The Price of Blood and Honor

by Elizabeth Willey

  Prospero chuckled, leaning back and stretching. “Ah, good lad; I knew wouldst have some trap laid about thee, and thus I did not seek thee out, rather kept to my restless alibi.”

  “I won’t release them without some concession from Avril, I’ve decided.”

  “Interesting notion. Hold ’em hostage i’ the anteroom, dust them weekly; why, charge the public to view ’em. What wouldst thou?”

  “I came to ask you that.”

  Prospero blinked and gazed thoughtfully at Dewar for a long time. “Hast nothing thou wouldst demand of the Emperor for thine own?” he said softly.

  Dewar shrugged, embarrassed, knowing the value of the gift and the pride of the Prince. “Nothing sprang to mind at once. I thought you might make use of it better than I. He’s not equipped to give really useful concessions as King Panurgus could.”

  “ ’Twill be his death. Hm. Aye, a host springs ready-fitted to mind.” Prospero opened a pomegranate, pensive.

  “If I can release you from the oath—”

  “Nay, thou know’st it cannot be so lightly untied. I thank thee for the thought.” He ate seeds one by one. “Meseems,” the Prince said slowly, “canst not ask too great a thing; he’ll deny it outright. Must ask a small thing with great things to tumble after when it rolls.”

  “I understand.”

  “My preference, of all the fetters that lie on me, must be to throw off the choke-chain that leashes me to this cur’s-house. Thou know’st the terms; I am under house-arrest, to fetch and carry, come and go, heel and sit, all at his behest, and ere long I’ll snap, howl, and foam. Do thou get my freedom for theirs, untrammel me from that condition fully as they shall be freed by thee, and ’twill serve well.”

  Dewar nodded. “All right.”

  “He’ll grudge it, say it cannot be done. It can an he will it; ’tis paper and spit, no sorcerer’s vow, and can be altered by both in accord. I’d be gladly restored to myself and freed of fealty, but I’ll settle for liberty of my body; ’twill answer admirably.” His eyebrow twitched again as he contemplated the crimson pomegranate, smiling faintly. “Aye, ’twill answer,” he murmured.

  Luneté sat writing little notes of apology and farewell. She was probably permanently ruining her future in Court society, but she didn’t care; she had to get out of Landuc. Laudine, behind her, packed with loud bangs and sniffs. The maid had been looking forward to spending the winter here, in the Imperial City, and had received the Countess’s orders to prepare to leave with bad grace.

  The door opened behind her.

  “Otto, please knock,” Luneté said without looking up. “I have asked you so many times.” To the Lady Quarfall, with all respect and duty …

  The door banged. “What do you mean telling everyone we’re leaving?”

  She continued writing. “We are not leaving. You can stay and you probably should. I must return to Lys at once.” Signed, Luneté, Countess of Lys. Luneté sanded the note, then folded it cleverly and sealed it, then looked up at her husband.

  Otto pulled the stool from the dressing-table over and sat down close beside her. Laudine conspicuously remained in the room, slamming the lid of a trunk. “Lu, what’s got into you?”

  “An unfortunate choice of words,” Luneté said. “I’d prefer not to discuss it here, in Landuc. If you’ll ride a little ways with us, I’ll explain. I absolutely must return to Lys before the snows close the roads. I must, Otto.”

  “You must,” he repeated. “We were going to go to Ascolet—”

  “That was before, before my vows, before other things. Now I must go to Lys. You can stay here in Landuc, and probably you should, to try to come to some kind of … agreement … with your … father.”

  “Has that advisor of yours, Valgalant, put this in your head?” demanded Otto.

  “No,” said Luneté. “We will leave tomorrow before dawn. Would you please ride with me a little way then?”

  Ottaviano stared at her. His calm, steady wife had become a frantic, driven madwoman. Had a certain person whispered some nasty piece of gossip to Luneté, enhancing Otto’s role in the matters of Miranda and of Prospero’s daughter? Was she shamed by yesterday’s revelation of his father’s identity?

  “Luneté, why?” he asked.

  Luneté took a deep breath. “Just come with me tomorrow, as far as Chargrove Inn, and I will tell you,” she said. “But do not think you can persuade me to stay.”

