The Black Swan (22 page)

She stood before him in the simple black silk dress that was the easiest to summon and dismiss, determined to learn their destination before he could change the subject. “How much longer?” she demanded, before he could say anything. “How much longer will we be traveling? The others want to know, and so do I; we're all exhausted every night, and
I
don't think we're getting enough rest to recover before we take off again.”

He laughed indulgently, as if she were a querulous child, weary from staying up past her bedtime, and not a woman pushed to the end of her endurance every day for the past week. More than once she had been forced to bolster the failing strength of her charges with her own slim resources, with no end in sight. At times she had felt deep regret that she had ever wished to be given the responsibilities of a partner in her father's work.

Now, as he chuckled at her, she choked down anger mingled with resentment. Why should he laugh at her?
She
had been the one doing all the work, not him!

“Tomorrow,” he said, as she struggled with her emotions. “Or rather, tomorrow night. We will arrive at the place where I intend to allow Odette to attempt to prove herself, and where I bring about the downfall of a queen as corrupt as Jezebel and as evil as Lilith.” His smile held a quality that suddenly made Odile feel uneasy. “She means to betray her own son, her own blood—she believes that I will help her in her scheme. She has no notion that I have merely placed before her the poisoned dainty; she will gorge upon it, and destroy herself in her greed.”

“And Odette?” Odile asked, feeling that there was something wrong, but unable to imagine what it could be.

“Ah, Odette will test her virtue against the son, who shares the queen's tainted blood,” von Rothbart said dismissively. “If God in His mercy deems that she has redeemed herself through contrition and suffering, which I doubt, then she will succeed. If not, things will remain as they are.” He shrugged, for the subject was clearly of no importance to him. “But that is for the future. For now, you may set your mind at rest, daughter, for just after sunset on the morrow, your journeying will be at an end.”

Odile sighed, and let her anger sweep away. Her father was right in one respect; the only important thing at the moment was that the end of the journey was in sight. She could discuss her grievances later.

“I will leave you to watch over the flock as usual,” he continued, unaware that he rewoke her resentment, which smoldered just beneath the surface of her carefully cultivated mask. “I will come to guide you when the first light is in the sky, for we will need the full day and a little beyond to reach our goal.”

With that, and without waiting to hear if she had any objections to his desertion, he cast his own magic over himself, and transformed into his owl form. With his gaze locked intently on the darkening sky, he crouched, then leaped upward, unfurling his wings in a tremendous downward thrust that drove him into the blackness above the trees.

Frustrated and still seething over her father's treatment, Odile turned her attention toward the flock, now wearily foraging among the water weeds. She clenched her jaw, as angry for their sake as for her own.

This sympathy had grown over the course of the journey; she had never been thrown so closely into their company before, and to her surprise they weren't nearly as dull as she had always thought. Since the night in the swamp when she had built a shelter for them, Odette was opening up to her, albeit slowly, and as their “queen” lost some of her suspicion, the rest of the flock followed. There was surprisingly little in the way of complaints about this journey; the entire lot of them seemed to think that it was worth anything just for the
chance
of winning their freedom.

As they cautiously warmed to her and included her in their conversations (or at least stopped guarding their words when she was around), so Odile slowly gained sympathy for their situation. Their plight was especially poignant now, when they were almost too tired to eat when they landed, sometimes so weary that they fell asleep on the bank before the moon rose, and spent all of their brief transformation still in slumber. There was something incredibly pitiful about the poor things, curled up on the damp grass in their thin silk dresses, oblivious to everything around them but shivering in their sleep. They would have been far more comfortable as swans, and it was a measure of her father's indifference to their welfare that he didn't simply arrange for the spell to remain in force so that they could at least sleep in peace.

As soon as von Rothbart left, the flock drifted toward the shore. One by one, they clambered out onto the shore; watching how hard it was for them to accomplish even that simple task because of their weariness, Odile seethed with further resentment.

But anger was useful in this case; it gave her more energy than usual, enough to reinforce her drained magical power. With that extra boost, she coaxed a rough semicircle of bushes to grow and twine into a windbreak, created another of her flameless “fires” in the center, and induced the grass within the windbreak to grow thick and lush. The swans saw what she was doing and gathered close to her, warming themselves at the fire and tearing tiredly at the grass until the moon rose.

She began summoning food from the manor; she was determined to do what she could tonight to bolster their strength as well as hers. As they assumed their proper shapes, she thrust bread and cheese and sliced meat at them, urging them to eat. “Father intends a long flight tomorrow,” she told them. “But he promises that we'll be where he wants us when he guides us to ground, so we'll all get a proper rest at last.”

The flock accepted her offerings without hesitation—another sign of improvement in their relationship. “He gave us no time to forage tonight, and what will he allow us tomorrow?” asked Katherine in dismay. “I am so tired now I'll never wake before dawn!”

“That's why I'm bringing food for you,” Odile pointed out. “I'll risk his anger if he finds out.” She passed Katerina a portion, and the young woman nodded as she held out her hands for it.

“If we do not eat, we won't have the strength to fly, and he will be angry at all of us,” Odette said shrewdly. “Thus far, we have given him no reason to be angry with the flock, but I should not care to thwart him even by a little so near to his goal.”

