Longlight woke up in darkness. She blamed the last glass of brandy—one of them, at least—rolled over in the soft, warm bed and went back to sleep.
It happened at least twice more before her sense told her it could not still be the black middle of the night. It had, after all, been the middle of the night when she’d gone to bed.
She sat partway up. It hadn’t been cold enough to close the bed curtains, and over the footboard she could see a brilliant streak of light on the floor, leaking under the heavy drapes. The sunlight was from rather a high angle. She found the bedside lamp and turned its switch. Electrical plumbing (was that what they called it?) was another thing she needed more of at home, along with hot water; no burnt fingers on dark mornings. The clock read a quarter to eleven. She sighed and forced herself awake and out of bed, grabbing at her robe; then the quiet of the room reminded her of the nature of Strange House, and she relaxed, went without hurry to shower and dress.
She dressed relaxed as well: a loose shirt of blue-gray linen, belted over black trousers that she tucked into her everyday boots. In the hallway outside her room, she paused to admire a beautiful scale model in a glass case, a two-horse coach. Her suspicion that it was the coach that had brought them from the station was confirmed when she saw Roan’s name worked into the doorframe, in minute letters.
It was a bright day, and the halls were sun-warmed. The second-floor breakfast room was flooded with light; it was empty, though she could smell hot bacon. The two double doors to the terrace were open.
Birch appeared in a doorway, a great black silhouette in his plain black gown. “Goddess’s morning to you, Longlight. And it is Her own day out there. Will you please to join us?”
The terrace was built on top of the bay window of the great hall. A waist-high stone railing ran around the outer edges, and wooden poles supported a canvas sunshade, though it was rolled back now and the sun was in glory. A table was set out, with a silver tea service and a partly covered basket of muffins. Strange, in a dark red gown, sat at the breakfast table; Dany, who wore a loose golden robe, was wiping what seemed to be a bit of honey from Strange’s sleeve. A covered service cart was to one side; Birch lifted the lid. “We still have some kippers and bacon, and plenty of muffins. Would you like eggs?”
“Yes.”
Birch leaned through the door. “Gaily, dear,” he called, and a moment later a tall, thin woman in a white apron appeared. She seemed to be floating above the floor; she was almost frighteningly animated. “Morning, morning, Lady. So it’s eggs, then? How shall they be?”
“Just shirred would be fine.”
“No cheese? No mushrooms? And there’s a lovely bit of salmon.”
“The salmon, thank you.”
“And then surely a little green onion.” Gaily’s smile and tone made green onion seem a treasure from afar.
“I leave it to you,” Longlight said.
Gaily laughed aloud. “Leave it to me, now really. Well, I’ll wrestle it out as I can, thank you, milady.” She floated away.
Strange said, “The story is that, as a baby, she was named Grace, in hope. Then for her first half year she never smiled nor giggled. I think her parents were too worried to notice if she was developing any graces or not. The priest said, ‘Call her Gaily. It can’t harm, and if she doesn’t laugh by her first birthday, we’ll try Grace again.’ You can see the result.”
Birch pulled back a chair for Longlight. “Naming babies is a more daunting prospect than most people imagine. I’ve been asked only twice.”
Longlight said, “How did it go?”
“Oh, one’s eyes made him a Bluely for certain, and the other seemed to like Pineblossom. Fortunately I’m a country priest. If people want a Quercian name, or Pandekt, or something from literature, they usually manage on their own.” He paused, thoughtful. “Strange, is there one of those Ancient Names and Their Meanings books around somewhere?”
“That should be in the downstairs annex. Or else upper west. Black or green tea, Longlight?”
“Black, please. No milk. Is there honey?”
“Certainly. And we still have muffins with bacon, apricot, and—no, the brown bread are gone.”
“Oh.…”
“One of each, then. We probably won’t have a formal lunch today. Hard to say when anyone else will be awake.”
“I’m not the last one up, then.”
Strange laughed. “Reccan’s about somewhere; she hardly needs sleep at all. But certainly not Varic or Winterhill. Edaire and Silvern, well—I don’t expect to see them before dinner, and possibly not until tomorrow.” Strange’s smile made the point without any hint of the improper.
Dany passed the butter and honey. A breeze rustled the canvas shade, and somewhere a bird sang. Across the courtyard, in the lake, as predicted, Agate’s ice sculpture was entirely gone.
Gaily danced onto the terrace, bearing a covered platter. She whisked away the lid, and a cloud of scent, sharp and delicate, drifted up from the eggs with salmon. They glistened and shivered on the plate, rosy and golden.
Birch held his breath, said, “Thunder and boom. Dany, give me a muffin quick, before—”
“The hens won’t miss them,” Gaily said, “and the salmon’s past caring.”
“Oh—I suppose if you would, Gaily—”
Gaily said to Longlight, “You can give him a taste if he starts to pace and fret, but don’t you wait him, or yours’ll go cold, and he’ll wait your seconds, and we’ll be up to our eyes in cold fish and eggs.” And she was gone again.
Longlight said to Birch, “Would you like some?”
“It would … be good for me to wait.”
Strange was laughing silently, rocking in his chair, holding Dany’s hand.
Longlight tasted her breakfast. It was, for just a moment, disappointing; nothing short of transcendence could have followed that presentation. But it was good beyond any question, the onion unobtrusive below the smoky-sharp fish. Bread crumbs, soft without being mushy, gave it texture, and there were at least two more ingredients she didn’t wish to stop and identify.
Next to her, Birch ate a bacon muffin without any butter, sitting up straight in his chair. His eyes gave him away, though.
Longlight saw him, then, as he must have been when young: a big, happy boy, from a happy world where his size and gentleness did not mark him out as a fool or worse. Perhaps he had been scraped a little by the inevitable, meaningless cruelties of childhood, but not scarred by them.
As Gaily delivered Birch’s plate, Strange said, “Longlight, do you still wish to play battleboard at four?”
“Of course.”
“Then I will see you then if not before. Remember that the House and grounds are yours: if there’s anything you desire, ask, and someone will find someone who’ll try to remember where to find it.” Dany pushed him back into the House.
Birch said, “I need to get some things from the Dark Room, for tomorrow. It would be nice to have someone else along. Would you care to come with me?”
“The Dark Room? Why—yes, I will.”
“I will appreciate it. Do finish your breakfast. There’s no hurry.”
So they had more tea, and shared the last apricot muffin. Gaily did come back to check that more eggs weren’t needed; told no, she rolled the serving cart away, singing something about an Ironway motive, with a great deal of “Huff, huff, chuff!” on the chorus.
Birch said, “Shall we go?”
They walked down the central stairs, the ones circling the lift—Birch said, “I prefer to leave the car wherever Strange did”—to the lowest level, and went through the door that did not lead to the arenetto. It opened onto a short corridor, lit adequately by glasswicks. Birch opened the first door on the right, held it for Longlight. As she passed, he produced a large bronze ring with three keys. Two were large but conventional finger bones; the third was about a span long, with a complex, slotted web.
Beyond the door was a rather small room, a little larger than one of the apartment parlors upstairs. It was lined with maple bookcases, from just above knee height to the low ceiling. Below the books was a bronze band, deeply cut with a knot pattern, and below that old, dark leather wainscoting. On the far wall, a glass case held a collection of coins displayed on plum-colored velvet. In the middle of the room were a large, soft chair and footrest covered in green plush, with a little bronze side table and a standing lamp.
It was a cozy little study, but it certainly was no Dark Room. Unless—Longlight looked closely at some of the books: masonry, gardening, history of arms and armor.
Birch said, “This is the annex library. Remind me to look for that names book when we come back out.”
“Out?”
Birch grinned, a boy full of mischief, and knelt by the left-hand wall. He ran his fingers along the metal band, then took out the large key. Its web fit into a bit of the engraved pattern. Birch pushed it into the slot, turned it firmly. Within the wall, there was a series of muffled ratchetings, like a clock winding up to strike. Then came a sort of brazen groan. Birch withdrew the key, hooked his fingertips beneath the bookcase, and swung a section of the wall outward.
Longlight said, “I think I’m impressed.”
Birch grinned broader yet. “It’s something of a joke. There are a number of secret places and trick panels in the House, but none of them are very sinister. No peepholes in the bedrooms and baths, I assure you. Strange calls it the House’s sense of humor. This way.”
A shelf just inside the hidden door held some small lanterns and a box of phosphors. Birch struck a fire and lit two lamps, giving one to Longlight.
They were at the end of a hallway not much more than a step wide and barely higher than Birch’s head. The walls were rough mortared stone; every few steps there was a wooden arch with an iron lamp hook. The floor was smooth concrete. The air was quite cool and fresh, with a faint draft in their faces.
Longlight said, “Are there set traps?”
Birch laughed. “No. But mind how you go; the walls scrape hard, as I’ve reason to know.”
Longlight counted thirty of her own paces, just over twenty-five steps of measure, and four of the wooden arches. Then the hall turned right and ended in an alcove housing a large iron door that looked stout enough for the National Treasury.
Birch put a hand against the iron door, turned the heavy key ring over in his big hand. “Has Strange told you about this place? Not the Room, I mean, but the place it occupies?”
“No.”
“When the House was being built, the crew digging the foundation broke into an underground chamber. The entrance had caved in, and there were two skeletons inside. It had been a sacred place, and a Seer’s Seat. Eventually the local records were located—this was two hundred years ago, of course, and Corons weren’t answerable to Parliament for this sort of thing—and it was worked out that the occupants were a priest and acolyte who’d disappeared about four hundred fifty years before the picks opened things up. The papers are in the House, if that sort of thing interests you.”
“Is it still a Seat?”
“No. The lines of power are long broken. And the temple,” he said, his voice even and calm and serious, “was one of those old faiths that any conscientious priest counsels against and the law sometimes has to forbid. However: I know of no danger within, physical or sorcerous.”
“I see,” she said, feeling a very small chill.
“I’ve been thinking on this ever since you asked about traps. Spiritual danger is harder to define than a crossbow and trip wire, but I don’t think you’re either weak of spirit or lightly suggestible. I tell you this because you ought to know it, not because there’s anything you should fear.”
“My own house has a Dark Room,” she said. She did not say that it was at the center of a dank stone maze, purpose-built by her ancestors, and that a duty of every Coron of her line was to design a new scheme of death traps around the Room.
Birch nodded. “Usually Strange keeps the keys, of course. In Dany’s country they have something like our Rooms, a house in every town, called the end house. But only a priest may go there, and afterward, the priest has to walk around town for half a day, so that any Demons following will lose interest. Our ways are hard for her, sometimes; it’s her duty, as she sees it, to be with Strange, but when he goes to the Dark Room, well, that’s the End House and she can’t enter.
“But things fit together, in their own ways. In Nisimene, a very wise person may have the status of a priest, though the sage—they’re called Sky’s-Bridges—never claim such status, if you follow that. Agate pointed out to Dany that Strange was without question a Sky’s-Bridge, and that put everything in place.”
He put one of the smaller keys into a hole central on the iron door. There was a click, loud, but rather anticlimactic. He pushed the door open, with a visible effort. “Go in; the door is sprung to close.”
She did so. Her lantern lit up a dancing skeleton, and she caught her breath. It was a painting on the wall, in colors that must once have been very bright. One bony hand held a jester’s taddelix, shaking the clappers; the other pointed the way ahead. The bones were followed by flesh, a long line of people dancing after. Their clothes were of the earliest Midreigns and represented the whole world: nobles and beggars, bailiffs and thieves, priests and dung-rakers, a sorcerer wreathed in thunderheads and a child clutching a toy horse. Longlight moved her light, following the mural procession halfway around the room. They were all the living, of course, on their way to the end. When the march was staged for festivals, the people in costume were called Mori dancers.
The dancing-master Death was wrapped in a white ribbon with an inscription: the letters were antique and faded past legibility, but Longlight knew what it said:
Who or why or when or whether,
You and I shall dance together.
The door closed with a boom and a click. Birch held up the two small keys on the ring. “One to enter, the other to leave. So you know.” She nodded. In her memory, the traps in her own house had never caught anyone, but they were lethal enough. A Dark Room was the spiritual drain of its house, the place where rage and terror, all the nightside emotions, collected. If one believed there to be any reality to that, the Room had to be guarded by real force.
