Clouds swallowed the light of the heavens, but Rafe hardly needed light to know the shape of the cheek against which he rested his fingers.
“I await your wry comment,” said the duke, his voice barely a whisper.
Rafe answered him just as softly. “Alas, my lord. I have, for perhaps the first time in my adult life, none to offer.”
From The Book of Kings, by Alastair Vespas
But his hopes were not to be met. For in the following year it came to pass that King Edgar, though he had thitherto been the wisest and most reasonable of men, did fall prey to the terrible malady that was to plague him and the Land for so many long years. His dreadful illness did not have quite so dramatic an effect as the madness of his grandson, King Hilary the Stag; yet still only through the offices of Good Queen Margery did the Land survive and prosper.
The cause of Edgar’s illness has long been a subject of discord among medical men. Some have said it was caused by an imperfection in his blood, while others have blamed it on an imbalance in his vital humors. The folktales of a poison called shadowroot are, of course, to be classed with rumors of a Northern wizard’s curse and other like nonsense. But all are in agreement on the severity of his symptoms and the suddenness of their onset. The king began, it seems, to converse with the air, as if in front of him stood a person or, at times, an animal—most often, it seems, a stag or a bear or a crow, but in no wise only these. When those around him protested, he fell into rages from which nothing but confinement and sleep released him. He grew exceedingly suspicious of all who cherished him, whom he had formerly held dear, even his lady wife.
And now is come the time to speak of the tenderness, the bravery, the loving-kindness of Good Queen Margery. When her lord husband began to rave, she took up the reins of leadership. She ruled, capable as a king, in his stead, conducting the business of the Land, negotiating treaties, and waging war when necessary. At first the people liked not to be governed by a woman, but she turned their hearts with the continued devotion she showed Edgar even after his descent into madness was complete. She mixed his medicine every evening and administered it with her own hand, ensuring that he consumed it all, lest a lackey forget for carelessness, and it was only due to the draught’s salutary effects that his illness did not strike him even more cruelly than it did. The day she died, the people went into mourning for a month.
Doubly tragic, then, was the king’s recovery within a few weeks of Margery’s death. With what transports of joy would his lady wife have greeted her lord’s recovery, a recovery that without her ministrations would undoubtedly never have been achieved!
Kaab hated wasting her time.
The carriage rattled on down the road toward the City. The other travelers had had their fill of looking at her and were looking out the window instead. Not that there was anything to see. The countryside was barren, and the clouds overhead made it more barren still. A clap of thunder startled and irritated her in equal measure. An entire morning in the middle of nowhere, spent talking to people who stared at her, and for what? Scraps of information she already had. Rupert Hawke, Gentleman Robber, steals your money but spares your daughter! Yes, she already knew that. She and everybody else in Riverside. Wicked Thomas. The Farnsleigh fortune and the armored carriage. The ambassador from Arkenvelt. Nothing she hadn’t heard in the Three Dogs at Ben Hawke’s wake. The one woman the highwayman had ever loved, the child whose birth had killed her, the boy who had become Tess’s protector. His fraught relationship with that child, cold and hot, close and far. Nothing Tess hadn’t already told her.
But Xamanek’s light, today she had been talking to his neighbors, the people he had lived among for decades! Tess had never met Ben’s father, and the men and women in the Three Dogs hadn’t seen him for twenty years; they had nothing to offer but shreds of memory. But today, the women who had lived in the rooms across the hall, his landlady, the tavern keepers—they had given her nothing better. “He kept to himself,” they said, and “He wasn’t one for talking.”
It would be blasphemous to think Ahkin of the Waves annoyed in sympathy with her, but she felt comforted nonetheless by the lowering skies.
One barmaid had said she could tell Kaab about the Gentleman Robber, but it turned out that the only words she had were in praise of Kaab’s body (“delectable” was one of them), and, while Kaab was not unappreciative of the compliment, and the girl’s skin was as pale as a sweet white-corn tortilla, Tess awaited her in Riverside.
