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Maredd Flame-crowned, the jarl of Velladar, stood on the watchtower and watched the ornate coach laboriously climb up the twisting mountain path to his fortress.
"It looks like a worse and worse idea," he muttered. The guards accompanying the coach had had to lead their horses and walk on foot at least three turns of the road ago. The coach, driven by a couple of patient mules, got stuck on the rocks under Maredd's eyes, and its convoy swarmed to it to get it free once again. The coach's passenger stayed invisible.
"How human of you," his companion said, calmly. "First you take weeks to decide, and now you're unsure about your own decision. Did I not teach you better?"
"Peace, Ergyll, peace," Maredd laughed, and laid his gloved hand against the warm scales of her neck. "I'm not going to change my mind! But look at this: he doesn't even try to get out and help them, or walk next to his carriage. What kind of man is it?"
"The one you accepted," Ergyll pointed out. "You didn't have to, but you did."
Maredd frowned. The procession below him cleared the rocks and hit the relatively even stretch leading to the gates. "You know I had to. Hirsain is the first country willing to actually talk to us again, and we've been sharing a border for a while now. If they can help us reopen trade, it's worth accepting their second princeling as my companion. Even if he turns out to be a waste of space who doesn't care for anything but his comfort."
"Human folly," Ergyll said, and let out a plume of smoke. "Why don't we just take what we want?"
Maredd groaned, for she knew as well as he did why they couldn't and wouldn't take on the entire peninsula combined, she just didn't like to be reminded of it. Mercifully, instead of pursuing the argument, Ergyll stretched her foreleg out to him - claws the size of swords, each green-and-gold joint softly gleaming - and Maredd laughed and climbed the rope harness to his seat on her back. No matter his mood, even a short flight with Ergyll always had the power to make him happy and clear-headed. "Let's go now, or their animals will lose their minds. We could maybe get away with explaining to king Arlain how I scared his son's carriage and retinue off the cliff before even meeting him, but let us not."
He settled in, and Ergyll rose to her feet. She clambered over the parapet, unfurled her great wings, and glided down. She landed among Maredd's honor guards, light and silent as a feather, and Maredd slid off her back and touched her side in gratitude.
The gates opened to let the guests in. The outriders had the good sense to continue to lead their mounts: Ergyll was motionless by Maredd's side, but the horses still noticed her, and they were afraid, their eyes rolling. The guards kept them in check with some difficulty. The men all wore heavy furs and looked like they weren't used to wearing them. Maredd spotted at least three sets of frostbitten fingers and ears.
Their leader, a man of too-sharp posture and with a workmanlike sword on his belt, stepped forward and bowed to Maredd, doing a pretty decent job of not looking at Ergyll. Despite the cold, sweat was sliding down his temples. He said, in stilted and weirdly accented but passable Velladar, "Lord Maredd Flame-crowned, jarl of Velladar and king of Surande, king Arlane Taren of Hirsain sends you his greetings and his regards."
"Regards to your king as well," Maredd said. "I hope you had an easy journey."
"Of course," the man answered, the effect somehow spoiled by a shiver going through his frame. For Maredd, the day was pleasantly fresh - freezing but windless, with the sun high and generous. If those men, whose country never saw snow deeper than a handspan, came during the worst of winter storms, they'd probably not survive the journey. Now, in late summer turning into autumn, they just looked miserable.
Still the man flicked his palm as if chasing some unpleasant memory away and made a commanding gesture at his fellows by the carriage. Two of his men began unloading heavy chests from the back of the couch. "We bring the gifts from the royal household: His Majesty's personal gifts for you and, of course, His Highness' dowry."
Maredd nodded at his chatelaine, and she stepped forward to take charge of whatever it was. Later he'd look through them and find something interesting for Ergyll, but no amount of gold or jewels would do them any good if they couldn't trade for grain and salt and vegetables.
"And the prince..?"
"Of course," the man said. For a moment something in his stance changed in a way that made Maredd's hackles rise. Next to him, Ergyll turned her dark gaze to the man with sudden and disconcerting interest. Maredd's guards shifted on their feet.
The man bowed stiffly. Then he said, "Allow me," and went to the carriage. One of his people set up a small wooden step at the couch's door, and Maredd snorted at this bit of civilized frippery. The captain reached into the carriage, and a man climbed out, leaning heavily on his hand.
Maredd stared. The second prince of Hirsain turned out to be a slender, dark-haired man in his twenties, with a face that was straight, narrow, and a bit too long in the nose, and piercing black eyes. He was also limping heavily; the captain helped him to get down the step, and then handed him an elbow crutch made out of dark wood.
"I have the honor to present to you His Highness Alaric Taren, the second prince of Hirsain," the captain said, tensely. The man - the boy, Maredd thought, feeling much older than his forty-and-two - smiled widely at Maredd, limping forward with determination.
"He's terrified," Ergyll said in Maredd's mind, very quietly. "He reeks of fear."
Maredd nodded. This was secondary to what he was seeing: for some benighted reason, the prince was wearing nothing but thin black trousers, a white blouse with gigantic sleeves caught by bows at his narrow wrists, and soft-soled boots made of some thin material that was soaking through before Maredd's very eyes. His bronze skin was washed out, sickly pale. It was ten steps between the coach and Maredd; by the fifth step, the prince's lips were turning blue.
He was still smiling in a very determined way. "My lord," he was saying, and Maredd didn't like the way his teeth didn't even chatter, "I'm happy to meet you - forgive our tardiness, the roads - it's my privilege..."
