by Mary Gentle
One brown gelding screamed. Its head jerked up and pulled the reins from a dismounted mercenary's hand, and its forefeet rose, hung pawing; and the bugling scream ripped out as it backed, jostled, and half-reared again. The other horses began to back and fret.
The White Crow paused with one hand halfway to her dagger. She drew no confirming blood.
"Madam!"
Still holding the mercenary captain’s gaze, his face blue-white in the sudden freeze, she all but completed the air-drawn hieroglyph, then dropped her hand to the dapple mare’s neck.
Potential predators faded into greyness. The exhausted horse whickered and raised her head.
Snow ran into water around the White Crow’s boots. Yard-cobbbles gleamed. Sudden warmth breathed into their faces.
"Magia!" The captain swore.
A horse clattered back. One sword among the group snicked back into its scabbard. She heard startled whispers.
"My name is White Crow. Master-Physician Valentine White Crow, of the Invisible College. Now. If we don't have muskets, I suspect you don’t have magia. Probably we could discuss this in a civilised manner."
The man’s gaze went past her. The White Crow took two steps back before she glanced over her shoulder.
"Excuse me." Three skidding steps took her across the wet stone. She grabbed the Lord-Architect’s fat arm as he walked into the yard. "Casaubon! What in damnation do you think you’re—"
"CALMADY!"
The White Crow fingered her cold ear, a pained expression on her face. " ‘Calmady’?"
The Lord-Architect, beaming, lumbered between horses and riders to enfold the mercenary captain in an ursine embrace. "Rot it! Pollexfen Calmady!"
Captain Pollexfen Calmady studied the hole in the heel of his stocking. He eased down in the wing-armed kitchen chair, one boot still on, sinking his chin into the yards of lace swathing his throat. "That’s luck. Death and damnation, but it is!"
The heat of the oven fireplace beat against him.
"Post sentries, Captain?"
"Post lookouts for Bevil, death take him." Calmady shut his eyes. The gentlemen-mercenary’s footsteps departed.
"Messire Captain."
Without moving anything else, he opened his eyes. Half a dozen mercenaries, in various states of disarray, lounged in the great fireplace. A pale snowlight shone on the kitchen’s whitewashed vaults. He smelled salt bacon, herbs, and sawdust.
A redheaded woman of perhaps thirty sat with one hip up on the scrubbed table. She watched him with tawny-red eyes.
"Messire Captain, I want some answers."
"Apply to your husband for them, madam. I confess myself so exhausted, I couldn’t plead my case were I before the Lord Chief Justice herself."
"Try."
Slowly, he finished unbuttoning his frieze coat, letting it fall open. Melting snow crusted his scarlet silk breeches and the embroidered hem of his scarlet waistcoat. He sighed.
"Calmady of Calmady," he rumbled. "That is my lord Gadsbury; that is Lord Rule; over there you’ll find Lady Arbella Lacey, Sir John Hay, Margrave Linebaugh, the Countess of . . . but they have manners enough to introduce themselves."
He saw the woman’s mouth tighten.
Lord Rule, black periwig somewhat wetly draggled, swept the plumed hat from his head and made an exquisite bow. "Servant, ma’am."
"Likewise, madam, likewise." Bess, Lady Winslow, flashed paste rings, whirling a lace kerchief in a flourish. She stretched one silk-breeched leg to the fire, hand casually resting over the larger of its patches.
"I don’t like gentlemen-mercenaries." The woman’s mouth remained tight. "I don’t like your particular brand of noble brutality."
"As Physician-magus, madam, you’re at liberty to dislike what you please." Pollexfen Calmady watched snow-light glint off the last remaining gold rings on his large fingers. "Were you both scholar and soldier, as some of your College are, we should find a less cold welcome."
"I am—I have been a Scholar-Soldier. As for the present, your welcome depends solely on your conduct in my house."
She slipped from the table to stand on the stone flags, hands cupping elbows, looking at him with her head cocked to one side. He let her hostility slide by him. He leaned forward, smothered in the riding-coat, to pull off his other boot; failed, and snapped fingers for Gadsbury. The stocky man knelt and dug his fingers into leather, mud, and slush.
"Any sign of him, Gadsbury?"
"Not yet, Captain." The boot jerked free.
"Boy’s a damn fool."
