Freia chewed her lip. Maybe it was really Dewar, though, she thought, and she knew it wasn’t. The weather had been springlike and mild since she had arrived.
She didn’t want to think about it. “Scudamor—Prospero imprisoned you and he was going to kill you?”
“Yes,” Scudamor said.
“How did you get away?”
“Cledie contrived it,” Scudamor said, “all without my knowing.”
“He would not leave with me at first,” Cledie said, shaking her head, smiling. “My Lord Prospero will be as displeased with me as with his Seneschal, for I did beg a boon of my lord, that he would allow me to pass the night with my friend, and this kindness did Lord Prospero bestow upon us, and even consented that the hours be passed in a room more comfortable than that where he had pent Scudamor.”
“Pent,” Freia repeated.
“On the island, my lady,” Scudamor said, nodding. “I did not understand why they moved me, nor why they assured me Cledie Mulhoun would see me soon, and I feared it meant that she too was to be killed, though I could not think why except that the Black One dislikes her.”
“I discovered which room of the tower it was to be,” Cledie said, “and brought some rope with me, and we took that and the ropes of the bed and left through the window. ’Twas dark last night, and we launched a boat and fled.”
“Where are you going?”
Cledie smiled and spread her hands open, shrugging. “In all honesty, we reached the end of my plan when we reached the Wyebourne, and I do not know where we shall go now.”
“We are at your mercy and your command, Lady,” Scudamor said.
Neither idea pleased Freia. “I’m not going to do anything to you and I’m not going to tell you to do anything,” she said. “Prospero must be mad, to try to kill you. You are his people. It is not like him.”
“It is his will,” Scudamor said.
Cledie sniffed.
The two women looked at one another and Freia said, “Or somebody’s.”
Cledie nodded. “One hears things, Freia.”
“One does. What is this Odile like?”
Cledie raised her fair eyebrows. “Ever present, ever watching, ever whispering in Lord Prospero’s ear.”
“She does not like Dewar,” Freia said. “I have never met her, but I know that. Is Utrachet there?”
“He is still there, unless something has befallen today,” Scudamor said.
“What does he think?”
“He thinks as I do,” Scudamor said, “that Lord Prospero has been a changed man since he returned from Landuc with the tale of your death in his mouth and the Black One at his side, and that the change estranges him from our counsel. He never asks for it, now.”
Dewar’s cautions and forebodings about Odile came again to Freia’s mind. She pushed them aside. The right thing to do was obvious.
“I am going to the city,” Freia said. “I was anyway. You do as you think best for yourselves; you might be safer in the woods for now. I am going to have a look at this Odile and see my father. He wasn’t lying—he believes I’m dead—and I am going to tell him I am all right.”
Prince Gaston led Otto, via a circuitous route through little-frequented corridors and halls, to his apartment. At the Prince’s command, Robin the squire arranged pens, inkwells, stacks of fresh paper, and sand-trays, and waited by the table expectantly until the Fireduke dismissed him.
They divided the work; although Ottaviano assured Prince Gaston there was no need for him to take part, the Marshal had no urgent duties elsewhere. Prince Gaston read through the documents, as he was already familiar with most of them, and reeled off names. Otto wrote the names out, two lists: one in letter-order and one in number-order by the coordinates, looking up each place-name in the Prince’s Ephemeris. Proceeding thus, it went very quickly, and most of the time seemed to be consumed by Otto shuffling through loose paper or through the Ephemeris. The Fireduke’s presence made him nervous. He had no certainty that anything would come of this notion of his; he had no wish to make an ass of himself in front of Gaston—again.
There were many pages to each of the lists: Prospero had wished to settle a great deal on his daughter. Midway through, they encountered a difficulty.
“Those coordinates can’t be right,” Otto said, pausing as he wrote a word on the letter-list.
Gaston repeated them; Ottaviano shook his head and went round to look over the Fireduke’s shoulder.
“Those numbers are nonsense,” Otto said. “See? This one’s impossible, and that zero makes no sense. He made a mistake! Well. Probably a transposition. Hm.” He hunted through the Ephemeris.
