They crossed the rolling lowlands at a good pace and reached the city of Landuc with sixteen days to spare before the court, and so Otto did not even pause at the Palace gates (he did spend little more than a quarter of an hour in a jeweler’s shop, with his Chancellor, selecting a rope of pearls to grace the throat of the Countess of Lys), but set out immediately again on the king’s highway southward, along which he reckoned the Countess must come. Now that he was struggling against the road’s current, Otto noticed how much traffic there was. Every noble in Landuc who could move was travelling to the midwinter court for the spectacle of Prince Prospero’s formal surrender; the highway was snowless and frozen solid in the dry deep cold, and caravans of painted coaches and horses and baggage rumbled rapidly along, sweeping into inn-yards and occupying every room in a place. The expenses were much higher on this leg of the trip, and the innkeepers were far less receptive to the idea of the Baron’s travelling on credit: there was so much good solid gold and silver flowing along the road that they had but to hold out a hand to catch a fistful, and so the Baron’s ethereal money bought him nothing. Thereafter, he and his party travelled incognito; they did not declare themselves and slept in stable-lofts; and they breakfasted, dined, and supped on onions, coarse bread, hard cheese, and sour beer or cider, all these cold comforts bought dearer than Otto’s rustic Chancellor could believe. The chambermaids and serving-girls were all busy with the cash-rich customers, too, and the Baron consoled himself with the reflection that it would be prudent to keep a low profile going out, in order to avoid embarrassment on his way back, with his wife.
It was therefore with sincere joy that, on the sixth day of their journey from Landuc, Ottaviano espied the Countess of Lys’s arms on a coach at a crowded inn where, it seemed, most of the nobility of the southern part of the realm had halted for food and fodder. He and his party clattered into the inn-yard, and Ottaviano made his way through a throng of gentlemen and ladies to inquire of the preoccupied host where he might look to find the Countess of Lys.
“Lys! Back there,” said the host, jerking his chin toward the stairs and back. So Otto, leaving his men to forage in the public room, went upstairs and intruded on three other private parties, largely composed of ladies, until he found the right door.
“This is not the public dining-room, sir,” said a hawk-faced lady he didn’t recognize, as he stepped into the chamber, but Otto did recognize Luneté, with a little leap of his heart, before she turned to see him. “Sirrah—!”
Otto took two more steps and put his arms around his wife, giving her a squeeze by way of greeting, and kissed the back of her neck soundly. “Hello, Lu!”
Without a sound, Luneté spun around on the bench (the older lady had taken the only high-backed chair) and leapt to her feet; her maid squeaked with surprise, and the fourth woman, who must be the hawk-faced lady’s maid, gasped. The Countess’s hand was lifted and she was very close to boxing his ears, but Otto caught her wrist, laughing.
“I’ve been looking for you,” Otto announced, grinning, and kissed his wife again before she had quite caught her breath.
“Otto!” Luneté said then, drawing back as far from him as she could, encircled still by his arms.
“Yours to command, my lady.”
“I, I, I did not know you—you sent no word that you would meet me on the way,” she said.
“I missed the courier and came myself, as fast as I could. Had some work to do in Ascolet first.” Otto kissed her once more. “You’re a sight for sore eyes, Lu! And who’s this?”
Luneté turned, extricating herself from his embrace as she did, and introduced him to the Countess of Surluse, her neighbor south-west of Lys, who held herself starchily and disapprovingly aloof from the Baron of Ascolet.
“Liker a highwayman than a prince’s son,” said the Countess of Surluse with a meaning-laden sniff.
Ottaviano disregarded the sniff and found another bench along the wall; he pulled it over to the table and joined them in their lunch, which was an unidentifiable scrawny fowl, a few chops, pickled crabs, white bread that tasted of other things than meal, and a greasy pudding. The ladies were drinking the fortified and fortifying hot punch known as glog, which Otto found to be a great improvement over the thinner brews he had been served on this trip. Likewise, the chops and pudding were welcome after the onions and black bread he had been travelling on, and he did them better justice than they deserved. The ladies dined, as ladies will, delicately, and with little conversation. Laudine was dispatched to chivvy the kitchen sluts (as the Countess of Surluse referred to them) into providing them the coffee they had ordered with their food, “for they’ve charged us for it, sure as sundown, my dear; these highway innkeepers are sharp as skewers, specially before a court.”
