The Duke's Decision

The bed was big enough for four people, Isolde thought to herself, and would have been a very tight squeeze for five women. There were – she counted again – six already in her bed, including Merilda, who was visibly larger than the rest and therefore easy to identify even as a dark lump under a blanket.. She definitely took after her father, and her father looked like a trollblood. There was simply no room to be had; Fiona was visibly the last to arrive, and had simply lain on top of the blankets, using Merilda as a mattress. As Fiona was elfblooded and slender, her weight seemed to have gone unnoticed, her tightly-curled body rising and falling gently with the rhythm of Merilda’s breathing.

She considered waking them and demanding they make space. It was her room and her bed, after all. She shook her head. She'd rather not draw attention to the lateness of her arrival. She'd been wandering around the keep in male company unaccompanied by a chaperone. Bad enough that she would probably be getting a lecture from her mother later for it. The castle hounds had kept a close eye on her – and growled at Stephen whenever he came too close – but her virtue would still be suspect if the episode became widely known among the better sort of folk.

The castle servants and guards were probably already gossiping amongst themselves. The guards knew all about the duke's hounds, though, so none of them would worry she might have been dishonored by Stephen while the two of them were alone. She glanced over at the women in the bed one more time. They were all sleeping soundly. She could hear the occasional sigh or shift of a body, but otherwise the room was quiet.

Isolde curled up in a chair, pulled a blanket over herself, and tried to sleep. Her mind was still racing. She couldn't stop thinking. Stephen had been surprisingly friendly and courteous for someone who had conspicuously avoided accompanying Sabine on her previous visits. Perhaps he'd taken a liking to Isolde. Maude had seemed to think he had and that he could therefore be convinced to marry her. But Stephen was a wizard of the Order of the Luminous Rose and a Lancastrian to boot. She didn't want to leave York and move to Lancaster.

Isolde was tired. She'd been awake since dawn, and the murders had turned her day from hectic to exhausting. Six of Avery's brides-to-be had moved in on short notice, along with over a dozen of their relatives. All sorts of arrangements had to be made for security, accommodation, and the continuing preparations for the wedding.

She, Marcus, and her mother had been overwhelmed by the sudden surge of work. Isolde had planned on sneaking off to bed early, but her mother had insisted on dragging her to dinner in order to meet Stephen, and then Avery had needed her help. She needed sleep, she thought to herself, turning over and rubbing her eyes.

Was that morning sunlight? She opened her eyes and blinked. Her neck was stiff. She felt vaguely cheated, and turned over, falling back asleep.

Stephen stood by one of the tall narrow windows of the sitting room, watching the sun rise. He missed Lancaster; he missed his friends; he missed the little comforts of life in modern fifteenth-century England, which were frequently absent in a York that seemed stuck in a preindustrial era. He'd been gone for almost three weeks, which seemed an eternity. His eyes dropped to the chessboard, remembering the game he'd played last night.

Isolde had won, but he'd been trying to stretch out the duration of the game by playing defensively. She had also played defensively at first, lulling him into a false sense of security until he'd been distracted by the return of his sister, at which point she'd unleashed a torrent of attacks that had taken him off-guard. He hadn't taken her first offered knight sacrifice because he hadn't trusted that it was as good of a trade as it seemed, and that had been a crucial blunder.

When he'd returned to the sitting room last night, he'd found his sister alone and asleep, wrapped in a blanket on a couch, her makeup blurred by the tracks of tears. He wasn't sure if that meant she'd succeeded or failed. She'd intended to get herself ravished by an out of control duke driven by phantasmal lust, giving her the negotiating leverage to demand that he marry her to salvage her ruined virtue. Crying could have been part of that plan. He wasn't sure, and didn't want to wake her. So he'd simply gone to sleep on a pile of pillows he'd set up next to her couch.

Now it was morning, and in the light of day, he felt certain that Sabine had been ravished. If his sister had simply failed because the duke had controlled his lust, she wouldn't have cried herself to sleep over her failure. What he didn't know was whether she'd cried deliberately to elicit sympathy, or if she'd cried tears of pain and regret. Could he angrily confront the duke? In his own castle? With those hounds everywhere? Stephen felt uncertain now that he'd met the man in person. It was one thing to see Duke Avery from a distance; it was another entirely to stand up face to face with him and be topped by two hands of height.

My sister’s plan was unwise, he thought to himself. She didn't know what she was getting into. He felt a pang of guilt. It was partly his fault, as well. He'd played a critical part in every step of her ill-fated plan. He'd encouraged her to go to the castle by telling her that she could seduce the duke with the perfumes he'd enchanted. That had been a mistake. He shouldn't have let her talk him into putting phantasmal lust in a bottle. She'd been in no state to resist the duke, and lacked the experience to know the full consequences of her plan. She'd been naive; he'd been stupid.

He sighed and turned to look at his sister again. She was asleep, lying on her side with her cheek resting against the cushions. Her long blonde hair was a tangled mess, and her face was smudged with tear-streaked makeup. The duke had stolen her innocence and her virtue.

“I’m sorry, Sabine,” Stephen said. Then he stepped onto the window sill, turned sideways to inch his way to the edge, muttered a few words under his breath, and jumped.

Isolde made a face. “Why does my neck hurt?”

