The sun was sinking as the small group wound its way up the well-maintained but narrow road towards the palace on the hilltop.
It wasn’t really a palace. Feilan had been in the caliphates, he had visited palaces, all red-veined marble and tesseral tiles of pure white or gold or obsidian. He’d visited stone castles too, high-walled and heavily fortified, mostly existing because Vaeringa did.
This place was more organic. It was built of stone, certainly, but of the local pinkish variety rather than the heavy grey that dominated further south. The setting sun cast the pink to a deeper red, and Feilan had carnelian on his mind, apparently, because this place was nothing but a string of beads draped across the small peaks of a green-carpeted hill chain. Seven flat-fronted, peak-roofed buildings sat proudly atop seven summits, with a colonnaded walkway – Feilan had to dredge his memory deeply to come up with ‘arcade’ as the correct local terminology – crossing the undulating dips of the long ridge’s saddles to link them all.
‘Pretty,’ he said, in a halfhearted attempt to lure his reluctant husband from a miserable hours-long silence.
‘Ripe for raiding,’ Torben said. ‘Not even a token wall.’
Remy scowled.
Feilan leaned over to flick Torben on the ear. He told Remy, ‘You’re too far from the coast and too far from a major river or a main thoroughfare. And too high.’
‘We don’t like having to run uphill,’ Torben confirmed. ‘More effort than it’s worth.’
The riverport they’d just ridden through before the rise to Seven Hills, however, had some flat approaches. Admittedly, Vaer raiders would have to row along fairly narrow ways, and even the shallow-keeled clinkers would have to be ported across fords several times, but it wasn’t impassable. They might even leave the ships, and follow the meandering roads, deeper and deeper into the rich lands of these patchwork kingdoms, rolling hills and hidden valleys, fat sheep and hops and wheat and salt mines and lime kilns, all of which translated, through hands like Freyja’s, into portable wealth.
That supposed that Freyja, eyeing off this exact little riverport for the access it would provide to the towns west and south of here, wouldn’t put a stop to it the moment Torben tried putting any bright ideas into his hersir’s head.
The road gave out onto a broad paved forecourt before the central building, larger than the others, its pink stone crisscrossed with a decorative pattern of wooden beams ending in whimsical curls at the eaves. It had huge double doors, arched, and matching arches extending along its frontage to meet the arches of the hilltop arcades, one heading eastwards, one westwards, as if the building opened arms wide to its guests.
Two richly-clad men met them in the forecourt. They almost immediately engaged in the family pastime of browbeating Remy, particularly once Lady Slaphappy had hurried from horseback to brief them. The other sister hastened Adeline inside, and Bertrand, after a murmured exchange with the men, bustled after her.
One of the men, mid-harangue, tugged the cowl up, covering Remy’s hair, obscuring his face from Feilan’s view. Remy was holding himself very still, like he had in Siftar every time he’d had to brace himself for unpleasantness.
Feilan stood by his horse, slowly flexing sore muscles – it had been a while since he’d needed to ride – and wondering when to intervene. Torben casually tossed his reins off to a Riverlander who may or may not have been a stable hand, and plucked the reins from Feilan’s hand to palm them off as well.
He smiled around as the horses were led away. ‘Welcoming place.’
Feilan thought this was sarcasm before he, too, took in the other people milling about. They were murmuring to each other in a local dialect, not the familiar Riverlander, and openly admiring Torben’s form. In fact, it appeared they were milling about, not so much because they were required to attend the new arrivals, but because they wanted to ogle.
Torben waved at a pair of giggling women. ‘This’ll be be delightful.’
‘Why aren’t they scared of you?’ Feilan asked.
‘It may shock you to learn,’ Torben said, ‘that women find very tall, broad-shouldered men with wealth’ – he touched the silver arm-ring wound four times about his bulging bicep – ‘golden tresses, and trimmed nails to be irresistibly attractive.’
