Rock of Ages

by Walter Jon Williams

  “I don’t think we’re going to be attacked by outlaws,” the Bubber said, “but I’m sure that if we are, we’ll be thankful for the hardware. And I wasn’t planning on riding through heavy brush, either, though the chaps will be useful if we do.”

  Roberta arrived, dressed casually, and looked at Maijstral in surprise. “I’ve seen that costume before,” she offered, “You wore it on the night of the Grand Ball on Silverside, when you stole my necklace.”

  “I hope the associations aren’t too unpleasant.”

  Roberta offered an ambiguous smile. “Quite the contrary. It was an exhilarating evening.”

  “Perhaps,” said the Bubber, “I should introduce you to your horses. And, ah, Drake—I’d take off those spurs if I were you. There might be an accident.”

  Maijstral had fantasized himself flying along on a midnight steed, a lean animal, all clean streamlined angles and flying mane and surging muscle, but his horse turned out to be a gentle, middle-aged gray mare named Morganna, who jogged along the path without any apparent need for direction on Maijstral’s part. Even so Maijstral found the sensation a bit alarming. The large beast moving beneath him gave him the sensation of being harnessed to a slow-motion earthquake, a natural force of sufficient power to cause injury if be made the wrong move. Still, he and the horse managed to get along well enough, and he found himself enjoying the experience.

  Roberta was less successful. It became obvious from the first that she and her mount were engaged in a furious contest of wills from which, very possibly, there would be but one survivor.

  “I can’t understand it,” the Bubber remarked, after they’d been riding about ten minutes. “Ringo’s been a perfectly tractable animal till now.”

  “If this beast doesn’t soon learn to obey,” Roberta said through clenched teeth, “I’m going to break every single one of its ribs.”

  Roberta was a world-class racer, with the powerful legs necessary to negotiate the turns and leaps of the zero-gravity maze, and she might well have been capable of carrying out her threat.

  “Just try to relax,” the Bubber suggested.

  Ringo regarded the Duchess from a red, rolling eye, ears flattened. “Relax?” Roberta cried. “How? With this wretched animal confounding my every . . .”

  Roberta urged it forward, and instead, out of contrariness, it backed. Roberta’s ears drew back in anger. She kicked the horse to get it moving, those powerful racer’s legs driving into the animal’s ribs . . . and Ringo took off with a bound, almost flinging Roberta over its tail, and raced top speed across country. Roberta hung on gamely, crouched over the horse’s neck, and hurled abuse into its ear as it carried her off.

  Maijstral watched in alarm at this development right out of one of his Westerns. The heroine’s animal had run off with her, and it was clearly up to the hero to do something about it. If Elvis had been here, or Jesse James, the course of action would have been clear. But Maijstral, an equestrian tyro, was helpless to intervene. If he’d only worn an a-grav harness, he could have flown after the Duchess and plucked her from the saddle with ease.

  Fortunately the Bubber was up to the challenge and raced off in pursuit. Maijstral peered anxiously after, but all he could see were two swiftly moving clouds of dust aiming for a convergence on the horizon. After a certain amount of negotiation with his animal he managed to work it up to a trot; and he jounced along in pursuit, feeling as if life had just handed him the sidekick role.

  Eventually, emerging from the heat shimmer on the horizon came the Bubber on his horse, with Roberta mounted behind and a lathered Ringo following on a lead. The Bubber was grinning, and even Roberta had a smile tugging at her lips.

  “I trust you’re not injured?” Maijstral asked.

  “Not at all,” Roberta said. “Will was the perfect rescuer. Snatched me right out of the saddle and set me behind him as if I were a child.” She patted the Bubber on the shoulder. “You’re stronger than you look.”

  The Bubber seemed pleased. “There’s a trick to it. You just have to know how.”

  “And how do you know these tricks? Do you go plucking ladies off runaway horses every day of the week?”

  The Bubber flushed a little. “I used to do a little acrobatic riding, but I haven’t done anything like that in years. Surprising how the reflexes come back.” He shaded his eyes and looked toward the sprawl of the Prince’s residence, still looming on the horizon, then turned to Maijstral. “I’m sorry to cut your lesson short, Drake, but we’d best return to the stables.”

