Nobody's Son (32 page)

What a shitty thing to give.

Valerian looked up in awe. “This would be too great a gift!”

“God no!” Mark forced a smile and tapped the sword hanging at his side. “I have one of my own now. The dagger is a spare. It… it’s maybe a bit too grim, to give your best friend at a parting.”

Valerian smiled, a small, pink, solemn, friendly smile. “I’m very good at light, Mark. It’s my darkness I must explore, and this will be my candle. This is a thing of ancient power, and more than that, an emblem of the man I most admire, the friend I love the best. I will treasure it.”

Their eyes met, Val’s grey and honest behind his spec-tacles. They stood in the courtyard of Swangard Palace, too cold to be comfortable despite the sun, and they looked fully on one another, knowing that they were friends, and would always be.

A lot of water under this bridge too
, Mark thought, with something like awe. He was growing older. Old enough to feel the current of what had been flowing under him, leading to his future. Old enough to look back over his shoulder, and see his past behind him, and grieve for what was gone, and honour its memory.

He felt, suddenly, how much it would hurt him if Val died; felt an echo of that pain, knowing that the Valerian he had known, fluffy and peering and hapless and altogether wonderful: this Valerian was already dying. Not physically, of course, but the man he remembered from that first night in Swangard Palace would be gone the next time they met, though his ghost would linger on in Val forever, and in their memories.

Three cheers for ghosts
, Mark thought.
Three cheers for the dead
.

Of course Val would be much the same: better, even. As full of wonder and delight, with big pockets full of puzzles and fascinating stories about the lives of ants and ingenious designs for windmills that would do your washing. And they would still be friends, excellent friends. It could be even better next time.

But it would never be the same.

How much of life is like this
? Mark wondered.
Is that what being grown up means? Saying goodbye as often as hello? More to wave back to with every step
. He glanced down at his hand again, that would never be a soft Court hand, and saw the fresh scar there, white no longer, but pink, like any other scar just starting to heal up.

Gravely Val belted the black dagger at his hip. Then he climbed into his saddle, pushed his spectacles firmly up his nose, and grinned at Mark. “
Adventure
!” The big bay sidled restlessly beneath him, eager to be moving in the chilly afternoon. “Goodbye, Shielder’s Mark.”

Mark smiled back, feeling the nip in the air, and Ashes heavy at his side. “Goodbye,” he said.

Soon it was time to head back to Borders. He had plans for the Keep, for his duchy and his people. He was looking forward to being home.

Gail frowned. “Lissa, where’s that brown-and-purple thing I dyed the other day—that’ll be good and warm.”

“I regret to tell you that a pang of conscience smote me and I burned it, Gail. It had suffered enough.”

Gail scowled.

Mark looked over at Lissa, who was checking off their belongings one by one as servants packed them onto a brace of ponies. “In a world where I’m subtle and Val’s brave,” he said, “I want to see you giving orders, not just taking them. I’m going to make you Seneschal, Lissa. That’s managing all my lands, reporting straight to me. You’ll be riding out from Borders half the summer, mebbe, poking here and yon. Can you handle it… cousin?”

Lissa’s perfect eyebrows arched a fraction of an inch. “I can indeed.” Her cool blue eyes sparkled. “There will be much to do, I think: you left all in a shambles, Mark. We must first make sure of stores to see us through the spring. We need an ironmonger more, and a tapister besides, though that can wait. We should secure a weight of seed for—”

Suddenly Lissa stopped dead. “But—!” She took a deep breath. “My lord, you honour me in such an offer. But if I were to be your Seneschal, then who would attend your lady wife?”

“We can always find another lady-in-waiting,” Gail said softly.

“You think it so simple! What woman could you find to scare you up a dyer in the middle of the night?” Lissa demanded. “What wench will you employ who knows a hundred ways to excuse you from a dreary dinner? Where will you meet that maid that sews as well as I a knife-sheath in a ball-gown sleeve?”

Impulsively Gail took Lissa’s hands. “Nowhere, Lis. But a lady-in-waiting doesn’t need to know those things; those are things only a true friend knows. And I hope we’ll still be friends, even if my idiot husband gives you work equal to your genius.”

“You make things happen,” Mark said briskly. “That’s the sort of head I need to be my Seneschal.”

“Mark is right. You deserve a greater part in life than looking after a brainless royal brat,” Gail said, smiling.

Lissa stopped and did not speak. She gripped Gail’s hands, and then hugged her tight. A miracle rolled slowly down her cheek. “To be your friend was all the honour I ever wanted from my life.”

Gail reached up with a teary smile and ruffled Lissa’s hair. “Well I know that, and you know that, but try to tell my idiot husband!”

Mark chuckled. “I know squat about statecraft, Lissa: I need you more than Gail does.”

“Which is saying something,” Gail said, laughing and crying at once. “I don’t know if I can breathe without you, or put my boots on in the morning. But I think I’d better learn.”

“Well, you can ride,” Mark said. “And that’s all you need to know for the next week, until we get home!”

