The Royal Line Pt 07

Chapter Seven: Condign

Lord Condign of House Inhren, Warden of the Rivenlands, faced the semicircle of pale, blue-eyed faces, his hands folded behind his poker straight back. His iron-grey hair was cut close the scalp and his lined face was scrupulously clean-shaven. In his youth, Duchess Delicacia reflected, he must have been quite a handsome man, despite the severity of his straight nose and powerful jawline. Now he was merely imposing. The passage of time had done little to winnow the muscles of his broad shoulders and nothing at all to the dim the intensity of his dark eyes.

"It doesn't take a sage to work it out," he informed them calmly.

"To work what out, my lord?" inquired Prince Satin. The waifish princeling sat close beside Delicacia, who Codign judged to be there leader, for all that it was her brother Hale who now wore the golden circlet of the Crown Prince of the Rivenlands.

"Every since Lady Rue returned from the north, it's been one damn thing after another. And now when all the smoke as cleared away, it's one of your little cabal who's poised to take the throne. You six have always been as thick as thieves."

"And how thick are thieves?" purred Princess Vitalia, leaning back in her chair so that her impressive bust strained at the cloth of her gown. For all that she was the shortest of her sisters there assembled in that tower room, the young princess seemed no less well endowed. Four months of pregnancy had only added to the lushness of outsized bosom.

With an effort, Condign tore mind away from that line of thought.

"It seems plain enough to me that you six have conspired between you to take the throne of the Rivenlands, even if it meant the murder of your eldest brother, King Prowess."

"Ridiculous," snorted Hale. The eldest of the six, and the brawniest, this man had been a field commander before he became the Baron of Hawkshead, and now more recently, Crown Prince. "As you said yourself, my lord, these last few months have been just one thing after another. How could anyone have predicted all this, much less engineered it?"

"How?" Condign growled. "I'll tell you how. To begin with, there was the business with Duke Courage of Lorthwood."

"He was spreading seditious rumors, your Wardenship," Father Sedulous reminded him. The chaplain's voice was calming, deep and melodious. "A room full of witnesses heard him."

"A room full of witnesses would have dismissed his speech of as the ramblings of a drunk," Condign countered, "had not the Lady Rue challenged him to duel over it."

"He insulted the honor of my father and my late brother," growled Rue. She sat upon the very edge of her seat, wiry muscles clenching and unclenching. The sight reminded Condign of a wolfhound straining at its lead. "I will not apologize for defending the good name of my house."

"Very convincing, your Ladyship," snorted Condign. "At least it might have been, had not the Duke Courage's speech been immediately preceded by long hours of conversation and heavy drinking with Duchess Delicacia and Duke Bold."

"Are you suggesting my husband and I manipulated the Duke of Lorthwood into that shameful display?" asked Delicacia. Her regal countenance was as blank as a marble slab.

"More than that. I also suggest that you deliberately used Lady Rue's fame to draw out a exceptional large crowd, mostly of off-duty soldiers, to watch the duel."

Hale shrugged his powerful shoulders. "My little sister is something of a legend within the realm's armies. We can't help it of lots of people turn out to see the Grey Lioness fight."

"Can you help it if you then play on the tensions between the coastal fiefdoms like Brinmoore and Shoareave and the inland ones like Lorthwood to incite the arms-men to riot when Duke Courage lost?"

Hale was unperturbed. "I myself rule an inland fiefdom, yet my soldiers managed to behave themselves."

"Yes," Condign said coldly. "Why risk losing your own men when your can call on Princess Vitalia's connections among the personal guards of a half-dozen houses to achieve the same effect?"

"Careful, Warden," Rue hissed. "Don't give me grounds to challenge you as well."

"Then of course," Condign continued, ignoring Rue's threat, "news of this great unrest reaches his Majesty in Windlewoods and he calls on me for advice."

"And what did you tell him?" asked Satin, innocently.

"I told him what I believed to be true. Duke Courage and his kind felt free to question the royal house because there was no king in Castle Grey to command their respect. A prince, even a Crown Prince like Prowess was, doesn't mean much when there's more than a hundred of them running about."

"I'm sure you did what you thought was right," said Sedulous gently.

