The fires from the bronze lamps in the corners of the room lit Helen’s hair with a coppery glint. Lladwen ran his hand over the unbound waves, the stray and frizzed bits tickling his palm as it passed over them. It was an unusual shade, her hair, vibrant and free from dye, but marked with errant strands of silver. The closest any true-blooded Talian could claim to such a hue was a pale reddish blond, a dilute and faded version of rich color.
Helen shifted in his arms, her bare breast pressing into his side. “Hmmm,” she murmured. The hand she had on his chest contracted slowly into a fist, the nails scratching lightly against his skin. A shiver run down Lladwen’s spine, his body responding to her touch.
“Hmmm,” she said again. She turned her head toward him and opened one eye. The other eye soon followed. She unclenched her hand, drawing her fingernails out across his chest until the warm flat of her palm lay on his skin. Her eyes fixed on his, she began to run her hand down the firm muscles of his chest and over his stomach, moving in a slow and deliberate path. She smiled when Lladwen’s arm darted out and caught her wrist just as her fingers began to slip beneath the blue silk covers of the bed.
“What?” she purred. “Done already?”
Lladwen frowned and cast her hand away from him. She'd used him enough this night. He liked her better when she was sleeping, when she didn't say a word. Helen had always had a barbed tongue, and she did not spare him from it, despite their long association. He turned away from her onto his side and swung his legs over the edge of the bed, Helen’s mocking laughter following him. With one arm, he dug through the embroidered pillows that had fallen onto the floor, found his trousers, rose, and began to pull them on.
Helen propped herself onto an elbow to watch, the blue bed sheets falling to her waist and revealing a wealth of pale, smooth skin, unmarked by age. There was no modesty about her. Despite the cold night air drifting in through one unshuttered window, she did not make any move to pull the covers up about her nakedness. She ran her eyes over Lladwen appreciatively, blinking with the lazy contentment of a cat in the sunlight.
“I should tell my minstrel to play for you. Ask him to play that Fair Folk song, but tell him to take it slow, and see what happens.” She stretched her arms out in front of her and let her head sink into her pillow. “Its effect on me was interesting, as you’ll recall. He has the most unique voice.”
Lladwen fastened the laces of his pants. “It doesn’t bother you then?”
“What bother me?”
Lladwen grunted and dropped into a crouch. He felt around on the thick, plush rug beneath the bed, grasping about for his tunic. The light from the bronze lamps was dim and did not assist him much in his search. “That your friend, that Fair Folk Queen, chose an outskirter and a minstrel to be her consort. She was at the masque. She could have had her pick of any of the jheranun there. You would think,” his hand closed around the soft cloth of his tunic, “that if she was only one of two Fair Folk Queens left, she would choose her consort carefully. With one of the jheranun under her wing, she could exert some influence in the city. But an outskirter? A musician?” Lladwen rose to his feet and pulled the tunic on over his head. “What benefit does that gain her?”
Helen shrugged her shoulders. “The Fair Folk are fickle creatures. Probably one of the reasons they’re dying off. I’m in no mood to worry about it just now. I’ll enjoy my minstrel as I can.”
Lladwen found his belt on the table at the bedside, the curved blade of his dagger strapped to the leather. For most of his life, he had been trained with a straight-edged blade, but he was beginning to acquire a taste for the curved weapons of the Hajinni. Or perhaps it was just that he’d lived here for so long that their tastes were beginning to sink into his body, much as the spices they used sank into the oils of his skin. The whole city reeked of exotic spices, but he no longer noticed or cared. He pulled the belt about his waist and started to buckle it at the front.
Helen rolled onto her stomach, her hair spilling over her shoulder. She eyed the dagger at his side. “Will you teach me another of those tricks? I used your last one to marvelous effect on Haj.”
Lladwen stopped in the fastening of his belt and glared at her. She was always a bit foolish after their lovemaking. He turned his back and pulled his belt tight. “You shouldn’t use these things on other jheranun, and most certainly not another Seat. It humiliates them.”
Helen laughed and he heard the rustle of bed sheets as she slid out of bed. “There is only Farahd as a Seat now. Besides, Haj laid hands on me and that displeased me. If you had been there, Lladwen, you would have done more than threaten him and cause him a little pain, so don’t lecture me. He is a coward and a posturing fool. He will attempt to weather whatever comes but will take no part in it. What has he done except to hide in that palace of his? If things go as planned, I'd wager my best sapphires he flees from the city altogether. He has as much power as one of the multa now.”
Not entirely foolish, Lladwen thought with a smile. Every word was a bite, and each as accurate as the last. He could hear her pulling on her dress behind him, languid and slow, as if she hoped he would turn around before she was quite done. He was fond of her, more than he would like to admit to either her or himself, but he resented the way she used him. It reminded him uncomfortably of the way she had used Haman and her late husband, Joram. One had been ruined, with little more than a large house left to his name, and the other was long dead. Only Rabani, her stepping stone from Haman to Joram, had escaped unscathed. Lladwen took a little solace in the fact that Helen used him for simpler needs.