The Fireduke watched the younger man as he frowned at the book and went forward and back a few pages.
“It’s not in here,” Ottaviano said, shaking his head. “That place isn’t in the Ephemeris.”
“Perhaps it is too small.”
“Must be. I’m going to put it down anyway, and those bogus numbers at the head of the list here. Could be it’s under another name, or something. Funny about the numbers, though.”
“Well, it will be clear in the end,” said Gaston, sounding the name out slowly for Ottaviano to write. “Let us go on.” And they completed the lists of the riches that Prospero would have bestowed on his daughter as the afternoon became evening.
“Now, the list of lands that he forfeited to the Emperor,” said Ottaviano.
“We want light,” said Gaston, and he rose and left the room, returning with a burning spill with which he lit four oil-lamps. Then he sat and, saying nothing more, began to read from Prospero’s treaty of surrender, tonelessly. Otto began a second pair of lists, and these two but scantly filled a sheet each. Each new name Otto checked against the list of the lands deeded to Freia.
There was no overlap between the two collections of names. “It’s obvious his stratagem was to hand the lands he wanted to really keep over to her,” Otto said, looking at the disparate lists. “Since he’d emancipated her, he probably planned to continue controlling it all anyway, through her. I bet he never thought that the Emperor wouldn’t honor the emancipation. But since the emancipation wasn’t upheld, everything she was supposed to get has passed to the Crown. Right?”
“The legality of the affair is moot,” Gaston said, ambiguously.
“Is there anything regarding her marriage to Josquin?” asked Ottaviano, surveying the table. There were four tidy piles of documents before him. He massaged his pen-hand.
“Belike ’tis another box,” said Gaston, but he rustled through the papers, setting some aside, and then said, “Ah.”
“What we want is her dowry. The lands she would have kept, if she’d lived and married him.”
“Much was said of that, and little done,” said Gaston, and he studied the dowry-papers. Indeed there was little settled on Freia, directly on her, compared to Prospero’s first generous intention. He read slowly, revolving other thoughts in his mind than the words before him. “This is not large,” said Gaston, half-aloud.
“I didn’t think it would be,” said Otto.
“His Majesty was loth to grant the girl anything. He and Prospero argued it full bitterly, but usage is that the woman must be left something of her own. And so it ought to be.”
“Exactly. Suppose they wed, he dies—could happen—and she has nothing to live on, nowhere to call home. It’s only right. What would have been left to her, sir?”
Gaston shook his head, reading Cremmin’s regular, smooth-flowing script. “Some jewels. Any gifts presented in the course of … hm. Ah,” he said, and turned the leaf. It must be done: he could not oppose the Well; it would destroy him. “There is land.”
“I knew it,” said Otto, and he grinned. “Prospero’s last trick.”
“A manor-house in Landuc, lying—”
“Skip it. Lands that are not in Landuc are what we want now, sir.”
Gaston looked up from the list, met Ottaviano’s eyes, and nodded slowly. “I
believe I see, Baron.” They stared at one another; Otto was bright-eyed, sensing the quarry; Gaston was unmoved, examining Otto. Then the Fireduke returned his attention to the list, and Ottaviano dipped his pen in the inkwell. Four estates were left to Freia, had she wed Josquin, four estates lying in Pheyarcet, scattered from the center to its barren outlands. Ottaviano stood with the last sheet of paper before him and the Ephemeris open on the table’s edge, flipping pages, beginning to frown.
“And that is all.” Gaston dropped the paper back in the box.
The Baron took out his handkerchief and wiped his perspiring face, then his hands. “Warm in here.”
“I had liever keep the door closed.”
“Of course.” Otto stood, looking down at the open Ephemeris, the list of Freia’s dower-lands, from one to the other. “Argylle, a wilderness,” he read aloud.
Prince Gaston waited, watching the Baron of Ascolet, his hands folded on the table before him.
“It’s the same as the place with bad coordinates!” Otto exclaimed, and he smacked his right fist in his left palm. “We’ve got him! He’s there—wherever there is.”
