The Price of Blood and Honor

by Elizabeth Willey

  Prospero had scolded her about that. He scolded her about everything. He had lectured her as they rode here on the Road, and he had chivvied her relentlessly since arriving. Their every conversation had revolved on her behavior, her disobedience, her folly; any word she spoke to Prospero brought a scolding. All the ill-hap and evil that he now suffered was her fault, according to him.

  Was it her fault? Freia had no notion of her own blamelessness. She had had no chance to tell Prospero what Golias had done to her; it had hurt her deeply, true, but perhaps it mattered less than what had been done to Prospero, which would hurt him longer and more than her transient physical pains. Hitherto unaccustomed to hypothetical cases, Freia had hours now to teach herself their construction and bitter use. Had she but remained at home, waiting, while Prospero went to war—but she still saw no wrong in having followed him. Had she not sought the place where she could free herself of the burden of Golias’s rape, had she instead insisted that Dewar carry her directly home to Prospero—why, they would have arrived in Argylle in time, before Prospero left again for Landuc, and all would have been well for Papa. He would have kept his sorcery even though he’d lost his war.

  But it was his war, Freia thought. His war. She hadn’t wanted anything to be different and he had.

  She squeezed her eyes shut. It was harder and harder to imagine herself home again. Home was gone; Prospero had changed; she was as much a prisoner as she had ever been, but her father had joined the enemy.

  For perhaps an hour she worked on being asleep, achieving only a dreamless, unrelaxed doze that was often the best she could do now. The sound of someone saying her name made her startle awake, clammy and disoriented. It wasn’t home; the voice wasn’t quite Papa’s—

  “What?”

  “Freia? You’re in bed? Hell, I’m making a light,” Dewar announced irritably, and light flared, a bright line between the curtains. Freia pushed one aside, sitting up, pulling the blankets around her.

  “Hullo.”

  Holding a triple candlestick, Dewar came around the bed and sat on its edge. His eyes were black in the candles’ wavering light; he wore different clothes now—snug-fitting silvery-grey breeches; blue stockings; a waistcoat embroidered with sea-shells; a sea-blue coat, deep-cuffed, silver-buttoned, silver-laced. Fair Prince Josquin wore such garb, and the other men of the Court; Freia could not quite fathom Dewar so dressed. He nearly glowed. He said, “Hello yourself. Are you being spartan for any particular reason?”

  “Spartan?”

  “No light, no fire, no maid, no dinner.” Dewar gestured at the cheerless chamber. “And a surpassingly hideous tapestry,” he added.

  “This is where they told me to stay. There isn’t any wood.”

  “Tell your maid to bring it to you. You do have a maid?” He looked around: clothes on the floor, general disorder in the room, and Freia’s tangled hair something less than fashionably dressed.

  “The Empress sent one. She was nasty; she pulled my hair and pinched me. I told her to go away and she did,” Freia said. “I can comb my own hair. Nobody brought wood ever. Maybe they’re afraid I’ll set the room on fire.”

  “Would you?”

  “I’d burn it piece by piece in the fireplace,” she said, wanly humorless.

  Dewar grinned, white teeth flashing in his dark beard. “Start with that tapestry, and I’m with you all the way. How are you? What’s news?”

  She shrugged. “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Prospero talks to the Emperor and nobody tells me what about. I don’t know what’s happening. I’m afraid to ask. Papa’s so angry all the time, and I’m—Dewar, I’m afraid. This is a bad place. I don’t know what’s going to happen.” She stared at him, pleading in her heart for him to offer her a way out.

  “Ask Prospero.”

  “He won’t answer. He—he growls at me.”

  “Ask Josquin or somebody. He’d tell you if he knew. He’s not a bad fellow.”

  “I don’t know anybody. I—Dewar, I want to go home. I don’t want to be here,” she whispered, her throat tight.

  Dewar frowned. “Then you shouldn’t have come.”

  “Tell Papa that! He brought me. Dewar—”

  “I can’t help you leave,” Dewar said. He looked down at the candles and pinched a bit of soft wax from the side of each one.

  Freia didn’t finish speaking, forestalled.

  He went on, “Prospero asked me not to.”

  “Oh.”

