by Dave Duncan
much amusement.
"You couldn't throw me around like that before you were bound,
you know? What a mean, tough Blade you are!
What's wrong?"
"Thralls."
Radgar scrambled to his feet and shrugged.
"They're dead, Wasp. No one can reverse the
conjuration, any more than death can be
reversed. The body goes on. It ages and
eventually dies, but the spirit has fled." As a
Bael he saw nothing wrong with thralldom. Had
Ironhall done him no good at all?
Raedwald led them to a much-ornamented
cottage, the largest and most decorated Wasp
had yet seen. When the guide tapped and then
opened the door, Wasp shouldered his ward aside
and strode in first to make sure all was safe. The
women sitting on the couches sprang up with
cries of alarm.
The three young ladies-in-waiting went
scurrying out, none of them sparing a glance for
Wasp. He nodded his thanks to the cniht, then
closed the door and turned to inspect the room.
His ward was enveloped in a mother's fond
embrace. At first he had put his arms around her
to return the hug, but he soon let them fall,
enduring her affections with a puzzled, uneasy
expression while she wept, laughed, and kissed.
The big perfumed salon was grander than anything
Wasp had ever seen in his life. An
intricately carved and gilded spiral stair led
up to an upper level, which he assumed would be the
sleeping area. The ground floor was a single big
chamber furnished to bursting with soft chairs and
couches upholstered in brilliant silks,
thick, bright rugs bearing tables of marble, onyx,
and alabaster; statuary, rich drapes, shelves
of precious ornaments; flowers in crystal
vases. The shiny paneling of its walls bore
many paintings set in golden frames. His mind was
sent reeling by the impact of so much wealth, a
room full of pearl and rainbow. He remembered
the magical treasure houses in the stories his
mother had told him when she tucked him in ... also
dragons' hoards. Whoever had designed the
room had displayed excellent taste; but this was
pirates' loot, paid forwiththe blood and tears of
innocents.
Radgar had never said what his mother looked like.
She was tall, but Wasp could discern almost nothing
else about her. Inside her voluminous clouds of
cobalt silk, she might be fat or skinny,
stooped or straight. Her hair and neck were
hidden by a white head cloth and pale green
wimple. Her heart-shaped face was so heavily
painted that it seemed curiously devoid of character.
He wondered why a woman would conceal
herself so. Her attendants had not been packaged
like curd in a cheese bag.
At last Queen Charlotte stepped back a
pace, dabbing her eyes with a piece of lace.
"So tall, so manly! Taller than your father."
"Greetings, Aunt." Radgar still seemed
puzzled.
She either did not hear the slur or else
ignored it. "I can see the Candlefen chin, but
all the rest is your father. Wonderful, wonderful
... But why, darling? Why did you hide away
all these years? So cruel! Why not tell me you
were alive? Even if you were a prisoner, could you not
have sent word, just a word to let me-- Who's he?
What is he doing here?"
"Sir Wasp, my best friend and my Blade."
"Send him away. This is a private
meeting. By the eight, if I cannot have a few
minutes' confidential--"
"Can you leave us, Wasp?"
"No, sir." Who could tell who might be
lurking upstairs?
"Sorry, Mother. Don't worry. He's a
Blade and utterly trustworthy."
"Ridiculous!" said the Queen. "A
Blade? That boy?"
"He's already killed one man in my
service."
"Oh, really, Radgar! Stories!" The
lady pulled her son over to a multicolored
embroidered couch. He was still only thirteen
to her. She sat so she did not have to see the boy
by the door, and Radgar joined her, not quite
reluctant but certainly not enthusiastic. "Now
tell me exactly what happened!" she said.
"Where you went. Why you went--"
"Shall I start at the point where I woke up and
found my door bolted?"
Again she ignored the implications. "Start
by telling me why I have been left for five whole
years believing my only son was dead, with not so
much as one word to tell me he was alive."
"In Chivial, in Ironhall. But why not
ask your husband, my lady? He knew."
"Oh, what nonsense!"
"No. Cynewulf knew I was alive and where
I was."
Careful! Wasp thought. You don't know that,
you only suspect.
The Queen raised her chin. "I
refuse to believe it! Stop slandering your uncle
... I mean your, er ..."
"A little more than uncle, Mother!" Radgar
pulled away and stood up. "I was deceived and
abducted. Had I known you were alive, I would
certainly have let you know where I was. When I
found out, I came as fast as I could. Now, why
don't you tell me why you jumped into bed with that
man right after Father died? "With unseemly
haste" was what I was told. Does that mean you
began right after Father died or before?"
