Questions whirled in Rodvard’s mind, but the larger of the pair said;
“Hurry,” and gripped him by the elbow like the guard who had brought him
in, dragging along the corridor.
“Wait!” said Rodvard, resisting. “There is another—”
“We must hurry,” said Demadé Slair. “You do not know how desperate a
business this is. We have had to kill.”
“No. I will not leave her. She is my sweetheart; my witch.”
“You have her here? Of the two of you, she is the more important! Where
is she?”
“At the third cell here, I think.”
Without another word Slair counted off. “The torch, Cordisso,” and began
to try keys from a chain of them. The big man advanced the torch, but
the place held only some babbling, furtive creature with white hair and
idiot eyes. The next cell was empty. Slair swore furiously. “You are
sure your doxy’s here?”
“She was brought in with me.”
He tried another door. It was she, rising surprised from the floor in a
whirl of dresses. Rodvard pushed past the small man to grip her by the
hands. “Come, and quickly.”
She made small uncomprehending sounds. Rodvard put an arm around her and
drew her toward the door. Reverse of the stair by which they had been
brought in; in the torchlight Rodvard saw a pair of feet at the base. A
dead man, one of the guards. In spite of the hurry, he paused to unbelt
the fellow’s dag, and rushed with the rest, feeling more a man again now
the lost knife was replaced.
At the outer gate stood two more men, hoods pulled over their faces.
They saluted Demadé respectively and led across the street to where a
carriage stood, pushing Lalette into the back seat. There were three
horses, one in front of the pair, according to the Mancherei fashion.
One of the hooded men cracked his whip, and they were off at a bumping
pace, as Demadé Slair said; “It is as well you were placed in arrest and
proclaimed this afternoon. We should not have known how to find you
otherwise.”
“Who sent you—Dr. Remigorius?”
A shadow winked across the man’s face, even in the dark. “The High
Center; I say the revolt has begun and they are in rule. But you shall
be told everything soon.” He would say no more; the carriage bumped
across cobbles, and they were at the dock, with a man holding a
candle-lantern by its side. Slair leaped down without offering a hand to
Lalette and sprang across the plank of a ship with “Hurry!” Already, as
she and Rodvard reached the deck a whistle was blown, and men were
moving rapidly among the ropes. They followed their guide’s beckoning
down a ladder to a cabin; he set the lantern on a table.
“Let yourselves be placed, and hear me carefully,” he said. “It is of
the utmost moment to the cause and everything that you are not caught or
even held back. If the guards come aboard, if we are stopped by a galley
as we leave the harbor, you are strictly to go down the ladder leftward
of this cabin. At its base is a pile of bales of goods, of which one is
hollowed out to take a man, with a flap at the edge that can be pulled
to from inside. Insert yourself and pull the flap.”
(A thrill more of excitement than apprehension shot through Rodvard; the
thought of being as important as this to the great enterprise.) He said;
“If this ship’s invaded, they will likely have an Initiate or at least
one of their diaconals with them, and from the mind of anyone aboard, he
will be likely to know where the hiding place is.”
Slair grinned. “That has been thought of. No one knows of this hollow
but me. I made it and can take care of myself.”
Lalette said; “And I; what shall I do?”
Slair frowned. “You are a problem, demoiselle. We came for friend
Rodvard and his Blue Star, imagining you were still in Dossola, and
there’s no preparation.” He put an index-finger on his chin. “You have
the Art. Could you not—”
She raised a hand. “Ah, no. Never.” (In the flash of her eye Rodvard saw
how she was thinking of some witchery on a ship, something terrible and
sickening connected with it.)
“Of course,” said Slair. “Against an Initiate, it would miss nine times
out of ten. And concealment’s a weak resource. No, the problem is one of
hiding you in plain sight; that is, to let them look but not know your
identity. . . . Ah, I have it; let your hair down and the hem of your
dress up to show an ankle; be one of those travelling strumpets who call
themselves sea-witches.”
Lalette said steadily; “How will this deceive one of the Initiates?”
Demadé Slair made a twisting with his mouth. “Why, demoiselle, these
Initiates are not magicians; they can read no more than thoughts and not
all of those. All women have in them a trifle of the strumpet; you have
but to think yourself one, be one with your mind. It would be a rare
Initiate to tell the difference.”
(Lalette’s mind beat frantic wings; the bars were there again, whatever
route she took led to the same cage); (and Rodvard caught enough of her
thought to know how deep was her trouble.) “Is there not some better
plan?” he asked.
