Quillifer the Knight

by Walter Jon Williams

  It was true that she had promised not to harm those I loved. But it had to be said that I had not loved Harvey Meens, but his sister, and that if she were hurt by this business, the hurt would be indirect.

  I continued to circle him, but he advanced to cut me off, his blade licking out like the tongue of a serpent. I parried with my dagger, pain blazing through my arm and shoulder. I retreated and waited for a chance to use the falchion, but my blade was shorter than his, and he was careful to stay out of range.

  We separated for a brief instant as Meens tired, and then I threw the dagger at his face—throwing underarm, which was the only way my injured limb could throw at all. He uttered a breath of surprise as he took a step back and batted the weapon away with his dagger, and then I hurled the heavy falchion point-first at his belly. This time he gave a shout as he parried it away, but by the time he recovered from his surprise, I had turned and begun to run. Once he recovered, he began to lumber after me.

  There were more cries of surprise from the onlookers, for they thought I was flying for my life, but in fact I was running toward something—the pollaxe leaning against the belfry. I snatched at it, turned, and had the pollaxe on guard before he was closer than five paces from me, which brought Meens to a sudden stop.

  Pollaxes have a spike on either end, and an axe-blade on the crown, and that axe-blade has another spike growing out of the back of it. I advanced with the butt-spike foremost, the shaft supported in the middle by my weakened right hand, while the axe-blade I controlled with my left. I used my weakened right hand not as an aid to striking, but as a kind of fulcrum to aid in shifting my point either to the attack or defense.

  For I was using the pollaxe not as a smashing weapon, but as a rapier, and one with greater range than that awkward length of steel in Meens’s fist. With both hands controlling the weapon, I was employing Coronel Lipton’s strike of the peasant.

  I came straight on before Meens could work out a means of response, and now it was my weapon darting out at his face and body, while he made desperate efforts to parry. He tried knocking my point away with his dagger and then thrusting with the rapier, but the strike of the peasant was too strong, and I knocked his sword aside. He saved himself from my riposte by leaping, and I cut a piece of his shirt away, though without drawing blood.

  I pressed the attack, and I saw by the growing hopelessness in my enemy’s eyes that he was about to try something desperate, so when he lunged with both weapons, I took a step to the side, dropped to one knee, and swung the axe-blade at his legs. The blade itself missed, but I swept up his ankle with the haft, and he crashed heavily onto the roof-tiles.

  I intended now to stab him in the leg, which would allow me to inflict an honorable wound and end the fight, but Meens’s fall had shattered the terra-cotta beneath him and precipitated a slide as one tile after another disengaged from its supports, and though he’d fallen at least two paces from the edge of the roof, he found himself carried into space on a raft of clattering rubble.

  I saw the fury in his dark eyes die as he went over the edge, and for a moment he looked puzzled, as if he couldn’t quite remember how he had come to this fate. Orlanda’s spirit of vengeance had abandoned him at the last moment, and his mind was his own as he fell three storeys into the courtyard and landed amid the watching monks. I dropped the pollaxe and, mindful not to break any tiles, made my careful way toward Lord Barkin.

  “You will need to help me down,” I said, “and then I need to see a surgeon.”

  Barkin’s look was alert. “You are wounded?”

  “I think I may have broken my arm.”

  He nodded. “Dom Emidio and I have arranged for a surgeon to stand by,” he said.

  “Then let us go, and quickly.”

  I almost fainted with pain as I clambered down the face of the prayer hall and into the lane behind the building. Barkin leaped on his horse, and Sansloy gave me his courser, and off we rode to the surgeon, leaving Harvey Meens in the care of Dom Emidio and the monks.

  * * *

  “No, the arm is not broken,” said the surgeon. He was a charming gray-haired man with a shaven chin and curling mustaches, and he cradled my arm carefully in his two gentle hands. He spoke the tongue of Loretto slowly and clearly, so that his foreign patient would understand. “Instead there is a misalignment of the bones. I can repair it, but it will be very painful.”

