Chapter Six

Master Nicolo At Work

The next day, Nicolo and Balduin turned their competitive natures to fencing, an area where I had more knowledge.

They were both skilled with the blade (although I considered myself a match for either), though it seemed Nicolo had the edge: he was just a little sharper, a little faster, a little more deft. But perhaps I was biased, because after five close-fought rounds, it was again Balduin who came out on top.

True to his word, Gauthier had delivered on his promise to provide my squire's uniform and I was now wearing my newly updated costume. When first I had met Nicolo for the day's activities, I could almost feel his gaze like a physical thing as it wandered up my body, now displayed in my flattering uniform. The costume included skin-tight, brown, leather breeches that did nothing to hide the contours of my thighs, hips and ass. Above the breeches, I wore a plunging tunic that tucked into the hemline above my trousers. And, over the tunic, I wore a lace-up corset type vest that cinched my already small waist and only caused my breasts to nearly overflow their tight confines. Even though my getup was hardly considered feminine, it revealed my female shape much better than a frock ever could.

Nicolo wasn't the only man to notice my newly improved uniform. Balduin had practically tripped over himself when I'd followed Nicolo into the room in which they practiced their fencing.

"My goodness, Gauthier certainly does a good job, does he not?" Balduin asked with an appreciative smile as his gaze roved my body.

"It helps that his canvas was a pert one to begin with," Nicolo answered and his tone of voice wasn't encouraging. Clearly, he didn't like it when the prince made eyes at me.

"And have you been able to peruse this canvas yet, my friend," Balduin continued as he licked his lips and his gaze traveled from my overflowing bust to the crux of my thighs. "Sans the paint?"

"Did you or did you not wish to spar with me?" Nicolo asked, raising his fencing sword.

***

After the two had practiced their swordplay for over an hour, I followed them outside where they took a walk through the Castle Gardens and then beyond them, into the expanse of green grassed embankment beside the Castle Lake. I walked a few strides behind them, Balduin's guards just behind me. After walking for another hour or so, Balduin decided he would like to rest in the shade of the willow trees, bodyguards standing over their prince like statues.

It wasn't long before Balduin's rest turned into a nap and soon he was snoring and dead to the world. Nicolo, meanwhile, sat beside him and did nothing but stare out at the still lake, lost in his thoughts. I sat a ways away from him, the guards standing just behind me as they were wont to do. When I attempted to make small-talk with them, they refused to engage with me at all, utterly dedicated to their job. And Nicolo made no motion to even notice me, which I supposed was just as well because I had my own thoughts to see to—namely, how in the world was I going to assassinate this man when he was never alone?

The last day-and-a-half had already taught me a lot, but my main takeaway was that Balduin and Nicolo were close to inseparable, which meant their bodyguards were ever-present. Although the guards were protecting the prince not Nicolo, there was no way I could assassinate Nicolo while he was with Balduin. And that would prove to be a challenge.

"Are you going out tonight?" asked Nicolo of Balduin after the latter had awoken and we were now strolling back through the garden.

Balduin shook his head. "No, I've promised to attend a dinner for... Hazel's husband – what's his name?

"Duke Furiosa."

Balduin nodded. "That's it. Ludicrous name for a man as threatening as a walnut. The dinner is in his honor, which is also ludicrous."

"Yes," agreed Nicolo. "I hope you enjoy it."

Balduin turned to face him with a frown. "You're not coming?"

"I was not invited."

Balduin snarled. "Hazel's manners are in need of reproachment."

"It's really quite alright," Nicolo started, but Balduin was angry and would be heard.

"She's the bitterest of my sisters," he continued while frowning into the distance. Then, apparently having thought of something of interest, turned back to face Nicolo. "You should have married one of them."

"Then the others would be out to kill me," Nicolo answered on a heavy chuckle. Like the guards, he'd ignored me for the whole last hour. "At least this way, all of them are angry with me, no less, no more."

"Come along as my guest."

"Why?"

"It will make Hazel furious," grinned Balduin. "Which will, in turn, make Furiosa furiouser."

They both got a hefty laugh out of that one.

