The Fall of The Kings (Riverside) (12 page)

“Oh?” said Theron, then, in a very different voice: “What has old Firenose been telling you? That I have a boundless appetite for men, women, and ponies? Or merely that I change lovers as often as I change suits of clothes? Not quite true. I deny the ponies. Are you going to bar me from your lectures?”

He looked at once haughty and so wounded that Basil reached out to him. Theron glanced down at Basil’s hand, square and dark against his own fair skin, and smiled. “A tutorial,” he murmured. “I’ve an hour free before Tipton’s lecture.”

TWO HOURS LATER, THEY LAY TOGETHER IN A WELTER of discarded garments and blankets. Theron’s hair was spread over them both like a damp scarf.

“You’re like one of the Forest Men in the old stories,” Basil said dreamily, “the ones who could drive mortals mad with desire. But if you could get one to love you, they said you’d be young for a hundred years.”

“And then what happened?”

Basil stroked a lock of shining hair around his finger. “You died of galloping old age.”

“Ech.” Theron shivered and pulled a random piece of fabric up over his leafy chest. “I’ve never heard that one before. Who told it to you?”

“Oh, my mother, probably. She knew a lot of stories.”

“Really?” Theron was amazed at the things he and his erudite lover had in common. “So did mine! But they’re all from Kyros.”

“I’d like to hear them someday.”

“Mmm.” The end of Theron’s hair had somehow found its way to the soft skin inside Basil’s elbow, and was making quiet havoc there. “But mostly she told me about my father. You know, the famous Mad Duke. Who wasn’t a duke by the time she married him on Kyros—and not mad, either, at least by her account.”

“A flexible fellow.”

“You have no idea. My father,” Theron went on, warming to his theme, “was a colorful character. I thought, when I was younger, that I would try to be more colorful still. Finding that to be impossible, I settle for pleasing myself. A variety of lovers is a family tradition, really.”

“It’s an older tradition than that,” Basil informed him. “Hollis tells us the most ancient kings were encouraged to take many lovers of both sexes. The wizards—”

“Wizards and kings,” interrupted Theron, “are not of any great interest to me right now. They’re dead, after all.”

“And so are Aria and Palaemon and Redding, and all the other great poets and playwrights you rhetoricians swear by.” Basil pulled himself upright against the pillows. “The past is never dead, Theron. It lives on in the present, in our laws and our customs, even in the way we think and speak. Stop that, Theron, I’m making a speech.”

Theron lifted his head and smiled. “It’s a very good speech,” he said, “and I don’t disagree with you. I’m hoping to find immortality through my poems, when I finally write some worth saving. At the moment, though, I’m far more interested in you and your body and my body and the pleasure we can give each other.”

Since he’d been busy with his fingers as he spoke, Basil was in no state to argue with him, and Theron’s moment spread to encompass Basil’s past, present, and future in one brief eternity of perfect sensation. They were just sinking into sleep when Theron sat up suddenly. “There’s the bell striking five, and if I don’t hurry, I’ll be late to dinner again and I promised Sophia faithfully that I would be on time. Shall I see you tomorrow?”

He was out of bed now, picking up his clothes from the floor and the bed. Basil pulled the quilts around himself and watched his lover dress, stopping him once to kiss the oak leaf drawn along his collarbone before it disappeared under his linen shirt.

“You haven’t told me about that tattoo yet,” Basil said as Theron shrugged into his braided jacket.

“No,” said Theron shortly. “I haven’t. It’s a long and silly story, and I don’t want to waste our time on it.”

He put on his cloak, then half-knelt on the bed to kiss Basil’s mouth. Basil caught his face in his hand and held it firm. “I’ll hear it tomorrow,” he said. “Dine with me—I’ll have Bet send up a pie. We’ll have the whole evening.”

The greenish eyes looked into his. “It may take all night,” Theron said.

“Good,” said Basil, his heart racing. “I like long stories.”

chapter
VII

TO PLEASE HIS MOTHER, THERON WAS NOT LATE FOR dinner at Tremontaine House. He was, in fact, early, which gave him time to wander about the wet gardens of its impressive grounds. He was drawn to some of his favorite childhood spots: the rose bower, where a few autumn blossoms doggedly bloomed, and the boxwood walk, dotted with classical sculpture. From old habit he touched the nose of the piping Goat God for luck, and even walked past the Transformation of Laurel with his eyes closed. He always used to hate the sight of the young man being engulfed in bark. He was far too old for such fancies, but he felt it again this time, a frisson of fear such as a child feels, who dreamed and cannot remember what frightened him.

There was nothing to fear. Life was good. He had a new lover, the young magister, so brilliant, so eager; it was just what he’d wanted, exactly what he’d dreamed of happening between them all these weeks. But Ysaud, too, had filled him with this crystal joy at first.

Theron broke a twig off and crushed it. Ysaud had chosen him, seduced him, really, with her artist’s eye and her craftsman’s hand. Her master’s hand. And he had been her master-piece for a while. He smelled the crushed yew rich on his fingers and something else as well, and sighed with sensual pleasure. Basil, he had chosen for himself. Just when Theron had thought his heart was frozen forever he’d seen the magister in a tavern and been drawn to him, and wondered. And so he’d gone where Basil St Cloud had gone, watching him cast off those bright sparks of wit and insight, passion and faithfulness to learning that bespoke an honest man, a sincere man, a man to be pursued. For a while, Theron had wondered whether Basil’s eye would ever fall on him at all, and if it did, whether it would regard him with favor. Now he knew.

Theron found himself looking straight up at the dangerous Laurel sculpture. Rain had washed some dirt down it, and lichen was growing there, making the sculptor’s highly textured tree seem even more lifelike in the twilight. A young man with marble skin reached out beseechingly from the bark encasing his legs, his thighs . . .

