Swordpoint (20 page)

Don't forget my baby brother!

How many of them did you get?

One - Two - Three - Four –

One of the twirlers suddenly missed her beat. The jumper caught her feet in the rope and stumbled. 'Sylvie, you goon!' But Sylvie ignored her.

'Hullo, old love!' she called to Richard, just like her grandmother, Rosalie.

'Hullo, Sylvie.'

'Got any candy?'

'Not on me, stinker.'

She stamped her foot. 'Don't call me stinker! That's for babies.'

'Sorry, brat.' He tried to walk past her, but she blocked the way to the stairs.

'Gramma says you can't come in.'

'Why not?'

'There's people looking for you. Have been all day.'

'Are they in there now?'

She nodded. 'Sure are.'

'Armed?'

'I guess so. You gonna kill 'em?'

'Probably. Don't worry, I'll tell your gramma you told me.'

'No.' Alec caught his sleeve. 'Don't. For god's sake, Richard, let's go home.'

'Alec..." They couldn't argue out here. Richard nodded at the children. 'Do you want to give them a little brass?'

Alec fished in his purse and came up with some coins, which he handed gingerly to Sylvie as though she might bite him.

'Thanks, Richard! Thank you, O my prince!'

A flurry of giggles covered their retreat, mixed with cries of 'Sylvie, you goon! I can't believe you did that!'

'What', said Alec, 'was that all about?'

Richard shrugged. 'They've probably made up some story about you. They always do.'

'Nasty little objects. I wonder which one made up that rhyme.?'

'All little girls say it,' said Richard, surprised. 'They did it where I grew up.'

'Hmph. I don't think my sister did. But then, Mother frowned on poetry.'

It was perhaps the first time he had mentioned his family. He was tense; the business at Rosalie's had shaken him. Of course, Richard thought: Alec wasn't used to being hunted. And there was no way to reassure him: it could be an unpleasant business, if you let it. It placed constraints on your life that Alec wasn't at all accustomed to. In fact, Alec probably had been right to insist on avoiding Rosalie's once they'd been warned. There was no sense in walking into trouble. But Richard didn't like having to put up with it. Alec, less patient than the swordsman, was going to like the new restrictions even less.

They stopped at Martha's for beer. Unless the informers were working double-time, no one would be looking for him there yet. When they came in there was a stir of movement that subsided into tight-knit groups doing their best to ignore them. It didn't particularly bother St Vier; it was almost welcome relief from the usual fuss they made over him. The two men drank quickly, and left.

'It'll get better come nightfall,' Richard told him, walking home. 'Everyone's easier then, there's fewer strangers around.' 'That's a life for you,' said Alec; 'just coming out at night, like a moon crawler.'

Richard looked curiously at him. 'I don't think it'll come to that.'

The rapid patter of footsteps behind them put an end to the discussion.

'Move,' said Richard, hand on his sword. 'Into that doorway.'

For once, Alec did as he was told. Already it was dusk under the lowering eaves of the close-set houses. Their pursuer rounded the corner at too fast a clip to have a prayer of holding ground against the swordsman standing ready.

The small white figure skidded to a halt. 'Holy Lucy!' Nimble Willie swore. 'Master St Vier, for godsakes put that thing away, and come into that doorway.'

'Alec's already in there.'

'That's all right,' the doorway interjected, 'we'll have a lovely time. What the hell's the matter with you, Willie,' Alec demanded, emerging from it, 'coursing like a stoat after rabbits?'

'Sorry,' Willie panted. He motioned them off to one side; what he had to say wasn't fit for the middle of the street. 'Don't go home that way. Cut through Blind Max's Alley; they're watching Dolphin's Cross.'

'How many?'

'Three. City toughs, with swords, out for the reward.'

'There's a reward?'

'Not for you yet. It's just the usual; for suspects to be brought in. But these boys think it's you - they might be friends of those other two you killed last week.'

Richard sighed wearily. 'I'd better kill them.'

'No, wait!' cried Willie. 'Don't do that.'

'Why not?'

'They've already paid me. I figured it'd be easy to give them the slip. But if one gets away, I'll be in for it...."

St Vier sighed, running a hand through his hair. 'Willie-----all right. Only for you. I'll just keep away from Dolphin's Cross.'

