Sword of the Lamb

by M. K. Wren

  And Karlis Selasis laughed. The Sers and Serras laughed with him, and not one of them had the humanity or the courage to offer Rich a succoring hand. Again, Alexand knew himself capable of violence. He would stop that laughter with his bare hands at Karlis’s throat if—

  Rich was no longer alone. Alexand was only a few paces from him, but he stopped short, jarred as if he were confronted by an apparition.

  There was one person here capable of compassion and possessed of the courage to defy the first born of Orin Selasis. She moved toward Rich silently, an eidolon materialized out of nothingness, a slight girl who seemed at first no more than a child. Yet she struck the laughter down.

  She walked with regal grace that dispelled the impression of childishness; not yet a woman, but far more than a child, and Alexand had the irrational conviction that she’d never been a child. He thought at first she was dressed in white, but that was also a false impression. Pale blue velveen bordered with pearls. Strands of pearls decked her night-black hair like stars; oblique eyes, black as her hair.

  Those weren’t the eyes of a child, and the unmasked contempt in them didn’t stop short of loathing. It was there to be read by anyone, and it was directed with no hint of equivocation at Karlis Selasis. He shrank under that gaze; his fair skin reddened, and no words came from his open mouth.

  The girl stopped when she reached Rich, the contempt vanished, and in its place was a gentle smile that hardly touched her lips; it was all in her dark eyes. She sank in a graceful, formal curtsy.

  “Ser Richard, if I may . . .”

  Rich could only stare at her, dazed and silent, while she knelt to pick up his crutch, then steadied him as he took it and grasped the handgrip. Alexand roused himself and started toward Rich. The eddy had already dissipated; only Karlis was left, standing in livid humiliation, ready to vent his anger on the Serra, but the words died on his lips when Alexand appeared at Rich’s side.

  “Lost your nerve, Karlis?” Alexand asked softly.

  His chin came up sullenly. “Are you calling me a coward?”

  “That would flatter you.” Then the rage surfaced in a rush. “Out of my sight, Karlis, or we’ll settle this with a point of honor!”

  Karlis glared at him, then turned and stalked away.

  “We’ll settle it,” he said belligerently over his shoulder, but he didn’t pause in his retreat.

  “Alex . . .” Rich’s faltering voice made that more a sigh than a word.

  And the Serra was gone, like the eidolon she called to mind. But there wasn’t time to think about her; Rich was shaking, on the edge of collapse.

  “Rich, hold on.” Alexand had long ago learned how to support him without making it obvious; his hand on his arm high under the shoulder; a grip Rich could lean on, that would cause him no pain. The crutches were on maximum lift; if he didn’t lose his hold on the handgrips . . .

  Elise Woolf appeared, taking Rich’s other arm without comment, her smile still intact. But she stopped to speak with no one as the three of them moved toward the entry.

  “Rich, your father ’commed Hilding. The ’car will be waiting. Phillip will stay to finish the socializing here.”

  The ramp, and Rich sagged as it carried them downward.

  “Mother, I’m sorry. . . .”

  “Hush, love, none of that.” She leaned down to kiss his forehead. “All you need is some rest.”

  Alexand’s gaze was fixed on the scarlet and black banners on the Faeton waiting at the bottom of the ramp. He couldn’t meet his mother’s eyes now.

  5.

  Dr. Stel and Phillip Woolf were gone now. Rich lay quiet; the nearly hysterical bout of weeping he’d staved off until their return to the Estate was over. His mother sat on the edge of the bed holding his hand, and Alexand leaned against the canopy post at the head of the bed. The windowall framed a scintillant galaxy, the lights of Concordia, and the only sounds were Elise’s soothing voice and Harlequin’s music.

  Alexand looked over to the corner by the windowall where the old Bond sat crosslegged on the floor, lined face tilted up, blind eyes focused somewhere in the blackness behind those unseeing sockets. An electroharp rested on his knees, and his blunt fingers moved deftly among the strings, sending out soft, bell-like tones. The lumensa wall behind him shimmered with amorphic light-shadows, violet to blue to green, with the pulse of the music.

