Sinclair

"I like her not!"

Sinclair put his knife and fork together on the plate, and wiped his mouth with a soiled handkerchief. "What?"

"I like her not!" Arthur repeated, his voice a grating reedy whine. "I like her not at all, father!"

"Nobody is asking you to like her, boy!" Sinclair exclaimed, snapping his fingers for his cup-bearer, who refilled his goblet and took his empty plate. "I don't care whether you love her, like her, or wish her dead each second you spend with her! All I ask is you get the bitch pregnant. Affection is immaterial."

"Not to me, sir," Arthur hissed through gritted teeth, "I have to spend hours of my time with this woman, and it's making me miserable."

Sinclair rolled his eyes. "All right. What is it that's troubling you so?"

"She mocks me!"

"She does?"

"Yes! We seldom even speak, yet she belittles me at every turn! She corrected my grammar the other day, father!"

"As is her right," Sinclair shrugged, "she's a damned sight more intelligent than you, boy. Surely you've noticed that?"

"I like that not!" Arthur exclaimed unhappily.

"Then hurry up, and get the harlot pregnant! Once we've got an heir out of her, you need not even live with her. Now that Callow's Reach is beyond our grasp, the best we can sponge from this embarrassing mess is a healthy male heir. With luck, she'll die birthing him."

"And a slim chance an heir is, too." Arthur said sheepishly.

Sinclair's eyes narrowed. "Don't you dare tell me you've yet to bed her..."

Arthur looked down at his feet, his voice a low quaver. "Only a little." he said. "Twice...twice, in as many weeks."

"For the love of..." Sinclair downed his drink, and beckoned more from the cupbearer.

"We've established that Znya is of greater intellect than you," he snapped, "that a woman is always lesser of brain than a man, is naught but a fallacy. A myth. I've seen enough of the world to know that. But I shall tell you one thing which is undeniably true - you possess greater strength and size than she, by a large margin."

"Of course!" Arthur agreed, holding his head a little higher up. "I am magnificent of body, father! Everyone says so!"

Sinclair cringed into his wine, but nodded all the same. "Exactly so! Now, listen to me...we can't take Callow's Reach. The warden's "contract" put paid to those plans. Any court of the law, in any realm of the land, would look at that wretched document and advise us as such. You possess no rights over the blasted place. You have no authority there. This bastard Doctor has kept all of that for himself, and his foul daughter. But..."

He took a smacking gulp of his wine, and smiled grimly. "But...you can still teach this woman to respect you."

"How's that?"

"If she corrects you, then strike her. If she taunts you, then beat her. If she refuses to bed you, boy, then you do whatever it takes to get an heir out of her."

Arthur's brow furrowed. "I don't think I could do that, father. I...I don't."

Sinclair got to his feet and swerved around the table to stand by his son. "Listen, boy." he put his arm around his son's shoulders and guided him to the dining hall window. "Look out here, and tell me what you see."

Arthur took in the view and then looked back to Sinclair, confused. "Why, the Blackforte, father."

"Yes. My great grandfather took this castle, and it's been in the family ever since. Generations of the lowly class have bowed to our house. D'you think we achieved that on account of our kindness, or our principles?"

"No." Arthur conceded.

"No, of course we didn't. There is room for compassion in times of peace, and stability, but it does not do to follow one's conscience in graver times, my boy. You must understand this, which your brother never did. Protect and serve the interests of those who have wealth, and cast those who have not into the dirt. When a foe strikes you tenfold, strike him back a hundredfold! Do whatever it takes to advance the cause of your house and family! That is how you build a dynasty, Arthur."

Arthur nodded, his gormless face betraying a mind which was still struggling with the longer words in Sinclair's grim speech.

"Go. Ride back to Callow's Reach tonight, and bed that strumpet. Don't give her a say."

Arthur

"I should like it," Arthur said later that night, heart hammering, as soon as Znya joined him in their chamber, "if you'll come to bed with me tonight."

"Would you?" Znya replied, that horrible smirk tugging at the sides of her red-smeared lips. "Oh no, beloved husband. I am far too tired tonight."

They were sat alone in the chamber they shared, in a small turret of Callow's Reach. Znya had yet to loosen a scrap of clothing, and regarded Arthur's naked body with little more than contempt, not showing so much a vague interest.

Arthur blinked. "I...I am set on you coming to bed with me tonight! I shall give you fifteen minutes to be ready, no less." he hated how pathetic his voice sounded.

"Fewer."

"Uh?"

"Fifteen minutes, no fewer."

"You can't talk to me that way!" Arthur quavered, rising shakily to his feet.

"Oh, pumpkin," Znya cooed, "I meant no offence. But I'm afraid my joining you abed tonight is quite out of the question. I shall see you in the morn. Perhaps tomorrow evening, we shall."

She made to bustle past him to her wash chamber, but he grabbed her arm, the slippery silk of her red tunic pleasant in his hand.

"You will come to bed."

"You will let go of arm."

With his father's words of wisdom (or the opposite thereof) still ringing in his ears, Arthur tightened his powerful, vice-like grip on his beloved's arm, and attempted to pull her to the bed.

And no sooner had he done that, he saw her face change.

Her eyes, startling blue, flashed a horrific inky black, and her lips curled back into her fleshy pink gums, revealing a row of brown razors in place of her teeth. She opened her mouth, and Arthur's scream was drowned out by a ghastly, otherworldly hiss which pierced his ears and sent jolts of agony burrowing into whatever counted for his brain. Her breath was hot and foul, a stench of rotten garlic and age-old meat. He released her arm, and she seized him by the throat, lifting him bodily from the floor and tossing him into the bed.

"Keep away!" she barked in a deep, growling voice, before returning to her usual, almost-beautiful self. Her eyes regained their pretty blue centres, and her teeth were square, and milky white.

"My beloved!" she sang in her normal high voice, "Goodness! I think you've suffered a nightmare!"

He swallowed. "W...what?"

"I have just come in, to find you thrashing about and crying on the bed! My poor husband! Are you quite well?"

"That wasn't a nightmare," he breathed, his every nerve and tendon aflame with fright, "wasn't! I...I..."

"Would you like to bed?" she asked, her face a picture of concern. "You seem so dreadfully distressed! A night of passion might"-

-"No!" He staggered off the bed and pressed himself to the wall, shuffling closer to the door. "No..." and he ran screaming from the bedchamber, as fast as his tremoring legs could carry him.