The Grand Ellipse

by Paula Volsky

  Three of her competitors; and doubtless others already aboard. Luzelle expelled her breath slowly, torn between disappointment and an odd excitement. She’d thought she’d left Girays and most of the others behind in Toltz, but the Ilavian Whistler’s protracted delay had altered matters, and the race was still very much on.

  The gangplank vanished, the whistle sounded, and the Karavise embarked. For a time Luzelle stood watching the docks recede, the grey-blue seawater rushing beneath the hull, the raucous gulls trailing the boat, until these sights palled and she resumed her promenade along the deck. Presently she encountered Bav Tchornoi, who nodded at her with an air of guarded civility as she approached. She returned the nod but did not pause to speak, for his aspect was forbiddingly morose. His face, behind its black thatching of beard, was flushed, and he clasped a silvery flask in one huge hand. She caught a potent alcoholic reek as she passed him, and mentally registered, vouvrak.

  On she wandered toward the bow, eyes scanning the deck as she went, lighting at length on the object of her unconscious search—a lean upright figure, dark hair, careless pose.

  Luzelle stopped. Girays v’Alisante stood at the rail gazing out over the Sea of Silence, quite unaware of her presence. He had obviously escaped the smoky fracas in Irstreister Square uninjured, and the rush of relief that surged through her was followed at once by an acute sense of awkwardness. She had nothing pleasant to say to him, and no desire to quarrel, which left little room for conversation. Best to retire quietly, avoiding his notice altogether.

  Then Girays turned and saw her. The smile that so enlivened his habitually weary expression glinted, and he observed, “Ah, I wondered if I should find you here.”

  Too late for retreat, and she wasn’t about to let him see her uncertainty. Luzelle’s chin came up and she advanced.

  “I’m sorry I can’t return the compliment,” she replied. “Nor can I fathom your interest in my whereabouts.”

  “Then the years have surely dulled your wits. A pity,” he opined in that gilt-edged, own-the-world accent of his. “The smoke assault at the start of the race furnished you a substantial lead, which I perceived as temporary. But I’ve overtaken you even sooner than I expected, thus affording myself the simultaneous pleasures of success and your company.”

  “Enjoy them both while you can,” Luzelle advised. He was insufferable as ever, but he would eat dust before the end of the race. “Neither is likely to last beyond the term of this passage.”

  “You wrong yourself, Miss Devaire. I admire you, and truly credit your ability to keep pace with me a little while longer.”

  “I always thought you gifted with a sense of irony, but now perceive your sense of humor veering toward the farcical. Perhaps it is the effect of advancing age.”

  “Cranky little Luzelle, you are still so entertaining.”

  “If only the same could be said of you, how we might lighten the tedium of one another’s voyage. As it is …” Her voice trailed sadly. She held her temper strenuously in check. “Despite the ravages of time, however, you still possess the power to satisfy my curiosity.”

  “I live to do so, but how shall I dare address the question to which Miss Devaire does not already possess an answer?”

  “Direct observation has its advantages. Tell me what happened in Irstreister Square.”

  “Ah.” Girays’s smile faded. “Several separate small explosions, loosing quantities of smoke. Nobody burned, dismembered, or hit by flying debris that I know of. Great confusion, fear, uproar, and blind activity, though. I myself had to stumble and grope my way from the square, but managed to find my way out intact. Plenty of others, half blinded or half suffocated by the smoke, weren’t so fortunate.”

  “What happened to them?” She wasn’t sure she really wanted to know.

  “Hospital in Toltz, I believe. I’ve heard that one of the Grand Ellipse racers—liZendorf, that Hetzian horse-breeder—was incapacitated. No fatalities, though.”

  “What exploded?”

  “Are you requesting a recipe? You might better ask who engineered the explosions.”

  “Well?”

  “Only a few profited by the diversion, and you are one of them.”

  “You think I—”

  “Certainly not. But there are those Grewzians, and we know what they are. That flashy, synthesized hero of theirs—”

  “Stornzof?”

  “The demigod.”

  “I can’t believe him responsible.”

  “No?” Girays’s dark brows arched. “You seem certain. Do you know this Grewzian so well, then?”

  “I don’t know him at all, but—”

  “But?”

  “I’ve seen a bit of Stornzof since we left Toltz, and back in Glozh he did me a large favor.”

