He woke with scaly tongue, head spinning in the fumes of the fired-wine
and body burning with unfulfilled desires, to the clink of silver on
porcelain, as the maid Damaris bore in his breakfast tray. She was
already in costume, a milkmaid and not badly done; her eyes and feet
were dancing. “Oh, where did you get the lovely Kjermanash mask?” she
asked as he propped himself up among the pillows, and giving him the
tray, went to run her fingers lovingly over the white silk where it hung
across the chair. “It’s just the most beautiful thing ever. I’ll be so
happy to be with you in it.”
“Count Cleudi lent it to me . . . Damaris.”
“What is it?”
“Sit down a minute. On the chair, no matter.”
“I’ll ruffle your beautiful costume. Was it made in Kjermanash?” She sat
facing him on the bed as he moved over to make room. The neck of her
milkmaid’s dress was cut low enough to show the upper round of her
breasts with a little in between (and the Blue Star told him that she
noticed, and wanted him to notice; that it was festival day, when all’s
forgotten in the new spring).
“Damaris—about this ball . . . I’m afraid I won’t be able to go with you
after all.”
Rather than angry, her face was woebegone to the edge of tears. (A world
was crashing in her thoughts.) “You don’t want to be with servant-class
people?”
He reached out and patted her hand conciliatingly. “Of course I do, with
you. But Damaris . . . you said it cost three spadas and I haven’t
hardly any coppers, even.”
“Oh.” She perched her head on one side and looked at him birdlike under
prettily arched brows. “I can let you have that much.” Then, seeing the
expression on his face; “You can give it back to me when you get it from
your master.”
(He did not really want to go at all, headache and the thought of his
position with Cleudi and the Duke of Aggermans gnawed at him, he could
not think clearly.) “I—I—”
“I don’t mind, really.”
“But I don’t want to take your money. I may—may not get any.”
She considered, looking at him sharply, with eyes narrowing. Then; “I
know. You don’t want to go with me because I’m not your friend.” She
tipped suddenly forward, one arm round his neck, and kissed him hard,
then drew her head back, and with a long breath, said; “Will you go with
me now?”
“I—”
She kissed him again, tonguewise, and as her lips clung, shifted her
body, and with her free hand, guided his to the V of her dress. Her eyes
said she did not want him to stop, and he did not. Near the end it came
to him that the Blue Star was dead, he could not fathom a single thought
in her mind.
11
KAZMERGA; TWO AGAINST A WORLD
Mathurin entered on his almost soundless feet and let the door close
behind him in the dark before saying, “Rodvard,” softly. Rodvard, who
had been letting his mind drift along endless alleys rather than
thinking, swung himself up. “I will make a light.”
“Do not. There is danger enough, and its point would so be sharpened. Do
not even speak aloud.”
“What is it?”
“The Duke of Aggermans. His bravoes are let loose. No time. I only just
now learned it from the Count.” Outside there was the soft sighing of
rain.
“I am to go?”
“At once. Make your way south, to the Center of Sedad Mir. The contact
is a wool-dealer named Stündert, in the second dock street. Can you
remember? Change clothes with me quickly. Do not even take the door,
which is watched, but go by the window, across the road, and south into
the country.”
The serving-man began to undress in the dark; Rodvard recognized the
sound. “Is there any money?” he asked.
The rustling stopped. “You to need money, who have the Blue Star?”
Even under the dark, Rodvard felt himself flush (did he dare tell what
had happened? No.). “Still, I will need some small amount. I have
nothing.”
Even under his breath Rodvard could catch the fury in the other’s tone;
“Ah, you deserve to have your bones broken.”
“I know; but is there any money?” Rodvard fumbled for the unfamiliar
lace-points.
The man snarled, but pressed a few coins into his grasp. “You are to
regard this as a loan. Cleudi sends it.”
“Oh. You did not tell me he was aiding this escape.”
“He wants you to go south to Tritulacca, and gave me a letter for you to
carry—which I will transmit to the High Center.”
It might be a girl’s light tap at the door. “Go,” whispered Mathurin,
fiercely.
The window swung wide; Rodvard felt rain on his face, and the mud of the
flower-bed squished round Mathurin’s soft shoes as he took the leap
down. A light flamed up in the room behind him; he began to run,
stumbling up the terraces with branches snatching at his body,
zigzagging to avoid the pennon of light. A voice shouted across the rain
after him (and he thought Mathurin was a mighty bold fellow to face the
Duke of Aggermans’ assassins back there). He came against a hedge; there
was another shout and the sound of crashing footsteps from the left, in
which direction the hedge ran, no way to turn, and he stumbled over a
root, prone, to roll beneath the lip of the shrubbery, thinking
concealment might be a better resource than speed.
So it was; shout echoed shout with an accent of lost, footsteps went
past, but apparently no one had a light and before one could be brought,
Rodvard rolled out, and began to work cautiously toward the end of the
hedge, bending double. The bushes turned back to enclose a square of
garden, but there was a locked gate, low enough to be climbed. Over; the
gravel path beyond, for a wonder, did not run circular like most, from
which he deduced that it must be the one leading down from the main
road. It offered the only real clue to direction, for the lights had
winked out back there, the villa’s mass and the trees cut off the
night-shine from the bay, and the slope was no help at all with
everything so gardened. Rodvard pushed forward cautiously; presently the
feel of ruts under his feet told him his reasoning was sound, and he
paused to consider whether along the road or across it. The second
alternative won; if Aggermans were so in earnest, his people would not
give up easily, and they would likely spread along the road.
There was no hedge at the opposite side, but a narrow ditch, in which
Rodvard got one leg well wetted to the knee and almost fell. Beyond a
slope pitched upward into what, as nearly as he could make out by
feeling, would be a sapling grove with low underbrush. Having no cloak,
he was by this time so wet that it did not matter when he stumbled
against small trunks and the leaves just bursting above deluged him with
big drops, but the sensation was so unpleasant that it tipped him into a
despairing mood, where his fatigues of the night and day rolled in (and
he began to ask himself whether all pleasures must end in an escape of
some kind). So he followed the pent of the hill blindly, not thinking at
all of where he was going (but only of how he was trapped by
unfairnesses somewhere; and that it could not be altogether a matter of
man’s justice, which was the plainder of the Sons of the New Day, since
no justice of man’s would hold men from fiery passion).
Beyond an easy crest there was a dip, and Rodvard hurt his knee against
a wall of piled stone. In the field beyond, he could sense under his
feet the stumps of last year’s corn, he was sick with weariness and fear
and had begun to sneeze; there was no light or life in the world. What
direction? With no reason for any, he followed the line of the stone
wall for a little time, and it brought him ultimately to a sodden
straw-stack, whose hard surface yielded just enough to the persistence
of his fingers so that he could get the upper half of his body in and
slide down into unhappy sleep.