Havemercy Read online

  Besides the boys, there wasn’t much to look at in the Antechamber, just blank walls painted the same puke tan every which way you stared. Raphael said it was supposed to be calming, the color, so as to soothe the wild psychopath within, but Raphael talked like that all the fucking time, like he’d read one too many fancy books as a kid and the words had left him addlepated. Anyway, I figured the men that designed the room wanted anyone waiting to think long and hard on what they’d done, instead of letting them relax by filling the place with fancy picnic scenes so they could sit and think “What a lovely painting” and not “If Merritt goes on tapping his foot like that, I’ll kill him.”

  “She did have amazing breasts,” Ace said finally, before he kicked Merritt in the shin, at least solving that problem.

  His topic was a pleasing one, though it always set me on edge to be agreeing with anything Ace had to say. But I guess even disagreeable men could come together over a nice pair of breasts.

  I smiled, fierce and smug. Along the line of chairs, one or two bodies shifted like they had something important to say but couldn’t see their way toward saying it. I crossed my arms and dared them to go on and get it off their chests, but anyone who wanted to protest at being called in on my account had missed his chance when it’d first happened. ’Course, they may’ve been discouraged by my knife and my temper at the time, but that just meant they were prudent.

  Had to be prudent to fly with the Dragon Corps.

  Niall came skidding back into the room, looked relieved and then disappointed that we were all sitting exactly where he’d left us. He took the empty seat, fussing with the high collar of our uniform. “Esar’s tied up in some big to-do a ways down. Very top secret. Something to do with a Margrave and the prince of Arlemagne?”

  “Heir apparent,” I told him, in a foul mood now because this was no news, and I hated hearing the same rumors twice. “Seems he’s bent as a—”

  “Rook,” Adamo cut in, calm as ever, but with a promise in his tone for anyone who took that calm as anything like weakness.

  “Friend of yours?” I asked, and then I closed my mouth. Adamo’d always said I had more guts than good sense. Why anyone’d want or need the latter, I couldn’t imagine, but Adamo was too big for arguing with.

  “As a matter of fact, he is,” said Adamo, like he knew I’d just been mouthing off and hadn’t been expecting that.

  Before it could get nasty, or interesting—or both—the heavy doors at the end of the room gave way. The kid who’d opened them looked barely thicker than the doors themselves, but he wore the frip and cut of a man in the service of th’Esar.

  “We’re ready for you,” he said.

  Compagnon snorted, triggering a ripple of amusement through the rest of us as we stood, ranged more or less shoulder to shoulder with the exception of our punier members.

  No one was ever ready for us, I thought. Not even th’Esar himself.

  HAL

  The story began the way all the old legends began:

  This is only a story. Whether there is some truth to it is for the discerning reader to decide.

  Many years ago, in a distant land, there was born a most extraordinary young man to two entirely mundane parents. With his parents being such simple country creatures, it came as no surprise that young Tycho was born without any magical powers to speak of, let alone a Talent of his own. Perhaps it was this absence that caused his behavior, queer and brash at once, as though he did not understand that he too was meant for a common life, and wished to rail against the stars that had ordained his purpose.

  Tycho was many things before he was the Brave. Just short of twenty years, he lost his nose while outmatched in a duel with a magician. It is said that the lady they fought over was so impressed with his foolhardy courage that she implored her father—a silversmith—to craft the young Tycho a nose of precious metals to wear instead.

  She was a beautiful lady, unmarried and kindhearted. Therefore she was precisely the sort of lady any man would start a duel over, and even a man so peculiar as Tycho was not immune to her charms.

  What happened next was unclear; whether the lady held Tycho’s favor for the good she’d done him, or whether he had so indisputably impressed her that night. Whatever the case, it is certain that they made an impression on each other, for they came to be engaged over the course of the next year. Tycho visited his lady’s house to ask after the progression of his fine new nose, and soon he grew accustomed to taking her walking in the gardens or through the streets of the city.

  “We should be married in a garden,” he would say to his lady.

  “Yes,” said the lady, for that was what she always said.

  They might have been married the very next month, for the lady’s father had finished his work on Tycho’s fine nose, and there was no reason for any further delay. However, the magician who had taken Tycho’s nose in the first place had a delicate sense of honor, which had been dealt a frightful hurt over losing the lady when he’d won the duel.

  He came to Tycho’s wedding, dressed all in black velvets with a splash of white lace at his throat. There he placed a curse on the bride, that before the year’s end harvest she would fall ill and become a lady entirely of stone.

  “Your body will become as cold as your heart!” the magician cried, and he disappeared before any member of her family could reach his rapier in time.

  The lady was most distressed over this news. She fretted all through the reception and would take no cake, nor drink any wine.

  “I will take care of this,” Tycho said, for her father had many books, and he himself was incredibly learned.

  “Yes,” said the lady, for that was what she always said.

  They enjoyed no honeymoon, and the newly married couple went to none of the fine summer festivals that year. Tycho spent his days locked away in the study of their small home, poring over his vast library for any spell that might counter what the magician had done. His lady wife interviewed hundreds of magicians in their parlor, asking them each what might be done about the curse placed upon her, and if there was anything that might be done to keep a lady’s body flesh and blood the way it was meant to be.

