Swordpoint (26 page)

Richard turned it over. It had been in Ferris's hand, in Riverside, the night they'd spoken at Rosalie's. Ferris had shown it to him to dispel his doubts about going along with the unnamed job. The job which had proved to be the killing of Halliday. The job Alec hadn't wanted him to take. To identify the medallion and its purpose now meant pointing the finger at Tremontaine, in front of Halliday himself.

'Are you sure -' he began; but Alec's voice overrode his: 'My dear soul; I've heard a lot of scandalous things about you, but no one ever told me you were deaf.'

Or it meant pointing the finger at Ferris. Tremontaine and Ferris had fallen out. Tremontaine would deny all complicity in the Halliday job. Or perhaps... perhaps there had never been any in the first place.

'Yes', Richard said. 'I've seen it.'

'You amaze me. Where?'

The tone of Alec's voice, the showiness of his antagonism, were hopelessly reminiscent of the first time they'd met. Then, his foolish daring and bitter wit had attracted Richard. He knew Alec better now, well enough to recognise his fear and desperation. Alec had come close enough for Richard to smell the steely smell of freshly ironed linen, the citron he'd been barbered with, and, under them, the sharpness of his sweat. Its familiarity made him feel suddenly dizzy; and to his dismay it streaked his senses with desire for the nobleman in black. He dared to look up into Alec's eyes; but, as ever, Alec looked past him.

'I was shown this - the Tremontaine medallion - a few months ago, in Riverside. By someone... by an agent of Tremontaine.' Richard did not look at Ferris.

'An agent of Tremontaine?' Alec repeated. 'Really? Are you sure it wasn't just someone trying to sell you stolen goods?'

He thought, Re-ally, Alec! But that was probably what the nobles believed Riverside was like. 'He came about a job for me,' Richard answered.

'Was he a regular agent, one you recognised?'

'No. I'd never seen him before.'

'Would you know him if you saw him again?'

'Not necessarily,' Richard said blandly. 'I only saw him the once. And he seemed to be in disguise.'

'Oh, did he? A disguise?' He could hear the pleasure in Alec's voice. It felt as if they were fighting a demonstration match, the kind the crowds Irked, with lots of feint and flash. 'What kind of disguise? A mask?' They both knew what was coming, and it forged the first bond of complicity between them that day,

'An eyepatch,' Richard said. 'Over his left eye.'

'An eyepatch,' Alec repeated loudly. 'Tremontaine's agent had an eyepatch.'

'But then', Richard added sweetly, 'so many people do.'

'Yes,' Alec agreed, 'they do. It's hardly enough to convict anyone of falsely claiming to represent Tremontaine in a matter of honour, is it, my lords?' He turned to the Justiciary. 'Nevertheless, let's try. May I have the Justiciary's permission to call as witness Anthony Deverin, Lord Ferris and Dragon Chancellor of the realm?'

No one had any trouble hearing Alec. But the hall remained desperately quiet this time.

Ferris rose smoothly and slowly, like oiled machinery. He came down the stairs and stood next to Alec, in front of Richard. 'Well, Master St Vier,' he said; just that. 'Well?'

He was trying to make Richard afraid. Richard felt something mad about the chancellor, even more intense and furious than Alec at his worst. It was as though Lord Ferris did not yet believe he had been beaten, and at the same time believed it so much that he was willing to do anything to deny it.

'My lord,' Richard said gently to Alec - and this time Alec could not make him take back the title - 'you must ask me what you want to ask me.'

Alec said, 'Is this the man you spoke to in Riverside?'

'Yes,' Richard answered.

Alec turned to Ferris. Alec's body was so stiff with tension that he couldn't tremble. His voice had changed: formal, dreamy, as though he were caught himself in the ritual of accusation and justice. 'My lord Ferris, Tremontaine charges you with falseness. Do you deny it?'

Ferris's good eye was turned to look at the young man. 'False to Tremontaine?’ His mouth thinned in a sour smile. 'I do not deny it. I do not deny meeting the honourable St Vier in Riverside. I do not deny showing him the Tremontaine signet. But surely, my lords,' he said, his voice growing stronger with assurance as he faced the line of his peers, 'any of you can think of another reason for me to have done so.'

Richard's mouth opened, and then closed. Ferris meant that he had come to him to have Diane killed.