  “Freia, this is not, not— It is not an unpleasant place. You could enjoy yourself. You could be of great assistance to Prospero if you tried being charming to some of the people who have it in for him here. Admittedly that’s most of them, but you could try. And this is me telling you this, not Prospero speaking through me.” Dewar rolled his wax into a ball. “Jos, as I said, is really very pleasant, and Ottaviano’s not bad—just ambitious. Gaston’s quiet, but he has a mind of his own, and he has a lot of influence on the Emperor—if only because the Emperor can’t afford to lose his support.”

  “Ottaviano … he’s here,” Freia said.

  “Have you seen him? Spoken?”

  “No! Oh, no. No. But he’s here. What if—he can—”

  “He’s not going to hurt you.” Dewar gestured, brushing the notion aside.

  “Golias is here,” Freia whispered, drawing her knees up. “I saw him.”

  Dewar looked at her over the flames, waiting. “Did you—say anything—to Prospero?” he asked hesitantly when she said no more.

  “He won’t listen to me. I—I tried to tell him. He never let me. He’s so preoccupied. His horrible war. —It doesn’t matter. It’s over.”

  Dewar nodded. The subject made him uncomfortable. He shifted, turning away.

  “Why did you come here?” Freia asked, hoping he wouldn’t go.

  “I fear someone will try to kill Prospero. The Emperor had someone ready to poison him when Gaston captured him the first time, and I wanted to be sure nothing of the kind happened here. I told the Emperor that I’ll kill him if anything happens to Father.”

  “Would you?”

  “Yes.”

  “He didn’t think he’d be—executed, he said,” she said.

  “Indeed he did. He may not have said so, but he knew it was highly probable. But he’s safe now, at least from the Emperor, because the Emperor is an ignoramus and dares not pick a fight with me.” Dewar smiled, pleased with himself. “Simple, eh?”

  Freia nodded.

  “I’ll leave you to rest,” Dewar said, standing. “And perhaps I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “Good night.”

  “Good night,” he said, and the little constellation of the candles’ light moved away, reflected in the black windows, across the room, and stopped. She saw him open the door and the candles went out, pinched or blown. The door closed.

  7

  “GONZALO,” WHISPERED PROSPERO.

  His whisper fell into the footstep-metered silence of the long cloister. In the early days of Panurgus’s rule of the Well, this had been small cell-like clerks’ chambers opening onto a courtyard; the Palace had devoured the courtyard over time, and now it was covered and enclosed, starved of daylight, though still paved with mosaics of swirling flames. There had been a time—Prospero recalled it well—when this had been known as the Poets’ Court, for Queen Diote had smiled on poets and artists; and they had held little courts, reflections of the great Court, exclusive gatherings of the devotees of eight or a score of poets clumped among the arches and columns, seated on the mongrel assortment of chairs, tripod-stools, and divans that had furnished the place, declaiming, debating, drinking, delaying, deifying. It was silent space now, a between-place unseen by its transients, and forgetful centuries had passed since the last poem hymning Diote’s beauty was composed here.

  Lord Gonzalo turned, shadowed; the oil lamps that lit the place were not spaced widely enough to brighten it. He leaned upon his stick, then str
aightened, squaring his thin shoulders as Prospero’s quiet feet bore the Prince to the Lord of Valgalant.

  “Old friend,” Prospero whispered—three footmen on some errand hurried past—“Come, step aside, or if we shall not speak, say so.”

  “Old friend,” Gonzalo replied, a low creak, “how, not speak? Have we forgotten the words men use, our tongues dumbed of intelligence, our intellects numbed of sense? Not speak, and hear naught, no tidings nor comforts nor joys? Ah, the world is retrograde; time’s past when an hour’s parting furnished meat for three hours’ conversation, when a month’s absence fed a year’s vigorous debate. But with long fasting, the appetite dieth; the belly forgets that it must have food—and when it hath, betimes it swoons. So I, when your voice came again to my ears. My lord.” He bowed.

  Prospero closed his eyes, opened them, smiled sadly, swallowed. “They have silvered thy head, Gonzalo, but they cannot tarnish thy tongue; robbed thy estate, but not thy wit. Let me embrace thee; I have lived in barbarity, Gonzalo, I have famished of conversation, and I prithee forgive my empty silences, my unsavory words, my ill-chosen condiments of wit.”

