Free Swordpoint by Ellen Kushner Page A

winter to check on your pony.' Lady Helena hit him with her pomander ball.
    'My lord,' the duchess admonished, 'no woman likes to be reminded of her past. Not all of them come as well armed as Lady Helena, though.'
    'If she's trying to prove what a lady she is now,' Horn said primly, 'she'd do better to put it away.'
    'And who', Helena demanded, 'will protect me if I do?' The young woman's eyes sparkled with the delight of being the centre of attention.
    'From what?' asked her brother innocently.
    'Why, insult, of course,' the duchess defended her.
    'With respect, madam Duchess,' Lord Christopher answered, 'the truth cannot be considered an insult.'
    'Idealism,' murmured Lord Ferris, while Diane responded, 'Can it not? That depends on your timing, my lord.'
    'I had a pony,' quiet Lady Halliday spoke up. 'It bit me.'
    'Funny,' said Christopher Nevilleson; 'Helena's was always afraid she would bite it.'
    'Timing?' asked Michael, emerging from a cold draught of stony white wine. He didn't care much about ponies and pomander balls. Diane had barely looked at him since her initial greeting. He was beginning to strain for the cryptic messages she had been sending him the other day. The party felt so normal that it was making him uncomfortable. To find her again he felt he would have to walk a labyrinth of hidden meanings.
    Now, at last, her grey eyes were fixed on him. 'Is the wine to your taste?' she asked.
    'The timing of truth,' said Lord Horn with heavy self-importance. 'That's a matter for politicians like Ferris, and not mere ornaments like you and me.'
    The messages, god help him, were coming from Horn. Michael gritted his teeth against the archness of the man.
    'The wine for the fish', the duchess continued with relentless, impersonal politeness, 'I think is even better.'
    'Fish?!' Lady Halliday exclaimed. 'My dear, I thought you said this was just going to be a picnic'
    The duchess made a moue. 'It was. But my cook got carried away with the notion of what would be necessary to sustain seven people on the river in midwinter. I don't ever dare to argue with her, or I get creamed chicken for a week.'
    'Poor Diane,' said Lord Ferris, smiling at her. 'You let everyone bully you.'
    The sky over the river looked as though it were burning.
    'Hurry!' Alec said. But as they rounded the corner to Water-bourne they saw that the light came from torches set in the nobles' barges in the middle of the river. Some ten or fifteen of them were clustered in the centre of the dark water. They looked like elaborate brooches pinned to black silk shot with ripples of gold.
    Alec whistled softly through chapped lips. 'The rich', he said, 'are looking particularly rich tonight.'
    'It's impressive,' said Richard.
    'I hope they aren't too terribly cold,' Alec said, implying the opposite.
    Richard didn't answer. He was absorbed in the sight of a new barge making its way upriver to join the others. Flames and black smoke spun back from the torches set in its prow, surrounding it with danger and glory. The green and gold pavilion was still closed. But it was the barge itself that intrigued him. He must have made some sound; Alec turned sharply to see what he was looking at.
    'But of course,' sneered Alec; 'no party would be complete without one.'
    The prow of the barge reared up in the graceful curve of a swan's neck. Its head was crowned with a ducal coronet. In perfect proportion were the wings, fanning back to protect the sides of the boat. Despite the hangings, despite the flat bottom , and outsized stern, the barge managed to give the illusion of a giant swan on the river. Its oars dipped and rose, dripping jewels with each stroke, so smoothly that the barge seemed to glide across the surface of the water.
    'Who is it?' St Vier asked.
    'Tremontaine, of course,' Alec answered sharply. 'There's the ducal crown all over everything. I should think even you would recognise that get-up.'
    He had thought they were ornamental. 'I don't know Tremontaine,' he