Court Wizard (Spellmonger Series: Book 8) (11 page)

She had finally found a man worthy of her. 

Oh, she had encountered plenty of men in her time who would have made adequate, even exceptional mates, objectively.  But Arborn was the first she’d met who approached her ideal.

Their courtship had been odd, at best.  But once she’d given voice to her interest and received the faintest hint that it was returned, she had pursued the Captain of Rangers diligently and with a single purpose: to wed him according to the rules of his own tribe.  And when Pentandra set her mind to a task, that task got accomplished.  Her attraction to Arborn was no different.

To that end she’d taken the Kasari Rites of Marriage in the Kasar homeland, learning what the odd barbarians considered essential for a wife to know.  That the training and rites focused more on the domestic arts Pentandra had avoided her entire life was bad enough – the Kasari’s idea of a marital sex life was largely concerned with bearing children.  That had been both professionally and personally disappointing, though she’d learned a remarkable amount in the process.

But she was no fresh-faced Kasari maiden, she was a professional woman with a career and a post.  Nor was Arborn a stranger to streets and towns.  But his vocation involved the wilderness.  After their dramatic wedding at a sacred waterfall, she had been perplexed over what to do with her new husband. 

Minalan had offered this post as a compromise: good, honest work and an important title, near the forests of her husband’s Wilderlands home.  But he hadn’t coated the offer in honey – Minalan had given her a starkly realistic idea of the task ahead of her. 

Vorone was a Ducal city, technically, but it had little other purpose than entertaining nobles.  The summer capital of the Duchy of Alshar, it had been the site of the death of the Duchess Enora, just days after her husband had died of wounds sustained at the Battle of Timberwatch, four years earlier.  That had been an important battle.  Pentandra had been there.  Two Dukes had joined their armies together to fight the common foe, the gurvani invasion from the Mindens. 

That the Duke of Alshar had help toward claiming his due reward from Duin for his puissance was not widely known.  In fact, it was a closely-held secret of the Arcane Orders that Duchess Grendine of Castal had ordered her magical assassin, Isily of Bronwyn, to give the indecisive Duke Lenguin a push into the afterlife.  That her agents were likely behind the subsequent assassination of Duchess Enora was also strongly suspected. 

The Duke of Castal had used the resulting power vacuum in Alshar to elevate himself to King, using his military position to take wardenship of Duke Lenguin’s minor heir, Anguin, and force him to support the new Kingdom of Castalshar.

Not everyone had been eager to see the union of Remere, Castal, and Alshar.  There was a historical distrust of the realm, after centuries of intermittent warfare.  The anti-Castal parties in Alshar had largely fled south to the rich coastal valleys, where a coven of rebels denied distant King Rard and had taken control of the wealthiest portion of the Duchy. 

What was left under royal control was a slim slice of land between the nearly-impassable Land of Scars to the south and the unremitting danger of the Penumbra in the north.  Hardly a third of the original duchy.

That was enough for Rard and Grendine.  They had the Orphan Duke, they had the Duke of Remere, and enough of a pretext to build a throne.  Whether or not they could build an actual kingdom was another matter.

It was a deft piece of political maneuvering, Pentandra had to admit – it had all the style of the traditional Remeran politics she’d grown up with.  But the fact that she had directly benefitted from it left a bad taste in her mouth.  The Orphan Duke was an orphan because his indecisive father and idiot mother had gotten in the way of his aunt’s ambitions.  Both she and Minalan felt an obligation to the boy to try to make up for that.  That was part of the reason she was here.

But Pentandra was also here to represent the substantial interests of the Order and her profession.  She’d taken the post partly as a way to safeguard the political truce that the Magi and the nobility had come to in the last few years.  But she and Minalan had agreed that depending on one political alliance for the Order’s survival was foolhardy.  Rebuilding the duchy of Alshar – what was left of it – and restoring the Orphan Duke to power in fact, and not just in name, was her actual mission.

That would require magic.  And luck.  And the help of the gods.

