Herne glanced past Dewar. His eyes narrowed. “A horse-thief and a traitor,” he said. “Beneath you, Gaston.”
Dewar’s shoulders prickled; he heard Gaston behind him and glanced around. The guards were still fenced with flames; the Prince Marshal approached alone, passing indifferently through the fire.
Gaston paused in mid-step, met Dewar’s look, and his brows drew slightly together.
“What’s thy errand here, Dewar?”
“A professional call,” Dewar said. “On this lady’s father.”
“On her father,” the Marshal repeated, eyeing Dewar thoughtfully.
“I’ve a prior call upon thee, bastard,” Herne said.
“ ’Ware thy tongue, Herne; what know’st thou of his parentage?” Gaston said. “Meseems the lady finds thy arm little to her liking.”
“The wench was in the stables trying to steal a horse,” Herne said.
“He’s Papa’s horse,” Freia said. “Liar!” She landed a kick on Herne’s high-booted shins.
“Trying to steal thyself away, then,” Gaston said, “and couldst not go a furlong ere wert taken again. The Emperor desires that thou shouldst stay, Lady Freia, and—”
“He’s nothing to me! Nobody orders me!”
“So ’tis seen,” Gaston said, “yet hast no choice but stay. What’s thy office with Prospero, Dewar?”
“It is domestic in nature,” Dewar said, and they regarded one another again.
“Th’art acquainted with the lady.”
“Well enough to guess that she prefers my arm to Herne’s,” Dewar replied in the same dry tone.
“Herne, release her, and I’ll see them both within,” Gaston said.
“A fine guard wert thou aforetimes,” Herne said. “She’s a very vixen, and he’s cunning and without honor—”
“Watch it, Herne,” Dewar snapped.
“Herne, release her,” Gaston repeated.
With a glare, Herne opened his hand. Freia stood still for a heartbeat; Dewar smiled at her, and she sprang up to stand at his side. He slipped his arm familiarly around her waist and embraced her. Freia clung to him, hugged him trembling around the neck.
“Well met,” said he. “Glad to see me?”
“I hoped and hoped you’d come,” she said, low in his ear. “I was afraid you wouldn’t.”
“I had vital matters of my own, elsewhere, but it would have been ungentlemanly not to come. Your fears were baseless, madame.”
She nodded. “I thought so,” Freia whispered, and leaned against him, relaxing. “I trust you.”
“Thank you.” He looked down into her strained face, then pressed her against him, a reassuring squeeze. Was she his sister? Could a blood-clay construct be properly called sibling to those born of the body? Well, Prospero named her daughter; he had made up his mind to claim her as his own, and since Dewar was Prospero’s son then Freia must be his sister. It certainly accounted for her devotion to her father. But it was a queer notion. He looked up at the Princes again, the corner of his mouth quirking.
“Gaston, thou chivalrous blockhead,” Herne snarled, and stalked away.
“Perhaps,” Gaston agreed indifferently, and he turned and looked down at Freia, at Dewar. “Herne is no friend to thee, Dewar, but I am not thy enemy. Nor would gladly be.”
“I understand,” Dewar said, half-smiling. “Freia,” he said, lowering his gaze from Gaston’s, “I have some unfinished business with Prospero.”
“He’s here,” she said, straightening and moving away from him a little.
“I know. Will you take me to him?”
“He’s with that weaselly Emperor,” Freia said, and her look became colder.
“Perhaps I should speak to this Emperor also,” Dewar mused. “Yes. I think that might be best. It’s time.”
Freia folded her arms, pulling her cloak tight around her. Her expression had changed, closed and cooled and become inward-looking, though she watched Dewar and Gaston narrowly.
“I’ll escort thee, Dewar, but must first extract thy word of—”
“I won’t kill anyone if I’m not attacked,” Dewar said, smiling, glancing significantly after Herne.
“ ’Twill serve. Come with me. And thou, lass,” he caught Freia’s eye, “come also, for th’art too precious to cast lightly loose.”
Dewar drew her hand through his arm; she went with him, her face an unsmiling mask. The flames he had conjured fell down and extinguished themselves as he approached, and the guards saluted Gaston and let them pass.