Laudine was reduced to carrying the coffee up herself, which agreed poorly with her idea of the sort of service the Countess of Lys ought to have in an inn. The rest of the small Lys party—a footman, a page, and a coachman—had dined in the common room, which was so crowded and tumultuous with arrivals and departures that there was no seating the Emperor himself there, should he have come. Otto found the coffee, although weak, to be an excellent completion to the restorative meal, ignoring the dry biscuits with it. Those the Countess of Surluse wrapped up thriftily in her handkerchief for later, giving them to her maid to carry. “They have charged us for them, certainly,” she said, as if daring either Lys or Ascolet to think anything of it.
The reckoning had been paid in advance, an unusual practice prompted by the high volume of traffic coming through the inn’s dining-rooms. The Countess of Surluse muttered approvingly that they should not have to pay anything extra for Otto, at least, although he had eaten more than anyone, and Otto handed her and her maid into the rugged old Surluse coach with all the grace he could muster before attending to Luneté. “Where shall you stop the night, sir?” the Countess of Surluse asked him, before closing her coach door.
“I guess that’ll depend on how much progress we make,” he said.
“I have sent one of my boys on to Savarin’s, at Galisbridge, to take rooms for my party and the Lys people,” she said. “He won’t rob me as badly as some of the others. He knows me.”
“I’m sure he does,” said Otto. “You’ve been very kind to my lady wife, and thank you. We’ll see you at Galisbridge, then.” And he bowed, stepped back, and closed the door before she could say anything else.
Luneté’s coach was being brought around from the stubbled, muddy field where vehicles had been left in ranks and rows, owing to the impossibility of fitting them all in the yard.
“How about if I come ride with you to Galisbridge?” Otto suggested to his wife, leading her to her coach-door.
“Um,” said Luneté.
“There’s room,” he said, opening the door. It was a six-seater, and only Luneté, her maid, and her page were there to occupy it.
“Laudine, Dinas, get in,” said Luneté, and moved back a few steps with Otto.
“What’s wrong?”
“What in the holy Fire have you been doing?” she whispered.
“What do you mean, doing?”
“You smell like, like a brewery and a midden! When did you last shave? Your clothes—”
“Oh,” said Otto. He shrugged, rubbed his hand over his raspy coppery-bristled chin, slapped at his leather leggings. “I hurried to get here, that’s all. I didn’t know you were friendly with Surluse.”
“We met on the way,” said Luneté, sighing a little, “and she was very thick with my parents, or so she says, although I rather think she didn’t like my mother. She means well. And she has been very kind to me.”
“Tough old bird. Wouldn’t be surprised if she came over with Panurgus,” Otto said. “I’ll clean up when we get to Galisbridge, all right?”
“I wish you’d told me you were coming. I’d have been able to put off the Countess a bit. She’s arranged our stops all the way to the city.”
“That’s no b
ad thing, believe me. The road’s only going to get more crowded.”
Luneté nodded. “Otto, dear, I’m getting cold standing here. I’ll see you at Galisbridge.”
“If I take a bath and shave first.” He laughed.
“At least change your linen,” Luneté said, and kissed his cheek. “There. I am happy to see you, you know: you just look as though you’ve come from the battlefield. Now hand me up.”
Otto did so, closed the door on her (she lowered the shutter and blew him a kiss) and the coach rolled out of the yard.
“My lord,” said his Chancellor of the Exchequer, “this stop here done cleaned us out, sir.”
“Don’t worry about it,” said Otto cheerfully. “From here on we’ll be travelling with the Countess of Lys. Get the horses out here and let’s go!”
Dewar slept, dreaming lucidly that he slept on the soft bosom of an ocean, rocked and carried up and down his sleep by its rising and falling waves. He dreamt of coolness, and dim twilight-blue light, and a feeling of still serenity unlike anything he had ever attained waking; he dreamt of the warm, supporting embrace of sweet water, deliberately sinking deeper into his dream, refusing to wake yet, swooning with the pleasure of his surrender to the enclosing element. And sleep he did, deeper and darker and without dream, until he turned in a wave of sleep and woke all at once.
