Havemercy Page 12

  In general, though, I felt that things had been running more smoothly since Margrave Royston had taken it upon himself to occupy the children’s fancy. I myself enjoyed the help as much as I did the stories, and would have been very sorry if anyone had convinced him to spend his time otherwise.

  The children marched downstairs in a queue to the dining room, which I privately thought of as the finest room in the house. It was certainly one of the largest, paneled all in fine, dark wood with high-backed chairs and a long, rectangular table of exactly the same shade. The servants polished the table daily, whether we were using it or not, so that the wood always had an exacting gleam to it, as though it was not wood at all but marble or glass. I knew it couldn’t compare to the likes of what they had in the city, but I thought it very fine, all the same.

  “Any news from Thremedon?” The chatelain seemed relieved to have found that the city was no longer a subject taboo with his brother, and he asked after it often now; though whether he was truly curious or if it was only a peace offering, I couldn’t tell.

  “Well,” said Royston, and his eyes crinkled at the corners the way they did whenever he was about to relay something particularly amusing. I leaned forward on my elbows—too eager as always, but then no one was looking at me. “It seems the Esar has come up with a particularly unique way of dealing with our airmen and the diplomat from Arlemagne all in one.”

  Mme took a very long drink from her wineglass. She didn’t seem to like talking about the city very much.

  “Out with it then,” said the chatelain, who had no patience for the way his brother paused in order to build suspense.

  Margrave Royston put down his fork and smiled so widely that it still looked rather foreign on his face. “They’re calling it ‘sensitivity training.’”

  “What?” The chatelain’s broad face went slack with shock.

  The children broke out in a smattering of laughter, though whether they truly understood or whether they were laughing at their father’s expression, I didn’t know.

  “It’s a stroke of genius really,” said the Margrave, fingers toying idly with the stem of his wineglass. “It humiliates the Dragon Corps without any blood drawn, which I think the diplomat was quite keen on initially; and perhaps they might even learn something from the whole ordeal though I sincerely doubt it.”

  “Oh, Arlemagne,” Mme said, in a tone I thought rather strange. “They never do know what they want over there, do they?”

  There was a short pause before the Margrave answered. “Well, I don’t know about that.”

  “They’ve certainly had some problems in the past,” said the chatelain, in support of Mme. He smiled jovially, and refilled his glass with wine. “Especially after their king took ill.”

  “This new one is completely useless,” agreed Mme. She dabbed at her mouth neatly with a napkin and gestured for a servant to take her bowl of soup. “The prince, or whatever they insist on calling him.”

  “Now,” said the Margrave—and he’d told me not to address him as such but remembering was hard, especially in my own head. His voice came out a little colder than it had a second ago, and I had the unexpected sensation of a sudden frost. “Now, that’s not entirely fair. The heir apparent has many fine leadership qualities.”

  “Oh I’m sure he does,” said Mme, her expression as sharp and brittle as glass. “But that wasn’t exactly what we were talking about, now was it?”

  “Marjorie.” The chatelain said his wife’s given name, quick and quiet like a rebuke. It was obvious that she’d said something rude, though for the life of me I didn’t understand what.

  “Yes, Royston,” she went on. “Perhaps you should tell us of the enormous . . . talents the Arlemagnes possess.”

  Mme had partaken of rather a lot of wine. I could tell from the way she spoke, kneading the words in her mouth as if they were dough.

  “Brother,” said Royston, and in his voice I thought I could hear the rumbling of falling rock in the Ke-Han tunnels, “tell your wife to hold her tongue, else I may lose my temper.”

  She laughed, high and shrill, and I found myself wishing she would be quiet, or that the chatelain at least would quiet her. I stole a glance at the children to find William watching the Margrave with an eager sort of anticipation, while Etienne and Alexander stared at their uncle with a mixture of horror and awe. Emilie’s hair hung in her eyes, the way it did when she was trying not to cry.

