Singer from the Sea (24 page)

He said through clenched teeth, “Well, I’ll let her know what to expect. I’ll have her run down by nightfall, I assure you, and all your good offices will not win my forgiveness. She may well have upset some long-considered plan of the Lord Paramount. She may have been brought here for this particular reason. I don’t suppose that occurred to you?”

He glared at her, barely noticing how her expression hardened, how her lips thinned into an angry line. She rose, went to the tall windows opening on the terrace and flung one of them wide, sailing out through it. The Marshal followed her into the open air, steam rising from his forehead.

The Duchess turned to confront him. “Tell me, Marshal, does your daughter have a mind?”

“Of course she has a mind. I would have thought until now, a rather good one.”

“But she is forbidden to use it, is that it?”

“She is certainly not allowed to use it to disobey me!”

“Oh. Had you forbidden her to fall in love with Aufors Leys? I had thought it was you who introduced them.”

Fuming, the Marshal leaned across the stone baluster and spoke into the air. “Madam, you are serpent worded.
Your sentences fairly slither. You know full well what I mean, and you know more than that. You know this … defection may have set my own life at risk.”

“You curse Genevieve where you shouldn’t and deny her credit she has earned,” she murmured, bringing her lips close to him once more. “Her going has not harmed you, but her staying here might well have! If you value your life, Marshal, you will attend to what I say!
I heard the exchange at dinner last night, every word of it.
So long as you remember that Yugh Delganor had not actually asked you for your daughter’s hand, no matter how he may have hinted at or alluded to or implied an interest, so long as you did not certainly know what he intended, so long as you had not agreed to any such intention, so long as you had not told Genevieve of his intentions,
you
are not at fault, nor is
she.’’

He stared at her, chewing on his lower lip, his face only very gradually losing its flush as his icy lizard’s mind disengaged from its choleric tantrum to survey the battlefield.

“On the other hand,” she went on icily, “if she had stayed here, and if you had promised her to Yugh Delganor, and if she had been physically or mentally unable to fulfil that promise, then your life might well have been at risk.”

“She would not have been unable,” he snarled.

“Marshal, you may command men into battle. You cannot command them not to die in battle. The same is true here. She might well have died of it.”

He frowned. “This is hysteria!”

“Am I to infer you wish to see her dead?”

He made a gesture of disdain. “Bah, they’re fragile things, women. Few of them live long. One or two children, they fade like flowers, which is why we give them their youth. We never wish to see them dead, and yet they die. It’s their nature.”

She drew herself up, like a tower. “Don’t talk foolishness, sir. I deny your judgment of women. The village women I meet are often in their eighties or nineties, outliving their husbands by many years. They are not fragile. They do not fade. Why is it not their nature?”

He fumed, chewing at the inside of his cheek as at a cud. “We’re inbred, I suppose. We of the nobility.”

“If you do not wish to consider Genevieve, consider this,” she murmured icily. “Though a royal wife may spread ephemeral favor among her relatives, once she is dead, the favor rots with her.”

He stared. “Nonsense.”

“I do not argue nonsense,” she said. “You may check for yourself. Find out what has happened to previously favored families of royal or noble wives who are now dead! If you are more concerned for yourself than for your daughter, then consider yourself.” She lowered her voice once more. “Those close to the Prince do not last long, nor do their kin. Your best future will be found in service to the
Lord Paramount;
your best chance at survival will be to keep the Prince at arm’s length.”

“He’ll ask for her. The Lord Paramount. Or the Prince.”

“Until one of them does, you wouldn’t think her departure important enough to concern either of them, would you? You certainly wouldn’t
lend
it importance by bringing the matter to their attention.”

He stared, glared, shook his head. “Suppose not, no. Though His Majesty did ask me to bring her here.”

“But you wouldn’t trouble His Majesty if she were indisposed, or if she went home to Langmarsh for a few weeks. She hasn’t taken up her duties yet, and after all, we don’t know where she went or when she may return, so you have no real information to give them. If they ask you about her, why then you tell them what happened. The silly girl was frightened by something that happened at dinner last night, and she ran away, leaving a note with her friend, the Duchess.”

