Lens of the World

by R. A. MacAvoy

  This was so absurd it did not even irritate me. “Powl is never any man’s tool.”

  The field marshal laughed: a deep rumble. “You have the right of it, boy. Perhaps the Southerners are his tools.”

  I saw the glint of his eye whites in the darkness for just a moment. There was only the faintest sign of the hostility and contempt that had used to stamp his face when confronted with my own. “I think,” he continued, “that though we are in disagreement as to the meanings of things, we can agree surprisingly as to facts.”

  I wasn’t sure what the man had in mind, but before I could question him, the air wavered with a howl like that of some animal; I could not immediately place what kind.

  Then I surmised it. “He is still alive… the captive? All these miles?”

  The field marshal stirred and glanced at me closer. “Of course, fellow. He will be alive until someone is ordered to kill him. The king has him under close guard.”

  “What a horror,” I whispered, and the bulk of the man before me shifted like the shadow of a tree when the wind blows.

  “Don’t worry, he hasn’t revealed a useful thing.”

  I should have expected this out of the Duke of Leoue, but my mind had been focused on the condition of that wolf in chains, somewhere in the town or in the king’s camp. I rose to get away before Leoue managed to goad me again, when I felt his hand brush my arm. “No, excuse me. I spoke maliciously, and I cannot afford to do that. I am no longer so convinced that you had a part in the Rezhmian attack. Not a real, aware part, at any rate.”

  “I am grateful for that much,” I said, and I felt obliged to explain myself to the man. I began: “If you, Field Marshal, were suddenly told now that you had been an infant of Falinka parentage, stolen and sold to the Velonyans, would that information change your life’s loyalty?”

  The duke chuckled. “If I were a Falonk I would be little and round and brown-skinned. And my soul would be different as well. If I were a Felonk born, questions of loyalty would not bother me. I have fought Felonk corsairs for years, boy. I know.”

  He had succeeded in rousing me at last, and ironically, it was when the man had no intention of causing offense. As I tried to leave him, he put a large, restraining hand on my arm. I circled my hand out of his grip before he was aware what I was at.

  “No, Nazhuret, listen to me. Forget our disagreements if you love the king.”

  I stopped, out of amazement that he could pronounce my name after all. I decidedly did not love King Rudof.

  “You won’t like what I have to say, but hear it anyway.”

  I stood, not in reach of him, but within hearing.

  “I have known Powl Inpres, Earl of Daraln, now for over thirty-five years. We were boys together.”

  I could not have left the man now if he had threatened me.

  “I know him. I have never met any man who could command loyalty from others so well while seeming to desire it so little.”

  The truth of this statement, coming from that black bear with all his contempt and blindness, made me shudder.

  “Even as a boy he was this way: always in command of himself. Cold. He had questions and answers for everything.”

  “More questions, I imagine, than answers,” I said quietly, but the field marshal did not reply to or simply did not hear this.

  “Eydl was under his spell for years, though his was the higher rank and Norwess’s the older honor. They were inseparable when they went South, and when they came back defeated, it was dragging a train of goods, concubines, and hoary bookmen. No shame for their failure at all.”

  I was trying to imagine Powl with concubines. It was not such a difficult feat, after all. He would handle them gracefully, diffidently, without embarrassment or complication. Cold, Leoue called him. I would have used a different word, but I knew how Powl’s diffidence felt when one was under its power, and I could understand.

  “Yet it was Norwess who suffered the indignity of his failure. Daraln somehow… slipped out from under. He remained in Vestinglon while Norwess took his woman home and endured his disgrace, and within a year the king was besotted again with Daraln, his wit and his stories and his scientific fancies.

  “Five years later, when Norwess was accused of treason, Daraln was the unofficial tutor of Prince Rudof. He was very nearly declared regent potential.”

  “He was tutor? For how long?”

  The field marshal did not allow my interruption, “He survived Norwess’s disgrace and his flight with his own small reputation nearly intact—through the prince’s love for him in large part Norwess was destroyed. They were the best of friends, and Daraln the spark for their every strange idea. Yet the Duchy of Norwess is no more, and Daraln goes on.”

