The Broken Dragon: Children of the Dragon Nimbus #2 (3 page)

G
LENNDON, CROWN PRINCE
of Coronnan, hastily sanded the fresh ink on the parchment. He watched the lords in the Council Chamber as they milled about, discussing trivia and local gossip. The ink still looked too wet to roll the parchment. Stargods, he should be able to be-spell the black liquid before a meeting, so that it dried rapidly without the sand. But he hadn’t had time since becoming Crown Prince to do more than dash from one assignment or ceremony to another. Every day, it seemed, the king handed him new responsibilities, hastening his education into all things governmental and diplomatic.

He could whisper a few words to hasten the drying process, but not in public, with so many of the leaders of Coronnan still afraid of magic.

Master Magician Dennilley passed a hand over the chronicle of today’s meeting as he followed Lord Bennallt. The lord paused beside Glenndon.

“I look forward to watching you dance with my daughter tonight at court,” he said, loud enough for the entire Council of Provinces to hear. Then he moved on, taking Master Dennilley with him. The ink looked dry and solid.

Glenndon groaned as he rolled the parchment. He liked dancing with Lady Miri, but she always, always wanted more. Usually he managed only a brief kiss behind the tapestries in an alcove. Not an unpleasant experience. But Glenndon didn’t like the aura of commitment that came with a kiss.

As Crown Prince he had to think beyond pleasure. When he made a commitment to a young woman, both of his fathers, the king as well as the Senior Magician, would have more to say about the alliance than
he
would.

“Do you have time for a practice bout in the arena?” Mikk asked, frowning. Mikk also liked to dance with Lady Miri, but she never trapped
him
in a quiet corner.

Glenndon relaxed a bit. He liked his shy and bookish second cousin. They shared the chore of recording the proceedings of the Council of Provinces, then comparing notes and producing a clean and coherent report for the archives. Mikk was better at the clean and coherent part.

After three months of working together they’d formed a kind of friendship. Not quite brothers—no man would replace Glenndon’s brother Lukan in his affections—but it was nice to have another male near his own age and rank within the court to talk to. He had Frank too, his bodyguard who was also the son of the king’s bodyguard. But Frank was always on the job, rarely unbending enough to carry on a conversation that didn’t involve escape routes and positioning so that an assassin couldn’t creep up behind them.

Frank had turned his back and whistled jauntily many times when Miri shoved Glenndon into a corner.

“You sure you’re up to another bit of training?” Glenndon asked. This was the first time Mikk had voluntarily asked for a bout. He hadn’t the height, breadth of shoulder, or strength that Glenndon had. But there was time. Mikk was three years younger than Glenndon. He would grow.

“I need to develop skill as well as strength. Grand’Mere never allowed me to do much of anything at home. Except read. Grand’Pere always brought home new books whenever he returned from court. I think they intended me for the Temple.”

“Then a bout it is. I have listened to the lords hiding subtle threats and anger beneath polite political phrases for too long today. So be prepared to succumb to my blows.” Glenndon grinned and slapped his companion on the back.

Mikk didn’t quite stagger, but he clasped the edge of the desk they shared face to face.

Together they set about rolling their parchments (Glenndon nodded thanks to Dennilley’s back for the assistance), cleaning their quills and capping the inkwells. By the time they finished, the lords had gathered in their cliquish groups and exited. Glenndon and his cousin shared a quick glance, noting who gathered with whom, and whom they shunned. Only Mikk’s grandfather, Lord Andrall, of all the eleven lords, sought the king’s company openly. Lord Jemmarc hung back, trying to ingratiate himself into the aura of power without being obvious. Besides, since his disgrace last spring, none of his peers dared talk to him lest another faction interpret politeness as rebellion.

Glenndon briefly checked his father the king—the father he hadn’t known was his until last spring, when Darville needed a male heir so desperately to keep his lords in check that he finally acknowledged his son and legitimatized him. Not quite noon and the king’s hands were still steady, his speech clear, and his color healthy and tanned. Three months now since he’d had a drink of beta arrack, the strong liquor imported from Rossemeyer, the queen’s homeland.

