'In the sacristy?'
'It's as good a place as any other.'
Albrec sighed and rubbed at the stumps where long ago frost had robbed him of his fingers. 'Very well. But Corfe, I say this to you. Stop punishing yourself for what fate has visited upon you. It is not your fault, nor is it anything to feel ashamed over. What's done is done.' He reached up and set a hand on Corfe's shoulder. The Torunnan King smiled.
'Yes, of course. You sound like Odelia.' A strangled attempt at a laugh. 'God's blood, Albrec, but I miss her. She was one of the great friends of my life, along with Andruw, and Formio, and others long dead. She was another right hand. Had she been a man, she would have made a fine king.' He pushed the palm of his hand into the hollow of one eye. 'Perhaps I should have told her. She might not have been so insistent on this thing.'
'Odelia? No, she would still have wanted it, though it would have tortured her much as it is tormenting you. It is as well she never knew who Ostrabar's Queen is.'
'Ostrabar's Queen ... I wonder sometimes - even now I wonder - about how it was for her, what nightmares she must have suffered as I fled Aekir with my tail between my legs.'
'That's enough,' Albrec said sternly. 'What's done is done. You cannot change the past, you can only hope to make the future a better place.'
Corfe looked at the little cleric, and in his bloodshot fire-glazed eyes Albrec saw something which shook him to the core. Then the King smiled again.
'You are right, of course.' He tried to make his voice light. 'Do you realise that Mirren will have a step-mother younger than she is? They will be friends, I hope.' The word hope sounded strange coming out of his mouth. He embraced the disfigured little monk as though they were brothers, and then knelt and kissed the Pontifical ring. ‘I must away, Holiness. A king's time is not his own. Thank you for yours.' Then he spun on his heel and thumped the sacristy door. Felorin opened it for him, and they left together, the King and his shadow. Albrec stared unseeing into the depths of the bright fire before him, not hearing his Inceptine helpers re-enter the room and stand reverently behind him. He was still shaken by the light he had seen in Corfe's eye. The look of a man who cannot find peace in life, and who means to seek it in death.
In the midst of the crowded activity that currently thronged Torunn, few remarked upon the entry into the city of a Merduk caravan several days later. It was some thirty wagons strong, and halfway down their column a curtained palanquin bobbed, borne on the shoulders of eight brawny slaves. They had been given an escort of forty Cathedraller cavalry, and entered the city via the North Gate, where the guards had been told to expect them. Merduk ambassadors and their entourages were a common sight in Torunn these days, and no one remarked as the caravan made its stately way to the hill overlooking the Torrin Estuary on which loomed the granite splendour of the palace, its windows all draped black in mourning for Torunna's dead Queen.
Ensign Baraz was within the palace courtyard as the heavily laden covered wagons rattled through the gates, drawn by camels whose heads bobbed with black and white ostrich feathers. He drew up the ceremonial guard, and at his crisp command they flashed out their sabres in salute. The palanquin came to a halt upon the shoulders of the sweating slaves, and a bevy of silk-veiled Merduk maids lifted back the curtains to reveal a barely discernible form within. This shape was helped out with the aid of a trio of footstools and the ministrations of the maids and stood, slim, and somewhat uncertain, with the cold spring wind tugging at her veil. Baraz stepped forward and bowed. 'Lady,' he said in Merduk, 'you are very welcome in the city of Torunn and kingdom of Torunna.'
He got no farther through the flowery speech of welcome which he had devised the night before after the King had peremptorily informed him of his mission. A stout Merduk matron with black eyes flashing above her veil waddled forward and demanded to know who he was and why the King was not here to greet his bride-to-be in person.
'He has been unavoidably detained,' Baraz said smoothly. 'Preparations for the war—'
'Sibir Baraz! I know you! I served in your uncle's household ere he was transferred to the palace. My brave boy, how you've grown!' The Merduk matron enfolded Baraz in her huge arms and tugged his head down to rest in her heaving, heavily scented cleavage. 'Do you not know Haratta, who wiped your nose when you could barely say your name?'
