The Price of Blood and Honor

by Elizabeth Willey

  “You don’t want to break it off? Luneté, the woman was flat on her back in the bushes under a groom while Cambia drowned! You don’t think that’s grounds for some response? Branding? A whipping? Drowning? At least public recognition that she failed her duty?”

  “I will not alienate Sir Matteus and all his kin,” said Luneté. “It is none of your affair, what I do or do not do; this is an internal matter, Lys’s own.”

  Otto, momentarily dumbstruck, turned and punched a red-lacquered cabinet. His fist splintered a large hole in its front. He stared at the hole and then shrugged, turned on Luneté again. “You seem to be forgetting that Cambia’s my daughter too,” he said, more quietly.

  Luneté’s expression changed, at last; she looked down, away, a flush creeping over her cheeks, and her mouth moved to say something. She stopped herself, clenching her hands, looking back at Otto, who was standing at the bier now, watching her over Cambia’s closed eyes and slack cheeks. “No,” said Luneté. “I do not think vengeance is right, here. We need not exact pain for pain, death for death. Another death cannot bring her back.”

  “Is that what your advisor Valgalant tells you?”

  “It is common sense,” said Luneté, cold again.

  “And if I wanted to take her to Ascolet and put her there, beside her Ascolet kin, you’d say she belonged to Lys, wouldn’t you. Common sense.”

  Luneté said nothing.

  “You wouldn’t come to the funeral if I did take her to Ascolet,” Otto went on, “because it would mean being out of Lys.” He thumped the foot of the bier softly with both fists—a few flowers slid off noiselessly—and, his expression a mask to match Luneté’s, left the room. The door echoed around and around the ceiling, and then the room was still.

  24

  BARON OTTAVIANO OF ASCOLET HAD LEARNED, in one swift lesson, that many matters were best not committed to ink. Better to keep them as insubstantial and unsubstantiable as breath. He sat on his heels outside the stables now, waiting for the Empress to appear with her entourage for their morning exercise. Dawn had found Otto in the Royal Tombs, where night had led him after a long detour around the Sea Gate’s ale-shops. He’d passed the stews and brothels by, preferring his own company, and, after attaining a state of self-detachment hitherto unknown to him, had decided he preferred even more the company of the dead King Panurgus and his predeceased offspring. The Wards around the Tombs had let him enter, and he had walked up and down, climbed the little hills and scuffled down, until the drunkenness was left behind. Yet for all the walking there he did, he never went near Sebastiano’s tomb.

  Unshaven, unbathed, he rose to his feet on hearing the soft chiming of ladies’ laughter on the other side of the hedge; a gate opened and there was the Empress Glencora, trimly kitted out in a pale-blue riding costume, and there were her attendants around her, stopping, eyeing him distrustfully. Two or three of the gentlemen’s hands fell to their dress-swords’ hilts. Otto bowed, his face showing no apprehension.

  “Your Majesty, forgive my impatience, but I could not wait to schedule a private interview with your secretary.”

  The Empress considered him; he wore the same clothing she had last seen him in at the summer-house, the worse for a night’s hard wear and the Well knew what physical exertions. Yet his demeanor was sober enough, and it would look ill if she denied audience to a man not a day bereft of his child. She gestured with her riding-crop, said, “I shall call you when I want you; wait here,” to her little flock of hangers-on, and crossed the courtyard to Ottaviano. “Come,” said she, “let us take a turn about the stable-yard; it is uncommonly to advantage in this early light.”

  He bowed again, still bland, and followed the Empress into the stable-yard, followed her as she turned right and walked slowly along the wall. A groom led out her horse, on the other side; she held up her hand to him and he halted, waiting.

  “Speak freely, if you would,” the Empress said.

  “You’ve been kind to us, to the Countess of Lys and me,” Otto said. “Far kinder and more helpful than many might expect, all things considered. I know the Countess has much to thank you for, for herself, and I am grateful too, for the courtesy you’ve shown her and for your hospitality toward me.”

  “You and the Countess are both of peculiar interest to us here,” said the Empress, pacing evenly. They turned left, along the side wall, and continued to walk.

