Split Heirs

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  Beside him, Bernice frolicked along—or at any rate, she accompanied him as far as the pasture gate, and if she was not precisely frolicking, she at least came along willingly. Dunwin told himself that his dearly beloved pet and constant companion would have come with him even if he had not been holding out a handful of sugar, and, he assured himself, he was so confident of this that he did not bother to test his assumption.

  And maybe frolicking wasn’t the right word—after all, Bernice was no spring lamb any more—but there seemed to be a little bounce to her stride, as if she, too, were feeling good about life.

  Old Odo would probably have said she was just hurrying to catch up and get the sugar, and might have made some remarks about how Bernice walked strangely because she was limping after Dunwin had played a little too roughly with her, but Dunwin was not troubled by any such cynicism.

  At the fence he stepped up on the rail, and his beloved ewe bleated in dismay.

  “I’m sorry, Bernice,” he said, “but you can’t come with me. Stinkberry village isn’t safe for a girl like you!”

  She bleated again, more loudly.

  “No, really,” he said. “But here, maybe this will cheer you up until I get back.” He held out the sugar.

  She quickly licked it from his palm, her tongue moving so rapidly that some of the brown powder spilled onto the grass.

  Dunwin’s heart swelled with joy at the sight of his beloved Bernice licking his hand so enthusiastically. “Some might say it’s the sugar,” he said, “but I know it’s because you love me, Bernice!”

  Bernice bleated and began nosing in the grass for the spilled sweetening.

  “Well, I’ll be back for supper,” Dunwin said, as he clambered over the fence. “You just wait for me, okay?”

  Bernice didn’t bother to look up, but Dunwin didn’t let that trouble him. He waved a cheerful farewell and continued down the slope. A dozen paces from the fence he was whistling again.

  Life was good.

  The day was cool, but it wasn’t raining at the moment. The path was smooth enough that he could hardly feel any rocks through his worn boots. He was on his way to Stinkberry to buy another dozen candles, and three whole coppers were clinking in his pocket.

  And at home he had the sheep to keep his company, and Daddy Odo was getting too old to beat him more than once or twice a day—what more could a lad ask?

  There was no doubt at all in Dunwin’s mind—he had the best life in the world. Prince Arbol himself couldn’t have a better time, living in the Palace of the Ox—as the Gorgorians called it; the old fogies of Stinkberry village still called it the Palace of Divinely Tranquil Thoughts, but Dunwin preferred the Gorgorian version because it was shorter.

  Odo didn’t have much use for Gorgorians—but then, Odo didn’t have much use for anybody except the sheep. Dunwin tried to keep an open mind on political subjects, and so far, he had generally succeeded in keeping it so open that no political opinion lingered more than a few seconds before falling out. He thought it might be nice to see a real palace sometime, even though he wasn’t terribly clear on just what one was, and that was about as far as his opinions went.

  He had a vague idea that a palace had something to do with fancy embroidery, but he didn’t quite see how anyone could live in a piece of embroidery unless it was a sort of tent.

  Whatever a palace might be, Dunwin was sure it couldn’t be as pleasant to live in as Odo’s hut, where the roof hardly ever leaked, and the floor didn’t have any rocks in it, and the cesspool was downwind.

  He was pretty sure there weren’t any sheep in the palace, and as far as he was concerned that made it an inferior sort of dwelling. No one like his Bernice?

  He was still trying to imagine why anyone would choose to live somewhere with no sheep when he reached the village.

  “Hello, mister, would you…oh, it’s you,” someone said. Dunwin blinked, and for the first time noticed Hildie leaning against the wall of the baker’s shop.

  “Hello, Hildie,” he said. Her blouse had an awfully low neckline, he noticed; he supposed it saved fabric, but he wondered whether she got cold.

  “Hello, Dunwin,” she replied, tilting her head and fluttering her eyelashes at him. Her skirt had got hitched up on one leg somehow.

  “What’re you doing?” Dunwin asked.

  “Oh, nothing much, just waiting for some nice young fella to happen along who’d be interested in a good time.”

