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Dec. 4th, 2012 06:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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loathlyladyChapter Six
"Well, what do you know," Maldynado said as he read the headline on the newspaper Books held in front of his face. "Mancrest really did run the story."
"You mean you knew this was coming and didn't think to warn anybody? Nobody on the team?" Books shook the paper meaningfully.
Maldynado shrugged and reclined further in the armchair he was sitting in. He had been relaxing after breakfast in the parlor the team had unofficially claimed as theirs, waiting for Yara to turn up after her morning workout, when Books and Basilard had intruded on him.
"What was I supposed to say? 'Hey, Amaranthe, I know you and Sicarius aren’t here, and I’m talking to an empty room, but the perfectly marriageable man I introduced you to showed up to interview me about whether or not your freaky shadow really married you in secret.'" He made a sour face. "As if Sicarius could ever do anything that romantic. I doubt he has the creativity to even buy flowers, and that's kid stuff."
Books's gaze was positively censurious.
"I am once again astounded by your lack of awareness for the people around you, as well as your belief that you can't be romantic without first buying a woman flowers, as if relationships were a board game with stages you must progress through."
"Booksie," Mal said with mocking disapproval, "did you really never buy your wife flowers?"
"She preferred chocolates," Books sniffed.
Basilard interrupted their bickering by stabbing a finger at the paper Books still held out and signing, Amaranthe isn't going to like this.
Both men transferred the attention to what Basilard pointed at. Maldynado cocked his head to the side and let his mouth drop open, but Books spoke first.
"That artist's recreation," he said slowly. "Amaranthe looks . . ."
"Nauseous," Mal finished for him. "Or concussed. Or maybe drunk." He paused, considering something. "You don't think they were drunk, do you? I mean, if this actually happened. The documents were probably forgeries, and this is all a big hoax."
Neither of them would wander the city intoxicated. Basilard grimaced and then recanted, signing, Amaranthe, maybe.
"I really don't think Sicarius would ply Amaranthe with alcohol and then ask her to break into the licensing hall with him," Books said. "Remember when we celebrated the toppling of Forge and Amaranthe celebrated a little too much? He was not best pleased."
The room grew quiet as all three men remembered that night. It had . . . revealed sides to the boss's character that perhaps even she had not known existed. They certainly hadn't.
"She's a happy drunk, not a tractable one," Books said, summarizing everyone's thoughts. As the only sober members present for the occurrence, he and Sicarius probably knew this better than anyone else, as they were the ones who had had to deal with Amaranthe. "There is no making Amaranthe do anything she does not want." He cleared his throat. "And more importantly, he would not force her."
Basilard nodded in agreement, and Mal felt like both of them had suddenly stepped into another reality and dragged him along.
“He makes her do things she doesn’t want to all . . .” He trailed off as he realized how wrong that was. Sicarius made him do things he didn’t want to all the time, but Amaranthe made Sicarius do things Sicarius didn’t want to with shocking regularity. A worm of doubt began to nibble at his apple of certainty.
Akstyr came shambling into the room, headed for the corner table he had claimed as his own for studying his books on the mental sciences. He walked past them and then backed up several steps when he caught sight of their faces.
“What’s going on?” he asked. Books turned the paper so he could see. His upper lip twisted with confusion. “I thought Mancrest was gonna stop printing lies about us in that rag of his.”
I don’t think they’re lies, Basilard signed. Sicarius seemed nervous when he told me we would have these days off. He grinned widely and winked. I wondered why we got the break, but it all makes sense now. They snuck off together.
“How does it make sense?” Akstyr demanded. “Am’ranthe’s nice. She wouldn’t —” he made a gesture that could possibly be obscene, but was mostly vague “—with Sicarius. Ever.”
“See?” Mal waved toward Akstyr. “At last someone understands the situation better than you two.”
Books snorted derisively.
“Your argument is not furthered by someone who cannot say that two adults might have coitus and must rely upon gestures.”
“As if gestures are any worse than ‘have coitus,’” Maldynado said, ignoring the disgruntled look that appeared on Akstyr’s face at Books’s comment. “There are about a million better ways of saying it than that.”
A look of triumph lit up Books’s eyes.
