Please leave comments for me. Thank you! (Diolch.)
*****
Vadya climbed out of the saddle, looking warily at the people standing at the top of Castle Sietter's steps. All around him, the sunny cobbled courtyard was full of the van H'las retinue dismounting and Sietter servants taking their horses' reins or going to give a hand to H'las servants unloading packs and wagons of stuff or standing decoratively by.
At the top of the broad steps on the side by a ramp, was Lord van V'ta in a black robe with gold scrolls; whose army Vadya had skirmished with the previous autumn - and Tashka had been wounded by his side, and had saved all their lives.
van V'ta's daughters stood beside him with their eyes demurely cast down, one in dark blue, the other in light blue. They were proper Ladies, each with a Guard of Honour to guarantee their virtue. Vadya could just as well have been betrothed to the younger one, had the situation with V'ta been worse. Although as Tashka had remarked she was very young. Vadya had always hoped he would not get some naive child of the high nobility to his bride, whom he would have to coax in his bed.
Pava - who had laughed so heartily at Tashka's description of someone Vadya realised now was a cousin to Tashka - lounged against the castle steps in a green silk suit embroidered with blue and red humming birds. Pava gave him a grin and a wink, Vadya stared coldly back.
That thin fair Lord with the thin cold smile must be van Sietter, the old snake of a politician who was not to be trusted, the father who hated Tashka so much that Tashka had run off from him into a H'las troop.
That tall arrogant-eyed Lord with one ringed hand on his hip and the other on the shoulder of a small boy who was copying his stance exactly was certainly Tashka's older brother. He looked astonishingly like Tashka, only his slanted eyes were grey and his mouth was thin like van Sietter's. He tilted his head at Vadya in a graceful feminine gesture and that too was strangely unlike Tashka's typically salacious wink and nod.
The tall plump blonde beside Lord Clair el Maien with the beautiful blond boy leaning into her motherly red silk skirts must be Lady el Jien. Vadya could see immediately why Pava had wanted to marry her. She had the full figure and high held head of a Queen, she stood back from the menfolk she had been married into, looking with eyes veiled of expression vaguely into the courtyard, not inappropriately catching your eye and winking to make you snigger. She was a tip-top classic beauty, a highly honourable and great Lady, with a body rich in warm plump curves. The veil in her eyes suggested a maidenly modesty and proper subservience to the men standing about her. Her mother had a certain reputation but hers was for high chastity. How could his father have missed catching this gorgeous and honourable daughter of the el Jiens van Iarve for him?
Outside the gates First H'las would be establishing their encampment. They would have difficulty achieving this without entangling themselves with First Sietter or First V'ta already disposed for active battle defence either side of the castle.
'Sweet Hell!' Vadya scowled in disgust, 'all this for me to come to see my Angel-damned Captain. I want to spit in his ... her face. Where is he?'
His father, looking like a soldier of the line in leather jerkin, breeches and riding boots, was going up the broad stone steps to politely greet all the nobles and Vadya also had to go through the formal introductions.
"Lord Pava el Maien van Sietter."
"How do you, Lord van Sietter."
"Commander-Lord Clair el Maien van Sietter, formerly of Fourth Sietter."
"I trust you enjoy good health."
"Lady Arianna el Jien van Sietter."
"Honoured," pick up her hand with two fingers and brush her cool long elegant fingers with his lips. The small blond boy smiled angelically up at him from her skirts and she lifted her veiled blue eyes to introduce him as, "Sir Hanya Vashin." A frown clouded Vadya's eyes. He knew the name as that of a Sietter hero of the battle of Shier Bridge but he gently pressed the fingers which Lady el Jien nudged the boy to offer and gave the innocent child a smile in return for his sweet shy smile.
"Lord Arkyll el Maien van Sietter."
"Is it true," Arkyll broke in eagerly, grasping Vadya's fingers inappropriately tightly with his small hand and looking up into Vadya's face with eyes exactly like Tashka's, "that caughts't the bear that Uncle Tashka has as a rug now in his room?"
Vadya's face stiffened. Clair drew Arkyll back, glaring at him. Arianna bent to whisper to him. Arkyll replied in a piercing voice: "I only asked. It is not wrong to ask, is it?"
Captain-Lord Fiotr el F'lara van Vta, formerly of First V'ta. Lady Laienne el F'lara van V'ta. Lady Ilya el F'lara van V'ta. Commander-Lord Pava el Jien van Vail of Ninth Vail.
"Sweetheart," Pava murmured, giving Vadya his sword hand and looking warmly into his face with laughing green eyes. "I have been dying for you to come."
"I bloody hope you will die for this!" Vadya hissed in his ear. Pava tried to hang onto his hand and pull him into a hug but Vadya wrenched his hand from Pava's grip.
He looked around the top of the steps then down at the grooms, stable-maids and kennel-hands ranged up in the courtyard. Where was Tashka now, then? Perhaps they had stuffed the treacherous ... thing in a Vilandian troop but wherever the scum was hiding, Vadya would find him ... her.
