“I think,” Chantral said, “that I will have that drink after all.”
“Good man.” Montsimmard poured another glass and passed it over, and Chantral took it with trembling fingers.
Gaspard smiled. Celene probably thought that she had won last night’s encounter, and perhaps, in the minds of court fops and dandies, she had. But those weren’t the men Orlais needed in the coming fight.
“I plan to approach her on the hunt today,” Gaspard said, “and offer her my hand. Perhaps she will see reason at last, and all of this will just be idle conversation among men over brandy.”
“It will be difficult to make your case in front of the assembled peers,” Montsimmard said, pouring himself another glass from the decanter, “much less her damned champion.”
“I can find some way to speak with her privately,” Gaspard said, chuckling, “and as for the champion, I believe he may be indisposed this afternoon.”
* * *
It had been years since Ser Michel had felt the shiver of dread, but it came to him when he saw the note lying on the bed in his chambers. It was a sudden pulsing awareness, a tightness on the skin across his face that made his teeth ache in their sockets.
Ser Michel de Chevin, read the folded note. The hand was fine and neat for the first two words, but on “de Chevin,” the lines were slanted and scratched. A normal reader might think that the sender’s hand had slipped, or that their pen had broken.
Michel opened the letter. It held a time and a place, nothing more, and no signature.
As Celene’s champion, Michel knew her daily schedule by heart. This morning, she was meeting with the trade ministers, a normal function he would not be expected to attend. In the afternoon, however, she would be hunting with the nobles still in Val Royeaux after last night’s ball. He would need to be at her side for that, both for the sake of appearance and for the practical knowledge that many titles changed hands during “hunting accidents.” If he kept the meeting short, one way or another, Michel believed he could be back in time.
The empress’s champion was a figure who walked the periphery of the court. Though the name “de Chevin” showed that he came from noble blood, he was expected to eschew all personal ambitions, to have no loyalty save to the empress and the honor of the chevaliers. Though he was sworn to defend Celene from assassins and fight on her behalf in any challenge, he was as much confidante as guard, privy to a thousand secrets and expected to be her eyes and ears when she was not present. In any fight, in any public setting, he was the living embodiment of the empress herself, in just the same way that Grand Duke Gaspard, standing in Tevinter or Ferelden, would be a living embodiment of the might of Orlais.
Not, Michel admitted as he dressed himself, that Gaspard would appreciate the comparison at the moment.
He dressed in riding clothes. The jacket was reinforced with patches of steel along the sleeve, as were the breeches on the outside of the legs. While it didn’t offer the protection of his full armor, it let him move and gave him a few options in a fight. Today, his armor wasn’t an option. Today, he was the living embodiment of nothing and nobody.
He wore his mask until he was outside the palace, having left undetected through a servant’s door, and then slipped it into a pocket inside his jacket. Walking through Val Royeaux without his mask, he was just another man. He could have been the son of a merchant, or a soldier on leave.
Though he did not hurry, agitation kept his pace naturally quick. Soon, he was leaving the wealthy district near the palace. Off to his left, he saw a line of green beneath a tower. A few minutes later, it was a park, situated on a low hill that left it visible from most of the city. At the top of the hill, the tower was revealed to be the center of a small fortress: the Academie des Chevaliers.
The Academie was accessible by a narrow path that led through the park. By ancient tradition, only chevaliers were allowed to walk on the lawn, along with students who were using the park for exercises.
Michel saw such a group now, a dozen young men—and one or two women—in bulky training armor, climbing up the trees. Grunting with exertion, they pulled themselves up to the highest branches, grabbed a bright bolt of cloth, and then climbed back down as a master yelled at them to hurry up. As soon as their feet touched the ground, a weighted training sword and shield were shoved into their arms, and the instructors would attack with padded staffs. Michel remembered his lungs burning, his exhausted arms flapping like branches in the wind as he tried to keep his shield up. When the drill was complete, the instructors grabbed the bolts of cloth and flung them back into the trees, and it all started again. Michel stifled a grin as one student slipped and tumbled to the ground. By the look on the instructor’s face, the boy would be doing extra drills tomorrow.
