A Plague of Swords

by Miles Cameron

  Giselle laughed. “I’d have to agree,” she said, and they all roared and more wine appeared.

  And later, the emperor walked in. Michael had fallen in the corridor and was now sitting on the beautiful silk carpet, entranced by the patterns. The Duke of Venike was sitting in the courtyard of the palazzo with Bad Tom and Long Paw and the Corner brothers. They were singing. The old duke turned out to have a hoarse voice but every idea of how to carry a tune. He was teaching them to sing Che cosa e quest d’amor in a remarkable falsetto. Tom was trying to sing falsetto.

  Sauce was what she called fuzzy. But she picked up the duke’s tune faster than the others, and she didn’t need to sing falsetto to reach the notes. She was just trying a harmony when Gabriel put a hand on her shoulder and slipped away. He walked up the outside steps to the second floor and then into the candlelit corridor, where he stopped and put a blanket over Michael. Anne Woodstock appeared from one of the rooms and beckoned him, and pointed him to the end of the corridor, where the windows looked over the Grand Canal.

  He went into the bedchamber, which was hung, at least for the night, in a fortune’s worth of borrowed tapestries and carpets. The bed-hangings alone were embroidered in gold and were probably the property of the state.

  Blanche was sitting on the bed, braiding her hair. Kaitlin smiled. She had the duchess by one arm and was just trying to get her down off the bed, which was quite high.

  Gabriel laughed, and with Blanche and Kaitlin and a little help from Toby and Anne and Master Nicodemus, Gabriel’s steward, they moved the duchess to the next room.

  When they had her undressed and tucked in, Toby reappeared from the corridor.

  “Jules Kronmir,” he said. “Sorry, Captain. That is, Your Grace.”

  Toby was slightly the worse for drink. But behind him, Anne Woodstock was sober as a judge, still in her livery, and armed.

  Gabriel sighed. He was still dressed.

  Blanche stood on tiptoe and kissed him, biting his upper lip lightly. “I’m not drunk anymore,” she said. “Mostly sober.” She smiled. “Just saying.” She looked back over her shoulder with a cool confidence that Gabriel loved in her. “If’n you take too long, the duchess will try an’ take your place.”

  Gabriel nodded to Toby and passed into the corridor.

  Kronmir bowed. “Your Grace,” he said. “Congratulations on a brilliant wedding.”

  Gabriel smiled. “It was rather good.”

  Kronmir nodded.

  “And unless you’re about to say that the enemy is at the gates,” Gabriel continued, “and frankly, perhaps even then...”

  Kronmir bowed. “I expect we can hold the hordes a few more hours, my lord,” he said with a rare smile. “But Magister Petrarcha is now sure that the Necromancer is here. At Arles.” He held out a tiny slip of parchment. “Thirty-Four made it into Arles and out again.”

  Gabriel leaned over and kissed the startled intelligence officer. “My favourite wedding present,” he said. “Oh, Jules Kronmir, you are a pearl beyond price.” He laughed. “Give Thirty-Four a whole chicken, or a peacock, or whatever she fancies. Live mice!”

  Kronmir bowed, but he was bowing to empty air.

  * * *

  Blanche found that she was still drunk, and that a little drunkenness made her quite bold. The results were spectacular.

  She lay atop him. She had surprised him, and that pleased her.

  “We’re married,” she said.

  All the candles were still burning, a hundred wax candles, a reckless expenditure of beeswax and gold. All so that they could both be witnesses to their own lust.

  Blanche grinned.

  Gabriel grinned back. “So we are,” he said.

  “Do we live happily ever after?” Blanche asked.

  Gabriel’s look grew distant, and then sad. “No,” he said. Then he thought of what Sauce had said. “Damn it. Maybe yes.”

  They were both silent a long time.

  “You aren’t as light as you might think,” he said.

  “That’s the most amorous, elegant thing you could think to say to me?” she asked.

  He shifted. “Yes?” he said.

  “Why are we married?” she asked.

  “Because I love you,” he said.