"Don't patronize me, boy. In any event, King Potent heeded my advice and abdicated in favor of his eldest son."

"Prowess," said Delicacia in neutral tones.

"Prowess," the Warden assented. "But he had not held the throne for three months when warning came to him from the captain of his personal guard, one Tomair Swerdeson..." Here Condign looked directly at Vitalia, but she only ran her tongue lazily around her mulberry lips. "...that his own children were plotting to murder him and take his crown."

"An egregious sin," Sedulous declared, his tone grave. "No man farther from God's love than is the kin-slayer."

'Quite. Tell me Father, is it true that you were his late Majesty's sole confessor?"

"It is."

"He trusted you?"

"I am gratified to think as much."

"Did you perhaps advise him during his emotional turmoil following the uncovering of his children's supposed plot?"

"Confession is a sacred trust, my lord," said Sedulous. "I cannot reveal what was said beneath its seal."

"How convenient."

"The Church is quite definite upon this matter," remarked Delicacia. "I shouldn't advocate further prying."

"Be that as it may," Lord Condign said, pacing now, back and forth before the assemble scions of House Greyleon. "His Majesty decided to foil such plotters by breaking with tradition and declaring someone other than his child his legal heir."

Lord Condign stopped in front of Hale. "You, your Highness."

"I was his brother," Hale pointed out. His hair was midnight shot with silver beneath the warm gold of his princely circlet.

"And a landed lord in his own right," added Rue. "Much less likely to try for the crown than a princeling without a title of to his name."

Condign waved his hand dismissively. "His Majesty had many landed lords to choose from. And many, many brothers."

"You cannot dispute however," said Satin mildly, "that it was his choice to make."

"And legally binding?" Lord Condign, his voice hard and mocking.

"This is true," agreed Delicacia. Her cobalt gaze was steady and unsettling.

"A fortnight after he agreed to this folly," Condign said, wrenching his own gaze away, "His Majesty boarded a ship bound for Brinmoore, with the intention of inspecting and formally launching its new naval fleet. Prince Satin and his manservant, one John Umber, were also among those aboard."

"Tell me you aren't one of those dreary gossips who delight in accusing a man of sleeping with his valet," Satin begged, stifling a yawn with back of his lilywhite hand.

"I had no such petty accusation in mind," replied Lord Condign. "During a spell of a rough weather..."

"God's Horns, man," barked Rue. "Call a storm a storm."

"...of rough weather, a spar cracked and fell, crushing King Prowess' skull."

The room was silent. On his chest, Sedulous traced the spiral sign against evil.

"It occurs to me to wonder," Condign said at last, "how his Majesty came to be on deck during the midst of a storm in the first place."

"Sudden squalls are difficult to predict, my lord," said Satin.

"Which, I notice, is not to say that you didn't lure him out on deck so that your man Umber could drop a spar on his head."

"Are you making a formal allegation of regicide, your Wardenship?" asked Delicacia.

"And if I were? I'm curious. What snares have you six prepared for me?"

"Why none, my lord."

"Forgive me if I am dubious."

Delicacia shook her head, her raven hair shimmering in the candlelight. She was, Lord Condign could not help but notice, radiantly lovely. The swell of her growing belly was clearly visible beneath the dark silk of her gown.

"Consider, my lord," she said reasonably, "Even if, for the sake of argument, we were to imagine that your wild speculations were in any way true, what would the plotters have to gain by disposing of you?"

"My silence. A skull's tongue does not wag."

"But your Wardenship cannot prove anything. To make accusation with out evidence could only lead to unrest, perhaps even to civil war. And it is to prevent precisely that kind of chaos that your Wardenship has dedicated all the work of his life."

"My life's work has been to safeguard the kingdom of your father, my friend."

"Our father lives, content within the circle of our mother's arms..."

"Legs," Satin whispered.

"...and the peaceful glades of Windlewoods. He has lost a son and this grieves him. But how many more children would a civil war cost him? How much greater would be his grief to see his kingdom and his house thus torn to bloody tatters?"

"Sometimes chaos is preferable to tyranny," said Condign, but his words lacked conviction.

