A Sorcerer and a Gentleman
Page 32
Dewar thought of one answer, then another, and then a third which pleased him well, and he said, “Tomorrow night, if you will it so. I cannot tarry after that, but tomorrow …” He let his voice fade.
“Yes,” she said. “Shall I send for you? Where do you stay?”
“I will not tell you, nor shall you send for me. I’ll come to you as I did this night.”
“Very well. At the same hour?”
“As tonight. Do not look for me; I will be here.” He smiled.
Dewar watched Luneté’s maids disrobe her, watched Laudine brush out her hair and plait it. The Countess was in a mild humor, or her women more adroit; no reprimands were uttered. There was a tray with a bottle and a goblet on it on top of a chest near the fire tonight, Lys wine. Lys did not grow much wine, but some of the southern river-valleys had produced locally-salable stuff.
After her women left Luneté alone, Dewar stood silent and still, looking at her. She had risen from the bed and gone to stand at the fire. He watched the light play on her face from four paces’ distance, and when she glanced away he stepped quietly over to stand behind her, slipping his arms around her waist.
“Luneté,” he murmured, stilling her startled gasp with his hand. He kissed the back of her neck, whispering; his body shimmered into visibility again.
“Dewar,” she said, turning in his arms and embracing him ardently, and they said hardly a word more for several hours.
Then they lay cheek-to-cheek on the pillow, agreeably exercised, and watched the flame of the thick honey-scented candle consume wick and wax.
“Are you real?” Luneté said lazily, lifting her head.
“Yes,” Dewar answered, lifting his eyebrows. He moved a strand of her hair out of his eyes.
“You appear and disappear like one of the wood-spirits my nurse used to warn me about,” she said, smiling as she reached down and stroked his thigh, “out of the darkness, into the darkness, perhaps changing into a stag or a bull.…”
“I promise I am no incubus, but a sorcerer.”
“It’s the same thing.”
“It certainly is not,” he retorted, “although,” he continued thoughtfully, “some of the superficial characteristics may be similar.” And he moved her hand and lifted her hips, shifted his body under her. “There?” he suggested, and began to rock.
“Oh,” she said, and bent to kiss him, and they swayed together as her “Oh” became a low, throaty moan.
Later, beside a shorter candle than before, they rested again, wordlessly kissing and touching. Luneté stretched, her body tingling and tired, and then sat bolt upright.
“Someone’s in the solar!” she whispered.
Dewar threw her nightdress at her and rolled out of the bed, snatching at his own clothing strewn here and there. Luneté pulled the shift over her head. Footsteps and a murmur of voices were audible on the other side of the door.
“Under the bed!” she whispered. “Quick!”
Dewar didn’t argue; the door handle moved. He hit the floor and rolled.
Luneté flopped down, bedclothes over her, and feigned sleep. Dewar saw that one of his boots was visible still, reached out to snatch it under the bed with him. The floor was cold and gritty. He’d slid to the side farthest from the candle’s light, with no time to don a stitch.
A light glimmered on the floor. Footsteps. A male sigh. Rustle.
“Luneté,” said Ottaviano softly.
Dewar stuffed his shirt in his mouth, stifling his snort of laughter. The cloth smelled of Luneté. He stifled another reaction, and then more laughter at himself.
“Otto? Ottaviano! What are you doing here?”
“Missed you,” said Otto. The mattress moved. “Move over, sweetheart.”
The bed bounced.
“Get out of here!” said Luneté angrily.
Oh, no, Dewar thought. Luneté would ruin it—
“What?” replied Otto. “I’m taking a hell of a chance being here at all—”
The bed bounced again and dust sifted down onto Dewar lying naked on his back beneath it. Luneté continued, “You certainly are! Who do you think you are? What do you mean by sauntering in here? You shall lie elsewhere, sir!”
“I’m your husband, remember?”
“It seems to have slipped your mind not long after the wedding! Where have you been?”