  Dunwin looked around. There were four old men sitting on the bench in front of the inn, arguing about something, and Greta the butcher’s wife was hanging out laundry, but no one else was in sight.

  “I’ll let you know if I see one,” Dunwin said. “Right now I gotta buy some candles.”

  Hildie sighed. “Aren’t you ever going to grow up, Dunwin?” she asked.

  “I’m pretty grown up,” he said, a bit hurt. “Odo trusts me to come down here by myself, doesn’t he? And I’m bigger than half the men in the village!”

  “Well, you’re taller and broader, anyway,” Hildie admitted, “but I don’t know about bigger.”

  Dunwin squinted, trying to puzzle out what she was talking about, but she waved him away. “Forget it,” she said. “Go buy your candles.”

  “All right.” He walked on down the village’s only street, wondering what Hildie had been talking about. If he was taller than the other men, and broader in the shoulders, then in what way wasn’t he bigger?

  Sometimes he wondered about Hildie. She didn’t seem to work in any of the shops, she didn’t keep any livestock, whenever he saw her she was just hanging around the village, but she always had a little money. Not enough for warm clothes, to all appearances, but she never seemed to go hungry.

  She was a pretty girl, he thought; sometimes, especially in the past month or so, he’d thought she was even as pretty as a sheep. He had even had a few odd dreams about her.

  He wondered what she had meant about growing up.

  He could hear the men in front of the inn arguing.

  “…Wasn’t like that,” old Fernand was saying. “Not like that ’tall!”

  “Was, too,” Taddeus snapped. “They tortured old King Fumitory for six full months before he died, and he laughed in their faces the whole time!”

  “Couldn’t have laughed for six months,” Arminter objected. “His voice’d have give out.”

  “Well, it did,” Taddeus said, “so he just laughed in whispers, like!”

  Dunwin stopped to listen. He had learned most of what he knew of history, geography, and politics by listening to these four, who were regulars here.

  “King Gudge just whacked off his head,” Fernand insisted. “He didn’t torture him for any six months!”

  “Yes, he did,” Taddeus asserted. “An’ old Fumitory laughed.”

  “Six months? Laughing?” Berisarius inquired doubtfully.

  “Well, maybe not laughing all the time,” Taddeus admitted. “A man’s got to sleep, after all, and I don’t suppose even old Fumitory would laugh all the time.”

  “’Specially not with the wolverines,” Arminter said.

  “Right, not at the wolverines,” Taddeus admitted. “You don’t laugh at wolverines because it just makes ’em mad. Wouldn’t be no point to it, like.”

  “Took ’is head off with a sword, is all,” Fernand declared. “There weren’t any bloody wolverines involved.”

  “Tortured for six months and laughed at ’em,” Taddeus retorted. “’Cept during the part with the wolverines.”

  “Whacked his head off and made himself king, then bedded the old king’s daughter, is what Gudge did. He didn’t torture them.”

  “Well,” Berisarius suggested, “you might could say that we don’t rightly know what he’s done to poor Queen Artemisia. Could be he did torture her a little.”

  “That’d be natural enough,” Arminter agreed, “a man torturing his own wife.”

  “I ’spect it happens all the time,” Taddeus agreed, “among t
hem what can afford that sort of thing and not have to worry about whether the house is goin’ to be cleaned and the supper cooked.”

  “Ha,” Fernand said. “And I suppose you lot would all torture your wives if you had the chance?”

  “’Course not,” Berisarius said, offended. “We’re not a bunch of Gorgorian barbarians!” He looked to the others for support.

  There was a moment of sheepish silence.

  “Well, I wouldn’t go whacking off her father’s head,” Taddeus said.

  “But Gudge didn’t,” Arminter protested. “You said he tortured the old king for six months!”

  “Right, he did,” Taddeus said. “You’ve got me all mixed up. He tortured Fumitory for six months, and then he whacked off his head!”

  “What, someone whacked off Gudge’s head?”

  “No, no, Gudge whacked off Fumitory’s head!”

  “That isn’t what you said before.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  Dunwin was beginning to lose the thread of the conversation.

  “He whacked off Gudge’s head and then married Artemisia, then?”

  “So he could torture his wife.”

