Quicksilver's Knight

CHAPTER 1

Geoffrey had decided that it was very boring being the son of a nobleman—especially the second son, even if the first was away from home. It was even more boring if the only thing you were really good at was war, and nobody was obliging you by attacking your king. He would have settled gladly for even a nice pocket war, a tidy little rebellion in some distant corner of the kingdom of Gramarye, with a few good battles, some privations to endure and trials of will and muscle, feasting and celebrating after the victory—Geoffrey had no doubt that with him on the King's side, the rebellion would end in victory.

Unfortunately, the rest of the kingdom seemed to have no doubt about that, either—or perhaps it was just King Tuan's twenty-five-year record of winning every battle he had fought, especially with the Gallowglass family on his side. If Geoffrey couldn't win single-handedly, his parents, brother, and sister could certainly tip the scales in his favor.

So, all in all, it wasn't too surprising if nobody wanted to start a war—and, to keep himself from going crazy with inaction, Geoffrey had volunteered to be royal troubleshooter. When the King didn't come up with enough troubles to shoot, he took to the roads as a knight-errant. Again, though, his bad luck held—all he had to do was ride into a county, and the bandits instantly faded away into some other district. The lords began a startling program of reform, ceasing oppression and moving toward enlightened government; they stopped exploiting the peasants and began just and humane rule.

Which left Geoffrey with nothing to do but indulge himself in his only other really strong interest—wenching. Which is why he was currently in the hayloft with a particularly luscious and tempting morsel named Doll, caressing experimentally, to determine which stroke elicited the largest number of gasps, and beginning to coax her out of her bodice. Of course, he was minimizing the possibility of her objecting by seeing to it that her mouth was fully occupied with his own, and was distracting her with a particularly ardent kiss as he began to untie her lacings when a voice like the mew of a seagull called, "Young warlock!"

The girl froze, and so did Geoffrey, cursing darkly within his mind. Then he lifted himself away, giving her a tender and reassuring smile—rather necessary, since she was staring up at him with incipient panic as the voice called again, "Warlock Geoffrey! Come, sir, speak!"

"You are a warlock, then?" Doll whispered. "I am," Geoffrey sighed.

She relaxed, eyes half-closing, her smile returning, sultry and inviting. "Then work magic upon me, young sir." She wriggled to emphasize her words.

Geoffrey caught his breath, and was about to accept the invitation when the voice demanded, "There are folk in need, Sir Geoffrey! Remember your oath of chivalry!"

"A warlock, and a knight too," Doll murmured.

"A double curse," Geoffrey sighed, "if it must take me from your arms. Bide, though, and let us see if I may not send this small messenger packing."

"Small? How can you know that?"

"By the quality of his voice." Geoffrey rolled away from her and sat up in the hay, looking about.

"Up here, knight!"

Geoffrey looked up, and there upon a roof beam stood a foot-high mannikin, only a few feet above his head in the loft. The girl gasped and wrapped her arms about her torso, even though she was still fully clothed.

"Oh, be at peace, child! We of the Wee Folk have seen it all—so many times as to be wearied with it," the elf said with disdain. "Warlock, I am sent to summon thee to The Chief."

"The King of the Elves?" Doll gasped.

"Nay, only The Chief," the elf corrected. "He hath action for thee, warlock, an thou dost wish it."

"I was engaged in action that I did wish to pursue," Geoffrey grumped. "Can he not wait an hour or so?" Doll glanced from the elf to the warlock and back, looking very wary and not entirely sure about the enterprise. She was past second thoughts and heading into thirds. Geoffrey saw, and his hormones beat all the harder. "Surely whatever's amiss will not miscarry worse for a few minutes' wait!"

"Mayhap not, but The Chief will," the elf reminded him. "Thou dost know his moods."

Geoffrey smiled up at the elf, amused. "Do you say I should fear the Puck?"

The girl gasped and flinched away from him.

"A pox on this mode of speech that hath afflicted thy generation," the elf sighed. "Canst thou not say 'thee' and 'thou' like an honest citizen?"

"Perhaps I can say them, though as to my honesty, you shall have to judge for yourself," Geoffrey countered. "Surely one who honors Robin Goodfellow as chief would not be overly concerned with truth."

"We are, though not in the fashion in which you mean it," the elf snapped.