Odile nodded, as she took a bite of her own meal. One of the little ones nibbled her bread daintily, and offered a shy “Thank you,” that pleased her a great deal, although she did not show it.

The flock ate what Odile provided with birdlike appetites—which was to say, they devoured an amazing amount of food before they were sated; not quite their own weight, perhaps, but certainly far more than one might expect. That was hardly surprising, since they hadn't eaten all day, and by now they must be starving. By the time they finished eating, Odile was even more exhausted than before. If she'd had to do anything more with magic, even something so simple as lighting a candle, she wouldn't have had the strength.

For that matter, I don't have the strength to keep my eyes open much longer.
She knew that after all her efforts today, not the least of which was the fetching of so much food, she was actually closer to dropping into sleep than the rest were.
I can hardly keep my eyes open, and the warm fire is only making it harder to stay awake.
She was supposed to be watching the flock, but how could she do that if she was asleep?

I'm not going to watch them,
she decided.
Where are they going to go? We're in the middle of a forest, and they're already so tired they couldn't manage to run if a bear was chasing them! Even if they tried to slip off into the forest, they'd transform back into swans before they got very far.
She considered her own soft-soled, silk shoes, identical to theirs, and laughed at herself for worrying. Those shoes wouldn't protect against anything, and after a quarter of an hour of walking in the woods, shoes and feet both would be ruined. Even though some of the flock
had
been peasants, used to going barefoot in all weather but winter, by now they all had equally sensitive delicate feet. You had only to look at their hands to know that, for you couldn't have told anymore which were the fine ladies and which had scrubbed floors.

She yawned, as the others huddled closer to the fire and chatted softly among themselves, speculating about their destination. They no longer watched her out of the corners of their eyes and kept their conversation to inconsequentials around her; their speculations were remarkably intelligent. She decided to lie down in the soft grass, pillowing her head on her arms, listening with her eyes closed.

“He won't have us too near people, I wouldn't think,” someone said. “He doesn't want people to know about us, or see us transform.”

“But if he expects me to be able to prove myself, our home will have to be within reach of people. A few at least.” That was Odette.

“I don't suppose we can expect a castle or something we could live in, could we?” one of the younger girls asked wistfully. “Will he have a manor there, do you think?”

One of the black swans, older and less hopeful, replied with a bitter laugh. “We'll be fortunate if there's a ruined barn or a cave we can shelter in,” she said. “Wherever we go, it
will
be untenanted land, probably as forested as this place. People don't build castles in the wilderness.”

“No, but they do build hunting lodges, and that might be the answer,” Odette replied. “There
will
be a lake. We'll need one as swans, and he's never taken us to a place where there wasn't water. There might be a hunting lodge on that lake, and whoever uses it would be the person I am supposed to win over.”

Odile privately thought that there would be no such thing, but decided not to say anything. Once they weren't using all their strength just to fly from one overnight stopping place to the next, she'd be able to husband her resources and
create
a place for all of them to use, even if her father couldn't be bothered with anyone's comfort but his own.
The nights are getting colder, and I have no intention of spending them in anything other than a decent room with a fire and comfortable furniture. And I'm going to sleep during the day in a real bed, even if the swans don't need one.
Once again, she felt amusement at her own expense.
And here am I, planning on creating a shelter for the entire flock. I suppose I wasn't as fond of my own company as I thought.

The speculations drifted on to other things, and she let herself drift into sleep.

Siegfried reflected with a great deal of amusement that he had not been nearly so virtuous as his mother and her pet minstrel thought. He had not given up women or drink—well, not entirely, anyway. He'd just given up on the single-minded pursuit of both, rediscovering in the process the enjoyment he'd savored in scholastic pursuits before he'd been introduced to the first two pleasures.

Wine was always available, of course, but now he drank it to savor the taste and aroma, not to get as drunk as possible as quickly as feasible. He discovered, when he no longer kept specific mistresses, that there were plenty of wenches among the servants who flung themselves into his path and bed now and again in hopes of generous presents. He didn't disappoint them in the generosity of his presents, and they didn't disappoint him either. He made it very clear to all of them that he had no intention of keeping another woman—or women—but that didn't seem to make any difference to them. It was a bargain honestly kept on both sides.

And although he (and by extension, Benno and Wolfgang) were more moderate in their late-night wine-bibbling
cum
discussions, by no means had they taken to having the discussions without the wine to lubricate their words. The palace cellarer was happier; fewer bottles went missing on a night, and Siegfried found that the less they drank, the better their conversations were. Once again, it seemed a good trade for a slight sacrifice.

Nevertheless, there were some profound, though less visible, changes in his life. Most of them had to do with the way he conducted himself.

Only he knew how hard it was to keep his mouth shut and accept unasked-for advice and lectures from the “old men” of the Court, especially when the lectures had mostly to do with how depraved and degenerate the younger generation was. The only reward he got out of holding his tongue was that when he responded by looking sober and nodding, the lectures were notably shorter than they had been when he made witty retorts. The counter to that was that now the old goats considered it their privilege to deliver the lectures more often. He also had headaches more often now, caused by the strain of keeping his thoughts to himself.