“I seem to have little choice in the matter,” said I.
“You can agree to play the game with a whole heart,” said she. “Or you can refuse, and wither away as I send you one misfortune after another, wither until you are nothing. And what sport is that?”
For a moment, I said nothing, just listened to King Emelin’s fine phrases as they boomed up from the stage. “I will agree to this,” I said finally. “On one condition.”
“Oh, ay, conditions,” said she in scorn. “That is your lawyerly way.”
“I will play your game,” said I, “if you agree not to harm those I love. For if you intend to torment me by murdering my lovers or my children or my friends, then I will first end myself in order to spare them.”
She gave me a look. “You are not fit for self-slaughter,” she said.
I stared back at her, and let my anger show. “My family is dead,” said I. “I carried their bodies to the tomb in my arms. I laid them on the cold stone. Rather than endure that again, I would kill myself. So, you will agree to my condition, or I will say farewell to this life directly, and kill myself like an ancient general in the histories of Bello.”
Orlanda’s eyebrows lifted. “Do you take me for a death-dealing monster? Unlike your other enemies, I have ways to amuse myself that do not involve murdering people.” She nodded. “I agree to your condition, then.”
I turned back to the play. “Do I now sign a document in blood?”
“It’s too early in the game for blood,” said she. “But I will see you another time.”
I did not have to turn my head to know she had vanished.
I watched Emelin’s triumph, and heard the pretty speeches, and rose with the rest of the audience in applause. I sought out Blackwell afterward, to say good-bye, and he wished me good speed.
Good speed to what? I wondered. For wherever I could go, and however speedily, Orlanda could go before me, and place one ambush after another in my path.
* * *
Early the next morning, I boarded the galley for Bretlynton Head, along with Phrenzy and my boy Oscar, and Oscar’s own mount. The horses were stabled mid-deck, the boy swung a hammock with the crew, and I had a small cabin in the quarterdeck.
I stowed away my belongings and rose to enjoy the delicate dawn light as it played on the haunting mists of the Dordelle, but then I was distracted by a sight even lovelier than the dawn. She was only a few years older than me, with a lovely warm complexion, snub nose, and a mass of lilac-scented chestnut hair.
Recently widowed, I discovered, not by war or Berlauda’s executions but by a flux that had carried away her lawyer husband. Her name was Lacey. Her brother had come for some weeks to Howel to help her, but his own business had required him to return home, and he had taken her two children back to Bretlynton Head while Lacey remained in the town to tie up the last threads of her husband’s estate. Now she traveled south to be reunited with her family.
As a near-lawyer, I felt I should take a fraternal interest in the welfare of this lawyer’s lady, and I made a point to be pleasant to her.
And that Lacey, of course, is you. And now we lie together in my cabin, your head pillowed on my shoulder while your lilac scent dances in my senses. Your sweet, regular breath warms the skin of my throat. And I see that my modest narration has eased your anxieties, and sent you at last to sleep.
For tomorrow, we will land in Bretlynton Head, and Oscar and I will take horse to my new manor, which lies some days’ travel to the east, and we will discover whether it is a ruin or a bounty. You will be reunited with your family, and new lives will begin for the both of us.
Your brother, you say, is very protective and wishes you to live in his house as a sort of unpaid servant, obliged to care for his children as well as yours. He will not permit you to remarry, at the penalty of losing your babes. I fear he will not approve of your being friends with me, new-fledged knight or no. I consider this a great cause for sadness.
I have already placed on the record, I think, my opinion of brothers.
SOURCES FOR SONGS AND POETRY
“Youth will needs have dalliance . . .”
Song, “Pastime with Good Company”
“Ah me! as thus I look before me . . .”
Thomas Bruce, “The Summer Queen”
“What Joy or honors can compare . . .”
Ben Jonson, Second Epithelamium
“O cruel Love, on thee I lay . . .”
John Lyly, Sappho’s Song
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
With thanks to Ada Palmer for elucidating the difference between “prodit” and “comitatur,” and thanks also to this work’s many first readers: Sage Walker, James S. A. Corey, S. M. Stirling, and the Rio Hondo Workshop of 2016, which included Jen Volant, Diana Rowland, Alex Jablokow, Laurence M. Schoen, David D. Levine, Rick Wilber, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Michaela Roessner, Kim Jollow Zimring, and K. M. Horn.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo by Courtney Willis
WALTER JON WILLIAMS is an award-winning author who has been listed on the bestseller lists of the New York Times and the Times of London. He is the author of more than thirty novels and collections of short fiction in addition to works in film, television, comics, and the gaming field. In 2000 he won a Nebula Award for his novelette “Daddy’s World” and won again in 2004 for “The Green Leopard Plague.”
Williams is a world traveler, scuba diver, and black belt in Kenpo karate. You can visit him at walterjonwilliams.net.
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