by Greg Keyes
“As you say, most people in this world are just trying to do the best they can, protect the ones they love and the life they know, live up to their duties and obligations.”
“All perfectly reasonable.”
“Yes,” Neil continued. “And so when I meet real evil, it stands out all the more, like a tall black tree in a field of green heather.”
Robert’s eyes fluttered, and then he chuckled. “So after all that, you still believe there are genuinely evil men. You somehow possess the ability to read their hearts and see that they aren’t like most people, who think they are doing the right thing.”
“Let me put it another way,” Neil said.
“Oh, please do.”
“Do you know the island of Leen?”
“I’m afraid I don’t.”
“There’s no reason you should. It’s not much more than a rock, really, though a rock with a thousand small valleys and crevices. There are wolves there, but they keep to the heights. They don’t come down to where people dwell.
“In my fifteenth year I was on Leen for most of a summer, part of a Lierish garrison. And that year a wolf did come down—a big one. At first it only killed kids and ewes, but soon enough it started in on children, and then grown women and men. It didn’t eat what it killed, mind you; it just mauled them and left them to die. Now, there might have been any number of reasons for it doing that; maybe its mother died, along with its brothers and sisters, and it grew up outside the pack, a loner hated by its own kind. Maybe it was bitten by something that gave it the water-fearing madness. Maybe a man mistreated it once, and it had sworn revenge on all of our kind.
“We didn’t ask those questions. We didn’t have to. This thing looked like a wolf, but it didn’t behave like one. It couldn’t be frightened away, or appeased, or reasoned with. The only way to make the world a better place was to take that beast out of it, and that we did.”
“One might argue that you did not make the world a better place for the wolf.”
“One might reply that to ask the world to accommodate itself to the needs of a single mad wolf can never make it a better place for anyone. And the wolf that would ask such a thing of the world—well, that’s my black tree in a field of heather, you see?”
“Why not a green tree in a field of black heather?” Robert mused.
“Why not?” Neil agreed. “It’s not the color that matters, really.”
“Here’s my question, then,” Robert said, quaffing the rest of the wine and reaching for the bottle. He stopped in midgrasp.
“May I?”
“If you wish.”
Robert poured himself more wine, took a sip, then returned his regard to Neil.
“My question. Suppose you felt someone was this black tree of yours, this truly evil person. A mad wolf that needed killing. Why ever would you entrust the safety of, say, a young woman to his promise?”
“Because he serves only himself,” Neil replied. “Never something higher. So I can be sure he would never sacrifice himself.”
“Really? Not even out of spite or revenge? I mean, we all must die. I see no escape from that, do you? Let us suppose this man of yours had ambitions, and seeing them thwarted was just, well, impossible for him. If a man cannot inherit a house he covets, might he not burn it down? Wouldn’t that be in keeping with the sort of person you’ve been describing?”
“I’m tired of this,” Neil said. “If anything happens to Anne, you will not die quickly.”
“What is her signal? I wonder. How will you know she is well?”
“There is a signal,” Neil assured him. “Something we can see from here. If we do not see it before sundown, I will cut off one of your fingers and send it to your men. That will continue until she is either free or proved dead.”
“You’re going to feel so foolish when this is all over and Anne and I are fast friends. What do you suppose will happen to a knight who threatened his liege?”
“At the moment,” Neil said, “that isn’t my concern. When it is, I will of course accept whatever fate the queen thinks I deserve.”
“Of course you will.” Robert sneered.
Robert glanced up at the sky and twitched a smile. “You haven’t asked about your last queen, Muriele. Aren’t you curious about her?”
“I’m more than curious,” Neil replied. “I haven’t asked about her because I’ve no reason to trust anything you say. Whatever you tell me about her will leave me in doubt. I will find out how she is in good time.”
“And suppose she complains about my treatment of her? Suppose everything else goes well here—I step aside, Anne takes the throne—and yet Muriele still has some protest concerning her treatment?”