Alec paid him without having to be reminded.

The house seemed quiet. It was set in a cul-de-sac where no one in his right mind would want to take on St Vier. Nevertheless, he went first up the stairs, scanning for reckless intruders. There was nobody, not even a neighbour.

'God,' Alec huffed, throwing himself down on their old chaise lounge. 'Hadn't we better check under the beds?'

Richard answered his real question. 'I don't think they'll come in here. Even if they can get someone to show them the way, people don't like to attack a swordsman on his own ground.'

'I see.' Alec sat thoughtfully, turning the rings on his fingers. After a while he got up and found the Nature treatise with the burgundy leather binding and half its pages missing. He flipped through it while Richard limbered up and began practising. The grey cat came and sat on Alec's lap, trying to interpose her head between his eyes and the page. He scratched her chin, and finally snapped the book shut irritably and replaced it on the mantel, taking instead his worn philosophy text. Finally he gave up all pretence of reading, and watched the swordsman steadily working his body through parrys and extensions and recoils so quick and intricate Alec's eye couldn't make out the discrete elements. All he could do was sense their perfection, a dance made of deadly movements whose goal was not to entertain.

For a while Alec seemed to be drowsing, like the cat on his lap, eyes half-shut watching the swordsman. Only his hand moved, idling along the cat's spine, deep in the lush fur finding the ridges of its bones. The cat was purring; Alec put his fingers on its throat, and left them there.

The frenzy of Richard's movements had slowed to a deliberate pace. It was the cat's favourite stalking-game, but Alec's fingers left her too sedated to care. Richard's body obeyed him in his tortuous demands, and Alec watched.

'You know,' Alec said conversationally, 'they would be so pleased if anything were to happen to you.'

'Hh?' It came out a grunt.

'Your friends. They'd finally get their chance at me.'

'You'd have to leave.' Richard put up his sword and began slowly stretching his muscles out. 'They wouldn't follow you out of Riverside.'

'If you were dead.' Alec finished the thought bluntly.

The anger surprised Richard. 'Well, yes.'

Alec's voice was low, almost harsh with repressed fury. 'It doesn't particularly bother you.'

'Well, I'm a swordsman.' He shrugged, no easy feat with his head touching the floor. 'If I stay active, I can't last much past 30. There'll be someone better some day.'

'You don't care.' Alec was still lounging picturesquely, long limbs on display; but the rigidness of his hands clenched on the frayed upholstery betrayed him.

'It's all right,' Richard said; 'it's what happens.'

'Then what,' Alec articulated with crystalline clarity, 'in hell are you doing all that practising for?'

Richard picked up his sword. 'Because I want to be good.' He lifted it over his head and dived at the wall the way he would at an opponent who'd uncovered his front guard.

'So you can give them a really good fight before they kill you?'

Richard twisted and came in high again, his wrist arced like a falcon stooping. 'Mm-hm.'

'Stop it,' Alec said very quietly. 'Stop it.'

'Not now, Alec, I'm -'

I said, stop it!' Alec rose to his full height, towering and angular in his wrath. His eyes were green as emeralds uncovered in a casket. Richard put the sword down and kicked it into a corner. When he looked up he saw the raised hand, knew Alec was going to hit him, and stayed still as the palm crashed across his face.

'You coward,' Alec said coldly. He was breathing heavily and his cheeks were bright. 'What are you waiting for?'

'Alec,' Richard said. His face stung. 'Do you want me to hit you?'

'You don't dare.' Alec raised his hand again, but this time Richard caught it, gripping the bony wrist that was so much frailer than his own. Alec twisted the wrong way, making Richard hurt him. 'I'm not enough of a challenge,' he hissed through gritted teeth, 'that's it, isn't it? It would make you look bad. You wouldn't enjoy it.'

'Enough,' Richard said; 'it's enough.' He knew he was holding Alec too hard; he was afraid to let go.

'No, it isn't enough,' the man in his hands was saying. 'It's enough for you - it's always enough for you, but not for me. Talk to me, Richard - if you're afraid to use your hands, then talk to me.'

'I can't,' Richard said. 'Not the way you do. Alec, please-you know you don't want this. Stop it.'

