From my purse I drew a red wax seal and envelope, one of which encloses every letter he has sent to us. The postal seal of the King of Velonya has no real meaning, legal or social, once the letter is delivered, but I have found that very few men will lay hands upon one who is carrying it.
I keep the king’s letters with me. I value them highly.
Though it was the seal that brought us through the door, I believe it was my name that led us through to the duke. I remember counting steps and directions as we passed through that great, shapeless house as through the gut of an animal. Servants in livery and in the clothes of gentlefolk passed by, their eyes flickering toward us and away.
If Leoue was our hidden enemy, then there was a chance we were about to be killed. We might be trapped in a room and shot from all directions. We might be trapped and simply left. Servants could be bribed or threatened to forget our existence. Perhaps these servants would not have to be bribed or threatened.
We passed down one very long hall, which was limed and gilded, into a large chamber of stuffed furniture, rather shabby by contrast. It looked comfortable. From there the footman led us into another hall, which was of generous proportion but quite bare, with red and white tiles on the floor and red stripes between the wall pilasters. There was a staircase, all in marble, winding up to the first floor, and the base of this staircase was flooded with light from a half-circle window. As the shine of the lit tiles caught my eye, I was hit by a memory and stood stunned.
I knew this place from before: the tiles, the russet uprights of the baluster, the quality of sunlight on a summer afternoon. My body had the knowledge of it, though nothing else in the house was familiar. I heard the footsteps of the servant recede and then scuff to a stop. I felt Arlin’s hand tighten on my arm.
“Later,” she said. “Feel it later.”
Under the half-window was an open door, and outside that door stretched a small garden, divided from the park major by a wall of white-painted brick. This garden, like the room we had passed on our way, was comfortably shabby; there were uneven paths of brick, a patch of lawn, a small lion-headed fountain drooling into a pond with yet more goldfish.
First I knew the lion, and then the paths, and then I almost fell to my knees with the blow of memory, for this was the ducal nursery garden, and it was here I had had my first infant look at the natural world.
“He must have brought you here on purpose,” whispered Arlin, and she dug her thumbnail into the sensitive point between the bones of my elbow until I was forced to shrug her off. And to stand upright.
The Duke of Leoue was sitting on a three-legged stool at the edge of the grass with a low table in front of him, and both the table and the grass were scattered with books. I looked at the man and I did not think he had met me here as a strategy.
I had expected to see in young Leoue his father, for I had never seen picture nor portrait of the new duke. No lifetime, however spent, could have turned this man into a great bear, like the Leoue I knew. He was almost as tall as old Leoue, but he had nowhere his father’s breadth: not in shoulder, in chest, or in the fists like firewood that the duke had been known to fling at me. Maleph Markins, Duke of Leoue, was a graceful youth, and his black hair and sun-darkened skin were set off by large eyes of sky blue. Two bald furrows already running back above his temples, making inroads into the thick hair, served to give a greater intensity to what might have been a boy’s face. He wore a white woolen shirt, side-buttoned, knee breeches of plain gabardine, and the knee stockings of a mountain shepherd.
He sat waiting for us to be brought to him, alert and quiet. By looks, by dress, and by the controlled way he held his body, this duke might have been another student of yours.
The footman brought us to within five feet of the duke and then he retreated, but only by a few yards. At an irritated flicker of his master’s eye, the man backed further, but at the corner of my eye I saw him standing by the lion fountain.
“Nazhuret of Sordaling,” said the duke, and by his hesitation I wondered if he even recognized the name. He unfolded long limbs, knocking the stool back onto the grass. His gaze was very cool and steady, but the muscles of his jaw stood out visibly, even under the soft skin of youth.
For a moment he seemed to withdraw from me without moving. His eyes went from a pointed sort of blue to haze-color, and had it been I looking at Arlin, I would have said he had taken his mind into the belly of the wolf. As his eyes cleared again I saw his lips move, and I think he pronounced the words “God help me.”
“… of Sordaling,” he repeated, aloud. “Why ‘of Sordaling’?”
I answered him that I grew up there, and had no other name.
With no greater expression than before the duke said, “No other name? Not Kavenen? Timet Kavenen? Of Norwess?”
This answered my question about being recognized. I phrased my reply carefully. “I will not use either of the first two, lest it be connected with the third.”
I heard two sounds—a stir from the footman against the garden wall, and a quieter rustle as Arlin shifted to keep that man in sight. Leoue’s intensity took on greater edge as he asked me, “Are you denying that as your parentage? It was my understanding you yourself claimed to be son of Eydl of Norwess.”
I felt within me a bright spark of protest, for this was so opposite of the truth. Two men had claimed that descent for me, and one of them was this fellow’s father. I waited until the spark blew out before I spoke. “It was claimed by others before I had any idea in the matter. I believe it to be true, but I have no desire to possess the things that were Eydl’s.”
We stood almost two yards apart, with Arlin behind my left shoulder, but I would never have turned my back to an enemy as Leoue turned his upon me. He crossed the grass in a few strides and took the branch of a bush in his hand: a woody peony, I think. He pulled it loose at the trunk, leaving a white streak of split bark on the plant. It looked painful as a hangnail. Without looking at the thing he began to pull the leaves off, one after another, methodically. “You killed my father,” he said at last, as though that one sentence explained everything in the world.