Now this was a cheerier thought. She smiled the rest of the way to the City.
The smile didn’t survive the wind that hit her as she alighted from the coach. She pulled her coat around her and thrust her hands in the pockets. Tess would warm them, but in the meantime, she had a long, cold walk ahead of her.
She was halfway to Riverside before something made her stop, straighten her posture, look northwest, look southeast. Yes, there was no question about it.
She was being followed.
“No, Will.”
Rafe was walking down the broad avenue in the Middle City through streets gluey with mud and air heavy with the promise of rain, Will on his left, Joshua and Micah on his right. The clouds of the previous night sliced dark jags into the noon sky, reflected in the darkness on Will’s face. It was not, perhaps, the best day to go seeking a home for the school that was at last within his grasp, but Will had insisted. So why was the duke so distracted?
“My students,” Rafe went on, “will follow where their curiosity leads them. But first they’ll be exposed to everything. Natural Science, of course, but also the humane sciences. I want them to decide for themselves what they want to study—once they’ve tasted it all.”
“And who, pigeon,” said Joshua, “is going to teach them these humane sciences? Certainly not you.”
Rafe looked at his friend. “How ghastly. No, Pilson is going to join me as soon as he dons his Master’s robe.”
“You mean he’s forgiven you for that memorable evening?”
“Oh, he was quite drunk at the time,” said Rafe airily. “He can hardly remember I was even there. I convinced him it was Mitford.”
“How on earth did you manage that, pigeon?”
“It involved a goat,” said Rafe. “The rest, I leave to your fertile imagination. But now the two of them are inseparable, which makes me doubly lucky: I have escaped both Pilson’s ire and his affections.”
That, at least, ought to have elicited a laugh from Will, as it did from Joshua. But the older man was still just frowning morosely into space, as he’d been since they set out on this little expedition. Whatever on earth was the matter with him?
“Why do you call him ‘pigeon’?” Micah asked.
“I’ll tell you when you’re older, love.” Joshua patted the boy’s arm and turned back to Rafe. “But surely, you’re not going to teach them all of Natural Science.”
Rafe bristled. “Just what, my dear boy, are you implying?” He knew exactly what Joshua was implying.
“Well,” said Joshua delicately, “of course you could. But there might be certain subjects with which others display more . . . facility than you.”
“He means math,” Micah put in. “You’re not very good at math, so it would be a bad idea for you to teach it.”
Rafe looked to the dark heavens and quoted: “‘Lo, I am compass’d round by traitor friends!’”
“No, pigeon, seriously.”
“I can’t simply not teach them math. It’s the foundation on which all of Natural Science—Natural Science the way it should be studied—is built! What do you propose I teach them instead, how to tat lace?”
Joshua assumed an expression of exaggerated patience. “No, love. You should get somebody else to teach it.”
“Who could possibly be—” Rafe stopped in his tracks. By the Seven Hells, of course! How could he not have seen it, when it had been staring him in the face the whole time? He grabbed Joshua’s head with both hands and kissed him. “You are a genius
!”
Joshua lifted his brows. “Thank you?”
But Rafe was already looking at Micah, his eyes bright. “You must come teach at my school.”
“What do you mean?” asked the boy.
“Look, you’ve been talking ever since you got here about how you have to go back to the farm and help Reuben and Amos and Seth and Judith and Elfine the goat and Ada the cow and Flora the turnip and the gods only know how you’ve managed to keep them all straight, but in the end you never go back. And why is that? Because you want to stay here. And what I’m offering you is a way to stay here forever. Not just until you take your exams. And to study whatever you want to study, and correct whomever you want to correct, and no one will shout at you anymore. You have a duty to scholarship! What do you think?”
He looked over at Will, who radiated gloom. “Tell him he must do as I say,” he said. But Will made no response.
