by J F Rivkin
All in all, he was in no fit frame of mind to meet Nyctasia.
So this was the one Corson had spent half the year with-the scholar, the enchantress, the high-born lady. He might have known she’d be just some vagabond in a patched cloak. All the same, she had a knowing look about her that Steifann didn’t care for in the least. Corson was too rutting easily impressed by folk with a little learning, like that blasted student ’Malkin she sometimes talked about. Frowning, he strode over to Nyctasia’s table and glowered down at her fiercely. “Do you sleep with Corson?” he demanded.
Nyctasia nearly choked on her cider. What had she let herself in for now! A man whose fist looked larger than her head was looming over her like a ferocious giant in a fable-a hungry giant who’d caught the hapless human hero trespassing on his property and meant to dispose of the intruder in a few bites. Nyctasia didn’t know whether to laugh or flee for her life.
But an Edonaris ought always to maintain her dignity in the face of threats or insults. Turning to Trask, she asked coolly, “Tell me, is that the way he greets everyone?”
“Not always,” said Trask. “Sometimes he’s downright rude.” At a look from Steifann, he scurried off back to the kitchen, where he lost no time in informing the others of the situation. They soon gathered in the doorway to watch.
“Why don’t you ask Corson that?” Nyctasia was suggesting to Steifann, with a sneer in her voice.
“I’m asking you!” Steifann bellowed, hitting the table with his fist, and spilling Nyctasia’s cider.
Had he been of her own station, or at least a nobleman, Nyctasia would have flung the rest of the drink in his face and challenged him to a duel. As it was, however, she struck at him instead in the way such low-bred insolence deserved.
“Who is there that Corson doesn’t sleep with?” she said, and saw with satisfaction that her blow had hit home. With a shrug, she added, “And for my part I think it no wonder that she should prefer my company to yours.” It is not easy to look up at someone contemptuously, but Nyctasia was one of those who know how to do it.
Steifann had reddened like a victim of the Surge. “Look here, you little slut, you may be someone important where you come from, but this is my place, and-”
Nyctasia had heard enough. She stood, and tossed down some money for her drink.
“I’m a Rhaicime where I come from,” she said evenly, “but if I were a fishmonger I’d not waste words with an ill-mannered boor like you.”
“On your way!” shouted Steifann, throwing out one arm to point to the door.
It was this threatening gesture which brought Greymantle out from under the table, snarling and baring his fangs. He’d seen no harm in Steifann’s shouting-the Edonaris were always shouting at one another-but to a dog a hand raised in anger means only one thing. His mistress was in danger. Greymantle advanced on Steifann slowly, with the obvious intention of tearing out his throat as soon as he made the slightest move in Nyctasia’s direction. His fur bristled, and his every muscle was tensed to spring.
Nyctasia grabbed his collar and held him back, as Steifann slowly lowered his outflung arm.
“You heard me, take yourself off,” Steifann said, though not in quite as menacing a tone as he’d used before.
Ignoring him, Nyctasia turned to Trask. “Tell Corson that she can find me where she found me before,” she ordered, and took her leave without so much as a glance at the furious Steifann.
She missed Corson by only a matter of hours.
“Oh, well done,” said Annin drily. “Idiot! What if that woman’s really a Rhaicime? She’ll have your head for talking to her like that.”
Steifann knew he’d made a fool of himself, and the knowledge did not improve his ill humor. “Plague take her, brazen little bitch! She’d no call to-”
“Sit there drinking cider and minding her own business? Certainly not.
Villainous of her.”
“I’ll go after her and offer your apologies,” Trask announced, taking one of the lamps from its bracket. “If she has you thrown in a dungeon, who’ll chop the wood?”
“You get back here-”
“Go!” said Annin. “Hurry up or you’ll lose her.” She turned on Steifann with real anger. “Don’t you see, she might have done something for Destiver, and now you’ve set her against us!”
