by Dave Duncan
eyes were wide. He was still eating, though.
"Perhaps he keeps her chained in a tower,"
Kate remarked.
"The Dark Chamber spies say not. She
seems healthy and happy and popular. Baelmark
is not nearly as primitive as most Chivians
believe, and Ambrose knew that. We assume
that when he dies she will come home to claim the
crown, but this may be wishful thinking. Her oldest
son is almost eighteen, so she may send him in
her stead. The only thing certain is that she will not
tolerate me as her chancellor for an instant. I
knew my term of office was drawing to a close
even before Hagfish came to call today."
"Hagfish, my lord?"
"Chancellor Kromman. He was nicknamed that
by ... an old friend of mine." Montpurse
again! Durendal's conscience hadn't died after
all. Today it had taken on a new lease of
life. Fertilized by fear, no doubt.
The conversation veered to lesser matters then, because
Caplin returned, alerted by some stewards'
telepathy to the need to refill Sir Quarrel's
plate. The life-and-death question was whether
Kromman and Malinda were already in cahoots. Was
today's sudden dismissal the start of the Princess's
revenge?
When the meal was over, Durendal settled
into his favorite seat by the fireplace and
watched Kate spin. Quarrel pulled up a
chair between them. It would feel strange having the
lad hanging around all the time, almost as if Andy
had never gone. But Andy was thirty now, wrestling
trade winds in the Pepper Islands. And this
quiet home life was not going to last very long
anyway.
"Durendal, my love," Kate said, without
looking up from her busily whirring wheel, "you
described the Princess's career in great
detail for Sir Quarrel, but you did not
explain why it involves him."
"Ah! Forgive me! Well, a few days
ago, the King sent that warrant assigning a
Blade to me, with no explanation. I was
puzzled. Angry, in a way. I eventually
decided he was offering me a sort of farewell
present. There are very few rewards he has not
bestowed on me. I have declined many more, for
excessive honors attract enemies. We have
fought and argued bitterly for twenty years, but I
always served his interests as best I could. Even when
he was most enraged at me, he knew that. Rank
and lands and wealth--everything he had to give, he
gave me. One exception was a Blade."
Quarrel nodded, frowning slightly. At his
age, Wolfbiter had been led off by his ward
to the ends of the world, but he had to sit here and listen
to social gossip and talk of grandchildren.
Durendal could not forget the dismay that had flashed
across the boy's face when he turned to greet his
future ward. He had found an ancient,
broken-down politician, destined for the scrap
heap very soon. Although he had hidden that reaction
instantly and skillfully--and ever since had shown
no sign of resentment whatsoever--it must still
rankle. Antiquated Lord Roland could not be as
bad as the Marquis of Nutting, but he was hardly
a cause to dedicate a life to. What could a
fresh-minted Blade care about colic and teething
troubles?
"It seemed that he was warning me not to count on his
protection much longer. If he was admitting that,
then he must have accepted the gravity of his condition
at last. I decided to accept, mostly
for his sake. I could have refused, because he is too
sick to fight me now, but I could not bear to. I
hope you will understand and forgive me."
"There is nothing to forgive that I know of, my
lord!"
"Flames, I do not need a Blade, lad!
When I look at you I see a thoroughbred
harnessed to a broken-down tinker's wagon."
"I see one of the great men of the age, my lord,
and my heart swells with pride that I may serve
you."
No comment was possible except, "Thank you."
How could one so young be such a polished liar? It was
disconcerting.
Quarrel's eyes gleamed. "And with respect,
my lord, I think you do need a Blade. The King
thinks so. Aren't you in danger? Isn't that what
her ladyship meant? Wasn't Hagfish
threatening you in your office this afternoon?"
"You can't fight the government all alone,
Sir Quarrel, and Kromman is the government
now."
"Flee the country!" Quarrel said
triumphantly. "It is no shame, my lord.
You have done nothing wrong."
A jaunt to Samarinda, perhaps? It was close
to midnight, so Everman must be almost as old as
Durendal, heading fast into his morning senility.
But at dawn he would be restored to youth--like
Quarrel: supple, vigorous, beautiful.
Of course, Quarrel knew nothing of
Samarinda. Travel to him meant exotic
adventure, endlessly receding horizons.
To Durendal it implied purposeless exile,
waiting to die in some queer little foreign town, with
no company but strangers and Kromman's
assassins lurking in doorways. Flee the
country he had served so long?