Geoffrey nodded slowly. "No wonder you think that I should fear him."

"I do," Doll assured him.

Geoffrey turned to caress her cheek gently. "Aye, poor lass! I have wronged you, to seek your favors when I was such a fearsome beast. Nay, here will I leave you, that you may have no fear of the Wee Folk further."

"I do not mean that you should go," she said in alarm. "But I must," Geoffrey sighed, "or the Puck shall blame you for my tardiness—and I would not wish his ill will on any mortal who has no defense of magic. Perhaps we shall meet again, pretty wanton. I shall hope for it, for my body rages at me for breaking off this encounter."

"As does mine, Sir Geoffrey!" She caught his hand with both of hers, pulling. "Nay, bide awhile. I will risk the Puck's wrath, for the delights we may share!"

Her tone made Geoffrey's blood pound in his veins, but he summoned his warrior's self-discipline and disengaged her hands gently but firmly. "Nay, for I'd not forgive myself for what he would do to you. When your ardor has cooled and clear judgement has returned, you shall thank me for leave-taking. But I go to danger, I always go to danger, so do not await my return."

"You must not go, then!" she cried, reaching for him again.

"But I must." He avoided her grasp deftly, then knelt suddenly to kiss her—fleetingly, arousing more than he soothed. "Yet if I should chance to come back, and you are still unwed, perhaps we can begin the dance anew. Farewell, sweeting! Find a strong husband, for he'll need great endurance!" And he was gone before she could plead another excuse for delay—he was gone, leaping over the side of the loft into a mound of hay below, and striding out the door of the barn, still buckling on his swordbelt.

Doll glared after him, slamming a little fist into the pile of hay beside her. Now that he was gone from sight, she let her temper have its full, savage sweep, pummelling the mound about her, leaping up to lash kicks at the unoffending straws, not daring to shout her curses and imprecations for fear he would hear, but loosing them in a steady stream of hisses.

It wasn't just a release of a surge of frustrated hormones, though there was much of that to her vehemence—it was also anger and fury at one more plot that had miscarried, once again due to the interference of the Wee Folk. Handfuls of hay went flying through the air, but without the aid of hands, for Doll was an esper, gifted with quite a few psionic talents, among them telekinesis. She could move objects just by thinking at them, and in her rage she moved quite a few. Milking buckets and old horseshoes went clattering against the walls; a pitchfork hurled itself with such vehemence that it buried its prongs in a beam. She was having a full-fledged tantrum, and it felt very good.

Doll was really Central Agent Finister, the head of the Gramarye office of the Society for the Prevention of Integration of Telepathic Entities. SPITE was Geoffrey's hereditary foe, since it was the enemy of his father—but it was nothing personal; SPITE was really just the enemy of everything his father stood for.

For Finister, though, it was very definitely personal. Her interest in the Gallowglass family amounted to an obsession, but her interest in Geoffrey was very definitely a vivid example of lust adulterated only by hatred. Taken all together, it made him fascinating.

The clanging and clattering stopped; the cow ceased her terrified mooing, and the chickens sought their roosts again. Finister knelt in the hay, panting, hair dishevelled, amidst random straws that slowly drifted down into the mow. Slowly, clear thoughts returned, foremost among them being the fact that the yeoman who owned the barn was bound to come running in alarm to see what all the commotion had been. It would make things easier if she were not there.

She ran to the ladder, swung down to the earthen floor, then dodged out the small door at the back, where Agent Grommet was waiting with her cloak. He was looking considerably happier than when she had left him. "No luck?" he asked cheerily.

Finister was used to her male agents' suppressed sexual jealousy; she couldn't really resent it, since their desire was so useful for keeping them in line. That didn't mean, of course, that she couldn't torment them a little. "A great deal of success," she countered, and waited just long enough for his disappointment to harden into a wooden mask before she let him off the hook: "Until some weasel of an elf called him away for a conference!"

Grommet relaxed—relieved, Finister saw darkly. Like herself, he was a "home agent"—a local recruit, who had been found on the doorstep of an agent who had a reputation for taking in foundlings. In fact, it was his primary role in the organization, and he did it very well, raising local Gramarye children to believe in the goals and methods of SPITE, while nurturing their resentment against the society that had abandoned them. In Finister, that resentment had deepened into hatred, and the Gallowglasses had proved the perfect target for it. Her adoptive father had also recognized her psionic talents, and proved very adept at helping her train them, though he himself had none. He had turned her loose as a mature agent of SPITE at sixteen, and she had risen rapidly, being given her first assignment to hamstring a Gallowglass at the tender age of nineteen.

