A Sorcerer and a Gentleman

by Elizabeth Willey

“It does.” Otto’s lips were cracked and parched. The brook gurgled under thin ice like white porcelain two paces from him. Apparently his sorcery didn’t extend that far.

  “What have you concluded, then, from your new contemplative and detached—sorry—viewpoint?”

  “Life is better than the alternative.”

  “You thought differently before?”

  “Dewar—” he moaned.

  Dewar shrugged and half-turned to go.

  “Don’t go!” rasped Otto. “No! I thought no differently.”

  “So it has confirmed you in views and habits you already had.”

  Otto stared at him.

  “I think I’ll leave you there, then, Otto, because your views on life seem to involve parting me from mine. I cannot support you in that.” Dewar smiled, bowed, and turned to go again.

  “No! No! I’ll swear—Dewar, no!”

  “What would you swear, Otto? And would it be worth the breath you blow past your teeth to say it?” Dewar folded his arms, his staff in the crook of his elbow.

  “Nonaggression—I won’t attack you again, that was stupid and—and I won’t—won’t—”

  “You’ll not interfere with me, either.”

  “I won’t interfere. Whatever that means.”

  “You’ll not speak of me to anyone else, on pain of suffocation in your next breath.”

  “I won’t squeal, lest the air leave me.”

  Dewar drummed his fingers on his forearm. “You’ll not—let’s see. Oh, I don’t know, that seems to address all the major annoyances. You won’t plot against my life, nor collude with anyone else—”

  “No! I won’t! I swear it!”

  “And you’ll buy me a bed and whatever passes for a decent meal in this wasteland tonight.”

  “It’s a bargain.”

  “Very well,” Dewar said, and drew his sword to cut the ropes. “This is sorcerer’s work,” he observed, meeting opposition stronger than hemp. “Who put you here?”

  It was the custom for Emperor Avril to take breakfast with his Privy Council each morning. Little was actually eaten, so little that most of the members broke their fast beforehand or after and tasted only token samples at the Emperor’s table. The meetings were held in a long, many-windowed room, which was furnished with a table, sideboards, chafing-dishes, and a dumbwaiter to the kitchen. It would have been pleasant room for breakfast had the Emperor not been using it for Privy Council meetings, as it looked out on a long vista at the end of which a little white summerhouse and a corner of one of the ponds could just be seen.

  The day after Gaston spoke to the hostage, the Emperor entered at his usual time and paused. In his place, reading the agenda and deliberately making a mess of crumbs and butter on it, sat his brother Prince Prospero. His high black riding-boots were propped on a brocade-seated chair; his cloak dripped melting snow on the figured carpet; and he had opened a window, so that the room was uncommonly drafty.

  “Well, well,” the Emperor said softly.

  “Well, in sooth,” Prospero replied. “Why hast thou got my strayed-lamb daughter?” He crumpled the agenda disdainfully, a single crushing gesture, and tossed it to one side; it landed in the fire. The sorcerer stood and dusted crumbs from his fingers daintily.

  “Daughter,” the Emperor said. “Our family is a strange one, isn’t it. That would be our niece of whom you speak.”

  “I know Ottaviano had her; I know Golias took her; and I know Gaston, thy trained duck-dog, fetched her hither. I even know well-nigh where she is.”

  “Then spirit her away, sorcerer.”

  “Someone hath been busy there,” Prospero said.

  The Emperor smiled.

  “Oriana,” Prospero said, “of her vanity, cannot resist a certain visiting-card mark on all her handiwork. Using blood in the binding was mortally clever of her.”

  “She thought so. There was no lack of it to use.”

  Prospero whitened. “What did she charge thee?”

  “She was delighted to oblige us gratis, having been crossed by you in some matter quite recently. —So you’d like to see our little treasure, would you?”

  Prospero left the crumb-littered high seat and was in front of the Emperor in three rapid steps. A cold wind came with him and settled around the Emperor as Prospero grabbed his lacy shirtfront.

  As Prospero’s hand closed on the fabric, the Emperor kicked the door to his left, shouting, “Guards!”

  Three entered, weapons drawn; something touched the small of Prospero’s back. He was not unprotected, but he was in the enemy’s camp, and the enemy had something he wanted.

