Singer From the Sea

by Sheri S. Tepper

  He frowned. “I have no idea.”

  “Genevieve knew, to the penny. If she had not known, it would have cost you twice what it did. You would have been overcharged by your wine merchant, the confectioners, the butcher, and any number of other persons who live on the fat meat that falls from the tables of the ignorant. Unless you are far wealthier than we all assume, in short order you would have been ruined. Genevieve knew how much to spend heating this house this winter, how to get repairs done economically, how to handle the servants to keep them contented and working well. If Halpern decides to leave your employ—which is entirely possible, considering your manner toward him—who will you get to take his place who knows half what he knows about this place? Genevieve knew the answer to that, and also how to keep him more or less satisfied.”

  “All right, all right,” he growled. “Perhaps there is more to it than I thought. So, I’ll let Aufors do it …” He stopped, biting his lip. “Damn!”

  “So Aufors has resigned,” said the Duchess, accurately reading his expression. She was silent and thoughtful a long moment, then she came to herself and said, “It doesn’t surprise me. He would have gone long ago except for Genevieve.”

  He went on fuming wordlessly, while she sat a time, peering intently into his brooding, granite face. At last, she said:

  “Well, you seem set in edgy stone, and I have no time to spend smoothing you into something gentler. I came to bid you farewell, for I have received word that my daughter has also disappeared. I’m leaving today for Ruckward, by way of Reusel-on-mere. My granddaughter needs Grandma to comfort her.”

  “What should I do about Aufors?” he asked, not even having heard her. “What should I do about Genevieve?”

  She sighed, shaking her head at him. “Send him after her. Believe me, he’ll find her eventually. Tell him you have no objection to their marrying.”

  “That would be ridiculous! He’s a commoner!”

  “He’s uncommon, Marshal, and you know it! More uncommon than nine-tenths the nobility!”

  “But … Delganor …”

  “When and if Delganor says anything, you apologize and say you’re dreadfully sorry, but the young ones were so in love it seemed appropriate, sensible, prudent, for them to wed.”

  “He’ll be furious.”

  “I don’t know. He may be. On the other hand … he may not. Now, I must go. My carriage is waiting.” She rose, pulled on her gloves, and sailed out.

  The Marshal growled and glowered as he heard her speaking to Halpern in the hall, and by the time he figured out what he intended to do, Aufors Leys was halfway down the alleyway behind the stables. Though a footman was sent after him, the man returned much out of breath, saying he could not catch the Colonel and no one knew where he had gone.

  Finally, and only then, did the Marshal realize what the Duchess had said. Her daughter, too, had disappeared.

  “Another one,” he muttered gloomily.

  * * *

  “Your Highness.”

  A footman was at the Prince’s door. “Your Highness, Colonel Aufors Leys requests an audience.”

  “That was quick,” murmured the Prince. “Did Wiezal bring him?”

  “No, sir. He came, just now, of his own accord.”

  The Prince sat up and blinked twice, slowly, like a lizard, looking over the footman’s shoulder into some vast distance. A tiny smile moved across his lips, evanescent as cloud shadow.

  “Well, well. Do let him come in.’

  Aufors entered in military fashion, his cape flowing from his shoulder, his tall bonnet in the crook of his arm, clean-shaven as an egg, his back straight as he bowed. “Your Highness.”

  The Prince purred, “Colonel Leys. Is there something I can do for you, Colonel?”

  Aufors licked dry lips and said, “Your Highness is generous to grant me a hearing. We met, as you may recall, at the home of the Lord Marshal. You may recall his daughter.”

  “Ah, yes,” said the Prince vaguely. “Lovely girl.”

  “Quite so, Your Highness. I know that it is preferred that young women here at court not be attached, as they are all given duties to perform, but she and I are in love. It was nothing either of us intended; it just happened.”

  “Ah,” said the Prince, with a slight frown. “I see. Well. That is most interesting, but I fail to see what … it has to do with me….” He allowed his voice to trail away.

