The Privilege of the Sword (11 page)

“Sometimes,” the duke drawled without looking up, “I am almost sure I do not deserve
you
.”

Alcuin fiddled with the fall of lace on Tremontaine’s collar. “I wish you would not speak that way.”

The duke’s secretary glanced over at the Ugly Girl. She caught his look and smirked back.

“The nobility of this city have no right to live the way they do,” the Duke Tremontaine returned to his observations. “When they undid the monarchy, they revoked the traditional magical rights, not just of kings, but of themselves. They thus have no real right to rule, nor to hold land and profit by others’ labors on it. It’s odd that nobody’s realized that. Though I suppose if anyone tried to say so, he’d be challenged or locked away somewhere, depending on his rank and his lucidity. The Court of Honor, you see, exists not just to legalize noble assassinations but to ensure that only a court of nobles ever has the right to judge a noble’s deeds. A neat system, although I believe the privilege of the sword, as they call it, is beginning to show signs of fraying and wear.”

“Is that so?” Flavia asked, drawing him out, amused—he did love to lecture—and he obliged:

“Most challenges are fought as pure entertainment. Your swordsman gets a scratch, or
his
does, and you’re done for the day. The two nobles who called challenge on each other know what the fight was about, and usually their friends do as well, and everyone respects the outcome. Nobody asks swordsmen to die anymore just to prove a point of honor. Accidents or infection happen, of course, but as long as your man doesn’t expire on the spot, nobody’s bothered.

“But the darker side still exists, the practical origin of those little skirmishes. A noble can still hire a swordsman to challenge a nobleman without giving him time to find a professional proxy for himself. Even with all the protocols of formal challenge, at the end of the fight, unless he’s amazingly lucky, you’ve got one dead nobleman. Does privilege of the sword extend to the swordsman who did it? Certainly, as long as he can prove he was in a noble’s employ. The privilege belongs to them, after all. But to determine this, the matter is brought before the Court of Honor. That’s where the real fun begins. The rules of the Court of Honor are arcane, the judgments colorful and highly personal…it’s a perfect charade. I’ve been through it”—he shuddered—“I know. There’s more honesty in Riverside, where all the privilege is about who’s stronger and madder and meaner.”

“What about your noble
women
? What’s their privilege?”

He held up his arm to test the stretch of the sleeve again. The tailor nodded. “A woman’s honor is still the property of her male relatives, according to the Court.”

“Naturally.”

“Noblewomen have been known to hire swordsmen when they felt a point needed to be made. But it’s considered unladylike these days, as I understand it.”

“And your niece?”

“What about her?”

“Will she, as a noblewoman, be fighting her own battles on her own behalf, or will she have to hire a man to do it?”

The duke smiled. “Well, that is the question, isn’t it? She seems like a peaceable enough child. We’ll just have to wait and see.”

Cautiously, the tailor eased the duke out of his new jacket, and handed it to the assistant to fold. The duke watched with interest. “I think you fold things better than my valet,” he said. “How would you like a new job?” The assistant turned bright red with the inability to answer. “You should seize your moments,” the duke told him; “they may not come again. This is why it’s so hard for tradesmen to advance in this city,” he explained to the room at large: “timidity, lack of initiative; that, and the refusal of nobles to let them marry their daughters. You see,” he told Flavia, as if their conversation had never been interrupted, “the nobles are going nowhere. The people who’ve actually done something to get the comforts they enjoy are the ones who are worth something: the merchants and craftsmen—not to mention the farmers, though you can’t get rich off little patches of land, you have to have lots of it, and get others to work it for you—You didn’t know that, I suppose?”

“I’m not a historian, or an agrarianist. Go on, though; I’m fascinated.”

“If the nobles had any sense, they’d marry into families who knew how to fold things properly, instead of working so hard to marry back into each other.”

“The trouble with you,” the Ugly Girl said, “is that you think you know just what everyone should do, don’t you?”

The Mad Duke smiled at her. His face was bright and sharp, smooth and glittering. “Yes,” he said, “I do.”

“And what,” she said, “if you’re wrong?”

“And what,” he said, “if I’m not?”

W
HEN MY NEXT LESSON CAME,
I
WAS READY.
“M
ASTER
Venturus,” I told him, “I deeply regret any unpleasantness between us.” I’d never said anything like that before; I’d copied it from a speech of Mangrove’s, the lying villain, because although he was at core a rotten being, no one could fault him for style. (I did, however, leave out the bit about passion overwhelming, because it did not suit.) “I hope you will forgive me, and consent to teach me as before.”

The foreigner frowned. “Venturus is here, no? Why else here but to teach? You think he come to drink chocolate and pass the biscuit?”

So that was all right. We did the standing-still exercise with his serious blade again. But this time I remembered that, however weird he was, Venturus was a master swordsman. He wouldn’t hurt me unless he wanted to. I admired his form. He was in perfect control of his body, the sword an extension of it; he could repeat the same move precisely, and he did, without wavering. Once I’d realized that, I started to enjoy the illusion of danger, the way his blade hissed past my cheek, tickled my sleeve.

“Good!” he said. “Because this time, you know no angry. You know no fear. You trust Venturus. But you not always fight Venturus. So you learn you trust you skin. Know where man’s sword is all times. Know how close, how far.”

This time the sword came from above. My whole scalp prickled with the sensation as it came at me. I felt the blade in my hair, like a leaf that had fallen, or a bug.

