The Privilege of the Sword (17 page)

Ferris flashed him a look. In these, his later years, he had even less patience with people pretending to be stupid. But he only said, “I do not think it.”

“Nor do I,” the younger man said frankly. “Perhaps she did not care what happened to the state, once she was dead. Maybe she wanted to bring it down after her.”

From a low, polished table, Ferris bent to pick up one of the little glass birds she had collected. He held it gently. “Oh, no, not she.”

“Or she thought you and Godwin and all her other fancy boys would rise to the occasion. As indeed you do. She trained you well. The Council bears her stamp, I bear her title and everyone is happy.”

Carefully, Ferris put the bird down. “There is something else I thought…” his drawl had become almost as long as the duke’s, a relic of both their youths “…when I heard you had inherited after all. I wondered if she had not intended all along for your exquisite swordsman, St Vier, to direct the duchy. One so admired his balance. And you did seem inseparable, back then.” He looked lazily at a spot over the duke’s head. “Yet you did separate. Perhaps that was the flaw in her reasoning.”

The duke scrutinized his pearl-handled fruit knife as though he had forgotten just what it was for. Finally, he applied it carefully to the skin of his apple.

“It is interesting how one idolizes the departed,” the duke mused. “You admire the late duchess now, but I remember you calling her some very ugly names when she had you exiled to Arkenvelt over the matter of your misuse of my exquisite swordsman. I did think then, my lord, that you had learned that St Vier cannot be used against Tremontaine.”

Ferris heard the message and noted it for further study. He had been wondering if the swordsman was still alive. It appeared he might be.
Alive, but not in play
. He chose to ignore the dig at his own past disgrace; it was, after all, Tremontaine who had brought him to the political exile he had spent years and a small fortune to return from, and there was no reason for either of them to have forgotten it. “I remember,” the Crescent Chancellor added, “how very much in demand he was in his heyday, your swordsman. He killed with one blow to the heart.”

“If he liked you. As you may also remember, he was not always so merciful.” The duke gathered the folds of his poisonous green-and-black robe around him. “And now, if you will excuse me, there’s someone waiting for me.”

Lord Ferris did not bow, but said tightly, “We must all excuse you. Constantly. I trust we will see you no more this season in Council?”

The duke cocked his head. “Now, why should you think that?”

Lord Ferris opened his mouth to make a double-edged rejoinder, and closed it again, suddenly sick of the whole thing, and not at all sure of keeping his temper—another provocation he very much resented from the duke. “You disappoint me,” Ferris said heavily. “You could be more, much more.”

“I don’t think the city would take much more of me.”

“It would if you put your position to good use!” This was the speech Ferris had come planning to make, but it came pouring out of him untempered. “You have opinions, everyone knows you do; why will you not come and debate them in open Council with the rest of us? Statecraft and policy take time. They take patience and forethought and, yes, even compromise. They are not toys—we are not toys—to be picked up and put down at your whim, because you cannot stay the long course that it would take to effect real change. You are not stupid, you must surely know that. You find no one worthy of your vision, you do not wish to be a reliable ally? Fine. But at least be a reliable opponent, instead of shifting like a weathercock, blown by the wind of your fancy.”

The duke paused and looked at him with real surprise. “Ferris,” he said, “I am not a boy any longer. I don’t particularly care if I disappoint you or not. Save your pompous sermonizing for the young fools who want to impress you and run the country into the ground with self-serving tax schemes.”

Many years ago, Lord Ferris had lost his left eye. He turned the patch to the duke, a black velvet gaze that often unnerved people. “Someday,” he said, “you will regret the loss of that swordsman.”

Which was not at all what he had intended to say. Before his temper could drive him to further indiscretion, Lord Ferris turned and left the room. His own swordsmen and guards stood ranked to escort him; and in the shadows of the corridors of the Riverside house, he fancied he saw the shapes of others, watching.

T
HE
D
UKE
T
REMONTAINE THREW HIS FRUIT KNIFE AT
the wall, where its point stuck, quivering, due to luck or the fury of the blow.

Then he went into the adjoining room, where the Ugly Girl was sitting on his bed reading, fully dressed.

“God, you’re a pig when you wake up,” she observed.

“He should not have come so early.”

“Early!” she snorted. “It’s after noon. Though you’d never know it; in your room, it is eternal twilight.” She reached for one of the red velvet curtains, but he barked, “Stop. I like it this way.”

“Come down to the library,” she suggested, “where there’s plenty of light, and quit hoarding books in your room. What else have you got in that pile?”

“Poetry,” he said sweetly. “And pornography. Nothing to please your maiden eyes.”

“Crap. You’ve got Merle’s
Antithesis
, and after you swore you’d let me read it first.”

“I will let you read it first. I was saving it to give to you on a special occasion.”

“Like when you’ve been really annoying?”

“Just so. Where else are you going to get a copy of a banned book?”

She extended herself across the bed and snatched it from the pile. “For a noble and a libertine, you’re not so bad. Want to go downstairs and work on Coverley’s Last Theorem?”

“No,” he drawled; “I want to stay here and smoke something.”

The fat woman shrugged. “Suit yourself. But when I solve it without you, don’t expect any credit for helping.”

“I am going to have visions.”

