I was not quite certain what to say to this, but after some thought, I managed a commonplace.
“May the Pilgrim enlarge your sight.”
“Sometimes, I think I see far too much.”
Trumpets sounded a sennet from a gallery. Floria withdrew her arm from mine.
“My sister comes. Perhaps you should withdraw.”
I bowed. “As you wish, highness.”
“Try not to get in any brawls,” she advised. “And if you do, do not involve me.”
“Your highness, I shall try with all my heart to obey.”
I fled the palace, very much afraid that I had become the hobby-horse of a fifteen-year-old girl with nothing better to do than to meddle with the lives of her inferiors. I was already persecuted by Orlanda, and I felt that the scrutiny of another powerful being was a great injustice.
* * *
Now there was nothing keeping me in Howel but the few tasks remaining. I called upon the Roundsilvers to say good-bye and to thank them for their kindness, and they wished me joy of my knighthood. I returned to the palace to collect the title to my manor, and to the office of the King-at-Arms to certify my knighthood and to register my coat of arms. Which, in the strange tongue of the heralds, part Loretto, part Osby Lords, part Aekoi, is this:
Azure, a galleon argent a chief fir twigged argent, in chief three pens bendwise sable.
Which is to say a blue shield with a white ship thereon, and a white stripe across the top, with a jagged border resembling in outline the twigs of a fir tree. In the white stripe are three black quills.
Which is a play on words, if you like: Quill-in-fir. Even the herald-pursuivant laughed.
On my final afternoon in Howel, I went to the theater to see The Red Horse, or the History of King Emelin. The vast theater was built for spectacle, with an enormous wall built behind the stage that featured marble columns, balconies, niches for heroic statues, and the apparatus for making actors fly. The ancient statues of gods and heroes that had once filled the niches had long been looted, but they had been replaced by figures in a more modern style, one of which had been dressed to represent King Emelin himself, caught in the act of witnessing his own triumph.
It was a revelation to see the play with the audience of more than a thousand people instead of a hundred or so folk at court, and when Sir Bellicosus and his cronies came out, the laughter seemed to shake the heavens. The clowns had sharpened and enlarged their performance since the premiere in the autumn, and the play was somewhat less of a pageant, for Blackwell had altered a few of the scenes to create more movement. Blackwell himself had recovered from his quinsy, and spoke out in a fine loud voice from amid his warrior’s padding.
“You did not view The Nymph,” said Orlanda.
“I never cared for the play,” I said. The comedy had played the previous afternoon, apparently with great success.
Orlanda was seated beside me, wrapped in dark green gown that shimmered with silver stars. Her red hair was upswept into a complicated knot adorned with emeralds and pearls, and the air about her was fragrant with the scent of hyacinths.
I looked behind and along of her, and no one seemed to have noticed this verdant nymph appearing in their midst, right in the middle of a bright May afternoon. Apparently, she presented herself to me alone.
Somehow, I was not surprised. I had been expecting her any day.
“Have you come to congratulate me on my knighthood?” I asked.
“Foolishly I believed the Queen decided such things,” said Orlanda. “I had thought that the hatred I had carefully nurtured in her breast would prevent her from giving you rewards.”
“Neither of us, then, calculated on a meddling little girl?”
“I will not overlook her again.”
She unfurled her fan of peacock feathers and stirred the warm spring air. The peacock eyes gazed at me, green and blue and indigo.
Laughter rolled up from the audience at the antics of Bellicosus. Her lip curled in disdain. “You have a gift,” said she, “for showing mortals as they really are, scheming and blundering in their vain, useless way to catastrophe.”
“And yet here we are,” said I. “A theater full of catastrophes, all aglow with laughter.” I viewed Bellicosus and his crew, begging the bandits for their lives. “Perhaps it is healthy for us to laugh at ourselves.” I turned to her. “Have you ever laughed at yourself, my lady?”
She did not answer, but continued her inspection of the clowns. “You achieved honors,” she said, “and it was for the one thing you did not boast of. Did you ever expect to be rewarded for modesty?”
“It is a route to fame I had not considered.”
Orlanda looked at me, a shadow darkening the green eyes. “Has war changed you, Quillifer? Has it made you reticent?”
“It has made me reticent about war.”
“Perhaps, then, some mite of wisdom has wormed its way into your brain?”
I shrugged. “That may be. To myself, I seem less wise than before.”
I looked at the stage, at Blackwell marching onstage as the doomed prince Alain, soon to be snuffed by the hero. “Do you remember our conversation outside the foundry in Innismore? I spoke of the old epics, where the air is filled by invisible members of your tribe, all whispering into the ears of men, and laying their schemes with mortals as their pawns. If that is true—if such as you are everywhere—then how can human life have meaning? What means human ambition if it is but the prompting of a god?” I shrugged. “How can Berlauda be a Queen, a true monarch, if you or your like urge her to love and hatred, and the inclinations of her own heart are not her own?”