He had no idea where he was. He lay on his side in a bed with rough linen sheets and a scratchy brownish woollen blanket, looking at an unpainted, plain wall made of wide boards. There were no curtains around the bed; they were drawn back to the bed-posts, that were also plain and undecorated. The window was covered by a wooden shutter; there were bright cracks and chinks in it, and a door was open enough to let light in that he could see these things. The air was close and stuffy. Dewar tried to think where he could be. It wasn’t his tower; wasn’t any house of Oren’s he could recall; wasn’t Lys; wasn’t any of the tents he had lived in during the Ascolet and Chenay campaigns with Otto in Landuc; wasn’t his round-walled spiralling house by the sea …
It felt wrong to be anywhere he had ever been.
Dewar rolled onto his back, groping for the Well, for the Stone, feeling the one distant and the other somehow muffled or blurred.
Seizing on that feeling, he remembered where he had been: in Prospero’s place. They called it—what did they call it? Prospero had a Source here, that was why he couldn’t sense the Well or the Stone clearly. He had come here with poor Freia, left again, yes, a forced march to the Well-forsaken outlands of the place, where he had Summoned Prospero—
And returned. Copied Prospero’s workbooks in a cave. Freia had fed him some drug to keep him awake for he knew not how long, and for all those hours he had copied Prospero’s workbooks. Yes. Where were the copies?
Dewar sat quickly upright and had one foot on the floor before dizziness rushed over him, a sparkling giddy near-faint, and he flopped back onto the bed panting, breaking into cold sweat, his heart racing. Some effect of the drug, he guessed. Where were the books? He stared at the ceiling—more rough boards and beams—and racked his memory. Copying the books. Words, pages, diagrams flashed before his mind’s eye. Yes, all that, all that, and then what? Someone had taken the work from him as he completed it; who? Prospero? He tried to sit again, slowly, by propping himself on an elbow.
Quick steps pattered in the hall, and the door was pushed open. A woman whose hair was so dark as to be nearly black came in and spoke to Dewar in a lilting language. He understood not a word, which made him feel further disoriented. She wanted him to lie back, pressing his shoulders, speaking on, and he let her settle him in the bed again. She wore the scanty pinned-and-draped linen clothes they favored here when they bothered to dress themselves, and when she straightened he could see that she was pregnant. The woman sat on the side of the bed, looking at him. She asked him a question.
“I don’t understand you,” he said, frustrated. He had forgotten about the peculiar language they used.
She put her head on her side for an instant, birdlike.
“Where is Prospero? Where is Freia?” he asked.
“Prospero,” she repeated, and “Freia,” and with those were other words.
Dewar shook his head. The woman sighed, said something, squeezed his hand (surprising him) and smiled, and was up and out of the room in a trice. Dewar put his feet out of the bed again.
This time he managed to stand, holding a bed-post, and let the dizziness pass by. When his head had cleared, he went to the door slowly and glanced up and down the hallway. It was lit pretty well; there were small windows high up, like a clerestory, and all the doors up and down it were open, so that squares of warm sun fell on the floor or wall at regular intervals. No hanging or carpet softened the raw wood; it was all plain, unworked. He recognized the place now as the house where he had come with Freia and Prospero on first entering this wilderness—Argylle, that was what it was called.
He was hungry and he wanted to relieve himself and wash. And he wondered what had become of his clothing, for he stood there in nothing but skin. A breeze tickled his legs as he looked back into the room for clothes, but he saw none, nor any box or cupboard that might hide them. He remembered that the latrine in this rough house had been at the opposite end of the hallway from the stairs, and went and found it, then prowled the hall. The other rooms were empty of all but a few pieces of furniture: another bed like his, a very fine bed of dark, carved wood with beautiful hangings, the long table at which he had dined with Prospero and Freia, a few chairs and benches and smaller tables, some linen-cupboards. By the bed like his stood a hunting-bow. Wrought-iron gratings pierced the floors here and there in these rooms: for ventilation and heat. The windows were unglazed.
Voices preceded people coming up the stairs; Dewar waited in his doorway, folding his arms. There had been one man here at least who spoke Lannach, he recalled. Perhaps the woman had gone to fetch him.
She had. Talking without stopping, she led the rangy blond man Dewar remembered to the sorcerer. The two of them finished their conversation, and the dark woman shook her head and pattered off.
