The Fall of The Kings (Riverside) by Ellen Kushner, Delia Sherman Read Free Book Online Page B

salt. Dear Katherine , she read. The funniest thing happened and I thought you would like to know about it. I picked up a man who said he was your first swordsmaster. He remembered both you and the old Duke very clearly. He was in a bad way, being surrounded by bandits in Fulati Pass and also down on his luck. We took care of it. I brought him on board with me and was able to drop him in Chartil, where the sword is still honored. He told some very amusing stories. I had no idea you had almost killed Lord whosis in your youth. Too bad.
    “Katherine? You look like you’ve just bitten into a green plum.”
    It was Marcus, his hands full of papers.
    “Jessica.” The duchess waved the letter. “She says she met Venturus—my old teacher, remember?—out over the sea somewhere, rescued him from bandits. I wonder if she’s telling the truth?”
    He settled himself down on the windowseat. Middle age had thickened him, but his solidity was very much in keeping with his temperament, as though the outside man had finally caught up with the inside and was very comfortable there. “I don’t see why not. It’s not as though she goes to the trouble of writing very often. Is she trying to hit you up for anything?”
    “Let me see.” The duchess scanned the letter. “No. I don’t think so. Just international gossip. Oh, wait—here’s a bit about wool prices in Chartil . . . I knew that. When did she write this, last year? Hold on—oh, this is too silly, Marcus. It’s wizards. Yes, indeed, a whole tribe of renegade wizards from hundreds of years ago who made their way east outremar, and established a school on a mountaintop . . . she ran into one in a marketplace somewhere in the Kyrillian Archipelago. She said he hailed her as—oh, this is too silly.”
    “Sounds like her.” He grinned.
    “ He spoke our language with a fearsome accent, and asked for news of home. You will think this is even sillier than I did — Well, she’s right there. I told him we were all very well, thank you. He asked how the land prospered, without a king. I told him that we have a lovely duchess instead, who manages everything beautifully — A compliment! There’s a change! —plus a few lords and chancellors to make up the balance. —And does not the land hunger for a king? I said it was years since I’d seen it.
    “ What do you think, madam duchess? Does it? And, if so, do you have a candidate? Let me know at once if a coronation is toward, for I would certainly drop everything to celebrate a king of your choosing. ” She folded the letter with an exasperated sigh. “Oh, Jessica.”
    “You’d think she’d have gotten over baiting you by now.”
    “I suppose I should be glad she writes at all. She can’t be expecting an answer. But poor Venturus! Imagine him still being alive after all these years! If it really is him, I should track him down and send him a pension. Ask Angela to step in here, will you? I’ll draft the instructions.”

chapter IV
     

    THE DAY AFTER THE TORTUA LECTURE, LEONARD RUGG sat in the Blackbird’s Nest, debating Placid’s classic text Of Manners and Morals with Roger Crabbe. Placid had touched on both metaphysics and history, so it was an even playing field. Their students, who were standing by, ready to pick up the rhetorical ball as needed, understood that what was really being debated was Doctor Tortua’s sanity and that Rugg was deliberately being provoking.
    “Now, I’m no historian,” Rugg was saying, “and correct me if I’m wrong, but Placid wrote Of Manners during the reign of Anselm the Wise, some two hundred years after the Union, isn’t that so?” The historians nodded; the metaphysicians sniggered. “So when he says that wizards are, let me see, ‘perfidious, pernicious and given to unholy appetites,’ he’s talking about the ones he knows, the ones in Anselm’s court.” Everyone nodded. “These wizards are men he knows, men he’s observed, men he’s probably eaten with.