Grommet draped her cloak over her shoulders, grumbling, "I don't see why you have to pay so much attention to that musclebound oaf, anyway."

The reminder of Geoffrey's muscles stirred a thrill of desire in Finister, making her a bit more snappish than she needed to be as she answered, "Yes, you do—to make sure the influence of that viper, Rod Gallowglass, won't keep going after his death."

"Well, yes, I understand that," Grommet griped. "But why do we have to do it by making sure none of his children reproduce?"

"Because we've tried every other way," Finister fumed. "Assassination, rebellion, poisoning his mind with a psychoactive drug—and none of them worked. Between that horse of his and that wife..." She made the word an obscenity. "... he's just too well guarded."

She could have added the elves to the list of Rod's guardians, but she preferred not to think of them just now. Rod Gallowglass was an agent for the Society for the Conversion of Extraterrestrial Nascent Totalitarianisms, an organization dedicated to promulgating democracy by sniffing out dictatorships and other forms of oppressive government, and steering them onto the road toward democracy in one of its many forms. As such, Rod was the bitter enemy of all SPITE'S agents—because this planet of Gramarye was absolutely vital to the future of democracy. By a fluke of genetic selection, it contained more active telepaths than all the rest of the Terran-colonized planets combined—and if those telepaths could be swayed toward believing in democracy, they would become the communications system for a galaxywide federation of democratic governments.

In fact, that was exactly what had happened—or would happen, in the future. Centuries down the timeline, an interstellar democratic government ruled the Terran Sphere, with Gramarye's telepaths as its communications network. The anarchists had lost—as had their equally virulent enemies, the future totalitarians—so both groups had sent agents back in time, to try to change their own past and Gramarye's future, by swaying the planet toward anarchy on the one hand, or totalitarianism on the other. As Rod Gallowglass and his local allies had frustrated one plot after another and used each challenge to put the planet more firmly than ever on the road to democracy, the futurians had become less and less picky—they no longer cared much what kind of government Gramarye had, so long as it wasn't democratic.

In fact, both organizations had pretty well resigned themselves to having lost the fight, as long as Rod Gallowglass lived. The totalitarians were biding their time, plotting for the day after he died—but the anarchists, under Finister's leadership, were taking action now.

"How else do you think we're going to keep Gallowglass from polluting the future with his asinine democracy?" she demanded.

Grommet was silent for a few strides, face darkening. Finally, he had to admit, "Not much else I can see."

Finister felt a stab of vindictive satisfaction. "No other way at all—and so far, I haven't done too badly."

"Well, you made a good start, anyway," Grommet admitted, "and I can't deny you were the perfect agent to assign to the Magnus Gallowglass case."

"Yes, I certainly was," Finister purred. In three separate encounters, she had given Magnus such a nightmarish view of sex that it was highly doubtful he would ever do more than think of reproduction, and that only in the most clinical way. In fact, he had left the planet to get away from her (at least, she was sure that was the reason), and she thought it was all for the best. His siblings had to be much less effective without him. He was the eldest, after all, and the one they all looked up to, though she knew Geoffrey would have hated to admit it.

Cordelia would have, too, being the second child and the only girl. Finister's eyes flashed as she thought of the moralistic chit, and it didn't help that Grommet chose just that moment to mutter, "You didn't do too well when it came to Cordelia, though."

"Of course not! She's female, after all!"

"True," Grommet grated, and started to say something else, but caught his tongue in time.

And a good thing, too, Finister thought grimlyespecially if he'd been about to remind her that, though Cordelia might not have been susceptible to Finister's wiles, her fiance, the Crown Prince Alain, certainly was not. "I almost had him," she said between her teeth, "but the bitch used some kind of witchcraft on him that I don't know about."