As a matter of truth, Arlin, not I, had killed his father, but only because I was not in position to do so. That would make no good answer to the man, nor would it help to state in turn that his father had worked the death of mine. I saw a swallow dip over the garden wall, shimmering in the queer high air, and everything seemed to shimmer. I wondered if I had made a mistake in coming, for I could scarcely gather my wits.
“Your father was trying to kill the king,” I answered, because it was true as far as it went.
Now Leoue’s garment of calm left him. He took two strides toward me, swishing the naked branch over the grass where undoubtedly both he and I had toddled as babies. “So you said!”
“So the king said.” I hoped I did not sound as heated as he did.
Hearing this, the duke broke the stick. “The king can be mistaken. He was mistaken. I know what happened clearly. I see it in my mind’s eye. My father wanted the head of Daraln—to protect the king from the old illusionist—but the earl made a game of all of you and you slew the wrong man!”
“If that’s what you think…” It was Arlin, trying without success to be heard.
Leoue pointed one jagged fragment of his stick at my head. “Only, seeing that it was Eydl’s son who struck the blow, it may be your role was not merely that of tool. I have never been certain…”
Now Arlin shouted, “If that is what you see in your mind’s eye, fellow, then your mind’s eye needs spectacles! When your father struck, Daraln was nowhere within reach, and he stood in the opposite direction from the blow. And further, it was not Nazhuret who killed your father.”
She had his attention for the first time. I could see him taking this lean shape into account. Dark and dressed in dark, speaking in the gravelled voice of a pipe smoker, my lady had never looked less like a lady. Or like any woman. “It was I,” she said.
The swallows stitched over the sky and the footman’s jacket glowed like red flame against the gray of the wall. Beyond garden and wall I saw the tips of mountains, white even in summer against the sky. They appeared unsubstantial. I thought the peaks might float away, light as the purple swallows.
The duke’s response came slowly, and he had himself well in hand before he spoke. “Your man?” he asked, speaking again to me, as he might have said “your horse” or “your knife.”
Arlin and I answered together. “No.” I said more. “Not my man, but my friend. Arlin, also of Sordaling.”
Arlin interpreted the tight grimace on the duke’s face. “Of Sordaling, yes, but not another hidden son of a duke. Nor of any noble.” (My lady takes endless delight in using the truth to mislead people. She is not the son, but the daughter of a noble. At times of moment, such as this was, I hesitate to speak at all, whereas Arlin likes to speak at no other occasion.)
Another footman came through the doorway, and behind him, more steps. I measured the height of the garden wall, and the anger in the duke’s clenched hands. I thought I had better get my business over quickly. “Is vengeance for your father the reason you have sent assassins out against us, Duke? Or is it simply worry that I will petition the king to re-create my father’s honors?”
Once again I had turned his attention from Arlin to myself. The duke’s young forehead roughened at my words.
“Assassins?” Again he fixed that sharp blue gaze upon me. “Do you come here to accuse me of assassins?”
I did not shrug, because shrugging puts the body at a disadvantage. “Who else? Endergen? Fowett?”
By the time he answered, the duke had his composure over him as perfectly as when we had first seen him. “I’m sure a man like you has many personal enemies, without having to search for those of a previous generation.”
Until he said those words, I had been convinced that the young duke had nothing to do with the attacks against us. The coldness of that verbal thrust made me less certain. “Just answer me that you are not the employer of these killers, my lord. Only that and I will bother you no more.”
His large eyes searched my face. “You call me ‘my lord’? You do?”
In irritation I replied, “I will call you ‘my God’ if you will only answer my question. Of course I call you by honorific; you are a duke of Velonya!”
Leoue looked away. “You insult me, Nazhuret of Sordaling. Do I seem like a man who pays for murder?”
Once again I said, “Just answer me,” and the duke scowled at his heap of books. “I have sent no assassins to murder you or anyone else.” As though forced out of his throat, the words followed “Though I don’t wish you well… though I have a certain sympathy with the man whom you have made your enemy.”
I wanted no more of Maleph Markins. The assurance I had come for I had gotten, and whether I believed it or not was my problem. I backed away from him a good ten paces before I turned; let him think it was out of respect. Arlin came behind me.
In the doorway under the half-moon window stood a woman dressed in white like the white of Norwess stones, with a footman in red at either side of her. She was elegant, with silver and amethyst around her neck, and by her face, she was kin to the duke. She did not move aside, but stared down at me in the manner people use when they want a short man to realize his height. I am very familiar with that stare.
Leoue called to her to move aside, calling her “Mother,” speaking very respectfully. His voice, though controlled, had a lot of feeling behind it. Without a word the woman slipped to one side, and the bright-garbed footmen adjusted themselves next to her. I stepped into the house and noticed that Arlin was not with me. She was a few yards behind, and her eyes were locked with those of the duchess: no difference of inches there.
Again the duke spoke to me. “Servants talk, Nazhuret. There is no help for it. My men are loyal, and it would be better if you left the province with reasonable speed.”
