A Sorcerer and a Gentleman

by Elizabeth Willey

  “I see,” Dewar said, also smiling. Parents, guardians, friends, lover—forces that acted on other people, but not on sorcerers. It was an engaging change from his usual work. He envisioned Luneté’s story as spheres circling spheres, colliding at times.

  “I did not know he was Prince Sebastiano’s son at first.”

  Another sphere, its orbit tangent. “I daresay he’s kept that very quiet. If the Emperor had known of such a potential troublemaker, he’d have had his throat cut.”

  “Oh,” Luneté said, and she paused before continuing her tale. “My twenty-fifth birthday is four weeks away. Sarsemar, for reasons of his own which I cannot fathom, recently decided to use force to make me consent to the marriage after all. If I marry as a minor, you see—”

  “Your assets pass to your husband. Lys.” Dewar nodded. Territory was something of importance to everyone, even here in Pheyarcet where there was only one ruler over the Well. If Luneté was Lys, then she must act for Lys first, always.

  “And if I marry as an adult Lys remains mine. Yes. I couldn’t let that happen to Lys. I am the last of Lys blood; only the stones have been here longer. My great-grandfather was made a knight by King Panurgus in the War when he conquered Proteus and seized the sacred Well from Noroison. Lys is part of me; I belong here. It would be a betrayal of the very soil to let Ocher or another rule here while I yet live.” Luneté straightened slightly. Her voice rang with pride.

  Dewar smiled. “So you ensured this did not happen.”

  Luneté nodded tautly. “Ottaviano rescued me and we fled Sarsemar. That was when we met you. We contracted our betrothal before we left. Ocher knows about that, because Otto made the captain of the guard in the place where I was held sign the agreement as a witness. Now all we have to do is hold Ocher back until we are wed.”

  “A pretty tale, madame. I presume you have selected for the wedding the most auspicious day you could as closely as possible following your twenty-fifth birthday,” Dewar said. The system would stabilize, he thought, around this new twin planet, Luneté and Ottaviano, and all would go on, with them and around them, comfortable and foreordained.

  She relaxed, smiling back at his smile and humorous tone. “But of course.”

  “How delightful. So Ocher, if he comes to war, shall be attempting to seize your person, or, failing that, to kill Ottaviano.”

  “Or to keep us apart on that day. Anyone could guess which day we chose; it was the best one in the calendar for a month, Otto said. I wished to petition the Crown to remove Sarsemar from his position as my guardian for the balance of my minority, but Otto thinks that such a petition would be refused. It might even end with Sarsemar being given me by the Emperor, and then Lys would no longer be mine but his, my family’s blood erased by his. Besides, by the time a messenger rode to the Emperor in Landuc and returned, I would be of age—so we may as well do as we will. I know it is right.”

  Dewar began to ask why, and stopped. “And Lys’s army remains yours,” he said softly. Even in Noroison, the men of Lys were famed for their fighting skill and spirit. He had forgotten an element in his mental model: Ascolet, Ottaviano’s Ascolet, Ottaviano’s territory. As Luneté sought to preserve Lys, so must Otto burn to hold Ascolet—but Ascolet had been taken from him by the Crown. Dewar’s pang of recognition and sympathy surprised him. It was an old story in Phesaotois, and an old story here in Pheyarcet too; in the end, everything came down to land, and the Source.

  “Yes. If Sarsemar promised additional men to the Emperor, the Emperor would be sure to give me to him.”

  “While Otto will use them against Landuc.”

  “We haven’t agreed on that yet. It depends on what Sarsemar does. I will not leave Lys vulnerable.”

  “Wise of you.” Luneté’s explanation bridged wide gaps in the gossip Dewar had collected this morning. The Emperor would be very annoyed to find the armies of Lys suddenly turned against him on behalf of Ascolet—if that was what Luneté intended. If Ottaviano refused them, he was a fool, and Otto did not seem a fool. “The Empress, you think,” he said after a moment, “takes an interest in you.”

