Singer From the Sea

by Sheri S. Tepper

  As had been her habit since setting out, she turned in her seat every few moments, looking at the water around her, at the horizon to see if any boats were there. She was so accustomed to seeing nothing that she looked all around, turning without really using her eyes, for a moment quite sure that she was indeed seeing nothing.

  Then her eyes widened, for she had glanced across what stood upon the glistening horizon: a striped sail that identified a fishing boat from Sealand. As it came closer, she saw that the stripes were yellow and blue, which meant the boat was from Ruckward itself. It was setting directly toward her, and she thought she could make out the tiny figures of men on the foredeck, waving and pointing in her direction.

  “Oh, heaven, whatever help there is for women, help me,” she cried, the words coining from someplace deep inside her she had never plumbed until this instant. “Oh, help me for the love of all that is dear,” as she stared helplessly at her pursuer.

  The pursuit continued, though the following ship was obviously confused by something happening off to one side, a foaming, swirling disturbance in the water. At first Lyndafal thought it was a maelstrom, but the activity seemed to be all on the surface, a circle of creamy foam sequined with flashing light. The men on the other boat stopped pointing in her direction and scurried from the foredeck to busy themselves with nets. Even across all the distance between she could hear their eager shouts as the swirling water moved away from their line of travel, to the west.

  On that ship, the Captain shouted orders, the sails were tightened to sail nearer the wind, while ahead of them a sparkling curtain of golden fish leapt upward from the waves as though to escape something beneath them.

  On that ship a young sailor turned to his older mate and asked, “So, we’re letting the little boat go? What’ll Lord Solven say when he hears that?”

  “It won’t get away, boy! We can sail rings around it. There’s no land near enough for her to get to! Those are golden-eyes out there boy, worth their weight in royals. Now’s time to put money in our pockets, more money than that bastard Solven will ever pay us! Besides, we don’t even know it’s her!”

  And Lyndafal, on the tiny boat, fell into the bottom of it as it lurched and dipped and began to flee across the water like a bird, the sail actually bellying backward as something carried her faster than the wind away from that other ship. She did not bother to think. She crawled to the rope and dropped the sail, allowing the boat to go even faster. It dashed, throwing a high spume of water on either side.

  Island number five spun by. The boat kept on, never diminishing its speed. Another island loomed. And another still, the seventh, where she had planned to rest tonight. The boat swerved around behind it, beaching itself on a sandy beach near a wooded inlet. When a few quiet moments passed with no further happening, she pulled the boat from the sand and waded with it to the inlet where she found cover from the sea. Once the boat was hidden, she took the baby into her arms and stepped onto a mossy bank amid a wooded glade.

  As she turned back toward the water, she saw a circle of gold turning in the shallows, a shiny cog wheel like those that turn endlessly in the backs of watches or the workings of music boxes, and beyond the wheel, deeper in the water, a larger wheel, and another deeper yet.

  Breathless, she watched as the wheels spun. She thought of all the wheels at work in the universe, those of planets, of stars, of galaxies, round and round and round. When she had observed it long enough to know she was not imagining it, the wheels broke into hundreds of scaled creatures no longer than her fingers that darted away into the depths while she gaped at the place they had been.

  FOURTEEN

  Gentlemen of the Court

  UNLIKE MANY IN HAVENOR WHOSE HIGHEST AMBITION WAS to see and be seen, certain agents of the Prince made it their business not to be seen at all. Those who ran afoul of them more than once presumed, quite correctly, that they were immune to the Lord Paramount’s law. They were laconic, lean, and lurkish to a man, and chief among them was a man called Wiezal, a name he preferred because it was not his own. Wiezal made it a rule to maintain his private business quite private, though in addition to his own affairs, he was willing to go hither and yon at the Prince’s bidding, finding out this, stealing that, and occasionally finding himself in proximity (coincidentally, of course) to someone about to die unexpectedly.

