The Gentleman Bastard Series (40 page)

Don Maranzalla’s man caught him by the shoulders, gently but firmly.

“It can be overwhelming at first. Your eyes will adjust in a few moments, but mark my words well, and by the gods, touch
nothing
.”

As Jean’s eyes recovered from the initial shock of the garden, he began to see past the dazzling glare. Each wall of roses was actually transparent; the nearest was just two paces away. And it was flawless—as flawless as the rumors claimed—as though the Eldren had frozen every blossom and every bush in an instant of summer’s fullest perfection. Yet there were patches of genuine color here and there in the hearts of the sculptures, swirled masses of reddish brown translucence, like clouds of rust-colored smoke frozen in ice.

These clouds of color were human blood.

Every petal, leaf, and thorn was sharper than any razor; the merest touch would open human skin like paper, and the roses would drink, or so the stories said, siphoning blood deep inside the network of glass stems and vines. Presumably, if enough lives were fed to the garden every blossom and every wall would someday turn a rich, rusty red. Some rumors had it that the garden merely drank what was spilled upon it; others claimed that the roses would actually draw blood forth from a wound, and could drain a man white from any cut, no matter how small.

It would take intense concentration to walk through these paths; most were only two or three paces wide, and a moment of distraction could be deadly. It said much about Don Maranzalla that he thought of his garden as the ideal place to teach young men how to fight. For the first time, Jean felt a sense of dreadful awe at the creatures who’d vanished from Camorr a thousand years before his birth. How many other alien surprises had they left behind for men to stumble over? What could drive away beings powerful enough to craft something like this? The answer did not bear thinking of.

Maranzalla’s man released his grip on Jean’s shoulders and reentered the dim room at the apex of the stairs; the room, as Jean now saw, jutted out of the tower’s wall like a gardener’s shack. “The don will be waiting at the center of the garden,” he said.

Then he pulled the door shut after him, and Jean seemed alone on the roof, with the naked sun overhead and the walls of thirsty glass before him.

Yet he wasn’t alone; there was noise coming from the heart of the glass garden, the whickering skirl of steel against steel, low grunts of exertion, a few terse commands in a deep voice rich with authority. Just a few minutes earlier, Jean would have sworn that the catbridge crossing was the most frightening thing he’d ever done, but now that he faced the Garden Without Fragrance, he would have gladly gone back to the midpoint of
that slender arch fifty feet above the Angevine and danced on it without guide ropes.

Still, the black wallet clutched in his right hand drew his mind to the fact that Father Chains had thought him
right
for whatever awaited him in this garden. Despite their scintillating danger, the roses were inanimate and unthinking; how could he have the heart of a killer if he feared to walk among them? Shame drove him forward, step by sliding step, and he threaded the twisting paths of the garden with exquisite care, sweat sliding down his face and stinging his eyes.

“I am a Gentleman Bastard,” he muttered to himself.

It was the longest thirty feet of his brief life, that passage between the cold and waiting walls of roses.

He didn’t allow them a single taste of him.

At the center of the garden was a circular courtyard about thirty feet wide; here, two boys roughly Jean’s age were circling one another, rapiers flicking and darting. Another half dozen boys watched uneasily, along with a tall man of late middle age. This man had shoulder-length hair and drooping moustaches the color of cold campfire ashes. His face was like sanded leather, and though he wore a gentleman’s doublet in the same vivid red as the attendants downstairs, he wore it over weather-stained soldier’s breeches and tattered field boots.

There wasn’t a boy at the lesson who didn’t put his master’s clothes to shame. These were sons of the
quality
, in brocade jackets and tailored breeches, silk tunics and polished imitations of swordsman’s boots; each one also wore a white leather buff coat and silver-studded bracers of the same material; just the thing for warding off thrusts from training weapons. Jean felt naked the instant he stepped into the clearing, and only the threat of the glass roses kept him from leaping back into concealment.

One of the duelists was surprised to see Jean emerge from the garden, and his opponent made good use of that split second of inattention; he deftly thrust his rapier into the meat of the first boy’s upper arm, punching through the leather. The skewered boy let out an unbecoming holler and dropped his blade.