Perhaps he could maintain his vow of abstinence. He didn’t even take wine or small beer with his meals now. Only water that had been purified of poison and disease-bearing taints by a magician.

“I’ve a mind to try a slightly heavier practice sword today,” Mikk said brightly.

Glenndon suppressed a groan. “Stargods only know I’m not an expert, but I think it’s easier to develop skill first with a lighter sword, then build strength,” he offered.

“You use a broadsword nearly twice the weight of the one I use.” Mikk didn’t quite pout, but he came close.

“I’m three years older with broader shoulders. There are times I wish that General Marcelle would allow me to train with a battleax. I’d certainly have more skill and a more comfortable grip.” He’d honed that skill splitting logs and chopping wood to feed his mother’s hearth.

“Only peasant infantry use an ax,” Mikk gasped. A look of horror opened his eyes wide and pursed his mouth into a deep frown of disapproval. “A noble, especially a prince, needs to ride a magnificent steed and carry a sword so he can be seen by all his troops and inspire leadership.”

Glenndon swallowed a sneering protest that he’d been raised as a peasant magician at the Forest University with his mother and Senior Magician Jaylor, the man he had considered his father until the unwanted summons to court last spring; the man he still called Da.

And though he saw his Da most every day in the city or Council Chambers, he missed Mama with a deep and abiding ache.

“What are you wearing to court this evening?” Mikk asked, interrupting Glenndon’s sad and looping thoughts.

“Hadn’t thought about it.” He urged Mikk out of the round Council Chamber. “Whatever someone lays out for me.” He hated maintaining a fashionable wardrobe. What was wrong with his homespun, forest-colored, but serviceable tunic and trews as long as they were clean? He grabbed his staff from where it stood leaning against the wall beside the huge stained-glass window and stumped toward the door with three scrolls beneath his arm.

As they emerged from the chamber into the wide receiving room with King Darville’s and Queen Rossemikka’s thrones on a dais to their right, Glenndon came to a stumbling halt. Across the polished tiles, gathered into a huddle like a gabble of flusterhens, six teenage girls awaited them. Lady Miri, Princess Rosselinda’s former lady-in-waiting and now attendant upon the queen and the two younger princesses, raised her head and engaged his eyes with a winsome smile.

“Stargods protect me,” he whispered, pounding the staff lightly against the floor.

“What’s wrong?” Mikk asked, sidling slightly behind Glenndon. He had no weapon other than a ceremonial short sword—next to useless—and his penknife.

“Girls. Always hanging on me as if I alone stand between them and a long and painful death,” Glenndon grunted.

“Oh, the girls. They aren’t so bad. You just have to get them talking and pretend to listen. Actually, they know more about the goings-on at court than anyone else. I’ve learned many interesting things from them.”

“That’s because they see you as a friend. I’m prize meat in the marriage market at the moment because I’m the heir. All they talk to me about is how their pretty lace, imported at great cost from SeLennica, enhances their bodice. An open invitation to stare at their cleavage.”

“You don’t find that enticing?” Mikk blinked rapidly in dismay.

“Of course I do. But I’ll never get to act on it. As long as I stay in the capital, I can expect nothing less than an arranged marriage to a foreign princess.”

“Ah, but if any these girls can bear a royal bastard before your marriage, it enhances your reputation as a virile mate and gains her family much influence with the royal family. I, on the other hand, will have something to say on the choice of my bride when the time comes.”

“I won’t do what my father did—beget a bastard and ignore him until he needed me.”

Glenndon looked around and rapidly noticed each and every person in the room or stationed at doorways. Frank, his bodyguard, wearing the green and gold uniform of a trusted royal attendant, peered out from behind an elaborate tapestry hanging behind the throne. He beckoned. Glenndon grabbed Mikk by the elbow and judiciously retreated through the private family passage before the girls could follow him. “Swordplay. I need to bash some heads to get the sight of all those heaving bosoms out of my mind.”