“Oh?” he asked mildly. “Such as ‘spelunking in her cave?’”
Maldynado groaned. Was he never going to live that moment down? His Evi had forgiven him months ago, but these fellows wouldn’t let it go. Akstyr and Basilard were smirking at him, even now.
His lady chose that moment to enter the room, and the smirks turned into snickers. Even Books lacked the dignity to keep a straight face. Beneath hair still damp from bathing, her face snapped into a familiar expression of suspicion. It was aimed solely at Maldynado.
“What did you say?” she growled.
He resisted the urge to greet her with “hello, grouch”, which had long since become an endearment between them, but would not be welcome under the circumstances.
“I didn’t say anything,” he said, holding his hands up. “It was these other fellows who decided to have fun at my expense.”
“Uh huh.” Evy wasn’t having it. She folded her beautifully toned arms, displayed to perfection in the sleeveless tunic he had bought her, across her chest.
“No, really. I’m the innocent one here. I didn’t say anything about you.” His protests weren’t gaining him any sympathy, so he decided to divert the topic to one which didn’t involve any perceived offenses against his lady. “Deret says Amaranthe got hitched. To Sicarius.”
Evy’s face softened into confusion and she dropped her arms.
“Deret says what?”
Books handed her the paper, and she read it over with a little frown between her eyebrows, which disappeared when she looked at the engraving and one brow rose in the air.
“Hmm.” She handed the paper back to Books. “I thought those two had something going on.”
“Not you, too, sweetheart,” Maldynado said despairingly. Evrial put her fists on her hips and turned her raised eyebrow on him.
“Don’t tell me that you, Lord Lovecrest, didn’t see any sign of a relationship between those two, after all the time you spent with them. ”
“Lord Lovecrest,” Books repeated in tones of delight, probably wondering why he hadn’t thought of it himself before this.
"There you all are," came Amaranthe's voice from the doorway. “There’s something Sicarius and I have to tell you.”
Sicarius lurked behind her, his usual flat expression in place. She came into the room and he followed, his face hardening further as he took in the group gathered around the newspaper. There was something different about him, and it took Maldynado a moment to figure out what it was. When he did, the truth hit home like a crossbow bolt to the brain.
“Emperor’s buttocks!” He shot to his feet, finger rising of its own volition to stab at Sicarius. “Your hair. It’s tidy.” He scowled at Sicarius, whose expression had only grown colder. “What did you do to her, you scoundrel?”
***
"So, that thing we wanted to tell you about,” Amaranthe said in the silence that followed Maldynado’s outburst. “You all already know?”
Wordlessly, Books passed her the newspaper. It took several readings for the meaning of the rather short headline to sink in. There was her marriage, splashed across the front page of the Gazette because . . . she had talked Sicarius into taking yesterday off. She knew that Deret wouldn’t have run the article without speaking to her beforehand, but only if he could find her in the first place. And since he hadn’t been able to find her, she hadn’t been able to talk him out of it.
Her eyes flicked from the headline to the engraving underneath it, and she nearly fell over. She assumed the figures in it were supposed to be Sicarius and herself, but she could not imagine what they had done to deserve it. Nothing she had ever done had resulted in the death of anyone’s dog on the staff of the Gazette, and none of Sicarius’s actions would result in revenge so petty. Someone at the paper had a twisted sense of humor.
Sicarius was reading over her shoulder, and she looked back at him. After they had left Sespian’s rooms, they had parted ways briefly to bathe and change into fresh clothing. He seemed to have regained his usual equilibrium, and even she couldn’t draw a conclusion about his reaction from his face. The engraving certainly hadn’t evoked one.
“You did say you wanted the world to know,” she murmured, trying to feel out his mood. “I guess you got it.”
He grunted and continued reading.
“The article is more accurate than usual,” he said when he was finished. “Mancrest refrained from making defamatory statements.”
“He hasn’t done that for a while.” Amaranthe was amused by his continued antipathy towards Deret Mancrest. When they had recruited him to assist with keeping track of Forge’s movements in the city, Sicarius had been adamantly opposed to it, even as he and she had grown closer together. There had been a few meetings with Deret after which Sicarius had followed her into her separate room in their hideout and kissed her with a jealous possessiveness that had almost made waiting for more worth it. But only almost. Letting him walk back out the door had become increasingly difficult, and once she hadn’t let him go until the others in the common area had started wondering where they were. That had been a near thing.
