Brian McCLELLAN: Green-Eyed Vipers

Eight years before the events of Promise of Blood...

The Baroness Petara loved a good party. She loved the color, the wine, the music; the giddy blur of faces and the gaudy splendor of gilded furniture. The halls of Skyline Palace were lit this evening by hundreds of candelabras and all the nobility of Adro were in attendance, dressed to the nines and preening like haughty birds. At an event like this, Petara loved to assume an air of distracted boredom and watch the flock of vain young men fall over themselves to entertain her.

Petara loved that the rest of the women in the hall knew what she was about and were helpless to stop her, even when their own husbands threw themselves gallantly at her, requesting the honor of a dance or offering her a drink.

Some of the men enjoyed her sporadic flirting. Some of them were there to gain favor – she was a cousin of the king, after all – and even more of them hovered around hoping to spend a night in her arms. She didn’t blame them. Even in her late thirties, Petara was one of the most beautiful women in the room, and a wealthy widow.

On a normal night, she would have taken at least one of the young men home with her, or up to one of the hundreds of spare bedrooms on the second floor of the palace. This, however, was not a normal night. She was not going to be the midnight conquest of some idiot duke’s son. She had her own hunting to do.

The very best of hunters knew when to wait and let their prey come to them. And Petara was the best.

She gave a titillated laugh at something lewd the man next to her whispered in her ear. “I’m sure I couldn’t,” she said, giving him a sidelong glance that told him that oh yes, she certainly could. What was his name again? Frederik. How unoriginal. But he was the third son of a duke with lucrative trading contracts and he had some wonderfully strong arms. Petara liked to mix business and pleasure when she could.

She leaned over to Frederik and whispered, “Call on me at my manor in the Routs tomorrow night at eleven.” Without waiting for an answer, she extricated herself from his arms and stood against a marble pillar, stretching languidly in a way that would give Frederik all sorts of ideas. She smiled at him over her shoulder, snatched a glass of sparkling wine from a passing servant, and left the stuffy sitting room and the dozen or so suitors all vying for her attention.

It was a relief to be away from them, if she was being honest with herself. The simpering and flattery got old. Petara wasn’t some brainless bauble to be impressed by flattering words, even if she did act the part most of the time. She went out into the hall, sipping her wine thoughtfully, making a mental inventory of the faces she didn’t know. She threaded her way into the nearest ballroom, stopping to greet friends and rivals, then went half way up the grand staircase and turned to watch the dancers on the floor below.

She let her eyes wander the room, stopping briefly on a dark blue uniform in one corner. No. That wasn’t the man she sought.

She found another blue uniform and, with a nervous pit in her stomach, checked the face of the man wearing it. Once again she was mistaken. Her disappointment annoyed her. She felt like a girl at her first masquerade, heart aflutter.

She buried the annoyance beneath a smile, then proceeded on to the next ballroom, and then the next.

It was in the third that she found the man she hunted. He was hard to miss – a person much like herself, to whom lesser men and women flocked, clamoring for his attention. His presence in a room demanded such. He was tall, with salt and pepper hair and skin darkened by campaigns in the Gurlish sun, his face weathered by the elements and battle. He wore the dark blue uniform of an Adran soldier with a sword at his hip, and the gold epaulets of the field marshal of the Adran army.

Everyone in the room had their own opinion of Field Marshal Tamas. Some of them worshiped him. More hated him. At least half a dozen actively plotted his death. The nobility in general thought he was an insufferable upstart who had tricked the king into letting him lead the nation’s armies – a despicable worm burrowing its way into the royal apple.

Petara had no illusions about the field marshal. She never had, not since she first saw him on parade when she was still a girl and him a already a colonel. She could still remember that moment clearly, barely seventeen and feeling her heart pound in her chest as he rode by, her cheeks flushing when he glanced her direction. Others whispered that this low-born officer couldn’t possibly rise higher in the king’s graces but she had known almost instinctively that he would someday be one of the most influential men in the country.

So she waited. And nine years ago, when the opportunity presented itself, Petara aided the Kez plot to execute Tamas’s wife.

She felt herself flush, as if merely thinking it in the same room as Tamas would tip her hand to him. She dismissed the notion immediately. Tamas was a brilliant tactician and a natural leader of men, but only passingly adept at politics. Very little subtlety when it came to intrigue. Beneath his cold exterior he was a passionate, even brutal man and if he had so much as suspected her involvement, she would have been dead years ago. He didn’t know – he couldn’t know.

It made the prospect of bedding him so much more thrilling.

She took up her spot on the staircase, adopting a bored expression, watching him out of the corner of her eye as he moved across the room, greeting and shaking hands. His face was steel, only breaking character to flick a smile as he kissed a young woman’s hand. The girl’s father sweated visibly behind her. Everyone knew Tamas’s reputation with the young noblewomen.

The field marshal moved past the girl, hard eyes sweeping the floor. He glanced upward once, and Petara was sure he’d seen her. Lady Petara, the widow baroness; standing alone, statuesque in a low cut, damask dress, a string of pearls brushing against her décolletage. Petara knew Tamas. She was far too good of a target for him to ignore.

She thought back over the years since his wife’s death. Petara and Tamas never slept together, despite both their reputations for dalliances and their mutual eligibility. Petara had avoided him diligently – without looking like it, of course. She wanted to leave him for as long as possible. Let his grief pass. Let his star in the government continue to shine. Let him get older, lonelier.

The timing was perfect. Her informants said that he was growing more receptive to the idea of a second marriage. Despite their hatred of him, more than one noble house already spoke of sacrificing their prettiest daughters for a chance to snag Tamas’s influence.

Petara would bed him tonight. Give him something to remember. And then, over the next few months, they’d have more chance meetings. Another dalliance, then another. Petara would shift her interests to align with his, and influence his to align with hers in all the smallest ways. It might take years, but a man of his intelligence wouldn’t help but see the advantage in a marriage. She could give him more children and leave them a legacy that would be the envy of every other noble house. Petara need only be patient.

Tamas was heading toward her now. He shook off the last of his sycophants and ascended the stairs. He passed behind her, and Petara felt a spike of indignation. He was going to walk right past, without a second glance!

“Lady Petara.” The voice was clipped, formal.

She took a deep breath. Of course he wouldn’t walk past. Not a man in this room could do that to her. Petara looked at him over her right shoulder. “Why, Field Marshal Tamas! I didn’t see you there.”