The years he had spent in the Academie had been the best in his life. He had entered with nothing except a letter of introduction from Comte Guy de Montfort confirming his blood and a purse full of gold to pay his tuition. He had exercised from dawn until dusk, learning how to stand, how to breathe, how to make his body move when the muscles would no longer listen. He had learned the forms for the greatsword, the sword and shield, a long blade matched with a short. He had learned how to make a trained warhorse move as though its legs were his own, and how to fight from an untrained horse without getting himself killed. He had fought in plate, in chain, and in leather, learning how to instinctively use each type of armor to his advantage.
And he had learned the proud history of the chevaliers. He had learned to hold duty and valor in battle above his own life. He had learned to lift his shield to block a blow meant for a comrade, to accept his own death as the inevitable outcome of a life lived in pursuit of honor.
When the trials at the Academie were done, he and the other senior students were taken out into the city. They were taken away from the palace, from the history books, from the tales of glory. They were driven in coaches into the slums after dark.
Your bodies have been tested, and found strong, the masters had said. Your minds have been tested, and found sharp. The masters had passed around a skin of strongwine, pushed the students out of the coaches, and said, now, test your blades. Thrice this year, the elves of these streets have done injury to a lord of Orlais, and once to a lady. Go forth and mete out the justice of the chevaliers of Orlais.
Michel had known that the tale the masters had told was most likely a lie, and that even if it were true, they had no way of knowing which elves had committed the crime. He had also known that the truth was not the point of this last test. He had drunk the wine, and tested his blade.
Ser Michel de Chevin had never looked back.
He turned away from the Academie des Chevaliers and walked into the slums.
A short time later, he walked into the tavern indicated on the note. It was a seedy hole, and this early in the day the men inside were drunks and thieves with nowhere else to go.
Melcendre, the dark-haired bard from the banquet last night, sat alone at a flimsy old table. She wore leathers today instead of a dress, and knives rode at her hip instead of a lute. She smiled as he came inside.
“Ser Michel,” she said, her smoked-honey voice full of amusement. “You honor this humble tavern with your patronage.”
He sat. “Why am I here?”
“Perhaps I wanted you to remember your childhood,” she said with a sweet smile. Michel’s fingers gripped the table until the old wood creaked. “Ah, no sense of humor among the chevaliers. I have had to learn and relearn that lesson each time I have dealt with them. The perils of making a living by your wits, you understand. And now that I think upon it,” she added, “I wonder if they would laugh when they discovered that there is some doubt about the blood of the young nobleman they trained. Do you think they would laugh, Ser Michel?”
“Do you think you are the first to seek to embarrass me for being a distant cousin to the Chevins, for coming from a dead line?” Michel glared as the bard raised a finely plucked eyebrow and k
ept his voice stern and confident. “To question my birth is to question my honor, singer. After the embarrassment of a formal inquiry, I will be vindicated, while you will most certainly be dead for this insult.”
Melcendre said nothing.
It had been worth a try. Michel softened his voice. “Still, it would be an embarrassment, and I have little interest in your death. What is it that you wish? I don’t imagine you would have called me here unless I had something you wanted.”
The bard chuckled and snapped her fingers. Behind Michel, every man in the tavern drew a blade.
“Ser Michel, you have already delivered it.”
3
Michel listened to the metallic hiss of blades coming out of scabbards behind him.
“Six?” he asked the bard.
She smirked. “Seven, but who’s counting?”
Michel spun, kicked the chair at the men behind him, and moved.
His blade—not his formal blade, but a red steel longsword that was good enough to use but simple enough to avoid attention—slid out of its sheath and into the first man’s throat in a flawless execution of Duelist Catches an Apple.