  “Thank you. I am here to ask a great favor from you, Your Majesty, one which will afford the Countess a happier life.”

  “Be counselled, Baron of Ascolet, against interfering in Lys’s governance,” the Empress said. “It is a matter of considerable concern to the Emperor, that Ascolet and Lys, though close and allied, not be driven too closely in tandem.”

  He ground his teeth once and swallowed. “I know. In fact, she may already have approached you and asked about this—last night—before then—I don’t know. It has nothing to do with Lys’s government, but with Lys’s person.”

  “Continue,” the Empress said, when he paused.

  “I am convinced, Your Majesty, that the Countess is greatly burdened by the obligations our marriage places on her. I wish to ask you if you could intercede with the Emperor on her and my behalf and persuade him to annul the bond.”

  “Annul your marriage. This is a change of view, Baron.”

  “I know it must seem sudden, Your Majesty, but for some time Her Grace has not welcomed my presence or my attentions, and the death of our daughter has removed the most weighty and troublesome manifestation of those attentions. If the Emperor is anxious to forestall collusion between Lys and Ascolet, annulling the marriage will remove one of the more obvious ways the two places can be linked.”

  “You are convinced that this request accords with the Countess’s will?”

  “I haven’t talked it over with her, but—every sign seems to point that way, Your Majesty. The Countess considers herself beholden to Lys, before any other worldly bond. I can’t compete with the County of Lys. She isn’t interested in Ascolet.”

  The Empress turned again at the juncture of side wall and rear wall. Otto’s steps, in time with hers, echoed softly from the arched passages they now passed.

  “An annulment is not a light business, Baron. Are you certain you wish to pursue this step, yourself? Surely you are aware of your prerogatives under the law?”

  “I know, I know. Leaving other considerations aside, Your Majesty, the Countess is a peer in her own right, which complicates those prerogatives. If I pursued them too hard she might end up declaring war on me or something. I’d rather stop now than forcibly exercise my rights.”

  “You are uncommonly considerate,” observed the Empress. “If you wish to request an annulment, you must have some ground on which to base the request.”

  “I’m sure the irregularity of the marriage would provide ample ground for the Emperor. He acknowledged it, but he can unacknowledge it too. Panurgus did that.”

  “More than once. The most common ground for annulment, Baron, as you must be aware, is witnessed infidelity, during the engagement or during the marriage.”

  “I have no evidence of anything of the sort. Your Majesty, it’s not that at all, it’s just—Lys is more important to her, and I can’t keep running back and forth between Lys and Ascolet, and she won’t come to Ascolet. There’s no point to it.”

  They turned again, warmed now by the sun reflected from the wall onto their heads. The groom and horse were still waiting for the Empress in the center of the courtyard.

  The Empress tapped her crop lightly against her hand. “It is difficult to say how the Emperor will receive such a request, Baron. It is a great boon to ask of him; he may well refuse it and require that you take the customary route. He will certainly not act without a formal petition.”

  Otto nodded, watching her face; she didn’t look as though she meant to refuse him. “I understand. I want to know how the petition would be received. He’s entitled to be angry about it
, after all that’s happened, but I can’t think it’ll be unwelcome news.”

  “Very well. If you are determined, and are willing to trust my discretion—”

  “Completely, Your Majesty.”

  “Then I shall proceed as seems best to me.” The Empress halted and extended her hand; the interview was over. They had not quite completed a circuit of the courtyard. Otto bent over her hand, a formal bow, and followed the Empress out through the cold dark shadow of the gateway again.

  Freia waited, watching the peculiar and exuberant growth in the forest. On the second day after Dewar had left her, Trixie returned, skittish and inclined to gross disobedience. Freia petted the gryphon and used her to travel, in a circuitous route, along the mountains toward the south, toward the city, the Spring, and Prospero.

  She had promised Dewar to avoid any area that might be frequented by people, but people were in the mountains, in the forest, everywhere. She heard shouts at times, glimpsed movements, and smelled smoke. The people, if they were there, eluded her. She tried to creep up on them, to find their camps and spy on them as she thought they spied on her, and they scattered away whenever she thought she had them.