Not surprising that she didn't, Grommet reflected, since the magic in question was called "love." From personal experience, he knew that Finister equated the word with "sex," and thought everything else associated with it was sentimental hypocrisy. She didn't really have the concept, and Grommet wondered why. He knew she had had a rough childhood before being dumped on the SPITE agent's doorstep, being batted back and forth from one relative to another, then to foster parent after foster parent, before someone had finally remembered that there was a couple in one village who seemed willing to take all and any children, no questions asked. Fortunately, the SPITE agent's cover identity as a merchant let him support all those hungry mouths with no one wondering where the money came from, though there had been plenty of gossip about how well the grown-ups could have lived if they hadn't had such an expensive hobby. The local lord must have realized that there was enormous untapped potential for taxation there, but they were solving a problem for him that might otherwise have cost him even more, directly or through the Church's charities, so he had left the brooding couple alone.

Grommet did know, from personal experience growing up with Finister, that she had always thought talk of love was silly. She had become fanatically loyal to her adoptive parents, but even that seemed to be more out of a sense of survival than from any tender feelings. She had also realized the importance of status to survival, and had understood the effects of her burgeoning charms at a startlingly young age, using them to keep the boys firmly on her side, ensuring her dominance over the other children, even the girls who were four and five years older than herself.

So he wasn't terribly surprised that Finister could not understand how Cordelia had won Prince Alain's affections against every curve that Finister could throw. "You're going to have to work awfully hard," he said. "The Home Office still says there will be an alarming number of successful brats issuing from Cordelia's marriage to Prince Alain."

"You don't have to remind me!" Finister rounded on him. "Unless you want to spend the rest of your life watching the lack of events in some village out in the boondocks?"

"No, no," Grommet said quickly. "You know I want to be as near you as I can, Chief."

"Yes, I know," Finister said, gloating. She could see how her tone twisted inside Grommet, and felt a glow of satisfaction—and pleasure. She turned away, pacing as quickly as she could toward the forest. "They don't ever seem to remember Magnus having had any children, though."

"No," Grommet admitted, "but we here can remember that he did. Only because the old Chief Agent wrote it down, of course, just before he died."

Finister suppressed a quick shiver of delight at the memory of how the old man had passed away. The prelude hadn't given her much pleasure; but his dying had—and had given her a great deal of power, too, since he had named her as his successor. Of course, by that time, he would have said anything to win some time alone with her.

Foolish or not, Grommet was in the mood for revenge. "The future is still saying that, only a generation down the timeline, one of Cordelia's children becomes king with extremely republican ideals."

"Yes, I know," Finister hissed, "and worse, all his siblings will have been raised to be intensely loyal to himonce they're grown up."

Grommet didn't like the sound of that last. "Of course they'll grow up!"

"Not 'of course' at all," Finister corrected. "That can be changed."

"What?" Grommet stared at her, aghast. "Their growing up?"

"Of course." Finister gave him a saccharine smile. That shook Grommet down to the laces in his bootsbut he was even more appalled to discover that, no matter how much of a monster she suddenly appeared to be, he still would have killed to get into bed with her. His loathing turned inward.

"So, for that matter, can Cordelia's marriage," Finister informed him.

"Can what?" Grommet stared. "Be changed. Of course."

Grommet suddenly understood—and also understood that there was a great deal of Finister's self-esteem at stake here. He would have to tread carefully. "But they're engaged..."

"Yes," said Finister, "but the wedding is still three months away, and while there's bachelorhood, there's hope."

Grommet gave a humorless bark of laughter. "Chief, with your talents, even after the wedding, there's hope."

"Yes, there is, isn't there?" Finister said, preening. "Marriages can always be wrecked."

"And if you don't mind my saying so," Grommet said, "no one's better fitted for the task than you."

"You say the sweetest things, Grommet. Yes, I am well suited to the task, aren't I? Which is why I have to take charge of Geoffrey Gallowglass's case personally."

Grommet looked up in alarm, to her satisfaction. Had he really thought he had sidetracked her? Yes, none of her agents had anywhere nearly as good a chance of ensnaring Geoffrey as she had—she shivered at the thought of how she would go about that ensnaring. Certainly that was the reason—or one of the reasons, anyway; the shiver summed up all the rest.

In her natural form, Finister was a voluptuous, striking beauty—striking anyone who could be lulled into lowering his guard to her charms. But she depended on artifice more than nature, appearing to the Gallowglasses in a host of disguises, which made her appear even more beautiful than she was. She was a projectile telepath, and therefore skilled at casting illusions. She was also skilled at stimulating men's ardor, both telepathically and otherwise.

