The Well-Favored Man

by Elizabeth Willey

  “All.”

  “Can that be reversed, undone? If, later, you decide to … disincarnate, this person is freed as you were?”

  “No. It is … permanent. The Spring will not permit it, he says. Now it is … I am part of it. Imprinted. The one who followed me must be utterly banished: dead, true death, not … immured here as I am.”

  “Let Panurgus worry about it. My threat holds. You shall be restored, or I shall destroy as much of Landuc as I am able.”

  “Dewar, he says that if you would extinguish yourself for me, ’tis well, you are a fool and a fool’s soul is worth naught. If you can persuade someone else to do so, that is also acceptable. But it must be done soon. Before I … forget,” she whispered.

  “I say to him again, I shall go directly from here to Landuc and immolate myself, because life without you is no life at all.” He was shaking, breathing hard, hands clenched.

  Freia looked down, moved her feet and shifted about in a most unghostlike way. After a moment, she said with a slight quaver, “You didn’t feel so a little while ago.”

  Dewar didn’t answer at once. “Yes,” he said finally, in a small voice. “I was wrong.” He looked up at her. “So come through, Panurgus! Give me my sister or Landuc’s thirst to engulf Argylle shall be slaked better than ever they dreamed.”

  “Panurgus says, ‘Go thou, essay it,’” Freia said, the quaver stronger. “I say, do not! Dewar, I shall be with you always—whenever you are in Argylle or her demesnes. It would be wrong for someone else to die so I could live. Nobody else can do this as well as I can. You don’t need me there physically! Please, Dewar—” She stepped toward him and moved her insubstantial hands as if to touch him, then stopped herself.

  Dewar tightened his arms against himself, and the web grew brighter, more intense as he drew on the Spring. “I do. Gaston does. Father does. Gwydion does. All your children do. We need to watch you prune your apple trees and pick roses for you. We need to dance with you and walk with you, drink wine with you and laugh and listen to the ocean. I still can’t steer a toboggan, you know.”

  Freia covered her face and vanished with a truncated, miserable wail, half a sob, in which Dewar’s name was barely discernible.

  “No!” Dewar screamed, grabbing at the apparition.

  He disappeared.

  My ears rang and the sound of No echoed back and forth through the Catacombs, up the Citadel, through Argylle.

  I sat in stunned silence for a moment. The Spring sparked and flared opalescently, boiling and churning, luminous colors and darknesses appearing and disappearing in its surface and depths.

  I watched the light fluctuate. “Mother?” I whispered.

  But she wasn’t talking now.

  It was a fitting end to that nightmarish Day of Illusions.

  9

  I SAT AROUND CHAIN-SMOKING AND DRINKING, telling Virgil my troubles, feeling morbid and unhappy and powerless for a while, and then decided I was hungry. It had gotten very late; the Citadel was the closest it ever gets to being quiet. People were resting up. The New Year’s partying would start at dawn and go for two days more.

  It had begun to snow, too; the darkness beyond my window moved when I peered out past the draperies. The flakes pirouetted and leapt in the chaotic air currents by the wall, making the most of the long way down. New Year’s snow. This fresh coating would add a heightened festivity to the celebrations.

  Feeling nothing like partying myself, I headed for the kitchen. I went through the Core in order to find out whether Prospero had left the Catacombs yet. The Core is the central part of the Citadel, the oldest part of it except possibly the Great Hall and the Black Chair, which are attached to it. It’s a tower, surrounded on all interior sides with walkways and with a spiral stair down the middle—the same stair, really, that continues down to the Spring. Doors from various chambers and wings open onto these walkways, which are also interconnected with secondary stairs. It’s a tangled, improvised-looking snarl, but we like it. Visitors give themselves headaches trying to figure out how there can be windows to let in the sun when they know there’s a room on the other side of the wall. I have heard that Belphoebe as a child used to terrify Mother by walking all the way up and down the Spiral on the banister, barefoot. It’s a grand place to play Tag and Hide-and-Seek when you’re small.

