The Price of Blood and Honor

by Elizabeth Willey

  Freia’s arrow was through its heart; the other’s had passed through the bird’s wing and fallen to the grass some distance away.

  “Poor thing, I’m sorry,” Freia said, looking at the soft body distorted and transfixed by the arrow, the seeping blood, the beady dead eye. “I’m sorry,” she said again softly. “You choose the target,” she said, resolving to bury the bird when they were through with this game.

  The man-horse stamped. “Whatever comes from the forest there, in the instant it’s first seen by either,” he said, pointing at the other side of the meadow.

  “All right,” she agreed reluctantly. A live target meant that another death sentence had just been passed, for no reason other than a bet, on whatever animal, great or small, was foolish enough to move next. But this would end the argument; she was right, and she knew it, and she knew her aim was better than his. And if it was a wood-elk, she could feed Trixie, if she came back.

  They stood, arrows nocked and bows ready, as they had before, silent and waiting. The man-horse’s tail flicked his flanks, then stilled, and nothing moved. The darters were avoiding the place, and so was everything else.

  The moon was rising now. Freia’s eyes stared into the forest fringe, watching; her ears strained, listening.

  The moon had cleared the trees by a good stride when rhythmic snapping and crackling came from the forest. Something large was coming through the fringe-brush.

  Freia felt, rather than saw, her companion draw and begin aiming. She drew herself, holding ready.

  Movement in the trees’ shadows—recognition in her mind, and a panicked change of intention—but her muscles were already moving as Dewar came into the meadow, and she shot as her companion shot.

  Her arrow struck her challenger’s and sent it skewing off into the grass and Dewar shouted in anger all in an instant as her tumbling off-course arrow grazed his sleeve and stuck in his cloak.

  “You ass, that’s my brother!” Freia turned on the man-horse, drawing again and taking a bead on him. “Get out of here. Get out of here; go away, go where you came from and stay there, and stay out of Argylle!”

  “You spoiled my shot!”

  “You were going to kill him!”

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  The man-horse swung round belligerently and half-aimed at Dewar again; Dewar had a staff in his hands and it had little lines of light running down it, flickering and cascading and gathering.

  “You have not won!” the man-horse cried. “The shot is mine!”

  “Don’t even think about it,” Dewar said. “Freia, what is this?”

  “I don’t know. One of Prospero’s creatures.”

  “I mean, what the hell are you doing shooting at me in the dark.”

  “I am Bellonius, Sire of the Clan,” said the man-horse, “and the agreement was to shoot what came from the forest—”

  “So you shot at me?” Dewar’s voice went up. It could be one of Odile’s workings, he thought, to kill him by Freia’s hand, his own blood to spill his blood.

  “I shot at his arrow,” Freia said, his anger changing her own to conciliatory fear. “I saw it was you and I aimed at his arrow,” she explained, “not at you—”

  “Somebody hit me,” Dewar growled, and showed the blood on his sleeve.

  “My shot,” Bellonius said.

  “Liar!” cried Freia.

  “Blood to blood!” cried Dewar, exasperated, holding his staff sideways in front of his arm, and something hissed and thunked into the staff, barely penetrating, bouncing. “Whose arrow has striped feathers?”

  “Mine,” Freia said.

  “You hit me,” Dewar said; “the blood on the tip proves it.” He took the arrow from the staff and ran his hand along his staff, making a fist at the top as he summoned an ignis fatuus and bound it there. The ball of fire showed Bellonius staring fearful but defiant. “Blood on the point,” Dewar said coldly, and showed it to him. “Ware lest I call your own arrow back to you unshielded,” he added. “That is one of the most foolish wagers I’ve ever heard of, Freia. Never—”

  “I didn’t mean you!”

  “Of course you didn’t mean me! Nor did this Bellonius mean to kill me either, but someone’s curse could use such a bet, you fool! What inspired you anyway?”

  “This one says we, my clan, must leave this land, and we will not go,” Bellonius said.

  “We agreed that whoever shot best in three shots won,” Freia said. “I won, three of three,” she added firmly.

  Dewar rubbed his chin, studying his sister’s face by the flickering ignis-light, and inquired, “Freia, why must they leave?”