“Then you and I will have another discussion about mad wolves.”
Robert drained his cup and reached for the bottle again. When he tried to pour, however, he found it empty.
“Surely there is more of this around,” he said in a loud voice.
At Neil’s nod, one of Artwair’s squires hurried to fetch another bottle.
“This isn’t about Fastia, is it?” Robert asked. “These feelings of yours? That’s not what this is really about, I hope.”
Neil had managed to feel mostly contempt for Robert until that point. That was good, because it kept his murderous inclinations toward the man in check. But now rage came howling up, and it was only with great effort that he forced it back into his marrow.
“Such a tragedy,” Robert said. “And poor Elseny, just about to be wed. If only William had had more sense.”
“How can you blame the king?” Neil asked.
“He forced the Comven to legitimize his daughters. How could he imagine that they would not become targets?”
“Targets for whom, Prince Robert?” Neil asked. “An usurper?”
Robert sighed heavily. “What are you suggesting, Sir Neil?”
“I thought it was you doing the suggesting, Prince Robert.”
Robert leaned forward, and his voice dropped very low. “How did it feel? Royal wool? Different from the lesser sort? I’ve always found it so. But they buck and cry like animals, all of them, don’t they?”
“Shut up,” Neil grated.
“Don’t get me wrong; Fastia really was in need of a good thumping. She always seemed the sort to like it from behind, on all fours, like a dog. Was that the way it was?”
Neil was aware that his breath was coming harshly, and the world was taking on the bright edge that came with the quetiac, the battle rage. His hand was already gripped on the hilt of the feysword.
“You should be quiet now,” Neil said.
The boy arrived with a new bottle of wine.
“This will quiet me,” Robert said. But as he took the bottle, he suddenly stood and shattered it against the boy’s head.
It seemed to go very slowly: the heavy glass container cracking against the squire’s temple, the spray of blood. Neil saw one eye pop from its socket as the skull deformed under the impact. At the same time, he saw Robert reaching for the boy’s sword.
And he was happy. Happy, because now the feysword hummed from its sheath and he lunged forward. Robert twisted the dying lad in front of him, but the blade cut through and deep into the prince. Neil felt an odd jolt, almost a protest from the weapon, and his fingers loosened reflexively.
From the corner of his eye he saw Robert’s fist coming, still holding the neck and upper third of the bottle. He brought his hand up without thinking.
Too late. The side of his head seemed to explode in a white-hot concussion. He fell away from the blow, his rage sustaining his consciousness, but when he came back to his feet, Robert was already two yards away, holding the feysword, a demonic smirk on his face.
Dizzily, Neil reached for his knife, knowing it wouldn’t help much against the ensorcelled weapon.
But an arrow struck the prince high in the chest, and then another, and he stumbled back, shouted, and pitched over the side of the dike into the water. Neil l
urched after him, gripping the knife.
Artwair’s men caught him at the birm, preventing him leaping the eight kingsyards down into the water.
“No, you fool,” Artwair shouted. “Let my archers have him.”
Neil fought his captors, but blood had filled one of his eyes, and his muscles felt horribly loose.
“No!” he screamed. But following that, a deep silence fell. They waited for the prince to surface, dead or alive.
But after many long breaths he did not. Artwair sent men into the water then, but they found nothing.
A cold mist ran up the river that evening, but the Pelican Tower stood above all that, its north face clearly visible and dark.
“Even if she puts out the light,” Neil said, pressing a clean rag to his head wound, “it might only mean she was tortured into telling her signal.”
“Auy,” Artwair agreed. “The only thing that will have real meaning is if she doesn’t put out the light at all.”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Neil snapped. “Dead at the hand of Robert’s men, Anne might be more useful to you than alive—at least now that you know her mind.”
Artwair was silent for a moment, then took a pull on the green glass bottle he’d put beside them on the boards. The two men sat on the upper story of a half-burned malend, watching for Anne’s signal.
