Part 2 (1/2)
TWO: Mocker
These things sometimes begin subtly. For Mocker it started when a dream came true.
Dream would become nightmare before week's end.
He had an invitation to Castle Krief. He. Mocker. The fat little brown man whose family lived in abject poverty in a Vorgreberg slum, who, himself, scrabbled for pennies on the fringes of the law. The invitation had so delighted him that he actually had swallowed his pride and allowed his friend the Marshall to loan him money.
He arrived at the Palace gate grinning from one plump brown ear to the other, his invitation clutched in one hand, his wife in the other.
”Self, am convinced old friend Bear gone soft behind eyes, absolute,” he told Nepanthe. ”Inviting worst of worse, self. Not so, wife of same, cert.i.tude. Hai!
Maybeso, high places lonely. Pacificity like cancer, eating silent, sapping manhood.
Calls in old friend of former time, hoping rejuvenation of spirit.”
He had been all mouth since the invitation had come, though, briefly, he had been suicidally down. The Marshall of all Kavelin inviting somebody like him to the Victory Day celebrations? A mockery. It was some cruel joke....
”Quit bubbling and bouncing,” his wife murmured. ”Want them to think you're some drunken street rowdy?”
”Heart's Desire. Doe's Eyes. Is truth, absolute. Am same. Have wounds to prove same. Scars. Count them....”
She laughed. And thought, I'll give Bragi a hug that'll break his ribs.
It seemed ages since they had been this happy, an eon since laughter had tickled her tonsils and burst past her lips against any ability to control.
Fate hadn't been kind to them. Nothing Mocker tried worked. Or, if it did, he would suffer paroxysms of optimism, begin gambling, sure he'd make a killing, and would lose everything.
Yet they had their love. They never lost that, even when luck turned its worst.
Inside the tiny, triangular cosmos described by them and their son, an approach to perfection remained.
Physically, the years had treated Nepanthe well. Though forty-one, she still looked to be in her early thirties. The terrible cruelty of her poverty had ravaged her spirit more than her flesh.
Mocker was another tale. Most of his scars had been laid on by the fists and knives of enemies. He was indomitable, forever certain of his high destiny.
The guard at the Palace gate was a soldier of the new national army. The Marshall had been building it since his victory at Baxendala. The sentry was a polite young man of Wesson ancestry who needed convincing that at least one of them wasn't a party crasher.
”Where's your carriage?” he asked. ”Everyone comes in a carriage.”
”Not all of us can afford them. But my husband was one of the heroes of the war.”
Nepanthe did Mocker's talking when clarity was essential. ”Isn't the invitation valid?””Yes. All right. He can go in. But who are you?” The woman before him as tall and pale and cool. Almost regal.
Nepanthe had, for this evening, summoned all the aristocratic bearing that had been hers before she had been stricken by love for the madman she had married.... Oh, it seemed ages ago, now.
”His wife. I said he was my husband.”
The soldier had all a Kaveliner's ethnic consciousness. His surprise showed.
”Should we produce marriage papers? Or would you rather he went and brought the Marshall to vouch for me?” Her voice was edged with sarcasm that cut like razors. She could make of words lethal weapons.
Mocker just stood there grinning, shuffling restlessly.
The Marshall did have strange friends. The soldier had been with the Guard long enough to have seen several stranger than these. He capitulated. He was only a trooper.
He didn't get paid to think. Somebody would throw them out if they didn't belong.
And, in the opinion locked behind his teeth, they pleased him more than some of the carriage riders he had admitted earlier. Some of those were men whose throats he would have cut gladly. Those two from Hammad al Nakir.... They were amba.s.sadors of a nation which cheerfully would have devoured his little homeland.
They had more trouble at the citadel door, but the Marshall had foreseen it. His aide appeared, vouchsafed their entry.
It grated a little, but Nepanthe held her tongue.
Once, if briefly, she had been mistress of a kingdom where Kavelin would have made but a modest province.
Mocker didn't notice. ”Dove's Breast. Behold. Inside of Royal Palace. And am invited. Self. Asked in. In time past, have been to several, dragged in bechained, or breaked-broked- whatever word is for self-instigated entry for purpose of burglary, or even invited round to back-alley door to discuss deed of dastardness desired done by denizen of same. Invited? As honored guest? Never.”
The Marshall's aide, Gjerdrum Eanredson, laughed, slapped the fat man's shoulder.
”You just don't change, do you? Six, seven years it's been. You've got a little grey there, and maybe more tummy, but I don't see a whit's difference in the man inside.” He eyed Nepanthe. There was, briefly, that in his eye which said he appreciated what he saw.
”But you've changed, Gjerdrum,” she said, and the lilt of her voice told him his thoughts had been divined. ”What happened to that shy boy of eighteen?”
Gjerdrum's gaze flicked to Mocker, who was bemused by the opulence of his surroundings, to the deep plunge of her bodice, to her eyes. Without thinking he wet his lips with his tongue and, red-faced, stammered, ”I guess he growed up....”
She couldn't resist teasing him, flirting. As he guided them to the great hall she asked leading questions about his marital status and which of the court ladies were his mistresses. She had him thoroughly fl.u.s.tered when they arrived.
Nepanthe held this moment in deep dread. She had even tried to beg off. But now a thrill coursed through her. She was glad she had come. She pulled a handful of long straight black hair forward so it tumbled down her bare skin, drawing the eye and accenting her cleavage.
For a while she felt nineteen again.The next person she recognized was the Marshall's wife, Elana, who was waiting near the door. For an instant Nepanthe was afraid. This woman, who once had been her best friend, might not be pleased to see her.
But, ”Nepanthe!” The red-haired woman engulfed her in an embrace that banished all misgivings.
Elana loosed her and repeated the display with Mocker. ”G.o.d, Nepanthe, you look good. How do you do it? You haven't aged a second.”
”Skilled artificer, self, magician of renown, having at hand secret of beauty of women of fallen Escalon, most beautiful of all time before fall, retaining light of teenage years into fifth decade, provide potations supreme against ravishes-ravages?-of Time,” Mocker announced solemnly-then burst into laughter. He hugged Elana back, cunningly grasping a handful of derriere, then skipped round her in a mad, whirling little dance.
”It's him,” Elana remarked. ”For a minute I didn't recognize him. He had his mouth shut. Come on. Come on. Bragi will be so glad to see you again.”
Time hadn't used Elana cruelly either. Only a few grey wisps threaded her coppery hair, and, despite having borne many children, her figure remained reasonably trim.
Nepanthe remarked on it.
”True artifice, that,” Elana confessed. ”None of your hedge-wizard mumbo jumbo.
These clothes-they come all the way from Sacuescu. The Queen's father sends them with hers. He has hopes for his next visit.” She winked. ”They push me up here, flatten me here, firm me up back there. I'm a mess undressed.” Though she tried valiantly to conceal it, Elana's words expressed a faint bitterness.