“ Well, you wouldn’t,” Thessalina commented sarcastically, the unspoken meaning behind her words clear.
“ You and Father really should treat Jelena better. She is our family, despite both of your efforts to deny the fact,” Magnes said angrily.
“ Oh, not that old song again. It is sooo tiresome!” Thessalina rolled her eyes and heaved an exaggerated sigh.
Magnes could feel the pressure of fury building within him. “You are such a bitch sometimes, Thessalina!” he lashed out.
“ That’s enough!” the duke barked. “Magnes, you will not speak to your sister in that way. She is a lady, and you will treat her with respect!”
“ Sorry,” Magnes muttered grudgingly, but the hard look in his eyes warned of his enduring anger.
“ Now, then. I have some news for you, Magnes,” the duke began. “As you know, we’ll be hosting several of our neighbors at this year’s feast. Duke Leonus of Orveta will be attending. He’ll be bringing his daughter, uh…” the duke massaged his temples in an attempt to coax the girl’s name from his memory.
“ Lowena,” Thessalina supplied.
“ Lowena, yes. The girl just turned sixteen a month ago, and Leonus has made me an offer. He has agreed to a match between you two, as long as agreeable terms can be reached. I have graciously accepted on your behalf. You will be meeting your future bride tonight.”
“ What?” Magnes cried.
“ Oh, no, Father, not Magnes, too! You can’t be serious! I’ve seen that girl. She’s a simpering little twit! You can’t make Magnes marry her, any more than you can force me to marry that toad Artos!”
“ I beg you, Father,” Magnes pleaded. “I’m not ready to marry yet. Let me…”
“ Enough !” the duke bellowed, slamming both hands down hard onto the desk top. “You are both my children, and you will obey! You will marry when I say, and whom I choose! Your wishes have no bearing on the matter. This is business, by the gods!” Both Magnes and his sister stood silent, he with his arms hanging by his sides, she with hers folded tightly across her breasts.
“ Magnes, the deal is as good as done. Our family stands to gain handsomely by joining with Orveta, so you’d better get used to it. As for you , Daughter, Lord Artos hasn’t given me an answer yet. He may not accept my offer. I am sure he has heard the stories of your legendary temper, and he may not wish to take on such a willful wife as you’d be.”
“ I pray that’s so, for his sake,” Thessalina muttered under her breath. The duke acted as if he didn’t hear his daughter’s last comment. He began to gather up the papers he had been working on, stacking them into two neat piles. The room grew very still. A log collapsed in the hearth with a loud pop. The faint sounds of laughter and shouting drifted up from the yard through the high, narrow windows, open now to let in the fresh air.
“ Is there anything else to report?” the duke asked Magnes, not bothering to look up at his son.
“ No, Father. May I go now?”
Teodorus waved his hand in dismissal.
“ I’ll come with you,” Thessalina said.
The joyful mood engendered by his morning’s work had completely dissipated, to be replaced by one of almost unbearable sadness. All of Magnes’s hopes and dreams for a simple life were being consumed, destroyed on the pyre of his father’s ambition. Thessalina followed him out of the study and closed the door behind them.
As Magnes turned towards the staircase, Thessalina reached out and placed her hand on his shoulder. “Magnes, wait,” she said. He turned back to face her. “I’m sorry for what happened just now,” she began. “Despite our different beliefs, you are still my brother, and I love you. Father is thinking only of his purse, not of your happiness, or of mine.”
Magnes sighed. “What are we to do, Thess? Is there no escape?”
“ Well, I’m going to go change out of these clothes. I’m sure I must reek of horse. I was out breaking that new Raks’sh’Am stallion Father bought me last week, when Horsemaster Nolus came up to congratulate me on my upcoming marriage to Lord Artos! Imagine my surprise, since it was the first I’d ever heard of it.”
Magnes laughed. “How do the servants always seem to know things even before we do?” he said.
“ Huh!” Thessalina shrugged her shoulders by way of an answer.
“ I think I’ll go up to the top of the wall awhile, to clear my head,” Magnes said. He had a lot to think about.
“ I’ll see you later, at the feast.” Thessalina turned and headed off toward the staircase leading up to the third level where both she and Magnes had their private quarters. Magnes went down and out of the keep, back across the yard, and up the narrow stairs to the battlements atop Amsara Castle’s curtain wall.
Up here, so high above the earth, peace and quiet reigned. Magnes could look out and see the whole of Amsara, or so it seemed. At the base of the hill upon which the castle stood, the small cluster of houses and workshops that made up Amsara village nestled. Below the village, the fields and orchards began, spread out like a green and brown patchwork quilt. He placed his palms down flat against the rough stone of the wall, and took in great breaths of the sweet spring air, and slowly, slowly, the anger and sorrow roiling his heart began to settle down to a dull ache.
“ Happy Sansa, Cousin,” a familiar voice said, breaking into his reverie. “We always seem to end up in the same place when we need to think.”
Magnes smiled. “It does seem that way. Happy Sansa, Jelena.”
Chapter 3
"By the look on your face, Cousin, I know you need a drink,” Jelena said.
Magnes laughed. “Is it that obvious? What are you doing up here?”
“ The same thing as you. We both of us need a place to hide once in a while.”
“ That we do. Life is so difficult sometimes.”
“ Just sometimes?” Jelena’s voice was sly and teasing.
“ Yes, yes, I know. I, of all people, really have no cause to complain.”
The cousins rested their elbows on the parapet and gazed out over the outer wall, watching the horizon in companionable silence. A hawk screamed overhead, held aloft on rust-brown wings. The spring sunshine bathed the backs of their necks and shoulders with gentle warmth.
Jelena, with her keener vision, spotted the approaching party first. “Look there! Coming up the road,” she cried, pointing to the group of moving specks that soon resolved into a sizable party of both mounted and un-mounted people. The group appeared headed straight for the open gates of the castle.
“ Must be the first of our guests,” Magnes said. He strained to make out the device on the fluttering pennants. “Looks like an azure field, a silver ibex passant with two six-pointed silver stars. That’s Duke Sebastianus Lucien of Veii.”
Veii was Amsara’s immediate neighbor to the south, famed for the quality of the horses bred there, second only to the fabled Raks’sh’Am of the southern deserts.
Magnes nibbled thoughtfully on a fingernail. “You know, Duke Sebastianus was widowed recently,” he said. He turned his head and spat out a nail fragment. “He’s been putting it about that he’s in the market for a replacement wife. The last one failed to give him an heir, even after seven years of marriage.”
Jelena sighed. “Poor woman. He probably had her poisoned to get her out of the way.”
Magnes turned to his cousin with a look of feigned shock. “My dear cousin! Such cynicism, and in one so young!”
Jelena rolled her eyes.
“ For your information,” Magnes continued, “Duchess Trina died of a fever, or at least that’s the official story. Anyway, he’ll not have much of a selection. Most of the girls of noble families in this area are either already spoken for, or they’re too young.”