Paragon Lost

by Dave Duncan

  He loosed her laces. “Then you are doing well.” He kissed her again. It took a dozen kisses, or one kiss with eleven brief interruptions, to remove all her clothes and enough of his, but the entire process from head scarf to naked on the bed was the most enjoyable experience she had known until what happened after that, which was astonishing and beyond words, beyond thought, almost beyond enduring. She very nearly cried out in the intensity of her joy, and that would have been shameful. Or so she thought, until suddenly he muttered, “My turn now,” in a choked sort of voice, and his lovemaking went from slow and tender to abundantly vigorous for a few moments and then he moaned loudly and collapsed. Extraordinary! But now she knew that making odd noises was all right after all, and when next she felt the need to do so, she did. Every time.

  “You are a very quick learner,” he told her later.

  “I think I have a very good teacher,” she murmured happily.

  • 6 •

  Every garment in Deuflamme that had ever been near a wedding was offered to Isabelle and her mother. Every woman able to wield a needle spent half the night with them in the cottage, preparing for the great occasion, but when the carriage arrived the following morning, as Beau had promised it would, it brought the skilled Jeanne, Madame the Contesse’s dressmaker, armed with a wondrous selection of lace, frills, beads, and other flourishes. In a twinkling she transformed the merely impressive into the spellbinding, and she continued to nip, tuck, hem, and adjust all the way to Laville, until the very moment the carriage rolled up to the embassy steps and the Conte-Ambassador himself came forth to welcome the bride and her mother. Which was a dream.

  The entire staff had been invited to the wedding and many of them had forsaken their beds all night to make the celebration as splendid as possible. Which it was. The only sour note was sounded by Queen Tasha, who was indisposed and sent her regrets—so Isabelle was informed then, but she heard later that Her Grace had thrown a fearful tantrum, categorically refusing to attend the wedding of “a mere pot-carrying chambermaid.”

  The following day, the Contesse offered to present the new Lady Beaumont to Her Majesty and the Queen turned her back.

  This was a trivial regret amid the sudden wonders of married life, the thrill of going from servant to honored guest, the glories of new gowns and new status, but it was one that a woman must address. Isabelle chose a moment on the fourth afternoon of her marriage, when she and Beau were sitting in the flower-scented rose bower, holding hands and just being rapturously happy together. She could speak Chivian now, having been conjured. That morning she had walked in the grounds of the royal palace on the arm of a handsome swordsman and watched a hundred other women grind teeth in jealousy. Was not life perfection?

  Not quite.

  “Why does Queen Tasha hate me?”

  Beau laughed. “Don’t worry about her. She’s jealous because she only gets a king and you got me.”

  Which was true, possibly too true. “She may cause trouble?”

  “She cannot. I am more worried by that mole on your thigh.”

  “What mole?” his wife demanded indignantly. “And stop changing the subject. Were you lovers?”

  “It is in a place hard for you to see. But exceptionally beautiful. I think it needs to be looked at more closely, in daylight.”

  She avoided his kiss. “Beau, did you lie with the Queen on your journey?”

  “Come with me. I will examine—”

  “Why will you not tell me?”

  “Aha! Was that our first angry word?” His smile would break a million hearts. “Because, my dearest, a question that should not be asked must not be answered. The mole?”

  She should not have asked—he had not asked her. She knew how stubborn he was.

  “Let us go upstairs immediately,” he said. “The problem becomes more urgent by the minute.”

  “No. You are too greedy. It is shocking to jump into bed in the middle of the day.”

  “You didn’t say that yesterday, or the day before, or…Your Excellency?”

  They rose to offer bow and curtsey respectively.

  The Count of Hedgebury returned a worried nod. He was a compact, fair-haired man, stockier than Beau because of his age, but still trim. He would never have been so handsome, of course, but this might not be far from how Beau would look when he was fifty. “Forgive me, I am but a crow croaking at two love birds. May I have a word with you, Sir Beaumont? I promise it will be brief.”

  “Join us and welcome,” Beau said, waving at the other bench. “Whatever you wish to say you may say before my wife.”

