The Well-Favored Man

by Elizabeth Willey

  He snorted slightly and then shrugged again. “I’m a timorous old man,” he said, with a tinge of emotion I could not identify.

  He was neither, and we both knew it. “You think that’s not enough.”

  “I have no opinion, nay, naught but dislike and distrust to guide me.”

  I wondered what Mother would have done. That was a conundrum: she was ever-generous, ever-courteous, and she couldn’t stand Ottaviano. If Mother were here, the situation would not have arisen, because had Avril dared to send him to Argylle, either Walter wouldn’t have invited Ottaviano to the City or Dewar would have bounced him as courteously as possible. In fact, Ottaviano probably wouldn’t have tried to come if she were alive. He had always been very careful not to push things between himself and our family to the conflagration point, had always angled for a slightly better relationship.

  Prospero broke my reverie, greeting Ulrike. I said Hullo and sank back into my thoughts. Prospero proposed a walk along the Wye to her, to which she agreed in her usual shy way, and they left after she breakfasted.

  I decided I could not not have Ottaviano to the day’s dinner. It would be extremely obvious and rude. No. However, I could and would put more guards on duty, and no matter what Prospero thought I couldn’t do more and still be a good host. I rang and sent the servant who answered to tell Utrachet to meet me in my office in the next hour. Then I went there.

  Utrachet nodded when I explained that I must regretfully call in some of the guards from their family festivities in order to tighten Core security. We worked out how many were needed and where to position them, and I sent him off to take care of it.

  I did not tell him exactly why. While waiting, I’d framed it a number of times and the best I had come up with was that we had a guest of whose goodwill I was not entirely sure. Utrachet accepted this without questioning me—not that he ever did question me, but I felt my explanation was a bit sketchy. I supposed that the Seneschal knew us all well enough to know we didn’t trust Ottaviano, but I also supposed that he understood that if I named no names, he shouldn’t either.

  That done, I fell again into working on my account of the dragon, carefully phrasing it. I did not put here the truth about Dewar. I knew that myself, and that was enough.

  My report held my attention until the clock rang two. Then I stretched and put away my pen and inks and went into my rooms to dress more formally. Appearance counts more at these things than at the casual revels of the previous two days. Having passed final inspection at the looking glass, I went out, locking my door behind me. There seemed no one else around; I tapped on Ulrike’s door, but she wasn’t in or wasn’t answering.

  The high hall clock said quarter to three. The light from the windows was already dim. People would be gathering in the reception area in a few minutes; I was perfectly on time. I straightened my cuffs and lifted an eyebrow at my reflection in the face of the clock. I started down the Spiral, my soft shoes making a quick-paced padding echo like a heartbeat.

  Voices rose up, a wash of conversations running around and around the walls, growing fainter as I descended. I looked over the banister to see who had arrived, and tripped on the stair, for in the moving light of the lamps my mother—

  No. It was Ulrike, wearing one of Mother’s gowns, one I ought not to have given her—one of her favorites, sea-green silk with a gauzy green overdress. She was emerging from the passageway which leads to the Great Hall where the Black Chair is.

  The adrenaline left me weak and sick for an instant. I stepped away from the banister and stood, eyes closed, and for an instant only allowed the Spring which rushed upward and outward to subsume me. It was a comforting, upholding feeling, at once warm and cool, delicate and strong. I drew a shuddery breath and opened my eyes again, looked skyward at the windows around the top of the Core.

  “Better?” someone asked solicitously.

  I nodded and glanced over my shoulder. There was no one there.

  Was I losing my mind? I shuddered and began hurrying around the Spiral again. If Ulrike had been designed, by some evil genius, to remind us of Freia, she was well-made, and if she was the natural product of a natural process, then she was a miracle, a very wonder: Freia come again. In justice I modified my thought: except when she opened her mouth to speak, she was the image of my mother, for the resemblance indeed was only superficial—but that superficial seeming was a powerful reminder of what we had lost forever.

