The Fanciers & Realizers MEGAPACK

by Phyllis Ann Karr

  “Nevertheless, it is a custom I regret losing. Even in our modern age, I believe, a certain sartorial sobriety should be cultivated on such occasions as these. The kind of quiet tastefulness we see, for instance, in your own attire.” His gaze included them both in this compliment, and the young woman gratified him by producing the most genuinely good-humored smile he had seen on her lips since last night.

  “Thank you very much, M. White,” M. Weaver had said. “It’s really a compliment when one of your perceptions can see so well what all of us are wearing.”

  He had been strongly tempted to reveal his secret, but the hour was not quite ripe. Moreover, The Standard must have guessed it already, or she would not have tested him before dinner by claiming to see that abominable design on his tunic. To drive it home now might seem crude, pushy, undignified. Still, it was a severe temptation, and the Countess DiMedici’s coming at that moment had been perhaps one more signal mark of Lady Fate’s favor.

  DiMedici’s obvious purpose had been to pluck him away for a private game of chess and veiled flirtation on the balcony. He had joined her willingly enough, sensing that to excuse himself from Dame Margaret’s presence at this juncture would be to leave her with a peculiarly favorable impression of him.

  But this evening the countess was demanding more of his attention than he liked to give. He would have preferred an unchallenging game and stupid chatter that he could have pretended to find engrossing while actually giving his brain free play in the fields of his ambition. “Realizers very seldom wear mourning, so why should you,” The Standard had told him, a transparent cipher if he had ever met one…and DiMedici spoke of her fancied importance and puny rings. Now she was asking him if he admired a new one she wore for the first time tonight, on her middle finger, a moonstone that concealed some poison—he did not catch the name—that she called a traditional cure for false lovers.

  “Exquisite,” he said. “Exquisite, Countess.” He captured her queen’s rook to mate her king. “Your Grace’s move, I think.”

  As she frowned at the board, he rose and took a few steps to the balustrade, considering how soon he could escape from her, and whether it would be wise to seek The Standard’s company yet again this evening.

  He heard someone come out on the balcony, turned, and saw Poe, coffee cup in hand.

  The countess moved her remaining bishop. “Check,” she said, flashing one of her smiles up at her opponent: come and enjoy the thrill of our chase.

  But Poe stepped forward, sat in Tertius White’s chair, studied the board briefly, and touched the threatened king. He had just sufficient grace to look up at them before moving it. “Countess? M. White, with your permission.”

  Weighing against these insufferable manners his own desire to escape from the beautiful but sometimes tiresome DiMedici, White gave his permission with a slight wave of the hand.

  Poe placed his cup on the table, rubbed his hands, and moved the king. DiMedici, stony-faced, moved her knight to checkmate. Poe shrugged, sat back, and looked up again at the man whose game he had lost for him. “Be a good fellow, M. White, and let me lose a game or two of my own to the undoubted mistress of the board. You’ve monopolized her Grace most of the day.”

  “With your Grace’s leave?” White inclined his head to her.

  She may have seen that his deference was arbitrary. “Go, then, Tertius White. go and steal this man’s sweetheart, with our express permission and encouragement.”

  Poe waved his hand in imitation of White’s earlier gesture. “If you’re talking about M. Garvey Garvey, take her for your sins and welcome. Countess?”

  Coolly she began resetting the chessboard. Tertius bowed to her again and took his leave, thinking not of Angela Garvey but of M. Weaver. She had become so close a companion to The Standard that for him to attach her might be a superb move indeed.

  Fitzhugh had planted himself in the place beside them, however, and White was driven to spend a few minutes on the long couch with M.’s Quantum and Serendip.

  Chapter 22

  Irene, Countess DiMedici, kept her hands beneath the tabletop and twisted a knight in her long, strong fingers, feeling the comforting pain of her rings as they pressed to the bone. Her stare never left Corwin Poe.

  The effrontery of this peasant! To intrude his unwanted presence upon them and drive away a nobleman worth a thousand of himself, for the purpose of insinuating such things to her face!

