Swordpoint (9 page)

Chapter XI

Both Michael Godwin and Lord Horn were to remember the duchess's barge party, but for different reasons. Michael had already put the Horn incident out of his mind as one more unpleasantness in a evening rife with them. To be perfectly correct, he should have sent Horn a formal apology; but he was young, and arrogant, and very much preoccupied with banishing Diane from his mind. It required him, in the days that followed, to plunge into a feverish round of purportedly pleasurable activities: running and riding races, exchanging large sums on their outcomes; going to parties with people one's mother wouldn't know about, and being fitted for clothes to wear to them. It was clear that the duchess didn't want him. She was merely an accomplished flirt. If she were carrying on with Ferris, that was her affair; on reflection Michael realised that to call her reputation to question publicly would only damage his own. There were plenty of other distinguished beauties to be had with far less trouble. He continued to see Bertram Rossillion, and took to flirting with Helena Nevilleson until her brother told him to stop. He had begun the flirtation to annoy the treacherous Olivia, Bertram's wife; by the time Chris caught up with him it had done its work: Lady Olivia was as formal and distant as if she had never stumbled against Michael's coat to whisper to him the time to come to her room. Michael was glad of her distance; when he remembered how he had first encountered Lord Horn, he blamed her for that, too.

It was surprising, with all his other activities, that Michael found time to continue with his sword-fighting lessons. But in fact he found that only in Applethorpe's studio was he entirely free of Diane's image. He was ripe to fall on the day when the Master pushed him.

Standing in front of a group of sweating men, all paired off and glaring at each other after a workout of stroke and counterstroke, Applethorpe had said mildly, 'You all want to be the best. Forget about it. The best already exist, and you'll never touch them. Just be good enough to do what you have to do.'

The young men had shaken their muscles out and laughed, some at the Master's tendency to lecture, others in shamefaced recognition of their own ambition. Lord Michael stared at him, still panting from the exercise. He felt the blood pounding in his head. Of course he was good enough to do what he had to do. He always had been. For the first time he realised that perhaps not everyone was; that some never would be.

After the lesson, his mouth dry, he went up to the Master and asked, 'What did you mean by that, the best?'

Applethorpe held out his arm, and one of his assistants removed his glove for him. He said to Michael, 'The true swordsmen, of course. Men who must earn their living fighting to the death - and who must win every time. There aren't very many of them, of course; most last only a season or two before they die, or retreat into a cosy guard post on the Hill, or take to easier jobs.'

'Where do they come from?'

The master shrugged both shoulders. 'You mean, where did they study? Who knows? I had a teacher; crazy old man, drunk half the time, brilliant when he could see straight. If you need to learn, you do it.' He waved his hand as though swatting away gnats. 'It's not the sort of thing you come here to do. It takes more than two hours a week.' The point struck home.

Soon Michael's friends were making up stories to account for his disappearances: he had a low-bred lover on the other side of town; he had discovered a genius tailor living in some garret___someone who saw him near the stables said it was a horse he was training for the spring races. But nothing could be substantiated. Michael was careful. He went to Applethorpe's every day to drill, and took a private lesson weekly.

Lord Horn's reaction to the events of the fireworks night was to send a letter to Richard St Vier in Riverside. Alec brought it home from Rosalie's on the day after Richard's meeting with Katherine at the Three Keys. Richard had just got up. He didn't have a headache and he didn't feel sick, but he was moving cautiously in case something should begin. He was terribly thirsty, and was drinking well-water.

Alec waved a large parchment at him. 'Letter. For you. It's been at Rosalie's since yesterday. You get more letters than a first-year debutante.'

'Let me look at it.' Richard examined the large crest that sealed the paper. 'Oh, no!' He laughed, recognising it from the gates of the winter ball. 'It's from Lord Horn.'

'I know,' Alec said demurely. When Richard shook the paper it fell open, and he saw that Alec had already slit the wax away from the paper in one clean piece. 'Not bad,' he approved; 'but didn't they teach you how to seal it up again?'

