Free Darkening Skies (The Hadrumal Crisis) by Juliet E. McKenna

of tedious head-shaking and hand-wringing over each and every barony’s summer travails, even of those towns and villages two hundred leagues from the sea.
    Baron Ferl’s fleshy lips thinned. ‘My Lord Halferan.’
    On the bench opposite, Baron Karpis snorted with audible contempt. ‘That remains to be seen.’
    ‘My lord?’ Corrain bowed to Baron Karpis with precisely measured courtesy. ‘You have some doubts as to my marriage? After you and your household guard heard Lady Ilysh of Halferan declare it, gladly and unprompted? When you have seen the contracts for yourself, signed and sealed all according to proper form? You have heard firsthand witness that Lady Ilysh and I were wed with every necessary rite observed before Drianon’s altar.’
    Corrain surveyed the rest of the assembled nobles, challenge in his eye if not in his tone. ‘We married with the full consent of Lady Zurenne and with her husband dead, a mother has the right to give her daughter into wedlock under Caladhrian law. In accord with tradition and precedent, in the absence of any male heir of the bloodline, I am now Baron Halferan.’
    As he raised his voice to make that final bold declaration, he noted which lords were staring down at him with frank, sometimes prurient, curiosity.
    Sure enough, Baron Karpis satisfied them with his next question from the comfort of his seat.
    ‘You may have married Lady Ilysh of Halferan according to law. Have you made her your wife in fact as well as in name?’
    Corrain could see plenty of other lords were repelled by the thought of a rough-hewn swordsman a full generation older bedding a girl who had only just seen her thirteenth summer solstice.
    ‘My lord,’ he said mildly, ‘should you not honour this assembly by rising to speak?’
    ‘What?’ Baron Karpis was visibly taken aback as he realised his contempt for Corrain had betrayed him into such discourtesy. He was halfway to his feet before he realised he had nothing more to say.
    ‘Answer the question,’ he snapped, sinking down again.
    Corrain could see some lords wondering if he had challenged Karpis’s incivility in hopes of avoiding an answer. Far from it. He had known from that first summons to this unprecedented parliament that he would face this question.
    Just as he knew making such a reprehensible admission would guarantee their assembled lordships’ enmity quicker than spit could hit the floor. On the other hand admitting that he hadn’t claimed his rights as a husband would give Karpis grounds to attack the validity of this scandalous marriage.
    Corrain had been in enough knife fights to know when to sidestep to avoid an over-confident thrust.
    ‘That question has no bearing on the legality of our union. If I was dissolving a marriage for lack of an heir of my body, then this parliament would be entitled to ask for such intimate details. If Lady Ilysh was seeking redress on account of non-consummation, the same would be true. Since neither case applies, Lord Karpis, how and when my wife and I share a bed is no one’s business but our own.’
    Hopefully the honourable men on these benches would see the tacit denial beneath his refusal to answer. After all, a rank scoundrel wouldn’t shrink from boasting of his conquest to put the matter of the marriage beyond doubt. As for the others, especially those few betraying an unwholesome interest at the thought of deflowering a child?
    ‘I don’t suppose any of your lordships would welcome such impertinent enquiries into the business of your own bedchamber.’
    Corrain’s life as a common guardsman might be over but there was more than a hint of a retainer’s livery in his sternly cut doublet and breeches of pewter linen, with dark red collar and cuffs to recall the Halferan standard.
    Let these noble men consider what scurrilous gossip they learned from their own loyal servants. Let them wonder what he might have heard around the taverns and stable yards whenever their parliament had