  “I have never met her; I have never been to Court. But Mother knew her. People here said, when Baron Ocher was refused me when I was sixteen, that the Empress must have done it.”

  “The Baron might have had tacit Imperial approval for his recent plan to marry you against your will, then,” Dewar remarked, and poured more wine for both of them. “If the Emperor desires Lys under Sarsemar but did not wish to arrange it openly, he might have let Ocher know that this would be overlooked.”

  “Ye-es,” agreed Luneté slowly. “I suppose he might.”

  “You can count on it not being as simple as it looks, when monarchy is involved,” Dewar said.

  “May I ask, Dewar, why you take an interest in Lys suddenly yourself,” Luneté said. “There is a saying about sorcerers and simplicity.”

  “I’ve heard it,” said Dewar. “I am curious.”

  “Curious?” she said, when he did not elaborate.

  “Yes. Or perhaps I should say, I was curious. Now I am interested.”

  “Interested?”

  “I find Ottaviano’s case against the Crown compelling,” said Dewar. “I would like to see him succeed in it.”

  “You would?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I have every sympathy for his undertaking. I understand that people in areas like this would regard a sorcerer’s attention as more a threat than a possible benefit, but mine is benevolent.”

  “Benevolent,” repeated Luneté.

  Dewar nodded, holding her eyes with his. She had wide, bright brown eyes with straight, barely-curved brows over them; they dropped from his suddenly and a wash of color went over her cheeks.

  “However,” Dewar went on, “it is very difficult to demonstrate mere goodwill.”

  “You helped us yesterday,” Luneté said, aligning her silverware precisely. “For no reason.” She glanced at him from under her lashes.

  “That made Ottaviano less than happy,” Dewar said, “and more than suspicious.”

  “He is worried,” Luneté said softly.

  “You are too.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “If an occasion arises,” he said, “in which I might be of assistance to either of you, it would give me great pleasure to grant any aid in my power. And lest you concern yourself over with what fee I might burden you in return, hear this: I do not sell my sorcery.”

  Luneté looked up at him, still high-colored, and said, “You are not anything like a sorcerer, or not like the ones I have heard of.”

  “Of what sorcerers have you heard?” Dewar asked. The general ignorance of the Art in Landuc was appalling.

  “Oh, Prince Prospero, let’s see, Esclados the Red, Lady Oriana of the Glass Castle, the Spider King, Neyphile, Foul Acrasia—”

  “I see. An unsavory collection.” Dewar sipped his wine. “The scorn heaped on the Art here is deserved, if those are its most noteworthy practitioners.” They were of undistinguished repute in Noroison. Lady Oriana was the only one worthy of serious thought, and she had been but a minor sorceress before supporting Panurgus and leaving Phesaotois—and had not, after all the travails of exile, become his consort. “I am of a more retiring and scholarly bent than any of them, having deliberately cultivated a certain … distance between myself and my peers.”

  “I’m afraid it’s not very usual to even meet a sorcerer.”

  Dewar smiled crookedly. “If one were wise, one would not wish for such a meeting. It is usually dangerous, or at least unhealthful.”

  “But I am glad to have had the opportunity.” Luneté smiled at him again. “How did you happen to be travelling that way?”

  Dewar selected a pale gold-white pear from the tray of fruit—last fall’s, but still good—and peeled it carefully as he spoke. “I am looking for something of interest to me.” His head was tipped back and he addressed the fruit through half-closed eyes.
/>   Luneté watched him peeling the pear with undue attention. “A known thing? Or just something to amuse you?”

  “I know its characteristics; I do not know precisely where it is to be found.”

  “Oh,” Luneté said. “Is it rude to ask such a question?”

  Dewar’s left brow quirked. “It is not sorcerous etiquette to ask such a question other than to annoy the questioned party. However, you asked without intention of offense, and so I answered. Be warned I’ll say no more of it.”

  “I beg your pardon—”

  “Granted already.” And he smiled at her, that broad, brilliant smile which through some curious trick of perception Luneté felt at the base of her spine.

