A portion of Drumforce’s nervous agitation seemed to have passed to Floria, for she did not sit behind her desk, but stood in the corner, trembling like a hound straining at the leash. Cold anger burned in her eyes as she looked at me.
“Lord Drumforce just told me that my mother has been arrested at Bonherbes, along with her servant Doctor Smolt.”
At the news I felt a strange rush of cold fire through my limbs. There was a rising hum in my ears. With this I felt a mental serenity, as if I had been readying for this moment all my life. At last it begins, I thought.
“What are the charges?” I asked.
“Practicing sorcery against Berlauda and Priscus,” said Floria. “Casting horoscopes of the royal family.” Her mouth twisted in anger. “They will be brought to Murkdale Hags for interrogation. My mother will defy them, I know, but they may confuse her into making some kind of admission. As for that mountebank Smolt, I trust him not at all.”
She looked at me and gave a little lift to her chin, as if she were challenging me. “We have spoken of many contingencies, Sir Quillifer,” said she. “Do you stand ready to fulfill your promises?”
“Highness, I am at your service.” I smiled. “I have conceived this plan for you—so how can I resist putting it into execution?”
“We will speak later,” she said. “For now, I must inform my household, and also my friends.”
She left the room, and through the squint I saw you rise from your chair and go to attend her. I remained for a moment thinking, and then I silently closed the door. At Floria’s desk I drew out a deep drawer to reveal the coffer that lay there. The lock was as easy to pick as I could have hoped, and I had the casket open in just a few moments. I took out a bundle of letters, put them in the pockets of my fashion cloak, and then held the cloak over one arm as I left the room.
I saw Floria in a circle of her shocked friends, her white gown a brand burning against their somber darkness. She held herself bravely, like a lone sentry challenging a howling, approaching darkness, and I paused for a moment of pure admiration before I slipped briefly away from Wenwyn Hall, went to my galley, and stowed the traitorous letters in the locker by the stern.
CHAPTER THIRTY
You lie against me on my couch, your myrrh-scented hair draping my shoulder, the firelight dancing in your black eyes. In just a few moments, our treason will begin.
Countess Marcella has been sent to Floria’s country house of Kellhurst with orders to ready it for Her Highness. This, I hope, will cause Edevane to believe Floria will travel there, perhaps with the intention of flying to Ferrick or Stanport and sailing on to a foreign country.
Meanwhile, I will in just a few moments carry you in my carriage to the Howel quay and put you onto a barge bound for Bretlynton Head, where my ship Sovereign is undergoing refit after its return from Tabarzam. You will carry secret orders for the captain, to ready the ship for sea and for a passenger of distinction.
In a week or so, Floria and I will take a fast boat south along the same route, and join you aboard Sovereign, bringing with us 175,000 crowns, less that which I have given you for your own journey. And then we will take Floria abroad, where she may begin her plans for a brave return to Duisland in circumstances very much to her liking.
I must again caution you against speaking to anyone on this journey, or of even informing Captain Gaunt who his passenger might be. For while the government might hesitate to imprison Floria on such charges as a scoundrel like Doctor Smolt might make, they would have no choice were she to be caught in flight.
“You have just told me that you took Floria’s letters,” you said. “What will you do with them?”
“They are by way of insurance,” I reply. “If everything goes awry, I can give them to Edevane to prove my loyalty.”
“Have you looked through them?”
“I have not.”
You offer a languorous laugh. “That is a strange delicacy for one so bold. I think you should look at those letters, for you never know what knowledge might be to your advantage.”
Perhaps you are right. But now I see through the window that the eastern sky is growing pale and the stars are fading, and that a fine December day will soon dawn. You should have a trouble-free journey down the Dordelle, and I will soon follow. But for this next moment, let me kiss you, and lose myself in your lips, your warm breath, and your perfect dark-eyed mystery.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
For these three months I have lived in terror, for I was convinced that once our plan had failed, you would find yourself in one of Edevane’s dungeons, and subject to starvation, torment, and abuse. Yet here you are, newly arrived in Selford with scarcely a hair out of place.