"So you've taken a personal interest in the case?" Grommet asked, with irony.

"Personal in more ways than one," Finister countered. "He's escaped me once already. Curse the fool! Doesn't he know I can see how badly he wants me?"

"From what you've told me, he hasn't made any effort to disguise how much he desired you," Grommet said shortly.

"No, he hasn't," Finister agreed, "but he seems somehow to be infuriatingly proof against my spells!" Forget the spells, Grommet thought—her physical charms were enough. "He must be the only man you've ever met who is."

"Definitely the only one." But Finister reflected grimly that Geoffrey was also the only man who might be capable of enjoying her favors without being captivated by them. "It's a challenge I can't resist."

Nor could she, really, resist Geoffrey himself. She could not explain this obsession—he was handsome enough, surely, but there were men who were more handsome still; Geoffrey was certainly not what she would call a gorgeous hunk of male animal. Oh, he was male enough, to be sure, and a hunk—she had seen him without his doublet, and knew that he was muscular enough to make Adonis blush for shame; his chest and arms were magnificent, and the way he wore tights was distinctly unfair to every unattached female in his vicinity—and perhaps to some of those who were attached, too. Still, there were men enough with handsome displays of pectorals and biceps, and many of them were even more handsome than Geoffrey—so what was it about him that sent pangs of covetousness coursing through her whenever she thought of him? She could not make sense of it; she only knew that she had to have him, and would have him, some day.

Have him permanently, if she was bewitching enoughand she knew she could be.

"But what are you going to do with him once you catch him?" Grommet asked.

"What?" Finister looked up, startled at his words having matched her thoughts so well. Grommet was no telepathbut even if he had been, she was very adept at shielding what she was thinking. Covering her surprise, she snapped, "What am I going to do with him? I'm going to light such a flame of lust in him that it will never die down! Once I've done that, I can transmute it into what fools like him call love, even though it's just an obsession surging up from the gonads." She saw, with satisfaction, that Grommet was suffering. "Once I've done that, he'll realize that he absolutely must have me with him always."

"Meaning that you intend to marry him," Grommet said softly.

"Of course." Finister tossed her head, "I'm every bit as good as any of those highborn trulls he might be thinking about, when he gets old enough. In fact, I'm a lot better!" Was that a groan she heard from Grommet? Well, maybe a very soft one.

"You know that and I know that," Grommet said, his voice low, "but his parents don't."

Finister shrugged. "They'll object to my class, of course—peasant girls are all very well to bed, but not to marry. When the time is right, though, I'll reveal that I'm really the long-lost daughter of some forgotten earl who secretly married a woman who conveniently died in childbirth."

Grommet nodded; the device came as no surprise. "So you'll be legitimately of the nobility, but since you won't be competing with anybody for inheritance, you won't make enemies out of the dead lord's heirs—and, of course, you'll have a marriage contract and a statement from the priest who married them, just in case they want you to prove it."

"Of course," Finister agreed sweetly. "After all, we have the best forgers in the country, don't we?"

"The best we know about, Chief—so even the High Warlock and his wife won't be able to deny you."

"No, they won't. What good would it do them, anyway? I'll have their son so emotionally hog-tied that saying no will only make him elope with me."

"They'll disinherit him," Grommet warned.

That struck a qualm within Finister, making her angry at herself—she knew it for the mere instinctive response that it was. So she took it out on Grommet, speaking harshly. "What difference does that make? With his sword and my magic, we'll carve out our own fortune fast enough! But I don't think they will cut him off—their children mean too much to them, the fools! They won't be able to deny me, either. No one will."

"Least of all Geoffrey," Grommet said darkly. "So you'll live like a duchess, with all the respect and kowtowing that goes with it."

"Yes, I will," Finister said, gloating, but she thrilled inside at the thought of the less public rewards that would go with marriage to Geoffrey. She hid it, though. "I'll be in an excellent position to sabotage the government of King Tuan and Queen Catharine, too."

"Very subtly, of course," Grommet said sourly. "Can't risk your cover, can you?"