  “Which was?”

  “Helped me out of a very sticky situation.”

  “Sticky? What do you mean by sticky? Are you all right? What happened?”

  “Nothing came of it. But this Karsler Stornzof was more than decent, in fact he was wonderful—”

  “Wonderful, was he?”

  “And I’m not prepared to think the worst of him in the absence of proof, no matter what his nationality.”

  “Well, perhaps feminine eyes dazzled by all that fame and golden Grewzian radiance do not see so very clearly.”

  “Don’t patronize me, Girays v’Alisante. You haven’t even spoken to Karsler Stornzof; you don’t know a thing about him.”

  “Ah, but I do. I know that he is wonderful, and that he has found a passionate defender in you. I wonder if the gallant overcommander realizes his good fortune?”

  “He is gallant, as it happens. Believe it or not, there still is gallantry left in the world, and honor, and some chivalry—”

  “To be sure, and these agreeable commodities concentrate themselves within the borders of Grewzland.”

  “I might have expected M. the Marquis to sneer. It is what he does best.”

  “Quite the contrary. I commend your wisdom and the soundness of your judgment. I have always admired both.”

  “As I have always admired your humility, your liberality of outlook, and your progressive democratic attitudes,” she returned sweetly.

  “That is hardly my recollection. I seem to recall your frequent criticisms of my abominable arrogance, my unspeakable conservatism, and my annoying formerly-Exalted affectations.”

  “Oh, but I was so childishly intolerant in those days. So immature, so very juvenile, as you took pains to remind me, again and again and again.”

  “Less juvenile, perhaps, than liberated, contemptuous of empty outmoded convention, and far too free a spirit to endure the galling restrictions of ordinary, commonplace matrimony.”

  “Clearly you did not deem me fit to endure them, as it was upon such a pretext that you chose to dissolve the betrothal.”

  “What remained to dissolve, following your flight from Sherreen? You were the one who left, a truth you can hardly deny, and the separation was your choice alone.”

  “That is neither accurate nor reasonable.” An air of exaggerated patience masked her rising indignation. He was still so completely unfair, so inflexible, so unwilling to see her side! “There was no ‘flight,’ as you so melodramatically term it. The separation was minor and very temporary in nature—”

  “Several months, was it not?”

  “Six months. Six measly, insignificant little months, that’s all, and they would have passed in a flash. You might have waited. In view of all your vows and declarations, I shouldn’t have thought it too much to ask. But it was too much, and M. the Marquis’s much-vaunted affections proved unequal to the challenge. So much for his constancy.”

  “It’s a source of never-ending fascination, this ability of yours to warp and distort the past almost beyond recognition, without once letting slip your air of injured innocence. At times I believe you sincere in your delusions, and therefore now take the trouble to correct your misapprehensions. Here is
the reality. Approximately one fortnight prior to the scheduled date of the wedding, you—having turned nineteen and assumed control of your inheritance—suddenly announced your intention of departing for Lakhtikhil Ice Shelf, there to remain for an indefinite period—”

  “Six months!”

  “In vain I entreated you to reconsider—”

  “Entreated? You commanded!”

  “Or even to postpone the excursion for a time—”

  “I couldn’t postpone. It was already autumn. Another few weeks, and the Straits of Kubringi would have frozen over, and I wouldn’t have been able to reach L’mai, and the whole trip would have had to wait at least another year—”

  “Would that have been such a tragedy?”

  “Yes, it would! If I hadn’t gone to the Shelf that year, the year the frozen mounds were discovered, then somebody else would have been there before me. Probably Fluss Ziffi, that bandit. If I hadn’t published my account of the voyage before he did, then there would have been no speaking engagement at the Republican Academy. If it hadn’t been for that one engagement, then I’d never—”

  “Have become the personage that you are today. Yes, I understand. You got what you wanted the most. You might have become my wife and the mistress of Belfaireau, but what is that in comparison to personal glory?”

  “Oh, spare me the reproaches and self-righteousness. I might have been your wife and been myself as well. You were the one to force the choice on me. If you didn’t like my decision, have you anyone other than yourself to blame?”

  “My wife and yourself as well? I wonder what you think you mean by that? What is your notion of marriage? Was I to sit alone at Belfaireau for months on end, awaiting my wife’s occasional visitations?”

