He nodded. Ulrike looked at her tea-leaves. I had forgotten to strain the tea as I poured.
Alexander and Ulrike had been invited on an outing with friends; I declined to go and spent the day instead in my brother’s cool dim library, browsing lethargically through collections of essays on miscellaneous topics bound in dark old leather. The printing press had not yet come to Montgard. These books were imported from somewhere else; they were printed on thick creamy linen paper, a pleasure to look at and touch.
We had a quiet dinner. I arranged for Ulrike to use Hussy; Alexander agreed and stipulated again that he wanted her back soon, and I said I would certainly return her at the earliest opportunity.
The following day, in good time and good order, Ulrike and I rode down to the town and took rooms at The Mermaid’s Cups (Ulrike blushed) for the night. Our journey home through Pheyarcet and across the Border was so uneventful and peaceful as to be tedious. Still, that was good; Ulrike might have been permanently traumatized if we’d been set upon again. We took about ten days for the trip.
Spring was just putting soft touches of green to the trees and opening the first flowers on north-facing banks and in sunny gardens. I was glad to see it, glad that the winter and its dragon were gone for a season, glad that for the moment I had nothing to worry about but where I was going to put all my wine. With a feeling of noble resolve, I promised myself I would indeed take care of that this year. Ulrike set about reading and answering her hoard of plump letters from Haimance.
Virgil returned to me eighteen days after Ulrike and I arrived at the Citadel, just as the fruit trees began putting out tiny leaves. He indicated that Gemnamnon was in a distant part of Phesaotois, which was fine with me. I suspected he’d come from there in the first place. I hoped he stayed home from now on, and an anxious knot in my gut finally dissipated, leaving me wholly able to enjoy the weather.
A few days after that, upon receiving Prospero’s hesitant approbation for the idea, I opened a Way for Josquin and brought him to Argylle.
Josquin was pleased to meet Ulrike; she was shy as ever but did manage to make small talk with him at dinner that night. Josquin understood the shyness at once and made careful and successful efforts to get past it. Soon Ulrike was as comfortable with him as with any of us. He settled into life in Argylle as if he had been born there.
In Argylle, the City of Gold, spring brings picnics and dances and outings and celebrations. It brings parties and boating on the Wye on warm days and everyone in town out driving or walking and chatting and smiling. Word had gotten around that the Lady’s youngest daughter was home again, and this was of great interest to everyone. Whenever Ulrike went out for a walk along the Wye or through the town she was greeted warmly by complete strangers and welcomed, which she found disconcerting.
“They’re so friendly.” she said to me after we had weathered one such cheerful encounter.
“That’s Argylle. Landuc’s very different.”
“Unfriendly?”
“Mmm, standoffish. Josquin’s Madanese; he’s not like most Landucians. I like it better here.”
“And people are so …” she shook her head, “… ah, free with one another …” We were strolling along the riverbank, where rites of spring were in full swing in the parks, on the footpaths, and in the boats moored and floating. Ulrike blushed scarlet.
I grinned. “That’s nice too, I think. A lot better than bottling it all up.”
Spring also brings Walter’s First of Spring party, which is more exclusive than but as famous as his New Year’s revels. Ulrike did more than blush when she was propositioned there. Fortunately Walter was nearby and he caught my eye as he applied his diplomatic expertise to calming the dismay of all parties involved.
“Oh, dear,” Hicha said to me. “I did tell Staron she should wait until she knows your sister better. But she’s always been impatient.”
I hurried over to help and, with a polite mumble, dragged Ulrike into a nearby sitting room and closed the door so she could recover her composure in privacy.
“I shouldn’t have to put up with that!” she said. “No!”
“People are testing you, Rikki, finding your limits, seeing how you’re different from the rest of us and Freia. That’s all. Please don’t make a scene. You’ve already made her feel very awkward.” My sympathies were wholly with Staron, one of Hicha’s partners, a complaisant and quick young woman.
“No! It’s not right. No!” she cried.