"Are you all insane," Maredd growled, and caught the way the prince flinched back just for a second before leaning towards him again. "Don't you know where you are?"
He stepped forward, unclasping his heavy cloak, and draped it over the prince. "My lord, my lord," the captain was saying, his voice rising, and Maredd paid him no mind. Under the weight of the fur the prince staggered, and Maredd caught his shoulder - he was frozen nearly solid, and barely keeping his feet.
"Winter will kill you, boy," Maredd growled, annoyed by this insanity. Was it the fault of the prince's guard? Given the terror Ergyll had mentioned, was it even an honor guard; or had the man been sent to him unwilling?
It could be dealt with once his new companion wasn't about to freeze to death. Thus decided, Maredd swept Alaric Taren into his arms along with his cloak, picked up the crutch before it could clatter on the stones, and strode towards his chambers.
Alaric's heart beat so loudly in his chest his ribcage felt bruised. Swaddled in the heavy fur, he couldn't move. Lord Maredd carried him with insultingly little effort. A fold of the ridiculous cloak fell across his face, narrowing the world to nauseating, blind motion. Up, up; up the stones, up the stairs. Maredd was muttering something under his breath, angrily, but Alaric's grasp of Velladar language wasn't strong enough to allow him to decipher his words.
He hoped that Captain Zarinn wouldn't do anything ridiculous. The man knew the nature of his errand, and accepted it with great reluctancy; he could not afford to have objections now, regardless of what Alaric's new lord was planning to do.
The cloak - and the broad chest under Alaric's cheek - were both divinely warm. His heart tried to rally him to fight or to flee, but his body, frozen nearly solid through the last leg of his journey, could do nothing but soak this warmth in.
A bang of doors violently opened. A sense of vast, echoing space around them. Something big, moving quietly. Humid, soft air.
Lord Maredd finally put him down, gentler than Alaric had expected, on some raised edge. Alaric froze, unsure what he needed to do next, still blinded by the cloak. Before he could decide, he was unwrapped, not unlike a midwinter gift: he found himself staring into Lord Maredd's intent face.
Up close, the man looked even more imposing, with his too-light, flatly blue eyes in a face so tanned by the sun and wind that it looked like well-worn leather. He still looked angry, and Alaric still didn't know why. He tried smiling again.
"Strip," Maredd said, curtly. Alaric gaped at him. That, too, was to be expected, eventually - Alaric sure wasn't a blushing virgin - but there was no way this mountain lion of a man would be so overcome with the sight of Alaric that he would just... Was this some kind of punishment? Establishing dominance?
He hesitated a breath too long; the man reached out for him and took the cloak away, then reached for the ties holding Alaric's blouse closed at his throat. Alaric, alarmed, fumbled for them, trying not to look like he was resisting. His head swam; his breath began whistling a bit on the exhale, not a good sign. He slid his shirt from his shoulders, struggling out of his sleeves. His boots and trousers required more effort, pain, and wiggling - at least he had stopped feeling humiliation over such things a long time ago. Maredd, at least, didn't try to help or hurry the process once he was satisfied that Alaric would comply. Alaric managed to do well, or so he thought, getting himself undressed to his drawers - until he raised his head and saw the dragon's great, dark, multifaceted eyes watching him with interest from not twenty steps away.
He jerked back, overbalanced, windmilled his hands - and Maredd's arm arrested his fall, tugging him forward. "Steady," Maredd said. "Ergyll's not going to hurt you. These are her rooms as well as mine, you need to get used to her."
The dragon - the dragoness? the lady dragon? - made a hissing sound that sounded to Alaric suspiciously like laughter. A plume of steam appeared over her long nostrils, smelling of sulfur.
"My... apologies," Alaric said, faintly. "I -"
He didn't know where he was going with that - Liss almighty, was the dragon going to watch? - when Maredd leaned down and took hold of his right foot. Alaric lost the last thread of his scattered thoughts, mesmerized by the sight of his naked foot disappearing entirely between Maredd's wide, scarred hands.
Maredd grunted, apparently satisfied, and reached for Alaric's other foot. Then he said, in a much less growling voice: "No frostbite. You've been lucky, you know."
What. "What?"
"Into the bath you go then," Maredd said. Then, unsatisfied with the speed of Alaric's reaction, he reached out. Alaric found himself lifted - not ungently - and turned around - and slid into water.
He moaned, unable to stop himself. The world swam around him - dark stones, dark water, steam - and his body tingled and burned all at once, enveloped in something he'd thought he'd never experience again. Heat. It hurt, the water was scalding - and then his body adjusted and it just felt like bliss. He felt like he was dissolving into the liquid heat, his skin finally giving up on trying to hold him together. The heat crawled into his cramped hands, into his tight shoulders, doused the hot coals of pain in his bad knee. If Maredd decided to run him through at this moment, or give him to his dragon to eat, he'd meet whatever came with a blissful smile.
Some indeterminate time later he floated back into himself. He could now pay attention to his surroundings - he was half-reclining on a low ledge within a stone basin at least five steps wide, filled with gently steaming water. The ceiling over them seemed cavernous rather than man-made, and the torchlight didn't reach its topmost point. A cave? A... lair?
He raised his head and opened his mouth to ponder the difference between two before he could catch himself - and was confronted with the sight of Lord Maredd, sitting chest-deep in the water not two feet across from him. He was sprawled, apparently at ease, hands spread over the sides of the basin, and while the water covered everything rather chastely, it was still - a lot to take in.