  “The bludgeon is a man’s weapon, M. Poe,” she said in a voice of icy calm. “You suggest a woman could destroy with one blow?”

  “I conceive a strong woman could speed as well as a weak man. I’ll go further. Even a weak woman, steeled to the task and prepared with practice—say on a dummy or pillows—might succeed better than a strong but agitated man in the throes of sudden inspiration.”

  “You have studied your case well, M. Poe.” The wolf’s bane beneath her tourmaline? Or the tincture of destroying angel beneath the pale white pearl on her left little finger? No: the one was too immediate, the other would honor him too far above his due. Let it be the arsenic beneath her topaz, a common dose, and a leisurely. Let his suffering be prolonged, that he learn a full appreciation, before the end, of the methods by which a noblewoman of the Medici disposed of those who annoyed her.

  “Of course,” he was saying, “it’s for the gendarmes to measure the angle of the wound. I believe they have very exact measurements for these things nowadays. They may know already, through comparison of the wound with our relative heights.”

  Deliberately, she let slip the knight she had been kneading. It rattled on the mosaic’d terrace floor. “I believe I have dropped a chessman, M. Poe,” she remarked as she brought her hands into view. “We must have it if we are to play.” She plucked the white king from the pieces at the board’s edge and placed it in its proper square.

  Poe nodded, smiled, and left his chair to search beneath the table. With one smooth movement, the Countess DiMedici lifted the topaz of her ring and emptied the arsenic into his wine. She was arranging pawns long before he reappeared.

  Settling in his chair, he smiled again, unclosed his right hand and deposited the knight in an appropriate square. “To your decision, Countess,” he said, lifting his goblet.

  She watched the slight movement of the ruffles at his throat, folds of sheeny ridge and purple shadow in the candlelight. She nodded, satisfied. As he lowered his goblet, she rose. “My decision, sirrah, is to leave you to your peasant thoughts. A few moments ago you deprived me of a nobleman’s company. I choose now to deprive you of mine. Contadino, I will not play your game.”

  “To you, Countess,” he replied, and raised his goblet again. She left him to his thoughts.

  Tertius White sat with Quantum and Serendip. For a moment the Countess DiMedici was surprised he should seek such plebian company. But who else among the gathering was not plebian? Only, perhaps, their host and—by virtue of her office—The Standard; and both of these had lowered themselves to sit with Weaver, the commonest one of all.

  The countess saw that the divan where M. Tertius White had seated himself commanded such a view of the terrace that one could watch it without an obvious show of interest. She needed no words to rout Serendip and Quantum. She needed merely to stand behind the divan, towering above them, and clear her throat. They had the deference to depart quickly, leaving her alone with the one man present who met her favor. She sat with him, they regaled each other with wit, and meanwhile she flicked her glance from time to time at the terrace.

  M. Poe sat for a short time, holding his goblet in both hands, gazing into space. Eventually he rose, turned to the balustrade, and stood there a long while, his back to all in the room. Now he seemed to lean forward resting an elbow on the white marble, again he would stand straight as if staring at the stars, but now and again she saw the movement of his arm lifting the cup to his lips. Once or twice he
may have spoken to someone in the garden; Irene, Countess DiMedici did not keep track of unimportant people without good reason; but she thought that some of the party had left the room.

  At last Poe turned, taking his former chair, and she had a full view of his head tilting as he drained the last of his wine. The secret was as a spring of cool water refreshing her soul. Tonight, alone in her room, she would refill the topaz ring. Some day, perhaps, she and Tertius White would sit together, refilling their rings side by side.

  Chapter 23

  M. White had made Willa Grandar Quantum uneasy by sitting beside her on the qualahide lounge slab, and she was glad when Countess DiMedici came to loom over them in her cutaway Bode’ gauze. The notion that Squire Fitzhugh could have invited M. White as a match for Willa had backdropped her mind all day. Praise Holy Zarquon, women in this age were not forced to accept anyone—but still she felt much happier when M. White paid her no attention. If she knew any matchmaking tricks of her own, she would have tried them to further the Countess DiMedici’s designs on him. If this weekend were not so strange, Willa might have spoken with the squire about it before now.

