The Skies Discrowned

by Tim Powers

  “Shall I begin replying?” asked Frank.

  “Any time you like,” panted Orcrist.

  Frank parried the next attack and feinted in quarte, then riposted in sixte to Orcrist’s chest, poking him lightly with the point. He then tapped Orcrist’s elbow twice in a row, and then did a faultless bind-eight culminating in a full extension lunge. He held the position for a moment; his rear leg straight out behind him, lead leg bent in a ninety-degree angle, weapon arm straight and his sword point pressing a button on Orcrist’s coat. Then he relaxed back into the on guard posture. It felt good to get back into the disciplines of fencing—it reminded him of the old days with Tom in the Strand Fencing Academy.

  “There is … no end to your talents, Frank,” Orcrist panted. “Where did you study? Who taught you all this?”

  “Jacob Strand, in a fencing school about twenty miles north and ten miles west.”

  “Hmm.” Orcrist sat down and finished his beer. “Do you remember the words of our old friend Aurelius, Frank?”

  “Yes, I do. ‘The universe is change.’ Might he have added ‘and talented lads are soon promoted out of the kitchen’?”

  “Consider it added,” said Orcrist.

  BOOK TWO

  The Swordsman

  CHAPTER 1

  Frank delivered a final poke to the man-shaped rubber pad that was nailed to the wall—got him right in the throat!—and put down his sword. He unbuttoned his fencing jacket and sat down in a nearby canvas chair. Now where the hell is old Rutledge? Frank glanced at the clock on the wall. He’s ten minutes late.

  Frank stood up, crossed to the open window, and leaned on the sill. He watched the littered tide of the Leethee flow past, its blackness highlighted by dancing glints of light cast by the lamps that hung from the tunnel roof. The river was wide through here; and he sometimes saw festive barges and solitary canoes wend their way up or downstream.

  The Rovzar Fencing School had been open for almost six weeks. The location was good (Orcrist had helped him find a good river-view building to rent in a respectable neighborhood), and he already had enough students to pay the rent and keep him busy. Without exception, his students were ranking members of the Subterranean Companions; Orcrist pointed out that there was no reason to teach fencing secrets to strangers.

  A chittering screech sounded in the adjoining room, and Frank turned around with a smile as Rutledge entered, carrying his pet monkey on his shoulder.

  “Down, Bones!” Rutledge commanded. Bones, a wild-eyed spider monkey, leaped from the lord’s shoulder onto a chair and began gnawing the fabric.

  “Damn all monkeys,” growled Rutledge. He shrugged off his velvet coat and took a fencing jacket out of a closet. “You must have washed these, Rovzar! This one seems to have shrunk.”

  “It’s possible,” Frank said. It’s not the jacket’s fault, he thought. It’s beer and pork pie that have tightened the fit. “Have you been practicing your on guard?”

  “Yes, yes. It’s invincible.” Rutledge flipped a wire-mesh fencing mask over his face and selected one of the practice epees hanging on a wall rack. He flexed the blade a few times and then crouched, the blade held forward and ready. “How’s that?” he asked.

  Frank put on a mask and picked up his own épée.

  “Not bad,” he said, critically examining Rutledge’s posture. “Lets see if you can maintain it.”

  He saluted, and they began to bout, starting slow and relaxed. Each point hovered around the other mans bell guard, never getting a clear shot at a wrist or forearm. After a minute, Frank began to let his elbow show beneath, apparently unguarded. He saw Rutledge tense with preparation, and then the lords blade flashed out at Franks elbow. Just as he saw him extend, though, Frank went up on his toes and straightened his sword arm, catching Rutledge in the bicep with the sword’s covered tip. Rutledge’s sword wavered in empty air.

  “That’s a favorite trick of mine,” Frank explained. “Lure him below with your elbow and then go in over the top when he goes for it. You’ve got to be quick, though, or you’ll have a hole in your arm and an opponent who thinks you’re an idiot.”

  “Give me a gun anytime,” Rutledge said. “When I was a boy we had guns, you know. Kill a man from across a courtyard! None of this damned personal contact.”

  “Yes,” Frank said, “but a gun doesn’t take much skill. Any stable boy could kill you with a gun. But how many people can kill you with a sword?”