"Do you think Furiosa has designs on the throne?" asked Balduin, suddenly turning to his closest friend with concern in his eyes.

Nicolo shook his head. "No. If anyone has designs on your throne, I believe it's your sister and her husband's too scared of her not to do as she says." Then he frowned with a shrug of his very broad shoulders. "Can't say I blame him."

Balduin had a strange look on his face, one that appeared placid and yet, his eyes burned. "His fear will land him on a scaffold if he's not careful."

***

My duties as a squire didn't include attending Nicolo at dinner—some other maid would be smiling and flashing her breasts at him tonight—so I retired to my new and very much improved quarters.

I'd hoped to be close to Nicolo, or at least in the Prince's Tower, but no such luck. Nicolo found safety in solitude, and the room I now occupied was in the Lay House, a long building adjacent to the chapel where various guests and dignitaries stayed. It was not usual for a squire to be roomed there, but I was the only woman in that role, or in any comparable one, and Nicolo was oddly protective about placing me alongside so many men.

It was a setback to find I was physically no closer to the locked room where Nicolo slept, alone behind boarded windows and with a knife under his pillow (or at least Balduin joked with him about as much), but today had still been a huge step forward, and my difficult assignment had never seemed more achievable.

‘ The more you know about your target, the better, ' the words of Master Sharif came back to me. I certainly knew more than I had a few days ago, and had learned a little more before Nicolo went off to Hazel's dinner.

Before we'd gone our separate ways, Nicolo had given me a tour of my new living facility and, along the way, I'd decided to ask him a question which had been plaguing me since the day before.

"Master," I spoke in a quiet voice, "may I ask you a question?"

He looked at me and gave me a clipped nod. "You may."

"Do you always let the prince win in all your games and physical activities?" I was pretty sure my guess was right.

Nicolo's face didn't change as he replied. "Charlotte, if you ask questions like that, I will have you thrashed before ripping you of your title of squire and sending you back to the kitchens."

"My apologies."

It was a curious relationship that existed between the two men; very competitive and yet not very competitive; both appearing as equals and yet so imbalanced. Balduin would always be the social superior, yet he pretended not to be, and Nicolo was clearly the superior athlete, yet pretended not to be. Did Balduin realize as much? Did he understand that Nicolo swayed each game and deferred to Balduin in the end? And why would Nicolo do such a thing? Was Nicolo simply being a good friend or was he afraid of Balduin? Or was there some other explanation at play?

I could certainly understand how one could be afraid of the prince because Balduin's moods were constantly changing. It wasn't out of the realm of believability for him to be quite pleased one moment and speaking daggers the next.

As I lay on the comfortable bed, staring at the ceiling, my mind suddenly took me back to the maids' dormitory and that curious piece of graffiti on the wall, the two vertical lines, Nicolo's longer than Balduin's. I realized now what that graffiti was—a measure of each man's cock.

I had to laugh to myself as I wondered how in the world I could have been so na?ve as not to know at first? As I started to think about the fact that Nicolo was more gifted in the manhood category, it began to make more sense to me as to why Nicolo always allowed the prince to win. Most inter-male competitions were simply polite substitutes for both men dropping their trousers and pulling out a ruler to measure their rather awkward appendage of flesh.

And no matter how many races Balduin won, no matter how many times he wrestled his friend to the ground, Nicolo would always have that extra finger-length. I couldn't help but laugh to myself.

***

Being a squire wasn't simply about passing towels and watching half-naked men wrestle. And being Master Nicolo wasn't all about childsitting the heir to the throne and allowing him always to be the victor. Nicolo's ‘job' was essentially to be alive. That was it. To be alive and in the vicinity of Balduin, no doubt owing to Balduin's sickness which appeared whenever Nicolo wasn't in the vicinity—according to lore, anyway.

But Nicolo had carved out a role for himself in Balduin's court by picking up the slack for his closest friend, who had no interest in affairs of court (unless those ‘affairs' involved married ladies). Thus, Nicolo attended the meetings for which Balduin had no interest. Regarding those meetings which the prince couldn't avoid, Nicolo paid attention while Balduin daydreamed—no doubt about heaving breasts and high, firm asses.