Feilan punched him lightly on his musclebound arm, where, inevitably, Torben didn’t feel it but Feilan’s knuckle did. ‘I meant, the royal family is scared of us, why aren’t their people?’
‘The royal family isn’t scared, they just hate us,’ Torben said. ‘Don’t argue, Little Wolf, I know hate.’
‘All right, but why them and not them?’ He gestured towards some of Torben’s staring admirers.
‘That’s newfangled educations for you. The peasants don’t know any better. Good for them.’
He caught the eye of another young lady, and smiled winningly. There was an equally transfixed man behind her, long-lashed and willowy. Torben glanced around, realised there was not another Vaer man within his extended vicinity, and smiled at him too.
Remy managed to extricate himself from his trifecta of harassment on the excuse of seeing to their barbarian guests. His mouth tightened as he took in the small crowd of lingering retainers and servants.
‘Fidelity within marriage is expected here,’ he informed Feilan.
Feilan frowned. ‘I don’t know that word.’
I’m sure you don’t. It means don’t get caught with anyone else, or my uncle will seize the chance to disallow you as my champion.’
‘All right,’ Feilan said. ‘I promise I won’t get caught.’
‘I am very much not in the mood for this,’ Remy muttered to himself, more plaintively than angrily.
Feilan broke into a grin. ‘None of them are looking at me, you know,’ he said. ‘They’re looking at Torben.’
‘They’re looking at both of you.’
Taking pity on him, Feilan raised a solemn hand. ‘I promise to fuck no one else until the very moment Torben hands over the monster’s head.’
‘I don’t have to, do I?’ Torben asked. ‘Fidelity, I mean.’
‘Of course not, you’re on a mercenary contract,’ Remy said, innocently missing that Torben was not confused on the terms of the contract he had agreed to, but rather was rubbing in the terms of the contract Feilan had agreed to.
Torben grinned. ‘I think I’ll go have sex with lots of different people, then.’
‘How do you always manage to have more fun than me?’ Feilan lamented.
‘Wait, I need to show you your quarters first,’ Remy said, then flushed when both Vaer looked at him with open amusement.
‘What did he just say?’ Feilan said. ‘He’s not joking, Remy.’
‘I meant for…after.’
‘I’ll find a bed for myself somewhere, I’m sure. Food, too. See you in the morning.’ He clapped Feilan on the shoulder, rocking him forwards, and waded into the crowd, greeting women and men with equal enthusiasm.
Remy sighed. ‘I need to introduce you to my brothers.’ He did that – Feilan heeded the scowls more than the names – and then tucked his arm through Feilan’s, resting spread fingers over Feilan’s forearm. ‘Would you like supper soon, darling?’
‘We weren’t expecting guests of your calibre,’ the eldest surviving brother said, spitting that last word as he eyed Feilan with open disdain. ‘Not sure if we can rustle up barbarian food on short notice. What do you even eat? Raw meat?’
It seemed all the siblings were as unpleasant as each other. ‘Offering me delicacies?’
Remy’s hand tightened on Feilan’s forearm. ‘Or perhaps I shall take you straight to our chamber and fetch you something later?’
‘Only if you promise to lay morsels on my tongue one by one,’ Feilan said, low and throaty, which made Remy dig his nails in, but also slightly undid the tightness across his shoulders he’d worn since dismounting.
The brother pursed his lips. ‘Take your husband to your chambers, and then come back. We’re not done talking.’
‘We’re done.’ Feilan smiled at him and then tugged at Remy’s cowl, this time pulling it all the way off instead of merely pushing it down. ‘And don’t wear that,’ he said, tossing it to the ground. ‘I want to see your pretty hair. I told you. Don’t make me tell you again. Take me to our bed.’ He lazily twitched his fingers. ‘Send my things, would you.’
Remy about-turned and led him, not into the main building before them, but onto the eastwards arcade. They quickly dipped out of sight of the forecourt as the arcade descended into the shallow saddle between the first hill and the next.