He offered the bottle to Neil.
“I won’t pretend she left me happy this morning,” the duke said. “She reached right inside me. I could feel ’er there. What happened to her, Sir Neil? What has that girl become?”
Neil shrugged and reached for the bottle. “Her mother sent her to the Coven Saint Cer. Does that mean anything to you?”
Artwair stared skeptically as Neil took a drink from the bottle, tasting fire, peat, and seaweed. He looked at the bottle in surprise.
“This is from Skern,” he said.
“Auy. Oiche de Fié. The Coven Saint Cer, eh? A coven-trained princess. Muriele is an interesting one.”
He took the bottle and swallowed more of the stuff as Neil let the aroma filter up his nose. He’d never drunk much; it dulled the senses. Right now he didn’t much care, because his senses had proved pretty useless and every piece of him hurt.
“But you’ve got me wrong, Sir Neil,” Artwair said. “Just because I think a girl of seventeen winters doesn’t have the skills to lay siege to the greatest fortress city in the world, that doesn’t mean my aim is the throne. I’m unhappy enough with my duller duties as duke without being saddled and ridden by the Comven. Believe me or not, I do think she’s the one ought be on the throne, and I’m trying to put her there.” He drank again. “Well, she got her way, and see what’s happened.”
“Because of me,” Neil said, taking the bottle back and swallowing hard. He thought he would gag for a moment, but then it went down, feeling smoother this time. “Because of my rage.”
“Robert provoked your rage,” Artwair said. “He wanted to die.”
“He wanted me to fight him,” Neil said, ignoring Artwair’s outstretched hand long enough to take another drink. Then he relinquished the bottle. “That part is true, and I fell for it like the fallow-brained fool I am. I let the anger take me away from common sense. But he isn’t dead; that’s the thing.”
“I didn’t see it, but they say you fair skewered him, and it’s for sure he didn’t come up,” Artwair pointed out.
“Well, these days that’s nothing certain at all,” Neil said. “In Vitellio and in Dunmrogh both I fought a man who couldn’t die. The first time he nearly killed me. The second time I cut off his head, yet he kept moving. In the end we chopped him into a hundred pieces and burned them. A friend of mine told me he was a thing called a nauschalk, that he could exist because the law of death had been broken. Now, I’m far from an expert on this, but I have fought one nauschalk, and I’m pretty sure Prince Robert is another.”
Artwair swore in a language Neil didn’t know, then said nothing for the time it took each of them to have three drinks. It was the customary silence after one had spoken of something unnatural—at least while in cups.
“There are rumors,” he said finally, “rumors that suggest such a thing, but I discounted them. Robert always had unhealthy appetites, and people exaggerate.”
Neil took another drink. By now the oiche felt like an old friend drawing a blanket up from his toes to warm him.
“That was what we were missing,” he said. “He probably told his man to have Anne killed or taken captive the moment they passed through the gates. Then all he had to do was make sure we didn’t lock him up or slice him into pieces. All he had to do was provoke me into attacking him, which he did right well.”
“Yes, but whatever you might have done, the result to Anne would have been the same, you see.”
“Unless she’s safe until he returns,” Neil said. “That would have been the wiser plan. When he’s back, safe in the city, then the trap is sprung.”
“Auy,” Artwair replied. “That would make more sense, I’m supposing. But Anne isn’t helpless, either. I’ll bet Robert doesn’t know what she can do. And she has fifty good men with her.”
Across the water they heard the first, melodious chime of the Vespers bell.
The window of the Pelican Tower remained dark.
“She might make a fight of it, for a while, if she found the right place to defend. If she isn’t lulled into taking poison or has an arrow sunk into her eye.”
“I doubt she’s lulled,” Artwair said. “The tower isn’t lit. That means she’s dead, captured, or for some other reason not in the castle. Whichever it is, our duty is clear.”
