Quillifer the Knight

by Walter Jon Williams

  “Your husband’s gaming must stop,” said I. “You must be very firm.”

  Candlelight shivered in her wide blue eyes. “But how can we recoup?” she asked. “We have borrowed so much against my expectations.”

  “Let me consider. There are many ventures that would bring in a greater profit than laying bets with tricksters and coney-catchers.”

  Tears sped from her eyes, and she reached for a handkerchief. My heart dissolved at this sign of distress, and I wished to kiss the tears away. Instead I took her hand and put on my superior-prefect face, all conviction and assurance.

  “There is no immediate danger, yes?” I said. “Your creditors are content to wait for the present?”

  “Ay.”

  “And this child of your uncle’s is not born, nor is your uncle yet wed.”

  Her hand clutched my fingers. “Nay. But—”

  “Is your credit still good? Can you still borrow money?”

  She looked at me in some surprise. “I think so.”

  “You have time,” I said. “Time to make an investment. I would offer you cargo space on my Sovereign, but I fear it has already left the Saelle on its way to the Candara Coast. Yet something of that sort is called for.”

  She seemed perplexed. “We know nothing of the shipping trade.”

  “But I do. I will find you a good ship and a good captain, and the profits on a single long voyage may come near to ending your troubles.”

  She looked at me helplessly. “I—Edelmir doesn’t know that I’ve spoken to you. If you come to him with an offer of help, he will be angry with me for telling you of our misfortune—”

  “I will manage it. I’ll ask him to help me. I’ll tell him of an opportunity that’s risen, and that my own resources have fallen short.”

  Her blue eyes made little leaps right and left, as if she were reading an invisible text written on my forehead. Her lips trembled. She began to speak, then fell silent. Her diamonds glowed in the soft flickering light.

  “You must also speak to your uncle,” I said. “Tell him frankly of your situation.”

  The prospect seemed to frighten her a little. “We borrowed in anticipation of his death. Telling him will be hard, Heliodor.”

  “Bankruptcy is harder,” said I.

  Her eyes fell to the table. She squeezed my hand. “Ay,” she said softly, “I see that I must tell him.”

  And then, as she gave a little sigh of resignation, I heard the thump of a cannon shot. The gun had been fired on the other side of the building, down by the quay, but I felt the palace shiver, and two silver goblets on the shelf rang against each other. A bell began to clang. As I straightened in surprise, another big gun thumped.

  “Is that an alarm?” asked Lady Westley.

  “The one o’clock gun has already fired,” I said. “I hope the palace isn’t ablaze.” I rose, opened the door, and looked out into the hall. Only a few servants were visible, and they were as perplexed as I.

  When I returned to Lady Westley, she had risen from her chair. She came to me and took my hand.

  “I had hoped the afternoon would be full of enchantment,” she said, “but instead there is only alarm and sorrow.”

  I knew from her tone that our brief rendezvous was at an end. The world with its guns, bells, and terror of failure had entered my little bower like a great wave, and our love was too fragile not to be swept away by the inundation.

  “There will be other afternoons,” said I, and I grazed her knuckles with my lips. She made her way to the door, looked out, and then went into the hall.

  I looked ruefully at my room, all scented and glowing and filled with the promise of delight, and then I snuffed the candles and followed her.

  * * *

  There was a seething crowd along the quay, where a full eight-gun battery of Lipton’s demiculverins was spending colossal amounts of powder sending great roaring salutes out over the lake. The gunsmoke towered in great sunlit clouds in the still air. The bell still clapped out from its belfry atop the palace. I looked for Lady Westley in the throng but couldn’t find her. On the palace stair sat Their Majesties beneath a canopy of state, with state officials gathered about them, a line of demilances to keep the crowd at a distance, and little Princess Floria almost submerged beneath the crowd of dignitaries. A herald on a white horse stood just behind the line of cavalry, his tabard glittering with gold thread and his trumpet propped on his thigh. Apparently he’d just made an announcement, because the crowd was buzzing with what they’d heard, for the most part imperfectly, the words buried beneath the ringing bell and the thundering cannonade.

