Bee Sting Cake

by Victoria Goddard

  He stopped, but not soon enough. Mr. Dart gave him a fulminating glare, and spoke with haughty precision. “Do tell us the gossip, Hamish, I was in the fields all morning.”

  Sir Hamish was rather red, his bearing apologetic. He coughed. “Most of it is about Mr. Greenwing, naturally.”

  “Naturally,” I said, but they ignored me.

  “Baron Ragnor is convinced he’s here to bring magic back into prominence and destroy both his careful equilibrium of power and the calm prosperity of the fiefdom, though as he thinks everyone he dislikes is doing that I shouldn’t worry.”

  “Oh, good,” I muttered.

  “Justice Talgarth is certain that you have something do with the incident at his house last week, though he is amusingly inconsistent as to which part, and he’s too canny a lawyer to try a suit against you, even with Sir Vorel in the magistrate’s chair this session.”

  “He did nothing wrong,” Mr. Dart said stoutly, thus neatly glossing over the numerous crimes we’d committed last weekend, which ranged from gambling to impersonation to assault to entry under false pretences—I had to suppress a smile when he winked at me.

  “Lady Flora—”

  “My sainted aunt,” I put in for Hal’s benefit.

  “—is utterly sure you returned for no purpose other than to murder her husband, and probably herself as well, in their bed so that you can claim his property, which may or may not legally be yours, anyhow—”

  “Depending on his acknowledgment by the Marchioness?” asked Hal.

  “No, this is the Greenwing side,” I replied, deciding I would have some port after all. “The situation with my father’s inheritance is complicated.”

  “And Sir Vorel himself,” Sir Hamish went on, slightly triumphantly in the face of Hal’s visibly growing confusion, “is trying to pass off your return to Ragnor Bella as nothing less than the first sortie of the coming revolution.”

  “Does he say I am against any particular system? Or am I simply revolting?”

  “You went to Morrowlea, I think that’s quite enough for him,” said Mr. Dart, chuckling. “I don’t think he can get over the fact that you made it on merits. It throws off all his direst mutterings. Did you tell him about Mrs. Figheldean’s theory, Hamish? That’s the one where you’re responsible for the summer’s flooding.”

  I gritted my teeth, though that just added the increasing likelihood of a bad headache to my day. “And just how does she think I accomplished that, since apart from anything else I wasn’t in south Fiellan this summer?”

  “Oh, Mrs. Figheldean doesn’t think,” Sir Hamish said comfortably. “No more than any of that lot, outside their pet hobbies. Sir Vorel is very sound on ornamental carp, you know.”

  “As it happens, I wasn’t aware of that.”

  “How little interest you take in your neighbours and near relations,” Mr. Dart said, choosing two cakes. “Yet everyone’s in agonies over how to bet on you—for the Fair, of course.”

  “You’re not much like your father,” Hamish observed, when I took a deep gulp of my port and regretted treating the fine old liquor that way. “He would have hit someone by now.”

  I swallowed tautly. “I’m told I don’t favour either of my parents except in my general intransigency and propensity to cause chaos.”

  “I hear also in your skills at table.” He chuckled. “Shall I tell you why I think you’re back here?”

  “To dethrone the King of Rondé, no doubt.”

  “Or recreate the Red Company,” Mr. Dart suggested, having finally managed to swallow.

  Hamish smiled. “Ah, you see, I’m not one of the fashionable ton, Mr. Greenwing. I’m a simple artist and farmer. I don’t come up with elaborate theories to feed my folly if I can help it, and I’m not one of Sir Vorel’s cronies to be beholden to him for my opinions. I reckon you came here because this is your home and your stepfather’s died.”

  “And you need to be here for the will to be read at the Winterturn Assizes,” Mr. Dart said, bracing his pipe against his plate so he could tamp the tobacco down properly.

  “Assuming Sir Vorel doesn’t find a way to prevent it,” I said glumly. “I can’t believe they all spend that much time thinking about me.”

  “Well, you did come back and try to be polite to everyone,” Mr. Dart said, striking a sulphur match and lighting his pipe. I sneezed mildly at the initial burst of smoke, and sighed. He waved the pipe vaguely in the direction of the door. “Is that Brock answering the front door?”

