chapter II
A S THE DUKE TREMONTAINE HAD PREDICTED, there was chaos in the Council of Lords, and some of it could be laid at his door. The apportioning of new land taxes had been all but decided upon, and penalties for noncompliance laid out strictly but fairly. The unfortunate lack of rain in the south did not excuse a poor harvest; the nobles whose lands were the country’s breadbasket would just have to extend themselves in some other way—lumber, perhaps. It was unfair that the northern nobles were expected to provide more than their share of wood for shipbuilding, at a time when trade was so profitable and the river so low that in places you could barely bring the northern lumber down at all. But foreign grain was cheap this year, and shipping lucrative. And if the river was impassable, roads could be widened and improved—roads that happened to pass through the lands of the ambitious Philibert, Lord Davenant, and his political affiliates. They were powerful men; they served their country well, as had their fathers before them. What harm in a little profit for their faithful service, when the benefit to all was so clear to any but the most pig-headed of councilors?
But when copies of a certain document—a private agreement between Davenant and a foreign shipper, misleadingly worded so as possibly to be mistaken for a treaty between two countries—began to circulate, it threw the motives of all his associates, these noble councilors, into question. The original of the document was never found, of course, and no one could ascertain where the copies had come from; but it was enough to throw the coalition into disorder, their opponents into a rash of aggressive realignments and their tax proposals into brightly fluttering shreds. If that wasn’t enough, that same Lord Davenant was suddenly burdened with a faithless actress mistress, an angry well-placed wife and a chief lieutenant who’d acquired one and, some said, the other, as well.
While no one could say exactly how or why, many of the coalition thought their troubles stemmed once again from indiscretions on the part of the Mad Duke, who always seemed to know more about the city than anyone could remember having told him. Nor did he scruple to disseminate his knowledge where a true gentleman would have kept his mouth shut. There was no use challenging him again; his swordsmen were as likely to win as not. The sword loved Alec Campion, it seemed, and always had.
The Crescent Chancellor, leader of the Council of Lords and head of the Inner Council, decided to go and speak to the Duke Tremontaine. Anthony Deverin, Lord Ferris, had not visited the Riverside district in many years—not since his days as Dragon Chancellor, when the future duke had been a callow and obnoxious boy known only as Alec, and Deverin, already Lord Ferris, a rising star. * Diane, Duchess Tremontaine, had taken Ferris under her wing and tutored him in statecraft. When he tried to outsmart her in that shadowy arena, she smoothly engineered his downfall, sending her young kinsman to Council to do the deed. Everyone knew, after all, that the beautiful duchess never meddled in politics.
His punishment, an ambassadorship to the icy and barbaric lands of Arkenvelt, wasn’t a death sentence, though, and Ferris liked to think Diane had retained enough feeling for him to send him where he might succeed if he had the nerve and the brains, not to mention the endurance. The rewards of frozen Arkenvelt did include access to some of the world’s finest fur trading, and when his exile was over Ferris returned home with enough wealth in his pockets to reestablish himself in style. He frequented the right gatherings, married the right woman with the right connections, who died leaving him a small country estate and a good house in the city. He resumed his family seat on the Council of Lords, and there combined sense with statecraft in such perfect accord that, a mere ten years after his return, he was elected head of that august body of noblemen. It was in that capacity, now, that he paid a visit to Diane’s heir and successor, whom he disliked as much as ever.
At the time of his last visit to the little island between the river’s banks, Riverside had been no one’s domain: a warren of criminals and swordsmen living in abandoned houses. But the Mad Duke in his fancy now occupied it, in more ways than one. Ferris was aware that once he crossed the Bridge, he trod the duke’s territory. The City Watch still gave wide berth to the unsavory district, but it was honeycombed with Tremontaine’s people. So the Crescent Chancellor traveled in semi-state, with both guards and swordsmen, that no one there might mistake his person.
Lord Ferris had never been invited to Tremontaine’s Riverside house, and knew he was not welcome. Nevertheless his horses were stabled, his escort refreshed with courteous efficiency, and he was ushered into the ducal presence in very little time. It was not a house he himself would have chosen to live in: old-fashioned small rooms, dark paneling, heavy curtains…nothing shocking, though. Ferris felt almost disappointed. If there were indeed the pornographic frescos, instruments of torture, naked serving girls and other items popular opinion had decorated the duke’s house with, they were not on public view.
The duke himself was sitting in an upholstered chair eating crackers and cheese and slices of apple. He was wearing a brocade robe, and possibly not much else. His hair was tousled, imperfectly caught back in a black velvet ribbon.
He bit a cracker and shrugged. “Sorry. I get hungry.”
Lord Ferris refused the offer of any refreshment. If he’d roused the duke from carnal pleasures so be it, but he would be heard. “Tremontaine,” he said, “I’ll not take much of your time. I come from the Council on my own initiative, to ask you to reconsider your stand on the new tax laws.”
“Stand? I have no stand.”
“Of course not,” Lord Ferris said with mild irony. “You never do. Like your grandmother, the late duchess, you have no interest in politics.”
The duke smiled. “Exactly like.” One of the late duchess’s secret protégés, Lord Ferris knew the worth of that statement better than most. “It’s a family tradition.”
“And it is by pure accident that you have managed to bring down a coalition that was months a-building to make some honest change—”
“Honest change? Honest? Has someone altered the definition of the word while my back was turned, or have you recently developed a sense of humor?”
Lord Ferris pressed his lips together tightly. He endured these little sallies in the open Council Hall, as His Lordship of Tremontaine sporadically descended upon their proceedings. But there was no audience here to snicker appreciatively.
