“Nor pity! Someone has to draw a bloody line!”
Leo winced. He’d hoped at least to make it to the Lord Governor’s residence before the bureaucratic bog closed over his head again. “We’ll get to that, my lords, but could I first present my wife, Lady Savine dan Brock?”
“You must be Lord Clensher.” She slipped gracefully forward to offer her hand. “I do like your boots, are those new?”
“Well… as it happens, Your Grace…” grumbled Clensher as he bent to kiss it. He’d clearly been aiming to disapprove of Leo’s choice of wife but was already finding it difficult. “I know your father, of course.”
Savine laughed as though he was being hugely charming. “I can only apologise for that. But I am not my father. I am your Lady Governor, and I am here to do everything I can to help. How is Lady Lizet?”
Clensher’s bushy brows shot up. “You know my wife?”
“Only by reputation, but I am keen to put that right. My friend Tilde dan Rucksted is her niece, of course, and speaks so very highly of her. I understood she was having troubles with her back?”
“Well… she—”
“I took the liberty of bringing some salts that I am told can work wonders.” And Zuri produced a jar of coloured powder from her bag.
“That’s immensely thoughtful,” breathed Clensher, utterly disarmed.
“And Lord Mustred—what a magnificent moustache—I brought you a newly printed volume on the heraldry of Angland and Starikland, do you have that one?”
Mustred stroked the binding as Zuri passed it to him. “Why… no, but it’s always been a particular interest of mine!”
“Such a happy chance!” As if anything Savine did was by accident. She smiled even more sweetly, holding out both hands. “And you must be Jurand, Leo’s old friend and comrade.”
“Er…” Jurand had been giving her quite the frown, for some reason, but now he started to soften. “Yes—”
“I heard you had all the brains around here but Leo, why didn’t you tell me how very handsome he is?”
“Well…” Leo cleared his throat. “I suppose that’s not the sort of thing a man notices…”
He watched as Zuri magicked one packet after another from her bottomless bag. Savine had brought gifts for everyone. And not just any old rubbish. The kind a dear friend would bring on a special occasion. In a moment, she changed the mood from angry suspicion to baffled delight.
“It took me years to tame the old dogs,” murmured Leo’s mother from the corner of her mouth. “She has them eating out of her hand the moment she steps off the boat.”
“I own a stake in the armoury here in Ostenhorm,” Savine was saying, “but I have never had the chance to visit. Perhaps one of you two magnates might be kind enough to show me the way?”
“It would be my honour!” shouted Mustred, offering his elbow.
“My particular pleasure, Your Grace!” shouted Clensher, offering his, and she glided off with an old lord on either side, both gormlessly grinning as they competed for her attention. For maybe the first time since he took his mother’s place as Lord Governor, Leo was free of their demands. Free to limp over to his cheering people and press hands, slap shoulders, return their beaming smiles. Free to actually be a leader.
“Bloody hell, Leo.” Antaup stared down at a shining pair of new spurs with his family crest on the buckle. “I think I’m in love.”
“I know,” said Leo, smiling at Savine. Everyone was smiling at her right then. “I think I am, too.”
Steel on steel. By the dead, how Leo loved that sound. Sweeter than birdsong. He caught Jurand’s sword on his, blades grinding then ringing as he flung his friend away, pressed in with a couple of cuts and made him stumble back, only just keeping his balance on the wet grass.
“Better.” Jurand was grinning as he found his stance again. “Much better.”
“Oh, that’s nothing,” said Leo, grinning, too. It was good to be back with him. Very good. And the rest of the boys, of course.
The leg was still sore, but he was learning how to manage it. He’d strapped a belt around it under his trousers, just above the knee. Made it stiffer, but a lot more solid. Jurand tried to circle but Leo watched, waited, forced him to circle back the other way. He’d had to change his style. Far less aggression. Much more patience.
Jurand darted in but Leo was ready, parried once, twice, a careful shuffle to shift his weight then a pinpoint jab, and another, and he sent Jurand stumbling back the way he’d come.
Savine had told him to look at his leg as simply a new challenge. Overcoming challenges was what he did, after all. And she was right. When wasn’t she?
Jurand came on again, but he was tired from all that dancing. Leo parried the first thrust, sidestepped the second to let it slip past him, then twisted, swung, flicked the back of Jurand’s leg as he blundered past and sent him rolling across the lawn with a despairing squawk.
Antaup punched the air. “A touch to the Young Lion!”
“Damn it!” Jurand propped himself on one elbow and spat grass. “I take it the leg’s feeling better?”
“Far from healed.” Leo bared his teeth at the pain as he pulled Jurand to his feet. “But I have to be ready.”
“For what?” asked Antaup, waggling his eyebrows. “You’re a married man. It’s a different kind of sword-work that’s called for.”
Whitewater Jin smirked. “Aye. Your battle’s in the bedroom now.”
They all laughed, but they’d no idea how right they were. Leo thought Savine might’ve loosened one of his teeth last night.
“How are the men?” he asked.
Jurand was trying to scrub the grassy stain from his fencing jacket. “I was going to disband two regiments, now we’re on a peacetime footing—”
“Don’t.”
Antaup narrowed his eyes. “Expecting trouble?”
“It’s possible.”
“From who?” asked Glaward, always spoiling for a fight. “Not the bloody Northmen again? Or are you thinking about Dagoska—”
“A good deal closer to home.” They all looked at him, curious, excited. Leo knew there was nowhere safer than the gardens of the Lord Governor’s residence, no one he trusted more than these four, but even so he felt the need to draw his friends in close. Every time he whispered the words, every time he told someone new, it became that little bit more real, that little bit more dangerous. “From the Closed Council.”
Jurand’s eyes went wide. “You can’t be serious.”
“It’s chaos in Adua! Far worse than I dreamed it could be. Trouble with the Breakers. Trouble with the nobles. The Closed Council is out of control. King Orso is out of his depth. They’re throwing away all our principles. Everything we fought for. Everything my father fought for!” He was making himself angrier and angrier, and his friends’ faces were getting angrier with him. “They’re dragging the country into the fucking sewer! Did you hear what happened to Fedor dan Wetterlant? Did you hear what happened to me?”
Jurand exchanged a worried glance with Glaward. “We heard… something about it.”