To the court of love, p.1
To the Court of Love, page 1
PELTEDVERSE BOOKS
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First Ebook Edition, 2023
Copyright © 2023 M.C.A. Hogarth. All rights reserved.
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Cover art by M.C.A. Hogarth
You’re never safe from being surprised till you’re dead.
L.M. MONTGOMERY
CONTENTS
Introduction
Author’s Note/Chronology
To the Court of Love
Teachers And Students
From Poisoned Tree
(Directly after the events of Scions’ Flight)
Old Dogs, New Tricks
Opening the Court 1
A Change of Plans
Betrothed
Sweetest Things
Opening the Court 2
What Matters
Tarry Here, Merry Lad
In Self-Defense
Opening the Court 3
Theme, Again
Appendices
The Species of the Peltedverse
Dramatis Personae
About the Author
INTRODUCTION
I am inveterate lover of epigraphs as a way to suggest the themes of books I’m writing, and usually I know immediately what I should be looking for… whether it’s the suggestion of the path to maturity that gave us the Rumi quote for Girl on Fire, or the meditation on responsibility that gave us the quotes in the front of From Ruins. But putting together this volume, I was at a loss: what was the unifying leitmotif that stitched together stories as disparate as Giliriel’s with Jeasa’s, Jahir’s with Tiernan’s? What did I want to say about how the collection happened? Because you’ve heard all the usual, about my relationship with short stories, and my delight at Kickstarters that allow us to collaborate on the contents of a collection.
And then, during my re-read of the Anne of Green Gables series, good-natured village busybody Rachel Lynde popped out with a comment so perfect that I knew, instantly, I’d found my epigraph. “You’re never safe from being surprised till you’re dead!” I laughed, because isn’t that the truth… and isn’t it the thing tying all these stories together. Tying even the circumstances that resulted in the collection together with the campaign itself… because I wasn’t planning to handle the fallout from Scions’ Flight in multiple shorts, and I certainly wasn’t planning the life events that got in the way of my running the campaign as gracefully as I usually do.
The importance of surprise is a recurring theme in my stories, in fact, which is amazing in someone who resists change as reflexively as I do. Maybe it’s because I prefer things predictable that I know how dangerous it is when our lives lack novelty and the unexpected, though—both good and bad. We get comfortable, handling the things we know how to handle, and dealing with things we’re expecting. It’s only when we’re sideswiped that we get to test our powers, and maybe grow in unplanned directions.
To the Court of Love is the fifth of my reader-commissioned books, and its crowdfunding campaign was an exercise in (entirely enjoyable!) suspense. You chose the themes for three of the stories, and so we benefit by chance and novelty there. The characters in all seven of the stories (eight if you count the framing vignettes) are facing their own unforeseen challenges. And if ever a people needed the impetus of the unanticipated, it’s the Eldritch, so how fortunate it is that surprises never cease to ambush them… or us. Here’s to many more, aletsen. Enjoy the volume.
—M
AUTHOR’S NOTE/CHRONOLOGY
This collection fits into a narrow window in the chronology: after the events of Scions’ Flight and prior to the events of Part 2 of Surela’s forthcoming novel, An Exile Aboard Ship. With the exception of one flashback, it spans a single season, from spring to summer. Lisinthir’s heirs have been born on Escutcheon’s soil and he has taken them home with him to the Chatcaavan Throneworld; and Sediryl is preparing for her state visit to Chalice, which will take place during the summer court season. Some of the stories dip a little backward in time, but they all end in this period.
For those of you determined to read in chronological order, then, the right way to go about it is to read Scion’s Flight, then To the Court of Love, and then Part 2 of An Exile Aboard Ship. (And what of Part 1, you ask; an excellent question. Part 1 of Exile takes place during the events of Princes’ Game). I would promise that future books will be less interwoven, but somehow I doubt I would be able to make good on it.
As always, the wiki has the most up-to-date timeline information for those of you eager for more context. You can check here: https://peltedverse.org/wiki/index.php/Timeline for the overview, or dive into specifics of the Fallowtide period here: https://peltedverse.org/wiki/index.php/Fallowtide
TO THE COURT OF LOVE
TEACHERS AND STUDENTS
“I’m not sure about this,” her human liegelady said with a grimace that made a caricature of her face. “I’ve been asking you for phrases and occasional vocabulary for nearly a year, Felith, but it’s one thing to throw around a few tourist phrases and another to be able to speak fluently. I’ve never tried to learn a foreign language before, and starting with the hardest one in known space is just asking for trouble. Of the ‘I get discouraged and give up entirely’ kind.”