Now, his eyes glinted as he surveyed her. There must have been a gleam in hers that he had read all too easily. She had him now, and the time for mere near things was past. With time, maybe jealousy could join them.
Her answering smile was nipped in the bud by another outburst from Maldynado.
“Amaranthe, are you gravid?” Maldynado lowered his voice on the last word and made the universal sign for a pregnant woman, holding his arms out in front of him as if carrying an exceptionally large watermelon.
Behind him, Akstyr’s mouth dropped open.
“Am’ranthe, did you get bit by a dog?” he asked. “I can fix that now. You shoulda come to me for help instead of getting married.” He frowned. “I don’t know what I can do if it’s already eaten your brain, though.”
Books threw up his hands in exasperation as he turned away, too set upon by these linguistic developments to continue with the conversation for the time being. He sat down on the sofa next to the chair Maldynado had been sitting in, and Basilard joined him. Of all of them, Basilard looked the closest to enjoying himself.
“To answer both your questions, no.” A sobering thought struck her, and she quickly counted days in her head. She and Sicarius had not exhibited much diligence in certain areas in the past couple days, and she had had no warning with which to use the usual contraceptive tea. It could prove . . . fruitful.
“At the very least, I haven’t been bitten by any dogs, rabid or otherwise,” she corrected.
At her back, Sicarius shifted his weight. Possibly he hadn’t considered this eventuality for them, either. Another thing to discuss later.
Maldynado’s expression did not relax, and he spoke in a tone of such earnestness that it should have served as a warning.
“If this reprobate has besmirched your reputation and got you with child,” he said, spreading a hand across his chest, “then I am prepared to marry you to restore it, to save you from something which will only bring you sorrow.”
Sicarius moved to stand in front of her with his arms folded over his chest, as if to provide a physical barrier to prevent Maldynado from doing anything so foolish as marrying Amaranthe. At the same time, Yara made an inarticulate sound of rage and disbelief, followed shortly by Books saying to Basilard, “Reprobate is not the word I would have chosen, either. Blackguard, perhaps, but your suggestion that he should not have spoken at all is also perspicacious.”
Amaranthe glared at Maldynado around Sicarius, who flinched under the communal disapproval of herself, Sicarius, and Yara. Of all the outcomes she had expected from this revelation, a proposal of marriage was not one of them, coupled with the suggestion that she had just ruined her life. The kind of reputation she had would not be damaged in the slightest by an out of wedlock pregnancy. A pregnancy might actually go a long way toward improving her reputation. And marrying Sicarius might not do a lot for hers, but it would work wonders on his, if not perhaps in a way he would like.
“Now, now, ladies.” Maldynado patted the air placatingly. “I’d be happy to marry both of you. It would of course be a marriage in name only, Amaranthe, but I’d still have Evi for other matters.”
“If that is what you think, you stupid oaf, you need to think again,” Yara said, cheeks red with anger and hands twitching at her sides.
“Mal, I’ve already got one husband. I don’t need to add you to the list.” Amaranthe stepped up beside Sicarius and strove for patience. Couldn’t she and Sicarius go back to his hole? And never come out again? “He’s all yours, Yara.”
“I’m not sure I want him,” she retorted.
“It doesn’t count if you’re not willing,” Maldynado said, glancing uneasily at Yara. “There’s an imperial law about that.”
“Largely ignored in practice. The case law for it is sparse, and the last occasion of it being enforced was in the previous century,” Books said from the sofa. “Additionally, bigamy is illegal in Turgonia.” Everybody ignored him.
“I have no ability to control Amaranthe. She was willing.” Sicarius spoke in absolute tones that cut through the room.
“My own choice entirely,” she said before anyone could raise another objection. “You’ve all tried to stop me from doing things before this, so you should all know by now that trying to make me do anything that I don’t want to do is nearly impossible.” She leaned against Sicarius, wishing he’d melt enough to make some display of affection. Just because she could read the currents lurking under that face of his didn’t mean anyone else could. “And trying to keep me from things I want is just as difficult.”
