So instead of having to fight that gorgeous, rapacious harpy over every single possession that wasn’t an article of clothing, with Kordas’s help she had managed to make off with enough valuables to count as a decent legacy.
Kordas had actually done far more than she had in that regard. After her rooms had been packed up—not the furnishings; he’d taken one look at them and said “We’ve got better” and instructed the servants to leave them—he’d taken her around the manor, pointing to this and that, and saying “Your father left you that, right?” and she had just nodded. He had an uncanny eye for small, extremely valuable objects, and they kept well ahead of the new Baron and most especially his wife, snatching up treasure after family treasure before the interlopers even laid eyes on the pieces to know what they were losing.
Then he’d ordered her horse—pony, really, she had only been thirteen at the time—put her up on it, and led the whole cavalcade back to the Gate at the edge of the manor grounds, and through it, straight to the matching Gate here at Valdemar.
She had been in almost as much of a daze at the end of the sweep as the usurper and his wife had been. It was only when she was within sight of the manor of Valdemar that it hit home for her.
She had been saved, literally, by a knight on a shining horse.
She’d managed to be fervently grateful, but the second she laid eyes on her sister, she’d broken down and started crying her eyes out. Isla had taken her to these rooms, let her cry until she couldn’t cry anymore, then put her to bed.
And when she’d awakened, every one of the treasures that had been carried away had been lovingly installed here. Her clothing had been put away in the wardrobe. The family heirlooms Kordas had helped her abscond with were on prominent display in a suite of rooms that was easily a match for the ones her father had occupied. Where, in fact, those treasures were now. If she looked up from contemplating her mead-cup, she could see them all over the room. Here the gleam of the arm of a delicate statue, there the sparkle of gemstones in an ornamented cup, yonder the glint of gilding on the spine of a book. It was all still here, and all hers.
The only things that weren’t still here were all the books on magic. She wasn’t a mage and couldn’t use them, so she had given them to Kordas and Isla.
Now that she thought about it, that moment when she had looked up at the Duke of Valdemar and realized he had come to save her out of the kindness of his heart was probably the moment she had fallen in love with him.
She hadn’t realized that, of course. She’d only been thirteen. All she’d known then was that she worshipped him like a god, and would have done anything he asked of her.
And I still would, she admitted to herself. Then shook her head. She was just ridiculously lucky; she had a sister who loved her, she had a brother-in-law who could not have been more unlike most of the Emperor’s nobles, she was fed and housed in ridiculous comfort and had the freedom to do practically anything she wanted.
And I need to start concentrating on all the good things I have, and not on the things I can’t have.
Good things, like that adorable little filly. A Valdemar Gold! Never in a million years would she have imagined she’d ever own a Gold!
The memory of the darling little beastie being thoroughly cleaned by her dam made Delia smile with incredulous delight. And she’s mine! Which means that rather than sitting here in my cups feeling sorry for myself because my brother-in-law regards me as a sister, I should be thinking of a name for her.
She glanced down at the cup in her hand—one of a set of six she and Kordas had made off with. Something to do with honey or mead? Isla’s mount was “Sundrop,” after Isla’s favorite flower.
I know! she decided, swallowing the last of her drink. Daystar. Star for short. It had a nice sound to it.
And on that positive note, and feeling better just thinking about that lovely creature who was now her very own, she went to bed.
2
“Well, at least this time you don’t stink,” Isla said, as Kordas entered their suite. She was sitting by the fire, and had clearly been prepared to wait as long as it took for him to get back from his errand. “Something to be said for the rain.”
“More to be said for it staying warm until we were just about back inside,” Kordas replied. “Is that a hot toddy?” he added, staring hopefully at a steaming pitcher on the table beside her.
She laughed. “It is. Go strip off and get into the robe I’ve left out for you, and you can have some.”
“Yes, oh most benevolent of mistresses,” he responded, and did as he had been ordered. This did require going up two floors—suites in the towers were made up of vertical sets of rooms rather than horizontal ones, with a staircase going up along one wall—but the prospect of a lovely fire and a cup of spiced and spiked mead was enough to carry him up to the wardrobe floor, where Isla had, indeed, left out a nice warm (and thankfully dry) robe for him. He left his possibly ruined clothing in the proper place; Isla would have given him a piece of her mind about making extra work for the servants if he’d just left it on the floor. Isla was imperious in her own way, but there was nobody Kordas would have rather been ordered around by.
As he padded back down the stairs in bare feet, he saw Isla had already poured two cups and was holding one out to him.
“Are you in need of a bath?” she asked, sitting back down in her chair by the fire. This was diplomacy on her part; she could have leaned over and obviously sniffed him, then given him a Look. Isla was so skilled in projecting her meaning by precise expressions that it was nearly an entire language of its own.
“Thankfully the rain took care of the mess.” He took his seat across from her and sipped at the drink, sighing gratefully. “It was a breech birth and I needed three hands when I had only two; I’m just grateful that Delia turned up and sorted it out. I had no idea the Fetching Gift could be used to maneuver a stubborn foal inside its mother. I gave her the filly afterward.”
“She doesn’t give herself enough credit for how useful her Mind-magic is,” Isla mused. “That was tremendously kind of you, since it’s Arial’s foal.”
“I can’t think of anyone I would trust more with Arial’s foal. She’s more than old enough to learn how to train her own mount from the beginning,” he pointed out, and relaxed into the padded back of his chair, blinking at his wife a little sleepily. “If she’s going to be a Valdemar, even by marriage, she needs to learn every aspect of horsemanship.”
These Imperial manors were meant to be detrimental to their owners. They were supposed to impress upon you how all-powerful the Emperor’s mages were. And their very impracticality was supposed to make you squander resources. You were supposed to look at this gorgeous piece of architecture, realize that nothing you owned would look anything other than shabby within its imposing walls, and spend money you didn’t have to fill all the enchanting empty rooms with suitable furnishings. The more you spent on show, the less you had to spend on anything else. And if you overspent on show, the Emperor could use the fact as proof that you were not fit to be in charge, and replace you with someone else.