The Price of Blood and Honor

by Elizabeth Willey

“What is it?” Herne snarled, not turning.

  One of the Palace Guard entered. “My lord, sir, it’s the sorcerer, sir. We tried to—that is, four men went as you ordered, sir, and they, they—”

  “What?” Herne glanced at the man.

  “They can’t move, sir,” the guard said.

  “Can’t move?”

  “They walked into the room, sir, and they, they’re stuck there. They can’t get him, and they can’t get out.”

  “You sent four men to arrest my son?” Prospero said, sneering, though his blood was cold in him: a midnight arrest—an ill start to a day, an ill end to a night. “Sent four men to arrest a sorcerer, a guest, lying sleeping in a hostile house, and expect them to live? Perhaps they will—awhile. Think you he’s as easily bullied as this girl? Hah!”

  Freia had pulled herself into a ball and was huddled silent now, though her trembling breathing rasped loud.

  There was a brief silence as all parties prepared to speak. Fulgens was first.

  “Come with us, Prospero. The Emperor desires to speak with thee.”

  “Nay. ’Tis the middle of the night, you’ve set my daughter a-raving, and I shall not go,” Prospero said coldly and precisely. “If you’re here to prison me, I can be as easily held here as anywhere. Let some of Herne’s famous guards ward the doors and windows, if they can keep the task in their sieve-heads for an hour at once, and be you gone, for I shall not go.”

  Herne began to speak; Fulgens interrupted. “Very well; that shall we relay to His Majesty.”

  Herne glowered at him. “The wench is lively enough,” he said; “her own mind torments her more than anything outside it. But I concur, Prospero; canst be arrested here or anywhere, arrested, tried, judged, and—”

  “Enough!” Fulgens said. “Let’s see what the guards have done in Lord Dewar’s case.”

  With a final hate-filled glare at Prospero, Herne left behind Fulgens, and the guard followed them out.

  Prospero, iced with his own perspiration in an instant, sat down on the edge of the bed, his legs weak. “Freia, my Puss,” he whispered.

  “P-Papa?” She peeked at him above her fingers, cowering yet.

  “Come; I would hold thee. No surety but that they’ll come again.”

  Freia uncurled and slid toward Prospero. He leaned against the bed-post and hugged her, suddenly struck by how near death could be: his; hers; his son’s.

  “Papa,” she whimpered, huddling to him, “Papa, I wish we were home.”

  Prospero closed his eyes and embraced her tightly. “And I, Puss,” he whispered to her hair that smelled of smoke and stale air. “And I.”

  Dewar awoke, stretched, and lay abed staring blurrily at the stitchwork at the end of the pillow, half-asleep yet and thinking of how it was done, each stitch, and how one might get an Elemental to do it, perhaps a Sylph—

  Voices. His elaborate plan for training the Sylph evaporated. It was probably cheaper to have girls embroider linens anyway.

  The voices were outside his closed bedroom door. He put on a deep-turquoise quilted silk dressing-gown and tucked his wand in the pocket before opening the door.

  “Ah,” he said.

  Six armed men stood statuelike, none closer than four paces to the door. His protective Bounds had snared them and kept them snared, speechless and frozen …

  … but aware. Their eyes rested on him.

  Dewar leaned on the doorjamb and looked past them at Count Pallgrave, Prince Herne, and Prince Fulgens. Prince Herne was also caught, red-faced with effort and fighting it still, attempting to draw back a fraction at a time from the sticky, engulfing suction of the spell. He was losing. Prince Fulgens and Count Pallgrave were apparently trying to pull him out without also being taken.

  “Good morning, Prince Herne.”

  Herne glared at him.

  “Uncivil of you to call so early,” Dewar said. He yawned. “I shall be along in a while. In the meantime, carry on. Amuse yourselves. I’m sure you can think of something. I certainly shall.” He smiled and shut the door. Count Pallgrave spluttered; Prince Fulgens bellowed threateningly.

  Having shaved, bathed, groomed, and dressed, Dewar stood before the looking-glass in the bedroom, adjusted his cuffs, and took up his wand again, which he tucked in one sleeve. With a courteous bow to himself, he turned away and went to the door.

