The Jack of Souls (29 page)

“Just so.”

“Come on,” Harric said. “We aren’t total bumpkins, so you can leave the absurd fake names. Or at least make up something plausible, like, Sir Fumble-Ring or something.”

The old man let out a cloud of ragleaf, his eyes flashing.

“You might have something there.” Brolli chuckled. “‘Sir Willard and the Fumbled Ring’? Perhaps I’ll make one of these ballads myself.”

“Do, and they’ll never find your body,” said the knight.

The Kwendi laughed.

“It’s her, Harric,” Caris said. She stood aloof, eyes distant, face strained. “It’s Molly.”

Harric blinked, dumbfounded. There was only one Phyros mare in Arkendia—Willard’s Molly. The rest were stallions. He’d assumed the old knight’s Phyros was male, because the tournament caparison draped across her haunches had concealed her sex, and because the old man
couldn’t
have been the immortal Sir Willard. But there was no questioning Caris’s horse sense.

The old man’s eyes sparkled with amusement as he watched Harric’s jaw wag soundlessly. “Not what you’d expect from Sir Willard, eh boy?”

“But…you’re not immortal,” said Harric feebly.

“Stopped taking the Blood some years ago, son. Best thing I ever did. Seven generations is a long time to live, and a man isn’t made for it. It’s a hard life, with the Blood. Changes a man.”

“It didn’t change you,” Harric protested, as if his knowledge of the ballads were greater authority than the man himself. “In the ballads—”

“Damn the ballads,” Willard growled. He snorted smoke through his nose, which made his mustachios smolder like tinder. “The truth wouldn’t make a nice ballad. It isn’t a good life.” A shadow clouded his eyes, only to be lost behind a puff of ragleaf. “Past time to claim my mortality. Grow old with people I love, if they still live. Is that so strange?”

“Do not let him fool you with that speech,” said Brolli wryly. “He tell me the same one, but I don’t believe it.”

Harric’s head throbbed. He closed his eyes tightly and tried to put it all in order. His childhood hero, Sir Willard—Queen’s Champion, Chief Architect of the Cleansing, greatest of the immortals and Blue Order—was right there before him, and dying. He climbed to his knees, bowing his head.

Old and dying, yes. But it was Sir Willard.
The
Willard, and
the
Molly. It made sense now that the old knight barely flinched when the witch vanished before his eyes. The ballads told of dozens slain by Willard and
Belle
.

“See that, Brolli?” said Willard. “That’s the kind of respect I ought to get. None of this ballad nonsense.”

“That is good. But why is he laughing?”

Harric couldn’t help it. The whole procession of ludicrous events with Caris and the love charm that day suddenly made a kind of sense to him, for disasters and bungles involving love or politics were the trademark of a Sir Willard ballad. In them the great knight always ultimately triumphed, but not without creating some preposterous bungle on the side. “Caris, we’re in a Willard ballad,” he said, his giddiness growing. “We’re the bungle. Don’t you see? It started with that squire in the market, and our flight from home, and now that ring.”

Caris smiled distantly. The Kwendi cast a confused look at Willard, who scowled.

“But if we’re the bungle,” said Harric, gaining control of his mirth to direct his words to Willard, “then what’s the burden of this ballad? What’s the main heroic theme?”

“What’s the what?” said Willard. “I don’t follow.”

“I mean, what are you doing here? A magic love charm—a pack of murderous knights—Sir Bannus. What’s it all about?”

The knight puffed silently on the ragleaf, the tip of the roll pulsing in the darkness. Sir Willard appeared to study Harric as if calculating what to reveal.

The Kwendi shrugged. “They with us now, for good or ill. Shall I tell it? We owe it.”

Willard frowned. He nodded.

“It’s simple,” said Brolli. “When your people invent blasting resin and blast a road through the Godswall mountains, they see for the first time the big land beyond. They see only wild animals there, so your queen opens them to settlement and calls them Free Lands. Of course, she is wrong about no one lives there.” Brolli bowed ironically. “For
we
live there.”

“Yes, I know that,” said Harric, “but what I don’t know is why you and Willard are here with this ring, in the middle of nowhere.”

Brolli flashed his feral grin. “I am sent to your queen’s court as ambassador, to negotiate a peace treaty.”

“And he couldn’t stand the place.” Willard laughed softly. “Said it was full of liars and deceivers, each worse than the next. Which it is.”

