A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 19

Thank you so much for the feedback and 'votes of confidence' as I put up the latest chapters, which mark a shift in tone. I was anxious about how that would go down, so I'm very grateful to see you are still enjoying the story. :heart:

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Tashka trailed into Arianna's room and sank into one of the blue and yellow armchairs. She shut her eyes and lay still. Her mind was like a herd of deer, so many thoughts running this way and that, appearing in brief dappled shadows in a sunny wood. Her body lay absolutely still and relaxed in the soft cushions. She felt a touch on her cheek and started up, seizing Arianna's cool hand in a hard grip.

"Prithou pardon," she said, letting Arianna's hand go and sinking back into the cushions. Her blue eyes turned aside while Arianna cleaned her cheek and applied some salve to it.

"Anna," she said mournfully, "Vadya wants to be married the night."

"Ar't sad for that?" Arianna asked in surprise, putting the jar of salve onto a table beside the armchair.

"Oh no," Tashka said carelessly. "It will be nice to be able to lie with him without him fretting about my honour and whatnot. Only, I know not what to wear," her mouth turned petulantly down at the corners. She turned her eyes upwards, trying to smile at herself but Arianna did not laugh at her. "Of course, I never thought I would wear a pink dress, ha ha," Tashka said. She sat up and fiddled with the handguard of her rapier. "I just thought ... I would think of something special but I never did. I mean, of course Vadya does not care. He has the worst sense for clothing I ever saw! Only ... he must marry his officer, who drinks and swears and fights, and Anna, when I had to be betrothed to him, I started to wonder what sort of woman I would have been." She looked nervously at Arianna, who had seen her in a dress.

"Woulds't have been an heartbreaker," Arianna said promptly. "Has't such beautiful eyes, has't a merry witty way with you and a strength of heart to make men swear their lives away. And ar't sexy, there is no denying it." She smiled into Tashka's shyly pleased face.

"Oh well," Tashka said. "I would have liked to be a woman for Vadya, just for one night. But he does not like me to wear a dress. In fact, he forbid it!" she laughed.

"How about a suit made in the style your friend Anata wears?" Arianna answered, looking with a warm love into Tashka's wistful face. "She does not wear dresses but nobody will say she is not a woman."

Tashka thought about her friend's Northern peasant clothes: wide-hipped trousers and little jackets made from fabrics in dashing colours embroidered with animals, birds and flowers. Anata Yrai was a storming P'shan beauty and Pava and Tarra had both rushed to flirt with her, but she had dismissed their attentions with a biting wit. She barely tolerated the advances of the immensely wealthy Hanya el Jien only because he was so shy that he always treated her with extreme courtesy.

"I could still wear my sword!" Tashka said, her eyes brightening, "but Anata is too short, I cannot borrow her things and we will never have time to get me a new suit before the night," her face fell again, she pouted and her eyes glinted with regret. "Perhaps Vadya would let me wear my old Sietter parade silks or there is my brocade suit I suppose but I have lost a button off the breeches."

Arianna got up off the stool she had been sitting on and went over to her door. "If gives't up this easily on the field of battle," she said, "I am amazed ever wons't a name for yourself as a soldier!" She leant out of her door and shouted: "Fiotr, go and beg to come to me the Lady van P'shan, the Lady Sevianne, Dame Anastelle Yrai and Mistress Faffie Velor. Ask Vidor Hyaline to come too. Get Lisette, Ladda and Tisha! Run to it!"

Tashka stood up and stared. Arianna crossed over to a big wardrobe in the corner of her room, opened the doors and pulled out a deep drawer at the bottom of the wardrobe, out of which she began taking bolts of silk cloth.

"Are ... are you going to make me a wedding suit?" Tashka asked, her eyes narrowing nervously up as if she could not bear to believe it.

"It might be difficult to go down to the shops and get you any other wedding present," Arianna answered with a laugh. "So musts't accept this suit instead." She threw a pink silk on the bed, unrolled it and held up the edge of it to Tashka's face. "Oh dear! no, even I can see pink really does nothing for you. But it is more like your luck that I invited Vidor Hyaline and Faffie Velor to our party. Faffie worked at embroidery for the King's robemakers, so you will have a royal edge to your wedding suit. And Vidor has been trying to get Faffie to help him do some stitching but she only laughs at him. That is something to make you smile, my sweetness, is it not? To have a wedding suit designed by Hyaline and embroidered by one of the King's robemakers."

