Not Really the Prisoner of Zenda (11 page)

“True enough.” But he couldn’t help but keep his eyes from scanning not only the trail in front of them, but the brush to either side. “But it’s what I’m used to.”

“I know.” She nodded, and as the trail widened, kicked her heels against her brown mare’s broad sides until they were riding almost knee-to-knee. “Still, you can get used to all this. Good food, clean clothes, a regular bath, and as much leisure as you’d like aren’t difficult tastes to acquire, are they?”

He didn’t answer. “It’s … different. I’ve spent most of my life —”

“Shhh.” She looked ahead. “I know we’re alone, but please, please don’t get in the habit of talking about … such things.” Her lips pursed tightly. “I can’t imagine that Miron would suspect the truth, but he’s certain to be looking for an opportunity to discredit you — and he is known to the local landholders, and has allies in Parliament. In fact, I think you ought to make an opportunity to court Lord Moarin — he’s a wretched old lecher, but —”

“Please? At least when we’re alone, can’t I just stop pretending for a few moments?”

When she didn’t answer right away, he angrily slapped his reins hard against his thigh. The horse misread that as a signal to break into a canter, and he was easily a dozen manlengths away before he pulled the horse back into a slow walk so that she could catch up.

Ahead, the trail broke on a clearing surrounding a small pond. The ducks that seemed to glide effortlessly across its green-scum – covered surface ignored them, while a skinny heron, propped up on one foot at the far edge, paused for a moment to eye them carefully before knifing its long beak back into the water, emerging with a wriggling fish, its rainbow scales gleaming like jewels in the sunlight.

Heron wasn’t the most flavorful of birds, but it wasn’t bad. Better than eagle and loon, and there was more meat on one than there was on a duck. Since he hadn’t been able to locate a proper bow boot quickly, and hadn’t wanted to take the time to find one, he hadn’t even strung one of the longbows in the Residence armory; he had simply taken a short horn bow and a small quiver from the armory and strapped them to the back of his saddle.

It would be almost too easy to stop, string the bow, and shoot some supper — and it would have been the natural, the normal thing to do. The woods here were like an open town market without the incessant cries of farmers and merchants hawking their wares.

“No,” she said, finally. “I don’t think you should stop pretending, as you put it. But we can make an exception, just this once. Since it’s just you and me.”

“Thank you.”

“Would you mind stopping for a moment? I’m finding that bouncing up and down on a saddle is beginning to tire me.”

“Of course.”

He pulled his horse to a halt, quickly bolted to the ground, and went to help her dismount. He could barely feel the ground through the thick soles of his boots. If he had still been himself, he would have brought along a pair of woodsman’s leather buskins.

She stretched broadly, but showed no other sign of weariness from either their ride out from Dereneyl or their much shorter ride from the Residence.

“Thank you,” she said. “It’s very gentlemanly of you to hand me down from my horse, but please do get out of the habit of rushing to do it — it makes you look like a servant. I can wait.”

“Very well.”

She untied the leather provisions bag from her saddle, and looked around. “Should we cut some stakes? For the horses?”

“We?” He raised an eyebrow.

“We,” she said, firmly, and reached into her saddle’s pouch to produce a short sheathed knife. “I’m not utterly helpless, you know — I’m perfectly capable of chopping a stake.”

He tried to decide whether she was really irritated or just teasing him, but gave up. “If the horses won’t stay near their riders,” he said, “we may as well find out now, and not sometime when we’re half a day’s ride away from the Residence.”

“From home, you mean.”

“From home.”

He loosened the bits from both horses’ mouths and tied the reins to their saddles so that they wouldn’t catch in the brambles. After giving Kethol a curious look and snort, his gelding walked a short way off into the meadow, staked out a patch of clover, and began to graze, followed after a moment by the mare, who took a tentative nibble from the same patch, then quickly moved away at the gelding’s warning whinny.

He smiled. It seemed that the horse’s spirit hadn’t been totally cut away when a red-hot gelding iron had taken its cock and balls.

Leria spread the blanket out, flattening the waist-high grasses, and quickly produced a bottle of wine and a half-dozen meatrolls, each wrapped in now-greasy parchment.