  Argylle is a peaceful place, but out of habit we do have a few guardsmen around the Citadel. Two are always by the door to the Great Stair. There is also a sentry post by the Iron Bridge that arches over the Wye to the City and two inside and two outside the main door. Mainly they answer questions and pass messages along, although they will also keep people out if necessary when it is not office hours, with exceptions of course for those known as household intimates.

  I came slowly down the spiral stair, which was illuminated by oil lamps every few steps, and overheard quiet chuckling from the guards at the door. One looked up and saw me and nodded, squaring his shoulders: Akrak. I lifted a hand in greeting.

  I was on the opposite side of the spiral when I heard Akrak shout, “Hey!” It echoed up and down. Virgil stiffened on my shoulder. Surprised, I stopped, foot in midair, and then sprinted around the column to the other side so I could see.

  Akrak and his partner Valgez were moving forward toward someone in a dark, hooded cloak, who was smaller than they and backing away, looking about. I heard exclamations indicating that the Black Stair guards were also alerted to this intruder.

  “Hold,” I said. Akrak and Valgez stopped. The cloak whirled, obviously startled and confused.

  “F-Father?” I heard a girl’s voice call shakily—light, uncertain.

  Still a full turn of the Spiral above the floor, I stumbled and caught myself on the banister. The voice, the word—Out of the deeper and irrational part of my mind stormed the conviction that Freia had somehow returned. She had ascended the Stair from the Spring. It had all been a misunderstanding. It was over. She was here, alive as she ought to be, asking for Prospero.

  “Mother?” I tried to say, but there was no breath to utter the word.

  Akrak glanced up, and she must have seen him do so, because she whirled about again and stared at me. I saw a pale face in a dark hood, and my head spun. The light was poor. I flipped my hand and said a word, and a sparking, annoyed gold-white ignis dropped through the dimness and hung above the tableau, illuminating all of us.

  She had straight black hair held back from her face by a simple black ribbon under the hood, which fell off as she tipped her head up. Her face was oval, rounded, with a touch of childishness in it. Her eyes were light-colored, her skin fair. The hood was lined with green-and-grey striped silk, the cloak a dark grey-green. Her dress was plain and dark, of heavy stuff.

  She was definitely not Mother. I collected my scattered senses. I had made my own New Year’s illusion, born of too much reflection.

  “Whom do you seek?” I asked her, still holding the banister tightly.

  She inhaled, looking at me. I could see she was frightened. Virgil launched himself off my shoulder and swooped down for a better look at her, perching on a railing. She jumped. “I—I didn’t mean … I …” she stammered, and then collected herself with a visible effort. “I was supposed to go home.”

  Home? I studied her face, its shapes and colors. “Come with me,” I said. “Akrak, Valgez, I’ll deal with this.”

  “She just appeared, sir,” Valgez said. “Came out of the Keystone.” They fell back to the door, still staring at her.

  I went down the stairs, bowed, and offered her my arm with a smile. “Upstairs,” I said, “we can have a glass of good wine and a quiet conversation.”

  Virgil glided to my shoulder again.

  She took my arm: thin fine-boned hands. She was not short, but was not particularly tall either. I flicked my fingers and dismissed the ignis as we ascended. The Core seemed very dark when it was gone.

  I led her to a comfortable room my mother had often used, lit the lamps there, an
d poured two glasses of good red Argylle wine at the sideboard. The room was cold and the air musty; I put logs in the green-tiled stove and kindled a fire. We sat in chairs to either side. She seemed to have gotten over her initial fear, but she watched me do these homely things with wide anxious eyes.

  “The first thing I want to know,” I said, “is your name and lineage.”

  She swallowed. “M-my name is Ulrike. My father’s name is Gaston the Fireduke of Landuc and my mother was Freia the Lady of Argylle. This—this is Argylle, isn’t it?”

  “It is.”

  “Are you Gwydion?” She said it timidly.

  “I am.” I looked at her closely. “It is perhaps rude to question you so nearly on your first entry into the Citadel, but …”

  “I was to go home. Father said so.”

  “Ulrike, you must start from the beginning. But wait—you left him but recently?” Valgez had said she came through the Keystone, to which a Way opened with a Citadel Key must lead.

