A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 10

Copyright © 2015 Naoko Smith

My dear reader,

I've been posting these chapters in the hopes of some feedback. I've had very few comments, votes or even anonymous messages via the feedback form. (I am extremely grateful to one person who let me know that the way I use the names in this novel is confusing so I should do some work on that.) The number of views on recent chapters has dramatically dropped, making me wonder if this story is maybe too old-fashioned? I did start writing it a long time ago, when FemDoms and women warriors were rare and wonderful beings, maybe it's not such a big deal today.

If you managed to get as far as this chapter, you are a serious fan, and I owe you something for that. I'm going to post a couple more chapters so you get a little bit of closure on this bit of the story, then I'm going to edit the novel some more and come back and re-post it later on. Please please, if you have any suggestions I should take on board, please let me know. I do have the whole novel written up, and you may have a pdf copy of it all for free if you can't bear to wait while I tidy it up and repost the earlier chapters. Just drop me an email with your address; I love to think people are reading my stories so I will be very glad to hear from you.

Thank you so much for staying with the story. I'm determined to write it up better - for you. :heart:

Vadya found Pava in the inner courtyard. He was dozing on a rug and some cushions, in the flickering light shade of a pear tree. Two cats had curled up beside him. He had a romantic novel loosely held in his long hand.

"Which is my room," Vadya asked the footman who had been showing him to a bath.

He walked past the nodding flowers around the mossy fountain and jabbed Pava in the ribs with the dusty toe of his boot.

"Ow!" Pava groaned but he did not bother to open his eyes.

"Get up!" Vadya said angrily.

"Dearest Vadya, let me be," Pava said lazily, opening his sleepy green eyes and smiling up at the glowering Commander above him. "I promise not to tell anyone slepts't in the same bed as Tashka at the Ship Inn."

Vadya went hot and then cold at this reminder of an occasion when in a drunken stupor he might have kissed his junior officer, not realising she was a woman and that very member of the high nobility whose hand he was going to have to ask for in marriage. "Holy Angels!" he hissed. "Get up, traitor! Snake! Pink-fingered scum!"

Pava sat up at this, raising his eyebrows. "I prithou pardon me," he said. "Of course I would not tell. On any road I made sure I slept in the room too so no one could say ..."

"Will you get up?" Vadya hissed at him, seizing the beautiful bird-embroidered silk of Pava's shoulder and hauling him to his feet. Pava swayed and stood, running his fingers through his longish fair hair. He made a deprecating grimace, attempting to look into the brown eyes of the big-shouldered Commander in front of him. Vadya's hair was dusty, his eyes glowered past dirt-lines on his face. There was blood on his kerchief where it hung out of his sleeve.

"Is ... is Tashka alright?" Pava asked anxiously.

"I am sure he will live!" Vadya snarled. "That pretty-eyed lying ... thing! Put up your fists."

"Vadya, come come," Pava said with an idle grin. "Ar't surely not going to beat me for faults as if I were a common trooper in Sixth H'las."

"It is you I can give thanks to for my betrothed, puh," Vadya spat neatly into the flowers, "in my troop. Come on, skinny-shanks."

"Really," Pava said in an annoyed tone of voice, casting a quick look down at his calves (which he was proud of). "It is hardly my making that he has been betrothed to you or that he is how he is. What is it ar't so cross about? There are worse people mights't have been asked to take, was't a mad fool to get into Maive's bed and lucky the el Statens did not rush to pin you for it. Loves't Tashka well, is it not?"

"What in Hell are you talking of?" Vadya shouted. "He is my junior officer! Hell and the Angels of Hell, what kind of commanding officer do you think I .... el Jien, you are a butterfly-wits! He is no woman, that the sworn Lord of a region could consider as a Lady wife. You of all people should understand, you were betrothed to him yourself! How did you like it?"

A look of absolute disdain crossed Pava's face. "Tashka was my baby Lieutenant," he said in an unusually cold voice, his hand slipping negligently to the gloves in his belt. "There was no question that I could ever have walked the little lamb to the altar. I knew him as a scrawny kid and he slept years in my tent on the summer manoeuvres, his honour mine to give the glove for. Even my parents came to understand that there would be no securing the succession with someone whose honour was under my eye even more than is my sister's. But although he is your junior, darling Vadya, he was not a baby under your command. Does't not love him in the way I do."