“Ride!” Gail said suspiciously. “We’re not
riding
anywhere.”

Mark groaned. “If you really think I’m going to walk back to Borders in the middle of winter—”

“It isn’t the middle of winter yet. There’s barely any snow,” Gail wheedled. “I love walking, Mark! Besides, by this time next year I might be pregnant, and you can’t expect me to traipse all over the countryside then.”

Mark looked at Gail in shock.

Sudden joy flamed in his breast, like fire bursting from blown embers. Hers was the sly, bold, laughing face he had seen in the flames. They would be friends and lovers too: they were meant to be after all.

And he would have sons, sons to take down to the river, and hold in his arms, and teach the finer points of fishing to.

“We’ll walk,” he gasped. “But, but what made you change your mind?”

“Might! I said I
might
be pregnant,” Gail cried. She was blushing, and once again Mark had the sense of a little girl, peeping out from behind her Princess mask. Gail glanced over at Lissa. “A wise friend of mine once told me that there are only four great Adventures in life: being born, being married, being a parent, and dying. I didn’t used to believe that, but now I’m coming to think it’s true. About being married anyway.” She scowled comically. “There’s nothing so broadening as having to put up with someone else’s foolishness all the time! And I looked at my sister with her new baby, and she didn’t look like her life was over, and I thought,
1 can do that
! I mean, what if I want to travel about and be a wife and be a mother and have a wonderful time? Who is going to stop me? I want everything, Mark: and you know I’m very good at getting what I want.”

“God help us,” Lissa murmured.

Gail grinned and took Mark’s hand. “Have you any girls’ names you particularly care for? I feel quite certain our first child will be a girl. She’ll take after me, of course.”

Mark looked at her, eyes wide with alarm.
O my Lord
, he thought.

A daughter?

Praise for Sean Stewart’s award-winning debut novel
PASSION PLAY

“DARK AND NASTILY BELIEVABLE… Sean Stewart [is] a talent to watch.”

—William Gibson, author of
Neuromancer

“A TERRIFIC NOVEL by an author whose talent is both obvious and subtle, a story that engages the imagination and, even better, leaves echoes that linger after the book has been shelved… A NEW VOICE AS DISTINCTIVE AS ANY IN SF.”

—Robert Charles Wilson

“BOTH ENTERTAINING AND CAUTIONARY,
PASSION PLAY
IS A WONDERFUL DEBUT NOVEL FROM A TALENTED NEW VOICE.”

—Charles de Lint

“A NOVEL SO SUBTLE AND LAYERED WITH MEANING, that works on so many levels at once… simply has no business being this compulsively readable.
Passion Play
is ONE OF THE BEST FIRST NOVELS I’VE EVER READ.”

—Spider Robinson, author of
The Callahan Touch

“SUCCEEDS BOTH AS SCIENCE FICTION AND A MYSTERY… [A] FAST-PACED AND THOUGHTFUL DEBUT.”

—Publishers Weekly

“EXCITING, TENSE… A MORAL TALE AND A THRILLER AT THE SAME TIME.”

—
Edmonton Journal

“THIS CYBERPUNK SAGA OF A LADY P.I… IN A NOT-SO-DISTANT FUTURE IS, QUITE SIMPLY, TERRIFIC… The story isn’t the usual rant against religion. This is a much more textured, much deeper tale of temptation and death…
Faust
as a whodunit. But it’s Diane Fletcher, snarling off the page, who makes the story click.”

—Toronto Globe and Mail

“THE BOOK’S INNER LIFE IS SUPPLE AND VIBRANT… Stewart’s political sophistication is matched by an equally subtle appreciation of character…
Passion Play’s
prose style is particularly impressive… a happy balance between the lean and the poetic.”

—
Vancouver Sun

“[A] POWERFUL DEBUT… COMPELLINGLYTOLD.”

—
Library Journal

More Praise for Sean Stewart’s
NOBODY’S SON

“
PASSION PLAY
INTRODUCED A NEW VOICE TO CANADIAN FANTASY FICTION. IF ANYTHING,
NOBODY’S SON
IS EVEN MORE SUCCESSFUL. Its narrative style, a delightful combination of first and third person, and his attention to recreating not only the feel of this magical past but its language make his world a thoroughly believable and attractive one…
Nobody’s Son
provides a thoroughly engaging portrait of a man trying to discover his uniqueness and discovering that we are all, inevitably and inexorably, on our own. We are all nobody’s son. With his second novel, SEAN STEWART CLEARLY EMERGES AS ONE OF CANADA’S MOST IMPORTANT FANTASY WRITERS.”

—
Canadian Literature

“SEAN STEWART IS, SO TO SPEAK, BURIED TREASURE, but as the list of people who know how good he is gets longer, he will not likely stay so… Stewart is a rare commodity in the slash-and-burn narrative inferno of popular fiction.”

—
The Georgia Straight

“PART OF STEWART’S GENIUS is his ability to give the ordinary, personal events of his characters the same weight as their epic clashes.”

—Horizons SF

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