Despite his title, the actual holdings the Duke would have under his control were pitiful, wartorn, and fractured.  Nothing had been the same in the Alshari Wilderlands since the invasion, and what loose social and cultural institutions had been in place among the far-flung settlements of this robust land had been ripped away by the invasion. 

There was Tudry, in the north – once a rustic walled town depending on mining and forestry for its survival, Tudry was now an army town on the edge of the Penumbra, ruled by her friend Astyral, a Gilmoran magelord of some repute.  And there were a few smaller baronial towns south of here.  But Vorone was the last city of any size in the Wilderlands worth ruling.

And it was a mess.

The summer capital was poorly situated for defense, and the flood of refugees from the Penumbralands had swelled its population far beyond its meager capacities.  There was a ring of camps around the town were the survivors of the invasion had sought refuge.  After four years, they had settled into near-suburbs of the resort town, surviving on alms and whatever else they could.  There was a garrison here, but it was poorly maintained and led, suitable for little more than quelling riots and protecting the palace.  King Rard had installed a local pro-Castali baron, Edmarin, as Steward of the Realm in Vorone, ostensibly in charge of both the summer capital and the lands beyond.

But without a Duke in the palace they were riding toward, there wasn’t really any reason for the town to exist at all.  The snow-covered shops and homes that surrounded them on this sacred night had no reason to exist without the government institutions and visiting nobility of Vorone.  Without a Duke, the town was irrelevant, an abandoned capital without purpose.  Without a capital and at least a fragment of his legacy to stand on, he was a Duke in name only.  The Orphan Duke and Vorone needed each other . . . they just didn’t realize it yet.

It was her job to help push the young man into power, and then help him keep it – and then help him make something worthwhile out of it.   Pentandra had to admit to herself she found the prospect challenging.  And frightening.  But it was a welcome distraction from the fear she felt over her new marriage. 

She had felt so wonderful when she and Arborn had finally consummated their love for each other, but she also knew all too well that there was more to marriage than blissful repose.  Now that she had achieved the man she’d coveted, she needed to figure out how to incorporate him into her life.  She had to learn how to live here with her husband, somehow, and compared to that challenge the idea of rebuilding a broken duchy from the ashes of invasion, usurpation and neglect seemed elementary.

Her father had been skeptical of her appointment, and considered it a demotion.  On top of her unanticipated wedding to a barbarian, she’d lost much of her family’s good opinion of her. Mother was mortified at the news.  Her sister was gleeful at Pentandra’s embarrassing choice.  He was neither mage nor nobleman.  He was poor, as her family measured things.  A penniless ranger from the wild – the news had shaken her mother’s social circle and enlivened her sisters. 

Pentandra was supposed to marry a fellow mage, or at least an intelligent nobleman who would add to the family’s prestige, if not its estates.  Arborn was neither of those things . . . which was one of the many reasons Pentandra had been attracted to him.

But now that her ideal man was hers, she was perplexed as to what to do with him.  They’d gone from Kasar to Sevendor, for the Magic Fair, and thence to desolate Gilmora, where the Orphan Duke’s party was quietly congregating.  A month spent in an abandoned cot with Arborn had seemed an extension of the honeymoon, as had Sevendor.  She’d spent her days discussing the arcane situation and helping Father Amus with political strategy while Arborn had consulted with Count Salgo on the tactical situation in and around Vorone. 

Their nights had been cozy and passionate as she could ask . . . but they’d already shared some awkward mornings. 

Now that they were headed toward their final destination on their journey, the reality of her situation was starting to bear down on her. 

She was married.  She was someone’s wife.  She, Lady Pentandra anna Benurvial, scion of an ancient Imperial house of magi and specialist in Sex Magic, had a husband.

The very idea made her want to giggle and shudder at the same time.

But every step her horse took toward the palace was a step toward settling down into a permanent household with Arborn . . . and despite all of her education, training, and mastery of obscure arcane subjects, that was a lore that eluded her.

