The Fall of The Kings (Riverside) (18 page)

Wat brought a pitcher of cider and a large iron key, which Greenleaf picked up and dropped without ceremony down the neck of Finn’s shirt. Finn gasped and twitched. Miraculously, the flow of blood stopped.

“Cheer up,” said Smith. “It’s Harvest Night, and a full moon at dusk. Time to encourage the rabbits and deer, eh? Is your Horn ready? I know mine is!” He was a large, bluff youth, thick as a northland oak, and even coarser grained.

Finn managed a smile. “Had I the power of the Horn in me, I’d have beaten that Campion.”

“Don’t be a fool,” Greenleaf said wearily. “For all his titles and his land, Campion was raised in Riverside. He could have killed you. You serve Northern honor better by keeping your tongue between your teeth just now. We all do.”

The Companions nodded. Ever since that lunatic Blood-wood had come down from Harden and set the city by the ears with his public demand for the restoration of the monarchy, they’d been treading carefully. You saw things differently, living down South. The kings were gone, and the wizards with them. What they’d left behind was mighty, though, mightier than these soft Southerners understood, or needed to. Tonight, the Companions would call up the shadows of the ones who had gone before. Crowned with horn, they would dance them into being, and take their pleasure with one another, as the Companions had done from time immemorial.

chapter X

THERON CONSIDERED THE EVENING BEFORE HIM WITH an eye to whether he should start drinking now or when he got there. The Perry Harvest Feast wasn’t the only one in town, but it was the biggest and best and most prestigious, so of course Theron had been invited. He was, after all, heir presumptive to the Duchy of Tremontaine. His mother and the duchess had received invitations, too, but Sophia said that Harvest was one of the liveliest nights in Riverside and she needed to be on hand for the burn cases and the knife wounds. Katherine had taken a fancy to go down to her estates at Fernway and celebrate there in country style—or so she said. She had taken Diana and the new baby with her.

So Theron was left to face the Perry crowd alone. Lord Perry’s was the largest and most traditional of the private Harvest feasts. There would be a bonfire, and dolls made of straw from the harvest’s end, shuttled down from the Perry country estates, to be thrown into it. It all seemed ridiculous, to keep such country customs in the city, but since the autumn Season had begun, no noble family with any pretension to style would be caught dead in the country, so they observed the practice here in town. The Perrys had a very large courtyard where a fire could safely be lit without danger to the shrubbery.

And because the Perrys were an old Northern family, there would be the Stag Dance, usually performed by homesick farm boys who’d come to find work in the city, recreating the customs of home: holding up branches of horn as they leapt in rhythm to the eerie notes of a pipe and tabor, clashing the stags’ horns together and leaping apart.

After the mock fight of the Stag Dance came a real fight, performed by professionals with sharpened steel. The Perrys always hired the best-known swordsmen for their feast, and guests who usually saved their money for the card tables had been known to lose it all in one bet on the outcome of the Harvest duel.

Interspersed with all this, there would be dancing, and enough food to feed a village for a week, and red wine sweetened with honey and cloves, which made it go down so smooth that even generally abstemious people inevitably drank too much.

And of course, it being the opening weeks of the Season, there would be bevies of fresh young ladies being presented to adult society as potential mates for its sons and heirs.

Theron decided that the earlier he arrived, the earlier he could leave. That way, he’d get the food and the bonfire, and miss the dancing and the debauchery. He had nothing against debauchery in the abstract, but he was particular about the details. In addition to its other splendors, the Perry Harvest Feast was an evening renowned for the pleasures it afforded unmarried young men. Once they had done their polite duty by the daughters of their mothers’ friends, dancing country dances and fetching them honeyed wine, they moved on to stronger stuff. Their blood heated by drink and flame and the spectacle of men fighting with ritual horns and actual steel, their subsequent pursuits were heated as well.

Mothers knew that the Perry feast was the one to be seen at, but they also knew to hustle their daughters home after the swordfight. A girl who stayed too long at the Perrys’ on Harvest Night got a reputation for being fast.

Theron hastened home to Riverside before sunset, had Terence shave him, and put on a nice clean shirt and a very good suit of dark green wool shot with silk, which, Terence pointed out, hadn’t seen action since the Lassiter girl’s Birthday Ball. That must be why he hadn’t been wearing it, Theron reflected; it was a very nice suit, but it had been a very trying ball. He had been besieged by marriageable daughters whose mothers had told them that the Tremontaine heir liked poetry. He’d escaped to the card room, where he ended up losing a great deal of money because he did not play cards very well. He always drank too much at these affairs, and he tended to lose the ability to add and subtract when he’d been drinking.

And so he set out, wearing a fur-collared coat, heavy boots, gloves, and a broad-brimmed hat in case of rain. The sun was setting out over the river in a glorious scarlet display and the evening breeze was sharp and chill. At a brazier by the bridge, he fired up the torch he’d brought from home, and lit himself up the well-known streets.

An hour later he arrived at the Perrys with the rest of the early guests. He was divested of his outer things and escorted to a dressing room where he could change into indoor shoes and have a man brush out his hair. Terence had fastened it with a gold ribbon. Terence knew about these things.

He shared the dressing room with one of his cousins, Charlie Talbert. They had gone to children’s parties together at Tremontaine House, because the duchess believed in doing right by her brothers’ families and making sure for Sophia’s sake that Theron was always included in normal activities despite their unorthodox life. Theron and Charlie had little in common; but both had been well brought up, and Charlie knew that Theron was likely to be the head of the family some day. So he greeted him affably, “Theron! Good to see you! Happy Harvest and all that. Don’t worry about being bored—thing is, there’s to be a real fight, a decent fight, out in the garden after the Stag Dance. Rupert and Filisand are finally going at it.”