"Silence!" Queen Charlotte sprang up
almost as nimbly as he had. "You will not speak to me
like that! I married your uncle because I love him,
and who are you to question my right? Men!" Her voice
grew louder, shriller. "You are as bad as your
father was. All my life I had been treated like
a brood mare of a rare bloodline--auctioned off
to the highest bidder, stolen, forced to produce
offspring whether I wanted to or not. You think I
asked to have you implanted in my womb? No, I
was given the choice of submitting or being forced,
no other. Your father was a killer and a rapist, and you
accuse me of not being faithful to his memory?
Flames and death! Why should I be faithful
to his memory?"
Radgar's cheeks burned red as his hair, but
he held her furious gaze. "You forget how
long I slept downstairs, lady. Often I
heard you asking him to ... telling him you loved
him. I heard you. I heard you cry out with
rapture in his arms. Call him a rapist and I
call you liar."
"And that is worse, I suppose? Oh!
Oh!" Incoherent, she began striding back and
forth across the room, weaving between the cluttered
furniture with the skill of long practice.
"Were all my efforts to educate you wasted? You
approve of abduction?"
"Not much, but it is a Baelish tradition. You
were luckier than most women carried off
by raiders, luckier than almost all women, because you
became a queen. You were happy--I heard you
say so many times."
"I made the best of my captivity. What was
I supposed to do--starve myself to death? Jump off
a cliff?" She came to him and yelled in his
face, "Your uncle is the first man I ever met
who spoke to me as if I mattered. He--"
Radgar shouted her down. "That is not
true! I heard Father offer you your freedom many
times. He would send you home with a shipload of
treasure, he said, if that was what you wanted.
He adored you!"
"Send me home without my child! You were the
Cattering heir, so you had to stay."
"Except that. When did he ever refuse you
anything else? Show me all my bastard half
brothers and half sisters, because I never met any
of them." He pushed her when she swung a hand
to strike him. Overbalancing, she toppled down
on the couch and he leaned over her, bellowing. "A
Baelish king faithful to his wife? It's
unheard of! And you agreed to the marriage! If you
had no choice it was because your own family had
left you none, and at least the pirate offered you a
virile male body to live with instead of that
rotted husk of a duke."
"You think that matters so much to a woman?"
"Obviously not, if you prefer the walrus you
sleep with now."
Screaming, she tried to rise and he pushed her
down.
"Mother, you despised Cynewulf. You made
jokes about him, even to me. You hated him."
"That is not true." She tried to be
emphatic and sounded oddly unsure.
Radgar straightened. "No? Very well. Whose
bed did you sleep in on the night Father was
murdered?"
"Murdered?"
"Murdered. Tell me what you remember of that
night. Fat Boy offered to leave the feast and
take you home. What happened after I went
upstairs?"
She seemed convincingly incredulous. "I went
to bed, of course."
"Whose bed?"
"Mine, of course! Your father's bed! I put
myself to bed. I had sent the girls off earlier, you
may remember. They had laid out everything. ...
Next thing I knew was your father shaking me
awake. He had smelled smoke the moment he
came up the stairs. He sent me down and ran
up to rescue you, but the fire blazed up so
quickly--"
"No, Mother! That may be the story you told the
world, but it won't do for me. I saw him, Mother!
I saw him lying on the bed with his throat cut.
He was murdered."
She shrank down on the couch, white-faced and
horror-struck, staring up at him. No
actress could fake the pallor that showed under her
paint.
"But ..."
"But what?"
"But that's impossible!"
"Not impossible. Fire was my bane,
remember? Healfwer made me proof against
fire. I saw Father with his throat cut."
"No!"
"Yes! If you were in his bed when he came
back from the feast, then it must have been you who did
it. So it must have been you who went up and bolted
my door. You set the house on fire, then
wakened--"
"No!"
"Then whose bed were you in, Mother?"
She shook her head, seeming more confused than
indignant.
"Whose, Mother?" Radgar bellowed.
She bellowed back, "Nobody's! You
remember how the house thegns let us in and then I
kissed you and sent you upstairs. We were right at
your uncle's door and he had some rare brandy he
wanted me to try. Your father didn't know brandy from
small beer. And ... I fell asleep in the
chair. I've never admitted that. But it was your
uncle who wakened me. By then the stairs were a
furnace."
Radgar folded his arms and looked down at her
with undisguised contempt. "In a chair?
Does adultery only count in bed? You went
upstairs with me first, so you must have gone back
down."
"No. I sent you up without me." She glared
up at him indignantly.