‘Please don’t try to antagonise Hughard,’ Remy said shortly.
Feilan caught his wrist, forcing him to slow. ‘Why not? He’s our enemy in this.’
‘He’s my brother.’
‘Remy…’ They reached the flat peak of the next hill, but passed that building, a reprise of the first at a smaller scale, and went on into the next dip. ‘All your siblings count as contenders, correct?’
‘Yes.’
‘They’ll all be entering champions into the contest. Or will your brothers enter themselves?’
‘No, they’ll enter champions.’
Feilan had been thinking about the conditions of the contest, how strangely wide the net was cast by rules allowing anyone with a claim, no matter how distant, to enter. He thought he knew why. ‘Some of them have children old enough to act as regent, and therefore count as contenders?’
They crested the third hill, Feilan somewhat out of breath thanks to harking from a very flat plain where the only gradient was the mild slope up to Siftar from the riverbank. Another of the pink halls sat there, smaller again. Here, Remy turned down a stub of walkway and led Feilan through a wide doorway into a high-ceilinged foyer with open arches set waist-height in every wall. The foyer floor and minimal walls were starkly bare, but the ceiling was painted with clouds innocuously fluffy.
‘Three of my nephews, one of my nieces,’ he answered distractedly, walking along a corridor with more of the full arches on each side, a short echo of the main arcade, before they finally entered what Feilan thought of as a proper building, with actual walls and a ceiling of normal height.
‘Right. So that’s a champion for your uncle, two for your brothers, two for your sisters—’
‘I have a third sister. You haven’t met her yet.’
‘—five for the siblings, then, and another four as well. Ten. If any of them gets the head of the monster, who wins? Who’ll be designated regent?’
Remy was quiet so long that Feilan knew he’d worked it out, even before he doubtfully said, ‘Hugo might… No, no. It’ll be Uncle Bertrand, you’re quite right.’
Feilan nodded. Bertrand was just as subtly scheming as he’d suspected: as counter-intuitive as it seemed, the wide net gave him a strong coalition of monster-killers against a loose assortment of independent champions unlikely to take the head alone, while making it look like he was being scrupulously fair.
‘Those ten warriors make a formidable bloc,’ he explained. ‘We’ll need allies, certainly, but your family are not among them. We have to treat them as the enemy.’
Having passed several closed doors, Remy finally paused at one, as plain and nondescript as the rest. He toed off his shoes, saying, ‘This is why they call you the clever one, isn’t it.’ He didn’t sound happy.
Feilan followed custom with his boots, and Remy ushered him into the room, generously sized but stuffy. While Remy went about twisting chains to raise stiff linen covers off narrow gaps along the top of the outer wall, letting in fresh air and the last wane of the light, Feilan assessed his new sleeping space with the habitually mercantile eye of a longtime trader, digging toes into the thick rug underfoot.
There was a bed, raised off the floor on thick legs, with a mattress, probably not stuffed with straw, and quality linens, and a thick gilt rope hanging over the head, which Feilan tracked to a loop over a hook before it vanished through a hole drilled through the plastered stone wall. He’d seen its like before, and knew it connected to a bell to alert servants to their masters’ needs. A heavy sideboard sat against the wall under the window slits, holding a lamp, an assortment of bottles and jars and other bits and pieces, a bowl, and a fancy imported aquamanile, wrought into the shape of a lion’s head, aroar. That would be for washing, Feilan again knew from previous forays into the beds of wealthy men. A wardrobe and a trunk completed the furnishings.
‘Plain for a prince’s bedchamber,’ he said, and received the gift of watching Remy open his mouth to superciliously enquire how he knew what a prince’s bedchamber should look like, before realising what the answer would be and blushing.
He said instead, ‘It suits my needs well enough.’
He paced from one side of the room to the other, breath coming short. He’d been self-contained in front of his brothers, cool-eyed but docile, and was now uncoiling his tension through his restless feet, his tapping fingers.
