The Charnel Prince (40 page)

“But Duke Artwair—”

“He’s a different sort, and as the lady Gramme said, he’s been sent away, hasn’t he? And the emperor don’t turn his eye here. He don’t hear us or see us, and he don’t help us.”

“The emperor—” Leoff began.

“I know about the emperor,” he said. “But his mother, the queen—where is she? We’ve heard nothing from her.”

“But she—” He stopped, unsure if he was allowed to mention his commission.

He sipped his wine. “What is this, then?” he asked. “Why am I here?”

“I don’t know,” Gilmer replied. “But it’s something dangerous. I only slipped in to warn you. I’ll be leaving as soon as I see my chance.”

“Wait. What do you mean, something dangerous?”

“When the nobles court the landwaerds like this, it’s not usually just to be friendly. Especially when no one seems to know who is really in control of this country. The lady Gramme has a son, you know—he was standing just next to you. I suppose you know who his father was.”

“Oh,” Leoff said.

“Auy. Take my advice—play something on that hammarharp and then get out of here.”

Leoff nodded, wondering if Alvreic would take him back if he asked.

They had reached the instrument. It was beautiful, maple lacquered a deep red with black-and-yellow keys.

“What are you doing, now that your malend is burned?”

“Duke Artwair arranged a new position,” Gilmer said. “One of the malends on Saint Thon’s Graf, near Meolwis. Not too far from here.”

“I’m glad to hear that.”

He settled on the stool and glanced back up. Gilmer was gone. With a sigh he touched the keyboard and started playing.

It was an old composition of his, one that had pleased the Duke of Glastir very well. He’d once been pleased with it, too, but now it felt clumsy and childish. He pushed on to the end, adding variations in hopes of making it more interesting, but when he was done, it felt hollow.

To his surprise, the final notes were greeted by applause, and he realized a small crowd had gathered, Lady Gramme among them. “Enchanting,” she said. “Please play something else.”

“Whatever you would like, milady.”

“I wonder if I could commission a piece from you.”

“I would be pleased to do so, though I’ve already agreed to one
commission I must complete first.”

“I was rather thinking you could invent something for this occasion,” she said. “I’m told you can do such things, and I’ve made a wager with the Duke of Shale that you can make an impromptu that pleases.”

“I could try,” he agreed reluctantly.

“But see here,” said the duke, a puffy man in a jacket that looked too tight, “how shall we know if he is inventing and not playing some obscure older piece?”

“I think we can trust to his honor,” Gramme replied.

“Not where my purse is concerned,” the duke huffed.

Leoff cleared his throat. “If it please you, Duke, hum a snatch of some favorite tune of yours.”

“Well . . .” He considered for a moment, then whistled a few notes. The crowd murmured laughter, and Leoff wondered exactly what sort of tune it was.

Leoff spied Areana in the crowd. “And you, my dear,” he said. “Give me another melody.”

Areana blushed. She looked around nervously, then sang:

Waey cunnad min loof, min goth moderp

Waey cunnad min werlic loof?

Thus cunnad in at, is paed thin loof

That ne nethal Niwhuan Coonth

She had a sweet soprano voice.

“Very well,” Leoff said, “that’s a start.”

He began with Areana’s tune, because it began with a question: “How will I know my lover, good mother? How will I know my true love?” He put it in a plaintive key, with a very light bass line, and now the mother answered, in fuller, more colorful chords, “You’ll know him by his coat, which has never known a needle.”

He separated the two halves of the melody now, and began weaving them through each other, and as counterpoint added in the duke’s whistle near the top of the hammarharp’s range. When they heard that, almost everyone laughed, and Leoff himself smiled. He’d guessed the juxtaposition of the lover’s riddle song against the other, probably vulgar tune, would amuse, and now he made it a dialogue: the girl asking how she would know her lover, the leering lecher who overheard her, and the stern mother warning the fellow away, bringing it all to a head with a sort of bang as the mother threw a crock at the man and he ran off, his melody quickly fading, until only the girl remained.

Waey cunnad min loof? . . .

Raucous applause followed, and Leoff suddenly felt as if he’d been playing in a tavern, but unlike the polite and often insincere acknowledgment he’d had in the various courts he had entertained, this felt sincere to the bone.

“That’s really quite remarkable,” Lady Gramme said. “You have a rare talent.”

“My talent,” Leoff said, “such as it is, belongs to the saints. But I’m glad I pleased you.”

The lady smiled and began to say something else, but then a sudden commotion at the door made everyone turn. Leoff heard a clash of steel and a howl of pain, and grim-faced men in armor bearing swords burst into the hall, followed by archers. The room seemed to explode into chaos; Leoff tried to get up, but someone bumped into him from behind and he tumbled to the floor.

“By order of the emperor,” a heavy voice thundered above the general din, “you are all arrested for collaboration against the throne.”

Leoff tried to rise, but a boot struck him in the head.

NEIL TENSED HIMSELF AND saw all his roads go black. If he killed Swanmay, he would protect Anne’s destination and serve the queen in the only way he now could. But to kill a woman he had promised not to harm would be the end of any honor he could claim.

Either way, he was certainly dead.

He stared at Swanmay’s white throat, willing her closer, wondering how he could have been so wrong about her.

She bowed her head slightly, and wisps of her short hair fell across her face. “I wish I could grant you your wish, Sir Neil,” she said. “But I cannot take you to Paldh. I am nearly free, do you understand? If I help you more than I have, I jeopardize everything. And you would probably be killed, which I would not see.”

