“You must stay another night,” she crowed. “Nothing happened.”
I replied, somewhat stiffly, that I felt a good deal had happened, at which she was properly giggly. I had not known before that girls were giggly. Boys are, young boys, that is, in the dormitories of the schools. Perhaps girls are allowed to retain some childhood habits and joys which boys are not. Or perhaps it is only that male Gamesmen are so driven by Talent—but no. The whole matter was too complex to think out. At any rate, the matron came again to give us leave to go into the market while she arranged for the room to be cleaned and food brought in. So the day went by and another night during which I had no real need of Trandilar, and another morning with Sylbie weeping, for this time the Midwife nodded, the owl feathers bobbing upon her head. A child would be forthcoming, it seemed, and the purpose of my being a nobody had been fulfilled. We sat in the window above the street as she shed tears all down the front of my tunic.
“There is no reason to believe you will not have great pleasure with your husband,” I said. Privately, I thought it unlikely unless he had been taught by Trandilar, until I remembered that Trandilar herself had been taught by someone. “Don’t cry, Sylbie. This is foolishness!”
“You don’t understand,” she cried. “They will marry me off to someone I don’t even know. Someone old, or bald, or fat as a stuffed goose. Young men don’t get wives with settlements as good as I have, or so my mother says. They have not the wherewithal. Only old men have enough of the world’s wealth to afford a wealthy wife. Oh, Peter, I shall die, die, die.”
She was such a pretty thing, soft as a kitten, warm as a muffin. I was moved to do something for her, saying to myself as I did so that the occasion for doing helpful things should not pass me by again while I mumbled and mowed and made faces at the moon. So much I had done when Himaggery asked my help. I would not be so laggard in the future.
“Shh, shh,” I said. “Be still. If I fix it so that you may marry whom you will, will you leave off crying? Sylbie, tell me you will stop crying, and I will work a magic for you.”
There were kisses, and promises, after which I went off to see the master of that place, a great fat pombi of a merchant Duke with more Armigers around him than any Gamesman needs if he is honest. It was not easy to get to see him. I needed all the Necromancer’s guise to do it. He greeted me coldly, and I resolved therefore to make the matter harder on him than I had intended.
“I am told that Necromancers have tried heretofore to rid Betand of its spectre,” I intoned. “Without success. I come to do what others have not done, if the price be to my liking.”
He shifted in the high seat, staring over my shoulder in the way they do. He would not meet the eyes behind the death mask, as though he were afraid I would take out his life and transmit it to another realm before time.
“What price would you ask?” His voice was all oil and musk, slippery as thrilp skins.
“One request. Not gold nor treasure. Merely that one of the people of Betand shall be governed according to my will. For that person’s lifetime.” I made my voice sinister. He would assume I wanted torture and death as my portion, being of that kind which would sooner kill anyone than give a woman joy. I know his kind—or Trandilar knew them. Yes. Perhaps that was the way of it.
“One of my people?” He oozed for a moment, thoughtfully. “Will you say which one?”
“Not one close to you, Great Duke. I would not be so bold. Merely an insignificant one who has attracted … my attention.”
He glanced at his counselors, seeing here a nod, there a covert glance. “What makes you believe you can do what others have not?”