"My lord," he said, cautiously. And then, as a gigantic, darkly green, scaled head slid onto the edge between him and Lord Maredd, and regarded him with a jeweled eye again, he managed to get out "My lady" through a suddenly tight throat. Maredd Flame-crowned's dragon, the terror of the entire peninsula, the burner of cities, the killer of warriors, the eater of babies. Lord Maredd's bathing companion, apparently. He realized that there was a resting perch for her head worked into the lip of the basin, made out of polished green stone.
Maredd snorted. "Ergyll informs me that you look much better half-boiled than you did half-frozen."
While Alaric was trying to swallow this dubious compliment, Maredd suddenly leaned forward. Something shifted in his face; from a mountain lion at repose he suddenly turned into a mountain lion about to pounce. "Why, in the name of all that's holy, did you arrive frozen half to death? What the hell were you wearing? I'd think you people don't understand snow, but your guards had furs. Did they take yours away? Should I deal with this captain of yours?"
"No," Alaric said, alarmed. "No, no, Captain Zarinn would never - actually if I could just talk to them before they leave - "
He paused, gathering his scattered wits. He had expected many things to happen on his arrival, some of them horrible, some of them dangerous, but he never imagined he'd have his first conversation with his new lord while naked in the bath. Or for it to be on the topic of his clothes. Did Maredd take his appearance for an insult?
"My lord," he said, "I deeply apologize, I didn't mean to cause so much fuss. It's an old Hirsain custom for alliances between nobles: when a person enters their new house, everything they bring with them is a gift for the accepting house; they come with nothing but clothes on their back. It's meant as an honor..."
A very ancient custom, he didn’t add, one rarely used nowadays, one stemming from centuries of blood feuds: meaning that the bride or the groom entering their new family would bear no weapon with them, no tie to their old home. His father, making sure Maredd knew he was completely in his power, and brought no danger.
"Please tell me you didn't ride this way from the border," Lord Maredd said, frowning.
"Ah," Alaric said. "No. I'm afraid I was very unfaithful to tradition and only shed my furs at the beginning of our ascent."
The dragon snorted again, and this time he couldn't control his jump. She was so silent; somehow he managed to not look at her, focused on Maredd, and now that he was reminded it was impossible to ignore her presence. Still; whether she could actually talk to lord Maredd somehow, or it amused him to pretend that his beast of destruction could crack jokes at the expense of his new consort, it seemed that the best thing to do was to include her in the conversation. "Am I amusing my lady again?"
Now that he was looking - and his head was beginning to swim from heat and fatigue, and his eyes to water with exhaustion - he couldn't stop noticing just how beautiful she was. If Maredd reminded him of a lion, she looked like a mountain lake made flesh: her scales gleamed softly, green so dark it was almost black, shot through with gold like sunlight on the water. He stared, mesmerized - and she opened her mouth in a wide, catlike yawn, showing him a row of teeth, each the length of his palm. He fought not to shudder.
"Very much," Maredd said. Then, without a preamble. "What about your leg?"
Ah. "Ah," Alaric said, and fought not to touch his bad knee under the water. "I'm afraid it happened when I was very young. Does it displease you? Were you not informed?"
Maredd snorted. "It's not like you're a horse I can't ride. I'm going to assign somebody to escort you for a while, though, because this place is mostly stairs. You're liable to fall down and break your neck."
Thus satisfied, he leaned back while Alaric was still digesting the horse remark. "Hungry? Olga - my chatelaine - has her heart set on a feast, but you look like you could use a simpler meal and a chance to hit the sack."
The indisputable temptation of that offer hit Alaric like a blow. But his wits were returning to him along with the feeling in his hands and legs, and they were telling him his arrival to his new home was fast approaching catastrophically off course.
"I would never dream of offending a chatelaine," he said, brightly. His smile, so far, didn't elicit a rebuke, so he made it wider. His habit of going off on tangents might, but he knew from bitter experience that this he could never fully control; sooner or later his tongue would slip his best efforts to rein it. Some people found it diverting or amusing; some people hated it. His father, for example... but this was a thought for another day.
With Maredd, he might as well get the suspense out of the way. "Every chatelaine I ever met was a ferocious figure, a force to be reckoned with - why, the one who governed our castle when I was a boy ruled a hundred cooks and a hundred maids with nothing but a quirk of her eyebrow - and I would rather die of exhaustion than allow myself to stand between honorable Olga and the feast her heart is set upon..."
He risked a glance, and found Maredd watching him with a bemused expression. This could go either way, but all the man said was "You speak our language very well."
"I learned here and there," Alaric said, "languages are something of a hobby," and didn't add and I found it prudent to learn the language of people who suddenly turned conquerors. "Is my accent atrocious?"
Maredd laughed at him. "You mangle the words, put stresses in the wrong places. But the order of the words is right."
"I'll try to do better. I'm afraid there weren't many Velladar people to learn from in my country."
"You'll have plenty of practice," Maredd said, "most of my spears don't know a word of Hirsain. Well then; if you would rather heed Olga than me, I suppose we need to find you some clothes."
He vaulted out of the basin in one sudden, fluid arc of motion. Alaric blinked, overwhelmed with the sight of Maredd’s lean, powerful back, and fought the urge to huddle deeper in under the water.
