Free A Company of Heroes Book Two: The Fabulist by Ron Miller

arrived. Are you really sure I should be here?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Do you really think we ought to let my brother know where I am?”
    “He’s bound to find out anyway, sooner or later.”
    “Maybe later would be better.”
    “No, no. This man is here for some purpose. Your brother and Lord Roelt must suspect something. Heeeeeeee. Seeing you ought to force the issue, we hope. Whatever the issue might be.”
    “Well, we’ll see. Where is this envoy?”
    “Let me see. Heeee, heeee, heeeeeee. Oh, there he is. Come, I’ll introduce you. You too, Baron. Heeee.”
    “Wait a minute, Uncle. Let me do this my way.”
    Music has started, a small orchestra playing the sweeping Dark Forest Waltz. The number of people in the ballroom seem to halve as couples merge almost automatically to rotate to the romantic tune like the mechanical figures on a music box. Bronwyn turns to her companion.
    “Baron?”
    “My dear,” he says, not missing his cue, “would you care to do me the honor?”
    “I’d be delighted.”
    And before the king can wheeze another protest, the baron and the princess have swirled onto the floor. Her concentration refocussed onto a smaller scale, Bronwyn feels her confidence returning .
    “What’re you planning to do?” the baron asks.
    “I was just getting tired of doing nothing. I wanted to take things a bit more into my own hands. You’ll see.”
    “Wasn’t I right, then?”
    “Right about what?”
    “You haven’t noticed?”
    “What’re you talking about?”
    The baron chuckled. “You’re very charming!”
    “Are you laughing at me?”
    “You’re sweet because you really don’t see what’s going on. Every man in the room has had his eyes on you and you haven’t even noticed!”
    “That’s not true!”
    “You mean you have noticed?”
    “No, I mean that they haven’t been looking at me!”
    “How would you know if you haven’t looked?”
    “I don’t have to. I know they wouldn’t notice me.”
    “You really think that?”
    “Of course!”
    “That’s why I says that you’re charming.”
    The music stops briefly while the musicians shuffle their scores. The last note is still wanly vibrating in the air when a polite voice speaks over her shoulder. “Pardon me, your Highness: may I have the pleasure of the next dance?”
    There are three men, she sees, each with the anxious look of puppies expecting almost anything. Two are more hopeful than the third as the latter has been the one to speak and is the one to whom Bronwyn owes an answer.
    “Of course,” she replies. The music resumes with the Tulebug Waltz, one of her favorites, and she swirls away leaving a slightly bewildered baron.
    Her fortunate partner is handsome and charming, but in spite of his ardent protests she devotes the next two dances to his previously disappointed friends, even though at each opportunity they seem to gain more competition. By the time the orchestra is completing the final strains of the fourth number (the eternally-popular Waltz of the Dwarves) Bronwyn has found herself surrounded by perhaps as many as a dozen eager men, both young and old. Eager as they are, they defer to a newcomer, parting for him like pack ice before the keel of an icebreaker. This gentleman makes Bronwyn think of a steel blade sheathed in a full-dress scabbard. His snowy white shirtfront is crossed by the scarlet sash of the diplomatic corps, the ornate medallion of an ambassador plenipotentiary pinned to the middle. He is tall, as tall as Professor Wittenoom, but his thinness is sharp and spring-like, unlike the professor’s disjointed marionette-like quality. His face continues the princess’s cutlery metaphor. It falls just short of handsomeness for seeming so dangerous: everything about it is hard, tempered and sharpened to a cutting edge.
    “May I have the honor of this dance?” he proposes in a voice as soft as the sound of a knife being carefully honed.
    “Certainly, Lord Bugarach,” she