  “Sounds like it,” agreed Master Dart, turning in his chair as the door to the dining room opened and the butler came in to ask in sonorous tones whether the Darts were at home to Sir Vorel Greenwing, magistrate.

  Chapter Ten

  Sir Vorel has No Idea

  MY UNCLE GAVE THEM no time to decide, stomping through the door in Mr. Brock’s wake. A footman bobbed behind him, trying to take cape and hat, both of which were dripping wet.

  “Ah, good evening, Sir Vorel,” Sir Hamish said urbanely, nodding at Mr. Brock. “Pour the good magistrate some port, will you? We have already dined, but do you need any sustenance? I believe there’s some Blue Yrchester left.”

  Sir Vorel fought his arms free of his many-shouldered cape and glared indiscriminately around the room until his gaze found me. “Not at the same table as that—that—” He shuddered all over, as if words could not come anywhere close to expressing the revulsion he felt looking at me. “How can you be so lacking in all finer sentiment? I thought you men of sense.”

  Master Dart rose from his chair, walked unhurriedly around the table, and placed his hands firmly on my shoulders. “Are you suggesting we should be anything but glad to offer hospitality to my brother’s best friend and the son of one of our closest friends?”

  “You should know better than to harbour the degenerate offspring of a traitor!”

  Master Dart pushed me back down into my seat as I tried to rise. He frowned severely as I protested incoherently. “No, Mr. Greenwing, this is not the time.”

  “A coward and a fool, like his father,” my uncle spat.

  I wrestled with Master Dart’s grip, but he was immovable.

  Sir Hamish spoke with a kind of cool amusement. “And does that come down your father’s side, or your mother’s, Sir Vorel?”

  Sir Vorel swung, eyes bulging, face reddening furiously. “How dare you, sir! If I were not the magistrate, it would be pistols at dawn, sir!”

  “For pointing out that Jack Greenwing was your brother as well as Jemis’ father? You cannot rewrite all the barony records to suit your fancy.”

  Sir Vorel’s jaw worked, his chins wobbling over his too-narrow cravat. His face was no longer so red that I feared (oh, all right, hoped) for an apoplexy, but his eyes were terrifying. His voice hissed with rage. “So you show your colours at last! You would have harboured the traitor, too, would you not? You will let him have the freedom of the barony, will let him besmirch his name and his family, will let him pretend to a rank he does not have and make us all a laughing-stock and an object of scorn and mockery!”

  “Are you talking about Jemis or his father?” Mr. Dart asked after a moment, his tone one of polite enquiry.

  “You watch yourself, young man! You will regret—”

  “Here now,” Master Dart said. I squirmed under his iron grip. Pain was radiating out from his fingers. “Watch your tongue, Sir Vorel—you have no call to be threatening either my brother or Mr. Greenwing.”

  “Is he not pretending in public houses to be a Viscount?” Sir Vorel cried. “Is he not threatening to race with all the commoners? Is he not claiming his father was no traitor, though all the letters of proof were come? Is he not—”

  “Excuse me,” said Hal, in a quiet tone that nonetheless cut easily through my uncle’s bluster.

  “Who the hell are you?” Sir Vorel cried. “Some rapscallion crony of my degenerate nephew’s?”

  I stopped struggling against Master Dart so I could twist to look at
Hal. He had not stood, was leaning back in his chair, but every line of his body, from the angle of his chin to the way he’d crossed his legs at the ankle, said—

  “I am Halioren Lord Leaveringham, the Duke of Fillering Pool,” he said, in a tone I had never heard from him before. I’d never heard anyone speak like that, though I’d certainly heard people try.

  Sir Vorel gaped and spluttered and looked as if apoplexy was still a viable possibility. Hal slowly uncrossed his legs and stood. He held himself without any pretence or affectation, but if he had been dressed in cloth-of-gold and ermine he could not have looked any more impressive. I gaped almost as badly as my uncle. I had shared a room with Hal for three years, and never seen even a hint of this.