“She’s of a nesting mind,” said the blond man, who was wearing a single length of reddish cloth over one shoulder, fastened by a braided leather belt, “and wants to fuss over you like her chick. You look steady.” His Lannach was heavily accented and fell into a singsong rhythm. Dewar found that he must pay close attention to follow; he was unpracticed at deciphering accents.
“I feel steady. But I’m hungry. And where’s Prospero?”
“He’s taken the Lady and gone to Landuc. He said we must see to you, Lord Dewar, and so we shall, now that you wake.” He grinned. Scars flexed on his suntanned face.
“Thank you. I am sorry, but I have forgotten your name.”
“I am Utrachet. I am Lord Prospero’s second, his Castellan he calls me. We met on the beach, after the fight at Perendlac.”
“I remember that now. Did I sleep long? Where are my clothes?”
“Tauvis stripped you to wash the clothes, Lord Dewar, and so they are somewhere about, only she knows where, and I shall find them.”
“Thank you. I was working at writing, on the island before I slept. I know I wrote many pages of notes. Where are they?”
The Castellan nodded wisely. “The Lady gave them to Scudamor, who keeps things for Lord Prospero. She said they are very important, and that you would want them. He will have them.”
“I must see them right away.”
Utrachet looked perplexed. “Scudamor is not here, Lord Dewar, and I do not go into the things he keeps in his storeroom: they are all ordered in his way. He will be here tomorrow. Is this well enough, or shall I look?”
Dewar hesitated. “You’re sure he has them safe.”
“Oh yes. She said he must keep them for you.”
“Then it can wait, just one day,” Dewar said. “It has waited a few days already, I think.”
“You have slept through the last of
winter, four days since Lord Prospero left us. Today is the first day of true spring. Everyone is swimming. Come to the river with me, and then we shall eat, if you will have it so.”
“All right,” said Dewar, for the day was very warm, and he followed Utrachet out of the house and through the empty square of the walled town, outside the walls to a fallow field that stretched to the river.
Utrachet had meant “everyone” when he said it. Dewar thought that the whole town must have taken a holiday. The riverbank was a solid mass of bodies, men and women and children sunning, grooming one another’s hair, tickling and teasing and playing love-games, wrestling and taking turns throwing a stone and running footraces, and just talking and talking in a pleasant singing hum. The river itself was full, too; people were falling out of boats, having swimming-races, playing more lovers’ games, splashing, laundering clothes, washing their hair, washing a handful of children who had had a mud-throwing contest, and talking and talking. The trees at the edges of the fields were out in their newest green foliage, that stirred in the sweet air. The sown fields were dusted with sprouting leaves, and the green fallow field they walked on was speckled with pink, white, and yellow flowers. Utrachet undid his leather belt and bundled up his half-tunic. Tauvis was ahead of them, naked now, carrying her clothes over one arm as she walked upstream to the area where the laundering was done. A leggy brown-haired girl ran to her and they went on, arms around one another.
Dewar stopped, staring at the island that lay across from the walled city site.
“Prospero made the tower,” Utrachet explained, in the same tone he used for weather.
“Oh,” Dewar said, and walked on, still staring at the black, monolithic-looking tower. A tower. Why would Prospero put a tower there, away from the city? He must see it himself, and soon.
But there were other things to do first. Dewar waded into the cold river and was pounced on by a trio of bold children, who pulled at him under water, teased him, and shrieked with delight when he chased them and threw them into the water; he swam farther and faster than anyone else, and he could stay under water longer, too; he amused a toddler with round black eyes, who was sitting on the shoulders of a burly reddish-haired man, by spitting water through his teeth in a stream, which became a coveted skill among the slightly older children. Then he left the river to dry off, because the afternoon was fading, and on the riverbank a dark-skinned man combed his hair and beard for him. Trying to fit in with the local standards of social behavior, he borrowed the comb to unknot a young woman’s curly locks for her while she fed a child at her breast. The woman smiled and hummed a little as he combed, clearly pleased. Two younger women—more girls still—took the comb from him, giggling, and dressed each other’s hair with elaborate braids under the first woman’s direction. Dewar watched the crowd. A great number of them had gone up to the flowery field, where they were cheering three runners on.
The Price of Blood and Honor Page 7