The Price of Blood and Honor

by Elizabeth Willey

  Now Trixie had come to her. Would she be able to find Argylle again? However she did it, could Freia persuade her do it once more?

  It was worth trying. Freia didn’t know the way home herself. Dewar had taken them there with sorcery, through a Way, but he wasn’t helping now. She couldn’t get there with Gaston’s help, either, willing though Gaston might be to assist her. Trixie must have been wandering around looking for her, all these seasons, all these years.

  “Poor Trixie, poor Trix,” crooned Freia. “There’s a wood I know where I’ll hide you now, for the while, and you must lie quiet there.…”

  Planning the theft of a considerable quantity of leather and chain from Gaston’s house, Freia stroked Trixie’s soft feathers and soothed her agitated temper.

  Ottaviano was in Ascolet again. And yet again, the Countess of Lys was unable to join him, due to the demands Lys placed upon her. Otto had flared angrily before going this time.

  “Why do I always have to come here? You haven’t visited Ascolet once. Why don’t you and Cambia come to Ascolet now?”

  “I can’t, Otto! I’m needed here.”

  “The place got along without you for years,” he said. “Who says you can’t go away for a while? Valgalant?”

  “Are you jealous?”

  “Of Valgalant?” yelped Otto. “Lu, I asked why you can’t leave Lys!”

  “And I told you! Lys needs me.”

  “What is so all-fired important that you can’t leave it to look after itself for the summer?” he demanded, exasperated.

  “I’m reviewing the tariffs and duties now,” Luneté said, “and there’s the problem of those graziers wanting more range but I don’t know if it’s really profitable to Lys to allow them to take land out of wheat, and the canals are being refaced, and—”

  “None of that is life-and-death essential!”

  “Neither is going to Ascolet!” Luneté shouted back, and she realized what she had said when Otto’s face went white and cold.

  “Madame, I leave you,” he replied formally, and he bowed and was out of the solar before she could soften her words.

  “Otto—” she said, but the door had closed.

  Biting her lip, Luneté sank back in the chair. Lys needed her. She could feel it, needing her. Lys wanted her here, not in Ascolet; she had vowed her life to serve Lys. She couldn’t run off to Ascolet half the year. It wouldn’t be right. Ascolet didn’t matter to Otto the way Lys mattered to her, she supposed, or he wouldn’t make such unreasonable suggestions. He didn’t understand her bond to Lys. Why, he wasn’t really of Ascolet blood; the Emperor had thus far said nothing of rescinding the title he’d unwittingly bestowed on his bastard son, but Otto had only been able to claim the title at all because it had been Sebastiano’s. Otto wasn’t what he’d said he was; that was why he didn’t understand Luneté.

  The Countess of Lys squared her shoulders and straightened. He would be back, probably before the summer was out, full of aqueducts and roads and wool.

  21

  FREIA IMPROVISED A HARNESS FOR TRIXIE, poulticed the gryphon’s injury, and writhed with indecision about telling Gaston she was leaving. She wanted to tell him, and she said nothing. In her heart, she feared he would hold her from going, perhaps even take her back to Landuc.

  Smuggling heavy clothes and some food and utensils out of the Montjoie manor-house and hiding them was easily done during the five days she tended Trixie’s foot. Freia spent those days with deer-hide and chain, hastily stitching harness for the gryphon. Gaston’s Montjoie steward conducted an inquisition among the servants to discover who had purloined the chains that drove the well-pump.

  The foot improved rapidly. Trixie groomed herself back to glossiness and ate well and crooned when Freia spoke to her, all normal behavior. On the seventh day after finding the gryphon, Freia donned warmer clothing than the season warranted and went riding out with her bow, a saddle-bag of food, and a troubled conscience. Gaston had brought her a book, a romance with pretty margin-pictures from Lindfluss, and he had mentioned that he would like to ride up to a certain viewpoint with her on the following day, and he had been as kind as he ever was, or better, and Freia nearly told him about Trixie. Nearly: fear kept her tongue silent.

  That day she finished the harness, shot a young buck for Trixie to eat, and picked berries. She would wait until twilight to fly.

