Paragon Lost

by Dave Duncan

  Beau was hugging his knees. He curled forward to rest his head on them, turning his face to study her. “Insult you, love? Never. How could I?” He knew perfectly well. Merriment gleamed in his eyes like quicksilver.

  “For two weeks you say you love me and want to marry me and you have never even kissed me. Not so much as touched my hand!” It had been his idea to come up here. He must know why couples came to the woods on Montmoulin. If he didn’t know before he must know now—you could see the grass waving where it was happening. She hadn’t quite decided what she would do when he tried, but he hadn’t tried, and she would have to go back to work soon.

  “I promised I wouldn’t until you asked me to.”

  “It is not for me to ask! It is the man’s job to ask.”

  “It’s a man’s job to keep his promises. Say you’ll marry me.”

  “No! I won’t be bought by lies. You’ll deceive me and then run away to find your Skyrrian princess, the Czar’s sister.”

  “Who says so?”

  “Everyone knows!”

  He sighed and raised his head to study the city. Did he know what a perfect profile he had? He was trim, compact, barely taller than she—a terrier. His features seemed small for a man’s and yet too bony to be effeminate. Even his ears were small, set close, no lobes. And those golden curls!

  “Czar Igor doesn’t have a sister. A sister-in-law, who is also his cousin, a princess of the blood. She is said to be stunningly beautiful. Maybe I will marry her instead. Tasha, such a pretty name.”

  Isabelle wanted to rip his eyes out, although she had spied on his fencing and knew he was far faster than she could ever be. If she attacked him, would he push her down in the grass and kiss her?

  She was not going to ask first!

  She could be just as stubborn as he could.

  “The new Ambassador has arrived. The Conte d’Edge-bury?”

  “Hedgebury. An excellent man! A knight in my order. He was the most decorated Blade ever.”

  “You will be gone soon.”

  “Probably.” He looked at her again, and now his eyes were leaden. “You think this is not agony for me, too, Belle? The moment I first saw you I went mad and swore that I would have you for my wife. I have told you that my ward must always come first, for I am bound by oath and by the eight, but you will ever be second, I swear. He is old and cannot live many years. Say yes and we can be married tonight with all the noble witnesses you want—peers of Chivial and Isilond lined up. You think my ward would ever let me break my word? He is a crusted statue of lithic honor. He is so honorable everybody hates him and he knows it. When we leave, you will stay behind in the Ambassador’s house as my wife, not just the girl who makes the bread. On our way home we will come back through Laville, I am certain of that. And when I have seen my ward to his home in Chivial, he will never roam again—he swears it. He owns a fair castle, I’m told, and I will give you fine gowns and maybe some small jewels.”

  She dared not speak in case the wrong words came out. Beau was not boasting. Great nobles called on him every day and jumped to his bidding. Her mother would swoon to hear of such a wedding!

  He sighed. “What I really want is not to have to eat in the kitchen.”

  Oh! Monster! He did that all the time—wove a spell and then snapped it.

  Yet she was trembling. She ached all through. It would be so easy to whisper yes. Even Mistress Gontier, who had always seemed so fierce, had taken Isabelle aside and asked why she was snapping at everyone. And then—miracle!— she had laughed and said, “Don’t ask him to kiss you—kiss him! Kiss him until steam blows from his ears. If he is any man at all, he will take care of the rest.”

  She put Mistress Gontier out of mind. “You don’t even know if I’m a virgin!” If she wasn’t, this would be much easier.

  “I don’t care whether you are or not. I’m not.”

  She sniggered and felt herself blush. “Men can’t be virgins.”

  “Yes, they can, but not usually from choice.”

  “How long will you be gone?” She was wavering.

  “Months.”

  “Ha! I would rather remember a lost lover than worry about a missing husband. Suppose you never came back? Suppose Lord Wassail dies?”

  His eyes turned steely. “He will not! We will bring our ward safely home to Chivial and the King himself will honor us.”

  She scrambled to her feet. “You insult me! Go find your queen, you stupid swordsman. If you still want me after seeing her, ask me then.” She ran.

  He caught up with her easily and jogged alongside. “Is that all? No promises? No understanding, even?”