With difficulty Baraz extricated himself from her soft clutch. Behind him, a fit of coughing had spread throughout the men of the honour guard and the eyes of the slim girl who had been in the palanquin were dancing.
'Of course I remember you. Now lady' - this to the girl - 'I have been instructed to guide you and your attendants to your quarters in the palace and make sure that all is as you wish there.'
Haratta turned and clapped her hands. In an entirely different tone, a harsh bark, she began to issue orders to the hovering maids, the slaves, the wagoneers. Then she turned back to Baraz, having produced a chaotic turmoil of activity out of what had been stately stillness a moment before, and pinched his burning cheek. 'Such a handsome young man, and high in the favour of King Corfe, no doubt. Lead on, master Baraz! The lady Aria and I would follow you anywhere, I'm sure.' She winked with a kind of jovial lechery, and when he hesitated shooed him on as though he were a chicken clucking in her path.
The procession had something of the circus about it, Baraz leading, with Haratta beside him chattering incessantly, Aria following with her maids about her, and then an incongruous crocodile of burly, sweating men burdened with trunks, cases, rolled carpets, bulging bags and even a flapping nightingale in a cage. But the sombre mourning hangings which festooned the palace soon put paid to even Haratta's loquaciousness and by the time they reached their destination they were a silent troop, and somewhat subdued.
The palace steward, an old and able quartermaster named Cullan, was waiting for them surrounded by sable-clad courtiers. The Merduk party was installed in a cavernous series of marble-floored rooms which were traditionally reserved for visiting potentates, but which had seen little use since the days of King Minantyr forty years before. Even the braziers, which had been lit in every corner, seemed to have done little to dispel the neglected chill within. Haratta eyed the suite critically, but was courteous, even restrained to Cullen and his subordinates. The Merduk slaves deposited a small hillock of luggage in every room, and then were shown to their own quarters above the kitchens - no doubt warmer and less draughty than the grand desolation their betters occupied.
Baraz turned to go, but Aria laid a hand on his arm. 'When will I see the King, Ensign Baraz?'
'I do not know, lady. My orders were to see you comfortably installed here and then to report to him, that was all.'
She drew back, nodded. Her eyes were incredibly young and somewhat fearful under the cosmetics which had been painted about them. Baraz smiled at her. 'He is a good man,' he said kindly, then collected himself and saluted. 'A pair of palace maids will be stationed in this wing to see that you have everything you need. Fare well, lady.' And he was gone.
Aria's entourage spent the rest of the day converting the cold chambers into something more befitting a Merduk princess, and by the time evening had rolled in, and with it a chill spring rainstorm out of the heights of the Cimbrics, they had transformed the austere suite into an approximation of the luxurious living spaces they were used to. Rich and colourful carpets had been unrolled to cover the bare marble, hangings had been hooked upon the walls, brass and silver lamps had been lit, incense was burning, and the nightingale sang his drab little heart out from the confines of his golden cage.
Aria and Haratta were in the bedchamber unpacking silken dresses and shawls from one of the larger trunks, Haratta enlarging upon the merits and defects of each garment, when one of the doe-eyed maids rustled in and fell to her knees before them.
'Mistress, mistress! The Torunnan King is here.'
'What?' Haratta snapped. 'Without a word of warning? You are mistaken.'
'No! It is he, all alone but for a tattooed soldier who waits down the passage. He wishes to talk with the Princess!'
Haratta threw down the costly silk she had been examining. 'Barbarians! Send him away! No, no, we cannot do that. My sweet, you must receive him - he is a king after all, though now I believe those stories about his peasant upbringing. Unheard of - to force himself upon us unheralded, catching us unawares. Veil yourself, girl! I will speak to him and set him to rights.' Haratta rose and, twitching her own veil about her pouting mouth, stalked from the chamber in a shimmer of billowing raiment.
