Post by indifferentred on Feb 25, 2014 11:30:27 GMT 10
Title: Plus ça change
Rating: PG-13
For: Tamari
Prompt: 2. A couple reveals their secret relationship
Summary and Warnings: Marek Swiftknife/Eiralys of Cavall; five months after the end of the Scanran War, it's time to confess... (References to sex, very brief/vague reference to attempted sexual assault.)
Sorry this is so late (and so very, very long), but I hope you enjoy it. I also intended it to be a lot darker than it actually ended up being, but I hope it's still dramatic enough for you...
The lady’s dark velvet cloak was of finer quality than one usually saw in the Lower City, but Eiralys of Cavall was certain that no one would try to rob her. Her husband wouldn’t have stood for it, for one thing, and for another, the locals were too used to her and too knowledgeable about her skills with a knife to try it. She stopped just outside the circle of light cast by the lamps swinging from the Dancing Dove’s eaves and fixed a shaking smile onto her face, hands fisting in the grey silken skirts beneath her cloak. It had been almost two weeks since her last visit, after all. What if he had forgotten her? What if he had turned his attentions to someone else? A moment more, a slight straightening of her shoulders, and she entered.
The place was raucous with loud music and the chatter of thieves and their wenches, as usual. A few of them paused in their conversations and games of dice to call out greetings, but she did not pause longer than was polite. Instead, she wended her way purposefully towards the fireside, where a brown haired man just brushing middle-age sat over a chessboard. His opponent was a wizened old man with a grizzled grey beard and a scar that cut down his right cheek. It was the older man who noticed her first and rose. His body was as bent and crooked as his beard was grey. “Evenin’, mistress,” he grinned, showing gaps where teeth should have been.
Eiralys smiled, a true smile this time, and hastened to help him back to his seat. “Hello, Varn.” She bent and kissed his withered cheek, and the old man batted her away playfully. “Careful, girl, or yon fine fellow’ll be gettin’ th’ green eye!” he joked, hand flicking carelessly across the chessboard. Eiralys turned and met the deep brown eyes of Marek Swiftknife, King of the Court of the Rogue in Corus, thief, swordsman, curse of the Provost’s Guard… and her husband.
“Hello,” she blushed shyly.
He reached for her hand and lifted it gently to his lips, kissing it softly, and all her worries vanished. “Hello,” he replied genially. “Varn - we’ll finish the game tomorrow.” His eyes did not leave Eiralys’s face as he spoke. Without another word, he led her from the room and up the stairs to his private chambers.
Once there, he shut and bolted the door behind them and then turned, arms crossed across his chest. “I was afeared you’d forgotten me,” he commented. His voice was cool and Eiralys couldn’t look at him. She distracted herself by unhooking her cloak and folding it neatly over the back of the winged armchair by the fire.
She bit her lip. “It’s been difficult to get away. Papa came home last week, for good this time, he says.”
Her husband exhaled deeply - in disapproval or surprise, she wasn’t sure. In any case, when she turned her eyes upon his face finally, there was no trace of anger or irritation. “Do you believe him?” Marek asked, sympathetically. He knew how much she missed her father - stiff, cold prig that he was - and how much his absence distracted her. This would be the second time Wyldon of Cavall had made this promise to his daughter. Marek remembered all too well the last time he had broken it, remembered Eiralys fleeing across the city to him in her grief, remembered holding her slender frame in his arms as she wept herself to exhaustion. It was at times like these that he regretted marrying her as he had, secretly, hidden from all but a few trusted friends. If he had been recognised as her husband by the world, he could at least have relieved his feelings by ranting publicly at her father.
Eiralys shrugged, all of a sudden looking very tired. “I don’t know. I’m not sure that I even care, apart from being able to tell the truth at last.”
He turned to the sideboard and poured them a glass of ruby wine each. “Want to talk about it?” he asked, but she shook her head almost immediately.
“No. I come here to forget about them all, remember?”
Another man might have taken that badly, wondering if his wife had only married him as an escape from her dull, ordinary life, but Marek knew better. His sweet girl was independent, crafty and determined enough that if she had wanted an escape, she could have found a better one than as the secret wife of a thief. “How did you manage to get away tonight?” he asked, instead.
“Cathrea arrived today, for a visit. Papa and Mama are overjoyed to see her,” she explained softly. “And besides - I told him that I was working the night shift.” A light blush mantled her cheeks and he smiled. That was how they had met after all. Eiralys, with her Gift for healing, had joined one of the city infirmaries the day after the war with Scanra had been officially declared. Returning home late one night alone, eight months into her work, she had been set upon by a man, looking to steal her purse and her virtue. Fortunately, Marek had been passing by - just in time to watch Eiralys sink her hidden knife into her assailant’s belly. They had hidden the body together and shared a meal at Naxen’s Fancy afterwards. And so had begun a close friendship and, finally, romance. They had married during the winter of 461, a few days before Midwinter, and since then had snatched what moments of peace they could together. Eiralys had insisted that they wait until the official end of the war - and her father’s consequent return home - to announce their marriage; her parents both had enough to contend with at present without news of their eldest daughter’s waywardness as well.
His hands settled, warm and wanting, on her waist and pulled her closer. She barely had time to set her glass of wine safely down on the table before his lips had met hers, teasing them open, with all the practiced ease of a man of extensive experience, to taste her. “Mmm,” he murmured. “I missed you.”
“And I missed you,” she replied, when his lips left hers. Her hands rested against his shoulders, fingers curving over onto his back to feel the comforting solidity of his muscles. “Take me to bed,” she whispered.
Normally he would have obeyed without question, but there was something almost desperate in her tone tonight that made him pause. He frowned lightly and ran a finger around the neckline of her dress, hooking out the thin gold chain she always wore. Out it came, and he examined it closely. One silver wedding band and - “No charm,” he murmured, in an offhand voice.
“No,” Eiralys agreed, her fingers playing distractingly with the brown curls at the nape of his neck.
His frown deepened. “Eiralys…”
“What?” she asked lightly.
Marek cocked a warning eyebrow and she pouted, mule’s chin jutting out. “I’ve made my decision, so there’s no point trying to change my mind,” she informed him. “I saw how you looked at Fianna’s little girl, when she brought her to see you.”
Marek opened his mouth to lie, to argue that admiring his new baby niece did not mean that he wanted littles of his own running about the place, especially not when he and Eiralys were not even living together yet, but she raised a hand to stop him. “And I want children, too.”
“Your parents - “ he sighed and she rolled her eyes in a most unladylike fashion.
“Even my parents aren’t conservative enough to find something to complain about in my choosing to bear my husband’s children,” she reminded him, and he let out a little exasperated laugh.
“It isn’t that simple, though, is it, lass?”
Eiralys’s hands slipped down to the laces on his shirt and began to untie them. “It’s as simple as this,” she murmured. “I am your wife, I want your babes, and - “ (here her mouth quirked up into that rare mischievous smile she had) - “at this precise moment, I want you.”
*
“I’ve promised Master Reyvik that I’ll work the evening shift tonight,” Eiralys told her mother over breakfast.
Lady Vivenne looked up from her porridge with a frown of concern. “Are you sure? Rhiann said that you were sick again this morning. Oughtn’t you to stay at home and rest?”
Eiralys set aside her half-empty breakfast plate and stood to plant a kiss on her mother’s cheek. “No,” she replied shortly but kindly. “We’re far too busy.”