“What is thy plan, Baron?”
He hesitated, then said, “It’s about the war, sir. And Prospero. He, well, he’s hiding somewhere now.”
“Aye, so’t seems.”
“And nobody knew where he was during the war, or where he came from.”
“ ’Tis so.”
“I’ve been told Prospero would never lie,” said Otto. “The list of things he wanted to put in Freia’s control is the important one, you see: if the Emperor hadn’t messed that up by declaring her his ward, and therefore taking possession of everything she might have had, it could have worked. Prospero included this Argylle in the emancipation list. Since the emancipation failed, he had to get it into the dowry-list, and he did. That’s the place he cares about most. I can’t believe nobody cross-checked the lists before, or looked up the numbers.”
Gaston nodded.
“Now the numbers,” Otto said, tapping the dowry-list with a finger, “the numbers aren’t right. The zero, there— Well, the zero there, sir, if I understand the way the coordinates work, that means it’s outside Pheyarcet. But it can’t be, unless it’s in Phesaotois; and if it’s in Phesaotois, it wouldn’t come under the Emperor’s eye, and Prospero would never have mentioned it. There’s some error. I can figure that out later. —What happens to a dowry if the bride dies?” asked Ottaviano suddenly.
Gaston shrugged, waited.
“It doesn’t change hands,” the Baron answered himself.
Gaston picked up the dowry-list, read it, and put the paper back.
“So he still has title to the lands she would have held.”
“Perhaps not. By treaty, he has yielded his lands to the Emperor, Baron.”
“I think he’d read it the other way: that these lands were accidentally left in his hands. When he surrendered his lands, he had already given these away to her. If the emancipation weren’t void, then he’d hold now whatever she held title to when she died, both the dowry and these other lands. It would be a hard case; I can argue either side, and so can anyone. He’d owe tithes, but that’s better than owning nothing.”
Gaston nodded agreement.
“If Prospero is in Pheyarcet,” said Otto, “I will wager anything that he is in one of these places. His dead daughter’s dower-lands. And now that we’ve found this one, this that isn’t in the Ephemeris, that no one’s heard of—he must be here, in this Argylle place.”
“Indeed ’tis possible,” said the Fireduke, and he looked again at the short list under his fingers. Garvhaile, or Argylle, a small village, no manor-house, a free-flowing spring, forest (not measured). He went on, slowly, “Thou hadst best prepare to explain this to the Emperor, Baron. Meseems ’tis well-thought-on, and reasonable, and he’ll receive it with much interest.”
“If we can find that place, we’ll find Prospero,” Ottaviano said. “Now the men he brought from there spoke strangely: it must be far out in the wastelands, very near Phesaotois. And maybe, if his army was raised there, that’s why: the area might be so Well-poor that, that they aren’t quite creatures of the Well, not the way normal people are.” He was excited; he spoke quickly, loudly, assuredly. “There’s new Eddies, new places, spinning into being all the time. Most of them don’t last. Probably Prospero found a good stable one and now he’s hiding out there. We just have to find it. Simple.”
Gaston nodded, once. “The Emperor will be pleased, if so,” he said. “There are tithes owed.”
“Prospero hasn’t begun to pay his debts,” said Otto.
26
PROSPERO SLEPT NOT AT ALL WHEN he laid himself down, despite Odile’s best efforts to beguile him to rest. He rose and went to his study, drank there a few glasses of whisky he had brought from Landuc, and still his mind raged over and over rehearsing the events of two days past: Scudamor’s treachery, Cledie’s treachery, and his own trusting folly. He would not let himself be so befooled again by Argylle’s folk. He’d thought they knew little of cunning deceptions, but they had taught him otherwise. They were men, with all the evil of humanity in them. When his searchers brought the two traitors back he would hang them together on the same rope they’d climbed down on.
Seething, he dressed and went out, disregarding Odile’s calling after him drowsily. He climbed up the citadel and stood there long hours, staring at the darkness and the stars while his anger glowed; and then as dawn dimmed the stars he went down and walked slowly around the isle. The air was cool, without a snap of frost to it. It was high time winter came properly. Not even the seasons kept their places. Prospero crossed over the framework of the new wooden bridge into the city.
