Sheri Tepper - Singer From The Sea

by Singer From The Sea(Lit)

  Aufors dropped his jaw, only momentarily. "I... I wasn't consulted about her going, sir."

  Nor, he thought, about Duchess Alicia's going, either. Since the Duchess was his only connection to Genevieve, he had gone to her house at once, only to find she had departed for Ruckward. After a time weighing the various possibilities and consequences, he had decided to tell the Prince what he intended. In that way, he could not be accused of dishonorable conduct.

  "What do you propose?" asked the Prince, in an irritated tone.

  "Inasmuch as she was to take up certain duties here at the palace under your aegis, Your Highness, I felt it only proper to tell you that I intend to find out where she has gone, to follow her, and to offer her my protection by marrying her, despite the Marshal's opposition to the match."

  Once more in full command of himself, the Prince said, "I am certainly not pleased."

  His stern face and unyielding mouth made this quite believable. Aufors gritted his teeth and was humble. He had practiced being humble all the way to the palace, and he was determined to do it well. "No, sir. I am truly desolated by that fact."

  The Prince drew a deep, dramatic breath, a very audible sigh with only a touch of petulance in it. "Young people. Oh, young people. So urgent. Well, I too was once young. Though the young lady has behaved foolishly-even ungraciously, one might say-you, yourself, Colonel, have behaved as honorably as one would expect of the hero of the Potcher War."

  He mused, drawing his brows together, frowning, tapping his ringer on the arm of his chair, cocking his head, pursing his lips, slightly changing position and then doing it all again, the perfect picture of a man concentrating on an issue. He said at last:

  'Well. I will make you an offer, Colonel. Though I am greatly displeased at her impetuous behavior-scarcely what one would expect from one so carefully educated, one whom I myself recommended to the Lord Paramount-I will not make an issue of her departure. I will withhold my displeasure in return for your promise to accompany me on my planned trip to Mahahm. I need trustworthy people, and your honorable actions concerning this matter do you credit. Also, it is at least nominally a military mission, so it's in your line of work."

  Aufors felt his tight jaw relax, his rigidly locked knees start to tremble, ever so slightly. He had thought he risked everything. His life, perhaps. He had believed it necessary to risk everything including his life, and he was now not only surprised but dumbfounded. All he could think of to say was, "Your Highness is most generous."

  "The terms are agreeable, Colonel? For you and the lady to accompany our mission? Hmmm? In return for my permission for you to marry."

  The evanescent little smile had gone. The slight frown of disapproval had gone. There was nothing now in that face or voice to give anything away, but nonetheless, something in that voice brought Aufors's eyes up, to meet the expressionless gaze of the Prince.

  He considered. The offer seemed generous. Aufors would have accepted a sentence of death in order to let Genevieve escape from this man, and this bargain was far less than that. If there was a trap in it, it was a trap for himself, not for her.

  "If she consents to marry me, Your Highness. You have my word."

  The Prince made a gesture, waving this away. "No ifs, Colonel, but you had best go to the Marshal and explain to him that I have consented to your marriage with his daughter-that is, when and if you find her- in return for your accompanying me to Mahahm. I think, once he hears that, he will not oppose, as you put it, the match."

  "Thank you, Your Highness, for your generosity."

  Aufors bowed and backed away from the presence, not seeing the little smile return, not raising his head until he stopped in the anteroom to wipe his beaded forehead. He stank of fear-sweat. Why, in heaven's name? He hadn't known he was terrified. He had sworn to himself he would face death without being terrified, but something about the Prince, something... well, he could understand Genevieve's aversion, put it that way.

  Understand though he did, he couldn't take time to think about it. Instead, he got on his horse and went back to the Marshal's house, where he made a stiff-necked admission of his interest in Genevieve and a more or less accurate account of his meeting with the Prince. The Marshal yelled, ranted, threatened, while Aufors said he understood the Marshal's feelings. The Marshal pronounced himself taken aback, confused, and angry. Aufors apologized again. The matter volleyed several times more, with ebbing impetus, after which the two of them ended up, as the Marshal had suggested the day before, having lunch together.

  15: Bessany Blodden

  He said you could marry her," said the Marshal, over his soup. "If he didn't care who married her, why was he thinking of doing it himself?"

  "I can't say, sir."

  "Whatever he was thinking, it doesn't change what I think! I do care who marries her!"

  Aufors took a deep breath. "The Prince said that in view of his permission, you would probably be kind enough not to object."

  The Marshal fumed. They'd gutted him! Usurped his prerogatives! If the Prince permitted it, that meant the Lord Paramount permitted it, and what the Lord Paramount permitted, the Marshal was not accustomed to question.

  He snarled, "You'll be going off to find her, then."

  "Yes, sir. I'm taking tonight's packet down the Reusel."

  "You think she went to Langmarsh?"

  Aufors did not intend that the Duchess be brought into the conversation. He equivocated. "Langmarsh is a good place to start looking."