  “Not many! Especially now that I’m taking your lessons. Your damnably expensive lessons.” Frank shrugged. “How do I compare with your other students, Rovzar? I know Orcrist and a few others are studying your methods. Has Tolley come in?”

  “No, Lord Christensen doesn’t think he needs any help. He told Orcrist that the day he goes to a painter for fencing lessons will be the day he sends Costa his two virgin daughters. Not real soon, in other words. Anyhow, speaking honestly, I’d say you’re my most rapidly improving student.”

  “No kidding?” replied Rutledge in a pleased tone of voice. “In that case have another try at teaching me that eye shot.”

  The next half hour was spent in showing the elderly lord a particularly vicious bind in sixte that, properly executed, landed one’s point forcefully in the opponent’s eye. Rutledge was beginning to catch on, and after Frank had three times taken a blow to his mask he called a recess.

  “I pity any sewer vagabonds who try to rob you,” Frank said. He opened a cabinet and took a bottle of cheap vino bianco out of an ice bucket. “Will you join me in some wine, my lord?”

  “Good God, yes. Swordplay is dry work.”

  Rutledge took a glass of wine and gulped half of it right off. Bones climbed up to his belt buckle and made gross smacking sounds, so Rutledge handed the monkey the glass, and the hairy creature drank the rest of it with relish.

  “Can monkeys get drunk?” asked Rutledge.

  “I suppose so. Want me to give him a glass?”

  “Why don’t you.”

  Frank poured a third, slightly bigger glass, and handed it to Bones. The monkey took it to a corner to drink, and Frank poured another glass to replace Rutledge’s slobbery one.

  “There is a nice feint you can use if your man bends his arm as he retreats,” said Frank, crossing to the windowsill and sitting down on it. “Done right, it puts your point into his kneecap. I’ll have to show it to you next.”

  “Why do so few of your moves hit the body, Rovzar?” asked Rutledge. “Seems to me you’re just wasting time hitting your opponent in the arm and the knee.”

  “If your opponent knows anything about swords, you generally can’t get to the body,” Frank told him. “Before your point hits his stomach or chest, his point is buried in your forearm. A full-extension lunge is a beautiful thing to do when you’re practicing in a fencing school, but I’d certainly never do one in an alley against an opponent with an untipped weapon.”

  Frank was suddenly aware of breathing sounds echoing softly behind him, from the river. He leaped off of the sill and turned around, pushing his sweaty hair out of his eyes. Peripherally, he saw Rutledge come up beside him and stare wordlessly out.

  The river was jammed. Boats, rafts and logs covered its surface, and every floating thing carried silent, staring passengers. Children huddled in blankets in the bows of rowboats, while haggard old men worked the oars; string-tied bundles and frying pans and guitars were roped in piles on rafts that old women paddled along with boards; sunken-eyed men floated past with their arms around logs, their bodies immersed in water up to their chests. None of these drifters spoke, even to each other.

  “What in God’s name?” began Rutledge. Bones climbed unsteadily up his master’s leg and perched beside him on the windowsill.

  “Who are you?” called Frank to the people on the nearest raft. “Where are you all going?”

  A man stood up on the raft. He looked about forty, with brown hair beginning to go gray at the temples; he wore overalls with no shirt under them.
“We’re farmers,” he said, “from the Goriot Valley.” The echoes of his own voice seemed to upset him, and he sat down again.

  “Where are you going?” repeated Frank.

  “To the Deptford Sea,” answered a woman from a heavily-loaded rowboat. “We can’t go overland because we don’t have travel permits.”

  “Give us the monkey,” called a boy perched on a log. “We don’t have food. Give us the monkey, at least.”

  “Yes, the monkey, give it to us,” came a shout from farther out in the river. In a moment the water-borne fugitives were chorusing madly: “The monkey!” “God save you for your gift of the monkey!” “My boy here hasn’t eaten! Throw the monkey to me!”

  Frank looked down at Bones, who squatted drunkenly on the stone coping of the window, blinking his eyes at the clamoring floaters. The monkey’s stomach was jerking up and down like an adam’s apple, and as Frank watched, the beast leaned forward and noisily vomited vino bianco into the water.