  “Nothing! Ask me again when you return. If you return.”

  She put her hands over her ears and ran on down the slope.

  IV

  The Sport of Czars

  • 1 •

  Klong-ng-ng!…The great bell tolled, the one they called Mother Tharik, mightiest of the High Town carillon. Its knell reverberated through ancient stonework and shivered in listeners’ bones. Just as the clouds of panic-stricken doves began to settle on roofs and battlements, another stroke would send them thundering skyward again. Beyond the curtain wall, out in Great Market, a crowd was singing anthems. The Czar had returned! The Little Father had returned. Klong-ng-ng! All Kiensk rejoiced.

  All Kiensk, that is, with the possible exception of Czarina Sophie, who was of two minds. Last night a razor-thin crescent in the sunset had signaled the start of Sixthmoon, meaning her husband had been gone nine weeks this time—and all those nine weeks she had languished in High Town, condemned to a life of excruciating stupid trivia. When he was in residence, she was wife, empress, royal hostess, but also permanently terrified. Hence her ambivalence.

  Igor had returned last night, but he had sent her no word, no summons. Warned by her maids, she had lain awake for hours, waiting for the corner door to open. It had not moved.

  Even now, standing at her window looking down on the open square of Great Market, she was keeping half an eye on that corner door. Klong-ng-ng! The tolling signified that the Czar was about to hold court, a royal audience. He was probably being dressed in his finery right now, behind those massive, soundproof timbers. Forewarned, Sophie was already clad in her state robes, ready to leave the moment he was. She had sent her ladies-in-waiting out to the Robing Room so there would be no witnesses to the imperial reunion.

  She had known for several days that Igor would be returning because all the princes and boyars within two days’ ride of Kiensk had been summoned to Court, and the Boyar Chamberlain of the palace had been ordered to prepare a feast. She relished the prospect of greeting family and friends.

  The Czarina’s floor-length state robes were as massive as the palace itself—layer upon layer of brocade and marten fur. Her ruby-studded hat weighed as much as a baby and its trailing lappets cut off her peripheral vision. Entombed in all these and armor-plated on top of them with jewels and cloth of gold until she was bell-shaped, Sophie felt like a national monument. In a sense that is what she was, a public demonstration of Skyrria’s national wealth, the lion’s share of which belonged to its autocrat, the Czar.

  Klong-ng-ng! The singing crowd now filled Great Market to overflowing. Whips swung as coaches and parties of riders beat their way toward the gates like hares in long grass, terrified of being late for the audience. Kiensk stood on very level ground. High Town was merely the central complex of palaces and other state buildings—fortified, ancient, and labyrinthine. From the lofty viewpoint of her window, Sophie could see over the curtain wall to Great Market, then a rippling expanse of roofs that was the city itself, and finally fields flat as puddles spreading away into distant mist.

  She wanted to pace, but the weight of her state robes dissuaded her. The Czarina’s bedchamber was large enough to seem spacious although it contained numerous mismatched chests, chairs, tables, and a four-poster that would sleep a family of six. Ancient tapestries on the walls had been crudely cut t
o fit; under thick smoke stain they depicted strangely clad people in scenery that was certainly not Skyrrian. Sophie assumed they had been looted during some eastern campaign. Moth-eaten bearskins covered the floor.

  Hinges squeaked…she jumped, but it was the other door, not the corner door. Every lintel in the palace was set so low that even a woman had to bend almost double to enter a room. One good swordsman could hold such a door against an army—and many had in the palace’s long and gory history.

  The woman who crept in and then straightened up was Eudoxia, Sophie’s Mistress of the Wardrobe, childhood nurse, lifetime retainer. The hair under her head scarf had faded from gold to silver and her gait was a flatfooted waddle; she was stupid and ignorant, but devoted to Sophie. She also had courage, fighting constant battles to protect “her” girls from the predatory streltsy who garrisoned High Town.

  She beamed. “The Princess!” Skyrria had many princesses, but Eudoxia would refer to only one of them that way.

  “Send her in, grandmother!”

  Sophie struggled forward as if wading through waist-deep snow and met her sister in the center of the room. Finery clattered and clinked. The door squealed closed as Eudoxia backed out.