"Well, what do you know," Maldynado said as he read the headline on the newspaper Books held in front of his face. "Mancrest really did run the story."
"You mean you knew this was coming and didn't think to warn anybody? Nobody on the team?" Books shook the paper meaningfully.
Maldynado shrugged and reclined further in the armchair he was sitting in. He had been relaxing after breakfast in the parlor the team had unofficially claimed as theirs, waiting for Yara to turn up after her morning workout, when Books and Basilard had intruded on him.
"What was I supposed to say? 'Hey, Amaranthe, I know you and Sicarius aren’t here, and I’m talking to an empty room, but the perfectly marriageable man I introduced you to showed up to interview me about whether or not your freaky shadow really married you in secret.'" He made a sour face. "As if Sicarius could ever do anything that romantic. I doubt he has the creativity to even buy flowers, and that's kid stuff."
Books's gaze was positively censurious.
"I am once again astounded by your lack of awareness for the people around you, as well as your belief that you can't be romantic without first buying a woman flowers, as if relationships were a board game with stages you must progress through."
"Booksie," Mal said with mocking disapproval, "did you really never buy your wife flowers?"
"She preferred chocolates," Books sniffed.
Basilard interrupted their bickering by stabbing a finger at the paper Books still held out and signing, Amaranthe isn't going to like this.
Both men transferred the attention to what Basilard pointed at. Maldynado cocked his head to the side and let his mouth drop open, but Books spoke first.
"That artist's recreation," he said slowly. "Amaranthe looks . . ."
"Nauseous," Mal finished for him. "Or concussed. Or maybe drunk." He paused, considering something. "You don't think they were drunk, do you? I mean, if this actually happened. The documents were probably forgeries, and this is all a big hoax."
Neither of them would wander the city intoxicated. Basilard grimaced and then recanted, signing, Amaranthe, maybe.
"I really don't think Sicarius would ply Amaranthe with alcohol and then ask her to break into the licensing hall with him," Books said. "Remember when we celebrated the toppling of Forge and Amaranthe celebrated a little too much? He was not best pleased."
The room grew quiet as all three men remembered that night. It had . . . revealed sides to the boss's character that perhaps even she had not known existed. They certainly hadn't.
"She's a happy drunk, not a tractable one," Books said, summarizing everyone's thoughts. As the only sober members present for the occurrence, he and Sicarius probably knew this better than anyone else, as they were the ones who had had to deal with Amaranthe. "There is no making Amaranthe do anything she does not want." He cleared his throat. "And more importantly, he would not force her."
Basilard nodded in agreement, and Mal felt like both of them had suddenly stepped into another reality and dragged him along.
“He makes her do things she doesn’t want to all . . .” He trailed off as he realized how wrong that was. Sicarius made him do things he didn’t want to all the time, but Amaranthe made Sicarius do things Sicarius didn’t want to with shocking regularity. A worm of doubt began to nibble at his apple of certainty.
Akstyr came shambling into the room, headed for the corner table he had claimed as his own for studying his books on the mental sciences. He walked past them and then backed up several steps when he caught sight of their faces.
“What’s going on?” he asked. Books turned the paper so he could see. His upper lip twisted with confusion. “I thought Mancrest was gonna stop printing lies about us in that rag of his.”
I don’t think they’re lies, Basilard signed. Sicarius seemed nervous when he told me we would have these days off. He grinned widely and winked. I wondered why we got the break, but it all makes sense now. They snuck off together.
“How does it make sense?” Akstyr demanded. “Am’ranthe’s nice. She wouldn’t —” he made a gesture that could possibly be obscene, but was mostly vague “—with Sicarius. Ever.”
“See?” Mal waved toward Akstyr. “At last someone understands the situation better than you two.”
Books snorted derisively.
“Your argument is not furthered by someone who cannot say that two adults might have coitus and must rely upon gestures.”
“As if gestures are any worse than ‘have coitus,’” Maldynado said, ignoring the disgruntled look that appeared on Akstyr’s face at Books’s comment. “There are about a million better ways of saying it than that.”
A look of triumph lit up Books’s eyes.
“Oh?” he asked mildly. “Such as ‘spelunking in her cave?’”