He seemed to have arrived back where he had
started. Could that be exactly what the King had had
in mind? But ...
Kate said, "You have not explained to me why, after
all these years, the King should suddenly promote
Kromman to chancellor."
"Because I don't know why. I can only
suppose that the man's whining finally wore him
down. They are shut up there together in
Falconsrest--have been for weeks. Or it may
be that he thinks a new chancellor will have better
luck making the Princess see
reason."
She snatched up a skein of wool and hurled
it at him. "Durendal, you are being
excessively stupid!"
"My love?"
Quarrel's surprise flashed to high
amusement and then polite inattention.
Kate's cheeks were flushed, which they had not been
a moment ago, so it was not the fire's doing. "There
is far more to this than you admit or even see. When
Kromman brought that warrant, did you touch it?"
"Of course. I opened it and read it."
"Have you handled anything else unusual today?"
What in the world was troubling her? "Dearest, you
talk in riddles."
Kate hugged herself as if she felt chilled.
"Your hands smell of enchantment," she said.
About a hundred possibilities flashed through
Durendal's mind and were discarded. "What sort of
enchantment?"
"I don't know, but I certainly do not like it!
I have met it before somewhere. Sir Quarrel, my
husband was not entirely truthful with you, but then I
have not been entirely truthful with him. A week
he brought it home to show me. In twenty-five
years he has never once discussed state
business with me, because he is bound to secrecy
by his privy councillor's oath, but this was a
personal matter." Kate was obviously
annoyed that she had to make such excuses; she must
have a very good reason for doing so. She had never
behaved like this before!
Quarrel nodded eagerly. Perhaps he thought the
Roland household was always this exciting. "Of
course."
"He did not decide to accept the Blade the
King offered. I decided. I talked him into it."
"I am very glad you did, my lady."
Nobly said! Quite convincing.
"There was enchantment on that warrant, too."
The men said, "What!" simultaneously.
Kate clenched her lips angrily for a moment.
"I should have told you, dear, but it was very faint, so
I was not quite sure of it. I am now, because it was the
same enchantment I detected on your hands when you
came home tonight. Whatever it is, it is
no conjuration that ought to be around the court."
"Some new healing?" Durendal suggested, but the
glare he received dismissed his question as an insult
to her intelligence.
Quarrel's mind was more nimble or less
hidebound. "Are you saying that these documents are
fakes, my lady, or that the King himself has been
enchanted? Is he the source of the conjuration?"
"I am saying that there is something seriously
wrong, and now Kromman has had my husband
evicted from court." Kate never galloped off
on wild byways of imagination like this.
He must believe her. "Could Kromman be the
source of the enchantment?"
She shrugged. "If he is, he should not be
allowed near the King. What are the White
Sisters doing?"
"The King is at Falconsrest."
Kate put a hand to her mouth in shock. "So
he is!"
Quarrel glanced from one to the other anxiously.
Kate explained. "The lodge had been used
as an elementary. What they did there I shudder
to think, but it absolutely reeks of conjuration.
The octogram is still there. I can't go near it,
even yet. No White Sister can."
Candles were starting to gutter, and the library grew
dim. Durendal threw another log on the
fire.
"I don't recall seeing any White
Sisters at Falconsrest, but I probably
did and just didn't register them. There must be
some!"
"In the village, not the lodge," Kate
said, frowning.
"But if enough enchantment is leaking out for you
to detect it here, then they would have to be aware of it,
surely?"
She nodded reluctantly. "That sounds
logical. I wish I could remember where I
met it before. It is horribly familiar. One
of the suppressed orders, I suppose. You
took me to a few of them."
"Can you go back to Falconsrest, my lord?"
Quarrel asked quietly.
"I'm technically under house arrest."
Kromman would use any such move as an
excuse to have Durendal thrown in the Bastion--not
that Kromman needed any more excuses. He
tried to envision what might happen if
he did go. Would Kromman be there or at
Greymere? How would Commander Dragon react?
Even if Ambrose was informed that his former
chancellor had arrived--which was by no means certain--
would he not just assume that Lord Roland had come
crawling on his knees to ask for his job back?
"The King would not receive me."
"Where is Mother Superior?" Kate asked.
"At Greymere or Oakendown?"
"I have no idea."
"You can't go to the palace, so I must go
to Oakendown. I'm the one who's blowing
trumpets, after all. If she isn't there
I'll dump the problem on the Prioress."
