A Curious Fleet: Nagru/Silvamord
#4 of A Curious Fleet
Three days a year Nagru and Silvamord make a truce. The rats know it's coming when her scent begins to change and she walks with her tail stiff; Nagru is less vicious to her, yet more tense. They avoid eye contact all evening as they eat their fill, then lock themselves in Silvamord's chamber and nothing more is seen of them. Plenty is heard, though. Sicant describes them as sounding like a nest of fledgling crows dropped in a pike lake, and the rats howl with laughter.
When it's over, the foxes leave the room, again not making eye contact. Nagru resumes his usual behaviour, and, as she did last year and the year before that, Silvamord waits, and waits, and waits. The rats see her plucking at her belt, tying and retying it, hoping she will feel it getting tighter; she picks at her chestfur and it comes out with no more ease than usual. On the forty-eighth day of nothing, Sicant overhears her weeping. Nagru, on the other hand, seems relieved.
There are no other foxes in Floret, and whether this is good or bad is unsure. Silvamord is jealous enough when a female ratguard starts bloating up out of her chainmail; one wrong word and the poor rat has to flee as Silvamord aims a thrown bottle at her vulnerable belly. On the other paw, if other foxes were around the royal couple could at least find out which one of them has the problem.
Silvamord stares venomously at the little prince and his doting nurse and mother. Nagru, when he sees neither she nor the rats nor the prisoners will notice, gives her a very brief glance of irritated sympathy. Little as he wants competition, getting her wish would at least give him some peace.