Vivenne sighed. “I don’t understand how that can be, Eiralys. The war’s been done with for nearly five months, now - surely there can’t still be casualties to treat?”
Her daughter didn’t answer her for a moment; she was too busy pulling on her cloak and readjusting the pins that held her hair in its business-like net at the base of her neck. At last, she sighed. “No, but there are still army officers recuperating, and Master Reyvik hasn’t had time to recruit more healers to replace the ones who haven’t been demobilised from the forces yet.” She turned from the polished mirror that hung on the wall. “I must go, Mama. I have a wardfull of amputees, three pregnancies and a blazebalm victim to deal with.”
“And I don’t suppose you’ll let me call the carriage for you, either?” asked Vivenne.
Eiralys smiled. “No, thank you. I enjoy the walk. Really, Mama.”
Vivenne’s mouth had taken on that slightly pinched, half-worried, half-disapproving look, and Eiralys, somewhere deep inside her, felt a twinge of guilt. “Well, try not to be too late. Your father is bringing Sir Warrin haMinch for dinner this evening, and it would be rude for you not to be there.”
Eiralys raised an eyebrow to herself. Another potential suitor, then. Since the end of the war, and the gradual return to Corus of scores of victorious young knights and officers of the King’s Own, her mother had done nothing but throw suitor after suitor at her. It had been a trying few months to say the least - and only her nights with Marek had made them bearable. She was sure that her mother viewed marriage as a surefire way of putting an end to her gallivanting in the Lower City - war work or not - and she rebelled against the prospect as much as possible. It was perfectly easy to duck out of dinners, and take on extra shifts at the infirmary that just happened to coincide with victory balls or riding parties, or one of the other numerous, utterly frivolous gatherings that had made up the vast majority of her pre-war life.
“Sir Warrin and I haven’t even been introduced, Mama. He won’t notice whether I’m there or not. Let Sunarine look after him - she finds soldiers far more attractive than I do.” And it was true; Eiralys’s younger sister had turned out to be the social butterfly of the family. Even during the war, she had occupied herself with charity committees and dancing with officers and knights on leave - and now, in a Corus that was still joyfully celebrating its victory over Scanra, Sunarine had more suitors than Eiralys could be bothered to count.
Lady Vivenne let out another deep sigh and stood to hug her eldest daughter. “I don’t worry about Sunarine, my darling,” she explained softly. “Having your work is all very well, Eiralys, but it won’t last forever. I don’t want you to end up alone and unhappy.”
“I won’t,” Eiralys promised her mother. “But I really must go now, Mama. I’ll send a messenger if I’m going to miss dinner.”
The walk to the infirmary that morning was much needed; it was so much easier to think when she was out and about and moving than it was when she was shut up in Cavall House, with all the chatter and laughter and endless stream of visitors. After all, Eiralys Swiftknife had much to ponder. Her father had had to go back to the front, in the end, but he was definitely home for good now, and had been for weeks. She was slowly working up her courage to admit to him what she had done, but it was difficult, even with Marek’s promise that he would be there by her side when she did so. “A bell or so of discomfort, lass, and then our life can begin properly,” he kept telling her, but Eiralys wasn’t so sure. It was all right for him - his widowed mother adored her - but her father was less likely to take so well to Marek. Her husband was, after all, a thief - and the king of the thieves at that. It would be impossible for her father to see her marriage as anything other than dishonourable and disgraceful, no matter what she might have to say on the subject of her husband’s loyalty or honesty.
And that was before she had even begun to think about the child, the child Marek had put inside her, the child who was growing even as she walked, the child whom she loved already with her whole heart. Eiralys sighed. At least she had her work to distract her.
And distracting it was, on that day at least. Two of her pregnancies progressed into labours within the same hour, and four members of the Provost’s Guard had arrived in the infirmary overnight with serious injuries after breaking up a tavern brawl in the Lower City; Eiralys made a mental note to inform Marek of it. His men were surely above nobbling Dogs for sport, or at least she hoped they were.
The day progressed unnoticed around her, and the sun set. Across the city, in the Unicorn District, her father was trying to cajole her mother out of the irritation she was feeling at Eiralys’s noticeable and unexplained absence, with little success, but Eiralys herself wasn’t to know that. The first she knew of evening’s arrival was when calloused hands came to rest on her waist from behind as she swabbed clean the bloody table before her. “Lass,” Marek murmured in her ear. “It’s time and past you were finished here for the day, surely?”
She turned in his embrace and gave him a wan smile. There was a streak of some green medicinal paste over her right eyebrow and her eyes were reddened with tiredness. Marek had never seen a prettier lass. “What time is it?” she asked.
“Just past the first bell of morning, love. Master Reyvik says you’ve been here since the ninth bell of the morning yesterday.” His tone was gently censuring and Eiralys shrugged. “We were busy. Two births and some cracknobs from the Provost’s Guard who’d got mixed up in something in the Lower City.”
Her husband shook his head. “‘Cracknobs’, is it? And you a well-brought up young lady, too.”
Eiralys snorted. “If you’d spent your afternoon tending to their broken bones while they were trying to flirt with you, then you’d have something worse than ‘cracknobs’ to call them, I’d warrant.”
His mouth flicked up at the corners, amused, and his hands moved to lie across her still-flat belly. “And how is our little one?”
She smiled. “I keep telling you - it’s still a little early to be feeling any- “ And then she stopped, eyes wide. Marek had frozen in place, hand pressed against her, straining to feel the fluttering that had been there just a moment ago. “Say something again,” Eiralys whispered. “Your voice - “
“Hello?” murmured Marek. “Hello?”
There it was again. Eiralys gave a bubbling laugh, and Marek followed, wondering at the perfection of such a moment. And wasn’t it ironic that the most valuable things in his life - the life of the King of the Court of the Rogue - had not been stolen at all, but freely given? Marek bowed his head to rest it against her forehead, and Eiralys leant up on her tiptoes to kiss his lips. She had intended it to be sweet and chaste, but with them, things never remained sweet and chaste for long. It was their joy and their trouble, after all. Soon, they were kissing so passionately, so needfully, that neither heard the door open behind them.
They did, however, hear Wyldon of Cavall’s furious roar as he caught sight of his firstborn in the arms of a strange man. “Unhand my daughter now, cur!”
Marek and Eiralys jumped apart and she reached instinctively for his hand, clutching onto her husband tightly as they turned as one to face her father’s wrath.
“P-papa,” she whispered. “It isn’t - isn’t what it looks like…”
He turned cool eyes on her. There was no possibility that he could have mistaken their kisses for anything other than ones borne of mutual affection and, yes, desire. His lip curled in disgust. “It looks as if you have forgotten your station, your duty and your honour,” he snapped. Eiralys couldn’t look him in the eye. He was using that tone of voice - detached, cynical, coldly savage, the closest her father ever got to becoming totally unrestrained by his iron will. It was the tone of voice that had made her - had made all of the Cavall girls - cower as children, the tone of voice that reduced erring knights to ashamed infants, the tone of voice that meant Papa was in a temper that not even Mama could quell. “Explain yourself.”
Eiralys’s back automatically straightened at the syllables. Her father was, first and foremost, a soldier and his household had always been run along military lines of discipline. Those two words were well-known to Eiralys, the most rambunctious of the Cavall girls as a child. They meant… Facts. No excuses. No emotion.