“Because you were trying to sleep in a chair for something like half the night,” Fiona said. “I moved you to the bed after the rest of us got up. You were snoring.”

“Oh,” Isolde said, blinking sleep out of her eyes. “Right. Sorry. I was up late. Avery needed my help with something.”

“I thought you were up late entertaining the Lancastrian siblings,” Fiona said. “But no matter. I brought some tea, I figured you'd want some.”

“Thank you, that’s helpful. Yes, I was, Avery had some questions he wanted to ask them later.” Isolde took the proffered cup and sipped. “And then we ended up playing chess very late.” She decided she would not mention that she'd spent some time walking with Stephen while leaving Avery alone with Sabine.

“Was he making arrangements to marry Sabine?” Fiona asked.

“No. Her brother didn’t even bring up the subject, and there's no way that her father would swear allegiance to the duke,” Isolde said. “Her father wasn't even here last night. I believe you’ll be Avery’s one and only wizard bride.”

Fiona cracked a half smile. “Maybe I could teach one of the others up to competence. Master Warin says I'll make a fine teacher once I've learned well enough. Maybe I could teach you, too. Elfbloods often have a knack for wizardry, and you're… what, a quarter? Like me?”

Isolde nodded. “I never knew my grandmother, but my mother says she was a full-blooded elf. She left after my grandfather died, I think. My mother doesn't like to talk about it much.” She sipped her tea. “Why do you want to marry my cousin?”

Fiona made a wry smile. “What, you don't think he's that great of a catch?”

“It's not that,” Isolde said, then paused. “Well, maybe it is that. Not great enough for eight wives.”

“It's complicated,” Fiona said. She poured herself a cup of tea. “I’m not sure how best to explain it.”

“Try,” Isolde said. “Quarter-elf to quarter-elf, what do you see in my foster brother?”

“All right, I’ll try.” Fiona paused for a moment, gathering her thoughts. “I’ve been studying magic for most of my life. I've always been interested in it, and I've read a lot of books. Master Warin started teaching me basic cantrips when I was ten. I'm twenty-five now. Most of the girls from my childhood village are married with kids. Master Warin says I'm just a bit of a late bloomer.” Fiona set her teacup down, looking at Isolde.

Isolde nodded. “Elf blood does that to a person sometimes. You're beautiful now, however late you may have bloomed.”

“Thank you for saying so,” Fiona said, her quick smile not quite reaching her eyes. “Anyway, it took me a while to start looking, and there were always more things to learn. Master Warin is particularly good at divination, so the few times I took interest in some handsome lad in the village, he'd take it as a teaching opportunity. I had every reason to want to scry on him, do auguries, and the like, and then… well, you know all the questions adolescent girls like to ask the fortune tellers. Only it was a real wizard doing real divination, and the answers were a lot less optimistic. This one had a wandering eye; that one could never sire children; that one had a violent temper behind closed doors.” Fiona swirled her cup, looking at the tea leaves collecting at the bottom.

“And Master Warin divined good things about my cousin?” Isolde prompted. “That he’d make an excellent husband?”

“Rather, I would say he didn't find anything wrong with him. But also, I found him pleasing. He smells a little like fresh bread, you know.” Fiona smiled. “More pleasant than the usual musk. But we came here because of a different divination, one we did before I'd considered your cousin as a marriage prospect. When he heard that the old duke named Avery his heir, Master Warin determined that the course of certain events in the near future would be much better if Avery held onto the ducal throne for at least ten years. We came to York so that Master Warin could offer his assistance. He started by trying to contact the court wizard.”

“Really?” Isolde blinked. “We've never had a court wizard.”

“So we learned when the letters were returned unopened. Then we tried getting an introduction through the wizard collegium, and the seneschal at the time – Lucas, I think his name was – sent us a note saying that our efforts to insinuate ourselves into the duke’s court had been noticed and to stop, as he disapproved. Master Warin gave up trying to secure an introduction at that point, but then there was the coronation, and the city was flooded with even more eligible young men of good breeding than usual, so my prospects as a woman looked good even if his prospects of assisting the duke did not. Master Warin started pulling favors to try to get us invited to your ball, and then you invited me to one of your little get-togethers.” Fiona paused, giving Isolde a questioning look.

“My mother had told me to wave every eligible woman I could in front of Avery's nose. Trying to get an invitation to the ball put you on my list of people to invite for a soiree.” Isolde said. “It was very haphazard. Later on, my mother told me I needed to be more selective about who I invited.”

“As soon as I met your cousin in person, I decided he looked and smelled toothsome, but assumed he was out of my league as a high-ranking nobleman. Master Warin took offense to that assumption on account of his own status, so then we did some divination. Or rather, I did, with him criticizing all the while. Once I'd gotten through our… um… standard boy battery of divinations, I was ready to marry him if I got the opportunity. He's a decent person.” Fiona frowned. “Though some of the auguries make a little more sense now that I know I'll be sharing him. Master Warin is glad I'll have the time to continue my studies. The bit about oaths of allegiance was a bit of a surprise, but Master Warin decided taking the oath was worthwhile given what he'd learned about Avery's potential as an independent ruler after the fall of the empire.”

Isolde stared at Fiona. “The fall of the…” She paused. “You’re serious. Breakfast. I think I need breakfast before I can talk about my foster brother as a post-apocalyptic sovereign.”