  “They’re making a mess,” Freia said, “and it’s mine, and I don’t want any more people making a mess in my land. Killing things and burning and cutting trees.”

  “Did she shoot best?” Dewar asked Bellonius.

  Bellonius reluctantly said, “Yes, but the last shot was unfair!”

  “She blooded me; does that satisfy you?”

  Bellonius stamped; his hindquarters danced sideways and he stilled himself. “We live here,” he said.

  “Do you know who she is?” Dewar asked him.

  “She said, but it meant nothing to me. I do not know her sire.”

  “He’s Prospero,” Dewar said, “and he made this place out of nothing and gave it to her to do with as she would, to govern and shape as it pleased her, all the world. And if she’s telling you to leave this part, you’d better go.”

  “There is nowhere to go; this is where we live,” Bellonius said.

  “Freia, they cannot evaporate,” Dewar pointed out to her, as gently as he could. She was very angry with this fellow, he could see, and she wasn’t thinking the matter through.

  “They can’t stay here. I won’t have them here in my forest. They make a mess.”

  “Then give them someplace else.”

  “What do you mean, give them someplace else?”

  “It’s all yours. You decide where you want them to go. You can’t just tell them to disappear—well, you could … remove them, but I think you’d rather not go for genocide, hm? More war?”

  “No,” she said, giving him a dirty look, her eyes flashing. “All right, you can go west. There’s plains out there beyond the tablelands. Plenty of game, too. You can go there and stay there.” She tossed her hair back again, watching Bellonius. Sire of the Clan, indeed. Men. “And get moving tomorrow morning.”

  “This is not fair,” Bellonius said.

  “Fair!” Freia said scornfully. “You said you’d abide by the game, and then you don’t like losing! Is that fair?”

  “Freia,” Dewar said, and he touched her arm to keep her from starting a war on the spot. “Bellonius, it seems reasonable to me. Argylle is already settled. If you do not go west as Freia says, you will soon be in conflict with others who are even more … defensive of their lands than she is, and less inclined or able to give you an accommodation. It may not be perfectly just, but it is wiser to put distance between you and the people already settled here. Surely you can see that. There are empty lands and she has given them to you. Take them and thrive.”

  Bellonius and Freia glared at one another.

  “The consequences of not keeping to your word would be far worse than honoring the agreement,” Dewar said persuasively.

  “If we perish, it will be to your account,” Bellonius muttered.

  “If you perish after what I saw today, you’ll have been muffing your shots deliberately,” Freia said, as gracious a compliment as she could manage.

  Bellonius snorted. “A strange clan you have, if she leads it,” he said to Dewar, beginning to turn away.

  “It suits us,” Dewar replied.

  “I will lead the Clan to these plains,” said Bellonius.

  “Safe journey to you all,” Freia said, more courteously.

  Bellonius made no reply; he sidled away from them and then turned and walked away quickly across the meadow. Under the ignis-l
ight, Dewar and Freia watched him go.

  “Come over here and help me dig a hole,” Freia said, when the Sire of the Clan was out of sight among the trees.

  “A hole?”

  “I have to bury the poor little bird,” she said.

  The Empress Glencora sent for the Countess of Lys to attend her as she ate her second breakfast of fruit and a few crumbly little butter-horns and a cup of manly black Madanese coffee. Such meetings were afforded only to the Empress’s most intimate and favored acquaintances, Luneté well knew, and as she hurried to keep the appointment, she wished with all her heart that a hastily made grey mourning-gown had not been delivered half an hour before.

  Still, the honor was hers, and she was left alone with the Empress (and a pair of maids sewing busily at the other end of the room beside the window) and offered a cup of coffee and a butter-horn just as if she had been the Baroness of Olm or the Dowager Queen Anemone. Luneté accepted, but she found the butter-horn an untidy thing to eat, and after one bite settled for sipping at the coffee cautiously. On one side of the tray were the Empress’s letters in a pile with her silver-and-gold letter-knife, just as anyone might have them at the breakfast-table.

  The Empress watched Luneté, chatting of light matters, and waited until the Countess had taken several sips of coffee and set the cup down before serving her the meat of the meeting.