“When I brought Delganor to her, back at school, she didn’t mention to me she was in love.”

“I doubt she was, then.”

Behind them, in the dining room, the door opened and Aufors Leys came in. Hearing this, the Marshal and the Duchess reentered the room, closing the tall window behind them.

Aufors’s eyes widened when he saw the Duchess. He bowed. “Sir, you sent for me?”

The Marshal’s eyebrows went up. “So you’re here, eh?”

“Of course, sir. I have several days’ leave planned, as you know, but I didn’t intend to depart until this evening.”

“Never mind, never mind. I had the impression you might have gone away somewhere.”

“No, sir,” said Aufors, managing to look extremely puzzled. “Though I did oversleep this morning.”

“And where are you going for your leave, Colonel?” asked the Duchess.

“An old friend of mine is being married in Reusel-on-Mere, and he’s asked me to stand up for him.”

“Right,” snarled the Marshal. “You told me, weeks ago. Well, well, go shave yourself. You look disorderly. We’ll talk later.”

“Yes, sir.” And Aufors Leys departed, taking note in passing of the Duchess’s quietly triumphant expression.

She would have been less pleased if she had heard the Marshal’s commands to an aide, given soon after she departed. All roads out of Havenor were to be scoured for a runaway daughter. If found, she was to be brought home to him, at once. An intelligent women herself, the Duchess had overestimated the Marshal’s intelligence. Not an ambitious women, she had underestimated his ambition. So are many misread by other’s lights. The Marshal did not for one moment believe that a family alliance to Prince Delganor could bring him, the Marshal, anything but good. The Duchess was obviously a woman to whom the covenants meant nothing. Her warnings were ridiculous, the result of pique or jealousy or female connivance. Women were always warning you against this or that. Genevieve’s mother had been full of such warnings. No doubt the Duchess would have preferred the Prince for one of her own daughters. Perhaps she still did.

Having assumed this, the Marshal rested on the assumption as on a rock, without bothering to turn it over to see what lived beneath it. He particularly did not ask whether the Duchess had a marriageable daughter, for he preferred not to know that she did not.

*   *   *

While all this scurry went on in the house of the Marshal, the Lord Paramount of Haven, guarded as always by two Aresians, sat down to a late breakfast, only to be interrupted by the arrival of Yugh Delganor, who seemed in an unusual state of annoyance.

“The girl’s run off,” the Prince said, with an angry grimace.

With well-feigned innocence, His Majesty looked up from his imported quail, served on a bed of Farsabian rice. “What girl?”

“The one we planned for me. Langmarsh’s daughter. My listener heard the Duchess of Merdune telling the Marshal about it earlier this morning. Seemingly, I frightened her rather badly at dinner last night.”

The Lord Paramount had known this for hours, but he did not say so. “Ah. Well! Does this upset your plans for her?”

The Prince snarled. “It could well do. Though I doubt she’ll be hard to find. Her father’s already sent people after her, as have I.”

“Who did she elope with? That young man, the equerry, what’s his name?”

“Colonel Leys? No.” He barked laughter. “I wouldn’t have minded if she’d eloped with someone. That would have been easy enough to fix. One of my men tells me that someone bought passage for a young woman on the Reusel packet, the someone much resembling Colonel Leys, so she’s probably prevailed upon him to help her run off home to Langmarsh House.”

The Lord Paramount mused, “Your business is scheduled for later this year, Delganor.”

The Prince shrugged. “There’s more than one way to crack a craylet, Your Majesty. So she’s run off home. We’ll give her a little time to calm down. Either her father will round her up, or you’ll discover that she’s displeased you by leaving without permission, and my men will find her for you. Under threat of royal displeasure, our subjects are usually biddable enough.”

His Majesty nodded and smiled while marking down in memory what Delganor had just said. In the Lord Paramount’s
pocket was a small, off-world machine on which everything anyone said to him was recorded. In the Lord Paramount’s luxurious rooms was another little machine into which, every evening, the Lord Paramount unloaded those parts of his day’s record that qualified as “Delganor’s presumptions.” He did not wish to forget even one of them, and certainly Delganor’s use of the words “our subjects” was a presumption, if not a damned arrogance.

