TRAVELLER'S JOY

  VICTORIA GODDARD

  Copyright © 2024 by Victoria Goddard

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Author’s Note

  1

  The door to the infirmary closed quietly behind the nurse, and Hal finally let himself relax.

  Not that Jemis, who was out cold under the nurse’s potent sleeping medication, would have cared in the least that Hal lost his composure, but—well, Hal did. He’d learned to hold himself with rather less rigidity than he’d been accustomed to, before Morrowlea, but always at the back of his mind was the knowledge that he was, regardless of Morrowlea’s egalitarian principles and policies, nevertheless an Imperial Duke.

  Very soon now that would come out.

  He took a turn around the private room—usually kept for faculty, but under the circumstances given over to poor Jemis—and frowned out the window at the students crossing the quadrangle. It was obvious that the happenings from yesterday’s viva voce examination were the object of much discussion: little knots and clusters of students of all years were forming and dissolving, their robes and hat-ribbons streaming in the day’s brisk breeze.

  Fine white clouds piled up, casting scudding shadows over the five great oak trees, the close-cropped lawn, the students. The faculty had withdrawn into their debating chambers, no doubt to discuss the appalling chaos of the end of the previous session.

  Hal was still wrestling with his own response. Why had he been the only one to go down, to stand with Jemis? Why had the rest of the watching students been so riled that they resorted to actual violence? Why had the faculty done nothing?

  Why had Jemis responded the way he had?

  Hal turned to his friend, who lay pale and bruised in the bed. It was a fortunate thing, the nurse had said solemnly, that the voting stones were mere pebbles. She’d been at Morrowlea a long time, and she had assured Hal that it was not the first time stones had been thrown in the examination hall. Not recently, and not very often at fellow students, admittedly, but it was not unknown.

  Hal placed that interesting fact into the part of his mind that was forever collecting information on how groups of people worked, and focused more on the present. Namely, that it was his friends and fellows who had responded to an admittedly impressive quarrel between two of their number by stoning his best friend.

  He rubbed at his ear, where a stray pebble had stung badly, and considered what he could and should and wanted to do.

  It was frustrating beyond all words that what he wanted to do was something he could do—technically, at least—and almost certainly what he should not do.

  He wanted to use every resource at his command to ruin Lark.

  He was the Imperial Duke of Fillering Pool, though no one but the university chancellor and her assistant (who handled student post in order to maintain their anonymity) knew it. He was the largest landowner in Northwest Oriole. He had many resources he could call on.

  He let himself imagine the sweet vindication involved. All the might of great wealth and power and lawyers and soldiers and royal relations and economic sanctions, all of them focused down on⁠—

  Unfortunately, that was the problem. All of them focused down on one young woman who had very carefully managed to cause devastating harm without actually breaking any law or even university statute.

  It was vastly aggravating.

  Hal and his friends had had many delightful conversations about tyranny and the rule of law and the aftermath of the destruction of the Empire of Astandalas, which all of them had lived through. They were the inheritors of what came after the collapse of the rule of law, and in Morrowlea where a radical idealism was carefully nurtured, where origin was supposed to be obscured so that personal merit could shine, there were many thoughts on the topic of good governance.

  As far as Hal knew, none of his fellow yearmates had quite the opportunity to set themselves up as a tyrant as he did. He could, actually and quite conceivably, decide to set himself up as the lord of a new empire.

  He’d had nightmares for years that someone—everyone—would call on him to reconquer the continent and do so. Never had it ever been quite so appealing as just this moment, when he knew Lark was going to get away with it.

  He made himself imagine what would happen if he did make use of all those resources to punish her. It would not, by definition, be just, because the situation was even now being considered by the university senate, and if they found her free of fault—as indeed they must, for Hal knew the statutes better than most, and had read them over again the past sleepless night, searching for some way Lark had misstepped, and knew she had not, curse her for the very brilliance that had drawn Jemis to her in the first place!

  If they found her free of fault, as they must, and if Hal nevertheless called up those resources for personal vengeance against a technically-innocent person, it would be a clear and true abuse of his power. And for all that Hal had gladly and fully devoted his scholarly activity to botany, he was well-versed in history. He knew what the next steps were for a great power who had decided to pursue personal vengeance over impartial justice. History was littered with the ruins they had left behind.

  He flung himself down in the chair beside the bed.

  Jemis was his best friend. But that did not make private vengeance right.

  At least Hal had not succumbed to whatever madness had infected everyone else—even Marcan!—and had been resolute in standing beside him.

  He rubbed his ear again, and forcibly pushed aside the visions of crushing Lark and all her family like one or other of his much more martial ancestors. Lark’s family were obviously not involved in the least. Hal was not the first or third or fourth or fifth duke—the second and sixth were not nearly as warlike as the others; or perhaps it was better to say their emperors hadn’t been—he was the seventh, and he had no emperor at all to order him to do anything, and so he had to make these decisions himself.