“At the war! You know that! What—”
“Why haven’t you written to me? You’ve sent three brief letters and two one-line notes. I’ve read more engaging tax bills! What do you think you are, that you can go off to Landuc or wherever you were and take half my able-bodied men with you—”
Dewar grinned. The Countess of Lys was a shrewd tactician.
“—to fight your damned war, not mine, and then show up expecting me to greet you with open arms! You’re a fine one to talk about being a husband. What kind of husband never writes his wife? I’d just about decided you were dead!”
“I couldn’t—” Otto began, and changed his line, “I’ve been so busy, so tired—”
“Busy! Tired! Then get out of here until you’re at leisure and rested. I’m busy too, and I’m tired, tired of waiting for you to write or send a message or come back and resume the marriage we put off so that you could take my people into Ascolet and get them killed and tramp off with that rotten Prince to get involved with things that are none of our business! What’s kept you so busy, Otto? Tell me! And to what do I owe the remarkable favor of this audience with Your Highness?”
“Luneté! Be reasonable! We’ve been in Chenay, way the hell out West, and Gaston’s given us the filthiest duties, and by the Well don’t get sarcastic with me, Countess! I’ve had a bad time of it while you’ve been sitting snug and secure here in Lys!”
Luneté’s bare feet hit the floor and walked away from the bed. “Oh, how sad. You left home and went to war and didn’t like it! Could that be because you were not victorious?”
Ottaviano’s scarlet-stockinged feet thumped down and followed her. “What’s got into you? You thought this was a fine idea. You sure didn’t mind. You thought the risk was worth taking, Countess of Lys! I never concealed the possibility of a loss from you! Never!” he said, his voice lowering on the last word.
“You certainly didn’t tell me it would mean I wouldn’t see hide nor hair nor word from you in three-quarters of a year and more,” she hissed. “I have misgivings, Baron. Our marriage could still be annulled, you know. The Emperor hasn’t acknowledged it yet.”
“What? Annulled! Luneté, this is a temporary war, not permanent. It’s going to be over in a few days—”
“Days! I don’t believe you. I’ve heard nothing good from any quarter about the fortunes of your army and your great Marshal against Prince Prospero.”
“He’s captured.”
“And escaped,” Luneté retorted. “Fine bunch of soldiers you are.”
“Where did you hear that? Bad news really does travel—Yes, captured, escaped, and captured again! He was careless. I took him myself and I’ve prisoned him in my own Malperdy in Ascolet. And believe me, madame, I swear by the Well that he shall not leave there save on my word. Gaston was stupid, an honorable idiot, and he trusted that turncoat renegade Dewar alone with Prospero, and of course Dewar was in his pocket.”
“I don’t believe that either. Dewar never said he was anybody’s. He said he was with you because he liked you and he liked your cause. Remember? He wouldn’t sell his services. Unlike some of your friends.”
“Flames of Eternity! Leave him out of this—”
“You brought it up. If he did release the Prince, good for him! It’s an evil day for the world when the Emperor and Princes kill each other out of spite.”
“He’s a rebel.”
“Avril usurped his place. He has a legitimate quarrel. His quarrel! And the Emperor’s! Not ours. Not Lys’s! I want my people home again before any more of them are killed in this stupid fight of yours and the Emperor’s and the Marshal’s
.”
“You are bound by fealty-vow to provide the Emperor with troops whether you like it or not—”
“I have taken no vow yet to anyone but you, and I’m sorry I took that one. Leave my chamber! I married a husband, not a mercenary.”
“You married me,” Otto said.
“Touch me not, sir!” Luneté cried, and there was a quick step, a muffled sound, and then the thud of a blow followed by a wooden clunk as Otto yelped. “Lu!” he gasped.
“And get out of here until you’ve learned to behave like a gentleman.”
Otto was swearing in a whisper. Below the belt, Dewar guessed, and muffled another snort of laughter in his shirt.
Luneté stood still for a moment and then walked to the door. “Laudine!” she called, distantly.
“Lu, get back here,” Otto demanded, his voice still tight, and Dewar heard him get to his feet and follow her out of the room.