  “Something that happened at dinner apparently frightened her terribly,” said Aufors, keeping his eyes down and thereby missing the slight amusement that again crossed the Prince’s face. “She has run away; she may be in danger, away from the protection of her family.”

  “Frightened her?” mused the Prince, frowning slightly. “What could have happened at a dinner party? I knew most everyone there, scarcely a villainous crowd.” He peered down his nose, as though expecting a comment on this judgment.

  Aufors made none. “I can’t say what frightened her, sir. But I feel that I must find her, wherever she has gone. It is apparent to me that she feels unprotected and insecure.”

  “Then why in heaven’s name didn’t you go with her?” asked Delganor, without thinking, real irritation in his voice. “I should have thought you would have done so!”

  Aufors dropped his jaw, only momentarily. “I … I wasn’t consulted about her going, sir.”

  Nor, he thought, about Duchess Alicia’s going, either. Since the Duchess was his only connection to Genevieve, he had gone to her house at once, only to find she had departed for Ruckward. After a time weighing the various possibilities and consequences, he had decided to tell the Prince what he intended. In that way, he could not be accused of dishonorable conduct.

  “What do you propose?” asked the Prince, in an irritated tone.

  “Inasmuch as she was to take up certain duties here at the palace under your aegis, Your Highness, I felt it only proper to tell you that I intend to find out where she has gone, to follow her, and to offer her my protection by marrying her, despite the Marshal’s opposition to the match.”

  Once more in full command of himself, the Prince said, “I am certainly not pleased.”

  His stern face and unyielding mouth made this quite believable. Aufors gritted his teeth and was humble. He had practiced being humble all the way to the palace, and he was determined to do it well. “No, sir. I am truly desolated by that fact.”

  The Prince drew a deep, dramatic breath, a very audible sigh with only a touch of petulance in it. “Young people. Oh, young people. So urgent. Well, I too was once young. Though the young lady has behaved foolishly—even ungraciously, one might say—you, yourself, Colonel, have behaved as honorably as one would expect of the hero of the Potcher War.”

  He mused, drawing his brows together, frowning, tapping his finger on the arm of his chair, cocking his head, pursing his lips, slightly changing position and then doing it all again, the perfect picture of a man concentrating on an issue. He said at last:

  “Well. I will make you an offer, Colonel. Though I am greatly displeased at her impetuous behavior—scarcely what one would expect from one so carefully educated, one whom I myself recommended to the Lord Paramount—I will not make an issue of her departure. I will withhold my displeasure in return for your promise to accompany me on my planned trip to Mahahm. I need trustworthy people, and your honorable actions concerning this matter do you credit. Also, it is at least nominally a military mission, so it’s in your line of work.”

  Aufors felt his tight jaw relax, his rigidly locked knees start to tremble, ever so slightly. He had thought he risked everything. His life, perhaps. He had believed it necessary to risk everything including his life, and he was now not only surprised but dumbfounded. All he could think of to say was, “Your Highness is most generous.”

  “The terms are agreeable, Colonel? For you and the lady to accompany our mission? Hmmm? In return for my permission for you to marry.”

  The evanescent little smile had gone. The slig
ht frown of disapproval had gone. There was nothing now in that face or voice to give anything away, but nonetheless, something in that voice brought Aufors’s eyes up, to meet the expressionless gaze of the Prince.

  He considered. The offer seemed generous. Aufors would have accepted a sentence of death in order to let Genevieve escape from this man, and this bargain was far less than that. If there was a trap in it, it was a trap for himself, not for her.

  “If she consents to marry me, Your Highness. You have my word.”

  The Prince made a gesture, waving this away. “No ifs, Colonel, but you had best go to the Marshal and explain to him that I have consented to your marriage with his daughter—that is, when and if you find her—in return for your accompanying me to Mahahm. I think, once he hears that, he will not oppose, as you put it, the match.”

  “Thank you, Your Highness, for your generosity.”

  Aufors bowed and backed away from the presence, not seeing the little smile return, not raising his head until he stopped in the anteroom to wipe his beaded forehead. He stank of fear-sweat. Why, in heaven’s name? He hadn’t known he was terrified. He had sworn to himself he would face death without being terrified, but something about the Prince, something … well, he could understand Genevieve’s aversion, put it that way.

