The Aeronaut's Windlass (15 page)

“Not everyone feels that way, sire,” Benedict said quietly. “Not all of us see you as a relic.”

“Not the Lancasters,” Gwen added.

“Perhaps not,” the Spirearch said thoughtfully. “But be that as it may, I’m interested, Gwen, in why you wish to join the Guard.”

“I am the only child of my father’s line,” she replied.

“And as such may be excused from such duty with no loss of honor to you or your family. No one would think ill of you for avoiding your term of service.”

Gwen lifted her chin slightly. “I would, sire.”

The Spirearch sat back in his seat and eyed her for a moment. Then he said, “I will show you no favoritism whatsoever, Miss Lancaster, despite your importance to your father’s house. You will be given assignments like any other recruit. Some of those assignments might carry you into danger. More young men and women than I care to remember have been hurt or killed in the line of duty while following my commands. Do you understand?”

“Yes. I do, sire.”

He finished the last few bites of his dumpling with a pensive frown. Then he turned to Benedict. “The same goes for you, Master Sorellin. I choose those best suited to the tasks at hand based upon their ability. You’ve been put into harm’s way in my service and might be again.”

“Yes, sire,” Benedict said, as if the Spirearch had stated that water was wet.

Addison nodded and said, “We’re to have about forty new recruits this year, and as many returning veterans. I’ll see you both at the palace at the end of the training cycle to take your vows and sign your contracts.”

“Of course, sire,” Gwen said. “Sire . . .”

“Miss Lancaster,” the Spirearch said reprovingly.

“Addison,” she said, and then added, “sir.”

He smiled, mostly with his eyes. “Yes?”

“Had I known who you were earlier . . .”

“You would have been well within your rights to react in precisely the same way, Miss Lancaster,” he said firmly. “Please excuse me for my rudeness. It’s very seldom I get to be impolite for fun—and I’m afraid I have a rather depressingly low sense of humor. I trust you will forgive me.”

She felt her cheeks heating up again. “Of course, sire.”

There was a sudden deep, hollow chime. Someone was ringing the bells at the center of the habble’s common area, near the marketplace.

Benedict tensed. Then he popped the second half of his second dumpling into his mouth in a single bite. Gwen pushed her dumpling toward him automatically, and he scooped it up in what was clearly an unthinking, instinctive reaction.

“Ah,” the Spirearch said. “I believe I saw something in the notices about a duel to be fought today. I may have heard that the situation has the potential to be quite messy and ugly for those involved. You wouldn’t know anything about it, would you, Miss Lancaster?”

His voice was calm, even whimsical, but there was something in his words that carried the hint of steel.

“I suspect you know very well that I do, sire.”

His teeth showed briefly. “Then I suspect that you plan to see it to the end.”

“We do,” Benedict said in a quiet voice.

The Spirearch nodded. “A great many eyes are on what you do today, Miss Lancaster—among them my own.”

Gwen swallowed. The great chime tolled several more times and then fell silent.

The Spirearch glanced toward the source of the sound and nodded in what was undeniably a dismissal. “The Tagwynns are good people. House Lancaster has always had my respect, miss. I expect today’s events to vindicate that respect.”

Gwen could recognize a command when she heard it, and her heart suddenly beat a little faster. This situation was no longer a simple mess caused by her lack of judgment. The attention of the Spirearch meant that it had ramifications for her House as well.

“Yes, sire,” she said, her throat dry. “They will.”

Chapter 10

Spire Albion, Habble Morning

B
ridget felt sure that she was going to be sick and throw up in front of half the habble.

“Littlemouse,” Rowl said in a low, stern tone from her arms. “Straighten your back. Lift your chin. Show no fear. Give your enemy nothing.”

“That’s very good advice, miss,” said the master of arms in a similar tone, though speaking the human tongue. He was a tall, spare man, the threads of silver in his hair standing out sharply against his all-black outfit. They were waiting in the common area of the market of Habble Morning, near the dueling platform, and the grizzled warriorborn man had just finished ringing the chimes.

“You speak Cat, Mister . . . ?” Bridget flushed. “I’m sorry. I don’t know your name.”

“Esterbrook, miss,” he said with a slight polite bow. “I don’t speak it well but I understand enough. All wise folk do.”

“I like him,” Rowl said from Bridget’s arms.

She smiled faintly and tried to follow Rowl’s advice. “I apologize if I do something improperly, Mister Esterbrook,” she said, “but I’m afraid I have little experience in these matters.”

“Wise folk don’t,” Esterbrook said calmly, giving her another smile. “It’s simple enough, Miss Tagwynn.”

“I’m unclear as to what role a master of arms plays in a duel when it’s being fought . . . unarmed.”

“Oh, my part doesn’t change,” Esterbrook said. “My office is filled by several of us old soldiers, with one of us covering each day of the week. My job is to do everything possible to make sure everyone lives. I seek to resolve the cause of the duel before any blood is shed, and then I ensure that the protocol of the duel is followed and that no one interferes in what happens.”

She frowned. “Who would interfere?”

“His second, perhaps,” Esterbrook said. He glanced at Rowl. “Or yours.”

Rowl gave a contemptuous flick of his ears and looked away.

“And . . . if someone does not follow the rules?”

“I’ll stop him,” Esterbrook said. “It is within the rights of my office to take any steps necessary to do so, up to and including the taking of life.”

Bridget blinked. “Goodness.”

“Duels are serious business, miss,” Esterbrook said quietly. “Though these arrogant sprats growing up these days don’t seem to think so. They shouldn’t be entered into lightly.”