Feilan took another slow measuring look around. It really was as bare as his own little hut, comparatively speaking, without even the simplest of icons on the wall. He didn’t know the goddess-oriented Riverlands belief system, except for a few rote phrases uttered by local merchants, and no idea what form it would take in the specific locale of a seven-summit hill chain, beyond Remy’s occasional endearingly pallid swearing, and Adeline’s invocation of She Who Spins when she signed the contract.
The lack of iconography reminded him, however. He slid the two extra talisman bracelets from his wrist and held them out. ‘For you and Adeline.’
Remy, turning from lighting an elegant glass lamp, swept him with a hostile look. ‘We’ll wear no Vaer superstition.’
‘Look,’ Feilan said, dropping his hand. ‘I know it’s not nice to be told your closest family is your enemy, but that’s the game you’ve chosen to play, and that’s why you dragged me into it, isn’t it? To tell you these things? Torben for the strength, me for the tactics?’
‘No,’ Remy said, after a moment. ‘I wanted the best warriors I could manage to get hold of.’
Feilan had a blank moment of his own. ‘Then why did you trick me into fucking you, instead of an actual Vaer man?’
‘You are a Vaer man,’ Remy said. Then, uncertainly, probably because of his two evenings in Siftar, ‘…Aren’t you?’
Feilan was a Vaer and a man, but not a Vaer man: that was what being Cursed meant. He shook his head and made it less confusing for his husband. ‘Why’d you fuck me and not one of the warriors?’
‘I told you,’ Remy said. ‘You were the compromise. It was my first time,’ he added, to whatever Feilan’s expression was giving away. ‘I was scared and chose someone who looked strong but who I thought probably wouldn’t hurt me. I told you that. I had no idea you were considered clever among your people.’
‘Considered clever, is it?’ Feilan sat on the bed, dropping the two talismans beside him. He bounced up and down. ‘Too soft.’
The compromise, he thought. The you’ll-do. He wanted to spit.
A knock came – that would be Feilan’s trunk arriving. The trunk he hadn’t bothered to fill with furs, because he’d forgotten other people had these horrid smothering beds.
‘The bed’s too soft,’ he snapped at Remy as he moved to answer the knock. ‘Tell them to bring furs.’
Quietly, hand on the latch, Remy said, ‘We’re meant to be in love. How will I explain you wanting to sleep on the floor to my family?’
Feilan’s irritation reached an unfortunate peak, provoked to the roil after simmering all day. ‘Tell them it’s so I can fuck you on the floor like the little bitch you are without hurting my knees.’
Remy paled, and then nodded and opened the door. Feilan, intuiting that the cursed jolterhead might actually announce the reason right there and then, swooped in and took possession of his belongings from the two young men who’d carried them over, closing the door in their faces with a grunt of thanks that he knew was pure Vaer.
He set the trunk in a corner, dumped his borrowed sword atop it, and sat back on the bed. ‘It is no fun to tease you,’ he informed Remy, ‘if you’re just going to believe every word out of my mouth.’
Remy sat on the other edge of the bed, strain evident in the taut line of his body. ‘Husband’s prerogative,’ he said, repeating Feilan’s phrase out of nowhere.
Feilan raised his eyebrows in a question.
‘You said it. You’re aware of the husband’s right to claim sex.’
‘Draf you will!’ Feilan said, mostly from surprise. ‘Try that one on, I dare you.’ Remy watched him with increasing tension until he abruptly realised. ‘I’m the husband. Ah. Also the husband.’
‘Yes,’ Remy said, sounding almost relieved that he’d finally understood. ‘And I’m at your every whim. So if you tell me you’re going to fuck me on the floor, I really have no choice but to believe you, do I?’
Feilan huffed his air out in one noisy exhale. The worst of it was, he wanted to do it. Remy had practically given him permission. He wanted to drag him down onto this stupid soft bed and fuck him every way he could think of and make him wail like he had the night before.