  “People like you sometimes love people like me. We’re kept in nice houses and our babies are raised in the best homes.” Blanche had him pinned, literally. She wrapped her legs around his to make her point. “We don’t get married. We don’t become empresses.”

  “The old king married his Sophia,” Gabriel said.

  Blanche wriggled, and when he didn’t speak, she blew softly on his eyelashes, which he hated.

  “Do you know who Clarissa de Sartres is?” Gabriel asked.

  Blanche sighed. “No.”

  “She may, right now, be the Queen of Galle,” Gabriel said. “Her father was the last Prince of Arles. She is still holding the castle of Arles, as of yesterday, and we are going to rescue her.”

  Blanche wriggled. “Is this about our wedding?” she asked.

  “Yes. Be still, woman. I’m your lord and husband. You have to obey my every whim.” He tried to tickle her.

  Blanche moved her slightly sticky bare thigh in a way that suggested that her knee knew the location of his testicles.

  He subsided.

  “If Clarissa holds Arles. If we defeat the Necromancer and relieve Arles, and save the gate. If, as we have reason to believe, both her father and the King of Galle died fighting the Necromancer...”

  Blanche shook her head. But his eyes were without deception.

  “The pressure on me to wed Clarissa would then be immense, sweet. Even people like Michael would want it.” He shrugged. “I wanted to wed you. By wedding you now...I have closed certain doors.” His eyes met hers. “Listen, it’ll be a wild ride, but Bad Tom follows me because I am a loon. In a year, I will probably be dead. I have to take risk after risk. There is no holding back. We can’t lose, or rest, or fail.”

  She raised herself on her elbows so that she could look at him.

  “All I can offer you is a place on the ride,” he said. “And that if I make it to the end, I’ll hand the crown to Comnenos and then we’ll live happily ever after.”

  Blanche laughed. “I don’t believe it,” she said. “I don’t think you have happily ever after in you. I think you are all strive and struggle every day.”

  She leaned over him and kissed him.

  She was completely sober, and she found that she could still surprise him. But being who he was, he had to surprise her, and the two of them, the top mattress, and the richly worked bed-hanging, all ended up on the floor.

  “Sleepy?” he asked.

  She laughed. “No?” she answered.

  “Let’s walk,” he said.

  He really could surprise her. “Walk?” she asked.

  “I’ve been filling out lists for two days,” he said.

  “I could teach you a few things about lists,” she said.

  He nodded. “So I gather, from the duchess, your greatest admirer. After me, let me hasten to add.”

  She bit him.

  “I’m about to fight a four-week campaign. And live. Or die. I don’t want this night to end, and honestly, I’m not sure I can do that again.” He smiled at her.

  They both laughed.

  He opened his campaign trunk and threw her braes and hose and a doublet.

  She went behind a screen and threw him a towel.

  In front of their door stood Anne Woodstock. She had a bare sword in her hand.

  Gabriel was clearly touched. He bowed, knee to floor, as if he were the squire and she the great lord, and the page girl blushed.

  “We are going out,” he said. “You may retire, and get some sleep.”

  She smiled.

  “I’ll borrow your sword, if I may,” Gabriel said.

  And then they were out in the night. Just the two of them. No Toby, no Anne, no string of servants, no Master Nicodemu
s, no Bad Tom or Sauce or Michael or Kaitlin.

  Blanche realized she was seldom alone anymore.

  It was dark. The moon lit the canals, and the narrow alleys and walkways had lanterns and torches in iron brackets.

  It was all very beautiful.

  Everything smelled of seawater. There was no garbage, no refuse, no dung carts.

  Blanche was wearing a pair of plain leather shoes, and the stone beneath her feet was smooth and cool and bare of dirt. She began to understand how the people here often wore only hose with leather soles on them, instead of shoes.

  “Where are we going?” she asked, after a while.

  He shook his head. “No idea,” he said.

  They slipped through alleys so narrow that they had to pass one at a time. One alley was a tunnel that dipped low under a wall and came up on the other side. They emerged into a small square that seemed to be lined in lights. A church rose in splendour, the front covered in statues and carving that rendered stone like frozen flame, and high above them, the candles in the church backlit the rose window of coloured glass, a beacon of beauty.

