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Authors: Ellen Kushner

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BOOK: The Privilege of the Sword
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A
RTEMISIA
F
ITZ
-L
EVI’S MOTHER DID NOT THINK MUCH
of her choice of gowns for the evening’s festivities, and was busy telling her so. “A supper-party, my dear, is not a ball,” she said. “Even if there is dancing after, you want something a little more…restrained.” “But Ma
ma
,” Artemisia argued, “the green silk was most particularly admired by the Duke of Hartsholt at the Hetleys’! And you said his taste is impeccable.”

“So it is, my dear—and don’t think he won’t notice if you wear it again! Do you want to look as if you are courting his favor? And Hartsholt a married man…no, no, it would never do.”

Artemisia pouted. “Don’t be ridiculous, Mama. No one would think that. Besides, I wanted to wear the tourmalines Papa gave me, and they suit it perfectly.”

“So they do, my love, and you shall wear them at the next possible occasion. But not the green, not so soon after you’ve worn it once. Do you want people to think you don’t have enough gowns?”

That worked, where nothing else had. “What about the yellow?” Artemisia asked hopefully. The yellow dress was the result of an argument her mother had lost, with a bodice cut down to there, and enough flounces to trim a cake.

“Don’t you think it might hurt Lydia’s feelings, since it is her party and she looks so peaky in yellow?”

“Mama, you are an angel of kindness!” Artemisia flung her arms around her mother’s neck. “How could I be so unfeeling? I know—I shall write to my dear Lydia.” Artemisia settled in a ruffle of dressing gown at her escritoire. “I’ll see what she’s wearing. If it’s white or cream or ecru, I’ll wear mine, too.”

“Now why,” her mother said dryly, “did we not think of that before?”

And Lady Fitz-Levi went to scribble off a note to Lydia’s mother, so that Dorrie could take them both at once, and return with the correct response.

M
ASTER
V
ENTURUS CONTINUED COMING EVERY DAY.
Every day Betty laid out my sturdy practice clothes, and every day I dutifully put them on and went to the practice room to meet him. And every day after he’d left I’d practice for an hour or more. What else was there for me to do with my time? I could hold the sword without my arms aching for quite a while now, and my legs could hold their position without trembling, at least until Venturus was gone. I learned how to hold, how to stand, even how to strike—if aiming at a spot in the air can be accounted striking. It was all a bit dull, really, this training to be a swordsman. Venturus talked, and I repeated drills for him, and he talked some more, and finally he left and I did them again and again, until it was time for my bath.

I didn’t even notice the morning I woke up with no ache in my muscles at all. Betty did, though;
sprightly
, she called me, and I went down to my lesson feeling very pleased with myself for being sprightly instead of sluggish and dull. Venturus retaliated with a whole new set of moves for me to learn: parries and ripostes, with no particular purpose that I could see except to make me turn my wrist in funny ways and feel like even more of a useless idiot. He would never even show me how to do them properly, just talked talked talked until I got it right, it seemed, only to stop his voice. I began to wonder if he was ever going to teach me to fight for real.

So it was a great startlement to me, the day he stood waiting for me stripped to his breeches and shirt, holding a powerful sword with an intricately woven basket. It was not a practice sword. It had an edge, a real one.

I drew in a deep breath. Guard, feint, parry, riposte…I could do this. I would have to, to keep that evil blade from me. Venturus had thrown his jacket over the rack of practice swords. He smelt sweaty, as if he’d been drilling already. But when I went to pick up a weapon, he stopped me. “No. You no sword. You stand.”

His sharp steel tip directed me to the center of the room. I stood there at the guard, miming a sword in my hand.

“No guard!” my strange teacher corrected. “You standing stand.”

I stood still, my arms at my sides. He raised the sword in one swift motion. I flinched.

“Stand.”

I said carefully, “I think that you are going to hurt me. I can’t just stand here without—”

“Good. Good you think. No laughing sword. Laughing sword is death sword.” He smiled, showing large yellow teeth. “But Venturus not to hurt. No hurt if stand, no move. No-o-o move.” I didn’t move. Slowly, but perfectly steadily, the sword was swinging in a great arc towards me. I watched it come. I thought as hard as I could about how much practice it must have taken for Venturus to be able to keep it at that steady rate, without wavering.

The blade stopped at the cloth of my shirtsleeve.

“No-o-o move.”

I did not move. He swung it suddenly to my knee, and I would have jumped except that I was afraid he’d hit me by accident then.

Venturus stepped back a pace. “Good.”

So quickly I had no time to be frightened, he had the tip at my neck. Without appearing to change his stance, Venturus extended his arm a crucial fraction simply by tightening his muscles, and the metal pressed into my skin. I knew it did not break through, although I felt it all the way down to the small of my back. I did not swallow until he’d taken it away.

“Yess,” he said in his satisfied hiss. He was not even winded. “Now you see.”

“See what?” I demanded hotly. When I lose my temper, I’m afraid it’s gone. “See you are the biggest show-off in the world, or see you nearly scared me out of a year’s growth?”

He lowered his blade and twirled it at his side in a very show-offy way. “Hmm,” he observed to the air around him, “little scared duke-boy gets anger.”

“Yes, I get angry when I’m scared—what do you want me to do, cry?”

“Anger,” Venturus said, “is enemy to sword. Many angry men killed by sword.”

“Is that so?”

Venturus made a tour of the room, working the sword in flashy patterns so that I had to keep well away. “Fear,” he observed to the air, “is enemy to sword. And fear to sword is friend. You see now?”

“No.”

