Please leave comments for me. Thank you! (Diolch.)
*****
Vadya walked into the castle courtyard, kicking a stone along the cobbles as he went.
He had been down to First H'las' camp to lunch. The officers had annoyed him by talking constantly about Captain-Lord el Maien and how brilliant a military brain "he" was and how Vadya would miss "him" if his father were able to get around "his" van Sietter birth and take "him" up to the Generals' strategic staff.
Suddenly Tashka herself appeared, walking out of the stables in muddy riding boots, jodhpurs and a green jumper. A grubby Imp was jumping around her heels, she was teasing him with a piece of biscuit she was holding above his nose. Her slanted blue eyes caught on Vadya's stare, she tripped on a cobblestone and stumbled to a halt, letting Imp take the biscuit without teasing him any more. She started to snap her heels together then she started to set her legs apart then she just stood staring back at him.
"Um, er," Vadya could not decide how to address her. "Have you seen my father?" Of course she had. They always seemed to be together, even playing cards one evening! The number of times he had warned his father off playing cards with Tashka.
"No sir," she tilted her head, narrowed her slanted blue eyes and then she began eyeing him up and down in a way that made him feel strange.
"Oh," he said.
She was looking in an unnerving speculative way, unlike the way any of his junior officers had ever done before. He could not quite believe she was looking at the part of his body her eyes seemed to be lingering on. She opened her mouth then looked down at herself and shut it again. Imp scratched at her booted leg and whined.
"Shut it!" she said in an unusually rough voice.
"Did you have a good ride?" Vadya enquired, half polite, half sneering.
"Yes," she said. "I went into the hills for lunch at Vidor Hyaline and Faffie Velor's farm. Did you enjoy it there, when you went?"
Vadya jerked his head in a sullen nod. He looked her over, yet again tried to think of her as a woman and failed again. She only ever looked like the perfect young officer. He gave a heavy annoyed sigh.
"What?" she said roughly, "do you not like the cut of my shirt?"
"Not much," he snapped back. "It is hardly the dress of a Lady." He immediately felt ashamed and walked off so he did not have to see her rose-petal mouth bunch up in the rueful pout that would only make him want to kiss her again. If only she would wear a dress but he reminded himself that that would not make her willing to give him a kiss, it would only make him feel better about lusting after one of his junior officers.
At last her awful father and that scum her uncle had gone. Lord Esha had made it plain to van Sietter that the el Gaiels would not be ridden rough-shod into jilting his scandalous daughter. He had taken pains to demonstrate his affection and respect for her, reiterating his offer to take her onto his strategic staff with a hopeful gleam in his eye.
van H'las had been moved into the great bed-chamber where van Sietter had previously been placed. (By moving him into the family quarters Clair had sought to demonstrate his gratitude towards his former enemy.) Vadya ran up the stairs and along the veranda and knocked on his father's door.
"Enter," said Lord Esha's warm deep voice. Vadya opened the door and found his father sitting at the desk in the room, scowling and scratching at a letter. Lord Esha looked up to see Vadya and pushed the letter away with an expression of great relief.
Vadya strolled moodily around the floor, poking with one foot at the stools set out by the fireplace and the chairs in a circle in the middle of the room. He came back round in front of the big curtain-hung four-poster bed and went to the narrow slit window by the desk, peered out of it at the hills rising behind the castle up away into the skies, standing broad-shouldered and muscular in his white cotton shirt and fawn breeches in the sunny light that fell through the window.
"Where is your clerk?" he asked in a bored voice.
"I gave her an holiday," van H'las replied, sucking on his quill pen as if it were a pencil and then looking at it with a surprised expression of disgust. "There is a long letter come from the Port Ithilien Council that is marked urgent and is probably a lot of rubbish. I concealed it and sent poor Ladda off to get some fresh air." He sniggered.
Vadya sat down sideways in one of the carved wooden chairs near the desk and leant over the back of it, frowning irritably at the floor. He knew the letter would be crucially important and he ought to ask to look at it and tell his father what to do about it but he was too cross to care.
"Was your lunch with Mada good?" his father asked.
"Mm, it was very tasty," Vadya said sulkily. The Commander of First H'las was his father's best friend, Mada Stanies, he was the father himself of the best friend whom Vadya had lost in a duel. Vadya always took the time to go and sit with him when he could, Commander Stanies could not usually bear to talk of young Mada with Vadya (he would do that with Tashka) but Vadya knew it comforted him; he had seen Vadya grow up with his own son.
His father sat patiently for a moment then Vadya said: "They all talked about Tashka. Uncle Mada said how sorry I will be when he comes to you in the strategic staff. When I tried to change the subject he said I should not let Tashka stay so hung on my banner. I should like to hang that little ... thing from my banner, I swear it!"
Lord Esha got up, went over to the sidetable and poured himself a whisky and Vadya a bowl of the exceptionally fine brandy that Clair kept in his cellars. He fetched his long-stemmed curving pipe and filled it with his pleasant light tobacco, lit it and passed it to Vadya. Vadya drew on it and passed it back, continuing to frown at the floor.