  He sighed again. What an end to his time at university, his chance to find out who he was when he wasn’t being the Duke. Turned out that despite being incognito he was still himself.

  Hal’s own final examination had proceeded without any drama whatsoever. He’d presented his final paper on the genus Ilex to decorous applause from the other natural philosophers and a good attempt at paying attention from the humanists, and returned to his seat with the satisfaction of a difficult task well done.

  The spectacular falling-out of Lark and Jemis the next day had been unexpected, to say the least. Hal could admit that he had not precisely liked Lark, and that he was altogether rather relieved that she would no longer be in Jemis’s (and consequently Hal’s) life. But he had not thought that she would …

  That she would use her final paper to hurt Jemis. Nor that Jemis, apparently pricked with personal allusions that no one else caught, would use the opportunity for student questions to demolish it.

  Nor that Lark would respond by goading the already-agitated and bewildered studentry to verbal and physical violence.

  Hal watched Jemis laying still under the influence of the sleeping draught, and went over the sequence of events yet again. Lark’s paper—on the House of Fame and why Major Jakory Greenwing should not be admitted to it. To Hal’s knowledge the Major was a great hero of the latter days of the Empire, and he was disturbed by the implications of the topic. Lark had spent a great deal of time on the purported treasonous actions of the major at Loe. Hal’s great-uncle, who had been a close friend as well as commanding officer to the major (and personally rescued by him after the disaster at Loe), would not be pleased by hearing of this slander.

  Something in that, something Hal did not know, had deeply offended Jemis.

  He stared at his friend, but could glean nothing from his form. Three years of close acquaintance had led them to a deep friendship, but Hal had never wanted to break Morrowlea’s dictum of relative anonymity by explaining his background as an Imperial Duke, and so he had never asked Jemis of his family situation, either.

  Jemis had already been pale-faced and distraught that morning. Hal had assumed this was on account of his own upcoming examination, which had been supposed to follow on Lark’s, but perhaps he and Lark had already broken things off before-hand.

  If they had not, Jemis’s actions were rather mystifying. Not worthy of being stoned, but … strange. He had said nothing against the subject. Instead he had deconstructed every flaw of logic and rhetorical fallacy Lark made, with even greater than his usual brilliance and entirely unusual viciousness.

  And if it had not been for the look in Lark’s eyes, the glitter not of tears but of malice, the shimmer of something that Hal was not quite certain was just her usual minor glamour to make herself more than usually attractive, the way she had so very deliberately and with calculated cruelty proceeded to manipulate her audience into actual deliberate violence…

  If it had not been for all that, Hal would have … would have … well, he would have questioned Jemis quite carefully as to where that highly unusual viciousness had come from.

  But there had been all that, and no matter the sharpness of Jemis’s criticisms, Lark’s response was inexcusable.
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br />   Hal did not like Lark, and never had. Jemis was his best friend.

  Hal was also an Imperial Duke, and had been since he was seven. He had fulfilled most of the duties since he was fourteen. He was quite accustomed to making judgments of people’s likely probity and honesty—and to cross-checking those judgments, too. Balancing three years of close acquaintance with the two would have led him to expecting a proper explanation from Jemis.

  But he was no authority here; had no authority here. No one bar the university chancellor and her assistant knew his rank and title. The Empire which had given him his jurisdiction was no more, and the lands he governed and ruled in his own right were far from here.

  Lark had done nothing wrong, according to the laws of West Erlingale and the statues of the university. She could choose whatever topic she pleased for her final paper, and she was studying Rhetoric: including hidden barbs could well be part of her assignment. The ensuing practical demonstration of demagoguery would probably garner her extra points.

  Jemis had done nothing wrong according to those same laws and statutes. The viva voce examinations were open to any questions, however sharp they might be.

  The students who had thrown their stones at him were … not Hal’s problem.

  The students who had sat there in stunned discomfort were … also not his problem, bar the half-dozen who were close friends and he would have thought were of stronger moral fibre than that.

  But it had all happened so quickly, at the end. Hal had never realized quite how quickly a situation could boil over from tense to disastrous.

  (He should have. He had lived through the Fall of the Empire of Astandalas. There had been tensions, of course there had been tensions, but the actual cataclysmic destruction had simply … happened. One day the great magical empire of five worlds was there. And then it wasn’t.)

  Hal got up from the chair and opened the window. He leaned out, breathing deeply of the fresh air. The oaks, which leafed out quite late, were still sheened with bronze; in the ivy running up the wall of the infirmary there were what seemed like dozens of sparrows. The little birds were chirping and twittering as they went in and out of their nests.

  He listened to the birds and rested his eyes on the soothing shapes of the great oaks. It was hard to bring his thoughts into order. His emotions were getting the better of him.

  Leaving aside thoughts of vengeance on Lark—who had, after all, been very soundly humiliated by Jemis’s attack on her paper, and Hal surely could content his ancestors with that (Jemis was not actually under his protection; not officially under the Duke’s)—what then?