Birch set his lantern into a polished metal bowl, filling the room with hazy light. The chamber was an imprecise circle six or seven steps across. About half the circumference was plastered, with the Mori mural painted on; the rest was raw stone, with alcoves and ledges holding idols of stone and metal and ancient wood. At the center of the room was a stone chair with a low back, carved and pierced over its whole surface. Soft metal had been hammered into the grooves. It was a kind of work old before the Quercians had developed any thought of building an empire; before they had learned to build boats.
Birch bent before a heavy wooden cabinet, opened the doors. Inside were shelves, holding at least ten objects wrapped in velvet. He carefully drew out two of them, placed them on the top of the box. One was flat, the other narrow. The cloth wrapping them was old, though not seriously worn; it had faded to a dusty rose color, from either crimson or purple.
Birch closed the cabinet doors. “Take a look,” he said. “I won’t unwrap them again until tomorrow in the Bright Room.”
He folded back the velvet from the flat object. It was a disk of metal, with inlays of wood and stone veneer around the edge. At the center, a circle of the underlying metal had been polished to what must once have been mirror brightness, though now it was gray and hazy. The long wrapper contained a tray displaying a short sword, no longer than Birch’s forearm. It had a broad, double-edged blade with a triangular point, in dull gray metal that was glass-smooth, a crude design executed with great smithing skill. The hilt was in the same fashion: a heavy metal T that would have been hopelessly clumsy to hold in a fight, but was crisply and carefully worked, with unfaceted gems, like fat drops of colored water, set precisely into the metal.
“When I was twelve,” Birch said, “some people from another town brought my father one like this; it had been damaged, I don’t know how. They may never have said.”
“He must have been a very fine smith.”
“No, he wasn’t. He was a good worker, you understand, but he was just an ordinary ironsmith, never did jewelry work, nor even weapons, beyond sharpening a soldier’s bayonet or little knives like mine. But they insisted, and left it with him. He stood in the smithy, looking at it, and said—I was there with him, but he wasn’t talking to me—‘I don’t even know how to pray for the mending.’ And I said—something said—‘It is a work for Coris, because the sword is no longer a thing of mortals, but of Nature.’
“He called Coris to guide him at the forge, and he mended the sword. He said later, ‘They won’t break it again, I’m sure of that.’ We didn’t talk about it for almost three years.” He wrapped the cloth around the sword again, folding and tucking it with care. “Twelve to fifteen is a long time not to talk about a thing like that.”
Longlight said, “Did it happen again? The—”
He looked down at the scroll box. “Yes. She spoke to me again. And when I was fifteen, we went to talk to our priest—her name was Enolesia, which if your Pandekt won’t stretch, I won’t explain—and, well, now I am bound for Capel Storrow.”
“What does the Imagery’s name mean?” she said, hearing her voice echo off the stone walls.
“Oh, it was ‘Sorrow’ originally. A few hundred years ago, someone tried to soften it with a hard sound.”
His voice was hollow and ringing as well. Longlight looked up from his hands, lightly resting on the sword tray, to his eyes. For a moment they seemed to flash. She thought of Varic’s eyes, in the whip of lights past the train window. The skin of her palms felt tight, and she thought of dark rooms, of mazes and set traps. She could hear the bowstring snap. She could feel the trip weight fall, its cord running in the sheave—
Suddenly Birch had his arm around her, holding her up. The sword and mirror were wrapped and tucked under his left arm. “It’s all right,” he said. “It happens. We’ll go now.”
When the lamp was removed from the reflector, the Dark Room was suddenly very black indeed. The iron door closed behind them, and they went back up the tunnel, followed by shadow.
They emerged into the book-lined room. Reccan was curled up snug in the green chair; the lamp threw a bright circle on the book in her lap. Another half dozen books were stacked in easy reach. She turned pages carefully, but with remarkable speed, gobbling down words by the plateful.
As Birch shut the concealed door, Reccan turned to smile at them. She held up a finger, pointed at a spot along the shelves, moved her hand in Dr. Soonest’s sign, and then went back to her furious reading.
Birch went to the indicated spot, counted books. “Twelve, thirteen—ah. Thank you, Reccan.” She waved without looking up, as Birch pulled Names: Their Voices from the shelf. Without further sound, they left the annex.
As they climbed the stairs, Longlight said, “I suppose she’s only recently learned to read.”
“That is so. Did Varic tell you?”
“Winterhill did.… Seeing her like that, going through the books … she made me want to—to catch up. To not waste time.”
“I think time is hard to truly waste,” Birch said. “What Reccan learned from the book of streets and darkness saved Winterhill’s life, as he will explain to you if you ask, and through that she was rescued. Play keeps us happy and agile, in mind and muscle; sleep and good meals keep us alive. We can misspend time—hurting people, ourselves included, making the world worse—but to ‘waste’ time—to get no motion at all, good or bad—to do that one would have to be not alive at all. Which, if you like, makes any untimely death the worst of wastes.”
“Yes, I see,” she said. “And Winterhill did tell me, about the tavern.”
“Not a pretty story. But the spoon was what she had to hand, and a man will guard his eyes over almost any other threat.” He stopped climbing then, looked her straight in the face; she realized that her mouth was open wide, and shut it. “I may have gotten the story wrong,” Birch said with a distinct mildness, “and of course Winterhill was there, and I was not.”
They paused at the first-floor landing. Birch said, “I shall take these upstairs. I’ll see you at dinner, if not before.”
“In your way,” she said without thinking, but Birch just smiled and said, “And in yours.”
She waited in the entrance hall until Birch’s steps had died away above. She thought about hunting through one of the libraries, then decided that she still wanted someone’s company. She went upstairs to the breakfast room. Winterhill was there, spreading strawberry jam thickly on a muffin. A pile of bacon was to one side, a pitcher of apple juice to the other. He was wearing a purple dressing gown over a collarless white shirt and loose black trousers, stockings, and backless leather slippers. “Another survivor,” he said. “Will you join me?”
“I’ve—”
Before she could finish, Gaily had appeared. “Yes, honored? What else would please you?”
“Just some black tea and honey, thank you. And another glass, if Winterhill will offer some of his juice?”
“By all means,” Winterhill said. He watched Gaily leave, and said, “I begin to think my lady Coron would have me say something improper.”
“Would it be so … difficult?”
“It would be the easiest thing in the world.” He took a large bite of his jam muffin, chewed meaningfully, swallowed as punctuation. “And having the swindler’s expert distrust of easy things, I shall allow it to get … more difficult.”
“I have something more difficult to ask you, then.”
“I am also extremely lazy. But please ask.”
“I’m playing battleboard later today. Reccan’s playing as well. Could you teach me some of the manual speech?”
“School opens as soon as I finish my bacon. Kindly press the bell for Gaily, and I shall obtain something to keep my throat damp while I harangue you.”
She did, and another pitcher of cider arrived. Winterhill cleaned his lips and fingers, sat forward in his chair, and pushed his shirt cuffs back with a fine flourish.
“First, inflection. You usually flash an inflection sign before a statement, though it can come anywhere. Experienced speakers can get a lot from where they put the stress flash. Now, hold your hand flat, fingers together. Yes. That means a plain flat statement. You can get away without it. Fan your fingers for imperative or emphasis—you can just gesture emphatically, but if you just use the hand, no one else will know you’re shouting. Hand like this for a question. And this”—he tapped his first two fingers against his thumb, twice quickly—“is sarcasm: I mean the reverse of what I’m saying. Now that you know this one, watch for it: sometimes signers who can speak use the gestures as well. I imagine you can think of one or two uses for that.”
“I can.”
Winterhill nodded. “Then on to some basic vocabulary.…”
The battleboard room was on the ground floor, near the arenetto. It was windowless, but lit brilliantly by glasswicks in a hanging fixture of polished brass and green glass.
The board itself was a wooden box a span deep, two steps across, and six long; it was on heavy wooden supports bolted with iron, to support the considerable weight of the sand that filled it. There was plenty of space all around the board, with side tables, paper and pencils, rolling carts to hold the miniature armies, and storage cabinets all along one wall. At either end was a door to a small side chamber, so the players could confer out of the enemy’s hearing.
Except for the electrical light, the room was very much like the one at her own home. She remembered what Strange had said, about playing with her uncle and aunt, and wondered if the similarity was just a coincidence.
Tacker was standing behind Strange’s chair, wearing a white shirt, black canvas trousers, and a black vest with pockets for her cheroots and phosphors. Her hair was pulled back and tied casually with a leather braid. She seemed completely at ease.
Reccan was crouching beside the playing table, to see it from a trooper’s eye level. She wore a loose tunic of green and gold flannel patches, with a sleeve pocket to hold her writing pad, narrow trousers, and deerskin boots laced up her calves.
Varic was in shirtsleeves, with a canvas shoulder satchel for his measuring tapes, cards, and other game equipment. He said, “It is a lovely spring day in our constantly embattled little nation.” He pointed to a village of model buildings set up about a third of the way from one end of the table. Roads led from the town center to all four edges of the board; a river of blue glass, the sand carefully brushed into its banks, curved around the village in an L. “The stalwart footmen of the Blue Army are valiantly defending this small but important crossroads against the dashing cavaliers of the Gold Army, which I’m sure has a perfectly legitimate claim to its annexation. That concludes the political portion of the game. Since this is Blue’s country, they will be allowed to see … well, at least the principal elements of Gold, and then prepare their defenses at least partially concealed.”
Varic went to one of the wheeled carts, rolled it away from the wall. Miniature infantry and cavalry, painted in shades of gold and bronze and tan, stood ranked upon it. “Strange, Tacker, these are your initial forces. Your maps show the limits on placement. Reinforcements as yet unscouted by the defenders—if any”—he arched his eyebrows and smiled—“will be stored in the top drawer of the cart. Reccan, Longlight, your army is waiting in that conference room, same arrangement. After examining the table, you may wish to look it over and make some preliminary dispositions, and then come back to watch the enemy approach. I am, of course, at your service for any questions.” He went to the side of the room, poured himself a glass of tea.
Looking from the defenders’ end of the board “north” to where Gold would come from: there were hills to the east, built up from sand supported by slabs of wood a finger thick. A long, narrow, razorbacked ridge ran along the east side main road north, the road that would have to be the enemy’s main avenue of approach. At the river just before it entered the cluster of buildings, the road crossed a substantial bridge, of wood carved and painted as stone. Across the river to the northwest of the village was a wooded area, perhaps a hundred tiny wooden trees leafed with green sponge. On the village’s west side, the river was crossed only by a small wooden bridge that looked too small to bear cavalry. The stream banks around it, however, were shallow, and Longlight supposed that the river was fordable there.
Looking at the hills and the sculpted crossing, Longlight had a sudden, deep, pleasant thought of Varic working at the board, sometime in the dark hours of last night, his shoes discarded in a corner, his sleeves rolled up, shaping the sand with careful, patient strokings of his fingers.
Longlight made the sign for Go? and without a blink Reccan gestured Certainly. They went into the side room, where maps and blank pads for orders were laid out neatly on a table.
Their army, painted in shades of blue, with white facings and silver metal, stood neatly ranked on one of the rolling carts. They looked very trim in their upright pewter ranks, and their regal-blue banners had tassels of fine silk thread, but there were disappointingly few of them: perhaps half as much infantry as had been visible on the Gold cart; two squadrons of horse, one with muskets, one without; a single horse-drawn artillery piece, with its powder wagon; and an “organ gun,” essentially a row of muskets bolted to a wagon and rigged to fire simultaneously, after which it was useless for the fifteen or twenty minima necessary to reload and prime all the barrels. They were sometimes called bridge guns, because the one place they could be useful was at points where the enemy had to crowd together—as at bridges. Longlight picked up the model—carefully, by its wooden base—and said, “I suppose we know where this goes.”
Reccan grinned and nodded. She was running her hands over the maps, tracing out possible lines of enemy approach. She tapped her knuckles on the long ridge that paralleled the main road into town, then made the sign for an exclamation.
Longlight was confused for a moment, trying to interpret the sign; she felt inarticulate, rather painfully stupid. Then she said, “Surprise?”
Yes.
“There aren’t any gaps at all in that ridge, are there? Our maps should show them even if theirs don’t.”
None. Then Reccan pointed to a notch in the far side of the ridge, something like a fishhook, open toward the town.
It was clear enough: troops hiding in the hook would be invisible to an advancing force at least until they were alongside—possibly, with care and luck, the ambush could go undetected until the Gold Army was entirely past, ready to be taken from behind.