Hale stood then and stepped forward. "I promise you, my lord, I'll prove no worse a tyrant than my father. The people will follow me. They have grown used to the idea of their king as a strong, serious man with a flock of heirs to call his own, the kind of man my father was. The kind of man that I am still.

"I loved my brother Prowess, but you and I both know he was too credible. His flatterers, and every king gains flatterers, would have led him down bad roads, led his kingdom to its ruin. I will able to rule not only with the strength that flows in all my father's line, but with the wisdom that Prowess never had."

"And if you abuse your rule?" asked Condign.

Hale laughed and gestured about him at his siblings. "How could I, when I rule at the sufferance of others? If I overstep my bounds, I shall find my harbors blockaded, my armies in mutiny, myself excommunicated, and a knife in my back."

"That hardly sounds like stability," Condign observed.

Hale shrugged. "It is politics. And you can help to make it stable. You have done my father goodly service for many years. Will you do as much for me?"

The Crown Prince stuck out his hand.

After a long moment, Condign took it. They grasped each other's forearms, the handshake of soldiers, and thus the pact was sealed.

***

'Children,' Prince Satin reflected, as he moved through chilly halls of Castle Grey with a silence and poise that would have startled Lord Condign, who thought the princeling as clumsy with his limbs and he seemed to be graceful with his tongue. 'This place is always crawling with children. There's my littlest brother, probably still sucking away on Mona's fat teats. The little ingrate gets twice the milk now that my own babes are growing in her belly. Not that I mind, so long as I still get to taste.'

'Then there are my nieces and nephews. Hale's lady wife finally dropped her colt and now I hear she's starting to swell again. And I hear he got one heir apiece out of those pretty stepdaughters of his, save for that little one, Sweet, who gave him twin boys on her first try. I wonder if he's managed to knock her up again yet? If not, you can bet she and her sisters will be getting a visit tonight.'

'And then there are the children still on the way. Deli's going give that brat Bold a couple of sons, or else a brace of daughters she can dress up in lace and teach to throw poisoned tea parties. Vitalia's pretty far along too, I suppose. Well, that babe will have fathers and to spare. She'll never want for anything. Even the hard-bitten Rue decided she and her ice-woman cow needed to get in on the action.'

Satin smiled to himself, remembering the silken softness of Nuveya's seal brown hair, the tender plumpness of her buttocks, the scalding heat of her dripping cunt as he'd entered her, over and over and over, the wordless prayers she'd moaned in her lilting voice as he'd emptied himself into her. Rue had made it very clear that this was not an event that was going to repeat itself. Nuveya was hers and the child she bore would be Rue's as well. Satin was just a necessary inconvenience.

That was fine by him. A taste of ice-woman every nine months was, he considered, the perfect amount of seasoning to round out his usual menu: three meals of day of Mona's sweet cunt and her creamy, behemoth breasts.

Rue herself had, he understood, recruited the help of her loyal Captain Verence. It was early days yet, but come spring, the Grey Lioness would be big with cub. She and her mate would swell side-by-side, massaging away the other's aches and sipping the sweet milk of her expanding breasts.

Satin reached the door to his chambers and, having satisfied himself that hair he left draped across the gap between door and doorframe was undisturbed, slipped. A single taper burned on the bedside table casting a warm glow over Mona. She lay atop the covers, her back to the door, naked and fast asleep. The candlelight gleamed in her corn-silk hair and pale satin of her skin. Even the marks of the bullwhip had faded by now to thin lines of silver.

Satin undressed and lay down softly beside her. Gently, her rubbed himself against the tender swell of prodigious rump. Soon his massive cock, legacy of his royal blood, was hard as rock. He slipped it between the hills of Mona's glorious ass and into the welcoming warmth of her wet cunt. A great peace settled upon him. It was as though, after years of scheming, he was finally coming home. This was where he belonged. This was bliss.

Satin reached over and lightly fondled the immense warm weight of Mona's breasts. Mona whimpered quietly in her sleep, and though she did not waken a dribble of creamy milk trickled over Satin's fingers. He sucked at them, savoring the sweetness, the bliss.

'This will feed our children', he thought. 'This will feed the royal line.'