She patted at the blanket beside her, and he unbuckled his sword belt and set it down on the grass next to the blanket as he sat.

She frowned at the leather bag. “I’m sure that there’s a proper picnic kit somewhere in the Residence, but the cook didn’t know where it was, and I’m going to have to have my confrontation with Elda soon enough.” She pulled the wooden stopper out of the wine, and gave a quick sniff. “It’s Ingarian, I think,” she said, taking a brief drink before offering the bottle to him. “I wouldn’t say that it’s the best wine I’ve had, but I can swear that it’s not vinegar, at least.”

“Thank you.” He took the bottle and tilted it back. The wine was light and cool, smoother and gentler than he was used to. It tasted of lazy summer days, he decided, although he had never actually had a lazy summer day.

“Confrontation? With Elda?”

She pursed her lips. “A home has to have one mistress, and that’s going to be me, not some housekeeper,” she said. “The only question is when I have to set Elda straight, not whether, although I’m tempted to say that the sooner, the better. Are you set on keeping her?”

“I hadn’t thought about it.” That sounded better than saying,
Yes, I have thought about it, but I’m not going to fire the whole staff.

“Well, please do think about it. I’m sure I could arrange a position for her with one of the nobles minor in town — I’m not talking about turning her out into the night, you know — and I think that a sudden drop in station might actually be quite good for her.”

“You decide.”

“No. You are the baron, and you have to decide. Even if,” she said, smiling, “you decide to do what I think is best. If you’re set on keeping her on, though, I’d better have my confrontation with her privately — but if you’re not, making an example of her in front of the rest of the staff would probably be the best way to handle things. What do you think?”

“I think,” he said, “that I don’t have much of any of an opinion, and would very, very much like putting the whole matter off, at least for now.”

He was impressed at how her mind was constantly working. And he was impressed at how much there was to the running of a noble household, and yes, he would have to learn all about it.

But not now. Now it was a fine afternoon, and he was in the woods, which only made it better, with the
scree-scree-screes
sofa pair of distant flitterwings boasting to each other of their prowess also announcing that they were alone — flitterwings were even more cowards than they were braggarts.

“I don’t think so,” she said, primly, folding her hands in her lap. “There’s much that you have to learn about being a noble, and little enough time to spare.” She raised a finger. “Now, now, don’t look like that — you remind me of a little boy, trying not to admit that he’s done something that deserves a beating.”

She leaned back on an elbow and considered him. “It’s quite a turnabout, you know. When we were on the run, it was you who knew everything — how to keep dry in the rain, or start a fire, or when and how to go to ground and let the pursuers pass. But here and now, this is where I’m at home, and — if you’ll let me — where I can teach you.”

He didn’t know quite what to say. “I don’t see much choice in it.” “Oh.” Her expression grew somber. “Is my company so unpleasant to you?”

“No. It’s not that. You know it’s not that, not at all.” She had a way of putting him on the defensive. “It’s just that — I don’t think I can
do
this. I’ll try, I swear on my sword I will — but it seems to me that anybody can look at me and see that I’m not what I pretend to be.”

She shook her head. “I think you give people too much credit. Most people, most of the time, see what they expect to see, what they’ve been led to see.”

“You sound like Erenor.” The wizard was perfectly happy to hold forth, at great and infuriating length, on the fallible nature and utter foolishness of both the common man and the noble class.

She nodded, and took a thoughtful drink from the bottle. “Yes, perhaps I do — and perhaps it’s not a bad thing to sound like Erenor? As he says, illusions aren’t just a matter of magic. If you just remember that you are Forinel, Baron Keranahan, and if you just remember to try to do what Baron Keranahan does, nobody will ever be the wiser.” She cocked her head to one side. “You may find that you’ve come to like it — there are more than enough rewards that go along with the responsibilities.”

“But what does a baron
do
? In peacetime, I mean.” He spread his hands. “I’ve served Baron Cullinane, yes, but he’s not exactly typical, and his regent does most of the running of the barony — he seems to spend most of his time flitting about, seeing what’s wrong and having it fixed, settling disputes, and the like. When he isn’t off getting into trouble.”