  Luneté smiled and blushed a little again. “So you will be leaving soon.”

  “I have no fixed itinerary,” Dewar said. “If you are uncomfortable with my presence in your house or your demesne, I shall not impose a moment longer on your kindness—”

  “I didn’t mean that at all,” Luneté interrupted him, leaning forward. “No, no. You are welcome as long as you care to stay, and I say so sincerely.”

  “I still don’t know,” replied Dewar, smiling merrily, with such a mischievous, teasing look that Luneté laughed outright.

  10

  ARIEL HAD GATHERED A COLLECTION OF fallen leaves, bright-colored and dark, all different, and whirled them up and down in a column, rattling them on the ground as they struck, then spiralling them up again in a circle. There were wild winds and gusts about, too, swooping up drifting leaves and grasses and blowing them against the stone and wooden walls of the buildings clustered at the bank of the river opposite Prospero’s island. Ariel had cleared the weather for Prospero last night, and the morning was a hard, cold bright one, the mud stiffened with frost, the grasses and stubble bleached into winter. The hard ground was good for men to walk on, Prospero had said. The cold air kept them moving briskly. When Prospero commanded, later, Ariel would move them briskly in their ships.

  The men who must travel that day were arranged in neat square patterns over the tide-bared beaches a few miles from Ariel’s sporting-place, at the mouth of the river. Carrying their weapons and packs, they had marched there in rows and columns in the infant hours of the day and had begun embarking there, row by row, orderly and in good time, climbing into boats, shoving them off the beach, and rowing out to their moored ships through the calm sea, a forest of masts bobbing offshore now with faces turned shoreward below the rigging. Another crowd stood apart from the array of men, a compact mass of women, a few men, and children. They were quiet; there were no cheers, nor marching music, nor banners nor parting shouts, a silence which bothered Prospero. An army should set forth in good heart, he thought, should bear with it the confidence of its home, and these gloomy faces were no meet farewell.

  Prospero stood apart from both these groups, watching the embarkation with one eye, the other on his daughter and his Seneschal before him.

  “I am loth to leave thee, Scudamor,” said Prospero, “yet must I, and think not that ’tis for any lack in thee; rather for thy strengths that will guide the folk here in the work I must leave, unfinished, in thy charge.” Prospero had left behind a handful of adult men. The oldest of the boy-children, grown now and sprouting beard-fuzz, were in the army; the others stayed, with the women and girls, to carry forward (slowly, Prospero knew) the project of the city walls under Scudamor’s direction.

  “Master, I shall not fail you.”

  “Do not. I know thy ability; let not thy will fall short of it.” He looked piercingly at Scudamor, who was square-bodied and dark-bearded, dignified in loose belted robes of blue-grey wool and an undyed grey woollen cloak. Satisfied, Prospero glanced over the handful of others who hovered some few paces away and fixed on Freia.

  Her oppressed look and silence angered him; she had infected many of the women, and some of the men, with her worries about his enterprise before he commanded her hold her tongue, but the damage had been done and doubt sown among them where only confidence had flourished before. Now she stood like a road-pillar, wrapped in a stained old cloak and a fraying shawl.

  “Freia.”

  She tore her gaze from the boats and ships and said, nearly whispering, “Don’t go, Papa.”

  He made a sign to her, to follow him apart from the others, and they walked over the loose sand to a serpentine, silvery trunk of driftwood. “Thou knowest better than to oppose my will, daughter,” he told her, looking down into her eyes.

  Freia stared up at him an instant only, then turned her face down, away. She nodded.

  “Do not abandon these folk, whom I leave in thy care. Ill to them shall be ill for thee.”

  “I don’t want …”

  “What now?” he demanded sharply.

  “Papa, please don’t go. I cannot imagine you not here. It’s so far away. What if you cannot come back?” Freia looked up at him again, so pleading, so sad, that Prospero was softened: he knew her devotion to him was bone-deep, blood-strong, despite her youthful rebellions and tempers. This time, he left her behind, for an indefinite time, and she was frightened.

