The Luck Of The Wheels

by Megan Lindholm

  'No,' Lacey said softly. 'No one thought Kellich was good enough to win against the Duke. But Kellich's blade was to carry a slow poison. Kellich was willing to make a sacrificial reach to get past the Duke's guard and bloody him.'

  'No!' Willow cried suddenly, wildly. 'That wasn't what he planned. Not to die! Never to die! He told me he was good enough, that he was sure he could wound the Duke and still win the match. That he would come away from it alive and we would be married, that we would live together many long years ...' Her face had gone very pale beneath the shadowing hood, her eyes two bright coals of witchfire.

  Lacey shook his head slowly. 'No, Willow. So he told you, to give you courage. But he knew he would have to die, would have to stop caring about his own guard to get in past the Duke's. We all knew Kellich would have to die to win.'

  'No!' Willow staggered forward from where she had been leaning against the wall. She pushed her hood back, revealing how she had shorn her coppery hair for grief. It stood up in wild licks from her skull, making her look pathetically vulnerable.

  'Believe me, child,' Lacey whispered. 'None of us wanted it that way. But we knew ... and you must have seen that even if Kellich could outfight the Duke, even if he could wound him and somehow win the match, that the Duke would never let him leave those chambers alive. Even if he had been sure of a killing thrust, the Brurjan guards would have killed Kellich within moments. That was the reason for the poison, and finding a Brurjan who could be bribed not to find Kellich's blade tainted.' Lacey sighed. 'But now it has all gone to ruin. Goat stole from you the names of the guards who could be bribed. And Vandien killed Kellich.'

  'No.' Willow spoke the word in a sullen child's voice, as if she had been instructed to fetch water or go to bed early. 'No. Kellich wouldn't have gone along with that. He loved me.'

  'Willow.' Lacey's voice stopped hers. 'It was Kellich's plan. He brought it to us, and we refused it. Until he made us see it was our only chance.'

  'No! You're making that up, you're lying to me!'

  No one was contradicting her. No one had to. Eyes gazed at the floor, at the ceiling, at Vandien's chair, at anything but Willow. No one moved to comfort her. Vandien suddenly had the perception of her being alone in the room, set apart from all the others. She had been a tool for their politics, her love for Kellich turned to the good of the rebellion. And now she was a tool that had failed, had lost its edge and usefulness. She had not needed to know the true plan, had been more useful in her ignorance. Their letting her perceive the whole thing now could have only one meaning: that she was no longer of any use to them at all. Vandien felt a chill in his belly as he wondered how thorough they were about tidying up loose ends. Willow stood where she was, hugging herself. She was not weeping; it sounded as if all her strength was consumed by breathing. Her shoulders rose and fell with every rasping breath she took.

  'It was a stupid plan from the start,' he observed, breaking the silence. 'Full of holes. Any plan where you don't expect to survive is inherently bad. To think that because a Brurjan took your bribe he would actually do what you paid him for is ignorance. Rather he'd turn around and betray you for the extra his master would pay him for it. And slow poison ... where's the sense in that? So the Duke would have plenty of time to torment Kellich and make him betray the rest of you?'

  'Kellich wouldn't betray anyone!' Lacey declared firmly. 'Our cause was sacred to him, his highest purpose in life. And the slow poison did have a reason; it was to give us time to negotiate with the Duke. Once he sickened, we'd let him believe we had a cure for it. A cure he could buy only by a gradual surrender of power. Our first demand would be that he disband his Brurjans. Next we would ask that the Duchess assume control while he recovered. Then we would ...'

  'Idiocy.' Vandien spoke softly, then glanced around the room, shaking his head. Farmers and tradesmen, artisans and tavernkeepers. It was all wrong. Where was the authority behind the rebellion, the shrewd political players guiding it? Lacey couldn't even assume he had authority here. It was wrong, all wrong. 'Look,' he said gently. 'Everything I've seen about your Duke and his reign makes your plan laughable. If he thinks he's dying, he's not going to negotiate. He's going to start a bloodbath in hopes of taking you with him. What would he have to lose? He'd figure he could capture one of you and wring the antidote out of him. And the Brurjans? They have a saying: "Only a vulture is friends with the dying." There'd be no restraints on what they'd do, disbanded or not. You'd plunge all of Loveran into a nightmare. It would gain you nothing. The Duke might die, but the Brurjans would pick your bones clean.'

