Lord Quillifer

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  For Kathy Hedges

  CHAPTER ONE

  You rested your cheek upon your palm as you sat at the table, your expression a mixture of disdain and weariness. “I have been traveling this world of yours, Quillifer,” you said, “and I find it a dreary place, where the debased inhabitants employ themselves only in making it drearier.” Contempt laced your words. “What have your cannons and galleons, your astrolabes and hairsprings brought you but fruitless and thoughtless activity? And your printing presses serve only to better distribute to the world your own sad ignorance.”

  “Our ignorance is hardly our fault,” I pointed out. “And you could lessen that ignorance, were you so inclined. For you were created with the world and know many of its secrets. How much could you contribute to our metaphysics, our history, our natural philosophy?”

  You waved a scornful hand. “You think me as old as the world? Nay—my kind grew up alongside yours, and in the early days we dreamed together, and we built together. But my people learned wisdom, and yours never did.” You laughed. “Over many centuries I tried to improve you,” you said, “but you remain obstinate in your foolishness, and now I find your whole race irredeemable. Why should I take up that useless task again, when I find you all unchanged, and as witless and savage as the first human to come blinking from the shadows of the forest into the dazzling light of the sun?”

  I reached for my crystal goblet and held it glittering in the light of the candle, bubbles rising like worlds in the golden wine. “I think you need an occupation,” said I.

  Mischief glittered in your green eyes. “Besides tormenting you, Quillifer?”

  “Surely that grows as tedious as the rest of your dealings with humanity,” I said.

  “You have not yet ceased to amuse,” you said. “Your wrigglings, your plottings, your absurd ambitions.” I sensed a shift in your mood, as if a tide had changed behind those sea-green eyes. “Yet perhaps I will cease my plots for a time. They are hardly necessary now.”

  “I would be very pleased should you no longer seek my downfall,” said I, “but how is your intervention no longer necessary?”

  Your forest-green satins rustled as you took the wine-cup from my hand and drained it. “A second-rate vintage at best,” you said.

  “I think you are evading my question.”

  You lifted your cheek from your hand in order to better regard me. You tossed your head, and your red hair blossomed briefly beneath its circlet of gold, then fell back into place. Your mossy scent wafted through the night. “Consider your position now, Quillifer,” you said. “You live at court, where every jest is malicious, scandal lurks behind every tapestry, the very air breathes conspiracy, and a dagger is concealed behind every smile.”

  “Indeed,” said I, “the court at times resembles a congress of fishwives, only less well-mannered.”

  “Fishwives are less inclined to poison and murder.” A corner of your mouth turned up in a smile. “Whereas you, Quillifer, are at your zenith. You are the favorite of the Queen as well as her secret lover. You are a Knight of the Red Horse and the new-made Count of Selford, which is a title formerly employed only by members of the royal family. You sit on the Privy Council, and even the hoariest statesman or the most regal duke is obliged to reckon with you. Do you think they love you for it?” Again you laugh. “Every courtier hates you and wants to be your friend, and those to whom you offer favors grudge the thanks they offer you.”

  I contemplate my empty goblet. “You think I don’t know it?”

  “I think you believe that none of that matters, so long as you have the love of the Queen.”

  “And does it?” I decanted more wine into the cup.

  “I think you may not live in a world of whispers and enmity without suffering some loss,” you said. “And in your position, to suffer any loss is to lose all, for once you are shown to be vulnerable, your very friends will become wolves and tear out your throat. You have risen as far as you can, and from this point you may only fall.” You held up a hand. “The matter is inevitable, and I need not intervene.”

  “Oh,” said I, offhand, “your premise may be somewhat in error. I may rise farther still.”

  Your barking laugh was incredulous. “What—you think you can marry the Queen?”

  “It matters not what I think,” said I, “it matters what the Queen thinks.”

  I sipped the wine. It was a second-rate vintage, but then, I had got it from the palace butler, who was probably trying to put me in my place.

  “If the Queen marries a butcher’s son,” you said, “she would lose her authority faster than if she had run naked after hares armed with a pruning-hook.”

  “You offer a striking image,” I said. “Have you met many monarchs who pursued game in such a manner?”

  “One,” you said, “and she was not a monarch for long.”

  Again I sipped the wine. “There remains the question,” I said, “as to whether I am a butcher’s son or the Count of Selford.”

  “The nobility think they know the answer to that question,” you said. “And it is not an answer that would please you.”

  “I care not if they please me,” said I, “so long as they hold by the Queen.”

  “The Queen has a government,” you said, “and those not in power will form an opposition. But do they oppose the Queen’s government, or the Queen herself? At some point these boundaries become indistinct.”

  “There is no alternative to Her Majesty,” said I, “but submission to a foreign power. Even those opposed to her choices will hold by her.”

  “And they will hold by her,” you said, “so long as she doesn’t do something as mad as to marry you.”

  “I’m sure the Queen knows best.” Though I admit that your certainty made me uneasy.