And, all the while, I sat alongside Nicolo and the prince and simply watched, absorbing as much information as I could.

"The prince believes the situation will defuse itself, provided we don't take a heavy-handed approach," Nicolo announced during one such meeting.

"But…"

"You would be well-advised not to question the prince."

The noble on the other side of the table, who outranked Nicolo by an almost infinite number of rungs, could only sweat and bluster and mutter something about wanting to see the prince himself.

"Charlotte, show the man out."

Whether or not Nicolo enjoyed this work was hard to say, but I swiftly realized he was good at it. Master Nicolo certainly had a handle on court politics.

"Why can't I sit next to her?" Balduin whined after the meeting as Nicolo stared at a seating chart for the next meeting at hand. "She's damned pretty."

Nicolo regarded the prince with a frown. "Her husband thinks so too, and his brother is the big noise in grain production in Kirkfield."

"Why should I care about that?"

"Because you like your bread, Balduin, that's why," Nicolo answered as he frowned at the prince and then faced me, handing me the sheet of paper he'd been scrawling notes on. "Charlotte, take the seating chart to Mistress Rosana."

What I learned, that I'd previously not understood, was that although the Castle Complex in its entirety was ruled by the Old Queen, it was also broken down into a number of disparate fiefdoms—harking back to when those areas had been physically separate. And though all those fiefdoms and the dukes who ruled them were loyal to the queen, they were not loyal to each other and they squabbled continually.

I'd also learned that loyalty to the queen didn't mean loyalty to the royal family. The Old Queen had been on the throne for as long as anyone could remember; no one knew any different, so no one wanted any different.

Balduin was another matter.

There were many who saw him as dissolute, adolescent and self-indulgent (points which were hard to argue). Those same people felt that such a king would be an affront to the monarchy. Then there were those who didn't consider Balduin as unworthy so much as an obstacle—most notably his four older sisters, all of whom believed the throne was rightly theirs. Lastly, there were those who felt Balduin was a despot in waiting.

It was hard to see the carousing, fun-loving wastrel as a tyrannical ruler, but when people who care only for their own pleasure are given infinite power, things happen. I recalled Balduin's reaction to the death of his bodyguard and thought about that attitude scaled up to an entire kingdom. The Old Queen might consider the nobility above the peasantry, but there was always a sense that she cared about everyone. Balduin only cared about one person; Balduin.

I got the sense that he would happily torch people's homes if he felt a bit chilly.

To a degree, the same could be said of Nicolo. I didn't detect the same streak of gleeful cruelty that sometimes flashed from his friend, and Nicolo didn't share the prince's indolence, but he was certainly out for number one.

Maybe that was mitigated by Nicolo's childhood—how he'd been ostracized by his community then wrenched from his mother. To whom should he have loyalty if not to himself? But mitigating circumstances didn't make him any less dangerous. In many ways, Nicolo was more dangerous than Balduin, because he was smart, he listened, and he understood. Balduin made decisions based on his immediate pleasure, without ever weighing the consequences. As far as Balduin was concerned, there were no consequences. Nicolo, on the other hand, made decisions while taking to mind consequences that could come way down the line—usually consequences others couldn't see. When Balduin became king, who would be his chief advisor? Balduin was as unlikely to do any actual ruling as he was to attend meetings, thus it was quite obvious that Nicolo would be king in all aspects, but his name.

No wonder so many people wanted the master dead.

But killing him would not be so easy.

"Come at me," Nicolo said, his eyes narrowed and predatory.

Sparring with Balduin kept up Nicolo's sword skills, but the latter always held back. With me he had no such qualms.

"Don't be afraid of hurting me," he continued. "Give it all you've got."

"And what of you hurting me?" I returned.

He further narrowed those violet eyes which, even now, seemed to glow with some preternatural sight. "If I think you're holding back, Charlotte, then I will hurt you."

He threatened me with beatings most days, usually in a casual way. And, as of yet, he'd never followed through with his threats. Maybe the threats were simply in jest? You could never tell with Master Nicolo.

Our swords clashed and we met, nose to nose.

"Your father taught you well."

"Thank you, Master."

