Mitchell Smith: Moonrise

The third book in the Snowfall Trilogy series, 2004

Do the seasons warm? Perhaps a very little, though the wall of ice still stands across the continent, the seas lie shrunken, and Lord Winter rules more than eight Warm-time months each year.

If Warm-times do come again, I will not see them, since I am dying, and so leaving the service of the Achieving King. And, after all, I have seen enough. I cannot believe in the Shadow World, though I wish to, for there my friends would be waiting for me. My dear Catania, and Newton – sad, reluctant ruler. Dangerous Jack Monroe… my Gardens Lady Bongiorno, and the late great Queen of Kingdom River. They have seemed too grand, too vivid for death's idiot emptiness.

I have not been so grand, so vivid. Still, I will miss my breakfasts.

Note found in the desk of Neckless Peter Wilson, Lord Librarian at island. Filed in the daily Book by Her Honor, the Lady Portia-doctor.

Knowledge of one's self – a study often unrewarding as a southern songbird's battering at its own reflection. Futile as complaining of cold in a world gone to cold for six hundred years, thanks to treacherous Jupiter's altered orbit.

I have seen persons cry, of course, and found it odd… No longer. Imagine my startlement, imagine the sudden pain in my eyes as tears, hot tears in my rooms carved from ice, came welling at the news that Small-Sam Monroe, an old – May I call him friend? I believe I may. – When news came to me that he and his queen had perished in a storm on the Gulf Entire. Their ship, aptly named Unfortunate, had foundered.

I had seen him last – he was not yet called the Achieving King – almost twenty years before. Only his first great victories were behind him. Still to come were the campaigns against Manu Ek-Tam in Map-California, and the organizing of the Great Rule of North Map-Mexico, Middle Kingdom, and the West… Young, stocky, and strong, with beautiful eyes in a fighting man's grim face, he'd kissed me good-bye (our only kiss), and helped me up onto the occa's back – a stupid and inferior occa, sent up by my Second-cousin Louis from Map-McAllen.

The Made-beast had been sent to save me weeks of Walking-in-air back to New England – to which, I'd thought then, I'd been so foolishly recalled. Thought that, and wrongly, since my order home was to an appointment of infinitely greater honor than even that of Ambassadress to a Kingdom certain to grow greater.

The occa had grunted, groaned, flapped up from Island's East battlement into the freezing river wind… then sailed its first wide ascending spiral. It was the last I saw of Sam Monroe, looking up in the company of his officers, all still dressed in their wedding finery, leathers, jewels, and velvets, their veteran sword-scored armor polished to shining.

I have been to weddings, since – Boston taking contractual matters very seriously and in celebration, so we march through frozen Cambridge singing – but have been to no such wedding as Sam Monroe's and his Princess Rachel, where sadness and joy were so mingled that the ceremony seemed the very mirror of our lives.

From Early Years,the Memoirs of Patience (Nearly-Lodge) Riley

Property of Boston Township Public Library.

Removal or disfigurement is a CAPITAL OFFENSE.

Someone chased with a sense of humor.

A hunting horn winded along the river's bank. The hoofbeats following those notes came cracking through the last of Lord Winter's fading snow and puddle ice, fell softer over mud. Someone called – perhaps a name, perhaps an order.

These were Heavy Cavalry reservists, unsuited to rough-country chasing, which was certainly why Bajazet was still alive, light Cavalry, light Infantry, would have filtered here and there until they had him.

It was a blessing of both Blue Sky and Lady Weather to have gifted him with terror enough to smother sorrow, so he could lie trembling beneath a frozen log, fallen to rot years before, thinking more of staying alive than remembering the king, his Second-father, and his Second-mother, Queen Rachel. Remembering Newton – named for a royal grandfather – and his brother in all but blood.

It seemed to Bajazet, lying hunched in puddled ice under frozen wood, that the true world had been taken from him, with only this desperate dreamed one left. And the taking accomplished in only a day. He heard the hunting horn again… but distant.

Newton, a year younger, but bigger, stronger, kinder – older in every important way – had seemed indestructible as the king had seemed indestructible. Prince Newton, only nineteen years old, but already with endless hours spent in tedious councils, and study with ancient Wilson, while Bajazet, even quite young, was amusing himself in Natchez brothels… also amusing himself puncturing, though not murdering, less accomplished swordsmen – husbands, for the most part. This, until the king, one day, came into the salle, gestured the bowing Master aside, chose two fighting rapiers from the rack… tossed one to Bajazet – and attacked to wound or kill him.

They'd fought across the slippery oil-puddled floor, until the king parried a desperate thrust in quarte, reposted… and, during what had seemed recovery, reversed and ran Bajazet through the left shoulder. Then, the king had stepped in to disarm – breaking Bajazet's right wrist – and while stepping out, had kicked him in the groin so he fell, curled in three agonies.

Portia-doctor had done wonders with a short slender iron rod, heated to only dull red. Then done more wonders with a wrist-splint, and very gradual exercise – Queen Rachel coming, anxious, to stroke Bajazet's forehead, leave imperial chocolate candies, and a kitten for company. Newton coming to make jokes… play checkers and chess. So that after the so-short summer, Bajazet – then barely eighteen, after all – had been left with only rapier memories, and an occasional ache in his left shoulder. The wrist was good as ever.

Healed, he'd encountered the king in the West Glass Garden. Sam Monroe had smiled. "Lessons learned, Baj?"

"Yes, sir."

"And what lessons were they?"

"… That there is always someone better. And only luck prevents the meeting."

"And?"

"Dueling is one thing. Fighting is another."

"… And?"

"A decisive blow may be struck in retreat."

"And…?"

"Pain is too important to be suffered or inflicted without good cause."

Then, the king had gathered Bajazet into his arms as if he were still a child, and hugged him hard before letting him go. Strong arms, and the scent of leather and chewing tobacco. "Your First-father," the king had said, "- the Lord Toghrul, would have been proud of you."

And on the first day of Lord Winter's festival, the king had given Bajazet a sword – a rapier made by Guild-master Rollins himself, its blade (of imperial wootz steel) folded and hammered again until even Rollins had lost count of the doing, so the slender double-edge, slightly sharper than a barber's best razor, and needle pointed, could with great effort be bent into a curve – to then spring humming, perfectly straight. The sword's grip was wound with twisted silver wire, its coiled guard forged of simple steel. A fighting instrument, its only decoration a cursive along the base of the blade – with good cause.