  Every day, the magicians shook their heads and left the house regretful. Every night, Tycho would unlock the window casement in his study and climb to the roof of their house to sit with his wife and gaze at the stars.

  “The harvest comes soon,” Tycho said, stretching his fingers to trace the shape of a horse’s head in the sky.

  “Yes,” said his lady, for that was what she always said.

  The summer ended, and it came time for the year’s end harvest. Magicians from all four corners of the world visited Tycho’s house, but none of them was able to offer a single suggestion that could offset the magician’s curse. The lady’s mother came to stay at their house and to look after her daughter, while Tycho expanded the time he spent with his books, reading through them like a man caught up in some terrible fever.

  “There must be something,” he said to his lady’s mother.

  “A pity you had no children,” replied the old woman.

  The harvest came. The men and women on their farms scythed their fields and reaped their wheat, and one morning Tycho woke to find his lady wife a gray weight beside him, stony and silent.

  A great heaviness settled over his own heart that day, as though some part of him had turned to stone as well. He set his lady in the garden, where they had taken their first walks and spoken their first vows. Then he locked the doors to the house they had shared and left the village where he had been born and raised.

  The events of those years are not well documented. It is said that Tycho was searching for the magician who had cursed his wife, or that he was searching only to forget his wife entirely. Some accounts insist that Tycho encountered a dwarf and took to keeping him as a kind of jester, to lift his spirits. Others say that he took to riding a moose, stating that it traveled much faster than even the swiftest of horses
.

  Of the many differing accounts of these years, it may be argued that the most true is the very first: that he sought to take his revenge on the magician who had so cruelly stolen his lady wife.

  No one knows how many years it took for Tycho to find the magician. The only certainty can be that he did, one dark, chill night very far from home. Night was when the magician traveled best, since his clothes were black and his horse a fine black gelding.

  The magician saw only a flash of silver—Tycho’s nose in the dark—before he was dragged from his horse and the rapier plunged into his chest.

  “This is for my wife,” said Tycho the Brave.

  The magician in black said nothing at all.

  Tycho the Brave took the magician’s horse, and spurred him toward his old home. Who can say why he decided to return? Perhaps it was the notion of spring in the air, and the promise of rain in the clouds. All around, the land spoke of new beginnings, and the ground was green and fertile when at last he arrived.

  Tycho the Brave brought the horse around to stable it in the back, and stopped in wonderment at what he beheld. The stone statue was gone from the garden, and there was a woman singing in the kitchen, sweet-faced and dark-haired.

  It was his own lady.

  She came running out of the house when she saw him, and stretched her hands out to clasp his own.

  “You broke the curse,” his lady said.

  “I killed the magician,” Tycho the Brave countered. While possessed of a curious befuddlement at this turn of events, he was nonetheless thrilled beyond the telling. “Is that what’s done it?”

  “Yes,” said his lady, for that was what she always said. She took him by his hands, and led him back into their home, where they celebrated his return in a manner as befits a husband and wife, and they were very happy until the end of their days.

  The stories I read to my young cousins always ended the same way, just as they always began the same way, and sometimes I wondered about them. Was it really possible to be simply happy until you died of gout, or old age, or some kind of nefarious poisoning? It seemed to me that a man like Tycho the Brave—more peculiar than brave, to my own private thinking—would have had a very difficult time staying out of trouble entirely. There were other tales about him, romans filled with them in the library, so I could only assume he hadn’t.

  Perhaps his wife didn’t mind it so much. She must have been a very different woman from the chatelain’s wife, my adoptive mother, who would have run screaming in the opposite direction from even so much as a whisper of magician’s curses. She didn’t approve of my reading romans.

  The Margrave Royston was related to me very distantly through marriage, because he was the chatelain’s brother. And this was why he came to stay with us of all people, in the middle of Nevers—between Nevers and Nowheres, as most liked to call it.

  As far as my place in Castle Nevers was concerned, there was some business of third cousins and thrice removals, but no one could keep it straight, not even the chatelain himself. Most of the time we figured it didn’t matter, and the little lords and lady of the house called me no less than Cousin, while the chatelain and the Mme addressed me by name when they addressed me at all.

  We had barely three days’ notice of the Margrave’s arrival. Upon receiving the news, the entire house was thrown into a whirlwind of excitement, Mme going into fainting spells every two minutes about how we’d never be ready in time, and all the servants bearing the brunt of the real business. The chatelain wasn’t pleased for a number of reasons, not the least of which being the cause of his brother the Margrave’s sudden imposition. The scullery maids were all whispering about it, but everyone quieted before I ever had a chance to sort this troublesome business out. Instead, I made a point of keeping out of sight and out of mind, since I was in the middle of a new roman about the Basquiat itself and wanted to read in peace.

  Eventually, the chatelain found me.

  “Damn it, boy, what are you doing there?” he called up to me, arms folded, standing beneath my tree. I nearly fell off the branch and only managed to catch myself just in time. I wasn’t keen on falling, not again, since the first time I had I’d done considerable damage to my wrist.