He smiled at her admiringly. Even the
short carriage ride today had fatigued her,
yet now she was blithely talking of the much longer
journey to the White Sisters' headquarters, and in
midwinter, too. "A letter would suffice, dearest.
We can send Pardon with it." Quarrel would be
better, but Quarrel could not leave his side.
"The King was quite normal when you saw him, my
lord?"
"Not unless you call dying normal. But if
something happened--and I'm not convinced yet that
anything has happened--then it must have been about
Long Night itself, after my visit
to Falconsrest and before he issued the warrant for
your binding." The handwriting on that had been
surprisingly firm and legible, he recalled.
Was that significant?
"Well," Kate said, "we must sleep on
it." She rose, the men jumping up also. "We can
sleep more soundly knowing we have a Blade to defend
us from burglars." She took up a candle and lit
it at another.
Quarrel chuckled gleefully. "When you have the
second Durendal beside you, ma'am? He would
slaughter the whole gang of them before I could draw
Reason from her scabbard. It is well known that
that's why the King never bothered to waste a Blade
on his lordship."
"He did have a Blade once. Didn't you
know?"
"Well, yes. He died overseas somewhere,
didn't he? I haven't heard any
details."
That innocently smiling young scoundrel had been
trying to worm the story out of his ward since they
left Ironhall. Kate did not know
that. What she did know was that Durendal had
written a detailed account of the Samarinda
adventure to be placed in the Ironhall
archives after his death. She was the only person who
had ever read it.
"Up there," she said, "that black volume. You
can reach--"
Durendal snapped, "No! I forbid it!"
He was still bitter that Wolfbiter had not received the
honor he deserved, but to spell out for his present
Blade how he had failed his first one would be an
intolerable humiliation. He turned to snuff out the
candles.
Like the deadly bolt he was named for, Quarrel
flashed across the room and caught Kate as she
fell, scooping her up in his arms and stamping on
the candle she had dropped before Durendal had
taken a step. He strode over to the couch and set
her down.
"Just a faint, I think, my lord. A healer
... but she can't, can she? Perhaps a cold
compress? Summon her maid to loosen her, er,
bodice, my lord?"
"Ring the bell." Durendal knelt at his
wife's side, alarmed and furious at his own
dismal performance and even more furious that he was
worrying about that just now. All his life he had
been fast and proud of it.
"No, I'm fine!" Kate said. "Don't,
please,
Sir Quarrel. Just a slight dizzy
spell." She made a brave attempt at a
smile and reached down to adjust the rumpled gown
over her farthingale.
"Wine!" Durendal said, jumping up.
Quarrel beat him to the decanter.
"A cushion for my head, dearest? Thank
you." She was still pale, but she laughed and squeezed
her husband's hand. "My, it is nice to have men
dancing attendance on me like this. Relax, dear!
I'm not having a baby."
Quarrel almost spilled the wine he was offering
her. In a moment, though, Lady Kate was
sitting up, composed and insistent that she was
recovered.
Durendal sat on the couch beside her. "I've
never known you to do that before."
"Neither have I! And you won't again." She
pressed her lips together for a moment, thinking. "I
got up too quickly. And the shock, I suppose.
I remembered."
"Remembered what?"
"Where I met that enchantment before. Give me
your hand again." She held it to her cheek. "Yes.
It comes from Samarinda."
Durendal's mind shied away from the
implications. His flesh crawled. Not that horror
again, surely? Here in Chivial? "That's what you
sniffed? How could you possibly know?"
She set her chin as she did when she was not to be
moved. "Because when you came back, you stank of it
for weeks. If I hadn't loved you so much and
wanted you so much, I couldn't have borne to be near
you. It faded eventually, but I remember it."
"It was the gold. The gold bones."
"I don't care what it was." Kate
shuddered. "Ghastly! But whatever contaminated you then
is back on you now, and I smelled it on the
King's warrant, too."
It was Quarrel who fitted the last piece in
the puzzle, but that came in the morning.
Not for many years had Durendal found trouble
sleeping, but too much had happened too quickly that
day. As he lay wide-eyed in the darkness,
listening to Kate's soft breathing, he remembered
the book and knew that Quarrel would be tempted
to pry. The youngster had been officially given the
dressing room outside the bedchamber as his own, but
a Blade had no use for a bed. He might be
anywhere in the house by now.
Which would be worse--having him learn all about
Wolfbiter's death or letting him know that his ward
was too nervous to sleep? Could Durendal
possibly get to the book first without being
detected? He slid gently from beneath the sheets,