Chapter 1420: Welcoming guests(2)

There was something about Yarzat that Merelao could not name, no matter how sharp he honed his thoughts, there was a distinct pulse or air that set the city entirely apart from the rest of the south.

It was not merely the architecture, though new colonnades and limestone monuments worthy of ancient Romelia had sprouted across the districts like white mushrooms after a heavy rain since the last time he came.

Nor was it simply the foreign blood, though the streets had turned into a soup of different mixes.

Along his ride, he had spotted pale Romelian scholars, dark-skinned Azanian merchants leading those tall, sinewy desert steeds that made even a connoisseur of horseflesh stare in envy, and even a few shaggy tribesmen moving on the side of the roads keeping well away from where the carts would roll.

It was neither stone nor flesh. It was something in the very air, it was carried in the posture of the common rabble, that usually either carried coin or plague.

If collective hope had a scent or a shape, it was this that he smelled and saw.

He was certain his lost capital of Vinnacovi had never possessed such an aura. Even through the hazy lens of childhood thirteen winters gone, he could not recall ever feeling that strange, tightening ache in his chest while riding through Kakunian streets. He had rarely left the palace walls as a boy, but he knew Vinnacovi did not smell like this.

Yarzat smelled of tomorrow.

It was a fascinating thing to witness. Perhaps, once he reclaimed his birthright and took his rightful crown, he might dissect the Fox’s methods, copy the machinery, and make his own realm bloom in equal measure.

It would be in need of coin, but with good temperament and counting he could make it.

A dream for kinder times, he checked himself with a cold, interior smile. Iron forged the nails that built granaries, true enough, but for now, they needed the cold iron that split skulls. One did not count the harvest before the field was cleared of weeds.

First came the butchery; second the peace.

Five long months had passed since he last traded barbs with Alpheo.He missed the man....

Merelao thought the king of Yarzat a weasel, a slippery, venomous beast who could wriggle through the tightest political noose, wrap around your neck and tighten against your cord. The Oizenians, the Habadians, the Kakunian princelings... the Five knew Merelao himself had paid dearly to learn just how treacherous the man’s handshakes could be.

Yet despite it all, Merelao found himself genuinely longing for the man’s company. Alpheo was an artist of statecraft, capable of plunging into the darkest depths of strategy one heartbeat and leaping to airy, gossiping wit the next, riding political storms like an agile longship of the sea wretches.

And beneath the shifting alliances lay a singular, refreshing quality: there was an unmistakable honesty in Alpheo’s dishonesty. The man never pretended to be a saint, which made him vastly more trustworthy than most people he knew.

Sebastian led the Kakunian delegation through the towering arched entry of the royal wing, and halted before the massive double doors of the private reception hall. Two guardsmen in plate drew the bolts with a dull thud, hauling the timber inward.

The chamber was bathed in afternoon light. At the far end, stripped of royal robes and wearing only a practical, high-collared doublet of black wool, stood the man himself, in his hand a miniature wooden ship that he took from a wooden stand above sands.

At the scrape of boots on marble, as if he hadn’t already heard the door open, the King looked up. A slow, fox-like grin broke across his sharp face as he regarded his new guest.

’’Merelao!’’ Alpheo called out, tossing the wooden ship onto the sand and striding forward with open arms. "I half-grieved thinking you would not make it in time’’

’’I thought the rainy days would continue, it seems the gods himself sent it right to me, the roads were as dry as summer grass.’’

’’I said it. Gods can witness to it.

There could hardly be a feast without the Bull. Especially since he is half the reason I am going to have a crown on my brow soon’’ He said amiably, as he regarded the rest of the company. He exchanged greeting with each one that he knew from the war, and made pleasantry to those that he did not know. More than once he received compliments about his soldiers, and more than once he waved his hands away as if it were simple air.

As noted before.

The vainest man of them all.

He should have been rightful angry about the man. He had cheated him of his prize after all, if the bastard of the fat prince had been in his hand there would never have been a war....well actually probably not, he thought it likely his uncle would go ahead for the civil war to avenge him.

He was always the emotional type, and a kinslayer beside.

Nonetheless that took little from the fact Alpheo had gone to his back. But once the reason were heard he could hardly blame the man.

People were made for love, and what chance did the duty of a promise held against the warmth of one family?Love was the greatist virtue of man and yet also their greatest tragedy.

In its name people could make wonders out of heavens, and blunders out of hell.

"You look well, Bull," Alpheo murmured, stepping back with that effortless, calculating scrutiny that took in every stitch of velvet.

He did not need the mail for the road was as safe as a nun’s leg.

The king continued "I was glad to hear the lords have been flocking to your banner of late. I began to worry you had forgotten about me."

"As a green lad never forgets his first maiden, so a moneylender never forgets who owes him silver," Merelao countered, his tone smooth as polished glass. "You owe me, Fox."