“I have married Marek,” she said, quite clearly, and then her eyes left her father’s face and travelled to that of her husband. He was looking at her with such pride in his eyes that, despite the fear bubbling in the pit of her stomach, she could not be sorry for their discovery. It was all out in the open now, the deception was at an end.
Wyldon stood as fixed and still as marble before them, processing his daughter’s words. “I see,” he replied finally, and that above all else sent a sudden chill of foreboding down Eiralys’s spine.
She tipped her chin back proudly and asked, trying to keep the quiver from her voice, “Is that all you have to say?”
Wyldon’s hands were clenched tightly behind his back. “No. But I will not discuss the matter further in front of someone so wholly unconnected - “
Eiralys’s clear voice interrupted him, for the first time in her life. “Marek is my husband. Whatever you need to say to me is fit for his ears too, Papa.”
“Marek is your husband,” he repeated, looking as though the words pained him. He looked at the room’s other occupant for the first time. “Is this true?”
Marek gave a tired smile. “Aye, my lord. Yon lass o’ yorn speaks no word of a lie.” Eiralys bit her lip. He was doing this deliberately - speaking broad Lower City cant, knowing it would antagonise her father even more. But if he had expected an overt reaction, he was disappointed. Wyldon’s face did not move a muscle. For a while, the two men stood there, looking each other over, waiting for the other to make some move or declaration. Eiralys didn’t need Cathrea’s foresight to know what would happen, if they were allowed to continue thus.
“Papa, we can discuss this more easily at home, surely? I must speak with Mama, and - and introduce her to Marek.” That was the key. If she could get her father home, back into the domestic, womanly space of her mother’s sitting room, into the presence of Mama’s calming voice and reasoned mind, then they could state their case, make their peace. It was a slim chance, but a chance nonetheless, and Eiralys could not afford to abandon it.
*
Papa had brought horses with him. It was only as she mounted her docile mare that Eiralys noticed he was still in evening dress. No doubt Mama would have sent him after their guests had left, to discover where she had been and why she had neglected to send word. He had even had Reel saddled with a man’s saddle, to accommodate the wide cotton breeches, almost like skirts, that she wore for her work. It was lucky he had - it meant that Marek could ride with her, his arms tight around her waist. They rode slowly, to Wyldon’s obvious ire, but Marek didn’t care. He wouldn’t risk Eiralys and their babe with ill-advised galloping just to suit the caprices of a crotchety nobleman.
Stablehands awaited them at Cavall House. Wyldon dismounted hurriedly and almost threw his reins at the nearest boy, but Marek was more careful. He slid down first, then reached up to scoop Eiralys safely from the saddle and set her on her feet. He dug into his breeches’ pocket and flicked a copper noble at the hand who was drawing away Reel.
Inside, a hushed and hurried conference was going on within the sitting room. Eiralys could hear her mother’s voice, lightly questioning, and her father’s terse replies - and then she caught sight of a flicker of light up on the landing and Sunarine and Margarry appeared at the head of the stairs, both barefoot, both dressed for bed, and both with identical long plaits of hair hanging over their shoulders.
“Eiralys? What’s going on? Who’s that?” asked Margarry, holding up her candle the better to examine Marek. She grinned impishly. “He’s handsome, whoever he is.”
Marek gave an embarrassed little chuckle beside her and Eiralys sighed. “Thank you very much, Meg. Marek, these are - “
There was a crash from the sitting room and all three girls winced. Margarry started down the stairs and Sunarine, grasping vainly for their youngest sister’s arm, followed. “That’s Mama’s pottery,” Margarry observed conversationally. “The Yamani, I think. Why’s Papa in a fret?”
Sunarine elbowed her hard in the ribs and the younger girl turned to her indignantly. “It’s true! He only ever breaks the cups when he’s really angry. Like that time with the Chamber of the Ordeal and Vinson of - “
“Be quiet, Margarry,” hissed Sunarine. Margarry subsided sullenly into silence.
Eiralys and Sunarine shared an indulgent smile, and then she drew Marek forward with an encouraging hand. “Sunarine, Margarry… this is Marek. My husband.”
Margarry let out a little, low-pitched squeal of delight and threw herself at Eiralys and Marek, one arm landing around each of their necks and squeezing tight. “Congratulations!” Eiralys hadn’t really expected anything different. Margarry, fifteen in a few months’ time, was the most romantic of the sisters, and had not yet completely got over the stage of sighing over the works of lovelorn minstrels and admiring every man who looked twice at her.
Over Margarry’s shoulder, Eiralys could observe Sunarine. She was frowning lightly, puzzling over something. Eiralys thought she could guess what it was. Being the social butterfly of the family meant that one spent much of one’s time in conversation with the gossips - about both the Court and the City. She braced herself for the inevitable storm. Sunarine’s mouth suddenly dropped open, her eyes flicking from Eiralys to Marek at high speed. For a moment, she gaped, unable to speak, and then she exclaimed, “You’re Marek Swiftknife!” Her eyes gleamed with excitement. “Aren’t you? The Marek Swiftknife? The King of the Thieves? The man who beat four men in a knife fight at once? The man who was best friends with George Cooper? The man who took down thirty men in the Coronation Day Battle and didn’t even get a scratch?” Her eyes widened. “Mithros and the Goddess,” she murmured to herself, “Marek Swiftknife is my brother-in-law!” Overcome with her newfound discovery, Sunarine sank down to sit on the stairs.
Before Eiralys could respond, another door opened on the landing and a third figure leaned over the railings. She was shorter and stockier than the others, and her chestnut curls had been cropped to fall just past her ears. Even at this distance, Marek could sense something ethereal and otherworldly about her, despite her entirely worldly appearance. Cathrea, then.
“What in the name of the Great Mother is going on down there?” she asked, and Marek could hear her exasperation through the sleepiness of her tone.
Margarry released them at last and turned her head back to call, “Eiralys has married a thief. Come down and meet him, Cate!”
There was an extended groan from the gallery. “Oh, that.” Cathrea flapped a hand. “Finally.” She had injected her words with all the world-weariness of the aged cynic, and Eiralys put her hands on her hips as she tilted her head back far enough to see her sister’s face. “Has anyone ever told you how irritating that is?” she asked.
Cathrea’s cat-like face stretched into a grin. “Frequently. Excuse me if I don’t come down and meet you properly, Marek, but you’ve been running around my head for six months now. I could do with the break first.” Marek shuddered inwardly. It didn’t matter how often he had been told about Cathrea’s preternatural senses - actually witnessing them in action was another experience entirely. Another crash sounded, louder this time, and the girls winced again.
“Shame,” Cathrea sighed. “He’s run out of Yamani. You’d better go in before he starts on the Carthaki stuff,” she advised. “Night, all.” With that, she turned and vanished into the shadows of the landing once more.
Marek turned and rested his hands on Eiralys’s shoulders. “Ready, sweet?”
She took a deep breath and nodded. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”
They turned to the door, but it had opened before they could reach it. Vivenne of Cavall, looking splendid in a deep red silk gown under a coppery overrobe, stood there, a long-suffering expression on her face. “Will someone please come inside and explain to me what is going on? Eiralys, all I can get from your father are indeterminate squawks and some hopelessly muddled story about your being married.”
Eiralys sighed. “Mama, this is Marek, my… my husband.”
“He’s the King of the Thieves,” Margarry added helpfully from the stairs.