  When Genevieve was found to have disappeared, Yugh Delganor summoned Wiezal and set him upon the trail. Wiezal soon found that Aufors Leys had booked passage on the Reusel packet, informed the Prince of this fact, and then went off down the River Reusel with a couple of his pack members, slavering upon the spoor. All of them were tireless and clever hunters who either returned with their prey or, if it was in no condition to be returned, with enough of it to prove its demise.

  When Wiezal returned a few days later, however, he was not his usual self. Instead of his customary sidling, head bobbing approach to the Prince, he remained standing by the door, shifting from foot to foot, his appearance more than ordinarily stoatish.

  “Well,” the Prince inquired in a soft voice, “is she at Langmarsh?”

  “No, sir. She is not.” Wiezal’s voice was petulant, indisputably annoyed.

  Delganor raised his head to peer down his nose, keeping his voice soft and unthreatening. “Well then, where did she go?”

  “The thing is, Your Highness … well, the woman Colonel Leys bought passage for wasn’t her.”

  Delganor frowned. “Then who was it?”

  Wiezal breathed deeply and leaked words like a faucet dripping. “The passage was for the daughter of one of … well, the Colonel’s officers, man he fought with in Potcher.” Deep breath. “She was engaged to another officer. This woman went to Reusal-on-mere. She met her man there. His name’s Enkors. They got married. Colonel Leys was there. He stood up for the groom. The journey was a wedding present.”

  “Then where in the deepsea is the Marshal’s daughter?”

  “Don’t know!” snarled Wiezal. “We’re looking! There’s people out. If she don’t turn up in Langmarsh, we’ll look elsewhere.”

  “We don’t have forever, Wiezal.”

  “Shouldn’t take forever. Just got misled, that’s all.”

  “Purposefully misled, do you think?”

  As he thought seriously on the question, Wiezal lifted a nostril, which lifted one side of his lip, letting a sharp tooth show at the corner. “No. Seems the Colonel promised this wedding long ago. Not something he just thought up. Coincidental, more like.”

  “I understood the Colonel was in love with the girl.”

  Wiezal shrugged. “Nobody saw them together. Not without her maid or somebody there. Maybe she loves him. Or visus vercy. It didn’t get far, if so. Besides, Marshal wouldn’t have it.”

  So the Marshal wouldn’t have it, ah? Which might explain the fact she’d run off without her lover! That was a complication to keep in mind. “Wiezal, find Colonel Aufors Leys. I want him here, before me, soonest. And Wiezal …”

  “Sir?”

  “I don’t want him damaged. I need him in good working order.”

  “Ah. Soon as may be.”

  “Sooner than that.”

  Wiezal slipped out and away while Delganor sat in his chair and brooded. No matter how well he planned, there were always these little glitches. The flow of his life was not clear and straight. There were opacities. Eddies. But small, small, nothing in the way of a maelstrom or a tidal wave. Not that Haven needed fear tidal waves. It took long, sloping shores for tidal waves to build their force, and there were no long, sloping shores around Haven. No long sloping shores in Delganor’s life, either. His way was straight up, a cliff to scale, a peak to ascend. There was only one height beyond his own, the rule of Haven, including Mahahm, which would belong to him in time.

  In fact, Mahahm might belong to him before the rest of Haven did. They were a poor people in Mahahm, and this mission to offer them royalties for P’naki would whet their appetites. Later he w
ould make another such trip, to offer something else they hungered for. Delganor had seen Mahahm. There was only one thing there to satisfy any hunger at all, and with that one satisfied, they had to hunger for something else. He would find out what it was, just as he would find Genevieve, sooner or later. These were not major matters. They were merely annoyances.

  They were not the only annoyances of that morning. Before noon, another visitor was announced: a messenger from Lord Solven, Earl of Ruckward.

  He came in at a march, clicked his heels, bowed, and said: “My master the Earl of Ruckward presents his compliments, Your Highness.”

  “No doubt,” said Delganor. “And does he present else?”

  “His apologies, Your Highness. The Right Honorable Earl of Ruckward wishes you to know well in advance that he may be unable to accompany Your Highness on the trade mission scheduled for later this year. Lady Lyndafal, the Countess of Ruckward, has unaccountably disappeared, and the Right Honorable Earl is greatly distraught.”