  Roberta looked firm. “I think not,” she said. “You and Maijstral go on with your plans.” She kicked one leg up over the Bubber’s head—her athleticism was so effortless that it did not surprise—and slid, off the saddle to the ground. “I shall walk Ringo back to the stables,” she said. “And if the beast gives me trouble, I shall simply break the animal’s knees.”

  The Bubber looked dubious. “We’ll take you back,” he said. “I’m sure Drake doesn’t mind.”

  “Not at all,” Maijstral said.

  Roberta’s violet eyes flashed. “Maijstral,” she said. “Go for your ride.”

  Maijstral blinked. He had encountered Roberta’s force of will before, and on consideration it amazed him that Ringo had managed to resist it for so long. “Your grace,” he said, “if you insist.”

  “I do.” She turned to the Bubber, and her face assumed a less stern expression. “I’m perfectly capable of walking the couple of leagues to the stables. I’m a racer, after all.”

  “Well,” frowning, “if you’re sure . . .”

  Roberta took her leave and began her walk, the exhausted, chastened horse following. Maijstral and the Bubber turned their horses and began a trot back to the road.

  “Rather high-strung, ain’t she?” the Bubber said.

  “She has more reason for temperament than most,” Maijstral said. “She is young, and has been to a strict school. No doubt she wishes to prove herself worthy of all the trust that has been placed in her. And of course she has to be constantly wary of people who want to take advantage of her—fortune hunters and so on.”

  The Bubber’s ears reddened. “Well, yes,” he said, “families can be a bother sometime. I find I’m glad I’m not the heir—I’ve much more freedom that way, I’ve got enough money to be comfortable, and J.B.’s kind enough to employ me at things I enjoy. Fortunately we get along.”

  “My titles came with no money or property,” Maijstral said, “only debts. It was hard to think of them as an advantage.”

  They rode along pleasantly for a while, each with his own thoughts.

  “Drake?” the Bubber said. “When do you think you might teach me a little magic?”

  “Right now, if you like.”

  “Now?”

  “A little theory, anyway.”

  “Oh. Well. To be sure.”

  “We have several varieties of effects to consider,” Maijstral began. “All classic visual effects fall into one of a few categories—vanishing, production, transformation, transposition, restoration, penetration, and levitation.”

  “That seems rather a long list.” Dubiously.

  “Some effects are merely the reversal of another, vanishing and production for example. Allow me to give an example of each.”

  Discoursing thus, the two rode on companionably.

  Behind them, out of sight of the two, a large transport craft descended onto the Prince’s lawn to unload its cargo.

  One large coffin.

  *

  After luncheon the Prince, his family, and his guests boarded a large flier and sped to the Grand Canyon, where, after a leisurely drift down the length of the Canyon at about medium altitude, with the Colorado still far below and the canyon walls looming high on either side, the flier soared effortlessly upward to a landing at Cape Solitude. There everyone disembarked to observe the Colorado stretching on down the length of Marble Canyon, and marveled at the side-canyon’s grand, if inaccurately named, magnif
icence.

  As the others absorbed the Canyon’s splendor, Maijstral carefully watched Joseph Bob from beneath his lazy eyelids. He wanted to do a card trick that would astound everyone, but it required knowing the subject well. In the cant, it required “taking dead aim” at Joseph Bob.

  But he wasn’t certain if he knew Joseph Bob well enough. Maijstral had, during their school years in the Empire, known the young princeling as well as anyone, but he hadn’t seen the man since graduation.

  But Joseph Bob seemed not to have changed at all. Matured a bit, certainly, but in essence he seemed the same young human Maijstral had known at the Academy.

  Well, Maijstral thought, he might as well find out. If this didn’t work, he’d cover it with another trick.

  The others were starting to drift back to the flier in preparation to moving to another vantage point. Maijstral approached Joseph Bob.

  “Would you mind assisting me in a card trick?” he asked.

  “Here?” Joseph Bob seemed surprised. “If you like.”

  “Perhaps we could use the table near that, ah, tree-ish thing.”