"Only as far as making sure I don't have any children," Finister assured him. That was no great sacrifice—she hated the little monsters anyway, especially babies, and wasn't about to go through that much inconvenience and pain, to say nothing of the damage it would do to her figure—or to her relationship with Geoffrey; the enforced abstinence of pregnancy would weaken the power she intended to have over him.

"How are you going to hold onto him if you don't give him the children he wants, though?"

Finister flashed Grommet an angry glare, then followed it with a lazy smile, stepping closer. "The same way I hold onto you, little man, and make sure you do exactly as I want. Could you dream of disobeying me?"

Grommet turned away, his face scarlet.

Finister gave him a low, gloating laugh, then turned away and tossed her head. "Don't worry, I'll have a grip on him that no infant could match—a grip so strong that he'll have to be faithful to me, whether he likes it or not."

"A compulsion," Grommet breathed. He knew it would not be completely natural.

"Yes, a compulsion—and don't worry about his defenses. Psi or not, he can't stand against this form of projective telepathy. He's a man, after all, and this is my area of psionics."

Grommet didn't doubt it for a second. With Finister around, testosterone haze would cloud Geoffrey's psi abilities to the point of disability.

"I'll see to it that he can't even think of leaving me!"

Finister's eyes glowed. "He'll be so ecstatic that he'll never regret the children he doesn't have—at least, not for any longer than it takes to come near me."

"He doesn't exactly seem to be the fatherly sort, anyway," Grommet grumbled. Then he saw a chance to get a little of his own back, and took it. "But even your charms can't last forever, Chief."

Finister tossed her head as though she didn't care, but inwardly marked Grommet for a long and painful revenge. "There's always the poison bottle."

"Why don't you just kill him right now and be done with it?" Grommet muttered.

"Because I can't get close enough to him for long enough, of course! I have to win his confidence first, so that he's willing to drink what I give him. We've already tried all the other ways—several times, too. The man has an uncanny knack for knowing where the knife is coming from."

It was a good excuse, but she and Grommet both knew the real reason—that she hated to see such a good hunk of manflesh go to waste. Finister intended to take her pleasures of Geoffrey first; there would be time enough to kill him later—and it would be far easier when his wariness had been blunted by love and trust.

In the meantime, if he could give her the power and status she had always craved, so much the better.

"It's just a matter of time, then," Grommet said. "Yes," Finister echoed, "just a matter of time." Time until she had her way with him, time until she wed himtime until she killed him.

"Of course," Grommet said spitefully, "there's always the chance that there might not be that much time." Finister suppressed a surge of rage-because she knew the man was right. Every day that passed increased the chance that Geoffrey might meet the wrong woman—wrong for Finister, anyway—and fall in love. He was at that atrociously dangerous age—one of the characteristics that made him so fascinating. He was twenty, which was old for a peasant to marry, just right for a lord. He might well hold onto bachelorhood for another ten years—or he might surrender it tomorrow.

"Don't worry," she assured Grommet, with her sweetest smile. "I can frustrate any romance he might develop and it's more fun after it's started. First I lead him into infidelity, then I make him forget the woman he thought he loved."

If that failed, of course, she had an excellent team of assassins, and though Geoffrey might have proved immune to them, his ladylove certainly would not.

"You failed today." Grommet was becoming reckless indeed, in his jealousy. "You might fail, period."

"Don't be ridiculous!" Finister snapped. "You know I would have had had him today, if it hadn't been for that blasted elf!" For a moment, she let her anger boil over, picturing the little fellow screeching through all manner of delightful torments, then shut the picture away with a shudder of pleasure and turned her mind back to Geoffrey, who quite frankly held much more of her attention than an enemy should. She would never admit it aloud, but she knew Grommet was right—Geoffrey was a tougher target than any she had ever faced. She would have to be very industrious in her seductions.

Well, she had failed to captivate him again—but it did not much matter that the elf had destroyed this opportunity for her. "I'll find another chance," she assured Grommet, "or make one."

Grommet knew she would. Finister excelled in the use of makeup, so none of the Gallowglasses had ever seen her in the same guise twice. A discerning eye could see which facial features Doll had in common with the Faerie Queene, or the Hag of the Tower, or La Belle Dame Sans Merci—but when she appeared to one of the Gallowglass boys, their minds were scarcely discerning.

"I'll meet Geoffrey Gallowglass again," she breathed, "in one disguise or another—and I'll know him when we meet, but he won't know me."