Steifann hadn’t thought of that. And Annin was right, he realized. If this was the same woman who’d fled Chiastelm with Corson last year, as he suspected, then she did have reason to be grateful to Destiver. Fool that he was, had he not only made trouble for himself, but helped put Destiver’s neck in a noose as well? “Curse Corson, this is all her doing!”
“And how do you make that out?”
“If she’d been here, it wouldn’t have happened in the first place. And where is she, for that matter-answer me that. Probably dead in a ditch.”
Annin shook her head, and turned back to the kitchen. Steifann followed, drew a pitcher of ale and sat down to resume his interrupted brooding. Now there was twice as much to worry about.
Nyctasia heard someone running behind her in the dark street, and she thanked the vahn for the second time that night that she hadn’t come out after dusk without Greymantle. By the time Trask caught up to her, she had turned to face her pursuer and was waiting for him, sword in hand.
Trask halted abruptly and fell back a step. “Er-Your Ladyship-pardon me-” He had no idea how to make a formal bow, but he did his best.
“Well, what is it, boy?” Nyctasia said imperiously. “I left payment for my drink.”
Her manner and bearing, even her voice, were so different from what they had been at the tavern, that Trask wondered for a moment if he’d followed the wrong person in the dark. “You really are a Rhaicime,” he said stupidly.
Nyctasia sheathed her sword. “And did you chase after me to tell me that?”
“No, I-that is, Steifann-he didn’t mean to offend you, lady…”
“Indeed?” She sounded amused, now.
Encouraged, Trask grinned winningly, assuming his most deferential demeanor.
“Well, he didn’t mean any harm, I promise you. He’s always in a temper when Corson’s late corning back. He growls at everyone, but he wouldn’t hurt a flea.
You’ll like him when you come to know him better.”
“I do not mean to know him better.”
“No, of course not,” said Trask hastily, “but, you wouldn’t complain of him to the City Governors, would you, m’lady?” His tone was wheedling, but Nyctasia saw that he was genuinely worried.
She had in fact dismissed Steifann from her mind almost as soon as she’d left the Hare. She had been angry, but as much with herself as with him, and it would never have occurred to her to seek to punish his loutish behavior. Nyctasia had been taught that one could not expect a commoner to behave like a gentleman. If one mixed with base-born folk, one had only oneself to blame if one encountered unpleasantness.
“A lady,” she said to Trask, “does not stoop to resent the ill-advised scurrility of an inferior.”
Trask would have found this more reassuring if he’d understood what it meant.
“As you say, my lady,” he said glumly. “But really, I swear-”
Nyctasia couldn’t help laughing. “Never mind, lad, you may tell the host of the Hare that he’s forgiven. I wouldn’t dare to make trouble for him, you see-Corson would kill me.”
19
the place where Corson had found Nyctasia before was an old stone house on the cliffs just outside of Chiastelm, known as the Smugglers’ House. Nyctasia had bought it years ago, as a retreat from the duties and dangers of her life in Rhostshyl, but she had never passed much time in the place. Now she meant to establish her household there, for the time being, and send for those with whom she must meet-her allies first, and then the others.
It was important that she make them come to her. To obey her summons would be to acknowledge her powerful position, and only if her right to g
overn was recognized by all could she hope to fulfill her dream for the city’s future. She must return to Rhostshyl as its ruler, or not at all.
She was not surprised to find the house standing open, the locks broken. It had been long empty and unguarded, easy for thieves and vagabonds to invade. But there was nothing left to steal, and Nyctasia found no further sign of intruders as she explored the building by lamplight. She’d heard it said that the house was haunted, and she supposed that such talk kept trespassers away, but she did not suspect that the sinister reputation of the place had grown since the mysterious murders there the year before. The killer had reportedly vanished in the very midst of a troupe of guards, leaving three dead-or six, or eight, according to the varying versions of the tale. But most folk agreed that it looked like the work of demons, and shunned the place more than ever.