  At dusk, Freia loaded the gryphon with the saddle-bags from the pretty white-socked mare and stood a long, indecisive moment before untying the horse. If she sent the horse home without her, they would think she’d had an accident. Perhaps, she thought, they would think she was dead when they didn’t find her. She looped the horse’s reins around and around her fingers, considering. Gaston would be angry with her for running away, but what if he thought she was dead? He wouldn’t tell anybody in Landuc about thinking her dead in an accident in Montgard, because they wouldn’t believe him—or if they did, they’d blame him for not telling them she had been alive. Thus if she let the mare go back without her, she would be safe from Landuc, and Gaston couldn’t follow her.

  She looked at the ground. The mare tried to toss her head, and Freia made her stand still.

  But the things Gaston had done …

  He had given her the horse, and he let her go anywhere—not that it mattered, because he knew she couldn’t leave here and go home—but he had said he would take her home—had he meant that? Had he truly meant that? He had shown her the book of routes and places and the Map, explaining how to use them together. He had told her things her father never had. When she was sick, after Golias had stabbed her, Gaston had talked to her gently and never lost patience with her silence, and he had brought her good food and kept her prison-chamber warm and forbidden the Emperor to throw her in a dungeon again. He didn’t ask questions, not like Dewar. He didn’t make her do things and not do things, not like Prospero.

  But would Gaston keep her from leaving? Would he have stopped her this morning?

  He would be worried if she sent the mare away; Freia knew that. She imagined him searching and making all his people search and call for her, all over the mountains, as they had when two shepherd boys were lost in a late snowstorm last spring. Gaston wouldn’t give up. He never gave up. He would fell the forest, she thought, or at least look in every tree and under every bush. He would be worried and unhappy, and it would be her fault; he would feel as she felt when Prospero went away and told her nothing.

  She shouldn’t have ridden this morning; she should have walked here. Well, now she would have to send the horse away with some clear sign that she wasn’t hurt or lost.

  She tied the mare up again. Trixie fidgeted and croaked, impatient; Freia took out her flint and steel. Squatting on her heels, she cleared a little space on the ground and, after a few false starts, made a twig-fire, small and restrained. There was a thin-barked log by the mare, and Freia used her knife to cut the bark, peeling until she got a largish piece off.

  The fire had nearly burned out; she began offering it twigs and pulling them out half-charred.

  She hesitated. She had never written a letter. Gaston had taught her all the ways people here wrote letters, but she didn’t have enough bark or sticks for a formal address or the courtesies and bombast which formed half the body.

  Uncle, she began, and chewed the stick’s unburned end, thinking. The letters were neat enough. She thought he’d be able to read it. What should she write?

  I am not hurt, she scratched out carefully, stick after stick. I found a way to go to P. Thank you.

  All the letter closings she knew were too long. There wasn’t room on the bark for them.

  F.

  Would that be enough? Freia thought so. It seemed a very good letter to her, even written on bark in smudgy charcoal. The top words were bigger than the ones toward the bottom of the bark, but she didn’t want to try writing it again all one size. She rolled it loosely, tying it with a long blade of grass, and squeezed it between the mare’s
saddle and saddle-cloth.

  Then Freia untied the mare again, slapped her rump, and shooed her onto the homeward path. When the hoofbeats had clipped away Freia took Trixie’s bridle and led her out of the forest to a clearing.

  The sun was behind the mountains; the thin air was cold. Freia waited under the dark trees as the clouds changed colors. Trixie crouched, alert, knowing departure was coming. The stars began to come out behind the clouds, and she found constellations Gaston had taught her, bright chips of light above the dark fringe of treetops. Night: they could fly unseen. It was time to go. She guided Trixie from under the trees to the open clearing.

  Trixie lifted her head, lashed her tail, looked around.

  Freia stopped in mid-gesture and listened, wary.

  “Freia!” someone shouted, very near—Gaston. Branches breaking and a disturbance in the forest accompanied his voice.

  He had gotten the letter. He was angry. She’d better go.

  The gryphon twisted and misbehaved as Freia tried to mount, squirming and jumping away like a cub, and Gaston yelled “Freia!” again, now at the bottom of the meadow. Trixie squalled angrily.