"And how do you think I love him?!" Vadya cried. "I am no man-lover and look at him! Anyone who marries him will have a guard-house to an home, he might embroider me a sword-belt but he is more likely to throw 's glove in my face if I ask for it! That creature. What kind of Lady wife would he make? I can just picture him giving me ten days on station for coming in the house with muddy boots, oh yes!" Pava laughed but Vadya threw such a savage look at him, strung with angry tears, that he bit the laugh back in his throat. He looked into Vadya's dusty angry brown face with his green eyes puzzled. "Bloody Angel of Baya!" Vadya snarled tearfully. "I would have done my best by any pleasant woman, were she stupid or ugly, and I am to be thrown into the arms of that creature, my own junior officer! Sweet Hell, he has even defended my honour, mine, on Lieutenant-Sir Vaian's body!"

"Come Vadya," Pava interrupted, trying to put a hand on Vadya's arm but Vadya shook it off. "What is all this nonsense? Woulds't fight with any silly woman who tried to tell you not wear your sweet old dirty boots in your own house ..."

"Well but most Ladies care a little about ... about the house, or sewing," Vadya put his big hands up and covered his dusty brown face. "They wear a dress, not the uniform of their husband's troop!"

"Perhaps Tashka will wear a dress for you," Pava suggested in an unconvinced tone of voice.

"What a disgusting idea!" Vadya cried through his fingers.

"My sweetheart," Pava said in a firm voice, attempting now to put his hand on Vadya's shoulder. Vadya shoved his hand off and glowered past the tears and dirt on his face at Pava. "Vadya el Gaiel," Pava said gently. "Stop whining about all these silly things. What does it matter if Tashka is a darling little officer and not interested in the dusting or stitching you some awful garment. What does any thing matter, since loves't him?"

"I? Love that thing!" Vadya repeated in withering tones of scorn.

"Do not deny it," Pava said crossly. "What of how you were together in Paviat?"

"Paviat?" Vadya's round brown eyes widened and he took a nervous step back, looking warily at Pava in the flickering shade of the pear tree.

"Ay," Pava said. "When founds't he was van Sietter and forgave it him. You two held each other so close, never tell me woulds't hold those darlings Captain Basra Inien or Captain Fiotr Araine so close!"

"Oh that," Vadya said in relief. "How stupid you are, el Jien! and it is you I can give thanks to for placing Tashka with me so I am going to beat you thunder and lightning." His face clouded over, he bunched up his fists and flashed a furious glare at Pava.

"Nonsense," Pava said idly, putting his elegant long hand out and regarding the way the lace of his kerchief matched the lace of his cuff with a satisfied air. "Just because Tashka has got round you with his sweet blue eyes and has't some silly prejudice against striking an old snake like van Sietter, do not seek to take it out on poor little me ..."

"Holy Angels!" Vadya exclaimed. "You could talk the birds out of singing! Will you put up your hands?"

"Certainly not," Pava said, pulling out his kerchief and sniffing it aggrievedly.

"Right," Vadya said and let his balled up fist fly into Pava's eye.

"Angels of Hell!" Pava cried, falling back onto his rug. The cats started up and fled into the flowers. "Sweet Hell," he moaned, putting his hand up to his face, a tear of pain trickling down his cheek.

"There," Vadya said with satisfaction. He felt much better, as if his anger and irritation had all collected up in his shoulder and gone down his arm into Pava's eye.

"What will they say when I get to court?" Pava groaned. "Maive will think I have been round some other woman!"

"Well you have," Vadya pointed out.

Pava took his hand from his face and squinted up at Vadya, grimacing with pain. His left eye was screwed up and there was a lump starting to swell on his cheekbone. "Why dids't not make it my body, why my face," he said disconsolately.

"Vain fool," Vadya replied. "It will be gone in a two-three weeks. You can make some story about it and appear an hero. Maive el Vaie does not care for you. She is too good for you. And she is the oldest, she will not put a ring on your finger."

"Go and get Anna," Pava said, gingerly pressing the lump on his face.

"Pooh!" Vadya grinned at him. "Do you need a bandage, poor little wounded soldier?"

"No of course not," Pava said, wiping the tears from his face with his kerchief. "I want a fuss made over me. She is in her room, just there. It is the least cans't do for me."

"Poor little baby," Vadya jeered but he obligingly ran up the stairs and along the veranda towards Lady el Jien's door. Behind him Pava was calling to the servants to bring him ice and special tea and sweets.