“That would be a fine spot for the mounted muskets. There’s no way back, of course—if we send them and Gold doesn’t come that way, they’ll miss the whole battle. And we’ll surely miss them.”
Reccan picked up one stand of the sword-armed cavalry, just two figures on a slab, and put it down on the ambush notch.
“Good. Write the order.” Such a tiny force couldn’t do much damage, but they could almost certainly stay unseen until the best moment; a charge then would produce enough confusion and noise to alert the defenders in town to enemy beyond the ridge.
Longlight looked at the other approach to town, the small bridge and ford over the western bend of the river. To the north was a fairly large woods. Outnumbered forces had been using forests to cover ambushes ever since there had been warfare; but, much as with the ridge, any troops they sent there would be far away on the wrong side of the river when the attacking forces reached the town.
The town was what counted; Varic had made that clear. But unless the estimate of enemy strength was wildly off—or there were some hidden factor, as if the Gold Army were green recruits who would panic and run at the first shots—there didn’t seem to be any way of stopping them outside the town.
Longlight looked at the map again, at the spot where the bridge and ford were marked. It was an exceptionally small bridge, and would certainly be a bottleneck for infantry, but the horse would simply ride through the shallows—
Longlight banged her fingertip on the bridge. Reccan looked at it. Carefully, Longlight gestured her idea. When she was finished, Reccan took hold of her hand and adjusted its position. Then she took a pad and wrote, in her rapid and precise hand:
I DO NOT THINK IT WOULD BE A GOOD IDEA TO GIVE THE ENEMY HORSES A BATH JUST NOW. BUT MEETING THEIR CAVALRY AT THE FORD IS AN EXCELLENT THOUGHT. VARIC DID SAY IT WAS SPRING.
They sat down to write their orders.
About a quarter of an hour later, Varic knocked at the doorway. “Gold have deployed, if you would care to see.”
Gold cavalry were on the north road, beginning about half a span south of the edge of the table. They were in column of fours, six ranks deep. Behind the metal figures, stretching past the end of the long ridge, were wooden blocks the size of figure bases. Some were painted with symbols, the inverted V for horse and the slashed circle that was an infantryman’s weapon and shield; others were blank. They represented troops too far away to precisely identify—or rumors of troops who were not there at all.
Varic said, “Do you wish to make any changes to your orders?”
“I believe not.” Longlight looked at Reccan, who nodded in agreement. They had known the enemy must come down the road; there was nothing surprising in the way they came. At least, not yet.
Tacker pushed Strange into their planning room. Reccan retrieved the Blue Army on its cart. Longlight handed the Blue deployment plans to Varic, and he began checking the table to see what troops might be visible to the Gold vanguard. He took sightings with a long white stick, marked with the distances of movement and ranges of shot.
Reccan pointed to the ambush notch on the east side of the ridge. Varic turned slightly away, as if to hide his smile, and said, “They see no one yet. It’s a comfortable spot to wait, though. I’ll ask you both to step out for a moment, now.”
In the side room, Reccan wrote, DO YOU THINK THEIR HORSE ARE ALL ON THE ROAD AFTER ALL?
“Not at all. They’d be mad to cram them all onto that bridge, even with our weakness in guns.”
When Varic called them back, he had placed a few of their advance infantry at the tiny west-side bridge, and indeed the first ranks of Gold cavalry were visible, circling around the woods toward the ford. Some Blue blocks were placed about the town—less than half of them, Longlight noticed, representing real troops. The position of the organ gun was marked only by an artillery symbol.
Varic said, “Does anyone wish to give an immediate fire order?”
Tacker conferred with Strange. She crouched at the end of the table, looking toward the stone bridge and the possible gun beyond it, squinting one eye and rolling up the cheroot in the corner of her mouth. Finally she said, “No.”
“No,” Longlight said.
“Very well,” Varic said, and began moving troops.
For three moves, very little happened. The advance column of Gold cavalry drew closer to the town, but it was a long road, and they were still too far away to charge.
Varic paused, scribbled a note, handed it to Longlight.
TWO RANKS OF HORSE, TWO ABREAST, HAVE JUST PASSED YOUR SCOUTS BEYOND THE RIDGE.
She showed the note to Reccan, who held up two fingers. Varic nodded.
“Why not?” Longlight said.
Varic took four cavalry from the Gold cart and placed them on the table, just beyond the notch. Then he placed two Blue horses behind the Gold. “Move to impact,” he said, and handed Longlight a leather case.
She uncased the battle gauge, then paused to look at it. Like any gauge, it had movable slides, marked in red and black and gold for troop types and strength; the player adjusted it for the numbers engaged in combat, moved the bottom slide according to a die roll or card play, and read off the result. But usually they were made of printed cardboard, the fanciest just paper glued to wood. This one was of fine hardwood, with brass ferrules, with the slides running in milled tracks, not just butted together. The markings were engraved and filled with colored ink.
She turned the gauge over. Neatly inked letters signed it PLUMB.
She said, “This is a remarkable piece of work.”
“So is Plumb,” Tacker said. “Though he doesn’t see the guests much. Shy, a bit, and always busy. This is a big house. But he’ll be happy to hear you liked his gauge, if I may tell him so.”
“By all means do.”
Varic produced a walnut dice box, a tray lined with padded green felt, with a rack of ivory dice to the side. He held it out to Reccan, who selected a die.
Longlight set the gauge—working a bit slowly, just to feel the fine motion of it—and Reccan tossed the die. It showed a 6. Longlight adjusted the gauge and handed it to Varic.
“Definitely a rout,” Varic said, to no one’s great surprise.
A 1 meant the troops had been little short of cowardly, a 6 called for medals all around. Each side also had five cards, numbered 1 to 6, held apart. At any time, instead of a random roll, a player could instead choose one of those numbers—but those, once used, were gone. When to play the 6 could be a crucial matter of strategy. The 1 and 2 were not often used, but there were ploys that called for an attack to falter, and draw a counterattack into a trap.
The Gold troopers fled off the east edge of the board. They might rally and return later, though in this case it could not make much difference. Longlight said, “Who else is there?”
“No one that your people can see,” Varic said. “Apparently just a scouting expedition.”
One of the staff brought tea, and they paused for a cup. Everyone sat but Reccan, who kept circling the table, taking sightings.
Strange said, “There’s an old story that the Royal Marshal, being told that his officers were playing a game, stamped into the room proposing to, quote, hang the one most culpable and sack the remainder. But he saw the board and the pieces, and immediately ordered that every fortress in Lescoray should have a set.”
Longlight said, “Which Marshal?”
“Oh,” Strange said innocently, “knowing that would quite spoil the story.”
A few moves after play resumed, more Gold cavalry appeared to the west of the woods, north and west of the bridge and ford. Longlight moved some of their musket-armed infantry across the bridge and waited. It could have been another feint, a few horse to distract them.
It wasn’t. Varic placed a column of fours eight ranks deep on the packed sand, wheeling round the edge of the forest.
“Well, then,” Longlight said, and Reccan made a sign that probably meant much the same thing. “Form line, three ranks deep,” and Varic brought out more miniatures to follow the command.
“Fire by introduction,” Longlight said, loud enough to bring Tacker’s head up sharply. But she was grinning around her cheroot, and said right back, “It’s to them or tail-for-home now, braves—Flag Centurion, sound the charge!”
Varic put down a line of cotton, stained gray to represent gun smoke, as the front rank of Blue musketeers fired. Tacker set her gauge, and Reccan rolled a 4. Two horsemen vanished from the charging column.
The rear rank of musketeers advanced through the just-fired line, prepared to shoot while the others reloaded. Fire by introduction was a continuous process of load, advance, fire in alternate lines, so that the battle line was continuously firing and continuously rolling forward.
Each wave of fire picked another one or two riders from the front of the column. Varic said, “Test for losses.”
Strange said, “Use the six,” and Tacker drew the high card from their packet.
“Their nerve holds,” Varic said, and moved the charging horse the last distance to contact with the musketeers. “Test for impact.”
Longlight looked at their own packet of cards, then pointed at the main deck, making a question sign to Reccan. She nodded and tossed the die. It came up 3.
Varic checked his tables. “The infantry hold. This is going to be rather vicious.” Battle gauges were set, dice were rolled. To no great surprise, almost the whole first line of musketeers went down under the impact of charging horse. Musket fire was not allowed at close quarters—it was in fact almost impossible to reload muskets when so engaged—and given roughly equal numbers now, the advantages of height and mass would tell. The remainder of the second and third ranks of infantry broke and ran. Varic pointed with his measuring stick toward the far end of the table. “They won’t make a sharp left turn to enter the town. Straight back; you’ll have a chance to rally them before they leave the board.”
Longlight said, “Contingency order.”
Reccan handed an order slip to Varic, who read it with interest, then put it on his tray of equipment without further response. He said to Tacker, “Follow-through move,” and measured out the advance of the victorious cavalry.
“Left wheel and form line,” Tacker said, “and then across the river.”
Varic adjusted the formation of the Gold horsemen. Then he put the powder wagon model on the table, at the end of the narrow footbridge. “With a suicidal effort, the caisson team sets a fuse to their powder.” Varic dropped a thunderball of black-and-orange cotton on the bridge.
The room was still for a moment. Then Tacker burst out, “The river. I should have seen it.”
Strange looked at Varic. Varic pressed his fingertips together and said nothing. Strange said, “Have the horse regroup and advance to the crossing anyway. It can do no harm to see for certain, and they are a long way from the point of decision if the water is too high to cross.”
“It is now half an hour past five, in the larger world,” Varic said. “Does anyone wish to concede?”
Tacker frowned. Longlight looked at Reccan, who folded her arms in an almost quarrelsome fashion.
Longlight motioned for Varic to step aside, asked quietly, “Would we then have some unexpected reinforcements on the way?”
“I fear not today.”
She laughed. That was an old quote, from Lescoray’s Quercian age: Three Imperial legions had moved north, to bring that part of the country under control. In the forests of Black Pines, they had been ambushed and cut to pieces. The commander, confronted with the local general, said, “This cannot have happened. The Bright Empire is invincible.” To which the native, quietly as a Northerner, replied, “I fear not today.”
Tacker said, “Let’s go out glorious. Charge the bridge.”
“Oh, Tacker, really,” Strange said, “but I think you have a point. Pewter and paint can afford to be gallant. Besides, I shall feel much better if there are some Blue foot lurking in those woods.
There were not, of course. The organ gun gave a surprisingly good account of itself, bringing down the front ranks of horse and forcing the rest to pause and regroup; but behind them were companies of fresh infantry.
As the Gold foot reached the bridge, Varic said, “It would be interesting to play out. Street ambushes against formed infantry.”
“But very slow,” Strange said.
“True. I was somewhat too ambitious, as usual.” He turned to Longlight. “You couldn’t win it on numbers; you barely might if you could wear down Gold’s morale. What do you say?”
She looked at Reccan, who gave a shrug that needed no special knowledge to interpret. “Very well, then. Concetta.”
Strange rolled his chair to Longlight, held out his hand for her to shake. “Thank you for an excellent game. I shall see you at dinner shortly. We won’t be dressing up tonight.” Tacker pushed him out of the room.
Varic was stacking up the maps and papers. Longlight said, “It was a very good game.”
“Too complex. I shouldn’t have had both all that field maneuvering and the street battle. But thank you. And thank you, Reccan.” He handed her a stand of figures, which she placed carefully in a felt-lined wooden case.
Longlight said, “I shouldn’t have introduced fire. If we’d stood the bridge and braced, we might have held it. And survived.”
Varic said, “Or if you’d had modern weapons. Mirit Opranas, or Challenge repeaters.”
Longlight inclined her head, said, “That demonstration at the Embassy must have impressed you.”
“Large volumes of gunfire generally do, in one way or another.”
“I’m sorry. I spoke quickly.”
“Nothing to be sorry for. But as the losers—however narrowly—you and Reccan owe a penalty.”
“What might that be?”
Varic handed a trayful of figures to Reccan and said, “You are required to help me put the troops back in their cases. House rules, I’m afraid. If we’re quick, we shall be comfortably in time for dinner.”
Dinner was informal. People wore coats, and Edaire was wearing a fine jacket of wine-colored satin with puffed sleeves, but Bliss, the butler, had the only cravat in the room. The sideboard was set with warm meats and vegetables, and everyone served themselves, with Bliss keeping glasses filled and supervising the clearing of used dishes.