“You’ve done well with the things you’ve picked up!” said the lady tigress. “Just think of what you could do if you learned more of it? Especially…” A little wiggle of her brows. “In bed with your husband?”
This ribald commentary should have made their liegelady blush, for charmingly she continued to do so almost two years after her marriage. But the human only laughed. “Seriously? With my atrocious accent?”
Felith decided to chance the interruption. “Your accent is not atrocious, my lady.”
“You don’t have to be nice, Felith, I can take it.”
Hiding a smile… she had learned that sometimes Eddings could guess when Eldritch were disguising their feelings, so it was perhaps something of a game that she did so, anyway. “We might return to etiquette lessons? Accusing someone of lying when they are attempting to smooth over a slight social discomfort, milady, is uncouth.”
Irine snickered. “There, see? You can either be miserable with language lessons or more miserable with the manners.”
“Blood and life, absolutely, let’s do the language, then.” With a sigh, the woman pushed away the remnants of her half-eaten lunch, which they had repaired to her office to share while conducting Forecourt’s business. They had wrapped that up in clean linen quickly enough, which is how they had ended up on this topic. “Back to phrases, I guess.”
“I thought we’d try something somewhat different today, milady. More about the history and usages of the language than how to speak it. Would that make you feel more comfortable?”
“Maybe?” The woman drew the word out so skeptically! How refreshing her candor was. “That depends on whether you’re trying to go easy on me or if this is actually useful.”
“I’m betting this is actually useful, and I want to know it,” Irine said, staring now at Felith with avarice. While her accent was strange to Felith’s ears, the tigraine could already converse and, indeed, was no longer safe to speak around did one desire privacy. “Please, Felith?”
“Very good, if my lady consents.” Reese waved a hand, which Felith took for embarrassed agreement. Having received it, Felith said, “I would wish you to understand that our language has both a vernacular and a formal mode of speech, sometimes called the church tongue. The latter belongs to rite and ceremony, and the former to the day-to-day. I had not thought of it, but the responses we taught you for the Lady’s Day ceremony in the church, and again, for your wedding… tho se were formal. The grammar is different, more complex. In a way, we began with the hardest things with you… but needs must, or did at the time.”
“I didn’t know this about the church register.” The tigraine’s felted ears were quivering with interest. “I just assumed I hadn’t learned the tense or mode for those things yet.”
“Nay, Lady Irine. They are differently said.”
“And this is only for ceremonies?”
“Yes,” Felith said, and then rethinking it. “Well and again, also no.”
“Eldritch,” her liegelady murmured. More clearly, as she refilled her mug, “All right, let’s have it.”
“The church rites… they are said in the formal language, not because the formal language is of the church, but because the formal language is the language of poetry and meaning. Of course, rites are said in it: rites are moments of great import. Of intimacy, because one is affirming something before Goddess and Lord—”
“The priest?” Irine interrupted, confused.
“The priest and priestess are there to receive the vows and to grant the blessings of the Divine,” Felith said. The more she spoke in Universal, the easier it was to recall the words, but not all of them came quickly to her. She could sympathize with her auditors and their attempts to grasp an alien tongue. “They are… ah… stand-ins. Representing Lord and Lady.”
“That’s… so Eldritch.” The human’s smile was fond, and as usual, she understood these things faster than her House-sister. Felith appreciated this about her most, of all her many virtues: that the trappings of their society and culture could often confound Theresa Eddings, but the heart of what it meant to be Eldritch? That she understood quite well, for someone who had not been born one of them. Even now, tapping her finger impatiently on the wall of her mug, she was more attuned to their mores than her agitation and human seeming suggested. “All right. So you’re about to tell me… let me guess. That the Eldritch start using the church language when they’re really passionate about what they’re talking about.”
“Yes, milady,” Felith said, gratified at this confirmation of her liegelady’s understanding. “Or… perhaps not solely passion. But that we believe a thing merits poetry and song, to be witnessed by Goddess and Lord, when it is close to our spirits, and touches us to the quick. Then we choose the formal tongue.” She thought. “Some of us, at least. As with all people, some are quicker to poetry than others, and some feel it not at all.”
“And I’ve been using the harder mode all this time?” Eddings paused, winced. “Does that mean every time I’ve said ‘hi’ to someone it was more like ‘hail and well met’?”