  “Would you prefer to see her dead,” the Emperor asked somewhat breathlessly, “or alive?”

  Prospero put his brother down slowly. The Emperor straightened his garments and the guards held ready in a long, exquisite moment of tension. The Emperor smiled.

  “Accompany Prince Prospero to Prince Gaston, with our compliments. He desires to view his daughter.”

  “Papa!” screamed the girl, and hurled herself against the doorway, which flashed and repulsed her.

  Prospero cursed a blue streak, commending Oriana to the attention of a number of ills. Gaston, who was in the room with her, helped his prisoner up. She was wild-eyed, the first emotion beyond immobilizing fear he had seen in her.

  “Prospero …” she quavered.

  “Touch’t not!” Prospero ordered her, waving her back from Oriana’s Bounds.

  “Where’ve you been?” the girl wailed in accented Lannach, shrugging Gaston away and coming as close as she could to Prospero without hitting the Bounds.

  “Seeking thee—”

  “I looked for you! I looked and looked! I looked everywhere—”

  Prospero looked grey, ill. “Puss, Puss, calm thee, calm thee. Shshsh. Now I’m here, thou’rt found.”

  His daughter nodded, holding the doorjamb. “Can I go home?” she whispered.

  “Not yet. I—I must know—” Prospero stopped and went on, “what the price of thy going shall be.”

  She was perfectly still.

  “Art well, Freia?” Prospero said, his voice shaking.

  Gaston marked it: she had a name.

  “No. I want to go home.”

  “Not yet,” Prospero said. “Soon.”

  “Papa, I was good. I didn’t tell them anything. I didn’t tell anyone. Anything. Papa. Please, I want to go home,” Freia said, her voice rising.

  “I know. I know. I must contrive it, Freia. I wished first to see that all’s right with thee.”

  “I’m not all right! I want to go home!” She punched the Bounds, leaving her fist there in the painful flare until Gaston grabbed her away.

  The Fireduke held her arms, not meeting his brother’s eyes. “Don’t hurt thyself, child.” He had never seen Prospero show such concern and pain before; it startled him.

  “Let me go! I want to go home!” she shrieked at him.

  “Freia!” yelled Prospero. “Command thyself!”

  “Papa! I want to go home, Papa!” Freia squirmed free of Gaston again and hugged the doorjamb. “Please,” she said in a tiny voice. “Oh, please …”

  “Puss, thou’rt hostage. They’ll ask much for thee. I must treat with the Emperor. Dost understand?” Prospero said to her.

  She nodded.

  “They’ll not let thee go yet,” he said. “Thy Uncle Avril hath little good in him, Freia.”

  “He—” Freia began, and stopped.

  If Freia told her father, Gaston mused, that the Emperor had threatened using force on her, then probably this room by virtue of the Bounds on it would be the only thing left standing of the Palace. He touched her shoulder; she flinched. “Thou’lt go home,” he told her, “but not yet, not now.” Would Prospero indeed bargain for her, surrender something for her? A wonder: that she could be so precious to him. It could not be so, thought Gaston; Prospero was a sorcerer.

  Yet Prospero had given up something precious not long ago. He
was not mad; he could not have handicapped himself in the war for no reason. Gaston looked at Prospero with sudden, sharp uncertainty: he was not behaving as expected.

  “Thrash not so. Trust me, Puss,” Prospero said, his voice rough to cover emotion. “I’ll see thee home safe ere long. I did but come to be sure thou’rt well ere I began.”

  “I’m not well,” she said in a keening voice, turning away. “I want to go home. I’ve got to get home.”

  “Thou’rt looking hale enow,” Prospero said. “Now, Freia—”

  “Interview’s over,” the Emperor announced, arriving at the other side of the door. Behind him, Count Pallgrave and Cremmin waited, holding books and ledgers. “Come, Prospero, we have much to say.”

  “Avril—”

  “We have a little time free now,” the Emperor said, “or you can wait two days.”

  “Father—”

  “Freia, patience.” Prospero turned from the door and followed the Emperor.

  “Papa, no! Don’t leave me here! Don’t leave me! Don’t go!”

  Gaston caught her before she hit the Bounds and held her back, then held her against him. She struggled, trying to kick him.