  “How now, Puss. I must go, and I shall go.” Prospero squeezed her shoulder. “Hast thou not coursed unmarked, unseen wildernesses, faced beasts never met by man before, brought thy gryphon to heel o’ thy will and heart alone? This time must thou be brave enough to stand thy ground: to stay here. Thou’rt strong in body, strong in mind, too strong to tremble at my leaving thee for a time. I have gone away before, and returned: and so shall it happen again.”

  “When? How long?”

  “I do not know,” he said, “but if my plans fall out as I intend, ere two winters come again to Argylle. But do not reckon overmuch on that, Freia: for the Well is disturbed and all runs warped and unruly from it, so that time is crooked. When I’ve claimed the Orb for mine, there’ll be urgent tasks to complete and vows to fulfill.”

  “Will you not let me go with you? Please, Papa. I will bring Trixie. I will help you if you want me to. She’s very fierce; she can fight for you. And I can help, can’t I?”

  “No,” he said. “No. I command thee, Freia, to stay here. Do not seek to follow me, do not try to send thy gryphon after me.”

  “I found her for you, Papa …” Freia’s voice failed her. Her disappointment and frustration brought tears to her eyes. “I kept her especially for your war!”

  “I thank thee. It was most generously done. But a dozen gryphons, fierce though they seem to thee, will not make Landuc quail. ’Twill take more familiar threats. I have my plans already, and no call for gryphons.” He veiled his amusement; truly, it touched his heart that she had gone to such labors for him. “And while I am gone, do thou attend to the folk here, be good, be a Lady as I have taught thee. Promise me.”

  Too dispirited to argue, Freia said, “I will, Papa. —Are you going to bring her here, Lady Miranda?”

  “Mayhap. ’Tis early for such plans. I’ll not tempt Fortune by such speculation.” Prospero turned away, watched a group of soldiers clambering into a rowboat and pushing off.

  “Papa.” Freia put her hand on his arm.

  He looked at her; her face had changed from uncertain child to watchful woman, as sometimes happened of late. She was maturing at last, pushed out of long childhood by the pressure of the times, Prospero thought. When he returned, he must see about settling her. There were men enough willing here, but he harbored better plans for her. “Puss.”

  “My friend Cledie— I told her about Miranda, and she wondered, we wondered, if you brought her here, would she not miss her family?”

  Prospero had never yet met Freia’s friend Cledie, who was one of the folk who had wandered into the forest in the first few days after the transformation. Freia mentioned her name only occasionally. “There’s but her father left her, Freia, if he lives yet.”

  “Then if you brought her family, her father then, also, you would not need to go away to Landuc again, would you?” Freia’s
head was cocked to one side, her eyes missing no nuance of his expression.

  Startled, Prospero stared at her, at once annoyed and charmed. “Thou’rt transparent yet in thy persuasions, little diplomat,” he said, with a rush of tenderness. He bent and folded her in his arms, then lifted her, a strong tight embrace: she was dear to him, he knew it in his heart. “And I shall not promise thee anything of the sort, but I will not wed without thee knowing of’t, I do promise that.”

  Freia sighed when he put her down, resigned. She had not expected any argument to turn aside Prospero’s plans, but she had wanted to try, hoping (she knew) vainly for a miracle.

  Prospero watched his men embark. Freia stood beside him, her hands tucked through his arm, hugging it. When the time came for him to go, climbing into the last boat, she kissed him on both cheeks and was kissed, without tears; as brave, Freia thought, as Lady Miranda could ever have been.

  The Emperor of Landuc waited to receive a guest with whom he had had, in all the time of his reign, no previous dealings, and with whom he would have preferred to have none. He sat in the Small Formal Reception Room, attended by only his six highest ministers, Count Pallgrave, and also Cremmin, and waited for the herald to come in and announce her. A winter-toothed autumn wind rattled the tall windows; the Emperor, disliking the clatter, turned to his secretary and told him to see that the windows did not rattle in the future. Cremmin bowed and made a note.