“Some people,” she said, “have no idea how to enjoy themselves.”

But the duke opened a cabinet by his bed, and began sorting through his collection of little vials. “
You’re
all right,” he said to the door closing behind her. “Without poetry or pornography, it’s unlikely that anyone will ever strike you through the heart.”

Soon he began to feel better.

chapter
III

I
LEARNED THE SWORD FROM HIM, BUT
I
LEARNED
more. I learned to be quiet in the wood, and how to breathe so no deer could hear me. I learned how to gut a fresh-caught fish, and how to rob a beehive of its honeycomb. I learned to know where my feet were at all times, and how to make the sword I wore a part of myself, so that when my teacher took a sudden swipe at me, my hand was no longer empty, and I was not defenseless.

I rediscovered skills I’d had as a child: climbing trees, knocking down nuts, skipping stones across a pond.

And I learned him well enough that it became harder for him to surprise me with a sudden attack. I could sense the stillness of his impending motion, and I was ready.

I raided the great house’s kitchen gardens for herbs, and made a little plot by our door so that I would not have to go so far to make our food taste like something. As the harvest came in, the house staff left us baskets of good ripe squash and tomatoes and leeks and chard. I was going to miss the sweet green peas I ate by the handful that were already gone by. I dried bunches of thyme and sage, and brought indoors a little pot of rosemary I hoped would last out the winter.

There was always enough butter and cream and cheese, since there were more than enough cows. And suddenly, as the night air turned cold and the day sky burned a bright and gallant blue, the world was full of apples. The air smelt of them, sharp and crisp, then underlaid with the sweet rot of groundfall. One day the orchard was infested with children, filling their baskets with them for cider. The next week, pigs were rootling for what was left.

On one of the last warmish nights of autumn we sat by the stream, grilling trout stuffed with fennel over a fire of apple wood. The stars were thick as spilled salt above us.

He pulled his cloak around him and poked the fire with his staff. “There were apple trees where I grew up. I used to collect fallen wood for my mother. And steal the lord’s apples, with his sons.”

“Were you caught?”

“Chased, not caught. He was a nice man. He understood boys get hungry. He liked my mother; used to lend her books and things.”

“Did your father die?”

“I never had one, not in the usual way of things. My mother ran away with him when she was young, but she decided she didn’t like him after all. By then she was stuck with me, but I guess she didn’t mind. She used to show me bat skeletons and teach me the names of plants.”

My mother seemed so far away she hardly seemed worth mentioning. And mine never had any bat skeletons. “She sounds a bit…unusual.”

“Yes, I figured that out later.”

“Did she teach you to fight?”

“Oh, no. I learnt from a swordsman. No, she couldn’t do anything practical, really.”

We’d eaten all we wanted to eat, but were in no mood to leave the fire.

“It’s too bad neither of us can sing,” my teacher said. “The nights are getting longer. Can you recite anything?”

Poetry?
I thought in panic. “Just schoolroom things: ‘The Maid Forlorn,’ ‘The King’s Run,’ that sort of thing.”

“Can I hear them?”

He was always amazing me by not knowing the most common things. “Well, if you like.”

But he stopped me halfway through “The Maid Forlorn.” “Do you think that could really happen?”

I sucked fish off my fingers. “A girl believing everything a man tells her? Probably. Some people are very gullible.”

I heard him smile. “True. But—are you supposed to admire her as well as feel sorry for her? Or just to think,
I’ll never do anything that stupid
?”

I’d never considered it. “You know,” I said, “I think the point is she’s in love with him, even though she isn’t supposed to be. That’s what makes her stupid, really. It’s not to say she isn’t clever with other things. She might have been very good at sums or geography or something, beforehand.”

“So they made you learn this as a lesson not to fall in love with unsuitable men?”

I drew myself up. I did not like having my upbringing criticized, even by him. “I learnt this,” I said, “because it is
poetry
. Girls are supposed to know poetry. It is the inner beauty of the soul made art.”

“I take it she dies at the end.”

“She wants to die. She’s been betrayed. She’s lost her
honor
.” He made a dismissive noise. “Well, what do you want her to
do
?” I demanded. “Go off somewhere and open a
shop
?”

“Well, why not?”

“Because then it wouldn’t be
poetry
.”

“How’s ‘The King’s Run’?”

“It’s heroic. The young king dies, but it’s for the land.”

“I thought nobles hated the kings.”

“We overthrew the bad ones,” I explained, drawing on my schoolroom lessons of a lifetime ago. “There used to be better ones, before, in the really olden days. Those are the poetry ones.”

He leaned forward. “Look, I’ve been wondering about that. People have written books of history, haven’t they? We might find a few in the library here.”

“I could read to you.”

“Yes, I’d like that.”

I thought, and then said, “Your mother, she never taught you to read, did she?”

“It didn’t seem important, then. You know how it is.”

Well, I did know. Learning things was hard, and people were always trying to teach you things you didn’t want to know. If I had a daughter, I’d never make her sew or cook if she didn’t want to. But she’d have to learn to read and keep accounts. “History books?” I asked. I suspected they’d be dull. But maybe I’d find other books in the Highcombe library, good ones, like travel or adventure. “Could we send for more from the city?”