Afterward, the table was cleared and rolled on casters toward the sideboard, clearing most of the hall for conversation. Bliss moved around the room with glasses of a fine clarine, full-flavored and slightly sweet.
In one corner, Strange, Winterhill, and Edaire were playing arcquet. Dany and Agate were doing something with colored stones on a patterned scarf, either a divination or a game. Reccan and Varic had disappeared separately. Silvern was settled before the fireplace with his clarine and a clay pipe of something spicily aromatic. He waved Longlight to the chair by his.
He said, “I propose to leave for your Coronage in four days. The Ironways will be far less crowded. Have you sent a magnostyle home?”
“I told my castellan I’d be a few days late, and that he could reach me here. He’ll make sure there are horses for us at the last Ironway station—that’s in Caligo Pass, two days’ ride out. The waycastle’s comfortable.”
“I’ve never been opposed to traveling in comfort.” He smiled and adjusted his pipe. “Contrary to what you may have heard, not too many Palions wash their faces in snow and birch each other just for the practice.”
She laughed. “Of course I had a copy of In the Days of Lord Falchion. With the color plates.”
“Didn’t we all?”
Longlight said, “I went to Lystourel looking for help against the bandits. When I come back with a Palion, there may be some winking and nodding when we say it’s for a hunting lodge.” She sipped her wine. “But your presence may make the raiders walk more carefully for a while.”
“You overestimate me and undervalue yourself. I imagine they walk carefully in the lady Coron’s presence.”
“But I am not a Palion.”
“It’s a word. It is perfectly possible to live as a Palion, keep all the covenants and uphold the honor, without having the name. Varic would say that, since Goddess and all Her consorts are only stories, there must have been a time before the stories were told. And so, if there truly are any Palions, there must have been some such then as well.”
Longlight wrapped her right hand around her left wrist.
“You see,” Silvern said with great gravity and kindness, “you make the sign of the Willed Draw, even though you are not called a Palion.”
“What would the name mean, then, if wanting it were enough?”
“I did not say that wanting it was enough. I said that, possibly, living it was.” He held up his glass, clicked it to hers. “As was true in the days of Lord Falchion, as now.”
Edaire came over, and rested her hands on Silvern’s shoulders as they finished the clarine. The sight of them in such easy contact was suddenly difficult for Longlight to endure, and she said good night and walked away, down the hall.
Varic answered his door on her first knock. He was in his stockings and had taken off his coat, but was otherwise still dressed. “Please you to come in?”
He shut the door behind her. “Would you like to sit? I haven’t anything but some whisky, but…”
“I don’t need anything, thank you. And I don’t really want to sit out here.”
“Well, then.” He walked down the hall toward the bedroom. The lights were on; he plucked an open book from the slightly rumpled, still-made bed and tucked it into the nightstand. He leaned against the edge of the bed, crossed his arms. “I am glad you decided to stay,” he said. “And I apologize for the events that made the choice difficult.”
“It was a misunderstanding. No one’s fault.”
“Still, there was an injury done, and whether or not it can be made right, at least someone needs to be responsible for it. As you are probably aware by now, I do not believe that the Dark Room solves these things.”
“I’m not minded to argue it.”
“Good,” he said, loud enough to startle her. Then she remembered that in his country, what was spoken loud was meant gently. “For I would never have this done over argument.”
He stood up then, and in an astonishingly quick movement, his fingers closed on the top button at her collar. “There is a spare robe in the bathroom.”
She touched the back of his hand. The muscles were not at all tense. She reminded herself that he was in fact a fencer, and a dangerous one. “Aren’t you going to go ahead with that?”
“Wilt do me a courtesy, and open the first yourself?”
“I’ll trade you.”
He nodded.
He did not move at all as she removed his shirt; relaxed to let the fabric slip away, but was wholly still. She wondered if that meant something; if it were supposed to answer a curiosity, about Agate.
When she returned from the bath, Varic had turned out the glasswicks and laid a small wood fire in the hearth; amber light shimmered over the room, leaving angles of deep darkness. He was sitting up in the bed, the linens drawn up to his chest, his hands clasped around his knees.
She hung her robe on a peg on the bedpost and climbed up, shivering slightly at the touch of cool sheets. He turned to look at her, and gave a small flat smile, but did not move.
She waited a moment, then sat up beside him and said, “Are you actually paying for Silvern to scout my country?”
“Someone needs to. And you’ve seen how Parliament does these things.”
“We’re not that poor a Coronage.”
“And when you have Ironways to take out your ores and timber, you may be a very wealthy Coronage.”
“How much do you know about…”
“Less than you, certainly. But my spies are probably better.”
“But why do you—”
“My dear fellow Coron, at the risk of being rude at the worst imaginable time, put it aside for now. Silvern will offer a preferential rate for his services. Don’t ask it of Winterhill, though—discounts and favoritism are looked on harshly in his profession.”
“I meant, why do all of you—oh. What am I saying? I want to be awake for the service tomorrow, and I didn’t come here for a discussion.”
“Oh, I’m quite happy to have a discussion, and it’s a long time until morning. Do you read gluebacks?”
She looked sidelong at him. “Oh, sometimes.”
“That wasn’t an accusation. More of them are good than you might think. And after all, what else is there in Ironway stations? Gluebacks, newspapers, Lives of the Great Ironway Financiers, and Misty the Merry Motive.”
“What?”
“Children’s books. Misty lives in Steamdale with a whole yard full of humanized Ironway equipment—Swifty the Steamcar, Cranky Crane—oh, I’m sure it’s all right to laugh—delivering the goods and the happy passengers. Hazel loves them. I mean, of course, he loved them when he was much younger.” Varic smiled.
“Of course.”
“When the rails run into your country, you can expect the adventures of Misty and company very soon afterward. It is impossible to do just one thing … but that wasn’t my point. Or perhaps it was.” He shook his head. “Aside all that: I know someone who writes gluebacks, the really red-litten sort. The Wheatcombe Nightcryers, Fear in Amber, To Sleep with Shut Windows. And what he tells me”—Varic’s voice was serious now—“is that what those stories are always about is people forced to exceed their limits. Someone has to find a strength, of body or spirit, that wasn’t there before, or lose everything. Fortunately, they almost always do find it—at least, in gluebacks.”
“And if not, the story is a tragedy?”
“Tragedy itself.”
“That word … it rings so drowe,” Longlight said, her home accent coming up strong. “It means … ‘hooves’?”
“Tragadae is the stamping of hooves. In the old Pandektine theater, a story where the hero failed—generally because he was fighting the gods—would finish with the chorus stamping their feet. The audience usually joined in.”
Longlight nodded slowly, then said, “But why are we talking about the Pandektine theater? Nyne t’mind gruesome gluebacks and Cranky Crane?”
“We were speaking of the heroic reach. Have you never been in a company, late and a little drunk, who were daring each other? Snuff a candle with your bare palm, down a whole jack of ale without taking a breath, balance a knife on your nose. A deer may leap a long gap to escape the hunter, but I doubt very much that deer spend any time wondering if, should the hunter come, they can stretch enough to make the distance.”
“Deer fight each other time on’s, over territory, and mates.”
“Yes. But do they know they are doing it? Or is there just some deep pressure to push the other away, take what’s there? And do they fear losing?” He tapped his fingers on her wrist. “You told me a story about deer hunting. This is really nothing to do with that—unless, of course, it is.”
“To talk of jumping gaps—”
“Yes, I know. There are an infinite number of ideas in the world, and I cannot make love to any of them for very long at a time. This is not true,” he said with that sudden volume that was Northesse for tenderness, “not, somehow, true of people … the fascinations are not so universal, and not so easily given up.”
Longlight said, “Last night, I was in a company, late and rather drunk. Dwillknow Winterhill was tapping me for echoes, but there weren’t any dares that I could seil.”
“No, not in the House. Not even at swords’ length in the arenetto.” Varic rolled toward her, put his fingers very delicately around her bare throat. “Aye and this is different, here, is it not? What was sweet and desperate nights back, now is but sweet and calm.”
Longlight woke in daylight, lying on her side facing the wall, conscious of Varic’s weight behind her. The corner of a pillow blocked her view of the bedside clock. Carefully, so as not to wake Varic, she pushed the pillow down. Twenty to nine. She slipped her legs over the edge of the bed, turned her head back.
Varic was sitting propped up on a pillow, silently watching her. “Good morning,” he said.
“Good morning. I was—”
“I know. I was about to wake you. I wouldn’t have let you miss the service.”
“But you’re not going.”
“No. I…” He reached out, pushed a curl of her hair away from her face with a fingertip. “No.”
She watched him, then suddenly said, “Do you have to look so resigned?”
“I don’t suppose I have to look like anything.” His look softened, just enough to make it bearable. “Better?”
She turned toward him, put her arms around him. “Yes, better.” He held her close. His skin was cool, and she wondered how long he had been awake, just watching her sleep.
“I suppose,” she said after not nearly long enough, “I should hurry back to my room.”
“This is Strange House. There are clothes for you in the hall closet and extra towels in the bathroom. You did notice that I had a spare robe?”
“No … I suppose I didn’t.”
She showered and dressed. The staff had brought several things; she chose a silver tunic and a blue pleated skirt.
“Very fine.” Varic stood in the hallway, wrapped in his dressing gown. She swallowed a chuckle at the sight of his spectacularly disordered hair.
He caught her hand suddenly and kissed it.
“Oh…”
“Don’t say anything,” he said. “Don’t inspire me to something I couldn’t possibly mean.” He turned away.
“I don’t know where the Bright Room is. Do you—”
“Oh, I know where it is. Top floor of the main House, north side. You’ll see it.”
He bowed and went into the bathroom. She heard the shower run and had a sudden, terrible feeling that the water was supposed to cover some other sound. She went out into the hall. In the main house, she met Silvern and Edaire, on their way to service as well, and it was fortunately easy to smile for them.
The Bright Room was polygonal, twelve-sided, with a ceiling that came to a high point: quite literally a faceted jewel of a room. The southern half of the ceiling, behind the rows of seats, was clear glass, letting in the sky; the arc behind the dais had four stained-glass images of the Grand Aspects, and two panels of figured bronze mounted with crystal lamps.
The ancient mirror Birch had brought from the Dark Room hung on the wall behind him. The ceremonial sword was on a small table between him and the audience.
Birch was wearing a rather plain gray gown. It had organ-pipe pleats from the waist to the floor, and seemed to be made of a very fine, heavy silk, but there was no ornamentation on it at all, and the shirt that poked out at collar and wrists looked like, well, a white cotton shirt. He wore no headdress.
And it was, Longlight realized with something of a shock, quite right. It was not easy to imagine Birch in thick brocades worked with masses of gold wire, a hat as tall again as his head.
She would go to Capel Storrow, Longlight thought, attend his first Communion as Archimage, wearing something fine, but simple. She would tell her court to do likewise. Her father would have liked that. He had always been for Coris, taking his Goddess simple and thundering and elemental.
“This is Equinox Morning,” Birch said. “In Her name, I welcome you to Her chamber, and to Her autumn.
“In this most fortunate house, first of autumn has always been one of our happiest holidays. It is still warm enough to play outside, the harvest is coming in, we’re relaxing into the slower step of winter.
“It wasn’t always like that. When we were new in the world—not that long past—the fall was when tensions rose. The winter would come after it, and winter was an ordeal every year that not everyone passed through. Would the food last; would our tempers explode, crowded into the few warm places; would there actually, this time, be a spring?”
She would announce a procession to the Communion: everyone who wished to go would go, the whole Mori dance from beggars to Coronate. The money saved by dressing the court plainly but well would dress the poor plainly, but well.
“They did not, yet, trust their Goddess. Partly this was because they laid too much upon Her; they supposed that She sent them deer, or fish, or apples, by whim, not yet aware that the deer, and the fish, and the apple trees, had reasons of their own, which they could understand and use. They were afraid that She would make a winter and stop, and they would die in the cold, and never know what they had failed to do for Her.
“We, of course, mistrust Her in a different fashion entirely.”
Longlight looked around the room. She could see the lucate varii, the glowing centers of everyone there—everyone but Birch, but the lights were visibly refracting through him. He was the heart of their light.
“We know about the deer’s scent and how to prune an apple tree. We know that faith will not hold a ladder if we tip it over, and the man who only prays over his sick family when the cause is a fouled well is worse than a fool.
