Annice lifted her chin defiantly. "I wanted to."
It didn't take a bard to read the implication. "But he didn't want to sleep with you. Why not?"
"He's the Due of Ohrid." The emphasis came without effort. Even stripped to the waist and wrestling a stubborn colt into a halter, Pjerin i'Stasiek had been definitively the Due of Ohrid.
The captain, as intended, misunderstood.
"And you're only a bard." Liene finished the thought silently. And you've always gotten what you wanted, haven't you, Princess? If he only knew who you really
were; not that pride would allow you to tell him. You must have been furious. "The father?"
"Someone willing."
"I see." And she could see it. Exactly. Annice had probably stormed away from the due and kicked the feet out from under the next person she met. Liene spared the fellow a moment's sympathy and hoped his heart had been up to it. Then she spared another moment to Sing a silent and heartfelt gratitude that the fear she'd nursed had been unfounded.
"So…" Leaning back, Liene drummed her fingers against the edge of her desk in a martial rhythm. "Do you think the due has agreed to open the pass to a Cemandian army?"
Annice tossed her head. "Only if they were willing to put him in charge of it," she snapped.
There could be no mistaking the ring of truth that statement carried. Satisfied, the Bardic Captain nodded and relaxed for the first time since the kigh had contacted her with Tadeus' news, the knot of worry that had settled between her shoulder blades easing away. "You've had quite an eventful couple of quarters, haven't you? You bring a baby back from Ohrid, then you discover young Jurgis while Walking up coast. I think I'll keep you around the Hall for a while before you inundate us with children."
"Jurgis is…"
"Jurgis is fine. Petrelis is beside himself. They're still getting to know each other, of course, but the boy has fit himself into the Hall like a missing puzzle piece and soaks up music like a little sponge. We have a percussion lesson, he and I, every other morning."
The thought of Jurgis finding a place where he belonged so perfectly combined with the sudden realization that she'd done it and her baby was safe jerked Annice's emotions from one extreme to the other and shoved them right over the edge. To her horror, she burst into tears. "I'm sorry," she gasped, both hands waving in the air as if they were searching for her lost control. "It's just… I mean, I don't… He was so…"
Liene cleared her throat, at a loss for something to say. Raw emotion, unconfined by verse or chorus, made her profoundly uncomfortable. "You're tired," she said at last, coming around the desk and gathering up Annice's outerwear and instrument case from the floor. "I think you should go and lie down. We'll discuss this latest Walk of yours after you've had a chance to rest."
Annice struggled to her feet. "But recall…"
"Recall can wait. This interview is over." The captain accompanied her to the door and whistled a piercing summons down the corridor.
Leonas appeared almost instantly. He gave the captain a cursory nod and glared at Annice who was scrubbing at her cheeks with her palms. "What's wrong?" Concern leaked out around the brusque tone. Not even in the early days, at her most lost and confused, had he ever seen the princess cry.
"Nothing," Annice began indignantly but Liene cut her off.
"She needs to rest."
He snorted. "She's expecting a child. She needs to rest. She needs to eat properly. She needs to not be out tramping around the countryside." He pointedly took the clothing and instrument case from the captain, every movement a criticism. "Probably walked since dawn, skipped breakfast, skipped lunch."
"I had breakfast."
"But not lunch," he concluded triumphantly, shoving the end of her scarf up under one arm and starting down the corridor. "Come on."
Annice shot an apology at the captain who merely rolled her eyes and said, "I'll see you when you're rested. I'm looking forward to hearing Jurgis' story from you."
All at once, as tired as everyone seemed to think she should be, Annice fell into step beside Leonas. She essentially played parts of the truth so loud they'd drowned out the bits she didn't want heard and the performance had exhausted her. But it wouldn't have worked if I hadn't been playing a tune the captain wanted to hear. When Tadeus got back to the Hall, she'd have to see what she could do to start clearing the whole mess up. He had to have misunderstood what the Cemandian meant.
"I lit a fire in your rooms when I heard you were in the building," Leonas told her as they moved in slow procession up the stairs. "It should be nearly warm in there by now."
"Isn't Stasya back from her Walk yet?"
"Didn't they tell you?"
"Didn't who tell me what?"
"Stasya's the bard they sent into Ohrid."
"They sent Stas?" The disappointment hit her as almost a physical blow; she'd been looking forward to the other woman's company for days. Blinking back yet another unexpected rush of tears, Annice fought to let only the annoyance show in her voice. "She'll be gone for months."
"Needed a bard who Sings a strong air to travel that far in this weather."
"I know that, Leonas."
"Stasya was the strongest in the Hall at the time." He snickered. "Got a good blunt Command on her, too. Yours, now, it works because you expect it to. Hers works because she dares it not to. Due of Ohrid won't know what hit him."
"The Due of Ohrid," Annice ground out, trying to determine which of them she was so suddenly jealous of and why, "can take care of himself."
"You've been this way before?"
Stasya smiled tightly at the guard riding beside her, leading her horse. "I've Walked this way, Nikulas. It's not the same thing."
Nikulas nodded. "You move a lot faster on horseback."
"You see less and it hurts more," she amended.
"I thought they fixed that at the Healers' Hall in Vidor?"
He looked honestly concerned, so Stasya allowed her smile to relax a fraction. "The memory remains painful," she told him, shifting in the saddle. A bard on foot took eight to ten days, Elbasan to Vidor and, on the way, they talked with the people, observed the minutiae of the kingdom, sang, laughed, made love. The troop she traveled with had done the same distance in four days, pounding down the frozen River Road, pounding past many of her favorite inns, pounding the insides of her thighs raw. Drifting snow between Vidor and Caciz had slowed the pace, even though she used the kigh to push through a path, but the Troop Captain seemed determined to make up the lost time.
Speak of something unenclosed and lo, it appears, she thought as Captain Otik galloped back to fall in at her other side.
"I don't like the look of those clouds," he grunted without preamble. "Could be a storm forming up."
"Could be," Stasya allowed, squinting into the distance where the sky seemed to be resting its weight on the horizon.
"Best Sing it away."
"Excuse me?"
Her tone pulled him around in the saddle and he glared at her from under the fleece-lined edge of his helm. "That is one of the reasons you're riding with us, Bard. To control the weather so we can reach this traitor before he's warned and gets away."
"First of all, Captain, I can't control that storm, I can merely redirect the results. Secondly, I won't even do that unless it actively threatens our route. Thirdly, we don't know that the due is guilty of anything until I arrive and ask him."
"You don't seem to understand the seriousness of this expedition, Bard."
Stasya caught his gaze and held it. "And you don't seem to understand that I take my orders directly from my captain and she takes hers directly from His Majesty the King. So go away and stop bothering me before I Command you to stuff your head up your ass where it seems to belong."