None of the men had even moved yet, and as the shocked cry went up, Michel shouldered the dying man into one of his comrades, then stabbed through him and into the other man with a perfectly aimed thrust he’d learned from Second Shield. Both men fell as Michel yanked his blade free.
Seven was now five. Melcendre had drawn a dagger, but kept well back from the melee.
The rest were moving now, swinging at him, and Michel dove into their midst. He batted down most of the strikes on the right with a great sweeping blow, took one on the reinforced forearm of his jacket on the left, and broke through the circle where they’d tried to pin him.
No second blade, so much of Bear Mauls the Wolves didn’t apply. He kicked his fallen chair to the left to slow the men down, then moved right, holding his longsword with both hands as he swung low at the nearest enemy’s knees. The man in front of him moved to block his strike, and Michel used his two-handed grip to reverse direction and stab up, catching the man with a shallow but ugly cut across the face.
Four. Melcendre had a table between her and Michel, looking at him nervously.
Michel swung back to his left, knocking aside a blow he’d only heard, and stepped in to smash his pommel into his enemy’s face. He was too close to stab the man, but he stabbed past him, another nasty maneuver from Second Shield, and caught the man behind him by surprise in the knee. With a roar, Michel lunged forward and drove both men backward. They hit a table and fell, and Michel stepped back and stabbed once, twice, ending them.
Three and two. From the corner of his vision, he saw Melcendre break for the door.
He wasn’t fast enough as he turned, and hot pain slashed across his side as the man behind him connected. He grimaced, batted aside the second strike, chopped down across the man’s wrists, then slashed up and across his throat.
One left. The bard herself.
Michel dashed across the room and out the door, frantically trying to find her before she lost herself in the market crowd outside.
He saw motion in the corner of his eye, something thrown, and turned and slashed.
It was a thin cloth pouch, and it burst at his strike, sending a cloud of green dust into his face.
He stumbled back, coughing and choking as pain seared his eyes and throat. Blinded, unable to breathe, Michel wanted nothing more than to curl up on the ground, but years of training kept him on his feet, blade up and instinctively moving into a defensive spin.
It did him no good. Something blunt slammed into his head from behind.
He hit the ground, his last waking thought that his masters would have been disgusted with him for forgetting that he should have made the bard his first kill.
* * *
Celene was greatly displeased to find her champion missing when it came time for the afternoon’s hunting expedition in the gently tamed woods outside Val Royeaux. After last night’s victory, it was vital to keep momentum going, to keep Gaspard back on his heels for the few weeks it would take Divine Justinia to prepare herself and commit the Chantry to direct action in the growing hostility between the templars and the mages. The hunting trip would give her a chance to gauge the nobles who were undecided and point them in the right direction, and show the nobles allied with Gaspard that moving against her would have consequences.
Ser Michel was nothing if not punctual and responsible. He had left no message. It was clear that his absence was not intentional, then.
Celene dispatched Briala to find him. Then, because canceling the hunt would be an act of weakness, she called for her shining white mare, adjusted her riding skirts, and went off to battle.
The lords, and those ladies who rode, numbered perhaps a dozen, plus their servants, Celene’s guards (enough to protect her even without her champion present), and the huntsmen who handled the minutiae that the nobles did not care to attend to themselves. As they rode into the woods—carefully sculpted woods, enough to offer fine hunting, but not enough to pose a real threat to an inexperienced rider—there was noise all around Celene. Gruff orders from the servants to their underlings, banter and laughter amongst the nobles, the occasional barking of the hunting dogs. The nobles wore riding gowns or leathers, all of it accented with silver and gold and ribbons that complemented their riding masks. The servants trailed behind, always ready to rush up with a goblet of watered wine or a skewer of meat, cheese, and wine-soaked fruit for a rider more interested in eating than hunting.
Celene rode in icy silence, a polite smile frozen upon her face. In her agitation while ordering the search for Michel, she had neglected to take tea before she had left, and her nerves felt simultaneously raw and clouded at the lack.