“We are even close to really knowing the great thing: that Goddess can be different things to many people and still be Goddess. A soul may, for this reason or that, prefer Evani to Wyss, or Hand to Evani; but if he does not see that Hand is Evani, Evani Wyss, he rejects them all.”
She would invite the bandit chiefs to join her, and make it clear that she did not fear what they did when she was gone to Communion.
She caught her mind wandering, and without really thinking made the sign of Coris-Calming-Beasts. A blob of roseate light tumbled from her fingertips, bounced softly on the floor, scattering silent flickers. She looked up quickly. No one else seemed to have seen it. Or was Birch smiling particularly at her?
“The first thing the Book teaches is that meanings must be found and interpreted.” Birch held up his hand, and twisting light intersected on his fingers, forming a rectangle of translucent whiteness. He did not look at it; perhaps he had made only the gesture, and the rest of them created the card.
“When I put on the priest’s gown, my favorite teacher told me, ‘Sooner or later, but probably sooner, someone will ask you if there are any limits on what must be tolerated in Her name, and you had better have an answer ready.’ I knew her well enough to know that this was a question.
“The question only seems to be about Goddess’s nature. What it really says is, ‘My mind, my heart, stick at accepting this. Tell me either that it is not truly of Her, so that I may reject it freely, or tell me that it is Her, so I can say I faced immortal will and not another soul as common as mine.’ When it is not the rightness or the wrongness of the rejection, but the rejection itself, that troubles the person, that blinds the soul to Her. Sometimes the blindness leads a pilgrim down crooked ways, and we ought to bring our fellows back; but how can we bring them back if we will not look at where they have gone? We cannot change a thing if we deny it. We must accept its reality and its meaning.
“Still I say we are close to the full understanding, the true and total acceptance. Some souls, I do believe, are there already. But I think, here on balance day, that most of us are still on the edge between what we were and what we will become. I called this thing great, but when we master it, a greater one will follow. That is wonderful. That is what I ask you, now, to think about with me. The next wonder, and the next, and the wonder after that.”
He tossed the card—or perhaps just waved—at the antique mirror from the Dark Room, and it broke into butterflies of light that fluttered and vanished.
“We have learned enough to know,” Birch said, his voice seeming to come from everywhere in the room, “that we cannot stop learning. When we say, ‘Find Her, in your way,’ we are not commanding or dismissing; it is not for us, priest or pilgrim, to command or dismiss one another. We are asking to be remembered on the journey.
“And now I say unto you, fellow pilgrims, find Goddess in your way; and as you find Her, remember me to Her.”
After Birch’s morning service, Longlight went back to her room, in something of a daze, intent on writing down some ideas before they faded from her mind. When she finished, back to normal, the House was very still; she wandered down the hall to the Blue Parlor, supposing there must be an interesting book there. She heard voices, and looked in tentatively.
Edaire and Hazel were sitting on the floor, playing with colored wooden blocks. It only took a moment to see that they were playing Ironway: a train of blocks was lined up neatly, and other rows and stacks were clearly enough signals and towers, bridges and stations.
Edaire said, “Steam up, brakes pumped, orders in hand, Captain! Ready to depart.”
“Wait for me,” Hazel said, and two fingers of his hand ran across the carpet and jumped on the trail wagon. “Don’t tell the ’Specker Gen’ral I was late, will you?”
“She won’t hear a word,” the Inspector General said. Then the two of them took hold of the train blocks and slowly accelerated them away from the platform.
Longlight laughed. Edaire and Hazel looked up, grinning. Hazel jumped to his feet at once and bowed. Edaire said, “Care to join us? Having only two people on a crew is strictly against the work rules.”
“Strictly,” Hazel said with extreme clarity.
“Thank you both, but I’ve just thought of something. I’ll see you later.”
“Goodbye, my lady,” Hazel said, and bowed. Longlight returned it, then said, “Tell me, Hazel, what’s the quickest way to the carpenter’s shop?”
“Go to the very end of this hall, my lady, then out the door and across the road—you will be careful when you cross the road?”
“I certainly will.”
“You’ll see the stables clear then. The smith’s is on the left, with the big chim-a-ney, and the woodshop’s on the right. Our house is just past—it’s the green one. I could take you, if you wish.”
“I’m sure I’ll find it. Thank you, Hazel.” They traded bows again, and Longlight set off down the hall.
There was some cloud, and the air had become slightly chilly. The trees along the road were starting to turn color, and there were spatterings of red and yellow leaves on the green grass. She saw the blacksmith’s and smelled its coal smoke at almost the same moment, then scanned past the long stable—big enough for at least twenty horses, she guessed—to the carpentry.
There was a whining sound within. Roan, in an open-collared wool shirt and a denim apron, was turning something on a lathe. The tool was driven by a belt to an overhead pulley and shaft; the shaft ran through the wall to the rear. The drive engine would be in a shed of its own, so any sparks were well away from raw wood and sawdust. Roan took the tool away from the work and said, “Good day to you, honored. What may I do for you?”
“That lathe is very quiet.”
“Aye so. Ferangarder roller bearings; a third less power and half the noise.”
“I saw your model coach upstairs. It was a proud thing to sign.”
“I do thank you, honored.”
“I would like to borrow some tools for small woodwork. And if there are some pieces of softwood—” She indicated a size with her hands, then described what she had in mind.
“Oh, that’s lovely, honored. Will you just wait a moment? Plumb!”
A figure in wool and worn leather came through the back door of the shop. His black-haired head came up only to the middle of Longlight’s chest, and he seemed almost as broad as he was high. Still, he moved smoothly around the machines and racked wood, stepping lightly in heavy metal-capped boots. He came around the last turn, and Longlight nearly flinched: his face was seamed with scars and seemed to have been pushed in, but his black eyes were bright and full of wit. She had yet to see anyone in the House, Longlight thought, who did not have that gleam of happiness. It was slightly disorienting.
Plumb said, “She’s smooth as butter, Roan, I’ve only just oiled both th’ lathe and th’ engine—oh, me. Pardon me, honored, guest.”
“Plumb, the lady Coron wants to do a little work at the carver’s bench. Is it clear?”
“Well, of course it’s clear, and every tool sharp. What sort of stock does my lady need?”
Longlight said, “Some softwood, clear pine would be fine, about a quarter-span square—”
Roan put in, “And a handful of harness snaps—we’d better have snaps in stock.”
“We’ve buckets and barrels.”
“And some flathead round nails, and a bit of that thumb-wide dowel. I take it you want to finish quick, my lady?”
“I should like to. But I hadn’t even thought about the snaps.…”
“We won’t paint, then. Just some emery cloth to kill the burrs.”
Plumb said, “Better ’ad varnish ’em.”
“Milady, if we varnish they will still be ready before you leave. Is that well?”
“Certainly.”
Plumb ticked off materials on his fingers as Roan named them. Longlight saw that his hands were incongruously slender and long-fingered, almost delicate, though they were clearly a workman’s hands. She had another idea, said, “Would you have a small burning iron? Something that could make a rectangle.” She indicated the purpose with her hands again.
Roan said, “Two bits of angle around a block, that’ll do ’en. Plumb, you get the lady settled and started.”
“This way, honored, guest,” Plumb said.
Varic walked through the garden, bending over by a neatly trimmed bush to watch a hedgehog doze in the sun. He took another few steps, turned to look at the House; the crystalline peak of the Bright Room was just visible above the south cornice.
“What are they doing now?” he said.
Agate was sitting on a bench nearby, looking across the pond. Without turning, she said, “Midday service is almost over. Birch could have been quite a sorcerer, if he hadn’t heard it as the Voice.”
“If … My lady wizard is trying to provoke me.”
“Never,” she said, very seriously, and then more playfully, “never, for my life.”
Agate was wearing a Pandektine chiton, a simpler version of the gown she had worn for the first night’s dinner: black dyed linen, draped at the neck, sleeveless, with a skirt slit above the knee and a belt of knotted white rope. She had an elaborately knotted black silk cord holding her hair back, and plain black sandals.
Varic bowed to her, for no real reason, and followed her to the boathouse, where a small rowboat was moored. She paused on the landing, seemed indistinct for an instanta in the light off the lake, then got into the boat. Varic followed, tugged the mooring line free, and began pulling at the oars.
“I could rhyme us over,” Agate said.
“It’s only … a few … strokes.”
The boat bumped against the small stone jetty. They fixed ropes fore and aft to pegs, making the boat fast, and then Agate stepped easily up.
Varic said, “The country life … agrees with some people.” She laughed as he climbed onto the dock. They walked into the grove.
The entire island was only about twenty steps across. At its center, among the closely planted trees, was a little pavilion of white stone: a ring of slender columns, half again a person’s height. Half a dome covered one side; the other was open to the sky. Inside the columns, three obsidian benches surrounded a sculpture of Goddess in Her four Great Aspects, each paired with Her Consort: Coris and Windrose, Shyira and Palion, Evani and Hand, Wyss and Mother Wolf.
Agate stood between two of the columns, touched them with her fingertips. She frowned. “The structure’s not entirely sound. There’s been subsidence, some gravel shift.”
“Is it dangerous?”
“Not yet. But it should be attended to before winter and frost heave. Plumb and I will see to it. Come, sit.”
He sat down on one of the black glass benches, cold and smooth as ice. Agate perched on the sculpture, between Wyss and Coris, Knowledge and Nature. She kicked off her sandals and curled her brown legs around Wolfa’s forepaws.
Varic said, “Disrespect is more my task.”
“You know you can’t disrespect Her. And I’m not flouting, I’m adoring.” She laughed and leaned back, into the figures’ arms. “Now, tell me how the City is.”
Varic tilted his head back. “Dr. Whisper is Crafting a new lens for the Grand Oculus, over four spans across. It’s quite a thing to watch, a glob of molten yellow glass suspended on his magic, in an airless envelope, spinning itself into a double meniscus. Whisper estimates it will take another week and a half to purge all the impurities and perfect the shape; he has two apprentices for spell sustenance, so he can get a little sleep.”
“Sleep, yes,” Agate said, quite without any immediate meaning.
“And Falconer’s people have broken into a new chamber at the Castle. A library: scrolls, not books, so it’s probably from before Falconer’s era, meaning there will be a small war in the University over who’s in charge.”
“One would think that there were no more walls to knock through in the Castle, after all this time. No more rooms to find.”
“Indeed,” Varic said. “Indeed, in—” He caught the rhythm in his voice before it could set, held his breath and a ragged pause. A little brown thrush fluttered down from a tree limb and settled on his shoulder. Agate watched it with a small, rare smile.
Longlight emerged from the shop, stretched in the afternoon light, exhaled varnish fumes, and took a breath of sharp clear air. It seemed quite silent, after the sounds of forge and tools, and red leaves under her shoe crunched like breaking glass.
Tacker was standing just across the road, leaning against a tree. She was tumbling two unlighted cheroots over in her hands, something hesitantly like Reccan’s pencil trick. She turned at Longlight’s next footstep, caught the cheroots in her fist, and tucked them away.
“A pleasant afternoon, my lady.”
“And to you, honored Tacker.”
“Thank you, if you will’t so.”
“So I do. It was a good move, with the cavalry.”
“Better had it won outright,” Tacker said with no special feeling. “We had some tricks in the woods, if you had come out. You and Reccan make a good team; she’s awful bold, on her own. As I guess am I; Strange reins me. A fine game.”
“Perhaps we’ll play another before I go.”
“Well by me. Wouldn’t ask milord Varic again, though—he makes it too much work. My lord Strange might prepare, and Silvern play.”
Longlight turned her head at a flare of light, from across the pond south of the House. She could see a lens of golden light, like a hovering eye, above a building that could not possibly have been there before, and could hardly be there now: a castle with towers and buttresses, bridges and narrow-windowed walls. As she watched, it shifted so that she seemed to see it from many angles at once. A vaulted hall stood open to view, shafts of glass-dyed light through its pictorial windows; then that space moved—revolved, folded, whatever—into a wall that crumbled away, revealing a room lined with scroll cases, its air sparkling with yellow-white dust.
“That looks … like the Castle, at Lystourel.”
Without turning to look, Tacker said, “I wouldn’t know, milady. I’ve never been near the City.”
“But … it must be magic.”
“The island, milady Longlight. Varic and Agate are out there, talking, I’d think.” A little more softly, Tacker said, “It’s like a dream, I think, milady: once you know it is a dream, it’s over.”