Two days after you went down the Dordelle on your barge, I received a letter from Captain Gaunt that he had finished Sovereign’s refit, taken on cargo, and was about to leave Bretlynton Head for Selford. I sent one messenger galloping after you on horseback, and another by boat, but they must have failed to catch you. I pictured you lost in Bretlynton Head, terrified and alone, and pursued by the huntsmen of the crown.
Yet I had reckoned without your resourcefulness, and I had forgot that you come from the port city of Winecourt. For once you arrived at your destination and realized that Sovereign had sailed, you made your way to Winecourt, where you hid among friends and were eventually able to secure passage to Selford, crossing a sea filled with storm and war, and a land afire with fury and rebellion.
Come, my love, and rest you in my apartment. It is not Rackheath House, but at least I lodge in a palace, and my rooms are large and fine, with tapestries of trees and birds and fruit, and this great bed carved with roses. I will send for wine, and honey-cakes if you want them.
I still can scarce believe my eyes, for I had thought you lost forever, and here you are before me, your lips warm from my kisses, and your myrrh scent aswim in my senses. I know not whether I wish to weep with relief and joy, or leap and cavort, or all these at once.
For once I received that message from Captain Gaunt, I knew that I had to act, and act at once. I sent those messengers after you, and then I had to attend the Burgesses, where I was expected to vote up some new taxes on wool and hides. Since there was no actual vote, and the bills were recorded as passed by acclamation, I was there only to sit upon my bench, above the members filling the room with coughs, sneezes, and sniveling, and be counted—and once the roll was taken, I slipped away and carried the package of Floria’s letters to Edevane’s office. As he was attending the peers, I left the package with his page, along with a note saying I had purloined them from Floria’s casket but had not read them.
This, I should note, was a lie. I had looked at the letters and found they were all sent to Floria years ago by her father, King Stilwell, and concerned mainly instructions for her education, comments on her deportment, and admonitions to obey her tutors and study the words of the Pilgrim.
From the Burgesses I flew to Blackwell’s rooms in the Cat and Custard Pot. Since the theaters were closed, he had turned to poetry and was buried in writing a sequel to his Laelius encompassing the latest crimes of the administration.
His rooms were small and filled with stray bits of furniture, piles of foolscap, stacks of books well read and scribbled in. The air reeked of mildew and spilled ale. In great surprise he looked up from his desk as I came bursting in, his pen poised above a bottle of Q Sable Ink.
“Master Blackwell,” said I. “You told me once that you owed me a great debt, and that you would repay it willingly. I am here to tell you that the time has come.”
* * *
From there I went to Wenwyn Hall. Since you were on your way to Bretlynton Head, Marcella had been sent to Kellhurst to open the house, and Chenée Tavistock had been carried off by her future husband, Edith Ransome was the only lady left to supervise our meeting through the hagioscope. Eventually, though, she was called into the room with us, so that she would understand her part in the play that was to follow.
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br /> That night, after the household had gone to sleep, I brought my galley to the landing and disembarked along with Blackwell, his wardrobe mistress, and the child actor Bonny Joe Webb. Mistress Ransome let us in through a side door, and from there we crept to Floria’s chamber. There Bonny Joe was dressed in Floria’s clothing, and a wig and a cap put on his head. The wardrobe mistress then cut Princess Floria’s tight curls away, leaving her with a boy’s short-cropped poll. With hose, a doublet, trunks, and cap, and any remaining appearance of femininity concealed by a hooded wool cloak, she seemed a plausible, fresh-faced young page.
I went with Blackwell, Floria, and the mistress of the tiring-house back to my galley. Blackwell and the wardrobe mistress were left at the quay in Howel, and Floria and I were carried to the northwestern corner of the lake, well past the palace of Ings Magna that crouched like a vast, savage hound on the edge of the water, its eyes glittering. We could clearly hear the calls of the sentries.