  “Who’d Fumitory marry, a lady torturer?”

  “Well, he didn’t marry Artemisia—she’s his daughter!”

  “She is?”

  “Right, that’s why Gudge whacked Fumitory’s head off, so he could marry Artemisia.”

  “Is that what you said before?”

  “When?”

  “About your wife?”

  “But what about the torture?”

  “What torture? I’m not even married!”

  Dunwin, now totally lost, decided he had heard enough for today, and went past the four and into the inn’s diminutive taproom. Stinkberry village was too small for a separate candlemaker’s shop; Armetta, the innkeeper’s wife, made candles in her husband’s stewpot when no stew was cooking and sold them out of the kitchen.

  A man, a stranger, was seated at one of the three big tables; Dunwin nodded a polite, wordless greeting and looked for Armetta.

  At that moment she emerged from the kitchen carrying a pitcher of ale in one hand, a mug in the other. She set both down in front of the stranger and wiped her hands on her apron. “It’s our best,” she said. “My husband’s the finest brewer in the mountains!” She smiled broadly.

  Of course, Armetta did everything broadly.

  Dunwin waved to her. “Hi,” he said. “Odo sent me down for candles.”

  Armetta looked up, startled; the stranger paused in the midst of pouring ale from pitcher to mug, and he, too, turned to look at Dunwin.

  He blinked, and stared, almost spilling the pitcher.

  “Candles?” Armetta frowned.

  “Right, a dozen candles,” Dunwin said.

  “That’ll be two coppers.”

  “I’ll pay three,” Dunwin replied, dimly aware that dickering was expected.

  Armetta snorted. “Done,” she said. She held out a hand, and Dunwin dropped the coins into her palm.

  “I’ll get them,” she said, and turned away.

  As Armetta waddled toward the kitchens the stranger stared up at Dunwin, who nervously pretended not to notice this unexpected and unwanted attention. When the woman vanished through the door, the man said, “Sit down, lad.”

  Startled, Dunwin hesitated.

  “Sit,” the man repeated, pointing to the chair opposite him.

  Slowly, Dunwin sat.

  “What’s your name, boy?”

  “Dunwin.”

  The stranger frowned. “Is that a Hydrangean name, or a Gorgorian one?”

  “I don’t know,” Dunwin admitted. “It’s mine, that’s all I know.” As the stranger continued to stare, Dunwin asked, “What’s your name?”

  “Oh, they call me Phrenk,” the man said.

  “Is that a Hydrangean name?”

  “Yes,” the stranger replied sharply.

  Dunwin realized from the other’s manner that he had said something wrong, had somehow given offense, and needed to recover somehow. An apology would be excessive, he knew, but he had to say something.

  “Oh,” he said.

  The stranger was staring at him again, and it was beginning to make Dunwin uncomfortable.

  “So,” he said desperately, “are you from around here?”

  “No,” the man called Phrenk said. “Are you?”

  “From around here?” Dunwin said. “Well, yeah, I am.”

  “I wondered,” the stranger said. “You look just like someone I know.”

  “I do?”

  Phrenk nodded, slowly, once.

  “Is that good or bad?” Dunwin asked.

  “That depends,” Phrenk said. “I was just wondering if you might be related.”

  “I doubt it,” Dunwin said with a shrug.

  “Oh? Who’s your family, then?”

  “Well, I don’t have much of one.”

  “Oh? Who are your parents?”

  “Well, my father’s Odo, he’s a shepherd. And my mother’s name was Audrea. She was a ewe.”

  “A me?”

  “No, a ewe. A sheep.”

  Startled, Phrenk asked, “Your mother’s a sheep?”

  “Well, she was. She’s dead now.”

  “You don’t look like a sheep.”

  Dunwin shrugged. “I guess I take after my father.”

  “Um.” Phrenk hesitated. “I don’t think men and sheep can, um…procreate.”

  “Can what?”

  “I mean, I don’t think a sheep could have a human baby.”

  “Oh. Well, Dad Odo never really said that Audrea was actually my mother mother, I guess. But she’s the only one I ever knew.”

  Phrenk nodded. “And you’re sure this Odo is your real father?”