The dragon withdrew her head from the edge of the basin; turning after her, he saw a wide space, dark outside of the sphere of several gleaming torches: a rack of weaponry, several carved chests, a low, wide bed covered with a heap of furs. The rest of the cavern - for, aside from the wall with a square opening cut through it, cut with a long piece of embroidered cloth, it was without a doubt a cavern - was taken up by Ergyll's wings and sinuously coiled tail. She was huge; and she curled into a glittering coil, apparently done with her interest in human affairs. When she closed her eyes, Alaric felt it like a snap: the immense attention that he was unaware of was lifted off him.
Maredd snagged a tunic off the floor and walked to the doorway, still pulling it on, heedless of the effect he created. When he lifted the edge of the cloth, a freezing draft snuck in. Alaric slid further down under the water, and wondered just how it stayed warm. Even assuming an army of servants or slaves, there simply couldn't be enough firewood on this mountain to keep so much water heated...
He missed Maredd's conversation with somebody standing guard outside, and jerked back to reality only when the man was leaning over him. "Hilled will ask around and find you something that'll do for now. I'd loan you some of my clothes, but -"
Alaric sniggered, unable to bear the emerging image of himself swimming in Maredd's tunic and pants. "Thank you, my lord. I must apologize again."
"You apologize too much," Maredd said, decisively. "Are you still afraid of me?"
Alaric flinched despite himself. "Still?"
"Ergyll smelled terror on you. Are you here by choice, second prince of Hirsain? I didn't refuse you, but I didn't ask for you, and I have no need for thralls or slaves."
No, Alaric thought, bitterly. For some warm and water-soaked moments he felt - if not safe, but somehow relaxed, free of the path that brought him here. It was important to remember where and why he was, and unpleasant to be reminded. You didn't ask for me; you just found a dragon in your little mountain end-of-nowhere, and turned into a power to be reckoned with. And then you ate a kingdom between yours and ours, and now you sit on our borders, and my father is afraid; afraid enough to buy himself time with a spare heir.
"You're - imposing, my lord," he said out loud, spinning a lie that was mostly truth. "You and your - and lady Ergyll. I heard rumors, of course, but I never imagined - and the road was long - I'm here of my own will, and I can swear on it in whatever way you choose. If I'm not what you wanted..."
"I don't even know who you are yet," Maredd said. "It's too early to talk about that. Why is that captain of yours pacing my courtyard like he's about to storm the gates any minute?"
Alaric stared at him for a moment, before realizing that his host was entirely serious. "My lord, the captain has served our family for a long time, and he's - protective. And you growled at me, picked me up like a sack of wool and carried me away, swearing."
There was a sound like rustle of dry leaves from the back of the cavern where the dragon slept. Maredd's face stayed blank for several breaths and then - impossibly - slowly filled with a blush. He slapped his hand on his forehead with a long groan. "Did I, now."
"I realize now that the sight of my wardrobe was distressing, my lord."
Maredd shook his finger at him. "I will take cheekiness over apologizing, but also: let us never talk about this again. Talk to him before the feast, tell him I didn't - it's not -
"And stop calling me 'my lord'," he added, suddenly. "My name's good enough for my people, it'll do for you too."
He leaned over the basin again, and offered Alaric his hand. Alaric, still reeling, felt a surge of gratitude for Maredd abstaining from simply plucking him out of the water: he fumbled, trying to get his warmed-up limbs to cooperate, to twist around without waking his hip up to pain. Maredd waited with his hand outstretched, without a single sigh of impatience. When Alaric grasped his waiting hand, Maredd let him lean on it and leverage himself out of the water instead of pulling.
Maredd's eyes skated over Alaric's body simply and without shame; his face was unreadable. Alaric's face flamed suddenly, painfully; he waited for censure. But Maredd contented himself with handing Alaric his crutch and turning away.
"Hilled will bring you clothes soon, and take you down to the courtyard," he said over his shoulder, pulling the rest of his clothes on. "I'll see you at the feast. Don't be afraid you'll wake Ergyll up, she sleeps like the dead when there's nothing to mock me for."
With that, he disappeared behind the curtain before Alaric could say a word.
Maredd had to admit Hilled and Olga had done the best they could with the time they had, raiding some poor soul's chest for clothes that were neither too juvenile nor dwarfed the prince too badly. Not that it stopped his spears from cradle-snatching jokes, but at least it helped some. Judging by the blush crawling up Alaric's neck, he understood the jokes perfectly well, too.
Maredd didn't like his color when he came into the hall of the feast, nor the way he leaned heavily on Hilled's arm - the stairs were a problem, it seemed. He stopped by his people, who were seated high at the table, at a place of honor, and talked quietly and shortly to his captain before walking to his seat. Maredd didn’t approve of a guard who thought his charge was in danger but didn’t try to protect him - but how Alaric dealt with his own spears wasn’t his business. They were to depart the next day, in any case.
Hot food and mead seemed to revive Alaric, and he sat by Maredd's hand like a ruffled and curious bird. Maredd didn't know how things were done in Hirsain, but he doubted Alaric's father feasted like this with his warriors. The great hall had one long great table for everybody, and Maredd's spears were determined to outdo each other in dirty jokes. Mock-fighting ignited here and there; the old scald, a relic of the previous jarl's court, made an effort to begin a heroic ballad, and was drowned out by a many-throated ribald song about the lucky shepherd and the three hills he visited.
Alaric laughed, took the mockery of his lilting accent in a well-natured way, listened to contradictory suggestions and corrections with his head thoughtfully cocked, and very skillfully turned each question about what exactly Maredd had dragged him away for into a rambling description of his long and cold journey to Velladar. He drank mead a bit too freely for a man his size, and Maredd thought to warn him - but it was a rite of passage to discover the treachery of mead's sweetness, and so he let Alaric be.