  “That’s where we were wed,” she breathed.

  Gabriel squeezed her hand. “They must have decreed that the square be lit all night,” he said.

  The pinpoints of candlelight all around were like a flight of faeries.

  He led her across the square.

  There was a low bridge of one of the small canals, and there was a boat.

  “Let’s take a boat!” she said.

  “I didn’t bring a purse,” Gabriel said. He was obviously sad to disappoint her.

  She rose and kissed him on her toes. “Silly,” she said. She had his purse on her borrowed man’s belt. She found a rose noble—an enormous sum.

  He laughed. “I carry them to give rewards, not to pay boatmen,” he allowed.

  She held the coin up and the boatman took it, bit it, and shrugged. He spoke Etruscan.

  She didn’t.

  But of course, Gabriel did.

  And then they were seated together, and the boatman was poling them along. They went up one little canal and down another, and at one point he bent low and they passed under a whole house, or perhaps a block of houses, and emerged to a wider canal and a forest of masts, twenty or more Venikan warships all docked together.

  “The duchess is a soldier,” Blanche said. “She fancies me.”

  “Everyone fancies you,” Gabriel said. “Don’t let it go to your head.”

  She poked him.

  “I’m not coming, am I?” she asked.

  “You are, at that. At least until Berona,” he said. “If you don’t come, who will do all the laundry?”

  She poked him again.

  “But I think you are coming all the way,” he said. “I’m going to take a momentous risk. If it works...” He paused. “Well, if it doesn’t, the end will be very quick indeed.”

  And later, the sun began to rise, and after a whispered discussion with the boatman, the boat turned.

  “What did he say?” Blanche asked.

  “He said that if I wanted to use the curtains, we could make love,” Gabriel said. “I said we’d rather have breakfast. I think he fancies you, too.”

  Blanche ran a finger down his jaw. “Sometime, I think I’d love to make love in a little boat. Right now, food is my sole passion.”

  They landed on another square, this one with a little fortification on its seaward side. Behind the fortification, which was manned, was a tavern or an inn. A dozen people in the wreckage of magnificent clothing sat or lay about at the outside tables.

  “The city never sleeps. That’s what they say, and here it is true. I believe these are survivors of our wedding.” The two of them clambered out of the boat. They were fed eggs and little cakes, and drank hypocras. The sun was rising, and the last of the magnificently costumed musicians had “one last cup” and stumbled away. The boatman shared a cup with them.

  “Your boy’s a beauty,” he said to Gabriel, who laughed.

  “He thinks you are a boy,” Gabriel said.

  “No, he doesn’t,” Blanche said. “I’ll wager he even knows who we are.”

  Gabriel sat back.

  Blanche smiled.

  The boatman smiled back.

  * * *

  The hundred candles hadn’t even burned out yet.

  He went to the balcony over the canal and they stood, his hand around her waist, as the red ball of the sun came up over the east and the strong red light poured over the golden domes and smooth grey-and-white stone of the city and turned the canals orange as it rose.

  “That’s as happily ever after as I can manage,” he said into her neck.

  She laughed.

  Three weeks earlier, and two thousand leagues to the west

  * * *

  Princess Irene had expected to die when the Red Knight left. She knew she was a fool. In fact, she was unable to stop herself from speaking, because she felt shamed, humiliated, abandoned. And guilty.

  So she sat on her throne for a long time after he left, and stared into space, and thought about her choices.

  Maria came to the foot of the throne, and bowed. She had a cup in her hand.

  “So you were always his creature,” Irene spat.

  Maria looked at her, her face grave, but serene.

  Irene wanted to explode. Except that she’d been trained better. And she’d had enough of her own foolishness for one day.

  “Is that poison?” Irene asked.

  Maria curtsied. “No,” she said. “It is a drug.”

  “And if I drink it?” Irene asked.

  Maria shrugged. “I cannot promise you life,” she said. “It is not mine to promise. But...” She shrugged. “I do not think he seeks your death. A nunnery is not so bad.”