“My lord Maranzalla!” One of the boys in the crowd spoke up, and there was more oil in his voice than there was on a blade put away for storage. “Lorenzo was
clearly
distracted by the boy who just came out of the garden! That was not a fair strike.”

Every boy in the clearing turned to regard Jean, and it was impossible to guess what soonest ignited their naked disdain: his laborer’s clothing,
his pearlike physique, his lack of weapons and armor? Only the boy with a spreading circle of blood on his tunic sleeve failed to stare at him with open loathing; he had other problems. The gray-haired man cleared his throat, then spoke in the deep voice Jean had heard earlier. He seemed amused.

“You were a fool to take your eyes from your opponent, Lorenzo, so in a sense you earned that sting. But it is true, all things being equal, that a young gentleman should not exploit an outside distraction to score a touch. You will both try to do better next time.” He pointed toward Jean without looking at him, and his voice lost its warmth. “And you, boy—lose yourself in the garden until we’ve finished here; I don’t want to see you again until these young gentlemen have left.”

Certain that the fire rising in his cheeks could outshine the sun itself, Jean rapidly scuttled out of sight; several seconds passed before he realized with horror that he had leapt back into the maze of sculpted glass walls without hesitation. Positioning himself a few bends back from the clearing, he stood in mingled fear and self-loathing, and tried to hold himself rigid as the sun’s heat cooked great rivers of sweat out of him.

Fortunately, he hadn’t much longer to wait; the sound of steel on steel faded, and Don Maranzalla dismissed his class. They filed past Jean with their coats off and their jackets open, each boy seemingly at ease with the lethal labyrinth of transparent blossoms. Not one said anything to Jean, for this was Don Maranzalla’s house, and it would be presumptuous of them to chastise a commoner within his domain. The fact that each boy had sweated his silk tunic to near translucency, and that several were red-faced and wobbly with sun-sickness, did little to leaven Jean’s misery.

“Boy,” called the don after the troop of young gentlemen had passed out of the garden and down the stairs, “attend me now.”

Summoning as much dignity as he could—and realizing that most of it was pure imagination—Jean sucked in his wobbling belly and went out into the courtyard once again. Don Maranzalla wasn’t facing him; the don held the undersized training rapier that had recently stung a careless boy’s biceps. In his hands, it looked like a toy, but the blood that glistened on its tip was quite real.

“I, uh, I’m sorry, sir, my lord Maranzalla. I must have come early. I, ah, didn’t mean to distract from the lesson.…”

The don turned on his heel, smooth as Tal Verrar clockwork, every
muscle in his upper body ominously statue-still. He stared down at Jean now, and the cold scrutiny of those black, squinting eyes gave Jean the third great scare of the afternoon.

He suddenly remembered that he was alone on the roof with a man that had
butchered
his way into the position he currently held.

“Does it amuse you, lowborn,” the don asked in a serpentine whisper, “to speak before you are spoken to, in a place such as this, to a man such as myself? To a
don
?”

Jean’s blubbered apology died in his throat with an unmanly choke; the sort of wet noise a clam might make if you broke its shell and squeezed it out through the cracks.

“Because if you’re merely being
careless
, I’ll beat that habit out of your butter-fat ass before you can blink.” The don strode over to the nearest wall of glass roses, and with evident care slid the tip of the bloodied rapier into one of the blossoms. Jean watched in horrified fascination as the red stain quickly vanished from the blade and was drawn into the glass, where it diffused into a mistlike pink tendril and was carried into the heart of the sculpture. The don tossed the clean sword to the ground. “Is that it? Are you a careless little fat boy sent up here to pretend at arms? You’re a dirty little urchin from the Cauldron, no doubt; some whore’s gods-damned droppings.”

At first the paralysis of Jean’s tongue refused to lift; then he heard the blood pounding in his ears like the crashing of waves on a shore. His fists clenched on some impulse of their own.

“I was born in the
North Corner
,” he yelled, “and my mother and father were folk of
business
!”

Almost as soon as he’d finished spitting this out his heart seemed to stop. Mortified, he put his arms behind his back, bowed his head, and took a step backward.