Maldynado groaned. Was he never going to live that moment down? His Evi had forgiven him months ago, but these fellows wouldn’t let it go. Akstyr and Basilard were smirking at him, even now.
His lady chose that moment to enter the room, and the smirks turned into snickers. Even Books lacked the dignity to keep a straight face. Beneath hair still damp from bathing, her face snapped into a familiar expression of suspicion. It was aimed solely at Maldynado.
“What did you say?” she growled.
He resisted the urge to greet her with “hello, grouch”, which had long since become an endearment between them, but would not be welcome under the circumstances.
“I didn’t say anything,” he said, holding his hands up. “It was these other fellows who decided to have fun at my expense.”
“Uh huh.” Evy wasn’t having it. She folded her beautifully toned arms, displayed to perfection in the sleeveless tunic he had bought her, across her chest.
“No, really. I’m the innocent one here. I didn’t say anything about you.” His protests weren’t gaining him any sympathy, so he decided to divert the topic to one which didn’t involve any perceived offenses against his lady. “Deret says Amaranthe got hitched. To Sicarius.”
Evy’s face softened into confusion and she dropped her arms.
“Deret says what?”
Books handed her the paper, and she read it over with a little frown between her eyebrows, which disappeared when she looked at the engraving and one brow rose in the air.
“Hmm.” She handed the paper back to Books. “I thought those two had something going on.”
“Not you, too, sweetheart,” Maldynado said despairingly. Evrial put her fists on her hips and turned her raised eyebrow on him.
“Don’t tell me that you, Lord Lovecrest, didn’t see any sign of a relationship between those two, after all the time you spent with them. ”
“Lord Lovecrest,” Books repeated in tones of delight, probably wondering why he hadn’t thought of it himself before this.
"There you all are," came Amaranthe's voice from the doorway. “There’s something Sicarius and I have to tell you.”
Sicarius lurked behind her, his usual flat expression in place. She came into the room and he followed, his face hardening further as he took in the group gathered around the newspaper. There was something different about him, and it took Maldynado a moment to figure out what it was. When he did, the truth hit home like a crossbow bolt to the brain.
“Emperor’s buttocks!” He shot to his feet, finger rising of its own volition to stab at Sicarius. “Your hair. It’s tidy.” He scowled at Sicarius, whose expression had only grown colder. “What did you do to her, you scoundrel?”
***
"So, that thing we wanted to tell you about,” Amaranthe said in the silence that followed Maldynado’s outburst. “You all already know?”
Wordlessly, Books passed her the newspaper. It took several readings for the meaning of the rather short headline to sink in. There was her marriage, splashed across the front page of the Gazette because . . . she had talked Sicarius into taking yesterday off. She knew that Deret wouldn’t have run the article without speaking to her beforehand, but only if he could find her in the first place. And since he hadn’t been able to find her, she hadn’t been able to talk him out of it.
Her eyes flicked from the headline to the engraving underneath it, and she nearly fell over. She assumed the figures in it were supposed to be Sicarius and herself, but she could not imagine what they had done to deserve it. Nothing she had ever done had resulted in the death of anyone’s dog on the staff of the Gazette, and none of Sicarius’s actions would result in revenge so petty. Someone at the paper had a twisted sense of humor.
Sicarius was reading over her shoulder, and she looked back at him. After they had left Sespian’s rooms, they had parted ways briefly to bathe and change into fresh clothing. He seemed to have regained his usual equilibrium, and even she couldn’t draw a conclusion about his reaction from his face. The engraving certainly hadn’t evoked one.
“You did say you wanted the world to know,” she murmured, trying to feel out his mood. “I guess you got it.”
He grunted and continued reading.
“The article is more accurate than usual,” he said when he was finished. “Mancrest refrained from making defamatory statements.”
“He hasn’t done that for a while.” Amaranthe was amused by his continued antipathy towards Deret Mancrest. When they had recruited him to assist with keeping track of Forge’s movements in the city, Sicarius had been adamantly opposed to it, even as he and she had grown closer together. There had been a few meetings with Deret after which Sicarius had followed her into her separate room in their hideout and kissed her with a jealous possessiveness that had almost made waiting for more worth it. But only almost. Letting him walk back out the door had become increasingly difficult, and once she hadn’t let him go until the others in the common area had started wondering where they were. That had been a near thing.
