Impossible Odds

by Dave Duncan

  “No,” Rubin said, speaking quietly because of all the on-lookers, but looking as if he meant it. “No dances! Stay away from this libertine, my dear. He is a wastrel and a sponger.”

  “Ah, that reminds me!” Karl declared, fishing in a pocket. “A wedding gift for you, Cousin.” He pulled out a string of pearls and moved as if to hang it around her neck.

  Rubin snatched it away and glared at it. “Stolen, I suppose?”

  Karl feigned hurt. “Of course! Where would I get the money to buy something like that? But I took it off the lady’s dressing table and she’ll never admit I was in her bedroom, so it will be quite all right for you to wear it, Johanna dear.”

  “It will not!” Rubin was seething. “And you address our wife as ‘Your Royal Highness’!”

  “Verily!” Karl shrugged, flashing Johanna a look that plainly commented on the impossibility of dealing with old folk.

  Now Johanna was having trouble not smiling, which would be an unwise act. She wondered if this Karl might be an asset to life in a stuffy old palace. On the other hand he must have a claim to the throne, and his eyes were missing nothing. His cloak of antics might hide a dagger of meanness.

  He did not get the second dance that night. There was no dancing. Right after the banquet the Grand Duke declared the party over and took his wife upstairs to teach her some of the realities of life.

  Nine months and one day later, she was delivered of a son.

  • 3 •

  A Grand Duchess was never alone. Even taking her son out for some fresh air one fine morning, dawdling along a corridor at Frederik’s erratic pace, Johanna was attended by three bored ladies-in-waiting and, farther back, his nurse Ruxandra with a bag of necessary supplies. Frederik, being two-going-on-three, insisted on exploring everything and threw tantrums if his mother tried to carry him or hold his hand. Progress was achieved only by negotiation, supplication, and distraction. He slowed the business of the palace, because servants must bow or curtsy and then stand aside until the Heir Apparent had passed. Few members of the nobility were around at that hour, but those who were swept by without a glance, as always. Johanna was used to that. As far as the aristocracy of Krupina was concerned, she still did not exist.

  The fairy tale had not worked out as planned.

  The Marquis of Krupa, busily banging his little fist against a suit of ornamental armor, paid no heed to sounds of marching boots and jingling spurs as a troop of a dozen or so Vamky knights came around the corner ahead. The man in the lead had a slight limp, identifying him instantly as Volpe. At that moment Frederik noticed his favorite stuffed horse on the other side of the corridor and went trotting across to inspect it. Johanna did not believe even Volpe capable of trampling a child to death, but she swooped anyway, snatching Frederik up and moving them both to safety against the wall.

  “Oh, look!” she exclaimed to forestall his inevitable scream of fury. “See the soldiers!”

  “Soldiers!” Frederik agreed. He liked soldiers.

  Vamky brethren were a common enough sight in the Agathon Palace. They usually went about in twos or fours, gliding along in their white robes with the blue Vamky V over the heart, going about spirits-knew-what business, hands tucked in sleeves, faces hidden in hoods. Less often they would appear in military mode, clad in anything from antique plate mail to leather riding gear, but even then they usually managed to conceal their faces to some degree, and invariably they bore swords. Today’s fashion comprised brimmed helmet, cuirass with tassets, and leather breeches tucked into long boots. They were well spattered with spring mud, as if they had just ridden in. Their helmets lacked the usual cheek pieces and nose guards, leaving their dusty, wind-burned faces exposed.

  To Johanna’s amazement they did not go matching straight past her. Volpe barked, “Squad…halt! Left…face! Pre…sent arms!” Steel swooshed against scabbard and she found herself staring at thirteen swords held in vertical salute.

  She was so astonished she almost dropped Frederik. The brethren were forbidden to speak to, or even look at, women unless absolutely necessary. Although that rule did not apply to Provost Volpe, for his own reasons he had never acknowledged her existence since their first meeting. It was his lead that the lesser nobility followed in snubbing her, his authority that gave them courage to defy their sovereign.