'I generally don't bother,' he answered blithely.

'Well, what does it say?' Richard asked. 'Is he trying to hire me, or does he want to take me to court for messing up his shrubberies?'

'I haven't read it yet. I just wanted to know who it was from. The handwriting is really bad - I bet it's his own. No secretary writes like that.'

'Clever Horn,' Richard observed sarcastically. 'Doesn't want his secretary to know he's trying to hire me, but lets everybody in Riverside see his crest. What does it say?' he asked again; but Alec was laughing too hard to tell him.

'Take a deep breath,' Richard advised. 'I can't understand a word you're saying.'

'It's the spelling!' Alec chortled helplessly. 'Pompous idiot! He thinks - he wants -'

'I am going to put snow down your back,' Richard said. 'It's a sure cure for hysterics.'

Alec read aloud,' "As you may be no doubt aware, my servant Master de Maris encountered grave misfortune in his profession last month - " He means you killed him. Grave misfortune -I wonder if Horn knows about puns?'

'What is he after, an apology? If he wants a new house swordsman, tell him my rates are 20 - no, make it 30 a day. An hour.'

'No, wait, it's not that." - Happily, this may be turned to your advantage, for I am prepared to offer you employment of the sort which I believe you usually engage in, and will no doubt find acceptable."'

'No doubt.' Richard flipped a knife at the ceiling. 'You're right. He's an idiot. Tell him no.'

'Oh, come on, Richard,' Alec said cheerfully. 'Just because he's an idiot doesn't mean his money's no good.'

'You'd be surprised,' St Vier said, retrieving the knife in one high jump. 'I don't like working for stupid people. They can't be trusted. And he doesn't know much, or he'd never have hired de Maris.'

'They don't care who they hire. It's only fashion.'

'I know,' he answered imperturbably. 'Who does he want me to kill?'

'Challenge. Please. We are gentlemen here, even those who cannot spell. Or read.' Alec held the paper at arm's length, squinting at the writing.' "There is a matter of honour which has touched my honour - " No, that's crossed out - "which has touched my spirit, wounding it with a mighty g-gash that may only be..."'

'Steady, Alec.'

'"... only be healed by the sword! The matter of the injury need not concern you. I am prepared to pay you as much as 40 royals as a hiring fee. In return for which sum you will act as my surrogate by means lawful and honourable in the challenge to the death of Lord Michael Godwin of Amberleigh."'

'Who's that?'

'Who cares? You can off him and be home in time for supper with 40 lawful and honourable royals under your belt.'

'Can he fight?'

' "All they know how to do with their swords is poke lapdogs." I believe I quote you directly. I don't suppose this Godwin rises above the other doggie-prodders.'

'Then Hugo can kill him.'

'Ah.' Alec tapped the letter against his palm. 'Shall I tell Lord Horn that?'

'Don't tell Lord Horn anything,' Richard said bluntly. He picked up an iron shot and flexed his wrist against it. 'I don't do business by letter. If he had any brains he would have found that out first.'

'Richard...' Alec was swinging his heel over the arm of the chaise longue with an irresponsible air. 'How much do you suppose it would be worth to Lord Michael to find out that Horn is trying to kill him?'

Richard tried to see his face, but it was hidden by shadow. He asked, 'Why? Have you been losing at dice again?'

'No.'

The swordsman stood poised on the balls of his feet, the shot balanced between his two hands. 'You do understand', he said carefully, 'that my reputation rests on people knowing I will keep their secrets.'

'Oh, I understand,' Alec said blithely. 'But it was stupid of Horn to put it in writing, wasn't it?'

'Very. It's why I'm more interested in working with Ferris and his duchess' - he swung the weight in the air - 'than with Horn. Burn that letter now, will you?'

