Page 32 of Elvenbred

“Vassals. Kyndrath will call his swords, from his vassals first to get a good number, then starts working his allies to kick in troops. Then the real negotiating begins.”

“Negotiating?” asked Nora.

“Yes,” Triana replied with a smile. “Everyone wants enough war to be there for a slice of the booty, and to remind their liege of their contribution … but not so much war that it gets too expensive, or there are enough casualties to change the balance of power. Profitable wars are not a sure thing, so we mostly farm it out.”

Nora looked taken aback. “How?”

“Gladiators,” Triana replied. “We train gladiators to fight, and resolve it that way. They go into a ring, so we don’t have to take the field. Simple and elegant, really.” She couldn’t resist a catlike purr. “So, while I don’t have an army, I do train gladiators. Good ones.” A memory stirred of the champion who’d been filling her bed when the mood took her. “Verrry good, indeed.”

Nora slid another slice of the ration bar onto her plate. She pointed with the stick. “No sauce. Just crunch.” She set another to cook. “That’s a lot to take in. You train gladiators?”

Triana gave a small laugh. “Me, personally? With these nails? No. But I have exceptionally good trainers, and as I make gold, they make gold. I punish precisely, with exactly enough force, but it’s not personal, and I reward talent. I also have one of the best stables going. I have a very good eye for top quality stock, and keep meticulous studbooks on all my bloodlines. I breed top tier fighters, condition and train them properly, and retire the champions to stud. Unlike most, I heal the ones that get damaged, as I’ve found that scars are cheaper than starting over. My outculls are good enough to sell to other farms, so I make pretty good gold on the ones others would euthanize.”

Nora scratched her cheek with a nail that was definitely not to Triana’s standards. “What do you do when there is real conflict, say, between cities?”

Triana considered. “We probably don’t have much of what you would call cities. The Great Lords’ manors and estates come the closest, but most of what cities we have would all fit well inside this one. It’s pretty rural, and most elven lords like their elbow room.”

“Elven lords.” Nora smiled. “Suggests there are other kinds of lords.”

“Hardly,” Triana replied, with a touch of heat. She thought back to the rebellion, the simmering war with defiant slaves who had yet to get the deaths they so richly deserved. Her temper flared. “To all the slaves … every one of us is an elven lord, even the meanest in his cottage with no money, no title, no magic, and no prospects. It’s a reminder to all of them, that all of us are above them, and in no way, in no regards, are those vermin our equals. There isn’t a slave alive who shouldn’t be down on its belly, licking the boot of even the poorest elven lord and grateful for being granted the privilege of living. And any who defy? Long, slow, lingering deaths, ideally while watching their cubs and mates die as well. Bodies unburied so the others get the message.” Angry now, she crossed her arms, waiting for Nora’s reply, and more than happy to argue the point.

Nora refused the bait, changing the subject. “All right, I see we need to work on your present to past transitions.”

Triana took a deep breath, frustrated that she had been deprived of the fight. The slave revolt infuriated her, and those emotions, once roused, did not easily return to their rest. “Fine. Go ahead.” She crossed her arms. “Change the subject.”

Nora smiled her neutral smile, the one Triana recognized as the one Nora used when she needed to do something with her face that looked friendly and benign. Triana had a similar one she used when dealing with those stronger than her. It occurred to her that she should be using it here more than she had.

“How did you become a lord?” Nora asked.

Triana enjoyed wielding one of Nora’s weapons back at her. “You said lord, not er-lord. Gradations of rank. I’m ennobled to the fourth degree, and am a free-holding lord, by right of inheritance recognized by the Council. Er-lord is third degree ennoblement. Lord basically means ‘by right of birth.’”

Nora raised a finger, riposting. “Well, technically, the root is a bit like ‘boss-lord,’ but I get your point.”