  The Prince sat as one petrified, unmoving, seeming scarcely to breathe. At last, barely above a whisper, he murmured, “The child.”

  “Sir?”

  “She had a child? Didn’t she?”

  “Two children, Your Highness. A toddler daughter, and the infant, also a girl.”

  “And where are they?”

  “The older child is with her father at Ruckton, sir. The baby disappeared with the Countess. Both mother and child are feared drowned.”

  Delganor’s teeth ground together audibly. He took a deep breath and said, “Tell the Earl that I sympathize with his feelings and appreciate his timely information. Tell him, please, that I will be in touch at a later time.”

  The messenger bowed and left. The Prince sat still as stone, occasionally baring his teeth and drawing back his upper lip, almost as Wiezal had done, though the teeth thus displayed were gray-white, lifeless as dry bone. He sniffed the air, as though he smelled something inimical but could not identify its source. Once, as though barely able to believe what he said, he murmured almost inaudibly, “Another one.”

  Long before Genevieve’s departure, Aufors Leys had obtained leave from the Marshal and scheduled his trip to attend Enkors’s wedding in Reusel-on-mere. With Genevieve gone, there was no reason to change his plans. He anchored Enkors in his determination to wed after forty-some-odd years of single life, and blessed the bride, a no-longer-young but no-less-for-that maiden with more good sense than beauty and a body, Aufors judged, that would come as a happy surprise to his old colleague. During their several long conversations, Aufors enlightened Enkors as to his discoveries in the archives.

  “Makes you wonder,” said Enkors, slightly tipsy, “if maybe that Prince o’ Potcher didn’t have it right. About some lords bein’ a bit old for the job.”

  Aufors suggested it wasn’t the thing to say where it might be overheard, and Enkors had looked guiltily around himself, saying, “Right, Colonel. Oh, right.”

  It took Aufors two days and nights to get back using post horses, after which he went about his usual work, quite aware that the Marshal was watching him a good deal of the time. Aufors was not himself and did not pretend to be so. Though he had made a pretence of jollity during Enkors’s wedding feast, he was not a happy man. He accomplished his duties commendably, as always, but his downcast eyes and strained expression betrayed his distress. He blamed the Marshal for what had happened, and he was not of a mood to make the old soldier feel less guilty, presuming he felt guilty at all.

  The Marshal had found himself itched by an unfamiliar feeling of disquiet, though it had nothing to do with his daughter but rather with Aufors himself. Why had he suspected Aufors Leys, a man who had done him nothing but good? Why had he suspected a man who was obviously just as upset as the Marshal himself? After all, it wasn’t Aufors’s fault if the stupid girl had fallen in love with him!

  In this mood of forgiveness, the Marshal found the Colonel in the stable yard with the farrier, looking over the horses to see which needed shoeing. When the farrier started his work, the Marshal invited the Colonel to join him at luncheon. Surprisingly, the Colonel begged off, saying he wasn’t feeling all that well.

  “Come now, Colonel. You and I must talk.”

  “About what, sir?”

  “About these recent happenings, Colonel. All this about …”

  “About Genevieve? What can I say about Genevieve? She is lovely, generous, and intelligent. She has a good deal of kindness about her, and what good will it do us for me to say that?”

  “What I want you to say,” snapped the Marshal, “is why Yugh Delganor’s expression of interest in her sent her over the wall that way.”

  “She cannot bear him, sir.”

  “So? So she cannot bear him. She would be Queen, Colonel! Isn’t that enough to make up for being unable to bear him?”

  Aufors found himself simmering with a rage he could barely conceal. “She may suspect, as do I, that she would not be Queen for long or, indeed, might not survive to be Queen at all. The wives of Haven’s royalty do not thrive.”

  “That’s treasonous!” the Marshal shouted, guilt forgotten in a sudden ecstacy of fury.

  Aufors said stubbornly, “It’s a simple statement of fact. None of Yugh’s wives have lasted longer than a year or two, and few members of their families remain alive. The same is true of the Lord Paramount’s wives, except for this last woman, whom he married when he was already aged and so was she, a political match, as was said at the time. Heaven knows what the others were.”