~#~*~#~

Clair got up from the table of food laid out for lunch and looked with a frown out of the sitting-room windows - one of which had had to be covered over with a board. "Where is Tashka?" he said irritably.

"I will go and see," Vadya started for the door, Clair came with him and they passed out of the sitting-room and up the stairs to Arianna's room together. A footman came hurrying down the stairs past them with a tray laden with beautiful bowls slopped with dregs of tea and matching plates covered in cake crumbs.

"What! are they having a tea party while this war crashes about our ears?" Clair said crossly, knocking perfunctorily on Arianna's door and opening it without waiting for her to say he could enter.

He and Vadya stood on the threshold and stared. Arianna's bed was a mess of material: ivory silk, peach silk, pale blue silk. Tangled amongst the lengths of cloth were bits of lacy lingerie that made Vadya's eyes start in their sockets. Two servants, Anata and Sevie were kneeling on the floor cutting out some fawn raw silk cloth. Faffie was sitting in an armchair, embroidering something. Lady van P'shan was sitting in the other armchair dangling snippets of cloth for Arkyll and Hanya to play with.

Arianna was standing by her mirror with Tashka, who was wearing nothing but a flimsy cotton dressing gown over her underwear. Vidor Hyaline was holding bits of lace lingerie up with an intent expression on his face while Tashka said: "No. Angels no! Not red." The two noblemen both narrowed their eyes up at the total lack of sexual interest in the artist's eyes as he dangled pieces of outrageously alluring lace and silk around the body of the woman whose honour was about to be bestowed by the one young man on the other.

"What is all this?" Clair exclaimed. "Tashka, what are you doing? We have been waiting on you!"

Tashka blanched, turning around and striding across the room with the edges of the dressing gown flapping about her body in her utilitarian men's underpants and plain white bodice. "Oh I forgot!" she exclaimed, her face stricken. "My Commander, I prithou pardon me!" She hurriedly seized her breeches and began pulling them on.

"How late is Tashka?" Arianna asked.

"Ten minutes," Clair said.

"Oh is that all," Tashka said in relief. "You are not angry, el Gaiel? It is only ten minutes and I am coming imminently."

"Can you not start without Lord Tashka?" Hyaline inquired politely. "The cut of the suit is such that it is not possible to fit it without him."

"Suit?" Clair repeated, his slanted grey eyes narrowing in annoyance. "What are you doing here?"

"My darling," Arianna laid a hand on his arm, she smiled winningly at him, her warm eyes dancing, "we are making a wedding suit for Tashka."

"What?!" Clair exclaimed. "We are making the strategy to ensure we can start this disgusting war properly, we need Tashka's military mind to do so and you are off making a suit for him to get married in? What in Hell does it matter what he wears when he marries?"

Hyaline looked sideways at Arianna and moved softly off to where the women were lifting their heads from the fawn silk laid out on the floor to look apprehensively at the Lords el Maien and el Gaiel and Lady el Jien.

"Clair, be reasonable," Arianna coaxed. "Let him have a suit to be married in: your own brother. It has been so hard on him, he wants a wedding suit, let us do it, to make you proud."

"I do not need to see him dressed up like a parrot to feel proud of him!" Clair said furiously. "Any man who will not take him as he is is a fool - and can have my glove for it!"

"But it is Tashka," Arianna cooed, pouting her warm red mouth up at him, sweet as a bowl of cherries. "He just wants a little suit, it is a nothing, my dear. Come, my darling, my dear, give us just twenty minutes. Vadya," she turned warm blue eyes suddenly on Vadya, "sweetheart, wills't not deny Tashka twenty minutes so we can fit his suit properly?" She tilted her head down, pouting her mouth up, her eyelashes fluttered and her eyes looked sweetly through them up at him. Vadya was completely confounded by the sudden melting of the elegant Lady el Jien into this flirtatious maiden. He flicked his eyes sideways at the husband who was notorious for leaping into the duel over quite trivial suggestions that her honour might have been compromised, and who had already had his temper tried high that day by revelations about the honour of other members of his family.

"Twenty minutes!" Tashka stood suddenly up, dressed only in breeches and the thin cotton dressing gown. "What is that? If my military mind is so important to you, you can wait twenty minutes for me, is it not?" She flashed a freezing glare into Clair's face.