“What’s the quarrel?” Theron asked.

It was Charlie’s turn to be caught short: clearly it was unthinkable to him that anyone in their circle should be without this piece of intelligence. But he was polite enough not to say so. “It’s like this,” he explained. “Rupert kicked Filisand’s horse before the first go at Penning—or at least, that’s what Rowland says—if you can believe him. I mean, everyone knows Rupe’s sister gave him the one-up at Karleigh with a vengeance, so he had a bee in his roses, if you catch my drift. Not that it matters. The horse thing stands—it’s a done thing, what with Penning clearly having gone to Rowland anyway. So what else could Filisand do? He sent challenge right after the White Rose Ball—you were there, weren’t you? Well, the fight would have to wait ’til summer’s end, when everybody’s back, you know—and didn’t that give Rupert time to sweat! See, the thing is, he has no idea who Fili’s hired to fight! And none of Fili’s friends are talking, either. Good man to trust with a secret. Not like some—anyway. Thing is, here’s poor Rupers stuck with no idea what to spend on a sword: does he waste his allowance on the best man in town, just to blood some poor hack of Fili’s? Or does he go for a hack himself—a stylish hack, mind you—nobody ever faulted Rupe for style—but a wedding-and-flowers sort of fellow—and risk seeing his nose cut off by a fancy blade of Fili’s?”

The amazing thing, Theron thought, was that he understood almost everything his cousin was saying. Except about the horses, which didn’t really matter. He just couldn’t bring himself to take an interest in riding or racing. Swordsmanship he knew: the duchess had seen to it that he had several years of lessons, as she had herself—but unlike her, he hadn’t kept it up. And he did not particularly enjoy watching other people’s fights.

“Wonderful!” he said, bright as new silver. “I’ll try and make it.”

Charlie gave him the
I can’t believe I just heard that
look that he knew so well.

Theron beamed even more brightly at him. “Where are the drinks?”

An hour later, his smile was beginning to slip. “I wish this were a masked ball,” he told a nice girl whom he had offered to fetch flower water for.

She looked as if she were going to cry.

“Oh!” he said, realizing what he’d done in time, he hoped, to catch it. “Not because of you. Because of me. All this smiling. Don’t you find it tiring? I do!”

“Aren’t you having a good time?” she asked in a small voice.

“Oh, splendid,” he was forced to say; “with you.”

He fetched her drink and danced with her twice, and then it was time for the Harvest Fire and the Stag Dance. Baskets of little woven dolls passed amongst the guests. “Close your eyes!” his partner squeaked; “close your eyes and pick one!” Theron reached into the basket, and pulled out a figure with a crown. “Oh, look,” she said; “you’ve drawn the King!”

He held it up to the light. “A Little King. I wonder which one he is? A good one or a bad one?”

“Weren’t they all bad?”

“No, lady; not all.”

She looked at him as if he’d farted, and then waved to a friend: “Look, Amalie, Lord Theron’s drawn the King!”

The other girl came up with her escort. “That’s so lucky. All I’ve got is a Companion.”

“Me, too. Too bad.”

“In the ancient times, the King’s Companions were all possible kings,” Theron explained kindly, remembering something he’d read in Hollis. “It wasn’t until the Trial that the king was chosen from amongst them. So maybe yours will yet be a king, Lady Amalie.”

She was giving him that look now, but only for a moment—then she changed it to an expression of wide-eyed interest. (He could imagine her practicing in front of a mirror until she got it right in time for her first ball.) “I never knew that. About Companions. Where could I learn more about it?”

“I read it in Hollis’s history of the North. But there’s a better book being worked on by a man I’m studying with, a Doctor of Ancient History at University.”

The young lord escorting her broke in: “Ancient history—ancient
heresy
if you ask me! Kings and wizards.” He made a face. “Best forgotten.”

“Ooh,” squealed Lady Amalie, “history—all those dates. I never could keep them all straight. That’s something you men are so much better at.”

After this exchange, Theron had little stomach for the bonfire and less for the Rupert/Filisand swordfight. He gave his straw king to his partner to throw into the fire, earning a smile and a melting look he didn’t in the least deserve, and bowed himself away. Feeling hunted, he slipped from the ballroom to the refreshment table, where he procured a glass of wine and a cheese tart, and went in search of an empty room.

He thought he’d found it in the library; but when he peeked around the door, he saw a girl sitting at the library table, her braids brushing the surface of a large book as she read. She looked up before he could retreat and said, “Oh. Hello. Did you want somewhere to hide, too? You can come in if you like; nobody ever comes here.”

She was still a child, really, podgy and uncomfortable-looking in a little girl’s stiff party dress with too many ruffles. Theron hesitated, then shut the door and sat down opposite her.

“What’s that?” she asked, eyeing his provender with interest.

Theron broke the tart in half and held it out invitingly. “It’s cheese. Do you want some?”

She reached for it, retreated, blushed, shook her head unhappily. “Mama wouldn’t like it,” she said.

“Whyever not?” Theron asked, amused.

“It’s not manners to take people’s food,” she informed him. “Besides, I’m too fat.”

Theron laughed. “Half a cheese tart won’t make any difference. And your mama need never know. Take it.” They sat for a little in companionable silence, chewing, and then Theron said, “I didn’t know the Perrys had a daughter your age.”

“I am not a Perry,” the girl said, rather indignantly. “But my mother is—on her mother’s side. One of my sisters is actually
named
Perry. We’re visiting. That’s why I’m at the party. Really, I’m too young.”