  “Such noise the creature makes,” the Emperor’s voice floated back.

  A door slammed.

  Freia moaned and slumped.

  “I’m sorry, lass,” Gaston told her. “Trust in thy father. He loves thee well, I see’t, and he—he’d give much for thy welfare.”

  35

  THE BARS OUTSIDE THE WINDOW WERE an obstacle, but not a formidable one.

  Dewar tapped. His gloved hands didn’t tap well. He used the pommel of a dagger.

  The bedding he could see through the gap between the drapes moved seismically, erupted. A rumpled, white-gowned lady blinked owlishly around the room.

  Dewar tapped again.

  Freia stared at the window and was at it seconds later, yanking the drapes aside, fumbling at the casement. It was locked—in fact, welded; Dewar saw her scowl. He gestured to the hinges. She looked at them, then at the lock, and shook her head, either not understanding or not able to do anything about it. Dewar meant for her to break the hinges; he had no doubt it would be possible, but he couldn’t easily mime it to her hanging onto the grating with one hand.

  Snow blew against his back. It had been raining earlier. He’d rather have rain.

  He held up one finger and pointed to her with a questioning expression.

  She nodded, then pointed at the next room to the left, holding a finger of the other hand to her lips.

  He nodded. Gaston was there; Dewar’s surveying had discovered him already. Dewar plinked the glass again with the dagger: then break it.

  Freia went to the bed and got a blanket. She muffled it over the window and drew the drapes again. Dewar lowered himself a few feet on the knotted rope, crouched against the brown-ivied wall, and waited.

  Chink—chink—crash! Musically, the glass panes shattered. A shard hit his thick-hooded head and bounced off. Hand over hand, Dewar climbed back up. Freia had just cautiously lowered the blanket, staring anxiously toward Gaston’s room. Dewar saw why: a connecting door.

  “Why doesn’t it flash?” Freia whispered. “The doorway does.”

  “Bindings are tricky,” he whispered back. “The iron grating is Bound, but more weakly than the walls. The wood frame and glass aren’t Bound at all. They’re not integral, you see. Makes for a weak link. And you didn’t cross the Boundary by breaking the glass. I see it’s a blood Boundary. Cut your finger on a piece of that glass, Freia, and smear the blood around the window opening in an unbroken line.”

  She hesitated, distrustful. “Why?”

  “If you do that, I’ll break the Bounds; or rather breach them.”

  Freia, flinching, cut her left middle finger on the jagged glass and began drawing the line. Dewar put his hand opposite hers on the outside of the window and drew on the force of her blood, altering the Binding without destroying it. The blood burned through the Boundary, but since the maker had worked Freia’s blood into them as well as his or her own, the Emperor’s, and Gaston’s, the Binding-spell accepted and accommodated the change in forces and direction.

  They finished. Dewar’s arm was cramped from clutching the grating and rope. He shifted. Inside, Freia pressed her hand to stop the bleeding.

  “Are you here for me?” she whispered.

  “I thought I’d drop in for supper. What do you think? Get the poker.”

  “I haven’t one.”

  “Oh. Lest you trepan somebody with it.”

  “I’d love to,” she said, and her voice and her face trembled.

  Dewar patted her hand through the grating with two fingers and smiled. “Luckily a burglar, I mean a sorcerer, comes prepared.” Indeed, his sorcerous career of late seemed to be half a housebreaker’s. He pushed that aside for later consideration.

  “How did you get up?”

  “Rope. We’ll go down same way. Shshsh. Draw the drapes. Pretend to sleep. Just in case.” He began breaking and picking more glass from the casement, reaching through the grating.

  She obeyed, disappearing behind the folds of heavy cloth. Warm air poured thickly past him into the night. Dewar, one-handed still, rootched in the bag slung at his hip and found the jemmy bar. He began working at the bolts holding the grating.

  They were newly set in the red sandstone wall for the occasion, not at all in keeping with the Neo-Ornamented architecture, and not terribly well set either. The mortar crumbled, badly packed, as he worked. He pried bolts off, picked more glass from the casement, and pried again. It seemed to take hours and to make a horrendous noise. No light came on in Gaston’s room, though, and no one stirred within. Snow pattered on his shoulders.