  I had sent Master Redbine, a retired member of the College of Heralds, to my home city of Ethlebight to pursue inquiries about my ancestors, in hopes of finding a vine of nobility, however slender, wrapped about my family tree. If I could convincingly offer a noble ancestor—preferably from an otherwise extinct house—then I might ease the resentment of my supposed peers.

  I was not entirely proud of this stratagem, for I had no wish to debase myself by making some false claim of nobility in order to gratify the prejudices of some well-bred, fleering coxcomb; but insofar as it might keep the peace in Her Majesty’s council, I would make the attempt.

  And of course half the nobility based their pretensions on invented genealogies, so I would find myself in the very best company.

  You looked at me with your emerald eyes. “Your lover comes,” you said. “And though I despise all your women, I think I despise Floria the least.” Your lips turn up in a self-satisfied smile. “Perhaps,” you add, “because you will not keep her long.”

  And then you were gone, and I turned to the secret, silent door through which Her Majesty soon emerged.

  Floria wore a dressing gown of royal red satin and matching high-heeled sandals with bows. Her ladies had bound her ill-tempered dark hair with a ribbon, but it was already escaping its bonds. She carried a candle in her hand, with which she had lighted her way down the secret passage to my room. The great white castle overlooking Selford has its share of such passages, through which Floria’s father used to visit his many mistresses.

  Floria lifted her chin, and her nostrils flared as she tested the air. “What is that scent?” she asked.

  “Labdanum, I think,” I said. “I had an otherworldly visitor.”

  Her brows lifted in amusement. “Your fairy?”

  “She isn’t a fairy, as I understand fairies,” said I. “A goddess, perhaps, and certainly a nymph, a nereid as proudly inconstant as her watery element.”

  Floria walked across the room and drew the bar across the door. “This won’t keep out a goddess, I suppose,” she said, laughing, “but it will do well enough against sublunary invaders.”

  I took the candle from her fingers and placed it on the fireplace mantel, pink marble carved with gloxinia and camellia, ornament suited to a monarch’s mistress. Floria’s bright galbanum scent flooded my senses, overwhelming your own earthy fragrance. Floria’s face was turned up to me, an opalescent shimmer in the dim light, and I kissed her lips. I lost count of time for a moment, and then Floria sighed and rested her head against my chest.

  “I don’t know if I fully believe in this Orlanda of yours,” she said, “but I suspect any woman who visits you at this hour
.”

  “It is you I adore,” said I, “and it was the nymph I rejected, which accounts for her malignancy.”

  Floria frowned. “Malignancy?”

  “It’s a new word. I made it up.”

  “Do we not already have good words for such a sentiment? ‘Mallecho,’ for example?”

  “Would that make Orlanda a mallechist, then?”

  As I attempt honesty whenever I think anyone might actually wish to hear the truth, I have told Floria about you, including the fact that you served her in the guise of the Aekoi Countess Marcella, who vanished when I unmasked you at the beginning of the rebellion against Viceroy Fosco. It seemed only just, that she should know she was the lover of a man cursed by a being extramundane, and that she should not be surprised by any extraordinary hostility directed against me.

  She does not entirely believe me, I think, but is at least convinced that I believe in your existence.

  “You need not fear her,” I told Floria, “for she has promised not to injure anyone I love, and I love you utterly.”

  She looked up at me. “Yet you say she is inconstant. May she not retract that promise?”

  “If she does, that will end her torment of me, her chief amusement in this world. For rather than risk one I love, I would make an end of myself immediately.” I smiled. “You begin to sound as if you believe in Orlanda.”

  “Perhaps I do. Though I do not care to think that my safety is bought with such danger to you.”

  I laughed. “Kiss me, love! For all her mischief has done is bring me to your arms.”

  We kissed, and embraced, and went from there to other things, as you surely know if you were watching from some invisible perch. For I have noticed that, though you say that you hate and despise my lovers, you nevertheless maintain a great interest in them, and in our doings together.

  It is almost as if you are jealous.

  CHAPTER TWO

  In the council room there was no throne or canopy of state, but the Queen’s high-backed chair was placed on a platform that allowed her to overlook her councillors, an arrangement which gave her an extra degree of majesty and proved useful in wrangling a score of quarrelsome lords. She was the smallest person in the room, and the only woman, and thus made the utmost out of every advantage she could find, which included swaddling herself in clothing suitable for a goddess. She dressed in royal scarlet and gold, the heavy silk studded with gems and woven with gold wire. A carcanet of rubies circled her throat. Jewels glittered on her fingers and shone on the small crown she wore atop her head. Her face and hands had been blanched with egg white and talcum mixed with ground pearls, the latter of which gave her complexion an unearthly opalescence, as if she were a celestial being that had just taken a dainty step off a passing cloud. Her councillors wore their own silks, chains, jewels, and finery, but she glowed at their head, a being half-divine—majestic, awesome, and apart.