Gadsbury grunted agreement, rising. "Anyone who doesn’t make it through this soon isn’t going to make it at all."
Cold blasted through the cracks of the kitchen door. A few particles of snow dusted the floor. Calmady rested his foot down, wincing as the stocking-hole let bare skin touch the flagstones. Beyond the snow-pasted glass, a blizzard whirled. The wind’s buffets echoed through the kitchens.
"Light the lanterns." The redhaired woman signalled to a clutch of country-dressed men and women whom Calmady assumed to be the servants, and turned back to him. "Messire Captain, you—"
Thunderous bangs rattled the kitchen door.
Lord Rule, having applied his eye to the crack, wiped sleet from his face and wig and unbarred the door. It clanged open. A cluster of figures stumbled in, shedding cloaks, shouting. Calmady sat straighter in the chair. As they saw him, they quietened.
"Captain—"
"Report first—"
"—captain!"
A familiar gangling figure pushed his way forward to the fireplace, swept off his triple-plumed hat, and bowed to Calmady, scattering snow over flagstones and Bess, Lady Winslow, impartially. The woman-mercenary swore. The boy pushed his long yellow curls out of his face.
"Father—Captain, I mean—we did it!"
Lieutenant Bevil beamed with a sixteen-year-old’s enthusiasm. The tip of his sharp nose shone red in his cold- mottled face, and a drop of moisture hung from it. He fumbled, stripping off lacework gloves from practically unprotected hands. "No trouble! My lord Thompson, be so kind as to show the captain."
Calmady turned his head. The Physician-magus, caught in mid-speech, shut her mouth and leaned up against the inglenook wall in silence. Their cloaks shed, in blue and scarlet and orange silks and brocades the gentlemen-mercenaries crowded close. The boy pulled his tom lace cuffs into more splendid falls. The high folds of his cravat, soaked, subsided onto his azure-silk shoulders.
"Here!" he proclaimed.
Enthusiastically, Thompson and Arbella Lacey spilled the contents of four hessian sacks onto the kitchen floor. A dozen shirts, two patched doublets, odd pairs of hose, and innumerable sheets piled up. Calmady met the boy’s pale blue eyes.
"Bevil . . ."
"You said we needed material to patch our uniforms with. We ambushed Captain Sforza’s troop. We stole their laundry! It's perfect." Doubt crossed his raw features. "Someone’s going to have to wash it first . . ."
Very still, Calmady looked down at the heap of dirty clothes.
"I have a message." Bevil frowned with effort. "From Captain Huizinga. He’s holed up on the other side of the moor. He says would we mind returning the cow we stole from them. Their troop doesn’t have any milk. He says he'll exchange her for two hens—but one of them isn't a good layer."
Loud argument broke out: Gadsbury staggering to his feet to proclaim the value of the bargain, Hay contradicting; others on their knees, sorting through the clothes-pile. Pollexfen Calmady sat motionless.
"Captain."
He turned his head and met the redheaded woman’s gaze. Prepared to challenge at the merest hint of a smile, and (for all his exhaustion) to draw sword on a magus if this particular one should chance to laugh.
With equal parts gravity and courtesy, the woman said, "I came down to bring you a message, messire Captain. The Lord-Architect invites you—all—to dinner."
Desire stares out through the leafless February branches. Snow rapidly
penetrates the thick copse.
Cut aside and trampled, barbed-wire coils. Fractured ice feathers down to lay on rusting black spikes. Beyond the forest’s edge, noon darkens.
Fast filling up, the second mercenary patrol’s tracks turn unmistakably towards the isolated hall.
The snow-front lowers the sky to the horizon. Cold stings her cheeks. Wind lifts the matt-black tendrils of Desire’s hair. Her greatcoat billows over belted layers of skirts and doublets.
She carries a heavy dead branch, resting it against her shoulder, a two-handed grip ready to swing it in a crippling blow.
The blizzard drives hard across the heathland beyond the forest. She staggers out, head down, at once ankle-deep in snow. Blasting wind robs her of breath.
Forced on, aware that she follows mercenary tracks, aware that there is only one place to which the tracks can lead; without shelter and without opportunity to reconnoitre, Desire plods towards the unknown hall.
"Well done," the White Crow said softly.