“What’s that?”
“We have to strike, and now. The rumor has gone out by now of what happened with Robert. Even if he lives, everyone believes him dead. If we give him time to reappear, it will prove confusing. So we strike immediately, while we can.”
“Strike what?” Neil asked.
“Thornrath. After what she did to me this morning, I’m tempted to believe Anne’s prophecy concerning Baron Fail and the Lierish fleet. We have two days to take control of Thornrath. If we manage that—and if Fail arrives as foretold—then we have a chance to take Eslen and save her.”
“Unless she is already dead.”
“In which case we will avenge her. In no case would I see Robert on the throne, nor, I’m sure, would you.”
“You have that right,” Neil said, lifting the bottle. The liquor was now a tide, lifting his anger even as the night darkened and the water deepened. “Can we capture Thornrath?”
“Possibly,” Artwair said. “It will be costly, though.”
“May I lead the charge?”
Artwair swirled the bottle, then sipped at it. “I’d meant to have you do that,” he said, “on acount of that feysword of yours. It’s a narrow approach, and that sword might have made a difference. Now…”
“I’d still prefer to lead it,” Neil said. “I’m a warrior. I can kill. About strategy I know little. Without Anne here, that would be the best use for me.”
“You’ll probably die,” Artwair said. “Anne would think I’d sent you to your doom to avenge myself on her. I can’t have her thinking that.”
“I’m not too attached to this life,” Neil confessed. “And I don’t much care anymore what Her Highness thinks, if she’s still able to think anything. She’s the one put me in this situation. I’m tired of being set up to fail, only to live and lament it. Let me lead that charge, and I’ll write a note in my own hand for you to give to whoever might care. I suspect that’d be no one.”
“You’ve a better reputation than you think,” Artwair said.
“Then let me better it yet and live on in song,” Neil replied. “I don’t need a feysword. Just get me a few spears and a broadsword that won’t break at the first swing. Then find me some men who love death, and I’ll give you Thornrath.”
Artwair handed him the bottle. “As you wish, Sir Neil,” he said. “I’d neve
r deny a good man his destiny.”
HESPERO SMILED and rose from his chair.
“Praifec?” Ehan gasped.
“You seem chagrined,” Hespero said, raising an eyebrow at the little man.
“Surprised, perhaps,” Stephen quickly replied. “Sir Elden led us to expect a humble sacritor.”
“But I am a sacritor,” Hespero said, stroking his goatee. “And a fratir, a patir, a peslih, an agreon.”
“Of course, your grace,” Stephen said. “It’s only that one usually is known by one’s most exalted title.”
“Generally true, depending on one’s purpose.” His brows knitted. “Brother Stephen, are you unhappy to see me?”
Stephen blinked.
OBSERVATIONS QUAINT & CURIOUS:
CONCERNING THE WELL-MANNERED VIPER
Perhaps the most deadly of its sort, the well-mannered viper is capable of great charm, luring its prey near with honeyed words. It is a most unusual predator in that it has the habit of convincing other animals to kill for its sustenance and amusement. It is only by observing the middle of the eye where the icy fluid that passes for its blood coagulates visibly that one can identify its true nature, and when one is that close, it is often too late to save oneself.
It is in the perfection of its knowledge—or lack thereof—that survival often hinges, for if the viper believes itself well served, it may allow the servant to live and perform another task. But if it believes itself betrayed, and its real nature is discovered, woe to the hapless titmouse or toad that finds itself confronting those gleaming, venoméd teeth…
“Brother Stephen?” the praifec said impatiently.
“Praifec, I—”
“Perhaps your anxiety stems from what you have to tell me. I have had no word of you. Where are the holter and your friend Winna? Have you failed in the task with which I entrusted you?”
Stephen felt the first sense of relief he’d experienced since meeting Sir Elden. It wasn’t much, but it was something.
“They were slain, your grace,” he said, putting on the most doleful face he could manage.