“No time; see, the ship is stirring.” Demadé Slair stood up. “So now I
must leave you.” The door banged behind him.
Lalette said; “This is a second rescue—from one prison to another, each
time. I thank you, Rodvard.” (Her eyes flashed a dark color of anger, he
knew what was stirring in her mind, but also that if he mentioned it
directly, there would be a flash.)
He said; “Lalette, let me implore you. I will not quarrel with you about
whose making this trouble is, or how we seem to go from one difficulty
to another. But if we can work together, this escape shall be better
than the last. I did not leave you at the couvertine.”
“Oh, I am grateful,” she said, in the tone of one who is not grateful in
the least, turning aside her head. “If you had only—”
(He had wit enough not to carry this line on.) “Do you know anything of
this revolt?” he asked.
She turned again. “Ah, I cannot bear if that I should never have a
thought of my own while I am with you. Will you give me back the Blue
Star?”
“No! It is all our lives and fortune now, and the fate of many more
important than we.”
“I am not beautiful and brilliant like those girls of noble houses; but
even so, would like to be wanted for myself, and not what I can bring.”
Outside, the first harbor-swell caught the ship; she turned her face
again, queasy at her stomach. They slept in shut-beds on opposite sides
of the cabin.
23
NETZNEGON: RETURN TO GLORY
The skies were filled with glory, the new day rising. The man who called
himself Demadé Slair explained, leaning against the rail at the waist of
the ship, in the blue-and-gold morning, a day anointed with white in the
form of a circling seagull.
“It’s an intricate tale,” he said, “of which the sum is that we are
unlikely to see queens in Netznegon again. But I’ll begin with Cleudi’s
plan for having the nobles gather taxes in their seignories. They would
not have it.”
“Something like that seemed to be happening when I was at the conference
of court,” said Rodvard.
“They say there was a scene to remember when Florestan told the old
bitch there was no more money,” Slair went on with a laugh. “She beat
him about the head with a slipper and for days he wore a patch over one
eye.”
Lalette said; “She is your queen.” (She wanted to cry out, to say
something that would drive this man to fury.)
Rodvard drew her hand toward him, but she pulled it away; Demadé Slair
said; “I crave your pardon, demoiselle; truly. I did not know you were
so royalist. . . . Then Brunivar fell. You heard of it?”
Rodvard said; “I have had little news, buried in Charalkis; only that
there were troubles.”
“Attainted of treasons, and sent to the throat-cutter. The case was
pressed by the Duke of Aggermans, very violent against him, no one
altogether knows why.”
“I think I could find a reason.”
“No doubt, with your stone. But d’you see the situation that left? With
Brunivar gone, there’s no regent-apparent in the case of Her Majesty’s
death, which may fall any day. I think it was you who sent word to the
Center that Florestan expected the regency in his room. Very like he
would have had it, too, but for the tax matter; but the regency question
furnishing an excuse the nobles summoned a general assembly of all the
estates, and once they were met, they began to consider everything.”
“And the revolt?”
“Oh, it began in the west—at Veierelden, with some of the army and not
with our party at all. Brunivar’s people joined, setting forward the
name of Prince Pavinius, and how he was wrongfully set aside from the
succession, and had long since abandoned being an Amorosian. They even
persuaded the old man to come out of Mayern and raise his standard. Most
of the nobles have gone there with what troops there are, but I don’t
know how much fighting there has been. Neither side’s very anxious for
war. The important thing is that the great assembly was left in session
with the nobles out of it, and you can see what that means.”
“Not quite. Enlighten me.”
“Why our party in the majority and Mathurin in control of everything.”
Rodvard turned a face of utter astonishment. “Mathurin? How—What—? I
might have thought Dr. Remigorius—”
Slair laughed again, a sharp bark. “Bergelin, for one who can see the
thoughts in a head, you are the ignorantest man I have seen—or one of
the cleverest.” He shot a quick glance of suspicion at Rodvard. “You
truly did not know that Mathurin was the head of the High Center, the
major leader of the Sons? As for Remigorius, the less you mention him,
the better. Some connections are not quite healthy.”
“I did not know,” said Rodvard slowly (trying in his mind to re-assort
the tumbled building-blocks of his world). “But I? The Blue Star’s a
treasure, but why send a ship for such a mouse as I am?”
“Answer your own question, friend Bergelin. Look, here’s Pavinius; the
court; our party with its control of the great assembly; maybe some of
Tritulaccan tendency, and a few Amorosians—all opposed to each other.
You are the only man we know can untangle where the true loyalties lie
and discover whom we can trust.”
