The Privilege of the Sword (55 page)

T
HE
D
UKE
T
REMONTAINE WAITED IN A YELLOW-AND-BLACK
drawing room that was the height of fashion and reminded him of stinging wasps. He was prepared, he told Lord Ferris’s man, to wait until tomorrow, if necessary, as long as they would bring him a pillow for the night. He ate only nuts from his pocket, and drank only water, but he opened the book Ferris had sent him and after a few pages took out a pencil nub and started scribbling comments in the margins.

The day was well advanced when Lord Ferris admitted the duke to his study.

He did not bother with preliminaries. “You come unarmed?”

“You know I can’t fight.”

“That, my lord duke, is becoming increasingly obvious. All the same, if you will empty your pockets, please?”

“You’re joking.”

“I am not joking. We are alone in this room. Let me see what you carry.”

Tremontaine glared at him. “Do you want me to trade my marbles for your string collection and broken top?”

“Do you want me to have you searched? Please don’t be offended—or rather, be as offended as you like. We both know you’re not going anywhere.”

The Duke Tremontaine put three nuts, two handkerchiefs, a penknife and his pencil stub on the table. He fished a little deeper and disgorged a button, two calling cards and half of the Knave of Cups with some calculations scribbled on it.

Ferris looked at them impassively. “And where is my contract?”

“Your what?”

“My marriage contract with your niece.”

“She’s just a girl,” Tremontaine said bluntly. “What possible use can you have for her now? She’s much too young.”

“Early marriages are a tradition in your family,” said Lord Ferris. “She’s sixteen now—See? I cared enough to check—older, in fact, than your mother was when you were born, like her mother before her. But you don’t respect your own traditions, do you? Your family’s, or anyone else’s. Do you think the Perrys will be pleased to know you’ve been employing their son as a Riverside whore? Or the Fitz-Levis, for that matter, who are even now trying to foist him on their not impenetrable daughter? Fussy people, the F-L’s.”

“You give me too much credit,” the duke said. “I didn’t find him his trade, I found him already at it.”

“They might not believe that.”

“They can ask him themselves. I’ve got him in my house—what’s left of him.”

Ferris laughed aloud. “If they ask him, he’ll blame you, if he’s got any sense.”

“And say he does? What difference will it make? The Mad Duke debauches another beautiful nobleman—again. All yawn. The question is what they’ll say when they learn what you’ve done to spoil his beauty.”

“I?” Lord Ferris cocked his head. “What did
I
do?”

“Oh, come, my lord.” The duke gave a pretty good imitation of the older man. “Hired bravos aren’t that hard to bully information out of.”

“Or to bribe. Of course you’d pay some Riverside tough to say I hired him. You’ve got plenty of money, we all know that.” The duke glared at him. “Face it. You may have friends, I’m not saying you don’t—all sorts of eccentric people adore you. But you’ve got no allies. No one who counts.”

Lord Ferris picked up a paper-knife, a long silver tool ornamented with a lascivious nymph. He rubbed his thumb along her while he talked. “You’ve brought this on yourself, you know. What do you think I’ve been doing for the past ten years? Building alliances, creating systems that will hold me. Yes, it’s cost me, but I can get more funds, one way or another. People respect me—and they fear me—and well they should, as you now know. Do they fear you…Alec? I don’t think so. They used to, back in your murderous Riverside days. But you’ve let that particular power go. You’ve gotten squeamish. Here I am, the elected leader of the land’s most powerful governing council. And you are…what, now? An entertainment. A curiosity.” He held the nymph up. “For your grandmother’s sake, I did try to warn you. Now you’re on your own.”

“Ferris,” said Alec Campion in a curious growl. “You are making me angry.”

“Try to control it,” Lord Ferris said agreeably, “or you’ll never get anywhere in life.”

“Very angry,” the duke repeated in the same half-musical tone. “It makes me wonder what it would be like to take the battle you’ve begun to its next logical step. To hire people to attack your people on the streets on no provocation but that they support you. You’d retaliate in kind, of course. I’d need to arm my friends, or have them guarded well. But there are plenty of swords out there, looking for work.”

Ferris turned his whole head like a bird, to look straight at the duke with his one good eye. “You would, too, wouldn’t you? You’d plunge this city back a hundred years and more, to when liveried houses were fighting each other on the streets, when houses were fortresses, and nobles hired swords to keep from cutting each other down. You’d do all that, rather than capitulate or work out a reasoned, reasonable compromise. You would.” Without warning, Ferris slammed his hand against his desk. “
What
was the woman thinking? Making something like you her heir! I admired her, I even loved her for a while, but in the end, she must have been mad.”

“They say it runs in the family,” the duke said doucely.

“I am hoping that isn’t the case.”

“Still planning on breeding my niece?”

“We’ll merely skip a generation—write you off as a bad egg and then move on. The girl has neither your grandmother’s looks nor her charm. Maybe she has brains, though. I trained with the duchess; she passed on to me what she knew of statecraft and the human heart—and believe me, she knew a lot. I’ve even forgiven her for throwing me over for Michael Godwin; I see now she chose well, he’s a capable man.” Lord Ferris’s nostrils were white, distended. He was breathing rapidly through them. He had lost his temper, but didn’t realize it yet. “Or maybe…” he went on cruelly, “maybe you had to sleep with her to get the benefits. I did wonder about you for a while, but now I’m quite sure you never did, or you wouldn’t be such a fool.”

“I’m crushed.”