  “What are you going to do? Blow me to smithereens, perhaps?” Mme asked pointedly. There were two spots of color rising high on her cheeks, and she was trembling. Despite the poor constitution she spoke so often of having, she seemed in no danger of fainting now.

  “That would be against the law,” the Margrave replied. His voice seemed to have two layers, the external worn thin to reveal the one beneath, which was sharp and unpleasant as a row of crocodile teeth. “I’m quite sure that I needn’t go to such extreme measures to shut your mouth.”

  “Brother,” the chatelain warned.

  “This is an outrage,” Mme pressed; a moment later she’d slammed her wineglass down on the table so vehemently I was stunned when it didn’t break. “We’ve given you our home, our hospitality—”

  “And it has been truly hospitable,” the Margrave replied, on the edge of a sneer.

  “How dare you?” Mme said, her lips trembling. “How dare he!”

  “I merely feel,” the Margrave countered neatly, “that you should keep your mouth shut when you know so very little about the subject at hand.”

  “I know this much!” The Mme had never struck me as frightening before—inflexible, yes, and often selfish, but never so unforgiving or unkind—but now I found myself drawing away from her, wrapping my arms around Emilie and letting her hide her face against my shoulder. “You did a disservice to your country—betrayed your king by taking up with that fool in the first place—and because you did, why we . . . we might have gone to war over it! It’s unnatural, and yet you—you had the audacity to be so indiscreet—”

  “Marjorie,” the chatelain almost shouted.

  He never called Mme by her first name. In the course of five minutes, he’d used it twice.

  I hardly dared, but suddenly I found myself looking at the Margrave in the midst of all this. His face was white as a ghost’s, his jaw clenched, his eyes fiercely dark. When I combined what I knew of the Margrave as he was now with his stories from the past, I wondered if he wouldn’t set something on fire or use his Talent out of anger.

  Surely he wouldn’t, I told myself.

  Emilie was on the verge of crying. I stroked her hair.

  “Madam,” the Margrave ground out in a voice like sharpening knives, “this may come as an immense surprise to you, considering how highly you esteem your intellect, yet I must confess there is a great deal in this world about which you know less than nothing. I say ‘less than’ because you are informed incorrectly—and being both tenacious and pompous, you cling to this misinformation as a pit bull to the bone, which makes you far more dangerous and contemptible than even the stupidest of men.”

  After that, no one said anything for a very long minute. I could hear the sounds Mme made as she searched for something to say, her breaths rasping; I could almost hear the moment when the entirety of the Margrave’s insult had sunk in at last.

  Then everything happened at once, the chatelain and Margrave Royston and Mme shouting at one another; the Mme’s wineglass being knocked over; the chatelain pounding the table with his fist over and over until it threatened to split along the grain; and above all that, a crackling tension that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end and which came from where the Margrave was seated, perfectly still. I knew at once that it was his Talent, and whether he was searching to employ it or to check it, I wasn’t sure.

  “Only an idiot,” Mme was screaming hoarsely, “would be so incompetent as to—”

  “The Arlemagnes are damned shirkers, that’s what they are,” the c
hatelain was bellowing over all that. “Shirkers of responsibility, dogs in a fight, cowards and bastards all, and I can’t say, Royston, I can’t say as I approve of any of your damn choices, but this—”

  “Is too much!” Mme barked. She clutched at her breast. “To come here—to poison our children—to allow them to worship you, when you are no more than a common—”

  “As I said, Madam, I have no further use for you or a single one of your ample prejudices,” the Margrave interrupted smoothly. “I should like to think that you and your ilk are the reason most of Volstov has gone to piss in the past four years, and the reason why I fled the countryside in the first place. You epitomize everyone I’ve ever hated—every fluttering, close-minded maiden aunt with no beauty of feature or soul—”

  “Now see here, damn it,” the chatelain snarled. “Royston, you ass, if you hadn’t noticed, she’s my wife—”

  “I’m very sorry, brother,” the Margrave replied. “That was an unfortunate choice you made, and it’s an unfortunate fate you suffer. I’d not even wish such a terrible thing on the Ke-Han—”

  “All this from a man who bedded an Arlemagne prince!” The Mme spat on the floor; William, in what I assume was uncomfortable horror, barked out a dreadful laugh. Neither his parents nor his uncle seemed to notice. “I’d say, of everyone here, you’re the disgrace to our country, Margrave,” the Mme went on, inexorable. “As evidenced by the Esar’s all-too-lenient punishment. If you ask me, it should have been far worse!”

