The Privilege of the Sword (53 page)

The man watched, entranced. It was like wizardry: Lord Lucius Perry, who wasn’t himself but someone else who looked just like him, taking off layers of disguise until he stood revealed as a painted whore, less himself now than when he started fully clothed in noble’s garb. That’s what I thought, anyway. He wanted to see how far from himself he could go, and this was how he did it. I hoped someday he didn’t lose himself entirely.

The cloth merchant lifted Perry’s shirt behind, and stroked him. “Lie down,” he said. “You’re mine, now.”

“I’m yours,” Perry sighed, and laid himself facedown on the tasteless, gilded bed.

What they did didn’t really seem so terrible, because I couldn’t see much, just a back and some legs. The noise was the worst of it, especially at the end.

Beside me, I felt Marcus turn to the wall. I reached for his hand in the dark, but caught only the edge of his cloak. He was shaking.

The man was already up and buttoning his clothes. “Get dressed,” he said curtly. “I’ll see you next week. Wear something different, though.”

“As you wish.”

When he’d left, and Perry was washing himself, Marcus murmured to me, “Well. Now I know how it looks from the outside.”

“Outside what?” I whispered.

He pulled away suddenly. “Sorry,” he said, and flung the little door open. I tumbled into the hallway after him, and found him kneeling over a convenient basin, puking his guts into it. There were, I saw, many such basins, large and ornamental, placed strategically along the hall. I guessed they were used fairly often, for one thing and another, at Glinley’s.

I tried to hold his shoulders, but he waved me away. Of course he had brought his own clean handkerchief. “You need water,” I said. “It’ll wash the taste out. Was it the wine, Marcus? Did it make you sick?”

He sat all scrunched up with his arms tight around his knees. “No. I’d like more of it, actually.” His teeth were chattering. “C-can you find me some?”

I looked wildly up and down the candlelit corridor. “Not a prayer. But—” There was a bellpull. I pulled it. The man who came was the same one who had first let us into the house.

“My friend is ill,” I said. “We need to get our things and go. I’m sorry about the mess—”

“That’s normal,” he said. “A little too rich for your blood, sir?”

“Stuff it,” Marcus growled.

“Quit being so uppity,” the man said. “You may be the duke’s own bumboy now, but I’m an old friend of Red Jack’s, and I know what you was.”

Marcus seized the sides of the basin again.

“You lay off him,” I said to Red Jack’s friend. “He can be uppity if he wants to.” I heard Marcus laugh—it was an awful sound, in the midst of his retching, but it gave me heart. “Now show us to our room,” I said, “and make yourself scarce.”

The man glowered at me, but when Marcus could stand, he led us back to the room with the couch.

“You won’t get much good of him here, my lady,” the man said rudely. “Too bad—he used to be the sweetest little tosser on the streets.”

“Out,”
I said, looking for my sword. He left before I could find it—and without a tip, I need hardly add.

My friend sat shivering on the couch. I put my cloak around him and made him drink some wine. “Never mind,” I said. I needed to pace, since Marcus wouldn’t let me touch him. “He’s just a filthy stupid whoremongering idiot. We’ll tell my uncle, and he’ll have him thrown out on the street.”

“No! Katie, no, you can’t ever tell Tremontaine about this,
please,
Katie, swear!”

“Well, all right,” I said. “You’re right. I guess it was a bad idea. But it’s over now, Marcus; you’ll feel better soon. I’m sorry it made you sick. You couldn’t know.”

“Yes, I could,” he said fiercely. “I knew exactly. Don’t you understand?” He was shaking so hard he could barely hold the wineglass, so he knocked it back in one gulp. “You heard the man. And I told you that day, in the garden, but you still don’t really understand, do you?”

I was beginning to; I just wished I didn’t have to. “It’s not your fault,” I said. “You were just a kid. It was in Riverside, and you were just a little kid and you needed the money, right?”