The sorcerer under the bed took the opportunity to squirm agilely into his breeches. Voices continued in the solar; he pulled his shirt over his head and succeeded in donning most of his clothing except his boots, which he would not put on until he was nearly outside. Luneté and Otto left the solar and went elsewhere, still arguing.
Dewar rolled from under the bed and rose cautiously. He ducked behind it in the shadow of the hangings and closed his eyes, drawing on the Well and murmuring the spell of concealment which would wrap light and shadow around him. He was not interrupted; the candle burned steadily, and the fire’s coals lay passive on the hearth.
Unseeable, Dewar began to leave, but paused at the fireside. The wine stood untasted. He lifted it, studied the label, and removed the loosened cork.
With a ceremonial air, he filled the goblet, turned and toasted the bed silently with a bow, and drained it. Goblet and bottle he replaced on their tray. Good, he noted to himself; a solid domestic white with no pretension to greater than local interest, but with a pleasantly acid afterbite. Refreshing.
Grinning, boots in hand, he padded out of the room and away.
26
CLOAKED IN AIR AND DARKNESS AND good double-woven wool, shod in soft boots, Dewar noiselessly climbed the thousand stairs of Malperdy Keep behind the walls of the castle also called Malperdy. The Keep was the heart of Ascolet, one of the oldest fortresses in all Pheyarcet, reputedly built by Panurgus himself in the early days, and it looked its age; several times Dewar stumbled on the unevenly-worn steps, each time halting and listening for alerted guards. Curious that there was no guard at the bottom of the topmost flight, where a wall intersected the keep. He hoped that Prospero had not been moved. The dungeons would have been a likelier holding-pen for a Prince of Air: likelier, but less easy to control mayhap. Well, thought Dewar, it was not his decision, but he would have put guards at the bottom. Otto’s men were slacking, perhaps.
He came around the last turning of the stair and stopped.
Someone was crouched low in front of Prospero’s door, a dark bent back in the light of the torch which guttered with Dewar’s stirring of the air. There was a pile of junk on the floor beside this furtive-looking person, which Dewar’s eyes sorted out after a moment as discarded armor: a breastplate and helm, other pieces.
Looking round, the footpad’s face was shown in the light too: Dewar held himself very still. He recognized the face; he had spent ten days getting to know it in the snowbound manor-house in Chenay, more than a quarter of a year ago by his clock but not half a month by hers. It was the young woman who had dragged Dewar out of the ditch and doctored him. She was dressed in the sheepskin jacket and trousers and boots she had worn when he’d first met her, now somewhat the worse for wear.
For a long, breath-holding moment she stared through him at the empty stairs, and then, biting her lip, she turned back to the door. Dewar smiled. Lockpicking.
A loyal partisan indeed, she had tracked her leader here and—how, the Sun and Moon could never know, probably—slipped in. He suspected she was the reason there were no guards at the bottom of the stair.
“Please work,” he heard her breathe. She took something from a bag at her feet.
Dewar smiled still, and weighed his next move. He could help her. He could not help her. On the whole it would be more amusing to help her. Her industry and determination in making her way here were admirable; it was the sort of thing that his acquaintance Lady Miranda of Valgalant would do. Dewar whispered the sibilant words which put aside the air and darkness around him; the woman turned and lifted a cocked crossbow, pointing anxiously at nothing, resigned fear in her face.
“Don’t shoot!” Dewar hissed as he became visible and the bow swung to aim at him.
Her finger tightened on, but did not close, the trigger. “You,” she said, not moving the bow.
“I think we have a common goal, to open that door. Am I right?”
“You’re the Emperor’s man.”
“I certainly am not. I’m freelancing. I have personal business with the fellow in there.”
She swallowed, nodded, lowered the bow. “You have a key?”
He sprang lightly up the stairs. “No. I work other ways. Let me see the lock.”
She moved aside. “Hurry. The sentries go round and they’ll raise an alarm as soon as they find the guard missing,” she whispered.
Dewar made no answer to this, but knelt at the door as she had. She had been trying to force the lock with a small knife. As he lifted his hand to the lock, something cold touched his throat: a line of steel.
