Sky of Swords

by Dave Duncan

  Malinda smote him with an even better glare. “Because.”

  Intrepid said, “Hector and I will chaperone you.”

  “No you won’t! If the court harpies hear about this outing, they’ll have quite enough to feed on without that. Dian can’t lie to the inquisitors and you can.”

  “Can we? I didn’t know that.” Intrepid turned to Chandos, who had a reputation among the Blades as an intellectual. (Courtney would say he must have been caught reading a book once at Ironhall.)

  Chandos shrugged. “Maybe. I probably could if my ward was in danger. It would be my conjurement against theirs, though, and the inquisitors’ is pretty strong.”

  “I am not your ward,” Malinda said, “and Dian is not going to let me out of her sight while you lechers are around.”

  With that they all had to be content.

  But it was spring.

  Tired and happy, they returned to the palace at twilight, with Eagle riding Thunderbolt and Malinda demurely sidesaddle on his horse. They went right to the stables. The hands were all at their evening meal.

  It was stupid, it was crazy, it was madness…

  It was spring.

  Malinda cornered Eagle in a tack room, closing the door behind her. When he tried to escape she blocked him.

  He dropped his normal air of banter and backed away. “Please, my lady!”

  “It’s been a wonderful, marvelous day. It needs a kiss to complete it.”

  “You want to get me beheaded?”

  “I won’t tell—if you do it, that is. If you won’t, then I will scream that you tried to rape me at least a dozen times in the hills.”

  He muttered angrily, grabbed her shoulders, pecked her cheek, then tried to get past her.

  She clung. “A real kiss!”

  “That was a real kiss! Please!”

  “No it wasn’t. Show me how you kiss Iris.”

  “Your Grace! You are not that sort of girl!”

  “Pretend I am and kiss me. One real, lingering kiss. Show me.”

  “Death and fire!” he muttered.

  She was almost as tall as he was, but his strength astonished her. She had not expected to be crushed so tight, or the pressure of his mouth on hers, or the way his tongue prized her lips apart…or the sudden flare of lantern light as the door creaked open. They sprang apart. She screamed. Eagle moaned.

  There were two of them there, barely more than faces in the dark because of their black inquisitor’s robes and birettas. One of them was Secretary Kromman. Another man pushed his way between them—Sir Dominic, who was Acting Commander during Bandit’s absence. His always-fair face shone like chalk in the gloom. For what seemed an hour, nobody spoke. Horses clumped hooves and crunched hay out in the stalls. Malinda felt her world collapsing around her. She could not imagine what her father was going to say. Spirits knew what she had done to Eagle.

  “It was entirely my fault, Sir Dominic. I ordered him—”

  “Give me your sword, guardsman. You are confined to quarters.”

  Eagle drew his sword and handed it over in a silence that hurt like a scream of pain.

  Kromman said, “Sir Dominic and I will escort you to your apartment, Your Highness.”

  “I don’t take orders from you!” she yelled. How could she have been such a fool?

  “Then I must refer the matter to the Lord Chancellor,” the nasty little toad sneered. “I trust you recognize his authority in the absence of His Majesty?”

  Roland! Of course this must be all Lord Roland’s doing. When he had been Commander Durendal, he’d spied on her all the time, so that she had only had to say one kind word to a Blade and he would be snatched away from her service and assigned elsewhere. Now Roland had trapped her.

  “Stand aside!” she roared and elbowed her way out of the tack room.

  She had barely bathed before a page delivered a note from Chancery: Lord Roland begged the favor of a brief audience concerning the marriage negotiations.

  He was coming to gloat!

  She was tempted to refuse on the grounds that the hour was inappropriate, but that would feel like cowardice; her pride would not allow it. She replied that she would be honored to receive his lordship. She did so in her presence chamber, which in Nocare was spacious. She brought Wains, Crystal, and Arabel for support, but Lord Roland came alone. Even in his scarlet chancellor’s robes and gold chain of office, he still moved as gracefully as a fencer, floating across the floor, bowing low, kissing her fingers. His dark eyes revealed none of the triumph he must be feeling.

