Part 5 (1/2)
He stood. ”Come now. Let's feed thee and salve thy scorchings.”
”How can you?” Freia's reddened eyes accused him. She wiped at her face and stayed seated.
Prospero sighed and sat again. He took her right hand in his left, pressing it. ”It likes me little, Freia, but I cannot mend all that's amiss in the world. Yet what's amiss with A Sorcerer and a enteman 53.thee, can be mended.” After a pause, ”Hast been long from home,” he said.
”Are they still here?” Freia asked, looking significantly at the clearings on the banks, the boats drawn up, the long-houses.
Prospero nodded. ”Aye, they are here. I would no more send them from the place than I'd send thee. Less, indeed.” He watched her face change, open heart-ache. ”Freia,” Prospero said, leaning toward her, ”thou hast that which none other hath, my blood. Thou'rt mine own and there's none like thee. Dost compa.s.s the difference 'twixt thyself and these others I have made?”
Freia looked down at their clasped hands. He took her left hand also, holding them both between his now.
”Puss,” Prospero said, pressing her hands, ”I do love thee; art dear to me as only mine own child could be. Yet thou canst not have me all thine own, no more than the wind may blow only on one tree or the rain fall on one stone. Must share.”
”There's too many of them,” she whispered. ”They're a, a herd.”
”Thou hast not seen a group of men before,” Prospero said, scenting victory. ”They startled thee, I know; thou art likewise strange to them. Aye, they're many, but withal my concern for them is balanced by my love for thee, and thou'lt receive full measure of thy ent.i.tlement.”
”Why did you make them? Wasn't I good enough?” Freia asked, looking up at him.
Prospero smiled at her. ”Good? A flower fresh-budded hath more of evil or hatefulness than thou. Leave jealousy, lest it canker and corrupt thee. Good enough? I am pleased with thee; thou art made to please me. I made them to serve my purpose in ways beyond thee, in matters where I would not hazard thee. Sooner would I build a wall of blossoms than spend thee on such wholesale work as I undertake with them.”
Freia gazed at him, perplexity in her face. ”Then what do 54.Elizabeth ”Wittey you want me to do. Papa? Why am I here? I'm no use to you. What should I do?”
”Do thou obey my bidding, and be of good cheer, and keep thy duty uppermost in thy thought,” he told her. ”Do as thou hast ever done, as a daughter ought, and thou wilt be ever near my heart.”
Ottaviano, his lady, and his men arrived in the large chartered town of Peridot as the town gates closed, having pushed five miles further than kind usage of the horses and the spring-muddied roads would have permitted, and, Otto reckoned, leaving Ocher at least ten miles behind them, stranded in one of the far less hospitable villages through which their road had taken them that day.
Their feeling of safety died when Ottaviano selected one of Peridot's three inns and found that a large chamber had been reserved for Lunete. Otto asked how this came to be, and the landlord explained that a gentleman had bespoke it for her.
”What gentleman?”
”Put him down, Otto!'Was he a tall man with a blue-green cloak and a black staff?” Lunete interrupted.
”Yes,” whispered the landlord. ”He's out-sir-my lady-back soon now I daresay, sir-”
”I'll-be-blowed,” Otto said, and apologized to the landlord in cash. Then he, his lieutenant, and his betrothed put their heads together.
”Third time's the charm,” Lunete suggested, smiling despite Otto's glowering face.
”Charm, my left-” Otto interrupted himself. ”This is the third time he's been right where we're going. Last night and yesterday afternoon, not to mention yesterday morning at the bridge. He's following us.”
”Sir, we've got to get rid of him. He may be reporting to Ocher,” Otto's lieutenant Clay urged.
Lunete said, ”Ocher wouldn't have such a man working for him. Indeed, I don't think such a man would work for Ocher.” Clearly she thought him too elegant to be a.s.sociated with the gross Baron of Sa.r.s.emar.
J? Sorcerer and a QentCeman 55.”What do you think he is, then?” Otto snapped at her impatiently. ”An eccentric n.o.bleman fond of walking alone? A wandering student? A bard with expensive habits and a long purse? Coincidentally bound for Lys, just as we are?”
”Would a spy reserve a room for me?” To Lunete, the answer was obvious. The spy would betray himself by snowing too much interest in her if he did that, and so no spy would.
Otto began to frame his own answer to this question and said instead, ”I'm checking it over before you set foot in it.”
”Do it now, please. I believe my head begins to ache.”
They proceeded upstairs without further conversation, Otto carrying the small bundle that was her sole baggage. His humor was not improved by his discovery, on opening the door, of an unseasonal yellow rose in a slender gla.s.s vase on the table. Behind a screen waited a basin of steaming water strewn with rose petals, and the fire had pleasantly overcome the spring chill.
”Oh, lovely!” exclaimed Lunete, and brushed past him.
”Lu! There could be-”
She shook his hand off. ”Otto, you're being very silly. I think you're jealous.”
His jaw slackened; he gaped at her, taken off-guard by the accusation. ”Sky above me! We're running from half an army, toward a war, and you think I'm jealous because this, this crazy rich vagrant is following us?”
”Yes,” she said firmly, taking her baggage from him. ”If you knock on the door in an hour and a half perhaps we'll have dinner together. Au revoir.”
The door closed behind him.
Otto stood with his back to it, fuming, building up a good head of steam, and then growled deep in his throat on his way down to the public room.
There he was, talking with a well-dressed merchant in the common room. Ottaviano ignored him and had a mug of good dark beer until the merchant had left, with many courtesies, to join his fellows at table in a smaller room on the other side of the inn. There were few locals in the inn yet, 56 -=>.
and they were loitering at the counter. Otto ignored the stranger a few minutes more and then suggested to Lieutenant Clay that the men should go into the inn-yard and run through an hour of drill, to limber them up after the riding and keep them at peak readiness.
When his men, grumbling, had left the inn, Ottaviano walked up to the stranger, who was now reading by the fire in the early spring twilight, at his elbow a table which held a candle, a pewter plate of tidbits, a gla.s.s of red wine, and a bottle. Otto observed that he wore high black riding boots and clothing of good but not ostentatious cut and quality, displayed by a full, bluish-green cloak thrown back over one shoulder; the light showed gold on his dagger's pommel and his sword-hilt, and a very nice emerald pendant dangled from his left ear.
Ottaviano glared down at the stranger. ”Who the h.e.l.l are you?” he demanded in a low voice.
”I beg your pardon,” said the man, lowering his small black book. ”Are you addressing me?”
Otto belatedly alerted his senses for nascent sorceries and locked his gaze on the other's. The guy might try another spell. If he did, Otto must disrupt it or avoid it.
”Yes, I am,” Otto said softly. ”Don't get cute.”
”I have been called many things, but never 'cute,' ” said the other coldly.
”1 believe you. You're tailing us, or me, and I find it very, very annoying, buster.”
The sorcerer looked at the man leaning over him. The fellow plainly wanted to pick a fight. He thought he'd deny him the satisfaction of it. ”You have an overrated opinion of yourself if you believe that, sirrah. I have no interest in you at all.”
”I find that hard to believe, considering the number of times I've seen your face lately.”
”Believe anything you like, by any means,” said the other, indifferently.
”I'd also like your attentions to my fiancee to stop,” Otto said.
Sorcerer and a (jentkman 57.”You have confused me with someone else,” the sorcerer decided, and raised his book again.
”I don't think so.”
”You think?” the sorcerer muttered, and it took a few seconds for the insult to register.