“Oh, Campion,” Ferris sighed. “Your grandmother was no friend to chaos. I wonder what she was thinking of when she made you her heir.”
“Perhaps,” the duke said around a mouthful of apple, “she thought I would reform.”
Ferris flashed him a look. In these, his later years, he had even less patience with people pretending to be stupid. But he only said, “I do not think it.”
“Nor do I,” the younger man said frankly. “Perhaps she did not care what happened to the state, once she was dead. Maybe she wanted to bring it down after her.”
From a low, polished table, Ferris bent to pick up one of the little glass birds she had collected. He held it gently. “Oh, no, not she.”
“Or she thought you and Godwin and all her other fancy boys would rise to the occasion. As indeed you do. She trained you well. The Council bears her stamp, I bear her title and everyone is happy.”
Carefully, Ferris put the bird down. “There is something else I thought…” his drawl had become almost as long as the duke’s, a relic of both their youths “…when I heard you had inherited after all. I wondered if she had not intended all along for your exquisite swordsman, St Vier, to direct the duchy. One so admired his balance. And you did seem inseparable, back then.” He looked lazily at a spot over the duke’s head. “Yet you did separate. Perhaps that was the flaw in her reasoning.”
The duke scrutinized his pearl-handled fruit knife as though he had forgotten just what it was for. Finally, he applied it carefully to the skin of his apple.
“It is interesting how one idolizes the departed,” the duke mused. “You admire the late duchess now, but I remember you calling her some very ugly names when she had you exiled to Arkenvelt over the matter of your misuse of my exquisite swordsman. I did think then, my lord, that you had learned that St Vier cannot be used against Tremontaine.”
Ferris heard the message and noted it for further study. He had been wondering if the swordsman was still alive. It appeared he might be. Alive, but not in play. He chose to ignore the dig at his own past disgrace; it was, after all, Tremontaine who had brought him to the political exile he had spent years and a small fortune to return from, and there was no reason for either of them to have forgotten it. “I remember,” the Crescent Chancellor added, “how very much in demand he was in his heyday, your swordsman. He killed with one blow to the heart.”
“If he liked you. As you may also remember, he was not always so merciful.” The duke gathered the folds of his poisonous green-and-black robe around him. “And now, if you will excuse me, there’s someone waiting for me.”
Lord Ferris did not bow, but said tightly, “We must all excuse you. Constantly. I trust we will see you no more this season in Council?”
The duke cocked his head. “Now, why should you think that?”
Lord Ferris opened his mouth to make a double-edged rejoinder, and closed it again, suddenly sick of the whole thing, and not at all sure of keeping his temper—another provocation he very much resented from the duke. “You disappoint me,” Ferris said heavily. “You could be more, much more.”
“I don’t think the city would take much more of me.”
“It would if you put your position to good use!” This was the speech Ferris had come planning to make, but it came pouring out of him untempered. “You have opinions, everyone knows you do; why will you not come and debate them in open Council with the rest of us? Statecraft and policy take time. They take patience and forethought and, yes, even compromise. They are not toys—we are not toys—to be picked up and put down at your whim, because you cannot stay the long course that it would take to effect real change. You are not stupid, you must surely know that. You find no one worthy of your vision, you do not wish to be a reliable ally? Fine. But at least be a reliable opponent, instead of shifting like a weathercock, blown by the wind of your fancy.”
The duke paused and looked at him with real surprise. “Ferris,” he said, “I am not a boy any longer. I don’t particularly care if I disappoint you or not. Save your pompous sermonizing for the young fools who want to impress you and run the country into the ground with self-serving tax schemes.”
Many years ago, Lord Ferris had lost his left eye. He turned the patch to the duke, a black velvet gaze that often unnerved people. “Someday,” he said, “you will regret the loss of that swordsman.”
Which was not at all what he had intended to say. Before his temper could drive him to further indiscretion, Lord Ferris turned and left the room. His own swordsmen and guards stood ranked to escort him; and in the shadows of the corridors of the Riverside house, he fancied he saw the shapes of others, watching.
T HE DUKE TREMONTAINE THREW HIS FRUIT KNIFE AT the wall, where its point stuck, quivering, due to luck or the fury of the blow.
Then he went into the adjoining room, where the Ugly Girl was sitting on his bed reading, fully dressed.
“God, you’re a pig when you wake up,” she observed.
“He should not have come so early.”
“Early!” she snorted. “It’s after noon. Though you’d never know it; in your room, it is eternal twilight.” She reached for one of the red velvet curtains, but he barked, “Stop. I like it this way.”
“Come down to the library,” she suggested, “where there’s plenty of light, and quit hoarding books in your room. What else have you got in that pile?”
“Poetry,” he said sweetly. “And pornography. Nothing to please your maiden eyes.”
“Crap. You’ve got Merle’s Antithesis, and after you swore you’d let me read it first.”
“I will let you read it first. I was saving it to give to you on a special occasion.”
“Like when you’ve been really annoying?”
“Just so. Where else are you going to get a copy of a banned book?”
She extended herself across the bed and snatched it from the pile. “For a noble and a libertine, you’re not so bad. Want to go downstairs and work on Coverley’s Last Theorem?”
“No,” he drawled; “I want to stay here and smoke something.”
The fat woman shrugged. “Suit yourself. But when I solve it without you, don’t expect any credit for helping.”
“I am going to have visions.”
“Some people,” she said, “have no idea how to enjoy themselves.”
But the duke opened a cabinet by his bed, and began sorting through his collection of little vials. “You’re all right,” he said to the door closing behind her. “Without poetry or pornography, it’s unlikely that anyone will ever strike you through the heart.”
Soon he began to feel better.