  “Oh, well,” I said. “Didn’t want to be in the way.” Then, I realized it was very awkward talking to the chatelain this way, and clambered down the trunk.

  The chatelain looked at me with some bafflement—a big man, broad-shouldered, good-natured but often red in the face about something or other. I was quite fond of him, though there were a rather large number of people who found themselves put off by his bellowing.

  “Well,” he said. “Hal, you’ve a leaf in your hair.”

  So I had. I combed it out as quickly as I could with my fingers, book tucked under my arm and threatening to slip all the while. “Sorry,” I said.

  “At your age,” said the chatelain, “you’ve no business still reading in trees. Well, no matter. We have something to discuss.”

  I walked beside him on the bank of Locque Nevers for a time while he said nothing and worked his large jaw. The upset with his brother had unsettled him. I was unsure of what to do or say, and so did and said absolutely nothing, which seemed the best option.

  At last, the chatelain took a deep breath, clasped his hands together, and said, “The Mme and I will be trusting you to take care of him.”

  I didn’t have to ask who. “Oh,” I said, and without thinking, “in—Well, how?”

  “You may have noticed that your room is situated very close to the guest’s chamber,” the chatelain explained. “My brother is . . . not impressed by country life, nor was he crafted as a person to respect or uphold any of our . . . country values.”

  “Ah,” I said, when it appeared I needed to confirm I was listening.

  “He thinks they’re damn backward,” the chatelain clarified. “Already, there is some suspicion among the servants concerning members of the Basquiat. Besides which, my brother is by no means an inconspicuous man. It is this decided lack of inconspicuousness that has returned him to us in the first place, and will no doubt cause a considerable volume of misunderstandings in the coming weeks until he is once again . . . accustomed to our lifestyle here.”

  “Ah,” I said again. I was coming to understand this better, though he was speaking as if he were uncomfortable, and therefore without his usual brusque clarity. At its simplest, I realized the chatelain wanted me to treat the Margrave as I would have treated his sons and daughters: half-schooling and half-nannying.

  I didn’t think this was the best of plans, but it wasn’t my place to air these concerns.

  “Yes,” said the chatelain, even though he’d agreed to his own statement and nothing more. Perhaps he’d seen the understanding on my face, for Mme often commented I was as easy to read as a book. Though I was uncertain as to whether my adoptive patroness could read at all, and couldn’t keep from wondering whenever she used this expression.

  Still, I didn’t think the Margrave would appreciate being treated as a child by one not so long departed from that state himself. This was not my observation to make, and yet I couldn’t help but hope that the chatelain would realize this for himself.

  All I knew about the man—save that he was the chatelain’s brother—was that he was a Margrave, which meant that he was a magician who’d done great service for the Esar in one way or another. The title was usually awarded to a man who had distinguished himself in the war. What I’d read about the Basquiat offered little help, for I felt that any man sensational enough to be a member of the city’s elite assembly of magicians would find no amusement in the country. Many people referred to the Basquiat as the heart of Volstov—to the Esar’s displeasure—as their meeting place stood second only to the palace in scale and architectural marvel.

  How anyone could leave all that excitement for a place as simple as Nevers, I didn’t know.

  Then I remembered that it had not been his choice to begin with, and
a dark cloud settled over my heart as swiftly as the weather can change on a summer’s day. Dealing with the Margrave would be far worse than even dealing with William, the chatelain’s middle son.

  Wind stirred my hair, in want of a cutting, and made little eddies and ripples on the lake’s smooth surface. The chatelain had been standing silent for some time now. I found myself wondering after his thoughts. I’d never had a brother myself, and so I had nothing to be used for comparison. He seemed agitated, which was usually left to the Mme, and what was more, he had nothing to say for himself, which I thought terribly strange.

  “He’ll likely be rude,” the chatelain said at last. He too was studying the lake, as though it might offer some helpful wisdom to deal with what I was privately beginning to view as the coming storm, throwing our little household into disarray.

  I nodded, to show that I’d heard him.

  “He’s a good man,” he continued, with a conviction that assured me he believed at least this about his brother. “A good man. Not as good as some, and certainly not as sensible, but his heart’s in the right place.”

  I was relieved to hear this, as there had been a section in the roman about the very early founders of the Basquiat, two of them with their hearts removed entirely and stored elsewhere for safekeeping.

  “I’ll look after him,” I said, with more courage than I felt. There were some days, after all, when I felt that I was inadequate to bear the responsibility of the chatelain’s sons and daughter. His brother, some small rebellious part of me insisted, was asking too much. I’d already decided the Margrave would see straight to my purpose and would hate me on sight.

  But I’ve always found that it’s best to prepare for the worst possible eventuality in any given scenario. Then you can only be pleasantly surprised.

  Three days went by faster than I could possibly have imagined, with the servants shooing me out of every room I could find in which to take refuge, even the ones we never used. The children were the only ones who seemed pleased, referring to the Margrave as Uncle Roy. To the children, he was preceded only by his reputation for lavish gifts. Mme, on the other hand, developed a tight look about her mouth whenever he was mentioned, and the lines only grew deeper as the days went on.