  It was almost worse this way, I mused. My feet had slowed to a deliberate pace as I thought. I did not look down again. We would always be pained by the surface so reminiscent of Freia, because the interior, by comparison, was alien, blank, nothing. If only she had Mother’s intelligence, her liveliness, her wisdom, or even the potential for them.

  Another more worrying and immediate thought came to me: suppose Prospero’s great fear were true, that she was an impostor, a clever faker come to trick us into giving her the Spring? She had been much in Ottaviano’s company: Prospero surely feared that they were confederates, the woman enlisted by Ottaviano to engage our trust and open the way to the Spring for him when we had taken her there. More subtle than Dazhur, more dangerous, assailing our susceptibilities with weapons against which we would have no defense—if she were lying, what could we do? Execute her for misrepresentation? Exile? Exile might be most fitting, I thought. Death for a lie—that seemed harsh, yet the stakes of the lie were high and it might be wisest to make an example of her.

  Or might the Spring take the matter unto itself, as the Stone of Morven in Phesaotois and the Well of Landuc in Pheyarcet have done on occasion, annihilating the unfit who presumed to partake of their potency?

  I left the Spiral at a walkway that led to a corridor, taking a less direct way to the banqueting room where we would be dining so that I could think this through. What punishment would fit someone who wanted the Spring enough to lie for it, to impersonate the Lady of Argylle’s own daughter?

  And the answer came to me: the Spring itself.

  My feet stopped and I stood very still, my heart hammering.

  The Spring itself could kill her, yes, and it would—if she were cast to it as Freia had been. Unprotected, she would be destroyed, and by her death …

  By her death Freia would live again.

  Yes.

  It was justice of the sort my mother had often handed down from the Chair: give people just a little more than they meant to ask for. It was Argylle style; it was precedented. Mother herself would probably agree. If this Ulrike who wanted the Spring so much proved false, we could give it to her: give her to it, and redeem my mother.

  Dinner proceeded smoothly, decorously; the Day of Intentions has everyone trying to strike optimistic notes to begin the coming year in a favorable key. The Voulouys joined us, and Lishon tried to flirt with me; I gravely told her in a private aside that I could not afford any appearance of favoring her family, given the sensitivity of the negotiations the Citadel and the Empire had in hand. She was sensible enough to take my meaning and behaved less kittenishly thereafter.

  Ottaviano was a model of good deportment and made polite, neutral conversation with the people seated around him. I watched him and Ulrike, but he paid more notice to Lishon than to my sister, though Lishon’s enthusiastic response to his attention might have been responsible for that.

  Ulrike sat at my right hand. She knew little about wine—barely the basics—and, this being Argylle, wine was something on which everyone was ready to hold forth, so the talk in our vicinity went onto that track and stayed there, more or less, through the meal. I listened, not saying much, following three or four conversations and fragments at once: it is always good to know what other people think, although one needn’t put much stock in it.

  A curious exchange came between Ulrike and Lishon, who complimented my sister on her gown.

  “It is very pretty,” Ulrike said. “They gave it to me.”

  “Where did it come from?” Lishon asked her.

 
; “I don’t know.”

  “It was one of Mother’s,” I said.

  “What!” Ulrike exclaimed, paling and looking down at the gown. “How?”

  “Howso, how? It hung in her wardrobe,” I said. “The clothing shops are not open for business during the holiday, by and large.”

  “It looks nice though it’s such an old dress,” Lishon said.

  Prospero glanced at her contemptuously—it was a tactless enough remark—and turned to Hicha beside him to ask about a book she had located for him.

  “It is not so old as that,” I shrugged, “and it suits … Why, Ulrike, what is it?”

  “I, I didn’t know,” she said.

  “Does it matter?” I asked her, puzzled. This was hardly elevated table-conversation, but her expression of mixed dismay and horror was hardly dinner fare either.

  “I think it is not … to wear someone’s clothes after they …” she said, unable to articulate her thoughts.

  “I should think it would be rather uncomfortable to wear a dead person’s clothes,” Lishon said.

  Tautau caught my eye and made an apologetic face. Lishon’s manners would receive resounding and rapid correction when her sister had her alone later.