  “Give us the damned monkey! We’ll have it! You can’t keep it from us!” moaned and wailed the refugees. Frank leaned out and pulled the heavy shutters closed. He latched them, and then slid a bolt through the iron staples.

  “Let’s close up shop,” he said to Rutledge. “You were my last pupil of the day anyway.”

  They hung up the swords and jackets, blew out the lamps, and locked the front door behind them. The Rovzar Fencing School was in a fashionable understreet neighborhood, so they talked freely and left their swords in the scabbards as they walked. Spicy cooking smells wafted out of restaurant doors, and Frank was beginning to get hungry.

  “Have you paid off your bond to Orcrist yet?” Rutledge asked. “No,” Frank answered, “but with the money I’m making from the fencing classes, I should have it paid off in a month or so.”

  “You’ll be getting digs of your own then, I expect.”

  “Yes. I’ve been looking at apartments here in the Congreve district, and I think I could afford to live near the school, which would be handy.” They rounded a corner and found themselves facing four uniformed Transport policemen, each armed with a standard-issue rapier. Their faces showed tan in the lamplight, proof that they were new to understreet work. “Good evening, gentlemen,” grinned one of the Transports. “May I see your identification and employment cards?”

  “Since when have they been necessary for understreet citizens?” queried Rutledge with icy politeness.

  “Since Duke Costa signed a law saying so, weasel! Now trot ’em out or come along with us to the station.” Each policeman’s hand was on his sword hilt.

  Rutledge drew his sword with a salty curse. Frank and the four Transports followed suit simultaneously. One of the Transports lunged at Rutledge, who parried and jabbed the man in the wrist. Bones, terrified, leaped from the lord’s shoulder to the ground.

  “Nicely done!” called Frank to Rutledge as two of the Transports centered on him. He feinted ferociously at one, and the man retreated a full two steps. The other man aimed a beat at Frank’s blade, but Frank dropped his point to elude it and then gored the man deeply in the shoulder. The clanging and rasp of the swords rang up and down the street. Frank stole another glance at Rutledge and saw the lord thrusting furiously at one of his opponents.

  “Watch your weapon arm!” Frank shouted. “Hide behind your bell guard! Don’t be impatient!” Frank held his two men off by whirling his point in a continuous horizontal figure eight. It was dangerous, but it gained him a breathing space. After a few seconds the shoulder-wounded Transport got angry and ran at Frank in an ill-considered fleche attack; Frank stepped away from the blade and drove his point through the man’s neck. The other policeman was close behind, so Frank hopped backward as he pulled his sword free. Bright red blood jetted as the stricken Transport sank to his knees on the street.

  “How goes it, my lord?” Frank called as he crossed swords with his remaining opponent.

  “I poked one of them in the belly,” gasped Rutledge. “Be careful … he’s crawling around in the middle of the street. Don’t let him get you … from below.”

  Frank glimpsed the man, who was on his hands and knees on the pavement, and kept clear of him. Frank tried two feints on his own man, but the policeman was being cautiously defensive—maybe waiting for reinforcements? Frank wondered.

  “I can’t quite get that … sixte bind,” panted Rutledge. “How do you … take the blade to start it?”

  “Watch,” called Frank. He hopped forward, took his opponent’s sword from below, and then whirled his point in around the other man’s bell guard; he lunged, and the point punctured the eye and brain of the unfortunate Transport.

  “Thus,” said Frank, holding the position for Rutledge’s benefit. “Begin it like a standard counter six. And finish with a moderate lunge.”

  “I see,” said Rutledge. Frank straightened up to watch his pupil. After a moment the thief-lord leaped forward, caught the man’s blade, and, lunging, spun his point, into the man’s eye. The Transport dropped like a puppet with its strings cut.

  “Well done, my lord!” Frank nodded. “You see the advantage of practice. Now let’s get out of this incriminating street.”

  Rutledge quickly dispatched the wounded policeman, and Bones, who had been sitting on a curb during the encounter, hopped up on Rutledge’s shoulder. Lights had gone on and people were leaning out of windows, but Frank knew none of them would ever tell anything to any authorities. It was entirely possible, in fact, that the local citizenry would dispose of the bodies and weapons, leaving the Transport with, apparently, four more cases of unexplained desertion. Frank and Lord Rutledge strolled away down a cross street as casually as they would if they were leaving a poetry reading.