Count Pallgrave, to his own great humiliation, had been expelled at Prince Prospero’s behest from the chamber where Prince Prospero and the Emperor were now having a loud, but unintelligible, argument. He sat stiffly outside, waiting until he should be called again to advise and annotate points of discussion and agreement. The Emperor’s secretary Cremmin, who had taken his portable desk out with him into hallway exile, sat busily polishing his minutes of the meeting thus far today. They were not a pretty sight, full of blasphemies and ad hominem slurs from both parties, and the Emperor’s remarks about Prince Prospero’s daughter, the Lady Freia, really ought to be struck altogether. Cremmin instead filled them in, perhaps embroidering slightly. Even so, His Majesty’s invective came off a poor second to Prospero’s.
The hall leading to the chamber was long, its floor of cold polished white marble and its walls decorated with cameolike, allegorical white-and-salmon bas-reliefs of Panurgus’s nonmilitary conquests, each panel picked out with gilding on fingertips, arrow-heads, nipples. There was light from thin windows between the bas-relief panels and from freestanding candelabra; the arm-thick candles were lit, though storm-tinted late-afternoon winter sun was making the hall as warm as it ever could appear. The approach of Prince Gaston with two persons in his wake was thus immediately visible, as well as audible.
Cremmin rose, as did Count Pallgrave. The four guards to either side of the salmon-and-white door squared their shoulders and set their eyes resolutely forward. The Marshal was accompanied by the very Lady Freia whose name had arisen in discussion and by a bearded, cloaked young gentleman whose air of insouciant superiority could not be due to the metal-shod staff he carried like a sceptre.
“The Emperor desires not to be interrupted, Your Highness,” Cremmin said respectfully, bowing. “I will announce you when—”
“Don’t bother,” said the young gentleman, somehow lightly sidestepping Prince Gaston and nearly getting to the door.
Two of the guards stepped together in front of it, shoulder-to-shoulder.
Count Pallgrave inhaled, a hissing sound. “Young man, this is not—”
The Marshal interrupted him. “Aside,” he said. His mouth might have twitched in a faint smile. Was Gaston amused at Pallgrave’s discomfiture? The guards stepped aside as precisely and impassively as they had stepped together.
The young man inclined his head courteously to Prince Gaston, smiling sardonically.
“Your hat, sir,” Pallgrave growled, placing his monocle in his eye for a better look at this would-be jester.
The gentleman, who was clearly no gentleman at all, opened the door, hatted still. “Hello, hello,” he said, “I do hope I’m interrupting something.”
“Pallgrave!” shouted the Emperor.
Lady Freia, startlingly, giggled, then sniffled and sighed. She turned away from the door and went back down the corridor alone. Two of the guards followed her at four paces’ distance after Gaston paused in entering the conference room and ordered them softly to do so.
Count Pallgrave drew himself up stiffly as the door was closed in his face. Cremmin hid a smirk and sat down again.
Lady Freia didn’t look back at the guards escorting her, but her shoulders hunched as she crossed her arms and she walked with her eyes on the floor.
Prince Prospero had turned from giving the fire a wholehearted kick as the door opened; the Emperor, seated at the table, started to his feet.
The smile on the face of
the man who opened the door was anything but deferential. “Hello, hello,” he said insolently. “I do hope I’m interrupting something.”
“Pallgrave!”
Prince Gaston stepped in, closing the door on Pallgrave and, merely fortuitously, setting his shoulder blades to it. The handle turned frantically, unheeded behind his back.
“Gaston, we hope this jackass is a prisoner who has slipped from your custody. Get him out of here and have him hanged.”
“ ’Twere ill-conceived of thee to pick a quarrel here, Avril,” Prospero warned, watching Dewar. “What’s thy errand, sir?”
“You left me incapacitated,” Dewar said, deliberately oblique, “and we left matters between us in some suspense.”
“Time pressed me to leave thee and hasten hither, to waste time,” Prince Prospero said. “We’ll make an end of our dealings anon.”
“Who is this?” demanded the Emperor.
“So you’re the Emperor,” Dewar said, regarding him. “Hm.”
“Get—him—out,” the Emperor ordered Prince Gaston.
“No man orders such as he,” Prince Gaston replied.