Alec said it for him: 'St Vier doesn't do weddings.'

The familiar phrase broke some of the tension in the room: 'No weddings, no women, no demonstration fights....' Montague rehearsed ruefully.

'Very well,' Alec said directly to Ferris, his voice ringing with restrained excitement. 'And if he refused the job, which he surely did, why then did you twice send your servant, Katherine Blount, to negotiate with him?'

Ferris's breath hissed sharply through his nose. So that was where she's gone - to Diane, her rival in his bed. The slut had no pride. But that must be it - how else would Tremontaine know about her meetings with St Vier? Knew it, then; but couldn't prove that he knew it.

'My servant.' Ferris forced himself to sound surprised. 'I see. Then I fear Tremontaine has been misled. Mistress Katherine is herself Riverside-born. I took her into my service to keep her out of prison. I had no idea she was holding to her old ways, her old friends....'

'Just a minute,' said Richard St Vier. 'If you mean she is my lover, she is not. You should know that very well, my lord.'

'Whatever she is', Ferris said coldly, 'does not concern me. Unless you intend to produce my servant here before this Council to testify that she was running messages from me, I'm afraid we'll have to let the matter rest.'

'What about the ruby?' Alec spoke to Ferris so quietly that even Richard could barely hear him. But the old note of mockery was back in his voice.

'Ah,' Ferris began, in stentorian tones for the public. 'Yes. The stolen-'

'It's mine,' Alec murmured. With an actor's grace and timing he opened his hand, holding it low between his body and Ferris's. The ruby ring blazed on his finger. 'Always has been, always will be. I recognised it at once when Richard brought it home.' Ferris was staring into his face. 'Yes,' Alec continued in an insinuating purr, 'you're awfully dim, aren't you? I even wore black especially so you'd make the connection. But I suppose you can't really be expected to see things as clearly as the rest of us....'

The insult struck home; Ferris clenched his fist. Richard wondered how he was supposed to keep Ferris from killing Alec here in Council. ¦

'My lord... ?' Basil Halliday's voice tried to recall the drama to the public sphere; but Ferris stood frozen by the sudden double vision of the young man before him as he had been the night of the fireworks, dashing up the Riverside tavern stairs.

They say he's got a tongue on him to peel the paint off a wall. Richard says he used to be a scholar.

Thank you, Katherine. I've seen him. He's very tall.

Tall, and much more handsome than he'd been with hair straggling in his face - dressed in black, to be sure: the black rags of a student, then. Ferris remembered asking about the swordsman and being told by a chortling taverner, 'Oh, it's St Vier's scholar you'll want to apply to, sir. He's the one knows where he is these days.' And Ferris had watched Alec go past him out of the door, noted the bones... but he never would have connected that ragged man with the honey-and-acid creature who'd insulted him at Diane's house.

It was not Katherine who had informed the duchess, then, but her own kinsman. With his information Diane would have pieced together everything Ferris had done, and intended to do. Ferris wanted to laugh at his own stupidity. He had been watching her right hand these last few days, the hand that held his affections, wondering like a jealous husband why she was casting him off; while all the time it was her left hand that held the key to his future, his plots and his mind.

Diane had discovered his treachery, and from her lover and student it was unacceptable. Basil Halliday was her darling, the cherished heart of her political hopes for the city. She had already hired the swordsman Lynch to fight one of Karleigh's in Halliday's defence, and succeeded in scaring Karleigh off. She would not forgive Ferris for trying to dispose of his political rival. For Ferris to have pretended that the orders were coming from her was doubly damnable.

He hadn't meant to do it. He'd thought he could convince St Vier to work for him on his own merits. But when the swordsman had proved recalcitrant, Ferris had remembered the Tremontaine signet resting in his pocket, lent by the duchess that night for an entirely different purpose. It had seemed the height of cleverness to show it to St Vier. He remembered thinking that if, some day, St Vier were called to trial for the killing of Halliday, the evidence would point back to Tremontaine, and the duchess, finally, would be forced to set foot in the Council Hall herself to defend her house before Ferris, the new Crescent Chancellor. ...