  “What are you alleging?”

  Aufors drew himself up to his full, haughty height, confronting the Marshal at eye level. “I do not allege. I describe a condition that exists. If I say that most of the people who walk along the Great Falls Trail in Tansay end up dead at the foot of the cliffs, I am stating a fact. I don’t know why they end up there. Rock slides, perhaps. Collapses of terrain. Attacks by beasts. Slippery footing coupled with drunkenness. I don’t allege, I simply say the trail is demonstrably dangerous. If I cared about someone, I would have her view the Falls from some other place. Because I care about Genevieve, I would rather see her as a live Marchioness than a dead Queen.”

  The Marshal huffed, like a bull, working himself up toward another explosion. “You’re saying I don’t care about her.”

  “I’m saying nothing of the kind. I have no idea whether you care about her or not. How would I know?”

  “You certainly have reason to know!” he shouted. “She has always been well-cared-for, in accordance with the covenants. She has been given her youth. She has enjoyed the house and gardens in Wantresse. She has been well dressed, well kept and fed, well trained—”

  Aufors interrupted, as loudly: “Which is also true of your horses, sir. Rather more true, actually. You spend a good deal more time with your horses. Nonetheless, you would sell any one of them for a good price.”

  The Marshal turned red with fury, his neck swelling.

  “Forgive me,” said Aufors between his teeth, controlling himself with a good deal of effort. “I have no right to speak so. It is obvious to me I can no longer maintain the neutrality and balance which are necessary for me to work beneficially for you, Lord Marshal. I have been training someone to take my place, and I think it would be best, sir, for you to hire him at once as I offer my resignation as your equerry forthwith.”

  He had said far more than he meant to say; the Marshal had heard a good deal more than he had thought to hear; and they parted in mutual fury. The Marshal started to say that officers were obliged to fulfil their specified terms of service, but then bethought himself that he had not appointed Aufors to a specified term, leaving him quite free to go elsewhere.

  Aufors sent a note to the selected replacement with a written introduction to the Marshal. He then went to his quarters and packed his belongings, arranging with one of the footmen to store them for later dispatch. Meantime the Marshal sat simmering in his office. When Halpern came in an
d respectfully requested a word, the Marshal only nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

  “Sir, I hate to trouble you with such a matter at a time like this, but if Lady Genevieve is to be away for very long, we will need to hire a housekeeper.”

  “I don’t understand you,” grunted the Marshal.

  “You have several dinners planned, sir, as well as certain other social events. The Marchioness was handling all the arrangements. I could perhaps catch up to it, sir, but then I would have to have someone to fill in for me. Her absence just at this time is most sorely felt….”

  “For heaven’s sake, man. What has she to do with it? You people do the work, do you not?”

  “No sir, that is, not all of it, sir.”

  “So, how much time did she spend on this? A few moments a day?”

  Halpern looked shocked. “She began with the cook at seven in the morning, sir, and she often finished up with the accounts after you had gone to bed, with very little time to herself in between.”

  The Marshal stared at him. “You’re joking.”

  Halpern bit back a retort, turning rather red himself, saved by the cool intrusion of another voice: Duchess Alicia, who stood in the doorway, accompanied by an embarrassed footman.

  “I am sorry, Marshal, I couldn’t help but overhear. Lest you grow angry at an irreplaceable part of your establishment, thereby further handicapping yourself here in Havenor, let me assure you that Halpern does not overstate the case. Genevieve spent many hours every day seeing that your social affairs and this establishment were well managed. Did you think it happened by magic?”

  “My dear lady, I simply don’t see what all the fuss is about. Halpern makes it sound like a … a profession!”

  “Dear Halpern, leave me with the Marshal. Perhaps I can enlighten him.” She went so far as to pat the departing butler on one trembling arm before seating herself beside the Marshal.

  “Well, sir. Let us try a bit of education. What does it cost to prepare and serve a dinner for thirty people?”