  It was annoying. Trixie was frisky and difficult, because of the odd weather; Dewar was taking too long to do whatever he had been doing; and now there were people in her forests hunting and digging roots and leaving messy camps behind when they moved on. They seemed to have horses with them, too—unshod hoofprints were everywhere. There were knapping flints and broken arrowheads littered where they stopped.

  Piqued, Freia began tracking them in earnest. She wrangled Trixie into cooperating and flew as low as she dared over the trees, a flight pattern not at all to the gryphon’s liking, watching for signs of trespass in the clearings and through gaps of the branches, circling. Lying on the gryphon’s back, she was mostly concealed, unless the observer noted the harness under the animal’s feathery fur, and she had no helm to reflect the sun and give her away.

  Twelve days she passed this way, each day more worried about her brother—what if he didn’t return?—and each day more irked by these elusive intruders. When she found them, Freia decided, she would tell them to get out of her forest. Prospero made them, and he made his city for them, and they could damned well stay there. This was hers.

  On the evening of the twelfth day she was looking for a camping spot for herself in the high, dry forest of the western leg of the Jagged Mountains, a place to sleep and to let Trixie off to hunt. Trixie’s hunting trips had grown longer and longer; Freia cooed and praised her warmly when she returned, afraid of being abandoned by the gryphon as well. Trixie was irritable, snappish and sullen, disobedient and gnawing her harness often; Freia wanted a game-rich area for the gryphon, so she wouldn’t stray too far from her mistress. The high meadows were attractive grazing for wood-elk, and Freia now was looking for a meadow with a brook and an open place to land.

  They dropped over a clump of trees and toward a boulder-strewn meadow, and Freia hauled Trixie upward abruptly. Trixie screamed protest and fought.

  The man on horseback below them glanced back and turned in an instant, a perfectly executed sinewy curve, raising a short bow and nocking an arrow.

  Freia hissed, “How dare you!” at the gryphon as much as at him and yanked Trixie’s head. They swerved and the arrow missed.

  Trixie was angry now. She had learned about arrows at Perendlac, and she wasn’t letting this one go by unanswered. Ignoring the yanking and throttling of her harness, she folded her wings and dropped.

  Freia had a moment to wish Dewar had come back so that she wouldn’t have been doing this and to hope that she didn’t break any bones in the strike. She braced herself and they hit the ground.

  The horseman, whose mount was more obedient than Freia’s, had whisked out from under the gryphon’s wing-shadow to halt and wheel again a few dozen paces away. He was drawing his bow again, Freia saw, and, her teeth still rattling from the force of the landing, she grabbed her own bow, strung it, nocked and drew, and pointed it straight at him.

  In that instant she saw that he wasn’t a man on horseback, but a man with a horseback.

  He froze too, perhaps wondering if she and Trixie formed a taxonomical blur like himself, and she could see him frown.

  Trixie hissed and pounced. Freia half-fell off her smooth-feathered back. She grabbed the bridle-chain, dragging the gryphon’s head down and to one side and wishing she had a cloak handy to throw over Trixie’s head.

  The man didn’t shoot, but he held ready still, watching, as Freia scolded Trixie in a scalding, furious undertone.

  “You have it pretty easy, you know,” she snarled at the gryphon. “Who fixed your foot, huh? You’d have gangrene now. Forget that, huh? Disobey me? I’m in charge here. You do what I tell you! Stupid bird! Fatheaded feather-arse! You want to see what it’s like on your own again? You want to starve when the hunting’s bad and I’m not around to get you game? All by yourself? You want that? Get out of here! Go! Go on, go!” Freia yelled, and grabbed her saddle-bags from the gryphon’s back and slapped her across the head. “Go, go, go! Go!”

  Trixie, glaring balefully back at her for an instant, gathered herself in a pounce-crouch. Then she bounded upward, into the air, disdainfully flapping away.