And then the structure was gone, except for a faint shimmer that could easily have been heat haze, had the day been warm enough for it.
Longlight nodded to Tacker and went back to the corner of the House. Strange was in the east breezeway, looking out over the gardens. “Good day to you, Longlight.”
“And you, Strange.”
“Agate says we shall have good weather all night—clear, perhaps a bit cool after midnight. We’ll be able to have Masks out of doors.”
“Oh! That’s something I can never do at home. It isn’t the same in the snow. What do you do here, that I should know?”
“Nothing so very unusual,” Strange said. “A light early dinner, and we’ll draw; then back to your room to see what you’ve drawn, and dress for it. The more creative you are, asking the staff for costumes, the better they’ll like it. Then we’ll gather in the garden and the Teller will tell the tale that’s told. I ask you to pardon my absence—a mask could hardly hide me—but I will be watching, and with you.”
They gathered at five in the great hall, sitting about in soft chairs at small tables, for meat pie and green salads, and a dish new to Longlight, of cold spiced noodles with groundnut sauce.
Bliss wheeled in a cart with a heap of black velvet bags. “Who shall draw first?” Strange said, and after some murmuring, Winterhill stepped to the cart, shut his eyes, and pulled a bag from the middle of the pile. He tucked it under his arm, said, “I shall see you all again, when none of us are to be seen,” and left the room. One by one, they drew and departed.
Back in her apartment, Longlight pulled open the velvet bag. Inside, padded with paper so that it could not be identified by touching the bag, was a wooden mask, lacquered bright red; it had cheek and jaw pieces that articulated on leather cords. It looked rather Demonic in her hands, empty-eyed, the jaw hanging wide. She put it to her face and looked in the mirror; with flesh filling the gaps, the expression was much more placid, though still extremely formal.
She rang for the parlor maid, who listened to Longlight’s instructions and quickly brought her a short jacket of red satin, ornamented with black embroidery. She paired it with a black kidskin skirt, just loose enough to walk in, and her boots. The maid checked fit and coverage, and showed her the short way to the garden, down the south staircase and outside.
Candles sparkled all about the garden, with high gaslights marking the paths and sitting areas. On the east side was a boxy building, one end open to show a shallow wooden stage with a dark curtain behind it. She had been told it was a theater; the stage could open on this side in good weather, for an audience out of doors, or to the covered auditorium inside. Now the stage was empty except for a small lectern and a high chair.
Reccan was standing near a gate, wearing a sleeveless dress of crazy-color patchwork, silver-buttoned black boots with high, slender heels. Her mask was woven of silk ribbons, as colorful as the dress, with many trailing ends twined into her hair and dangling over her shoulders. Some of them had been wrapped and tied tightly between her lips. She posed against the upright, clutching it, one foot drawn up, as still as a marble nymph. Then, as Longlight passed, her head revolved, slowly, slowly, her eyes straight and clear on Longlight’s for a moment, then turning past to stare at—Longlight began to follow the look, then walked on by.
“My Red Lady,” Dany’s voice said.
Dany was wearing the Teller’s golden mask. This one was a deep golden-bronze color, cut just below her cheekbones so that she had complete freedom of speech, with wide eyes of milk and blue glass. She was wrapped in a great length of metallic golden silk, wound from ankle to shoulder, trailing down behind.
Longlight looked at the mask and thought suddenly about the staring blue eyes, so different from Dany’s beautiful, liquid black ones. The gilt complemented her dark skin, but where she came from, on the other side of the world, did they have such pale blue eyes? And if not, then what was it like to wear them?
Longlight put a hand to her own mask, feeling a brief shock of unminded fear, a childish fright that the mask worn too long—or too well—would not come off.
Dany said, “You are the Moon, the Bride of the Sun, and your love is true but troubled, your pride is the Moon’s own. It is the lost time, when your faces are few and known, and you smile full every Shineday.”
“I understand,” Longlight said, and Dany nodded once gravely and moved on, a golden comet.
Longlight walked on as well. There were some small iron tables and chairs ahead, lit with candles in colored glasses. Two people sat at one of them, talking over plates of biscuits and meat rolls; after another step, Longlight saw that they were Winterhill and Edaire.
Winterhill turned, with something of a twitch, to face Longlight. He was wearing a mask of woven leather studded with bronze, and a Quercian Centurion’s costume: leather, bronze, red cloak, thick-soled boots. It was well worn—in fact, it seemed about to fall to pieces.
“My good cousin,” he said, his voice dripping honey, “how good to see you here—you and your husband both. May I introduce my own wife? She is not of the family, of course, but comely, do you not think? For a mortal, of course, I mean. And I do love her so.”
Edaire stood to bow. Her mask was sea green, with golden flecks that caught the candlelight like sorcery. It had a crease indicating lips, but no definite mouth. Her long dress was of translucent green stuff, off one shoulder and slit high on both sides. Quercian frescoes of the muses of art sometimes showed them so; indeed, when Edaire took a step, she showed flat sandals corded up her calves, precisely Quercian.
“I am pleased to meet you … half cousin?”
Edaire bowed her head, but did not speak. Winterhill said hastily, “My cousin of course meets so many of her large family. I am the Lord of Those Who Guard with the Warrior’s Spear.”
Longlight felt a laugh rising, started to stifle it, then thought of her role and let it bubble out. “Your gracious acquaintance, God of Spear-Carriers,” she said, still laughing, and passed on, as Winterhill bowed and gestured his overwhelming gratitude.
Some distance on, Reccan skipped past, weightless and shadow-silent. Longlight did turn to follow her this time, and saw, beyond a hedge, Winterhill apparently adjusting Edaire’s gown: he seemed to be trying to draw it even tighter across her hips and breasts.
Longlight did not know the play yet, but it was already full enough of unease.
Sometimes the funniest story slid uncontrollably into horror and death, and sometimes something that began like an old Pandektine tragedy, full of indifferent deities and brutish mortals, ended up in dancing and laughter.
A hand tugged her sleeve. She turned and saw no one; then from behind her Varic’s voice said, “Here on your dark face, cousin Nightshine.”
He wore an elaborate jacket of white leather, with wide shoulders, a peplum, and a short cape; tight leggings, one white, one black, and boots black and white counterchanged. His mask was of snow-white china that had been broken into pieces and reassembled, awkwardly and with bits missing. Iron bolts stuck out from it.
“Do I know you, then, cousin?”
“I know you. That’s what matters. Your mate wants you: Shall we go?” He held out his arm, and she took it.
A few steps along, a dark shape came suddenly into view: Birch, in a plain black suit with a long silver scarf wound loosely around his neck. His mask was glossy black with faint silvery highlights, just suggesting a face.
“Enough, cousin Sky, enough!” Varic said. “Speak not; I am returning the lady to her lord.”
Birch gave a slight bow of acknowledgment and stepped back into the shadows.
They approached a long table set with food and drinks. At the center sat Silvern, wearing a loosely draped cloak of intense yellow, a heavy golden chain around his shoulders. His mask was a hammered copper disk.
“This way,” Varic said quietly, “I’m sure he’ll be pleased to see you.”
Silvern swayed in his seat, groped toward Longlight. “Come here, wife; I want you closer. Closing the gap is … difficult.”
“My lord the Sun has been drinking.”
“Ach! I am drunk on moonlight and I would taste more. Sit where I can reach you.”
“I would not be reached now,” Longlight said. “It is fast dark, and time I shone on others.” She held up her head and turned away from him. Varic had disappeared.
Reccan whirled close to her, the ribbons from her mask flying. She produced a crystal goblet, filled it from a jug that seemed to float on nothing, handed it to Longlight with a deep bow.
She drank; it was sparkling cider. When she looked up from the glass, Birch, as the Sky, stood before her, offering a silver-gloved hand. She took it, and he led her in a dance step to mandolin music that came from nowhere visible.
The wind was sweet through the garden flowers, just warm enough to give no notice of itself, like water to fishes. Longlight did not see Agate, and wondered if she were responsible. The stars were soft and happy as Birch’s eyes.
Reccan was juggling phosphors now, ten or more long wooden fire-lighters tumbling over between her hands, wreathing her in golden light.
Winterhill appeared, holding a wineglass none too steadily. He lit a cheroot from Reccan’s cascade, blew a smoke ring. “Well met again, cousin Moon, cousin Nightmantle. So glad to see you dancing.” He bowed, making his armor flap and clink.
“Where is your wife?” Longlight said.
“Oh,” Winterhill said, nervousness apparent, “I’m sure she, um—shall we go over there and talk about, um…”
Varic stepped from behind an arbor. Part of a smile showed next to a bolt in his mask. He gestured back toward the main table, where Silvern had been sitting.
Longlight said, “Perhaps I have neglected my mate.”
“Oh, surely not!” Winterhill said. “After all, he was all the wrong—I mean, you wouldn’t—”
“I shall.” She let go of Birch’s hand and started toward the table. Birch looked silently after, Winterhill took a crooked step, then faltered.
The Sun was still seated in his brazen glory; but in the seat next to him was Edaire.
“Do you see,” Winterhill’s voice said from somewhere far behind, “how my lady, however mortal, is preferred of the Sun?”
“Indeed,” Varic said, very dryly, “she does look a natural shade.”
Reccan whirled by, her hands making the laughter sign. Then Varic was laughing as well, and Birch.
Longlight had to pause and sort her reactions. Silvern and Edaire were mated and more, and Varic’s laughter was deeply bitter; but the masks set the meanings tonight, and the response.
“That is my place the woman sits in,” Longlight said, “and you laugh that I am not in it? What is your meaning in laughing, and what is her right of occupation?”
Silvern said thickly, “I did not think … you wanted to be with me.”
“Perhaps not; but if I am not, who shall be?”
“I have decided to offer honor to this woman!”
Varic said, rather loudly, “Who’s off and who’s on?”
Longlight said, “There is no honor when there is so much dishonor! I demand justice!”
Agate’s voice said, “Demand it once again, and you shall have it.” Agate was seated on the stage, on the stool behind the lectern. A book was closed before her, and a glittering aurora was above her head. Longlight thought at first it must be sorcery, then saw it was strips of metal foil, drifting in the breeze.
Birch, the Sky, said gently, “This is a folly of the Sun’s, and within your power to forgive.”
Longlight hesitated. She knew where the story must be going. Varic, the Trickster spirit, had allowed Sun and Moon to meet at just the wrong instant, and then persuaded the little follower-god to seek advancement by having the great Sun seduce his wife. The Moon had summoned the powers of Justice, and had one chance to change her mind. Which she could; this was Masks, and she was not compelled by any rule to speak any line.
But the story, the character, did compel. “I call again for Justice!”
Reccan played one long stinging chord on the mandolin.
“So be it,” Agate said, “and it shall not be otherwise. Sun and Moon: until this night you walked to one rhythm, and the days themselves named your faces. Now that order is broken, and you are out of step, hour by hour and day by day, to your own distress and the confounding of mortals. They shall labor to know when you are full, and when fallow.”
Longlight said, “I did not … desire this.”
“Then let your desire cool slow,” Agate said. She turned to Edaire. “You, mortal woman in the wrong chair, wife of the little god. You have failed your vow and your kind.”
“I am not like you gods, who make things as they want them,” Edaire cried, “nor even a King, who wants a thing and has it. I have only my own little power.”
“It is not difficult as kingship is difficult, to save the people from starvation and war. It is hard in the way of ordinary things: to not be vain, to not break what should be whole. You did not fail to be a god. You failed to be what you should have been.”
Agate threw out her arm, and something flew from it; Edaire huddled as it struck her. It was a wadded strip of soft red cloth, that uncoiled and dangled from her shoulder and arm, bloody on sea green.
“This is … my blood,” Edaire said. “My inward blood.”
“You are of earth, not spirit. Your suffering must be first of earth. But it will follow the Moon’s wandering, so that you do not forget why you bleed.”
“Justice does not consider me!”
“That is so,” Agate said with a truly inhuman calm. “Justice considers nothing except itself. And for you, small god who loved this mortal, and should have loved her better, you will see your children scattered on the mortal earth, and see them fight and kill one another for a place in the Sun’s favor, and never know why they do.”
Winterhill fell to his knees, head bowed.
Agate turned to face Varic, who stood carelessly against a lamppost. “Now you, Trickster: you who were given more freedom than any god, and with it made this discord.”
“A fine discord, was it not?” Varic said pleasantly. “It was splendid to see the gods’ table disturbed. Where there is no seat for me, let all sit uneasy.”