  The Provost had the same heavy, solid build as Rubin, but in his case it seemed all bone and muscle. His face had been hewn from oak—jaw, cheekbones, heavy brow ridges—and the weatherbeaten skin glued on without any intervening flesh. He was clean-shaven, which was unusual in Krupina, and no hair showed under his helmet, as if he shaved his scalp also. His eyes were extraordinary, jet black and very round, frozen in an intense stare.

  He regarded her in silence with a faint sneer, pretending to be amused at her surprise.

  “Good chance to you, Uncle,” she said. “I presume you honor the Marquis, not myself ?”

  “A reasonable assumption but not necessarily correct. He is a big, strong boy.”

  Little thanks to Rubin, she thought. “My father could hold his halberd extended at arm’s length with one hand.”

  “I saw him do it more than once. And so can I. Still.” The predatory glare did not soften, but Volpe clearly thought he had won that round.

  “I did not know you ever met my father!”

  “Why should you?” Point two.

  Frederik was staring with interest at the warriors, yet content to remain safe in his mother’s arms.

  “Greet Lord Volpe, Frederik.” She expected him to bury his face in her collar, but he could surprise her as well as Volpe could.

  “Good chance, my lord!” he recited in his sweetest best-behavior voice.

  “And may chance always favor you, Your Highness,” Volpe responded solemnly. “I hope that soon I may wait upon you at leisure, but now, by your leave, I must be about your father’s business.” He snapped orders, the men shot swords back in scabbards, turned ninety degrees, and resumed their progress along the corridor.

  Several servants had witnessed the incident, as well as the three harpies-in-waiting. All mouths hung open, and the story would be everywhere very shortly. On the face of it, Volpe had granted Johanna a vital concession by acknowledging the heir apparent. Having survived the most dangerous years of childhood, Frederik could no longer be ignored, and Volpe could hardly give him due respect while snubbing his mother as a parvenu commoner. Yet somehow she did not feel as if she had won a victory. A man as devious as the Provost could easily throw a battle to win a war. What was he up to?

  The Agathon Palace was a maze, a mad assemblage of additions, restorations, and renovations whose original nucleus had been lost centuries ago. Successive Grand Dukes had improved it beyond all reason, elaborating it into an architectural nightmare, the sort of nightmare that involves endless running going nowhere. Staircases plunged through halls, corridors doubled back on themselves, stable yards divided dining rooms from kitchens. It was Johanna’s prison. Right from the start, Rubin had forbidden her to leave it, lest she be hissed or pelted by the crowd. She had never walked the streets of Krupa.

  She knew the labyrinth as well as anyone, for exploring it had been her main occupation during the first months of her marriage, before Frederik was born. She knew the windows that offered views over the roofs of the city to the distant hills she missed so much, and others where she could see down into busy streets and watch real people living ordinary lives. She cherished its two private little gardens and hated the gloomy, musty rooms, the twisted stairs; above all she hated the throne room where she was sometimes required to sit beside Rubin and suffer the resentful glares of an assembly. Yes, she occupied the consort’s throne beside the grander ducal throne, but she had never been formally installed on it, never crowned with the silver coronet, never hailed by the people. Fraud! their eyes said. Intruder! Upstart! Peasant!

  Disturbed by the encounter with Volpe, she changed her mind about taking Frederik to play on the
grass and went instead to her favorite place, a gallery overlooking the main courtyard. It was narrow and went nowhere, so only she and the pigeons used it. On sunny days she could sit there and watch the business of the palace ebb and flow below her in a vast gavotte—horses, wagons, carts, men-at-arms, bakers’ helpers, footmen, chambermaids, minstrels, buskers, couriers, and dozens more whose purpose and occupations she could try to guess. Frederik could safely play there, for the iron balustrade was tightly woven. Furthermore, she was in plain view and that mattered. Never let them forget they had a Grand Duchess!

  She arrived to see Lord Volpe and his troop making ready to depart, causing much shouting and hoof-stamping down in the courtyard. Bystanders bolted out of the way as the brethren took off. The timing surprised her, because it meant they must have already completed their business before she met them, yet they had been seriously mudsplattered, so she had assumed that they had just arrived and had not had time to clean up. If their visit had been so brief and their business so urgent, why had Volpe taken time to stop and greet Frederik? Most curious!