Beside her, Grand Duke Gaspard rode in the place normally taken by Ser Michel.
“You did not bring a bow, Gaspard?” Marquis de Montsimmard called, bringing his stallion up close.
Gaspard looked back. “I did not,” he said. “I would not wish to frighten any of noble birth with the sight of blood.”
“Then what will you drink, cousin?” Celene asked without looking over. Gaspard chuckled.
“You cannot expect to bring down anything without a bow,” Lord Chantral called over. He was flushed and awkward in the saddle.
“If need be,” Gaspard said, still smiling, “I shall use a feather.”
The nobles went silent.
“Not your strongest weapon,” Celene observed, “given how easily you were disarmed last night.”
The nobles laughed, but it was a nervous laugh, not the rich reaction of a crowd on her side. Had she misjudged last night’s victory?
Then, up ahead, the dogs bayed in pursuit. Celene turned to the group. “Let us be off!” With a nod to her guards, she spurred her mount and rode off into the woods.
The other nobles were surprised—Celene’s hunts were usually a more relaxed affair, with the nobles riding as a group to find whatever poor animal had been treed or cornered by the hounds and then finishing the beast off with bows or blades. The exchange with Gaspard had shaken her, though, and she needed the disruption to gather herself for the next exchange. Her horse pounded through the woods, quickly losing the others as each noble found a different route through the trees, trying to reach the quarry first.
Then the clop of hooves behind her proved her wrong. It was a heavy horse with an experienced rider, and rather than appear to flee, Celene slowed her mare to a trot. Gaspard pulled abreast of her a moment later. “Your Imperial Majesty.”
“Cousin.”
In moments, the rest of the nobles were out of earshot, and the pair rode along the easy and well-maintained trail. “It would have been a waste to bring my bow, in any event,” Gaspard said after a time.
“Are you that incompetent a huntsman?” Celene asked.
Gaspard chuckled. “No. But these woods are so tame. Practically a park. I prefer the hun
ting in Lydes.”
“A pity you won’t be visiting Duke Remache to hunt this winter, then.”
“Actually, Remache invited me late last night, after the ball,” Gaspard said, his voice going hard. “He said that the forest had grown so dangerous that he welcomed the company of a man of honor.”
“Oh, stop,” Celene said in irritation. “There’s nobody but us around.”
Gaspard was silent beside her for a moment. Then he burst out laughing. “Maker’s breath, Celene!” He slapped his leg. “You’ve never lacked for courage, I’ll give you that. Were you a man, you’d be leading the armies yourself.”
“Is that why you must plot against me, Gaspard?” she asked, looking over. “Because I’m not a man?”
He actually seemed to think about it. “No,” he finally said, “the real problem is that you aren’t me.”
“Few people are, Gaspard.” Celene shook her head. At least he was honest in his folly.
They came into a clearing, and Celene pulled up her mount. “You have Montsimmard and now Chantral, and you claim to have Remache.”
“Among others.” Gaspard shrugged. “It would seem the feather went too far.”
“You would threaten Orlais to gain the throne? Now?”
“Absolutely.”
Celene gestured angrily. “You better than anyone should know that the mages and the templars will be at war within a season unless we can prevent it!”
“They certainly will, and I don’t see that Your Radiance has done anything to stop it.”
“And I don’t see, Grand Duke, that invading Ferelden will help.” She glared at him. “Had you killed Bann Teagan, our soldiers would have been dying for your folly by spring.”
“A good war unites the empire. Maybe we can let those idiots in the Chantry and the Circle kill people outside our borders instead of inside them.” Gaspard reached up and, to Celene’s surprise, removed his mask.
It had been years since she’d seen his full face. His features were still hawk-sharp and rugged, and he spent enough time outdoors to have tan lines around the edges of where his mask normally sat.
Dragon Age: The Masked Empire Page 5