  “All right,” said Otto. “I’ll ride partway with you and we can talk. I hope you know what you’re doing, Countess.”

  “I do,” said Luneté firmly. She picked up the pen and dipped it again. Her eyes narrowed and she began:

  From Countess Luneté of Lys to Lord Dewar, with all due gratitude and regard. I cannot depart Landuc without acknowledging the labors you have generously performed on matters nearly touching Lys and Ascolet …

  Freia stared at the canopy of the bed. She knew its shadows and sags now, and her gaze went from one spot to another, from cobweb to frayed thread, with the attention a traveller gives to a map of his morrow’s route; but her starting-place was always the same, and her route never varied, and she knew how her journey must end.

  The fire had gone out hours ago. Coldness was coming back to the room, a thin trickling stream seeping down from the windows. Prospero had gone out also. She remembered him scolding her for being ungrateful and telling her he had more important things to attend than her vaporous fancies. Golias was dead, he had said, and therefore would not trouble her again, and he, Prospero, would not sit another night with her; she was old enough to bridle her nightmares, damn her, and his patience was blown. He rued the day he had sparked life in her. She had too great an idea of her importance. He was damned if she would hamstring him.

  The herbs left a musky aftertaste and thickened her tongue and saliva. Freia had drunk the cupful obediently. Even as her head had begun to float and spin she had heard the door slam. She had dreamt that he had returned and sat with her, but it was only a wish-born dream; the heavy fog of the drug had dispelled gradually and she knew no one had been in the chamber since Prospero left.

  Golias was dead. That wasn’t a dream. Prospero had said it was so.

  Prince Herne and Prince Fulgens had come and awakened her, shouting at Prospero; and that was a true thing, too. A strange man, white-haired and palely dressed, had come as she had been falling asleep again, and Prospero had stopped holding her, had put her in the bed, and had spoken a long time with the man, whose craggy, sad-eyed face had looked at her past Prospero’s shoulder from time to time.

  “Miranda!” Prospero had cried roughly, and “The craven whoreson butcher! I’d have flayed the rutting varlet, spilled his bowels and watched him try to gut it out, choked him with his rot-blunted sword— O ’tis fair Justice, Justice, Gonzalo, but I’d fain mine own daughter had died for thine, O Miranda.” He had wept, and the white-haired man had talked, and Freia had been unable to get up and go to her father; her arms and legs were leaden, paralyzed by the drug.

  Staring at the top of the bed, she wondered about Miranda. Prospero had spoken of her often through the years when they two had lived on the isle alone, saying that in her Freia would meet the best of her sex, the finest and fairest of all humanity, and Freia must study to be as much like her as possible, for there was no better model. Yet her elusive model had ever surpassed Freia, in his judgement.

  Once he had explained to her that though sorcerers had no families, they kept pets sometimes, and that her father loved his daughter, and that the sorcerer was fond of his Puss. Freia had been contented by that. Now, in the detached contemplative mood that had followed her drug-muffled fits of despair and terror, two things occurred to her.

  The first was that she had become a burdensome pet to Prospero the sorcerer, and so he shunned her and would be rid of her.

  The second was that Prospero, here, did not exist as she had thought him to be. He was a Prince. She had thought he would no longer be a sorcerer wh
en he renounced sorcery, but he was more a sorcerer than ever, busy with unexplained concerns, impatient with her and putting her aside, though he’d insisted she come here to hateful Landuc, and now that she was here there was nothing for her to do and no one wanted her about. It had been indicated to her in arch, oblique terms that her origins were unacceptably vague; Princess Evote had inquired minutely about Freia’s mother and Freia had truthfully replied that she had never known her mother. What? No family, no kin? None. Where was she born, where were they wed, then? She had stared at Princess Evote, feeling trapped and not knowing what more to say, and a sinister whisper of bastardy had run round the Palace. She was no true member of the family.

  Freia’s chest ached. She wanted to go home. Prospero did not want her there. He had shaped her mind and her deeds with his lessons in everything he thought a princess should know: more than most princes would agree was necessary, and no fripperies like embroidery or dancing, but in the end she had failed him. She wasn’t as fine as Miranda. She would be mated to cold and doll-like Prince Josquin and stay prisoned here, and Prospero would go to his home that was not hers. There was no wilderness into which she could escape here but the maze of her memory-tangled sleep.