When Michael wasn't dreaming of the duchess's chilly eyes, he was thinking of ways to disengage a man coming at him in perfect form. They knew him at the school, now. A couple of the other serious students, servants training to be guards, wanted him to come drinking with them after, and he was running out of excuses. It wasn't that he disdained their company; in fact, he liked them for being serious about the same thing that he was; but while he was confident of being taken for a commoner through the rigour of lessons, he wasn't sure he could keep it up socially. He was learning to speak more quickly in their company - and had, in fact, recently alarmed his manservant by rapping out the demand that his boots be cleaned 'any which way'. Michael amused himself around the city by singling out shops he could pretend he worked in; by handling precious stones and imagining he spent his days selecting them for clients instead of for himself... but it never could feel real to him.

Michael was not entirely surprised when the Master drew him aside after his lesson to speak with him. He had been asking for an additional weekly lesson, but so far Applethorpe had only nodded absently and said that he would see. Now Michael offered to take him out and buy him some dinner so they could discuss it in comfort.

'No,' said the Master, looking off at a tall window at the end of the studio. 'I think we can talk in here.'

He led the way into a small room originally designed for the old stable's tack. Now it was cluttered with gloves, throwing-knives, pieces of canvas and other detritus of the academy. They sat down on a couple of targets that gently oozed stuffing.

Applethorpe rubbed his chin with his fist. Then he looked at Michael. 'You want to be a swordsman,' he said.

'Umm,' said Michael - a habit he was supposed to have had trained out of him at an early age. There was no question what the Master was talking about: men who earn their living fighting to the death - and who must win every time.

'You could do it,' said Vincent Applethorpe.

A series of inadequate responses flashed through Michael's head: Oh, really ?__What makes you say that}... May I ask if you're serious?... He realised he was blinking like a fish. 'Oh,' he said. 'You think?'

Swordsmen were not expected to be masters of drawing-room conversation. Applethorpe answered as though he were making perfect sense, 'I think you're suited. And I know you're interested. You should begin at once.'

'I should...' Michael repeated numbly.

The Master began speaking with the terse excitement he used in the thick of a good lesson: 'Of course it's a bit late for you -How old are you, 19? 20?' He was older than that, but the easy life of a city noble had spared his youth. 'You have the feel, though, the movement, that's what's important now,' Applethorpe rushed on without waiting for him to answer. 'If you're willing to work, you'll have the skills as well, and then you'll be a match for any of them!'

Michael managed, finally, to come up with a complete sentence. 'Does it work that way? I thought it took years.'

'Of course it does. But some of it you've already got. You had the stance on your first lesson, many of them take months just on that. Still, you’ll have to work, every day, for hours on end if you want to be able to take on the others and stand a chance to live. But if you'll take it seriously, if you'll let me teach you, I can give that to you.'

Michael stared at him. The Master's one hand was clenched on his knee. Michael was arrested by the sight of the swordsman's body, perfectly poised, tensed for an answer. He thought sadly, Now I have to tell him. I've come to the end of this particular game; I have to tell him who I am. I can't possibly be a swordsman.

Applethorpe studied his face. The tension left the Master, his enthusiasm snuffed out like a candlewick. 'Of course, this may not be important to you."

It came to Michael then that he was a fool to think that Applethorpe hadn't known all along who he was.

'Master Applethorpe,' he said, 'I'm honoured. Stunned, but honoured.'

'Good,' said the Master with his customary mildness. 'Then let us begin.'

Chapter XII

St Vier's answer, when Lord Horn received it, was soon reduced to a crumpled rag on the floor. In an eccentric handwriting distinguished by strong vertical strokes, it read:

Thank you for your kind offers. We have enjoyed reading them even more than you intended. Unfortunately, the job in question does not really suit our current needs. We wish you luck with it elsewhere. (Your future letters will be returned unopened.)

It was signed, 'The St Vier Duelling Corporation, serving Riverside and Gentry of Distinction.'

It was enough to make him stop thinking about Michael Godwin for a while. Wrapped in mute fury, Lord Horn went off to salve his pride with the prestigious company of the Lords Halliday, Montague, and other notable gentlemen at a dinner party given by the Dragon Chancellor.