“Indeed,” Dewar agreed, “though had you bargained with me in the past, brought me under contract, Emperor, you might be able to bargain now. As it is—”
“You’re that Dewar of whom we’ve heard.”
“There could be more than one man of the name about,” Dewar said. “What have you heard?” he inquired, in a tone of mock-dismay.
Prospero laughed outright, a dark sound.
The Emperor glared at him, and Dewar shook off his flippancy. “My errand’s mainly with Prince Prospero,” he said to the Emperor then, businesslike. “But since you’re here I may as well tell you a thing, one that may benefit us all.”
“And what is that,” the Emperor said.
“Prince Prospero’s welfare is of dear concern to me, and if he were to meet with mishap here—for example, dine upon a meal that disagreed with him, or cut himself shaving in the bath or fencing, or perchance an accident with rope—I see you take my meaning. Be his well-being less tenderly cherished than your own, Emperor, I shall take your blood for his in filial vendetta.”
“What—” began the Emperor, and stopped.
Prince Gaston closed his eyes a moment, then looked at Prince Prospero, who had folded his arms and stood watching Dewar with half-raised eyebrows, his expression betraying only calm interest and perhaps a touch of pride. There it was. Avril’s and Prospero’s feud had just become broader and more dangerous.
“Your Marshal here can assure you that I’m well able to do so,” Dewar said.
“You knew of this,” the Emperor accused the Marshal, rising from his seat as his anger rose.
“Your Majesty, I did not,” Prince Gaston said sharply.
“Of course he did not,” Prince Prospero snapped.
“How not?” demanded the Emperor.
“I’m not in the habit of announcing my lineage, nor are most sorcerers,” Dewar said drily. “However, Emperor, I make an exception in this case. You crow over the defeat of your brother. Take your delight in moderation this time, or you’ll find yourself facing me—and you’re not competent to do so, ignorant as you are of the Art. You’re undefended, unshielded here, even though hard by your own Well. You have relied on oaths and old treaties to protect you from sorcery, but I have sworn no vows to you or the Well. I could kill you now. I will not. And you shall remember that you are hostage to your own good conduct toward my father.”
“You dare to stand here and threaten us—”
“I could extinguish you before Gaston could draw, and his sword is of no use against me,” Dewar said, motionless but tense. “But I have no real quarrel with you. I do not involve myself in politics, and I shall not take sides in Prospero’s dispute with the Empire. That’s his, not mine. Just remember that I’m here, Avril, Uncle Avril, and that I have an interest.”
“We shall certainly remember that, sorcerer,” the Emperor said, narrow-eyed, “nephew.”
“Good,” Dewar said. “Free for dinner?” he asked, turning to his father.
“Not free, but available,” Prince Prospero said, the corner of his mouth lifting in half a smile. “Aye, let us dine; thy uncle hath much to chew on and digest ere we fare further with his reprehensible ideas.”
“You demanded a judge,” the Emperor said.
“Aye, and a clean one, if there be such in the realm, which I doubt.”
“It will be settled by the Imperial Court,” the Emperor said, smiling, “as it is a lofty matter.”
“Imperial Court?” Prince Prospero repeated derisively.
The Emperor continued to smile. “Tomorrow afternoon,” he said.
Freia knew the guards were there. Since arriving in the Palace, she and her father had been under house arrest. The guards were always there.
She closed the door to her apartments and left them outside. She’d managed to lose a pair today, and had crept out of the Palace with no clear destination beyond not-there, but Herne had caught her in the stables. Freia felt a taste of despair in her throat; she swallowed it. Dewar was here now. He must have come to get her out, to get Prospero out, away from the cruel Emperor, from Prince Herne who made her tremble when he looked at her, from raging Prince Fulgens, from Golias. Prince Gaston was a cipher, a background figure, always watching, as he had watched before. He wasn’t on her side, though she thought he wished to be kind.
Dewar would help them.
Freia left the door. The room was dim, though its tall windows were uncovered. On the unfavored north side of the building, it overlooked a fir-ringed ornamental lake which was frozen and dead for the season. Rushes poked through the ice at broken angles, yellow against the black. The hearth was empty; the fire had gone out and there was no wood. The servants were as ungracious as their Emperor. There was never any wood; they’d built a fire once, on the first day, and it died of starvation. She was always cold here. She had been warmer in that snowbound house in Chenay, where she had met Dewar, where her gryphon Trixie had barely fit into the barn. There’d been firewood, anyway, and better food than the overdone, inedible messes they served here.