“The province,” he had said. The ancient name of these high mountains is Norwess, not Leoue. The duke did not feel comfortable using the name in front of me.
I left grinning. Norwess—the honor to which I was born, and to which so many expect me to aspire again—seems as foreign as the moon to me, and leaves me dizzy as a kite.
“My men are loyal,” he had said. Did he mean his men were too attached to his honor to be obedient, or did he mean they would do murder at his command? Either manner, the threat did not weigh upon me; even in strange territory, Arlin and I are not so easy to find. That evening we spread ourselves out in a dry pine wood, ate drier bread, and discussed the results of our visit.
Arlin was convinced that Leoue was the heart of our problem. She had enough reason on her side, for surely we had found anger in our reception, and the man was convinced that we were responsible for the griefs of his life. My only argument against this was no argument at all: that I thought the duke looked too much and dressed too much and acted too much like a student of Powl’s to be so devious.
She raised her head and dusted the needles from her black hair. “I am a student of Powl’s. I am devious,” she said.
I had to admit that, and so was forced to contradict myself. “But he is not Powl’s student, so how could he be so good an actor? He seemed so outraged that we should be there. Not wary, not smug—not like a man who had planned and paid for our deaths. Could he be such a consummate actor at the age of seventeen?”
“Consummate actors are born,” Arlin answered. “Or made in early youth. My father honed my instincts in that direction. Wouldn’t you say the son of the Black Duke had opportunity to learn at least as much as I?” Arlin was taking apart a pine cone as she spoke, and her hair still wore a halo of dead twigs and needles. I remember that she looked like a stern sort of angel as she compared her own duplicity to that of Leoue. I remember that this was the first evening we were too occupied to think of the assault, and the death of the baby. And the death of the horse.
I poached rabbits in my father’s preserves for the next few days while we tried to decide our next action. It began to rain, and though we should have been glad for the sake of the dry countryside, we had not prepared for it. Arlin began to sneeze and I thought it best, threats or no, to seek out human habitation. The nearest village was a handsome place of steep-roofed wooden buildings with their eaves painted in bright colors. When I saw them the thought was forced upon me that such sights would have been a joy and a solace to me in my childhood, and I was aware that the ghost of Timet of Norwess was encroaching further into my mind. I would have to exorcise him somehow.
The first tavern we came to was glad to trade supper and space in the stable for my wife and me, for work in these high altitudes is more plentiful than people. Arlin retired to the warmth of horses to let her clothes steam dry, while I warmed up more quickly chopping the ever-needed firewood.
(I call Arlin my wife, but the truth is that we are not married by any law or order besides the natural one that marries geese and wolves. I have never yet dared to engender a legitimate child, lest its very ancestry doom it to murder. Until the assassins came, this lack had been my only grief. Now, I had others. Now, I knew bastardy was not enough protection.)
I am not bad at reading human expression, and there was nothing in the face of the innkeeper or the potboy that led me to believe they knew my identity and felt obliged to inform the soldiery or take matters into their own hands. The villagers were more polite and reserved than I was accustomed to in my travels, even though my mongrel face must have surprised the folk of Norwess more than those to the south.
It was a small pleasure to be able to speak to strangers without adopting the Zaquash dialect I had learned so laboriously from you. The burghers of Norwess speak a very pure Velonyie.
I brought our supper to the stable, because Arlin was very tired. We washed in water borrowed from the animals and then cleaned our clothes as best we could. Letting the wool dry over two crossties snapped toge
ther, we wrapped ourselves in a blanket on a heap of good straw and let night fall.
It was Arlin’s belief that whoever had set the killers upon us now knew we were seeking his identity, and to visit Fowett or Endergen would only be asking for a knife in the ribs. I was dissatisfied, however. I felt we had learned very little in all our climbing.
We discussed the matter very softly in the dark, so quietly we were aware when the grunts and snores of the horses stopped, and I could sense one beast raise his head and sniff the air. Our conversation died at that moment and Arlin and I rolled back to back, letting the blanket fall away. In another moment we were crouched in the darkness, and there was not a sound from inside the stable. Slowly I reached for my dowhee and some beast kicked his stall partition once. My skin felt a very strong sense that someone was moving in the dark before me. Black against darkness, Arlin shifted beside me. No sound.
How many assassins could we handle, naked and trapped in a three-sided oaken box two feet deep in straw? How many assassins, well trained or no, could move together so silently?
“I wish I could have been of some assistance,” said your voice out of the blackness. You were far enough away from us that neither was likely to strike you in pure startlement. I took a deep breath and laid my dowhee against the loose-box wall. “But until two days ago, when I reached the oratory, I had no idea you were pursued.”
(I will repeat your words as I remember, and later we can argue whether I was correct.)
“Good evening, Daraln,” answered Arlin in her drawling gambler’s voice. (She only called you Daraln because she was irritated by the surprise.) “Don’t think of it twice. You can’t be forever nursemaiding us.”
I remember you replied with a little sound in your throat, more polite than a grunt. In it I felt that you communicated you understood many things, including the loss of the baby.
The Lens of the World Trilogy Page 31