Luckily, they reached the gates of the palace before she completely lost her mind dwelling on that fact.

The main gate to the palace looked formidable, but Pentandra could tell that, while stout, the impressive gate was more decorative than functional.  Two burly-looking guards bundled up against the cold stopped leaning on their spears long enough to challenge the vanguard of the party.  When twenty men behind the duke drew steel, and several others drew bows or arbalests, they dropped their weapons and opened the gate to the palace. 

“That was a lot easier than I expected,” Arborn murmured to her, as he helped her down from her saddle in the courtyard in front of the beautiful palace, a moment later.  No guards had come streaming from their barracks, no alarm had been rung.  But then the night of Yule saw most of the people dead drunk in celebration. 

“So far,” she agreed, allowing her husband to catch her as the knights in the vanguard dismounted around her.  She lingered a moment to appreciate his strong arms before she felt the toes of her riding boots touch the snowy cobbles.  “But then that’s the point of the element of surprise, isn’t it?”

“I think we’ve accomplished that,” he murmured, nodding to the great door of the palace, which was already thrown open by the Duke’s men.  No one rushed to meet the intruders.  A single old man roused himself from the outer hall.  He proved to be the steward on watch.  The night steward started to complain about the interruption until he saw the visitors.  He recognized young Duke Anguin at once, and fell to his knees in front of his liege. 

Anguin seemed gratified by the recognition, and bid the man to rise.  He assured the old servant that he was, indeed, returned to Vorone to set things right.  That pleased the steward until he had tears in his eyes.

After that, the securing of the palace was simple.  The night steward supplied the keys and led the Duke’s knights to the strategically important posts around the palace.  The guard rooms, the armory, the main entrances between wards of the palace were all manned by sober, clear-eyed Alshari knights bearing the ducal badge on their baldrics . . . and naked swords in their hands.  Count Salgo directed them, and they moved quickly and quietly.

“Where shall you sleep this evening, Your Grace?” asked Count Angrial, as more men filed into the entrance hall.

“Sleep?  Luin’s staff, Angrial, I’ve just come home!” complained the young nobleman with a snort.  “I cannot think of sleep!”

“My lord,” the minister said, reprovingly, “you did ride more than ten hours today!  In the cold!  You must be exhausted!”

“I feel more awake and alive than I have in years, Angrial,” assured Anguin.  “Indeed, it is close to midnight.  I feel like a brief court session,” he announced.

“Sire?” Angrial asked, dully.  It was clear to Pentandra that the old man was far more tired than his liege.

“I want to address the man who has let my home fall into such disrepair,” Anguin decided.  “As my very first act as sovereign duke. I want to meet Baron Edmarin, the vassal appointed to safeguard my realm in my absence,” he said, his voice grave.  He studied a threadbare tapestry that Pentandra would have been ashamed for the servants to display back at her quaint little estate of Fairoaks.  It was a hunting scene depicting wild dogs surrounding a wounded stag, a hunter – no doubt some illustrious ancestor – being forced to defend a kill he had yet to make. 

Pentandra didn’t have to wonder what the boy thought of the image.  Especially when a wood roach the size of his thumb raced across the scene.  It looked like a good time for a distraction.

“Where would you like to hold your audience, Your Grace?” Pentandra asked, emphasizing the title.  Anguin looked as angry as she’d ever seen him about the disrepair around him.

“The Stone Hall,” he repeated.  “The throne room my father favored.”

“The Stone Hall, Your Grace?” Angrial asked, curious. “That was used more for summer occasions, due to the placement of the windows.  Would not the Rose Hall be better suited?”

“I am not partial to roses,” Anguin said, sternly.  Pentandra controlled a self-conscious grin.  The yellow rose was the personal badge of Queen Grendine, Anguin’s aunt and the woman he – rightly – suspected of ordering his parents’ assassinations.  “I will see Baron Edmarin in the Stone Hall.  Make it as ready as it needs to be.  I will sit in court first there, I think, and ask this man what he has done here in my absence.”