Sir Apropos of Nothing

by Peter David

  “It’s amazing,” she continued, “that you’re as heroic as you are.”

  Then again, maybe she didn’t understand me all that well.

  I’d been sitting on the floor of the barn, and she climbed down off the hay bale and sat next to me. And we continued to talk for quite some time after that. I was still guarded, and I suspect that she was as well. But we spoke of many things, most of them involving our cynical view of the world at large. I sensed within her a kindred spirit, someone who was capable of perceiving the dark underbelly that those in power seemed incapable of seeing no matter how clearly it was pointed out to them.

  “Sometimes,” Entipy said, “I think the only person in the entirety of my father’s court who makes any sense at all is the jester. He, at least, is capable of treating the world the way it deserves to be treated: with humorous contempt. And the real joke is, as often as he points it up, my parents and the courtiers all laugh as if it’s some great jest with no deeper meaning. They don’t understand that their inability to understand that they’re all shams is the biggest joke of all. They are the butt of all the humor of the jester and they blindly snicker about it. Fools.”

  I couldn’t help but agree.

  I also noticed, though, that the more we talked, the closer she seemed to edge to me, until—as the evening hour drew late—she was within bare inches of me. As chill as the barn was getting, she was so close that her body heat was warming me. I found it … disconcerting. We had lapsed into momentary silence and this time it was an uncomfortable one, because I sensed that there were things she wanted to say, and I didn’t want to hear them. “Princess …” I said after a time.

  “I hate that,” she said abruptly. “I hate when people call me that. Don’t you call me that.”

  I blinked in surprise. “But … it’s your title.”

  “Yes, I know. And that’s what people see me as, and that’s all they see me as. My title is me, I am my title. The title says everything that I’m supposed to be, except it’s a title given anyone of that birth, so we’re all supposed to be alike. Except I don’t want to be like anyone else.”

  “Trust me: You aren’t.”

  She didn’t seem to have heard me speak. “I’m so defined by my rank,” she said softly, “that I feel as if no one knows the real me. I even start to wonder … if there’s any real me left anymore.”

  “There is. I’m sure there is.”

  She looked to me and smiled that dazzling smile again. I felt a warm stirring in my loins, and shoved the thoughts away immediately.

  Understand, I wasn’t being bound by any prudish concerns. A female is a female is a female. But there were two major problems. First and foremost, as much as I was beginning to feel some rudimentary connection to her, I couldn’t help but remember that it wasn’t all that long ago that I had considered her borderline insane. That I would look into her eyes and see an ocean of madness in those orbs. I was not ready to set aside the notion that she was a loon, and the last thing I needed to do was couple with such a mad creature.

  Second, and just as problematic: This was no bored wife of a knight. This was no tavern maid. This was a princess. One does not form the beast with two backs with such an individual and then expect that it ends with a shake of the hands and a “See you later.” When one engages in such horizontal activities, one had better be damned ready to make a lifetime commitment or be prepared to lose one’s head, or other body parts.

  You might think me mad to flinch from an alliance that would wind up making me consort to a future queen. Not so. It was simply not my way to rush into anything. Not until I had the opportunity to consider every possible angle and determine the potential negative aspect of a situation. I had given in to impulse before, remember, and had nearly had my skull caved in by my mother’s funeral urn because of it.

  “It’s getting cold,” said Entipy. She got up and took a large blanket piled in the corner, then brought it back to the two of us. She draped it around herself and then held it up, indicating that I should join her under there.

  “I think,” I said slowly, “that it would be best if you wrapped yourself up in that, Highness. I can sleep next to you to provide warmth, but … within the blanket, well …”

  For a moment, just a moment, she looked hurt. Then the hardness of rejection was reflected in her eyes. “Is there a problem?” she said, her voice suddenly sounding much colder than the air around us.

  “Entipy …” I said, deliberately not making use of her title. “As you yourself have observed … I have every reason to have a difficulty with the concept of trust.”

