A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 32

Wow, this is it! I have managed to post the whole novel up here. It has been so great, and I have had wonderful encouraging feedback and support. I'm equally flattered by the comments which helpfully told me what I need to do to improve my writing, as well as kind comments telling me how much you enjoy it. I know people wouldn't take the trouble unless they thought I was doing something right.

I will miss all you readers, whether you posted, voted or just came on to find out how the story is unfolding. It's been the best thing - to share this world I invented, and find out there are people who enjoy reading about it. Thank you all so much. :heart:

*****

Vadya woke to find Tashka's intense blue stare looking across the pillows at him. He reached out to put a sleepy hand round the back of her head and they smiled. Batren coughed behind Vadya. He rolled over to take Tashka's coffee and pass it to her. He put his on the floor by the bed and snuggled back down into the crisp cotton sheets. Five more minutes and then he would drink it.

When he woke up again Tashka was gone. Batren was still moving about their huge square room. The long blue velvet curtains were pulled back, sunshine poured over the comfortable armchairs by the fire, the glass-fronted bookcases by the door, the stands of their weapons and mail. Vadya watched Batren picking up the clothes he had thrown on the floor the previous night and laying out their uniforms and the towels for their morning baths. He looked at his coffee. It was cold and there was a skin on it.

"Batren," he moaned feebly.

"Certainly my Lord," Batren said crossly, limping off to call for more coffee for him.

Vadya lay staring at the paintings on the walls, waiting for his coffee.

Tashka commissioned the huge sunny painting of sailing boats along the coast from someone she found in Port Ithilien, whom she recommended to Vadya to take under his patronage. She let Vadya choose the colours for the walls and curtains to set off the painting. She never complained, even when he had the room painted three times and they had to sleep in his Commander's tent while it dried. (Batren complained a lot about it.)

Vadya had begun to look round the other rooms in the wing they lived in with his father and consider whether he might commission some more enjoyable paintings to replace the large and imposing portraits of previous van H'lases which currently dominated the reception and sitting rooms. Perhaps he would replace all the furniture too. And have some sort of veranda so they could go outside and feel whatever it was the weather was like and experience the world each day.

Angels! he could probably afford to rebuild the whole castle. The Lord General had once said that his Lady wife could have double pay if she came up to the strategic staff out of the field and she held him to his word. That was an enormous sum of money when you had a General's salary. She also received a vast income from duties levied for passage through the lands she had as a marriage settlement: the Maier Pass. And if he took his eye off her for ten minutes she would sneak off down to the scummy taverns near the port, dragging along some poor junior to watch her back while she won additional eye-watering sums of money in card-playing hells.

When Vadya reached the armoury, Tashka was finishing off her morning exercises, lifting weights with a sickening bright-eyed air of concentration and sharing jokes with a Captain from First H'las who had been training alongside her. Vadya looked grumpily around the armoury. It was empty apart from them - it was still horribly early. He rubbed his stubbly chin with one slow hand.

Tashka came loping over to him, dragging her right leg, her hips rolling sexily in her loose cotton training trousers. She grinned at him, jogging on the spot in front of him. He grunted, beginning to jog round the room. She jogged on beside him, cooling down while he warmed up. She did not speak to him, he was always grumpy in the morning. They did some stretches together and she went off to have her bath.

By the time he got back to have his bath she had eaten a large breakfast and gone off to her offices where she and her strategic staff would be working on the troops' dispositions for autumn: reading and assessing reports, requests for arms, men, supplies; designing the strategies that would organise the movement of troops across the land in perfect distribution. His father had persuaded her to write a book collecting some of her battle strategies together, she might work on that but she hated it.

Most of her work was too secret for her to discuss with Vadya but he had seen her working on her book. She sat at her desk with the draped red silk banners of defeated Sietter troops and one Vilandian banner behind her, staring out of the window. She picked her nose, flicked a screwed up ball of paper at Imp or at an officer passing in the corridor and said: "so the right wing goes to the left and becomes the foot of the tiger." The Lieutenant set to clerk for her that day would solemnly write this nonsense down and Vadya, who had seen the Maien tiger in action and knew what she meant, laughed till she threw him out.