  I couldn’t make much sense of this history. I wanted five different men’s versions before I could hear it and have an opinion as to what had happened. Still, I valued it as a piece of Powl I did not otherwise have.

  “King Rudof is a clever man, boy. Don’t you think he can review the past in his mind and see where his favor might have been used to protect a man whose own interests superseded those of his country? Don’t you think he now has reason to be angry at your… Powl?”

  I did not think of these matters at all. My mind was full of the news that Powl had been the king’s childhood teacher. For how many years? What had he shared with him, and what had he not?

  King Rudof spoke Rayzhia. He said he had been taught by a friend.

  “Whatever you think of Powl’s interests, Field Marshal, surely you admit he is not at all ambitious. Not dangerous.”

  “Not dangerous?” The black bear rumbled once again. “He had created you, Nazhuret, King of Hell. If there were ten like you, it would kill Velonya.”

  Having said this, Leoue rose, dusted himself, and turned his back on me.

  I saw the sun rise the next morning, and I heard the bustle of the royal encampment as it packed to leave, but looking up and listening out were all I could do. Five days of forced running had so accumulated the weariness, stiffness, and cramps that I was paralyzed, and I lay on the dewy grass wet-eyed from the sun—and from despair.

  My secret friend left a new plate for me, rich-smelling but beyond my power to reach. I believe it was eggs spread on black bread. Various people came to stare at me, but I could not turn my head to identify them. A blanket was thrown over me by a servant in livery, and by that sign I believed the king had been by. By the time the sun had climbed from among the tree boles to hide in the leaves, the procession had trampled and creaked its way off, leaving me in the sheep-cut grass at the edge of a village whose name I don’t remember.

  Shortly after that my blanket was stolen again, and my breakfast was eaten by a dog. I didn’t object to either.

  A horse approached at a good hand-gallop; I could hear it in the earth. By its angle it seemed the beast might run me over, though there is nothing a horse hates more than flesh beneath its hooves. I lay waiting without much stake in the matter.

  I recognized the hoofbeats only after they had clattered still and Arlin had lifted my head in his hands.

  I will call him “he” for consistency’s sake.

  “I had given you up,” I said to him, or tried to say. “I searched for days. I thought you dead.” His dark face glowered in surprise and outrage. “Dead? Why dead? You yourself told me very confidently that I would live.”

  I laughed, which was both painful and exhausting. “I say a lot of things very confidently. I hope to convince God with my confidence.”

  Arlin’s eyes widened owlishly. “Well, you succeeded. And I doubt I was hurt as badly as you, Zhurrie: exploded all over South Territory. I would have been back sooner, but I had sold my horse in exchange for… services… and I had to wait until I could get her back again.”

  Arlin’s beautiful passionate, Velonyan features—horse-face, as the Warvalan immigrants would have called it—soothed my pain and misery as no other could have done. No other but one.

&nb
sp; “And did you have to steal her back, old fellow?”

  Arlin’s scowl was fierce, oversized, like all his expressions. “I won her back in a game of three-hand paginnak.”

  “That’s what I meant—stole her,” I said, but it was affection: all affection and relief. I asked him to raise me to my feet, which he did with difficulty, remarking how much heavier I was than I looked to be. I hung my arm over Arlin’s neck and shoulder, in which position I could have only one foot on the ground, so much taller was he.

  There was soot on the back of his hand and arm and on the silver velveteen of his cutaway jacket. The smell of camp grease, of onions, and of horse sweat made a cloud around him. There were unidentifiable smudges on his face.

  I turned to him as well as I could and asked, “Do you do that to keep people away from you, Arlin? Roll in dead campfires, I mean. Use your clothes as a horse-wisp.”

  His long mouth tightened and the ends turned up. “Nazhuret, you are quick slowly. Does my appearance repulse you?”

  In answer I leaned my face to where his hand rested on my shoulder, and I kissed it. “Though I know you are picky about the men you like,” I added.