Thunder rolled above their heads. Micah jumped. “I—I—”
“This one!” cried Joshua suddenly. “Pigeon, this one!”
Rafe looked around to see his friend pointing at a house so garishly tricked out it would have shamed Lord Ruthven’s lady. The eaves were painted a bright red, the door more intricately carved than a woman’s lace collar, the windows bedecked with a cheap and dingy pink gauze.
“Joshua,” said Rafe, “it looks like a brothel.”
“Exactly!” Joshua was smug. “Your students can learn a useful trade along with their Natural Science and tatting.”
“What’s a brothel?” asked Micah.
“I’ll tell you when you’re older, love.”
Rafe regarded Joshua. “You know, I was mistaken about you.”
“How so?”
“I used to believe fervently that you had the second-worst taste of any man I knew. I see now that denying you the victor’s laurel was the height of injustice.” He looked over at the duke and tried again. “My lord? What do you think?”
Will spared the gaudy abomination a brief glance. “Not grand enough.” His tone was short.
“Not grand enough?” Rafe’s hands clenched. “Not grand enough? I do not want a grand house for my school. I do not want a grand house for my school today any more than I did when you showed up at my rooms last night so unexpectedly, if delightfully. I do not want a house at all, frankly; I’d much prefer to rent a shop of some kind, the more ramshackle, the better. One has appearances to keep up. The only reason I agreed to this expedition at all was that if I didn’t I was afraid you’d simply do to me again what you did this morning, but there are no feathers left in my pillow, and I hesitate to think what you’d use instead.”
Will ignored Joshua’s laugh and stared at Rafe, his eyes wide.
Rafe snorted. “Oh, please! It cannot have escaped your notice that Joshua and Micah here have male body parts. They’re both quite aware of the sorts of things one does with them.”
Will stopped and seized both Rafe’s arms. “Can’t you see that your school deserves more than that? More than that dilapidated shack?”
“Will, if you call that a dilapidated shack, why don’t you just have me open the school in Tremontaine House? I’m sure the duchess would love having young minds opening all around her, flirting with the lackeys, and getting their grubby lower-class fingers in the jam.”
Will’s hands clutched Rafe’s arms to the edge of pain. “And would that be so bad? To fill Tremontaine House with people seeking knowledge, with people passionate about something? Who allowed themselves to be guided by their hearts?”
“And their minds,” said Micah. “I hope.”
Will barreled on. “To bring joy into the house? What would be so very, very wrong with that?”
A brief silence. “Will,” said Rafe, quietly, “what is the matter?”
Will released his lover’s arms. “Nothing.” He turned to start walking again. “We’d better get inside somewhere. It’s going to rain soon.”
This time it was Rafe who took hold of Will’s arms. “That’s not good enough. Try again.”
“I said, nothing!”
“And I said, that’s not good enough. If you won’t let my wretched temper and unbridled arrogance keep you from forcing me to reveal myself to you, then I’m certainly not going to let a mood keep me from forcing you to do the same. What is wrong?”
Will turned his head away, his features contorted in anguish. Joshua took Micah’s hand and dragged him off in the direction of the University.
Out of the corner of his eye, Rafe saw a passing water carrier give him and Will a curious look. Clearly, the open street was no place to talk. Rafe drew Will into the alley running alongside the garish house, muddy but empty. “Tell me,” he said.
Will sighed. “It’s Diane.”
Rafe took a deep breath, exhaled. “Go on.”
“I’ve hurt her terribly,” he said quietly. “We had words yesterday, and mine were . . . harsh.”
“From you, I suspect that means you said you liked her hair better the other way.”
That won, finally, a rueful smile. “I told her she had clockwork lubricated with acid for a heart.”
The sound of arguing voices floated to them from the street. Rafe whistled.
“Precisely.” The relief of unburdening himself, perhaps, loosed Will’s tongue. “We’ve never quarreled like that before, and I’ve certainly never stormed out and spent the night elsewhere.”