Tashka kept Imp in her offices. She banned him from their bedroom because early in their marriage he bit Vadya in the leg. Tashka had been trying to wrestle Vadya's uniform off him and get him to come to bed with her instead of going to take an inspection parade. He was on the verge of giving in when Imp bit him and after that he sulked and insisted on taking the parade so she said Imp must stand on station for the rest of his life. Imp liked her offices. The staff officers spoiled him with chocolates and bones, junior officers were very willing to trot around the gardens or the port town walking General-Lord el Maien's special pet dog and there was always the chance that a raw baby Lieutenant would be sent to Tashka with some message, who could be teased with a pretend growl.

Vadya went down to the Sixth H'las encampment and dealt with all the disasters that had happened in the night, wrote up some paperwork and dreamt up a practice attack on First H'las.

This summer Sixth H'las had not been sent out on manoeuvres. In a rare personal appeal, his father asked the strategic staff to keep Sixth in the port area because he said he wanted some family time with his son and daughter by marriage after the war. Vadya was glad. It was fun being home for the summer. There were the sailing races to take part in and Vadya had not been contemplating with any pleasure a long traipse without Tashka off to Soomara or the H'velst mountains.

The Sixth H'las soldiers had a standing invitation to the First H'las and strategic staff dining hall. Vadya went up there at lunchtime with his officers and met his father and had lunch with him. He saw Tashka but she was sitting at a table some way away with Commander Stanies. Vadya grinned when he saw Stanies, thinking about the practice attack he and his officers were planning.

"I have been to a very boring council meeting," his father was grumbling, shovelling forkfuls of choice pork cutlet through his neat beard into his mouth.

"Oh yes," Vadya was not really listening, he was thinking about the practice attack but he kept a bit of attention on his father in case it had actually been an important meeting which his father would dismiss as 'that political rubbish'.

"They had the cheek to put the question of the succession on the agenda," his father said.

Vadya choked on a potato, lifting brown eyes to glare at his father in mute indignation. His father looked hopefully back at him.

"Papa!" Vadya looked nervously round but his Captains had gone off to sit with some other Captains, there was nobody near them. He said: "We have told you! I would like to have children but Tashka says I should stay with my career a bit longer. Give me one more summer in the troop, Angels' sake! Next year Tashka and I will think seriously about it, I have given my word and you may hold me to it."

His father grunted and looked back at his cutlet in a disappointed way. Commander Stanies' daughters had given him three bouncing grandchildren, Lord Esha was envious and the regional council were starting to annoy him about the matter, pointing out that having all three members of the family in the military put the succession at considerable risk. They had become additionally anxious because Tashka had gone and thrown her glove at some idiot who made a drunken comment about how they missed Clair's lovely eyes in the staff officers' mess nearly as much as they missed his management of the lines of supply, although he had of course immediately offered her an abject apology. This was the real reason his father asked for Vadya to be kept home that summer. He was hoping Tashka would be negligent for once, although considering how well he knew and admired the absolute precision with which she managed his army, he must be getting desperate to rely on such a vain hope.

After lunch Vadya's Captains wanted him to come and sort out disciplines for the soldiers who had committed silly faults but he made an evasive excuse, pushing it off on Basra, and sneaked off to have a nap with Tashka.

She was sitting on their bed, Batren tugging off her boots, and complaining about how she had taken Batren's advice and bet on a dog in a race that morning which had come last. "I saw it all," she grumbled. By some unspecified underhand means (probably involving high play at cards), she had secured an office which overlooked the dog tracks. "The bitch clearly had some foul disease, it ran like a three-legged toad."

"I cannot understand," Batren said apologetically. "Her parentage and previous record are immaculate."

Tashka unbuttoned her double-breasted heavy cotton summer tunic and handed it to Batren to hang up over a chair. Vadya sat down by her to drag off his boots and tunic, he chucked them on the floor, took his lucky filigree button out of his pocket and put it carefully on his bedside table beside a watercolour sketch of himself and Tashka and his father fishing in the harbour, a picture of his mother and a group of small cheap gold-sequined ornaments she had bought for him years ago in P'shan.