  “It would only have been a few months! Then I would have been back, and we could have been married. If you’d ever cared anything about me—I mean about me myself as opposed to me as potential chatelaine of your precious estate—then you could have supported my efforts, you could have spared me those months, and afterward we might have been happy—”

  “Until the next time. How long before you found yourself impelled to set forth on your travels again, for months or years on end?”

  “Well, and what if that were so? Men go off all the time, and their women must wait at home. Why should the reverse not hold true? A sea captain, for example, is away for months at a time, and he expects his wife to wait patiently—”

  “And perhaps she is content to do so, but I am not. I am old-fashioned, as you have so often observed, and I cherish the outmoded conviction that a wife prefers the society of her husband.”

  “Does that mean she’s glued to his side?”

  “It means that her marriage supersedes the importance of her personal ambition and her vanity.”

  “Vanity!”

  “But your priorities are ordered otherwise, and always have been,” Girays concluded dispassionately.

  “Well.” Drawing a deep breath, Luzelle managed to curve a condescending little smile. “I see that you are every bit as narrow, critical, and prejudiced as you ever were. It’s reassuring to discover that some things never change.”

  “And to think I imagined you immune to the charm of tradition.”

  “An admission of fallibility, straight from the Marquis’s own lips. The world is never devoid of marvels. M. v’Alisante, I thank you for the moral instruction, but I have drunk as much of your wisdom as my poor mind can absorb at one draft, and must now retire to contemplate the new mental treasures at leisure.” Allowing him no time to reply, Luzelle turned and walked away. Her face burned and her blood raced. He had assumed his usual intolerable air of superiority, but she’d had the last word. And she would have it again, next time.

  What next time?

  As soon as the Karavise docked, she would leave Girays and the others far behind. She would not see him again, there would be no next time.

  The thought was curiously deflating. Suddenly the hard salt breeze scouring the deck chilled her to the bone. It was not really that cold, but somehow seemed so.

  Down she went, out of the fresh air, back to her windowless slot, where she lit the lamp and started in on another of her purchased novels, The Shadow of the Ghoul.

  The Ghoul wasn’t half bad, and she stayed with him for hours before the clang of the ship’s bell recalled her to reality and summoned her to dinner. She made her way aft to the crew’s mess hall, which was cramped, crowded, and moderately malodorous. The passengers aboard the Karavise had a table to themselves, and she saw at a glance that the ship was infested with Grand Ellipse competitors. There were the Festinette lads, exquisitely turned out in matching navy-blue jackets banded with quasi-nautical gold braid. There was Bav Tchornoi, gloomier and redder of face than ever. Girays v’Alisante, looking Exaltedly nonchalant. Mesq’r Zavune, the debt-ridden Aennorvi speculator. Porb Jil Liskjil, the rich Lanthian merchant, aglow with pearl jewelry. A few other faces she recognized from city hall, in Toltz. And there sat Overcommander Karsler Stornzof, beside his unutterably aristocratic kinsman, the Grandlandsman Torvid.

  She was not surprised to encounter Karsler aboard the Karavise, yet her heartbeat quickened. Their eyes met and her cheeks warmed. She felt and no doubt looked like a flustered goose. Girays was watching her, and her expression must have alerted him, for his dark gaze turned from her to fix unerringly upon the overcommander’s face.

  The men rose briefly as she joined them. Company manners, she thought. Wonder how long that will last? With Girays the courtesy was ingrained, but the majority of the contestants were unlikely to match M. the Marquis’s breeding.

  There was a quick flurry of introductions, and she picked up the names of two more hitherto anonymous competitors. Founne Hay-Frinl was a tall, emaciated Kyrendtish blueblood with protruding ears and stammering speech. Dr. Phineska, a Strellian physician, boasted a rich bass voice and a suave manner.

  Taking a seat between Mesq’r Zavune and Porb Jil Liskjil, she helped herself to flatbread, salt beef, fried goldtubers, boiled carrots, and sweetened stewed prunes; the same fare served to the crew—plain and dull, but decent and plentiful. There was good ale or vile coffee to accompany the meal, and she partook sparingly of the ale. The conversation interrupted by her arrival resumed, and distinctly awkward it was, conducted in sometimes fractured Vonahrish by a polyglot group of rivals mutually wary.

