he remembered, and he remembered very well. Thoughts of her had protected him for so long, against every cold emptiness that the Shatter hurled at him across the broken battlefields of Alterra. Laurael was softer in some places now, harder in others. Age had changed her body, but not Rikard’s desire for her. It burned so sweetly, so bright that he felt certain Laurael could feel it. Had to feel it. Rikard pulled her tightly to him.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” she said.
“You’re beautiful,” Rikard murmured. He kissed the side of her neck.
“I spent all day showing you what we’ve built here, my lord. Do you see any of it?” She looked not at Rikard, but out at the vastness of the world outside. “I showed you what you have done. Not only for Carce, but for us. For your family. You’re angry with Emperor Tychon, but I am grateful to him. What did we have before you left for Fiore on his order?”
“I had everything I wanted.”
“What did we have?” Laurael asked again, heavily emphasizing the question. “Nothing. You were the only son of a minor family, a junior captain of the smallest and least important VEIL court. I contributed little else to our standing. I was the youngest daughter of a father with a little more money than yours, but never enough. We had nothing to give our son but a life of hard work and a small house on a stony hill.”
Laurael turned so she could look up into Rikard’s eyes. He kept his hands pressed against the graceful curve of her lower back.
“Are you happy now, Laura?” he asked.
“Even the VEIL generals don’t live so well as we do. The Everstone manors sprang up around us simply to be near the memory of you. By your sacrifice, you gave us everything.”
“I wasn’t trying to. I didn’t want to be a hero, Laura.”
Rikard slid his hands along his wife’s back to caress her neck. The soft, delicate curls of her hair tickled the sensitive skin around his bloodcap. Rikard leaned in to kiss her, but Laurael pulled away and strode over to the huge bed, which was raised up on a steeply stepped dais.
“You never did have any ambition,” she said. “But the gods had other plans, praise them. Do you not care about the fortune you’ve given us? Are you not at all pleased? Grateful that your family has been provided for?”
Rikard could not understand the chilly, sour-tasting displeasure oozing from his wife. She had what she wanted, didn’t she? What did it matter what he thought of her riches? He was glad, of course, that his family had lived well in his absence. But it was Laurael and Gaius who had enjoyed that bounty, not Rikard.
I don’t know this life. I only met it this morning, and I never sought it.
Laurael watched Rikard, waiting for him to respond. He was searching out words to give her when he was interrupted by a polite rapping at the door. Laurael sighed and went to open it. The little red-haired foster, Thainna, stood outside. Her eyes flickered between Rikard and his wife. A blush darkened her cheeks.
“I’m sorry, my lady. I can come back later. I just thought… Well, it’s after dinner,” she stammered.
Laurael stood back and ushered her inside. “Come take care of your business.”
“Thank you, Lady Mazrem.”
Thainna bowed and entered, carrying her satchel over her shoulder. Her eyes wandered through the room as she crossed it, marveling at the beauty and richness of it all. She was impressed, just as Laurael seemed to think that he should have been. Thainna tore her attention from the decadence and returned it to Rikard.
“Captain Mazrem,” she greeted him. “How do you feel?”
“Whirlposted,” he answered. The argument with his wife, one-sided though it had been, made Rikard’s head ache.
“Um, hae. Can I look at your bandages?” Thainna asked.
Rikard nodded wearily. He went to the bed and sat on the edge, laboring to unbutton his saela, as Laurael had done that morning. Thainna watched with a curious expression, but didn’t do anything. When Rikard was finally free of the saela, she took a lamp — a pretty little bulb of iridescent glass wrapped in gold wire — from a nearby table and held it up to Rikard’s bandaged midsection.
“It doesn’t look like you bled through, but I’m going to change the dressings anyway. I don’t want you getting an infection.”
I wouldn’t know what to do if you did. Thainna’s thoughts were restless and scattered. Rikard felt her worry like spiders crawling over his skin. And I don’t want to report problems to Narissa this early into the game.
He clasped his hands behind his head as Thainna unknotted and unwound the bandages. They came off quickly and easily now, without using the knife this time. The foster held the lamp close to check the stitches over Rikard’s ribs.
“Does that hurt?” she asked
“No.”
It was not Rikard’s body that ached.
Thainna covered his injuries with fresh salve and bandages from her satchel. She bowed and left, lighting her way through the room with the lamp. When she was gone, Laurael sat down beside Rikard. The glowering needle-spike of her anger was gone. His wife was cool and smooth and soothing once more. Gratefully, Rikard hooked his arm around her waist.
“Did you see that girl’s eyes?” Laurael asked. “She must be from the country. She’s never seen anything like this.”