“Yes, if you must know, it bothers me.” Her voice had lost its soft, lazy quality from a few moments before and was now brisk and clean. Lladwen turned to find her doing up the brass buttons on the front of her nightgown. The gown was loose and heavy, one end of the embroidered neckline draping off her shoulder. “What are the chances that an outskirter, little more than a boy, gets picked off the street by the Third Seat and then chosen as a consort to a Fair Folk Queen? It doesn’t make sense, any way that I look at it.” She pulled her hair back and tied it with a strip of leather from the side table.
“Why did you pluck him from the streets, Helen? You don’t need a minstrel, and you’ve never said anything about wanting one before.”
She sat down on the edge of the large, wooden-framed bed, the feather mattress sinking beneath her weight. “The worst thing is that I’m not entirely sure why I did it. I thought at first I panicked, hearing him sing a song about Fair Folk when I have given them refuge in the bowels of the city. But why should I care? The song doesn't implicate me. He does have an excellent voice, though. Extraordinary, really.” She frowned.
“More than extraordinary,” Lladwen said, “unnatural. Did you see the way Haman reacted at the masque when your minstrel began to sing?”
“Haman was there?” A smile curved the corners of her lips as she combed her fingers through her hair. “I didn't know that. I didn't think he'd show at all.” She looked up at him, the smile fading. “Why didn’t you tell me before?”
Lladwen shrugged. “I didn’t think about it before. After your Fair Folk Queen touched the minstrel, I forgot about it. I was too busy chasing an adolescent boy through the palace.”
“She’s not my Fair Folk Queen. I wish she were. I might have better luck controlling her. What did Haman do?”
Lladwen pulled the blue armchair from the side table to the bedside and sat in it. He found his boots and began to pull them over his feet. He had never gotten used to the slippers or sandals the Hajinni wore. They felt light, vulnerable. “If only I could have seen his face. His mask was over his eyes, but when the minstrel began to sing, he went stiff as everyone else and then he pushed his way out of the room.”
“Haman? Push his way out of a room? He’s been such a docile little lamb since he lost his family’s salt mines. It doesn’t seem like him to manhandle other jheranun. Something about our minstrel either scared him or had him so excited that he had to leave immediately to tell someone.” She pushed her hair back over her shoulder. “I have the uncomfortable feeling that everyone else knows something about the boy that we don’t.”
“He could be the bastard son of a noble, thrown into the outskirts to die or be forgotten,” Lladwen suggested.
“And whose bastard would you guess him to be?”
“Joram's,” Lladwen said without hesitation.
“You think so? I thought so, too, when I had the chance to see him close up and clean. He has something of Joram in his face, although he's much prettier than Joram ever was. If he’d turned to whoring, he’d have made better money than he ever could as a musician. He would have been better fed as a whore, at least. He’ll have Joram’s build as well, once he grows into it. Chances are he is not Joram's bastard, with the number of orphans in the outskirts, but it still matters that he looks a faint bit like him.” She tilted her head. “So now we have a pretty puzzle on our hands. What do you do with a minstrel chosen as consort to a Fair Folk Queen, who also happens to resemble your late husband’s get, and is, at this very moment, living underneath your roof?”
“Dispose of him.” Lladwen’s hand moved to the hilt of the curved dagger at his belt. The boy made him uncomfortable. He’d feel better if the boy was dead, his blood spilled out on the ground and steaming in the night air. “If he is Joram’s bastard, he could be used against you. Haman could use him against you. He has reason enough.”
“I’d say the same thing, Lladwen, but you’ve missed something.”
“And what’s that?” His eyes narrowed.
“You said that Haman left the masque as soon as he heard the minstrel sing. If that’s true, then he never saw the boy’s face. The boy removed his mask over halfway into the song. No, Haman left because of what the boy sang, the way he sang it, or something else entirely. Joram’s bastard or not, there may be something else about the boy that is attracting such interest. I want to know what it is before I make any decisions about my minstrel’s fate.”
Lladwen rose from his chair, the legs of it scraping against the stone floor. “Sometimes I wonder why you even bother asking my opinion.” He turned and made his way toward the door. He had just put his hand on the cool bronze doorknob when he heard Helen behind him.
“Stay,” she said.
Lladwen halted in his tracks and clenched his teeth. “Is that a command or a request?”
“A request.” Her voice was soft.
Lladwen turned the knob. His temper leapt inside him, prodding him to act. He wanted nothing more than to be gone from this room and leave her alone with her thoughts and her scheming. She was too soft for him to admire with any sort of consistency and too hard for him to ever truly love. He had once thought himself in love with her, when they were little more than children, but that had been before Haman and Joram and that despicable Rabani, men she’d all used and cast aside. He knew her better, now. But then, he knew himself better now, too. When it came to her, he was weak. Lladwen lightened his grip on the doorknob and felt it slide back into place.