  It was then that the Margrave exploded the dining-room table.

  I believe, even provoked as he was and shaking with rage, he was still in enough control of himself not to harm any of us with the outburst of raw magic; the explosion was oddly contained, as if some invisible protective dome existed between us and the blast. Splintering, burning wood skittered underneath our chairs and to the four walls of the dining room like some sort of fireworks display. As quickly as the fire began it was doused, and all we were left with was a singed rug and pieces of table everywhere.

  Emilie was too shocked even to cry. Etienne was gripping Alexander by the arm, and William’s eyes were wide with disbelief. I, too, felt myself staring.

  Once again, the Margrave had rendered us speechless.

  In the silence that followed, the Margrave said, very quietly, “I’ll pay for that.”

  “Yes,” the chatelain replied, clearing his throat. “Well. See that you do, brother.”

  The Mme fainted; Emilie immediately recovered from her shock and began to bawl. It was into the ensuing chaos that William asked, “Will you do the china cupboard next, Uncle Roy? Mama always says it’s so ugly!”

  “To your room, William!” the chatelain commanded.

  While I attempted to round up the children and lead them out of the dining room—which appeared now to be more of a war zone than anything else—I saw the Margrave sink into his chair and put his head in his hands. I feared the fog would descend around him; I feared Mme’s tongue had been too sharp. I feared a great many things, but Emilie was tugging on my sleeve, desperate to leave this battlefield.

  Instead of doing anything I would have liked to do, I ushered the children out into the hallway, where the servants had gathered to stare, openmouthed, through the door and at the scene before them.

  “Would you?” I asked the cook.

  “Of course,” the cook said, gathering Emilie close. “Come now. Tut, what’s she crying for, then?”

  I turned back to the dining room. One of Mme’s maids was kneeling on the floor beside her, waving smelling salts underneath her nose and trying, in vain, to rouse her. Now and then, Mme would let out a trembling groan; she’d stir, her eyes would flutter, and she’d fall back into deathly stillness. She’d done this before. It only meant she was scared and unhappy and faced with something she didn’t understand and couldn’t predict. By morning she’d be fine, if complaining of a headache.

  The chatelain was unexpectedly quiet, staring at the tragedy his dining-room table had become.

  “It was a very nice table,” he said, at length. Mme took that moment to let out another groan, and I saw the Margrave wince.

  “I’ll buy you another,” he repeated. “My apologies for the mess, brother.”

  “Well,” the chatelain said. “Marjorie has that effect on even the best of us.”

  The Margrave returned his head to his hands, and I took that opportunity to step back over the threshold and into the madness. When I rested my hand on the Margrave’s shoulder, he stirred and looked back at me, and did not smile.

  What I’d learned was in some ways very much what Cooke and the others had been gossiping about before—the rumors that had preceded the Margrave and made the servants so uncomfortable. There must have been more to it than that, however; I could tell as much by the unhappy slump of the Margrave’s back.

  “Would you,” I said carefully, “like me to accompany you back to your room?”

  “Oh,” he said, and didn’t seem able to answer my question.

  “It’s just that I think you might benefit from some company,” I said, more quietly, so that only he could hear. I hoped that intimated what I thought—that no man should be left alone with such thoughts as were obviously haunting him—but I couldn’t tell if he was pleased or displeased to hear my motives.

  “I’ve made something of a mess,” he said, still refusing to answer me.

  “It would appear so,” I replied. I looped both my arms under one of his and helped him to his feet. “The servants will look after it.”

  “Hal,” he began.