“But surely, this is not the only Blue Star.”
“The only one we can be sure of. We know the court butler Tuolén had
one; perhaps there is one or more in Pavinius’ party.”
“You say ‘had.’ Does Tuolén have it no longer?”
Slair looked sidewise (with something a little savage in his glance).
“An accident befell him. You know Mathurin.”
Said Lalette; “If I understand what you mean, you had him killed. But
this would not affect the Blue Star itself.”
“Not if we could find the heiress. And there’s another question also;
suppose we have found her, does she know enough of the Art to make the
Star active? True witches are very hard to find, with the episcopals so
bitter against the Art on the one hand, and the Amorosians draining so
many off to Mancherei on the other.”
“My mother—” began Lalette.
“Oh, Mathurin followed that line up long ago. She could instruct, but
would she? I think not for our party; the last I heard she had followed
Cleudi and the court out to Zenss. You two are our mainstay.”
Rodvard (thinking of the witch of Kazmerga, and thinking also that it
would be little good for the Sons of the New Day to have commerce with
her) said; “It should not be hard to trace Tuolén’s heiress. I was in
the Office of Pedigree myself once.”
“One more reason why you’re a figure. I’ll conceal nothing; most of
those who can read the old hands, or trace the pedigrees, are either
fled with the court or little trusty. We dare not place reliance in
them; and it’s a matter of hurry with the armies in the west both
anxious to do us harms, and even the Tritulaccans calling out new
troops.”
A whistle blew; men moved among the ropes, the ship changed slant.
Rodvard said; “What you say is very strange. I would like to know—”
“Ah, enough of politics for now. I must make my apologies to this lovely
demoiselle for having spoken unthinkingly.” He offered his arm to
Lalette. “Will you honor me?”
Rodvard was left standing; and not for the only time either, in the next
three or four days, for Lalette formed the habit of walking with Slair
along the deck, she laughing and both of them talking of trifles in a
manner that seemed to Rodvard inane and pointless. Of an evening the
girl would hardly speak at all, or if she did so, it was in a flat
voice, shunning his eyes, so that he could tell little of what she was
thinking; at night, she shut herself in her lock-bed before undressing.
This became so intolerable that at last he rose one night and tapped on
the door of her bed.
“Open,” he said, and over the noise of the thuttering rigging, heard her
say faintly, “Rodvard, no.”
“Open, I say,” he cried again. “You must hear me.”
There was a silence of seven breaths, and then he heard her spin the
lock.
“Lalette,” he said, “why do you treat me so?”
“Have I treated you worse than you have treated me?”
(He fought back an impulse to a retort that would bring angers.) “I do
not know that I follow all you mean.”
(There was only night-shine from the window, she emboldened at knowing
he could not learn her fullest thought.) “Will you still say you did not
cheat me? Now that I know you were always one of the Sons of the New
Day. Tuolén had an accident—and the doorman at your house—and how many
more? I used to believe in some things before you trapped me.”
“No trap,” said he, jerking back so violently he struck a beam and gave
an exclamation. “No trap. You cannot make a new world without destroying
some of the old, and some suffer unjustly for every gain.”
In a small voice she said; “I feel—used.”
“Lalette,” he said gravely, and not taking offense. “Listen to me. We of
the Sons of the New Day are truly striving for a better world, one in
which there are such things as honesty and justice for everyone. But
this much I have learned, and not from Dr. Remigorius, that any such
effort is a swimming against the world’s stream, and must be paid for.
You feel used? Myself no less. But I like to think of myself as used for
the betterment of men—perhaps by God.”
His voice was a little unsteady at the end, and now it was her turn to
be silent for a moment. At last she said; “And how do you know the use
is for betterment—not someone’s personal pleasure in ordering others?
What you say is not too different from the teaching I heard at the
couvertine. Only there they would say that God uses no earthly vessels.”
“Do you believe that?”
“Ah, I do not know. I only know that I am tired, and alone, alone . . .”
The words tailed off, he heard her shift in the darkness of the bed, and
then the intake of a sob.
“Lalette, don’t cry.” He bent over, wiping a tear from her face, then as
it was followed by more, fell to kissing her eyes. “I love you” (for the
first time since that night on the roofs). “Lalette, Lalette.” More and
more he kissed, from eyes to lips, and she gripped her arms around him
(because he was the nearest anchor in a shifting world), and his kissing
turned to passion (as she had known it would, and what did it matter?)
(But she was only a recipient, and to Rodvard it was a relief and an
agony. In that moment he wished it had been Leece.)