“Well you say: for unease shall be—”
“Oh, stop it,” Varic said. “Don’t pronounce: do!” He spread his hands. “Of course you will punish me! It is in our natures to do as we do, and we cannot alter it: Are we not gods? But if I had a choice, I would do it again.” He raised his fists at the sky. “Because it was a good joke!”
Agate threw out her hand again. A kind of glittering black snowball flew at Varic, struck him, and burst into shining flecks.
Varic’s raised arms stiffened. His spine bent back. He swayed, dropped to one knee. His mouth was stretched wide beneath the fractured mask, but he made no sound. His back hunched, and he pawed the ground with one clawed hand.
“A new shape for new tricks,” he said, in a wavering screech. “Well, I have things to do, if you will pardon my going. When you see me next—I wonder if you will know me?”
He loped to the stage, vaulted up on it, gave Agate a crooked, courtly bow. Then he disappeared through the stage curtain behind her.
No one moved then. Dany came in from the boathouse, her gold much like a dawn; she removed her mask and placed it on the table. Then Silvern unmasked, and Edaire, and then the rest of them. Reccan untied her ribbon mask, tossed it in the air, where it spun like a firework wheel. She brought out a little black mandolin and began to play. Bliss served glasses of apple brandy, fiery in the cooling night. They drank, and embraced, and drifted back toward the House.
There was a slip of folded paper on the handle of Varic’s door. Longlight unfolded it: it read UNLOCKED. ENTER. She did so.
The apartment was silent and seemed empty; a fire was going in the bedroom. When she came around the foot of the bed, she saw Varic sitting before the fireplace, looking into it. He was naked, and the light on his skin was like gilding on marble.
She crouched behind him, touched his side. There was a small, round scar on his lower back, an exit scar—the sword had gone in between his ribs. Every time she saw it, she wondered how he had survived the wound.
He said, “Are you thinking how helpless I am, how easy I would be to kill?”
“No. Why do you say such a thing?”
“I was thinking of your deer hunt, in the clearing.”
“That was—do you think that was anything like this?”
“No. But a Coron must never show weakness toward anyone, didn’t your father teach you that? Certainly not to another Coron.”
“My father did teach me that,” she said. “He also taught me that one can be tender without being weak.”
“Then he was an exceptional man, and you rightly honor his memory.” He turned, stroked her cheek, her temple. He took delicate hold of the cords that fastened her tunic. “May I?”
She put her hands behind her back. “I refuse to interfere.”
“I may make you regret you said that,” he said lightly, and touched one finger to her lips when she started to speak. A full half hour later, as he was folding her last stocking with an absurdly methodical slowness, she understood his meaning very well.
She fought for enough breath to speak, said, “Did you know tonight’s story?”
“No. It’s from Dany’s country. I like it, though, better than ours; a quarrel among jealous but passionate and understandable gods is—oh, somehow more artful than a bunch of greedy sorcerers trying to grab more power. And the Nisimenish story comes back to touch life at the fundaments; ours just sees the Moon bumped loose from its old tracks and the bad old sorcerers all drowned in hot lava.”
“I read a book once that told the story differently,” she said. “The sorcerers all had their own characters. Kin more to real people, and some of them meant to do good. And it wasn’t a mistake that stopped them, but one of their own, who saw they couldn’t be trusted with the new power.”
“Did that one still die in the volcano?”
“Yes.”
“Well, there’s art for you,” Varic said. “From time to time the Weekly Reasoner prints a satire on one Parliamentary commission or another, casting them as the moonwreckers. They always end up in the volcano.” He put a hand to his face.
“Is your head hurting again?”
“No. Truly, no.”
She laughed. “And once again you make me wait while you tell a story, about stories. Now I want to play a game with you.”
His eyes narrowed just slightly, striking sparks of reflected firelight, and then he nodded.
Longlight said, “I ask you a question, and you must answer. Then you ask one of me.”
“I take it that I must answer truthfully?”
“I had not supposed you would lie.”
“Point,” he said. “And concetta. Ask.”
She hesitated for a few instanti, then said abruptly, “Why Agate?”
“Because someone must, and I can. I am not vain or stupid enough to think that no one else on earth could take my place, but none of the others have made themselves available. I discount Strange, of course—I would never imagine Strange incapable of anything. At any event, it is … a rewarding thing to be needed.”
She said, “Now your question.”
“How many aces to a mark?”
“What?”
“A mark breaks down to how many coppers? In Lescorial currency, I mean.”
“Ten plates to the mark, ten aces to the plate,” she said slowly, “after Redlance’s reform, of course. So: a hundred.”
“Thank you. Is the game over, or do you have another question?”
She turned, gripped his upper arms hard, and pressed him to the carpet. The fire whispered and shifted. He offered no resistance. She said, “Here we lie and are a question, shoulda seiled it from the first. Be hard as you please, I’ll be hard straight back.”
“That is a good game, too.”
It was nearly eleven when Longlight got to the breakfast room. Only Edaire and Silvern were there; Silvern had a platter of sausages next to his eggs and muffins, and with only a little prompting from Gaily, Longlight had some as well. (“Three to start, Lady, while the two more you’ll want are browning.”)
As they ate, Silvern said, “Are my manners still asleep this morning?” and Longlight realized she was staring at his knife and fork. “It does happen—the Kólyan haven’t read Little Clarity.”
“No, no, I am sorry … I was just watching your knife work. I was thinking about … precision.”
Edaire began to laugh, and was unable to stop. Silvern said, “Will you excuse me a moment?” set down his knife and fork, put his elbows on the table in bald defiance of Princess Clarity’s Little Book of Social Rules, rested his chin on his hands, and gazed at his conseil with a broad and delicious smile.
Edaire held quiet with a visible effort. Silvern’s eyebrows rose. Edaire said, “Oh,” in a small, clear voice, and then began to laugh again.
“The honored will get hiccups,” Gaily said, holding a teapot in each hand.
Silvern said, “Perhaps a pitcher of apricot juice, then, Gaily, just in case?”
Edaire finally controlled herself.
Longlight said, “I don’t think I’ve ever been in a place where there was so much real laughter. It will be difficult for me to ever thank you adequately.”
Silvern said, “Just keep coming back.”
“I wonder if you know,” Edaire said quietly, “just how good your company has been for Varic. That is more than thanks enough.”
“Oh—well,” Longlight said. “Now you’ll get me to naughty laughter. I wonder that the Parliamentarian isn’t here—Varic’s friend Lord Brook. He seemed to need a rest and a laugh as well.”
Gaily stopped in the doorway, turned, and went out again, without leaving the pitcher of juice.
“Brook no longer comes here,” Edaire said.
Longlight said, “I’m sorry—I seem to have wandered off the path.”
There was a long moment of silence between Silvern and Edaire. Silvern said, “Yes, I suppose it is my turn,” and then to Longlight, “You should know this. The last time Brook visited was a few years ago. He brought along a companion who, to be honest, was something of an opportunist. There was certainly attraction, and I would like to think some real affection, but Rissi was interested in Brook mainly because Brook was a powerful Coron in Parliament. Rissi, who was a not-very-adept Archifactor, was attracted to other people’s power. Strange saw through him instantly, of course, and I imagine Varic did as well. Before long it was apparent to all of us—except milord Brook.
“Varic had decided not to come to the House while Brook and Rissi were here. He didn’t know that Agate was visiting.”
“And the opportunist was a sorcerer.”
“That’s right. He wouldn’t let Agate alone. He asked for lessons, trade secrets, everything novices think masters have to give away. May I be forgiven for a guess with cause, I think he believed she wanted seducing.
“Finally, Agate went out into the woods, just to get away. Rissi followed her, probably thinking he was going to discover some great mystery of Craft. What he found was the big mystery.” Silvern made the sign of the Willed Draw, finishing it with a snap of his fingers so that it was just a gesture, without magic. “From time to time … energy builds within Agate—and then—”
“It’s been explained to me.”
Silvern looked suddenly at Edaire. “Oh. Well. At that point, I’m not sure even Varic could have done anything, and Rissi certainly wasn’t Varic. Ever hunted Nightcryers?”
Longlight signed against evil. “She—surely can’t—”
“No. Even Agate doesn’t have that power. But what happened to Rissi wasn’t too far different. He lived long enough to print a memory on all of us who were there, and not long enough to raise the hard choice of keeping him alive.”
“What did Brook do?”
“Brook woke up from his infatuation so quickly that he may have been under Craft all along. He went back to the City and hasn’t visited here since. There must have been something said between him and Varic, but I don’t know what it was, and I’m not likely to learn. Though he told Strange last night at dinner that Brook may visit for Solstice. That would be good.”
“Would it?”
“If it needs mending, it can’t happen at a distance. If it doesn’t, then we will be happily together.”
Varic entered Strange’s outer office. Its walls were mostly bookcases, with a few glass sideboards displaying this and that. There was a large, tidy desk, and a world globe more than a step in diameter. Dany was sitting in a comfortable chair near the inner door, reading. “Thank you for a fine Mask Night,” he said. “Is Strange busy?”
“I am sure he is not so busy as that,” Dany said, “but I will call, if you please.”
“Thank you.”
She went to the desk, pressed a button, and uncoiled a speaking tube covered in green cloth. Varic could hear the tube whisper. Dany said, “Varic would like to see you. Yes.” She put the tube down. “Do go in.”
He opened the door. The inner office was the outer, but more so: more books, more gadgets and souvenirs, more paper in much less order. Strange had been writing, with the pen Varic had bought at the City Terminus. He capped it, stretched out the chain that held it to his robe, put it in a pocket. “Good morning,” he said. “Why ever are you being so formal?”
“It’s a formal business. Serious and legal.”
“Very well. You won’t mind if I remit my fee?”
Varic took a step one way, then another. He looked at a large wall map of Lescoray. “Reccan found something, in one of the provincial papers. A boy in a town called Sunsawe, down in Planes—have you noted it?”
“No.”
Varic went to the wall and stared hard at the bookshelves. Calmly and firmly, Strange said, “Varic, sit down.”
He did, dropping his hands into his lap. “The boy is … simple. Never did any harm, and people generally watched out for him. So far, so fine. Then when he reached his growth, he turned out to have the sorcerer’s touch.”
“How does he control?”
“Music. He’s apparently a natural singer, knows all the favorites.” Varic looked into the distance, past Strange. “One day he sang ‘Summer’s Gone to Cavalry’ and let the power get into it. Well, you can probably imagine: a journeyman would have done damage with that, and any novice should have known better. A stone wall came down, and a horse barn. The barn had five horses and two people inside; one of the people may yet live.”
“Does this involve Parliament?”
“It’s going to involve Cable,” Varic said, very quietly. “We passed the resolution establishing legal responsibility for the effects of magic. It’s a good bill, but it’s amazing what a good, sharp law can do in the hands of our Chief Justiciar. The law’s like magic that way, I suppose—sometimes you get much more than you asked for.”
“What do you think Cable will do?”
“I’d bet a mark to an ace he tries to hang the boy.”
“Literally?”
“Cable has no use for symbolic acts. Certainly not executions. It’ll be a fine, solemn, corrective spectacle, and everyone will see that the law for sorcerers is applied without fear or favor. Also without compassion, understanding, or regard to circumstances, but—” He stopped, shut his eyes tight.
Strange said, “I am going to summon Jingle about your headache.”
“With all respect to your physician, it is the holiday, and my headache will pass.” He took a long breath, and finally opened his eyes, spreading his hands wide so Strange could see that he was relaxed. “The Coron of Planes sends a proxy to Parliament. Decent fellow. Do you have an opinion on the Coron?”
“I recall her as a just soul.”
“That’s the best hope for everyone.” He smiled crookedly. “One Chief Justiciar is like one King—it just won’t do.” He smiled faintly. “That was once a dangerous idea, too.”
“I thought you and Brook had provided for that in the new Constitution.”
“Article Twenty calls for a Chief Court of five equals. But I don’t know if it will survive. It’s on the second-rank list of provisions we’re willing to bargain out, and I have very little hope we won’t reach the third list.” He pressed his hands together.
Strange said, “Will you at least take some feverfew? You can’t help this young man if your head’s off its pinions.”
“I imagine … I’ve already ‘helped’ enough. Far away in Parliament.”