“Today you ride instead,” General Marcelle said, appearing out of nowhere and grabbing each young man by the elbow.

Glenndon groaned. Mikk sagged as if his thighs already ached and chafed from contact with a saddle.

“You just said, Master Mikk, that a prince must appear princely on a magnificent steed. As of yet neither of you looks anything but miserable astride an embarrassed steed, even a dainty palfrey the young princesses feel at home with.” The general propelled them toward Frank’s hiding place. The bodyguard held the hidden door ajar for them.

“Maybe if we started with dainty palfreys and worked our way up to magnificent stallions . . . ?” Mikk asked hopefully.

“His Grace the king told me not to coddle either of you. You have a lot to learn, in a hurry. Best we start where we hope to end up.”

Mikk rolled his eyes, and Glenndon firmed his posture. Learning to speak after a lifetime of silence was easier than mastering the steeds General Marcelle considered docile.

“Lukan, where are you going?”

Lukan paused in his attempt to cross the home Clearing as rapidly as possible. He shrugged rather than answer his mother.

“You are not Glenndon. I will not allow you to dismiss me with that horrible gesture,” Brevelan admonished him. She slipped a well-worn travel sack over her shoulder—she must have had the thing since before she met Da—and stepped into the sunshine.

He watched her lift her face and welcome the light and warmth. A brief word of thanks crossed her lips. Her once bright red hair tossed glints of gray and darker shades into her aura. Tiny lines around her eyes and mouth smoothed out for that short moment. She looked as young and vibrant as his sisters.

Then she turned her attention back to him, and advancing age slid back onto her face. How old was she? Thirty-six? Not forty yet. Surely. Yet she looked as if she’d aged a decade in the last few months, ever since she had stopped ignoring her latest pregnancy and openly admitted that her seventh child was due in early autumn—or earlier judging by the size of her belly.

“Long ago, the dragons promised you six children in a dragon-dream.” He cast his gaze upward, away from her. “Which of us is the unwanted seventh?” he whispered to himself, knowing that he was the unwelcome one, the odd one, the ordinary one in a family of brilliance and talent.

“I might ask you what you are doing, Mama,” he said aloud, moving to her side and taking the sack from her. “Where are you going with a travel sack?” He suddenly felt protective. Brevelan, the core and center of life in the family, and in the Forest University, seemed tiny, almost shrunken beside him. The top of her head barely reached above his shoulder.

He remembered hugging her knees because that was all he could reach.

“Since when do I have to report my comings and goings to my second son?” she asked, a bit of humor returning to her voice. She reached up and caressed the partially healed weal along his cheek. “That’s going to scar. Mistress Maigret has an ointment that might help.”

Lukan shook off her caress. He’d earned that scar observing the Circle of Master Magicians, spying for Da and figuring out who was going rogue before his father or either of his sisters had a clue. Master Marcus had sought him out and praised him for his actions. Da had ignored him. “I ask because you never leave the Clearing without good reason.”

She heaved a sigh and rubbed the side of her belly. “Yes, this trip is a bit out of the norm. I’m meeting your father at the University. We are transporting to the old University to see Lillian and Valeria off on their journeys.”

Lukan dropped the sack at her feet. Anger boiled in his stomach and heated his face. “My
younger
sisters are to be promoted to journeymen ahead of me!”

“Lukan, it’s not like that. Your Da has to have a journey suited to a young magician before promotion. I doubt you’d deal well with either Lady Ariiell or Lady Graciella . . .”

“That’s not the point, Mama. I’ve passed all my tests. I’m older and more experienced than half the apprentices he’s promoted. I’ll never be good enough for him.” He slammed a fist into the nearest tree trunk and instantly regretted it. A bone-jarring ache spread from his stinging knuckles to his shoulder. Blood dripped from the barked skin. He sucked on it, turning his back to his mother. If he admitted how much it hurt, she’d have him back in the cabin and soaking it in some foul mixture of herbs and goo before bandaging the injury.