Hero Read online

  Lord Delcasio’s eyes lit up at that, and Donnola wanted to stab him, for surely he was then thinking this latter foolery the better course, as it would prove cheaper and might be one where he could further profit down the line.

  “A deal, Lord Delcasio?” she asked sharply.

  He nodded, and Donnola left the room, pointedly closing the door behind her. She moved down the short corridor, her mind whirling as she considered what roads might be open to her here. Despite her threats and cold-hearted attitude with Lord Delcasio, Donnola wanted to find some way to help Lady Concettina. She knew Lord Delcasio’s daughter personally from her earliest days in the social circles, when Grandfather Pericolo had first put Donnola out among the lords and ladies of Delthuntle as the quiet representative of Morada Topolino.

  Concettina was about Donnola’s age, and along with her noble friends had welcomed Donnola to the court celebrations. Donnola had never been overly fond of any of them—the gatherings were simply business to her, her acquaintances were needed contacts, and rarely resembled anything like true friendship—but neither had Donnola disliked this member of the young noble coterie, and surely she understood poor Concettina’s current desperate plight.

  No woman deserved that.

  Lord Delcasio could have made a better bargain, given Donnola’s personal feelings, and Donnola actually felt a bit guilty about pressing him for such an extravagant payment.

  Just a bit, though.

  She came back into the ballroom and noticed Regis dancing quite gracefully with one of the ladies of court. Donnola couldn’t help but giggle when the couple came together, for Regis got a faceful of bosom.

  Donnola continued her scan, nodding to Wigglefingers who was preparing his next performance, some inane trick involving a rabbit. She didn’t linger on the wizard, though, moving her gaze past him to find one for whom she might have just found some value.

  Yes, she thought, when she spotted Wulfgar, surrounded by a bevy of flapping fans and batting eyelashes. That large northern human would hardly be out of place in the Bloodstone Lands, and wouldn’t King Yarin be thrilled at the thought of such a strapping young heir?

  CHAPTER 10

  Queen Infecund VII

  THE GREEN-BEARDED DWARF WANDERED THROUGH THE PALACE gardens, pausing often to offer his greetings to each lush plant. Summer was short in Damara, but Pikel made sure to bring it to its shining brilliance in the palace grounds of King Yarin, with colors upon colors of roses, orchids, tulips, and daylilies—so many daylilies!

  Still, the hedgerows and not the flowers were the centerpieces of these magnificent gardens, natural walls creating as many and as varied “rooms” out here as in the palace beyond. And never had they been lusher or more neatly groomed than this summer.

  Each year, Pikel built on the successes of the previous summer, tightening his friendship with the plants, talking to them, helping them to find their greatest potential.

  And they talked back, and in conversations spoke of things that few in the world beyond Pikel Bouldershoulder could ever begin to imagine. For with a quiet spell, the druidic dwarf could coax from the flowers the echoes of the garden conversations of the people who congregated here. It was almost always nonsensical stuff, trivial gossip and sexual innuendo that seemed to be the lifeblood of the self-absorbed and somewhat pathetic nobles of Helgabal.

  All in all, Pikel found his greenery gossip quite amusing, a guilty pleasure, but since everyone at court thought him a simpleton anyway, his giggles when he recognized some of the more ridiculous gossipers or gossipees were usually met with nothing more than a condescending nod.

  Sometimes, though, Pikel did garner useful information for his soldier brother—one time he had uncovered a clandestine operation and so had whispered to Ivan a plot to steal the king’s own scepter.

  When the youngster, the teenaged son of a Vaasan merchant, opened the great King’s Receptacle in the palace audience chamber, he had found not a scepter and robe and assortment of jewels but a yellow-bearded Ivan Bouldershoulder crouched within the box, a smile on his hairy face and a brass wrap around his knuckles.

  Then the youngster saw those brass knuckles much more closely, for a moment.

  And so, a diligent and easily amused Pikel Bouldershoulder always took the time to listen to the echoes of the garden flowers. He cast a spell to speak with the flora and crawled on his knees, whispering niceties and flashing his sincere loving smile.

