22. The Journey Begins
A simple waltz...
The Queen’s Aerie is a MMF fantasy romance (romantic fantasy?) in 57 parts that I serialized throughout 2023/2024! If you are just now joining the story, you can catch up by starting here. Full story ToC here.
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Previously: Mani asked Ro about a certain maid...
The trip was to last twenty days at most, given sea currents and winds and distance, but hopes were high that it would take no longer than two weeks. Agadart expected to spend most of her time continuing her studies with Worthan. That was exactly how she started out the first couple of days, but then everyone got bored and evenings were given over to socializing. At least that was something she had an abundance of experience with, if usually not in such informal a setting. It almost felt like a vacation from the real world, as if being on the seas put them into a no-man’s-land where nothing mattered the way it did on land.
She spent several dinners as the guest of the younger officers (stiff, formal, and too polite, with the ensigns fidgeting in their heavily pressed uniforms while being scolded by the lieutenants) and then at the captain’s table, where she sat at the very end, far from the ship’s captain and Admiral Leonteinparre. It reminded her in unpleasant ways of her years at court, where she was constrained by the rules of etiquette and the expectations placed on her as Baroness Stewardt. The main difference was that, given her status as a dragon maid, she was not expected to participate in conversation nor have opinions about politics, which was just as well, since she was fairly sure that anyone with a keen mind would quickly see through to the nature of her background. Matrica Roki had discerned as much on less evidence, so Agadart was at peace with keeping quiet and polite, even if it all was stultifyingly boring.
The eighth night, they were more than halfway to the Isle of Watt and everyone was of good spirits. The ship captain begged off hosting dinner, claiming to need to focus on navigation and whatnot, although Agadart suspected he was simply a man who liked his own company and needed an evening to himself. She was happy to set up in the cabin set aside as the medical bay, which was where her own hammock was slung since Worthan was bunking in with the lieutenants in a forward cabin. The seas were calm so as the sun set outside of the small porthole, she decided to risk a reading lamp. As she lit it, a knock came at the door.
“Maid Aegirine, Admiral Leonteinparre bids you join him, Matrica Roki, and Doctor Worthan for dinner.”
Sighing heavily as the ensign shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot, Agadart nodded. “Tell him I will attend momentarily.”
The ensign was pleased to have a reason to escape — Heavens only knew what he had once been told about dragon maids — and Agadart turned to dress for dinner. There was not much she could do other than switch out her overgown with one a bit more formal. Her hair, petticoats, and shoes were a loss but she knew that most everyone else who didn’t have an actual uniform had the same limitations.
She knocked on the door to the admiral’s private cabin, which was probably the ship’s lieutenant’s own cabin given its primary location fore, to find only the admiral and his consort in residence. Both men gave her polite bows and she looked around awkwardly for a moment before Mani stepped up.
“The doctor was to join us, but I believe he’s found a card game he cannot refuse,” he said, his expression polite and a little contrite for the situation.
“Oh.”
The admiral swept his arm around the small room that had been reorganized to make way for a short table full of food. Three chairs were crammed around it. “It is not Kaaltendt tradition for a woman to dine alone with two men who are not relatives, but given your status as dragon maid and assistant to Doctor Worthan, I felt it would not be detrimental to you. However if you decide that it is inappropriate, you are free to go.”
“No!” She shook her head and both men’s eyebrows went up in surprise. She smiled. “No, it is acceptable. I would enjoy a quiet evening with familiar company,” she said, nodding at Mani, who smiled broadly and led her to the table.
“We are so grateful, otherwise we would be forced to host the ensigns, who are irredeemably boring.”
“Mani,” the admiral sighed, although his exasperation was tinged with fondness. He turned back to Agadart. “Both of us come from cultures where unaccompanied women are more common, and thus less prone to gossip. Mani was concerned you would refuse.”
“Again, the ensigns,” Mani stressed.
Agadart laughed and sat in the proffered chair. The men scuttled up against the other wall to take their own seats, trying not to dislodge the table. She nodded towards Mani while looking at the admiral. “By Kaaltendt custom, I must point out that due to your consort being present, your invitation is considered quite proper.” She smiled.
Both men stalled, hands on their napkins and wide-eyed looks on their faces as they stared at her. She frowned, trying to understand what they could possibly be thinking, then felt herself go crimson. “Oh!”
Mani all but stuffed the napkin in his mouth trying to stifle his laughter, his whole body shaking, while the admiral looked supremely embarrassed and uncomfortable and red-faced.