“You have gained wisdom, then. It is what I have said all along. Human ambition is worse than futile; it is delusion.”
Applause roared up from the stone core of the old theater. I waved a hand. “Yet here we are, futile though we be. Watching our dreams parade themselves before us, on a stage that was dreamed by another people long ago. We are still here, after all this time, dreaming and laughing and beating our hands together in approval of the shades that play before us. Where are your people?”
Her expression was hooded. “We lost interest in your dreams long ago.”
“Our ambitions may be futile, as you say. Our very thoughts may not be our own. We may have no more freedom of action than those actors, who speak aloud poetry written by others, and stand and strut on the stage where they are told.” Orlanda looked down at the stage, her lip curled in something like derision.
“Yet,” I said, “as the actors must believe the lines when they speak them, we have no choice but to act as if we have freedom. Necessity is a cold mistress, but Liberty inspires delightful bed-play.”
“Finely phrased,” said Orlanda, “but finely phrased delusion.”
“What whispers in your ear?” said I. “Is there something greater than you that plays with your heart-strings?”
Orlanda’s eyes remained on the stage, where Prince Alain led his armies off to their fated, doomed encounter, and King Emelin marched on to give an inspiring speech before battle.
“Master Quillifer,” she said, “I propose a game. I shall thwart you, and hurl obstacles in your way, and amuse myself with your delusions and evasions and your antics. And this game shall continue till you die.”
I considered this. “How is this different from the game you have played these last months?”
Her peacock-feather fan fluttered in the air. “It differs in that I play it not out of anger, but for the sake of amusement.” She looked at me, and I saw that very amusement glitter in her eyes. “Come now, Master Quillifer, to defeat mortals is nothing for you. But to defeat me is achievement indeed.”
“I seem to have little choice in the matter,” said I.
“You can agree to play the game with a whole heart,” said she. “Or you can refuse, and wither away as I send you one misfortune after another, wither until you are nothing. And what sport is that?”
For a moment, I s
aid nothing, just listened to King Emelin’s fine phrases as they boomed up from the stage. “I will agree to this,” I said finally. “On one condition.”
“Oh, ay, conditions,” said she in scorn. “That is your lawyerly way.”
“I will play your game,” said I, “if you agree not to harm those I love. For if you intend to torment me by murdering my lovers or my children or my friends, then I will first end myself in order to spare them.”
She gave me a look. “You are not fit for self-slaughter,” she said.
I stared back at her, and let my anger show. “My family is dead,” said I. “I carried their bodies to the tomb in my arms. I laid them on the cold stone. Rather than endure that again, I would kill myself. So, you will agree to my condition, or I will say farewell to this life directly, and kill myself like an ancient general in the histories of Bello.”
Orlanda’s eyebrows lifted. “Do you take me for a death-dealing monster? Unlike your other enemies, I have ways to amuse myself that do not involve murdering people.” She nodded. “I agree to your condition, then.”
I turned back to the play. “Do I now sign a document in blood?”
“It’s too early in the game for blood,” said she. “But I will see you another time.”
I did not have to turn my head to know she had vanished.
I watched Emelin’s triumph, and heard the pretty speeches, and rose with the rest of the audience in applause. I sought out Blackwell afterward, to say good-bye, and he wished me good speed.
Good speed to what? I wondered. For wherever I could go, and however speedily, Orlanda could go before me, and place one ambush after another in my path.
* * *
Early the next morning, I boarded the galley for Bretlynton Head, along with Phrenzy and my boy Oscar, and Oscar’s own mount. The horses were stabled mid-deck, the boy swung a hammock with the crew, and I had a small cabin in the quarterdeck.
I stowed away my belongings and rose to enjoy the delicate dawn light as it played on the haunting mists of the Dordelle, but then I was distracted by a sight even lovelier than the dawn. She was only a few years older than me, with a lovely warm complexion, snub nose, and a mass of lilac-scented chestnut hair.
Recently widowed, I discovered, not by war or Berlauda’s executions but by a flux that had carried away her lawyer husband. Her name was Lacey. Her brother had come for some weeks to Howel to help her, but his own business had required him to return home, and he had taken her two children back to Bretlynton Head while Lacey remained in the town to tie up the last threads of her husband’s estate. Now she traveled south to be reunited with her family.
As a near-lawyer, I felt I should take a fraternal interest in the welfare of this lawyer’s lady, and I made a point to be pleasant to her.