  “Very kind of you to wait,” he said pleasantly. As he had hoped, Fulgens and Pallgrave were now indeed trapped; their hands on Herne’s arms, the spell had flowed outward to seize them as well.

  Dewar wondered how many people one could link into such a daisy-chain of near-paralysis before the influence of the spell was taxed beyond its capacity; it was his version of a common variety of protective spell, designed to keep intruders alive but harmless until the sorcerer had leisure to deal with them. It might be wise, he thought, to experiment; the spider-spell normally acted only when one entered its sphere of influence, but one could also be trapped by touching someone already caught—though not reliably nor within any certain time; Dewar was unsure what the variables were. He nodded to Prince Herne and Prince Fulgens as he went by; the door had to stay open because Count Pallgrave was in the way, but that was all right. Perhaps some of the domestic staff, or Cremmin, who seemed to loathe the man, would come by and take advantage of the moment. Meanwhile, breakfast called.

  “Dewar!”

  “Good morning, Prince Josquin.” The sorcerer bowed, smiling in a most wicked and ungentlemanly way.

  “What’s going on at your apartment?” Prince Josquin asked.

  “Your Highness—”

  “Josquin. I asked you. Cousin.”

  Their eyes met; Dewar inclined his head slightly, as if it were he granting the favor, not the Prince. “Josquin, I am not sure. They don’t look terribly friendly, do they? But they’re harmless. If you have ever wanted to—well—Count Pallgrave may be immobilized for much of the day, and he is slightly bent forward—”

  Josquin laughed. “You are evil, you know.”

  “Merely mischievous, and charming too. And disinclined to be disturbed by armed guards and irate princes in my sleep,” Dewar said. The joking was over. “Kindly tell me what they were trying to do. Arrest me?”

  “Uh.”

  Dewar shrugged, started away. “I’ll find out from my father.”

  “Dewar—” Josquin pursued him as he strode away. “Your father— Damn it, wait for me!”

  “If anything has happened to my father, I shall do things the Emperor will dream about for eternity in his nightmare-death,” Dewar said, staring the Prince Heir down.

  “It’s Golias,” Josquin said. “To do with that.”

  “Has your father somehow convinced himself that my father was responsible for Golias’s attack on my sister?” Dewar asked in an unpleasant voice. The air crackled audibly.

  “No. No. Calm down, Dewar! Prospero’s all right; he threw a coffeepot at Viola this morning. She made a rather funny joke—about the murder and your sister. Wish he’d hit her, but it missed. Viola— He— I mean— They said your sister might—Damn! Do stop looking at me like that. I can’t think.” Dewar had backed Josquin to the wall, and Josquin felt like a bird before a snake.

  Dewar’s breath, clove-scented, stirred the Prince’s hair. “Tell. Me. What. Has. Happened.”

  “You don’t know about Golias?”

  “I know more than I like knowing about him, enough to know that I do not intend to dine with him any time soon, although I don’t mind taking his money at cards.”

  “He’s dead.”

  “Dead. I am not surprised.” Dewar moved a step away from Josquin, who remained leaning against the wall, not taking his eyes from the sorcerer.

  “Did you kill him?”

  “No. He owes me too much money for me to want to do that. Someone killed him, eh?”

  “Quite thoroughly, sometime yesterday evening. He’s a mess. What’s left of him. He can’t have died quickly. He was half-disembow
elled.”

  Dewar thought of several witticisms on partial as opposed to complete disembowelment, but restrained all of them. It was early in the day yet.

  “And castrated,” Josquin said, watching him. “Before dying, evidently.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Something about the—the wound. The surgeon said it, not I.”

  Dewar snorted. “Hem wouldn’t recognize his own—”

  Josquin shook his head quickly, once, and interrupted. “Gaston’s man made the inquest; Herne insisted. He knows more than Hem about violent death. You mean you didn’t know this.”

  “No. I didn’t know, and although I am not surprised—he had many enemies—I am disappointed that I won’t see the money he owed me. Thank you for the information, Your Highness. I am going to see my father, wherever he is.”

  “In his rooms or your sister’s. He and Father went one round already this morning. Father wanted him to release Herne and Fulgens and Pallgrave.”

  “Prospero to release them from my spell? The Emperor has a short memory,” Dewar observed drily.