  “What?” said I. “How do you—?”

  But while I was in the midst of this civil inquiry, he took my forearm in one hand and my shoulder in the other, and gave my arm a very firm twist combined with a sharp tug. It was very painful, and I gasped in surprise while tears sprang to my eyes, but the extreme pain lasted only an instant, after which the sensation faded to mere agony.

  “I shall make a sling for your arm, Dom Keely-Fay,” said the surgeon with a smile. “You should not play tennis for a few weeks, or use a sword.”

  Lord Barkin arranged for a hired coach to take me to the Palace Ribamar, and accompanied me to make certain that I was comfortable. He installed me on a settee in a parlor, and had the fire built up so I would not take a chill. “If I hear of a warrant being made out,” he said, “I will do my best to warn you.”

  “Thank you,” said I. “I am very much in your debt.”

  “Not at all,” said he. “At the palace it is all ceremony and play-soldiering. By contrast, I found this affair bracing, a pleasurable diversion.”

  “I am heartily glad someone enjoyed it,” said I.

  “Take your ease, and recover yourself,” said Barkin. “I do not think justice will exert itself overmuch in the matter of Harvey Meens.”

  “My doctor has ordered me not to fight duels,” said I, “and I will obey his instructions. But I think I will not be long in Longres—there were too many witnesses to that fight, and not all of them love me.”

  “I may be interviewed,” said Barkin. “I will put the blame entirely on Meens, and so will Dom Emidio if he is just.”

  “Nevertheless,” I said.

  He shrugged. “You will not err by being cautious,” he said.

  In fact I had already decided to leave Loretto. I had been here for over two months, and had failed at everything I’d hoped to accomplish. I had thought it might be possible to achieve a reputation here as I had in Duisland, through wit and perhaps a well-chosen escapade or two, but the barriers against me were far stronger here than at home, and the reputation I’d gained had been that of a bedswerver and a quarrelsome fighter. I hadn’t found Lady Westley, and I had failed to avoid Lord Edevane’s conspiracies. Perhaps it was time to heed the business that was calling me elsewhere. A spring voyage to Selford was probably the best thing for me.

  Lord Barkin had no sooner left for Longres Regius than Rufino Knott appeared. “Meens yet lives,” he said, “but his back may be broke.”

  He had gained admission to the monastery’s infirmary by claiming to be Meens’s servant, and heard the verdict of the surgeon-monk who tended the injuries and illnesses of his brethren. Though Meens might survive, he would likely never walk again.

  “Goodman Knott,” I said. “I need you to arrange a carriage to take me to the western coast tomorrow. Afterward, pack my things.”

  “Very good, Sir Quillifer.” Knott held out a letter. “The porter had this message from Prince Alicio.”

  I read the letter, a response to the query I had sent to him about the two ladies from Duisland and their inadequate lodging at the palace. He responded that you and Countess Marcella were welcome to stay at the Palace Ribamar, and the steward should make the arrangements.

  I called for mulled cider and some bread, then went to the library, where I had the portable desk that held my correspondence. Painfully I adjusted my sling so that I could hold a quill, and put paper and ink before me. First I wrote to you, to let you know of the prince’s kind offer of lodging. Then I wrote Prince Alicio, thanking him for his hospitality, and telling him that I was obliged to return to Duisland, but
that I’m sure the two stranded ladies would be delighted by his offer.

  Next I was obliged to write Elvina and explain the morning’s events. I expressed regret for her brother’s misfortune and told her that I must leave the country, and then the words seemed to drain away, and I was left staring at the half-filled page of foolscap while weariness and misery swam in my head. I remembered the look of puzzlement in Meens’s eyes as he plunged over the edge, and thought how he had challenged me as the pawn of a malevolent goddess, but fallen to his fate as himself, his own master only for the length of time it took him to plunge three storeys to the ground. I wondered if I were any better, if I was blown hither and thither by some force beyond myself, and falling all the time toward some fate as calamitous as that of Meens, or Wilmot.