  “Come,” I said. “You won’t even have to talk to me. We can sit about in silence, if you’d like, or I can read to you. Anything you’d like.”

  The look he gave me then was one I’d remember for the rest of my life. “Well,” said the Margrave. “All right.”

  I took him upstairs. I thought it strange that the Margrave, after such a display of power, could need to be led anywhere, but he didn’t make any effort to lose me. I myself was glad of it, because I had the uncomfortable feeling that Margrave Royston had transformed into someone else again before my very eyes, and I wanted him in sight until I’d got it pinned down.

  At some point during the tenure of his long and difficult stay at Castle Nevers, I’d somehow convinced myself that I knew the Margrave, knew what sort of a man he was by the way he interacted with the children and with me. The stories he told were fascinating, and I’d never heard the like, but until tonight they had remained only that—stories. Now, with the memory of the dining-room table fresh in my mind, it seemed as though the things I’d known about the Margrave were only a very small part of a much greater whole.

  It was as though a character from one of my romans had leapt from the pages, full-blown and hale. I could scarcely look at him, I found, and not for lack of wanting to.

  “I should apologize,” he said, when we reached the landing. His voice was quiet, private, as though he were still half-lost in thought.

  “You’ve done so,” I reminded him, even if it was uncharitable of me. “And you promised to pay for the table.”

  “I lost my temper,” he said. “I shouldn’t have.”

  “Well, you heard the chatelain. Mme has that effect on everyone.”

  At that the Margrave laughed, startled and hoarse, so that I knew it had sounded quite as rude as I’d feared. I didn’t care. At that moment, I felt as though I would say anything at all if it would keep him from retiring once more into depression.

  “Indeed,” he said, with a rumble in his throat that sounded pleased. I felt a strange sort of swelling in my chest—like pride—to know that I’d caused it, that I could effect such a change.

  It was, after all, what I’d been aiming for.

  The Margrave stepped away from me as we reached the door, turned the knob, and opened it halfway so that he might slip inside alone. He paused at the doorframe.

  “I suppose,” he said, turning slowly to me
et my gaze, “that if you have any questions about the details aired so publicly this evening, I should offer to answer them now.”

  I blinked, felt a momentary scramble in my mind as I sought for the right question, or even any question at all. I wanted to ask a great many things. I wondered what the prince of Arlemagne had been like, or whether he’d been anything like me, though that seemed a terribly inappropriate thing to ask, and not at all the sort of question I imagined Margrave Royston would feel up to answering.

  “Would you,” I said at last, “like to finish telling me how they built the Basquiat?”

  He smiled again, and again I felt that peculiar flush of gladness.

  “I would.”

  ROOK

  Our Lady of a Thousand Fans was nice enough, but there was way too much fucking ceremony involved for my tastes, too much hoopla for the end result. I mean, everywhere else you have to sign your name and such, so if you kill somebody they’ve got your calling card if you’re stupid enough to leave your real name, but in Our Lady they make you leave a surety—that is, a piece of yourself they keep until you’re done, the kind of personal item they can track you down with if you were smart enough to sign with an alias. But Our Lady, if you counted it all up and weighed it out, was just about the same as anywhere else, so far as I could tell. Sure, they taught a few of the girls some real exotic stuff, just so they could charge us extra, but underneath all that they weren’t nothin’ special.

  I had to go to Pantheon after Our Lady, get the sludgy taste of their sweet tea out of my mouth. That and some other things, ’cause Our Lady was all silk and softness, and I was too hacked off at everything to deal with any of that shit. Pantheon had gambling, and a man with one eye who was offering knife fights in the corner, even odds. Adamo’d told me off more than once for knife-fighting in the city, ’cause I was better’n most and more than once we’d had to have a little “talk” about what was fair and what was murdering a man in broad daylight. I still say that if you’ve got a knife and the other man’s got a knife, then it’s a fair fight no matter what angle you’re coming from. It just shakes down that what isn’t fair in this world is some people being better than others at killing.