  “Not if they fit,” Ottaviano said, frowning at Lishon. “That sounds like a silly superstition to me.”

  “I didn’t mean that,” Lishon said, “it seems rather creepy, that’s what it is. Isn’t that it, Ulrike?”

  “It is … odd,” she said. “I did not know the dresses were Mother’s.” She looked at the gown again, clearly disliking it.

  “Not like things from your sisters,” Lishon continued, “that’s different.”

  Shaoll saw the opening and mercifully redirected the conversation. “We’ll take you out in the morning and go round the town shopping,” she said. “One doesn’t often have a chance to buy a whole new wardrobe! Even for someone else, especially for someone else, and on Walter’s account too,” said she, and glanced down the table at Walter mischievously.

  “What?” Walter said, hearing his name.

  “Shopping,” said Shaoll. “It would be a fine New Year’s gift to your sister to buy her a few frocks, wouldn’t it?”

  “A fine gift,” Walter said. “I wonder if I have any money.”

  I laughed at his lugubrious expression; Walter usually doesn’t have any money, officially; he gives it away and funds things and bails his friends out of debt, and it sinks away from him, water into sand. But everyone knows he’s Walter, and so the unpaid bills come to his family at the Citadel—where, long ago when the pattern became clear to her, Mother arranged that there should ever be funds for Walter’s use. Walter is not very clear on how it is that there is always, somehow, enough money, but somehow, there always is.

  “Of course you do,” Shaoll assured him.

  Everyone laughed at that.

  After dinner we retired to a music room for civilized entertainment. In the more casual setting I expected Ottaviano to once again approach Ulrike, but again Lishon Voulouy absorbed much of his attention. Perhaps he was self-conscious, since I had twice now interrupted them in colloquy.

  I was still apprehending the consequences of Ulrike being, possibly, no true member of our family. It was hard to believe her naiveté could be shammed, but acting is a skill like others. Suspecting Ottaviano was natural; he had a name as a schemer. I heard him mention the Empire to someone and a fresh suspicion hit me—Ulrike could be an agent of Landuc, cunningly planted here by Avril. I pushed the problem away, as it threatened to preoccupy me: I couldn’t worry about that and entertain my guests.

  The evening passed quickly and very pleasantly with songs and instrumental pieces contributed by all (except Ulrike). Prospero once again turned the full force of his character on her and got her to behave more naturally, and perhaps his presence near her also kept Ottaviano at arm’s length.

  Ottaviano left with Walter, who would ride back to Ollol with him tonight. Nothing had happened. No one had so much as looked at the door to the Black Stair; though I’d watched Ottaviano and kept an ear cocked toward his conversation, nothing of sorcerous or political content had been mentioned. Ulrike, in Mother’s green gown, bade me a polite good-night and went to her rooms.

  12

  THE DAYS THAT FOLLOWED NEW YEAR’S were true winter days, short and gray and wet. Prospero stayed in Ollol, inexorably mincing Ottaviano’s hopes for a trading treaty that would put him high in the Emperor’s favor, and Ulrike stayed in the City. Tautau and Lishon Voulouy and Shaoll earned my everlasting gratitude by commanding the vitally-important shopping for a wardrobe for Ulrike, whose taste was uninformed, though she favored flattering cloudy greys and blues of every shade. Her choice of colors made her look less like Mother, so that she did not continue to startle people when they glimpsed her unexpectedly.

  She asked about Gaston, but never about the Spring. I suggested several times to her that she descend and drink, but she balked at the idea each time. Puzzled, I spoke of this to Prospero.

  “She will not drink of the Spring,” I said when we met over lunch at an inn between Ollol and Argylle.

  He arched an eyebrow, sampling the wine in his glass. He swallowed, grimaced. “Will not?”

  “Will not. I have offered more than once. She will not.”

  “Will not. ’Passing strange, that; if she’d see Gaston again, or Fenshuyan, needs must drink. You’ve told her so?”

  “Oh, yes. Prospero, isn’t it a point, so to speak, in her favor, that she did not leap at the first chance and do so? For surely a faker would.”