  Understand though he did, he couldn’t take time to think about it. Instead, he got on his horse and went back to the Marshal’s house, where he made a stiff-necked admission of his interest in Genevieve and a more or less accurate account of his meeting with the Prince. The Marshal yelled, ranted, threatened, while Aufors said he understood the Marshal’s feelings. The Marshal pronounced himself taken aback, confused, and angry. Aufors apologized again. The matter volleyed several times more, with ebbing impetus, after which the two of them ended up, as the Marshal had suggested the day before, having lunch together.

  FIFTEEN

  Bessany Blodden

  “SO HE SAID YOU COULD MARRY HER,” SAID THE MARSHAL, over his soup. “If he didn’t care who married her, why was he thinking of doing it himself?”

  “I can’t say, sir.”

  “Whatever he was thinking, it doesn’t change what I think! I do care who marries her!”

  Aufors took a deep breath. “The Prince said that in view of his permission, you would probably be kind enough not to object.”

  The Marshal fumed. They’d gutted him! Usurped his prerogatives! If the Prince permitted it, that meant the Lord Paramount permitted it, and what the Lord Paramount permitted, the Marshal was not accustomed to question.

  He snarled, “You’ll be going off to find her, then.”

  “Yes, sir. I’m taking tonight’s packet down the Reusel.”

  “You think she went to Langmarsh?”

  Aufors did not intend that the Duchess be brought into the conversation. He equivocated. “Langmarsh is a good place to start looking.”

  “I suppose. I suppose.” The Marshal buttered a bit of bread and chewed it, calming himself. “I don’t understand it. I confess that to you, Aufors. It’s just … like this business of being at court! The Lord Paramount asked me to come to court as a kind of balance to some of the new ministers. They seem to be a bit liberal, commonish, you know what I mean.”

  “I myself am commonish, sir, so I suppose I do.”

  “Didn’t mean it as a slur, Colonel. Simply meant it to express ideas that go against the covenants. Haven was set up as an aristocracy. Our covenants reflected our culture, either as it had once been or as we wished it to be. You other sorts were invited to come along, and the ones who chose to did come along, no slavery or coercion about it. So, now, a few generations later—”

  Aufors interrupted, “Well, sir, it’s actually been around twelve hundred years or so. Given as few as three generations a century, that would still amount to thirty-six generations, scarcely a few.”

  “The number doesn’t matter. The fact is the people agreed to live under an aristocracy. They agreed to do without high technology, so our cuitare could be preserved. Our women agreed to a certain role in that culture. Now some commons are agitating to share rights that belong to the nobility—or even the royals!—and the Lord Paramount doesn’t like it.”

  Aufors accepted a plate of vegetables and rare beef and picked up knife and fork. “So you were invited to court as a counterbalance: a solid weight of aristocratic disapproval from one with a great reputation as a warrior.”

  The Marshal cut a large bite of beef. “Pah, the kind of opposition these people could make doesn’t need a warrior. The least conflict, they’d run screaming. No, these are the kind who talk and talk and talk, scream and scream, march up and down with placards, but they do nothing.”

  “What is it these ‘commonish’ people want, Lord Marshal?”

  “I asked Prince Thumsort that! He says the men want to marry their daughters to whomever they choose. Well, no one interferes with their doing so now except one time in a hundred! Some particularly pretty girl may fit a baron’s idea of a proper upstairs maid, so her wedding gets delayed a few years and she has a child or two more than she’d thought of, but in the end she goes back to her lover, if he’s still about, richer than when she began. They want freedom to engage in whatever trade they like. Well, mostly they can and do, unless it removes them from traditional work. They want freedom to innovate, so the traditional work will be easier! Innovation leads to technology, we’ve told them that, over and over. Man gets tired digging ditches by hand, and he goes and invents a mechanical digger. Does he care that it’ll destroy our way of life? Not in the deepsea he doesn’t.