Maredd drank sparingly, determined to keep watch. He didn't expect anybody to make trouble - his people respected him, and his decision to accept Hirsain's sudden offer had been discussed and approved by the clans beforehand - but there was something about Alaric's guileless, pleasant behavior that niggled at him. He wished Ergyll was there, but she never came to those gatherings, despite the space left for her. She claimed that so much human folly at once made her teeth ache.
Alaric turned to him after a particularly spurious stanza in the song, eyes bright, and said, suddenly, "I have to admit, I was expecting more warlike songs! I used to enjoy war ballads - there were bards, back home, I would pay for them to bring me new ones all over the peninsula."
"You'll need to wait for everybody to get drunker than that," Maredd said. "Dirty songs first; then they'll pester old Hallas for old sagas, and he'll harrumph and berate them, and then give in. You can stay later and somebody will begin a lament, but I plan to be asleep by then."
"A tempting thought," the prince said, smiling at him like he was sharing a precious secret. His eyes, Maredd thought suddenly, were very, very dark; he could barely tell the iris from the pupil. "An incredibly tempting thought, but maybe not for tonight. Still, I would've thought your court would have more recent songs? Your conquest of Surande has been the talk of the entire peninsula. Do you not sing of it here? I heard Velladar records its history in sagas and songs."
He was still smiling, and then it looked like he was holding onto his smile by the force of will, in response to whatever was happening to Maredd's face. Maredd made an effort to unlock his gritted teeth. "Is that how they call it? The conquest?"
Alaric inclined his head. "Was it not? There used to be a king in Surande. There used to be, well, Surande. Technically speaking. Hirsain and Velladar didn't use to share borders."
By some miracle, either nobody heard them over the din or nobody was paying attention. "The songs are for the deeds done in truth. And I did not do anything in Surande worth a song."
"Rumor has it, my lord - forgive me, Maredd - that you put the old king's head on a spike and set it over his own throne."
How did it get out of hand so badly? "I didn't lay a finger on that thrice-damned king. I took Ergyll with me, Ergyll and my forty spears, and rode to talk to him, because his serfs and peasants were fleeing his country in droves, and crossing our borders. Velladar can't feed this many mouths: they didn't know how to survive. Come winter, they would've died of hunger or fallen to trolls and wargs."
Alaric listened intently. "We tried to herd the people back, but they begged - grown men crawling in the dirt, grandmothers wailing and trying to kiss my feet…" He spat behind his shoulder, chasing away the bad luck. "The taxes were high, they said, and the old king enjoyed bloodsport when they weren't paid. Save for slaughtering them, I couldn't make them leave. So I went to talk to their king about what could be done."
The memories of this journey - Ergyll went by land so his people could ride with him, and it took them ten days. Ten days of empty fields, and empty-eyed children with hunger-bloated bellies, and people hiding desperately in their huts as they passed by. Crucified bodies by the road; some of them still alive.
"We rode for ten days," he said, "and, I guess, the fear rode ahead of us. That king didn't have many friends left, and by the time we were by his gate, his chieftains met me with the keys to the city and his head on a silver plate."
"Oh," Alaric murmured. "Did they, now."
"I took hold of the city," Maredd said. "Seemed ridiculous not to, at this point. And I kicked out the ones who gave the king's head to me - they killed his wife too, you know? His wife, his daughter. Cowards, the lot of them. If they were unhappy with him as their jarl they should've challenged him before we even crossed the border."
"Yes," the prince said. He was looking at Maredd strangely; his hands were clenched tight in his lap. "Indeed."
"The old king didn't have an heir, and nobody wanted to challenge us for his crown. So we left them more or less alone to sort it all out, except that Ergyll comes with me every other month to go over the country and check that there’s no bandits or armies to push people over our borders again.
He took a gulp of his mead, suddenly glad to have a person he could complain about this to. The clans stood with him; but it was unwise to complain too much to them about the results of Maredd’s own hasty actions. “This country is a goddamn mess, and a drain, and now nobody will trade with us. Winter is coming fast, and we'll have our hands full with the things that come down from the mountains."
For a moment, Alaric looked like he was going to say something. Then a fight erupted on Maredd's left side - Garald and Orwald, always in the same stupid contest they had brought over from their home village - and when Maredd looked back, the prince was asking Hilled about the embroidery on his tunic.
Maredd expected to have to carry him up the stairs to his and Ergyll's room once the feast was done. The journey back upstairs took an eternity, but at least most of the keep was either too drunk or too busy to heckle them. The last thing Maredd saw was Olga dumping a pot of cold water onto a couple of spears too intent on either a fight or a courtship, which meant that he was very glad to go.
In his rooms - their rooms now, he supposed - Ergyll opened one eye and told him, cryptically, "Good job." The prince bowed to her, and then solved the question of whether he wanted his own cot by collapsing face-first onto Maredd's bed and beginning to snore.
"Well then," Maredd said, amused. He sat on the edge of the bed and drew the boy's boots off, trying to be careful of his knee. It looked like he didn't need to bother; the prince muttered something and curled up on his side, mouth half-open and lax, hands reaching out. Tomorrow he was going to have a headache so bad he would wish he'd froze to death on the way up the mountain; but there was no better cure than the basin for that, and Olga might like him well enough to send some of her better draughts.
