The Privilege of the Sword (31 page)

T
HE FIRST LETTER REACHED ME THE NEXT MORNING
. It was addressed to the Lady Katherine at Tremontaine House, and had clearly passed through several hands, not all of them clean. The sealing wax was scented, and the loopy handwriting was in violet ink. But there were spots on the paper where tears had made the ink run, and the letters sloped downward across the page.

Dearest Friend,
it read.
I am beset. I am without hope. My parents Know All, but my woe means nothing to them. They
are monsters and tyrants. They want me to marry him, still. I will die, first. You understand. You are the only one who does. I will never forget your kindness to me. Do not try to visit me. I am a prisoner here. But if you can contrive to send a line or two of simple hope to me in my wretched misery, it will speak more than volumes of insincere verse from less noble souls than yours. I hope this letter finds you well. I will bribe the underhousemaid with my last year’s silk stockings to bring it to you from your own—

Stella

I stuffed it in my pocket when Marcus came in. Of course he noticed.

“From your mother?” he said.

“No. You know that’s not allowed.”

“I don’t care.” He studied his nails. “I’m your friend. I’ll help you, if you like.”

“I don’t need help, thanks.”

My friend took a step backwards. “I guess not. After that swordfight, and all. The duke’s pleased, anyway. Do whatever you want; you could fill your room with apes and parrots, and he’d only ask if you wanted to feed them oranges.”

“I don’t want parrots,” I said. He did not look happy. “Do you want to play shesh?” I asked, partly to make him feel better, and partly to distract him from the letter.

“Not really.”

“Well, then…do you want to hear about my swordfight?”

“Dying to tell me, are you?”

“Well, who else am I going to tell?” I was dying to tell someone, after all. It was my first real fight, and I had won! I almost wished that Venturus were still around, so I could tell him. Marcus lacked expertise and enthusiasm, but at least he would listen. I decided to ignore his mood and continued ruefully, “Betty will only start going on about how I should have seen St Vier in his heyday or something; besides, I want to get it all clear in my head before I have to run through it for Phillip Drake so he can tell me everything I did wrong.”

Marcus wasn’t interested in the subtleties of my swordplay, but he was very enthusiastic about the results. He’d disliked Alcuin more than most, and utterly approved of his public humiliation at the Rogues’ Ball. “You’ve got a real future, Katie,” he concluded approvingly, “in hitting irritating people where it hurts. No wonder the duke is pleased with you.”

He didn’t ask again about my letter, but then, it wasn’t the only one I got. Sabina actually wrote to thank me for providing such wonderful entertainment at her party, and did I want to do it again for a private event? Two people offered me jobs as a guard, and a theatre asked if I would be interested in entertaining crowds between shows. The duke’s private secretary, Arthur Ghent, offered to open all my letters and take care of the crazy ones for me. But I didn’t want him to see what was coming to me, because I was expecting another one soon from Artemisia.

I had written her back saying:

Stella—

To live is to hope, and while we breathe, we hope and live.
(That was from the book.)
Though I serve another, I am yours to command.
(So was that; it was a line of Tyrian’s, but I liked him sometimes better than Fabian. He had sense.)
Be brave, be strong, and know that you are ever in the thoughts of your faithful—

Getting it delivered to the Hill without any of my friends on the duke’s staff knowing about it would be tricky. In the end, I went out on the streets of Riverside and picked the hungriest kid I could find.

“Watch it, pal,” he said, and I said, “You!” because it was the one who had tried to rob me that first day in the snow. He had nerve, even if he didn’t have much sense. His name was Kevin, and I gave him two coppers to carry my letter to Artemisia’s maid, with the promise of five more if he came back with a ribbon to prove it had gotten there.

It was a lavender ribbon. I tied it around my wrist under my shirt, as a token not to forget.

A
FTER A FEW DAYS,
A
RTEMISIA’S PARENTS WERE AT
their wits’ end.

“I am at wits’ end, Fitz,” his lady said to him for the third time that hour. “She’s showing no sense whatsoever.”

“Seems simple enough,” her husband repeated. “Easy for her, really. She’s already agreed once to this marriage. She just has to do it again. Simple.”

“It’s not as if we forced her into it, is it? We let her choose for herself, and she chose Lord F.”

“Certainly she did.” Lord Fitz-Levi examined his neckcloth in the mirror. It had held up remarkably well under the morning’s stresses. “All this fuss over a little cuddle in the dark.”

“They were, after all, betrothed.”

He gave a final tug to put it in place. “She’ll settle down once she’s married, god love her.”

But their daughter seemed to have suffered a sea change. She spoke wildly, most unlike herself. She had no wish to go out, she said, lest she encounter
him
. She refused even the most tempting food, and would not try on her wedding dress, although it was magnificent. There was talk of a physician, or a trip to the country, and they put it about that she was down with the grippe. No one but her maid noticed the purple inkstain on her middle finger.

G
entle Friend,

Do not believe anything they say of me. Not even if you hear the wedding is going forward. If it does, it is without my consent. They say I am to blame. I do not understand how that could be. Men are supposed to protect women. And when they do insult them, their fathers and brothers are supposed to rush to their defense, not call them horrible names and laugh at their distress.

How I envy you. Your uncle may be mad, but at least he lets you fight back.

The anguished,

Stella

I replied to her at once:

L
ady Stella,

I am not so gentle a friend that I am not filled with righteous wrath on your account. By no means hearken to the voices of those who say it was your fault, because it wasn’t. Any more than it is my fault that I have to learn the sword and wear funny clothes. They are bigger than we are, and older and have more money and can make us do things we don’t want to. Remember when we met at my uncle’s ball? I thought you were so brave and elegant and daring, and you were, too. I wished I could be like you.