I knew when it was gone, before I even looked to see. It was not only that I no longer felt it, or that I saw him move. Or, I suppose, it was both of those things, and another I can’t quite explain. Anyway, the sword was gone, and nothing in my body or Venturus’s said it was coming at me. It was the oddest thing. I unclenched the hand at my side.

“Now you try,” he said, standing perfectly still.

I retrieved a practice sword, harmless and dull; but before I could swing he was out of my reach, his sword up and guarding against me.

“You no say ‘No move,’” he taunted, like a child. I felt a slow flush of anger. “Venturus always move,” he grinned, “no matter you say.” But then he turned to display a bulky figure behind him, swathed in a cloak. Theatrically, he whipped the cloak off to reveal a straw man. “So
here
this your partner to practice. He no listen, but he no move!”

I swung my blade at the straw figure, and was proud when I stopped the sword just short of it without wavering much. I targeted another point on it, and again I made it. I’d almost forgotten my teacher was there, when he said, “How? How? This you practice you chopping down trees? No!” But I did not fear his roaring. In fact, I thought he sounded amused. “Is practice now. Once again with the guard, the feint, the parry—but this time, when you strike—hit home!”

In guard, I glared at the straw man. If he tried a direct cut I would do—thus—and counter with—thus—feinting so that he changed his line—and I plunged the sword home into his heart! The tip went in so deep it was almost out the other side. I looked at it half in shame, half in satisfaction.

“How?” Venturus roared again. “What trickery is this? These are not patterns Venturus teach you, this mummery-flummery dancing about! Venturus is no dance-master. You think you partner is some girl-doll to play with, you make up you move? Why you laugh?”

The very last doll I loved was a china-faced lady with painted blue eyes. I used to dress Fifi in stylish gowns made from my mother’s old dress scraps.

“Again,” he said. “You show you move, just like I teach.”

What sort of costume would I dress this huge straw doll in? Perhaps Betty would help me make a sweeping cloak as black as night. Using the patterns of attack and defense that he had taught me, in just the right order I had practiced many times, I stabbed Huge Fifi right through the heart.

Venturus nodded. “See, now, when you follow Venturus teaching, see how sweet she is?” He almost sounded coaxing. “See, how swift and clean is the stroke? The pure attack? The sureness of the thing that there is?”

I grinned at him. It did work, after all. “Good!” he cried. “I go now. You follow teaching, is good. No follow, no practice, you hear me?” I nodded. “Bad habits ruin sword. Practice practice practice…now!”

I waited ’til he was gone; then I stared hard at Fifi. The straw head was just a featureless orb. Could I find somewhere a wig with inky curls? “You,” I said, “may live to regret this day. Or, if not this day, the day that you met me. They are much the same. For two entered by that window, but only one of us shall leave by it. Have at you!”

I
T WAS AN AWFUL, AWFUL DAY.
A
RTEMISIA COULDN’T SAY
why, but it was. Her new dress had been delivered, and when she tried it on, she was convinced that the blue, so becoming in the shop, made her look like a frump, or an old lady. She actually cried over that, until Dorrie, her maid, in despair went and fetched her mother, who swore that it became her better than Lady Hetley’s rose taffeta, which she had so much admired at Jane’s barge party. Artemisia sniffled and allowed Dorrie to pin some ecru lace to the collar, and thought perhaps that did help. As she stared at herself in the mirror, she realized she had a spot coming out on her chin. Her gasp of horror was interrupted by her brother Robert storming into the room, calling, “Mother! Mother, I’ve been all over the house looking for you. Kirk says I cannot have the carriage, because Artemisia wants it to pay calls.”

“Indeed she does,” Lady Fitz-Levi said, “and doesn’t she look like a picture?”

Her brother bit back a nasty comment about what kind of picture his sister made. “It is intolerable, Mother. I told you two days ago I needed the carriage to go out to the races today.”

“Why don’t you ride there, dear?”

“Mother, no one rides to the races! Where is Artie going, anyway, just across the street or something? Why can’t she walk?”

“Oh, it’s all right for
me
to get splashed with mud, is it?” Artemisia cried. “You pig, Robert! Well, it hardly matters, does it, since I have nothing to wear and I’m the ugliest thing in creation. Take your carriage, then—I just won’t go. I’m never going anywhere again. And get out of my room, you pig.”

Lady Fitz-Levi motioned Robert to follow her out into the hall.

“What on earth has gotten into her? She used to like going to parties.”

“You must be patient,” their mother explained. “She is a bit under the weather today. She did not receive an invitation to the Galings’ musical luncheon, and she particularly wanted one, because a certain—ah, gentleman said he would be there.”

“Oh really? Who?”

“Never you mind.” His mother put a finger to her cheek. “The less said on that front, the better.”

“Come on, Mother, maybe I know him.”

“I’m not sure you do—he is a rather plodding young man, not for your set at all.”

“If he’s plodding, what does she see in him?”

“My concern is what he sees in her. He was starstruck, moonstruck, and paid her all sorts of compliments at the Montague ball. Trust Helena Montague to invite half the city, even ineligibles. I made the mistake of telling Mia not to take him seriously, so of course now she is making a meal of it. I would have done better to keep my mouth shut. Don’t
ever
have a daughter.”

Robert laughed. “I shall have several, and send them to you for advice. But maybe a dull, plodding sort of fellow is just what Artie needs to settle down and be happy with.”