“No, thank you,” Walter corrected her, returning from his chat with the terribly embarrassed Staron. He closed the door quietly and knelt beside her chair, putting his hand on her shoulder. “That’s all you need to say, dear Ulrike. No, thank you. Your mother,” and he grinned, “had to say it quite a lot.”
I chuckled. Ulrike didn’t. “It’s shocking! It’s … it’s … it’s unnatural!” she wailed.
“Unnatural!” I repeated. “If sex isn’t natural what is?”
My brother shot me a brief glare and shook his head. “It’s life,” Walter said to Ulrike, gently and definitely. “Just remember: No, thank you. And ninety-nine in a hundred will take that for an answer gracefully. The hundredth one gets turned to a cactus.” He glanced at me and I nodded, resigned. “You probably won’t have further … problems,” he went on. “I’ll spread the word if you like, make it clear that you are not interested.”
“This is not a subject for, for gossip!” Ulrike burst into tears. “It’s horrible! It’s not!”
I was confused now. What was the problem? Walter hugged her and patted her back and soothed her. I looked at him, bewildered, over her shaking shoulders. Later, he mouthed.
“Gaston is strait-laced sometimes,” he said when Ulrike had been persuaded to return to the party and had gone to wash her face first. “I suspect he, hm, did not mention a few things to her here and there, things that Mother would have told her. Such as the differences between Argylle and Landuc families. You know that Mother and Gaston were exceptional here, that Landuc’s standard is not ours.”
“Monogamous and male-female and that’s all they’ll admit to. I’m not sure what one would call standard in Argylle. People would laugh if one tried.” Argyllines have families. Some people have big families. Some people have small families. Some are loose-knit associations like Hicha’s, some tightly-organized to carry on a farm or business. Everybody has somebody; there are a few loners who don’t travel with the herd, but they’re a distinct type too, usually too busy with whatever they do to bother with building and maintaining family ties.
“That’s the point. You grew up here. You have seen Landuc and places like it, though,” Walter went on. “In such places sex is forbidden or regulated. I don’t know this Fenshuyan from experience, but I’ll warrant you it’s run by the men, who own their women … She has to become accustomed to much.”
“Do you think she’s—” I started to say, amazed.
He cut me off. “It is none of our business to think, simply to make sure that the lady is not subjected to unwanted attentions. Mother had a perfect drop-dead glare she used on the ones who didn’t take no for an answer, and then of course Dewar would turn around and smile at them rather nastily.”
“Yes, I remember …” I grinned broadly, recalling a party one day on the river, a persistent suitor …
He began to chuckle and I joined in, remembering. “That ass got what he deserved. Never heard Gaston laugh so much in my whole life.” Walter leaned on the doorjamb, laughing harder and harder. I wiped tears from my eyes. “The goat,” he gasped. “… on the boat, oh, that was funny, oh … Can you do that?”
“I guess so. Yes, I can. Prefer not to.”
We calmed down and massaged our aching sides. “Right,” I said. “I shall do what I can, and you too.”
“Yes. You know, it may be she’d be better off in Landuc …”
“She has not been keen on the idea of going there.”
“No. But I believe she’ll like it when s
he does.” Walter snickered. “Or maybe I’ll tell her the goat story.”
22
DEWAR INVOKED ME WITH A LESSER Summoning a few days after the party. I was in my office; reluctant to take the risk of being overheard or interrupted, I hurried to my workroom, closed the door, and used a mirror to focus the spell.
It clouded and changed and cleared …
“Greetings,” he said.
“Salutations. How are things?”
He smiled. “We found Lars Holzen, who introduced us to the people we needed to know at the Clinic, who have agreed to build a body for Freia, which they are doing.”
“I thought this would be difficult, take a long time …” I said, taken aback.
My uncle shook his head. “Easy, easy, easy,” Dewar crowed. “They keep tissue samples, not just sequence information. Frozen cell specimens.”
“You can make a person from a few cells?” I asked, repelled.