Nyctasia wandered through the deserted rooms with Grey-mantle, searching the cellars and the scullery, then each floor above, to be certain that she was alone in the house. There was nothing to find but dust and cobwebs and the ash of long-dead hearthfires. She could have the locks seen to in the morning, and the house cleaned and readied for habitation. She would send for sentries from her own guard in Rhostshyl to garrison the premises while she dwelt there. But tonight while the house stood empty, she had one thing to do there alone.
When she reached the topmost story, Greymantle at once led the way to the one door in the corridor that was closed, and sniffed at it mistrustfully, his ears pricked for any sound within. But Nyctasia looked into all the other rooms before returning to this one, the room where Thierran had been killed, where she herself had come so close to death. Greymantle was pawing at the sill and growling softly, and Nyctasia wondered if it were true that animals possessed a special awareness of immaterial Influences. Perhaps the Smugglers’ House had not been haunted before, she thought grimly, but it surely was now. “You will make me a good familiar, Grey,” she said, and pushed open the door.
She half-expected to see Thierran still lying there, his throat slashed, though she knew that he must have been long since interred in the crypts beneath the palace of the Edonaris in Rhostshyl. As children they had defied their elders’ orders and explored those crypts together, frightened but fascinated, knowing that they would lie there themselves one day among their ancestors-yet not really believing that they would ever die.
But the dark, dried blood staining the far wall and the floor reminded her of how wrong those children had been. Greymantle sniffed at it, and she called him away hastily. Then, when she had looked around the room, she hung her lamp in the corridor outside and came back to the chamber in darkness. The window was still open, as it had been on the night Corson clambered through it to find her, and the wan moonlight it gave the room was quite sufficient for Nyctasia’s purposes.
While she knelt by the spot where Thierran had fallen, Grey-mantle examined every corner of the room, even resting his front paws on the windowsill to sniff the night air suspiciously. When his searching led him out to the corridor again, he looked back, waiting for Nyctasia to follow, but she remained on her knees, silent and motionless. Greymantle came back to her and nudged her chin with his nose insistently until she took heed of him.
“Talk to a hound with your hands,” said Nyctasia. “Talk to the dead in your dreams.” She stroked Greymantle’s rough fur, then gently pushed him away. “You stand guard. Grey. Go on now.” The dog gave a whining sigh and resumed his restless prowling.
We ourselves are the true link between the world of the spirit and the world of matter, Nyctasia mused, and thus the gateway where the two realms meet is rightly to be sought within ourselves and not otherwhere… Nevertheless, in this room she had last seen Thierran in life, and here she had met him again, in her troubled dreams. The way she must take lay within, yes, but here if anywhere was the place from which to depart.
Nyctasia drew her dagger, and slowly closed her hand around the blade. The edge bit deep into her palm and fingers, but she barely felt the pain at first.
“Approach, I am near you.
Speak, for I hear you…”
Nyctasia chanted, over and over again, as the throbbing swelled in her wounded hand.
Behind her closed eyes she thought she saw the reflections of fallen stars, or of stars which had never been. Finally she pressed her hand against the stained floorboards and waited, silent, while the living blood mingled with the dead.
Corson couldn’t stop laughing. Her ribs ached, she could barely breathe, and tears of laughter flooded her eyes. Every time she thought of Steifann and Nyctasia face to face, his red-hot rage facing her pale, cold fury, she collapsed in howls of helpless glee. She could picture them both perfectly.
Trask had reported every word of the quarrel to her, with a few embellishments of his own, emphasizing Steifann’s folly and his own heroism in braving Nyctasia’s wrath to intercede on Steifann’s behalf.