  “Sir Vorel,” he said, his voice soft, so that we all instinctively leaned to hear better. “You may perhaps have noted that my given name is Halioren; I am named for General Prince Benneret Halioren, commander of the Fourth Division of the Seventh Army of Astandalas. He is my great-uncle; my father’s mother was the younger sister of King Roald of Rondé, and the General is his youngest brother.”

  Sir Vorel opened his mouth, then closed it again when Hal took one not-particularly-aggressive step forward. I had never noticed how short my uncle was before.

  Hal smiled slightly. “I am sure you recognize his name. The General was, of course, Jack Greenwing’s commander at both Orkaty and Loe. In my family, Sir Vorel, we have been regaled with stories about Mad Jack Greenwing—how he took a border at Orkaty and won thereby the Heart of Glory from the Hand of the Emperor—and how he rescued my great-uncle from death by torture by the Stone Speakers at Loe.”

  “He was the traitor of Loe,” Sir Vorel whispered, face very white.

  Hal actually chuckled, not his usual whoop but a civilized kind of noise that managed to convey a deeply sophisticated knowledge of the world, a sadness with its follies, an aloofness to its rough tumult.

  “Sir Vorel, I assure you I will be doing everything in my power to find out how this tragic misunderstanding was able to occur and to persist. Major Jack Greenwing was not the traitor who opened the castle of Loe—he was not even in the castle when the betrayal happened.”

  Master Dart’s hands clenched on my shoulders, sending darts of agony through my neck.

  I cast my thoughts back to those crazy three weeks when my father came back to find everyone confused, suspicious, unrelentingly doubtful. What had my father said? He’d been over the border on a scouting mission, that was it—but I couldn’t remember details, I had been so angry with everything—and all my memories were washed over with the fury that my father had been so hounded—that he, who had made it all the way home, after the Fall, from across the other side of the Border—three years it had taken him—and he came home to find everyone thinking him a traitor—

  “Do you not know the true story?” Hal said, still in the light, thoughtful, disinterested tone. “My great-uncle tells it, oh, almost every time he comes for a visit.”

  “Please enlighten us, your grace,” Sir Hamish said, his voice nowhere near as sardonic as usual.

  Hal smiled again. “With pleasure. The fortress of Loe was in the sixth valley of the Seven Valleys over in far eastern Alinor. The Seventh Army was pushing the Border eastward. The Fourth Division was always the vanguard—at Orkaty they earned the motto of ‘We hold the Sun’, when my great-uncle commanded Jack Greenwing to take the next ridge, and when he planted the Sun Banner at the top discovered an ambush.”

  My father had held the banner firm. General Halioren had come up second behind him, and the rest of their patrol after, and they had held the ridge until the rest of the division came to relieve them.

  “In the Seven Valleys campaign they were again first, and ended up pushing farther than anticipated, all the way to the capture of the fortress of Loe. The Valleyites then collapsed the mountains behind them and cut them off from the rest of the army. They were sitting out the siege on the other side of the Border—until at least the fortress was betrayed and most of the officers and men slaughtered immediately. My great-uncle and those of the command staff who survived the initial assault were captured and led in chains up into the uncharted mountains and eventually into a secret fastness hidden by magic inside a mountain.”

  We had not heard this story.

  We had received the letter stating that Jakory Greenwing had been shot in the back running away from court martial for the betrayal of Loe.

  And two months later—after my mother lost the baby she had been carrying, after my elder uncle Sir Rinald had broken his neck out hunting, after the inheritance had been decided in favour of Sir Vorel, for a traitor forfeits his patrimony—we had received the letter stating that Jakory Greenwing was reported dead on a scouting mission.

  And three years later—after the Fall of Astandalas, after my mother had married again, after I had started slowly to let myself love my new stepfather, after Lauren had been born—I had opened the door to a knock and discovered there on the step my father.

  And three weeks after that had come the visit from the constables to tell us that his body had been found hanging in the forest.