“I didn’t get any money. My mother’s man sold me to Jack when she died. Jack gave me food and a place to sleep, and I worked for him. When I stopped being little and cute, he didn’t have any use for me. Someone told him the Mad Duke liked them older. So he took me to the duke and sold me to him.”

It was true, then, about him and my uncle, what people said and what I’d refused to believe. I swallowed bile. I didn’t know how I could stand it, but I was going to have to. Fear is enemy to sword. I listened, and I kept very still, but I couldn’t look my friend in the face.

“Tremontaine saved my life. He gave me a room, and a door that locked.”

I let out breath I hadn’t known I’d been holding, and drank some of the wine. “Oh, Marcus.” I wanted to put my arms around him, but I saw from the way he was gripping my cloak around himself that he didn’t want to be touched; he wasn’t done saying things.

“He gave me teachers, and books, and—well, you know, everything. I owe him like nobody’s business. He’s been protecting me all this time; nobody touches me, and oh god god god, after all that—” Marcus was twisting his fingers together—“If Tremontaine finds out I came here after all that, he’ll fucking kill me, Katherine. He will. You mustn’t tell him!”

“I won’t,” I promised.

“I mean, it’s been all right for so long, I thought I could do this—I didn’t think it mattered, it was all about someone else, like I could test myself—just watching Perry—I don’t know how he does it, honestly I don’t—”

“He’s testing himself,” I said. “Like a swordsman. It’s some kind of challenge for him.”

“Well, he can have it. He’s crazier than I thought.”

“Is there any wine left?” I poured us each another glass, and drank. It made me feel warmer and braver at once. “Let’s just go,” I said. “I think I can find the main door.” I buckled my sword on, a little unsteadily.

“Right.” He was still shaking. He turned his dark eyes wide on me. “Do you hate me now?”

“Hate you? How could I hate you?” I put my arm around him, and this time he let me. “Come on,” I said; “we’re going home.”

Glinley’s smelt of sandalwood and beeswax and smoke and drugs and bodies. We wound our way down infinite identical corridors, trying not to be noticed. Once we actually stood like statues in empty niches as customers passed by. The halls started looking familiar. “Have we been here already?” I whispered. A door opened, and since there was no niche, we flattened ourselves against a wall. It was Lucius Perry, leaving the room where he worked. He was brushed and cloaked, on his way out. We followed him through the house, dropping back far enough not to be obvious. Once he looked behind him, so we quickly seized one another in embrace. I buried my head in my friend’s shoulder, and Marcus put his face in my hair until we heard his footsteps fade away.

When we got outside, even the Riverside air smelled fresh.

I began to turn toward home, but Marcus held my wrist. He nodded in the direction of Perry’s departing back and raised his eyebrows. I shook my head: enough was enough for one night. Besides, Perry was nearly out of the radius of the house’s torchlight—he’d be stopping for a linkboy or his own torch soon, and I didn’t fancy trailing behind him in the dark. We stood in the shadows of Glinley’s, and watched Lucius Perry walk away into the night.

And we watched two men walk after him, faster and faster, and then we heard a loud thump and an even louder shout.

We ran toward the sound, Marcus with his knife and I with my sword. It was one of those little Riverside streets where the houses nearly touch across. We could barely see the shapes of the two men and one more, whaling on one crouching figure who was not quiet as they laid into him.

“Stop!” I shouted, and to my horror I heard one say, “Is that the girl? That’s her!”

“Run, Katie!”

With my sword in my hand, I could not run. I just couldn’t do it. I knew I could take them on—they didn’t have swords, and I did.

“Katie,
please
!”

“Get help,” I said to Marcus as they came at me, leaving poor Lucius Perry gasping on the ground—but help was already there.

