Of Princes False and True

Acknowledgments

The incredible, marvelous, perfect cover for this book

came from the talented mind of Karrie Jax.

Her cover design skills are on display at karriejax.com

and you can reach her at karriejax@gmail.com

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

The Moving Finger Writes....

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Epilogue

Author’s Note (If You’re Interested)

Author Bio

More Books by EAW

"The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,

Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit

Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,

Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it."

Omar Khayyám

On the other hand, in the Westlands,

there’s a magickal Moving Pen

(so much easier to read)

and who knows what tweaks

of edits, erasures and revisions

it might take to get to the end of the tale?

Imagine, if you will, a magickal hand

lifting the pen, dipping it in the inkwell,

raising it, and then beginning to write...

Chapter 1

THE ROYAL BEDCHAMBER

The Castle of the King of the Westlands

Late Afternoon

The Day the Story Starts

The clock chimed a bright and cheerful chime, announcing the end of nap time.

Good King Hiram got out of bed naked—he was now free to sleep without either prior hindrance: clothes, or a wife nagging him about his nakedness—paused by the side of the new, sleeps-four-with-ease-but-can-accommodate-more-with-cuddling bed, raised his arms for a good end-of-nap stretch, inhaled...and paused. There was a whiff of something rank in the royal quarters!

Oh. He moved his arm, bent his head, and verified the whiff with a sniff of the royal left pit. Ha! Most excellent royal ripeness. He scratched his large, low-hanging balls right where anyone might have seen him even though no one was there to see (previously prohibited by the once and not forever queen), padded over to the piss jar, flipped its top, aimed carefully to avoid giving the servants too much to clean, and then let loose a kingly piss. The sound of the noble waterfall echoed a bit in the bowels of the tall, wide-mouthed piss jar. He sighed. Two more of the previously prohibiteds gone: naked padding and bedroom conveniences.

And thinking of bedroom conveniences... While stroking the last reluctant drops past the tip of his lengthy foreskin and into the jar—hopefully into the jar; at that point in the piss he wasn’t paying very much attention—he said in a loud voice, though well short of an actual bellow, Roger!

He was the king. He could shout if he wished, in lieu of taking all the time to walk over to the bell pulls and yank the Roger one. Another prohibited gone.

The door to the right of the bed opened, Roger came through, paused to admire his liege’s hairy, still-muscular-at-forty-three ass, and said, You bellowed, Sire?

When you are the king’s bedroom convenience, and so much more, you can be impertinent in private.

The king turned. It was his turn to pause for admirational purposes. Roger was taller, heavier and stronger than the king, though he long ago lost the competition for hairier. He was also longer and thicker, both soft and hard, the former shown by the breeches he’d painted on between the not-quite-a-bellow and door-opening. The rest was gloriously bare.

I need a bath, the king said.

Indeed, Sire. You...now how shall I put this, without affronting the royal dignity? Roger paused to contemplate, shrugged. It can’t be done. Ah, well. Sire, you stink!

The king huffed. He considered his stink status for a moment. While huffs weren’t precisely prohibited previously, he may have gone into the realm of excess with them since he acquired freedom. He gave a mental shrug. Lady LiWood, a most talented authoress of whimsey and rod-heartening tales of lasciviousness and lust between men, was, he was sure, counting his huffs with care. After all, it was she who directed his attention to the matter of a surplusage of huffs, and would, without a doubt, advise him when necessary with her usual demure demeanor. Something along the lines of Hiram! Cut the damned huffs in half! when she thought they were in private, but weren’t.

He huffed again. After all, private huffs Lady LiWood couldn’t know about couldn’t count. A well-earned stink, I think.

They looked at each other, knowing without looking lower both their pricks were twitching with remembrance.

In the first hour of the traditional midday, avoid-the-massive-heat nap period, when the kingdom’s business and its citizens simply stopped everything—or almost so—the king gave Roger a royal rogering in this very bed. As witnessed by the rumpled and crumpled sheets and the very large pool of Rogerian seed which long since sank into the mattress.

