Chapter 165 First Kiss

Held fast in his arms — having first affirmed her Grand Strategy of the Realms, and then put to her a question with only two doors out of it.

There was no fleeing this one and no muddling it. Lora could only blink her eyes and say:

"You guess!"

Guess? Whichever she named, he would say wrong — and then there would be no more to the story, wouldn't there?

Leon did not walk into her trap. One hand cradled the back of her head and brought her near enough to touch, and he smiled out of half his face:

"Since we two are fated for each other this life, and I hold the memory of four years to come — then from now on... you will be taking my word."

"I've got twelve hundred years of memory myself. What do I want with taking yours?"

Lora's willow-brows shot up in a fine arch, and she gave a good loud sniff at him.

Half a year in his company — say rather than that she trusted Leon's character, that she trusted a reborn man not to waste his days on needless suspicion and fear.

He had known she would not knuckle under meekly. But Leon had his answer all the same. He swallowed, quiet as could be:

Twelve hundred years? Counting forward he knew nothing; counting back — that ran clean to the age of the petty kings, before ever the first empire stood... Think of it: a man suddenly become Prince Harwin of the old kingdoms — could he have beaten down his elder brother and taken old King Huel's throne?

Come what was come, then make the best of it. He gathered his wits back in and put on a calm front:

"I'm the husband, after all — a man must be allowed some face... Very well then: small matters yours, big matters mine."

He had been burning, truly, to ask what the Empire would come to — and out of his mouth had come a seminar on standing in the household. Could it be that four against twelve hundred had his conscience wilting?

"Done!"

Lora's assent came brisk this time. Had she not still been held in Leon's arms, she would have clapped her hands, to show how light she felt:

"From this day forward, whatever falls inside my power to decide shall by definition be no big matter."

"Good — we have a meeting of minds. And today I mean to do a big matter."

"What big—"

The question was half out of her mouth when Leon leaned in and touched her lips. Half an instant's hesitation — then no more asking of leave: he kissed her, and kissed her hard. In the space of a breath the sky went dark and the earth tilted; two hearts floated loose in the air, as if only by holding fast to each other could either keep from sailing off on the clouds.

How long it was, no one could say. At last he gave her lips one more soft kiss, and looked at her — her eyes still shut fast — with a smile as gentle as warm water:

"What are you thinking?"

First kiss of either lifetime, and Lora's mind at last came back into her head. Her eyes opened and her fist went straight to Leon's chest, in high dudgeon:

"You fouled! That was a small matter, mine to decide — what business had you deciding it for me?"

"Oh? A small matter? Then how come you're blushing? Plainly it was a very big matter. And besides..."

He caught her fist, smiling into her with eyes that meant to see clean through her:

"Matters are for doing. Not for deciding."

Ah! Just as she'd been told: the day a courtship's made official, a woman's standing drops on the instant... My besties did not lie to me.

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Tipping her face up: the autumn sun came through the window-lattice onto half his face, and every pore of him glowed soft gold — but his eyes under that sun were an autumn night's stars, drawing her down and down into them.

This was the man whose hand she would hold in this life.

You jerk, being this handsome...

A lightness she had not known since crossing over settled all through Lora. The window-paper between them — pierced at last; speech and deed would come easy now, and no more endless sounding and riddling, one at the other.

"Twelve hundred years on — what did the Empire become?"

"In less than eighty years, the Empire falls. As after the Loenbergs came the Aurelians, and after the Aurelians the Marcher Wars and the petty crowns, it went on through the new kingdoms, the horse-lords, the restored crowns, the commonwealths — and so at last to the Europe of my own day."

Leon went silent.

Realms succeed realms — he had read the histories whole, and knew the pattern for law. But to hear the Empire's own allotment of years suddenly capped with a number — it caught him unbraced. He murmured:

"Europe? A nation of the Heartlands, then?"

"No — the Heartlands are one corner of it: a dozen wealthy, civilized, mighty nations and more upon these same lands and past the western sea — and mine the island realm of them all: the England I come from."

"So... I am your forefather. And you still dare make me take your word?"