Men from my uncle’s house—a footman and a swordsman, not wearing livery, but I knew them well and had never been so glad to see them. They laid into the three bullies, and they were much better trained and well-armed, besides. I’d like to say I helped, but I didn’t—everyone was much bigger than me, and it was street-fighting without any rules—I hung back, and it was over so fast, with two of the bullies running away and the third one kept for questions, hands bound behind him. The swordsman took charge of him and the footman picked up Lucius Perry, because he couldn’t walk. We went slowly. I felt much better when the Tremontaine swordsman, Twohey was his name, who was having trouble with his prisoner, said, “Lady Katherine, if you could just give him a good jab in the ribs—with your pommel? Good and hard—that’s it, thanks. Come on, you.”

My uncle was wearing a bright yellow dressing gown that didn’t suit him; I’m not sure it was even his. He stood blinking in the hall at the top of the main house stairs, having been alerted by what I was coming to see was an admirable network that something had happened.

“For once,” he drawled, “I try to get to sleep at a reasonable hour, and you bring me—bodies.”

“One for questioning and one for bed, my lord,” said Twohey cheerfully.

“Not my bed, I hope,” the duke said; “that one’s a bloody mess—” He saw who it was. “Oh, god. Get him seen to. Now. What the hell do you think you’re doing, holding him in the hall like a package?”

“And this one?” My prisoner moaned, so I whacked him in the ribs again.

“Katherine, my dear! I want him for information, not for kickball. Take him down cellar—Finian can work on him. I’ll be down later. Marcus, come help me find my—”

“I’d like to go to bed, now, please.”

“Re-eally?” the duke drawled, then snapped, “Get up here.”

Swaying gently, Marcus met his master on the stairs. I watched them anxiously. Was it all true? Had the duke saved my friend and never really touched him? If he hurt Marcus, I’d kill him.

As if he could hear my thoughts, the duke said coldly, “Katherine. I don’t believe this. I leave you alone for one instant, and you debauch my personal attendant.”

I felt utterly sick in the pit of my stomach. How did he know? What would he do?

“This boy is drunk,” the duke said. “And I suppose that means you are, too. Go to bed, the pair of you. If you wake up in the morning with a bad head, ask Betty for some of that unspeakable green tisane. But don’t disturb me; I’ll be up all night torturing prisoners.”

He stalked off in a blaze of mustard-colored glory. I suppose I was drunk enough to think that it would be a good idea to explain to him that I was not in the least bit drunk—I certainly didn’t feel it. Marcus had had much more wine than I; but then, he’d needed it. I watched Marcus go on up the stairs alone. He had very nice shoulders.

“Good night,” I said, though there was nobody left to hear me.

L
UCIUS
P
ERRY DREAMED HE WAS A TREE, AND
that woodsmen were chopping at the bark that was his face. It hurt like anything. Well, now that he knew that trees felt pain, he’d tell his brother to stop cutting the ones on the estate. He was flying now, way above the forest where the trees were, but something was pulling on his leg, and he was all off balance. He fell into the trees, and branches exploded all over his body as he crashed to the forest floor, a wild goose shot full of arrows. They stung him when he tried to move.

Hold still,
a deer said.
Drink this.

It put him to sleep, the deer’s drink. When he woke, he was in his own body, lying in a bed. The Duke Tremontaine was bent over his head. Lucius’s mouth was all stuck together, and he could see out of only one eye. It hurt so much to move that all he could manage was a feeble moan of protest. The duke pulled away. “I’m not looking for your favors,” Tremontaine said. Someone Lucius couldn’t see put a spout between his lips—an invalid’s beaker, filled with water that drizzled into his mouth.

He heard Tremontaine’s voice. “Perry. I am sorry. I know the man responsible for this, and it is entirely my fault.”

What happened?
he wanted to ask, but his lips were too stiff to form the words.

“I had one day,” the duke said. “I didn’t know it ended at midnight.—Never mind. You may stay here while you recover. I promise you’ll be safe. Or, when you are a little better, I can send you home.” The duke went on, something about messages and assurances, but Lucius closed his eyes so he could see the walls of a little white house with the sun on them, and a bowl of roses, freshly blown, on a table reflected in a mirror.