  “Are you saying,” she asked with incredulity in her voice, “that you don’t trust me?”

  “No,” I corrected her as politely as I could. “I’m saying I don’t trust myself.”

  At that, the corners of her mouth turned up again, ever so slightly. “Oh. I see” was all she said. Whereupon she wrapped herself up in the blanket, tightly cocooned, and presented her back to me. I lay next to her. Somewhere during the night, I draped an arm over her, and that was how we slept, while the Heffers looked on and doubtless thought we were ridiculous.

  They were probably right.

  “Get up.”

  Dotty was prodding us with her foot. Immediately I snapped awake, worried that we were under some sort of attack. Entipy was slower than I to be roused, but only slightly, as we both blinked against the early-morning sun streaming in through the door of the stable. I could still smell the dew in the air. Whatever time it was, it was damned early.

  It was at that point that Dotty drew back her foot and gave me a swift kick, hard enough to send me rolling. “I was awake!” I yelped in irritation.

  “I knew you were,” she replied tartly. “That was payback for my inconvenience.”

  “Inconvenience?” Entipy was rubbing the sleep from her eyes. “What inconvenience? What did we—?”

  “I received a return on your message,” she said. She was looking at the two of us with renewed suspicion. “Never got one back so fast and so early. Whatever your package is, someone obviously considers it to be extremely important. The spell landed in my cauldron, shrieking its blasted head off. Wouldn’t shut up until I transferred it to parchment for you. Here.” As she leaned forward to hand it to me, I saw that there was still some slight gunk in her eyes. She’d really only awoken a minute or so before.

  I unrolled the parchment and studied it. Entipy looked over my shoulder. She seemed to be breathing in my ear, but I chose to ignore it.

  “We are quite pleased, as you can probably surmise, to know that your package is safe” (said the note). “For obvious reasons, coming into the Outer Lawless regions is not practical. We will trust you, Apropos, to get the package to the fortress outpost called Terracote. There you can turn your package over to its rightful owners.”

  Very carefully worded. The reasons were obvious, all right; unexpected and unprompted troop movements over the borders into Outer Lawless would certainly attract the attention and interest of the dreaded Warlord Shank. It might make him wonder just what it was that had so sparked the king’s interest that he would undertake such an endeavor. I couldn’t say that I was thrilled to think that we were, in essence, still on our own for as long as we were in Outer Lawless. But I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised that there were not going to be easy answers.

  “Terracote,” I said, looking up at Dotty. “Where is—?”

  But she was already reaching into her robes and extracting a map. “Thought you might be needing that,” she said. “It’s about a two-, maybe three-week ride from here, just beyond the Outer Lawless borders, at the outskirts of Isteria.”

  “A hazardous journey?”

  “In places,” she said. “Some is well traveled, some … less so. It’s hard to say for sure. The makeup of the land is changing. Don’t know if you’ve noticed that or not.”

  “Somewhat. I wasn’t sure what to attribute it to.”

  “These ar
e dangerous times,” she said darkly … which is what weavers usually say when they’ve no idea what other answer to make. “Now … get off with thee so I can return to sleep. Usually I don’t waken until noon. I need my beauty sleep.”

  Privately I thought that there weren’t enough hours in the day for her to sleep through to help her in that score, but I saw no reason to voice the opinion.

  “Madam,” I said abruptly, just before she was out the door. She stopped and looked at me balefully. I thanked what gods there were that her specialty was communication. If she had any knack for transformation, I’d most likely have been a raccoon or some such by that point. Gamely I said, with a slight bow, “I cannot thank you enough for you service. I was hoping that I might be able to impose on you for one last—”

  “No,” she said, and started to walk away again. I knew her type, however, and when I made a significant enough jingling while pulling out my purse, it stopped her in her tracks right enough. She regarded me with a suspicious, but accepting stare. “I’m listening.”