Agadart reached for words. “I expect…there are different traditions in Watt?” she asked carefully. Mani was reduced to covering his whole face while the admiral glared at him.
“Such, ah, alliances? Shall we say? Are not unheard of. I admit I was quite taken aback at court by the considerable number of mistresses.” He coughed. “But I suppose such solutions are necessary when, uhm, beds are so small?”
Agadart tried to parse what he was saying. “There are no mistresses in Watt?”
Back on safer ground, the admiral shrugged then offered to serve her, reaching for her plate, which she handed over in surprise. “Not as such. We call them triamonds. As in triangle? They are more stable, we find, and it allows children born of such unions to be legitimately recognized. I mean no offense when I say that Kaaltendt is overrun with bastards.”
“I suppose this is true. I have never considered it from another perspective.” Agadart thought of the number of illegitimate children of nobles, including her cousin, and the significant number of scandals and threats to titles they always involved. More than a few legal cases as well.
Mani had recovered himself and handed his plate to the admiral to be filled. “I think it is once again tied to dragons. My country is much the same as Watt, allowing different configurations of romance and marriage. Dragons in general tend to be more open with their affections, whereas it can complicate human matters of the heart.”
“That is only true for some of us, consort,” the admiral said curtly as he put food on Mani’s plate and passed it back to him.
“You are only jealous of those you don’t find interesting yourself,” Mani said with a haughty sniff.
Agadart focused on her food, which was not quite as lavish as their first couple of days at sea but was still fresh and well prepared. The admiral did not deign to reply to Mani on that point, and instead served himself.
“Is it common practice for lords to serve themselves and guests, in Watt?” Agadart asked. She had not mentioned it at first, too caught off guard to comment, but it was not something she had ever seen before. Usually at least a steward was on hand to serve.
The admiral tilted his head. “It is, in small private company. It is considered gentlemanly and proper. I remember the many, many lessons our house butler gave me and my siblings on serving etiquette. I was actually quite charmed by the Kaaltendt practice of never touching your own food until it is plated for you.”
Mani waved a hand around. “Akanata is more like Kaaltendt in this. I was appalled the first time Ro served me food.”
The admiral, whom Agadart could not quite bear to call “Ro,” even in her own head, smiled softly at Mani. “It was quite an adventurous honeymoon.”
Agadart focused on her vegetables, which admittedly were a little wilted. Even just eight days at sea was not good for the food stores, she supposed, as she pushed some mushy sautéed squash onto her fork.
“Did we make you uncomfortable?” the admiral asked, his tone almost painfully mild and polite. Agadart looked up to see Mani frowning at his own plate, assaulting the slab of grilled meat as if it had offended him.
“No, Admiral, it simply struck me as a private moment.”
The admiral chewed slowly, staring at her for a long moment before glancing at Mani. “You always fear the worst.”
“I do not understand this puchairt country,” Mani grumbled.
“Pusaird?” Agadart asked, never having heard Kaaltendt described with that term.
The admiral barked out a surprised laugh while Mani choked on his food. The admiral slapped his back a few times. Mani gasped for breath and waved his arms around. “Maid Aegirine! Never repeat that.”
Agadart stared between them, realizing that it was probably an Akanatan curse word. The men waited for the abjuration they surely would have gotten from any noble lady who figured out as much, visibly torn between mirth and dignified horror, which neither was succeeding at very well.
Unable to contain herself, Agadart laughed. “You both look like naughty schoolboys.”
Mani’s shoulders relaxed and they laughed with her. The admiral shook his head and rolled his eyes at Mani, and in that moment he was transformed from the handsome but distant soldier and nobleman Agadart had first spotting getting off the train at Endestern into a charming, warmhearted man. Her admiration must have been too visible, as Mani caught her looking and winked. She frowned at him but he laughed again so she focused once again on her food.
They talked some more about the trip and her studies with Dr. Worthan, and it was all pleasant enough that Agadart relaxed to the point that when the admiral piled up the plates and serving dishes, she found herself mourning the end of the evening. Just as she was starting to rise, the admiral laid his hand on her arm, holding her in place with a surprisingly gentle touch for a dragon. She looked up at him. He stared down at her for a moment too long, his gaze calculating, but then he pulled his hand back and smiled. “We have wine that needs to be drank.”
