Swordpoint (28 page)
'Was that your dangerous research?' she laughed. 'The revelations of drugged 16-year-olds? No wonder no one took you seriously!'
'The stars!' he shouted. 'Light! Did you know light moves? The stars, the planets are a measurable distance away. They're fixed, they don't move; we move. It's provable mathematically-'
'David,' she said softly, 'you're shouting. Lord,' she sighed, 'I really don't see what the fuss is all about. It makes no difference to me what the stars do with themselves.'
'Politics', he said flatly. 'Just like here. It went contrary to the ranking professors' findings, and they couldn't have that.'
The duchess nodded approval. 'Politics. You should have stayed there. You would have learned a lot.'
'I didn't want to learn that!'
His voice rang in the gilded reaches of the cornices. The duchess shrugged her shoulders as though shaking off a gossamer scarf. 'Oh, David, David... use some sense. You already have. What do you think you've been playing at in Riverside? Politics of the crudest nature: the politics of force. And you enjoy it, my dear. But you're capable of more. What about Lord Ferris? You convicted him admirably.'
'It wasn't... fun.'
'Mmm,' she nodded. 'More amusing when you get to watch them die when you're through with them.'
He picked up a green glass paperweight, tossed it from palm to palm. 'That disgusts you, does it?'
'Not at all. It's just the kind of charming eccentricity society looks for in a duke. Put down that paperweight, David, I don't want you breaking it.'
'You're mad,'-he said. The edges of his lips were white. 'I'm not even your heir.'
'I'm about to name my heir,' the duchess replied with a hint of steel; 'and I'm not mad. I know you, and what you're capable of. I know it to a hair's fineness. I must parcel out the power that will succeed me; no one person can hold it all. You should be pleased; your part is one of the easiest, and you'll get all the money.'
'I am not going to be duke,' he said stiffly. 'Even if you died tomorrow. Or right now,' he added; 'that would be fine with me.'
'Don't be so quick to reject the dukedom, Davey. Wouldn't you like some real power, for once? You could build a library, even found your own University, independent of the city's. You could hire Richard St Vier to protect you.'
He turned as though he would have hit her if he'd ever learned how to. His eyes were hot, like molten emeralds, in his white face. 'Halliday,' he managed to say; 'your hope for the city. Make him your heir.'
'No, no. He has his place already.' She rose on a burst of angry energy, strode across the room in a hissing of skirts. 'Oh, David, look at yourself! You were born to be a prince - you were a prince in Riverside, you shall be so again! I've seen you do it. Just look at the men who love and follow Halliday - and look at the one who loved and followed you.'
'And then there's Ferris,' Alec said acidly, 'who loved you and followed Halliday, with a detour to Arkenvelt.'
'Very clever,' she answered. 'Very nicely reasoned. You should be this clever all the time. It would have spared your Richard a good deal of trouble if you'd been clever enough to tell Horn who you really were when he was stupid enough to abduct you.'
'Maybe,' said Alec. 'But I was hoping to avoid something like this.'
'Avoid it?' she said, scorn showing on her face. 'Is that all you want - to avoid things? Do you think the world exists to provide a playground for your whimsies?'
He looked blandly at her. 'Well doesn't it? I thought you'd just been telling me to amuse myself.'
The duchess's knowing smile was strained. 'Ah, so that's what you want to hear, my young idealist. Power for the good of the people; power to affect change; great responsibility and great burdens, which must be shouldered by those with the brains and the skill to use them. I thought you knew all that, and didn't want to hear it.'
'I don't,' said Alec. 'I've told you what I think. I don't want any part in it. I don't know why you think I'm a liar. Even Richard doesn't think I'm a liar. Richard doesn't like to be used, and neither do I.'
'And I, too,' the duchess said icily, all warmth gone from her, 'do not like to be used. You came to me because I could be helpful. You never could have saved him on your own. But my dear child, you can't just turn around and go back now. Surely you knew the risk when you took it. You've lost him. You let Tremontaine use him for its purposes today. He's a proud man, and a clever one. He knows what you did.'