  She bit her lower lip and nodded. “Yes. I looked for him when I had passed the fire and he was gone.”

  “Just now? Damn! At least he’s all right. We’ve not heard from Gaston for much too long.” I felt hurt and concealed it. A sister! Why hadn’t Gaston trusted me enough to tell me? Here she was, anyway. “Now for the story. Please. To beguile a winter’s night.”

  She smiled suddenly, shyly, and as suddenly it faded. “I don’t have a story,” she said. “I don’t remember my mother. Nanna said I was only an infant when she died. I grew up in Fenshuyan, in the mountains. It is a great fortress; it sits across a pass high in the clouds and fogs … Father is the warlord, he keeps peace throughout Huhanwa. Everyone knows him.” She sounded proud of this.

  I nodded encouragingly.

  She continued, “After Nanna died three summers ago,” and her voice trembled, “he told me about Landuc and Argylle, about my family and their history and, and how the Well makes the Road and sustains everything and said that sometime he would take me to the Well and induct me as one of its own. A, a few days ago he came to me and said we were going to Landuc, and he brought me there along the Road.… that was a strange journey, such places we passed, the things he did at, at the Gates …” Ulrike shuddered. “He smuggled us into the Palace grounds, and took me to the Well there in the garden of tombs. It was all flames. I was afraid, terribly afraid it would kill me, but I … I went into the fire.” She stopped again, swallowed. “When—when I was done, he said we would use a spell of passage to leave and made a fire for it.”

  Ah-hah. I could foresee what had come next.

  Ulrike went on, “Father did the magic; I was still giddy from the Well and I don’t know very much about that anyway. Father said I would learn more later. He opened the Way and told me to go through. I had to step into the fire again … I thought it would burn me … Then … I … I was here … and he didn’t follow me.” Her expression became one of bewilderment and fear. “He didn’t follow,” she repeated.

  “He feared what we’d say to him for keeping you to himself so long.” I smiled.

  Ulrike did not smile. She looked down at her hands, which were clutching her winecup. I looked at them too; they were like my mother’s hands, save that the nails were bitten.

  I went on, “If you would like to return to Fenshuyan, you can. But if you would prefer to stay here awhile and get acquainted with your family …”

  “All of them at once?” she asked, nervously.

  I shrugged. “However you like. We could have a coming-out ball if you like, or you can just take a set of Keys, invoke them all with Lesser Summonings, and frighten them half out of their wits.”

  She giggled nervously. “Sometimes … after he told me … I did wish to do that,” she said. “There are not many people to talk to, really talk to about things, there. There weren’t any children in the fortress. After Nanna died, I would have been so lonely without my books and the stories Father told me.”

  I wondered if Gaston knew where she was. “Gaston told you he would meet you at home, did he?”

  “N-no. I guess not,” she said. “He said he was sending me home. I heard him put that in the spell, too. Sending me home. He wouldn’t just leave me like that! All alone!” Her face crumpled with a child’s distress.

  “You are hardly alone,” I pointed out. “If he sent you here deliberately, he knew someone of your family would be here.” Especially, I realized, since it was New Year’s—before Mother’s death, before Gaston had pulled his smothering grief around him and left Argylle, the Argylline New Year had been a time of family reunion for us. He certainly knew it was New Year’s here; he had the tables and formulas for calculating the passing of times in his Ephemeris.

  Ulrike, however, was visibly dismayed by the idea that her father had sent her away by herself. I spoke again to forestall tears from her.

  “Perhaps he saw someone coming and was detained,” I said, “or perhaps the fire ran out of fuel. It is even possible that he made a mistake in construing the spell and sent himself elsewhere.” Neither of those possibilities seemed terribly likely to me, though they reassured Ulrike. Gaston could make anything burn for as long as he desired it to; and to suppose a man who had opened a Way as often as Gaston would err, when he was under no discernible pressure, was to insult him.

  Ulrike nodded slowly. “It seemed awfully complicated,” she said.

  “Did he give you a Key so that you could Summon him? Did he teach you the Lesser Summoning?”

  “A Key?”

