Lora of Two Worlds

Who goes around calling himself a perfect match? The cheek of it.

Lora rolled her eyes good and big at him and went off to one side to tease the dog.

Dr. Osler, quietly observant, caught the something-between-them soon enough, and lifted his cup without a flicker: this same brother — who had fled the capital half a year back, gray-hearted, hiding from ruin — was full of fight again already.

Did it have something to do with her?

Norton had told him: the man had been deaf and mute, and she had cured his ears for him. If there truly was such a ”Grand Strategy of the Realms,” what would it take, he wondered, before she could be brought to teach him the medical parts of it?

Leon had been away from Augustburg close on half a year now. In the palace there was a von Klein; at Voss’s side a Greene; a Hugh Horn planted in place; and a Dr. Osler who went his rounds among the houses of the high and noble.

Call it a certain sure footing, at least, for keeping a hand on the capital’s pulse.

”Lord Darcy and his party mean to petition again before the Harvest Home recess, begging that Prince Ewan be named Crown Prince — and that is the very day my father goes up to the capital for his rotation report, so he can stand up in court and show where the house stands.”

”Rotation to where this time?”

”Thornford. Not forty leagues from the capital precincts — nearer, if anything. And only a year, thank heaven: back in Lohenheim by next Harvest Home.”

The several Lord Wardens posted about the capital district and the Eastern Capital’s own precincts left their stations and traded posts with one another every second year, and the Count of Odenheim was no exception.

By the old pattern, Alvin, Gareth, and Roland went along with the General to the new station at the head of their own guards, while the fourth and the fifth could stay on with the Lohenheim army and keep an eye on things at home.

This time, however, Leon had a finer-grained plan. The Odenheim sons were grown men now; there was no sense in the lot of them crowded into one camp.

He was waiting for his opening — the opening that would carry Roland back to Augustburg and into the Privy Council.

Crouched to one side teasing the dog, Lora carried a dull weight at her chest: next month her father and brothers would be off to garrison Thornford. Only a year, it was true — but a year of few meetings, and a house gone quiet and cold.

”Yvonne out of sorts? Afraid that with your brothers away, there’ll be no one to bring you your coming-of-age gift?”

Roland had seen her fling the stick a long, long way, and knew her heart was not in the game — he teased her on purpose.

”While you’re away, I’ll just come live at East Manor. Perhaps the Southland rice seed will have come back by then, and I can put in a trial season. And the Lornmere forests — Gareth and Roland promised to take me there — well, I’ll simply have to make do with Carl.”

Lora clapped the dirt off her hands and stood, chin up, skirts gathered, and made for the gate: ”Coming of age, what of it? I’m a busy woman. You men talk — I’ll go out and meet Faye.”

Watching her go, Felix laughed:

”Yvonne really isn’t the girl she used to be. Go off to Thornford in peace — aren’t Leon and I still here?”

”You? Didn’t Leon say to get you up to the capital as quick as might be? Lohenheim is only the second capital, after all. If you mean to do great things, you can’t all be tucked away down here taking your ease.” Dr. Osler smiled, mild:

”Once you’re up in the capital, I mean to take a post as an army physician in Roland’s camp.”

This stroke of luck — the chance to learn the treatment of sores and wounds under an old army physician — had set him wanting to go into the camps and hunt down some field-work of his own.

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A man who would not so much as set foot in the Royal College of Physicians naturally had no taste for making the round of princes’ houses either; had it not been for Leon, he would have left Augustburg long ago.

”My lord — Tobias is here.” Lyle stood at the pavilion’s edge to ask.

”Send him in.”

Tobias was the wine-madman of Leon’s telling: a man who would not doctor his wine, and had walked away even from the directorship of the Royal Brewery — a humble post enough — rolling up his bedroll and going home to his village in the Lohenheim countryside.

The plan had been to settle him at Little Penn; Roland said East Manor was nearer, and better for the drinking afterwards — so the brewing-shed had gone up at the little East Manor.

Tobias came in at the head of his men, a wine-jar borne on their pole, and saluted with folded fists, grinning:

”My duty to you, my lord. Hearing the young lords were out this way, I took the liberty of bringing up my own yellow ale, for the lords to taste. That brewing-recipe you gave me — I have run two trial jars of it; only, the hour for breaking the seals is not yet come.”