  "I suppose. I suppose." The Marshal buttered a bit of bread and chewed it, calming himself. "I don't understand it. I confess that to you, Aufors. It's just... like this business of being at court! The Lord Paramount asked me to come to court as a kind of balance to some of the new ministers. They seem to be a bit liberal, commonish, you know what I mean."

  "I myself am commonish, sir, so I suppose I do."

  "Didn't mean it as a slur, Colonel. Simply meant it to express ideas that go against the covenants. Haven was set up as an aristocracy. Our covenants reflected our culture, either as it had once been or as we wished it to be. You other sorts were invited to come along, and the ones who chose to did come along, no slavery or coercion about it. So, now, a few generations later-"

  Aufors interrupted, "Well, sir, it's actually been around twelve hundred years or so. Given as few as three generations a century, that would still amount to thirty-six generations, scarcely a few."

  "The number doesn't matter. The fact is the people agreed to live under an aristocracy. They agreed to do without high technology, so our culture could be preserved. Our women agreed to a certain role in that culture. Now some commons are agitating to share rights that belong to the nobility-or even the royals!-and the Lord Paramount doesn't like it."

  Aufors accepted a plate of vegetables and rare beef and picked up knife and fork. "So you were invited to court as a counterbalance: a solid weight of aristocratic disapproval from one with a great reputation as a warrior."

  The Marshal cut a large bite of beef. "Pah, the kind of opposition these people could make doesn't need a warrior. The least conflict, they'd run screaming. No, these are the kind who talk and talk and talk, scream and scream, march up and down with placards, but they do nothing."

  "What is it these 'commonish' people want, Lord Marshal?"

  "I asked Prince Thumsort that! He says the men want to marry their daughters to whomever they choose. Well, no one interferes with their doing so now except one time in a hundred! Some particularly pretty girl may fit a baron's idea of a proper upstairs maid, so her wedding gets delayed a few years and she has a child or two more than she'd thought of, but in the end she goes back to her lover, if he's still about, richer than when she began. They want freedom to engage in whatever trade they like. Well, mostly they can and do, unless it removes them from traditional work. They want freedom to innovate, so the traditional work will be easier! Innovation leads to technology, we've told them that, over and over. Man gets tired diggin
g ditches by hand, and he goes and invents a mechanical digger. Does he care that it'll destroy our way of life? Not in the deepsea he doesn't.

  "They want higher pay for those who work for the noble houses, they want funds set aside for women who are noticed by nobility! It's impossible. Any woman picked out by a noble should be damned proud of it, and those who work for the noble houses should be honored to be there!"

  Aufors smiled.

  "What?" the Marshal demanded.

  "I've heard it claimed that women themselves should do the choosing of their mates since anything else is tantamount to slavery and rape."

  The Marshal scowled. "I won't argue the merits of our customs with you, Colonel. It's not something I'd ordinarily discuss except with my own class. The thing I started out to say was, why am I here in Havenor? Since I've been here, there hasn't been a single meeting of the ministers! Not one! There hasn't been an occasion when I could be useful as a counterweight to anything! So. Why am I here?"

  Aufors took a deep breath and said, probingly: "I have been struck by all the attention paid to Genevieve."

  "Well, yes, but I thought that was because of Delganor."

  "I think not. If he had been set on her, would he have treated me as he did?"

  "He was magnanimous."

  "Prince Delganor has no reputation for magnanimity."

  "Perhaps he is more generous than he is said to be," the Marshal replied, in a grumpy voice.

  Aufors merely nodded. Though he thought it unlikely the Prince was better than said to be, he could not deny the Prince had behaved well. Better than the Marshal, and with less justification. But then, the Prince did not have the habit of rage, as the Marshal did. Whatever he felt was kept hidden. That, in itself, might be a cause for concern.

  Though Aufors left Havenor a full day and a half behind the Duchess, his use of the river packet put him in Reusel-on-mere in a day and a half, well before she arrived there. Reusel-on-mere was a small place with several good inns, its existence justified by the confluence of the Reusal with a number of small streams which together formed the mirror smooth blue of the Mere. Below this sizeable lake, the river was wide and slow, running between the farms of Dania and the fens of Southmarsh, a route for both cargo and passenger ships that traveled to and from Poolwich on Havenpool.

  Aufors felt the Duchess's arrival would take some time, for her carriage was large, the road was not at its best during this season, and no doubt she would pause for meals and rest. To catch her whenever she arrived, Aufors took a room in the same inn from which Enkors had been married, one with a good view of all roads into or out of the town, and he offered a good tip to the inn servants to keep a lookout should she arrive while he was away.

  It did not take him long to find out that someone had been asking a good many questions about himself and Enkors and about the woman who had come down on the packet the day Genevieve disappeared.

  "What were they like, these men?" Aufors asked a garrulous tavern keeper.