“No treaty is coming from that visit,” Brolli said. “I am ready to leave and recommend war to my people, when Willard comes to court and seems to me the one honest Arkendian. This gives me hope there might be others. Maybe the liars are only in court.”

“I was there for the Day of Pardons, as I am every year,” said Willard. He shrugged his ironclad shoulders. “She never pardons me, but I go anyway. To see…old friends.”

“And when Willard leaves, unpardoned, I follow.”

Willard chuckled. “Noticed I was followed by a drunk who could barely keep his saddle. Turned out it was Brolli, and he’d never ridden a horse in his life. When he told me who he was, I tried to take him back to court, but he refused. Said if there were any chance of a treaty, it would come of seeing Arkendia
outside
the court—”

“I tell him to escort me through his land on the way back to mine,” Brolli interjected.

Willard raised his eyes and hands as if in surrender. “What could I do? So I pledged my support, and here we are. Would have been an easy ride north, but those West Isle knights went out looking for him and got lucky. Hence the gang of curs at our heels.”

Harric stared at the ambassador, his temples pounding in pain as he struggled to put the story together. Something about it didn’t ring true to him. The enormous danger Brolli put himself in by leaving the court. Even escorted by Sir Willard, it seemed less than reasonable to risk the peace of two nations on anything less than a full military escort. The fact that Willard embraced it led him to think there must be more Brolli that hadn’t shared.

“I am meaning to ask you,” Brolli said to Willard. “Your curse is still active tonight?”

Willard cast a hard look at Brolli, then glanced meaningfully at Harric.

“They’re with us now,” Brolli said, a slight apology to his tone. “They must know. Your last squire…he is dead of it, yes? There is some danger.”

“You had a squire?” Harric said.

A look of pain or regret settled in Willard’s face. He closed his eyes, and sighed in resignation. “Tam. A good lad.” He sucked the ragleaf again, the red eye glaring. “I am plagued with a…
condition,
son. A curse, I call it. When I’m threatened, or…possibly, around women…something happens to people around me. All judgment leaves them. They do things they wouldn’t normally do, and afterwards have no memory of it.”

“Like I did in Gallows Ferry,” Harric said. “Caris too. We thought we were witched.”

A scowl wrapped around the ragleaf clamped in Willard’s teeth. “Witched is a strong word, boy.”

“And that’s what happened to Tam? He did something foolish?”

Willard nodded. “As did I when I gave that ring away. Didn’t remember a thing of it. Had to reason it out after the fact.”

Harric stared, understanding gradually dawning on him, and a laugh welling up from his lungs. He suppressed it, but it leaked out in lines around his eyes and the corners of his mouth.

“Something funny, boy?”

“Well, no, but it does explain a lot about the origin of the comic bungle in your ballads. These things actually happen to you. It isn’t made up.”

“They aren’t
my
ballads, boy, and in my experience this curse isn’t comic, so you can wipe that foolish smile from your face. People get hurt. Dreams shatter. Lives end.” The old knight glared through gouts of ragleaf.

“Sorry,” Harric muttered, dropping his gaze. “That was stupid of me.”

Willard sighed, and chuckled ruefully. “Hardly your fault, boy. Fact is, it’s the very reason for my banishment from court. I’m a bloody lodestone of catastrophes.” He stared off for a moment at something only he could see, then his attention snapped back to Brolli. “That clear me of my obligations to this boy, Ambassador?”

The ambassador bowed ambiguously.

Willard turned to Harric. “Well, boy? What do you say? Are we even?”

Harric glanced at Caris, whom Willard seemed to pointedly ignore.

Willard frowned. “It seems not,” he said, mistaking Harric’s hesitation for discontent. He dismounted the towering Phyros with a grunt, lowering himself from the saddle with powerful arms.

As Willard stepped toward Harric, Molly aimed a vicious bite at the old knight’s neck, as if she’d grab him and shake him like a rag. Willard crammed a mailed fist blindly in her teeth, halting her attack and barely interrupting his limping path to Harric. Molly snorted. She shook blood from her lips, evidently decided against another lunge, and went back to sharpening the long blood tooth in the left side of her jaw against a stone.

“Willard assures me that’s completely normal for a Phyros,” said Brolli.

“It is,” Willard grunted. “So keep your distance.”