In the second hour the king was Roger-rogered so well he was certain he could still feel the seed dribbling out of his hole and coating the hairs there. And if he was somewhat disappointed the pool of kingly seed beneath his belly wasn’t as large this time around, he had a valid excu...reason. It was his second time in a short time and he was in his forties. He avoided acknowledging Roger was five years older.

In the third hour, they parted and slept. While the servants would know a great deal of rogering had occurred, in the lowercase sense, Hiram believed, without the tiniest bit of proof, they didn’t know who was rogerer and who was rogeree. He overlooked—deliberately avoided considering?—the fact certain names and certain explicit instructions were called out at certain peak moments. And both the callers-out and the responders who sometimes repeated the instructions to be sure they understood, had well-developed lungs. Strong lungs which expelled air to support the sounds which made the words which could be heard for quite some distance, despite intervening doors and walls.

Content in his belief no one knew who did what to who...whom?...Hiram smiled at Roger.

Roger smiled back, knowing better.

A double round of rogering which left the coverings and mattress so stained with seed, sweat, spit, drool and three different oils, the mattress needed replacing, was an excellent outcome. It was good to be a king who could afford to have enough specially made mattresses and sheets specially made in advance, so there were always replacements at hand when the need arose.

The king’s smile widened. He was king, damn it! He could silently say, Fuck governing the kingdom! He could keep the door locked, and get back in bed with Roger.

Except he couldn’t.

He snapped his head around at three fast, sharp knuckle-raps on the door, with Majesty! appended.

Immediately followed by another set of three knuckle-raps and Majesty!

And a third set.

He was often tempted to respond to each set of raps and Majesty! with three fast raps and Moldy! But he never did.

He glanced toward Roger, who was already gone. He stalked to the armoire, yanked the door open to get at a light robe dangling on a hook, pulled it on, belted it over his nakedness, and went to the door. He ignored the fact the light streaming in from the tall windows making up most of one wall of the room would show what he wasn’t wearing. He ignored the fact anyone with even a reasonably capable nose, or a reasonable ability to see, would know there had been no midday napping in the royal bedchamber.

He ignored his annoyance at being deprived of a third round with Roger’s ass, mouth or hands, and replaced it with annoyance at the ancient, scrawny, white-haired Lord Muldur, the Chancellor who brought him an endless array of problems, almost all of which someone lower in the kingdom’s hierarchy could have dealt with. All, he was earnestly assured, were of the utmost concern and immediacy. Very few of them were either.

The king opened the door, enjoying the slam it made against the stone walls. He liked the effect, which was why the door had been redesigned after there was no one to argue he couldn’t do it. Or shouldn’t.

Old Moldy’s hand was raised as if to start another set of rapping, rapping, while the king was not napping, on his chamber door.

Interesting. The last time Moldy did more than three sets, the king informed him doing it again would cause castration. Upon reconsideration, since doing so would likely not even cause a ripple in the Chancellor’s life, the king advised his loyal servant if it happened again, he would be drawn, quartered, castrated and beheaded. Apparently whatever wild conspiracy theory he was bringing to royal attention was serious enough to take the risk.

Well? the king snarled.

Old Moldy lowered his hand in the process of wilting under the royal glower. He opened his mouth to speak, oblivious to the guards who were returning from their there’s royal fucking going on, so let’s move where we can’t quite hear everything so clearly stations, back to positions by the door, protecting the king from unwelcome intrusions.

Ha. The king could have used another round of welcome intrusions, just then, but it wasn’t to be.

The Chancellor was oblivious, as well, to the miniature entourage he’d acquired en route from wherever he had come from. Each of them, plus several servants who had no need to clean the corridor a second time the same day, were hovering within earshot, while doing their individual and collective best to create the impression they could see and hear nothing, while seeing and hearing everything.

The king held up his hand in a shut-up-now gesture, stepped back, and arm-waved the Chancellor inside, shut the door on the disappointed faces, but didn’t lock it.