  Freia watched her go, horrified at what she had just done, as the gryphon rose out of sight beyond the trees.

  A thump drew her attention back to the horse-man. He had stamped one—hoof, impatient. Was this another of Prospero’s sorcerous accidents, like the gryphons? Freia wondered. There were others, half-people with deer-like lower bodies, but they had two legs only, and they kept to the south. This one was half man, half horse … a man’s torso where the horse’s neck should be. He had lowered his bow, amused probably by the sight of a disobedient gryphon getting the better of her mistress.

  “What are you looking at?” Freia demanded, and she picked up her own bow and quiver, and shrugged her saddle-bags across her shoulders. “And what are you doing here? This is my forest!” She tossed her hair back.

  He moved toward her cautiously, like an uncertain horse, watching her hands. Freia set them on her hips and glared at him. He stopped.

  “This is our forest,” he said slowly.

  “It is not. I’ve never seen you here before, and I know these mountains well. I’ve been through them in every season, and you don’t belong here. Where did you come from?”

  “Here,” he said, stomping again.

  Freia frowned.

  “Where did you come from?” he countered.

  “Here,” she said. “I was here before anybody but Prospero.” It was hers. She didn’t want interlopers hunting in her mountains, running down her game, making fires in her forest. No doubt their fires had been the cause of the great destruction in the north.

  “Prospero?” he repeated.

  “Prospero is my father,” said Freia, “and he made Argylle and gave it to me, and it’s not yours.”

  They stared at one another on the darkening mountainside.

  “You have a bow,” he said.

  “And I can use it well,” Freia retorted, lifting it again, putting an arrow to the string.

  “Your boasts are as great as clouds,” he said.

  “I’m not bragging. I was here before anyone and the stones themselves know the truth of that.”

  “Would the trees know too?”

  “Mind your tongue,” Freia said, with a rush of boiling rage, and the feathers of the arrow were by her ear.

  “I challenge you,” he said. “I am Sire of the Clan, and I challenge you. We will choose three targets. The one who shoots best at all three speaks truth. This forest is ours, and we will not be forced from it.”

  “It’s mine,” Freia said. She would show the bastard. One of Prospero’s rogue inventions, wandered wild now. She wouldn’t stand for it, for horse-people polluting her forests and meadows and mountains— “I’ll take your challenge,” she said, “
and the truth is that I was here before you, and that Argylle is mine.” She lowered the bow. “Who picks first target?”

  He looked around, seeming nonplussed. Freia thought he hadn’t expected her to take him up. The light was failing; they’d have to shoot quickly or wait until morning.

  “There,” he suggested, and pointed at a single white-trunked tree gleaming in the dusky fringe of the forest.

  “From here,” Freia said, stamping once.

  “Yes,” he agreed, and slowly came toward her again. They eyed one another distrustfully. He snuffed audibly when he was closer, reminding her of Prospero’s Hurricane taking stock of her Epona, and stopped a few steps away on her right.

  “You may shoot first,” she said.

  He stamped and gave her a quick glare, then drew his bow—it didn’t appear to have much stronger pull, if any more at all, than hers—and aimed and shot.

  They heard the arrow thock into wood; branches quivered.

  Freia turned, drew the arrow back to her ear and looked at the white tree, loosed her breath softly, and loosed the arrow.

  Thock.

  Without speaking, they walked to the edge of the forest.

  Freia’s arrow was in the trunk of the tree. The man-horse’s had pierced and was stuck in a greyish sucker-shoot coming out of the ground to one side of the white trunk. He had missed by a hand’s breadth, and it shocked him. He stamped and pulled the arrow out.

  Freia decided to leave hers where it was. “I will choose the next target,” she said, and looked around the meadow. “Let us go to the middle again,” she said, “and we will both shoot at once at the first bird to pass. The darters will be out soon.”

  He grunted and they did that and stood, neither speaking, waiting.

  The first darter of the evening cooperated by appearing not long after, its erratic path taking it here, there, left, right, up, down after insects swirling in the evening air.

  Their bows sprang back; the arrows flew out. The darter fell, transfixed.