Vivenne took a faltering step backwards and her hand closed around the doorframe for support. Her eyes flickered closed and she looked as though she were fighting for the composure that usually came so naturally to her. At last, she opened her eyes and said, “Sunarine, please take Meg and go back to bed.” It was not a request. Obediently, Sunarine gathered up Margarry and vanished upstairs, after casting a last, longing look back at Marek.
Eiralys and Marek entered the sitting room. Her father sat in one of the fireside armchairs, head back, eyes closed, arms braced on either side of it. The rug in front of him was dusted with shards of painted and patterned pottery. Vivenne shut the door behind them quietly and then turned to face her daughter and son-in-law. “How did this happen?” she asked.
The guilty pair shared a look. At least this was better than shouting.
Wyldon opened his eyes and sat up. “Vivenne, does it really signify how it happened? All that Eiralys needs to know is that it is ending, now.”
Vivenne rolled her eyes. “Wyldon, for Mithros’s sake, let Eiralys speak. Tantrums will help nobody.”
Wyldon subsided and Eiralys shot her mother a grateful look. Marek was looking at Vivenne with a new respect - there was something in her voice, something elegant and steely, that reminded him inescapably of Eiralys. So Eiralys began to explain. She talked and talked and Vivenne listened to her in silence, every so often sending a quelling look in Wyldon’s direction when it looked as if he were about to interrupt. She talked about the infirmary, about meeting Marek, about jumping over the embers with him at Beltane on the Common, about wedding him in her favourite dress and celebrating at the Dancing Dove afterwards, about sneaking away to share his rooms and his life, and most of all about her utter certainty that she had made the right choice. At last, she fell silent.
Vivenne smiled thinly. “I suppose you are aware that by taking this step, you have thrown away your reputation, any prospect of a position in society, any right to the respect of the palace courtiers? You do realise that you have branded all of your sisters with the mark of your disgrace too?”
Marek heard the rush of breath next to him and then Eiralys had buried her face in her hands, the tears she had held in for so long finally flowing freely over her fingers. His heart sank. She was raised to this, to a life of duty and reputation and upholding the family honour. Of course her mother’s words would cut her deeply, perhaps even make her regret what she had done, in some small part. But then Eiralys spoke and it was with a voice aglow with fierce passion. “I cannot be sorry, Mama. Not for this. Not for him.” Her voice quivered. “And for that I must beg your forgiveness.”
There was a moment’s silence, and then Vivenne stepped forwards and embraced her daughter. “Oh, my girl. My poor, foolish, darling girl…” She looked up at Marek, her own eyes bright with unshed tears. “And what have you to say for yourself? Do you truly believe yourself worth what she will have to give up?”
Marek swallowed. “I… I love her.” It was not enough, not nearly enough, and yet… it was all he had.
Behind them, Wyldon snorted. “Love. If you truly loved her, then you wouldn’t have married her. You would have stayed away! How could you be so irresponsible? Did you not think what would happen, if the Provost ever arrested you? Did you not think how it would destroy her to be left widowed and abandoned among strangers?”
Marek’s eyes flashed with fury. “And did you never think how it would destroy Lady Vivenne, to be widowed through one of your foolish campaigns?” he replied heatedly.
Wyldon’s hand settled on the riding crop at his belt. “How dare you? I ought to thrash you like the dog you are!”
“Wyldon - “ Vivenne cried, at the same time as Eiralys raised her head from her mother’s shoulder to beg, “Papa, please…” Her breathing had grown heavier and she swayed as she tried to break from her mother’s grasp. She swooned - Marek caught her before she hit the ground and scooped her up to lie on the sofa.
Wyldon had launched himself forward, his anger replaced by a sudden fear. “What’s wrong with her?” He rounded on Marek. “You see - you see what your interference has led to?” Marek squared his shoulders and had just opened his mouth to argue back, when Vivenne, kneeling by Eiralys’s head, waved a hand for silence. Eiralys was coming round, trying to murmur something out. Her hand flailed vainly by her side for a moment and then settled against her abdomen. “Mama, please, don’t let Papa hurt him. Please… for our child…”
Vivenne brushed a soothing hand over her forehead. “Of course not, sweeting. Shhh, just rest.”
She turned to the men. Marek’s eyes were fixed firmly on Eiralys, and Wyldon looked as if he had received, for the second time tonight, the shock of his life. “She’s with child?” he whispered, stunned.
Marek nodded shortly. “Yes. The babe quickened tonight.” He looked at Vivenne. “Will she be all right?”
Vivenne gave him a quick smile. “Yes. But she needs rest and quiet. Why don’t you take her upstairs, Marek? Doubtless Sunarine and Meg will still be awake - they’ll show you to her room.”
“Vivenne - “ protested Wyldon, but his wife reached for his hand and rubbed a soothing finger over his knuckles.
“Not now, Wyl,” she said firmly.
Marek had bent down to pick up Eiralys. When he turned, Vivenne was holding open the door. “Thank you. My lady, I - “
Vivenne shrugged. “Don’t thank me yet. Stay with Eiralys. My husband and I need to have a quiet conversation.”
*
“Absolutely not!” snapped Wyldon of Cavall. “Go begging to George Cooper to save my daughter’s reputation? He’d laugh in my face, Vivenne!”
His lady threw up her hands in exasperation. “Then what else would you do, Wyldon? Allow Eiralys to go back to the Lower City with him, allow her to be a thief’s wife? At least this way, Marek will have respectable employment, and Eiralys will be able to hold her head up in society.”
Wyldon’s mouth tightened. “There are ways… this can be put to an end. No thief would turn down the sum I could raise to make him leave Tortall and never return. Eiralys will be asleep now - it would be easily done. By the time she wakes, he could be far away from here, on a boat to Tyra, or Carthak, or the Copper Isles…”
Vivenne looked horrified, but her voice was calm when she spoke. “She would never forgive you. And have you forgotten her child? You would allow her to give birth to it in disgrace, with no visible husband?”
Wyldon stood up and began to pace. “I could send her back to Cavall. She could give birth quietly there, and then the child could be sent away, fostered elsewhere… there are hundreds of couples who desire children, Vivenne.”
His wife stood up and gripped both of his arms in her hands. “Wyldon, listen to yourself!” she exclaimed. “Do you know nothing of your daughter, that you believe she would go along quietly and obediently with your plan?” She shook her head, wonderingly. “She is more like you than you know.” Her lips curved into a sad smile. “She is slipping away from us, and all we can do now is save face. Even if you send him away, even if you forbid her from seeing him, even if you take his child from her, her heart will be Marek Swiftknife’s until the Black God claims her, Wyl.”
Wyldon snorted. “You cannot know that. You’ve seen them together for a few minutes - how can you possibly know that?”
Vivenne’s thumb stroked lovingly across his elbow. “Because of her face. Oh, Wyl, didn’t you see it?”
“See what?” His voice was a confused, tired rumble in his chest and Vivenne sighed and rested her head against him.
“It was the same face you wore when your mother forbade you from marrying me,” she explained gently.
They shared a look, brown eyes and blue, and both reflected silently on all those moments that had congealed, somehow and someway, into the present they shared now. It had gone like this. There had been an arranged match with a wealthy heiress; and a young knight who had been too headstrong for his own good; and a pretty, penniless baron’s daughter, who had been presented in her mother’s best gown (taken in and up to fit) and borrowed jewels; and a single dance… and Wyldon of Cavall had fallen in love.
“Vivenne…”
She didn’t reply, only looked up at him expectantly. At last, he let out a deep, frustrated growl.