Now, his eyes glinted as he surveyed her. There must have been a gleam in hers that he had read all too easily. She had him now, and the time for mere near things was past. With time, maybe jealousy could join them.
Her answering smile was nipped in the bud by another outburst from Maldynado.
“Amaranthe, are you gravid?” Maldynado lowered his voice on the last word and made the universal sign for a pregnant woman, holding his arms out in front of him as if carrying an exceptionally large watermelon.
Behind him, Akstyr’s mouth dropped open.
“Am’ranthe, did you get bit by a dog?” he asked. “I can fix that now. You shoulda come to me for help instead of getting married.” He frowned. “I don’t know what I can do if it’s already eaten your brain, though.”
Books threw up his hands in exasperation as he turned away, too set upon by these linguistic developments to continue with the conversation for the time being. He sat down on the sofa next to the chair Maldynado had been sitting in, and Basilard joined him. Of all of them, Basilard looked the closest to enjoying himself.
“To answer both your questions, no.” A sobering thought struck her, and she quickly counted days in her head. She and Sicarius had not exhibited much diligence in certain areas in the past couple days, and she had had no warning with which to use the usual contraceptive tea. It could prove . . . fruitful.
“At the very least, I haven’t been bitten by any dogs, rabid or otherwise,” she corrected.
At her back, Sicarius shifted his weight. Possibly he hadn’t considered this eventuality for them, either. Another thing to discuss later.
Maldynado’s expression did not relax, and he spoke in a tone of such earnestness that it should have served as a warning.
“If this reprobate has besmirched your reputation and got you with child,” he said, spreading a hand across his chest, “then I am prepared to marry you to restore it, to save you from something which will only bring you sorrow.”
Sicarius moved to stand in front of her with his arms folded over his chest, as if to provide a physical barrier to prevent Maldynado from doing anything so foolish as marrying Amaranthe. At the same time, Yara made an inarticulate sound of rage and disbelief, followed shortly by Books saying to Basilard, “Reprobate is not the word I would have chosen, either. Blackguard, perhaps, but your suggestion that he should not have spoken at all is also perspicacious.”
Amaranthe glared at Maldynado around Sicarius, who flinched under the communal disapproval of herself, Sicarius, and Yara. Of all the outcomes she had expected from this revelation, a proposal of marriage was not one of them, coupled with the suggestion that she had just ruined her life. The kind of reputation she had would not be damaged in the slightest by an out of wedlock pregnancy. A pregnancy might actually go a long way toward improving her reputation. And marrying Sicarius might not do a lot for hers, but it would work wonders on his, if not perhaps in a way he would like.
“Now, now, ladies.” Maldynado patted the air placatingly. “I’d be happy to marry both of you. It would of course be a marriage in name only, Amaranthe, but I’d still have Evi for other matters.”
“If that is what you think, you stupid oaf, you need to think again,” Yara said, cheeks red with anger and hands twitching at her sides.
“Mal, I’ve already got one husband. I don’t need to add you to the list.” Amaranthe stepped up beside Sicarius and strove for patience. Couldn’t she and Sicarius go back to his hole? And never come out again? “He’s all yours, Yara.”
“I’m not sure I want him,” she retorted.
“It doesn’t count if you’re not willing,” Maldynado said, glancing uneasily at Yara. “There’s an imperial law about that.”
“Largely ignored in practice. The case law for it is sparse, and the last occasion of it being enforced was in the previous century,” Books said from the sofa. “Additionally, bigamy is illegal in Turgonia.” Everybody ignored him.
“I have no ability to control Amaranthe. She was willing.” Sicarius spoke in absolute tones that cut through the room.
“My own choice entirely,” she said before anyone could raise another objection. “You’ve all tried to stop me from doing things before this, so you should all know by now that trying to make me do anything that I don’t want to do is nearly impossible.” She leaned against Sicarius, wishing he’d melt enough to make some display of affection. Just because she could read the currents lurking under that face of his didn’t mean anyone else could. “And trying to keep me from things I want is just as difficult.”