  As usual, she ordered a chair placed at the far end of the gallery for herself and took her son and a bag of toys with her, leaving the hags-in-waiting to attend to their crochet work and character assassination beside the door. Smaranda, Eupraxia, and Cneajna were all older than she, sullen burghers’ daughters with ambitious mothers, all ugly enough to need promoting as matches and willing in the cause of husband acquisition to attend the fraud duchess, which the noble ladies of the realm flatly refused to do. Johanna wished she could help their efforts, dreaming private fantasies of hanging price labels on them. The faster she could move her stock, the more choice she would have for their replacements. She might even find some congenial companions. Alas, only too often her ladies succumbed to the temptations of the palace and had to be sent home in disgrace. That did not encourage other mothers to put their daughters forward.

  Speaking of debauchery…Johanna had just made herself comfortable and Frederik was still contentedly peering through the ironwork at the activity below when Cneajna, Eupraxia, and Smaranda dropped their handiwork and jumped up so they could curtsy to the most eligible bachelor in the dukedom as he strolled out onto the balcony.

  Maturity had not improved Karl. He had just turned twenty, yet those startling good looks were already sagging and the most expensive raiment in the country could not quite mask the start of a potbelly. His tailors’ bills would be crippling if he ever paid them. Even that day, when there was no special reason to shine, he was a startling vision of rainbow impracticality in brocade and taffeta, puffed, padded, and slashed. Spurs jingled on knee-length, tight-fitting kidskin boots; his gloves had cuttes on the fingers to show off his rings; fur trim edged his cape; his beard was carefully curled; and the apparition was topped off by a tall, crowned soft bonnet. None of the three ladies was attractive enough to delay him long. He strolled on toward Johanna.

  His morals had not improved, either. That pose of indolent sensuality concealed at least some of his father’s ferocity, for he had fought two duels and killed his opponent each time. Outraged husbands no longer challenged him. Women who valued their reputations kept well away from him.

  Frederik, too young to know better, doted on him. Now he went happily trotting to meet him, chirruping, “My lord, my lord, my lord!”

  Karl scooped him up and tickled him as he continued to advance. Admittedly there had been times when Karl had been amusing company for a lonely duchess, but Johanna had always been careful to give no grist to the scandalmongers’ mills. Lately his efforts to flirt with her had taken on a more intense tone that infuriated her. He had started pestering her with notes and flowers, even sending her gifts, although he knew as well as anyone that there were no secrets in a palace. He had never intruded on her privacy out here before.

  “What are you doing here?” She tried to keep her tone threatening and her face noncommittal. Even to raise her voice to him would start gossip.

  “I sorrow!” Karl somehow contrived to strike a dramatic pose while balancing Frederik on one hip. “Ask first the bee why it haunts the blossom. Ask the ocean why it seeks the moon.” He put his mouth to Frederik’s neck and created a noise that no one else in the palace would dare make: Phwurp! “Ask the lark why he sings so melancholy. You know I cannot stay away from you.”

  Frederik squealed with glee. “More!”

  “Your attentions are neither welcome nor credible, my lord!” Johanna knew what a lustful look was and Karl’s did not convince. He did this just to frighten her. It was a pulling-wings-off-flies thing. “Did your father put you up to this?”

  Phwuurp! “My father is insane. Too much sun on his helmet, you know? He considers you a despicable gold-digging slut and me unworthy to kiss your shadow.”

  “In that last opinion he is correct, but he would love to see you expose me as a wanton.”

  “Oh, so would I!” Karl sighed. “I could play your body like a harp, woman. Drown you in floods of ecstasy. I long to caress your breasts with my lips. Like this.” Phwuuurp!

  Frederik screamed with glee.

  Johanna remembered a hysterically weeping Helga, one of her first ladies-in-waiting and even younger than she, who had fallen prey to Karl within a week of arriving at Court: I thought he was just joking, Your Highness! Then suddenly it was too late.

  “You are not welcome here. Release my son and go away.”

  Phwuuurp! “You know I am drawn by your fatal beauty.”