  I could tell nothing of this to Elvina, and of course Elvina might herself be a puppet, inclined toward me by Orlanda’s power.… I may serve my purposes better by making the wrong people love you. Elvina might be another of that divine lady’s victims.

  “Dom Keely-Fay,” said Braud the steward. “There is a lady to see you.”

  I could imagine no lady at my door but Elvina, and so I left the library and hastened to the parlor, where I saw you on a chair by the hearth. You were wearing a blue riding dress, as if you’d just come in from a stag hunt, and your face was turned to the fire. The flames outlined your strong profile, your proud straight nose, your full lips, the noble forehead. I stopped in the doorway, surprised, and you turned your black eyes to me, and then to my arm in a sling.

  “Are you injured?” you asked. “I heard you won the encounter.”

  “The surgeon assures me it is a trifle,” I said. “At any rate I’m better off than Meens.” I advanced to kiss your hand. “Mistress d’Altrey, how did you hear of the meeting’s outcome?”

  “Meens was hardly discreet, so the entire court knew it would take place. This morning at least a dozen witnesses galloped straight to the palace to tell everyone what had happened.”

  “You have come to ask about the affair?”

  You dismissed the thought with a sniff. “Of course not. I received your letter when I came in from my morning ride, and I thought I’d get back on my horse and survey the accommodations.”

  “Let me call Braud, and explain the matter to him.”

  The steward seemed at first a little skeptical, as if I intended to install a mistress under his master’s roof, but I had Prince Alicio’s letter at hand and was able to show him His Highness’s will in the matter. You chose a fine room overlooking the lake, with a mirror, a wardrobe, and a door leading to a terrace. Your bed had a canopy painted with stars, so that once the bed curtains were closed, you might fancy yourself lying beneath the open sky.

  You told Braud that you would come tomorrow with your belongings and a servant, and that Countess Marcella might arrive with you. Braud said he would send servants to clean the room and withdrew, and we opened the terrace door and stepped out into the bright sun. Prince Alicio’s lake stretched out before us, with a dark forest, one of King Henrico’s hunting preserves, stretching out behind. The taste of spring lay in the air, a hint of things stirring under the earth. Doves from the columbarium darted through the sky in pairs. We walked along the terrace toward the lake, and the pleasure-ships that Prince Alicio had moored there.

  “Now you will not be obliged to share a bed with Marcella,” I said.

  You waved a hand. “When she is there, she sleeps so quietly that I barely notice her,” you said. “But she barely sleeps at all, and is in bed only a few hours each night. I wondered if that was normal for the Aekoi, but I’ve since learned they take as much sleep as we.”

  This I found interesting. “Where does she go at night? Does she have a lover?”

  You smiled. “Do you wish to be that lover? At present you are without a paramour, I believe.”

  “Marcella may be a little fierce for my tastes. I think also she may not like humans.”

  “Certainly not those who think her no better than a courtesan. She has boxed the ears of more than one impudent rogue since we have come to Longres.”

  I shook my head. “She will tell sad, unflattering tales of us when she returns to her home.”

  “But I think she will return in something like luxury. She gambles late into the night, and she wins more than she loses. Sometimes I partner her at rentoy, and she is fair in sharing the booty.” You regarded me from half-lidded eyes. “I hate the palace and its smug denizens,” she said, “but I may regret losing that income. I hope also I will not regret any scandal that may attach to me for living in a man’s house with one of Duisland’s most notorious seducers.”

  I frowned. “I dispute both ‘seducer’ and ‘notorious.’ The former assumes I must employ falsity to somehow coax or trick women into my bed, and the latter term is mere sensation, completely overblown.”

  You laughed. “Yet you did not hear how you were characterized this morning, when word of your encounter arrived at the palace. It’s generally believed that all your fights were over women.”

  One woman, I thought. “Well,” I said. “I suppose the courtiers will find other things to talk about, by and by. And in any case, this last encounter with Meens will oblige me to leave Loretto, and you and Countess Marcella may retain your chaste reputations, an you desire them.”