  “And perhaps should.” The Ambassador perched as if not intending to stay. “I suspect she has all the brains in your marriage. Brother, you must leave.”

  Beau raised flaxen eyebrows. “I just arrived.”

  “Don’t play stupid with me, boy! You know what I mean. I will gladly give you two horses, any two you wish from my stable. Take them and the money and begone forever. Isilond is a fabulous land. You are young and in love and free to live as you please. Why throw all that away?”

  “Because I have duties, of course. I have not yet escorted Her Majesty to Court. I have—”

  “Her Majesty refuses to have anything more to do with you! She screams if you are mentioned.”

  “She is under strain,” Beau said smoothly. “I brought some of my late ward’s personal effects, which I shall return to Lady Wassail. I must testify to her husband’s death, for legal reasons. I have monetary instruments to restore to the Royal Exchequer, and Oak’s sword to Return to Ironhall. I must see poor Arkell settled somewhere. Now I have fulfilled my duties to my ward, His Majesty will formally dub me knight, according to custom. After that—” he flashed his glorious smile at Isabelle. “Then life and love and youth and fine wine. But duty first.”

  “Duty?” The Ambassador was growing irate. “You did your best. I’m sure you achieved more than other men would regard as humanly possible. No one could have asked more of you. Go!”

  Beau sighed, turned to Isabelle. “One day, dearest, I must tell you the tale of a stalwart young Blade who leaped off a cliff because he thought it was his duty to his ward.”

  His Lordship’s face flamed scarlet. “That was necessary! This isn’t. What do you expect the King to say when he reads that his wife spent months traveling like a vagabond, unchaperoned, in the company of a Blade and a halfwit?”

  “I didn’t tell him that exactly,” Beau said cheerfully, “and surely a king will not be so crass as to ask for details? He can establish discreetly what really happened and then turn the tale into high romance. Bards will sing, strong men weep, and ladies cry out in terror. All Eurania will thrill to the adventures of the young queen hastening to her bridegroom’s side through snow and storm and—”

  “That is one alternative!” the Ambassador barked. “The other is to bounce your head across the grass for high treason. Already, here in my house, the Queen has done and said enough to damn you. Rumors fester in the Regent’s Court that the Czar’s son has been murdered and he is blaming certain foreigners. That could mean war, man!”

  For the first time, Beau’s sunny smile seemed a little forced. “Believe me, brother, Fedor wasn’t worth a cats’ spat, let alone a war. I know your advice is well meant, but to take it would be to confirm the sneers of the nasty-minded. It would damn the Queen. I am shocked that you would ever doubt her virtue. I expect to be questioned before inquisitors, of course. I shall tell the truth. They will so testify. If the King then offers me a peerage, I shall respectfully decline. A bag of gold and a manly handshake will suffice. Meanwhile I refuse to let your croaking spoil my love song, Master Crow.”

  The days passed in bliss, the nights in rapture. A good horseman could ride from Laville to Grandon and back between dawn and dusk, Beau said, were it not for the Straits. The crossing depended entirely on the winds. It was a week after the Ambassador’s warning that the summons came. By coincidence—the spot must be cursed—the lov
ers were sitting in that same gazebo, amid the same flowers and the same sunshine, when Sir Lindsay came strolling along the path, escorting two young swordsmen in blue and silver livery.

  Beau said, “Ah!” and stood up. “My dear, may I present— Sir Rivers…Sir Clovis…companions in my Order. The monkey suits mean that they serve in the Royal Guard. My wife, brothers.”

  As the guardsmen paid their respects, she noticed how similar all four Blades were, almost as alike as the cat’s-eye jewels on the pommels of their swords. The newcomers were dusty, wind-burned, and sweat-stained; they stank powerfully of horse. Their brief and cheerless smiles implied no joy.

  “Sir Beaumont,” Rivers said, “the Pirate’s Son has sent us to convey you into his presence.”

  “I shall be happy to wait upon His Majesty.”

  Their grimness eased a little on hearing that. Isabelle knew their authority ended at the embassy wall, which happened to be almost at Beau’s back. Were he to vault over it, he would be a free man. She wished she could throw him over it.