  “I most humbly beg Your Grace’s pardon for intruding so close to the dinner hour.”

  “My time is always at your lordship’s disposal.”

  He produced a paper. “A brief list of names here. If Your Highness would be so kind…” His minuscule smile to her companions was enough to convey the message that this matter was so enormously confidential that they should all withdraw at once to the far end of the hall, which they did, instantly, and without a single word from her. The mere name of Lord Roland was enough to make them all run in circles like rabbits—idiots!

  The paper, when she unfolded it, was totally blank.

  “I have given strict orders,” Lord Roland said softly, “that none of the persons involved is to mention the incident to anyone whatsoever, not even Grand Inquisitor. I should much prefer that it remain that way, but Kromman is a worm.”

  She blinked in astonishment, and then her fury redoubled. If the Secretary was a worm, what did that make the worm’s master?

  “He revels in creating trouble, so your father will certainly hear of the matter when he returns. Until that time, nothing must change. Sir Eagle will be allowed to fulfill his duties as if nothing at all happened, and I most strongly urge, my lady, that you do the same. Just be sure that you are properly accompanied at every moment.”

  His hypocrisy was unbelievable! Not trusting herself to speak, she thrust the paper back at him.

  He took it and bowed. “I shall do my best to persuade your honored father to overlook the incident. Most important of all, Your Grace, I pray you not to speak with any of the people involved.” He retreated a pace and raised his voice. “I shall arrange for the artist to wait upon Your Grace’s matron companion to arrange a sitting at Your Grace’s convenience.”

  Bowing again, Lord Roland withdrew. He paused at the door for a word with her companions, and they all twittered like sparrows.

  Slimy, sneaky, despicable rodent!

  Whatever orders Lord Roland claimed to have given, the news was all over the palace within an hour. Crystal went whimpering to bed with a headache. Arabel tried to berate Malinda as if she were still a child. Dian called her a witless numbskull. Even Lady Wains caught the prevailing mood and wept in bewildered misery. Worst of all were the Blades. When she went for her regular evening visit with Amby, Dominic himself was there to lead her escort, but neither he nor any of the others would speak to her. They stared right through her in silence. There was no sign of Sir Eagle.

  Rumors grew faster than toadstools. By morning she had been discovered naked in the straw with at least one Blade and probably several. Just like Queen Sian, of course…Her case was not at all like Queen Sian’s, but she could not fight faceless lies. To run through the palace shouting, “It was only one kiss!” would do no good at all.

  She knew that her only hope—a very faint one—was to get to her father before Roland did. Alas, the King returned late at night, and the first she knew of it was when the Healer General himself arrived the following morning to inform her that she was running a slight fever and needed bed rest. The mythical ailment required strict quarantine, so all her maids and ladies and servants were removed and replaced by grimfaced nurses. She was under house arrest.

  Her room contained a bed, a few pieces of furniture, and a garderobe, but nothing to read and no one to help her with her hair or the devilishly inaccessible laces on her clothes.

  The next day, having been granted t
ime to meditate upon her failings, she had to submit to examination by a team of healers and midwives, whose only concern was to establish whether she was still a virgin. She had not yet recovered her temper after that degradation when she was called out to her own presence chamber to face a panel of inquisitors, two men and one woman. They had the audacity to sit behind a table and expect her to stand in front of it. When she protested, they showed her their warrant with the royal seal. If she tried to lie to them, or refused to answer any question they cared to ask her—fully and to their satisfaction—they were commanded to have her removed to the Bastion. The implication was that it contained equipment capable of making her answer.

  One kiss!

  So she stood and fumed before their glassy eyes and answered a thousand questions: impertinent, personal, irrelevant, and humiliating. How many men had she kissed? How many men had touched her breasts? Had she ever fondled a man’s groin, either inside or outside his breeches? They asked about things that had never even occurred to her. “Why should I want to do that?” she demanded more than once, and each time the fish-eyed horrors replied that she must answer the question. The kiss was not the real problem, though. Did she recall the King’s Majesty forbidding her to ride a horse astride? How many times had His Grace told her this and when? How many times had she deliberately defied that royal command and when? How many other royal orders or wishes had she flouted? Was she aware that this was treason? Who else had known she was disobeying? And so on and on. If she shaded the truth by even a hairsbreadth, they accused her of lying. The kiss did not matter.