He smiled again, “You’re very clever, Delganor. Really, extremely clever.”

“Your Majesty is too kind,” the Prince demurred, though with little sense of satisfaction. Of course he was clever. He was so clever that the former royal heir had died “accidentally,” and this old fool thought it really had been an accident. When this old fool found himself dying earlier than expected, as the Prince planned he should, he’d probably think that an accident as well. Delganor liked making such plans, which he found juicy and savorsome in anticipation. So far, all his advancements had been covert. Covert they would continue to be until he himself was Lord Paramount.

“Will the Marshal confide to you about his daughter running off?” wondered the Lord Paramount in the same innocent tone. “Full of blustering apology?”

“He’d be a fool to put himself in the wrong,” murmured the Prince. “Though his naïveté continues to surprise me. Even though he was orphaned at an early age and had no father or uncle to enlighten him, you’d think a man his age would have taken notice by now, would have asked a few questions, would have attended a few Tribunal meetings and started looking about for a candidate of his own. Instead he blunders about like an ape in an apiary, infuriating the inhabitants and missing all the sweetness! Well, if he takes good counsel, he’ll not say a word. And later, when we get righteously angry at him, he’ll be all surprised innocence, or do his best to act so.”

“Ah,” said the Lord Paramount, with every show of disappointment. “I had hoped we might have a bit of excitement out of it.”

“Not soon.” The Prince smiled grimly. “Eventually,
yes, if Your Majesty would like to take part in the final act of our drama.”

“Thank you, no,” murmured the Lord Paramount, leaning his head on his hand and smiling a secretive, bland smile. “Not at my time of life. Thank you. No.”

The Prince missed the secretive smile. The Aresian guards, who missed nothing that happened in that room, did not.

T
HE
D
UCHESS HAD PLANNED
G
ENEVIEVE’S ESCAPE AS WELL
as she was able; Garth Sentith was as appropriate an escort as could have been found even with longer notice; but however thoughtful and sensible the plan, it lacked the necessary redundancies to cope with disaster, and disaster struck before they were well gone from High Haven.

When they had come only a few miles outside Havenor, Genevieve’s horse slipped on an icy rock and lamed the right front leg. Garth Sentith put Genevieve on his own horse, put the horse’s pack and light saddle on his own back, and turned the lame horse back toward the city, letting it find its own way home, which it would in good time, lame or not. He would, he said, hire another horse at the next post.

The post was a considerable distance off. Their night’s travel on foot brought them only partway to the border between High Haven and the Tail of Merdune, and they were both weary by the time light oozed up over the eastern hills. As soon as it was fight enough to see by, Garth began looking for a place to hide Genevieve during the daylight hours.

“Do you think someone will be coming after me?” Genevieve asked.

“I don’t know,” he answered. “But if they do, we want to be prepared for it. The horse is the problem. It isn’t
easy to hide a horse, so I’ll look for a place where I can be more or less out in the open with the horse and you can be well hid. That way, the horse is explained innocently enough, and since there’s no connection between you and me, they’re unlikely to suspect anything.”

Genevieve agreed that this sounded sensible, and when they came across a wooded area at the foot of an east-facing cliff with a good many cavelets in it—though most of them were mere bubbles—they set up camp as Garth had suggested. The area was obviously often used by travelers, for there were circles of blackened rock, dried saplings laid across lower branches to provide framework for shelters, and even a small stack of firewood ready collected under the lee of a large boulder. Genevieve selected a small cave hidden behind some boulders about twenty yards away, where she put her own saddle and pack.

At the back of the cave a fallen stone made a shadowed space, and she lit a lantern to scan for unwelcome inhabitants before unrolling her bedding there. The flame wavered and smoked, as though in a strong current of air. A few moments of poking and prying established that air was indeed coming from the back of the shadowed area where a cylindrical opening extended into the cliff, like the neck of a bottle. The air coming from this duct was surprisingly warm, which made her curious enough to squirm into it, pushing the lantern ahead of her. Two body lengths in, she found further movement blocked by a rusty grille some three feet across. Beyond it, something rustled and stilled, and rustled again.