  Hal said, voice clear and unemotional, “The magic-users of the Valleyites were adherents of the Dark Kings, and they hated the soldiers of Astandalas. They used three of the commanders in their evil rituals. My great-uncle, as the ranking officer, was forced to watch, and then while they worked on the other two, they broke his hands and put him naked in a hole on the side of a cliff and left him there to die of starvation and cold.”

  I firmed my lips against disgust and fury that anyone could do that to anyone else.

  “My great-uncle said he decided he would die defiantly, and all through the night, as long as he could, he sang the anthem of Astandalas. Some time before dawn he heard something scrabbling on the outside of the cliff, and he did his best to lift his head and prepare himself to die—but it was not death, it was Jack Greenwing come to rescue him.”

  “Yes!” whispered Mr. Dart; when I looked over at him I saw his cheeks were silvery with tears.

  “No,” said Sir Vorel, but it was a protest against the world, not against Hal.

  “Yes,” said Hal even so. “Jack had been sent on a scouting mission before the siege closed in. Only he and two others of his patrol had made it, but they saw the fall of Loe, they saw the command staff marched out, they followed them all the way up. No one knows exactly what happened to Mad Jack between leaving his two soldiers to wait for his return and when he reached my great-uncle, because there wasn’t enough time afterwards for him to give a full report. He had been caught, been imprisoned with the corpses of the other officers, had fought a giant ice serpent with the hairpins that one of the officers had in her hair. He gave the mercy cut to the other officer. He made his way through the walls of a fortress made of stone and ice and magic.

  “He used his belt to lift my great-uncle out of his hole. My great-uncle’s hands were broken, and they were halfway up a thousand-foot cliff. He says he fainted from the pain and exhaustion as Jack carried him down, didn’t see much more than that Jack had nothing but his hands and his feet and a short rod of metal to use as an anchor.”

  “They got down?” Mr. Dart said.

  “All the way down. Jack’s men were waiting, and led them to a safe spot to rest, then to the only pass they could hope to make before the Valleyites found them—Jack had heard that they planned a new sortie. They came to the Gate of Morning—”

  “Dear Lady,” Mr. Dart breathed, leaning forward in his chair, intent on every word. “The pass into Bloodwater. They said the river ran red for weeks after the battle there ...”

  Hal looked at me. “They could see the Valleyites coming up the valley when they reached the pass. They knew they had to leave someone to hold them back as long as possible—and the General had knowledge he needed to pass on, one of the soldiers was a wizard and they needed him to perform the spells to open the Border, and the other one was badly a
ffected by the altitude. So ...” He looked solemnly at me. “So they left Jack to hold the pass as long as he could, knowing that—”

  “That no one would be coming to relieve him,” Mr. Dart said quietly. Hal nodded.

  “Until this spring, when I heard the story of the so-called ‘Traitor of Loe’, my family had never heard anything of Major Jack Greenwing than his superb heroism and self-sacrifice.” He glanced at me. “That is why I thought my great-uncle might be coming here, to find out the story of Mad Jack’s return home and ... and subsequent fortune.”

  He looked back at my uncle, whose face was blank with some negative emotion I couldn’t otherwise decipher. “Sir Vorel, I will assure you once more that I will be doing everything in my power to redress this unspeakable travesty. My great-uncle will certainly vouch for him, and if I must go to Zunidh to seek a benediction from the Last Emperor, I shall do so.”

  “Thank you,” I said quietly, when my uncle still said nothing.

  Hal smiled very faintly, still every inch an imperial duke, radiating the assurance that if he did have to cross the borders between worlds to seek an audience with the Last Emperor, there would be no problem whatsoever in being granted one.

  “As to the other matter, Sir Vorel, it is my understanding that Jemis is the grandson of the Marchioness of the Woods Noirell, eldest son of her only child. As imperial titles are passed through primogeniture, and it appears from what Sir Hamish and Master Dart were telling us earlier that any peculiar requirements arising from the customs of the Woods themselves were met, then yes, it is my belief that Jemis’ proper title is the Viscount St-Noire. There will no doubt be some legal matters to clear up, and of course he shall have to confirm the inheritance requirements of the marquisate, but I very much doubt those will prove a problem.”

  The dragon might, I thought. Master Dart’s hands were still heavy on my shoulders.