"Aye, down to the last copper." The King’s grin didn’t shrink a fraction; if anything, it widened splitting his face. "Though I expect you’ll wipe the ledger clean once I help you collect an even fatter debt. Whose head weighs heavier on your scales, mine, or your usurping uncle’s?"

Merelao let the question hang. One had cheated him of a bastard’s head; the other was seeking his head for the sake of said bastard’s arse.

Very similar treachery, very different scale.

"I look forward to settling both accounts in due time," Merelao said, his golden brows arching. "Though I do wonder... will you still be light on your feet when they drop twenty pounds of consecrated gold upon your brow?"

Alpheo caught him in a brief, bone-hard grasp of forearms, his grip unyielding. "It was nearly five-and-twenty. My lady wife took it into her head to encrust the rim with another row of river pearls and cut emeralds." The King gave a rueful shrug. "You know how women are with heirlooms. We argued over the setting until the thing ended up a compromise that thoroughly displeased us both.We’ll have to share a bed and a crown now both."

"Am unfamiliar curse," Merelao chuckled. "It is hard enough to please a king,a king and a queen? Impossible , I say.’’ He cast a searching glance across the sunlit chamber. "Speaking of delicate tempers, where is that cub of yours? I find myself in need of some youthful wit , my mood is far too high. Need be brought down a peg."

"You and I both," Alpheo sighed, rubbing the nape of his neck with sudden weariness. "The boy has grown more elusive than an eel in a bucket. He is out in the royal gardens, no doubt, perched in the canopy of an oak. The lad is half a monkey by the hours he spends up in the branches. Though lately... I have the distinct impression he is nursing a grievance against me."

"Did you take an axe to his favorite pony?" Merelao asked dryly. The notion of the dutiful, soft-spoken prince holding a grudge against his own sire struck him as faintly ridiculous.

"Nothing so merciful," the King replied, throwing up his hands. "He should have been standing at my right hand to greet you. You are half a friend to him, after all."

Merelao’s eyebrow climbed nearly to his hairline. "A friend? I am ten winters his elder, Alpheo, and far too fond of vice to be an example for your heir. Put me in a lake and the wawter will turn black. As I am sure you have noticed"

"Left to me, I would surround him with boys his own age," Alpheo said, stepping back toward the cedar sand-table. "Yet every lordling I shove his way bores him to tears. The only creature outside his own kin he speaks to with any warmth is a half-mute little girl with a pet rabbit.’’ he leaned in to whisper on a smaller not ’’I am half worried if I must state the truth"

"The boy has particular tastes....."

"’and black as well said the raven to the crow,’" Alpheo fired back. ’’You are not know for temperance , my lord’’

Merelao laughed as not to get offense, he was called worse. "Be that as it may, I did not ride leagues merely to trade philosophy, that if I recall well is your Mountain’s specialty? I came for the lists. My lances have gathered dust in the south, and I intend to see if your knights and lord can withstand the horn of the Bull."

"I have no doubt you will make an exquisite butcher of them," Alpheo remarked. "Few men cross lances with you and keep their teeth."

"None that I recall," Merelao agreed, basking in the compliment. Then his eyes flashed with sudden mischief. "And what of you, Your Grace? Will you don your plate and ride? I would gladly settle our old border disputes across the tilt-rail with blunt ash."

Alpheo tapped the scarred hollow where half his left ear had been shorn away in the war. "I have already paid a portion of my face to the gods. And my comeuppance came from a war-lance as well. I should like to keep the rest intact for the portrait painters."

"You have another ear to spare." He noticed.

"For my wife’s sake then, I must decline. A sovereign must maintain some shred of dignity, if only for the bedchamber."

"I am unmarried, so that is lost on me," Merelao sighed, shaking his head in mock pity. For all his strategic brilliance, the King of Yarzat was remarkably reluctant to bleed for sport unless an entire army was on the line.

He still remembered the sight of Alpheo at the Ford, a broken lance-shaft jutting from his visor like a devil’s horn, roaring orders and killing man in great swath.

That, Merelao remembered fondly, was glorious entertainment. He hoped more of that would come. He trusted he would, as something on the back of his mind told him that , on that regard at least,the Fox would never disappoint.

Still, he was bored now, he had to search for something else, for it would be two months before the list and he could hardly kill time away with just wine and food.

He looked outside the windows at the trees.

"You said the boy is nesting in the garden?" Merelao asked, adjusting his velvet cap.

An idea was blooming in his mind.

"Near the willow grove, most likely."

"Then I shall go hunt the monkey down," Merelao said, gesturing toward his entourage. "See that my lords are supplied with your finest vintage, please, we all made long travel to reach here. I’d hate it to be a disappointement to them. When I return, you and I have a great deal of thing to organize, concerning what was, and what we are about to take."

"Go," Alpheo smiled, his dark eyes sharpening with familiar malice that only two devil with the same enemy could share. "I shall have the maps laid out before you shake the leaves from your hair. You’ll have a bastard head in your hands sooner rather than later."