On Tashka's table there was a Hyaline sketch of Clair, Arianna, Hanyan and Arkyllan enjoying a picnic in their orchard, a set of Sietter Lieutenants' buttons in a glass case and Vadya pretended he did not know of it that in her drawer she kept an elaborate gold earring with the el V'lair insignia in it - together with some bloodstained bits of paper that had a letter and some scribbles outlining a battle strategy. He understood that the earring was not in fond memory of el V'lair but a sort of trophy.

He climbed between the sheets in his shirt and breeches. Tashka climbed in beside him, pulled the sheet over them, put her head on his shoulder and was asleep as if she had been dropped like a stone in a well. Vadya sighed. He had wanted to tell her about the practice attack he was planning and his father going on about the succession - again. Alternatively they might have made love, that would have been better fun.

He looked affectionately at her tanned face on his shoulder, putting one hand up to cradle her head in his big fingers. Her long black lashes lay on her lean cheeks, her rose-petal lips were parted a crack. She breathed lightly in the enclosing circle of his arm, lying with her arm flung across his chest and one knee between his knees.

Vadya looked drowsily round as Batren picked up his tunic, hung it in the wardrobe, drew the curtains and left the room.

When he woke up, he pulled her closer without thinking about it and so she woke up too, looking at him hazily at first and then with a focussed grin. He put his head out for her kiss and she licked his lip, making him giggle.

"What is it you are about this afternoon?" she asked, stretching her muscular long body out beside him.

"I ought to get the Lieutenants together for a lesson on manoeuvres I suppose," he said. "I have made Basra do all the disciplines, tee hee! Oh! I have this excellent idea for a practice attack on First."

When he had explained it to her, she laughed and said: "Stanies will be furious."

"Will you not come and help me with the Lieutenants' lesson?" he asked. "They are always on at me to use my influence with General-Lord el Maien to explain the Maien star to them."

"What?! You are jesting with me! Come and teach your scummy Lieutenants," she said in disgust. "What a cheek, too, do you tell me they are hoping you will seduce your senior officer into showing them preference?" She bent her head to his with a snigger and they had a long and giggly kiss. "If you want to seduce me, you had better do it for something much more fun than giving your Lieutenants a lesson in strategy. Tell them to come to the lectures like all the other Lieutenants. I am going to practice my rapier-work!" Her eyes gleamed in the dim light of their room.

"You are already renowned as the finest rapier-swordsman in Trossia," he protested. "You do not need the practice and surely they do need the lesson."

"Yes but I enjoy it," she said. "Come and practice with me, forget the baby Lieutenants."

"This is no way to encourage your junior officers!" he teased.

She turned her head and grinned at him. "I am the General," she said, puffing her cheeks out and pretending to be very fat. "I can do as I like!"

"Yes sir!" he said.

"And what I like," she added, "is kissing!" She seized his chin and pushed his head back, pressing kisses into his neck and chin and all over his face while he laughed and tried to catch her head and pull her in to his mouth.

They heard the door opening and Batren coming in and they pulled apart, out of mercy for him. He was always deeply embarrassed if he caught them kissing and cuddling. Batren went over to the wardrobe. Tashka sprang out of bed to continue an argument she was having with him about a suit she wanted made. "Cloth all of silver!" Batren said indignantly. "That is a girl's cloth!"

He and Tashka got down to the serious business of what she might wear that afternoon. While they were deciding on green hose and a white shirt (but not one with lace, the day I think I will be quite plain, with an high collar, and I will wear that earring which is just a plain gold rod hanging from my ear), Vadya managed to sneak on a tatty pair of breeches and his buckskin jacket. He had already managed to get one boot on by the time Batren had found the exact earring Tashka wanted so he got away with the breeches but Tashka said she wanted the jacket. They had a wrestling match over it and Tashka won, to Batren's great disgust. He hated the buckskin jacket, he thought they both looked vile in it. Vadya thought it made him look raffish and handsome, it made him feel like a lone forester striding in the woods. He thought Tashka looked adorable in it. It was too big so it made her look as if she were playing at dressing up. She would have been revolted if he had told her so, he let her think she looked like a lone forester too.

