Chapter 28 | The Last Royal Mistress

In this life, thought Bear, I am doomed to spend more time waiting outside Missy’s apartments than in them. Once again he sat in his preferred corner in the kitchens at the Keep, listening to the gossip of the servants at tea. It was the best way he’d found to measure the mood of the castle, and through it, the world outside its walls. Going out had become too dangerous.

Few Inchari lived in the capital, and though he exchanged his turbans, bright satin breeches and brocaded doublets for sober clothes when going into the city, he still stood out on the street like a parrot among pigeons: tall, brown, dark-eyed and exotically handsome. Everyone knew who he was on sight, and some took great exception to him as the “Furrin Hoor’s boy.” The last time he’d ventured out, he barely escaped a small mob with no more than a cut to one hand. “T’ain’t you, sweetheart,” the motherly housekeeper had said that day as she bandaged up his hand. “We as know you, love you! It’s that Lady of yours! I know you love her, but you’re the only one--besides His Majesty!” she whispered.

Except that was hardly true, he thought. Plenty of men loved Missy. A whole herd of them were in her apartments right now doing the Gods only knew what, because Bear certainly didn’t want to know.

What the Gods knew, was that the strong, good-looking herd of young men in Rose’s apartments was carrying on in quite improper ways.

Rose had been generous with her money among the capital’s students. She spread her largesse, and herself, among certain of the city’s scholars and wash-outs from the Brother’s Temple, a population habitually low on funds and female attention. In return she received both affection and protection; never again did she spend a boring evening letting Varrido suck on her toes, nor did she ever have to worry about violence in the streets of the city. Her own little militia surrounded her carriage, walking or running alongside. They wore her colors, ribbons in rose and gold fluttering from their sleeve points, and they beat anyone who so much as sneered in Rose’s direction--unlike the Royal Guard, who required actual provocation to beat her antagonists.

Most nights, Rose knew the King sat by the door connecting her rooms with his, listening in blissful humiliation, and tonight she had planned an evening that should make them both exceedingly happy. Six strapping things in nothing but their shirts had gotten drunker than Farr and were carrying a naked, giggling Rose bodily about the room. “Put me down!” she said.

“Never!” cried the burliest, bouncing her in the air for good measure. She repeated her command, and her devotees settled her onto a couch, sifting her dark hair through their fingers, slipping hands along her legs.

“Ah, my darrling boys!” she said. “Who will be first?”

Periander, meanwhile, had made the circuit of the kingdom, gauging its mood. He had already gained promises of military support from the Duke of Kellen and his nobles. Whithorse promised money but no men, “and you shall not mention my support to anyone,” added the Duke, “or I will side with the King and fight for the crown, Per. We may be cousins, you and I, but Aunt Maritta’s memory isn’t enough to make me jeopardize my holding.” Leutefloss, Barle, Valmouth and Belleth promised nothing but non-interference.

But it was in Corland, where Rose herself ruled the Earldom of Callant, that Per found a nobility and populace wound tight and ready for revolt. As soon as he arrived at Aeskhold, Talan Duke Corland’s castle, a council of war gathered, almost without Per’s bidding. Round the table were the complete Corrish nobility and most of Kellen’s lords, come from some distance.

“The Foreign Woman calls herself Queen in all but name, and claims she’s running the country!” said Baron Odoness, whose holding fell within Callant.

“She’s not far wrong,” said Talan.

“My father won’t listen to anyone but Domma Herrada,” said Per. “Every day his speech is a little more halting, and he trembles. I believe him to be mad.”

“Why wouldn’t he turn to you as regent, then, Your Highness, if he’s no longer able to rule?” said Fillen Lord Kellen.

“He doesn’t think he’s unable to rule,” said Per. “And jealousy adds to it. The Foreign Woman was my mistress before I discarded her. The King is concerned that I might decide to take her back--quite an unfounded fear, gentlemen.”

“What are we to do?” said Odoness. “I have to pay three times the levy to her that I did to the crown! My own holdings are threatened by her! My tenants have been refusing to pay the dun. They’re beating my collectors, and one was outright murdered! Never worry, the entire village paid for that,” he added with a nod so vigorous his wig shook, “but I can’t put all the men in all my villages to the sword, and that’s what it’s come to! I shan’t stand for it! My fields are already laying fallow as it is. It wouldn’t be half so tiresome if there were a war involved!”

In the end, they agreed that a change of kings was all there was for it. They were being taxed beyond endurance, and all they had to show for it was a glittering and beautiful spendthrift of a woman with her dainty foot on the old King’s neck. They all swore that from then on, Periander was their King, and they would fight to put him on the throne as Andrin the Third.

“What has Teacher to say on this, Per? Have you talked to him?” said Corland as the two walked away from the meeting.

“Only that we must not tell him anything about the plot, or my father will force him to reveal what he knows.”

“So he won’t stand in our way?”

Per held his breath for a moment in thought. “He won’t let any harm come to the King,” he said. “Nor will he let harm come to me. In the end, if I am to take the throne and Teacher’s obedience, Talan, I will have to kill my father myself.”

Talan dipped his head, looking at the Prince from under heavy brows. “Do you think you will be able to do that?”

“If I am to hold this country together, I have to,” he answered. “For now, we must keep this as closely guarded as we can.”

But preparations for war are hard to keep secret; every time a man is called away from his family to join his master’s regiment, whispers begin in his family that spread to family in the next village and then the next, until a minstrel hears them. The minstrel walks to the city and sings his songs about the war to come; after a while, everyone knows the horizon will soon be filled with spear points, arrows, war machines, and fire.

When word reached the capital, Bear heard it before either the King or Rose. “Nonsense!” said Rose when he tried to talk to her about it. “Bear, thou soundest like a flock of chickens! If thou dost not stop thine incessant squawking, I shall have to keep thee in the kitchens!”