  “Tasha, dearest, how are you? Did you have a good journey? How is everybody? Yelena?”

  The Temkins were all fair-colored, in varying degree. Bronze, gold, and silver their mother had called them— Dimitri being reddish, Sophie herself having hair like ripe wheat, and Tasha the palest of all, flaxen with eyes of midwinter sky. Today she wore layered robes of scarlet and royal blue, glittering with a thousand or so pearls. Tasha had always had flair, and had obviously learned how to choose a good dresser. At fifteen, going on sixteen, she was well aware of the overall effect she had achieved.

  “Ugh!” Tasha pulled loose. “You are a fearsome collection of hardware, Your Imperial Majesty, like embracing an armory. Yelena’s a week past term and enormous—it has to be triplets at least.” She glanced inquiringly at the corner door.

  Sophie nodded to confirm that the monster was probably in there.

  “You look thin!” her sister said accusingly. “Are you well?”

  “Thin? In all this? I am very well. And you?”

  Tasha poked Sophie’s midriff through the state armor. “Why no bulge yet?”

  That was not a matter to be discussed with an unmarried maiden. “I realize I must seem ancient to you, dear, but I still have a few good years left in me. I’m only eighteen! And speaking of bulges—” she poked, too “—how much of this is real?”

  Her sister sniggered. “Some of it.”

  “Not much, I bet! Your face is as thin as a sled runner. Isn’t Dimitri feeding you?”

  A faint smirk twitched the corners of Tasha’s mouth. “We Temkins have never been big, Your Majesty!”

  Sophie let the smirk go by, unsure of what it portended but certain it would return in due course. “Dimitri is well?”

  “Solid as a castle. What does he do there? On and off all winter?” She meant Igor at Czaritsyn. “Other women?”

  “He hunts,” Sophie said vaguely. If Tasha had not heard the rumors about what the Czar hunted, then she should be left in ignorance. “I don’t suppose he’s chaste, dear, but if there’s anyone special, I’ll be the last to hear about her, won’t I? And talking of being over the hill, my sweet, it’s about time we found you a husband. You’re older than I was.”

  Whispers about Tasha’s future were creeping around High Town like slugs, but Sophie had not yet felt sure enough of them to mention them in her letters. Left to itself, court gossip would take years to reach the Temkin domain at Faritsov.

  The smirk flashed back. Tasha’s pale cheeks bloomed a trace of pink. “We do have someone in mind.”

  We? The little minx was probably leading Dimitri around by the nose now, while Yelena was preoccupied by her pregnancy. At the very least princesses of the blood needed imperial permission to marry, and in practice they were far more likely to be assigned husbands for reasons of state. In Sophie’s case, her uncle had merely summoned her to Court and informed her than he was divorcing his third wife and she would be the next Czarina. He had taken her to bed that same night, as if to establish ownership, and had had sex with her again on their wedding night, a month later, and seven or eight times in the three years since. Her primary duty was to be seen at his side so other men might be jealous. Bedtime amusement he sought elsewhere, but Sophie must not say so even to Tasha.

  Hiding alarm behind a smile, she eased her sister across to the window embrasure, dragging the state robes. “Has Dimitri talked to him yet?”

  “He wants to ask your opinion, but if you agree, he’s promised to ask the Czar today! Before we go home, anyway!”

  “Who?”

  “Vasili Ovtsyn!” Tasha was almost bouncing with excitement. The pearls danced. “Prince Grigori’s heir! Do you know him? He’s so handsome!”

  “I don’t know him well, but he’s certainly a fine figure of a man.” Now Sophie understood the earlier smirk, but it was an effort to imagine her diminutive sister beside the huge Vasili. The boy lacked obvious merit beyond his unquestioned beef, but he had no special vices that she knew of, and the Ovtsyn family was one of the wealthiest in all Skyrria. “Physically, dear, and financially, Vasili would be hard to beat, but politically…”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “You know his sister Natalia has been one of my ladies-in-waiting for the last half year?”

  Tasha shrugged, unconcerned. “So he said. I do not recall meeting her.”

