Court Wizard (Spellmonger Series: Book 8) (13 page)

She was not just a bride, she was
married
.  She didn’t just have a wedding, she had a
husband.
  Pentandra was no fresh-faced Kasari maiden, she was a professional Remeran woman from a wealthy noble house who had a career and an important post.  While Arborn was no stranger to city streets and townlands and their customs, his vocation involved the wilderness.

After their dramatic, beautiful wedding at a sacred waterfall, Pentandra started to grow perplexed over just what to do with her new husband now that she had him.

Pentandra looked at her husband, bundled up against the cold on his well-muscled Highlands courser in a thick bearskin cloak.   Married for almost nine weeks, now, she still thrilled when she looked upon him.  His broad shoulders, long legs, and powerful arms filled out the great shaggy hide, his beard nearly blending with the dark brown fur.  He rode with the easy grace of long practice and many miles, but he had walked far more than he had ridden. 

Esteemed as adept in a culture that valued competence in all things, Arborn was a Raptor in rank, the highest rank a Kasari could earn.  He had learned more before his twentieth year than most sages learned in a lifetime of study.

He was the perfect man: broadly built and strong of limb, dark haired and steely eyed.  He possessed a fascinating and discerning intelligence, yet had a friendly and humble nature.  Arborn’s great humor had charmed her out of fits of rage she hadn’t thought capable of receding, and his quick wits had kept him alive and hale in the most harrowing of professional circumstances.  Captain Arborn of Kasar, the Eagle of the Wilderlands.

He had consented to marry her.  And she had won that right.

As challenging as the Kasari marriage rites had been for her, she had prevailed, proving her worthiness –without magic – until even the council had to agree she was a good mate for their most adept ranger.  But though the competition had been fierce, and the thrill of that victory still sweet, there was a part of Pentandra that felt as if her wedding was not yet legitimate.  Or at least real.

It was legal enough.  The Kasari woman who had seen them bound was a consecrated priestess of Trygg.  The union had been duly registered at her temple.  Pentandra and Arborn were legally bound as one, husband and wife, for the rest of their lives.

Only it didn’t
feel
real, yet.  The entire idea of getting married had seemed wonderful.  The celebration of life and her love for Arborn, the celebration after so much effort and struggle, the victory she had won over the other women who paid Arborn court in the rites – that had been real.  The exquisitely beautiful ceremony in front of the waterfall in the middle of the forest had been magical and meaningful.  When Arborn had placed his kerchief around her neck and fastened it in the traditional Kasari ritual, claiming her as his bride, there had been no hint of doubt in her.  She had enthusiastically and blissfully consented to wed him in front of the gods and Kasari animal spirits.

But she was still getting used to the idea that she actually had a
husband
, now.  Harder still was the notion that she was someone’s
wife.
 

Wife.
  The word felt strange in her mind and stranger on her tongue when she spoke it, now.  She was Arborn’s
wife
, and he her
husband
.  Despite the preparation the Kasari rites had given her (and her own professional interest in the whole idea of sexual and romantic love) Pentandra had never truly understood what it meant to be a wife.  To have a husband.  It wasn’t at all like the great romances foretold. 

Being Arborn’s wife meant that she was suddenly responsible for him in a way she had never been for another person before.  She was getting used to being
his
responsibility in ways that she could never have foreseen as well . . .  and found that it bothered her.  She had lived quite long enough without someone asking if she was hungry or cold all the time.  Now her . . . husband . . . asked her several times a day. 

It was confusing.  Things that she used to do for herself she now had to take Arborn into consideration before doing.  Her time was not quite her own, anymore.  And she now had a permanent invasion of her personal privacy that she found disconcerting.

The dramatic pace of their lives since their wedding had softened the transformation somewhat, she guessed.   A few weeks in Sevendor for the Magical Fair, and then the late autumn trek to Gilmora to join the Duke in preparation for his restoration had kept the full affect of her wedding from her, but Pentandra knew that the honeymoon was drawing to a close. 

She had to find some way to learn to
live
with a man, not just
love
him. 

Beyond her fears and anxieties over the intricacies of her newly-minted marriage Pentandra had other worries.  In marrying Arborn she had not just followed her heart, she had eschewed tradition. 

In the Remeran aristocracy in which she’d been raised a young woman not only did
not
marry for love, she did not marry without the
express consent and counsel of her entire family
, particularly her female relatives.  In finding the perfect man Pentandra had committed the sin of marrying him
without her mother’s knowledge
, much less her approval or permission.

That wasn’t a legal issue as much as it was a social matter.  Young aristocratic Remeran ladies were expected to wed in their late teens, with a lot of parental involvement in the selection – that was how her older sister had fared.  But because Pentandra developed
rajira
, the Talent to use magic, soon after menarche, she had been spared the indignity of an arranged marriage.  To her mother, Amendra, she was a lost cause.

While being a mage was a respected profession among the Remeran nobility, the Bans precluded most beneficial marriages for her anyway.  Female magi were professional women, in Remeran society, unlikely to marry at all.  Most went into practice as Resident Adepts (the traditional Remeran term for “spellmonger”) or went into public service.  Or teaching.  They were not particularly desirable as brides.