  Meanwhile, she murmured to Nantice, “Shall we walk out and look at the constellations?”

  Nantice whispered back, “Out there in the dark?”

  Willa glanced around the room. Angela was sitting with M. Livingstone and Captain Drake in front of the showscreen, but they seemed to be chatting, not watching. “It’ll be safe. We’ll get Angela and M. Livingstone to walk with us.”

  Nantice squeezed her hand and nodded. Leaving the lounge slab to M. White and the countess, they crossed the room. They paused before The Standard, offering polite remarks, but Nantice said little and Willa found even less to add. She saw M. Margaret Standard as a majestic Vulcan matriarch, clad in dark robes, with winglike streaks of silver in her black hair and an expression of vast sorrow on her venerable face, the Wise Woman whose word gauged the whole planet, if not the Galactic Alliance. Who would save the universe if The Standard should go mad with grief?

  Angela Garvey was a great relief. Eternally the junior cadet in short skirt and long golden tights, never to be promoted and supremely unconcerned about it, content to remain at the carefree bottom of the sophomore class. “Why, of course it’ll be safe to take a walk in the garden!” she said at once. “Why shouldn’t it be? Tige and Trooper are on the watch, and Sergeant Click himself said the squire has almost the best security system there is. We can’t take poor Captain Drake, he’d get his feet wet. But we can take Stanley Livingstone. You’ll come, won’t you, Stan?”

  “Of course. While I can’t feel quite so complacent about the strength of the stockade, M.’s, I’m sure we’ve got nothing to worry about this early in the night. We’ll keep close to the house.”

  The garden was stark but lovely by moonlight. Angela took the lead with M. Livingstone, joking and sometimes actually laughing. Willa followed with Nantice, arms about one another’s waists. “To me it looks like a moonscape,” Willa confided. “A moonscape seen by earthlight, blue and silver.”

  Nantice shivered. “I wish you hadn’t said that. It looks like a moonscape to me, too. A cemetery on the moon.”

  Ahead, M. Livingstone slapped at the back of his neck. “Damn bloody mosquitoes! Begging your pardon, ladies. Eh, who’s that, up there on the verandah? One of us?”

  Angela looked. “Oh, it’s only Corwin Poe.”

  “Poe? Looked dark, dusky somehow.”

  “Anyone would, in the dark like this,” said Angela. “We probably look like natives ourselves, to him. Come on, let’s stroll on past and pretend we don’t even see the gloomy gus.”

  Gloomigus, thought Willa. She looked up at the observation deck, half expecting to see some rare alien monster. But it was recognizable as M. Poe, standing alone at the rail. He held a fulltasse from the kaffee set, and as they passed he raised it to them. “M.’s, I bid you a good evening. M. Quantum. M. Serendip? Oh, it’s you. And M. Livingstone.”

  Angela made a show of turning her face away from him. The rest of them returned the greeting, M. Livingstone waving his hat.

  They passed out of sight of the observation deck and came to the fountain with its blue marble and silver lace of water. Willa sat with Nantice on one of the cool isinglass slabs. Angela sat on another one nearby.

  “I’ll just scout the bushes a bit,” said M. Livingstone, and the three young women were left to their own conversation.

  “Angela,” Willa began, “what’s wrong between you and M. Corwin?”

  “Nothing. Because there’s absolutely nothing whatever between us at all.”

  “You’ve known him a long time, haven’t you?”

  “Since school. Much too long. It’s a wonder he hasn’t infected me. Let’s not talk about him.”

  “He frightens me,” Nantice said softly.

  “Who, Corwin?” cried Angela. “Well, I’m not surprised,” she hurried on, going back at once to her former tone. “If we’re not careful he’ll end by setting the whole house in the dismals. Let’s not even think about—”

  “Hi! Hi, you there!” M. Livingstone’s shout broke in, with a tumult in the bushes. “There! Ladies—Ah!”

  Barks, a thwack, howling, and two shapes burst from the bushes. A five-legged Plutonian wolf—they were sentient—and a man—M. Livingstone—on its tail. Its tail—not a fifth leg? No, it was one of the squire’s dogs!