”East Manor’s own brew in the old days was too thin — nobody at the house would drink it. Now that you’re here, the name of our East Manor Brew can go out and make its mark.”

At ”the name,” Leon asked:

”Tobias — that brewery mark I showed you the last time. Are you content with it?”

Tobias chuckled: ”Well enough in every other way. Only — setting my face and my name on it? Wouldn’t that be making a name for the likes of me? This is a brewery of yours and of the Odenheims’...”

”What brewery mark?” Some fresh contrivance again?

That day when Leon had asked Lora for the brewing-recipe, he had told her that Tobias was a proud man, one who set his whole worth on his craft of the wine.

So Lora had drawn Leon a trademark: East Manor Brew — look for the ”Tobias” mark! The only maker in the Aurelian Empire; no second shop, no branch house.

The soul-artist responsible had thrown in a little fellow’s head-and-shoulders into the bargain, to stand for Tobias.

Tobias was content, of course. It came to every jar of East Manor Brew carrying his brand — his labor and his craft owned on the face of it.

Better still: whatever East Manor Brew earned hereafter, one part in ten of it would come to him.

This was money going into his own purse! Tobias had hurried back to Lohenheim that very night, hard on the heels of Leon’s men.

”That has the smell of Yvonne’s mischief all over it — that sly little wit of hers. With her about, the clock never once drags.”

Since the day Felix had set his true self loose to fly, he said out loud whatever was in his heart, no more striking attitudes before Yvonne — and felt the better for it.

”Do I hear somebody praising me again?”

Lora came into the courtyard leading Faye by the hand, the pair of them all grins.

At the sight of Tobias’s jar, Faye spoke up quickly: ”We brought wine too — they say it’s the best yellow ale in the two capitals.”

Tobias gave it a contemptuous sniff: ”Yours is the two capitals’ best, is it? Well, now that it’s come inside East Manor, let the young lords be the judges — whether Tobias’s yellow ale mayn’t deserve to be called East Manor’s best.”

Lora clapped her hands, delighted:

”Good, good, good! Nothing I love like being the judge. New brew or old vintage — never you mind the getting drunk; every bowl calls for a song! Today we’ll have no drinking-games. We go round the table singing — no repeating what another has sung, and no going off-key. Fail to come up with a song: one cup forfeit. Sing it off-key: three cups!”

Well! This little woman truly was a wine-madcap the moment wine showed its face — had she pitched every last vow of the other time clean out of her head?

Leon gave a couple of dry coughs.

Lora played deaf, turned, and called:

”Lucy! Lilac! Pour for everyone, quick now!” Garnet came forward to help as well.

Roland put the Horn brother and sister before Felix and Dr. Osler — though in truth, when Leon told the tale of Highgarden, he had already told of these two; now the faces were being fitted to the names.

Leon settled himself at Lora’s side and amended the rules:

”Five men, two women — and every forfeit the women pay at half.”

Chester Horn waved it off, laughing: ”Your Highness, don’t forget — your women are the very best at song and dance. We had better have a few songs thought out ahead of time, or these two will drink us under the table.”

No need to sing a whole song, anyway. I’m the one-line song king — I’ll sing the whole lot of you flat under the table.

Lora went off into a great scheming haw-haw.

But, ah but — she was still too green.

Only when Felix struck up Anacreon’s ”Three Airs of the Serenade” did the light break over Lora:

She had gone and supposed it was only the dance-songs that were made for singing! Who knew that with the court lyrics — everything short of the great old chants, the minstrels’ ballads, and the long lai-sequences — the quatrains and the little rounds could all be set to song and passed around?

The maddening part was that they could fit any one tune to any short-lined or long-lined verse in the book. They had worn those tunes so smooth they simply never went off-key, all right?

”Lovely... sing me Byron White’s ’Flower, Not a Flower’ next, hm~”

Chin in her palm, eyes gone wine-misted, Lora beamed at Leon and put in her request.

”Your turn to sing. You’ve done the sheep with its three bags of wool, the bridge that keeps falling down, and the blind mice that ran afoul of the farmer’s wife. What’s next on the program?”

Leon was a little drunk himself. Months of practice — his head for wine had been coming up.

What had him drunk was the silly woman in front of him.