Tomorrow night, Ferris would have his answer. He had given St Vier enough time to think the job through; enough time to become eager. Once the swordsman took the advance payment he was committed to the venture, and would wait until he was instructed to strike. Once St Vier was committed, Ferris was going to let him wait, as close as he could come to the Council election. It gave Ferris time to fan the Karleigh/Halliday feud. It gave St Vier time to learn Halliday's routines. There must be no obstacle to the formal challenge being met and Halliday heroically dispatched: Ferris planned to inherit a martyr's crown. By then some of Halliday's supporters might have learned of his favouring Ferris, so Ferris could take the Crescent before suspicion lit on him. Once he had it, suspicion would light where he willed it to.

Anticipation heightened Ferris's senses, sharpening his appetite for all activities the way that when he was a child the most mundane events of the days before New Year's and its presents had been inexplicably thrilling: the ice breaking on the surface of the washbasin was like a promised revelation; the untying of a shirt savoured of unwrapping packages; and every night's blowing out the candle brought the glad day one flame closer. Lord Ferris found some of the same savour in being Dragon Chancellor: something was always about to happen, and every action was invested with meaning. As he sat now at the head of his table, surrounded by wealthy and powerful men and the remains of the dinner they had shared, he cracked a nut between his strong white fingers and smiled to feel the thrill it undeniably gave him. One by one they departed, for bed, for other engagements, until all that remained were the Lords Halliday and Horn. Ferris knew that Halliday was hoping to talk to him after the last of his guests had gone; what Horn wanted only Horn knew. Perhaps he simply had nowhere else to go, and didn't want to return to his empty house.

The ornate dining room seemed to swallow the three men; even rank cannot stand up to architecture. Lord Ferris suggested that they adjourn to a sitting room to drink hot punch. Ferris was a bachelor, at 32 considered one of the prize catches of the city. The sitting room of his townhouse remained as his mother had decorated it when she first came to the city as a bride, in the bulky, comfortable furniture and deep colours of the previous generation. Although he himself preferred it, Lord Horn had banished the best of his old pieces to his country house, where style mattered less.

A young woman came in to tend to the fire. Ferris smiled when he saw her, inclining his head so that he could encompass all her movements with his one eye. She was broad-hipped, big-breasted, and handled the iron tools deftly, but something about her suggested malnourishment - maybe only her small height, or the tight way she clutched her plain skirts back from the fire. As she curtsied to her master at the door Ferris said, in his lovely speaker's voice that swayed the Council of Lords, 'Katherine, stay. We are all a little drunk; we need someone sober to look after the fire.'

Her eyes darted nervously to the other two lords and back to him. 'I'll get my mending,' she said finally.

But Lord Ferris raised one elegant hand. 'Indeed you will not,' he drawled affably. 'You will sit there - there, under the mirror, where the light catches your hair, and I will send for John to bring you a glass of sherry. Unless you'd prefer something else?'

'Sherry will be nice,' she said, settling into the chair he had indicated, across the room from the gentlemen; 'thank you.'

Her voice was flat, the vowels clipped and curt. Lower city. But she moved with assurance, a certain flair to the wrist and the set of the head. It didn't occur to either of the visitors to identify Riverside haughtiness; but then, neither of them had ever been there. They were surprised to see Ferris behaving this way - he must be drunker than he appeared. Bringing a mistress into a bachelor gathering was not unheard-of; but it was unlike Ferris, and inappropriate for the company. If she were only a servant, it was unkind to impose their society on her.

Ferris smiled disarmingly at his guests, inviting them to excuse his whimsey. 'A touch of feminine beauty', he explained, 'is essential to the after-dinner drawing room.'

'If we speak of feminine beauty,' Lord Horn put in expertly, 'it is a shame that Lady Halliday is not with us.'

But Lord Halliday resisted being drawn into the conversation. He had had reports of the Helmsleigh weavers that disturbed him; nothing that wouldn't keep until morning, but he would sleep easier knowing that Ferris was worrying about it too. So he kept quiet, in the hope that Horn would be content with centre stage long enough to talk himself out and leave. The woman in the chair was now ignored: a momentary whim of Ferris's, that he seemed to have forgotten about.