  “My dear, I must ask you a question which will seem quite impertinent,” said the Empress, “but you must answer me wholly truthfully.”

  Luneté, recognizing the change of mood from social to Imperial, straightened in her chair and nodded her assent.

  “Are you pleased with the Baron of Ascolet?” asked the Empress.

  Luneté’s breath stopped, then started; she lowered her chin and met the Empress’s gaze. “No, Your Majesty,” she replied.

  “No. Then perhaps it will not come as a great shock to you to learn that he intends filing a petition for annulment of your marriage.”

  Indeed it came as a great shock. Luneté paled. She stared, wide-eyed and foolish, at the Empress, and Empress Glencora watched her, waiting for her to collect her wits and say something.

  “Your Majesty,” whispered Luneté when she found words, “I had no idea—” and she stopped herself. It was not true, that she had had no idea that Otto was discontent. But so discontent as that—as to dissolve their marriage, make it never have been, to part utterly and forever— “I would never have thought he would do that,” said she.

  “Indeed,” said the Empress, “it is surprising, considering the trouble he went to to make it come about. But I suppose,” she said, lifting her cup, “it was not quite what he expected.”

  “No,” said Luneté. “Not what I expected either,” she said, attempting to be witty, and laughed a little. The laugh was wrong; the Empress looked sharply at her, and Luneté swallowed a mouthful of coffee, trying to thaw the ice in her stomach. “I assure you he has no grounds for an annulment,” she said, setting down her cup with a ringing tremor. Unless Dewar had betrayed her—but he would not—but men boasted—but Otto would have accused her to her face, not this; he was direct in all things. That letter was certainly astoundingly direct, she reminded herself.

  “I believe it can be sought on procedure, rather than conduct. The marriage was highly irregular. Certainly there will be a number of weaknesses to support an annulment. You do not find the idea attractive.”

  “Attractive!”

  “You have spent little time with him,” the Empress said, “and the double burden of Lys and Ascolet is a difficult one to balance.”

  “He blames me for Cambia,” said Luneté.

  “I am sure he is too much a gentleman to say anything of the sort,” said the Empress coolly. “Of course it is in your power to stop him, I should think, if you wish to remain married.”

  “There hardly seems any point,” said Luneté, suddenly angry. “If he does see annulment as the most reasonable thing to do, I should not like to oppose him. I am sure I should never compel someone into a marriage who did not wish it with all his heart. It was Otto’s idea. If his feelings have changed, and I can think of many reasons why they might, then I hope he proceeds with the petition, and that the Emperor hears it quickly and grants it.”

  “Very well,” the Empress said. “I shall certainly let the Emperor know your side of it, Countess. I quite understand how it must be.” She smiled and patted Luneté’s clenched right hand, and asked how the arrangements went on for the sadly sudden journey the Countess must undertake.

  “I shall be very glad to be home in Lys,” said Luneté, when the meeting was done. “I shall have Lord Gonzalo keep me informed of—matters here.”

  “I do not think there will be any delay about it,” said the Empress. “I am sure it is for the best, my dear.”

  “Yes,” said Luneté of Lys.

  Prospero’s dreams were fraught with meanings; they gave him no peace. They darkened his nights and shadowed his days, and he damned them and wished them on their agent. He attributed them to Dewar, to a Sending or curse the young sorcerer had laid to harry him in his tower, and he fought them by walking, waking, late night and early morning when they came the strongest.

  He would rise from beside the dark and fair Odile and dress quietly, then go down from the tower and outside and make the circuit of his isle as he was wont to do in elder days. The isle had changed. Its trees gone, Freia’s garden overlaid by mud and even before then a wild ruin, it was not the pristine green paradise he had first seen on coming here. The banks to either side were scarred and denuded too, and the river was busily reshaping them to suit its new humor, so that to build on them for a few months or years, before the river’s course had stabilized, were folly.

  As Prospero walked he would think on his plans, his buildings and his futures. He walked in the mild unseasonable night air, knowing morning lay some little time ahead, and listened to the late-summer insects choiring and cheering.