  But the Festinette twins weren’t wary in the least, she discovered at once. Nor were they reticent. Flushed with ale and hilarity, Stesian and Trefian bombarded the table with tales of their own merry escapades—their inspired pranks, their legendary feats of drinking, their infamous nocturnal forays. There was the outrageous affair of the Ostler’s Three Daughters. There was the rib-tickling Concerto of Crazed Cats. There was the immortal Two-Week Brandy Binge. There was the scandalous episode of the Beautiful Baroness’s Purloined Petticoats. There was …

  “… And so,” Stesian Festinette concluded one such narrative, “His Grace never knew how the three-legged cow found her way to the palace rooftop, and for weeks afterward kept on asking, ‘D’you suppose she fell from the heavens?’ And then he boarded over the skylight, to guard the stained glass against falling cows!”

  The twins howled with laughter, and their listeners smiled politely, with the exception of Grandlandsman Torvid Stornzof, who appeared to have cultivated icebound deafness.

  “My brother and I are mad, quite utterly mad, you see!” Trefian declared. “There’s nothing we wouldn’t dare, we’re absolutely incorrigible! Really, the two of us should be locked up in a lunatic asylum.”

  “We’re quite beyond redemption,” Stesian concurred. “We can’t help ourselves, we were simply born demented.”

  “Who but a pair of madmen would ever have thought of flooding the headmaster’s office with eau de cologne?” Trefian demanded. “Gallons of cologne—”

  “Vats of it!”

  “Jasmine Seduction, was it not?”

 
“The place was awash!”

  “And after that everyone knew we were completely crazy!”

  “Sometimes we amaze even ourselves.” Stesian turned to his twin. “Remember the time we got hold of the false beards, and passed ourselves off as the Demon Tax Collector, seen in two different places at once?”

  “Those villagers were panicked!”

  “They’re probably still talking about us!”

  Both brothers sputtered uncontrollably.

  Luzelle let her eyes wander. Clearly several fellow diners shared her opinion of the Festinette conversational blockade. Girays was engaged in a quiet exchange with Bav Tchornoi, who had brought his own silvery flask with him to the table. Grandlandsman Torvid, unequivocally turning his back on the loquacious twins, was chatting in Grewzian with his famous Stornzof kinsman. She allowed her eyes to linger on Karsler’s face for an instant, then turned her attention leftward to Mesq’r Zavune.

  They traded a few laborious pleasantries. His Vonahrish was poor, and her Aennorvi nonexistent. Despite communicative difficulties, she formed a favorable impression of the foreign speculator. He was soft-spoken, polite, and seemingly amiable. Within the space of a few minutes she learned that he had left a wife and two children behind in Aennorve, that he wrote letters to them every day, that he was acutely homesick, and that he longed for a swift conclusion to the race.

  Poor fellow, thought Luzelle, mindful of the financial disasters that mandated his participation. He ought to have been at home.

  She liked Mesq’r Zavune, but was relieved when the linguistically toilsome conversation concluded. Turning to her right, she quickly discovered that the Lanthian merchant Porb Jil Liskjil spoke perfect Vonahrish, and that he was willing to demonstrate his proficiency. Too willing.

  In his own relentlessly sociable way he was almost as tiresome as the Festinette boys. Apparently he knew everyone there was to know in his home city of Lanthi Ume. His intimate friends numbered in the hundreds or thousands, and he seemed determined to recite the entire list.

  “… Lord Har Fennahar, Lord and Lady Rion Vassarion, the Lord Ress Drenneress, several other great courtiers, all of us there at Parnis Lagoon to view the regatta, assembled upon the ducal float and awaiting His Grace’s arrival, when some fool of a retainer—one of Fennahar’s, I believe—manages to tumble overboard. He hits the water with a great splash and the spray drenches Lady Vassarion’s gown, so naturally Her Ladyship screams out, ‘Oh, you clumsy villain, you’ll not set foot again upon this float, I forbid you to attempt it!’ And when the oaf defies her, laying hands on the float and striving to pull himself from the water, Her Ladyship tears the shoe from her foot and with this makeshift weapon belabors the soggy wretch about the head, thus thwarting his efforts—you never saw so comical a sight!”