Chapter 221: Chapter#221

Vadya got off the floor and went to the door wearing nothing but his hose. Lieutenant-Lord Mada el Vaie van Soomara was standing in the corridor, blushing duskily scarlet. "S-sir," he stammered, casting agonised glances to where Tashka had strolled off across to the drinks cabinet and was pouring herself a bowl of whisky, her long shapely legs completely naked. "Hear me."

"I will hear you," Vadya said coolly, moving into his junior officer's eyeline so that his own half-naked body blocked off his Lady wife's from Mada's sight.

"Captain Lein sent me to say that First H'las sprang a practice attack on us after their party and have prevailed."

Tashka burst out laughing over by the drinks cabinet. Vadya swore.

"What damned dogs!" he cursed. "I had our practice attack all planned for the morrow, too. Alright, el Vaie. Go and ask Lein and the other Captains to let me have written reports the morrow. Tell Lein to send to Commander Stanies to say I will give him some Athagine."

"Sir, it is done," Mada said. To Vadya's annoyance, he peered round his Commander at the General over by the drinks cabinet. Tashka came walking suddenly over to them, leant on Vadya's shoulder and looked narrowly into Mada's round brown puppyish eyes, her shirt only half-buttoned up and hanging open at the top to show quite a lot of black embroidered bodice. She tilted her whisky in her bowl and stared with that look that meant: Do you want my glove or what?

el Vaie stared at her like a nervous rabbit and blurted out: "General-Lord el Maien! Hear me. The Commander said he would ask you to come give us a lesson on strategy. Sir, will you come, sir? If the Commander asks it of you as a favour?"

Tashka raised one eyebrow, looking sideways at Vadya. He looked crossly at Mada and said: "el Vaie! Go to quarter! And come and see me the morrow. "

"Let him be," Tashka said with a laugh. "What, may a General not be spoke to like a man?"

"He knows it well that is no way to address the most senior rank in the army," Vadya said crossly.

"Go to, Mada," Tashka said lazily, giving him that charming smile that made the juniors hang on her fingers forever. "You were my baby Lieutenant. Not for his sake but for yours, I will come give you your little lesson, there."

The young officer-aristocrat's face lit up, he saluted his crispest flicking salute, turned with the ritual stamping H'las steps and marched cheerfully off.

"You still have to come and see me the morrow!" Vadya shouted grumpily after him, shutting the door.

He walked grumbling over to sit in one of the armchairs by the fireplace. Tashka followed him, grinning and tilting her whisky about in its bowl.

"That pig Stanies," Vadya grumbled. "What a mean trick, to invite us to their party and get us all merry and then attack us." Tashka sniffed her whisky appreciatively, still grinning. He looked up at her suddenly suspicious and said: "You knew about it!" She laughed and did not deny it. "You could have said something to me," he complained.

"No no," she answered with a glinting smile. "What the General hears privily from a Commander must be held privy. I did not tell him about your plan, either."

"Now I must give Stanies some of our Athagine," Vadya grumbled.

"Oh our Athagine," Tashka repeated. "You want to give him our Athagine, do you?"

Vadya looked guiltily at her and she grinned that wolfish smile that meant: Over your dead body, my darling!

"I promised Stanies Athagine," he pleaded. "We have a pact because he likes Athagine best so we said we would always pay in Athagine for practice attacks."

"Buy some for him then," she said callously. "My Athagine was a present."

"I want to buy a new rapier," Vadya grumbled, "and Batren says I need some new suits."

"I will buy you your rapier," she answered carelessly. "There, now you may buy Stanies his Athagine."

"You will not like the one I want," he complained. "It is too plain for your taste, you'll say I have to have a more decorated one and I like it because the balance is good."

"A man must choose his own rapier," she said gravely, looking down into his eyes as she tilted her whisky about and sniffed at it. "Nobody may choose weapons for a man."

"Yes my General," he said mockingly.

She grinned lazily and said: "Call me your Lady." He was surprised at that, he twisted his mouth up in question. "Nobody else calls me a Lady," she said, her blue eyes looking into his brown eyes in the candlelight with a laugh in them.

"My Lady wife," he said with a curling smile, reaching out to put an arm around her lean hips. "That is a fine Athagine for a present, who was it gave you ten cases of such a supreme vintage Athagine, then? Did Clair do so?"

Tashka's face went blank and she hesitated then she gave him a guilty grin and said: "Tarra. el V'lair, I mean."

He snorted. "That lady-hunting former lover of yours has given you ten cases of best vintage Athagine and you are jealous because I danced three dances with some little chicken?!" he exclaimed.

Tashka grinned sheepishly. "Tarra gave it just in friendship," she said, pouting her rose-petal mouth at him in her most kissable way.

"Hmm," he said grumpily.

"Does it feel strange to call your General your Lady wife?" she asked him, pressing closer to him in the circle of his arm.

He looked up at her lean warm laughing face in the candlelight, the beautiful intelligent slanted blue eyes and the rose-petal mouth. Her hair was shorter than his but the poise of her head had a feminine grace to it. Her left hand had a marriage ring and a ruby and gold woman's betrothal ring on it. Her right hand was scarred from smashing into the face of the man who stained her honour and bore a heavy gold seal ring with two towers, the wavy lines, her initials and a sun, meaning: the letter sealed with this seal comes from your General and must be treated with the utmost despatch and privily. He kissed her scarred right hand and then the fingers of her left hand.

"No," he said. "Sometimes it feels strange to call someone who was my Captain my General. Only on formal parade. We were near equals for so long, is it not? And I always hoped you would be the Major General to me as sworn Lord." She smiled, caressing his ear. "As for being my Lady," he paused and tilted his head to look up at her standing lean, tall and muscular beside him. "Everyone else calls you a Lord," he said, "but I have lain in you and been warm in your love and I know that you are my Lady."

"Why is that?" she said curiously, "because it is you who enters me and so I am a woman and so I am your Lady?"

"Oh no," he answered, "you have shown me often enough that you can enter me too! because when we are naked alone together; when there is no troop nor duelling nor dancing nor all of that stuff, you are my Lady. For the rest of it, I like us to be officers together, to be the same and to be equals. Only when you are in my arms, I like it that you are different, and equal, and so you are my Lady."