  “Freia?”

  Freia yanked Trixie’s bridle and stood still, holding the gryphon’s beak closed with her arms. A horse whinnied; Gaston said something to the horse; she saw him come out of the darkness toward her, a tall lantern-lit shape blotting stars.

  “Bright World! What—” he began saying, and stopped, holding the lantern high, and the light flashed suddenly from the long blade of his sword.

  Trixie thrashed, threw off Freia’s grip, and screamed. Freia hung on the bridle with both hands and used all her weight to pull the gryphon’s head down as she tried to bolt.

  “Don’t—”

  “Freia!” Gaston lunged forward, lifting the sword as Solario carried him closer; another horse, released, galloped down the meadow.

  “She’s scared; get back!”

  Solario wheeled and Gaston retreated, lowering but not sheathing his sword. “Freia. Th’art unhurt? What beast is this?”

  “My gryphon,” said Freia, panting, holding Trixie’s head down. “Please, I’m all right, please put your sword away, I think it scares her.”

  Gaston sheathed the sword, still peering at the ill-defined shape of the gryphon in the dark, beyond his lantern’s range. “I found thy horse a-wandering. Did that beast start her? Hast met no mishap?”

  Freia saw now: he had ridden Solario and led the white-socked mare, but the mare had fled down the meadow away from the gryphon. “No,” Freia said. “Didn’t you find the letter?”

  “Letter?” Gaston repeated, his voice rising.

  “I put a letter on the horse,” Freia said. “Under the saddle. A piece of bark.” She was insulted. She had gone to considerable effort to write the letter, and he hadn’t even looked at it.

  Gaston said nothing. Trixie made a low rattling noise in her throat.

  “I did, I put it under the saddle,” Freia said, aggrieved, “I knew you’d think I had an accident if she came back without me.”

  Gaston dismounted, keeping watch on the gryphon distrustfully; Trixie glared back. “Well,” said he, lifting the lantern to half-light Freia and the gryphon, “I confess, lass, I’d not thought to look there at once. Wherefore didst thou not tell me this morn that ’twas thy intent to leave? Hast found this, this gryphon but today?”

  “I found her a few days ago,” Freia said. “She was hurt. She was looking for me. She’s mine, I trained her at home.”

  Gaston, lamplit, nodded understanding.

  “I thought you wouldn’t let me go,” Freia said. “I’m sorry, but I did, I thought—”

  Her uncle drew breath to speak; he stopped and sighed. A pause; he thought, studying her. “Freia,” said Gaston then, “didst thou think I’d keep thee here by force, having told thee th’art free to go and offered thee aid without reserve?”

  Freia looked down. “You did say that,” she admitted, “but people here—people say things, offer to do things, that—that they can’t do.”

  “I have not betrayed thy trust in aught,” said Gaston. “What I have promised thee, what I have given, is thine without reserve.”

  “It’s not that I’m ungrateful,” she said, her voice trembling. She was grateful; she was bowed with gratitude. Not a day passed in which she did not thank Gaston for something great or small, and not a day passed in which she did not labor to think of something she might return him for his kindness. There was nothing, not even meat or vegetables and fruits of her garden, such as she had offered Prospero; Gaston needed nothing from her, and all she had for him was gratitude.

  “Gratefulness is naught of’t,” Gaston replied, coming a few steps nearer.

  Trixie made a hissing sound. Freia cuffed her, out of patience with her bad behavior. “Friend!” she said.

  “So have I sought to be,” Gaston said, “as much thy friend as thou wouldst let me be.”

  The pain in his voice was audible; Freia, dismayed, understood in that instant that she had wronged Gaston. It wasn’t gratitude that he wanted, nor obedience nor the subjugation of her will to his; unlike Prospero’s or Dewar’s gifts, Gaston’s gifts such as cloak and horse, books and brooch, were given, not to require that she produce something he wanted in return, but because he wished her to have them. He offered them as her friend. Was it truly possible that Gaston wanted to be her friend, with nothing more to it? Prospero had said so much about the evil people of Landuc, and she had found nothing good in them herself—yet Gaston had asked nothing of her and had given so much—

  “I’m sorry,” Freia said in a small voice.