  “War!” I heard. “We’re at war!”

  “Who are we fighting?” I asked. No one quite seemed to know.

  “It must be the Aekoi, mustn’t it?” said a courtier. “They attacked Ethlebight, after all.”

  While I would have cheered for a war of vengeance against the Aekoi reivers, I thought it unlikely. Ethlebight had been sacked over three years ago, and there had been no great demand for retaliation in the meantime.

  “Three cheers for Their Majesties!” someone called, and cheers were duly given, though all seemed uncertain what the cheering might be about. I worked my way closer to the herald, and then he blew the trumpet and again shouted out his message. Between the bell, the crowd, and the gunshots, I heard none of it, but I read the word “war” clearly enough on his lips.

  “Who are we fighting?” I asked again.

  “Did he say Thurnmark?” said a lady.

  “Of course not!” said another. “How could we fight Thurnmark? Our armies would have to march across the sea just to get there.”

  But Thurnmark, I thought, made sense, for Thurnmark shared a border with Loretto. If King Henrico had decided to attack his neighbor, and Priscus and Berlauda had decided to support him, then such a war was perfectly possible.

  Though I didn’t know how popular it would be. Duisland had no reason to fight Thurnmark, and could expect nothing from the war but increased taxes. We would gain no new provinces, and any treasure would be swept up by the armies of King Henrico.

  The Estates would meet in a few days, and would now be expected to vote not only the new taxes Their Majesties were requesting, but additional taxes to support the war. I did not imagine this session of the Estates would be a happy one.

  But yet Thurnmark had a coast and harbors and ships. In the last war I had acquired privateering commissions and much profit, including the captures Royal Stilwell and Sovereign. This new war would be profitable for privateers, if for no one else, and so I made up my mind to go the next day to the high court of the admiralty and seek commissions for those vessels in which I had an interest.

  The bell-ringing and the cannonade went on. I pushed closer to the herald, who again blew his trumpet and cried out his message. Again I caught the word “war” and precious little else, but apparently war in the abstract was enough to set off another round of cheering.

  I pushed closer, and then I saw Sir Edelmir Westley pushing his way through the crowd. “Sir Quillifer!” he said. “I must have words with you!”

  The surging throng pushed us apart. I stumbled but regained my balance. “Did you hear?” I asked. “Who are we fighting?”

  Sir Edelmir said something I could not make out, and then a few phrases slipped through. “This is an insult! It is outrageous!”

  “The war?” I said. The crowd pushed us closer together. “Do you mean the war?”

  “That song!” he cried. “That impudent ballad! It is an insult to chivalry itself!”

  I was bewildered. A demiculverin roared out, and the echo came rushing back across the lake. “Who are we fighting?” I asked.

  As if in answer to that question, Sir Edelmir Westley struck me on the face with his fist.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Ay, you must fight him,” said Coronel Lipton. “If you don’t, you can’t show your face at the court.”

  “Isn’t dueling illegal?”
asked I.

  “Ay, but what of that?” Lipton spread his hands. “What does the law have to do with what men count as honor?”

  I rubbed my jaw where Sir Edelmir had struck me. “I could be charged with murder.”

  Lipton pointed a thick finger at me. “Only if you win, youngster.”

  “Yet losing,” said I, “does not seem the best option.”

  “To save honor,” said he reasonably, “you might contrive an honorable wound. Let Sir Edelmir run you through the shoulder, or pink you in the hip.”

  I considered this. “Would that not require his cooperation?” I asked.

  We walked along the quay in the light of morning, the day following Sir Edelmir’s challenge. Silver flashed on the dancing waves, and sun-dapples frolicked on the sails of the pleasure-craft that tacked back and forth offshore. The winter day was so mild and perfect that it was difficult to believe that Lipton and I were talking of the deadly single combat to which the customs of knighthood now bound me.