“All right. But… not Cooper!”
Rating: PG-13
For: Tamari
Prompt: 2. A couple reveals their secret relationship
Summary and Warnings: Marek Swiftknife/Eiralys of Cavall; five months after the end of the Scanran War, it's time to confess... (References to sex, very brief/vague reference to attempted sexual assault.)
Sorry this is so late (and so very, very long), but I hope you enjoy it. I also intended it to be a lot darker than it actually ended up being, but I hope it's still dramatic enough for you...
The lady’s dark velvet cloak was of finer quality than one usually saw in the Lower City, but Eiralys of Cavall was certain that no one would try to rob her. Her husband wouldn’t have stood for it, for one thing, and for another, the locals were too used to her and too knowledgeable about her skills with a knife to try it. She stopped just outside the circle of light cast by the lamps swinging from the Dancing Dove’s eaves and fixed a shaking smile onto her face, hands fisting in the grey silken skirts beneath her cloak. It had been almost two weeks since her last visit, after all. What if he had forgotten her? What if he had turned his attentions to someone else? A moment more, a slight straightening of her shoulders, and she entered.
The place was raucous with loud music and the chatter of thieves and their wenches, as usual. A few of them paused in their conversations and games of dice to call out greetings, but she did not pause longer than was polite. Instead, she wended her way purposefully towards the fireside, where a brown haired man just brushing middle-age sat over a chessboard. His opponent was a wizened old man with a grizzled grey beard and a scar that cut down his right cheek. It was the older man who noticed her first and rose. His body was as bent and crooked as his beard was grey. “Evenin’, mistress,” he grinned, showing gaps where teeth should have been.
Eiralys smiled, a true smile this time, and hastened to help him back to his seat. “Hello, Varn.” She bent and kissed his withered cheek, and the old man batted her away playfully. “Careful, girl, or yon fine fellow’ll be gettin’ th’ green eye!” he joked, hand flicking carelessly across the chessboard. Eiralys turned and met the deep brown eyes of Marek Swiftknife, King of the Court of the Rogue in Corus, thief, swordsman, curse of the Provost’s Guard… and her husband.
“Hello,” she blushed shyly.
He reached for her hand and lifted it gently to his lips, kissing it softly, and all her worries vanished. “Hello,” he replied genially. “Varn - we’ll finish the game tomorrow.” His eyes did not leave Eiralys’s face as he spoke. Without another word, he led her from the room and up the stairs to his private chambers.
Once there, he shut and bolted the door behind them and then turned, arms crossed across his chest. “I was afeared you’d forgotten me,” he commented. His voice was cool and Eiralys couldn’t look at him. She distracted herself by unhooking her cloak and folding it neatly over the back of the winged armchair by the fire.
She bit her lip. “It’s been difficult to get away. Papa came home last week, for good this time, he says.”
Her husband exhaled deeply - in disapproval or surprise, she wasn’t sure. In any case, when she turned her eyes upon his face finally, there was no trace of anger or irritation. “Do you believe him?” Marek asked, sympathetically. He knew how much she missed her father - stiff, cold prig that he was - and how much his absence distracted her. This would be the second time Wyldon of Cavall had made this promise to his daughter. Marek remembered all too well the last time he had broken it, remembered Eiralys fleeing across the city to him in her grief, remembered holding her slender frame in his arms as she wept herself to exhaustion. It was at times like these that he regretted marrying her as he had, secretly, hidden from all but a few trusted friends. If he had been recognised as her husband by the world, he could at least have relieved his feelings by ranting publicly at her father.
Eiralys shrugged, all of a sudden looking very tired. “I don’t know. I’m not sure that I even care, apart from being able to tell the truth at last.”
He turned to the sideboard and poured them a glass of ruby wine each. “Want to talk about it?” he asked, but she shook her head almost immediately.
“No. I come here to forget about them all, remember?”
Another man might have taken that badly, wondering if his wife had only married him as an escape from her dull, ordinary life, but Marek knew better. His sweet girl was independent, crafty and determined enough that if she had wanted an escape, she could have found a better one than as the secret wife of a thief. “How did you manage to get away tonight?” he asked, instead.
“Cathrea arrived today, for a visit. Papa and Mama are overjoyed to see her,” she explained softly. “And besides - I told him that I was working the night shift.” A light blush mantled her cheeks and he smiled. That was how they had met after all. Eiralys, with her Gift for healing, had joined one of the city infirmaries the day after the war with Scanra had been officially declared. Returning home late one night alone, eight months into her work, she had been set upon by a man, looking to steal her purse and her virtue. Fortunately, Marek had been passing by - just in time to watch Eiralys sink her hidden knife into her assailant’s belly. They had hidden the body together and shared a meal at Naxen’s Fancy afterwards. And so had begun a close friendship and, finally, romance. They had married during the winter of 461, a few days before Midwinter, and since then had snatched what moments of peace they could together. Eiralys had insisted that they wait until the official end of the war - and her father’s consequent return home - to announce their marriage; her parents both had enough to contend with at present without news of their eldest daughter’s waywardness as well.
His hands settled, warm and wanting, on her waist and pulled her closer. She barely had time to set her glass of wine safely down on the table before his lips had met hers, teasing them open, with all the practiced ease of a man of extensive experience, to taste her. “Mmm,” he murmured. “I missed you.”
“And I missed you,” she replied, when his lips left hers. Her hands rested against his shoulders, fingers curving over onto his back to feel the comforting solidity of his muscles. “Take me to bed,” she whispered.
Normally he would have obeyed without question, but there was something almost desperate in her tone tonight that made him pause. He frowned lightly and ran a finger around the neckline of her dress, hooking out the thin gold chain she always wore. Out it came, and he examined it closely. One silver wedding band and - “No charm,” he murmured, in an offhand voice.
“No,” Eiralys agreed, her fingers playing distractingly with the brown curls at the nape of his neck.
His frown deepened. “Eiralys…”
“What?” she asked lightly.
Marek cocked a warning eyebrow and she pouted, mule’s chin jutting out. “I’ve made my decision, so there’s no point trying to change my mind,” she informed him. “I saw how you looked at Fianna’s little girl, when she brought her to see you.”
Marek opened his mouth to lie, to argue that admiring his new baby niece did not mean that he wanted littles of his own running about the place, especially not when he and Eiralys were not even living together yet, but she raised a hand to stop him. “And I want children, too.”
“Your parents - “ he sighed and she rolled her eyes in a most unladylike fashion.
“Even my parents aren’t conservative enough to find something to complain about in my choosing to bear my husband’s children,” she reminded him, and he let out a little exasperated laugh.
“It isn’t that simple, though, is it, lass?”
Eiralys’s hands slipped down to the laces on his shirt and began to untie them. “It’s as simple as this,” she murmured. “I am your wife, I want your babes, and - “ (here her mouth quirked up into that rare mischievous smile she had) - “at this precise moment, I want you.”
*
“I’ve promised Master Reyvik that I’ll work the evening shift tonight,” Eiralys told her mother over breakfast.
Lady Vivenne looked up from her porridge with a frown of concern. “Are you sure? Rhiann said that you were sick again this morning. Oughtn’t you to stay at home and rest?”
Eiralys set aside her half-empty breakfast plate and stood to plant a kiss on her mother’s cheek. “No,” she replied shortly but kindly. “We’re far too busy.”
