Exiled former prince Osmund Haldebard may have been meek and bumbling and ridiculous and all the rest, but he was also, in one respect at least, an ordinary man.
Or that was how he preferred to think of it, anyway. He was all too aware that truly ordinary men did their leering at plunging necklines and revealing bustiers, not at tall strangers with broad chests and perfectly-ruffled hair and clean, manly beards.
Yes, that’s right. The prince of Valcrest… was a notorious stick-rider!
Back in the kingdom, he’d tried to keep his predilections to himself. Really, he’d tried. He knew his royal responsibilities, and he was desperate not to do anything to invoke his father’s wrath. But he was lousy in the face of temptation. Even the average town harlot would shake her head to see how fast Osmund dropped to his knees for a nobleman’s sneering son with a strong sword arm and some too-tight britches.
In short, he’d made many mistakes while in thrall to his own libido. And he was making one now. He was gawking, the one-of-a-kind mare all but forgotten. But really, what could you expect? Osmund was a man, not a stallion.
He was shaken out of his reverie by surprised stammers to his left and right. The tradesmen were greeting the newcomer, he realized, with bows and obeisances. He assessed the man again, this time with a less lusty eye. The stranger was tall, but not much taller than Osmund – he just carried himself notably well. He had dark skin and darker hair, and was dressed in a long buttoned shirt that hung nearly to his knees, the kind usually hidden beneath layers of fine dress in the Meskato style.
Even wearing nightclothes, his hair wild and stance wide like he’d just run here (as he clearly had), there was no doubt in Osmund’s mind that this was no ordinary man, but someone dignified and important, someone leagues above himself in every regard. He was also unquestionably the owner of this equally-beautiful horse.
Osmund came back to himself in a rush of terror. What was he doing?! He brought his arms away from the lovely equine creature in a panic and flung himself to his knees, and not in a fun sexy way. His dangling hair brushed the ground.
(An annoyed snort from the mare indicated she disliked no longer being the center of attention.)
“I-I-I’m sorry, um,” Osmund began in Meskato, before he immediately ran out of words. The rest flew out in a torrent of Tolmish. “I’m sorry for touching your priceless horse, sir! If you need to whip or punish me, I understand, but please spare my life! I’ll do anything you ask!”
For a moment, only the far-off sounds of the market answered his plea. There was nowhere to look down here but at the man’s feet. If he was this province’s governor (Osmund remembered only a little from his lessons of how the Meskato Empire operated), it didn’t look like he sat all day behind a desk. His bare feet were hard and calloused. That perhaps wasn’t surprising, given the strength of his powerful build.
Stay back, lecherous thoughts, Osmund pleaded! He needed all his strength to endure his punishment!
The man finally spoke.
“You… are from Valcrest?” he said, slowly, and even if he’d been an ugly old hag with bad breath and no teeth and a gangrenous nose, Osmund could have kissed him.
The man was speaking in Tolmish!
“You speak my language?” Osmund blabbed, and could almost at once feel the incredulous stares boring into his back from the merchants behind him, but he was too elated to remember himself (or the ways in which he was surely about to be abused for his impudence). “It’s been so long! I never thought I’d hear it again! Oh, thank heavens you can understand me!”
The man cleared his throat. “Stand,” he bade.
Osmund rushed to obey. He would have done anything this handsome man wanted of him, happily. Whip his own back? He’d do it. Clean the latrines with his bare hands? He would. What a joke that he’d been born a prince! He was meant for this. For orders. For commands.
“Thank you,” the man said once Osmund was back on his feet. His tone was stilted. He sounded…
Well, there was no other word for it but awkward.
Osmund floundered, the comforting submission he’d felt a moment ago dissolving. He’d been ready for nearly anything, but not that. “…Thank you?” he repeated back in a question, unsure.
The stranger studied him. “My horse,” he began deliberately, his Tolmish only a little unnatural. “You made her calm. Not an easy thing. What is your name?”
If this were any other time, maybe Osmund would have had the presence of mind not to immediately blurt his actual real name, “Osmund!”, like he did just now. But who would ever suspect a dirty laborer of being the former prince of Valcrest?
The man simply nodded, and didn’t introduce himself in turn. “Come,” he said, taking his horse by the reins, and once again Osmund nearly tripped over himself to obey – but then stopped. Was the man speaking to him, or his mare? Both the beautiful man and the beautiful horse were going through the gate past the beautiful wall, onto the grounds around that grand house. Surely he wasn’t meant to follow?
He shot a gaze back to the merchants behind him, seeking guidance in their faces. “What are you doing?” one of them stage-whispered to him in Meskato. “The şehzade gave you a ████. Go!” And so Osmund went.