“Yes, of course. What did you think I’d use, flowers? Snow? And they’ve done very interesting transfers: artificial people, originally with machine-based specially-designed task-focused identities, installed in custom bodies …” Dewar shook his head admiringly. “Fascinating!”
“People? This is done with people?”
He nodded. “Very much up Freia’s alley. She’s a wizard, in her own way.”
“I’ll say. —Mother did this kind of thing?”
“As she said, she augmented her own original genetic package with genes, hm, borrowed from Prospero to improve her cellular metabolism. She didn’t inherit a few important ones and the deficiency was beginning to have … serious effects.”
“Borrowed genes?” Like borrowing a pen?
“Gaston got a little careless in one of their fencing sessions and scratched him,” Dewar snickered, “and cleaned the blade onto a cloth she’d specially prepared. Then she analyzed the cells and extracted the bits she wanted. That picky work is even harder than working from scratch. Apparently here they suggested she simply build a new body and transfer into it, but she wasn’t enthusiastic.”
My skin crawled. I followed the gist, but the specifics were beyond me; perhaps I needed to study up on this, revolting though it sounded. “I’d imagine so.”
Dewar guessed correctly at the source of my revulsion. “This isn’t necromancy, Gwydion. Think of it as medicine on the grandest possible scale. It’s healing. In fact it’s not very different, if you think about it, from the, uh, usual way of making people. You started from only two cells, you know.”
“Dewar, how can … how can there be … what about …” I couldn’t even frame my questions properly, and so let pass unanswered his jab at my supposedly-deficient sex education.
“They retard the brain’s cognitive development,” he said briskly, as if he were explaining how cauliflower is blanched. “There isn’t another person involved here. Don’t worry about that.”
“Still …”
“You’re rather squeamish,” Dewar observed. “Why?”
“It’s … unnatural.”
“So is sorcery. So are many things you do, by somebody’s standards somewhere.”
I struggled to overcome my prejudice. Dewar shifted position, seeming to sit down.
“How … how are you going to … move her?” I asked finally.
“I’m still working on that.”
“If I can do anything …”
Dewar nodded. “Of course I’d ask.” He smiled. “Just keep doing what you’re doing. You’re doing it well.”
I smiled wryly. “Any ideas as to where I can stash a lot of wine?”
“Stars, are we running out of room again? No. None. There’s the Catacombs, but I’d prefer you not have a mason’s crew running around down there just now.”
Uh-hunh. I could see that becoming an exciting and controversial situation. “No, that’s ruled out already. Prospero and I talked about it and nixed it.”
“I honestly don’t know,” he said, shaking his head. “We have to drink more.”
“If people spent more time at home, we would.”
“True. You could reduce the Citadel’s share, considering that Marfisa never collects hers, but that’s a bad precedent.… I’m sure you’ll find someplace. Not in my rooms though, please.”
“How about under the bed?”
“Very well, a few cases of Corydol under the bed. Nice crusty dirty old ones.” He grinned again, his eyes lighting for a moment.
I laughed. “Wrong. Thanks for calling, Dewar. Keep me informed.”
“There’s not much to inform about beyond this,” he said, shrugging. “It’s all routine from here on out.”
Routine! I thought. Indeed.
Spring budded and bloomed around us, and my favorite days came, the warm days when the breeze off the Wye bathed the Citadel in the scent of blossoms from the Island’s orchard. I opened windows and worked, dined, and just sat outside on the terraces and balconies, watching the birds. Prospero went to Landuc to present the Emperor with an unexpected sweetener to the trading treaty he had closed with Ottaviano last winter: a large shipment of Candobel wine, for the Emperor to drink or sell as he saw fit. The gift had the pleasant side effect of liberating room in the Citadel’s cellars for a luscious lot of Bevallin Coast Ember-wine, one of Mother’s earliest and most successful varieties, which had the appealing quality (in our present pressed condition) of maturing in two years.