"How dare you address me like so, who have been a Lieutenant under my Command!" Clair snapped. "If I have any more insubordination of this kind, I will ... um,"

"I am not under your Command the more!" Tashka said furiously. The two el Maiens glowered into each other's slanted eyes then Vadya saw to his extreme consternation that Tashka was going to cry. "So I was your Lieutenant! I am your brother too, is it not? You might let your own brother have a bloody suit to his wedding. Your brother, what am I say-aying! I am not your brother, I am your si-i-ister! I grew up with you a soldier even though I am a woman. Men looked on me with eyes in the troop and I fought them. You tau-aught me not to go with them! When I met the man I love, who is to be my husband, he was my Commander! And he will no-o-ot marry me in my parade silks, he does not wa-a-ant to marry his ju-u-unior offi-, officer and who can blame him? Not you! You would not have married Ha-a-anya in parade silks, would you? with your C-C-Commander's bu-u-uttons. And you damned dog, you are to bestow me! Like I am a thi-i-ing that you are presenting, not as if I were giving myself of my free will!"

Out of the corner of his eye, Vadya was aware of the other women in the room hustling Hyaline out the door with the two little children. He started forward but Clair stepped up and said in a furious hiss: "I think there has been quite enough giving of yourself of your free will! How could you have gone with el V'lair? Exactly the kind of man I tried to protect you from but you had to fling your favours at him like any pink-fingered vixen!"

"I never!" Tashka howled, her furious blue eyes flooded with tears. "H-h-how can you th-th-think it? He t-t-t-took me drunk! I th-thought I would be safe to have a d-d-dinner with him; he is your friend!"

Clair swung suddenly round to the door, his face incandescent with rage. "I'll have his throat for it," he ground out. Tashka caught at his arm, clinging to his arm and sobbing.

"It is a nothing!" she said fiercely through her sobs. "I have dealt with it myself. It, it, it is a nothing for you! Why can you not let me have a bloody suit and give myself freely if I want to."

Vadya stepped up between them and put one arm around Clair's shoulders and the other around Tashka. She took one look at him and then buried her face in his shoulder, sobbing bitterly. He felt her head press into his neck and her tears run cold down his collar.

"el Maien," he said to Clair. "I do understand how you feel about el V'lair but this is not the time. I prithou, let it pass. Afterwards you can fling what you like in his face but for now we need his troop, to protect Tashka as much as the rest of us." He looked into Clair's face until Clair's eyes became more reasonable and Clair nodded curtly then he released Clair's shoulders and turned to his sobbing junior officer. He cupped his hand around her cheek, the only part of her face he could see, she had pushed her face so hard into his shoulder and neck. "Tashka," he said tenderly, "my heart, my betrothed, my love. Have twenty minutes, have your suit, have whatever you like. I beg for your pardon that you must be bestowed on me the night. In return I will bestow the whole of H'las on you, is it a fair exchange?"

She lifted her eyes to him, those exquisitely beautiful slanted blue eyes, with tears hanging off the lovely long lashes. Her rose-petal mouth pouted. "The wh-whole of H'las?" she repeated, he nodded his head with a smile. "Including the structure of the command?" she demanded. He looked confounded then he laughed. "Of course," he said warmly. "All of it. The Generals' strategic staff will be yours, my darling. My father's heart, the Lord General's heart, is already yours and the night you will have mine. You may have sworn allegiance to our fingers but we are wound around yours, you know it."

Tashka gave him a pouting look then freed herself from his arm and strode back across the room, wiping the tears from her eyes with the heel of her scarred hand.

"We will adjourn for one half hour," Vadya said to Arianna, who was standing by biting her lip as if she were trying hard not to laugh.

"Well I will see you then," Tashka said grumpily. "Sir," she added as an afterthought.

"My Lord, I prithou send back my friends," Arianna said in a mockingly prim voice to Clair. He glared at her as she took his and Vadya's arms and walked them to the door. "And Clair," she lowered her voice. "Shall't go to the castle strong-room and take out what has't of your mother's jewellery and send it to me here for Tashka. That jewellery belongs to him and it is time gaves't it to him. Not just the earrings, everything. Cans't use this half hour to consider what lands shall't be giving to Tashka as his marriage settlement, when ar't Lord van Sietter, because shall't not be sending him to H'las empty-handed, is it?" She looked meaningfully into Clair's cross face as she pushed two of the most influential Commanders in the country out of her door. "Hads't best ask Laran draw up the papers now so Vadya knows shall't not play a trick on his father and him and push Tashka off on them with no means to support himself. Tashka is expensive, knowest it well."

Firmly she shut the door behind them.

