Will Power (36 page)

Now, this was not the first time I had been a little the worse for wear after an evening’s carousal, but it was, I think, the first time that I had passed into this miserable state without the slightest idea how it had happened. One minute I had been the life and soul of the party, sipping some flavorless fruit drink while bantering to the admiration of all; the next I had been launching the partially digested remains of my dinner over someone in lemon velvet. My lyrical depiction of the pangs of love went into a hideously rapid decline, and before I knew what was happening, I was trying to organize some kind of impromptu orgy using language that would have made the most experienced harlot blanch. But how this all came about, I could not say.

Garnet and Renthrette, naturally, just assumed that I had let the side down by drinking beyond my limit. Now, I know for a fact that I could drink either of those two under several tables and go on to perform every role in several full-length plays without dropping a line. Moreover, everyone had been drinking the same yellowish muck as I had, and I would go before the highest authority on earth and swear that I had had no more than two glasses of the treacherous filth. In fact, I knew that many of those about me, including the stoically sober Renthrette, had had a good deal more than me, so engrossed was I with my courtly patter. I suspected foul play and said so, but Garnet would have none of it.

“Someone doctored your drink?” he exclaimed, his anger now showing through his disbelief. “Why would anyone do that? These are not the kind of degenerates you used to spend your time with.”

“I’m not a degenerate,” I muttered unconvincingly.

“Really?” barked Garnet with nasty hilarity. “So you’re just a normal, civilized person, are you? And normal, civilized people always end the evening by announcing that Lord Gaspar, the chief justice of the land, couldn’t fill his own codpiece.”

“I didn’t do that,” I said, hopefully.

“Yes, you did,” Garnet exploded. “You said that you bet there was nothing in there but old stockings, and that if his wife went home with you instead she’d get to see, and I quote, ‘the one that got away.’ ”

“I did not say that,” I said bleakly, my voice muffled by the rancid pillow.

“Yes, you did,” said Renthrette, leaping into the fray. “In fact, you went on for a full five minutes about your bait and tackle, about eels and fishing poles, about how once she ‘nets this one’ she’ll never mess with minnows again, and every other stupid, degraded fishing image you could come up with, all the while rubbing yourself against her and leering until everyone in the room . . .”

“Everyone!” agreed Garnet.

“. . .  was staring at you in horrified silence,” she concluded. “You only stopped when Lord Gaspar and Viscount Vallacin physically moved you away. And then you started drunkenly swinging at them and calling them a ‘pack of poncey-assed nancy boys who dressed like girls.’ It was only their honor and decency that stopped them from skewering you on the tips of their rapiers like the pig you are.”

“It can’t have been that bad,” I replied, lamely.

“No,” said Garnet, “it was worse. You sneezed all over Baroness Drocine’s dinner plate and then told her that you could bet safely that your snot was more palatable than anything that had been served all night.”

“Well, you know, the food here . . .” I inserted, semi-apologetically.

“And then you climbed onto the table and offered to urinate into any glasses that needed filling. Thank God Sorrail was on hand to get you down before you had a chance to lower your breeches.”

“I thought the worthy Sorrail would have been a witness to all this,” I said, the surge of resentment I always felt at his name rising as quick as the bile in my throat.

“Sorrail saved your neck,” Renthrette spat. “You could have been executed on the spot after what you said about the king being a bloated and flatulent old fornicator.”

“I never said that,” I tried again.

“You said he had a private room full of small animals with which he practiced immoral acts,” said Renthrette, her face prissily straight.

“I’ll bet I didn’t put it like that,” I said, managing a smile for the first time since this nightmare had begun.

“No,” she said flatly, “but I wouldn’t sully my lips with one-tenth of the things you said last night. You also called the king’s private secretary a ‘whoreson swamp-sucking varlet’ and the captain of the palace guard an ‘unctuous, civet-reeking, pus-dripping clodpole,’ whatever that is.”

“I can get rather colorful when the mood takes me,” I admitted.

“Most of the time no one had any idea what you were talking about,” Garnet said. “But they got the message, all right. How much did you have to drink?”

“Nothing!” I exclaimed. “Maybe two glasses, but no more! Somebody put something in my drink! You think I can’t hold my beer? I could outdrink everyone in that entire court combined.”

“How impressive,” said Renthrette.

“It’s not meant to be impressive,” I returned. “It’s just a statement of fact. I lived on beer—
real
beer—for over a decade in Cresdon. I worked in a theater that was also a tavern, remember? Someone spiked my drink, and I don’t mean they put a shot of grain whiskey in my tankard. I mean they added something serious, some drug that would . . .”

“No one in the court would do such a thing,” Garnet said. “It’s completely implausible.”

“And I’m telling you that it’s the only possibility,” I shouted back. “Someone in that court set out to discredit me, and they did so by . . .”

“Spare me your lies, you snake,” Renthrette snarled, cutting me off. “The insults you threw at the top of your lungs; the indecent suggestions you made to virtually every lady in the room, regardless of whether her husband or betrothed or admirers stood listening to every disgusting word; the people you offended . . .”

She paused, unable to finish. Then she looked me in the eye. Complete resolve came over her, and, when she spoke again, it was like watching a raging torrent freeze suddenly. “Last night, Will, you crossed the line. You have always walked a dangerous path, but last night you shamed us all, and that, as far as I am concerned, is it. Henceforth, do not speak to me. Do not associate with me. Do not even look at me. If you so much as mention my name I will find you and I will run my sword up to the hilt through your stomach. I will cut out your heart if you ever claim any kind of connection to me again. I have waited with you all night to tell you this, and now I am going. As
soon as you are fit to walk (if you were ever fit for anything), leave this place. Forget my name and that of my brother and those who traveled with us. If I ever see Orgos, Mithos, and Lisha again, I will say you are dead—and that, I think, is a kindness more than you deserve. From this moment on, you are alone, as you always wanted to be.”