"I think Tashka went out for a ride," Pava said airily. "Let us go inside, for a cool drink."
Vadya noticed one of the grooms looking over at the stables then the groom snapped his gaze back in front of himself. He turned to go down the steps towards the stables.
"Vadya," his father dropped a hand on his shoulder and gripped it. His voice had a warning note in it.
Vadya swung back and surveyed them all, standing at the top of the steps in their elegant silk garments. "I think," he said coldly, "we might all accept the fact that there is no need to formally introduce my betrothed to my notice, might we not? I should like a few moments in private with her. If no one has any objection." His voice was heavy with sarcasm, his brown eyes glowered hotly at them all, his big generous mouth set in a sullen line. His face was sweaty and dusty and angry.
Clair went one step down towards Vadya but Pava took his arm and pulled him back towards the castle entrance. Clair went slowly, his anxious grey eyes still cast back at the angry big-shouldered young Commander striding away towards the stables.
Vadya walked into the dim straw-littered stables and peered into the stalls, his eyesight blurred coming into the dimness from the bright sunlight. "Maien!" he said but there was no reply. He walked down past the stalls of horses, dust danced in the bars of sunlight that fell through windows in the roof. He listened to the clatter of hooves behind him as the grooms led their horses in and the bruffing noise horses made into their hay for the clink of a rapier or dagger then he found her, leaning on the partition of an empty stall, flattened out against it as though that would hide her. She was wearing dark blue silk doublet and breeches with pearls stitched into the puffed sleeves of her doublet and a pearl swinging in her ear. Delicate lace showed at her collar and cuffs. She also wore thigh-length riding boots. He knew exactly how it had been. First she thought she would face him out, be there with the others to greet him. She thought that her brother and her former Captain and his father would ensure he offered her propriety in public so she put on a formal silk suit. Then she decided that the sight of her in breeches and a doublet would only enrage him the more. Her father would be no protection; the old snake van Sietter would make no protest if her betrothed felled her to the ground with a blow. She would have decided to go out for the day on Jewel, come sneaking back when perhaps Vadya's rage might have simmered down. It was unlike her, but she had misjudged it, left it too late, torn between wanting to get it over with and wanting to avoid Vadya's anger, so he had caught her before she had time to saddle a horse.
"So!" he hissed at her, his eyes snapping. "Spy, traitor ... traitress ... oh damn you!"
"Sir," she said in that husky familiar voice, turning to face him and standing as if to attention. Even in this most difficult situation, she got it exactly right. Not quite the stiffness of a stance she would have adopted on formal parade since they were both in civilian clothes but clearly the demeanour of the junior officer. She used the H'las stance, her feet apart and her hands loosely clasped behind her back. He knew now why she had always had a tendency to snap her heels together - the Sietter soldier's stance.
It made his breath come short and the blood start flowing uncomfortably in his loins to see her there. She was dressed just as she had so often dressed when they went out - perhaps to some exhibition of paintings followed by dinner. But suddenly now he knew she was a woman. That time her shoulder was slashed open in the duel in Thiel and she lay so still for him to bind it up for her, clutching her shirt and some other garment to her chest, she had been hiding breasts with her ripped shirt and what he had assumed was a vest. His penis stirred in his breeches to think about it: she had breasts and a woman's sex. He could enjoy playing with her with his tongue and his fingers, even his penis, in all the same ways he had done with any of his former lovers. If she allowed him into her bed. His junior officer.
Looking at this honourable young officer with her close-cropped hair and military stance, he found it impossible to believe that she had kissed him while drunk in a hotel in Port Paviat. On the other hand, he thought it very likely she had started vomiting if her senior officer had tried to kiss her. The thought of that kiss that might have been made his cock stiffen harder in his breeches. It would have been permitted, he would not have been hung for taking it. She was his junior officer but she was also a woman, that particular woman whose body was to be offered to him to father children with.
He walked up to her through the straw, took her by the shoulders, looked into her exquisite slanted blue eyes glancing to the side, bent forward and pressed his mouth to her rose-petal mouth. Briefly he felt with his lips the small curve of her lips. Tashka gave a cry in the kiss, pushed him away and stood in the straw, her blue eyes wide, her breath suddenly fast. Her scarred fingers flickered towards the dark blue pearl-sewn gloves in her belt and then round the curved elaborately decorated hand-guard of her rapier. Then she took them from her sword and ran them over her cropped short hair, her mouth set into a sullen pout that emphasised the soft pink kissable curve of her lower lip.
He let out a sudden hiss of frustration and fury, snatched one of the heavy black riding gauntlets out of his own belt and snapped it into her face, catching her in the mouth. Tashka's head flinched back.
"Well!" Vadya snarled. "Put up your sword, vixen, spy, soldier's bitch!"
Tashka stood quite still on the straw-littered floor, no longer in any regional army stance since her head was turned down away from him.
"Come on, liar, pale Angel, scum," Vadya said, glowering at her from angry brown eyes.
"I could not offer to kill you, my Commander," Tashka said in a stifled low even voice.