He walked down to the armoury with her and watched her start her practice duel. She was fighting with a visiting officer on leave from Seventh Soomara. He had a reputation and she was looking forward to it. Vadya was glad to see Captain-Sir Levair give her a challenging fight. She rarely got an opportunity to properly test her skills and this would put her in a good mood. Since she had to take it off for the duel, she let him have the jacket back so he was pleased too.

In the evening they went to the First H'las party but they left it early. They liked to get to bed early then Tashka could wake up early and Vadya could have a good lie in. When they got to their room it was all laid ready but Batren never hung round in the evenings.

Vadya was humming to himself but Tashka was grumpy. She strolled about in front of the cold fireplace, undoing her shirt buttons. Then she stood over the hearth, glaring into the room, her hands on her hips and her soft heavy silk shirt hanging open so her bodice showed underneath it. She had got on a black bodice embroidered with hunting scenes in red thread, Vadya cast it an appreciative glance as he went to put his lucky filigree button on the mantelpiece beside a clutch of pink and gold cards inviting them to go all over Trossia witnessing the bestowal of friends on other friends by their families.

Anata Yrai's bestowal on Hanya el Jien had been nicely timed for the winter sports in the H'velst mountains. They would be able to take a holiday there with his cousins and then come back down to Port Ithilien to see Hanya Lein bestowed on Dar Vaie. Tashka had invited her old friends the Angels - and of course Pava el Jien and Clair - to come and stay in Castle H'las for a few days beforehand. They were planning to have a splendid officers' party on board his caravel sailing down to Port Ithilien although Tashka said Vadya would still have to pay for the provisions even if he did not manage to win the caravel back from her before the party.

Vadya pulled his purple velvet jacket off and his grey silk shirt over his head, letting them drop on the floor. "I had a nice chat with Dame Lisette Piria," he said.

"Yes, I noticed," Tashka said coldly. "You danced three dances with her."

"We were talking about Hyaline's pottery," Vadya said, sitting down to tug his boots off. "She said ..." suddenly he lifted his head and looked up at Tashka.

She pouted grumpily at him, her rose-petal lip pushed out and her slanted blue eyes narrowed up in that killing glare. Vadya sniggered.

"You are jealous!" he exclaimed gleefully.

"No, I am not!" she protested.

"Angel of Charity!" he said joyfully. "You are jealous of me! Sweet Heaven! Look at you: the prettiest officer in the whole H'las army, the youngest General ever to be made, the best rapier-swordsman in Trossia and you are jealous of me! I never thought to see it."

"I am not jealous of you," she scoffed.

"And you are the one who danced with Levair's chicken!" he laughed. "His reputation as a rapier-swordsman is not more notorious than hers for a pink-fingered flirt! I am the one who should be jealous."

Tashka looked sideways at him in a flash of amused blue. "She asked me," she said.

"You might have refused. Levair was fish-eyed when he saw her dancing with you!"

"I may be a woman," she responded haughtily, "but I can still be a man of honour, is it not? You would not refuse a lady who asked you to dance with her."

He grinned but she was still sulky. She flicked her mouth with one scarred finger and said: "Why should you dance three whole dances with one skinny cow?"

"We were talking," he said patiently. "Darling, you are truly jealous? Surely you do not doubt me!"

"No-o," she said, "but I should like to dance with you."

"Neither of us can dance the woman's steps," he pointed out.

She pouted again and walked off round the room, her hands linked behind her back, her right leg trailing behind her. When she came back to the hearth, he got up and put his arms around her, taking one of her hands up in his.

"So dance with me," he said. "I will sing and you may dance with me. You can teach me the men's dances you do with Clair."

She took her hand out of his and grasped him round the chest, pulling him against her body. "Dancing is boring," she said and tucked her hands into the waistband of his unbuttoned hose, pushing them down to squeeze his buttocks.

Vadya grunted and grinned, his hands clasped loosely on her round shoulder-bones under her soft silk shirt. She looked at him sidelong out of those gorgeous slanted dark blue eyes, through her long lashes. As it had always been, since the first day she appeared before him to give him that lingering look, he felt a warm thrill in his loins.