He was about to suggest Old Moldy sit, but remembered the only chair in the room, the one built to withstand anything, was somewhat broken. Damn, but he and Roger were good at rogering foreplay. He yanked his attention back to his problems.

Fuck protocol. Explain why my nap is being interrupted, Lord Muldur.

He did.

Chapter 2

SAME PLACE

Same Day

When Old Moldy started a cycle of repetition, and increasing jumbles, the king snapped Enough!

The word sliced off Old Moldy’s explanations, justifications and conjectures, leaving them raw and bleeding, though it was doubtful the Chancellor understood why his words were cut. The king closed his eyes, pinched thumb and forefinger between them. During the telling his face became set in severe lines; his lips retreated from the lingering, well-kissed, well-fucked state they’d had on awakening, into the thin, tense sternness they went to when he was considering, or when he was pronouncing judgment.

Hiram was indeed the good king his subjects proclaimed him, which was why he didn’t kill the messenger. Not killing the messenger was one of the prior prohibitions he retained. At the moment, a reluctant retention, but still....

He calculated how long he’d need to at least appear a king again, instead of nothing more than the ordinary, thoroughly pleasured man he thought he was so very few minutes ago. Too long. He cut it in half. He opened his mouth to set a time, but realized he lacked a crucial piece of information. One Old Moldy hadn’t thought to present, even though it should have been, if not with his first words, at least so close a second in the race it was almost impossible to discern which words were the winners.

It troubled the king even more he hadn’t thought to interrupt and immediately ask the question himself. How bad are his injuries?

Whose in...? Oh. Old Moldy flushed at the insult he’d just offered. It was not a good look on him. Bright red blotches, scattered here and there, appeared on his wrinkled, sagging, off-white flesh. Uh, not bad...exactly, Your Majesty.

Do you recall what I said would happen if you came rapping, rapping at my chamber door more than the three times I’m willing to allow you?

Old Moldy blinked, and blinked again. The Chancellor was not always quick to follow abrupt, or even gently curved conversational digressions into new territory, or a return to territory already shoved out of his mind, as it wasn’t a roomy place to begin with. He finally dredged the memory up. Uh, yes?

While the guards don’t dare have their ears pressed to the door, it will take only a little volume to get them in here. Right afterwards they’ll start fulfilling my promise, though I’m changing the sequence. Castration first, with dull snipping blades. Unless you tell me now, old man, whether my son is dying or in dire need of help you and your colleagues have dithered about providing.

Oh. But surely I said....? Well, I thought I did.... Old Moldy’s voice faded and the wrinkles assumed their all-too-customary, did-I-or-didn’t-I-oh-dear contours.

The king’s lips thinned to near invisibility and his mouth opened, shaped in just the right way for an annoyed, heading towards furious, king to begin the G of Guards!

The G-sound was preempted by Old Moldy’s quavering voice. He lives, Sire! Uh, not dying at all. Bloodied, but, um....

The king could tell from the sudden pause Old Moldy regretted starting the cliché. Unbowed apparently did not fit the situation.

The king’s softer enough stopped further blathering. He reconsidered. Rushing to be ready to deal with all he was facing would only mean he wouldn’t really be ready. Nor could the stage, so to speak, be properly set, nor all the players gathered. Ah. Players.

How many actual witnesses, Muldur?

I...ah...

The king restrained the sigh which would have told Old Moldy how much the king wished he could retire him. The man had been serving the Crown since the king’s grandfather’s reign, with quiet competence until recently, but there was Hiram’s unfortunate promise to the late king standing in the way of freedom.

Is Captain Nichols in charge of the prisoner? He damned well better be.

Yes, Sire.

Excellent. Tell him to turn over guard duty to someone competent, find out who was actually at the tennis match, as opposed to those who will claim they were to be part of the— with effort he kept his tone even "—excitement. Bring them all here. Separately. They speak to no one on the way, and no one speaks to them. Once here, they will be kept separate from one another and anyone else until I say otherwise. If anyone objects, gag him. Or her. I don’t care what rank any objector holds. And I don’t care if Nichols has to call on half the Army to make it happen.