  Josquin reddened. “He thought Prospero might be immune to the effects of, of whatever you did to them. I said I’d wait for you.” He hurried past the awkwardness. “Father gets a little—excited.”

  “So does my sister, but she doesn’t kill people. Not usually,” he added, remembering Malperdy and Perendlac. “I’ll release them when it pleases me,” Dewar continued. “Tell the Emperor I said so. You could remind him—no, I will, perhaps.”

  “Remind him?”

  “That were he not so cheap, I might not charge so dear,” Dewar said. “I’ll think about what I want in return for freeing them while I talk to Prospero.” He smiled again, the lazy smile that Josquin had come to associate with Dewar being in control of everything.

  Dewar knocked on his sister’s door. There was no answer, but she never did answer and still had no maid, and so he pushed the broken handle down and nudged the door ajar.

  “Freia, it’s Dewar.”

  Was that a sound? He rolled his eyes—she was taking things too far, languishing and being theatrical about everything. Entering, he closed the door at his back. There was a fire, for a change; the rooms were warm. Good sign, that she’d gone after the servants and made them do something for her. He looked cautiously through the chamber door.

  There stood the curtain-dimmed cubicle of a bed; a table beside it with a napkin-veiled pitcher and a covered tray; a cup, a glass. The fire was low, and there were clothes on the floor, a heap in the corner that was her torn dress, a dressing-gown, shoes and stockings—the usual disorder.

  “Freia?” he asked, his voice hushed.

  “Hm?” came very softly from the bed.

  Dewar wondered if she ever left her bed before tea-time, and then as he passed he saw that the pitcher had sediment in the bottom. There was liquid left in it, but very little. He sniffed the glass and smelled bitter herbs, masked by cloying sweetness. So Prospero was still drugging her; it was strange that he wasn’t here now. She would be groggy, if awake at all, and dazed and a poor conversationalist, but he ought to say hello.

  “Hello, Freia,” Dewar said, sitting on the edge of the bed where she was lost in an ocean of cutwork-edged Madanese linen, quilted velvet counterpane, and tasseled bolsters and cushions.

  “Papa …” she breathed, her breath catching, her brows kinking.

  “Dewar,” he corrected her gently.

  “Hm.” Her hand moved vaguely, a seeking anemone in the pillow-sea; he clasped it. Her mouth flexed, dreaming of a smile, and her eyes never opened.

  Heavily dosed, he diagnosed, and in no state for talking. He sat watching her face—the bruises around her mouth were like charcoal smudges, the tendrils of her hair swift-drawn freehand curves on the bedding—until her hand was limp in his again and her sleep was deep.

  Prospero had lashed out, Dewar thought. He had borne his defeat and its onerous conditions as gracefully as a true Prince ought; he had made shift to live by his wits and not his sorcery; and then he had been pushed too far. Had Freia finally told him about Golias’s treatment of her? Probably. Attempted rape alone seemed insufficient, to Dewar, for a penalty of mutilation and death. But if Prospero had at last listened—in his already-enraged state—to Freia’s tale of previous violation, he would surely snap, and rightly. If the Emperor wished to use Golias as a Prince, Golias must behave as a Prince, and he had never done so. Herne was as violent as Golias, but kept in check by honor and intelligence; so too were the other Princes, and Prospero was one of them. Golias was an unrestrained, bestial monster, and Prospero had killed him for his monstrosity.

  For the first time, Dewar wondered, uncomfortably, whether he ought to have killed Golias as soon as he found leisure for it—as soon as he’d arrived in Landuc. But no—it would not have answered, to be swaggering around avenging Freia unasked, undeclared; he hadn’t come here to kill anyone, but to see more of his father and to protect him if necessity required a sorcerer’s protection. It was none of his duty to sort out Freia’s difficulties for her: she was Prospero’s creature, to manage as he saw fit; Prospero had said so explicitly when he’d asked Dewar not to take her from Landuc again. Indeed, from what Dewar had seen of Freia when he first met her, if she’d just shake off her present melancholy she’d be capable of killing Golias herself; she had soared into fights and held her own. No, to strike any such blow for her would have been presumption, as bad as removing her against Prospero’s expressed wish.

  Yet, Dewar thought, perhaps he could help her indirectly. He was not sure what Prospero thought of this marriage to Josquin: it was a logical alliance, certainly, if one didn’t know she was a construct, but perhaps Prospero had had another match in mind.