‘Remy, come sit here by me.’ He patted the bed beside him.
His husband eyed off the expanse between them as if it were an impassable eastern steppe. ‘No.’
‘Promise I won’t bite,’ Feilan said with a grin that he was sure completely belied his words.
Remy stood, edged his way around the bed, and sat down again near Feilan. Feilan flung a long arm over his shoulders and pulled him closer, until he could feel his heat through his shirt. From his unnatural stillness, Remy was trying very hard not to squirm away.
Feilan said, ‘I was not aware of the meaning of a prerogative in this particular context. You said you don’t prefer men, as a rule, and I believe you. We never agreed sex is part of our bargain, so it’s not. Except for whatever show we have to put on in public. Good?’
‘You won’t demand sex from me?’
Feilan smothered his smile. Remy didn’t sound entirely pleased. There was that as a rule coming into play, possibly. ‘Not unless there’s a dramatic renegotiation of our agreement for all the prerogative you can handle.’
‘Our marital agreement.’
‘Go ahead, keep trying to talk me into it.’
Remy huddled under his arm. ‘I don’t believe you’re taking all this with as much good grace as you’re pretending you are.’
‘You’re right, I’m not. But I’m also not inclined to punish you for it.’
‘You’re a barbarian.’
Feilan squeezed tighter. ‘Unless you keep giving me bright ideas like that, Rufran.’
‘Sorry. Sorry I keep calling you a barbarian. You’ve been…not awful.’
‘Thanks,’ Feilan said. ‘Not awful. I’ll have it engraved on my runestone.’
He got a snap from those black eyes, before, making the apology somewhat more authentic, Remy picked up one of the talismans and wrapped the leather thong around his wrist. He tried to tie it off himself, before offering his wrist to Feilan, veins stark under his pale skin. He bore callouses on his palm, Feilan noted, though not those of a swordsman.
Feilan shifted the talisman about Remy’s wrist until the beads were positioned right, then tugged on the loop to tighten it. He pressed his thumb to the blue vein running down from Remy’s thumb, felt his rapid pulse, and let go.
‘What do they mean?’ Remy asked, as he instantly started to worry at the talisman, sliding the beads back and forth to the limit of the play Feilan had left in it.
‘The red jasper for safety. The tiger-eye for luck.’
‘You have blue jasper on yours.’
‘That’s just Freyja amusing herself.’
Remy touched the polished pale blue-green beads and looked at Feilan with the start of a confused query.
‘She’s reminding me she’s watching over me.’ They were also part of his verification, beads he’d seal in with missives to Freyja so she knew he was safe, the messages authentic.
Remy’s expression cleared. ‘The same colour as your eyes.’
‘Freyja’s eyes, but, yes, mine, too.’
Remy picked up the second bracelet. ‘I’ll make sure Lina wears hers.’
‘Thank you,’ Feilan said, a little gruffly. ‘Another matter. Where will Torben sleep?’
‘Wherever he likes, apparently,’ Remy said waspishly. ‘It’s not relevant to you, husband.’
‘It is, because if he’s expected to bunk down with all the other champions, I won’t have it. He has to have his own quarters.’
Remy fidgeted with his new bracelet again. ‘There’s an old barracks they’re clearing out, behind First Hill,’ he said. ‘They’re calling it the warrior stables. Not to insult the champions, it’s just a name.’
Feilan managed to refrain from rolling his eyes – there was no such thing as just a name – but he did so obviously enough that Remy tsked. ‘He doesn’t get special treatment just because you and he—’
‘Careful.’
‘—are fond of each other,’ Remy finished, not giving any indication as to whether he’d changed direction mid-sentence.
‘Fond? You can call it that, I suppose. No, he gets special treatment because he’s Adeline’s champion and I won’t have one of the other champions knifing him in his sleep at the behest of their employer.’
‘But that’s against the rules.’