Yes, Sire.

"The small throne room in two hours. You will be there. As will the captain, with the minimum—you are to stress that word—number of guards adequate to protect me, you, the prisoner, and handle anything which is likely to occur."

Yes, Sire. And, ah, Prince Henry?

No.

The Chancellor looked as though he might want to offer a thought about the refusal, but remembered discretion and valor. He said nothing.

Old Moldy left. The king managed the Rog in a tone far less vigorous than the earlier one, but was interrupted before the word ended.

Sire, your bath is almost ready. As you have selected the small throne room, I will begin laying out appropriate attire. Under the circumstances—

You heard? The king didn’t give him a chance to answer. Of course you did. His voice was amused rather than annoyed. Being aware—of the king’s needs, of the kingdom’s needs and how the two interplayed—and always ready with advice and help and care, was perhaps the primary reason Roger was so very much more than a bed convenience and a manservant.

He’d once asked, when Roger displayed a particular awareness of political facts and court in-fighting someone of his station should not have known, whether his awareness was a fairy gift. Both fairies and gifts were rare in modern times, as most believed the fairies had all gone away. There was a theory one or two were left behind to liven up human existence with random gifts which might be helpful, or a curse, or something which could go either way. This much-debated scholarly theory was an alternative to the more realistic explanation for good, bad, and in between: shit happens.

Roger denied it with almost as much vigor as one of his best rogerings.

King Hiram hadn’t quite believed him. There was just a hint of the lady doth protest too much speech from a ridiculous play which opened and closed after one five hour long performance. But it did leave behind a few memorable lines. Though why so many would want to quote to be or something was beyond his understanding.

I heard, Sire. Roger walked over to the king, gently disrobed him, and with a hand on the king’s lower back—a hand not going any lower, much to the king’s regret—guided him to the bathing room, up the steps, and to the steaming tub.

Hiram looked into it, sniffed the soothing scents rising from the water. Have I expressed my gratitude, Roger?

You have, Sire.

Should I do so again?

If you wish to make it seventeen. His tone clearly expressed the opinion only an ass, kingly or not, would add one more thanks to the superfluous fourteen of the previous sixteen.

The thanks were for the spelled crystal which heated water to the perfect temperature, and kept it there, after being dropped in. Hiram from time to time regretted the less than interesting life his court wizard led, which led to excessive expressions of gratitude for services which were part of his job, and not above and beyond.

Although the wizard had to be bored out of his rogering mind, he never said or hinted so. His most frequent official function, which wasn’t often, was to perform the occasional truth spell when the king was required to sit in judgment as High Judiciar, or do the same on loan to any of the Royal Judiciars hearing a complex case in which compelled truth was a necessity. Wards to protect the royal family, though none had ever been breached. And some one-off workings such as the water-heating crystal. Unlike other kingdoms, workings involving love and lust were prohibited, whether by potions or any other magick-delivery device.

Otherwise, the wizard lived a comfortable life with servants at his beck and call, and did whatever he did with the varied young men who visited his luxurious quarters with some degree of regularity at various times of day and night. Hiram never inquired, the wizard never told.

Some years earlier, Hiram tried to send him back. He penned a very polite explanation to the Empress about how flattered he was she assigned him a wizard from the Imperial College—the sole source of legal employment for wizards throughout the continent-wide Empire—but the man had little to do, so perhaps he could provide better value for the crowns the Crown paid him if he was assigned elsewhere. The king was surprised to receive a response from the Empress herself, handed to him by the brown-uniformed IPS—Imperial Parcel Service—driver. It was a large scroll, weighed down with various wax-affixed ribbons and seals, each attesting the parchment arrived unopened and went on its way unopened at each stage of its journey.