On the shore we met Rufino Knott, who had come with two horses acquired from a posting-house on the highway to Longfirth. Floria and I were in the saddle before dawn, and cantered westward down the highway.
I had decided that our only hope of escape was that my privateer Able had not yet left Longfirth, or that if it had, we might acquire some other transport there. Longfirth possessed another advantage: In terms of days spent in travel, a journey from Howel to Longfirth was nearly the longest from the capital to anywhere in Bonille. Any rider would have to cross the high, watery plateau of Howel, with all its bridges and fords, and then climb up and down the slopes of the Cordillerie, then get down the Brood and its long firth to the city. If Floria and I could get a sufficient head start, pursuit could be days behind us, not mere hours.
And so we rode in silence along the highway. The air tasted of woodsmoke from the hearths of the city and the farms, and the trees on either side of the road were bare, their rattling, skeletal fingers reaching to the distant, cold stars. Floria was in the lead, an expert horsewoman used to the sidesaddle, and now riding astride for the first time since she was a small girl and first learned to master her pony. I lumbered along behind. We were well armed, each with a broadsword and a brace of horse pistols, and I with a pocket-pistol and a poniard besides.
As I rode, I contemplated all that I was leaving behind. My friends, Boatswain Lepalik and my galley, my Rackheath House. Rufino Knott and his music, along with my guitar. Stern Master Stiver, my cook Harry Noach and his savory feasts. My empire of ink. Alaron Mountmirail with his kiln and his experiments, which he would now continue to little purpose. The armor that I had taken from Sir Basil of the Heugh. My castle at Dunnock, my new tower over the Races, my mill.
I sacrificed my office and my obligation to battle monsters. My place in the Burgesses I threw away gladly, for there I had no voice and no power, and existed there only as a slave. But with that I threw away also my canal, which would no longer save my home city. I had abandoned also my hope for the monopoly that would make me as rich as a prince.
And most of all, I had sacrificed you. I could not know whether I would ever see you again, or whether I had sent you straight to imprisonment or death. This gnawed at my heart as I rode on through the chill night, and left me blind to the glories of the sunrise.
All this I had sacrificed for the sake of a young girl who had never ceased to view me as a source of amusement, and who greeted me with raillery whenever she saw me. Yet I had been unable to resist her.
Or perhaps it was the plan I had failed to resist. For once I had conceived the plan that would deliver Floria, I had been unable to resist carrying it out, simply to flaunt my own cleverness before the world.
Though it must also be said that I stood firmly within the compass of a recognized tradition. All know that the duty of a knight is to rescue the princess.
The day was fine and still. We changed horses at the next posting-inn, called the Bridge House, and had a breakfast of porridge, cheese, some dried plums, and small beer. While we were stretching our aching limbs and warming ourselves before the fire, Mistress Ransome would emerge from Floria’s bedchamber and tell the household that the princess was feeling ill, and would not appear in public today.
Yet Bonny Joe did not remain entirely hidden. He had been instructed to show himself at intervals, looking out the window, or walking with Mistress Ransome between one room and another. We knew the house was watched, and we did not want anyone suspecting that the princess had fled.
You ask where and how we carried the silver. I regret to say that I dared not burden myself with such a great weight as 170,000 crowns, but instead carried only enough coin for our present needs, plus some gems to sell if necessary. I had left my fortune behind, as I had left everything—though I have hidden the silver well, or so I think, for I have sunk all of it in chests near one of the islands in Lake Howel. I stand a good chance of recovering it, if I ever see Howel again.
But back to the day. We changed horses every five leagues or so, which meant nearly every hour. The farther we got from the capital, the worse the roads, and this slowed our pace. There were also fewer bridges, and we were compelled to ford some of the streams, though they fortunately were not in flood and never reached the horses’ knees.
Floria did well in the saddle. I did not want her to exhaust herself, but she led the brisk pace, and if she felt anything like the pain that shot through my thighs and crackled along my jouncing spine, she gave no sign.