  “Lass—” Gaston began, surprised, but Freia interrupted him.

  “I’m sorry,” she said again, “I didn’t mean—I didn’t think—I haven’t—” She stopped, looking down at her feet. “I haven’t had friends very much,” Freia explained. “I’m sorry.”

  “How now, lass,” Gaston said quietly. “I meant not to accuse thee.”

  Freia met his eyes again and was reassured. She believed him. Gaston was kind to her and he listened and he was never angry, and he wanted to be her friend. That was why he had not taken her back to Landuc nor told anyone there about her: he was being her friend, and she hadn’t understood.

  “I like you,” Freia said. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”

  “Nor I thine. Freia, I’m not wroth with thee,” Gaston said. “An the gryphon can take thee to thy father, then ’tis well thou go. I know he’s ever in thy thoughts; this is not home for thee. I’d not prevent thee going. Nor returning.”

  “Returning?”

  “An it please thee to return, lass, art always welcome here.” Gaston was smiling, his eyes warm and his mouth barely curved, his underlying seriousness adding weight to the invitation.

  Freia smiled, warmed by a rush of relief.

  “And I will never keep thee ’gainst thy will,” Gaston promised, the corners of his mouth creeping upward.

  Freia’s smile vanished. “Thank you,” she said.

  “Dost believe me?” he asked, his own smile leaving him, now grave and intense.

  “Yes.”

  “I thank thee,” Gaston said, softening his look. “So thou’lt leave now, tonight. How? Hast studied th’ Ephemeris and Map?”

  “No. It doesn’t matter about the Well. Trixie will know where to go.”

  “A clever creature, that can find her path ’mongst the Gates and mazy Roads,” Gaston remarked, turning toward Trixie.

  “She did it before. She takes a while sometimes, but she gets there. She found her way here to me all by herself.”

  “Well. Art provisioned for thy journey?”

  “I have things,” Freia said. “Some food and a waterskin and my bow.”

  Gaston nodded, looking at the gryphon by the lantern-light. “Wilt accept more? I’d not see thee go without the best I could give thee.”

  “I don’t really need much—I— Un
cle, it was I that stole that chain. I needed it for her. I’m sorry.”

  He stared at her, amazed. “It was thy doing?”

  “Do you still like me,” Freia asked, her throat tight.

  Gaston put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed it hard. “Yes.”

  The saddle-bags were heavier when Freia rebuckled them just before midnight. Gaston had persuaded his niece to wait a few hours and had ridden away. He’d returned with larger bags stuffed full of food, a cooking-pot, a warm leather jerkin, extra socks, other things he considered needful for an indefinite journey. Freia demurred, embarrassed to accept so much from him, and Gaston need only stand, hands on hips, looking sternly down at her, before she said, red-cheeked, that she must pay him back someday if he insisted on giving her such a good pair of bags and a fleece-lined jerkin and all.

  “I wish with all my heart that thou hadst been to the Well and stood the Fire,” Gaston said, after she had buckled the new bags on. “To set off so, mapless, with no notion of direction—”

  “It’s only complicated in Landuc, in Pheyarcet,” Freia said. “And she found her way here, so she must know her way home. I’ll be all right, Uncle Gaston.”

  “Th’art wise and resourceful enough that I believe thee,” Gaston said, taking Solario’s reins. “Remember th’art welcome here always, lass.”

  Freia nodded. “I have to go home,” she said. “I’ll come visit you, though.”

  Gaston inclined his head, mounted Solario. “Be careful, lass,” he said.

  “I will.”

  He lifted his hand, not smiling, serious and ruddy-gold in the lantern’s low flame, and turned Solario to the path again. The hoofbeats receded into the night forest. Freia whispered, “Thank you,” after Gaston again. Should she stay?

  Trixie tossed her head and stamped.

  Freia scrambled up on the glossy, smooth feathers. Trixie fidgeted and danced, unused now to a rider, and for a few minutes Freia must wrestle her into compliance and keep from being shaken off.