  Frank escorted Rutledge home and then walked thoughtfully back toward Orcrist’s dwelling. He was upset, but could not precisely say why. The killing of the four Transports tonight seemed stupid—not cruel or murderous, because those four officers certainly intended to do him harm—simply stupid. Why do I feel that way? he asked himself. Actually, it was quite a brave thing, two against four.

  Brave? his mind sneered. You and Rutledge are superior swordsmen. You were safe. It wasn’t bravery, it was showing off. You want to know what would have been a brave thing to do? To have pulled the trigger of Orcrist’s gun, that night at the Doublon Festival. To have avenged your father.

  All the sour black misery of his fathers death and his own exile rose up and choked him. Tears stung his eyes; he clenched his teeth and drove his fist against the brick wall of Ludlow Alley. He stood there motionless for a full minute, leaning against the wall; then, he straightened up and strode off, impatient with himself for having indulged this maudlin side of his nature.

  When he entered Orcrist’s sitting room he had forced himself to become quite cheerful. He poured a good-sized glass of scotch, took a deep sip of it, and then set it down while he fetched his pipe and tobacco. Orcrist had brought him a can of good Turkish tobacco, thickly laced with spicy black latakia, and he was beginning to like the stuff. Now he was even able to keep the pipe lit. Soon the pungent smoke hung in layers across the room as he absorbed himself with a book of A. E. Housmans poetry.

  “Well, Frank!” boomed Orcrist’s voice. “I didn’t expect to see you this early. Didn’t Rutledge show up?”

  “Oh, he was there,” answered Frank. “We broke up early, that’s all. By the way, it’s been an eventful evening. The Leethee, if you haven’t yet heard, is packed with fugitive farmers from the Goriot Valley, all headed for the Deptford Sea—the south coast, I guess. And then on the way home Rutledge and I were stopped by four Transport cops, and we had to kill them all.”

  “They were down here?” asked Orcrist. “Understreet?”

  “That’s right. Four of them, asking for identification cards.”

  Orcrist shook his head. “Something, I’m afraid, has got to be done.”

  Frank nodded and put down his pipe. “I’ve been thinking about it,” he sa
id. “The Subterranean Companions are a well-organized group, armed and more-or-less disciplined. What if we recruit and arm a few hundred of these homeless farmers and then overthrow the whole Transport-Costa government?”

  Orcrist chuckled as he poured himself a scotch. “Overthrow is an easy word to say, Frank.”

  “But we could!” Frank insisted. “The Transports are having all kinds of financial difficulties—they couldn’t maintain a long siege. And Costa is no military genius.”

  “No,” said Orcrist, sipping his drink, “he isn’t. But I’ll tell you what he is. He’s the blood son of Topo, and that’s what counts. Even if we did, somehow, take over the palace and kill Costa, we couldn’t hold it because we have no one with royal blood to set up as a successor. And that is a prerequisite. The citizens of Octavio may not be fond of Costa, and they aren’t, you know, but they’re bound up by centuries of tradition. They won’t even consider accepting a duke who isn’t of the royal blood.”

  “Ignorant cattle,” muttered Frank, aware in spite of himself that he, too, was unable to picture a duke who was not the descendant of a lot of other dukes.

  “But” said Orcrist thoughtfully, “we might figure out a way to keep Understreet Munson, at least, free of Transport influence. I’ll have to bring the matter up at the next meeting. Anyway, stop bothering your brains with politics and go put on a clean shirt. I’ve invited Kathrin Figaro over for a late glass of sherry.”

  Frank stood up. “Righto,” he said, heading for the hallway. “Oh,” he said, turning, “I was just curious—I don’t suppose theres any truth to George Tyler’s stories about being Topo’s son?”

  Orcrist shook his head. “Come on, Frank. You’ve heard his stories. George is a good friend; and a moderately good poet, but a prince he is not.”

  “I didn’t really think so,” said Frank, leaving the room.

  Just as Frank re-entered, buttoning the cuff of a new shirt, a knock sounded at the door. Frank threw himself into his chair and snatched up his pipe, then nodded to Orcrist, who proceeded to open the door.