  His eyes darted from face to face, hoping for some sign of understanding, one gleam of enlightenment. There were none. The rebels stared back at him, their eyes flat and disbelieving.

  'It's too late for us to back out now,' Lacey said softly.

  Vandien leaned back, crossed his arms on his chest. 'That's too bad,' he said in an equally soft voice. 'Because I believe it's never too late to avoid stupidity. Even if I believed in your cause, even if I could go along with something as low as a poisoned blade, I couldn't go along with the sheer foolishness of this plan. Find yourself another sword.'

  'We're prepared to offer you ...'

  'Offer me the moon, I still won't go along with this. By your own admission, win or lose, I die.'

  'You won against Kellich. There's always the chance you could defeat the Duke and

  'Face his Brurjans. No thanks.'

  'But if some of our men were willing to break in afterwards, help you with the Brurjans so you ...' Lacey broke off suddenly, making a motion for silence. It wasn't necessary. Everyone had already frozen. From outside came the sound of hoofbeats. All heard the horse reined in outside the door. 'Be still,' Lacey breathed. He'd gone pale. Strain showed on every face. Except Willow's. There was something akin to a smile on her mouth as she rose, defying Lacey's command, and walked to the door. She eased it open a crack, then glanced back over her shoulder at them.

  'It's all right,' she said, and then slipped out the door.

  'What the hell is that girl up to now?' demanded a rebel of Lacey. The man could only roll his eyes and shrug. But in a few moments Willow came slipping back into the room, bearing an angular object wrapped in a piece of coarse sacking. Her eyes met only Vandien's as she crossed the room. She stopped in front of him. 'Are you absolutely certain you won't fight for us?' she asked, poisoned honey in her voice.

  'I already told you, Willow.' Vandien kept his voice level. 'Find yourself another sword.'

  She swept the remains of his dinner to the floor. Even before the bowl had stopped rolling on the floor, she shook the sacking over the table.

  The rapier fell with a clang and rolled toward him. He caught it up more by reflex than by thought, exclaiming with anger over her rough treatment of it. Then he stared at his hand gripping the hawk's hilt, ran his eyes up the blade that still bore traces of Kellich's blood.

  'That's the only sword we'll need, Vandien.' Willow was coldly sure of herself. 'You'll kill the Duke for us. Not because you believe in our cause or for a handful of greasy coins. You'll do it for a chance to see Ki alive again.'

  He lunged his full measure, and the tip of his rapier found the precise center of the small x he had scratched on the plank wall. The metal of the blade bowed with the impact. A solid thrust that would have emerged from a man's back. Satisfactory sword work. Don't think about anything else, he instructed himself. The sword is all. Don't be distracted. Just practice. Don't wonder how you got from wherever you were before to wherever you are now.

  After he had demanded proof that Ki was still alive, they had left him alone in the storage barn or whatever it was. Discordance had been his major impression of the group as they left. Lacey had not liked Willow's little surprise. She had taken control from his hands, but he could not publicly argue with someone who had given him the handle he needed on Vandien. And Vandien had lain down on the cot to ponder his situation. He must have dozed off.


  And awakened here. Some kind of a loft, with a peaked ceiling and plank floor. No windows, but light leaking in between the boards. Terrible light for practicing. Tip to x again, blade bowed. Draw back. So they had moved him while he slept. That was all. Yes. Come in, picked him up, dragged him about, and left him here. He, who usually slept light as a cat, had slumbered through it all. Certainly. He lunged again, scored his mark perfectly. He would not be distracted.

  He drew back, eyed the distance, tried a balestra. A quick spring from the balls of both feet carried him forward a short distance before he immediately launched into his lunge. It was a distance closing maneuver. The tip of his rapier took the mark squarely as he extended his body to its full reach. But as the small jolt of impact reached his hand, his hilt jumped free of his fingers. A numbing cold seemed to streak up his arm, and he watched, incredulous, as his weapon clattered to the floor. He cradled his chilled arm against his belly, rubbing his fingers up and down the raised red welt that marked the passage of Kellich's blade. He bit his lower lip slightly, anticipating pain as he prodded the length of the injury.