After a moment of weighted silence, Maranzalla laughed loudly and cracked his knuckles with a sound like pine logs popping in a fire.

“You must forgive me, Jean,” he said. “I wanted to see if Chains was telling the truth. By the gods, you
do
have balls. And a temper.”

“You …” Jean stared at the don, comprehension dawning. “You
wanted
to make me angry, my lord?”

“I know you’re sensitive about your parents, boy. Chains told me quite a bit about you.” The don knelt on one knee before Jean, bringing them eye to eye, and put a hand on Jean’s shoulder.

“Chains isn’t blind,” said Jean. “I’m not an
initiate
. And you’re not really … not really …”

“A mean old son-of-a-bitch?”

Jean giggled despite himself. “I, uh … I wonder if I’ll ever meet anyone who is what they seem to be, ever again, my lord.”

“You have. They walked out of my garden a few minutes ago. And I
am
a mean son-of-a-bitch, Jean. You’re going to hate my miserable old guts before this summer’s out. You’re going to curse me at Falselight and curse me at dawn.”

“Oh,” said Jean. “But … that’s just business.”

“Very true,” said Don Maranzalla. “You know, I wasn’t born to this place; it was a gift for services rendered. And don’t think that I don’t value it … but my mother and father weren’t even from the North Corner. I was actually born on a farm.”

“Wow,” said Jean.

“Yes. Up here in this garden, it won’t matter who your parents were; I’ll make you work until you sweat blood and plead for mercy. I’ll thrash on you until you’re inventing new gods to pray to. The only thing this garden respects is
concentration
. Can you concentrate, every moment you’re up here? Can you distill your attention, drive it down to the narrowest focus, live absolutely in the now, and shut out all other concerns?”

“I … I shall have to try, my lord. I already walked through the gardens once. I can do it again.”

“You
will
do it again. You’ll do it a thousand times. You’ll run through my roses. You’ll sleep among them. And you’ll learn to concentrate. I warn you, though, some men could
not
.” The don arose and swept a hand in a semicircle before him. “You can find what they left behind, here and there. In the glass.”

Jean swallowed nervously and nodded.

“Now, you tried to apologize before for coming early. Truth is, you didn’t. I let my previous lesson run long because I tend to indulge those wretched little shits when they want to cut each other up a bit. In future, come at the stroke of one, to make sure they’re long gone. They
cannot
be allowed to see me teaching you.”

Once, Jean had been the son of substantial wealth, and he had worn clothes as fine as any just seen on this rooftop. What he felt now was the old sting of his loss, he told himself, and not mere shame for anything as stupid as his hair or his clothes or even his hanging belly. This thought
was just self-importantly noble enough to keep his eyes dry and his face composed.

“I understand, my lord. I … don’t wish to embarrass you again.”

“Embarrass me? Jean, you misunderstand.” Maranzalla kicked idly at the toy rapier, and it clattered across the tiles of the rooftop. “Those prancing little pants-wetters come here to learn the colorful and gentlemanly art of fencing, with its many sporting
limitations
and its proscriptions against
dishonorable
engagements.

“You, on the other hand,” he said as he turned to give Jean a firm but friendly poke in the center of his forehead, “
you
are going to learn how to
kill men with a sword”

CHAPTER SEVEN

OUT THE WINDOW

1

LOCKE OUTLINED HIS plan over a long, nervous lunch.

The Gentlemen Bastards sat at the dining table in their glass burrow, just after noon on Duke’s Day. Outside the sun was pouring down its usual afternoon punishment, but in the burrow it was cool, perhaps unnaturally so, even for an underground cellar. Chains had often speculated that the Elderglass did tricks with more than just light.

They had laid on a feast more befitting a festival than a midday meeting. There was stewed mutton with onions and ginger, stuffed eels in spiced wine sauce, and green-apple tarts baked by Jean (with a liberal dose of Austershalin brandy poured over the fruit). “I’ll bet even the duke’s own cook would have his balls skinned if he did this,” he’d said. “Makes each tart worth two or three crowns, by my reckoning.”