  “How bloodthirsty is he?” Lipton asked. “Does he truly want you dead? What is the source of this conflict?”

  “Up till now our association has been perfectly cordial,” said I. “Thanks to the shooting and shouting yesterday, I could not entirely understand his challenge, but apparently he objects to the ballad that Goodman Knott wrote about the fire-drake.”

  “Was Sir Edelmir ridiculed?”

  “Not in any verse that I have heard,” I said. “Knott denies writing mockery of anyone other than Woolfardisworthy. And in any case, I don’t see why Sir Edelmir doesn’t take the matter up with Knott.”

  “Knott is not a gentleman,” said Lipton. “Sir Edelmir couldn’t fight him.”

  “Surely that is all for the best.”

  Though I feared that Sir Edelmir had more cause to murder me than any words that might have passed Rufino Knott’s lips. His challenge had not mentioned his wife’s affections for me, though that might be to avoid naming her in a scandal—or to avoid Sir Edelmir publicly putting the cuckold’s horns on his own head. Perhaps that afternoon he’d had a report that Lady Westley had visited me in my room at the palace.

  Yet there was something peculiar about his challenge. I had seen him angry, when he had drawn a pistol on Woolfardisworthy, but he had not seemed angry even when he struck me. He had shouted out his challenge into the surging crowd, and not to me directly, as if the words didn’t matter. It was as if he wanted to shout his challenge only because he could then move on to the sequel.

  “Sir Edelmir named his second,” I said. “Someone named Sir Hector Whyte.”

  “I know him.” Lipton huffed. “A threadbare baronet, a laddered stocking, an eater of broken meats. One of Wenlock’s mesnie.”

  I gave him a sharp look. “He serves the Count of Wenlock?”

  “Oh, ay.”

  “It has escaped your memory that Wenlock hates me?”

  Lipton stopped in his tracks, and he looked up with surprise. “Why did I not remember?” he said. “For did he not curse you on the day you gained your knighthood?”

  “He has cursed me on other occasions as well.”

  “Well, well.” Lipton turned thoughtful. “Yet what does Edelmir Westley have to do with Wenlock?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It seems a plot to murder you.”

  “And I must survive it. Will you act for me?”

  Lipton took longer to consider this question than I would have liked. “Ay,” he said finally, “but only if the seconds are present to insure the fairness of the fight, and not to join in. My days of brawling with sharp steel are far behind me.”

  “I desire nothing more than fairness,” said I, “or at least a pretense of it.”

  “What weapon do you choose?”

  I waved a hand. “It hardly matters, for I am inexpert with all of them,” said I. “I received some instruction in broadsword play when I served with the Utterback Troop, but Westley also served in the cavalry at Peckside, and has been training all his life.”

  A sailboat approached the quay in perfect silence, and then its sails rattled as it changed course and swept out onto the lake, its smiling captain hauling in the sheet and trimming the sail with expert ease.

  “Rapier?” Lipton asked.

  “I have never handled one. It is a prodigious long weapon, to be sure, and I should think very awkward.”

  “And Westley carries one, and I suppose knows what to do with it.”

  “Well then. No rapier.”

  “I saw you with a pollaxe at Exton Scales,” said Lipton, “and you did execution with it.”

  I watched the boat as it receded, its wake a series of black Vs on the blue water, and I wished myself aboard, and bound for Tabarzam. “That execution is precisely the objection,” I said. “For if I were to hit Sir Edelmir with a pollaxe, he would be dead, and then I would be taken and hanged for murder.”

  Lipton seemed amused. “So we desire a weapon with which both combatants are unfamiliar, and which will not be too deadly.”

  “Billiard balls?” I suggested. “Do you think we might hurl billiard balls at one another?”

  The cannoneer’s eyes turned dark. “He seems to want you dead, youngster. He will not want to play with toys.”

