The Price of Blood and Honor

by Elizabeth Willey

  He had given the note to Freia in a bouquet of flowers, a peace-offering left in her rooms. Ugly rooms, he recalled. Probably some of the servants’ quarters were prettier … not that he had done better for her … anyway there she had been put, and there he’d left the flowers and the note.

  Either Freia had seen the note or not; either someone else had seen it or not. If he set aside the idea that she might have sent it to his wife herself, as he must for various reasons, that left someone else sending it. Dewar and Prospero had both been in and out of Freia’s apartment, surely; her brother and father were probably the only people in the Palace who had visited her. Freia had had no tiring-woman, no maid. Thus it must have been one of them, perhaps acting through an agent who forwarded something blindly. Perhaps they had acted together. Dewar had stuck to Prospero like a burr, bartering for him, doing his sorcerous work.

  Otto frowned. Perhaps Dewar had done some of Prospero’s unsorcerous work as well, though it seemed more likely that Golias’s murder was Prospero’s doing. Prospero had probably killed Golias as much, or more, for Lady Miranda’s death as for Freia’s injuries. Dewar was finicky about bloodshed. Perhaps the sorcerer had punished Otto more subtly than the Prince punished Golias, repayment for taking Freia hostage and for Otto’s part in her suffering.

  A gentleman would have burned the note and said nothing; would have struck openly, with a challenge to a duel. “Bastards,” whispered Otto.

  A coal of vengeance began to glow in his breast. He would pay them back somehow. They’d both slunk off now, skipped town the night the poor girl died (Otto pushed away a recollection of her face in front of the Emperor’s throne) and neither heard from since. Probably the Emperor would be just as happy never to hear a word about Dewar again, but Prospero owed tribute and tithes. Ottaviano had too realistic a grasp of his own abilities to think he could find Dewar, and he wasn’t about to enslave himself to Oriana of the Glass Castle. Dewar cared about Prospero, and Prospero was what the Emperor wanted.

  Otto sat and stared at nothing and thought long and hard all through that long summer morning, picking through scraps and threads of information about Prospero, and at last in the high hours of afternoon, when the sun shone flat and bright on the lawns and terraces of the Palace, he rose and walked slowly to a certain room, where he knocked.

  “I wish to speak with His Highness,” said Ottaviano to the bright-eyed squire who answered the door, and he handed the boy one of the newfangled name-cards Luneté had made him get last year.

  “He has just arrived, sir, and may not see you.”

  “Please ask him.”

  The boy shrugged—of course he would ask—and left Otto standing by a closed door for a few minutes. Then he popped out again. “My lord will see you,” the squire announced, not keeping surprise from his voice. “Come in, sir, this way,” and Ottaviano followed the boy into a kind of foyer, whence led three doors, and was led through one to a room where the Prince Marshal, Gaston, stood, reading a letter in his stocking feet.

  “The Baron of Ascolet!” announced the squire.

  “Robin,” said Gaston, looking up from his letter, “boots.”

  “Oh, sir,” gasped the boy, shocked, and fled the room—to fetch the boots, Otto suspected.

  “New squire?” asked Ottaviano.

  Gaston nodded. “Thy errand?”

  “I didn’t know you were just arrived, sir—thought you must have been here earlier. I’m sorry to interrupt.”

  “As yet, there’s naught to interrupt,” Gaston said drily, “therefore hast chosen thy hour wisely.”

  “Sir. I have an idea—”

  Robin came in and the boots were presented, approved with a nod, and Gaston sat down to pull them on, telling the squire to go. Otto waited until the boots were donned and the Fire-duke on his feet again.

  “Thy idea.”

  “It’s about Prospero, sir. Is there any way I could obtain copies, or look at copies, of the surrender treaties and the stuff that would relate to his daughter’s marriage?”

  Gaston frowned. “Surely ’tis among the Muniments.”

  “I don’t think just anyone would be allowed to see them, though, sir.”

  “True. What’s thy idea?”

  “I want to see what he gave up.”

  “What he gave up,” repeated Gaston, and he studied Otto closely.

  “Once I look at that, sir, then I can tell you more. I might be entirely wrong. It’s a kind of vague hunch, sir.”