  “That’s a Jasperian Sprout Vine.”

  “It is? So that’s what a sprout vine looks like.”

  The others followed as Maijstral and Joseph Bob approached the table. They sat on opposite sides of the table, and Maijstral produced a deck of cards. He spread them expertly, faceup, in front of the Prince. .

  “If you could point to a card?”

  Joseph Bob pointed to the four of ships. Triumph flooded Maijstral’s blood. He swept up the cards, shuffled, handed the deck to Joseph Bob.

  “Find your card, if you please.”

  Joseph Bob looked through the deck for the four of ships but failed to find it.

  “Count them, please.”

  Joseph Bob counted the cards. Glancing around the table, Maijstral noted the little bobs of the spectators’ heads as they counted along with him.

  “There are only sixty-three,” Joseph Bob said. “The four of ships is missing.”

  Maijstral’s eyes glinted green from behind his heavy lids. “Perhaps,” he said, “you might find the missing card in the inside left breast pocket of your jacket.”

  Joseph Bob reached into, his jacket experimentally, and then his eyes widened. He withdrew his hand and in it, the four of ships.

  “You were on the other side of the table from me the entire time,” he said. “How did you do that?”

  Taking dead aim, Maijstral thought, and gathered up the cards. He rose from his seat and looked out over the Canyon.

  “Perhaps we might seek another point of advantage.”

  “I don’t see why we should bother,” Joseph Bob muttered, his ears pricking back in puzzlement, “since the advantage is all yours.”

  *

  The afternoon was spent flitting from one part of the Canyon to the next, and ended with cocktails and a light buffet in the Redwall Cavern. Then the flier returned to the Prince’s estate, where Roman helped lace Maijstral into his formal dinner dress.

  Roman was feeling a warm, mild burning sensation precisely in the middle of his broad back, where he couldn’t scratch it. All day he had felt mild fevers alternate with light chills. Phantom itches moved from place to place, over his body, and wherever he scratched, his fine black fur flew.

  As he’d experienced this twenty-odd times before, he knew perfectly well what was going to happen. He was about to enter molt.

  Roman hated molt. He was an exceptionally bad molter, and his molts put him out of sorts for weeks. And the fact that the molt meant he was a year older did not improve his humor.

  Another year, he might have thought, in service to Maijstral. Another year of being an assistant thief, occasional leg-breaker, and general voice of responsibility in a most irregular world.

  Roman might have thought that . . . but he didn’t. He was far too disciplined, too Khosali, ever to criticize his employer, even mentally. The most he would ever allow himself was an occasional diaphragm pulse of resignation.

  “Did you have a pleasant afternoon, sir?” he asked as he did up the side-laces of Maijstral’s jacket.

  “Very satisfactory,” Maijstral said. He looked at Roman over his shoulder. “A little looser in the armpit, please.”

  “Very good, sir.” Roman pried at the laces.

  “You were out last night,” Maijstral said.

  “I regret I wasn’t back in time to unlace you,” Roman said. “I lost track of time.”

  Maijstral tugged experimentally at his lapel, worked his arm in its socket. “I hope you had a pleasant time, wherever you were.”

  “I was at the library, sir.”

  “Oh.” Maijstral was surprised. “Well, I hope your reading was pleasant.”

  “I was reading history, sir,” Roman said. “It was very fulfilling.”

  Which was a statement calculated to end Maijstral’s questions. Roman, as well as the Duchess, had his own Special Project, one he had been working on for years, a project that involved Maijstral.

  Last night, in the library in Rome, Roman had found the crucial bit of evidence that had brought the project to its climax. He just didn’t want Maijstral knowing about it yet.

  Roman handed Maijstral his pistol, which was promptly stowed in the armpit holster, and then Maijstral made his way downstairs to dinner.

  Relieved to be left alone, Roman went straight to the service plate and called for a robot to come to the room and scratch the fiery itch in the center of his back.

  Dinner featured pleasant conversation and no card tricks—Maijstral understood that to be consistently amazing is, in the long run, to risk becoming consistently predictable, if not consistently dull. Besides, Maijstral was very pleased with the one trick he’d performed that day, and had no desire to perform other tricks that weren’t as spectacular.

