Wow, this is it! I have managed to post the whole novel up here. It has been so great, and I have had wonderful encouraging feedback and support. I'm equally flattered by the comments which helpfully told me what I need to do to improve my writing, as well as kind comments telling me how much you enjoy it. I know people wouldn't take the trouble unless they thought I was doing something right.
I will miss all you readers, whether you posted, voted or just came on to find out how the story is unfolding. It's been the best thing - to share this world I invented, and find out there are people who enjoy reading about it. Thank you all so much. :heart:
*****
Vadya woke to find Tashka's intense blue stare looking across the pillows at him. He reached out to put a sleepy hand round the back of her head and they smiled. Batren coughed behind Vadya. He rolled over to take Tashka's coffee and pass it to her. He put his on the floor by the bed and snuggled back down into the crisp cotton sheets. Five more minutes and then he would drink it.
When he woke up again Tashka was gone. Batren was still moving about their huge square room. The long blue velvet curtains were pulled back, sunshine poured over the comfortable armchairs by the fire, the glass-fronted bookcases by the door, the stands of their weapons and mail. Vadya watched Batren picking up the clothes he had thrown on the floor the previous night and laying out their uniforms and the towels for their morning baths. He looked at his coffee. It was cold and there was a skin on it.
"Batren," he moaned feebly.
"Certainly my Lord," Batren said crossly, limping off to call for more coffee for him.
Vadya lay staring at the paintings on the walls, waiting for his coffee.
Tashka commissioned the huge sunny painting of sailing boats along the coast from someone she found in Port Ithilien, whom she recommended to Vadya to take under his patronage. She let Vadya choose the colours for the walls and curtains to set off the painting. She never complained, even when he had the room painted three times and they had to sleep in his Commander's tent while it dried. (Batren complained a lot about it.)
Vadya had begun to look round the other rooms in the wing they lived in with his father and consider whether he might commission some more enjoyable paintings to replace the large and imposing portraits of previous van H'lases which currently dominated the reception and sitting rooms. Perhaps he would replace all the furniture too. And have some sort of veranda so they could go outside and feel whatever it was the weather was like and experience the world each day.
Angels! he could probably afford to rebuild the whole castle. The Lord General had once said that his Lady wife could have double pay if she came up to the strategic staff out of the field and she held him to his word. That was an enormous sum of money when you had a General's salary. She also received a vast income from duties levied for passage through the lands she had as a marriage settlement: the Maier Pass. And if he took his eye off her for ten minutes she would sneak off down to the scummy taverns near the port, dragging along some poor junior to watch her back while she won additional eye-watering sums of money in card-playing hells.
When Vadya reached the armoury, Tashka was finishing off her morning exercises, lifting weights with a sickening bright-eyed air of concentration and sharing jokes with a Captain from First H'las who had been training alongside her. Vadya looked grumpily around the armoury. It was empty apart from them - it was still horribly early. He rubbed his stubbly chin with one slow hand.
Tashka came loping over to him, dragging her right leg, her hips rolling sexily in her loose cotton training trousers. She grinned at him, jogging on the spot in front of him. He grunted, beginning to jog round the room. She jogged on beside him, cooling down while he warmed up. She did not speak to him, he was always grumpy in the morning. They did some stretches together and she went off to have her bath.
By the time he got back to have his bath she had eaten a large breakfast and gone off to her offices where she and her strategic staff would be working on the troops' dispositions for autumn: reading and assessing reports, requests for arms, men, supplies; designing the strategies that would organise the movement of troops across the land in perfect distribution. His father had persuaded her to write a book collecting some of her battle strategies together, she might work on that but she hated it.
Most of her work was too secret for her to discuss with Vadya but he had seen her working on her book. She sat at her desk with the draped red silk banners of defeated Sietter troops and one Vilandian banner behind her, staring out of the window. She picked her nose, flicked a screwed up ball of paper at Imp or at an officer passing in the corridor and said: "so the right wing goes to the left and becomes the foot of the tiger." The Lieutenant set to clerk for her that day would solemnly write this nonsense down and Vadya, who had seen the Maien tiger in action and knew what she meant, laughed till she threw him out.
Tashka kept Imp in her offices. She banned him from their bedroom because early in their marriage he bit Vadya in the leg. Tashka had been trying to wrestle Vadya's uniform off him and get him to come to bed with her instead of going to take an inspection parade. He was on the verge of giving in when Imp bit him and after that he sulked and insisted on taking the parade so she said Imp must stand on station for the rest of his life. Imp liked her offices. The staff officers spoiled him with chocolates and bones, junior officers were very willing to trot around the gardens or the port town walking General-Lord el Maien's special pet dog and there was always the chance that a raw baby Lieutenant would be sent to Tashka with some message, who could be teased with a pretend growl.
Vadya went down to the Sixth H'las encampment and dealt with all the disasters that had happened in the night, wrote up some paperwork and dreamt up a practice attack on First H'las.
This summer Sixth H'las had not been sent out on manoeuvres. In a rare personal appeal, his father asked the strategic staff to keep Sixth in the port area because he said he wanted some family time with his son and daughter by marriage after the war. Vadya was glad. It was fun being home for the summer. There were the sailing races to take part in and Vadya had not been contemplating with any pleasure a long traipse without Tashka off to Soomara or the H'velst mountains.
The Sixth H'las soldiers had a standing invitation to the First H'las and strategic staff dining hall. Vadya went up there at lunchtime with his officers and met his father and had lunch with him. He saw Tashka but she was sitting at a table some way away with Commander Stanies. Vadya grinned when he saw Stanies, thinking about the practice attack he and his officers were planning.
"I have been to a very boring council meeting," his father was grumbling, shovelling forkfuls of choice pork cutlet through his neat beard into his mouth.
"Oh yes," Vadya was not really listening, he was thinking about the practice attack but he kept a bit of attention on his father in case it had actually been an important meeting which his father would dismiss as 'that political rubbish'.
"They had the cheek to put the question of the succession on the agenda," his father said.
Vadya choked on a potato, lifting brown eyes to glare at his father in mute indignation. His father looked hopefully back at him.
"Papa!" Vadya looked nervously round but his Captains had gone off to sit with some other Captains, there was nobody near them. He said: "We have told you! I would like to have children but Tashka says I should stay with my career a bit longer. Give me one more summer in the troop, Angels' sake! Next year Tashka and I will think seriously about it, I have given my word and you may hold me to it."