  “A hunch. Well.” Gaston looked again at his pile of correspondence. “As I said, Baron,” he said, reaching a decision, “hast found me at the best time: for hereafter, these next days of the Summer Court, must I hither and yon. Let us go to the Muniments Chambers and lay thy hunch, or feed it.”

  Otto smiled. “Thank you, sir.”

  They walked through a maze of corridors and down many flights of stairs to the Muniments Chambers. The room to which they were admitted by a stooped clerk with thin reddish hair was unprepossessing: a cube, lined with cabinets and studded with many lamps, that had a door at the other side. The clerk had a nervous habit of twisting his hands together, and he spoke slowly and raspily, with a lisp. Otto wondered if the clerk ever left these rooms. His skin was so pale as to seem greenish, even in the lamplight.

  “Your Highness. Your Highness. Your Grace. Your Grace. What service, sirs? What service, sirs?”

  “Those treaties that Prince Prospero signed, and such documents as pertain to his surrender,” said Gaston, “would we review: bring them to me.”

  “The copies, sir? The copies, sir?”

  “Nay, no copies: all the first matter.”

  “Very good, sir. Very good, sir. I shall send them—”

  “We shall take them away with us now,” said Prince Gaston, and he repeated, fixing the clerk with a look, “Now.”

  The clerk wrung his ink-stained hands for a moment, nearly fizzing, and then bobbed twice and pattered out through the other door; Otto glimpsed more cabinets as the door swung closed.

  He was gone a long time. Gaston stood, waiting, watching the door. Otto, as quietly as possible, paced from side to side, eyeing the cabinets, not daring to open one and peek. He’d had no idea this was all here. How large might it be? If every letter, every treaty, every dispatch and memorandum from Panurgus’s long reign until now were filed here, how large would the place have to be to hold it all? And in some kind of order, too. There was a smell of dust, but it was not oppressive: the air was hot and dry, from the lamps Otto supposed. He looked up, around the tops of the cabinets, and saw gratings dimly in the darkness below the ceiling.

  The clerk returned at last lugging a wooden box. It was locked, and on top lay a ledger and a set of keys.

  “Sirs. Sirs. Yes. Yes,” panted the clerk, and set the box down with a thud. “Now then. Now then. You must sign, sirs. You must sign, sirs.” He took a stubby, chewed steel-pointed pen from his pocket, and a bottle of ink. Muttering rhythmically to himself, he set them on one side and opened the ledger. Pages after pages, columned entries … at the end were blank pages, blank lines.

  “Have all these people taken out this box?” asked Otto, amazed.

  The clerk stared at him and then, after a moment, laughed, a dry rhythmic rustle. “Oh, sir! Oh, sir! A notion, indeed! A notion, indeed! No no, no no. The box has its number, sir. The box has its number, sir. So. So.” And he pointed, and Otto saw a long number on the box, and the clerk was writing that number in a column of the book. “Sign here, sign here,” he said, pointing and lifting the ledger up to them, and Prince Gaston bent and signed, and Otto dipped the pen and signed also. “I sign as well, sir. I sign as well, sir.” Otto watched over his shoulder as he did just that—but only once, not twice as Otto hoped: Fidelio, Keeper of the Emperor’s Muniments. And the date. Very neat and legible writing, and small, with one restrained, intricate flourish.

  “There you are, sirs. There you are, sirs. The key, sirs. The key, sirs.” Fidel
io, Keeper of the Emperor’s Muniments, handed Prince Gaston a single key off the ring, with brass tag on it that had a number: the box number. “Two days, sirs. Two days, sirs. Holiday tomorrow. Holiday tomorrow.”

  Otto stooped, hefted the box; the clerk opened the door, bowing, muttering his farewells, and they left him.

  Back up the stairs, and along corridors and hallways; a shortcut through an empty ballroom Ottaviano hadn’t known about, and another flight of stairs, and Otto said, “Prince Gaston, sir …”

  “Baron.”

  “This probably won’t take long, but I won’t want to be disturbed—”

  “I will assist you,” said the Fireduke. “What is your notion, Baron?”

  “It’s not very …” Otto tried to shrug, holding the box. “Just an idea, based on what I know about Prospero, sir, which isn’t really much.”