And that Lacey, of course, is you. And now we lie together in my cabin, your head pillowed on my shoulder while your lilac scent dances in my senses. Your sweet, regular breath warms the skin of my throat. And I see that my modest narration has eased your anxieties, and sent you at last to sleep.
For tomorrow, we will land in Bretlynton Head, and Oscar and I will take horse to my new manor, which lies some days’ travel to the east, and we will discover whether it is a ruin or a bounty. You will be reunited with your family, and new lives will begin for the both of us.
Your brother, you say, is very protective and wishes you to live in his house as a sort of unpaid servant, obliged to care for his children as well as yours. He will not permit you to remarry, at the penalty of losing your babes. I fear he will not approve of your being friends with me, new-fledged knight or no. I consider this a great cause for sadness.
I have already placed on the record, I think, my opinion of brothers.
SOURCES FOR SONGS AND POETRY
* * *
“Youth will needs have dalliance . . .”
Song, “Pastime with Good Company”
“Ah me! as thus I look before me . . .”
Thomas Bruce, “The Summer Queen”
“What Joy or honors can compare . . .”
Ben Jonson, Second Epithelamium
“O cruel Love, on thee I lay . . .”
John Lyly, Sappho’s Song
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
* * *
With thanks to Ada Palmer for elucidating the difference between “prodit” and “comitatur,” and thanks also to this work’s many first readers: Sage Walker, James S. A. Corey, S. M. Stirling, and the Rio Hondo Workshop of 2016, which included Jen Volant, Diana Rowland, Alex Jablokow, Laurence M. Schoen, David D. Levine, Rick Wilber, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Michaela Roessner, Kim Jollow Zimring, and K. M. Horn.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo by Courtney Willis
WALTER JON WILLIAMS is an award-winning author who has been listed on the bestseller lists of the New York Times and the Times of London. He is the author of more than thirty novels and collections of short fiction in addition to works in film, television, comics, and the gaming field. In 2000 he won a Nebula Award for his novelette “Daddy’s World” and won again in 2004 for “The Green Leopard Plague.”
Williams is a world traveler, scuba diver, and black belt in Kenpo karate. You can visit him at walterjonwilliams.net.
MEET THE AUTHORS, WATCH VIDEOS AND MORE AT
SIMONANDSCHUSTER.COM
Authors.SimonandSchuster.com/Walter-Jon-Williams
ALSO BY WALTER JON WILLIAMS
* * *
NOVELS
* * *
Ambassador of Progress
Knight Moves
Hardwired
Voice of the Whirlwind
Angel Station
Days of Atonement
Aristoi
Implied Spaces
The Rift
METROPOLITAN SERIES
* * *
Metropolitan
City on Fire
STAR WARS: THE NEW JEDI ORDER
* * *
Destiny’s Way
Ylesia
MAIJSTRAL SERIES
* * *
The Crown Jewels
House of Shards
Rock of Ages
Ten Points for Style
(omnibus of The Crown Jewels,
House of Shards, and Rock of Ages)
DAGMAR SHAW SERIES
* * *
This Is Not a Game
Deep State
The Fourth Wall
DREAD EMPIRE’S FALL SEQUENCE
* * *
The Praxis
The Sundering
Conventions of War
Investments
Impersonations
COLLECTIONS
* * *
Facets
Elegy for Angels and Dogs Tor Double (with Roger Zelazny’s
The Graveyard Heart)
Frankensteins and Foreign Devils
The Green Leopard Plague and
Other Stories
HISTORICAL NOVELS
(AS JON WILLIAMS)
* * *
To Glory Arise
(published as The Privateer)
The Tern Schooner
(published as The Yankee)
Brig of War
(published as The Raider)
The Macedonian
Cat Island
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any res
emblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. * Text copyright © 2017 by Walter Jon Williams * Jacket illustration copyright © 2017 by Gregory Manchess * Jacket photographs (background and cross) copyright * Interior map illustrations copyright * All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Saga Press Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020. * www.SimonandSchuster.com * SAGA PRESS and colophon are trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc. * For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at * The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event, contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at * Jacket design by Greg Stadnyk; interior design by Brad Mead * Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data * Names: Williams, Walter Jon, author. * Title: Quillifer / Walter Jon Williams ; maps illustrated by Robert Lazzaretti. * Description: First Edition. | New York : Saga Press, 2017. | Series: The adventures of Quillifer ; book 1 * Identifiers: LCCN 2017011751 | ISBN 9781481489973 (hardback) | ISBN 9781481489997 (eBook) | Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / Fantasy / Epic. | FICTION / Fantasy / General. FICTION / Action & Adventure. | GSAFD: Adventure fiction. | Fantasy fiction. * Classification: LCC PS3573.I456213 Q55 2017 (print) | DDC 813/.54–dc23 * LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017011751
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