  The next day the whole process was repeated, with a new team of doctors and midwives, a new team of inquisitors.

  On the third day she rebelled. She hurled her dinner tray out the window and announced she would starve to death before she would answer one more question. She fully expected to be carted off in chains, but instead they locked her in and left her alone.

  7

  War, like love, should never be made in public.

  BARON LEANDRE

  By the second day of her fast, it took every scrap of willpower she possessed to continue throwing the trays out the window, the savory odor of roast swan being undoubtedly the cruelest torment ever invented. On the brighter side, she noted that the rose garden below was now closed off, but that spectators gathered behind the barricades at mealtimes. The word was definitely out, and dear Father would not like that.

  She was so shaky by the third day that she needed several hours to dress herself, but dress she did—if she must be dragged off to the Bastion, it would not be in her nightgown. Once dressed, though, she just lay on the bed and did nothing, other than think about food. And once in a while think of poor Eagle, whom she had so terribly wronged, or Aunt Agnes, who had borne a child in the Bastion and been stripped of all her royal titles.

  The rattle of the bolt was her only warning. She heaved herself up as the door opened. Commander Bandit looked in, glanced around without meeting her eyes, and then withdrew. She had just time to put her feet on the floor before Ambrose’s bulk filled the entrance. The room swam giddily. She dropped to her knees, more heavily than she’d intended.

  The door thumped shut. Someone else had entered, but she kept her eyes on the King’s great calves, bulging his white silk hose into meal sacks.

  After a while he said, “We will hear your appeal for mercy now.”

  “I am truly sorry to have caused Your Majesty distress.”

  “Hrrumph! That is not adequate, not nearly adequate.”

  “I kissed a boy. I confess that it was forward of me, but the difference in our ranks prevented him from making the first move. He obeyed my command reluctantly—as your spies must have told you—and neither of us had any intention of letting the matter—”

  “Wanton! Here I am negotiating with the kings and princes of half Eurania to find a suitable match for you, and I discover I may be peddling spoiled goods!”

  Then she did not care any more. He had made his decision. Whatever it was, nothing she could say would change it. “That is not true, as your troupe of performing seals must have reported.”

  “You defied my express orders about riding sidesaddle!”

  “Only when sidesaddle would have been suicidally dangerous.”

  He growled low in his throat. “I have told you before that you are a woman, not a Yeoman Lancer. Get up!”

  She rose and waited, hands clasped, eyes downcast. His belly was a great mountain of cloth of gold; his pudding fists rested on his hips. At the extreme edge of her vision were his eyes, glittering in a face like a bucket of butter. The other visitor, the witness to her shame, was a woman in a dark gown. Malinda could make out no further details, but the King turned to her.

  “Princess, your niece Malinda.”

  Shock! Malinda looked full at the woman. She was ample, clad in black, much like a sack of roots, leaning on a cane she clutched in a weathered claw hand. Her hat was years out of date, with unsightly wisps of white hair showing under it; her gown was shabby and ill-fitting; her complexion dark and earthy, as if she had not washed her face in years; her nose protruded as an ugly blob amid the wrinkles.

  “Well?” the King barked. “Greet your aunt, child!”

  Had she been stripped of her titles? A reigning monarch’s daughters should take precedence over his sisters. Malinda sank in a curtsey, which sufficed to conceal her confusion for a moment. Before she rose she had her features under control. “I am delighted to meet Your Highness at last!”

  “Humph!” said Princess Agnes, sounding very much like her brother. “Well, that won’t last long!”

  The King chuckled. What had he cooked up with this ugly hag? “Her Royal Highness Princess Agnes.”