"Strange! I remember you going up one
flight with me and saying good night outside your own
door."
"Well, I do not! You were a very tired boy.
Your memory is playing tricks."
"Or yours is. Go on with the poem."
"I am telling the truth," she said very
firmly, but not looking at him. "I admit I
haven't told this before. It might be misunderstood,
but it was only an innocent chat--a quiet
drink, talk of peace coming ... That's all I
remember until the house was full of flames and
smoke and Cynewulf was helping me out
through the window. Radgar, I swear that's the
truth!"
"So it wasn't you who bolted my door and then
lay in wait for Father to come home?"
"Of course not!" the Queen said hoarsely.
"And if you think either Cynewulf or I could have
cut Aeled's throat you are a fool. There
weren't a dozen men in the fyrd who could outfight
him." Her rage and fear and incredulity had faded
into a sort of bewildered resignation that Wasp
found nastier than almost anything else in the
sordid story.
"Perhaps he was drunk."
"Aeled? He wasn't." She smothered a sob.
"I'd watched him all evening and he hardly
drank anything. I never, ever, knew him too
drunk to defend himself."
Radgar gazed miserably at her for a while.
"I don't know what to think. Wasp, have you any
suggestions?"
"Was King Aeled drunk enough to go to bed without
noticing you weren't there, Your Grace?"
"No." She did not look up. "I mean,
he must have done. It was dark. ..."
"Mother," Radgar said, "your story has more
holes than a mackerel net."
"Did Cynewulf drink any of the brandy, my
lady?"
"I don't remember."
That was the only credible answer, after so long.
"Your brother, Your Grace--Lord Candlefen.
Do you know how many Blades accompanied him?"
She shook her head. "I have no idea."
"Cynewulf's room was at ground level?
Front or back?"
"Back!" Radgar said sharply. "Of
course!"
His eyes said it all. Forget rabid foxes,
ships vanishing, virile warriors perishing of
sudden fever, fires consuming whole buildings in
minutes. ... Conjury sometimes, no doubt, but
no need for an invisibility cloak in this case.
"I don't believe your second husband
killed your first husband, my lady," Wasp said.
"Physically he wasn't capable. But I think
he knows who did."
"He opened the shutters to let him in,"
Radgar agreed. He went down on one knee and
clasped her hands in his. "Well, Mother? Are
you a fool or a murderess? Answer
me!"
She choked
and then gasped out, "Neither! I have
told you the truth and you have no right to come back from the
dead and torment me. How dare you reproach me for
marrying the man I love? You were dead. My
husband was dead. My family had rejected me,
that slop-bucket brother of mine. Those first
terrible days, Cynewulf was kind and sympathetic
and supportive, and eventually he confessed that
he'd always loved me from the first day he set eyes
on me. And I had to confess that I had always
really loved him--not admitting it, ever, even
to myself. I may even have hidden my feeling behind little
jokes. ..."
Radgar leaped to his feet with a howl.
"Stop! You are raving! You did love my father!
You did detest Cynewulf. I don't know
what he's done to you, but you must have been there when he
let the killer in, and I can't stand it!" He
ran to the door and was gone, leaving it open behind him.
Hurdling stools and tables, Wasp followed.
Three cabins along the path, Radgar was
leaning against a tree, face in hands. He said,
"Go away!" in a thick voice.
Wasp ignored the order and stood guard in
silence for a while. When that didn't work, he
grabbed his tall friend with both hands and hauled him
loose. "You are allowed to weep on your
Blade's shoulder," he said. "It's part of the
service."
Radgar let himself be turned around. He
seized Wasp in a hug that almost crushed him--he
had always been stronger than he looked. "It is
possible, isn't it?" he mumbled into his
Blade's ear. If he was not actually weeping,
he was close, and that was very strange. That had never
happened before, although Wasp had wept in
Radgar's arms often enough--long ago, as the
Brat, but especially last winter, after the fire
in West House.
"Of course. You mustn't blame her for anything
that happened. No one can resist a conjurement.
Probably two of them in this case." Blades
had to know about conjury--so Radgar knew
the answers as well as he did--but theory was about
other people and the real thing hurt. "The first one would bring
her back down to his room. Probably some
trifle he palmed on her earlier. Did he
help her on with her cloak? Give her a ring
or a necklace? Doesn't matter--it would be
easy. She comes to him. Then the love potion in the
brandy. Seal it with a kiss, or ... or ...
something." Something not to be mentioned. "From then on
..." From then on she would be his, but Wasp
couldn't bring himself to say so.