We could see the tree-crowned mass of the Cordillerie looming dark in the west, with the pale gold sun kneeling toward the horizon. After nightfall we would come to Peckside, and I regretted that in the dark I would not be able to show the improvised entrenchments that the usurper Clayborne had built against the knight marshal, or the hillside meadow where the traitorous leaders of the rebellion had been beheaded.
Perhaps, I thought, it would be poor politics to show that meadow to Floria, for she might view it an omen of her own fate.
I was thinking of Peckside, and a warm hearth, and mulled wine with a fine hot supper, and I did not notice at first the ragged men coming like ghosts out of the trees. “Ho, Quillifer!” Floria called. “Brigands!”
I was more acquainted with brigands than she, having been held hostage by Sir Basil of the Heugh, and these seemed not to be vicious wolf’s-head robbers, but half-starved cotters desperate to feed themselves and their families. Nevertheless they came on bravely, eight of them, brandishing half-pikes and swords and a blunderbuss with its match glowing cherry-red in the shadows. One youth reached for Floria’s bridle while an older man menaced her with a spear.
The robbers’ faces flared out of the twilight as they reflected the flame of Floria’s pistol. She shot the youth in the head, and then an instant later her second pistol flashed out, and the shot knocked the spearman onto his backside. Then Floria clapped spurs to the sides of her horse and dashed right through the crowd of them, her head tucked down on her mount’s shoulder.
Her actions left me as surprised as any of the robbers, and my horse reared away from the pistol shots and the grasping hands of the brigands. I felt one man clutch at my stirrup, and I kicked out and felt my boot thud into his shoulder. I managed to get out a pistol and fired into the brigands as I kicked my horse into action, and then I fumbled for my second pistol as my steed gave an unnerved shriek and galloped after Floria, who was fast vanishing into the growing night. The robbers scattered, all except the fellow with the blunderbuss, who stepped out into the road, tucked the stock under his arm, and touched off the weapon. There was a terrific blast and a belch of flame, and then a great whirring and shrieking in the air, for the blunderbuss had been loaded with a double handful of old iron. Severed twigs tumbled from the trees, and I felt invisible fingers pluck at my cloak. My horse was hit in the rump, but that only prompted the beast to run faster.
I caught up with Floria a few hundred yards farther on. She had reined up, and had her sword in her hand. She looked at me, her haz
el eyes sparkling.
“Oh good,” said she. “I won’t have to ride back and rescue you.”
“I’ll let you rescue me next time.” I gasped for breath while my heart hammered high in my throat.
Floria had been raised in the saddle, and had been enjoying blood sports since she was a little girl. I had seen her bring down deer and shoot pheasant from the sky, but I had not imagined that lightning-fast draw with a brace of heavy horse pistols.
We went a hundred yards farther down the track, then reloaded our weapons before going on. But there was no pursuit, and no more gangs of robbers, before we arrived in Peckside. There I told the postmaster that my horse had been shot while fleeing bandits. He gave me a look from beneath bushy gray eyebrows.
“I thought you smelled somewhat of gunpowder,” he said.
“Have you had much trouble on the road?”
He waved a hand. “Now and again. The people are hungry, the viceroy does nothing, and many prefer to risk hanging than starve to death.”
I thought the brigands might well be his friends and neighbors, even his family. I decided not to tell him that we had left two of them in the dust.
“Does the sheriff do nothing?” I asked.
“The sheriff does what he can. But the wood-rogues are better armed than he, for weapons were free for anyone willing to walk to the battlefield and scavenge from the dead.”
I said that we would need a light carriage to take us farther into the Cordillerie, for we were bound for Mankin Clough. We supped on a pottage of lentils, salt beef from a cask that might have been filled during Clayborne’s war, and raveled bread better suited for the postmaster’s horses. It was the best fare to be found in a hungry, cold country, and even though it was wretched, I was amused to realize that there was no sugar or sweetness in this meal, and I had been served one of my own savory suppers.
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