Vivenne sighed. “I don’t understand how that can be, Eiralys. The war’s been done with for nearly five months, now - surely there can’t still be casualties to treat?”
Her daughter didn’t answer her for a moment; she was too busy pulling on her cloak and readjusting the pins that held her hair in its business-like net at the base of her neck. At last, she sighed. “No, but there are still army officers recuperating, and Master Reyvik hasn’t had time to recruit more healers to replace the ones who haven’t been demobilised from the forces yet.” She turned from the polished mirror that hung on the wall. “I must go, Mama. I have a wardfull of amputees, three pregnancies and a blazebalm victim to deal with.”
“And I don’t suppose you’ll let me call the carriage for you, either?” asked Vivenne.
Eiralys smiled. “No, thank you. I enjoy the walk. Really, Mama.”
Vivenne’s mouth had taken on that slightly pinched, half-worried, half-disapproving look, and Eiralys, somewhere deep inside her, felt a twinge of guilt. “Well, try not to be too late. Your father is bringing Sir Warrin haMinch for dinner this evening, and it would be rude for you not to be there.”
Eiralys raised an eyebrow to herself. Another potential suitor, then. Since the end of the war, and the gradual return to Corus of scores of victorious young knights and officers of the King’s Own, her mother had done nothing but throw suitor after suitor at her. It had been a trying few months to say the least - and only her nights with Marek had made them bearable. She was sure that her mother viewed marriage as a surefire way of putting an end to her gallivanting in the Lower City - war work or not - and she rebelled against the prospect as much as possible. It was perfectly easy to duck out of dinners, and take on extra shifts at the infirmary that just happened to coincide with victory balls or riding parties, or one of the other numerous, utterly frivolous gatherings that had made up the vast majority of her pre-war life.
“Sir Warrin and I haven’t even been introduced, Mama. He won’t notice whether I’m there or not. Let Sunarine look after him - she finds soldiers far more attractive than I do.” And it was true; Eiralys’s younger sister had turned out to be the social butterfly of the family. Even during the war, she had occupied herself with charity committees and dancing with officers and knights on leave - and now, in a Corus that was still joyfully celebrating its victory over Scanra, Sunarine had more suitors than Eiralys could be bothered to count.
Lady Vivenne let out another deep sigh and stood to hug her eldest daughter. “I don’t worry about Sunarine, my darling,” she explained softly. “Having your work is all very well, Eiralys, but it won’t last forever. I don’t want you to end up alone and unhappy.”
“I won’t,” Eiralys promised her mother. “But I really must go now, Mama. I’ll send a messenger if I’m going to miss dinner.”
The walk to the infirmary that morning was much needed; it was so much easier to think when she was out and about and moving than it was when she was shut up in Cavall House, with all the chatter and laughter and endless stream of visitors. After all, Eiralys Swiftknife had much to ponder. Her father had had to go back to the front, in the end, but he was definitely home for good now, and had been for weeks. She was slowly working up her courage to admit to him what she had done, but it was difficult, even with Marek’s promise that he would be there by her side when she did so. “A bell or so of discomfort, lass, and then our life can begin properly,” he kept telling her, but Eiralys wasn’t so sure. It was all right for him - his widowed mother adored her - but her father was less likely to take so well to Marek. Her husband was, after all, a thief - and the king of the thieves at that. It would be impossible for her father to see her marriage as anything other than dishonourable and disgraceful, no matter what she might have to say on the subject of her husband’s loyalty or honesty.
And that was before she had even begun to think about the child, the child Marek had put inside her, the child who was growing even as she walked, the child whom she loved already with her whole heart. Eiralys sighed. At least she had her work to distract her.
And distracting it was, on that day at least. Two of her pregnancies progressed into labours within the same hour, and four members of the Provost’s Guard had arrived in the infirmary overnight with serious injuries after breaking up a tavern brawl in the Lower City; Eiralys made a mental note to inform Marek of it. His men were surely above nobbling Dogs for sport, or at least she hoped they were.
The day progressed unnoticed around her, and the sun set. Across the city, in the Unicorn District, her father was trying to cajole her mother out of the irritation she was feeling at Eiralys’s noticeable and unexplained absence, with little success, but Eiralys herself wasn’t to know that. The first she knew of evening’s arrival was when calloused hands came to rest on her waist from behind as she swabbed clean the bloody table before her. “Lass,” Marek murmured in her ear. “It’s time and past you were finished here for the day, surely?”
She turned in his embrace and gave him a wan smile. There was a streak of some green medicinal paste over her right eyebrow and her eyes were reddened with tiredness. Marek had never seen a prettier lass. “What time is it?” she asked.
“Just past the first bell of morning, love. Master Reyvik says you’ve been here since the ninth bell of the morning yesterday.” His tone was gently censuring and Eiralys shrugged. “We were busy. Two births and some cracknobs from the Provost’s Guard who’d got mixed up in something in the Lower City.”
Her husband shook his head. “‘Cracknobs’, is it? And you a well-brought up young lady, too.”
Eiralys snorted. “If you’d spent your afternoon tending to their broken bones while they were trying to flirt with you, then you’d have something worse than ‘cracknobs’ to call them, I’d warrant.”
His mouth flicked up at the corners, amused, and his hands moved to lie across her still-flat belly. “And how is our little one?”
She smiled. “I keep telling you - it’s still a little early to be feeling any- “ And then she stopped, eyes wide. Marek had frozen in place, hand pressed against her, straining to feel the fluttering that had been there just a moment ago. “Say something again,” Eiralys whispered. “Your voice - “
“Hello?” murmured Marek. “Hello?”
There it was again. Eiralys gave a bubbling laugh, and Marek followed, wondering at the perfection of such a moment. And wasn’t it ironic that the most valuable things in his life - the life of the King of the Court of the Rogue - had not been stolen at all, but freely given? Marek bowed his head to rest it against her forehead, and Eiralys leant up on her tiptoes to kiss his lips. She had intended it to be sweet and chaste, but with them, things never remained sweet and chaste for long. It was their joy and their trouble, after all. Soon, they were kissing so passionately, so needfully, that neither heard the door open behind them.
They did, however, hear Wyldon of Cavall’s furious roar as he caught sight of his firstborn in the arms of a strange man. “Unhand my daughter now, cur!”
Marek and Eiralys jumped apart and she reached instinctively for his hand, clutching onto her husband tightly as they turned as one to face her father’s wrath.
“P-papa,” she whispered. “It isn’t - isn’t what it looks like…”
He turned cool eyes on her. There was no possibility that he could have mistaken their kisses for anything other than ones borne of mutual affection and, yes, desire. His lip curled in disgust. “It looks as if you have forgotten your station, your duty and your honour,” he snapped. Eiralys couldn’t look him in the eye. He was using that tone of voice - detached, cynical, coldly savage, the closest her father ever got to becoming totally unrestrained by his iron will. It was the tone of voice that had made her - had made all of the Cavall girls - cower as children, the tone of voice that reduced erring knights to ashamed infants, the tone of voice that meant Papa was in a temper that not even Mama could quell. “Explain yourself.”
Eiralys’s back automatically straightened at the syllables. Her father was, first and foremost, a soldier and his household had always been run along military lines of discipline. Those two words were well-known to Eiralys, the most rambunctious of the Cavall girls as a child. They meant… Facts. No excuses. No emotion.