  “You’re not that innocent,” Sophie said crossly. “You know who chooses my attendants and why. They’re hostages for their families’ good behavior, no more. So the Ovtsyns are out of favor, maybe even under suspicion. Whose idea was this match? Grigori’s, I suppose?”

  Prince Grigori was as sharp as his son was dull, far too clever and too rich ever to be trusted by the Czar. If he believed marrying Vasili into the imperial family would protect him from imperial spite, he could certainly offer an enormous price.

  A good man on a horse, Dimitri was naive as a newt in politics.

  “Suspicion of what?” Tasha demanded angrily.

  “Treason, of course. Haven’t you heard about Suzdena?”

  “There was some unrest there?” Tasha avoided Sophie’s eye.

  “Quite a lot!”

  Back in Fifthmoon, Prince Grigori had arrived in High Town very agitated, seeking the Czar. Igor had been absent, officially residing at his private retreat, Czaritsyn. The story Sophie had later extracted from Natalia, between sobs, was that a band of brigands had attacked the Ovtsyns’ outlying estate of Suzdena, striking in the night to loot and rape. By sheer chance—so Natalia had been told—Grigori and his son had been there, with their usual armed escort. They had beaten off the assault, but there had been casualties on both sides. Alas, dawn had revealed that the brigand corpses wore the wolf-head badge of the Czar’s irregulars, the streltsy. Such harassment usually signaled that Igor had decided to move against a noble house—hence Grigori’s rush to Kiensk to throw himself on the Little Father’s mercy.

  Worse news had followed. Just a week after the first attack, a much larger force had wiped Suzdena off the map, leaving a few dying survivors to tell the tale. The second assault had been led by a horseman directing a pack of giant dogs. No one would speculate who that might have been.

  So Grigori thought he could hide behind Tasha, did he?

  Repressing her anger, Sophie gave Tasha another hug. “Darling, how well do you know Vasili, really?”

  “We have met several times. He offered me a ring with a ruby as big as this! Dimitri said I should not accept it yet…” She managed to fake a little smile. “You know, when he knelt to me, his eyes were still this high!”

  So Tasha had set her heart on the biggest stallion on the greenest pasture, that was all. She was young. All would be well as long as she was not given time to convince herself that she was tr
uly in love. Sophie said, “Dearest, I haven’t dared mention…there are whispers.”

  “Whispers of what?”

  “Of making you a queen.”

  The sapphire eyes widened in panic. “I won’t leave Skyrria! You, Dimitri, Yelena…I won’t go!”

  “You’ll do as the Czar says, darling! It is no small thing to be a queen. And if it really is Chivial he has in mind for—”

  “Who?”

  “Not who, where, dear.” Few Skyrrians knew anything at all about the world outside the nation’s borders. Few princes, even, were literate and most women’s knowledge ended at their garden gate. At her mother’s insistence, Sophie had been taught to read and write. She had learned how books would help pass the lonely hours in High Town, she spoke with foreigners, and she had access to palace gossip. “Chivial is a fine, civilized country, and King Athelgar is quite young, never married. It would be a wonderful match, believe me. Warn Dimitri not to mention this other match to the Czar.”

  “What match?” rasped a low voice.

  It was not Igor’s voice. Only Czarevich Fedor spoke in sepulchral tones like Mother Tharik’s. (Klong-ng-ng!) Rising to his full height in his bulky fur robes he resembled a bear emerging from its den. He was not as huge as Vasili Ovtsyn, but larger than other men; not clever, but sly. In honor of the state occasion he was draped in gold and jewels from his conical leather cap to the spurs on his great boots; the sword and scabbard at his side glittered with emeralds. Fedor was the Czar’s only surviving child and Sophie’s stepson, one month older than she was. His straggly beard failed to conceal an ugly leer.

  Tasha sank gracefully to her knees. Sophie offered Fedor a cold stare; he returned a loutish scowl. In public he had to kneel to her, but nothing would force him to do so in private. He had been with his father most of the winter, reputedly an eager partner in whatever secret horrors went on in the Czaritsyn dacha—and at places like Suzdena.

  “Stand up!” he rumbled. “What match, cousin?”

  Tasha arose pink-faced. “Your Highness, my noble brother has received an offer for my hand.”