The more he realized how good with a sword I was, the more vigorous the sparring became and I swiftly came to enjoy it. We invariably finished, exhausted and sweating, but bright-eyed and in the wake of our spars, we chatted, the difference in our status forgotten, or so it seemed.

Seeing Nicolo like this, purely enjoying himself, he almost became a different man to The Unbreakable who stalked the corridors of the Great Castle.

"Where were you brought up?" he asked as he wiped the sweat from his brow.

"Crammer, Master."

"Why did you leave?"

"I wanted to see the Gath."

"What do you think now you've seen it?"

"It's… quite wondrous, sir."

He narrowed an eye at me and shook his head. "Speak the truth."

I shrugged. "There are bits I like."

He smiled. "There are bits of Crammer I like."

Sparring ought to have been a chance to kill him, but it was not so easy with an opponent as good as Nicolo. And, if I failed in my mission just once, he'd know what I was about and that would be that. I was always alert to opportunities, always on the look-out for vulnerabilities, but thus far, the perfect opportunity hadn't yet presented itself.

Truly, it ought to have been simple. I was well-trained and all I needed was an instant to stick a knife between his ribs and flee. Fleeing was important—partly because I had every intention of continuing to live—but also because Guild assassins didn't get caught, it was unprofessional. Getting caught left you open to revealing things under torture—and torture was first on my list of things to avoid.

But Nicolo was almost obsessively careful, though he never looked it. To anyone observing, he seemed casual, as louche and laidback as Balduin. But watching him closely, I saw the way his eyes moved and could almost hear his mind ticking, assessing the risk in every room he entered, aware that his life was constantly under threat.

What a way to live.

Regarding the strange situation between Nicolo and me, as his squire, he was still enjoying the novelty of having such an unexpected squire, particularly in the face of religious objections.

"It is our duty as men," Low Priest Affa of the Denn sect explained, "to protect women, from the violence and sin of the world, as they have neither the mental acuity nor strength to protect themselves."

Nicolo took this in, nodding as he scratched his chin. "Is that what you were doing the other evening with that maid with the mop of orange ringlets atop her head, Priest Affa? Protecting her?"

Affa turned red. "I was offering her instruction and guidance."

Nicolo shook his head as he gave Affa a conspiratorial smile. "Is that what you'd term it?"

Many high priests, low priests, bishops, llamas and other religious leaders lived in the Great Castle, reluctantly relinquishing the monastic virtues of solitude and abstinence to live in the luxurious comfort of the court, sacrificing themselves by serving the Great God in this sinful place.

"Master, how did you know about Priest Affa and the maid?" I asked, as we walked away.

Nicolo shrugged. "I didn't know the specifics. But it was a safe bet." Then he shook his head and sighed long and hard. "Those priests are nothing more than a bunch of self-righteous perverts."

"Absolutely," I nodded feeling a strange sort of comradery with him, maybe that was owing to the fact that he'd basically just stood up for me.

He looked at me with a raised brow. "You seem to know more than you let on?"

I nodded. I did know more because I'd lived in the maid's dormitory for a time. "Your safe bet was exactly that," I responded as I shook my head, reminding myself of Priest Affa and his penchant for scullery maids. "What sort of reprobate would mate a different maid every night?"

Nicolo and I had come to get along well enough that I sometimes forgot to think about what I was saying before opening my mouth. He looked at me a moment, then shook his head.

"I sometimes think those priests are right about you: you are an affront to the Great God."

Remembering myself and my role, I hung my head. "I am what he made me, sir."

"He does good work."

The way he looked at me, fully clothed, was scarcely different from the time when he'd watched me bathe. And that spark of interest suited my purpose. I was increasingly of the opinion that the only way to get Nicolo alone and at a disadvantage was to get him into bed. And even then, I suspected he wouldn't exactly be at a disadvantage.

So, I played with him. I made excuses to bend over, knowing how my squire's uniform hugged my body and outlined the areas of myself I most wanted to bring to his attention. I brushed up against him when we were working in close proximity. On a hot day, I untied the strings of my tunic and allowed him to see the valley between my breasts.

And I enjoyed every second of his attention, which I was fairly sure was now more frustration than anything else.