Josquin stayed on in Argylle, taking Ulrike around and amusing her and acting as a bodyguard to intercept the more-than-occasional offers for more-than-casual relations Ulrike still received. She did remember to say, “No, thank you,” which I thought was progress. We all went around together often, Ulrike and Josquin and Walter and his usual collection of friends and I, picnicking, birding, riding, walking, boating. Josquin and I went night-swimming under full and crescent moons and raced our sculls through morning mists.
I was happy. I felt as if there had been some twisting worry in my life which had been solved away, and everything seemed to come easily to me.
We heard nothing from Gaston. Ulrike asked periodically about him, obviously wishing he would come home, and accepted our waiting policy unhappily.
I pointed out that if she drank of the Spring she could spend all her time trying to find him, either with Summonings or travelling on the Road, herself.
“No, thank you,” she said, eyes widening, shaking her head quickly.
I stared at her and then laughed. It was probably the first real joke she had made, and I wasn’t sure it was intentional, but it was funny. It wasn’t intentional—she backed away from me.
“Gwydion!”
“Sorry, it just seemed funny for a moment. Then you’ll have to wait with the rest of us.”
Mother manifested herself in my rooms one rosy morning.
“Gwydion,” I heard in the study.
At first I didn’t recognize her voice and simply said, “Come in,” stuffing the rest of my breakfast roll in my mouth. I thought it was someone with a message, maybe one of my sisters. I jumped and gasped when she mistily walked through the closed door. Then, coughing and choking, I had to wash down the roll very fast with a mouthful of coffee.
Mother fidgeted in and out of seeming solidity. “Gwydion, I am uneasy about this whole thing.”
I swallowed again. “I can understand that, but I think you’re in good hands.”
“Panurgus says it will fail. He believes I shall extinguish myself.”
“He wants you to back down.”
She shimmered. “Perhaps he is right.”
“Oh, Mother!”
“It has never been done before,” she said.
“What would you have Dewar and Thiorn do? They are well along; he called me a month ago and told me so. It will not fail. He and Thiorn both have every reason to be careful, to succeed. You ought not to listen to Panurgus.”
“That is just what Dewar said. I am committed to it, it seems; there is no other path for me �
��” She looked through me, then at me. “We must speak about—what comes afterward.”
“Uh-hunh?” I had another sip of coffee to soothe my abused throat.
Afterward. I had thought about this myself. I had not wanted the Black Chair to be mine already. I had been ruling Argylle as a substitute while my mother was away down the Road, her proxy as Walter had recently been mine. I had not wanted it so soon, though it had been increasingly clear to me for years before that it was going to be mine someday. I had sat in it uncomfortably ever since.
My desire was that she would return, live here as before as the Lady of Argylle, and this could be just another weird, incomprehensible episode in our history, which already had a fair number, most of them associated with Freia.
Mother, however, had her own ideas. As ever.
“I shall not take Argylle again. You are doing well. I will substitute for you if you desire a sabbatical—as Prospero used to for me—but there are many things I still would like to do that I never did” She sounded defensive but quite definite.
I looked into my coffee cup. I chewed my lip. I stirred my coffee.
Nobody ever won this sort of argument with Freia. Prospero, Dewar, Gaston, even the Emperor Avril—they all backed down when she spoke in that firm tone. Despite the defensive note, I knew that if she said she would not do it, she was not going to do it.
And so I was stuck. I suppose I could have threatened to abdicate, but I suspect that neither she, Dewar, nor Prospero would have let me get away with it.
I moistened my lips and tried to sound hearty. “That’s fine. I’m glad, in a way. I’ve gotten used to this.”
Mother, with another of those disarmingly natural gestures, bent down in front of me and intercepted my gaze, which was trained on my boots at the end of the bed.
We regarded one another for a full minute, slightly-insubstantial mother and all-too-substantial son. Her eyes were strange, pure black iris and pupil, like the Spring itself.
I felt her looking right into me. I glanced away, unwilling to be studied too closely.
The Well-Favored Man Page 37