  Gaston looked at him, and waited for an explanation.

  “My idea is, sir, that first I want to list the locations of all the places Prospero tried to give to Freia, with that trick of emancipation.”

  Freia walked away from softly-snoring Dewar in the dull predawn light, threading through the undergrowth. She stayed close to the stream, which would soon empty into the broader river that held Prospero’s island. She made little noise. Perhaps she’d get lucky and see something worth eating, but she doubted it.

  As the pearly light grew stronger, she went more quickly, and soon she reached the flattened area where the river had flooded, where trees hung with snags lay uprooted and a layer of sandy mud spread over the banks a goodly ways into the forest. The mud was pierced here and there by spears of new grass. Freia paused, thought, and avoided treading in the mud. The fringes of the forest were full of old flotsam cast up by the flood waters—it must have been a terrible flood, unlike anything she had seen before—but just outside them she could walk quickly, not leave footprints, and get closer to the island. After sunrise, she thought, she would have to move into the forest and circle away from the river, which might be travelled.

  In fact it was travelled now. Freia saw and heard the muffled oars of a boat. She froze still by a tilted tree, hoping to be unnoticed.

  Two people were in the boat, a flat-bottomed rough-made rowboat, one rowing strongly, the other riding in the stern.

  “We must be ’most on it,” said the rower; his voice carried clearly to Freia, and she knew him: Scudamor.

  “I think it is there,” said the passenger, and she pointed to the confluence of the smaller stream and the river. Freia knew her also. “Yes. I see the break in the trees, the light grows better. Let us go near the bank,” said Cledie, “get out, and push the boat off; then we can wade up the stream a ways and get away from the flats. Our footprints will betray us else.”

  “Speak not of betrayal, I beg you,” said Scudamor, pulling on his near-side oar and turning the boat.

  “Friend, I know that what I have done is right, and that what you did is right, and that Lord Prospero is not incapable of error, though this error is not his,” Cledie said, “but this is no hour for debate.”

  Freia watched them, tense with curiosity. She knew them both well; she thought Scudamor liked her, and gentle Cledie had been Freia’s first friend among the Argyllines, found while Prospero was pursuing Landuc’s crown. Scudamor was Prospero’s man, his Seneschal and first before all others. Were they running away together? Scudamor, like all Argylle, had made no secret of his admiration for Cledie. But why run away?

  They reached the shallows of the river. Scudamor rowed against the current to hold them and Cledie, rising carefully, left the boat first; she wore loose trousers rolled up over the knee and they were wet to mid-thigh. “It is deeper than one might think; wait,” Cledie said, and dragged rowboat and Scudamor in toward the bank. “And mucky,” she said. “Give me the sack.”

  “I’ll carry it.” Scudamor said, and shrugged it onto his back. “Your sandals?” He put the oars into the bottom of the boat.

  “I put them in the sack. Come.”

  He crouched, balanced, and left the boat also. Together they shoved it out and away from the bank, and it bobbed, indecisive, before the river caught it and carried it away.

  Cledie turned, looking up and down the banks, and Scudamor also, and their eyes lit all at once on Freia, for the light had grown stronger with each minute.

  “Lady …” whispered Cledie.

  “Lady,” breathed Scudamor.

  Holding very still was useless. Spotted, Freia sighed and left the shadow of the tree, moving toward them on the trackless leaf mold, her steps rustling. She stood before them on the shore, and they remained knee-deep in the water while the light paled around them.

  “You’re alive?” Cledie asked, and then she said, smiling, “You’re alive.”

  “There was a, a mistake,” Freia said lamely.

  Scudamor was smiling too, jubilant. “I never believed it! Another of the Black One’s tales—”

  “You’re leaving the city,” Freia said.

  “Yes,” Cledie replied.

  Freia looked inquiringly at Scudamor. “Why?”

  Scudamor swallowed, shamefaced. He said nothing.

  “Lady, to speak honestly, our journey is away from Prospero’s city, by reason of his great displeasure with Scudamor,” Cledie said then, “whom I have helped to freedom by betraying Prospero’s trust.”

  “Why?” Freia asked again, puzzled. Scudamor, displeasing to Prospero?