  Harlequin he was called, and Alexand didn’t know his real name. Elise had dubbed him Harlequin when she was a child. He wore the gold-and-purple tabard of a Galinin Bond, but he had lived in the Woolf Estate since her marriage, his extraordinary talents her private delight. And Rich’s. There the old man’s loyalties were happily divided—and shared.

  There were no words to this song. Only a graceful melody that turned upon itself in exquisite variations, a melody that would be Harlequin’s own. A man who could neither read nor write, who could scarcely communicate in words, but the fire of genius burned behind those dead eyes. Yet only a handful of people would ever know it existed.

  But Harlequin was happy. His genius was rewarded with the solicitous care of his Lady and the appreciation of those few people whose lives were enriched by his talents. Harlequin asked nothing more of life.

  Rich was saying earnestly, “Mother, I’m all right now, really. The guests will be arriving, and you haven’t even changed your gown.”

  She hesitated, studying his pale features. “Are you really feeling better now?”

  “Yes, I am getting sleepy. Must be the sedative Dr. Stel gave me.”

  She nodded. “Rich, perhaps we’ll go to the beach estate for a few days. Would you enjoy that?”

  His eyes brightened. “Yes, I would—very much.”

  “So would I. All this celebration is exhausting.” She leaned forward to kiss him and take him in her arms. “Good night, Rich. I love you dearly.”

  “I love you, Mother.”

  She rose and turned to Alexand, their eyes meeting in a shared understanding, a mutual pain. But her smile didn’t falter.

  “Alex, will you be joining us at the ball later?”

  “If you wish.”

  “Only if you wish. You’ll have enough of such affairs in your life, and you won’t always have a choice.” She turned, touching Rich’s hand. “Rest well, darling.” Then, as she crossed to the door, she smiled at the old musician. “Good night, Harlequin. It’s a lovely song.”

  When the door closed softly behind her, Alexand brought a chair up beside the bed and slumped into it, then unlaced the brocaded doublet. Rich studied his brother silently. For some time neither of them spoke.

  Finally, Rich shifted his gaze to the windowall and the wash of Concordia’s lights.

  “One day I’m going to find out why. I mean, that Bond. It was so senseless. An ink bomb. And why throw it at Mother?”

  “It was probably intended for Father.”

  “That still doesn’t make sense. What did Father ever do to him?”

  “Nothing. It’s just that he’s the Lord Woolf.”

  Rich was quiet for a while; the sedative was pulling at his eyelids, but he was still fighting it.

  “Alex, who was she, the Serra?”

  Alexand didn’t have to ask which Serra. Her image haunted his thoughts, that child-woman with her pearl-starred hair.

  “I didn’t know her, Rich.”

  “Aren’t you curious about her? The mysterious Serra with the courage to defy Karlis Selasis?”

  “I don’t want to know who she is or anything about her.”

  “Why not?”

  Alexand turned to look across the bed to the windowall. “Tomorrow I’m to meet a potential bride. Not the first such meeting, not the last, and one day the Contracts of Marriage will be drawn and signed. But that mysterious Serra . . .”His throat seeme
d to close on him. “One could love someone like that. I don’t want to know her name.”

  Rich sighed. “Yes, one could love . . . oh, Alex—”

  “Rich, it comes with the Crest Ring, with the name and the power. It’s part of the price.”

  He nodded, closing his eyes; he could no longer stave off the sedative, and his words were slow and slurred.

  “So . . . sleepy. Alex, thanks. . . .”

  Alexand didn’t move until Rich was well asleep. The time moved past, paced by Harlequin’s music. He would play without pause until asked to stop; the notes under his fingers were as essential and as effortless to him as his own heartbeat.

  And Alexand sat motionless, listening. Why? So many whys: so many unanswerable questions. Tears moved unchecked down his cheeks. Harlequin couldn’t see them.

  6.