  He found a cooperative tulip just inside the Sunset Garden, a chamber the gossiping nobles had nicknamed “Driella’s Mausoleum,” since the headless representation of Yarin’s sixth queen was tucked into the waterfall display below the southern hedgerow, the one place in this particular garden chamber that was always in shadow.

  Echoes of the titters of several young women caught the dwarf druid’s attention. With his right hand, his only hand, he gently stroked the flower as he chanted a special song, coaxing the memories from it.

  Gradually, the recent voices began to whisper in the air around him. He recognized one, a young, black-haired woman nicknamed “Pretty Feet,” for the special attention she received, with very special gifts, from one of the older noblemen of Yarin’s Court.

  Pikel giggled at the thought. “Pretty Feet, hee hee hee,” he said quietly and crouched lower, leaning on the stump of his left arm and putting his ear right to the confluence of petals.

  Pretty Feet was talking about the current queen, he realized, and of the whispers that King Yarin was fairly finished with her. Other voices chimed in, then, but mostly inaudibly in the background. Pikel sensed their fears, for clearly none wanted to be chosen as a replacement.

  “Oh, but to be Queen of Damara!” one said.

  “Until death, so not for long!” another reminded, followed by nervous laughter. The grim inevitability of such a fate seemed hard to dismiss, particularly in this place so near to the headless statue.

  “Unless you just outlived King Yarin,” Pretty Feet responded. “He is no young man, nor a very satisfied one, it would seem.”

  More laughter followed.

  “Alas for poor Queen Concettina,” one said, and Pikel couldn’t tell if she was being serious or mocking.

  “Queen Infecund the Seventh,” Pretty Feet agreed, and there was honest regret in her voice, the green-bearded dwarf realized.

  Pikel rolled back into a kneel and kneaded at the grass with his bare toes, as he always did when he was down about the ground—that was why he wore sandals all the time, after all.

  “Hmm,” he said a few times, bothered by this development, though it was not unexpected. King Yarin wanted an heir. The aging man spoke of little else. And in this garden, of all places, it was not hard to remember the consequences to any queen who did not give him one.

  The dwarf stroked his beard and considered all the elixirs he might concoct to help with this problem. There were some for virility, perhaps, though those seemed more concerned with willingness and not necessarily ability …

  The dwarf sighed, trying to decide if he should tell Ivan.

  But what good would it do?

  He sighed again and crawled away, then spotted a squirrel and invited it to join him for some lunch.

  The rodent accepted.

  THERE WOULD BE no cuddling when the lovemaking finished. Concettina knew that, and was glad of it, for she could barely stand the touch of Yarin now that she was convinced he was going to behead her.

  She lay in the rumpled sheets of the bed, watching him as he quickly dressed, this pitiful old man who could now barely perform his husbandly duties and who had long ago given up on cleanliness. He was growing increasingly agitated, she could tell from his movements and from the way he had attacked her, a style of lovemaking more desperate than passionate.

  “I have duties to attend,” he grumbled, or something like that—Concettina couldn’t be sure.

  And out he went, and the queen sighed and dropped her face into the bedclothes.

  The slammin
g door startled her, but also brought her great relief. She wanted to remain in bed throughout the rest of the day and night, to just lie there and hide in her covers and pretend she was a little girl in Delthuntle.

  She thought of her mother, long dead. Concettina had not yet been a woman when Chianca Delcasio died in childbirth, along with the brother Concettina would never know.

  That day had changed her father, Corrado. Before that darkest of days Corrado had been a loving father, but the tragedy broke him. He had become more concerned with his business interests than with her, and thus had young Concettina been sold off to this King of Damara as part of a lucrative trade deal.

  Surely it was Corrado Delcasio’s grief that had driven him to this point. It had to have been.

  The woman pulled herself from the bed and began to collect her clothing. She noted then that the left eye of the painting of King Yarin was not identical to the right—again.

  Acelya, the king’s sister, was in the secret passageway that ran behind the interior wall of the room, crouched there, watching.