  After dinner, Joseph Bob, the Bubber, and Arlette played a three-sided game of puff-sticks in the drawing room, while Maijstral browsed along the bookshelves. There were a lot of histories and biographies, many of which concerned members of the Prince’s family. Maijstral browsed the pages of one of these—it concerned the great Flax-Seed Scandal that rocked, the Empire in the decade before the Rebellion and the then-Bubber’s ambiguous role therein—and discovered that the margins had been annotated in pencil. Most of the annotations were in the human alphabet, and consisted of the letter “L” or the letters “DL,” sometimes followed by an exclamation mark.

  Maijstral waited for an auspicious moment to interrupt the puff-sticks game, then asked Joseph Bob what the letters meant. The Prince gave the book a glance.

  “Oh, that’s my grandfather’s notes,” he said. “He annotated all the histories that way. L stands for ‘lie,’ and DL for 'damned lie.’”

  Maijstral smiled. “I am enlightened,” he said. “Thank you.” As he returned to the bookshelf the Duchess of Benn approached, rustling in a silk gown of imperial purple that admirably echoed her violet eyes.

  “Maijstral,” Roberta said, “I was wondering if you might join Kuusinen and me for a moment. There is something upstairs that might interest you.”

  “Of course, your grace.” Maijstral closed the book and returned it to the shelves.

  Feeling the sort of languid curiosity that is the best one can hope for after a large, well-prepared meal, Maijstral followed after Roberta. Little warning spikes of pain jumped along his thighs as he climbed up the stairs—the morning’s riding, he thought. Roberta’s gown plunged behind, and he found himself enjoying, once more, the supple play of muscle and shadow on the Duchess’s back.

  Roberta led Maijstral past her own suite, then opened a door into another room and stepped inside. Maijstral followed, saw what waited therein, and stopped dead. Kuusinen almost ran into him from behind.

  Maijstral’s first thought was that Conchita Sparrow had really outdone herself this time—not only stealing a huge cryocoffin from somewhere, but sneaking it past Joseph Bob’s security and hi
ding it in the room—but then he began to recognize the coffin’s sweeping bronze lines, turned into little classical scrolls on either end, and he frowned and stepped into the room, a song of warning keening in the back of his head.

  Aunt Batty, he observed, had been keeping the coffin company: she was well established in a rocking chair in one corner, surrounded by a little thicket of manuscript on which she’d been working. Evidently the coffin’s appearance was not a surprise to her, or to anyone in the Duchess’s party.

  Maijstral looked at the Imperial Arms and Lineage etched into the coffin lid, and it only confirmed his worst suspicions. His heart sank.

  “Hello, Dad,” he said. “How did you get here?”

  A plaintive voice came from the coffin.

  “Is it time for my cocoa yet?” it asked.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Maijstral had believed that he had kept his late father without enough funds to travel, and as his father’s legal guardian he’d forbade his father to borrow. Well, he thought, his dad had got the funds from somewhere, probably a little account he’d been hiding all these years, or maybe an old friend who’d been persuaded to make a loan; and Maijstral would have to get the lawyers to start searching for the source . . . after, Maijstral considered, the late Gustav Maijstral was shipped home to his tomb and safely reinstalled in the home of his ancestors.

  “Drake?” the corpse inquired. “Is that you, Drake?”

  “Yes, Dad,” Maijstral sighed. “It’s me.”

  “I came here for a very good reason,” Gustav Maijstral said firmly. “I want my cocoa!” And then, added, “. . . I think. I think that’s why I’m here.”

  “Dad,” Maijstral said patiently, “you can’t have cocoa. You’re dead.”

  Maijstral gave an apologetic look to the others while his father mulled this over.

  “Oh yes,” the corpse remarked. “You’re right. I’m dead. I forgot.”

  It is impossible not to observe that the former Duke of Dornier, ex-Viscount Sing, onetime Prince-Bishop of Nana, and late Hereditary Captain-General of the Green Legion had not been a particularly astute man while alive, and that death had not improved him.