For now Maredd dragged his own boots and crawled into the bed. The rooms, warmed up by Ergyll's bulk and by the hot stream coming from the heart of the mountain, were comfortable enough; but he knew freezing drafts would come in the night. He pulled the prince closer to him and tugged the furs over the both of them. Under his palm the skin of the prince's ribcage felt fragile and alien; his heart beat in a steady, lulling rhythm.
This wasn't such a bad idea, Maredd thought, falling asleep. Not a bad idea at all.
On the morning after his welcome feast, Alaric woke up in Maredd’s bed, without boots but still dressed in his gifted tunic and entirely unmolested. His husband was sleeping next to him, his naked back radiating heat like a furnace. Alaric reached out to the set of three deep claw scars on Maredd’s left shoulder, mesmerized - and then the headache hit him so badly he groaned.
Maredd shifted from asleep to awake smoothly and simply, and laughed at Alaric without reserve, although with a certain sympathy. “Aha. Now you’re familiar with the mead.”
Alaric almost scowled at him, but Maredd redeemed himself by offering him a hand up and making the best suggestion imaginable. “Into the basin you go,” he said, “and I’ll see if Olga liked you enough to share her hangover cure.”
The second encounter with Maredd’s miraculous basin was, if less dramatic than the first, no less pleasant. Alaric slid into the water as quickly as possible, sighing in relief as the water’s warmth eased his aching head, and he barely twitched when the dragon unfurled herself and inclined her heavy head at him.
“Good morning, my lady,” he said, and belatedly wondered if it was acceptable for him to be quite so undressed in her presence. Not that it seemed to worry Maredd, who seemed to consider clothes to be optional within his private rooms. Alaric was getting the impression that Maredd’s court wasn’t overly concerned with formalities on the whole.
Maredd touched his forehead to the dragon’s green scales in passing, an unconscious and gentle gesture, and slid into the water next to Alaric. “She does like you,” he said, and Alaric wondered whether he meant the dragoness or the chatelaine. “How’s the water?”
“Heavenly,” Alaric said, honestly. “But how do you keep it so warm? Does my lady” - he bowed to the dragoness again - “share her fire?”
Maredd snorted. “Now there’s a thought! Although you’re right in a way, since Ergyll was the one to show us the hot springs inside the mountain. The kitchens have another one, and there are the communal baths that the spears share on the lower levels. Sure makes winters easier. Worth building the entire keep around them.”
“Oh,” Alaric said, looking around the cave with renewed interest. “So it’s new?"
“The old jarl kept his household in the big hall at the foot of the mountain,” Maredd said, stretching. “You might’ve seen it when you were on your way. But Ergyll didn’t want to leave the mountain, and so I moved mine up there. It’s easier to defend, too -”
Hilled, a young warrior with a pleasantly open face and fire-red hair, interrupted him at this moment, entering with a steaming horn cup in his hands. Evidently, there was no need to knock. He bowed to Ergyll and to Maredd, and winked at Alaric before passing him the cup. “Mead, eh?”
On the whole, Alaric decided, this was an improvement on the levee Father had to go through every morning. “Indeed,” he said, and accepted the cup gratefully. It smelled atrocious, and, judging by Maredd’s and Hilled’s shared anticipatory air, it would taste awful as well. Alaric took a deep breath and drank it in one long gulp, doing his best not to pay attention to the sensation. It felt like it set his entire throat and belly on fire; but when he could breathe again, he found that the pounding headache receded.
“My compliments to lady Olga,” he managed with as much dignity as he could muster. “And deepest gratitude.”
“Not bad,” Hilled said, and retreated. Alaric turned back to Maredd and found him smiling indulgently. Something that he had said bothered Alaric now that his brain was returning to its proper speed.
“Maredd,” he said, “forgive me if it’s my imperfect grasp of your language - but did you say “the old jarl”? Was he not your father?”
Ergyll sighed gustily and curled up next to the basin, tipping her tail into the water, not five steps from where Alaric was sitting. He tried not to sttare at the sharp scales glinting underneath the surface.
“Hirsain doesn’t know much about us, does it?” Maredd said. “You aren’t born a jarl. You need to prove you can be one - and the old jarl’s children didn’t want to. I did, though.”
Alaric restrained from pointing out that nobody quite cared to learn about Velladar until the sudden and terrifying fall of Surande two years ago. And after the fall, there were too many rumors flying around to separate the truth from fiction.
“How does one prove himself a jarl?”
Maredd smiled wistfully. “You go up a mountain,” he said - his eyes were trained on Ergyll, alert with that same startling gentleness, “where the dragon lives, and you come back alive. And you bring down her scale or claw to show as proof.”
“Not - forgive me, my lady - not the head? Just a scale?”
A little plume of sulfur rose from Ergyll’s nostrils, and Maredd laughed. “Thirty generations of Velladar jarls went up the mountain to meet Ergyll, and barely half of them returned. We’re practical people! We don’t ask for the impossible.”
“When you came back down… you didn’t have a scale to show. You had a - companion? But how?”
“We talked,” Maredd said, simply. “I got lucky, mostly. Turned out I could understand her! And she could hear me. And she was bored.”
Alaric blinked. “That sounds like an amazing story,” he said, honestly. “Although I can’t imagine the previous jarl being very happy about the break in tradition.”
“He wasn’t,” Maredd said, frowning, and Alaric decided not to continue this line of questioning, at least for now. “Not just him! But it all settled eventually.”
That definitely sounded as if… As if it was a rather old story. “Your people definitely don’t look unused to living with lady Ergyll.”