Hating himself for it, he removed his hand from the door and turned around. She lay on her side in the bed, the blankets pulled up beneath her arms. He couldn’t tell what she was thinking. He kicked off his boots and removed his shirt on the way back to her bed. Lladwen slipped under the blankets next to her and felt her hand come to rest on his chest.
“The pillows,” she murmured.
Fuming, Lladwen leaned over the bedside and began to pull the pillows onto the bed. But as he reached furiously for the last one, his hand missed and instead struck something that was neither pillow nor rug. He lifted it to his face, squinting to make out its shape. A book.
“What’s that?” Helen’s voice was alert again. She sat up and reached over to snatch the book from his hands. Lladwen evaded her. “Give it to me.”
He felt the tattered edges and the thin, light weight of it. Ah. He knew what book it was, though he could not make out the plain, dark blue cover. “Some bedtime reading? A bit dangerous to leave lying about, don’t you think?”
She lunged and snatched the book from his grip. “No one here can read Andeuran except you and me, Lladwen.” She cradled the book in her arms as gently as if it were a child.
“And what about Farahd’s new soldiers? One or two of them look as if they’ve got some Andeuran blood in them.”
“Don’t be absurd.” She ran her hands over the cover as if searching for unseen blemishes. She opened to a page and Lladwen could see flowing black script accompanied by detailed illustrations in colored ink. The pages were yellowed and scuffed at the corners. She turned them with care, the parchment fluttering with her every breath. “They’re not full-blooded Andeurans like us. There are too few of us left.”
She sounded sad, and Lladwen could not help but reach out to her. “They meant us to join, you know.”
She pulled her shoulder away from his hand, hard and distant again. “I didn’t want to live my life as a broodmare, giving birth over and over again for the pleasure of our families. What a senseless waste. I have better things to do than to suckle a crowd of yowling, redheaded brats. Besides, I will give them something better.”
“And what is that?” Lladwen asked, though he already knew the answer.
“I will give them back their home. All of it.”
The old argument, Lladwen thought. He suppressed his rising anger. “Helen,” he said, as gently as he could muster, “what good is giving our people back their country if there aren’t enough of them to inhabit it?”
“Our people will do better once they have their home back. We aren’t meant to live in mountains, Lladwen. It’s too cold, and the air is too thin. We’re meant to spread across the plains and harbors, and to breathe the ocean’s air.” She turned a page. A delicate illustration of a large seaside city sprawled across the parchment. The buildings were a uniform beige stone and the rooftops were tiled in red. A great glittering expanse of water brushed against the city walls, its surface crowned with the silhouettes of seabirds. Lladwen could nearly feel the ache in her heart as she looked at it. “My great-grandfather. He must have known it was all coming to an end.”
“It’s gone. The great city sank beneath the waves long before the Malachans came to our shores. It sank beneath the waves before your great-grandfather wrote that book.” Lladwen rolled over onto his side, turning his back to her. “Andeura is gone. The cities and towers are ruins of crumbling stone. Leave it be.”
“You,” she hissed, “you would have lain down in the streets and let the Malachans use you as a rug if you had been there.”
Lladwen closed his eyes. Years before he would have tensed, her words a grave insult. Now he merely shrugged, the bed covers sliding against his shoulder. Perhaps he would have lain down like a rug for the Malachans, if she had asked it of him. He didn’t know anymore. “If I had been there it would not have made a difference what I did. Andeura was falling long before the Malachans came. It’s dead now, Helen, and you can’t bring the dead back to life.” He was getting angry again. What’s the point? She’ll do what she likes; she always has. Let it go, get some sleep.
“As long as I live, Andeura will live. I’m Andeuran, through and through.”
That she was. She had their once-famous red hair and the strong-featured face. Her body was lithe and tall, imposing and regal. But she also had the streak of clever ambition that had eventually become the downfall of Andeura. If she was somehow dropped into Andeura the way it was three hundred years ago, Lladwen doubted anyone would be able to tell that she did not come from their time. She belonged in that time. Her efforts here were wasted.
Helen ran her hands over the page with the painted city once more before shutting the book and placing it on the table next to the bed. She slithered beneath the covers toward him, pressing up against his side. The last of his irritation with her evaporated. He was never able to stay angry with her for long. It was one of his shortcomings.
“Lladwen?” she murmured.
Lladwen felt a sudden surge of apprehension. She did this sometimes—soothing him, making him complacent, and then asking a favor of him. It always kept him on edge. He wondered why she bothered. He would do nearly anything she wanted, as he had proved to her time and time again over the years. “Yes?” he said, in as neutral a tone as he could muster.
“I need you to keep a close eye on the minstrel. I want to know who he’s talking to and where he goes. If there is something else going on here other than his likeness to Joram, I want to know what it is.”
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Songweaver's Awakening is a completed novel. I'll be posting chapters Tuesdays and Fridays, if you'd like to keep up!
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