  Malinda bobbed a slighter curtsey. “I beg Your Royal Highness’s pardon.” There was hope yet. If Auntie had been elevated so high, it was so she would outrank a mere Highness, and thus Malinda was a princess still.

  “Agnes has graciously agreed to act as your governess,” Ambrose announced, “until we get you safely married off. Obviously I kept you on too slack a rein, but that will now cease. Need I say more?”

  “I understand, sire.”

  “Then I’ll leave you two to get to know each other. There will be a state dinner tomorrow, welcoming my sister back to court, and I expect you to behave yourself perfectly—then and in future. Know that you escaped the dungeons by the skin of your teeth.”

  Pompous fat oaf! The ladies curtseyed as he turned his back, although Agnes’s move was barely more than a nod. As soon as the door closed, she hobbled stiffly to the nearest chair, thumping her cane all the way. She sat down as if every joint hurt.

  Courtney’s mother! They were roughly the same rotund shape, but she was taller, as big as Arabel. And this sour old crone was to be Malinda’s jailer from now on? Her royal honors had been restored as her reward, and could doubtless be un-restored very quickly if she let her niece get away with anything at all. King Ambrose must think he was being very clever.

  “Congratulations!”

  Princess Agnes continued to fuss with her skirts for a moment before she acknowledged the comment with a frown. “And what is that supposed to mean?”

  Chuckling, Malinda strode over to the window to inspect the weather. The empty ache in her insides had been swept away by excitement and had not yet returned.

  “Exactly what it says. Whatever happened between you and my grandfather, your return to court is at least nineteen years too late. I am delighted to see justice done at last, and happy to have been the means, even if my part was unintentional.” She swept across to the chair and pecked the old woman’s cheek. “Welcome!”

  Her kiss was rewarded with a scowl that the old tyrant himself might have admired. “You needn’t try your charms on me, young miss! I won’t fall for sly tricks. From now on you won’t be out of my sight for one minute. There’ll be no more romping in the hay with Blades, I promise you!”

  “Aunt—You don
’t mind my calling you ‘aunt,’ do you? I swear I have not romped in hay since I was about eight. I kissed a young man in a tack room, and that is as wicked as I have ever been or want to be. Yes, I went riding astride, but where’s the harm in that? You have no need to treat me like a willful child.”

  “We’ll see about that! ‘Very tight rein,’ your father says!” The crone settled her wrinkles into an expression of crabby satisfaction.

  Malinda grinned long enough to bring back the scowl. “My father does not understand women and never did! ‘Royal Highness?’ You drove a hard bargain, I’m glad to see! Courtney must be pleased?”

  “Courtney? Tenth Baron Leandre, now Prince Courtney, shortly to become first Duke of Mayshire?” Agnes bared yellowed stumps of teeth. “Oh, they made a mess of him, didn’t they! His father would have wept with shame to have fathered that poltroon!” Her teeth clicked shut; she had a mouth like a rattrap.

  “But…I don’t understand!”

  “You think your father’s hard on you, child? You don’t know what the word means. Mine took my baby from me. Snipped him loose and carried him away before I ever set eyes on him. They reared him at court. For his own good, they said. Wanted to keep an eye on him, they said, but they were holding him hostage so I would do as I was told. So I did. I behaved myself, just for his sake, moldering away in the ruins of a castle; and now I find they turned him into that stool bucket! Courtney? Don’t talk to me of Courtney!”

  Compared to that, Ambrose would not be breaking the family mold if he did marry his daughter off to the leader of the Wylder rebels. After a moment, Malinda tried again. “Have you met little Amby, yet? Your nephew?”

  “Why should I want to? One smelly brat is much like another.”

  She was a sour, embittered, thoroughly untrustworthy old crone. But she was also a woman who had been treated most ill by her father and brother. From the look of her garments she had been poor; from the look of her hands she might even have dug her own roots or scrubbed her own floors. Victory should taste very sweet after a lifetime in exile, and yet court must seem intimidating now, even to a lioness tough enough to have wrung a dukedom out of Bullyboy Ambrose.