Before half of this had sunk in, she was gone. Garnet faltered for a second. His eyes met mine and there was uncertainty in them, but he looked to his sister as she stepped through the door, and a hardness came into his face. “Good-bye, Will,” he said, stiffly. And with that, he followed her out the door.

This was a bit of a setback. I had toyed with the idea of abandoning the party from the first day I had met them, but it was usually an empty threat. I needed them in this strange land and, though they could all get on my last nerve, I had grown to like them. Laughable though this now seemed, I had once thought that Renthrette might turn into something more than a friend. Garnet was a tougher nut, perhaps, but I had never really considered the possibility that they might just dump me on the side of the road. I had always assumed that I was just valuable enough to them to make them put up with my idiosyncrasies as I put up with theirs. Apparently this was not so.

Yet, however much Renthrette fancied herself party leader, she did not speak for Lisha and the others. I had briefly flirted with the idea of brandishing my secret knowledge about Lisha as a way of derailing their righteousness, a way of showing that the person they respected most thought me useful, may think me somehow more trustworthy than them in ways I couldn’t quite explain. But I didn’t. I had promised Lisha, and that meant something. So did the sense that there was something more important than whether or not Renthrette liked me.

Lisha had left me with a task, and whatever else it might achieve I figured that my one chance of staying with the party was by completing my assignment. I slept for one more hour and then dragged myself out of bed, washed, dressed in my new suit (its collar and vest front sponged as best I could), and stumbled out into the frosty morning.

Oh, and I stole Renthrette’s dress. The one she had worn the previous night. She wouldn’t be happy about it, but I couldn’t slip any further in her esteem, so I just concentrated on not getting caught. I rolled the thing up as best I could and shoved it under my arm as I
went outside. I did it because I needed it, though I’d be lying if I said that the fact that it would seriously piss her off didn’t add to the appeal.

The cold air skewered my lungs like one of the elegant rapiers which had surely been aimed in my direction last night, and my head swam. For a moment I thought I would faint, which led me to sit with hurried clumsiness in the street. After a few minutes I struggled gingerly to my feet and walked to a small piazza where I found a pump, splashed the icy water on my face, and took a tentative drink. A gaggle of courtiers who were exchanging amused recollections about the evening’s frivolities caught sight of me and stared in hostile silence. I returned to my drinking, ignoring them as they turned pointedly from me and walked away. I drank a little more while they got out of the way, then set off again, miserable but determined.

My stomach sloshed about as I walked, but my light-headedness passed and I felt no urge to vomit what I had just drunk. I begged a stale crust from a bakers’ shop, and, though I felt no desire to eat any more, I managed to keep it down. I sat for a while in the square by the library, feeling better apart from a pulsing ache in my temples. Now all I had to do was get into the library one last time. Then I could run, my tail firmly between my legs, from the city to Lisha, the one person on the planet who might still be pleased to see me. Of course, if I couldn’t get into the library—particularly if Lisha had gotten word of my evening’s activities—even her patience with me might reach its limit.

I found my way to the exclusive little gallery of shops adjacent to the marketplace where I had sampled the chocolate bird. A quick glance at the wares in the overstuffed windows and my mission was clear. I took a long breath and tried to screen out the pain in my head. Then, selecting the most ludicrously sumptuous of a number of establishments dealing in cosmetics, I barged in as if I had sprinted across town.

“Is it ready?” I demanded in a loud, impatient tone. “Is it ready? Come on, I don’t have all day.”

“Is what ready?” said a venerable old lady behind the counter. She was absurdly made up with cheeks of a uniform flamingo-pink and a blue-green shadow in the sockets above her eyeballs. She was sixty-five if she was a day.

“The package my mistress ordered!” I screamed back. “She wants it immediately.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” said the shopkeeper, with a glance at one of the serving girls who was ministering to another customer. “A package?”

“Yes, a package!” I spluttered. “Two complete wigs, face powder, lip tint, and colored spectacles.”

“And this was ordered when?”

“Last week. Maybe earlier. You must have it. She needs it now and she said she’d never employ you again if it wasn’t . . .”

“Now, let’s not be hasty,” the old woman cut in. “Your mistress’s name is . . . ?”

I glanced pointedly around the store. Several ladies paused in their perusal of false eyelashes and hairpieces and regarded this little scene with interest.

“My dear lady,” I began, as if offended, “surely you do not expect me to utter the name of so venerable a court lady as my mistress before common ears.” I leaned close to her. “She is a little . . . sensitive . . . about what time is doing to her beauteous features. Surely you would not have me . . .”

“Certainly not!” exclaimed the shopkeeper. “But it would help if I knew. . . . You say she has employed our services before?”

“On a regular basis.”

“As a personal dresser as well as supplier?”

“Indeed,” I confirmed.

“And she is more advanced in years than say, myself?”

This seemed tough to imagine, but I nodded knowingly.

“Would I be correct in saying that her name began with—” Here she leaned close to my ear. As I struggled not to keel over at the stench of her perfume, she breathed the letter “W.”

“The very same,” I smiled, remarking to myself how easy this had turned out to be.

“Then I am scheduled to meet with her this afternoon.”

“Err . . . yes,” I said, “or, rather, you were. She wants you to send this package to her today, though it seems my fellow the valet did not relay this information to you.”

“I think not.”

“It would not be the first time,” I said, sighing at the fallibility of servants. “But that is no matter. If you can compose the package now, then she will meet with you tomorrow instead of today and will pay you then.”