That sounded disloyal, and Kethol didn’t like sounding disloyal. But it was true, and a failing of the Cullinanes — they tended to go looking into problems themselves, rather than dispatching somebody else to do it.

Shit, Kethol had been along, years ago, when Baron Nerahan hadn’t appeared quickly enough in response to an Imperial summons, and the Old Emperor, Karl Cullinane, had shown up at the gates to his castle leading a company of the Home Guard, loudly threatening to have a following army tear the castle down around Nerahan’s ears if the gates didn’t open Right. This. Very. Moment.

The gates, of course, had opened right that very moment.

He smiled. The Old Emperor had been very direct, as was his son, and Kethol liked that.

Even better, the tendency of the Cullinanes to do such very unnoble things had given Kethol and Pirojil and Durine extra opportunities to pick up some spare coin — neither the Emperor nor Baron Cullinane ever seemed to notice them going through dead men’s possessions, and while there were good things you could say about the Cullinanes, you had to admit that as they went through life dead bodies seemed to sprout in their wake.

He had no complaint about that, or about any of it. It was just that they were by no means usual.

“I’m sure he does that.” She pursed her lips and nodded. “In peacetime, that’s not a bad thing for a baron to do, although most spend far too little time on everything except settling disputes. You’ll want to inspect things — the copper mines, the grain mill in Dereneyl, the buildings in the crofts, the freeholders’ armories. Freeholders tend to let their arms — and their tenants’ arms — be neglected in peacetime, and whatever you can say against the occupation, it’s been peaceful. If it weren’t for the occupation, you’d need to be spending far too much time going over the taxes, to be sure that the lords and wardens aren’t stealing from you, but right now you have Governor Treseen doing that. Both the going-over and the stealing, I’m afraid.”

She thought for a moment. “Treseen will happily handle the nobles for you, as well, to the extent that you let him. Oh, you’ll probably want to dispense the middle justice, every now and then — but most of the common freeholders don’t push their privileges too far, and you shouldn’t have to do that often.” She considered it for a moment. “Just make a good example of the first one or two who overreach, and the rest will fall neatly into line.”

“But —”

“But mostly, you just live. You can spend much of your time on the hunt — something that I think you can manage without great suffering — and less on managing the lords and village wardens who manage the peasants. I’m not sure when the engineers are going to want to extend the telegraph to Dereneyl, but you’ll want to be sure to entertain whichever of them is running the new copper mine and be sure to get him to see how more convenient it would be for him to be able to quickly talk with Ranella in Biemestren.”

Her smile broadened, then faded. “It would be more than unusual if you didn’t manage to visit the various lords’ holdings, from time to time, and allow them to entertain you, while you try to seduce a daughter or two — not that it will take much effort, particularly until we’re married. It’s easy for a young girl to think that if you like the wine, you’ll buy the bottle. Speaking of which,” she said, offering him the bottle, “would you care for some wine, dear?”

Her smile made his earns burn red.

“Oh,” she went on, as he tilted back a healthy mouthful, “I’ll affect not to notice,” she said. “As long as you don’t flaunt your affairs in my face, and I hope you won’t. But you’re half-expected to sire a few bastards — and then watch over their upbringing, distantly.”

“Forinel’s father did that?”

“Possibly, before Forinel’s — before
your
mother died, and before he married Elanee.” She shrugged. “Elanee watched and controlled him too closely for that, as far as I know. With — with her planning to have you gone, she didn’t want to complicate Miron’s status by him having even a distaff heir. But it’s possible. If my father acknowledged every bastard he sired, I’d be up to my ears in brothers and sisters.”

“And you won’t mind?”

“Mind? Of course I won’t mind.” She drew herself up straight, and folded her hands primly in her lap. “How could I possibly mind? I won’t even notice,” she said. “I’ve told you — I was raised to be a noble lady, and I’m perfectly capable of doing what’s required, and I’ll not spend more than a private moment regretting it. Which includes,” she said, musingly, “signing my own land over to you — in your person proper, as Forinel Keranahan, and not as the baron. We’d best get that out of the way, sooner than later. Not that that’s likely to make much of a difference, but …”