  Again Cledie spoke. “Lord Prospero did declare, Lady, that Scudamor should die—”

  “What?” Freia said.

  Scudamor, acutely miserable, began, “Lady, I—”

  “—for that he permitted Lord Dewar to drink of Prospero’s Spring, and Prospero considers that one his enemy,” Cledie said, speaking over Scudamor.

  “He’s mad,” Freia said. “Dewar, his enemy?” A thought crossed her mind, and she said, “Let’s leave this place, move further in,” gesturing up the smaller stream with her chin, “and talk there.”

  “Day comes, and discovery,” said Cledie.

  “Then we’ll go. Come. A little ways on the bank is rocky and you’ll leave no traces.” Freia turned and went upstream, and Scudamor and Cledie sloshed behind her.

  They had food; Freia had none, but Scudamor and Cledie insisted she share their meagre supply of nuts, smoked meat, and dried fruit when they reached a cluster of gigantic leatherbark trees whose discarded needles muffled every sound and hid their footprints too. The three of them sat in a triangle, Cledie and Scudamor leaving a small distance between themselves and Freia.

  “So Prospero thinks Dewar is his enemy,” Freia said, “and he’s angry with you for allowing him to drink from the Spring?” This was not the news she would have expected.

  “In a nutshell, Lady, yes,” Scudamor said, not meeting her eyes. “For he enjoined me to allow none to approach the Spring—the first command ever he gave me—and I—I did permit Dewar to pass. It is just.”

  “It is not either just,” Freia said. “He let Dewar copy from his books; why not drink from the Spring too?” And then, as what Dewar had told her about his mother came back to her, she went on slowly, “Is there a woman named Odile here?”

  Cledie simply nodded: Yes.

  “What’s she like?”

  They glanced at one another.

  “I think, Lady—” Cledie began.

  “I asked you before to call me Freia! I’m not a lady no matter what Prospero says.”

  “Freia,” Cledie corrected herself, dipping her fair head, “I cannot be asked fairly to assay this Odile, for I have seen little of her. Nor much of Lord Prospero. And Scudamor has been abused by her agency, I am convinced, and therefore he will say that he’s not unbiased.”

  “You don’t like her,” Freia said. Nobody seemed to be saying anything straightforwardly.

  “She is not what she seems to be,” Cledie said.

  “She is not one of us,” Scudamor said, “not from Argylle;
she is like those folk Utrachet met in Landuc, but worse. Prospero drowns himself in her.”

  “Has she drunk from the Spring?” asked Freia.

  “No,” they said together, and looked at one another, and looked back at Freia.

  “I fear, Lady Freia, that there is much you have not heard,” Scudamor said.

  Freia’s mouth sagged down in a frown. She propped her chin on her hand and her elbow on her knee. “I never do,” she said. “Tell me what’s been happening.”

  They told her of the floods and the famines, the droughts and disasters and the dry Spring. Scudamor even haltingly explained that most people thought it was all because of Freia being dead, and then he stopped, confused.

  Cledie smiled. “A false report, and its falsity shall be joy to us all,” she said.

  Freia bit her lip and shrugged. “I—it was a—mistake,” she said lamely. “So people have been moving away.”

  Scudamor nodded. “Yes, mistress. Over the hills to the Haimance, where the rivers did not flood, and south to the mountains where there is more game. Though the ground is bad for growing things there, it seemed better than the lowlands. I suppose they wander there, searching for food.”

  “And the strange weather …” Freia began and stopped, unable to fit a question around the weather.

  They told her about the storm and the second spring that had followed it, and Freia fell into an uncomfortable silence as they did.

  It seemed that the weather had improved just as she had come into Argylle. She counted days mentally, reckoning as carefully as she could, sorting the time gone past, and it did seem that her return and the warm weather coincided.

  Dewar had said that she was all that stood between Argylle and destruction and she had pooh-poohed him, laughing. He had tried to explain sorcery-sounding things to her and she hadn’t paid much attention. It was nonsense. The place was the place and she was herself and that was that.

  “Lady Freia?” Scudamor said.

  She could never get Scudamor to call her just Freia; Prospero had told him to address her thus and he wouldn’t change.