  These hours were his alone; he had the world to himself again, no disruption of daughter or other creatures to jar his thoughts, and he cherished them despite the loss of peaceful sleep that occasioned them.

  So Prospero stole forth one foggy morning and quickly came in his walking to the downstream end of the isle, and he stopped, because someone was there before him.

  “Who’s that?” he asked softly.

  “Papa, I miss you,” Freia said, turning to look at him.

  He stared, fearful and amazed. She was dripping wet, dressed in her hunting-clothes, and he could see the mark of his hand on her cheek beneath the tears that ran from her pleading eyes—

  Prospero sat bolt upright in his bed and cursed. The dream had felt so genuine, he’d have sworn he wore his cloak. Nay, ’twas a dream, and he’d waked Odile with his start.

  “What troubles thee, love?” came her voice, a dove’s fluting croon, in the dark, and her arms followed it and drew him down.

  “But a dream, madame, that doth double ill in waking thee as well. ’Tis naught.” Prospero embraced her body, naked beside him, and felt her hands on his shoulders, his back, his thighs.

  “Tell me thy dream,” she said.

  “I did but dream I saw Freia,” he said, “as she were drowned, naught of subtlety to’t.”

  “She seeks to drag thee after her,” Odile murmured, “and I will not let her; she seeks to drown thee in her folly, but my arms shall keep thee. Thou evil restless ghost, begone and leave the living to lie in peace.”

  “ ’Tis but a dream,” he said, “her ghost, if it walks, would walk the waters in Landuc and beckon sailors to their deaths, not here.”

  “Think’st thou so? Then perhaps ’tis some other Sending, from some enemy that would prey upon thy sentiment.”

  “I’ve none able to reach me here, so far as I have discovered, and that’s what hath preserved me so long,” he replied.

  “Dewar could reach thee, if he have drunk the waters of the Spring,” whispered Odile
, “and he’d know the shape to give thy daughter’s seeming, to deepest stir thee.”

  “Aye, ’tis possible.”

  “My lord, I would protect thee with mine Art if I could. Hast me for handmaiden in lesser matters; wilt not accept more?”

  “I’ll accept what thou canst give, madame, and no Art hast thou here, only thy native nature. And that hath been of great aid to me.”

  Odile lay some while with him in wordless colloquy, and whispered again at his ear. “Dear love, I am troubled by a sudden thought: as I bemoan my own powerlessness to give thee any gift of substance—”

  “Thou art thyself thy greatest gift,” he murmured, preoccupied.

  “—did a puzzle upraise from the disjointure of will and ability. If I may not travel from Argylle, to Pheyarcet or Phesaotois, without thy kind indulgence and escort—”

  “Thine in any instant,” Prospero said, half-listening.

  She turned in his arms to interrupt him, commanding his attention as she spoke. “—then how did it come to pass that Dewar did join thee in Landuc, did make his Way to the very Palace steps as I was told? Saidst thou not, hadst left him here?”

  “Aye,” said Prospero, holding himself still and reckoning. “Aye, so ’twas; he was ill from laboring o’er the copy-books and did sleep when we rode forth.”

  “Perhaps he had some aid of thy daughter,” suggested Odile.

  “Nay. Nay; had he drunk o’ the Spring when they two first came here, I’d have seen it in him, as ’twas ever clear to me in myself and Freia, different from the touch of Fire or Stone.” He thought, lifting himself on his elbow and staring into the morning-greying chamber. “In Landuc—why, I know not how he came to the Well, but that ’twas done is evident, for he’s able as a sorcerer should be. I noted no alteration in his substance—yet I did not look for’t, had other matters in mind.” He sat up, and Odile rose too and knelt half-covered against his back, warm and smooth. “An he’d drunk of the Spring after I left him here,” Prospero concluded a minute later, “ ’twere nowise obvious in Landuc, for the Fire might well mask the change in him. Indeed ’a must have done. He cannot have come to Landuc in any other way; he’d no means of doing it. Freia followed by her gryphon’s affinity for me, a freakish and uncertain method I’d never have countenanced. Dewar had no gryphon, assuredly. Scudamor would have spoken of’t.”