Felith said, cautiously, “It is possible? Though some styles of greeting are time-hallowed, and no one thinks anything of their formality.”
“It is so like you people to get more formal when you want to get more intimate,” the tigraine said with an exasperated sigh. “You can’t do anything quite like the rest of us, can you!”
“And we love them for it,” said the human, eyeing her House-sister repressively.
“Obviously. The only proper response to that much obstinacy is either hate or love. Ask us how we know….”
Felith judged that perhaps in the past, Eddings might have found such a comment hurtful. She saw no sign of that hurt on the woman’s face now as she raised a roll and threatened to throw it at Lady Irine, who fell to giggling with all the abandon of a child not yet out of the nursery.
“All right, all right,” Eddings said. “I’m guessing you brought this up as a roundabout way of giving me the confidence to try this for real, Felith-arii… after all, if I’ve been learning the hardest way of speaking your language all this time, learning the easier way is going to be… well. Easier. I appreciate that, and it worked.”
“I am glad, milady,” Felith said, and was surprised to discover it was true… that it was a little bit enjoyable, not having to worry quite so much that her attempts to manage the lady to whom she owed allegiance might be offensive. “Then we might begin as we hoped we would? At the beginning, which I fear might bore Lady Irine, but perhaps she might find the repetition helpful.”
“What about it, Irine, want to stay and correct my accent?” The human paused. “Irine? Hello? Station to Irine, come in, Irine…”
The cat’s head jerked upright, and her eyes were round in a way Felith had come to associate with the avarice that her kind embraced with such glee. “Oh, angels, Reese, I just realized. Did you? You didn’t… did you know that Hirianthial and Val talk to one another in church Eldren all the time?” She turned that swollen-pupiled gaze to Felith and sighed like a debutante confronted with a swaggering duelist. “Oh, Felith. They’re talking sweet to one another!”
Eddings began laughing. Ignoring her, Felith said primly, “High Priest Valthial is one of the two heads of the church on all Escutcheon—”
“And it’s exactly the sort of thing he’d do.” Eddings wiped her eyes. “And the fact that he’s high priest would leave you wondering all the time if he was playing his role, or if he meant something more by it.”
Felith was entirely sure that the high priest wasn’t playing a role. She had friends yet at the palace, and they’d told her about the mind-mage battle. To fight at someone’s side, using the tools of the mind… no, there was more to the twain than a mercurial man’s penchant for turning everyone’s expectations on their ears. That their culture allowed him to pretend otherwise, and protected him from the certainty of it, though….
“It’s good,” Eddings finished. “And it’s definitely none of our business, Irine.”
“Unless they make it our business.”
“Unless they make it our business.” The human nodded. “So, Felith. Maybe we can start with ‘hi, how are you, and are you eating enough or do you need more food.’”
Felith suppressed the urge to shake her head and smile. “Rather bluntly proffered, milady, but… let us begin with the vocabulary.”
/What does he say, what does he say?/
“Uhn!” Talthien laughed and pushed the muzzle away from his shoulder. “Stop, you’re heavy!” The wolf licked his ear, which made him laugh more. “All right, calm down, let’s see.”
Cautiously, because the new technology still struck him as magical, particularly this facet of it, Talthien tapped the surface of the tablet and waited for the projection to start moving, speaking. It showed the face of his newest friend, and wasn’t that quite a thing, at that… that a peasant from a forgotten village in the neglected north should have any sort of interaction with a boy who had been a lord, and then nearly no one, and was now a lord again in a wholly different way?
“Talthien, greetings,” said Kirthander, with such courtly diction that Talthien might have quailed… had not a wolfish face appeared at his shoulder and nudged him off balance until the picture was nearly entirely taken up by a grinning lupine countenance. “Augh, Madoc, really, must you? Yes, I know, it was on my list of questions to ask and I won’t forget…!”
At that moment, Talthien knew it didn’t matter that he was of low station and Kirthander either the highest or the worst, depending on which Eldritch you asked. They had something so much more important in common that the rest of it fell away.
“Madoc wants me to ask you and Graeme if the Guardkin are aware of anything he can do to make his paws not skid on stone. There are a lot of steps in the Chatcaavan palace. He doesn’t want to have his nails shortened, but they’re making it hard for him to get any traction.”
Talthien waved a hand to pause the message. “What about it?”