  “Arkell also,” Lindsay remarked from the background. “Can he ride?”

  “No. He bounces on tender parts and gets upset and weeps. Besides, my wife would prefer a coach.”

  Clovis looked quizzically at Rivers, who reluctantly nodded.

  “His Excellency will be happy to lend you his carriage, brothers,” Lindsay said. “If you leave at dawn, you can be in Boileau by dusk.”

  “If we leave now, we can sail at dawn,” Rivers retorted. “We have a ship standing by.”

  “As you wish. The Queen will not be accompanying you?”

  Clovis shook his head, Rivers shrugged—what queen? The Queen did not officially exist yet.

  “We have been starved for news,” Beau said brightly. “Who won the King’s Cup this year, brothers?”

  They reacted as if he had kicked their shins.

  “Some Isilondian!” Clovis snapped, “whose name I forget. There was a whole gang of the horrors. Had you anything to do with that, brother?”

  “Nothing whatsoever,” Beau assured him. “Unless you mean the Conte de Ferniot, the Conte de Roget, the Marquis Vaanen, and the Conte D’Estienne?”

  Rivers said, “Traitor!”

  Sir Lindsay made an unhappy-diplomat noise. “You are being a little extreme, brother.”

  “I don’t think he is,” Clovis said grimly.

  The carriage ride to Boileau was an experience even the joy of Beau’s company could not rescue. Arkell bounced on the opposite bench until he became nauseated, after which it was worse. Clovis and Rivers had wisely chosen to ride and insisted on pushing on when darkness fell, crawling through the night. They reached Boileau not long before dawn, going straight to the docks and a shabby little cog tied up at the quay.

  The guardsmen wanted to embark immediately, and were repelled at the gangplank by the master, Captain Bird, who would have been termed buxom had he been a woman. He flourished thick white eyebrows on a florid, baggy face, and was abrasively unimpressed by King’s Blades.

  “High tide isn’t till noon and the wind’s contrary anyway. Go find yourself lodging and I’ll send the boy for you when we’re ready. Maybe tomorrow.”

  “We hired your boat and we will live in it until you’ve fulfilled your contract!” Rivers announced haughtily.

  “It ain’t a boat, sonny, and no jack-a-napes, wood-chopping man-at-arms gives me orders.”

  “Excuse them, Captain,” Beau said soothingly. “The innkeepers won’t let them in—because of the fleas, you know.”

  Bird surveyed Beau from plumed hat down to cat’s-eye pommel and back again. He thawed a fraction. “Or they’re just too cheap to spend the money, more like?”

  Beau sighed. “There is that. They squandered all their expense allowance on Isilondian fencing lessons. And all they know about wind is too personal to mention.”

  Rivers and Clovis were not amused, but they chose to conserve the rest of their dignity by going in search of accommodation. Beau parted from the Captain like an old friend. After all—as he tried to explain to Isabelle later— any sailor who named his ship the Unexpected Tern had to be one of nature’s gentlemen.

  Boileau was a dull runt of a port, the inn had abundant fleas of its own, and Isabelle was happy when the wind changed the following day and Tern stood out to sea. Greatly excited, she leaned on the rail with Beau’s strong arm around her— and her arm around him—watching the homes and fields of Isilond fade back into haze. Ahead lay the snow-capped foam of the bar and the cold gray-green hills of ocean beyond. Hours, days, or weeks ahead lay Chivial, a new life, and the scent of adventure in the salt air was intoxicating.

  Suddenly Rivers and Clovis were there in menace.

  “It is my sad duty, Sir Beaumont,” Rivers announced— looking triumphant, not sad—“to require of you your sword.”

  Beau had not expected that. Isabelle felt his shock through their body contact; the watchers could not have known of it. There, on the restlessly swaying deck, he looked from one sneer to the other. He could almost certainly take those two men on together and defeat them both, but what good would that do now? In silence he unbuckled his baldric and handed Just Desert to Rivers. Then he turned his back and stared out at the heaving water. It may have been only a caprice of the wind, but Isabelle was certain she saw tears in his eyes. His arm around her tightened almost to hurting.