  Jemis did not deserve to have to sit through the final weeks of examinations and merriment in the company of a group of students who had at best sat by while the rest literally stoned him.

  Hal did not much want to do so either. The fact that he’d been struck by only one of the voting pebbles was very likely due to magical protections against harm his mother had woven around him as a child.

  A knock roused him from his musings. He hesitated, glancing at the still-sleeping Jemis, and went to the door. He didn’t open it all the way, not even when he saw that it was Marcan who stood there. He raised his eyebrows at his friend.

  Marcan winced and looked down, visibly ashamed. He hadn’t been one of the ones throwing stones, but he hadn’t come down, either.

  “How is he?” he muttered.

  “About as well as can be expected,” Hal replied coolly.

  “May I come in?”

  “He’s resting. Sleeping draught.”

  “I wanted to talk to you, Hal. Please.”

  Hal sighed, then stepped back to let him in. Marcan was a large, rangy sort of young man, simultaneously extremely athletic and extremely devout. He’d made no secret of his plans to enter the Linder Church of the Lady as soon as he could. He’d probably be a fine country priest, Hal thought, if he found a living with good hunting and a few local sports teams.

  “I’ve been praying,” Marcan said, looking uneasily at Jemis. “I don’t like what happened.”

  “Nor do I.”

  “You stood by him.” His tone was bitter, self-accusing, and Hal found his own resentment easing, hearing the remorse in it. After a moment, Hal stepped forward, and placed his hand on Marcan’s shoulder.

  Marcan flicked a glance up at him, then focused on the quietly breathing Jemis. There were a couple of shadowy bruises on his jaw, but they would be quick to fade. The bruises to his heart and spirit would not.

  “I didn’t come down,” Marcan said finally, quietly, low. “I should have—I know I should have—I knew I should have—but I didn’t.”

  Jemis would bear the wounds of the day before for a long time, but so too all those who had suddenly been faced with their own reactions to injustice, and been found wanting.

  There was not much Hal could say. He had been taught, trained, to stand by his own convictions. He’d been raised on stories of heroism and gallantry (to counteract, no doubt, all those historical examples of imperial dukes past). But he’d never had such a test before, either.

  “What do you think we should do now?” Marcan asked, and then went on, with a restless gesture. “I was thinking we—we three, if you and he will have me—we could go on our walking tour anyway.” He hesitated. “My family is in central Lind.”

  This was crossing a line. Technically there was nothing against saying what kingdom or region you were from, but in practice students who came to Morrowlea came so that they could leave behind their families and their status with their surnames. High or low was not supposed to matter, at Morrowlea.

  It did, of course, Hal knew that all too well. Half the students at Morrowlea were paying their way; half were scholarship students. Those could be from any stratum of society, theoretically, but in practice those who did best at the Entrance Examinations were those who had the best education. It was impossible not to wonder, from time to time.

  “Mine’s further north,” Hal said after a moment, tacitly agreeing to this next step, to continuing on as friends after they left the protected terrarium of university life.

  North of Lind covered Ronderell, northern Fiellan, the Tarvenol peninsula, the Outer Reaches, and Orio City, which last was probably where Marcan assumed Hal was from, given his unavoidably aristocratic appearance.

  His accent said as much, anyway, though it sounded educated Rondelan rather than anything regional. It was—not exactly a coincidence, but nevertheless a convenience that educated Rondelan was based on the elocution of the students of Odlington in Fillering Pool, which was under the aegis of the Imperial Dukes of Fillering Pool and Hal’s own school. Thus it was his regional accent, in a way.

  Jemis had a southern Fiellanese accent, though he’d never acknowledged anything beyond ‘Fiellan’. He had a stepfather, who travelled, and several younger sisters, and both his biological parents were dead. That was about all Hal knew about his family.

  That was all he needed to know.

  All Jemis knew about Hal was that he was from the north, that he had a twin sister, that his father was dead, that he had a lot of correspondence—and whatever he’d guessed from accent and appearance and habitus, when they first arrived in Morrowlea, when Hal had hardly known anything.

  At some point Hal would have to explain he was the Imperial Duke. He wasn’t looking forward to it, particularly. Not for Marcan, who would be pleased enough for the acquaintance but was unlikely to presume upon it. But Jemis … Jemis had opinions about the aristocracy. Even worse, he had ideals.

  He became aware that Marcan was mumbling prayers again. When Hal looked more attentively at him, his friend stopped, sighed, and said, “Did the physician say when he’d be cleared to go?”

  “Day after tomorrow, the nurse said,” Hal replied.

  Marcan nodded. “Will you speak to the Chancellor, or shall I? Or we could go together.”

  “She’ll still be in council with the Senate, I expect.”

  “Tomorrow, then. Once they’ve announced their verdict.”

  “Lark’ll get off,” Hal said dully, gesturing at the statutes. “She didn’t do anything wrong, technically. Fortunately, neither did Jemis.”