  Dewar’s rope was still fastened to the grating, and he prayed heartily that the bolts he left wouldn’t give up. He tugged. The three remaining bolts at the top seemed safe enough. He bent the grating back, clambered over the frame, and stepped through the billowing draperies to the floor. Glass crunched under his boots.

  Freia sat up in the dark-hung bed. She looked like hell, haggard and drawn.

  “You’re a sight for sore eyes,” he lied, smiling, and bowed.

  “Did my father send you?”

  Straightening, he still smiled. “No. Care to go anyway?”

  “Yes!”

  “Get warm clothes. Damn cold out.”

  She dressed. Dewar stood by Gaston’s door, just in case. Gaston slumbered on. Dewar pitied him in the morning. Out of favor. He’d probably better leave town.

  “Get a cloak.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Blanket.”

  She pulled two off the bed and stood by the window, clutching them to her chest. Her whole body was tense, expectant.

  Dewar winked at her, decided to say nothing about the grating and the rope and the paved terrace three storeys below, and opened the curtains with a flourish.

  “You first.”

  “I …” Freia looked out the window, at the rope disappearing into wet darkness, and quailed. “I can’t—I can’t. I can’t.”

  Dewar drew in his breath to argue about it and thought better of it. “Very well. I will carry you down.”

  He pulled on his gloves again to protect his hands from the coarse rope, then climbed over the sill. She put a chair under the window and stood on it, crouched on the sill, and transferred herself gingerly, stiff-bodied, to his care.

  “Don’t look down,” he commanded her in an undertone.

  “Trying,” she replied.

  “Surely a woman who can drop off a cliff on a gryphon can manage this,” he muttered.

  “I can’t do heights,” she whispered back, and squeezed her eyes shut. “I can’t look.”

  Dewar, exasperated, abandoned the topic. He had not expected her to be so damsellish. Fiery Lady Miranda wouldn’t, he thought, and he said to Freia, “Then don’t look.”

  She nodded.

  With on
e arm hugging Freia’s body against him, he descended without haste but without delay. She, trembling distractingly, clutched him around the neck, gripped him with her legs, and kept her eyes closed tightly. Dewar accustomed himself to the extra weight and odd balance, and then he inched them down, drawing on the Well to fortify his arms, bracing his feet on the rough wall. They rustled in the ivy and dislodged globs of slush. Once his boots slipped, and he and she dangled crookedly until he found footing again. Freia was inflexible as iron.

  The window-grating gripped its sloppy masonry until they were just above the first storey. Dewar felt it go and dropped, landing solidly on his feet and putting Freia down lightly, even gracefully.

  The grating hit the terrace with a thunderous clang a half-step away from them. Dewar swore softly in the shocked silence that followed.

  Light blazed up in Gaston’s room. Dewar grabbed her hand and, as the curtain opened, they scurried off the terrace. Gaston was shouting above them, and Dewar couldn’t resist looking up and waving cockily as they crossed the pale patch of light from his window.

  The Marshal stared at him, yelled “Dewar!” and was gone.

  “Oh no!” Freia wailed.

  “Think I’m stupid? The horse is this way.”

  “No … magic …” she puffed beside him.

  He thought she meant, Why not leave through a Way? “Bounds in your room prevented it. Good job, who did it?”

  “A lady—”

  “Neyphile?”

  “No!”

  “Oriana. Ah well. Here he is. Good fellow, Cinders! Hup I go—hup you come—and away.”

  Back at the Palace rose alarums and shouts, burned lights in the rain.

  Freia began “Guards—”

  “Forget them.”

  The horse pounded into the Palace Gardens, leaving a clear trail for anyone to follow.

  “Where—”

  “Shh. Trust me.”

  Freia clutched him hard around the waist, bouncing on the horse’s rump behind him. Trust him, she thought. Trust him.

  Later she could never remember exactly how they had gotten out of the Palace Gardens, though hanging by the ivied wall in the rain-flecked dark stayed in her nightmares for years. Dewar sent the horse on without them, Cinders galloping away wildly in the freezing rain and digging up the turf so that the guards would follow the animal awhile longer. Beyond that she wasn’t sure. She remembered a fire in a temple-like place, and being sodden, wet through, and very cold so that her body ached.