“I know you’re one of them. Any tricks, you’re, you’re dead,” she whispered.
The crossbow was butting against his back.
It was best not to argue. “Understood.”
“Open it.”
He did. He took the broken-bladed knife from the lock and put a square iron nail from his bag into it. Lighting a match at the nail’s flat head, which protruded from the lock, he chanted the low, singsong rhyme for copying the key which had last been in the lock: the lock was utterly unprotected from sorcery. These people were fools, he thought, and felt the iron move and flow in his gloved fingers. It was hot, but he turned it in the lock and the lock gripped it and tumbled.
“Ohhh,” she breathed at his neck.
“May I stand.”
“Yes. Slowly.”
“Your servant,” Dewar whispered.
Her knife left his throat; the crossbow stayed in the small of his back. He pushed the door open and got up in one movement. The woman had picked up her saddlebag and was on his heels as the first shout came up the stairs.
“Hell’s bells!” she said, and the crossbow left his spine.
“Get in!” Dewar grabbed her and pulled her in, turning; he closed the door, taking his magical key from the lock and letting it latch again. The room was not-lit by a faint greenish line of light in a circle on the floor. The place was freezing cold.
“Prospero!” she called softly.
No answer.
“Make a light!” she hissed.
“Should have grabbed the torch.”
“Prospero! It’s me!”
No answer.
Dewar felt nothing alive in the room. He said, “No, stay here, don’t move, it might be a trap,” and the woman, who had been stepping forward, stopped and returned to his side. Murmuring the Summoning under the shouts and clangor outside (“Send for the Captain! Get Captain Vandel!”), he invoked an ignis fatuus, which popped rosily into sight and hovered in midair.
The circular room it showed was empty. A bizarrely boiled-looking opening was seethed through the meter-thick stone wall, melted as if the stone had become taffy and run.
Dewar tsked softly. Elemental work.
The circle of foxfire on the floor was broken by similarly boiled stone. Inside was nothing but a wooden plate and a bucket.
“He’s gone!” the woman cried. “Prospero!” She ran to the opening in the wall; Dewar followed her. It let on the sheer side of the tower which rose over the less-regular but e
qually straight cliff. “Prospero!” she shouted out.
“It appears he has rescued himself,” Dewar said.
The guards were battering at the door. Dewar crossed to it, to close it more permanently.
“We’re caught!” she said, turning and staring at the door, and added, “At least, you are.” Leaning from the opening, she put her fingers in her mouth and whistled.
Dewar was fusing the door to the wall, sealing it with an affinity-spell only axework or fire could defeat. It would do for now. Someone was trying a key in the lock.
He looked round at the woman, who was still whistling. “What are you about? Calling a wind?”
The lock rattled and stopped. The door bounced, held; a crack appeared at its top. Dewar glanced at it. It wouldn’t endure long. He’d have to make a Way, fast—but there was nothing to burn.
Something vast and dark occluded the stars beyond the hole in the wall, then passed again, then returned and blocked it completely. Dewar saw a huge hooked beak, feathers, claws; there were scrabbling noises from the stone outside. The young woman climbed into the opening and looked back at him. “Good luck, sorcerer,” she said, and put a leg out.
“Don’t jump!” he cried.
“I’m flying.” She slipped out, sideways, and the opening was cleared. He heard shouting from the battlements below.
An axe-blow split the door from top to bottom; Dewar glanced around and realized he was in a bad spot. It was a single-panel door, not cross-grained; the next strike took out a plank of wood, sending it bouncing into the room. He ran to the hole over the cliff to see if he could scale it, as Prospero must have done, and the dark shape returned, hovering in the tower’s shadow.
“Stuck?” she called.
“Yes!” he screamed.
“Are you sorry?”
“For anything! Yes!”
“Jump, and we’ll catch you!”
He stared at her. The door lost another plank, behind him. Someone shouted, “There he is!”
“Catch me?”
It was a long way, straight down. Half a mile? Far enough, in the faintly silvered darkness. He felt, rather than saw, the dead stone below.