In the main antechamber a man of medium height stood warming his hands at the glowing charcoal of a brazier. He was dressed in black and his close-fitting tunic sat on him as trimly as on the torso of a youth. But when he turned Haratta saw that his hair was three parts grey and his eyes were sunken, though they gleamed brightly in the lamplight. He wore a simple silver circlet about his temples and no other ornament or decoration of any kind. King or no, Haratta had intended to upbraid him politely but icily for his presumption, but something about his eyes stopped her cold. She curtseyed in the Ramusian way.
'You speak Normannic?' the man asked.
'A small piece, mine lord. Not very goods.'
'Haratta your name is, I am told.'
'Yes, lord.'
'I am Corfe. I am here to see the lady Aria. I apologise for my absence at your arrival, but I was detained by matters of state.' He paused, and seeing the look of alarm and incomprehension crossing her face his eyes softened. In Merduk he said:
‘I wish only to speak with your mistress for a moment. I will wait, if that is necessary.'
Her face cleared. 'I will ask her to come at once.' There was something in this man's gaze, something which even at first meeting made one eager to obey him.
When Aria entered the room a few moments later she was swathed in yards of midnight silk, the finest she possessed, and kohl had been applied to her eyelids, the lashes drawn out at the corners of her eyes with black stibium. Haratta followed her and took an unobtrusive seat in a shadowed corner as her mistress walked steadily towards her future husband, a man old enough to be her father.
The Torunnan King bowed deeply and she inclined her head in answer. He did not look as old as she had feared, and had in fact the bearing of a much younger man. He was not ill-looking either, and the first, absurd, girlish fears she had harboured faded. She was not to share a bed with some potbellied bald-headed libertine after all.
They exchanged inconsequential courtesies, all the while taking in every detail of the other. His Merduk was adequate, but not fluent, as though it had lately been studied in a hurry. They switched to Normannic at her request, for she was at home in both, thanks to her mother. He had a stern cast to his face, but when she made him smile she saw a much younger man beneath the Royal solemnity, a glimpse of someone else. She found herself liking his gravity, the sudden, unexpected smile which lifted it. His eyes were almost the same shade as her own.
He asked about her mother, turning away to poke at the brazier with a fire iron as he did so. She was very well, Aria told him lightly. She sent her greetings to her future son-in-law. This last thing she had invented as an empty courtesy, no more, but as she said it the fire iron went still, and remained poised in the burning red heart of the coals. The King went silent and she wondered what she had said to offend him. At last he turned back to her and she could see sweat glittering on his brow. His eyes seemed to have sunk back into his head and the firelight raised no gleam from them.
'May I see your face?' he asked.
She was taken aback, and had no idea how to deal with such a bold request. She glanced at Haratta in the shadows and almost called the older woman over, then thought better of it. Why not? He was to marry her, after all. She twitched aside her veil and drew back her silken hood without speaking.
She heard Haratta gasp with outrage behind her, but had eyes only for the King's face. The colour had fled from it. He looked shocked, but mastered himself quickly. His hand came up as if he were about to caress her cheek, then fell away without touching her.
'You are the very image of your mother,' he said hoarsely.
'So I have been told, my lord.' Their eyes locked and something indefinable went between them. There was a great, empty hunger in him, a grieved yearning which touched her to the quick. She took his hard-planed fingers in her own, and felt him tremble at her touch.
Haratta had reached them. 'My lord King, this is no way to be behaving. I am here as chaperone for the Princess, and I say that you overstep the mark. Aria, what are you thinking? Cover yourself, girl. A man does not see his bride's face until their wedding night. For shame!'
Corfe's eyes did not leave Aria's for a second. 'Things are done differently here in Torunna,' he said quietly. 'And besides, we are to be married in the morning.'
Aria felt her heart flip. 'So soon? But I—'
‘I have communicated with your father. He has agreed. Your dowry will be sent on with your brother Nasir and the reinforcements he is leading here.'