"Phew!" Vadya said. "We came off the worse in that battle, el Maien!"

Clair suddenly started laughing and clapped him on the back, saying: "You gave up the banner, el Gaiel! You surrendered." They started off down the stairs, grinning at each other. "el Gaiel," Clair said. "You must not give way to Tashka's tears. I know it wrenches the heart when he cries, he has such pretty eyes, but you must not be indulgent and spoil him. You will have insubordination in your home else."

"I never had her tears before," Vadya answered. "I will never be able to resist them, el Maien, but I will not have insubordination in my home for I will obey her in everything."

Clair stopped on the stairs and looked into his smiling warm brown eyes. He took Vadya in his arms and hugged him close. "el Gaiel," he said. "I will give Tashka the Maier Pass when you marry her the night. I will tell Laran to get the lawyers write it for her."

"You will be a fool if you do that!" Vadya exclaimed. "What for will you give such a strategic position to a younger child who will be van H'las, and a General in H'las to boot! even though it will come back to you after she passes."

"What does it matter," Clair answered, "since the finest military mind in our land will be van H'las from the night." He gave a rueful sigh. "There is no strategic position that Tashka cannot take. He may as well have it as a gift, he will be kinder to me if I give it to him than if he takes it from me!"

Vadya laughed and said: "You have loved her and cared for her very close, el Maien. It cannot have been easy guarding her honour in the middle of a troop. You must not blame yourself for it that el V'lair was such a scum as to steal her favours under the cloak of your friendship." He looked warmly into Clair's eyes, pressing his arm.

Clair made a vicious pout with his mouth then a rueful smile. "Tashka has the look of our mam," he said, his slanted grey eyes turning away. "Mam loved me dearly although they made her leave when I was very small. When she sent me Tashka it was like having a piece of her back, I took him straight to my heart." Clair lifted his slanted grey eyes to Vadya and said: "If you can imagine a woman with Tashka's beauty, that was mam." Then he thought about what he had said and they both laughed as they passed on down the stairs and back into the sitting-room.

Clair paused to ask a serving man send his seneschal to him then went into the sitting-room and straight to Tarra el V'lair. Tarra saw him coming and backed up behind the table, saying easily: "No glove, el Maien, I'll not take it from you. I would not give you a glove over my wife and I will not take one over your ... sister."

Clair leant menacingly over the table. "If you think I'd accept a glove for my friendship with your unfortunate wife," he hissed, "you are even less of a friend to my heart than I had supposed. I will have you one day for what you did to my baby brother."

Vadya came over and obliged himself to be a lot more friendly to Tarra than he wanted to be. He put his arm around Tarra's shoulders and brushed his chin with a mock punch, Tarra flinched back. "There," Vadya said with a laugh. "Do you see this scar, el Maien? That is what your brother has done, for the sake of her own honour, is it not, el V'lair?"

Tarra's saturnine face broke into laughter. "That was a merry battle of fists!" he exclaimed. "I knew he was coming for me as soon as I saw him in the bar! I was unlucky, my former brother by marriage Hanya el Farin was there, he would have given me a softer blow. I did not mean the rest of Tenth to start fighting too. I was trying to tell them to stand easy but I could not talk because she broke my jaw so badly!" He laughed out at the thought of it. "And she is not the only one to come after me," he added, looking over at Pava.

Clair turned to glare at Pava, who had been sitting at the table watching them with a glint in his green eyes. Pava gave him a deprecating smile. "Sweetness," he said, "at the time he was my Lieutenant, my honour. It was just after he had killed in a duel so I was not particularly surprised when he did not appear on duty the first day but the second I was worried and went to the town my silly self to seek him out. From what they told me in the tavern I realised he was not being held by el V'lair against his will - as if anyone could do it to that young killer - so I came away and hid it from you that he was not on station and I pretended to the Commander that I had given him some leave because of the duel. He was of age, it was his own sweet business to whom he gave his favours but I knew woulds't not take it quite like that! and that the Commander would fret for it too: such a stain on the honour of a younger child of the el Maiens. Then from something Tashka said, I realised el V'lair had taken him drunk so I rode after el V'lair and offered him a glove," he laughed mockingly at himself. "Luckily for me el V'lair would not take it, he admitted the fault freely and made me a most abject apology. He promised me never to wave Tashka's honour about since he recognised that it would cause Tashka problems and also I pointed out that he would have to face you - a much better dueller than I, if word of what he had done got out. And till now, he never has spoken of it."