Eventually, people the duke disliked did lose their temper around him. It was a peculiar talent that he had, and he usually enjoyed it. He waited, now, to see what Ferris would say. The Crescent was working himself up to something unforgivable. The duke wondered what it would be.

“Did she think you’d change, I wonder? Or did she merely think St Vier would keep you in line?”

“We didn’t discuss it. Her face was all frozen.”

“She thought you’d keep him, though, I’ll be bound. I would have bet on it myself. He seemed unreasonably attached to you. What on earth did you do to lose him?”

“How do you know he isn’t dead?”

“I know,” Ferris said. The ruby at the duke’s throat jumped wildly against the lace it was pinned to. “Did he, too, come to find you unbearable? What would it take to drive him from your side? Not hissing, like your whore of an actress, or mockery, like your fat friend. St Vier was a reasonable man, and gifted. Not a man to be bought, as I found to my own sorrow. Perhaps, when his love soured on you, you trusted to all that nice money you have to keep him by you, only to find it wasn’t enough. Really, you’d do better to give your niece to me, before she, too, finds you unbear—”

There was a bronze figurine in the duke’s hand, and he swung it at Ferris’s head—from the side with the eyepatch, of course. Ferris groaned, and went down.

It was a small statue of a god leaning on a pedestal. The pedestal had sharp edges; the back of Ferris’s head was bleeding heavily. His eyes were closed, but his hands were moving.

The Duke Tremontaine considered the statue. It had little bits of skin and hair on it. Now that he’d relieved his feelings with one blow, he didn’t really fancy bashing Ferris’s skull in with it.

Nor did he like the idea of what Ferris would do if he survived now. His eye fell on the nymph, fallen from Ferris’s hand. The long knife wasn’t silver after all, just a strong alloy plated in silver. He could tell from the weight. He stuffed his neck stock into Ferris’s mouth, to discourage breathing as well as noise.

“Listen, if you can hear me,” said Alec Campion. “You were right about one thing. The duchess never named me her heir. She believed she was immune to death. Certainly she was very resistant; when it felled her, she stayed breathing for quite some time. They asked her whom she’d chosen, but by then she couldn’t answer. They went through a list of names. Maybe yours was even on it; I don’t know. But when they got to mine, she made a sign with her hand, and they took it for assent.”

Lord Ferris groaned. The duke pulled open the man’s jacket; no need to make this any harder than it had to be. Third and fourth ribs, right in between…He closed his eyes, pictured an anatomy text. Richard always made it look so easy. One blow, straight to the heart—if he liked you.

How many men had Alec driven onto St Vier’s sword? His turn, now. Loser of knives, lover of steel…It took more force than he was master of. Ferris grunted and thrashed. I’m going to look like an idiot, he thought, if I don’t do this right. He took a deep breath, and then struck home.

The duke did not ring for a servant, simply walked out the door, left the house and started walking back to Riverside. He washed his hands at a public fountain, and if a very tall man in very disheveled, very expensive clothing walking the length of the city was hard to miss, he was, if you knew the proclivities of the nobility, easy to ignore. And there had always been something about Alec Campion at his worst, some air of dangerous negligence, that made even the toughest element give him a wide berth.

chapter
IX

A
FTER DARK, A SMALL, NARROW CARRIAGE PULLED
into the courtyard of the duke’s great Riverside house, the horses sweating and dusty from the road. The footman knew better by now than to try to help his passenger out of it; he merely opened the door and attended to the baggage, while the man stiffly eased himself out. He stood for a moment in the courtyard, waiting, or looking around. Many of the windows were lit; in others, light passed from window to window as people hurried through the house.

One of the lights came toward him. “Finally,” a young man said. “You’re here. He’s been waiting for you. Please come with—” He put his hand out, and jumped at the newcomer’s reaction.

“It’s all right,” the man said. “I’ll follow you.”

I
N HIS STUDY, THE DUKE WAS BURNING PAPERS.
W
HEN
the pair came in he looked up but did not rise, just kept feeding things to the fire. “Good,” he said, “you’re here. I was afraid the Bridge might be closed.”

“Not yet. Will it be?”

“Soon, if they’ve got any sense.”

“Alec, what on earth have you been doing?”

“You didn’t get here in time, so I had to kill Ferris myself.” The duke waited a moment for the full effect.

“Did you?” his friend asked curiously. “How?”

“Eclectically. But conclusively.”

“You didn’t poison him, did you?”

“Heavens, no. That would be dishonorable. No, I stabbed him with a nymph.”

The other man laughed.

“I was in his house, and his whole staff knows it. I expect to be arrested any minute. So I’m leaving.”

“Rather than face a Court of Honor? Look, it’s not so bad, really. Did you challenge him first?”

“I forgot. There wasn’t time. But I can always say I did. There was no one else there.”

“You’ll get off, then.”

“Not necessarily. I had to whack him on the head first. Not very convincing as a challenge, even for a lenient Court, which this one won’t be—did I tell you he was also the Crescent Chancellor?”

“Oh, Alec.” St Vier shook his head. “Still, you are the Duke Tremontaine. Maybe you can bribe someone. You have supporters, surely.”

“The whole thing’s too much trouble. And anyway, I’m sick of it here. You were right.”

St Vier considered the fire. “I know.”

For the first time, the young man spoke. “You mean we’re leaving the city, my lord? Why didn’t you tell me? I’d better pack—”

“I’m going,” said the duke. “You’re staying.”