  “I was brazen and gilt,” Gonzalo said, “and I have blessed Fortuna’s alchemy that gave me silver for my pains, not steel. She hath transmuted us all, in her inconstant way: I see you have become a father, and twice over, that grudged an hour from your books and sorceries to dine, and never a day for dalliance—I e’en now recall you saying, ’twas business for the morrow. And some fair morrow caught you at last and you are become flesh withal. How is she called, this morrow?”

  “There is no morrow such as you envision. I’d fain not speak of my daughter,” Prospero replied, bitterness tinting his tone; “she is base motherless matter, a rocky field to my cultivating and a stone ear to my will, that hath brought us into such peril as you witness. And for my son: in shaping yon piece of work I lifted ne’er a hand, and a very marvel, is he not? I scantly know him, nor doth ’a know himself; he’s young, my eye tells me, and quick, my ear tells me, a prodigy of sorcery and an elegant fellow with a sword—and more I cannot say, naught knowing. Let us speak rather of your daughter, thereby to brighten our souls in her reflection.”

  “Of my daughter,” said Gonzalo.

  “Miranda, aye; how fares she? Came she hither? Avril consented to lift the sentence of banishment ’pon you both, though ’twas little to his liking.”

  Gonzalo looked away, past Prospero’s shoulder at the line of long-flamed lamps that led to the doorway, to the side at the scuffed, once-brilliant tiling of the floor. “Nay, my lord, she is not here.”

  “Is she returned home to thee? I know not the particulars,” Prospero lowered his voice, looked about them quickly—no one there now, the dinner-hour had come, “but here’s my ring, that I gave thee, and got of my son in Chenay, that said he had it of a lady there—Miranda, she—with news that mattered nearly to me. ’Twas a great thing, a deed worthy of herself and her house.”

  “She’s—returned, aye,” Gonzalo said. He placed his hand on Prospero’s shoulder. “My lord, I cannot spare thee pain, save by quickly wounding, taking no delight as some do in ascending the gradients of agony. I’ll say it, then: Miranda’s dead.”

  The stillness of the cloister hung; it seemed to Prospero that it expanded, and pressed into him, and pressed outward and silenced all the world to its outermost wastes, the Well itself stifled: and then he breathed again, and looked on Gonzalo’s sad lean face, recognizing there for the first time the burnishing of new grief.

  “Dead,” Prospero repeated.

  Gonzalo bowed his head.

  “How? Who? When?”

  “These things I too ask, and asked, and no answers have come; she was brought to Valgalant, encoffined, enshrouded, and there I consigned her to her tomb. The Emperor’s men that brought her told no tale of how this ending came, and I thus have only grief to tell. Yet if she did give that ring to your son, which I lent her to lead her to you, then I know she was in Chenay. Therefore shall I apply to those who were there, to tell what was betided. ’Tis possible a general silence will prevail, from the Crown’s wish to rule in darkness, without the Well’s truth to light the world. But I shall ask.”

  They stood in the flat silence. Prospero’s heart sank in him: Miranda, dead; hope, dead. How cunning Avril’s evil was—as subtle as the Well—insinuating itself everywhere, leaving nothing untainted.

  “This is heavy news, old friend,” the Prince said. “The very life is gone from the world with her passing. What good is left, I cannot see.”

  “It wounds you as it wounds me, my lord, a death so nigh the heart to leave it stone-still with surprise: how could a cold husk hold such vitality? We are but vessels; the vessel destroyed, Miranda’s gone, her essence sublimated to purer form. You spoke of your daughter as base matter a moment past; we are all base matter, unrefined, while we eat and breathe and soil the world around us. Surely that essence within your daughter’s form is nothing base.”

  Prospero snorted. “There is no cure for this in philosophy. I have no daughter, Gonzalo; heard you not the clack o’ the day?”

  “Is aught befallen your daughter too? O Fire of my soul!”

  “Naught’s befallen her; she’s arrogated from me, a puppet-judge hath so decreed. Understand that afore I began this past battle of the war, I did wish to assure me of her freedom, were I taken, and her of good estate, thus filed an endowerment and emancipation.”

  “Ah. Fidelio.”

