with some disappointment.
“He didn’t know what was happening,” said Thasha, climbing over the rail in turn.
“Be silent, you impious girl,” shrieked Oggosk. “Many who played their part did not know what was happening. The captain did not know, Sandor Ott did not know, Fiffengurt remained ignorant as a stump.”
“That’s a tad overstated, Duchess,” said Fiffengurt.
“Shut your mouth, you walking salt-dried carcass of a toad! Arunis escaped death because this boy defied you, and leaped on him before Stanapeth could strike. It’s true, my spell was a weakling’s charm. I held him not with iron but with thread, and I only managed that because I’d been spooling and hoarding my thread for thirteen years. Even so I knew the spell would break the instant anyone touched the mage. If not for this lovesick tarboy Stanapeth would have killed him with ease! We’d be standing around his corpse now, toasting our victory! Oh, damn you, damn your low Ormali blood-”
“Leave him alone,” said Thasha, her voice suddenly dangerous. Oggosk, to general amazement, obeyed.
Hercol turned to Sandor Ott. “I keep my promises,” he said, “even when no good can come of them.” With that he unbuckled Ott’s white knife from his belt and held it out, sheathed, to the spymaster.
Ott’s eyes were locked on Hercol’s. He took the blade without looking down. “You did well to ferret out that snake,” he said. “He was a greater threat than I ever understood. But we’ve learned this much: he still has cause to fear a blade. At least, certain blades.”
“And yet he bested us all,” said Hercol. “Rose had a good grip on his arm, but he lost two fingers when the mage produced a knife of his own. Lady Oggosk herself suffered blows-”
“Pah,” spat the old woman.
“And you, Thasha: let me see what that mace accomplished. Right away, if you please.”
Thasha reluctantly lifted the edge of her shirt. On her ribs were a wide, blackening bruise and two gashes, left by the teeth of the sorcerer’s mace.
“Fool!” said Hercol. “You climbed a spar with that? You might have lost consciousness and fallen to your death!”
“But I didn’t, did I?” said Thasha.
“Go to the surgery at once. Pathkendle, take her there, drag her. Chadfallow is already at work on the captain. Have him examine you, too, when he’s finished with Thasha. You may have a hard head-”
“A gargoyle would envy it!” said Lady Oggosk.
“-but I saw you strike those ceiling-planks. And there’s your fall into the hold as well. Go on.”
“Hercol,” said Thasha, “was Arunis telling the truth? Did my father know Syrarys… years before?”
“Nonsense!”
“You weren’t in Etherhorde when I was born,” said Thasha. “You were still in hiding with Empress Maisa. You never saw Clorisuela with child.”
“What of it? Go to surgery, I say, before you collapse.”
“Is Syrarys my mother, Hercol?”
“Thasha Isiq: as your martial tutor, I command you to seek treatment for that wound.”
“Come on,” said Pazel, touching her arm.
Thasha pulled her arm viciously away. She looked at Hercol for a long moment, and then moved slowly toward the hatch.
Pazel walked at her side. They did not speak as they descended to the orlop. Thasha marched aft with hands in fists. Ahead in surgery Rose gave a howl of pain. All at once Thasha stopped and turned to face Pazel, her eyes enraged and wet. A lock of her golden hair was pasted to her shoulder with someone’s blood.
Pazel stammered: “You know, to me-I mean, I don’t care whose daughter you-”
“Shut up.”
He waited. Thasha steadied herself against the wall. It would take hours to spit all the curses from that mouth, and she was not speaking, not saying a word. He wondered how much blood she’d already lost.
“I’ve ruined everything, haven’t I?” said Pazel.
Thasha clamped a hand over his mouth. With that gesture they both grew still. Her hand tightened; she swayed closer to him. Then, not weeping but shaking from head to toe, and sighing with all that she had not said to him in weeks and could find no words for now, she was in his arms.
9. What Fulbreech glimpsed was not Felthrup, who by that time slept only in his closet. In all likelihood it was Bolutu’s veterinary bag. If he had taken it, the youth would have been startled to find inside a notebook with the very words the dlomu and Hercol had just spoken-“a bright day for Alifros,” etc.-written out like a playscript in Bolutu’s hand. -EDITOR.
THE EDITOR REFLECTS ON THE CONDUCT OF HIS HEROES
They are, of course, too young.
You know of what I speak. With the exposure of Greysan Fulbreech there can be no remaining (logical) impediment to a carnal encounter between Lady Thasha and Pazel Pathkendle. In dramatic terms such an encounter is almost obligatory. Neither youth is hormonally defective. Both have considered the possibility for months-and with unseemly specificity, in the case of Mr. Pathkendle. They show no signs of disease or contagion. And they have been supplied with a preposterous array of opportunities: a magic wall, no less, deflects all rival suitors from intruding on their presumably impending bliss.
But I repeat: it cannot happen. Said bliss cannot, and therefore does not, impend. They are too young.
My own status as philosopher and moral paragon is beside the point. Anyone, from the lowliest fishwife to the most venerated saint, can grasp the fundamental wrongness of such a liaison. We need not elaborate. The Great Designer unquestionably decreed that human beings should reach bodily maturity at a certain age precisely that they might refrain from expressing that maturity for another five to ten years. In ancient Senadria the legal age was thirty-three (although we now know that in its declining years the republic collected a third of its income from the sale of special permits to younger citizens); in fair Elynon it was thirty (twice the age at which boys were forced onto the battlefield, and girls into factories to stitch their boots). Truly enlightened cultures, such as the Elari in their frigid fishing townships, aspire to eliminating the behavior completely. A few no doubt succeeded.
Yearn then, Pazel and Thasha, but yearn alone. We do not wish you joy, indeed far from it. The matter is not open to debate.
Except, of course, in the fugitive territories of their minds. However trivial the latter (it is not their inclination, after all, that concerns us) we should note in passing that neither Mr. P. nor Lady T. views the matter with our own precise and perfect clarity. This is where the moral lesson resides.
You may encounter persons who should not mate. Be ready to explain things. If, as with Pazel, they feel that to do so is no more than the natural expression of a love that is beyond question and well proved, urge them to doubt the very notion of “natural.” If, as with Lady Thasha, they feel the desire to give what is most intimately their own to the one of their choosing, remind them that there is nothing sacred in that choice. Magic may surround them (one may say I love you in twenty-five tongues, another be strong enough to hold death’s orb in her hand) but magic does not inhabit the sordid act of love.
If they protest that an overwhelming mutual tenderness draws them together, observe that virtually all cases of first love end in separation and tears, and that consequently they should do better to skip the experience. If they reply that some love has to be one’s first, unless one would go through life playing come-not-hither, tell them not to split hairs.
If, finally, they live in fear that at any day it may be too late: that the death stalking fleets, cities, empires must surely catch up with them; or that some morning soon they will wake up and find themselves asleep-that is, mindless, insensate tol-chenni with no possibility of experiencing love-well, that changes nothing. Virtue is virtue, and no one should face death without its comforts. Tell them this, if ever you have the chance.
A Broken Blade
2 Modobrin 941
