The Privilege of the Sword (20 page)

“Why did you come?”

“Do you wish I hadn’t?”

“No, of course not.”

“Come to me,” my mad uncle purred.

“Like this?”

“No. In the dark.” The hiss of silk. The fire went black. “Perfectly in the dark. Come to me now….”

Silence. Long silence, and I was asleep again, only someone was being hurt, I heard them crying out; I struggled, but I could not free myself from the blankets to help them.

Then the crash of a log falling, and a whisper: “I love you.”

“Liar! If you did, then you’d come back.”

The swordsman’s voice was low but clear, the voice I knew from hours of practice: “You know I would if I could.”

“You can. You
must
!”

“I can’t, Alec. Not like this.”

“It wouldn’t matter. I could make it not matter—”

“No, you could not. Not even you, my lord.”

If I had had a sword, I could have stopped the voices, and the noise; but I had left it outside in the snow, the blade was turning to diamonds.

“You only stay here to feel sorry for yourself.”

“Is that so?”

A muffled sound, then, “Don’t, you’re hurting me.”

“I know.” The swordsman, cool and detached. “If I kept on, I could kill you.”

“But you’d miss me then.”

“I miss you now. You aren’t happy, you know.”

“I would be, if you were there.”

“No.”

“Your pride, that’s all that’s holding you, just pride—”

“If you like.”

“But I can undo that with my hands alone….”

“Your hands. Your voice. You can, my lord. You do.” A hissing of fire. “But only because there is something left of me to be undone. Be sensible, Alec. Just for a moment. What is there for me to do there, now, in the city?”

“What do you do here?”

“Here. Here…before you sent me this little diversion…I walk. I practice. It’s quiet. Trees. Nobody bothers me.”

“It’s the people, then.”

“Why do you stay there yourself? They only make you crazy. I saw what it was doing to you.”

“I hate the country.”

“Because you can’t shock it. Or annoy it. Oh, Alec…” he sighed.

“What?”

“I don’t know. I love you.”

“I do not think so. Do you even think of me, when I am not right here pressed against you?”

“I think of you. I try not to.”

“And is that difficult? Or is it easy here, not to think of me?” A hiss of breath, a cry of pain. “Is that what the country is for? So you can forget me? I give you a house to live in and safety, all so you can never think of me? Well, I think of you. I think of you a lot. Almost always, in fact. Do you know what my days are really like, Richard? My days, and my nights. Shall I tell you?”

“Shh, I know. Don’t you think I know? I can feel it, feel it all over you. There, and there, and there—They are making you one of them after all. All that excess to no purpose.”

“Shut up. You’re never there, what do you know?”

“I know you. Be still, Alec, don’t…”

“You’ve done this to me. I wish I could kill you, but I’m already dead. I’m dead, and everyone else is a ghost. I sleep with everyone I can find—I plunge myself into flesh like buckets of cream, and I am always starving. My mouth is open, but nothing gets in. You are the only one that’s real. How do you do that, Richard? If you killed me, would I be real, too?”

“If I really killed you, you would be really dead. Please don’t start that.”

“Ah,” said the duke coldly. “
Please
. Yes. Let’s have you do some pleading for once. Because I’m tired of it. I’m sick of begging. I am not supposed to beg, certainly not to beg you. Do you know who I am? Sometimes I wonder if you understand how different things are now. I am not a ragged student who needs to be protected from tavern bullies. I am Tremontaine. I hold the power, the lands, the money. I hold Riverside, for one, and more of the city. I hold them, and I would burn them to the ground for you, Richard, I would kill them all and leave nothing—”

“So we could walk in a ruined city?”

“If that’s what you want.”

“Oh, my dear idiot. Then stay. Just stay here, with me. There’s nothing to ruin, here.”

“No, there isn’t.” The duke’s voice, thin and flat, mud gone to ice. “Is that it? Have you simply lost your edge?”

A sigh. “Do you think I have?”

“You don’t want challenge. How could you take one up, as you are?”

“I don’t need that sort of challenge now.”

“They would be looking at you there.” The voice was honed like cold iron. “Looking at you, and you not know it. That’s the challenge you can’t take up. It’s not their swords that vex you, it’s their eyes. Isn’t it? Not that they might kill you—you’d probably welcome that. But they might see you first, and know.”

“Does it give you pleasure, my lord, to think that?”

“It is, believe me, one of my more comfortable theories. What else is there? That it bores you, our city where we were together? That you don’t mind if I drop in from time to time, but really I bore you, too?”

“That is not so.”

“Oh, then it’s yes, you love me, yes, you want me, but not all that much? Not enough to risk being seen first, unknowing? Yes, you still love me, but in the end I’m not worth it to you. You’d kill for me, but you wouldn’t give up an ounce of your pride. I’m not worth that to you, in the end, am I?”

“Hush, Alec, hush.”

“Leave me alone. I want brandy.”

“That’s not what you want. Come here.”

“I’m not your lackey. I don’t come and go at your command.”

“Please, then. Please come to me.”

“I hate this.” The low voice shook the room with misery. “I can’t stand it.”