  “Well, yes—why else would he keep me around?”

  Phrenk had no answer to that. “It must just be coincidence, then,” he said. “It’s amazing, though—you look just like him. I could have sworn that you must have the same father…and I’m sure that there were plenty of women…or maybe the Black Weasel…”

  “Huh?” Dunwin blinked. “Weasels are too small to futter sheep. And Odo wouldn’t…well, I mean, why a weasel when he’s got sheep?”

  “No, no, not a real weasel.”

  “Well, who, then? Who is it you think I look like?”

  “I don’t just think so, boy—the two of you are as like as two books on the same shelf.”

  “The two of who?”

  “You and Prince Arbol, lad.”

  For a moment Dunwin stared. His brows drew closer together, first in puzzlement, and then in anger. He frowned deeply.

  “Are you making fun of me?” he demanded.

  “No, not at all!” Phrenk protested.

  “D’you expect me to believe that a runty little wether like you knows Prince Arbol, or that I look like someone who lives in a piece of lacework?”

  Phrenk’s mouth opened, but no words came out. Dunwin’s fists clenched.

  Just then Armetta emerged, holding a dozen tapers tied to a stick by their uncut wicks. “Here we go, Dunwin,” she said.

  Dunwin turned, snatched the stick, and stormed out without another word.

  Prince Arbol, indeed! When everyone said that the prince was a fine, handsome youth who took after his Old Hydrangean mother. As if Dunwin, the son of Odo and Audrea, could ever look like that!

  The stranger had been teasing him, just because he was an ignorant shepherd boy and not some dressed-up city-dweller.

  Phrenk, utterly baffled, watched the youth stamp angrily out. He was not at all sure why the boy had taken offense.

  And the resemblance was utterly uncanny. Either Gudge or Prince Mimulus surely must have sired the lad, somehow!

  Not that that mattered; both men undoubtedly had children scattered far and wide.

  Still, it would make an interesting anecdote to tell the queen.

  Chapter Nine

  “Al
l done, Mungli?” Queen Artemisia asked as she rapped on her lady-in-waiting’s bedroom door. The door was almost immediately flung open and the rather tousled Gorgorian stuck out her head. Nodding briskly, a wistful smile playing about the edges of her ever-silenced lips, Mungli let her royal mistress know that she had seen her duty and she had done it. And it had been rather fun, too.

  Behind her, Phrenk the messenger stood making the final, fussy adjustments to his palace livery. The plainer garb he had worn while in the queen’s service off in the wilds of the Fraxinella Mountains lay in a heap at the side of Mungli’s bed. When he was at last restored to the full glory of a proper junior-sub-head-under-footman, he stepped fastidiously around Mungli and, using the Swan Settling Upon a Lily Pond at Midnight with Variable Winds from the Northwest and the Flower Star Ascendant style of bowing, made his obeisance to the queen.

  It was very prettily done, and spoke well for the young man’s future in service at the palace.

  “Radiant Lady,” Phrenk said, keeping his eyes lowered. “Your Exalted Glory and Inestimable Beauty have done me a great honor.”

  Artemisia basked in the warm glow of full Old Hydrangean courtly speech. It had been so long, so very long! Since Gudge’s rule, a general slackness appeared to be taking over. Even the most refined and inbred of the aristocratic stock seemed to have let themselves go shamelessly when it came to the niceties. They called it being realistic and practical. Artemisia called it one too many sessions at Gudge’s nightly beer bashes.

  “It is you who have done me this honor, Golden Underling,” she replied. “I wish that I could send you on all of my errands to the Black Weasel. Alas, your frequent absences would be noted and your life forfeit.”

  “Well forfeited mote it be, O Splendor of the Sunrise,” said Phrenk. “Nay, gladly wold I lay mine unworthy head a-doon upon the cruel block and kiss the hem of Death’s own kirtle if such sacrifice might purchase me but a single hyaline drop of compassion’s own sweet dew from the matchless lights of your regal eyn.” He paused for breath. Speaking fluent Old Hydrangean courtly speech was a draining experience, and Phrenk had just gone through one of those with Mungli.