He let his head relax on the pillow. Bright spots danced in his vision, and for a moment he wondered if she had enchanted him somehow.

But he recognized the onset of the battle rage. It was leaving him now, but his blood was still moving too fast, and he was beginning to shake.

“Are you well?” she asked.

“I was dizzy for a moment,” he said. “Please. What did you mean—about me being killed?”

“I told you that your friends’ ship escaped the harbor, and that much was true. But they were followed—I saw the ship sail after them. If they are not caught at sea, they will be caught at Paldh. I imagine there will be a fight then, and you are in no condition to fight.”

“I beg you, lady. Take me to Paldh. Whatever your trouble—whatever it is you are fleeing—I will protect you from it. But I must reach Paldh.”

“I believe you would try to protect me,” Swanmay said. “But you would fail. Don’t you understand? The people who attacked your friends—I flee them also. Your enemy is my enemy. I took a greater risk than you can know saving your life. If they had noticed me, recognized my ship, all would have been done. If I follow them, they cannot fail to know me.”

“But—”

“You know you would not be able to protect me,” she said softly. “The
nauschalk
cannot be slain. He beat you when you were hale and whole—do you think you could do better now?”

“Nauschalk? You knew him? Know what he is?”

“Only from the old tales. Such things are no longer supposed to exist, and until a short time ago, they did not. But now the law of death has been broken.”

Her voice had gone a little eerie, as if she spoke to him from a great distance. Her eyes were mirrors.

Neil tried to sit up. “Who are you, lady, to speak of such things? Are you a shinecrafter?”

She smiled weakly. “I know something of those arts, and others you will not have heard of.”

“I cannot believe that,” Neil said, feeling cold. “You are too kind, lady. You cannot be evil.”

Her brow dropped in a frown, but her mouth bent up at one side. She steepled her fingers together. “Thank you,” she said. “I don’t think I’m evil. But why would you think I am?”

“Shinecrafters are evil, milady. They practice forbidden arts, abhorred by the Church.”

“Do they?” she asked.

“So I have always been told. So I have always believed.”

“Then perhaps you have been wrong. Or perhaps I
am
evil, and we merely disagree on what evil is.”

“There can be no disagreement there, milady,” Neil said. “Evil is what it is.”

“You live in a simple world, Sir Neil. I do not begrudge you that. In truth, I envy you. But I believe things to be more complicated.”

He was about to retort, when he remembered the choice he had been facing only moments before. Maybe it
was
more complicated. He was no churchman, to debate such things.

The law of death has been broken
.
Fastia had said that, in Eslen-of-Shadows.

“Lady, my apologies. You speak of things I don’t understand. What is the law of death?”

She chuckled. “Simply that things that die stay dead.”

“Are you saying that the man I fought was dead?”

“No, not exactly. But he exists because someone who should be dead is not. Someone has passed beyond the lands of fate and returned. That changes the world, Sir Neil, breaks something in it. It allows things to happen that could not before, creates magicks that have never existed. It is what allowed me to escape.”

“Escape from where, lady? Who pursues you?”

She shook her head. “It is an old story, yes? The woman locked in the tower, awaiting a prince who would rescue her? And yet I waited, and did my duty, and no man came. So I had to escape myself.”

“What tower?”

She combed her fingers through her hair and then dropped her head down, the first motion he had seen from her that resembled defeat. “No,” she whispered, “I cannot trust you that much. I cannot trust anyone that much.”

“Your crew? What about them?”

“With them I have no choice—and I believe they love me. If I were wrong about them, you and I would not be speaking now. Still, in a day or a month or a year, one of them will betray me. It is the way of men.”

“You have seen this in some vision?”

“No. But it is most likely.”

Neil sighed. “You are nothing if not a mystery, Lady Swanmay.”

“Then perhaps I am nothing.”

“I do not think so.”

She smiled wistfully. “I would help you if I could, Sir Neil. I cannot.”

“Then put me off at the next port,” he urged. “Let me make my own way. I won’t tell anyone about you.”

“Is my company so tiresome?” she asked.

“No. But my duty—”

“Sir Neil, believe me when I say that the pain of leaving behind your obligations will fade.”

“Never. And you cannot think so, either. You are too good for that.”

“A moment ago you called me evil.”

“I didn’t. I said you couldn’t be.”

She considered that. “I suppose you did, in a roundabout way.” She shrugged. “But whether you are right or not, I must believe that there is more to life than duty.”

“There is,” Neil said. “But without duty, the rest of it is meaningless.”

She stood and paced away from the lamplight, then turned to regard him with a slightly feral glint in her eye. “When you fell in the water,” she said, her words measured carefully, “you were still conscious. Yet you didn’t try to take off your armor. Not a single catch was unfastened.”

“I didn’t think to take it off, at least not until it was too late,” Neil replied.

“Why? You are not stupid. Armor is not new to you. Any man who was drowning would have tried to take it off, and instantly unless—”

“What, lady?”

“Unless he thought of his armor as so much a part of himself that he believed he could
not
take it off. Unless he would rather die than take it off. As if, perhaps, he wished to die.”

He felt a moment’s disorientation. How could she—? “I have no wish to die, Swanmay,” Neil insisted.

She stepped back into the light. “Who was she? Was it Fastia?”

Now it felt as if he had been struck by a spinning bolt. He opened his mouth before his sense overtook him.

“I don’t know that name,” he lied.