  They were all on their feet now, Nantice stifling a scream, Willa holding her. “Tige!” Angela was crying. “Here, Tige! Good boy, good boy ... What on earth? Stan?”

  The dog bounded whining to Angela. She bent to fondle it and landed on the ground with it seeming to huddle against her for protection after having knocked her down. The squire’s dogs were huge and noisy, but timid. The other dog barked in the distance, and they heard someone calling from the house to know what was wrong.

  “Nothing, everyone’s all right!” Angela called back, laughing.

  “It’s M. Poe,” whispered Nantice.

  “Oh, is it? I didn’t recognize his voice—all the confusion. Don’t come out, thank you,” Angela called again. “We’re all safe.”

  Willa asked M. Livingstone, “Was there anyone about?”

  He grinned like a Beta Minor furrytoad and dusted off his spacer’s planetside trousers. “Very sorry, M.’s. Heard Tige rustling in the undergrowth and took him for a native.”

  They looked at one another.

  “That’s all right, Stan,” said Angela. “I’m sure it’s a mistake even a realizer might make. At night like this and all. Go on, Tige, find Trooper.”

  Nantice shivered.

  “Perhaps,” said Willa, “we should go back to the house.”

  M. Poe was still, or again, standing at the rail when they passed, and again he greeted everyone else and mutually ignored Angela.

  Chapter 24

  Twenty-three hundred hours, and most of the company had gone up to their beds. Not to sleep, perhaps, but the atmosphere was inconducive to reveling. Tertius Black White had carelessly delayed his departure, and now the DiMedici had finally drawn him back to the balcony. He might have resisted, but M. Weaver was long retired, and he felt some curiosity what secret the countess seemed so desirous to share.

  Shamelessly but regally caressing his arm, she leant to his ear and whispered, “I have poisoned Corwin Poe.”

  He turned his head and looked at her. Her eyes shone eager in the light from the few lamps still glowing, and her lips parted slightly to show her fine, even teeth. He felt, not shock, but a kind of revulsed pity. “Why?”

  “He displeased me. The poison is beginning to take effect. I saw him grimace as he quit the room a few moments ago.” Her fingers tightened on White’s arm. “Dispose of him for me before dawn, Tertius. Dispose of his body, and I will reward you with mine.”

  H
e covered her hand with his. “I’ll claim that promise before dawn, my Countess.” When all was said and done, hers should prove a most desirable body; and when he revealed himself as a realizer, who would take her word against his?

  Chapter 25

  Midnight, and save for cracklings of the fire and the occasional grinding sound as the masonry settled about its crack, Fitzhugh Manor was silent. Even on the night following a murder, people retired to sleep. Indeed, they had retired earlier than usual, if not to sleep, then to lie restive in their beds, not unlike souls buried alive although in roomier coffins.

  Corwin Poe sat alone in the drawing room, now gazing into the gentle flames, now returning to his book, a quaint romance called The Last Egyptian. His armchair was cushioned in velvet as crimson as burgundy, sheening in one direction from the fireglow, in the other from the light of the single reading lamp, which burned oil faintly fragranced with balsam, and boasted a glass shade hued with whorls of blue and green. It rested on a mahogany lamp table with a small scarf rimmed in ecru lace crisp to the touch as October leaves. The stem of the blown-glass snifter which he held was fashioned in the shape of a leaping dolphin, rounded and smooth between his fingers, while the brandy was long aged, as rich in aroma and flavor as in color.

  The large chamber was dark around his double circle of light from fire and lamp. If anyone else stirred at this hour, the distant sounds were swallowed by the venerable house. At length, Corwin achieved a measure of absorption in the printed page.

  A footfall broke his concentration. It had come from the far end of the drawing room. He heard it repeated a second time, a third, a fourth, each step closer by that much to the fireplace. The glow of a hand-carried candle sent rhythmic shadows up and down to cross those cast by steady lamp and irregularly flickering fire.

  Whoever held the candle moved quietly but not stealthily. A fellow guest, or one of the servants about some late task. Surely not the squire: though masculine, the footsteps were too light for his girth.