Pentandra had compounded her problems by eschewing even
that
path and focusing on a career in magical research – and not just any research.  In spite of her mother’s investment in social propriety, Pentandra had chosen the thoroughly scandalous field of sexual magic to study – not the easiest thing to brag about at garden parties. 

While her older sister had gone on to be the perfect picture of her mother’s social ideals, marrying a handsome, rich young noble living in a small but elegant country estate, Pentandra had been publishing papers on arcane and outlandish subjects . . . and developing a somewhat unsavory reputation in the refined halls of Remere.

Her sudden rise to prominence in the Arcane Orders had mollified Mother somewhat.  Being so close to the centers of power almost made up for the lack of a beneficial match, to her mother’s mind . . .
almost.
  The glorious memory of her sister’s summertime wedding continued to echo in her letters even as Pentandra was dining with dukes and even the King, himself. 

It seemed that no matter how well Pentandra did, professionally, she did not measure up to her idiot sister in her mother’s eyes because she was still without a husband, and near to twenty-five.

Arborn should have repaired that . . . had he not been not just a commoner, but a barbarian.  The fact that he was more literate than most of the nobility and more widely respected than any aristocrat she knew meant nothing to Remeran society, and therefore meant nothing to her mother.  Without title, lands, or coin, his status as a penniless wanderer made him little more than a vagabond by that light.  Marrying the Kasari ranger had been as scandalous, in its way, as taking up sex magic. 

Perhaps that’s why Pentandra had yet to write her mother about it.  The news was out, of course – her cousin Planus had seen to that.  He had hosted a magnificent wedding party in their honor back at Sevendor and had certainly told everyone back in Remere.  Not even he could resist gossip that juicy. 

But Pentandra was not eager to face her mother over the marriage.  She did not fear her rejection of Arborn (no one would ever be good enough for her daughter, she knew, and she had never thought Pentandra would wed at all), she feared the judgment she would cast over making such a permanent decision without her counsel and advice.

Which was precisely why Pentandra made the choice to marry Arborn without her mother’s counsel and advice. 

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, and she into his.  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.

Minalan offered Pentandra her new post as a compromise: good, honest magical work and an important title, yet near to 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.  This would not be a cushy position, with servants and a stipend.  Her new title would have to mollify her family, not her income.  That would, at least, keep one of her parent’s happy.

Her father, Orisorio, was a professional mage himself, and he respected his daughter as a brilliant theoretician.  Orisorio had been skeptical of her appointment, considering it a demotion, but he had not given her trouble about her new husband.  He was more disappointed that Arborn wasn’t gifted with
rajira
than he would be in his social class or cultural associations.  He had been even less hopeful about Pentandra’s nuptial chances than her mother, but he’d also been less concerned.  A good mage could support herself, he’d always told her.  She didn’t
need
a husband to survive. 

But Mother would be beside herself, Pentandra knew.  The temerity at thinking she was wise enough to marry a man
without her mother’s help
would be just too much for her to bear.

With her unanticipated wedding to a barbarian she’d lost much of her family’s good opinion of her. Remerans of Imperial descent just did
not
see much worth in a man such as Arborn.  Planus had filled her in on the reactions, back home.  Her mother was mortified at the news.  Her sister was gleeful at Pentandra’s socially embarrassing choice. 

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.  He was ghastly poor, as her family measured things.  A penniless ranger from the wild – the news had shaken her mother’s social circle and enlivened her sister’s.  Arborn was scandalously unacceptable to her family.  Which was one of the many reasons Pentandra had been attracted to him.

Now she had to learn how to be married to him.

Even in Gilmora she’d been too preoccupied with planning and preparing for her new position to fret overmuch about her new marriage.  She’d spent her days discussing the arcane situation in Vorone and helping Father Amus with political strategy while Arborn had consulted with Count Salgo on the tactical situation in and around Vorone.  There just hadn’t been enough time to get used to each other.

Their nights had been as cozy and passionate as she could ask – Arborn had proven to be a lusty and enthusiastic lover, if not terribly sophisticated – but they’d already shared some awkward mornings.  She’d been worried how things would work for them for a while now, but other events had kept them occupied.  Now that they were headed toward the final destination on their journey, the gritty reality of her situation was starting to bear down on her harder than it ever had before. 

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.

That was the real, secret reason she was now skulking through the frozen, filthy streets of a scruffy town in the Wilderlands with a band of mercenaries and adventurers on the eve of Yule, she knew  . . . when she should have been basking in the sumptuous feast and stuttering over the difficult questions her family in Remere was certain to have prepared for her this year. 

The truth was, Pentandra was running.  And hiding.  Taking on an impossible task, just to avoid judgment.

From her mother.

The task ahead was daunting.  Most baronial court wizards would enjoy more comfort and luxury than she would.  The demands of the post would require far more than elegant spellwork and adept administration.  Serving the Orphan Duke in the capacity of court wizard promised to challenge her in ways she could not expect.  It was as much a study in crisis management as it was in magical opportunity.  Indeed, that was one reason Minalan had chosen her and promoted her for the position, because of her abilities beyond the arcane.