She stopped at the narrow black table which stood like a bar to entry in front of the door, noticing that it held something new: flowers. Yellow roses, the edges of their furled petals blushing peach, and cream-white lilies were joined by soft, trailing gossamer ferns that spilled over the edge of their silver trumpet-vase and brushed the table. It was midwinter here—where could the flowers have come from? Freia sniffed cautiously at a half-opened rose: its perfume was spicy-sweet and sharp, weak in the cold chamber. The lilies cupped a heavy, drowsy scent. The lush flowers were nearly too rich, nearly cloying; drawing back, she carefully stroked a fern’s delightfully soft frond.
Under the frond was something white and sharp-cornered. Freia’s fingers knocked it down; she lifted it and found it was an envelope. She looked at it, puzzled.
In a book of Prospero’s, she had read about people in Landuc sending one another messages in bouquets of flowers, but in the book there had been meanings in the flowers themselves, which ones were chosen and how they were arranged. Prospero had said it was a fool’s tale and that nobody did that, at least nobody of sense, although he’d not answer for idiotic fops and flirts. The people in the poem had all been shepherds and shepherdesses, not courtiers, and Freia had concluded that they sent messages with flowers because they couldn’t write. But why send both flowers and a letter? Who would do that?
Her name was on the envelope: Lady Freia. She had never had a letter before. Prospero had lately received letters from acquaintances and men of business, but she had neither. This must be for him. She picked at the wax carefully: her name was on the outside, and she could give it to him after she had looked to see who had sent it by mistake. The wax resisted her fingernail, and finally she had to tear the envelope to open it.
Inside was a piece of paper folded once
. On it was written:
To the worshipful Lady Freia, with most respectful greetings. We have met and parted in vile and harrowing circumstances, and since then my heart is deeply weighed by my trespasses against your liberty and by the sufferings you bore after being removed from my hands. Alas, had I known that leaving you in care of Golias would redound so to your harm I had never done it. For I do love you as my cousin and as the most courageous and right noble lady in the Well’s great realm of Pheyarcet, and I would never that so fair a creature should be so basely used as you have been. I beg you grant me some sign of compassion that will redeem my unhappy soul from its wretched perdition. I would prove me to you a more courteous gentleman and more loving friend than I have shewed myself hitherto. I am yours to command to any task and any favor of notice from you would be treasured by your most miserable cousin and devoted servant Ottaviano.
The ornamented Court-hand in which the letter was written took some minutes for Freia to read, and as she deciphered its meaning her hands trembled and her face became pale.
When she had reached the end and Ottaviano’s swashing signature, she stared at the letter again, frozen with fear, and then crumpled it and threw the ball of paper into the cold hearth. The envelope followed, and Freia flew to the gloomy corner where the bed, festooned with brown curtains and dull crimson tassels, stood high and square. She kicked off her muddy shoes and spread her muck-hemmed cloak across the bed for an additional blanket, her outer dress on top of it. Shivering, she pulled the covers down, tugged the heavy, cumbersome bed-hangings around, and got in, wrapping the blankets and pillows around herself to make a warm nest.
Here. He was here. Ottaviano was here in the Palace—he had been in her rooms—he was here, and Golias was here too. She had seen him in a hallway when Prospero brought her to meet his sisters and then had glimpsed him that very morning in the breakfast-room and fled without eating. Now Ottaviano was here also, and with fear-sickness she wished she had been able to get away from the Palace today.
She had stopped attending the formal Palace luncheons and dinners days ago. People stared at her. They whispered, but no one talked to her. Prince Josquin was courteously distant, but she never knew what to say, and after a few empty politenesses he had said no more than “Good evening” to her. The Empress Glencora had an odd accent, and she spoke quickly and brightly, and Freia couldn’t quite follow what she said. The others didn’t try. Prince Fulgens bellowed at her once when she’d failed to understand his “Heave it here, girl” to mean “Pass the salt” and after that Freia had deserted the Emperor’s table.
The Price of Blood and Honor Page 10