  “I hope I did nothing to give you the impression that you would not be well compensated for your—”

  “What is it, what is it?” she said impatiently, making a hurried gesture that indicated I should get to the point.

  I reached into my tunic and pulled out a folded parchment that I had carefully prepared the night before. “I would like you to wait seven days … and then see that this gets to the dreaded Warlord Shank. It is to be delivered directly into his hand.” I reached deep into my purse and said, with carefully constructed nonchalance, “I’d say two dukes should cover your services in that regard, wouldn’t you?”

  Her eyes widened. She was so startled by the amount that she didn’t even bother to haggle. She held out a clawlike hand and snatched the coins. Then she took the parchment from me and startled to unfold it.

  “Pardon me … that’s intended to be private.”

  At that she gave a contemptuous laugh. “You want me to walk up to the most formidable individual in our land and hand him a message sight unseen? And if it said something about me that would prompt him to put me to the sword? They kill messengers, boy.”

  She read it over, frowning, and then her eyes widened. She looked straight at me. “If you think I’d give this to him and be anywhere within the vicinity, you’re mad. I’ll send it by bird or by nothing.”

  “Bird. You mean that great falcon I saw?”

  She nodded.

  Well, it would have to do. The falcon looked formidable enough, and I doubted anyone could stop it if they had a mind to. “Very well,” I said with a curt nod. “I believe it will suffice. And thank you f—”

  She didn’t hear what I was about to thank her for, which was all well and good in that I don’t think she especially cared either. Instead she just walked out of the barn. The loose flaps of skin under her arms waved like twin pennants in the breeze as she lurched away.

  “That note,” Entipy said with interest. “What did it say?”

  “Oh. That,” I said with a feigned blasé attitude. “That was simply a note giving the good warlord some background information about his new bride. Things that she would be too modest to mention.”

  “The commweaver acted as if they were bad things.”

  “They were true things. I leave good and bad to be judged by others.”

  She smiled at me, genuinely smiled, and it was utterly devoid of the faintly demented looks I’d received from her before. “You told Shank about his fiancée’s background. Didn’t you. And he’s not going to like it.”

  “True. But they’re to be married within the week, so by the time he finds out, she’ll be his wife. So I’ve given her a sporting chance, you see.”

  “But she paid you for your silence.”

  “I never promised to remain silent. I simply said I’d go away. I’m keeping my word. However I also owe her a debt from the past … and make no mistake. I always repay my debts.”

  Chapter 21

  The Heffers we had obtained were worthy beasts, and we made reasonably good time with them. I was still not pleased over the fact that the weather had not become as temperate as we had hoped, but it wasn’t as if I had any choice in dealing with it. Other than the weather, things went fairly smoothly.

  We did the best we could in our journey to draw no attention to ourselves, and for the most part we were successful. Entipy cut her hair reasonably short so that, at first glance, she would appear somewhat boyish. We then did all that we could to make certain that no one gave us a second glance. We made eye contact with no one and, when addressed by other travelers, would mutter several indecipherable words to give the impression that we didn’t speak any tongue known to civilized man. It was enough to encourage people not to bother with us.

  At night we would pick extremely busy inns to stay in. The money that Astel had provided us proved to be more than sufficient to get us quite nice lodgings. Not only that, but it was enough for Entipy and I to have a room each to ourselves, and that much was an extreme relief indeed. You see, I couldn’t help but get the feeling that Entipy was becoming more and more attached to me, and that was a circumstance that simply was not going to benefit anyone.

  And yet, much as I am loath to admit it, I found her increasingly easy to talk to. The first thing to make conversation livable was that she had stopped mentioning Tacit with every other breath. At this point she had stopped mentioning him at all. She had totally lost faith in him, and that was not surprising. When one is put on as high a pedestal as Tacit was, one makes a very loud thud when one falls off it. The second thing was that she seemed to want to find out all about me. She found me interesting. I was not, she said, like any other squire or even knight that she had ever encountered before. I’d wager she was right.