“I have married Marek,” she said, quite clearly, and then her eyes left her father’s face and travelled to that of her husband. He was looking at her with such pride in his eyes that, despite the fear bubbling in the pit of her stomach, she could not be sorry for their discovery. It was all out in the open now, the deception was at an end.
Wyldon stood as fixed and still as marble before them, processing his daughter’s words. “I see,” he replied finally, and that above all else sent a sudden chill of foreboding down Eiralys’s spine.
She tipped her chin back proudly and asked, trying to keep the quiver from her voice, “Is that all you have to say?”
Wyldon’s hands were clenched tightly behind his back. “No. But I will not discuss the matter further in front of someone so wholly unconnected - “
Eiralys’s clear voice interrupted him, for the first time in her life. “Marek is my husband. Whatever you need to say to me is fit for his ears too, Papa.”
“Marek is your husband,” he repeated, looking as though the words pained him. He looked at the room’s other occupant for the first time. “Is this true?”
Marek gave a tired smile. “Aye, my lord. Yon lass o’ yorn speaks no word of a lie.” Eiralys bit her lip. He was doing this deliberately - speaking broad Lower City cant, knowing it would antagonise her father even more. But if he had expected an overt reaction, he was disappointed. Wyldon’s face did not move a muscle. For a while, the two men stood there, looking each other over, waiting for the other to make some move or declaration. Eiralys didn’t need Cathrea’s foresight to know what would happen, if they were allowed to continue thus.
“Papa, we can discuss this more easily at home, surely? I must speak with Mama, and - and introduce her to Marek.” That was the key. If she could get her father home, back into the domestic, womanly space of her mother’s sitting room, into the presence of Mama’s calming voice and reasoned mind, then they could state their case, make their peace. It was a slim chance, but a chance nonetheless, and Eiralys could not afford to abandon it.
*
Papa had brought horses with him. It was only as she mounted her docile mare that Eiralys noticed he was still in evening dress. No doubt Mama would have sent him after their guests had left, to discover where she had been and why she had neglected to send word. He had even had Reel saddled with a man’s saddle, to accommodate the wide cotton breeches, almost like skirts, that she wore for her work. It was lucky he had - it meant that Marek could ride with her, his arms tight around her waist. They rode slowly, to Wyldon’s obvious ire, but Marek didn’t care. He wouldn’t risk Eiralys and their babe with ill-advised galloping just to suit the caprices of a crotchety nobleman.
Stablehands awaited them at Cavall House. Wyldon dismounted hurriedly and almost threw his reins at the nearest boy, but Marek was more careful. He slid down first, then reached up to scoop Eiralys safely from the saddle and set her on her feet. He dug into his breeches’ pocket and flicked a copper noble at the hand who was drawing away Reel.
Inside, a hushed and hurried conference was going on within the sitting room. Eiralys could hear her mother’s voice, lightly questioning, and her father’s terse replies - and then she caught sight of a flicker of light up on the landing and Sunarine and Margarry appeared at the head of the stairs, both barefoot, both dressed for bed, and both with identical long plaits of hair hanging over their shoulders.
“Eiralys? What’s going on? Who’s that?” asked Margarry, holding up her candle the better to examine Marek. She grinned impishly. “He’s handsome, whoever he is.”
Marek gave an embarrassed little chuckle beside her and Eiralys sighed. “Thank you very much, Meg. Marek, these are - “
There was a crash from the sitting room and all three girls winced. Margarry started down the stairs and Sunarine, grasping vainly for their youngest sister’s arm, followed. “That’s Mama’s pottery,” Margarry observed conversationally. “The Yamani, I think. Why’s Papa in a fret?”
Sunarine elbowed her hard in the ribs and the younger girl turned to her indignantly. “It’s true! He only ever breaks the cups when he’s really angry. Like that time with the Chamber of the Ordeal and Vinson of - “
“Be quiet, Margarry,” hissed Sunarine. Margarry subsided sullenly into silence.
Eiralys and Sunarine shared an indulgent smile, and then she drew Marek forward with an encouraging hand. “Sunarine, Margarry… this is Marek. My husband.”
Margarry let out a little, low-pitched squeal of delight and threw herself at Eiralys and Marek, one arm landing around each of their necks and squeezing tight. “Congratulations!” Eiralys hadn’t really expected anything different. Margarry, fifteen in a few months’ time, was the most romantic of the sisters, and had not yet completely got over the stage of sighing over the works of lovelorn minstrels and admiring every man who looked twice at her.
Over Margarry’s shoulder, Eiralys could observe Sunarine. She was frowning lightly, puzzling over something. Eiralys thought she could guess what it was. Being the social butterfly of the family meant that one spent much of one’s time in conversation with the gossips - about both the Court and the City. She braced herself for the inevitable storm. Sunarine’s mouth suddenly dropped open, her eyes flicking from Eiralys to Marek at high speed. For a moment, she gaped, unable to speak, and then she exclaimed, “You’re Marek Swiftknife!” Her eyes gleamed with excitement. “Aren’t you? The Marek Swiftknife? The King of the Thieves? The man who beat four men in a knife fight at once? The man who was best friends with George Cooper? The man who took down thirty men in the Coronation Day Battle and didn’t even get a scratch?” Her eyes widened. “Mithros and the Goddess,” she murmured to herself, “Marek Swiftknife is my brother-in-law!” Overcome with her newfound discovery, Sunarine sank down to sit on the stairs.
Before Eiralys could respond, another door opened on the landing and a third figure leaned over the railings. She was shorter and stockier than the others, and her chestnut curls had been cropped to fall just past her ears. Even at this distance, Marek could sense something ethereal and otherworldly about her, despite her entirely worldly appearance. Cathrea, then.
“What in the name of the Great Mother is going on down there?” she asked, and Marek could hear her exasperation through the sleepiness of her tone.
Margarry released them at last and turned her head back to call, “Eiralys has married a thief. Come down and meet him, Cate!”
There was an extended groan from the gallery. “Oh, that.” Cathrea flapped a hand. “Finally.” She had injected her words with all the world-weariness of the aged cynic, and Eiralys put her hands on her hips as she tilted her head back far enough to see her sister’s face. “Has anyone ever told you how irritating that is?” she asked.
Cathrea’s cat-like face stretched into a grin. “Frequently. Excuse me if I don’t come down and meet you properly, Marek, but you’ve been running around my head for six months now. I could do with the break first.” Marek shuddered inwardly. It didn’t matter how often he had been told about Cathrea’s preternatural senses - actually witnessing them in action was another experience entirely. Another crash sounded, louder this time, and the girls winced again.
“Shame,” Cathrea sighed. “He’s run out of Yamani. You’d better go in before he starts on the Carthaki stuff,” she advised. “Night, all.” With that, she turned and vanished into the shadows of the landing once more.
Marek turned and rested his hands on Eiralys’s shoulders. “Ready, sweet?”
She took a deep breath and nodded. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”
They turned to the door, but it had opened before they could reach it. Vivenne of Cavall, looking splendid in a deep red silk gown under a coppery overrobe, stood there, a long-suffering expression on her face. “Will someone please come inside and explain to me what is going on? Eiralys, all I can get from your father are indeterminate squawks and some hopelessly muddled story about your being married.”
Eiralys sighed. “Mama, this is Marek, my… my husband.”
“He’s the King of the Thieves,” Margarry added helpfully from the stairs.