  “Ay.” I considered this sobering likelihood as I watched the boats turning like dancers on the lake. “Very well,” I said. “We may fight with whatever weapons you and Sir Hector Whyte can agree upon. But I will choose where the duel will take place—and if he likes it not, he may withdraw his challenge.”

  “You have a place in your mind, then?” asked Lipton. “Let it be at dawn, with the rising sun in Westley’s eyes.”

  “Ay,” I said. “We may as well have that, as well.”

  * * *

  Between us we set out plans in order, and Coronel Lipton went to seek Sir Hector Whyte while I returned to Rackheath House, where I found a hired carriage waiting in the road. Master Stiver, the steward, met me at the door, and bowed. “Sir Quillifer,” said he, “a lady has come to see you.”

  “Who is she?”

  His face was grave. “She is masked, sir.”

  I looked at him. “Surely you must have some idea.”

  I was forced to admire his practiced manner, for his expression failed to alter in any way. “I did not venture to guess, sir. I put the lady in the parlor.”

  “Very well,” I said. I was only a little perplexed, for there were not so many ladies who would visit me in disguise. I went to the parlor, and there found Lady Westley in her mask, traveling cloak, and a whisper of her bergamot scent. She rose from a settee and rushed to me in a rustle of gabardine, and gripped my hand in both of hers. She spoke with frantic desperation.

  “Heliodor,” she said, “you must spare my husband’s life.”

  I was perhaps a little displeased that she had not offered so much concern for my own well-being. “I will spare him if I can,” said I. “But he is making it difficult for me to rescue his financial affairs.”

  “But now there is war!” she said. Her tone was strangely hopeful. “Edelmir says he will go to the fighting in Thurnmark and make his fortune.”

  I suppressed bitter laughter. “Are there no cards or dice in camp? He will lose that fortune ere he can win it.”

  She looked at me for an anguished moment, then turned her head away. “Please do not say these things.”

  “Do you know what prompted his challenge?”

  “He said only that he had been insulted, but he would not say anything more than that.” She turned to me again, and looked at me from behind her striking mask of shot silk, pale gray with a shimmering undercast of blue that mirrored the color of her eyes. Her voice rose to a desolate pitch. “What has happened? Did you say something to him?”

  “No, I didn’t. Come and sit with me.” I drew her back to the settee. “Does he know we’ve been meeting?”

  “No,” she said, and then added, “I don’t think so.”

 
“And if he knew, would it drive him to this kind of violence?”

  She blinked, then shook her head. “I do not think so. He is not a possessive man. We have both had our adventures and there was no great jealousy on either part.”

  “He parts with his money gracefully enough,” I said. “But possession is a curious thing, and perhaps he did not know how well he valued you until I threatened his control of you.”

  I drew back a little and looked at her, her face wan behind the mask. “Girasol, I am afraid I must query you about your marriage,” I said. “We haven’t spoken of it—we have instead tried to create a sanctuary of our own, a harbor free of the cares of the temporal world—but there is now much I need to learn.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “How long have you known Sir Edelmir?”

  “All my life,” she said simply. “We were both raised at court.”

  “And his family?”

  “Edelmir is the fifth son. His father was unlucky—he guaranteed some loans for a friend who fled with the money—so there was little for Edelmir but a few properties by Lake Gurlidan.”

  “And yet your guardian permitted the marriage to a man without money?”

  She shrugged. “It was not Edelmir’s fault that he was not rich. He had friends at court and was master of the henchmen with the chance to rise to greater office.”

  “But if his office is like mine, it costs him more money to maintain his place than it brings him in earnings.”

  She looked away. Light from the window blazed up in the gold flecks of her eyes. “That is probably true.”

  “Do you know if your husband is friendly with Sir Hector Whyte?”

  She looked at me in surprise. “We know everyone at court, but Edelmir and Whyte are not friends.”

  “Or my lord of Wenlock?”

  “Again, we know him, but are not familiar.” She cocked her head at a memory. “But I recall now that I saw them together, outside the mews. Wenlock had just come in from riding, and they spoke for a while.”