“They shouldn’t exist at all,” Bridget said.

Esterbrook seemed to think about that for a moment. Then he shook his head. “They . . . serve a purpose, if they’re kept within a strict structure, and if death doesn’t result too often. There’s something to be said for having the means to directly confront someone who has wronged you—for there to be a reason for these glib-tongued louts to show an ounce of courtesy and to guard their words.”

“Ah,” Bridget said, flushing slightly. As the glib-tongued lout in question, she was currently on the receiving end of this facet of the habble’s law. “I’m not sure everyone would agree with you. We’re a civilized society, are we not?”

Esterbrook blinked. “Since when, miss? We’re a democracy.”

“Just what I mean. We have dispensed with violence as a means of governing ourselves, have we not?”

“The heart of democracy is violence, Miss Tagwynn,” Esterbrook said. “In order to decide what to do, we take a count of everyone for and against it, and then do whatever the larger side wishes to do. We’re having a symbolic battle, its outcome decided by simple numbers. It saves us time and no end of trouble counting actual bodies—but don’t mistake it for anything but ritualized violence. And every few years, if the person we elected doesn’t do the job we wanted, we vote him out of office—we symbolically behead him and replace him with someone else. Again, without the actual pain and bloodshed, but acting out the ritual of violence nonetheless. It’s actually a very practical way of getting things done.”

Bridget blinked several times. “I’ve never thought of it that way,” she confessed.

“It is one of the only things we respect about your people,” Rowl put in. “Though, of course, cats do it better.”

“Quite possibly,” Esterbrook agreed. “Ah. Here comes the physician. And your esteemed opponent, it would seem.”

Bridget looked around them. People were appearing from all over the market in response to the chimes—dozens of people, in fact. And only a moment later, she was quite sure that dozens had become hundreds. She felt her throat turning very dry, to go along with her fluttering stomach and her racing heart.

Fear was really quite tedious. She wanted to be rid of it as soon as possible.

A small man with silvery hair carrying a physician’s valise and wearing a very sensible, no-nonsense suit approached Esterbrook, and the two exchanged handshakes. Esterbrook introduced the man to Bridget, though a few seconds later she had completely forgotten his name. The crowd
continued
to grow. At lunch, on a weekday? Hadn’t these people anything better to do with their time? Bridget frowned at the crowd and restrained herself from rubbing Rowl’s ears, which the cat would have found undignified in public.

Reginald Astor appeared out of the throng, along with not only his second, but half a dozen other men of the same general age and rank. He was dressed just as she was, in a plain grey training uniform. They approached as a group, Reggie swaggering in the lead.

Beside her, Bridget felt Mister Esterbrook grow tight with coiled tension, something she sensed on a level below conscious thought—it was, she thought, almost the same sense she felt from a suddenly angered cat.

“Master of Arms,” Reggie said, throwing the warriorborn man an exaggerated bow. “It’s about time we did this, isn’t it?”

Esterbrook narrowed his feline eyes but inclined his head in respect. “I am indeed the master of arms. My name is Elias Esterbr—”

“Details,” Reggie said. His eyes were focused intently on Bridget. “There she is, the little trog with her little scavenger.”

The idiot couldn’t have known that it was a word the cats considered a deadly insult. Rowl catapulted up from his resting place in Bridget’s arms toward Reggie, and it was all she could do to keep hold of the suddenly furious cat.

Reggie reconfirmed his idiocy by bursting out in laughter, though at least his second had the wit to take an alarmed step back. “Goodness!” he said in a merry voice. “Is the kitty upset with me? It’s not as though I’m launching a suit to have the vicious little thing drowned.”

“Rowl,” Bridget hissed in Cat. “Settle down.”

“I
heard
him,” Rowl snarled.

“And he will be dealt with,” Bridget said, “in the proper order of things. First he is mine.”

Rowl let out a spitting snarl of frustration and then settled down again, though his body remained quivering-tight with tension.

“Mister Esterbrook,” Bridget said, looking from Rowl to the man. “I am ready to begin, sir.”

The warriorborn nodded. “In accordance with Spire law, I beseech you both to resolve your differences in some less dangerous and destructive manner. No matter how well managed, loss of life and limb remains a possibility of any duel. I now ask you, Mister Astor, if you will retract your grievance and avoid the dangers inherent in a confrontation.”

“She insulted the honor of my House,” Reggie said loftily. “She will apologize for it or I will have satisfaction here and now.”

Esterbrook turned to Bridget. “Miss Tagwynn, will you offer such an apology?”

“Let me be clear that I never offered House Astor an insult, Mister Esterbrook,” Bridget said. “Nor did I insult Reginald. I simply described him in accurate terms. If he finds himself insulted by the truth, it’s hardly my concern.”

A low, quiet round of chuckles went through the crowd.

“But in any case,” Bridget said, “I stand by what I said. Truth does not become untruth simply because its existence upsets the scion of a High House.”

Esterbrook’s eyes glinted and he nodded once. “Let the record show that neither combatant finds a way to resolve their differences peaceably. We will therefore proceed to contest. Mister Astor, is your second present?”

“Yes, here, of course,” Reggie said, beckoning his cousin Barnabus forward.

“Miss Tagwynn, is your second present?”

“I am,” Rowl said, in Cat.

Esterbrook nodded seriously, and another murmur ran through the crowd, a mixed sound of amusement, disgust, confusion, excitement, and other things Bridget couldn’t quite make out.