And since at least a third of his mages were busy full time masking the presence of the others, he was as certain as he dared to be that the Emperor had no idea so many had come to him for protection. He glanced up at the tops of the towers overhead. There were lights in the windows of all of them. His mages were hard at work tonight—perhaps. Of course they could also be curled up next to their fires with cats (or dogs, but mages seemed to prefer cats), mulled ale, and a good book.
Cats, mulled ale, and a good book sounded very attractive right now, but his bed sounded even more attractive. At least he’d washed all the muck off. Though if Isla had ordered him a hot bath . . . I wouldn’t turn it down.
The nearest entrance to the stables was the kitchen, which at this hour was dark and fragrant with the scent of the herbs in the cleaning water and a slight yeasty scent of the dough left to rise overnight for the first baking in the morning.
No one slept in the kitchens at Valdemar except, perhaps, the kitchen cats. With a superfluity of rooms, even the lowliest scullion had a little cot of his own tucked away in the warren of servants’ cells next to the kitchen. They were too small to be called rooms, in Kordas’s opinion, but they were private, comfortable, and each contained a proper bed, which was far more than most servants ever got. That had not been something that had been built into the structure. It was an innovation Kordas’s grandfather had made, converting a single large room next to the kitchen into twenty little kitchen servants’ rooms, each one with a door to allow the privacy that servants were so seldom accorded.
Kordas paused just inside the kitchen, next to the banked fire, to drip for a few moments. Cestin wrung out the hems of his robes at the hearth. “If you have no further need of me, my lord—?” he said, making it a question.
Kordas clapped him on the back. “Not tonight. There’s probably cakes in the larder.”
Cestin brightened at that. “I am a bit peckish,” he admitted, and went for a rummage, returning with a napkin full of tea-cakes. “It was a good night’s work, my lord.”
“And a success, thanks to both of you.” He clapped Cestin on the back again, and noticed as he did so that a cold draft was coming from the crack under the kitchen door. The temperature had dropped while they waited, just as he had predicted. Good work on Stafngrimr’s part, getting that mare and her foal up to the stables when he did. Wretched mage-weather! It just might blizzard by morning!
Cestin noticed too. “I believe I will get back to my room and enjoy these in bed with a cup of tea. I fear the weather is turning. Good night, my lord.”
“Good night, my friend,” Kordas responded with a smile.
When Cestin had gone, Delia made no move to leave. Instead she peered through the gloom at her brother-in-law. “Did you really mean that? About giving me the filly?”
“I wouldn’t have said it if I hadn’t meant it. I’d been thinking about it for a while. I might not have if it had been a colt, because I want to put any colts back into the breeding program, but you ought to have a horse you’ve personally trained, and I can’t think of anyone else who deserves one of Arial’s foals more than you do.”
Delia made a little sound he recognized as a sigh of pleasure. “Thank you, brother. This means a lot.”
“It does,” he agreed, with a half smile. “It means a lot of work. And that work will start immediately. You need to get the little one used to you from the beginning, and used to the idea of a little light weight on her back every single day. Not much. Just enough for her to notice, like resting your hand on her back while she moves about. Grim will teach you, and you’ll teach her, and it needs to be every day. There’s nothing like working with a horse from the moment it’s foaled to get an extraordinary mount. What are you going to name her?”
“I don’t know yet,” Delia replied. “I need to think about it. Is she going to be a Gold, like Arial?”
“Definitely. Another Valdemar Gold.” He had plenty of experience in telling what color a horse was going to be even when soaking wet, and the filly was going to be within a shade of Arial’s glorious autumnal color.
“Something about sun, then, maybe,” Delia mused, and stretched. “Well, I’m dry enough now I won’t leave drips all over the hallway. I’m heading for bed and maybe a small cup of mead.”
“I think I’ll be doing the same,” he agreed.
They parted company at the kitchen door, Delia going off to her own suite in a quiet part of the manor, and he to his tower, though before he got there he became aware that his shirtless state was getting uncomfortable as the temperature dropped.
Of course, he could have had all those mages he sheltered do something about keeping the manor warm by magic, but that would be a dead giveaway that he had all those mages. Only the Emperor and the Emperor’s favorite cronies were supposed to have enough mages on hand to do trivial things like keep their dwellings warm or cool.
He draped the damp tunic and shirt over his shoulders, and hurried his slightly squishy steps.
His tower was just off the seldom-used audience chamber, and he sighed with relief as he opened the door to the bottom level and his night-guard saluted him. There was a good fire down here; it had been banked when he’d left for the stables, and it looked like the night-guard had taken it upon himself to build it up again. He saluted back, and began to climb.
* * *
—
Delia was glad to get out of sight of her brother-in-law the Duke, and even gladder to get back to the privacy of her spacious suite—which was not in a tower, something this manor had a superfluity of. She didn’t care for towers, except to occasionally go up one to look at the view. She didn’t like the way they swayed a little in a high wind, she didn’t like the eerie sounds the wind made up there, and she preferred the feeling of being on the ground.
It was not that she didn’t enjoy Kordas’s company. Quite the contrary, she enjoyed it just a little too much. But his generous gift had come perilously close to causing her to crack the mask she always wore around him and her sister.
Every gift he had ever given her was generous, as far as that went. Take this suite, just as a for-instance. Granted, there was no shortage of room in this manor; in fact, she doubted that it was more than half occupied. But still, even by those standards, this was extraordinary.
The first room alone was the size of the suite she’d had as a child. This was the “public” room, the one where she would have brought guests, if she ever had guests. She could have hosted twenty people here with no crowding. It had a fine fireplace, comfortable padded furnishings upholstered in a dark brown leather, and walls lined with bookshelves. There were two windows with cushioned window-seats, and sheepskins scattered over the polished wooden floor. The next rooms were her bedroom, a closet so big her clothing barely took up a quarter of it, a bathing room, and a shielded magic room she never used at all because she wasn’t a mage. Everything matched: gleaming dark wood and shining dark leather, exactly the way she liked it. The bed was big enough for four, and had mage-lights in little cages mounted on the headboard, which had a little bookcase built into it.