“No wonder you were so enthusiastic last night. And so glum today.”
Warm blue eyes rose to his. “I’m sorry, Rafe. I should have told you.”
“Don’t be silly,” Rafe said thickly. “You just did.”
Will took his hand and kissed his fingertips. “Can you forgive me?”
“I could, were there anything to forgive.” Rafe leaned forward and brushed Will’s lips with his own, a feather on still water. There was one thing left to do—a difficult thing, but necessary. “You must go home,” he went on gently. “The Duchess Tremontaine is not a woman to be trifled with.”
Will frowned. “But we’re seeking a home for your school—”
“Yes, at your insistence. Go.” Rafe couldn’t believe these words were issuing from his mouth. “A wife is a very complicated thing, especially when she’s a duchess. Make amends. I’m easy.”
Will smiled and cocked his head. “So I’ve been told.”
“Ah, but your information is, alas, out of date. Haven’t you heard?” Rafe turned, impish, and sauntered away. He looked back over his shoulder to see Will smiling at him. “I’m in love.”
A razor of silver lightning slashed the sky.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with you today, Micah, but I’m certainly not going to check a gift stag’s horns.”
Micah sat back in shock as Larry swept the entire pot of bets over the scarred table, humming merrily. She hadn’t made an error like this since . . . well, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d made an error like this. She eyed the cards remaining in her hand. She’d known Thaddeus didn’t have the Twelve of Beasts or he’d have played it off Larry’s Seven of Birds. So why in the god’s names had she led the Moon, when it had been perfectly obvious that if Larry played the Comet or a Crown above eight, the hand was his?
She sighed, the sound inaudible in the din of conversation that filled the Inkpot. She couldn’t help it. Cousin Reuben was going to be so upset.
But the thought of a future devoted only to math filled her with such overwhelming happiness that for a moment she was almost calm. She saw a sky full of shapes, two-dimensional, three-dimensional, floating, rotating, spinning so that every moment they connected with one another and with her in new and more glorious ways, with no sharp voices to frighten her, no one and nothing standing between her and the magnificent vision.
But first she would have to inform her family, and she would have to do it in person. Telling important news in a letter would just be rude; Rafe had said so. They depended on her, and she was going to abandon them
. She owed them an apology and an explanation. And that was the problem. Aunt Judith and Uncle Amos were nice. Seth was nice, even when he was upset. But Reuben was the one who came to town, and though he was usually the nicest of all of them, he definitely wasn’t happy when you said something he didn’t want to hear.
“Micah? Hello?”
She looked up at Patrick. “What?”
“Your play.”
She examined the cards in her hand. She tried to call up the image of her likelies tables to figure out what she should play. But now she couldn’t concentrate on anything but the sound of Reuben’s voice as he yelled at her. How could you? he would say. You know how much we need you! We can’t do the turnips without you! I won’t allow it! I’m taking you back home right now. It made her elbows itch.
She shook her head to clear it and dropped her cards on the table. “I’m sorry,” she said, pushed back her chair, and ducked her way out between the Inkpot’s noisy, noisy customers. Thaddeus, Larry, and Patrick called out to her, but she ignored them.
The market was crowded—people probably wanted to get their shopping done before it started to rain—and the dark sky made it feel more so. Maybe Reuben wouldn’t be here, she thought hopefully as she forced herself past the red-faced fishmongers, particularly loud today, past the butcher with his knife bigger than her hand, toward her cousin’s stall. No, because then he would sell fewer turnips and her family would lose money, and she didn’t want that. Two dirty children were chasing each other through the crowd, snaking in and out and shouting. Maybe she could just write Aunt Judith and Uncle Amos a letter after all. Maybe—
She stopped in her tracks, her mouth and eyes wide. “Bessie!” she called, and ran toward the spotted cow staked nearby, her arms out.
Tremontaine Season 1 Saga Omnibus Page 43