Abiathar rested one hip on the arm of the White Crow’s carved wooden chair, wiping her burn-scarred hands on her apron.
"Now if they weren’t too exhausted and drink-besotten to realise, they’d see this is food fit only for pigs, which is after all what they are. Still, you call a dinner for fifteen extra at an hour’s notice, and half-burned and half-raw is what you’ll get."
The White Crow grinned at the older woman.
The tattered silks and faded brocade of the gentlemen- mercenaries gleamed in the snow-light of noon. Lord Rule leaned back, the pale light shining on the rouge on his cheeks. The Margrave Linebaugh fingered a brown beauty-spot. Hands formally gloved, the company made elegant and drunken conversation.
Thick flakes sudded past outside the tall windows. A haze of smoke and the heat of drink and noise made the hall loud.
"They may prove friends of at least one of us . . ."Wincing at the ringing shouts, the White Crow added, "Kitterage where he should be? And Hazelrigg?"
"Both with broadswords and muskets, ma’am."
The White Crow leaned back in her chair, chin down on the lace ruffles of her shirt, the baby cradled in one arm. Around the four dining-tables hastily put together in a hollow square, Pollexfen Calmady and the gentlemen-mercenaries sat drinking. She eyed the Lord-Architect sardonically.
Abiathar shrugged. "My cousin had soldiers billetted on the farm. Et the place bare. When they wasn’t out stripping and robbing some honest man for the fun of it, that is. Roughneck rogues and drunkards. Of whatever quality."
Watching her go, the White Crow shifted the shawl-wrapped baby to her other elbow, careful of the leather doublet’s studs. Missing the weight of a swept-hilted rapier jabbing her hip.
"You’re not very fashionable in the country, ma’am, are you? I see you don’t even paint for dinner."
The White Crow raised her head. The boy Bevil Calmady, in what she at first took to be watered (and instantly concluded was only water-stained) blue tabby-silk doublet and breeches, stood by the empty chair at her left.
She said, "This isn’t dinner, it’s midday; and not by my choice."
A spray of plumes buckled to his hatband fell forward, brushing his rouged cheeks. He fingered a beauty-spot which, like four others, had been pasted over a cluster of acne.
She searched her slashed doublet sleeves with one hand and held up a small linen square. "True, we’re very unfashionable. Have a kerchief. Your lipstick’s smudged."
The boy, midway through adjusting this, snapped his fob- mirror shut, suddenly distracted.
"You have a baby!"
He hooked a chair up with his heel and sat down, ignoring the growing revelry—drunkenness and relief from cold in about equal measures—of the other gentlemen-mercenaries.
His pale blue eyes gleamed. He leaned forward, proffering a finger. Under the table, the White Crow’s free hand loosened the dagger in her boot.
A hand no larger than a half-crown shut around the boy’s finger. The orange-haired baby opened unfocussed eyes of a shocking blue and dispiritedly announced, "Yawp!"
Bevil’s face glowed. He rested his arm on the chair so that the child’s grip on his forefinger was unstrained. "It likes me!"
"Yawp!"
"It’s a she." Calculating uses of trust, the White Crow added, "Would you like to hold her?"
"Could I?"
Oblivious to implications or danger, the boy shook back lace falls at his wrist, and carefully cradled the baby against his shoulder. It vented a resonant burp. The White Crow stood, walking past the backs of chairs—fifteen or so men and women, in their thirties mostly, worn hard with long campaigning—and around the room.
"Your baby, ma’am?" Pollexfen Calmady called, raising a pewter mug.
"My daughter Jadis." She nodded to the solemn eight-year-old, on his chair beside the Lord-Architect. "And my son, Jared."
" ‘Jared,’ " Pollexfen Calmady said gravely, "which in the Hebrew tongue is rose. I salute you, young man, as the emblem of your true Queen."
Jared’s small, stolid face froze. One serving-man banged a plate down in front of Lord Gadsbury. The White Crow winced at sudden tension. Apparently unaware of it—his gaze skidding across the servants as if they were human furniture—Calmady raised his mug again. He stood, elegantly massive in long curled wig and beauty-spots.
"I’ll wager nobody present will fail me in this. The toast is, the Queen and her Hangman!"