Steifann had contributed an indignant denial here and there, but he was content to let Trask tell the tale while he sat by with a sheepish grin and nursed a mug of ale. Now that Corson was back safe and sound, his good humor was quite restored, and matters did not look nearly so grim. Trask claimed that Her Ladyship had graciously forgiven his behavior, and Corson clearly did not think that much harm had been done. She sat with one arm around him and leaned against him, breathless with laughter. Her hair had started to come undone, and it tickled his neck pleasantly. He was mellowly drunk by now, and feeling far too comfortable to mind her mockery and teasing.
Indeed, the whole affair now seemed nearly as funny to him as it did to Corson.
He could already hear himself repeating the story over his ale in years to come, telling friends about the time he’d threatened to throw one of Corson’s countless lovers out of his place. (“An insolent little minx, no bigger than your thumb, she was, with a way of looking at you as if you smelled of the cesspit. And then when I’d finished telling her just what I thought of her-not leaving out much, you understand-she simply looked me up and down as cool as you please, and said, ‘I’m a Rhaicime where I come from…’ I thought I’d be in the pillory before dawn and on the scaffold before dusk! How was I to know Corson was telling the truth about knowing a Rhaicime? It’s not as if she’d ever told the truth before.”) Steifann chuckled to himself. It would make a fine story-the only trouble was that he didn’t yet know how it ended.
Corson wiped her streaming eyes on her sleeve. “You dolt!” she said for the twentieth time, and kissed him heartily. She didn’t know which delighted her more, Steifann’s jealousy, or the thought of Nyctasia being called a little slut in public. “You must have scared her half to death, you brute-a little mite like that! For shame!”
Steifann was, in truth, ashamed of that. No one who knew him would have supposed for a moment that he would strike anyone as small as Nyctasia. He might at the worst have taken her by the collar and pitched her out the door. But how was she to know that? Still, if she’d been frightened, Steifann thought, she’d certainly hidden it well. “It was that hound of hers scared me out of my wits,” he protested. “I was nearly chewed up and swallowed, but do you care? Anyway, it was all your fault, Corson,” he concluded with drunken complacency. “You should have been here to deal with your Rhaicime yourself-and to protect me from her.”
“By Asye, I wish I had been here. I’d give a fortune to have seen it.” She kissed Steifann again. “Well, I daresay she deserved it. She’s the most vexing little gadfly ever born.”
“And where were you while we were entertaining the nobility here? I expected you days ago.”
“They kept me waiting for my pay in Ochram till a courier arrived with letters of credit. But I made them pay for the delay, and for a room at The Golden Goblet too. I had a fine time.”
“I’ll wager you did,” Steifann said sourly. “You could have sent a message, curse you.”
Corson shook her head, and her braid tumbled down the rest of the way. “No one I met w
ith was leaving for Chiastelm any sooner than I was. I’m not to blame that you’re too hot-tempered by half. You should try not to be so hasty.”
“Hasty! If I weren’t such a forbearing fellow, your ragged Rhaicime would be in shreds and splinters now.”
“Why does she go about looking like a peddler?” said Trask suddenly-a question Steifann and Annin had known better than to ask, and which Corson knew better than to answer. She sent Trask off to the kitchen to find her something to eat.
“Nyc would try anyone’s patience, it’s true,” she said to Steifann, “but really she’s a pet when you come to know her. She doesn’t mind a few rough words.
You’ll see.”
Steifann snorted. “Know her! Rhaicime or no, if she sets foot in here again, I’ll-”
“You’ll beg her pardon,” Annin put in sharply, “if it’ll help us get Destiver back alive. What of that, Corson?”
“I don’t know…” Corson said thoughtfully. “You see, Nyc’s met Destiver, and I don’t suppose she thinks of her very fondly. Destiver was even less respectful to milady than you were, love. Threatened to have her keelhauled, as I recall.”
Annin groaned.
“But all the same, if I ask her, she might do what she can. She’d do anything for me,” Corson continued, grinning at Steifann. She lowered her voice. “If she’s here in secret, though, she can’t very well make herself known to the Guild. I don’t know what she means to do, but I’ll ask her about Destiver-after I’ve had something to eat.”