  From an acacia near the terrace, windwheels spun out sporadic waterfalls of chimes in the light breeze. It was a gray morning, threatening rain, but Serra Adrien Camine Eliseer found the foreboding sky appealing, and she was pleased that Lady Elise chose to serve tea here on the open terrace overlooking the rose garden. Adrien looked across the tea table at her mother, noting the subtle light that always came to her eyes on these occasions.

  They still called Galia Shang Eliseer a beautiful woman, and she was that, as all the Shang women were, her manner fastidious and restrained, her dress impeccably tasteful, her attitude outwardly serene. But she was worried. The Lady Galia was worried about her wayward daughter.

  Adrien looked down at the bandage on her right wrist; a minor sprain, but it ached. Perhaps her mother guessed more than she’d been told.

  And Adrien was wondering if her mother thought her so much a dupe. Tea with the Lady Elise. That was attractive enough, but there was more to it. Lady Galia had frowned at the pink gown Adrien chose with its high waistline and full sleeves. Couldn’t she wear something more—well, dignified? And must she insist on letting her hair run wild?

  Adrien had ignored that, but she’d also refrained from asking bluntly when Ser Alexand would appear. Lady Galia hadn’t mentioned him, and no doubt would be quite surprised when he did appear, as she’d been yesterday at the Selasid Estate when Karlis put in his studiously casual appearance.

  That was the way the game was played. Adrien didn’t take exception to that, only to her mother’s assumption that she was blind to the game. And she couldn’t explain even to her own satisfaction her uneasiness at this carefully casual encounter. With Karlis it had been simple; she recognized him for what he was and loathed him for it.

  But Ser Alexand . . .

  Corinth Panatell, her tutor, said the true test of character is stress; a few seconds in a stress situation is more revealing than years of acquaintance without conflict. As usual, Corinth was quite correct.

  In a few fleeting seconds last night she’d understood everything worth knowing about Ser Richard Woolf, for instance. She knew him to be as forgiving as he was vulnerable. He hadn’t been angry, nor was there a trace of recrimination in his eyes for his tormentors, vile as they were. Only pain. Pain that cut to her soul.

  The incident had also revealed a great deal about Karlis Selasis, but there was nothing new in the revelation. He was ready to laugh at a helpless cripple, even if he were a DeKoven Woolf, but not to face up to a whole-bodied son of Phillip Woolf with a reputation for some skill at the foils.

  The incident had also revealed much about Ser Alexand, something that made him more than a face familiar through the PubliCom System screens, that made him intensely human. He wasn’t as forgiving as his brother, and in his bearing was the stamp of pride almost synonymous with DeKoven Woolf, but what struck Adrien was the realization that this was a young man capable of deep and passionate love. He came to his brother’s aid like an avenging angel; she had no doubt he would kill or die for him. She wasn’t sure why, but she found that revelation disturbing, and she was vaguely apprehensive about the impending encounter.

  Still, she would always treasure the memory of this morning for one reason: the Lady Elise Galinin Woolf. Adrien watched her as she nodded to the Bondmaid to refill their cups. A living legend even more beautiful and gracious in person than in imagraphs or on vidicom. She was discussing certain mutual friends with Galia now, but most of her conversation had been directed to Adrien.

  Adrien knew she was being examined and assessed; she’d been through the process before. But most of the Ladies considering her as a future daughter-in-law limited their questions to matters of lineage, manner, House management, and etiquette. The Lady Elise was a pleasant surprise. She talked about music, art, poetry, history, and even politics, and without a hint of condescension for Adrien because of her age. And Lady Elise listened, not critically, but with curious interest, to what Adrien had to say.

  “My lady, I must compliment you.” Galia Eliseer lifted the dainty cup to her lips and smiled. “This is perfectly brewed, which is rather rare with Black Shang.”

  “That pleases me. Master Marco isn’t a fancier of tea, unfortunately, but he assures me he’s willing to learn.” Then she added with a quick laugh, “A little reluctantly sometimes, of course.”