  My friend gasped, and in my weariness I had no notion whether it was the sort of gasp that indicated disgust gratification, or merely surprise. His large eyes glanced around at the grass. “Do you want to be known for a boy-lover, like I am?”

  “I already am,” I said, and then the time for light talk was over for me; my dread washed back to me, blacker than Arlin’s soot stains.

  “Help me, old friend.” I took his arm clumsily. “I have offended the king, and someone I know will die for it.”

  Arlin cursed by the Triune, or perhaps it was a loose prayer. He gave me an awkward little hug. “Offended? Die? The redhead is headstrong, yes, but I had not thought him so—so fickle. So two-faced. When I left the procession a week ago, word was you could do no wrong.”

  Arlin still was helping me stand. Now he held me at the length of his straightened arms. “Did he have you flogged, old friend? Blustering pig that he is, did he do you harm?”

  Under his dirt Arlin was livid, and he showed his teeth in the grin of an angry fox.

  I explained as I could. As I told Arlin about King Rudof’s command that I show discretion in my friendships, Arlin grinned warily, but with some satisfaction. When I described the novel privilege granted me, he gaped. At the mention of the Earl of Daraln, he broke in with a cry of amazement. “Nazhuret, old stumper, you have picked one dangerous friend! Daraln the sorcerer, of all living men!”

  I stepped back, standing on my own, for I felt a sudden distance with Arlin. “How Powl would hate to be called that; sorcerer! Reason and restraint are everything to him.”

  Arlin was quick to pick up my change. “So he is not a magician?”

  I laughed. This time it hurt less. “Oh, yes, he is.” I waved the issue aside. “Arlin, child of Howdl—”

  “Don’t call me that. Even in private.”

  “Arlin, Powl made me what I am. I could ask for no better craftsman, either.” Now I found I could walk, if a dragging shuffle is a walk. I walked three paces left and then three paces right.

  “You are very attached to him,” stated Arlin, smoothing his soiled finery, flicking one of many ashes off his sleeve.

  “I love him wholeheartedly,” I answered, and at that moment it occurred to me I could not have admitted as much to Powl himself. Not easily.

  Arlin’s long, lean face creased in amusement. “So you are a boy-lover after all, Zhurrie. Like me. That explains much of your behavior, from what I have seen.”

  I am sure I colored, remembering one winter and a gold half royal. “I haven’t really discovered what I am… in that regard, sir. But I certainly never had love with my teacher in exactly that manner.” I did not speak convincingly, for it was a half truth at best.

  “‘Sir’?” echoed Arlin, now grinning hugely.

  “What would you have me call you, without endangering the life you want to lead?”

  Instantly the grin faded. Arlin stepped over to where his gray mare was waiting, reins at her feet, obediently. “I meant to ask, Nazhuret. After all this, how many people know about my masquerade?” He didn’t look back at me.

  As he leaned over one of the two worn cantle bags, I noted that Arlin’s lean hips projected from his small clothes in a way that was not really masculine. That line of him caught my eye and held it as I answered “Yourself, me, and anyone else you have told.”

  Now he did glance up. “You kept mum, though you say you thought I was dying? Dead?”

  I shrugged, and the pain of it spread nausea through my insides. “I know you would not be able to continue as you are if all knew you were… a woman.” I whispered the last two words. “Not for all your spinning steel. And your dirt. And you must have lived through dangers before. I thought perhaps you might rather die.”

  His eyes were startled, almost expressionless. “And you were not tempted to save me despite my own will in the matter?”

  I saw she was preparing to mount again, and I answered that I hadn’t been sure that betraying her confidence would help find her.

  I am sorry, my king; for some reason I have shifted gender. I mean Arlin, of course.

  Since he still wore that guarded face, I added, “And, of course, it was your business, not mine.”

  Arlin took his attention from checking the girth and now looked full at me, not warmly. I thought perhaps he felt that my humility rang false.

  “Not your business. Well, of course, that’s so. Every man for himself.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” I said, and as he seemed about to mount, I blurted out, “Please don’t leave me behind! I must keep up with the king!”