  King Yarin knew Concettina was becoming aware of her predicament, and so he suspected that perhaps his queen would find some secret lover to make her fat with child.

  The thought had indeed crossed Concettina’s mind.

  In truth, it echoed there whenever she walked through certain areas of the palace gardens, where the last two “barren” queens had been immortalized.

  She knew what the coterie were saying about her now, about the name, Queen Infecund the Seventh, they whispered behind her back.

  She tried hard to not let the thoroughly wretched Acelya know that she was aware of her presence.

  She dressed and went out to resume her day.

  “AH, BUT you should be more relaxed, my King,” Rafer Ingot said when King Yarin reappeared at the fountain patio behind the castle.

  King Yarin snorted and motioned for one of the servants to fetch him a glass of Impiltur whiskey. Few men would dare to address Yarin in such a manner, but Rafer, the huge and powerful murderer who headed one of the king’s spy networks—the one King Yarin was beginning to lean on more and more heavily of late—was one of them.

  Rafer Ingot had done a lot of very dirty work for King Yarin, and had been just a young and promising apprentice when Murtil Dragonsbane had unexpectedly met his demise more than twenty years before—unexpectedly, at least, to all but a few close associates of Yarin Frostmantle. And those close associates were gone now as well, except for Rafer, by whose hand the line of Dragonsbane had ended.

  Yes, he had been a promising apprentice, and was now the master assassin of Yarin’s court.

  King Yarin took the whiskey and swirled it around, letting the aroma preface the drink. He looked off across the garden field and nodded, spotting Captain Dreylil Andrus riding along the far hedgerow.

  “I become less sure of that one,” Yarin remarked off-handedly.

  “Likely with cause,” said Rafer, and that drew a curious glance from Yarin. It was one thing for the king to disparage the Captain of the Guard, but something quite different for someone else to agree.

  “What do you know?” Yarin prompted.

  “Bah, but it’s just the way he looks around in court,” Rafer explained. “Seems always sour, and I’m never for trusting one with a forever scowl.”

  “I have heard the same said of you.”

  “Bah, but you see me laughing all the time, my lord!”

  “Yes, like when I go to bed my wife,” Yarin remarked.

  “But that’s a cheer for your good fortune, for you’ve a pretty one to ride!” King Yarin took another drink and silently reminded himself of Rafer’s unique value. And so silently reminded himself not to have the crude man murdered.

  SHE HATED THAT the ladies-in-waiting followed her like a trio of obedient dogs, and every time she came out to the gardens, Concettina found herself longing for her home in Delthuntle. She used to go for longs walks there, usually along the docks to watch the sun set over the Sea of Fallen Stars. When she imagined it now and closed her eyes, she could almost smell the seaweed on the shoreline—just enough to give a slight taste to the air but not enough to make it unpleasant.

  Still, it was nothing like the aroma in those gardens. Every flower bed had been placed and nurtured to give each of the hedged-off chambers its own unique smell, and Concettina more often chose her course for the anticipated aromas as the views, particularly now, with Damara’s short summer in full bloom.

  Lilacs drew her to the long walk down the right hand side of the castle grounds. Bees buzzed around, too engaged with the flowers to even notice the queen and her entourage.

  Another creature, too, seemed not to notice, but Concettina grinned when she spotted him and made her way up to him directly after turning to motion for her attendants to be silent.

  The queen crept over to the hunched-over fellow, taking great pleasure in the little ditty he was singing to the flowers, a light-hearted melody that seemed more grunts than words, which, knowing Pikel, didn’t surprise Concettina at all. She moved right up behind the dwarf, whose face was fairly buried in the lilacs, and smiled wider. There were long pauses, as if Pikel was asking the lilacs to sing back at him.

  And they probably were.

  These gardens were the envy of any in the Bloodstone Lands precisely because of this green-bearded, green-thumbed gardener. They bloomed first and held their petals longest, a summertime blast of color and aroma beyond even those meticulous rows along the grounds of the Monastery of the Yellow Rose or the Lord’s Palace in Impiltur. And all because of Pikel.