  As the discussion of tea and the Woolfs’ master chef continued, Adrien looked down toward the end of the terrace where Lectris, her Bond bodyguard, stood waiting near the salon door—all two meters and hundred kilos of him—staunch and stolid in his blue-and-silver tabard, endlessly patient. It was the turn of Lectris’s head toward the salon, the wary narrowing of his eyes, that gave her warning. She put her cup down, wondering at the quickening of her pulse, wondering if he’d remember her, wondering so many things.

  When she looked up, he was emerging from the salon, dressed with appropriate casualness, the wide-necked shirt loosely laced under an open vest of blue—the color of his eyes, she noted—with only a narrow border of decorative brocade; informal boots of the same pale gray as the slim trousers. He walks like a dancer, she thought. He’d lose some of that youthful grace in the next few years; he’d fill out and grow taller. But he would never lose it entirely. Phillip Woolf still had it.

  He glanced curiously at Lectris, then when he saw her, stopped abruptly. He recognized her. He didn’t expect her, but he recognized her.

  And Adrien felt briefly afraid.

  She was the daughter of a First Lord; certain things were denied her by her birth as they were denied him. Yet there was a Rightness here. That’s what the Elder Shepherd Malaki would call it. Or perhaps a spirit weft.

  At any rate, it was too late now.

  “That’s only Lectris,” she said with a faint smile, noting Alexand’s backward glance at the Bond.

  “Only?” He laughed, offering his arm as they stepped down into the garden. Lectris loomed silently, a granitic pillar of a man with great, sinewy hands that would be nothing less than lethal weapons, and he was further armed with an X2 laser, which was particularly unusual for a Bond.

  “Lectris is my personal guard,” Adrien explained. “He’s really a very gentle soul. He’s been looking after me since I was old enough to walk.”

  The winding path led them away from the terrace, and if not out of range of maternal eyes, at least out of range of maternal ears. No attempt would be made to escape visual observation; that would strain the bounds of propriety as well as the patience of their curious and attentive mothers. For some time they walked in silence, and the garden had never seemed so beautiful. The gray light contradictorily intensified the colors, the incipient rain heightened the scents.

  Alexand looked down at her. The “mysterious Serra” was no longer a mystery. Serra Adrien Camine Eliseer, first daughter of the Lord Loren and the Lady Galia Shang Eliseer.

  And a potential bride.

  A cold warning sounded in his mind: in any human encounter, your best defense is doubt. His father’s words. There was trut
h behind them, and bitter experience, yet they rankled. He’d told Rich that one could love a young woman like this. Was it asking so much, or was it so foolish, to want to find out if he were right?

  He studied her face, in profile to him, shadowed by her black hair, which fell straight and unfettered to her waist. It asked to be touched, and he had to restrain the impulse. It had the same silken, blued sheen as Lady Galia’s, their heritage from Shang. Adrien’s features also reflected the Shang heritage: high cheekbones and dark, oblique eyes. Her hands were small and as delicate as finely carved ivories. A Selaneen doll; something so exquisitely fragile it should be encased in plasex as the finest Selaneens always were.

  Yet she’d seemed anything but fragile last night when she silenced Karlis Selasis with that potent, unmasked contempt. This Selaneen had bones of steel. She was something entirely new to him in his experience with the daughters of the Court of Lords.

  Your best defense is doubt. . ..

  He frowned, aware that the silence was stretching too long, even if she showed no impatience with it.

  “Serra Adrien, I’m grateful for this opportunity to talk with you, both for my sake and my brother’s. Rich regretted very much that he didn’t thank you last night. He’ll be happy that I’ve found you so I can offer his thanks—and mine—for your kindness.”

  She seemed to freeze, but it was something behind her eyes; her pace didn’t change, nor did her expression.

  “Kindness.” She pronounced the word almost coldly. “Holy God, it was his due, and not because of his lineage. A matter of simple courtesy that needs no special thanks.”

  “Serra, whether or not it was his due, you were the only one present who showed that simple courtesy.”

  “That changes nothing. Those simpering, gutless Lordlings try to bring him to his knees because he’s so much—” She stopped, her shoulders sagging. “Forgive me, Ser Alexand. There’s nothing new in this for you, I know, nor is it something that bears reiteration.”