I have a new cloak now. It is moss green figured velvet with gold tassels and a silk lining called moth’s wing. I wish you could see it.

Your family is wrong, that’s all. Don’t get married to him, whatever you do.

I looked at our two letters, sitting side by side.
He lets you fight back
. What would I do in her place? Well, that was the wrong question, because I would never be in her place. Thanks to the duke, no one like Lord Ferris was ever going to want to marry me. Did that mean my uncle was protecting me? If someone violated me, would he have them killed without question? I bet he would. But did that mean he cared, or just that he was crazy and bloody-minded? How could Artemisia’s parents love her and not believe her now?

Oh, it was hopeless. I wasn’t Artemisia, and she wasn’t me.

I liked the way Artemisia saw me as a heroic swordsman. Was St Vier heroic? He was, in his way, as much a legend as
The Swordsman Whose Name Was Not Death
. What would he say about Artemisia? He’d probably say she shouldn’t have been there in the first place without knowing how to defend herself, and he was probably right. But what did he know about it? He’d always been able to defend himself. He’d probably never been to a ball in his life, and if he had, he didn’t know what it was like to hope you were pretty, and that people would like your dress and ask you to dance…. What did he know? What did any of them know?

Of course her father and brother were hopeless. They didn’t know, either.

I did.

I picked up my pen again.

T
he insult is not to be borne,
I wrote.
If neither father nor brother will rise to your defense, then the lot must fall to one who, however unworthy of the position, is eager to stand as your champion. Not only for your own sake, but for that of all ladies misprised. What, after all, am I doing here, anyway? To what end my skills, if not for this? I wear your ribbon, and will avenge your wrong. And woe to he who stands in my way!

Your loving friend and staunch defender,

But don’t worry,
I added in postscript.
I’m not telling anyone.

I sealed it with candlewax and went looking for Kevin to deliver it. He was eager for the work. “So am I, like, your new guard or something?” he asked. “I’d make a good guard.”

“You are my private messenger,” I said. “It’s very confidential.”

“Huh?”

“Secret. Go and return within the hour, and I will have another task for you. Now, make it snappy!”

Then I went and found Arthur Ghent and asked the secretary a lot of intelligent questions about the Council of Lords and its officers: the Crescent Chancellor, the Raven and the Dragon, and all the rest. He was pleased that I was taking such an interest in government. “Would you like to visit the Council Hall someday?” he asked. “His Grace’s attendance is, ah, spotty, but I usually know when he’s going to take his seat. You could accompany him, and watch it all in action.”

“Thanks,” I said.

But I wasn’t going to wait that long. It was a bright, clear day. I dressed warmly, and strapped on my good sword and dagger, and waited for Kevin to come and take me to where the Council of Lords met across the river.

I had never crossed to the East Bank before. It was in the oldest part of the city, the part built by the old kings and queens that had ruled before the Council of Lords deposed them. Kevin didn’t know anything about that; his sense of the place was based entirely on where he had or had not gotten into food or into trouble. The docks and warehouses were especially fertile grounds for these reminiscences, but as we came up upon the Old Fort and finally to Justice Place, he ran out of narrative.

He wasn’t stupid, he just didn’t know about anything. I decided to instruct him, since it distracted me from being nervous and might do him some good. “These are very historic buildings,” I told him. “The Council Hall was once the Hall of the Kings—see those heads carved all along it? They’re carvings of the old kings.”

“I hate kings. We always kill the king on Harvest Night—throw him in the fire, and he burns up like this—blam!! If I saw a king, I’d kill him dead. What are you doing here, anyway? You gonna kill someone?”

“Stick around and find out. But make yourself scarce for now, so nobody sees you. I’ll pay you when we get back to Riverside.”

Kevin faded back into the buildings’ shadows, and I was alone watching the great doors of the Council Hall remain resolutely closed. My fingers were cold. I bought some hot chestnuts from one of the vendors that scattered the plaza, and that helped some, although they turned dusty in my dry mouth. At last a bell rang, as I knew it must. Servants and secretaries started coming out the door, and then carriages began pulling up along one side of the plaza, to carry their masters home.

And there he was on the steps. It wasn’t hard to recognize Lord Ferris from the secretary’s description. There might be more than one tall, handsome middle-aged man with black hair streaked with silver, but there was only one with an eyepatch. Arthur Ghent had neglected to mention that his mouth was cruel. At least, I thought so. He was talking to another noble, waiting for the carriages to come round. I took a deep breath, and walked boldly up to them.

“Lord Ferris?” I asked, and he nodded. “Um, Anthony Deverin, Lord Ferris, Crescent Chancellor of the Council of Lords of this city and this land, I challenge you.”

He looked down his long nose at me. “Whatever for?”

“I’m not sure you want your friend to hear.”

The other man blinked and laughed. “Good lord! It’s that chit of Tremontaine’s! My valet told me about it. Were you at that famous ball, too, Ferris?”

“Ask your valet,” Ferris retorted.

“What can you have done to offend Tremontaine this time?”

“What can one do not to offend him?” Ferris drawled. His friend laughed, but the Crescent’s look on me was fierce for a moment. “Come, young lady,” he said with smooth civility, “let us discuss this matter out of the cold.” I followed him back up the shallow steps of the Council Hall. At his nod, the guards drew aside. Lord Ferris led me into a small room, wood-paneled like the Riverside house, with a small fire just dying in the hearth. “Now then,” he said, “what is this nonsense?”

“It’s not nonsense. I challenge you.”