Page 37 of Garden of Poisoned Delights

“You’re smug,” Emile said, but he sounded as pleased as Baz, content in the warmth of the baths with Bazyli under in his lap. “Only you would treat a punishment like dessert.”

“Get a more agreeable submissive, then,” Baz said. “One who cries before you cut the wax off, and serves you tea just as you like it, and knows how to dance.”

“Stop,” Emile said, and Baz laughed. “You know I’d toss them out the door within a minute.”

“Then I guess you’re stuck with me,” Baz said. “Lucky you.”

“Yes.” Emile kissed him again, warm and possessive, and stroked Baz’s jaw. “Lucky me.”

CHAPTER 6

Knight and King, Traitor and Tyrant

Snow fell over the quiet village of Atherry. The small, narrow houses that lined the street running through town hunched in the gray light of an overcast dawn. Beyond them, the loomhouses perched like shabby vultures over the countryside. Most mornings, the heavy thump of the looms rolled through the village, but the barred windows were dark, and no sound came from the workrooms. The girls who lived and worked there, signed on by desperate parents who couldn’t afford the taxes Baron Atherry demanded, had disappeared from their beds above the workrooms three nights before. No one had seen them go. The baron’s man had locked the doors that night as always, but when he was summoned the next morning, he’d found the lock broken and the beds empty. It would only be a matter of time before the girls’ rest day came and their parents started wondering why they hadn’t left the loomhouses, and snow had long obscured their tracks.

Three days later, just as snow started to cling to the fields, a fox marched into town.

He was a beautiful fox, with a thick red coat and a green scarf wrapped around his neck, and a young man walked a few steps behind him with a hand on the hilt of an ornate sword. The crossbar looked like twining antlers, and a stag’s head was carved into the hilt, gleaming brightly under his calloused fingers. The man wore a dark coat and soft leather cuirass over his chest like one of the royal guards in Duciel, but the crest stamped into the leather wasn’t the crest of the de Guillory line—it was a stag’s head with a light caught in its antlers, embossed in gold thread.

Behind him came the missing girls.

They were dressed far better than they’d been when they followed a talking fox out of their beds three nights before. They wore thick furs and sturdy, expensive boots, and they were all grinning at each other and calling out to the houses along the lane. Their astonished parents joined them as they went, emptying the village, and several of the girls jostled each other for the honor of taking the arm of the young man with the glittering sword.

“There he is,” one of the girls said as they approached the loomhouses. One of the baron’s men was standing outside, kicking muddy snow off his boots. He turned to stare at the crowd of girls and their bewildered parents. “That’s the one that beat Jen when her fingers froze.”

“He beats us when we talk, too,” another girl said. The young man nodded thoughtfully, then tugged at his gloves.

“Thank you,” he said. He strode forward, unbuttoning his coat as he made for the man staring at the gathered girls. “This shouldn’t take long.”

* * *

“Something must be done!”

Bazyli de Guillory blinked down at the man standing in apoplectic rage at the door to his husband’s country estate. He hadn’t slept much the night before. Neither had Emile, but while Baz emerged from the bedroom in a daze, Emile was quietly reading in a breakfast nook with the satisfied air of a man who had slept ten hours on a bed of clouds.

“Please lower your voice and take three steps back,” Baz said, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“I am a baron under His Grace’s rule,” the man was saying, “and as such, I am owed his protection. There is a man—a beast?—”

“Right,” Baz said. He twisted to look over his shoulder. “This is your problem, Emile.”

“You’re the one who opened the door,” Emile called from the drawing room.

Baz grimaced.

“…beat my men,” the baron said. Baz was fairly sure he’d missed something important, but he was too tired to care. “Now they’ve taken over the loomhouses, and that man had the nerve to tell me how to tax my own people. As though he understands the burden of stewarding the land, or running a business with those lazy sluts—” His voice rose to a shriek as Baz closed the door in his face.

“Well,” Emile said, finally appearing in the hallway with a cup of tea in one hand. “That sounded unpleasant.”

“It was,” Baz said. The baron started knocking on the door. Baz locked it. “Didn’t the cook say something about those loomhouses, about how he treats the girls? If someone’s beating his men, he’ll probably take it out on the girls. That’s how men like him work.”

Emile gave Baz a considering look. Baz knew what he was thinking. Baz didn’t speak much of his childhood in Mislia anymore, but he didn’t have to. Emile had learned to read Baz better than his brother’s demon, who waltzed about in other people’s business like a town gossip. He’d filled in the silences between Baz’s words, the memories he couldn’t quite recount, the scars he didn’t like to touch. Emile wasn’t a soft man, not by most standards, but he had a straightforward kindness that fit well with Baz’s aversion to flowery words and overbearing sentimentality.

“I’ll send a message to de Valois,” Emile said. “If my son is clever enough—which he is—he’ll know how to settle the matter without alarming the surrounding nobles. He could use a few more challenges, I’m sure.”

Baz smiled. Even as king, Emile tended to attribute any popular decision he made to his son, building up Adrien’s reputation as a kinder king than his father. Adrien the Just, some were calling him, which Baz found a little ridiculous.

“In the meantime, I’ll send someone to inspect the loomhouses,” Emile said. “Now, come here and have breakfast. It looks like someone ran you ragged last night.”

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