  The little dwarf finally finished his song, then giggled and turned. He nearly jumped out of his open-toed sandals to find Queen Concettina standing right behind him.

  “Good day, Master Pikel,” she said politely. “The air is full of the sounds of happy bees.”

  “Queenie!” Pikel greeted and bowed so low that his green beard tickled the ground—and though that beard was long, such was no small feat. Unlike most dwarves, who let their beard hang low as a source of pride, braided or not, Pikel had braided his beard back and up over his ears, tying it in with his shaggy hair. That affect also pulled the hair from Pikel’s ample lips, so that when he smiled, he showed his teeth, full and straight and surprisingly white given his advanced age.

  He came up from the bow bobbing, grinning, and giggling, obviously overjoyed to see Queen Concettina out this fine summer morning.

  And that in turn delighted Concettina, though she was taken aback then as a cloud seemed to pass over Pikel’s cherubic face, and he even mumbled, “Oooo,” unintentionally, it seemed.

  “What is it, good sir dwarf?” Concettina asked.

  Pikel just smiled again and shook his head, but the cloud remained. The dwarf’s grin kept shifting to a grimace and he was moving from foot to foot, as if nervous. Concettina had met up with Pikel scores of times in these gardens, and never had she seen that behavior before.

  “Pray tell me,” she whispered, moving closer.

  Pikel continued to bob and started to whistle. He looked past Concettina to acknowledge the other ladies, who were all bunched together, whispering and giggling, no doubt at Pikel’s expense. Concettina shooed them away, doing so until they were far off, back by the entrance to this long side garden.

  When she finally turned back to Pikel, Concettina found that he had dropped all pretense of lightheartedness.

  “Oooo,” he moaned again.

  “Master Pikel, I do not think I’ve ever seen you like this,” the queen remarked. “What is the matter?”

  “Me friend, Queenie?” the dwarf asked.

  “Of course I am your friend.”

  “Me friend Queenie,” the dwarf answered somberly.

  It took Concettina a moment to realize that Pikel was answering her first question, that what was wrong had to do with her.

  “Me?” she asked and Pikel nodded. “Something is wrong with me?”

  He nodded more
emphatically.

  “Pray tell me what you know.”

  He shrugged, indicating that he really didn’t know anything.

  “Then tell me what you think might be wrong,” she prompted.

  Pikel glanced left and right and chewed his lip, as if looking for a way to explain—which was always the way with this strange little gardener. Finally, he put his hand on his ample belly, then moved it forward and pointed his stubbed arm at Concettina’s rather flat belly.

  The queen was taken aback by that. None were allowed such intimacy as that with her. The negative thought didn’t hold, though. This was Pikel, gentle and simple.

  “No, Pikel, I am not with child,” she quietly replied, glancing back at her attendants to make sure they were nowhere near enough to hear.

  “Oooo,” Pikel said, then he hopped suddenly, his face brightening, and he pointed his finger at the sky as if he had just thought of something. He motioned for Concettina to follow and led her along the left-hand hedgerow, down near the far end of the long run. There, he stepped aside and motioned for Concettina to look more closely at the hedge.

  She did, briefly, but came right back to the dwarf curiously. It was just a thicket of lilac bushes, after all.

  Pikel pointed more emphatically, motioning for Concettina to lean in closer.

  She gave him a curious look but obliged, putting her face very near the wide leaves, and still Pikel coaxed her on. She moved a tiny bit closer, and the dwarf whistled, and the leaves began to shift in front of her, shifting aside so that she could move in even closer.

  The hedgerow parted in front of her inquisitive face, revealing the garden adjacent.

  And more pointedly, revealing the statue in that adjacent garden, one of a headless woman.

  Concettina stood up straight, shocked, and on Pikel’s request the lilac bushes moved back into place, stealing the view. The queen turned to look down at Pikel, her face a mask of coldness and disappointment, her mind screaming to her: How dare he?

  She almost yelled that very thought at the dwarf, but when she noted his apologetic and sad aspect she couldn’t help but recognize the sincere concern upon his face.