The floor of the king’s office was littered with bits and pieces of wax, ribbon, and seals, and the parchment itself was punctured, by the time the king managed to get it unrolled. It was a very clear, no-nonsense, no misunderstandings possible, Imperial reply: with an upward slash, the word NO was written in large black script, followed by an exclamation point. Below was the Empress’s very own signature, consisting of her first name, followed by Empress of the Known Lands, followed by—Hiram made a careful count—seven of the Empress’s current thirty-nine titles.

Parents throughout the Empire were known to signal offspring displeasure by the use of the full name of those offspring, in lieu of whatever the usual affectionate diminutive might be. A similar principle existed for those who were or might be recipients of an Imperial missive. The more appended titles, the more annoyed the Empress was, right up to full-on Imperial fury when all thirty-nine followed her full name, including the Imperial House. Hiram sighed when the count was done.

Seven titles wasn’t bad, considering Hiram had dared to disagree with an Imperial decree.

As the king lowered himself into the bath, whimpering only a little at how good it felt with whatever wizard-like concoction of soaps and oils Roger mixed in, his memories of the wizard incident reminded him. Roger, tell Christopher—

Done, Sire. I presumed to tell him he would be needed to observe and advise but to cast no spells unless instructed or an emergency arose.

You presumed correctly. Whatever would I do without you? the king asked just before lowering his head beneath the water.

Have far less sex with far less quality.

Perhaps the words weren’t meant to be heard, perhaps they were. Either way, they were, and the king’s underwater snort sent bubbles to the surface, followed by the king’s head and shoulders.

The king’s bastard! in the general direction of where he assumed Roger to be was vocally smiling. He naturally didn’t admit aloud how right Roger was.

Hiram allowed himself to relax and soak, knowing if he was about to be overlong, he’d be notified. The meeting, however, moved him to move himself, and quickly scrub clean his bits, pieces, nooks, crannies, and everything else. As if by Rogerian magick, Roger appeared at tub-side the moment cleanliness was achieved and dropped a second spell-crystal in, changing the water back to fresh, and just a little cooler than at the beginning.

When he started to turn away, the king asked, Aren’t you going to get the first crystal?

Roger turned, looked down, sighed in the put-upon way only a long-time, more-than-a-convenient-fuck friend can ever properly achieve. You put the first crystal underneath your balls, didn’t you?

Hiram’s Who, me? look was a valiant try at innocence, but unsuccessful. He hadn’t been innocent in so long he couldn’t really fake it. Besides, he was king, and he shouldn’t have to ask for a little fondling and a bit more stroking. He should be able to comm—

He cut the thought off. Roger made it clear years earlier, the first time he was about to insert his monstrous prick in the royal behind, if the owner of the behind ever ordered him to have sex, it would be the first royal command Roger disobeyed and the last royal command the king would ever give him.

The king sighed.

Roger sighed.

The king considered another sigh, but decided a series of sighs could descend into maudlin territory and undo the modicum of relaxation he’d achieved.

Further consideration was eliminated by Roger’s, "Sire, do you need my hand or mouth?"

Their other agreement was never lie. No.

The king stood up, stepped out of the tub onto a thick towel, and while he usually dried himself, allowed Roger to do it for him. It was one of Roger’s innumerable fairy gifts—Hiram held tight to his preferred explanation rather than contemplate the numerosity of men Roger would have to have been with to acquire such skills in a non-magickal way—to be able to touch Hiram’s most intimate parts, and some not so intimate but so very sensitive, and convey only warmth and caring, but not arousal, in the pressure of flesh on flesh or fabric on flesh. One of Roger’s other fairy gifts was the ability to get Hiram from soft to let’s-rogering-roger-now rigidity with a single fingertip tap or touch or stroke. The king long ago concluded Roger’s family must have been well-liked in the fairy community to have so many gifts bestowed on him on his birthing day. Despite all Roger’s words to the contrary.

It had not passed Hiram’s notice Roger had never vowed to the contrary, but instead issued his steadfast denials.

Dry, Hiram sat on the padded bench before the tall mirror, ignoring the belly he made worse by slouching. Roger bent over the tub, retrieved the