Willard loomed above Harric, his bulk broad and dark, lined face illumined by a spray of scarlet moonlight. “Son, I owe you an apology for the events today. Things didn’t work out as planned, but I intend to make it up to you.” His tone altered subtly toward the formal. “I’ve come to a decision. I wish to make you my manservant. My valet-squire, if you will. You’re too old for training as a proper squire, but as a valet you’ll have to know how to handle a blade, and if you show promise in arms we can talk about other possibilities.”

Harric gaped. Rag whinnied and tossed as if Caris had lost concentration.

“Moons, girl!” Willard hissed. “You want the whole valley to hear us?”

Caris blinked as if stunned. Her hands covered her ears and she bent double as if to block out the words. Rag calmed, but continued to toss her head in agitation.

“You’re—serious?” Harric said to Willard.

The knight stepped back, evidently pleased with Harric’s awe. “Lost my squire on the road, as you know. You’ll take his place. Do you accept?”

“Of—course I do.”

“In that case, let me inform you that if anything should happen to me it becomes your duty to escort Ambassador Brolli and his wedding ring safely to his people in the north.”

Harric bowed deeply.

“The ring is valuable and dangerous,” said Brolli. “Those who want them will torture and murder to get them. With them they can force your queen to marry. Instant king, you see? And once she takes a king, her power is lost.”

Why did you bring them in the first place?
Harric wondered. He wanted to ask it, but his focus diverted to Caris, who stared resolutely at the earth between her feet as if her gaze could bore a hole to swallow her up. It must have become clear to her the old hero did not recognize women in his trade. She’d approached several knights of his kind since she came to Gallows Ferry, soliciting them as mentors, only to be scorned and rebuffed. He could see she had no intention of shaming herself and Willard both by asking it of him.

“Very good,” said Willard. “Now, I gather that moon cat’s your pet…”

“Actually, I’ve never seen him before tonight. He just hitched a ride.”

“Name him yet?”

“Spook.”

“Then you’ll have to keep him.” Willard smiled at his own joke. “Peasant folk think them associated with the moons and magic. If we get out on the open road and it brings trouble, the cat goes.”

“Among my people, this does not matter,” said Brolli. “We have fond tales of Moon Cat, the hero trickster. Be careful, or he will steal your eyes and ears,” he added, chuckling.

“Good,” Willard grunted. “Then I believe I can safely say my debt is paid.”

The seed of an idea sprouted in Harric’s mind. “Ah…your debt?” Harric echoed, setting the bait.

Sir Willard frowned. “Son? What is it? Out with it.”

The seed grew rapidly in the fertile soil of his mother’s training:
Seek your opponent’s blind spots, and in them lay your traps.
“Sir Willard,” he said, calculating the formality of his tone and manner carefully, “I do have a boon to ask.”

The old man responded instantly to the heightened tone. “I see my debt is not fully paid.” He drew himself up. “Name what boon you will, and I will grant it.”

Caris’s head snapped up as if she’d been stuck with a pin.

Anyone who knew the ballads would recognize what had happened; there was even a ballad titled “Sir Willard and the Rash Boon.”

Harric bowed again, formally. “Then I ask that you take Caris as your apprentice. It’s what she wants, though she’s too proud to ask it. And it’s what she deserves, even without your debt to her.”

The old knight blinked as if to clear his vision. Caris’s mouth parted in blank wonder as she turned to Willard, who gaped, then startled as if she’d appeared there from thin air.

“Ha. Her? A girl?” He nearly inhaled the dwindling stub of ragleaf. “Well, throw me down. Is
that
your way, boy?” He raised his steeled arms and dropped them to his sides in a gesture of dismay. “That’s the way of our queen, but you too? First her father learns ’em letters, and now it’s women fighting wars. Maids in court have books and tutors till book learning is common as knitting! Bust my girths, it isn’t right! Next she’ll ask the men to have the babies!”

“It’s what she deserves, sir,” said Harric.

“What she deserves!” Willard’s eyes bolted from his head. “And she as late as you in life? Impossible! And it isn’t
natural,
I tell you. It’s out of the question.”

“I’ve trained before now,” Caris said, voice and head lowered reverently. “And there are other woman knights. This year Her Majesty knighted two and started the Star Company—Sir Miyda and Sir Kethla. I’ve even heard it said that—”