  “E’en he, good fellow, but never say his name again, that he may continue among us. In her I vested title and rights to all my lands and holdings, to keep them from th’ usurper’s claws. I knew no glimmer of the boy, else I’d have made them to him, and ’twere a better thing, for ’tis done oft enough that a son cometh to his father’s estate afore his father’s death. For this very morn hath th’ Emperor’s judge decreed that a daughter may not be emancipated, which hath been done before three times in my memory and doubtless others; by nature’s law he saith the blood-bond must be inviolate. And therefore hath Avril the right by treaty, a treaty forced on me by her own ungrateful folly, to seize her of me and bestow her on his corrupt Madanese heir, and to seize likewise mine earthly holdings. I have a daughter, and no daughter, by a legal wonder that no honest hedge-magistrate could countenance. An ill day was she shapened.”

  Gonzalo nodded sagely. “I do recall when Fensdarggan’s estates were so confused, by reason of the second wife’s children—”

  “E’en so, Lord Fedo took counsel and emancipated the two daughters of the first wife, to simplify the inheritance of his sons by the second—dowered ’em richly and the thing withstood three challenges from the sons, ’twas legal as the King’s will would have it. And ’twas done again thereafter: but Avril’s puppet hath purblinded himself to serve the dark-witted fool.” Prospero’s jaw clenched; Gonzalo shook his head, his shoulders falling. “Yet still I have a son.”

  “Prince Prospero’s son?” the Countess of Lys repeated, wide-eyed, as that individual entered the Emperor’s throne room. Her breath caught as she saw him, and an involuntary chill of recognition and remembered excitement rippled across her skin. Dewar wore deep sea-green, a sheeny mutable brocade dark and cold, and a handsome emerald glittered in his ear. He carried a walking-stick, too, silver-knobbed and slender.

  “Indeed, if you can imagine any woman having anything to do with Prospero,” Princess Viola said, “oh, but you haven’t met him yet, well, you shall; I will introduce you, certainly. It sounds utterly untrue to me, but Prospero says so and so does Dewar, or should one say Lord Dewar—although the Emperor has not granted him any formal title—and certainly they do look alike, although it is unfortunate that his daughter takes after him, especially in her bad temper.”

  “Lord Dewar’s daughter?” Luneté asked, bewildered by the Princess’s fount of wisdom and by her own memories of Dewar’s breath on her neck, of her hands on his body. She had not imagined he could be here. She had
told herself they would never meet again. He was Prince Prospero’s son. He was here.

  “No, no,” Viola said impatiently, wondering what kind of country goose this Countess was, “Prince Prospero’s daughter.”

  “I do not believe I have met her,” Luneté said, grabbing at safe ground, tearing her gaze from Dewar, who had not seen her, barely registering the existence of Prince Prospero’s daughter. “But I have met so many people, you have been so very kind—and yes, they are very like, aren’t they. Tall.”

  “Exactly, although he doesn’t have Prospero’s nose, which frankly one must hope never appears in the family again. Really, he’s a very pretty fellow, and he dresses well and dances ever so nicely. Such legs. You wouldn’t imagine him a sorcerer at all, he’s a perfect gentleman at Court! I cannot wait until he’s called into a duel.”

  “A duel? Why? Has he quarrelled?” Her heart thudded: she could imagine a quarrel, oh, yes.

  “No, but—well.” Princess Viola suppressed some interesting speculation involving the Baroness of Broul, Lord Dewar, and a closed carriage. The girl was quite green, much too easily shocked, but she was trying very hard, much more promising than Prospero’s unpleasant daughter, and the Empress was particularly interested in her, having been close to her mother. “I suppose you must meet her, eventually,” Viola said, “but I don’t think she’s right in the head, and it doesn’t seem wise to me that His Highness the Heir should wed her, really, not until we’ve seen more of her, it wouldn’t do for him to marry a madwoman or a commoner, and she is very common, common as dirt. Oh, dear me, yes—I’ve shocked you again, but you’ll see her, my dear Countess, you’d be a fitter match for His Highness, more nobility in your ancestry and bearing, than that staring, shivering rat. We wonder, you know, if she isn’t lying. I can’t imagine her being connected with the family at all. Really. Golias at least is courageous, and has a sense of style, one can see that he’s a Prince. And she has the most peculiar habits—isn’t that the Baron your husband there?”