  For obvious reasons, I wasn’t about to tell her chapter and verse about my life. There were certain aspects that were far better kept close to my vest. So the specific circumstances of my conception, for instance, were omitted. I did tell her of my mother’s sense that I had a great destiny, and I further mentioned to her the immortal phoenix bird incident my mother had described so often from her pre-Apropos days. Entipy’s eyes widened at that point in the recitation. “So she saw one even before you were born! That’s impressive. You might have even greater auguries for your future than …”

  She stopped. I knew that she had been about to say “Tacit,” but she stopped herself before mentioning the name. Instead all she said was “Go on.”

  I described the brutality of her death and the circumstances which had resulted in my coming to Runcible’s castle. One of the things that I discovered Entipy liked to do was speak contemptuously of those who weren’t there, and I was able to give her plenty of fodder for it. She was lukewarm on Sir Justus, despised Sir Coreolis (“He’s not at all trustworthy,” she said several times), and almost oozed disdain for all of the squires … particularly the selfabsorbed Mace Morningstar.

  She didn’t seem to have much use for her parents, either. She seemed to find the queen tolerable if naught else, but she had no patience for the king at all. “He’s a sham. I know he is,” she said with a snort. She wouldn’t go into detail about how she knew this. Apparently she felt that details and facts were unnecessary. If she said it, it had to be so. End of discussion.

  Day became night, which became day and on into the night again. On the third day, after she’d found yet another triviality to complain about, I asked her point-blank. I said, “Is there anyone or anything in this world that doesn’t upset you? That brings you pleasure?”

  I had a feeling that she was going to bring up Tacit, but instead she surprised me. “I like sunrises. They make anything seem possible,” she said.

  I blinked in surprise. “I’ve always felt the same way,” I said.

  “Well, of course,” she said matter-of-factly. “I mean, even you, squire, can’t be wrong all the time.” It was typical of the snide and arrogant comments she had made to me when we�
��d first met, but she said it without any heat or vituperation. I caught her eye as I looked at her with open curiosity … and she winked at me.

  That wink said more than anything else thus far, and once again I felt apprehensive.

  My ambition was at total war with my common sense. I had, after all, seen the “real” Entipy: the sullen, arrogant, somewhat dangerous young woman whom we had picked up from the Faith Women. And Mace Morningstar had likewise seen her … and almost got his skull cracked for his efforts. Whatever I was seeing now was some new, flirting creature that had been applied to the surface like a cake of mud that some women believed removed wrinkles. She was not remotely genuine. Let us say, as a matter of insane speculation, that we wound up together. Sooner or later the demented Entipy would return, and I would be stuck with the creature for the rest of my life … which would probably be foreshortened as a result.

  Except …

  … how did I know that? Really? What if … what if the Entipy that I had seen before … was the “impostor”? That the one I was seeing now was real? What if she really was as easy to talk to as she now seemed? What if …

  Gods. What if she really was my ticket to everything?

  Just imagine it. Just imagine the faces on the knights, on Morningstar, on all of them, if the king announced that the princess had affianced herself to Apropos. Imagine the sputtered indignation from Justus and Coreolis and the rest. Imagine the look of pure horror from Morningstar and his ilk, knowing that I would eventually be in a position where they would have to bend knee to me, attend my commands, go where I told them they had to go. The joys of honor and obedience: I could instruct Morningstar to strip naked and ride into combat single-handedly against the dreaded Warlord Shank …

  … and he’d have to do it!

  “Apropos, why are you smiling in that slightly demented way?” Entipy asked, bringing me back to reality.

  A steady chill wind was blowing against our faces, the Heffers treading along the path as best they could against it. We’d been on the road for some days. I glanced at her as she spoke and, pulling my thoughts back to focus, said coolly, “Just imagining the joy on your parents’ faces when I bring you back, Highness.”