The Charnel Prince - J. Gregory Keyes [123]
She chuckled. “Simply that things that die stay dead.”
“Are you saying that the man I fought was dead?”
“No, not exactly. But he exists because someone who should be dead is not. Someone has passed beyond the lands of fate and returned. That changes the world, Sir Neil, breaks something in it. It allows things to happen that could not before, creates magicks that have never existed. It is what allowed me to escape.”
“Escape from where, lady? Who pursues you?”
She shook her head. “It is an old story, yes? The woman locked in the tower, awaiting a prince who would rescue her? And yet I waited, and did my duty, and no man came. So I had to escape myself.”
“What tower?”
She combed her fingers through her hair and then dropped her head down, the first motion he had seen from her that resembled defeat. “No,” she whispered, “I cannot trust you that much. I cannot trust anyone that much.”
“Your crew? What about them?”
“With them I have no choice—and I believe they love me. If I were wrong about them, you and I would not be speaking now. Still, in a day or a month or a year, one of them will betray me. It is the way of men.”
“You have seen this in some vision?”
“No. But it is most likely.”
Neil sighed. “You are nothing if not a mystery, Lady Swanmay.”
“Then perhaps I am nothing.”
“I do not think so.”
She smiled wistfully. “I would help you if I could, Sir Neil. I cannot.”
“Then put me off at the next port,” he urged. “Let me make my own way. I won’t tell anyone about you.”
“Is my company so tiresome?” she asked.
“No. But my duty—”
“Sir Neil, believe me when I say that the pain of leaving behind your obligations will fade.”
“Never. And you cannot think so, either. You are too good for that.”
“A moment ago you called me evil.”
“I didn’t. I said you couldn’t be.”
She considered that. “I suppose you did, in a roundabout way.” She shrugged. “But whether you are right or not, I must believe that there is more to life than duty.”
“There is,” Neil said. “But without duty, the rest of it is meaningless.”
She stood and paced away from the lamplight, then turned to regard him with a slightly feral glint in her eye. “When you fell in the water,” she said, her words measured carefully, “you were still conscious. Yet you didn’t try to take off your armor. Not a single catch was unfastened.”
“I didn’t think to take it off, at least not until it was too late,” Neil replied.
“Why? You are not stupid. Armor is not new to you. Any man who was drowning would have tried to take it off, and instantly unless—”
“What, lady?”
“Unless he thought of his armor as so much a part of himself that he believed he could not take it off. Unless he would rather die than take it off. As if, perhaps, he wished to die.”
He felt a moment’s disorientation. How could she—? “I have no wish to die, Swanmay,” Neil insisted.
She stepped back into the light. “Who was she? Was it Fastia?”
Now it felt as if he had been struck by a spinning bolt. He opened his mouth before his sense overtook him.
“I don’t know that name,” he lied.
“You spoke it many times as you slept. She is the one you love, yes, not the girl on the ship?” She lowered her voice further. “The King of Crotheny had a daughter by that name. They say she was slain at Cal Azroth.”
“Who are you, lady?” Neil demanded.
“No one,” she replied. “Your secret is safe with me, Neil MeqVren. The only reason I ask these questions is to satisfy my own curiosity.”
“I cannot trust you about that.”
“I know. Did you really want to die?”
Neil sighed and laid his head back. “You change targets so frequently, lady.”
“No. This is the one I have aimed at all along.”
“I did not seek to die,” Neil said. “But I was—I think I was relieved. Relieved that there was nothing I could do.”
“And then I spoiled it all.”
“You saved my life, and I am grateful.”
Swanmay regarded her nails. “There was a time, Sir Neil,” she said, “when I stood with a razor in my hand and contemplated my wrists. There was another when I held a goblet of poison, fingers away from my lips. Of anyone I have ever known, I think you