  She did not know what I meant. “Hm. I guess he didn’t.” I sat back and sipped my wine, which was warmed up to the right temperature now. Ulrike tasted hers cautiously, like a cat lapping unfamiliar water.

  I did not believe the alternate explanations I had invented. It was certainly unpleasant to think she’d been … packed off. But Gaston would have given her his Key, had he intended to keep in touch, I thought, and he would have taught her to invoke him with a Lesser Summoning. Ulrike had been pushed out of the nest, from the Well to the Spring, and whatever Gaston’s reason for doing so, the deed had been done intentionally.

  Strangely, my sympathy lay more with Gaston. She was like his lost love. It must have been painful to see the resemblance.

  On the other hand, sending a timid creature like this alone into the world could be signing her death warrant. Gaston was protective of Freia’s children and ruthless where threats to them were concerned, and I suspected he had planned Ulrike’s initiation very carefully. Perhaps something had thrown his plans out.

  She had said he said he was sending her home. It was actually possible that he had meant Fenshuyan. Gaston was not a sorcerer. He used minor magic. The more I thought about it, the more I thought about Gaston, the less likely it seemed that he would deliberately dump a child so ill-prepared even on her own family where she would be welcomed. Perhaps he had just been vague, sloppy in his construction of the spell of passage for them. “Home” is not precise. If he had made an error of focus, meaning to send her to Fenshuyan but thinking that Argylle was truly her home, the deeper intention might prevail. Many sorcerers routinely construct spells with such layered meanings, to hide their destinations or other things.

  Ulrike had been thinking too, and she had hidden two yawns while I thought. “I think …” she said, hesitating when I looked at her, “if it’s not too much trouble … I would like to … could I stay? Just a little while?”

  I smiled. “This is your place too,” I said. “When you have drunk of the Spring you may use it to return to Fenshuyan if you choose.”

  “Oh! I don’t think I’d like to do that. N—not right away.” She shivered.

  “As you wish,” I replied. “It’s late now. Let us find you rooms to call your own. In the morning we can discuss all this further.”

  Next to my own apartment were a series of guest rooms. I opened one, found it guest-ready, and gave her the key after lighting the fires for her. “I’m right here.” I point
ed out my doors. “Prospero is down the hall a ways. I’ll send a maid around in the morning—oh.” I struck my forehead.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked anxiously.

  “It is New Year’s holiday. Three days of nonstop revelry. The staff has largely deserted us. We will just make do.”

  The concept of three days of partying seemed wholly foreign to Ulrike. “Three days? Of celebrating a New Year?”

  “Argyllines mark the last day of the Old Year, the in-between day which is no year’s, and the first day of the New Year,” I said. “Tomorrow is the first of those. At any rate, I shall look you up at a respectable hour. Good night, Ulrike. Welcome to Argylle.”

  “Good night, Gwydion. Thank you.” The tiny smile again. She closed the door.

  Virgil was waiting over my door. I beckoned to him and he went into my rooms with me. I went straight to the bathroom and opened the window. Brrrr. Snow still fell steadily, diamonding my cuffs for an instant before transforming to dew.

  “Wake Prospero,” I told my owl.

  The candlelight flashed on Virgil’s wings as he glided out into the darkness, banked, and swooped up to perch on Prospero’s snow-upholstered windowsill. He rapped smartly on the glass with his beak. It took a long time for Prospero to notice.

  “What in Hella’s name is it?” he mumbled as he opened the casement. He batted at Virgil, who floated back to me. “Gwydion?”

  “We have a visitor,” I said.

  “How now?” Prospero’s bleary gaze sharpened and he leaned out to look around.

  “A nonmilitant, frightened one. Open the door, would you?”

  “Ha. Know you what hour o’ the clock it is? What visitor’s discourtesy to his hosts surpasses yours to your kin? This gem had better outvalue the setting, Gwydion.” Scowling, he slammed the window closed so that the panes rattled.

  He was waiting for me in his dressing-gown and slippers and had put a pair of logs on the fire to brighten the sitting room up. “ ’Twas warm in here ere you sent your subaltern to the glass. Is your humor so imbued with air that you cannot walk and knock as other men?” Prospero grumbled.