“Well, it’s been twenty years! Some of them were born in this keep, and they’ve known her from birth.”
It was hard not to stare. Was Maredd lying to him? Both today and yesterday, at the feast? The survivors of the Surande court told stories of their neighbor state somehow acquiring a terrifying, people-eating dragon and using it - her - for the invasion. The dragon threw the entire peninsula into a state of terror. The treaty that sealed Alaric’s fate was intended to stall for time and keep Maredd placated while Alaric’s father made new alliances with his neighbors. And Alaric agreed to it willingly; while it stung that his father offered him as a disposable pawn so easily, he was ready to play his role as a throwaway hostage to help stave off the conquest.
But Maredd’s words - and the age of his keep, and the demeanor of his warriors, and the words of the songs sung in his hall - implied that he was partnered with Ergyll for over twenty years, and in all this time, he had never shown any interest in straying outside his own borders.
Alaric came willingly, but he knew himself to be a more valuable tool than his father intended. He was going to begin with establishing a way to send messages, and on the way to Velladar, he invented and dismissed plan after plan for doing this without jeopardizing his mission.
Now he looked at Maredd, and thought carefully about everything he learned about the man’s character, and about the stories he - and his dragon - had inspired, and he decided to go with the simplest option.
“Maredd,” he said, “Captain Zarinn has in his keeping two birds from Hirsain that can find their way home from any place in the world. I was hoping that I could - with your permission, of course - establish them here so I can write to my family and friends.”
“Sure,” Maredd said, simply. “You need to talk to Olga about your clothes anyway, ask her where’s the best place to keep the birds so they’re not bothered. Are they magical?”
“No,” Alaric said, shaken a bit by the easy success of his gambit, “they’re just well-trained…”, and the rest of their morning was spent on the wonders of homing pigeons.
Maredd didn’t even ask him to show the letters to him before sending them. Alaric had a lot of work to do.
Maredd hadn’t shared his space with anybody for over a decade. Ergyll didn’t approve of random liaisons, so those were best left to other spaces. To invite somebody in was to share the duties and responsibilities of his position with them; and the right person failed to appear over the years. Some clans did try to bring up an idea of him getting a blood heir, since Ergyll now stayed and fought by his side instead of being a legendary menace on top of the mountain. But the suggestions were shouted down by the others before Maredd had to get involved, and so he was mostly left in peace.
Alaric slid into this empty space with barely a splash. Mared had expected a spoiled brat, but the prince took up surprisingly little space in both body and spirit, and his presence didn’t disrupt Maredd’s ways or habits much. All through his first autumn in Velladar, he was cheerful and curious, undemanding without being too subservient about it.
He established a comfortable relationship with Maredd’s spears without Maredd having to interfere. Alaric’s Velladar wasn’t good enough to let him play in the poetic contests or exchange proper insults, but once he settled in and stopped being too polite, he demonstrated that his tongue had a sharp edge, and that he could give as good as he got. Hilled, who used to complain incessantly about becoming a maid to a soft princeling, warmed up to him quickly, and he told Maredd that the others liked him as well.
Most importantly, Ergyll liked him. She stayed behind sometimes, sharing the space with Alaric when Maredd wasn’t present, and she told Maredd that she found him “soothing” - whatever this meant, in dragon terms - and that she liked the taste of his curiosity. There could’ve been no better recommendation.
It was just as well: even had it been needed, Maredd wouldn’t have had time to make sure Alaric was accepted by the court. The winter was coming quickly. He had to make sure there was enough food; that all the clans had enough able-bodied spears to protect their lands during winter; that the protections were set up and all the places of refuge were checked and repaired, with everybody knowing where to go.
Twenty years ago, there were no escape routes or walls, as the old jar had cared about nothing but the safety of his own household and kept all his spears on a tight leash. His greed led to the death of Maredd’s parents. When Maredd set out to find Ergyll, young and angry, drunk on fresh grief, he expected to follow them into death. But Ergyll came down the mountain with him, and she helped him - and those warriors who didn’t flee at the sight of her - to beat back the snow trolls, the wargs, the things that crawled out of the darkness of Velladar every winter. Ever since she was of amazing help to him, allowing the small villages and hamlets of his land to grow and prosper… but even she couldn’t be everywhere at once.
Almost every night they staggered into their rooms, heavy with exhaustion - and Alaric was there, with dinner already waiting and the torches set. He seemed to have an almost preternatural sense for when Maredd wanted to talk and when he didn’t; sometimes he asked questions about Velladar, but on other nights, he simply shared fresh gossip from the keep or told long, convoluted stories about his own court. They shared a bath every evening, by an unspoken accord. Maredd soon got used to seeing Alaric’s sharp profile across him, with his thin, long-fingered hands moving languidly through the water.
Alaric always relaxed in the bath, in some subtle way; no matter how many furs Maredd gifted him, he never quite got used to the cold. Maredd worried about how he was going to take to winter.
They still shared a bed - chastely. Ridiculous, Maredd thought; in his sleep, Alaric would press closer to him, burrowing into his warmth, and Alaric’s fine black hair would fall across the white furs like a raven wing. Ridiculous, to share a bed with his consort - husband - and not touch him. Ridiculous, when sometimes Alaric would look at him, with his eyes dark and intent, searching…
And then Maredd would remember how Alaric walked up to meet him, with nothing but the thin clothes on his back; how he asked for permission to write to his family. His guards were long departed. Aside from his wondrous birds, he had nothing that didn’t come to Maredd, and knowing that, Maredd couldn’t bring himself to take the first step.