  Irene cried a little, dismissed thoughts of suicide, and drank from the cup.

  * * *

  When she woke, it was morning and she was lying on the ground. She had a moment of extreme disorientation. She was lying in a wool blanket. She didn’t know where she was, and for a moment, she didn’t know who she was. Her hips hurt, and she was deliciously warm, and her head hurt.

  There was a face close by hers, covered in tattoos. Irene might have screamed, except for the extreme lethargy that seemed to possess her.

  She twitched her toes, and moved her fingers, and a little at a time gained control of her body. Her mouth felt as if she’d eaten sand, and her eyes were crusted. Slowly she raised an arm and rubbed her eyes.

  The eyes in the tattooed face opened. They were a brilliant green and appeared unearthly.

  Irene took in a sudden breath. Beyond the beautiful eyes, the sun was rising over trees, and a great beast was rising away on wings of red and gold and green. She took in a great breath as if she’d been long under water, and then exhaled, and took in another.

  “I am not dead,” she said aloud.

  “You are quite warm,” said the tattoos. “If you were dead, I expect you’d be cold.”

  Irene lay another moment, comforted by the press of bodies to either side. When it was cold, in the city, she slept with her maids. She never dared say so, but the press of warm bodies on either side was one of her favourite things in the world. She let the moment linger.

  And then, resigned to whatever brutal fate the Red Knight had allotted her, she sat up.

  It was dawn. The sky was a warm pink and no more. A fire smouldered in a neat fire pit at her feet, and twenty huddled shapes lay under blankets. The air was brisk, even cold, and the two upright men were in wool cotes and hoods. They had bows in their hands. Neither paid her any attention.

  At her feet, a familiar face was stirring a pot over the fire.

  “Gabriel?” she asked. Even as she said his name she knew it was not he; and she knew, too, that she would have been ashamed if it had been.

  The young man turned. The face was different—his eyes were slanted like a cat’s.

  “I’m Aneas,” h
e said. “And you are Irene.”

  She looked at him for a long time—perhaps a hundred beats of her heart.

  She looked briefly at her soft hands and took in one more long breath. Then she rose, carefully, from her blanket and threw it over the tattooed figure next to her. There was a purr of pleasure from underneath, as if a giant cat lay there instead of a tattooed man. Or woman.

  She considered various options. In fact, she was silent for long enough that the emotional warmth of the body heat drained away, and she discovered anger.

  “What am I doing here?” she demanded.

  Aneas Muriens—the family resemblance was obvious—studied her a moment longer. “That will largely be up to you,” he said. “I didn’t ask for you to be here. This is my brother’s doing.” He played with the fire.

  He was angry, too. She wondered if that gave her something on which to build.

  “I’m not going to run screaming, if that’s what you expect,” she said.

  “No screaming?” Aneas asked. He dipped a horn cup into the mixture he was heating and handed it to her. His Alban-accented Archaic was flat. He overpronounced almost everything.

  Barbarian.

  She took a sip. It was mostly honey. She drank some. It was like a dark, tart hypocras. She’d had kahve. This seemed stronger.

  “No, my screaming’s done,” she said. “If you mean your brother, the usurper.”

  Aneas shrugged. It was very like his brother’s shrug, and just as infuriating. “You don’t ever want to be in a contest for people’s affections with my brother,” he said. “Everyone always loves him.”

  “I hate him,” she said.

  He smiled condescendingly. “Really?” he asked. “Is that why you called his name when you awoke?”

  She felt herself flush. She hated that loss of control. But she was a princess of the oldest royal house in the world. She took a steadying breath. “I’m awake now. What am I doing here?”

  “We are following Kevin Orley. Do you know who he is?” Aneas asked. When he said the name Orley he said it as if it were imbued with eldritch power.

  “Yes,” she said. “Thorn’s apprentice. A claimant to the name of Orley, as yet unproven. Lived for some years with the Sossag.” She nodded. “I am a princess of the line of emperors. It is my business to know these things. Why are we following him?”