Ferris was enjoying himself immensely. Everyone in the room was now confused except for him. He always took pleasure in Horn's company, for what he knew were ignoble reasons: Horn's dullness, his relentless second-rate innuendo reinforced Ferris's estimation of his own social cleverness and political subtlety. He could run conversational rings around Horn, make him jump through hoops, bat him across the floor like a cat with its food. It was a private pleasure: the trick was not to let Horn know he was doing it.

Katherine folded her hands in her lap. She knew that Ferris was not so drunk as he was pretending to be. It was nice to sit down and rest, but she was quietly bored, watching the nobles showing off for each other. Lord Horn and her master were avidly discussing swordsmen, although they didn't seem to know much about the subject.

'Bah,' Horn was saying. 'They have no power. They do what you pay them to, and that's all.'

'But,' said the younger man, 'should they choose not to accept your commission... ?'

'Mine?' Horn said sharply; but Ferris's one-eyed countenance was as benign as it could be. He was looking at the girl, smiling.

'Oh, anyone's,' Ferris answered. 'A figure of speech.'

'Starve 'em out,' Horn said. 'If one won't take your money, another will.'

'You don't think it's dangerous, then, to have someone knowing your plans not being in your employ?'

'Dangerous?' Horn repeated, his face flushing with the thought. 'Not unless he goes over to the other side. Which isn't likely, knowing the way they work. If he betrays you, he'll never get another job.'

Ferris twisted a gold ring on his hand. 'That is certainly true.'

'It's not so much dangerous - ' Horn warmed to the subject, assured now that Ferris knew nothing of his recent disappointment with St Vier, and happy to be able to complain about it all on a theoretical level - 'not so much dangerous as it is disgraceful. After all, no one's asking them to think. They don't have to rule in the city, they don't have the care of the land in their hands. They've no need to concern themselves with the judgements of their betters. They just take the money, and do the job. Look -my tailor doesn't refuse to make me a riding jacket because he doesn't like horses! It's like that. You let them start thinking they have the right of refusal - '

'But they do have the right.' Basil Halliday shifted in his soft chair, unable to keep still any longer. 'That at least you must grant them, Asper. They're risking their lives for us, poor fools;

it's up to us to make it worth their while, so that they won't refuse the work.'

Ferris looked sympathetically at Lord Horn. 'Yes, but rejection is never pleasant,' he said softly. 'No matter who it's from. Asper is right, really: it all comes down to a question of power. Do we have the power, or do they?'

'They have the swords.' Lord Halliday smiled down at his hands; 'We have everything else. It comes out fairly even, though, with the tip of one pointed at your throat.'

'Every man lives at swordspoint,' Ferris intoned.

Horn laughed by reflex, scenting an epigram.

'I mean,' Lord Ferris elaborated, 'the things he cares for. Get them in your grasp, and you have the man - or woman - in your power. Threaten what they love, and they are absolutely at your mercy: you have a very sharp blade pressed to their throat.'

'And so,' Lord Halliday picked it up, 'you can disarm someone empty-handed. Take honour, for example: if you held mine in your power, I would have to think twice about refusing you anything.'

'But honour', Horn broke in, 'is a property of nobles, not of common swordsmen - at least, as we understand it. For them, it's a commodity they market along with their swords, and hang on the chimney with them when they go home to their trulls and their drink and their petty quarrels. They live like dogs in Riverside, caring for nothing: they change their women as we change our coats, and waste our money as fast as we can give it to them.'

'But you're wrong,' Ferris said softly. 'There is no man living who cares for nothing.' His head was turned to face Horn, but his good eye was on the girl. 'All you have to do is to find it.'

She downed the last of her sherry in one swift gulp.

'He may not want to admit it - who does? - but even in Riverside human vices bespeak human passions.'