Agadart looked over at Mani, who was already pouring three glasses out. As the admiral pushed the table as far as it would go towards the bed shelf (which, Agadart noticed with a flush, was just barely big enough for two people), Mani handed her a glass. “We expect nothing but the pleasure of your company, Maid Aegirine,” he said cautiously.
“If this is a seduction, you fed me too much. I am lethargic on roast.” She smiled. It was all fairly scandalous compared to the world she had moved through at court, with the strict lines of propriety and class, but as Mani had pointed out earlier, as a dragon maid she was somewhat exempt from those rules. She had always preferred time spent with her father and childhood friends over the rarefied atmosphere she had married into, and despite the admiral’s formal title as a duke of Watt, he was in private almost as forthright and easygoing as Mani.
Mani laughed at her words. “Less food, more wine, for Kaaltendt women?”
“So I’ve heard,” she said, sipping her wine.
The admiral sighed heavily at them as he eased back into his chair, this time with room enough to let his long legs trail out in front of him. Agadart was slightly ashamed of how easy it was to imagine him debauched from a night spent in bed with his lover, but on the other hand it was a very pleasant image.
Mani also stretched out, still conscious of his fine suit but far more relaxed than Agadart usually saw him. Taking their cue, she unwound a little, letting her back relax and sitting askance in the chair, her feet tucked up on a bracer bar. It made her feel young, reminded of times spent sitting similarly in her father’s den, drinking her hot chocolate while he sipped brandy and read one of his science books out loud to her.
“You are wearing such a happy expression,” the admiral noted quietly. Agadart startled at his words, but he smiled. “Far happier than the vintage calls for,” he added, raising his wine glass.
“Remembering my father, reading in his den. Many nights we kept company, when Mother was too sick to join.”
Mani pursed his lips, staring into his glass, but the admiral nodded. “Fond memories are the best cause of happiness,” he said, his expression almost unbearably soft.
Agadart looked away. “I have many. My life has not been as harsh as dragon maid lore often suggests.”
“Not left flat, begging on a street corner for bread?” Mani asked, his mouth quirking at the joke.
“Not quite, no,” Agadart answered with her own smile.
“But you are a noble lady, yes?” the admiral asked, and it was clear from his expression and Mani’s grunt of displeasure that he knew he was overstepping.
Agadart played with her glass. She was less worried about being found out by him than being sent home in disgrace because of it, but they were just days away from Watt and, therefore, war. She doubted anything would come of being honest, at least insofar as what she had already revealed to Mani in private. “Yes, but it is not something I wish to trade on.”
“We met at court,” the admiral added, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees. It wasn’t quite a question, but it was also not a declaration that he knew who she was specifically, just that he had finally recognized her from somewhere.
“Perhaps? I was there, in season.”
The admiral nodded and sat back again, apparently content to let the subject go. Agadart glanced at Mani, trying to get a read on him, but he was staring at the admiral with an unreadable expression.
As they emptied the wine bottle, conversation moved on to a discussion of what Emperor Rhezv’s motives for starting his attack earlier than anyone anticipated could possibly be, and what the admiral knew of Watt’s defenses. Agadart felt warm and comfortable, much as she did at home, and couldn’t help but laugh when the music of the sailors drifted down from topside. They played every night, jigs and maudlin love songs and very poor renditions of popular tunes, and some of them where at least proficient if short of talented.
The admiral stopped in the middle of a description of dragon-enforced battlements to look at her. “Do you dance?”
The song in play was a simple dancing waltz, different instruments weaving in and out of the tune as different sailors joined in. “Of course, Admiral,” she said, because it was true. She had loved dancing once, remembering how it felt to fly across the floor with a competent partner. If there was one single thing she allowed herself to remember fondly of her husband, it was that he was an excellent dancer.
“Oh, you’ve got him now,” Mani said, and Agadart realized that he had probably imbibed a few more glasses of wine than she had if the slightly glazed look of his eyes was any indication. “All dragons love to dance, even if they don’t admit it.”
“Perhaps I’m a dragon in secret, then, for I love nothing more!” she cheered, then blushed in realization that perhaps she, too, had imbibed more glasses than she had realized.
She started in surprise as the admiral glided to his feet, giving his glass to Mani and holding out his other hand to Agadart. She laughed, looking around the small, cramped cabin. He kept his hand out, his normally stern and dour countenance softened by a hint of a smile. His mouth was lush and red from the wine, and against her better judgment Agadart stood up and met him in the middle. He did not crowd her but brought her in closer to hold her in an odd configuration that she assumed was a style from his homeland, with one hand low on her back and the other holding her hand, their forearms up and pressed together. They were much closer than any standard dance form of Kaaltendt, their torsos almost touching, and she felt herself blush even further.