Vadya knocked briskly and when a slow warm voice said, "yes?" he opened the door and started to grin in a friendly way at Tashka's sister by marriage then suddenly he felt shy.

She was sitting in a blue and yellow armchair in the middle of a lovely room painted a warm golden yellow and full of colourful painted rugs and curtains and what-not. Her fair head was lifted to him, her round blue eyes limpid. She gave a smile and, tired after the hostilities he had provoked with both Tashka and Pava, he smiled gratefully back and leant in to the room. She was a magnificent beauty and he was unable to prevent himself staring at a ruby and pearl necklace which dangled into the cleavage of a full bosom curving down to a small waist. Then he hurriedly lifted his eyes up to eyes which had become opaque and cold. She looked a perfect Lady in her elegant red silk dress, with that suddenly cold blue look that was like an icy shower of rain after the polite warmth of her smile. The veil in her eyes seemed now only to hint that if you behaved badly to her you would regret finding out what power she in fact deployed behind it. He felt dusty and dirty and as if he might smell.

"Er, I ... can you come to Pava?" he asked awkwardly. "I ... I have hit him in the eye."

"Oh?" she said, as if her husband's guests were always fighting and although it was rather boring she did not care enough to interfere with their simple pleasures. She laid aside the scroll she had been reading. It was covered in complicated sets of triangles and circles. She frowned when she saw him looking at it, even more repressively than when he had looked at her breasts, rolled it up and put it back in its box.

As she rustled down the veranda by his side, so dauntingly magnificent in her red silks with the frown still veiling her eyes, he attempted some politeness by saying how lovely the gardens looked, how pleasant to enjoy them from this open veranda.

"It is cold in winter," she said. "We dislike to come out of our rooms in winter."

"You do not think of enclosing the veranda?" he asked.

"My Lord will not have it," she said in a prim proper voice. "He prefers that each morning we come out into whatever is the weather and so we experience something of the world each day." Vadya was astounded. It had never occurred to him to refuse any improvements in Castle H'las on such-like philosophical grounds. He was impressed too at the way Commander-Lord el Maien seemed to have his Lady wife under his fingers' ends but then he noticed Lady el Jien looking sideways with a mocking laugh lurking in her round blue eyes. "What was it about?" she enquired, "your quarrel with Pava?"

"Er, well," he said as he stood to one side to let her pass down the stairs in front of him. "It was Pava who put Tashka up to me for a Captain's sword."

"Mm, it is so," Lady el Jien said coolly, "but it is Clair brought Tashka up a soldier, musts't black his eye too."

Vadya cast a startled look at the back of her head. The shining fair strands of her elaborately woven elegant hairstyle went gracefully down the stairs in front of him as she swung down, lifting her skirts up but in such a way that nothing but the tips of her red silk slippers showed under the edge of her red silk skirt. You could only imagine the swish of the large round thighs vaguely outlined in her skirts and petticoats, thighs which were probably creamy soft but as powerful as whatever lurked behind the veil in her eyes.

"Your room is next to Tashka's," Lady el Jien said crisply, indicating the ground-floor room with one hand on which sapphire and gold rings sparkled in the sunshine. "There is always hot water available so mays't take your bath as soon as pleases't." The elegant long-fingered hand waved in the direction of the bath-house at the back of the courtyard.

'Phew,' Vadya thought, dismissed as effectively as by any General. 'She is a fine Lady but she makes you feel like a foot-soldier caught in a tavern without leave! el Maien must have a firm hand if he manages to keep it on her reins.'

~#~*~#~

Vadya came into a corridor from the courtyard and hesitated, unsure which way to go. To his left was a half-open door. He was about to turn into it when Pava's voice came from just behind it.

"That's a stinging kiss has't had off your betrothed," Pava quipped. "I never heard before that he enjoyed giving strict discipline!"

Tashka's voice replied grumpily, "shut it, el Jien, or I will make you." Vadya blushed to remember that it was his betrothed whose lip he had split with a glove.

"I have not escaped his favour either!" Pava laughed.

"Puh," Tashka said scornfully. "You are not going to the King's Council for reparations over that bit of bruise round your eye, are you?"