  “You’re leaving?” You seemed surprised. “When?”

  “Tomorrow. You see, I sacrifice for your convenience.”

  We reached the corner of the terrace and paused. A formal garden stretched before us, with topiary figures in the shapes of fantastic animals, and gardeners planting the spring bulbs. The calls of geese sounded in the air as a series of V-shaped formations flew high overhead, all heading north. Sun-silver glinted from their wings. You took my left arm, and I felt a thrill run up my spine.

  “I wish to applaud you,” you said. “You played with Meens, and played well. You left him so frustrated that he had no choice but to join your game of roof-leaping. And then you hurled him from the monastery in front of a hundred witnesses.”

  “Strangely enough,” said I, “Meens managed that fall on his own. If the doctors examine him for wounds, they will find none inflicted by me.”

  “You encompassed his ruin cleverly then,” you said. “And you gave a lesson to anyone else who would challenge you.”

  “I have given such lessons before,” said I with some bitterness. “And it did not prevent Meens from challenging.”

  “Your previous lessons had a limited audience. This had an absurd number of spectators, and by morning the whole city may be pondering the lesson you taught Harvey Meens.” You put your hand on mine. “If your life here may be likened to a game of rentoy, you are sending the right signals. It is not enough to be clever; you mortify your enemies as well as defeat them—no one so shamed will be taken seriously again. You disregard foolish notions of honor or tradition. And you are a marvelous hypocrite, the best in the world!”

  I looked at you in slow surprise. “I have not considered myself quite in that light,” said I.

  “Oh, I saw you a few weeks ago at the Footsteps of the Pilgrim monastery—adopting the postures, chanting with the others, putting on the most pious face imaginable! You were every inch the oblate, but I’m sure you care no more for the Pilgrim than I care for the health of the King of Josand!”

  “I found that retreat inconvenient and uncomfortable,” I said. “If I seemed devout, it seems I am a better hypocrite than I knew.”

  You leaned close. “It seems I know you better than you know yourself,” you said. Your breath was sweet, with the merest suggestion of orange and clove.

  “Will you accept a kiss,” said I, “from the best hypocrite in the world?”

  You tilted your face to mine, and I pressed my lips to yours and inhaled your scent of myrrh. The kiss went on for some while. When we paused, I discovered to my pleasure those faint freckles on the bridge of your nose, which for some reason embarrass you a
nd which you employ your arts to obscure.

  “If you are still concerned for your reputation,” I said after a while, “perhaps we can continue this elsewhere, in privacy.”

  You favored me with a demure smile. “Is your room nearby?”

  We went to my room, and I think we were both surprised by the profundity of what followed. For myself, I felt that I had found the one true woman of whom all others were a shadow, and for whom I would dare anything, and sacrifice anything, that we might only remain together. For it seemed to me that you were a supreme reality, and that all else was but contingency. In you I found a revelation of truth, fully as grand as those who suffer sudden illumination by the Pilgrim, or who claim some sudden and penetrating understanding of the universe.

  I was touched, also, by your care for my wounded arm, and by your concern that I would not suffer unnecessary pain as we interlaced. By that point I cared little about how I damaged myself, so that I might grow nearer to the real and perfect eidolon that is yourself.

  After this new knowledge had shaken my understanding of myself and of the world, I began to make plans to remain in Longres, but you dissuaded me.

  “It is better that you leave,” you said. “You will be safe from the authorities, and I don’t think I’ll be here much longer. Queen Berlauda has declined to intervene in order to procure better lodging for her sister, and so it seems that Floria is being slighted by deliberate policy. I do not think she will come to Longres, and I expect Marcella and I will be recalled as soon as Floria receives our letter.” You kissed me. “And so we should reunite in Duisland.”

  “If I must leave tomorrow,” said I, “I wish this day would last forever.”

  You gave me a wicked smile. “It won’t last forever,” you said, “but it need not end now.”