  “Go away! I shall complain to my husband.” But Johanna had seen Rubin order his errant cousin to leave the palace and never return. Karl had gone out into the streets, admittedly, but he had returned in a few minutes with a trollop on each arm. Volpe was known to rage at him, too, but Karl went on being Karl.

  “Rubin? Why should he care? He never spares you a thought, my beloved. You really think he would mind if you were to drop your futile resistance and stop torturing both of us? Admit your passion for me, my honeycake, and find surcease in my arms. The old porker will be happy to see you happy again, instead of mooning around unrequited.”

  “My lord!” Frederik squealed. “Again!”

  “You are an incorrigible pest!” Karl said cheerfully. Phwuuuurp!

  “Again!”

  Karl blew a strident fanfare on Frederik’s neck as he sank to his knees and set the boy down. “That’s all! Johanna, my beloved, don’t you see we were made for each other? Two lonely orphans in an oversized cattle barn? I have mooned around this awful slum of a palace all my life and never known—”

  His levity annoyed her. “You are not an orphan!”

  “You think not?” Suddenly he was looking up at her with an intense stare almost comparable to Volpe’s. “You call my father a father? After what he did to my mother?”

  He had a point. Karl was, as Johanna had long since discovered, a legitimate son, eligible to inherit. Although Vamky brethren were sworn to celibacy, affairs of state took precedence, and Volpe had been heir presumptive. He had been given a special dispensation to marry, but after Karl’s birth he had abandoned his wife and kept the baby.

  “Perhaps he was just obeying orders when he sent your mother away?”

  “No,” Karl said confidently. “My mother never existed and my father is sworn to chastity. I am a mirage, an illusion. I was created out of nothing!” His bitterness soured into mockery again. “Let me describe how I will make love to you. First, I caress your nipples with my tongue. Then as they flush and rise, I start gently nibbling…”

  Johanna gasped, partly at his vulgarity, partly from relief as she saw rescue in sight. Gripping the railing hard enough to hurt her hands, she said, “Speak louder.”

  Karl was too wily to be trapped so easily. He rose and turned and bowed in one smooth flow.

  Rubin himself was parading along the balcony. Johanna had never known him to come out here, either. Where had her precious privacy gone? And was he about to reprimand her for Karl’s public f
lirting? Frederik fled to safety behind his mother. Compared to Karl, Rubin looked old and dissipated, which he was, and even shabbily dressed, which he was not.

  Johanna curtseyed. “Your Grace does me honor.”

  “I find you in bad company, my sweet. You have our leave, Cousin.”

  Karl remained unabashed. “Then I wish Your Highnesses good chance. I shall see you in Trenko, if not before.” He withdrew without explaining that last remark, pausing for a final word with the three watchdogs, who were agog at this parade of royal visitors.

  “I assure Your Grace,” Johanna said, “that he was not here by my invitation.” She staggered as Frederik tried to climb up her skirts. She stroked his hair to let him know she had not forgotten him. As always, Rubin ignored his son. She often wondered if he would be able to pick Frederik out in a random pack of two-year-olds.

  “Even if I doubted you, my dear, which I do not, I would expect you to have better taste in men.” Rubin’s smile was transient and mechanical. He had other matters on his mind. “Ion has died, Ladislas’s son.”

  Ion she had never heard of, but Margrave Ladislas ruled the March of Trenko, the land beyond the Pilgrim Pass. Now Volpe’s hurried mission was explained, but what in all the world did it have to do with her?

  “I am unhappy to hear it,” she said hesitantly.

  Rubin shook his head sadly. “We must all be. He was very young. I propose to attend the funeral and hope that you will consent to accompany me and brighten my journey.” He raised well-trimmed eyebrows inquiringly.

  Had she fallen off the balcony and suffered concussion? Release from jail at last? Probation, anyway. “I regret only that an occasion so sad should bring me such happiness, Your Grace.” He appreciated well-turned phrases.

  “You can ride, I believe?” Three and a half years they had been married and he had to ask!

  “I ride well, sire.” But she was certain that none of her burgher maidens did. Would that ill chance snatch away her unexpected joy? If Rubin did not mention the problem of providing proper companions for her, she would not.