  Freia turned on her side, shutting her eyes and pulling the coverlet high over her head, hiding from the claustrophobic bed-hangings and the cold beyond.

  12

  THE COUNTESS OF LYS’S COACH, THOUGH of heirloom vintage, was neither heated nor plushly upholstered. Its exterior had been freshly painted for this momentous journey, in Lys, and the brave paint was spattered with the mud of the roads from Lys to Landuc. However, the coach was solid enough to stand any distance of rutted road, and Luneté had had Laudine procure extra cushions and lap-robes to make the interior more comfortable. Now Laudine, thoroughly annoyed, rode on the coach-box, and the Baron of Ascolet, thoroughly bewildered, rode inside, his horse following with Luneté’s page on his back. Luneté smiled at Otto from time to time, distractedly, and was rigid as a fencepost until they rolled through the Fire Gate and left the City Bounds behind. The wheels bounced and jarred them over the frozen road.

  “Better than being stuck in the mud, I guess,” Otto said, to break the silence.

  “Yes,” Luneté said. “I’m going to have a child.”

  The coach hit three cavernous holes in a row.

  Otto’s ears rang from the concussion or the news. “You? You are?” he asked. “How? I mean—Luneté, you’re sure?”

  “As you may know,” said Luneté primly, “there are certain unmistakable signs.” She sat as straight as she could, despite the bouncing, and she looked not at Otto but at a faded painted fish on the opposite wall.

  Ottaviano turned a remarkable shade of crimson. Her tone reminded him that he was not reacting as a prospective father ought. “I see,” he said, and bounced with the coach to land beside her on the seat. “You want to have the baby in Lys,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Why not Ascolet?” Otto suggested. “We take the Eälschar Road and—”

  “Lys,” said Luneté firmly.

  “But he’ll be my heir.”

  “And mine.”

  They regarded one another, neither having any stomach for a jouncing, rattling argument.

  “Very well—”

  “Lys then,” said Ottaviano, beating her to it. “And at this time of year it’s safer anyway. Lys.”

  “You don’t mind?” Luneté said, a quaver in her voice.

  “I— Just a moment.” Otto rolled down the shutter over the window and bellowed out at the coachman. “Iwen! Iwen! Stop the horses for a few minutes.” The coach rattled to a halt, and Otto sat back. “I don’t mind,” he said to Luneté, and he kissed her.

  “I do mind,” Luneté told him when they had moved a little apart. “This is bad timing. I shouldn’t be tied down now—you need me at Court, and Lys needs me everywhere, and I said I would go to Ascolet—it’s so inconvenient—”

  “There’s plenty of time later for Court and riding around Lys and Ascolet,” Otto said, soothing her. It was all understandable now, her strange moods and fainting and bad digestion. “I’ll return to Court now, follow you to Lys in a few months, and we’ll stay there until the baby comes.” He patted her stomach, feeling a nervous pride of possession. “Um, maybe, maybe we should get a better coach.”

  “I’ll be all right,” she said. “I came in this one.”

  “You mean you were already—”

  Luneté nodded.

  “Oh!” They had spent so little time together—but it wasn’t the time, rather the timing that mattered, and he had made the most of their few hours during the wars. Otto bit his lip, and a further thought came to him. “Well. If you think it’s all right, well, then. You go on to Lys, and I’ll stay here awhile, see what I can do for us. Luneté, did you tell anyone?”

  “No. No one. I don’t want anyone to know until afterward.”

  “Right.” Otto nodded. “Smart girl. The Emperor doesn’t need the news. Not right now.” He smiled. An heir for Lys and Ascolet. No, the Emperor didn’t need the news, but it was very pleasant to contemplate his discomfiture on hearing it.

  Dewar caught Josquin’s elbow. “Look,” he said quietly, and drew him along a side path into the fragrant yews. “We must talk.”

  Josquin smiled slightly, but did not move away from him. “I agree. I have wanted to talk to you for ever so long.”

  They stopped and regarded one another, turquoise-blue eyes and mist-blue-grey, both breathing a little fast, both very conscious of Dewar’s hand still on Josquin’s arm.