  For a moment Arlin’s Velonyan face was not guarded, sardonic. For a moment it was distinctly a woman’s face, and full of compassion. “Zhurrie, you are killing yourself for the privilege of watching this man you love slain before you.”

  “No.” I shook my head violently. In my emotion, the pain and wear of the body vanished. Almost. “I will find some way. Or I will fight beside him.”

  “Against the king? Against Velonya?” Arlin leaned against her mare—his mare, I am sorry again, sir—and sighed. “If he is like you, together you will kill a regiment. But still you will die. Both of you.”

  I fell onto my knees, half for supplication, half from terror of being abandoned. “Help me, Arlin. On your horse. I ask no more, but by all our childhoods, by God, by truth, by mercy, don’t leave me behind, I beg you!”

  As Arlin yanked me to my feet, his lips were white. If I had been a bit lighter he would have tossed me onto the mare’s back. He got up before me and gave heels to the horse.

  Between clenched teeth he said, “Actually, Nazhuret, I came pelting here for you so you might help me kill a dragon. And I think my project is far more reasonable than yours.”

  I had no idea what he meant, and my outburst had used the last of my energy—and my curiosity. As the pretty mare trotted off, her hoof crashed against the tin plate of my breakfast—the one the dog ate—and bent it into scrap.

  My arms were around Arlin’s waist, and as the horse floated her long trot, my hands rubbed up and down over my friend’s flat middle. More compromisingly, my face rubbed against Arlin’s—sparse bristle against smooth silk—and our lips were only inches away. The pronoun of my thoughts (and so of my narration) suffered a quick, violent reversal, and I knew all my talk of a pure-minded loyalty toward Arlin—gambler, knife fighter, and baron’s daughter—was so much horseshit. This was the only woman who had ever meant to me more than the strictly structured, limited interchange I had found with bored widows. This also was my closest peer and friend. Was her power over me merely caused by the fact she had not been a woman to me? Was I a boy-lover incontrovertibly? Born so, or corrupted by a violent past? Possibly so, but I could not be certain, for I had known so very few women, and in my station of life—fixed betw
een the worlds of beggary, scholarship, and war—I was unlikely to prove important to many women in the future.

  What matter what Arlin had been, or what I was now; she was necessary to me, and I wanted her with the longing and patient focus of a brute beast. A wolf in late winter. A buck in the fall. A goat at any season. I sat with my weight against her body, and the horse pressed us together, up and down, my thighs against hers up and down, my hands on her belly up and down. Our faces touching. In my madness I considered assaulting Arlin right on the horse’s back.

  I could have done that. My education had been eclectic, and I could think of a hundred ways to restrain a person from this position without use of threats and with a hand free to deal with bothersome clothing. I spent quite some time, my head resting on Arlin’s shoulder, planning how I might overcome her natural resistance and gratify my lust without either of us having to get down from the horse.

  Of course, afterward she would be free to throw a knife at me, but afterward I would most likely save her the trouble and kill myself. I had known too much of being raped. And whether I died for my efforts or was spared, Arlin certainly would carry me no farther toward the king and Powl.

  And then, to top all, I was Arlin’s “ideal of the true knight and gentleman.” I could only bow to that and behave myself.

  “What are you laughing about?” asked Arlin, turning her head. Now her lips almost touched mine.

  I improvised. “I wasn’t. I was groaning. My muscles hurt.”

  Without preamble she said, “I was not pregnant, you know.”

  I had not time to comprehend her meaning, let alone reply, when she added, “I know what was said. I have spent many evenings in taverns in and around Sordaling, engaged in salacious discussion of the history of Lady Charlan Bannering, daughter of Baron Howdl. I know every nuance of rumor.”

  “Neither did your father kill you, I expect,” I said, with an attempt to match her dry, disinterested tones.

  I felt her shrug. “No, but had the man really understood my nature, he’d have strangled me at birth. I merely ran away.” The horse trotted on a few paces before she spoke again. “I was almost fifteen. You, Zhurrie, were… partly… the reason.”