The sight of the restored walls comforted him. He went up a narrow stair and began walking along the top, from the downstream side to the upstream, all around the curve, his pace rapid enough that he soon came to the upstream end and descended the stair on that side. The work was not yet complete. It had been slowed by the need to rebuild all the other buildings, houses and warehouses. Soon they would build a stone bridge to the citadel’s island, extend the wall along the riverbank, and enclose the city. Later as the city grew he would bridge the river, up and down, with two fortified bridges.…
Prospero, soothed by his defenses, crossed back to the tower and walked around the island again. Smoke-smells and sounds were in the air now, Argylle waking up around him; the sun would rise soon. He strolled to the upstream end of the island, where the stolen boat Cledie and Scudamor had abandoned, evidence, lay hauled up and turned over.
A log was being carried toward the island on the current, not so common a sight as it had been in the wake of the great storm. Prospero stared at it and absently calculated the current’s speed.
The log split apart as he watched.
Part of it went past the island, long and low, and part moved across the current toward him, utterly contradictory to nature, but unmistakable in the grey, bright predawn light. For a second Prospero was astonished, but then he felt weak and fearful: a delusion of his unrested mind, to be sure—
“Papa?” Freia said, climbing over the rocks and staring at him, as astonished as he. How had he known she was coming? Sorcery?
There was an uproar somewhere, indistinct shouting in the city behind Prospero. He was deaf to it; he shook his head sharply and blinked. He’d wake instantly, surely.
“It’s me, Papa,” Freia said, sopping wet, on her back a tight-wrapped bundle that was bow and arrows protected from the water, appearing as she always did after swimming to the island from the forest, as she did in his dreams, not in Landuc’s finery but rough hunting-clothes.
The forest was not behind her; the cleared far bank with the single warehouse remaining was.
“What foul apparition art thou? Begone!” snarled Prospero, and he turned and stalked away.
“Prospero!” Freia cried, dismayed, and, shrugging off her bundle, she darted aft
er him to grab his sleeve.
Prospero, enraged in an instant, shook his arm free, turned on her, and lifted his hand.
“Papa!” and she flinched and her arm came up to ward her from the blow.
Prospero halted, staring at her in the new day’s earliest light as she stared at him, the horror and dismay on her face that which his worst nightmares showed him. Something exploded in the city, but neither of them heard it, and the top of the tower moved and made a long croaking sound.
“Be thou dream, or apparition sent to torment me, or fouler being still,” Prospero said hoarsely, and he lowered his hand, “matters not, I’ll not sin the same twice, goad me as thou wilt. What’s thy mission? Speak.”
“I’m not a ghost or anything else,” Freia whispered, still guarding herself, “I’m me, Papa. I’m truly me.”
“Thou’rt dead,” Prospero said. “This I know. Think not to bewray my thought so simply, spirit. Art Dewar’s creature, a thing of his making sent to jeer me? Go, and tell him he—”
“Prospero, I’m me,” Freia said. “Why would anybody do that to you? I’m me.”
“My daughter’s dead, spirit,” Prospero said; “tell thou thy master that. Hast something of her seeming, but the likeness is imperfect—”
“Papa! I’m here. How can I not look like myself?” Exasperation covered a tremble of fear: what if Prospero would not believe the truth? If he could believe Scudamor would betray him, couldn’t he believe his daughter would come back?
“Nay, my girl was not so lean as thou, nor her hair so dressed, nor was her voice thus, nor her eyes so colored.” Prospero turned from her and began walking away; there was some commotion at the bridge, a noisy knot of people.
“How could you forget— Papa!” Freia seized his arm once more.
“Release me, thou false copy, ere I abandon the courtesy I bear thee for the sake of thy original,” Prospero said, and he pried her hand from his arm and pushed her from him.
“Prospero,” Freia said to his back, quivering with fury. How dare he disbelieve her?
The tone of her voice stopped him; Prospero paused but would not look round.
The Price of Blood and Honor Page 44