She waved her other hand around a little until Mani laughed and said, “The shoulder! The shoulder!” She almost giggled putting her hand up on the admiral’s shoulder, given how tall he was to her, but managed to keep her dignity a little. Mani had an inch or two on her, but the admiral was easily a wide hand span taller.
He moved them to her left in a small step, which she tried to mirror, then he moved her back, and after a few more steps she realized he was moving them in a square, a very small box with their feet swinging out and back and forward to the rhythm of the song from above. Mani was humming along, and Agadart was trying to keep up with the smooth, fluid movements of the admiral. He was warm, his skin blazing with heat much as dragons did in their draconic form, and he smelled of the iron of their hides. However, it was not the burnt scent she was familiar with from the warrens, but musky and human.
“Please call me Rodgardae,” he said softly, his words gusting over her ear and making her shudder.
“Rodgardae,” she whispered back, and he spun her around.
They danced and danced, and by the third song, which was a jig, she felt the wine had drained from her blood and left desire in its wake. It nearly made her head spin, being so close to a dragon in his walking form, and she swayed towards him like a flower to the light. For that brief moment, he was everything, and then he was kissing her, pulling her in tight against his body. Agadart gasped, which deepened the kiss, and she lost track of whether that was what she wanted or not. She shuddered as another hand ran gently up her back.
“Aegirine,” Mani said, his lips near the back of her neck.
“Oh,” she said, struck speechless by the feeling of being pressed between the two men. She instinctively tilted her chin up to reach for Rodgardae’s lips as Mani continued to mouth down the soft skin under her jaw.
After a moment Rodgardae pulled back and his eyes were blazing, his power barely contained within. “You taste like flight, like the green lights of the sky’s borders,” he said breathlessly.
“What?” Agadart blinked at him, only then registering that Mani’s arms were around her waist.
“Ro?” Mani asked, leaning forward to nestle his head against hers, the skin of their cheeks brushing together.
“Like…like a flier,” Rodgardae managed to say, his hands shaking where they clutched her shoulders. “Like the dust of a warren.”
She felt Mani chuckle behind her. “You never make sense when you talk like a dragon, my love.”
“I am a dragon,” Ro said, looking dazed, before leaning down to kiss Mani. Agadart felt and heard Mani inhale deeply, and she could see them kissing, feeling almost as if she were a part of it. There was a peculiar feeling unfurling in her, desire and affection and possession all twisted up together in a way she never felt during the perfunctory marital fumblings of her former husband.
They traded kisses for what seemed like hours, and when the three of them tugged each other to the bed with all the grace of newborn foals, Agadart laughed.
“Are you still drunk?” Mani asked, his hands paused over the ties to her outer apron.
She shook her head. “Dizzy with want, I think. I’ve read of feeling like this, but…ah.” She fell back on the bed, which meant falling onto Rodgardae’s bare chest. She was nestled in his spread legs while Mani was crouched between hers, and both men were down to their trousers. She felt the hardness of Rodgardae’s cock pressing against her ass.
“Have none of your lovers ever truly pleased you?” Mani asked, sounding like a shopkeeper asking about her favorite tea. Behind her, Rodgardae was humming as he nosed among the curls of her hair, which was undone and cascading everywhere for the first time in she could not remember how long.
“My lovers?” She laughed, pulling Mani into a kiss that he returned with a happy noise. “I never took lovers.” She stopped there, thinking briefly of her life at court with her traitorous husband, trusting no one and fearing for her life every moment of the day. She shuddered for less pleasant reasons than her company.
“Mmmm, no. Shhhh.” Rodgardae murmured, kissing over her shoulder as Mani pulled off her dress. A sharp, angry part of her mind reminded her of all the rules she was breaking, of the risks involved with such an assignation. Deeper still, though, was a powerful need to claim and be claimed, to push these two men to their limits in pleasing her, and for the three of them to be wrapped up tightly together like dragons mating in flight. It was like the fabled aphrodisiacs peddled by traveling apothecaries, promising a moment of transcendent pleasure.
She felt wild and powerful, and pulled Mani down on top of her with a possessive growl. They all smelled of dragon and lust and magic and Agadart felt herself locked to them like a puzzle piece. She pushed her doubts away and sank into a pleasure she had never even dared dream of.