Feilan found himself unable to address this utter naivety in any conceivable way. ‘Just make sure he gets his own room with a proper latch, no matter how you have to do it.’
Almost forlornly, Remy said, ‘Swarf, so I should expect nothing but enemies and cheating in this, even from family?’
Especially from family. ‘I’ll try to win you some allies,’ Feilan said. ‘But – yes. That’s the game, I’m afraid.’
‘And you’ve played these games before?’
‘Trade squabbles. Not quite so violent as this one – don’t start.’
‘I wasn’t going to.’ Remy turned his face into Feilan’s shoulder. Feilan’s partly-mocking, partly-intimidating hold on him had become, in the last few moments, a comforting embrace.
Quietly, the Riverlander asked, ‘But I can trust you?’
‘Rufran,’ Feilan breathed, on the edge of a rebuke – what kind of person went around openly asking if he could trust someone and believing the answer? Not someone remotely capable of playing out what he’d started.
Instead, he gently tucked Remy’s hair back. ‘Yes. You can trust me.’
Remy stared up at him with those wide, dark eyes, nothing but soft willingness to swallow the reassurance, and Feilan would have offered up an awful lot towards that hypothetical dramatic renegotiation of their agreement. He reminded himself of Remy’s spikier side…and also that if he remained patient, Remy might come to the idea, the very bright idea, of renegotiation on his own.
He cleared his throat, and added, ‘If only because my mother will be dreadfully disappointed in me if I don’t win her little queen her crown.’
Remy demonstrated that he was beginning to grasp the edges of the endeavour before him. ‘What if Uncle Bertrand offers you access to the trade network if you help him instead?’
‘Excellent question,’ Feilan said. ‘Faulty premise. The trade network’s just an excuse. My mother wants Adeline to win because my mother was Adeline, a long time ago, and lost. Freyja made you a deal, and her word is golden. Her tool, me, is the one thing you can take on faith here, Remy. I can’t promise to win, only to try. I might yet let you down. I won’t betray you.’
‘Oh,’ Remy said. He was struggling for words. ‘I see.’
Unable to stand the sheer emotion Remy was losing control of, Feilan said, ‘Right, I’m hungry and I’m sore from that ride, so you’re going to do something about it, aren’t you, husband?’
‘Oh,’ Remy said again, startling out of the placid, almost yearning look he’d been directing at Feilan. ‘Yes. I’ll see to it.’
‘I’m inviting you to feed me and rub my arse.’
‘I did comprehend, yes,’ Remy said. ‘You don’t need to spell out your vulgarity.’
‘Never hurts to be clear about these things,’ Feilan said.
He did get food, a thick porridge in a trencher of rye, but not the arse-rub. Remy called for hot water instead, yanking on the bellpull over the bed, and Feilan stripped off. Remy was predictably awkward about it, looking away while Feilan slowly sponged himself down, wishing for the cold water of the bathing pond even over the luxury of hot water there wasn’t nearly enough of.
Amused, he eyed off his husband’s pink cheeks and averted gaze. ‘You’ve seen me naked.’
‘It was a little darker than this,’ Remy muttered.
‘Take a proper look,’ Feilan invited. ‘We’re a people of long things. Longhouses, longboats, longswords, long…swords.’
He put his hands on his hips and gave a waggle. Remy turned a brighter red but he also clapped both hands over a rather wild giggle, his first capitulation to the crude Vaer sense of humour. Feilan sniggered and went on washing.
When he was done, he put on a clean shirt and braes. The room was warm, despite the slits letting in cooler air, and the blankets on the soft bed looked thick: he would have slept naked, if he hadn’t known how uncomfortable that would make his husband.
Remy only quickly took a turn with the last of the clean water, now lukewarm, his back primly turned. Feilan, not without a small qualm, admired his arse anyway. He dressed in a long white shift that begged to be pushed back up over his pale thighs.
Feilan turned his eyes away, qualm at the ascendance. This bed was too soft, and it was far too small.