Thainna’s awe seemed to make up for the lack of his own and Rikard found himself suddenly grateful to the skinny young foster. He pulled his wife into his lap and kissed her. Laurael wrapped her arms around him. Rikard had not replaced his saela and her fingers seared honeyed fire across his bare skin.
“I’ve been gone so long,” he whispered into her ear. “I thought of you every breach. Every day. I love you, Laura. I need you.”
Laurael slipped out of his lap and lay across the bed, smiling invitingly. Rikard hesitated. He remembered this scene from their wedding night, but as faintly as a faded painting. Rikard searched frantically. He didn’t know what came next, only that he wanted to be close to his wife.
“I… don’t remember what to do,” he admitted.
Laurael quirked an eyebrow and shrugged sinuously. “Well, there will be time to remember. Come lie in my arms, my husband, and let memory come when it will.”
Rikard let Laurael pull him into her arms. Sleep came for him swiftly.
The tower-tree shuddered again, lurching nightmarishly against the stormy sky. Branches snapped and split with the effort, then fell away entirely as the tower aspect eclipsed the tree. Leaves shivered and faded, leaving behind only dark, empty windows. Stumble clung to a flaking sill, digging his talons into the wood-stone-loyalty until he found his balance. He reached wildly until he found Flickerdim, still floating where his perch had been.
What happened? cried Stumble.
He is distracted. Flickerdim pivoted his smooth, star-scaled head toward Stumble. It’s his wife. She wants other things, Terran things. Our bonds with the Terrans are so few and so slender that plucking any one will make the entire Uprising tremble.
As Rikard drifted into dreams, the tower surged and rippled. Branches bloomed from the great tree once more. Stumble hooted in sudden alarm as his window perch changed, twisted and extended, shooting him outward. The silver-white branch split and fanned out into twigs and leaves, bright with bringing.
Flickerdim settled himself onto the tree with a brittle rasp. He flicked his jet-black tongue at Stumble.
Do you feel her? he asked. His wife?
Yes. I don’t like her, Stumble thought.
She does not need affection to be, to exist. That is not what makes her real. She is woven from other threads. He loves her, but that is not what she seeks.
Should we tell him? Stumble asked, more worried now than when the Uprising had shifted all around them.
He would not listen, not even to us. He thinks he needs her.
Even in his sleep, Rikard held Laurael tightly. While thirty years apart had apparently robbed her husband of his sanity, it had not made him any less a young man. Though he could not yet recall the intimacies of the bedroom, his sleepy, youthful body nudged at her with an urgency that would not slumber forever.
Eventually, he slipped into deeper sleep and left Laurael in peace, but still she could not follow him into slumber. Rikard’s unfocused desire left her still dressed and though her tabba was the height of fashion, it certainly wasn’t the height of comfort. The whalebone ribs of her cincher bit uncomfortably into her stomach and the diaphanous outer skirts tangled around her ankles.
Laurael slipped away from Rikard and out of bed. She stretched and felt the stiffness in her joints. There was no way she could get out of this tabba alone. She tugged on a cord beside the door that rang a bell deeper in the house and a moment later, one of the maids knocked softly. Laurael let her in and instructed the girl to undress her.
As the tightness of the corset blessedly released, Laurael took a deep breath and gazed contemplatively out through the curtains. In the distance, Dormaen blazed with lights that filled the valley, like a sea of stars. The soft wind carried snatches of sound, the unintelligible babble of far-off voices. How many of them were talking about the return of the legendary Lord-Captain Rikard Mazrem?
Most of them, if not all. The hero has returned.
When the girl was finished undressing Laurael, she draped a wrap around her mistress’ waist. Laurael pulled it up and tied it under her arms.
“Put out the lights,” she instructed
The young maid bowed and circled the room, extinguishing the candles and lamps with a copper cone. Laurael climbed the steps to the bed again and lay beside Rikard. Why had he returned at all? Rikard said that the Alterra claimed his life as their price for victory in Njorn Pass.
Rikard was unhinged by his time in Alterra. He was furious with Emperor Tychon and seemed to have no desire or even ability to conceal it. What would happen when Castum Tychon inevitably wanted to see Rikard Mazrem, the man who had single-handedly forged his great empire? If Rikard somehow managed not to make an enemy of the emperor, then he would befriend him. And where would that leave Gaius in the line of succession?
Laurael sat up on one elbow and stroked her husband’s cheek with the back of her hand. It was rough with whiskers. Tomorrow, she would make sure someone shaved the man properly. Laurael’s fingers moved down his jaw to his throat. Rikard’s pulse fluttered under her touch, vital and fragile.
Why did he have to come back? Why couldn’t the Alterra just keep him forever?