Vadya heard a rustle behind him and turned to see Lady el Jien in the doorway from the courtyard. She was wearing a shimmering gown in green and yellow which significantly enhanced her already considerable beauty. "Lord el Gaiel," she said politely. "I prithou." She indicated a door on the other side to the room where Pava and Tashka were talking and he opened it to a wave of chatter and clattering dishes.

Vadya stepped back to let Lady el Jien through ahead of him, seeing past her a busy chattering crowd in a great hall. Relaxed at the end of the day, the guards and gardeners, maids and men-servants shared a joke or a story about the day's events. They seemed content and well-cared for. He thought of how his father would say you could tell the quality of a person by whether the people who depended on them were happy. He did not think these people were dependent on van Sietter.

"I must apologise," Lady el Jien was saying. "We have had difficulties in the kitchens, the head cook and his assistant have both been taken ill. My Lord el Maien has been obliged to undertake the management of the meal himself and will not be able to join us at high table." She led Vadya up the steps onto the dais at which a long narrow table was set for the high nobility. Pava and Tashka were coming behind them, Vadya made a business out of seating himself so he would not have to look either of them in the faces he had marked.

It made him feel strange to be seated so high above the rest of the dining hall, as if on display. At home he and his father were accustomed to eat in a separate mess with the Generals' strategic staff and First H'las. If there were important guests some of the round tables in the castle's dining hall were specially laid out but there was not this clear distinction between themselves and their serving staff.

"el Gaiel," Pava's idle warm voice came from Laienne el F'lara's other side. "Wills't tell me something of your college for wounded soldiers? I would like to tell my mother of your scheme."

Vadya turned, saying: "Forgive us, Lady Laienne, I hope we will not bore you." She giggled foolishly. He merely smiled patiently in response. She was pretty with her magnolia petal skin and slanted Northern features but such a complete bird-brain that he was actually grateful she was an oldest child and ineligible for his hand. He had made the mistake earlier of complimenting her on her dress and had been obliged to listen to a long and boring account of how it had been made up from cloth given to her by Lord van Sietter and the cut was this and it was difficult to get it done like so and something about having to do the cuffs herself because it was so hard to find anyone decent to embroider cloth for you – like that was the most important matter for an el F'lara van V'ta to consider when they were on the brink of war with his cousins in P'shan. He had only made the courteous remark as a preliminary to trying to talk to her about this problematic hostility. It had rapidly become plain that if peace in the H'velst Mountains depended on her political skills, his cousins were doomed to a long-standing and expensive war.

"A college for wounded soldiers," Lord van Sietter's cold voice said from Vadya's other side. To his irritation, Vadya had been placed not only next to young Lady van V'ta but in the seat of honour on van Sietter's left hand as his prospective son-by-marriage. He felt as if van Sietter was always listening to what he might be letting slip in his conversations although the thin pale Lord hardly looked directly at him at all. "Is that not a substantial cost to your coffers? Do you pay for that from the army budget?"

"We have a fund we have established for training those who are without work," Vadya answered. "My father, the seneschal and the two port councils agreed to provide for my college from that fund."

"What a great expense," van Sietter drawled softly. Vadya looked down the table to his father. Lord van H'las had had the good fortune to be seated on Arianna's right hand. He was turning a besotted smile towards her plump fair beauty and he had not heard what they were talking of. Since there was no guidance from van H'las as to what Vadya should say he spoke the simple truth.

"The training gives the poor income, which they may spend to support their families, we find it helps to keep small trade in the town busier than it would otherwise be," he answered. "I hope too that it will make it easier for trade to return, if there are those already waiting with the skills to work for the merchants."

van Sietter suddenly looked directly at him with more interest than he had previously shown. His cold grey eyes narrowed up. "I see," he said slowly then he added: "I am glad to hear you are confident that the trade will return since that must mean you will allow me to bestow that flower of our family honour, my lovely daughter, on you."

Vadya's eyes widened at this flicking sarcasm. He could not forbear shooting a look down the table at Tashka, who was sitting at the far end beyond Arianna with her cousin Ilya between her and van V'ta. Tashka was wearing a watered grey silk suit which emphasised her dark hair and the blue eyes in her tanned face. It did nothing to display any feminine curves of her body and as usual she had an elaborately decorated set of weaponry swinging in her belt. She just looked like some gorgeous young son of the high nobility who would snap his glove in your face at the least provocation. A frown crumpled Vadya's eyes as he was reminded of the match he was being asked to make.