  "Oh, you know the sort, sir. Sneaky men. Eyes never still, always back and forth, like a caged follet. Not there one moment, there the next, gone the one after."

  Aufors heard the same said several times, put two and two together and added it up to the men known to be employed by the Prince. In which case Yugh Delganor's ignorance of Genevieve's departure had been bogus. He had pretended not to know, but he had known, and he cared about it enough to put men upon her trail.

  Had he thought he loved her then? Or, at least, been attracted enough to care about her welfare? Perhaps the latter. Perhaps he had felt obliged to do something since it was he who had frightened her. It could not have been more than that, or he would not have accepted Aufors's declaration in such good part. But if it had been only that, why tie Aufors to a promise of service? Well, because, Aufors told himself soberly, any such promise from an honorable man is like money in the pocket. A note that can be called at need. The prospect increased his discomfort.

  The Duchess turned up about noon the following day. When Aufors greeted her as she dismounted from the carriage, she had all she could do to greet him politely.

  "I did not expect to see you, Aufors. I advised you to stay where you were."

  "I did expect to see you, Your Grace, but much has happened you do not know of."

  She shook her head wearily. "What has happened that I should know? No. don't tell me. I can't hear anything until I've had a bath and a few hours' rest. The inn in Sabique gets worse by the decade. I stayed there last ten years ago, and I believe they have not turned the mattresses since, much less invested in new ones. The dust in the corners dates from before the Inundation, and it would not surprise me to learn that the bread I was served dates from that same era."

  "Was the night before no better, Your Grace?"

  "Worse, if anything." She turned to her coachman, who was unloading luggage from the boot. "What was the name of the place, Yarnson?"

  "Wohsack, Your Grace."

  "Wohsack. Indeed. And woe I had there. Well, I know this place, and it is far better. I am too tired to talk to you now, Aufors. Join me for dinner, about sunset, and we will enlighten one another."

  As they did, in the Duchess's rooms, at a table laid before the fire, where, said the Duchess, it was most likely safe to talk for she had refused the first room the innkeeper had offered and picked one out for herself.

  She heard Aufors's tale while she ate, shaking her head gravely when he had finished.

  "And he actually told you to marry the girl."

  "I've said so three times, Your Grace."

  "Call me Alicia, Aufors. When we are alone, you can do that without offending the gentry."

  "As Your Grace wishes, Alicia. Not that I mind offending the gentry. I have mightily offended a couple of them lately."

  She leaned forward and began striking her glass with a spoon, making a tinkling sound as she whispered into his ear:

  "And now you want me to tell you where she is?"

  "Why else would I be here?" he whispered in return.

  "Why, to help me, as I have helped Genevieve."

  He dropped his fork onto his plate with a clatter. "Help... I'm sorry Your-Alicia. I didn't know you needed help."

  She wiped her lips delicately, saying in an ironic tone, even as she put a finger before her lips, "Oh, but the Marshal must have told you my daughter has disappeared."

  "He did not! Nor did anyone at your house, when I went looking for you four days ago!"

  The Duchess smiled bleakly. "Well, she has disappeared. I am on my way to Ruckward County, where my son-in-law lives. To fetch my granddaughter." Now she shushed him in earnest, leaning to his ear once again.

  "But surely... surely you will want someone to search for your daughter," he murmured softly.

  "Yes," she murmured softly. "And no."

  He regarded her closely for a long, silent moment. "You know where she is," he said with his lips alone.

  She read his lips, then stared past him, out the window, where the sky above the mountains shone purple with evening. She rose, drew him to his feet. "Let us wander out onto the terrace and watch the stars coming out."

  One of the windows opened upon the terrace, and once there, they leaned upon the balustrade as she said softly, "I say to you that I know where a former servant of mine, a girl named Bessany Blodden, is staying. She has a new baby with her, and I would much like Bessany to be escorted from where she is currently to Merdune, far, far east of here."

  "She has left her husband?" Aufors murmured. "She is... afraid?"

  "Oh, one could say that, certainly."

  "Your Grace... Alicia, I would volunteer for this duty in a moment if it were not for Genevieve. But she... she is my first concern."

  The Duchess smiled, genuinely amused. "Well, Aufors, my young friend, if you will consent to escort Bessany Blodden where she is going, you will find the one you seek, and I cannot think of any other way you will do so."

  Aufors said, "Y
ou want this... Bessany taken where Genevieve is."

  "How perceptive! Yes, I want Bessany and her baby taken where Imogene is."

  "And you don't want to do it yourself?"

  "I am too much observed. As you are, but you are better equipped to elude the ones following you, Colonel. There are at least three of them. Meantime, I have no objections to my pursuers following me to County Ruckward. They will find nothing of interest there."

  Aufors nodded. "Well then, how do we do this thing?"

  "You do it," she whispered, leaning toward him, and pushing a tightly folded little paper into his hand. "And do not cavil at the hoops you must leap through, Aufors. They are there for Genevieve's protection. And my own. And yours."