Vivenne took a faltering step backwards and her hand closed around the doorframe for support. Her eyes flickered closed and she looked as though she were fighting for the composure that usually came so naturally to her. At last, she opened her eyes and said, “Sunarine, please take Meg and go back to bed.” It was not a request. Obediently, Sunarine gathered up Margarry and vanished upstairs, after casting a last, longing look back at Marek.
Eiralys and Marek entered the sitting room. Her father sat in one of the fireside armchairs, head back, eyes closed, arms braced on either side of it. The rug in front of him was dusted with shards of painted and patterned pottery. Vivenne shut the door behind them quietly and then turned to face her daughter and son-in-law. “How did this happen?” she asked.
The guilty pair shared a look. At least this was better than shouting.
Wyldon opened his eyes and sat up. “Vivenne, does it really signify how it happened? All that Eiralys needs to know is that it is ending, now.”
Vivenne rolled her eyes. “Wyldon, for Mithros’s sake, let Eiralys speak. Tantrums will help nobody.”
Wyldon subsided and Eiralys shot her mother a grateful look. Marek was looking at Vivenne with a new respect - there was something in her voice, something elegant and steely, that reminded him inescapably of Eiralys. So Eiralys began to explain. She talked and talked and Vivenne listened to her in silence, every so often sending a quelling look in Wyldon’s direction when it looked as if he were about to interrupt. She talked about the infirmary, about meeting Marek, about jumping over the embers with him at Beltane on the Common, about wedding him in her favourite dress and celebrating at the Dancing Dove afterwards, about sneaking away to share his rooms and his life, and most of all about her utter certainty that she had made the right choice. At last, she fell silent.
Vivenne smiled thinly. “I suppose you are aware that by taking this step, you have thrown away your reputation, any prospect of a position in society, any right to the respect of the palace courtiers? You do realise that you have branded all of your sisters with the mark of your disgrace too?”
Marek heard the rush of breath next to him and then Eiralys had buried her face in her hands, the tears she had held in for so long finally flowing freely over her fingers. His heart sank. She was raised to this, to a life of duty and reputation and upholding the family honour. Of course her mother’s words would cut her deeply, perhaps even make her regret what she had done, in some small part. But then Eiralys spoke and it was with a voice aglow with fierce passion. “I cannot be sorry, Mama. Not for this. Not for him.” Her voice quivered. “And for that I must beg your forgiveness.”
There was a moment’s silence, and then Vivenne stepped forwards and embraced her daughter. “Oh, my girl. My poor, foolish, darling girl…” She looked up at Marek, her own eyes bright with unshed tears. “And what have you to say for yourself? Do you truly believe yourself worth what she will have to give up?”
Marek swallowed. “I… I love her.” It was not enough, not nearly enough, and yet… it was all he had.
Behind them, Wyldon snorted. “Love. If you truly loved her, then you wouldn’t have married her. You would have stayed away! How could you be so irresponsible? Did you not think what would happen, if the Provost ever arrested you? Did you not think how it would destroy her to be left widowed and abandoned among strangers?”
Marek’s eyes flashed with fury. “And did you never think how it would destroy Lady Vivenne, to be widowed through one of your foolish campaigns?” he replied heatedly.
Wyldon’s hand settled on the riding crop at his belt. “How dare you? I ought to thrash you like the dog you are!”
“Wyldon - “ Vivenne cried, at the same time as Eiralys raised her head from her mother’s shoulder to beg, “Papa, please…” Her breathing had grown heavier and she swayed as she tried to break from her mother’s grasp. She swooned - Marek caught her before she hit the ground and scooped her up to lie on the sofa.
Wyldon had launched himself forward, his anger replaced by a sudden fear. “What’s wrong with her?” He rounded on Marek. “You see - you see what your interference has led to?” Marek squared his shoulders and had just opened his mouth to argue back, when Vivenne, kneeling by Eiralys’s head, waved a hand for silence. Eiralys was coming round, trying to murmur something out. Her hand flailed vainly by her side for a moment and then settled against her abdomen. “Mama, please, don’t let Papa hurt him. Please… for our child…”
Vivenne brushed a soothing hand over her forehead. “Of course not, sweeting. Shhh, just rest.”
She turned to the men. Marek’s eyes were fixed firmly on Eiralys, and Wyldon looked as if he had received, for the second time tonight, the shock of his life. “She’s with child?” he whispered, stunned.
Marek nodded shortly. “Yes. The babe quickened tonight.” He looked at Vivenne. “Will she be all right?”
Vivenne gave him a quick smile. “Yes. But she needs rest and quiet. Why don’t you take her upstairs, Marek? Doubtless Sunarine and Meg will still be awake - they’ll show you to her room.”
“Vivenne - “ protested Wyldon, but his wife reached for his hand and rubbed a soothing finger over his knuckles.
“Not now, Wyl,” she said firmly.
Marek had bent down to pick up Eiralys. When he turned, Vivenne was holding open the door. “Thank you. My lady, I - “
Vivenne shrugged. “Don’t thank me yet. Stay with Eiralys. My husband and I need to have a quiet conversation.”
*
“Absolutely not!” snapped Wyldon of Cavall. “Go begging to George Cooper to save my daughter’s reputation? He’d laugh in my face, Vivenne!”
His lady threw up her hands in exasperation. “Then what else would you do, Wyldon? Allow Eiralys to go back to the Lower City with him, allow her to be a thief’s wife? At least this way, Marek will have respectable employment, and Eiralys will be able to hold her head up in society.”
Wyldon’s mouth tightened. “There are ways… this can be put to an end. No thief would turn down the sum I could raise to make him leave Tortall and never return. Eiralys will be asleep now - it would be easily done. By the time she wakes, he could be far away from here, on a boat to Tyra, or Carthak, or the Copper Isles…”
Vivenne looked horrified, but her voice was calm when she spoke. “She would never forgive you. And have you forgotten her child? You would allow her to give birth to it in disgrace, with no visible husband?”
Wyldon stood up and began to pace. “I could send her back to Cavall. She could give birth quietly there, and then the child could be sent away, fostered elsewhere… there are hundreds of couples who desire children, Vivenne.”
His wife stood up and gripped both of his arms in her hands. “Wyldon, listen to yourself!” she exclaimed. “Do you know nothing of your daughter, that you believe she would go along quietly and obediently with your plan?” She shook her head, wonderingly. “She is more like you than you know.” Her lips curved into a sad smile. “She is slipping away from us, and all we can do now is save face. Even if you send him away, even if you forbid her from seeing him, even if you take his child from her, her heart will be Marek Swiftknife’s until the Black God claims her, Wyl.”
Wyldon snorted. “You cannot know that. You’ve seen them together for a few minutes - how can you possibly know that?”
Vivenne’s thumb stroked lovingly across his elbow. “Because of her face. Oh, Wyl, didn’t you see it?”
“See what?” His voice was a confused, tired rumble in his chest and Vivenne sighed and rested her head against him.
“It was the same face you wore when your mother forbade you from marrying me,” she explained gently.
They shared a look, brown eyes and blue, and both reflected silently on all those moments that had congealed, somehow and someway, into the present they shared now. It had gone like this. There had been an arranged match with a wealthy heiress; and a young knight who had been too headstrong for his own good; and a pretty, penniless baron’s daughter, who had been presented in her mother’s best gown (taken in and up to fit) and borrowed jewels; and a single dance… and Wyldon of Cavall had fallen in love.
“Vivenne…”
She didn’t reply, only looked up at him expectantly. At last, he let out a deep, frustrated growl.
“All right. But… not Cooper!”