'No one's denying that.' Basil Halliday spoke calmly. From the tension of the girl across the room, he saw that the exercise in philosophy had ceased to be a game - maybe had never been one. He recognised the impulse in Ferris to play with the power he had been given; it was something one went through at a certain stage. Ferris's end seemed to be domestic. It was not for Halliday to judge another's personal relationships: everyone in the city was strange, if you looked deeply enough. But he saw no need to be a silent accessory.

So Halliday continued, 'But Horn is right. Ours is a different kind of honour, because we hold a different power. No lord acts as one man only: he has the power of the state behind him, the power of his birth and wealth. I should say it was beneath our honour to use them in a personal quarrel.'

Ferris turned his head to look at him. 'That is why swordsmen are so useful, my lord: they represent private enterprise. Indeed, as Horn was saying before, a swordsman's honour extends only so far as he may be trusted.'

'And no further?' Halliday asked. 'What about what it means to the man himself?'

Ferris smiled his thin-lipped smile. 'There's some disagreement on that point. But why not ask Katherine? She's our local expert on swordsmen's honour.'

The small woman got up, making for the hearth. But Ferris stopped her. 'Sit down, Katherine. The fire is going fine by itself. Tell us about the home life of swordsmen.'

She sat stiffly, her spread fingers clenched on her knees. Her eyes on the floor, she said, 'It's like what the other gentleman said. Drinking and dicing and fighting.'

Ferris sat back, enjoying himself. 'I hear they do us a service, pruning out the undesirables of Riverside.'

'There's a lot of killing that goes on,' she said. 'That's why you don't want to go there.'

'But their women are safe, surely? There must be something they cherish.'

A grim smile spread across her face, as though she'd just got the point of a joke. 'I knew a man once who killed his ... mistress.'

'Out of jealousy?'

'No, in a fight.'

'A swordsman with a temper.'

'Hers was worse, much worse. Nobody blamed him, really; or if they did, there wasn't much they could do about it. We all knew her.'

Even Halliday sat transfixed. Riversiders were seldom found as house servants; under her humility a wildness burned, the fear of a trapped animal.

'What about the man,' Ferris asked. 'Is he dead too?'

'Hardly. He killed two swordsmen in a garden last month.'

Horn's breath caught. 'Despicable!' he muttered. 'First he killed my house swordsman, now he's murdering defenceless women.'

'Not the sort of man', Ferris said, 'who seems to care for anything. Probably wise of him, considering the position it would put him in otherwise.'

'He was well enough cared for himself a few years back, before he got so fussy about commissions,' Horn said with sudden rancour. 'Of course, I couldn't say whether he took money for it...you know how they are when they're fresh from the country: young, and easily impressed.'

'Asper,' Basil Halliday said quietly. 'The woman's a friend of his.'

But Katherine was smiling at Lord Horn. 'Yes,' she said, 'those were wonderful times. He used to bring flowers back from the Hill with him. Kind of a shame he ever took up with... that woman as he did. But he's turned his back on Riverside and the Hill now: got himself a student with no money, and he kills for him for free.'

Ferris too turned to smile at Horn. 'I suppose vices learned in youth stay with you. He was not in your set, I take it?'

Horn allowed his lip to curl slightly. 'I have never approved of chasing after swordsmen. There is no... dignity in it.'

'You're right,' said Ferris.

Katherine got up hastily, bunching her skirts in her fists, and bobbed a curtsy to Lord Ferris. 'Will that be all, sir?'

'Yes, thank you.' Ferris smiled the melancholy smile his lean face was suited for. 'You look tired. Forgive me for keeping you. Yes, that's enough. Good night.'

Lord Halliday felt strangely tired himself. The evening had not been pleasant: something was going on between Ferris and Horn, something petty concerning swordsmen - and sex, probably knowing Horn's proclivities. He had a distaste of staying further in the other men's company. Confessing to himself that Horn had outlasted him, he rose to go. Horn, naturally, followed him. As they waited for their coats, they heard a commotion at the door. The messenger was looking for him, for Lord Halliday, had been to his house already and could brook no delay -