“Come to me. That’s better. Yes. You smell of smoke—ash—you’ve been in a tavern. Your hair—ah!—you washed it at home. Chypre. Something else—citron—barber—fish on your hands, your fingertips—walnuts—bitter—”

And I was dreaming of all those things and more, dreaming them thrown onto a fire that consumed but did not consume them, that fed but was never satisfied. The old sun was devoured by the new, and gave its strength to light a new year, in the course of a long night whose dawn seemed never to come.

My uncle shook me awake. “Get your things. We’re going.”

He stood a long way above me. I saw him filmed with grey, as though the whole air of the cottage were thick with the ash of last night’s bonfire.

I tried to find my feet, but they were tangled in the blankets. I raised myself on my arms. They shook under me.

“She’s ill.”

“She’s just hung over.” He pulled my arm. “Come on.”

I was standing up. The master put a cup of water in my hands, and lifted them to my mouth. I drank. My throat hurt.

“Alec,” he said. “You drugged her.”

“I didn’t poison her. I just didn’t want her bothering us. If she’s sick, I’ll take her to a doctor back in town. Come on.”

I could see where my feet went if I thought about it.

“What about your guests?”

“They’ll find their own way home. They can walk into Highcombe village.”

The master laughed. “You’re leaving them, are you? I wonder if they’ve made a bonfire of your furniture.”

“There’s plenty of furniture.” The duke gripped my arm. “Come on.”

“You’re leaving? Now?”

“We’re leaving. Come on.”

The carriage was cold. The drowsy footmen piled us with rugs. My uncle chewed on his thumb and said nothing. We bumped across the frozen rutted drive. The further we went, the more I shivered. He took out a flask of brandy, placed it against my teeth. I was crying, I think. I drank. I slept.

I woke up coughing. The carriage was swimming with sweet, heavy fumes. But I was warm. My uncle held me in his cloak. I watched the pipe rise to his lips, and felt his breath expand and collapse against me. Again, and again, like a cradle rocking.

His breaths were forming curls around me. “Richard,” he said. “Richard.”

chapter
I

I
LAY IN A CAVE OF DEEPEST BLUE, STAR-SPANGLED
with silver crowns. I was explaining to Betty that I must not sleep in Tremontaine’s bed; I could sleep on the floor next to the master. But every time I tried to explain something especially important, she’d make me drink a bitter potion. It was annoying, because it made it impossible for me to get up and practice, and at one point I was quite sure that the villainous Mangrove was coming to Highcombe, and if I didn’t defeat him he would set it on fire. I was very hot and very cold and my eyes ached. I was very tired, too. Eventually I slept without trying to explain anything.

When I woke up I was thirsty, but my starry cave had become only curtains: silk velvet with silver embroidery, hung around a heavy, old-fashioned bed of dark wood. I pulled back a velvet corner.

Sunlight sifted in through the narrow windows of the room. The walls were paneled with dark wood, hung with old tapestries. I heard a chair scrape; a boy appeared in the gap in the bedcurtains, one finger in a book.

“You stir,” he said. “I was told to give you this if you stirred.” He handed me a cool goblet. I drank; it was not bitter.

“I’m Marcus,” he said. “I work for the duke.”

I remembered him from my first days in the city; a boy about my age, with brown hair and brown eyes. His voice was deeper than I remembered.

“You took ill on the road,” Marcus said. “But your fever’s broken. Now, I expect you’ll be bored.”

“I’m tired,” I said. “How did you get here?”

“Where?”

“Isn’t this Highcombe?”

“No. You’re back in the city. The oldest part of the city, actually; you’re in the Riverside house.”

“Oh.” I realized that the ride in the smoky carriage had been real, and the feast at Year’s End, too, all those dreams were real—which meant that my master was gone, and Highcombe was gone, and even if I could find my way back there, nothing would be as it had been.

I didn’t even have the strength to care if I cried or not. Marcus kindly dropped the bedcurtains closed so I could do it in private.

B
EING SURROUNDED BY FLOWERS IN
A
RTEMISIA’S ROOM
should have been enough for the two girls, but it was only the prelude to the important task of passing judgment on their senders. The man who was under discussion now would have been horrified to hear that his considerable bouquet was being subjected to a very knowing scrutiny. But then, the girls had been reading aloud to each other while they sewed—so that their mamas would not say they did nothing but waste time together—and it had affected their outlook, not to mention their speech patterns.

“Armand Lindley,” Lydia Godwin sighed. “I like him very much, but in all honesty, he isn’t a bit like Fabian.”

“That’s all right,” said her friend; “you aren’t a bit like Stella.”

Lydia looked crossly at Artemisia Fitz-Levi. No one likes being told that they do not resemble the heroine of their favorite novel, and while it was true that Lydia was unlikely to become pregnant by a swordsman of dubious reputation, like any young girl she liked to think that she could attract one to commit folly for her sake.

But Artemisia was smiling cheerfully, and offering her more of her favorite biscuits, which both of them knew were bad for their complexions, so Lydia decided not to take offense.