  “I meant to tell you,” Josquin said, his smile warming and widening, eyes still locked on Dewar’s, “I’d be honored to make you a gift of a, hum, a book I’ve a notion you’d like, and an old piece of artwork, cartography …”

  Dewar grinned, tried to squelch the grin, and shook with unvoiced mirth, throwing his head back nonetheless. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” They managed to look at one another again, and Josquin laughed now too, noiselessly. He touched Dewar’s elbow. “Come, let’s further in here. Evote was out for a stroll with that bitch-in-heat Baroness of yours.”

  “By all means, let’s.” They glanced at the opening in the yew and, as one, walked away from it, into the shrubbery, around a corner, slowly. “That wasn’t what I wanted to talk about,” Dewar said, his smile disappearing.

  “Let us continue with it soon, then,” Josquin suggested.

  “Yes.” Dewar glanced at him, inhaled, swallowed, looked away. “About my sister, Prince.”

  Josquin sighed and sobered. “The title is ill-used. What about your sister? Or should we say, the impending contracted nuptials?”

  “How do you feel about that?”

  “How should I feel? Eccch.”

  “Oh. Mm.”

  “Sorry. I’m delighted! Tons of joy! Charming girl. So bubbly.”

  “Jos, be serious. Come now. Eccch?”

  “E-c-c-c-ch. I think that’s how it would be spelled. Dewar, I really— I knew I must marry someday—” Josquin’s lip curled, and he shook his head.

  “Entirely averse, eh.”

  “Yes. Besides, according to what I understand of the treaties, effectively she’s a pauper; the Emperor’s already taken the best of Prospero’s estate for himself, and the girl is just an additional item to confiscate. No kind of advance at all. That’s the reason for it; he wants to put the screws to Prospero and tighten them.”

  “Yes, I know. It hasn’t escaped his notice either, but he’s bound by his word. But Freia, Josquin—”

  “She hasn’t had to lift a finger. Lucky girl. If she did, I’m not quite certain she’d know what to do with it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She does not, pardon me for frankness, but you are a frank man yourself, convey an impression of agile wit and nimble thought. Of great knowledge or great anything. She’s a rather ordinary thing. In these circumstances,
” Josquin gestured with his stick, hitting the hedges, “ordinary is a cipher.”

  Dewar nodded. “She isn’t very broad, that’s true. One must make allowances.”

  “Even with a generous allowance, Dewar, dear fellow, there’s not much left after the allowance.”

  “Jos, have you ever talked to her?”

  “Daily. I say, ‘Good morning, m’lady cousin,’ or something of the sort, and she looks at me, gulps, nods, and looks down again. At dinner, when she deigns to dine with us, I say, ‘Allow me,’ or ‘May I please have the salt’—”

  “I get the idea. No.” Dewar thought of Otto and Luneté, of the blushing, flirting, and panting that had preceded their wedding.

  “Dewar, she has nothing to say.”

  Dewar stopped at a junction of two paths where a bird’s nest had fallen from a tree above to the gravel, tossed down by the winds of some storm and missed by the gardeners. He picked it up and looked at it: twigs intertwined by blind instinct, mud daubed neatly around, a few downy tufts of feather still clinging inside the bowl. It weighed nearly nothing.

  “You think I should talk to the lady before the vows?”

  “I don’t know. Yes, I do. There is something about all this that disturbs me. I suppose it is just that coldness that comes with all arranged marriages, Jos, yet she knows you no more than you know her. She’s in a foreign place, she doesn’t always understand the language well—”

  “She ought to pass the blessed Fire.”

  “—and that’s another thing, but I think she fears it. Prospero hasn’t pushed her to it, you know, and doubtless Avril wouldn’t allow it—not until after the wedding, lest she run away. But, Jos, it would mean a lot to her, and it would make a very very good impression on my father I believe, if you—if you swallowed your distaste and buttered her up a little.”

  “My dear fellow, supposing she did uncloister herself, I daresay there’d be little opportunity for it. She won’t talk at table. Fulgens saw to that.”

  “Fulgens?”

  “Yes, when she was still dining in company he completely flummoxed her—you know how he does, it’s all steam, nothing of substance in it.”