As one who, human, offered not his fruit
To one bright god
Must live condemned to offer it to all.
Ah! Bitter immortality! Majestic—
something
—

He’d forgotten the rest of the verse. There probably was a copy in the duchess’s library. Lord Theron strode through the gathering shadows into the bright-lit halls of Tremontaine House.

By the time he emerged from the library with the book he wanted, he was indeed late for supper.

THE DUCHESS KATHERINE’S GUESTS WERE NOT UNAWARE of Theron’s absence, but for a variety of reasons were trying to pretend it didn’t matter. They were assembled in a sitting room overlooking the river, furnished with comfortable peacock blue chairs, tables covered with curios, a card table with a game board, and a little escritoire in case anyone was suddenly struck with the urgent need to write a note. The duchess was deep in conversation with Marcus. Marcus’s wife Susan was playing tric-trac with their youngest son, Andrew, who was simultaneously trying to explain the rules to Lady Sophia. Sophia, out of courtesy and the sense that she was never really going to understand the ways of her adopted country if she didn’t keep making an effort, was trying gamely to be interested, but her attention kept straying to the two very pregnant young women seated side by side on the divan, their feet propped up on stools.

Diana and Isabel Ffoliot were identical twins. Both had married last year, but Diana was a bit farther along than Isabel, and Sophia was dying to ask her about false contractions. But Andrew was saying, “Now it looks like Mother’s got me beaten. But if I can throw Doublets here. . . .” He picked up the dice. Sophia nodded absently.

“I’m starving,” Diana growled to her sister. “Where’s Theron?”

Their mother flashed them a warning look. Susan Ffoliot was looking forward to as pleasant an evening as could be hoped for considering the family’s various colorful personalities. “Pass your sisters the biscuits,” she instructed her son.

The twins were Theron’s age, and as close to sisters as he could get; he had grown up tumbling about with Susan’s brood in their cozy house as much as he had in the imposing mansion of the Duchess Katherine, or his mother’s rambling Riverside home. He had always prayed that neither twin show any interest in scholarship; either one of them at the University, choosing to open her mouth, and he would be ruined. They knew far too much about him.

Diana took two biscuits, frowned, and put them down again. “I’ll bet you anything our Theron is still in bed somewhere. Maybe we should send out the dogs.”

Isabel snickered. “Oh, hush, Di. Mother says he’s a reformed character.”

“Mother,” said her twin, “doesn’t know him as well as we do. I would say it’s just taking him a while to creep his way back up from the slimy bottom of whatever well that artist was keeping him in.”

Lord Alexander Theron Tielman Campion chose that moment to enter, bright-eyed, in a swirl of long hair and a blue suit that didn’t really go with the room. “Sorry,” he said to everyone; “I was here, didn’t Farraday tell you? I just ducked into the library to look something up. I thought you’d start without me.”

“Hello, Alexander,” said his cousin Katherine, Duchess Tremontaine. She’d used his actual first name. Not good. “What were you reading—nothing modern, I imagine?”

Oh, wonderful. He’d just walked in the door and managed to put her back up already. He darted an eye at the gravid twins on the sofa; they returned the look blandly. No help there. He dealt the duchess the most charming smile he could muster. “How well you know me. Poetry, actually. Did you know you have a handscribed copy of Aria’s
Transformations
?” He really didn’t feel up to Katherine before soup. She’d be a lot more agreeable when she’d eaten.

Fortunately, Marcus stepped in. “Katie,” he said to the duchess, “consider the source.” There he stood, graying and bland, the perfect factotum: Marcus Ffoliot, marshal of the Tremontaine fortunes for the past forty years. He’d taught Theron to spin a top. Right now, Theron wanted to kill him. “Allow me to observe,” Marcus went on with mock severity, “that, as a point of law, being
in the house
does constitute being
here;
although the status of the library as a separate branch limits . . .”

“. . . limits all our access to dinner.” Laughing, Katherine finished the sentence for him. No one else knew what the two of them were talking about, but they were all used to it.

“I think dinner is an excellent idea,” said Susan Ffoliot. Marcus’s wife had long suspected that she was the only person of the whole menage who understood how families were actually supposed to operate. But she enjoyed watching the rest of them playing at it, and so she interfered only when things threatened to get out of hand. “With your permission, Duchess?”

After the soup, matters improved. The twins unbent enough to answer Theron’s inquiries about their absent husbands, and even to tease him about his hair. Mostly they discussed childbirth with Theron’s mother.

Lady Sophia did, however, ask about Aria’s
Transformations,
which got everyone onto the subject of the statues in the garden. Interest in things Tremontaine was always acceptable at the dinner table.

Susan Ffoliot gave Theron a grin. “I am so glad those statues are there. The girls learned such a lot about human anatomy without my ever having to explain it to them. Andrew, sit up straight or you’ll grow up hunchbacked.”

Andrew shrugged his shoulders and hunkered down in his seat.

The conversation at the duchess’s end of the table had shifted back to current affairs. Katherine was leaning across the table, making a point to her old friend and confederate. Theron heard her tell Marcus, “And now the Serpent wants the Crescent’s man to look into it, though I can’t imagine what for. I refuse to get dragged in, that’s all; it’s nothing to do with Tremontaine. Let Hartsholt worry about it; it’s his land.”

Theron wondered what Basil would make of the group gathered at the family table. He made a note never to try and explain to Basil that Marcus and Susan
were
family. It would probably serve as further proof that the ruling classes were somehow decadent—not that Theron would call Katherine decadent, himself. A woman near sixty who rose at five, did paperwork for two hours, and practiced the sword before breakfast was not his idea of the thing at all.