Eh? How had it circled back round to that? The two stared at each other — and Lora all at once went off into giggles:

"Where I come from, the economic base determines the superstructure. Whoever holds the money makes the rules — and I'm richer than you. So you'll be taking my word!"

Happy, all at once, past all containing.

And Leon — his husband's-rights ranking just upgraded — was hardly going to stand by while she gloated on her lonesome. He bent his head and kissed her again.

While the two of them billed and cooed at the Baron of Charnwood's residence, the Odenheim mansion broke suddenly into an uproar.

"Chandler — run for the house physician! Joss — still standing there for what? Down to the ice well and bring up ice!"

The Countess had called Coltrain home and made him the new steward. A little slow in his legs he might still be — but every word out of him did the work of two.

Word ran inside, and the Countess came hurrying over:

"Brendan's ridden horses ten years. Ten good years — and now he falls off one? Carl, go fetch the army physician from the camp as well, and give your father word on the way."

"Mother — don't scold Brendan. We were saddling up; I was the one who made a race of it."

Carl threw the words back over his shoulder as he made for the door.

"Mother, it was my own carelessness... ow! Mother, it hurts!"

Seeing the pages all thumbs and elbows, the Countess called Mallow and Briar forward to help:

"You child — never one hour's peace, from the cradle on. That time you took Carl off to poke a hornets' nest — and hid yourself, and let the child take the stings, a head full of lumps! Your father flogged you for it, and you ran away from home..."

"Oh, Mother — old, old history, that. This time it's my bone that's broken; Carl's perfectly sound, not a thing wrong with him."

"None of your 'broken bone' talk... Physician Zachary's come — quick, see to Brendan. Where's the hurt? How bad is it?"

Physician Zachary set down his medicine chest and felt, hand over hand, along Brendan's back and legs, where the cries of pain ran.

Wherever the hand went, Brendan hollered. The physician wiped the cold start of sweat off his own brow:

"Madam: no gross break, no displacement, that I can find. Pain of this degree — there may be some fine hairline crack, past my fingers' finding. Best wait for the army physician."

The army physician came and felt, and said the same — nothing to find from the outside. A prescription to stir the blood, scatter the bruising, and speed the bone's knitting; quiet, rest, and little moving about.

These two days, the Eastern Capital's own precincts — every soldier but the Odenheim household troops — had passed into Marquess Legard's keeping; and tomorrow the General went up to the capital for his rotation report.

The second, the third, the fourth, the fifth — all four were to follow their father up. Barring surprises, the third would stay on in the capital; the other three would go along to Thornford for the year's change of station.

And then, on the very eve of setting out, Brendan goes and breaks himself. The Count could curse twice over it, and there his remedies ended.

So it was settled: Brendan would stay in Lohenheim and mend — and mind the mansion's outer court into the bargain, keeping an eye on grandmother, mother, and Lora.

Of the household troops, five hundred went with Alvin; three hundred Grey Wolf guards stayed to watch the Odenheim mansion; the remaining two thousand two hundred marched for Thornford.

With no Odenheim contingent left in the Lohenheim garrison, Brendan had nowhere to billet. The year would have to be an idle one for him.

And Brendan had gotten exactly his heart's desire.

Coming home from Augustburg, he walked in on two gifts from his sister set out on the table.

One was a Grey Wolf saber. The other was wrapped in a little scent-pouch — opened, it held a note and twenty gold beads. Ten of them were the very ones he had given his sister; the other ten bore a somewhat different patterning.

The note read:

Brendan of mine: never pass over a good deed for being small, nor do an evil one for being small. The Salts are no true friends to the Odenheims — do not lose yourself among them. The gold beads are returned to you; see them returned in turn to their right owner.

The fourth brother had a touch of the sulks over it. However had she guessed the beads came from the Salts?

He swept all the gold beads into his pocket, never once glanced at the saber on the table, put his foot out the door, and took to the streets.

Back at the mansion that evening, he was in rare good humor.

The gold beads stayed unreturned — and he had found himself a notion for staying on in the Eastern Capital.