  Nothing. No feeling at all. He explored his hand, wondering if the hilt had somehow jarred against bone. He found no bruise. There was little sensation at all. He rubbed his arm gently, and with a sudden tingling like ants running over his flesh, it came back to life. Almost. There was still a cold along the bone, a terrible old ache. He was stooping to pickup his rapier when the trap door in the floor of the loft opened behind him. He spun to face it, his blade already challenging the intruder.

  The tray emerged first, landed, and was pushed scrapingly along the floor. Willow followed it up, clambering awkwardly over the lip of the door. She glanced at Vandien, then stood and dropped the door into place behind her. Then she turned back to him and stared at him, waiting challengingly. He neither moved nor spoke. 'That's your food,' she said at last, pointing to the tray.

  'And you came up here to tell me that. In case I might not guess it.'

  She reddened, ran a hand through her spiky red hair. 'I came up here to make sure you fully understand the terms of our agreement.'

  'What is there to misunderstand? I kill the Duke. I die. Ki lives.' He kept his voice flat, cold.

  'That's right.' Willow tried to copy his tone, failed.

  'I do have one question. Suppose I refuse, or fail. Who gets to kill Ki?'

  The girl looked suddenly rattled. 'That... that hasn't been discussed. If you do as we say, it never will be.'

  'I just wondered. I thought that, as you had laid out this plan, you'd be the one to implement it. It obviously wasn't Lacey's doing. In fact, he didn't look pleased about it at all. But you had ... persuaded Kellich's friends to help you with it, so what could he say? Turn against you and risk splitting his rebellion into factions? Besides, I know how much you hate both of us, after we treated you so badly, our deliberate cruelty to you and all. And I know how dearly you love this cause. I thought perhaps you'd claim the honor of killing Ki. By the way, how do you plan to do it? If I fail or refuse, I mean? Knife? Strangulation? Slow starvation?' He nudged the tray with his foot. 'Poison?'

  'You're disgusting.' Her face was white, but she spoke without stirring.

  'No. Your plan is disgusting. You're asking me to murder a man I've never seen before, by treachery, and lose my own life in the process. And that's if everything goes right for us. If it doesn't, I die anyway, and you cold-bloodedly murder my friend.'

  'The Duke is a tyrant,' Willow flared back. A coldhearted beast! No method of death is too cruel for him, no treachery too underhanded. Our land groans under his cruelty, our farmers suffer and their children shiver in ...'

  'The harsh rains of the Windsingers. Is that something you have to memorize to join this club? Willow, all winter rain is cold down the back. Neither tyrants nor weather should be taken so personally. If it rains, build a shelter and get out of it. And if you are tyrannized, band together and refuse the tyranny. A consortium of lesser nobles, backed by landowners and merchants ...'

  'Would take too long! We must act now!'

  'This land will be awash in blood, then. You have no plans after you kill the Duke. At the end of it, you will only discover that the most dull Brurjan can be a worse tyrant than the most dedicatedly depraved Human.'

  'That's how you see it. After all, what do you care? You hitch up the horses and move on; you have no ideals, no dreams of freedom ...'

  'No wish to assassinate anyone. It's not my quarrel, Willow. Nor yours. You aren't in love with the cause, with this rebellion. You were in love with Kellich, and willing to aid the cause to please him. You don't have a stake in this any more than I do. You could walk away from this right now. Knock out the guard downstairs, help me find Ki and free her and we'll go across the border and be gone. Walk away from this whole thing.'

  For an instant he thought he had carried her. Her eyes went wide and empty, as if visualizing the unwinding road that led to better places. But then her brows drew down in a frown. 'You expect me to be a traitor to all Kellich believed in?' she demanded angrily.

  'Why not?' Vandien exploded. 'He betrayed everything you believed in! You believed in love, and marriage and children. Life. Kellich believed only in death.' His voice became harsh. 'He wanted to be the glorious hero, not the contented husband. You were just a prop in his pageant, Willow. The beautiful lover left behind to mourn the fallen patriot. To become a symbol of the revolution. And damn you, you're playing it out! He didn't have the courage to live for you, Willow. All he was looking for was an excuse to die!'

  Halfway through his words, he regretted them, but they spilled out anyway. Her face went harder and colder, her mismatched eyes becoming the colors of glacier ice. And you gave him that excuse, didn't you? You made sure of it for him.'