'Please,' Alec said, still pulling against his arm as though he were ready to start hitting him again; 'that's a new one from you. I think I like it. Say it again.'

Richard's own hands sprang open; he flung himself away from the other man. 'Look,' he shouted, 'what do you want from me?'

Alec smiled his feral smile. 'You're upset,' he said.

Richard could feel himself shaking. Tears of rage were still burning behind his eyes, but at least he could see again, the room was losing its red tinge. 'Yes,' he managed to say.

'Come here,' Alec said. His voice was long and cool like slopes of snow. 'Come to me.'

He walked across the room. Alec lifted his chin and kissed him. 'You're crying, Richard,' Alec said. 'You're crying.'

The tears burned his eyes like acid. They made his face feel raw. Alec lowered him to the floor. At first he was rough, and then he was gentle.

In the end, it was Alec who couldn't cry. 'I want to,' he said, curled on Richard's chest, fingers digging into him as though he were slipping down a rock face. 'I want to, but I can't.'

'You don't really want to,' Richard said, his hand cupped around Alec's head. 'It makes your nose run. It makes your eyes red.'

Alec gave a strangled laugh and clutched him tighter. He tried an experimental sniff, and gasped with a sudden convulsion of some emotion: misery, or frustration. 'It's no good,' he said. 'I can't.'

'It doesn't matter,' Richard said, stroking him. 'You'll learn.'

'If I'd known you were such an expert I would have made you teach me long ago.'

'I offered to teach you the sword. It seemed more useful.'

'Not to me,' Alec said automatically. 'Did you know you were talking just now, too? It sounded like you were reciting poetry.'

Richard smiled. 'I didn't notice. It might have been.'

'I didn't know you knew any poetry.'

Richard knew that he ought to be upset. He had just been thoroughly overturned by Alec: had lost his temper, lost his control, behaved in ways he didn't even know he could. But Alec had caught him as he fell, had taken pleasure in it. And now he felt wonderful, as long as he didn't think hard about it. There was

no need to think. He never wanted to move again; he never wanted Alec's head to shift from the crook of his shoulder, or the warmth of their legs entwined to dissolve. 'I know a lot of poetry,' he answered. 'My mother used to say it to me. Old things, mainly.'

'Something about the wind, and someone's face.'

After awhile, he began to grow younger.

The years were torn from his face

Like leaves scattered before the wind,...

In the end, she made all others seem impossible.

'That's an old one', he explained, 'about a man who was taken by the Faery Queen.'

'I've never heard it.' Alec nestled under his chin, lulled by the words. 'Tell it to me.'

Richard thought for a minute, reaching back for the beginning, absently stroking Alec's hair:

It was never cold under the hill, and never dark.

But the light was not a light for seeing. It deceived.

He tried to remember the sun,

To remember remembering the moon.

He thought –

Alec's hand was at his lips.

'You've got to go!' His voice cracked. 'They won't let you walk out of this, they don't dare! I know them, Richard!'

Richard tightened his arm around Alec's shoulders, wordlessly trying to comfort, to drain the tension from the anguished spirit.

But the touch was not enough. 'Richard, I know them - they won't let you live!' He turned his face in to Richard's chest, his body clenched again in a frozen spasm not of weeping but of fury.

At a loss, Richard turned again to the words that still flowed through his mind like water:

Day followed day, with never night between:

Feasting and all manner of delight

Hedged him 'round like hounds their quarry's heart –

'I'm cold,' Alec said suddenly.

He knew that arbitrary voice: it was as warm and familiar to him as bread. 'Well, we are on the floor,' he answered.

'We should get into bed.' Alec propped himself on one elbow to observe, 'Your clothes are all a mess.'

'That can be fixed.' Richard stripped his shirt off in an easy motion, and helped Alec to his feet.

'You look as though you've been in a fight,' Alec said complacently.

'A lot you know about that. I look', he said, 'as though someone's tried to tear my clothes off.'

'Someone has.'

They were warm that night, never apart long enough to be cold. They talked for hours in the dark; and when words were not enough they were silent. At last they slept, twined helplessly in each other's arms.

Some time in the morning, when the light was still grey, Richard felt Alec slip out of bed beside him. He didn't even open his eyes; just sighed and rolled over, spreading into the spot where Alec's warmth had been.