On his own, Bear tended to his task: keeping Missy and himself as safe as he could. He began waylaying the jewelers who came in a constant stream to the Keep and sold some of the gems he’d kept aside for Rose’s future. Bear discovered he was a fair bargainer, and the jewelers discovered that trying to cheat the “beardless black boy” usually ended up strongly in the black boy’s favor. Once he was satisfied with the liquidity of their assets, Bear packed a bag for himself and one for his mistress, ready to leave at a moment’s notice. The only detail he hadn’t figured out was exactly where they could run to if it came to that.

Bear told Rose none of this, as she had requested, so that when Teacher was forced to tell Warin, she was as surprised as the King. “Per means to depose you?” she said. “Who would stand with him?”

“Corland and Kellen, according to Teacher,” said Warin, shifting his foot on its stool.

“Corland!” said Rose. “I will command my Callanters to march against him!”

“Your holding’s entire male population has already joined the rebel army, ma’am,” said Teacher.

“I won’t have it!” she stomped. “They shall do as I say! They’re mine!”

“In the end, they are their own, ma’am, no matter how much we wish to think otherwise,” said Teacher.
Warin wriggled in fretful agitation. “You must go through the mirror, then, and kill Per immediately!”

“Your Majesty, you of all people know I cannot.”

“Very well, then!” said Warin. “Go through and kill Corland and Kellen! They’re traitors!”

“Not a reflection have I been able to see them through, Your Majesty, since you set me to spying on them. They are both well aware of what I can do.”

Warin turned an odd shade of purple, and one side of his face twitched before his proper color returned. “F-find a reflection c-close to them and walk the rest of the w-way!”

“It may take me weeks to find them that way. They’ve left their holdings and I don’t know where they are. Sir, I cannot leave you here so unprotected,” said Teacher, with such a stony face that Warin couldn’t find the courage to make a further order.

“What do you recommend I do?” said the King.

“The easiest course, Your Majesty--the course that would save the most lives--would be to abdicate. Make Prince Andrin your Regent, retire to Middlemont or another of your holdings, and live there at your ease with Lady Callant.”

“I will never give up my throne,” said Warin. “Never. Not till I am dead.”

“And you shouldn’t!” said Rose. “You must march out to meet them!”

“Yes!” said Warin. “You speak sense, my dear! My fathers and grandfathers were mighty in battle, and so shall I be! Once they see their King in the field, the men who’ve been tricked into backing the traitors Kellen and Corland will run to my side immediately! We go to war!”

Warin ordered the Royal Armor brought out of the Brother’s Temple armory. The Eldest Brother brought it to the Keep, along with some distressing news. “Farr took his Embodiment unexpectedly yesterday as we removed your armor to clean it, Your Majesty. He has ordered us to stand clear of this war. We shall not come to your defense, sir.”

“Playacting!” said Rose. “It must be playacting! You just don’t like it that a woman has some say as to what goes on here!”

“That’s as may be, Lady Callant,” said the Eldest Brother, standing even straighter. “But it has no bearing on our decision. If Farr tells us to do something, we do it. If Farr tells us not to do something, we don’t do it. We are His soldiers, not the Crown’s.”

Warin found further disappointment as he tried to raise an army from the surrounding duchies. He sent Teacher to each of the Dukes in turn and found them all pleading poverty. “Tell him he has taxed us so completely,” said the Duke of Belleth, “that I have no money to equip a force, but nor shall I move against him. That’s the best I can do.”

Teacher told Warin the enemy armies were gathered in the fields and woods in Corland’s barony of Guenor, near the border with the home county, and that’s where Warin and his forces would meet them. Warin’s own treasury was strapped, and so he dipped into Rose’s jewels to pay for his troops; though she stormed and screamed and wrecked her apartments, he held fast until her storm broke on the rocks again. Rose took to her bed in one of her black moods, leaving Bear to run her affairs until she recovered. She didn’t even rise to see Warin march out of the Keep with his escort--if one can call being carried on a litter from place to place “marching,” thought Bear as he watched the procession from the windows. Rose and gold ribbons fluttered from the tops of the litter, though everywhere else was the red and gold of Tremont, the Three Mountains on every shield.

“Ototo,” came a voice behind him. He turned to see Teacher, a figure who frightened him more than a little. “I have watched you the entire time you’ve been here.” Bear waited for a reprimand, or a cuff to the ear, but none came. “Don’t be afraid. You are a kinder and more caring servant than your mistress deserves, but she herself is a pitiful thing. I intend neither of you any harm. But neither can you stay here.”

“Watchu mean, sirra?” said Bear in his false accent.

“Do not call me ‘sir,’ child.” Teacher took Bear by the shoulders. “I know you have made secret preparations for your departure. You are wise beyond your years, Ototo, and some day I hope you can use that wisdom in your own service and not Mistress Bakerson’s.”

Bear’s eyes opened wide. “Mistress Bakerson?” he stammered. “Eh--dat name Ototo don’t know, sirra!”

“Do not play at Inchari ways with me, boy. I know better. This is what you must do, Ototo. You must get word to your mistress’s young admirers immediately. They will help smuggle you out of the country. You cannot stay in Tremont! The people will kill you both the minute they can, and that time is fast approaching. Your mistress deserves a set-down, but death is too much punishment even for her, and especially for you. Exile is enough. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir--I’m sorry, I must call you something!”

“Call me Teacher, worthy Ototo. Now go serve your mistress and yourself, and get both of you out of here. I must go attend my King.”

By the time the last of Warin’s troops passed through the King’s Woods six abreast down the old war road, Rose’s students had bundled the listless woman and her servant off into the night to Esta, the port city at the mouth of the Shadow River, and onto a merchant ship sailing for Alzeh.