  Cold jolted through him, and he didn't know if it came from his arm or her eyes. He transferred his rapier to his other hand, cradled his injured arm against him. She watched him coldly. And in her eyes ... what? Satisfaction? Before her eyes went empty again. A dreadful suspicion grew in his mind.

  'You promised me proof that Ki is all right. I want to see her.'

  'No.' For the first time he pinned down the uneasiness that had unnerved her. Whenever Ki's name came up, she sidestepped like a nervous filly.

  'Why not?'

  She hesitated too long. 'We've decided it wouldn't be wise. Bringing her here would attract too much attention. We can't spare the men to do it, and ...'

  None of it sounded right. His mind made the leap. 'You've already done it, haven't you?' His throat closed up on him suddenly. He felt a light-headedness that made him sway. 'She's dead, isn't she?' Of course they'd already killed her. It made more sense. Tidier. Smarter. And soon he'd be dead, and the whole thing neatly wound up.

  'No. No, she's fine, and she will be as long as you continue to do as we say.' Willow spoke very rapidly. 'But you can't see her just now. It's my decision, really. I've seen you two together. She draws strength from you, and would become more difficult to handle. We might have to hurt her. And you'd do any stupid thing for the sake of protecting her.'

  'Like killing a Duke,' he said. His voice sounded distant. He could feel his heart beating in his chest. He knew his face had gone white.

  'Eat.' Her voice was expressionless, but her eyes betrayed some secret panic of her own. 'You should eat that food right away.' She crouched by the trap door, tapped on it. And practice. You'll have to take my word that Ki is alive now. If you want Ki to still be alive tomorrow night, you'd better be at your best.'

  'I'm not hungry.' His words were an empty reflex. Ki was dead. He could read it in Willow's hasty effort to leave, the way she resisted any further talk with him. Ki was dead already. His heartbeat thundered in his ears. Ki was dead, and ... the last piece suddenly slipped into place. He'd been a fool. The cold emptiness that flooded his heart set off a glaring white light in his mind, mercilessly illuminating everything he had hidden from himself. The cold-blooded logic
of their plan was suddenly revealed to him. Very tidy. No loose ends.

  'Eat it anyway.' She sounded worried.

  'I don't like the flavor.' He watched her face carefully as he added, 'Every damn thing sent up here tastes the same, same herb or spice in the bread, the tea, the stew.'

  There it was, the tiny widening of her eyes. Her control of her face was good, but too late. 'It's a strengthening herb, well known in this part of the world. I'm surprised you don't know of it. We're trying to give you every advantage we can.'

  He snorted, kept the suspicion from his voice. 'Herb lore. Something to bemuse old women after their children have grown up. Three-fourths of it doesn't do what they say, anyway.'

  The trap door in the floor heaved upward, the closed face of the guard appearing briefly. He glared at the bared rapier in Vandien's hand, then drew back to allow Willow to descend.

  'What's it called?' he asked as she reached a leg down for the ladder.

  'What?'

  'The strengthening herb. What's it called?'

  'Oh.' She paused - overlong, it seemed to him. 'Thwartspite.'

  His heart sank, his belly went cold. But he kept his voice even. 'Think about what I said,' he called after her, with little hope that she would, knowing it could make no difference anyway. All things were fixed now, lashed into their courses.

  'No. You think about what I said.' Her voice floated back to him. 'Festival starts tomorrow. The first matches will be just after noon.'

  He waited until the trap door was shut completely, heard the bolts securing it shot home. Then he allowed himself to sink slowly to the floor, still cradling his arm against himself. Not that it hurt. It felt fine, now.

  'Bloodfriend,' Ki had said, nudging the small, blueflowered plant with the toe of her boot. 'Cleans poisons from the system, some say.' She had stooped to pinch off a handful of the small flowers, shaking her head. 'Doesn't really. But it makes a sick animal feel healthy and strong, so it shows well enough to sell. Makes a good poultice for an infection is all I use it for. Thwartspite, I've heard it called, too.' He sat very still on the attic floor, remembering the angle of her jaw as she had looked up at him, the way her long hair swung forward of her shoulders, the easy way she flowed up from the ground to stand.