  Dewar released Freia’s hand slowly and stood carefully, not moving the bed. He put wood on the fire as he left, and at the door he glanced back, but the dark box of a bed enclosed and concealed her.

  Prospero shouted what Dewar hoped was an invitation to enter when the latter knocked, and so Dewar did, peering around the door before stepping in just in case Prospero was not really in humor for a caller.

  But the Prince smiled and nodded amiably. “Dewar! ’Tis good to see thee. Hast broken fast?”

  “No,” Dewar said. The food-smells made him swallow—bread, ham, mushrooms.

  Prospero lifted his cup, looked at a chair and at his son. “Why, come then, and join me; there’s ample for both, as they think me a very prodigy of appetite, or perhaps two.”

  Dewar smiled, inordinately pleased at the enthusiastic welcome, and joined him with vigor; and they ate and talked of inconsequentialities until satisfaction slowed them.

  “I went to Freia’s rooms. I thought you might be there.”

  “Nay.”

  “So I see and saw. She’s still sedated?”

  “Aye, the wench is deranged beyond self-government, so that she’d not let me leave her all the while she woke, and I must give her sleep in a cup that could not get it any other way. ’Tis best for her now; ’twill heal her more than anything, and moreover it keepeth questioners from her.” Frowning, Prospero broke and buttered bread as he spoke, each piece carefully set aside.

  “I have some visitors,” Dewar said.

  Prospero did not look up, but his eyebrow flicked and his mouth curled his beard in a smile.

  “What in Hell is going on?” Dewar asked when Prospero said nothing.

  “Why, Hell indeed is where the goings-on are,” Prospero said, “for they must find Golias a rare fellow in their revels. Hast heard of his passing from our merry company?”

  “Josquin said he’s dead, wholly and in parts. I don’t know more than that.” Dewar took out his pen-sized wand and began toying with it; Prospero watched from half-lidded eyes, nodded wordlessly. “Of course the Well would have killed him: but it seems that the Well preferred not to be soiled thus, and found him a fitting end.”

  “Aye,” Prospero said, “murdere
d with savagery beyond belief; least one would wish it were, but there he is, truly in the flesh and now beyond it. And whereas ’twas I he betrayed i’ the war just past, and I whose daughter he sought to force, therefore did Avril send Fulgens and Herne to arrest me for kin-slaughter at the ’tween-hour of the night, a siderate time well-suited to such grey undertakings; and they with their posturing and fulminating did so distress thy sister that I must sit with her the balance of the night swearing hollow oaths to her of safety.”

  The wand had lengthened to a walking-stick. “You do not think her safe.”

  “I am not sure of it. I am indeed not sure. She is a precious thing of herself, being of our house, she is even betrothed to thy dewy cousin Josquin; she hath done, can do, no harm to any; and yet I cannot be sure she is safe.” Prospero spoke to the bread and butter mess on his plate.

  Dewar stood and walked slowly around the table, drawing a line on the carpet with his silver-shod staff. “You don’t think Jos would hurt her?”

  “Hurt her, that one? Only through folly, not malice. She’d be happy with him as anyone, I dare say, an she put her mind to’t, an he allowed it. ’Tis in her humor and his too to dwell tranquil at home if not abroad—”

  “There,” Dewar said, sitting again. A silver shimmer, visible from the corner of one’s eye, now circled the table, and the crackle of the fire on the hearth was inaudible. It was a hasty job; Dewar preferred to take longer and forge such protective Bounds as to allow outside sounds to be heard within, but this met the nonce need.

  Prospero nodded once. “Well done. There’s a peep-hole by the chimney; in most of the rooms o’ this wing at least one. ’Tis why guests are housed here, but a sorcerer hath what privacy he pleases. —For thy ears: she’ll be well enough when she wakens and the drug’s purged from her. Her immoderate humors have gone to crisis i’ the night and found balance, and I’ve no fear for her soundness. As for the marriage, ’tis as great an evil as most of ’em. So you Ottaviano hath found.” He snorted. “And as to Golias.”

  “They tried to arrest me, and they are still trying,” Dewar said, smiling. “Herne and Fulgens, Pallgrave even, and some guards. A tableau vivante.”