The little apprentice boy had been watching him with open wonder. It wasn’t every day you got your life saved by a dirty vagabond, Osmund supposed.
The broad building was even more impressive up close. Hewn from tanned stone and lined with rows of pointed arches, the façade had two main entryways that he could see. It was not very like the castle in which he’d grown up. For one thing, though they were within the ornate stone gates, he saw commoners – not just servants, but ordinary civilians of all trades and cultures, orcs and humans and other peoples besides – everywhere. What’s more, they greeted the beautiful important man… the shehzadeh?... far too informally.
Osmund wondered if the merchants’ awed reaction outside had been more a surprised response to the man’s relaxed state of dress. He surely hadn’t been expecting his horse to suddenly bolt over a wall into the street.
A servant approached, and accepted the black mare’s reins. The horse snorted again unhappily, with a sidelong glance at Osmund as if to say, gee, thanks a lot, bub, and grudgingly trudged off in what must be the direction of the stables. Osmund almost followed on instinct.
“Here,” the yet-unnamed man said, instead leading him down an interior corridor. Osmund could barely keep pace with all that his eyes were seeing; he’d been in plenty of fine houses in Valcrest, but only one since he arrived here in the empire. And that was an occasion he deeply preferred not to think about.
Before long, they’d reached a courtyard. The bustle of petitioners and civil and domestic servants was gone. Tall trees with throngs of pointed leaves stood in intervals along the arcades. Bushels of colorful flowers and exotic plants bloomed in the controlled chaos of carefully-tended gardens. A few young cypresses – aspiring giants – stood vigil near a manmade pond in the atrium’s center. That such a wide green space existed in the middle of a bustling city like Shebyan, without the aid of illusory magic…!
But all of that was secondary. The man was smiling at him. Really smiling. At him!
“It is beautiful,” the man acknowledged, looking around at the courtyard, and Osmund realized the smile was, impossibly, a reaction to his own awe and wonder. Though the curve of his mouth was a very small thing, the effect on his face – and on Osmund – was staggering. “It’s good to see it through new eyes again.”
There was only one possible explanation: For the first time, Osmund was on the floor of his dirt hovel having a nice dream. A beautiful house, a beautiful garden, a beautiful horse and – oh – this man! How could a wretch like himself be so greedy? And yet his appetite was bottomless. He dared hope this dream might get even nicer.
“You’re beautiful,” Osmund blurted. The man blinked. Oh no. “This place is beautiful,” Osmund corrected madly, horrified by the not-entirely-ruled-out possibility that this wasn’t a delusion. He could feel the heat radiating off his cheeks as he gestured broadly to the greenery beside them. “I-it’s an impressive garden! The healers will be well-stocked with so many useful medicinal plants, a-and the horses, they must all be very healthy!”
The man furrowed an eyebrow, barely noticeable. “Medicinal?”
Osmund wasn’t sure if he wasn’t familiar with the Tolmish word, or if these plants had been intended strictly for decoration. He decided to change the subject. “Whatever you want of me, you can have it!” Osmund declared. “Th-thank you for not beating me on the street!”
For the first time, the man looked not just confused, but troubled. “Do people say such things of me?” he murmured. But then he shook his head and continued. “You misunderstand. I only wish to repay you. You see, Anaya is… not an ordinary horse.” This he said with a strange note in his voice that had nothing to do with the Tolmish language. “Many men have failed to tame her. Myself, she tolerates. None calm her so easily as you did.”
Osmund knew he was good with horses. It was possibly his one natural skill in this world. And not just riding: caring for them, soothing them, even delivering foals – it came almost more naturally than breathing. He had a precious memory of a time back before Valen Haldebard had known his son was a failure and an idiot and a flagrant homosexual, where instead of berating him, the king had praised his young progeny’s equestrian aptitude. No doubt he was envisioning a prince who would hunt and sport and ride bannered steeds into battle. Osmund clung to the memory, and the fantasy it represented, all the same.
So yes, he was good with horses. But the horse in question wasn’t the kind a Tolmishman would dare to own, even a prince. The horses on this continent were different. They’d evolved alongside the Meskato: the most skilled and fearless horse riders in all of history.
“It was nothing,” Osmund demurred, at the same time that the man asked, “Do you wish to join my household?”
Osmund shut his mouth. The handsome, important man held his gaze.
“Thank about it,” the man said, and then, difficultly, as if he wasn’t sure of a polite way to continue: “The baths here are open to you.”
That’s
right,
Osmund remembered. I probably smell like an unemptied chamber pot. The
most handsome man he’d ever seen had all but begged him to bathe. But Osmund
smiled anyway. For one brief moment, he was grateful that he hadn’t woken up in
his soft bed in the castle.
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