Once he'd begun the charade with the signet, giving St Vier the Tremontaine ruby as well had seemed too good an opportunity to miss. Diane had tossed it to him one day with a joke about pawning it; she didn't seem to expect it back. It was Ferris's passion for detail, his love of dupes and of complexity, and his belief in his own power to control everyone, that had tripped him up.

Now he was caught on the gilded curlicues of his own plots. If he had left Godwin alone, if he had left Horn alone, St Vier might never have come before the Council; and Alec might never have returned to the Hill for help for his lover....

Well, he could still take the blame for Horn's death - it was just that he do so, after all. That would be what they wanted, the duchess and her boy. Lord David wanted to save his lover's life. And Diane wanted her lover ruined. She possessed the means to do it. The duchess had seen to it that a considerable crowd was assembled to watch: every lord in the city was there today. If Ferris refused to act to save St Vier, Tremontaine would reveal the Halliday plot before them all.

'Well, my lord?' Tremontaine's voice spoke clearly for all to hear.

'And shall we have to let the matter rest? For you are quite right; I am not holding your servant up my sleeve, waiting to testify against you.'

There came to Ferris then one of the moments he treasured. He felt himself standing at the pinnacle of the past and future, knowing his actions would rule them both. And it seemed quite clear to him then that he must take control, and how. He would ruin himself by his own will, his own power, in front of the eyes all perfectly focused on him.

Lord Ferris turned, so that his back was neither to the Justiciary, nor to the mass of men who waited on his words. He addressed Tremontaine, but his words were for all of them, delivered in that, carrying orator's voice which had so often swayed the Council. 'My lord, you need pull nothing from your sleeve. You shame me, sir, as I hoped never to be shamed in my life; and yet, for the sake of justice I must speak. You may say that I am willing to sell my honour to keep my honour; but to trade honour for justice, that I can never do.'

'Interesting,' said Alec conversationally, 'though it follows no rules of rhetoric known to man. Do go on.'

Correctly assuming that no one else had heard that little commentary, Ferris proceeded. 'My lords; let the justice be yours, and let the honour be Master St Vier's.' Richard felt himself redden with embarrassment. For Lord Ferris to make a show of himself was his business; but Richard had no taste for theatrics. 'Before you all, I here freely confess that I did falsely represent myself to St Vier in Tremontaine's name, and it was through my agency that Horn met his death.'

And that, Ferris thought complacently, was not even a lie.

Basil Halliday was staring at him in disbelief. All of the justiciars were frozen, silent, calculating, looking at the one from their midst who had stepped onto the floor and broken himself. But the stands were another matter. The nobles of the land were shouting, arguing, comparing notes and comments.

Over the cover of their noise, Halliday said to him, 'Tony, what are you doing!'

And, riding the crest of his pure manipulation, Ferris found the delicious nerve to look him gravely in the eye and say, 'I wish it weren't true; I wish it with all my heart.' He meant it.

'Call for silence, Basil,' said Lord Arlen, 'or there'll be no stopping them.' The heralds pounded and shouted, and eventually some order was attained.

'My lord Ferris,' said Halliday heavily. 'You take responsibility for the challenge of Lord Horn. It is a matter for the Court of Honour, and may be dealt with there.'

But that would not serve Ferris, although the duchess might be pleased to have him swept away under the rug. For his purposes his downfall must be spectacular; something to be remembered with awe... something to be returned from in glory. So Ferris held up his hand, a deprecating gesture that made his palm burn as though he held their living spirits in it. Of course they would all listen to him. He had been their prodigy, the bright young man of courage and charm. He had seen to it that they were ready to follow him: he could have had the Crescent for the asking. It would take longer now; but by his very act of abnegation he was already working his way back into their hearts.

'My lords,' he addressed the hall. 'The council of my peers, the noble lords of this land, is court of honour enough to me, I freely grant that I deserve chastisement at your hands, and do not shrink from the weight of their justice. But I believe that which fated my ill deeds to be revealed before you all has also fated me with the small gift of letting you hear my reasons, the "cause of honour" that impelled me to the deed, here, from my own lips.' The gallery stirred with interest. This was what they had come for, after all: the drama, the passion, the violence; the making and unmaking of reputations in one morning. Almost as an aside, but pitched for all to hear, Ferris pointed out, 'In matters of honour, the wise man fears his friends' censure far less than he does their conjecture.' There was a ripple of approving laughter at the epigram.