At least he didn’t think Alaric was truly unhappy. He wrote a lot - he took great care of his birds, but the poor things barely saw the inside of the keep, always bearing some letter or another, resting briefly before another long journey. Sometimes, Alaric would mention some tidbit of news offhand - from the Hirsain court, from his many and varied ‘friends in the country,’ - although never, weirdly, from his father or older brother. He huddled in his furs; he wandered all over the keep, interested in every minute detail, from the spears’ training to Olga’s women spinning, from the big kitchens to the thatching of the roofs and making of the winter chests. He also pestered old Hallas into sharing all the songs he ever knew, heroic and otherwise.
Sometimes he seemed perfectly familiar and predictable, as though Maredd had been with him for decades and knew him as well as he knew Ergyll’s scales and claws and spines. Sometimes he’d turn, eyes glinting in the torchlight, and he’d look like a changeling, a fey creature out of the circle of stones, gorgeous and alien, incomprehensible to Maredd.
And in the end, he turned out to possess magic of his own: in the middle of autumn, when Maredd and the clans knew that they were facing a harsh and hungry winter, the traders - from Hirsain, Farrien, Anreg - came again, their caravans loaded with grain and vegetables and salt, with wine, with glass and clay jars, with fine steel and spices. Maredd’s reports from people stationed in various Surande towns told him the same: the neighboring countries stopped treating his people as if they were contaminated, and so trade resumed.
A couple of caravans even risked coming up to the keep. Alaric met them at the gates, standing by Maredd’s side, proud and beautiful. He greeted the traders as if they were old friends - some of them probably were old friends, especially the ones who brought him books and papers and inks. The traders watched Ergyll in avid terror at first, but Alaric almost dragged Maredd over to them, roping him into rapid, sketchily translated haggling in three languages, and by the end of the day nobody fled, Olga’s stores were full, and the traders were invited to the spears’ hot bath as a special honor.
“How,” Maredd asked the next day. They were standing side by side on the watchtower; down below, the caravan, with its wagons laden with furs and wool and amber, filled the twisting road. “Even before Surande, they never came this far.”
Ergyll opened an inquisitive eye in agreement, and added, in Maredd’s mind, that she never saw quite so many non-Velladar people not running from her.
Alaric laid a tentatively gentle hand by the side of Ergyll’s head. “I still have some friends, it seems. And some uncashed favors.”
For some reason, Maredd remembered standing in the same place, watching Alaric’s convoy climb the same road. He was tired, slightly drunk, mesmerized by the sight of Alaric’s thin fingers on Ergyll’s gleaming scales. “All of them, though. I sent people before, you know, all over the peninsula, to call the traders back in. This is how your father knew how to contact me. But nobody ever came.”
“Ah,” Alaric said. Something shifted in his face, slid like a dark shade over his eyes. “Maredd, people don’t know anything about you. Well, except for the horror tales those lords you exiled told about your - conquest.”
Maredd stared at him, incredulous. “All of this, just because I let those cowards go?”
Alaric smiled and bowed to Ergyll. “And because the world saw lady Ergyll and wasn’t quite ready for her. Don’t hold it against them, my lady.”
She grumbled in disapproval, but then relented and touched, briefly, the side of her head to his face - a sign of her highest approval.
“That’s not all,” Alaric said, quieter. “I’m afraid that once the winter passes, you won’t be able to afford the same degree of… separation from the rest of the peninsula that Velladar enjoyed before. I will do what I can, but the world will need to see you. My father…”
“Alaric,” Maredd said, slowly, “you were very afraid when you came, weren't you? And not just like a bridegroom nervous about entering his new family.”
Alaric turned to him and smiled, bitterly. “More like a sacrifice,” he said. “Sent - forgive me, my lady - into the dragon’s den.”
Maredd’s heart twisted sharply. “Your own father sent you? For me to - what, kill you? Put your head over my throne? “
“I came willingly,” Alaric said, hurriedly. “I didn’t lie to you. I wanted to - I was - “
“You were afraid,” Maredd said. His entire body was aching with the effort of keeping still. Ergyll unfurled her great wings, shielding the two of them from the world.
“Yes,” Alaric said, simply.
Two decades ago, standing before the great dragon’s cave, watching his panicky breath puff out of his mouth, he was more afraid than he ever thought possible. Now he was safe in his keep, standing next to his husband… this fear was different, but it was no less heavy on his heart. “And now?”
“And now,” Alaric said - and stopped. He lowered his eyes, and then looked up at Maredd through his dark eyelashes. “And now I wonder, night after night, if you’d prefer a consort who came to you without guile. Somebody from your own people - somebody hale - I won't hold it against you. I’ll still make sure people know the truth of you and your country, Maredd, even if you don't... But sometimes I see you watching, and I wonder -”
“Ask me,” Maredd said, through a suddenly dry throat. “Alaric. My husband. Ask me.”
Alaric stepped forward. “Am I what you wanted, my lord?”
“Yes,” Maredd growled.
He lunged forward, unwilling to wait a moment more, and swept his husband up in his arms. Alaric’s crutch clattered on the stones, and he leaned down to snatch it.
Ergyll, sounding her amusement and approval in his mind, stretched out her foreleg for them, and he swung them both into the saddle.
“Maredd,” Alaric said, melting against Maredd with not a shred of fear, “how high can we go?”
“Let’s show him, Ergyll,” Maredd said - and she launched them into the sky.