  “They want higher pay for those who work for the noble houses, they want funds set aside for women who are noticed by nobility! It’s impossible. Any woman picked out by a noble should be damned proud of it, and those who work for the noble houses should be honored to be there!”

  Aufors smiled.

  “What?” the Marshal demanded.

  “I’ve heard it claimed that women themselves should do the choosing of their mates since anything else is tantamount to slavery and rape.”

  The Marshal scowled. “I won’t argue the merits of our customs with you, Colonel. It’s not something I’d ordinarily discuss except with my own class. The thing I started out to say was, why am I here in Havenor? Since I’ve been here, there hasn’t been a single meeting of the ministers! Not one! There hasn’t been an occasion when I could be useful as a counterweight to anything! So. Why am I here?”

  Aufors took a deep breath and said, probingly: “I have been struck by all the attention paid to Genevieve.”

  “Well, yes, but I thought that was because of Delganor.”

  “I think not. If he had been set on her, would he have treated me as he did?”

  “He was magnanimous.”

  “Prince Delganor has no reputation for magnanimity.”

  “Perhaps he is more generous than he is said to be,” the Marshal replied, in a grumpy voice.

  Aufors merely nodded. Though he thought it unlikely the Prince was better than said to be, he could not deny the Prince had behaved well. Better than the Marshal, and with less justification. But then, the Prince did not have the habit of rage, as the Marshal did. Whatever he felt was kept hidden. That, in itself, might be a cause for concern.

  Though Aufors left Havenor a full day and a half behind the Duchess, his use of the river packet put him in Reusel-on-mere in a day and a half, well before she arrived there. Reusel-on-mere was a small place with several good inns, its existence justified by the confluence of the Reusal with a number of small streams which together formed the mirror smooth blue of the Mere. Below this sizeable lake, the river was wide and slow, running between the farms of Dania and the fens of Southmarsh, a route for both cargo and passenger ships that traveled to and from Poolwich on Havenpool.

  Aufors felt the Duchess’s arrival would take some time, for her carriage was large, the road was not at its best during this season, and no doubt she would pause for meals a
nd rest. To catch her whenever she arrived, Aufors took a room in the same inn from which Enkors had been married, one with a good view of all roads into or out of the town, and he offered a good tip to the inn servants to keep a lookout should she arrive while he was away.

  It did not take him long to find out that someone had been asking a good many questions about himself and Enkors and about the woman who had come down on the packet the day Genevieve disappeared.

  “What were they like, these men?” Aufors asked a garrulous tavern keeper.

  “Oh, you know the sort, sir. Sneaky men. Eyes never still, always back and forth, like a caged follet. Not there one moment, there the next, gone the one after.”

  Aufors heard the same said several times, put two and two together and added it up to the men known to be employed by the Prince. In which case Yugh Delganor’s ignorance of Genevieve’s departure had been bogus. He had pretended not to know, but he had known, and he cared about it enough to put men upon her trail.

  Had he thought he loved her then? Or, at least, been attracted enough to care about her welfare? Perhaps the latter. Perhaps he had felt obliged to do something since it was he who had frightened her. It could not have been more than that, or he would not have accepted Aufors’s declaration in such good part. But if it had been only that, why tie Aufors to a promise of service? Well, because, Aufors told himself soberly, any such promise from an honorable man is like money in the pocket. A note that can be called at need. The prospect increased his discomfort.

  The Duchess turned up about noon the following day. When Aufors greeted her as she dismounted from the carriage, she had all she could do to greet him politely.

  “I did not expect to see you, Aufors. I advised you to stay where you were.”

  “I did expect to see you, Your Grace, but much has happened you do not know of.”

  She shook her head wearily. “What has happened that I should know? No. don’t tell me. I can’t hear anything until I’ve had a bath and a few hours’ rest. The inn in Sabique gets worse by the decade. I stayed there last ten years ago, and I believe they have not turned the mattresses since, much less invested in new ones. The dust in the corners dates from before the Inundation, and it would not surprise me to learn that the bread I was served dates from that same era.”