Delia didn’t know the story of how Duke Valdemar—Kordas’s great-grandfather—had gotten a mage-built manor as a “gift” from the Emperor, but she knew why it had happened. It was all part of how the Emperor kept control over his nobles. You couldn’t safely refuse his offer to have his mages construct such a place for you, after all. But everything about the enormous piles they would make for you was calculated. It would be the height of luxury, setting you apart from your people immediately. Especially in a relatively poor Duchy like this one. It would also be utterly indefensible, which tended to discourage thoughts of rebellion. And, of course, since the layouts were exactly alike, you could not boast of having a better manor than someone else. The Emperor’s gifts always had many sticky threads attached.
Instead of seeking her bed, she stripped off her cape and draped it over a drying stand, and went to the window. Pressing her hand against the glass to check the temperature outside, she judged that it probably wasn’t going to snow, but it wasn’t going to be warm until whatever had caused the weather fluctuations passed them by. There was always war at the borders of the Empire, but this was the first time to her knowledge that what went on out at the frontier was actually affecting the Empire itself.
And what is the Emperor going to make of that? Probably nothing, as long as it didn’t inconvenience him.
Thinking about the Emperor got her mind off Kordas for a moment, which was a good thing.
It was fine to love your brother-in-law, just don’t be in love with your brother-in-law.
A fact of which she reminded herself on a daily basis.
She turned away from the window and went to the table against the wall where wine and mead waited, poured herself a generous portion of the latter in a pewter cup, and turned to the fire.
She’d left the fire well stoked when she’d gone down to the stables, and it only needed another log put on it. That was just a matter of a moment.
She didn’t bother raising the shades over the mage-lights; the light from the fire was enough.
Cup in hand, fire going well, she slumped down into her favorite high-backed chair on the hearth, pivoted so her legs hung over the right-side arm and and her back was up against the left-side arm, leaned her head against the padded back, and contemplated the ironic comedy that was her life.
The first irony was that Kordas and Isla liked each other very much, were indeed the best of friends, but theirs had been an arranged marriage (as nearly every marriage among the nobility of the Empire was), and they weren’t in love with each other. Not even after three children. And Delia? Delia wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for the fact that she and Isla had no brothers. When their father had died, the Emperor had swooped in, assigned the Baronial title and estates to one of his sycophants, and cut Delia out completely. She’d been lucky to be allowed to take her personal belongings with her when he unceremoniously threw her out.
Could be worse. I could’ve been forced to marry the Emperor’s puppy to cement his position. Fortunately for her, he already had a wife and was disinclined to divorce her or otherwise put her away, in order to marry someone who was in many ways that woman’s inferior. Delia had gotten a good look at her while she was packing; there was no doubt she was beautiful, and probably had been the Emperor’s mistress at some point or other. She was also tall, willowy, graceful, and wealthy in her own right, all things Delia was not. The perfect trophy of a wife, a living display of the Emperor’s favor.
“You’ll be moving out, of course, girl,” the wife had said. She could still hear that distant, dulcet voice in her mind. It hadn’t been more than a moment after she had been introduced to the new Baron of Sterngal and his wife. The wife hadn’t even bothered giving Delia her proper name; she’d just stared down her nose at Delia, and said, “You’ll be moving out, of course, girl,” in tones that suggested Delia should do so on the instant.
Delia had been at her wits’ end. Her father was barely in his tomb by a day, she was still in grief and shock at his sudden passing, and at the very least she had expected that she would be allowed to move to the dowager house or at worst the gatehouse on the grounds. She’d have been perfectly happy in either place. Her needs were few, and she’d still have been home.
But no.
They had shown up out of the blue, parading through the activated Portal with their entire household, which had included enough armed men that she had felt utterly intimidated.
And as she had stood on the steps of what was no longer her own home, wondering what the hell she was going to do, with the Ice Queen glaring down at her from one side, and the Ice Queen’s husband looking everyplace except at Delia, she had been tempted to run inside, flee up the stairs to the highest tower, and fling herself off it in despair to land messy and dead at their feet. Not being one of the Emperor’s mage-built edifices, that tower wasn’t that tall and she wouldn’t have splattered their lovely garments when she hit, but she’d at least have made an inconvenient mess for them to clean up and explain.
And that was when there had been a flurry of trumpets above as the two Heralds announced yet another group approaching the manor. She’d stopped herself—because it might have been the Emperor’s people coming to fetch her to the Capital, and while that was far from ideal, if the Emperor was fetching her, it meant he would probably make sure she wasn’t stripped of everything.
But it hadn’t been the Emperor’s representative.
It had been Kordas.
Riding in on one of his beautiful Valdemar Gold horses for which he was famed—she knew now it had been Arial, the mare she had just helped—and trailed by three empty wagons, he had come trotting up to the steps of Sterngal Manor as if he were the owner, not this trumped-up Emperor’s lapdog. And he didn’t even bother to greet the new owner and his wife; he came down off his horse and went straight to Delia, and embraced her as if he had known her all his life instead of meeting her no more than a handful of times at best. “Delia, my dear, I am so sorry,” he said, as she involuntarily responded to the kindness in his eyes and the warmth of his embrace by burying her face in his tunic with a muffled sob. “I’ve come to take you home to Valdemar, of course,” he continued. “You can’t possibly go anywhere else, I won’t have it.”
Then, and only then, did he look up at the usurper. “Ah, good, you’re here. That’s convenient. See that your servants pack up Delia’s things and load them in the wagons, will you? I’m going to take her up to her rooms so we can make sure that anything breakable is properly protected.”
And just like that, he put his arm around her shoulder and urged her up to her rooms, while the new Baron and his wife stared at them in slack-jawed astonishment.
They’d done what he’d asked too, probably assuming the Emperor had sent him, and not daring to do anything to contradict him. Or, more to the point, to interfere with what Delia said was hers. Which, among other things, were all the items that Isla had left behind when she’d married, and all the books in the library.