  He hmmmed in his throat and, thoughtfully, wiped out his empty wineglass and poured some of the white I had ordered for myself. “Much better. That’s raw young red, best cellared another half-dozen years. Fool of a host knows not his business. —Ulrike. Yes. Perhaps so, Gwydion, perhaps so. What seems and what is do not always live in the same house. Could be she’s all she says, your sister, his daughter, and all. She’s not asked of Ottaviano?”

  “Not a word. She goes about, just the way girls do, with other girls. Lishon Voulouy—”

  Prospero snorted. “Cheeky chit.”

  “I must concur. But Ulrike’s taken to her, and Tautau is perfectly pleased to look after them both and find them amusements. I cannot, I have forgotten what one does with seventeen-year-old girls.”

  “Swimming,” Prospero suggested, and grinned like a devil so that I blushed. He laughed and poured me more wine. In my youth I had been in the habit of swimming after dark from the Citadel’s Island to the Wyeside home of a certain young lady, and nobody who had heard the tale from my tutor had ever let me forget it.

  “Shopping, more to her liking,” I mumbled, and ate big pieces of fish, chewing hard.

  Prospero’s laughter ran down. “Ah well. So she’s of the age where she flocks with the other geese: ’tis quite as likely that was her father’s reason for shooing her here. Fine feathers and gabbling aren’t his forte.” He ate for a few minutes without talking. “You’ve heard naught of Gaston.”

  I shook my head, mouth full.

  He made an impatient sound. “Bandersnatch,” he said, or something like it. “Cannot have been mistaken, if he sent her here; I’ve thought over it, it’s not to be done thus. But still we’ve no proof of her bona fides from him. What would you have done had she taken you at your word, inviting her to the Spring?” He glared at me.

  “I’d have made some excuse, some delay.” We had agreed, after all, that she should not drink until we had word of Gaston.

  He shook his head, disapproving still. “Strange, strange that he sent her hither alone. Is he ashamed? Abashed? Wherefore?” he murmured, and took the last of the bread to his plate. “There’s something here not fathomed yet,” he decided, when the plate was immaculate and the bread eaten.

  “The glaze,” I suggested, pointing at the painted-on cherries and getting him back for the swimming joke.

  “Hah. I’m not Dewar,” said he, his
mouth twisting and no amusement in his face. “Another dog out o’ the kennel,” he said, “howling at the moon.”

  “Surely he’s all right,” I said.

  Prospero shot me a sharp look, quick and bleak.

  “Probably he’s just … busy. Lost count of the time.”

  “My son?” Prospero said derisively. True; Dewar was the master of clockwork and precision sorcery. He beckoned to the waiter, who came and cleared our table.

  When the man had gone, I said, “Why would he send her here alone?”

  “Ask him; I cannot guess. ’Tis unkind of him to do so. She’s a comely child, just the thing he’d find a comfort. He’d rejoice to see Freia again in her … Indubitably not in Freia’s gown, though,” Prospero added, giving me another sharp look. “Do you put those away again.”

  “I did, sir.”

  “Good.”

  “It gave me a turn and a half too. I wasn’t thinking. I’m sorry.”

  He nodded. We were brought dessert (a cake soaked with brandy and fruit) and the accompanying beverages, and we ate and drank without further talk.

  After Prospero and I had said our farewells in the brassy late sunshine, I rode on Cosmo over the frozen road back home to the Citadel. The treaty would be ready in three days’ time, and I would ride down to Ollol then and sign it with Ottaviano to witness. Then Ottaviano and Walter would return to Landuc and Avril would sign with Walter to witness, and so it would be concluded. Avril would not be pleased by the continued tight rein on commerce between us; Prospero had slackened nowhere.

  The other matter in my mind as Cosmo’s hooves thumped hollowly on the frozen mud was Ulrike, since we had just spoken of her at lunch. Though clad in different colors, different styles, different gowns, people still looked twice at her for her resemblance to our mother. As soon as she spoke the resemblance was gone, though, for the girl lacked Mother’s judgement, her knowledge, her humor, her wit. She wanted constant guidance and cosseting. She was as unlike her mother as two people could be.