  “Petty men!” he said bitterly. “No Blade deprives another of his sword.”

  “You should have listened to Hedgebury.”

  “Or obeyed the instructions written on her blade.”

  • 7 •

  A day at sea and another all-night carriage ride brought them to Grandon and its Bastion, a fortress whose grim reputation had reached even backwoods Deuflamme. In the dank light of dawn, the rumble of wheels on the drawbridge seemed as ominous as the slimy green moat below and rusty portcullis above.

  Beau remained unruffled. “Yes, its dungeons are celebrated, my love, and its torture chamber is the toast of connoisseurs everywhere, but it is also a fortress and even a palace. Not a few monarchs have fled here with the Grandon mob baying at their heels.”

  Isabelle was exhausted. “I suppose you’re going to lodge in the royal suite? Where am I to sleep?”

  “In nobody’s bed but mine! I am charged with no crime. I am a royal guest and you will share my quarters.”

  She distrusted his eternal good cheer. To look at him, no one would know he had not slept all night, but she had never felt frowstier in her life. Poor Arkell was a whimpering heap of confused misery, unable to understand why the world kept bouncing him, bruising him, and making him giddy.

  The Bastion was almost a town in its own right, a wide bailey cluttered with sheds and tents within a coronet of forts, towers, and battlements. Even at that early hour it bustled like a market. The moment the coach halted, Beau jumped out and she heard him hail someone in pleased tones. Then he handed her down and she guessed at once, even before she saw the cat’s-eye sword, that the dapper man in the elaborate livery was yet another Blade.

  “Love, it is a true honor to present you to Baron Bandale, Constable of the Bastion. In all my years at Ironhall, his was the only Durendal Night speech that did not put me to sleep.”

  The Constable bowed over her hand. “The honor is entirely mine, Lady Beaumont. I wish the circumstances were happier.” He was much older than Lord Hedgebury, but he had the same gracious smile and supreme self-confidence— gold-plated steel.

  His bushy salt-and-pepper eyebrows made his frown a serious matter. “Your sword, Sir Beaumont?”

  “It has fallen into bad company, my lord,” Beau said, with a nod at Clovis and Rivers, who had dismounted and stood scowling on the sidelines. “And here is a greater sadness— brother Arkell.”

  Bandale grimaced as he watched the shambling invalid descend from the carriage. “No charges have been brought against him or you, but His Majesty requires that you tarry here during his ple
asure, which is his right as head of our Order. If you will give me your parole, brother Beaumont, I will lead you and your gracious lady to suitable quarters. What care does Arkell need?”

  “Much. He would be happiest boarding with us. Certainly you have my parole, Constable. My wife is free to come and go as she pleases, of course?”

  “Of course. May I escort you?” Bandale offered Isabelle his arm. “I will inform my wife of your arrival, Lady Beaumont. She will provide suitable attendants and whatever else you need for your stay here.”

  Isabelle felt better already and the rooms to which the Baron escorted her were a delight—not large, but bright, sweet-smelling, and by no means dungeons. Their unbarred windows commanded a fine view of the river. Promising to send servants with hot water, refreshments, and a cot for Arkell, the Constable withdrew, leaving the door ajar.

  “A splendid gentleman,” Beau said, satisfied. “And a legendary Blade! He was Leader during the Monster War. Had it not been for him, Ambrose’s reign would have ended twenty years sooner.” He peered out at the scenery. “His wife was a friend of Queen Malinda’s.”

  Isabelle flopped down on the bed and sank almost out of sight. “Do Blades run everything in Chivial?”

  “Quite a lot of things,” Beau said thoughtfully, as if that idle query was portentous. “Ever since the Thencaster Affair, Athelgar has been much inclined to trust members of my Order and appoint them to weighty posts. The Blades have acquired great influence, these last few years. Of course bound companions must serve their wards without question and some knights fade into obscurity, but enough of them acquire enough influence that even the King might hesitate to antagonize the Order now.”

  “And how would one go about antagonizing it?”

  “Ah!” He turned to her with eyes glinting mischief. “Bartering the King’s Cup away to foreigners might be a good way to start.”

  “The King cares about that?”