“No? Why not? You have eyes, but you no see. I teach and teach, but you no learn. Why you no learn, silly duke-boy?”

I took a deep breath. “I see one thing,” I said, “and that’s that I’ll never be any good at this. And you know what? That’s just fine with me, because it was never my idea in the first place, remember? So why don’t you just go ahead and tell my uncle that I have too bad a temper and I’m too scared and stupid ever to be a decent swordsman, and then we can all go home!”

He turned to me with real hardness in his eyes. The sword was down at his side, but for the first time, the man truly frightened me. “Do not sharpen your tongue on Venturus,” he growled. “Do not command like to some servant.” His nostrils flared as he breathed deeply. “I go now, yes? This no day for sword.”

I stood very still as he put on his shirt and jacket, picked up his sword-belt and weapon and left.
“Do you ever even take a bath?”
I shouted to the door once it had closed behind him.

 

chapter
VII

A
S THE CLOUDLESS SKY ABOVE THE RIVER FADED
from blue to grey to green before settling into another deeper, darker blue that set off the evening star to perfection, the curtains of Godwin House were drawn against the night chill and the vapors of the river.

Scented candles were lit in the music room, which turned warm, hazy and dreamlike amongst their fumes, the vases of flowers and the perfumed men and women in their whispering satin.

The young Lady Lydia Godwin had assembled a group of friends for a dinner—or, rather, her mother had assembled them for her from a slightly longer list of Lydia’s. Since her first ball, Lydia was now allowed a certain number of small gatherings, carefully monitored and chaperoned.

After a dinner of eleven dishes and much innuendo, all Lydia wanted to do was to disappear into a corner with her closest friends to discuss the preceding events: looks and comments, dresses and ornaments, jokes and compliments. Instead, she must play the hostess and restrict herself to the occasional glance across the room at Artemisia Fitz-Levi when anything particularly struck her.

It wasn’t so easy to catch Lady Artemisia’s eye. Her attention was occupied by a nobleman in mulberry silk who seemed always to be speaking earnestly to her.

Artemisia could not be certain of whether Lord Terence Monteith was a bore or not. He had good clothes and good jewels, and a very pleasant face. The Godwins had invited him and he was unmarried, so clearly he had prospects. But nothing he was saying interested her. Which was odd, because he was not, as is usual with men, demanding that she listen to him. He was asking her opinion of things, and hanging on her every word. It was just that she had no opinion on the things he asked her. She hadn’t spent a lot of time thinking about whether musicians who played on the street should be required to have licenses, or livestock entering the city be inspected for disease. It was, of course, flattering that he wanted to know. “Really?” he kept saying. “Do you think so? And what about…?” until she was taxed for invention. In fact, it was beginning to feel a bit too much like a lesson she hadn’t prepared for, which made her cross. She was not, after all, in the schoolroom any longer. Artemisia tossed her curls. “Lord Terence,” she said, “how charming to find a man who thinks a woman knows more than just fashion and poetry!” hoping that at least he’d want to ask her about those.

His eyes never left her face. “What perfect teeth you have,” Lord Terence said, confirming her suspicion that he was, in fact, a bore and, having no conversation of his own, had simply been asking her to provide it while he stared at her.

Lydia’s parents came in then with a handful of their own friends who had been dining elsewhere. Artemisia had to restrain herself from dropping a schoolgirl’s curtsey to Michael, Lord Godwin, and his lady, now that she was a young lady herself.

The eddy of newcomers should have been enough to detach her from Lord Terence, but the young nobleman was nothing if not persistent. In a moment he would ask if he might call on her, and she would have to say yes, or she would hear about it from her mother. She looked desperately for Lydia to signal for aid, but the daughter of the house was being dutiful with one of her parents’ guests: a tall, dark-haired man with a distinguished air.

“Old people,” Artemisia murmured daringly to Terence, no longer caring what he thought of her, “why must they insinuate themselves and spoil the party?”

Sure enough, her suitor drew back a little shocked. “That is Lord Ferris,” he said, “the new Crescent Chancellor himself! Really, I wonder that Lady Godwin will have him here, now that he has taken her husband’s place as head of the Council of Lords; but I suppose they are used to these ups and downs in politics. I have already taken my seat in Council, of course, but I’ve spoken only once or twice, on minor matters….”

“About cattle?” she asked piquantly, “or fish?”

Lord Terence missed the mockery completely, and was about to tell her which, when suddenly Artemisia made the mistake of catching Lydia’s eye, and burst into helpless laughter.

Lord Ferris turned his whole head to look at her. His left eye was covered with a black velvet patch. “Hmm,” he said to Lydia. “Possibly the first person ever to find Terence Monteith at all amusing. Pray introduce me to your friend.”

“Do you mean
Artemisia
?” Lydia could have bitten her own tongue for sounding like a schoolgirl. But the Crescent Chancellor smiled at her in such a way as to indicate a complete understanding of what a complicated task it was for a young woman to play hostess at her own dinner party; indeed, he made her feel, just for a moment, as though running a party of eligible young people and running the Council of Lords were not such entirely different tasks.

“With pleasure,” Lydia said smoothly. Lord Ferris must be older than her father, but unlike her father, he took the trouble to treat a young girl like a proper lady, not someone who still ate in the nursery with her little brothers. His hair was very black, with just a little silver, and his hands were finely shaped, ornamented with heavy, tasteful gold rings. The eyepatch only gave him an air of mystery. She felt tremendously grown-up when he offered her his arm and guided her across the floor to where Artemisia Fitz-Levi stood, with Terence Monteith gawking beside her.

BOOK: The Privilege of the Sword
8.45Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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