He was trying to see past the net she was folding him in, and failing, by the pallor of his face and the dullness of his eyes. But even in his weakness, he had managed to anger her past the point where she should be. And because she was a mistress of men's weakness, of frailty, of uncertainty, she twisted truth around him like a decoy.
'I was going to spare you this,' she said stiffly. 'I don't want to hurt you - I thought you'd see reason on your own. But come here.'
Drawn by compulsion to the scent of danger, he came. She drew out the second ruby from her bodice. 'Do you see this? I offered it to him with my thanks. But he threw it back in my face. He knows exactly how we used him, you and I. He didn't want it. He told me to give it to you - as a parting gift. He's through with you, David -Alec. So you see, there's no way out.'
'Oh, don't be silly,' said Alec. 'There's always a way out.'
He turned from her and walked to the full-length window; and when his hand shattered the glass he kept on walking a few steps more, then stopped. He stood at the centre of a storm of broken glass. Shivers of it lay across his shoulders, rising and falling and winking in the light of his slow, ragged breath. His outstretched arm was flowing with blood. He was looking clinically at it.
The Duchess Tremontaine stood, too, watching the wreck of a man through the wreck of her picture window. Then she said, 'Katherine. Please see that Lord David does not die before he leaves here.'
She turned, and the grey silk whispered that the duchess was leaving, leaving to tend to some other piece of business that required her attention in the house, the city, the world.
She left Lord David Alexander Tielman Campion alone with his bleeding arm and a serving woman who was ferociously and methodically tearing her petticoat to strips for him.
Finally the blood's flow abated. The cuts had been many, but not deep. 'The funny thing is,' Alec told Katherine conversationally, 'I can't feel anything.'
'You will later,' she said to him. 'When you get home, soak all the glass out. He did give the ring back, but he still wants you. I'm sorry I waited so long to tell you. It's going to hurt plenty, believe me.'
'You're upset,' he said. 'It's a good thing you left Riverside. Don't ever go back.'
'I won't,' she said.
'And do remember to let grandmama bully you. She's perfectly charming as long as you let her.'
'Yes - Alec, leave now, before she comes back.'
'I will,' he said, and pocketed some silver ornaments.
Chapter XXVIII
By the time Richard got back to Riverside, word of his release had spread through the district. Already a few of his possessions had been returned; he found them lying piled like offerings in front of his door: a small rug, the dragon candlesticks, and the rosewood box with a few coins in it. He stuck his candlestub in one of the sticks and went inside. The rooms were not much disturbed: some furniture had been shoved around, and a cushion he'd never liked was gone. He wandered the rooms, bathing in the familiarity of shape and shadow. He lifted clothes out of the chest, folded and put them back; puffed up pillows and rearranged his knives. There was very little of Alec left in the house, and he was glad. His circuit ended on the chaise lounge. It had been almost a year since he'd sat on it regularly. He stretched out, with his ankles over the edge, and fell asleep.
When he awoke, Richard thought he was dreaming. A tall man in elegant clothes was shutting the door behind him.
'Hello,' said Alec. 'I've brought us some fish.'
The warm spring night curls itself silently around Riverside like a sleepy cat. One by one the stars come out in the clear sky, twinkling cheerily over whatever mischief is brewing below them in the twists of streets and houses there tonight. Under their gaze the chimneys rise up in jagged argument, cold and still and picturesque.-
From the celestial heights the arbitrary acts of life seem patterned like a fairy-tale landscape, populated by charming and eccentric figures. The glittering observers require vital doses of joy and pain, sudden reversals of fortune, dire portents and untimely deaths. Life itself proceeds in its unpredictable infinite patterns - so unlike the measured dance of stars - until, for the satisfaction of their entertainment, the watchers choose a point at which to stop.
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