  I, who knew the private Floria, was awed daily at her transformation. In you, nymph, I know an actual divinity; but beside Floria sitting in state, you seem whimsical and capricious and not entirely convincing.

  The council room was above the Inner Ward of Selford Castle, and light entered through a clerestory and illuminated the carved royal arms above Floria’s head, the tritons of Fornland quartered with the hippogriffs of Bonille, with an inescutcheon of the red horse of the Emelins. Light blazed along silk tapestries depicting the martial deeds of Floria’s ancestors. Richness and magnificence surrounded us, and Floria, her pearlescent face glowing above us all, was the figure from which all this abundance flowed.

  The lords assembled rivaled the tapestries in brilliance. They wore satins and silks and velvets. Sleeves were slashed to reveal bright satin shirts in contrasting colors. Gems winked from fingers and were sewn onto doublets in glittering patterns. Purfled velvets, gold and silver thread, and gold chains of office shone bright.

  By comparison to the others, I preferred to dress modestly, in colors bright or somber according to the season. To welcome the onset of spring, my doublet and trunks were green silk moiré, worn over immaculate linen. As I didn’t want simplicity to be mistaken for poverty, on my fingers I wore the best of the emeralds I imported from Tabarzam, and above my golden chain of office I pinned a diamond at my throat. On my cap I fastened an aigrette with a star sapphire surrounded by sprays of brilliants.

  I shone less than the others, but paradoxically I was the most noticeable. I own that this distinction somewhat flattered my self-regard.

  The Privy Council had about twenty members, of which half held high office under Floria, while the rest were present because Floria valued their advice, or because they headed some important faction in the Peers. Not all members attended, for some were elsewhere on matters of state, and the Knight Marshal and Constable were in Bonille, readying their armies for war. There were no less than four dukes in the room, all kinsmen of the Queen, all placed somewhere in the line of succession. The royal line itself had grown confused over the generations, with so many cousins marrying one another… and thus each one of the dukes, and a good many other nobles besides, could offer a claim to the throne that went back centuries. If Floria should die without an heir, there could be a blood-soaked scramble for the throne as bad as the Cousins’ Strife of two centuries ago.

  The Philosopher Transterrene, an abbot named Fulvius, opened the meeting with blessings and chants. I had not been raised in the sect of the Compassionate Pilgrim, but insofar as the Pilgrim’s philosophy was nearly universal among the nobility, I had acquired a primer a year or so ago, and memorized some of the most common chants so that I could mumble convincingly along with the rest.

  “Long live the Queen!” Fulvius concluded. “Peace unto her ancestors!”

  We repeated the formula, and I opened my folder and readied my pen to take notes. At each place at the table was a bottle of Q Sable Ink, made by my own company, and I opened my own bottle and took out some sheets of foolscap.

  “Gentlemen, I wish you good morning,” said Floria. “Most of you know that I have made an offer of peace to Loretto. I proposed to make Aguila my heir on the condition that he be raised here in Duisland, fostered to a member of the high nobility. Our emissary, my lord Lestrange, has returned with a message from Longres Regius, and I’m sorry to report that they have rejected my overture.”

  Floria had told me of this the previous morning, and while she spoke I kept a good watch on the members of the council to gauge their reaction. Most of the company were grim, but two of the dukes, Waitstill and Pontkyles, tried and failed to conceal their satisfaction. Both had unmarried sons who they hoped to match with the Queen and thus make themselves the grandsires of a monarch.

  Chancellor Thistlegorm raised a hand. The white satin that marked him as a member of the Retriever sect matched well with his white hair and beard. Yet he was also a lord, and a proud one, so his satin was sewn with white gems, pearls, and diamonds.

  “Your Majesty,” he said. “Was the message rejected on all points, or only on certain grounds?”

  “On all points,” said Floria. “And with insult—for the message implied that once I had Aguila under my power, I would make away with him.”

  Outrage sparked among the lords. “The brazen-faced dogs!” said Lord Coneygrave, the High Admiral. He was a tall, burly man with an iron-gray beard and an underbite so pronounced that his lower teeth rested on his upper lip, which lent his countenance an unexpectedly feral air. He clenched a fist and snarled with those undershot teeth. “Ay, Your Majesty, we will return that insult with buffets and knocks, mistake me not.”

  Prince Aguila, Floria’s nephew, was the son of Floria’s elder half-sister, Queen Berlauda, and her foreign husband, Priscus of Loretto. When Priscus had gone to war in Thurnmark, he had left a kinsman as his viceroy, and this arrogant stranger had been so tyrannical that he soon had the nation torn between outrage and fear. So bloody was he that it was all I could do to manage the escape of Princess Floria to Selford, where she was crowned on Coronation Hill, then raised the entire nation against the viceroy and swept him from the country.

  Berlauda and Priscus, in the meantime, had themselves been swept away by a sickness, and left behind an infant heir, Aguila, who in his cradle had been crowned King of Loretto and Duisland. Floria had made her proposal of peace to spare the nation a war, but now her hopes for a tranquil reign were over.