Before the White Crow could speak, Abiathar shouted from the serving hatch: "No one ever drank that toast in Roseveare. No one ever will. I’ll give you a toast that isn’t to that oyster-whore Queen Carola! The toast is, the Lights and Perfections."
"No toasts." White Crow took Pollexfen Calmady’s mug and set it down on the linen cloth. She leaned against the table, on the far side of him from the Lord-Architect. "Captain, you say you have business here?"
He shook his head, laughing, the curls of the periwig flying. "Irony, madam. Video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor: I see the better way and approve it, but I follow the worse way. I drink still to her most Royal Majesty Carola—but, being gentleman-mercenary and commanded by pay, I bring the Protectorate’s commission."
With some satisfaction the White Crow leaned back against the edge of the table, weight on her wrists, and crossed her booted ankles. "Now, see you, it was only a matter of time! I came home expecting trouble."
"Madam—"
"It was only a matter of which faction got here first. This family’s always had influence, and wealth, and I have knowledge of magia: Someone had to want to use that."
Pollexfen Calmady put his hands on the chair-arms, buttoned-back cuffs and lace falling to hide his fists. "Truthfully, madam, my commission isn’t to you."
"I—what?"
"Here’s my man!" Pollexfen Calmady slapped his embroidered gauntlet across the Lord-Architect’s shoulder. Casaubon took his nose out of a beer-mug, spilling brown liquid down his ruffled shirt, and looked up with an unassailably guileless amazement.
"Me?" He chuckled resonantly, caught the White Crow’s eye, and stopped short.
The gentleman-mercenary continued with distaste. "The damned bitch-General herself wants an architect. I go where I’m hired. Consequently, I’m hired to escort you to the Prince of Peace and Architecture, the most sovereign Protector of this realm—and I wish you joy of her—the great General Olivia."
White Crow, slightly pink about the ears, looked back at Casaubon in time to see him steeple his fingers and remark: "Ah! They must be having problems building the eye of the sun."
Pollexfen Calmady turned and spat over his shoulder into the open fire. "Without the blood royal, a pox-rotten mess they make of it! I saw the old bitch-General Olivia herself up on the foundation stones, chrism and sacrifice, did it work? No! Did she get away with a whole skin? Just barely. Plague take her!"
"Still," he added, with some satisfaction, "the temple’s no further up than the lower walls, and not like to be,
if tavern- rumour’s true. What’s built up by day is undermined by night, and they’ve taken to finding dead workmen there, too."
"Murdered?" the White Crow guessed.
"No. Murder, madam, would be a matter for the Watch. She wants an architect."
The door scraped open.
Plates scattered, swords ripped from sheaths. Abiathar, at the back of Bevil Calmady’s chair, suddenly rested a sharp skewer in the hollow of the boy’s ear, trapping him motionless with the baby in his arms. His startled gaze flicked to the double doors.
Edward Kitterage stumbled through, musket falling from under one long arm, his flaxen hair plastered across his face. On one arm and hip he lugged the unconscious body of a young woman. Snow crusted her sopping black hair. What skin showed under her bundled clothes was mottled blue and purple with cold.
The massive bulk of the Lord-Architect surged up, chair clattering over.
"Soup," the fat man shouted. "Hot wine! Abiathar! Quickly, woman!"
He caught and cradled the unconscious woman in his arms, resting her across the vast expanse of his chest and belly.
"Doing a round," Kitterage grunted, wary gaze on the gentlemen-mercenaries. "Found her out by the yard- entrance. Fell over her. She dead?"
"Not quite." The White Crow touched fingers to the young woman’s throat, skin chilled over invisible veins. A faint pulse of rose light remained where the White Crow touched, shaped in the whorls of a fingerprint.
With the swiftness of practise, she withdrew the bee-pin from her braids, pricked her index finger, and smearily traced a hieroglyph across the young woman’s brow. She smoothed back wet black hair.
Long lashes lay on clear-skinned cheeks, dotted with melting snow. Tears oozed from under one lid. Sharply delicate earlobes and nostrils were translucent white. She fingered the full lower lip down. A shiver of warm breath touched her skin.
"What has the same Signatures . . . ?" The White Crow mused aloud. "Fireweed and gorse-flower, for the essence of the Sun and warmth. Mandragora and moon-root for sleep. Blood for blood. Kitterage, I’ll want you to make liver-broth. Put her . . ."