Triana was about to argue the point, then recalled the advice about not fighting on another’s home turf. One point to Nora. “My mother was my father’s third wife, and the first to be fertile … or to be more precise, the first to survive her fertility, and deliver a live child. I was first, to my father’s great disappointment. But, having proved her womb, he was eager to test it again. So, I was followed, in somewhat unseemly haste, by two … brothers. We practice primogeniture, so I was ….” She stopped, unable to hide the bitterness. “My brothers went before me in the line of inheritance. The heir and the spare. My lot was to be a dynastic bargaining chip … a pretty thing to be traded for an alliance. My father seeded my mother the moment she was done having me, and kept trying so that he would not be stuck with a mere female as the heir. He was relieved once he had a proper male heir, and twice happy to have a spare. Not quite sure why, but he kept me around longer than most girls my age. Perhaps he never found the right combination of ‘offer’ and ‘desire.’ My mother died trying for four, when two is about as many as most survive, if they live through the first. Many elven lords only contract for one child, and take multiple wives. She does her duty, hopefully lives through it, and retires to her bower. But not my father, and his mania for bloodlines.”

She felt grief for her mother well up, the woman she barely knew, kept intoxicated with potions to improve her fertility, and later, to mask the pain of the damage from her deliveries. Triana turned away from the old griefs, keeping her voice flat and emotionless. “Then Father himself died, and my dear, dense brothers managed to get themselves killed in accidents.” She chuckled at Nora’s veiled expression. “Oh, I had nothing to do with that. It was all arrogance, stupidity, and a fundamental belief that they were immortal and invulnerable. This is why most want a spare as well as an heir. There’s generally one cautious one and one that is a thrill-seeker. I expect Father had no idea both the boys were going to be thrill-seekers. I was the cautious one. So, when all was said and done, my father was stuck with me.”

She glanced at the brazier, seeing the small curl of smoke from the hot oil. “He despised the idea of ennobling me as his heir, but hated even more the thought of it passing to another through my marriage bed. So, having no choice, I inherited. And lord I became.”

She shook her head. “That still holds, by the way. If I am ever stupid enough to wed, my husband takes control of everything I own. On the other hand, the only stigma attached to having a left-handed heir is a social one for the mother, so if I decided I needed an heir, I could always—well—get someone willing. I don’t give a toss about gossip, and eventually something else would come along to replace the tale of my woods-colt child.”

Nora shook her head. “Your world is so strange. More than anything, I want a child.”

“Why don’t you go have one?” Triana asked. She very nearly said, You certainly have the hips for it.

“Here, to raise a child, you need to have a plan for feeding it. I was a teacher for low-born children. Here your speech defines your class, and I was helping them improve their speech to get better placements. Technically, your class is based on how much magic you can do, but in reality, it’s how you talk that matters, at least up to a point. Talk middle-birth, get a middle-birth role, and quite often, display middle birth magical aptitude. Problem is, the children I taught are low-birth, so they can barely pay. Mothers going without food to give their rations to a teacher to help their child move a peg or two up the board.” Nora turned her teacup in her hands, looking down into the dregs.

“I had the speech, learned highborn accents well enough. Always had a good ear, but to make a good marriage meant bringing in enough rations that I could feed a child, and myself. Making milk is expensive. No rations meant no good marriage. So, I ….” She trailed off, sniffled a bit, and took a deep breath.

Nora wouldn’t meet Triana’s eye, instead staring fixedly at the diminished plate of wafers. “So, a recruiter came around looking for young women who were adept enough to learn the dialects for the main cities. Women who were willing to translate for powerful males, and whose wives were unlikely to be in attendance, or who did not have wives that were suitable to be in male company. I was offered enough rations to afford the marriage and the baby.”

“And?” asked Triana, in a quiet voice, though she knew the answer.

“And, of course, sex was expected. I knew that. So, I became a contract concubine. Two years on my back, two years speaking someone else’s words for them, for enough rations to set me up for the life I wanted.”

Triana didn’t need to hear the music to know the score. “And it didn’t work out?”

Nora sighed, and pinched the bridge of her nose with one hand to stop the tears. “They did everything they said they would. A nice ration balance, more than I could ever eat. But, I was naive. I thought once I was done, I could put it behind me. Turns out, I was wrong … your world sounds pretty casual about who does what with whom. Here, a girl had best keep her knees firmly pressed together until she’s in the marriage bed … or, she’s ‘ruint,’ to use the street word.”