“Where you cannot possibly see into every tiny village and surely cannot predict every consequence,” Strange said calmly. “If there’s really no other way through the law, then I imagine that the boy will have to be responsible for himself and answer in full for his action.”
The room was very quiet for a moment. Varic turned his head, and his eyes were unfocused, as if he were looking for something at a great distance. Then he said, “I believe I see your point. It’s a great deal to ask. Especially of people barely old enough for their oaths to count in court.… No. I wouldn’t know how to ask that.”
“It’s not difficult,” Strange said. “You say, ‘Your friend must be cared for, from now on, and protected from this ever happening again. It will be a special trust among all of you who accept it.”
“Very well, those are the words. What gives me the right to ask them?”
“What gives you the right not to? It’s better they be offered it now than realize, after their friend is dead, that someone could have made the offer. The hard choice isn’t for you, Varic. It’s for them.”
Varic held his head in both hands as if to keep it from literally splitting open. Strange started to reach for the bell cord.
Varic said, “And twenty years later?”
“Twenty years from now the boy may have died in bed and the problem be solved by default. Or he and his friends may have found a way to solve it, a living modality.… It has been known to happen.”
Varic let out an explosive breath. His shoulders relaxed just slightly.
Strange continued, “And there will surely be a different Justiciar in the country. Perhaps even five of them.
“You’re right that it isn’t your task. You have more to do than correct every injustice in the Republic. But it must be someone’s. I’ll send a message to the Coron of Planes: she’ll either do it or know who can. And stop worrying about your law; you know that no good tool can’t be misused.”
“Well, I oughten,” Varic said, his home accent strong enough to make the point.
Strange waited for half a minima, then said, “May I ask you to stay on here, a few days after the holiday?”
“Is something planned?”
“No. Everyone but Agate is leaving, so far as I know.”
“And do you think … it might be useful if I remained?”
“I thought it might be pleasant.”
“I’m sorry,” Varic said, his voice rasping slightly. “I imagine it would be pleasant. The City will be turning damp and gray, and it doesn’t need me for that.… I’ll send a magnostyle to Brook tomorrow. If I’m not needed there, I’ll stay—let’s say another week.”
“Very good. And now will you—”
“I will go to my room like a good lad,” Varic said, dry-throated. “And I shall take a large whisky with feverfew and stanbark, and further ask that you make certain Agate has something else to think about for the next few hours.”
“Point,” Strange said. “Not concetta, but I suppose a draw. Are you certain you want your simples in whisky and not black tea?”
“Perfectly.”
“Will you let Dany see you to your room?”
Varic started to nod, then winced and gave the hand-speech sign for yes.
Strange pushed himself to the door, opened it. Dany stood up.
“Walk me home, friend?” Varic said, and stepped uneasily through the door. Strange closed it, sat alone in the room. He rolled his chair to his desk, slid a blank magnostyle form from a rack of stationery. He plucked the castelline pen, Varic’s gift, from his pocket.
Then he pushed back from the desk, ran the pen’s chain between his fingers, turned the capped pen over and over in his hands.
Slowly, Longlight climbed the stairs of Strange House’s West Wing. The lack of any sound here was unsettling, without knowing entirely why; it was otherwise well-lighted, safe.
She knocked lightly on Agate’s door, which opened. Agate was wearing a long, plain dress of raw silk in autumn colors; her fair hair was netted back. “Good afternoon, my lady Coron. Will you please come in?”
“Strange suggested that I talk to you,” Longlight said. “I’m not sure what he had in mind, but … if you would like to talk, I would be pleased of the company.”
“Strange has great faith in the power of conversation. Come in and sit down. I was just about to call for more tea.”
Agate gathered up some papers from the parlor desk; they were covered with writing in what seemed to be several different hands: some spidery, some precise as engraving, some blocky and thick. Lines, and sometimes most of a page, had been struck out, sometimes with a single neat line, sometimes with savage hackings of the pen.
Not much was said until the tea came. Now and then Agate turned her head toward the hallway door, or perhaps the east in general, as if she heard something that way.
“Now,” Agate said, nesting in her chair, “what shall we find to talk about? Or will our mutual friend do?”
“I would like to know … more about you and Varic.… It’s prying, I’m sure—”
“Yes, it is,” Agate said plainly, “but that doesn’t necessarily make it wrong. With whom have you spoken already?”
“Edaire told me some things. And Varic—a very little.”
Agate nodded. “I will tell you what Varic is thinking about, just at this moment, if you will promise not to repeat it to anyone. Not even Strange.”
“Do I want to know?”
“A wise question. I think perhaps you do.”
“Then I promise.”
She turned east again. “He is in his room, drinking whisky and herbs, trying to sleep; because if he can sleep, he will not fret over a trial for death by sorcery. The case worries him enough, as well it might, but deeper down he is afraid of seeing me on the gallows. Or possibly some worse device, if he is correct about Justiciar Cable.”
“He loves you very much.”
“Be calm: I do not hear him when he is thinking of you. Nor at all, outside the House. Silvern and Edaire have more contact.
“But yes, he loves me, in his fashion. As how else can we? People can change, but they can’t be something before they change to it. Have you begun to love him, in your fashion?”
“Yes,” Longlight said. “Last night … I found I wanted his talk more than his touch—and I wanted his touch.”
Agate’s teacup shattered, not just into pieces but a cloud of white dust. Longlight gasped. Agate said, “You must pardon me. At the University they have a pavilion just for people like me, so that we may teach in safe isolation. Do continue.”
“Edaire told me about you, and him … and I thought, as long as ’twas all flesh ’an ’tween’en, then ’twas—different. But it’s never sole’n flesh, an’t so?”
“So I hear.”
“Observate Coron. That means—”
“I know that it means. I would respect your territory as well, Longlight. Have you read Mistral?”
Longlight started to speak, then shut her mouth. Agate said, “Do quote it; he’s a good poet, won’t hurt me at all.”
Longlight said:
“Forest is forest, and sand is sand,
But hearts shall be always debatable land.”
Agate shut her eyes for a moment. “There, do you see? No hurt at all. Tell me: most lovers take their companions candy, and flowers, and pretty little remembrances. Varic brings me quiet, and calm, and myself fit to smile at others. What has he brought you?”
“A Palion to protect my Coronage,” Longlight said. “Ironways to feed it. And Strange House.”
“You see: you do appreciate his peculiar fashion.”
Dinner that evening was a relaxed affair. The formal events of Equinoctials, Service, and Masks were past. It was now properly autumn, Shyira, Her aspect of body and senses, supplanted by Evani, Lady of Trade.
In honor of Evani, Birch brought out a set of Agora cards, and Strange, Winterhill, and Reccan were soon engaged in a spirited (and entirely wordless) game, indicating their trades with finger signals.
“Do you play?” Varic said to Longlight.
“I played Bourse when I was little. Someone at home was showing off a game called Kingscourt, all about politics and intrigue. It looked terribly complicated.”
“It is. Even worse if you add the war rules. And the markers, and the toy money, and the special record paper.…”
“I take it you play.”
“Yes. It allows things that real politics doesn’t, or at least frowns on. Assassination is much more fun, for instance.”
“Would you show me?”
He tilted his head, then said, “Bliss: Would you have someone send a Kingscourt setup to—your room or mine?”
“Mine.”
“To Lady Longlight’s room. And a large pitcher of cider, with spice and a fireplace kettle.”
“Of course, my lord Varic.”
They said good night and went up the stairs. As Longlight reached for the doorhandle, one of the chambermaids appeared from the south stairwell, looking agitated.
“Milord Varic, Jadey’s called up from b’lowst’rs. A maggunstyle’s coming in for you: Will you go down for it?”
“Of course,” Varic said. “Thank you, Liri.” He turned to Longlight. His expression was abruptly that of the City politician, as it had not been since leaving Lystourel: polite and empty. It was horrible. “Perhaps you should go to your room. These things can be unpredictable.”
“I’ll come along, if I may.”
“Quickly, then.”
They went down the central stairs to the lower floor, into a small room smelling of chemicals and hot metal, the sharp scent of electricated air.
A young man with amazing green eyes, undoubtedly Jadey, was seated at a large desk, surrounded by machinery and paper, working a pair of hinged levers with his right hand. “I’m just telling the relay to send, my lord sir. Be coming in a moment.”
“Leith Relay?”
“Tindale, my lord.”
Strange came in, Dany pushing his chair. “Good evening, Varic.”
“Possibly,” Varic said without turning. “It’s coming via Tindale.”
Longlight said, “What does that mean?”
Strange gestured, and they moved back a little from Varic and the desk. Quietly, he said, “Most messages from the City go through two Ironway relay stations, then to the large office at Leith Meadows, before they reach us. The Tindale Relay is a small office only one link from the City. It actually takes longer, because of clearing the lines and finding someone to retransmit, but it is more secure, because there are fewer copy points.”
“I understand.”
Jadey gave the sending levers a last flick and snatched up a pencil and pad. In a glass-fronted box before him, metal jumped.
The magnostyle receiving case held two long needles on central bearings. Magnets driven by the electrical fluid could pull each needle to the left or right; a particular series of combinations indicated a letter. A trained operator could read over a hundred letters a minima, though the standard speed was only about half that, to keep errors down.
As the pointers oscillated, Longlight looked around the ’style room; it was, like her own, and every other she had seen, lined with reference charts for coil windings and electric pressures and all the other knowledge to keep the system clicking. She looked especially for one piece of paper, and soon spotted it, framed behind glass: it was a verse by Shoredrake. It was always somewhere in the room, came packed with children’s toy ’styles; Longlight had learned it as a child, from her father’s chief operator:
Listen to the needles,
Listen to them click,
Auntie’s coming visiting,
Uncle’s taken sick.
Messages upon the wires,
Sparking up and down—
Spelling out the wider world
To every little town.
Something better secret,
Something better known,
Someone’s left a legacy,
Someone’s left alone.
Anyone may get a message,
Any time of day—
Anything the needles bring
They, too, can bear away.
Telling of a baby,
Telling of a crime,
Song of matrimonials,
Song of fallow time.
Never blame the messenger,
That’s the truth of it—
Life’s the common fabric
The electric needles knit.
Varic was watching the needles as if there were nothing else in the room, in the world. Longlight wondered if he could read the code.
The needles stopped. Jadey worked the levers, acknowledging the message. He passed the message form to Varic. “Shall I relay it, milord?”
“No, thank you, Jadey. I’ll see to it.”
“Certainly, milord.”
Varic turned and walked out of the room as if he saw nothing and no one else but the message form. Longlight followed, and Dany pushed Strange’s chair behind.
In the hallway, Strange said, “Yes?”
Varic handed over the paper.
BROOK TAKEN ILL. ASKS YOU INFORM CORON RED MOUNTAIN TO CANCEL APPOINTMENT. NOT SERIOUS, FULL RECOVERY EXPECTED.
FRESHET
END
Longlight said, “Who is Freshet?”
“Brook’s physician. Excellent soul, rarely wrong.”
“Was the key word red?”
“You have some experience of this,” Varic said distantly. “Of course—there are bandits in your country. And friends of bandits. Will you all excuse me now?” He walked up the stairs, and they let him go.
Longlight turned. Strange looked thoughtful, Dany questioning. Both of them were very still.
Strange said, “Perhaps, Longlight, you would explain to Dany.”
Longlight said, “If you think the wrong person might read your messages, there are ways to hide the meaning. For example, the word red could mean that the message is to be understood as far graver than its surface meaning, or even its complete opposite.”
“Then Brook’s physician,” Dany said, “believes he will not recover.”
Longlight nodded.
“But did you then read this code so easily?”
Strange said, “I believe the code is sound enough. My lady read Varic.”
“You flatter me, Strange.”
“Not much. What do you think he will do now?”
“Go to the City. Tonight. However he can get there.”
“You see, I don’t flatter.”
Varic raised his hand to knock on Agate’s door, then stopped. His head seemed afire, and he could feel his pulse in his fingertips. This was no state to visit her in, but he needed her.
Delicate fingers slipped within his skull, cooling the flames, and he heard Agate’s voice say, Sorcerers are always wanted for some thing or another, but so rarely needed. And to be needed by you is a rare thing indeed.
“Brook is … please, Agate…” He put a hand to his head.
I will take my hands away, if you will not weep.
He nodded, and the touch went away. “I need—I need you to work the Long Mirror.”
Then come in and help me find my robe.
He went inside. Agate was pushing a chair before a tall dressing mirror. She was wearing a short cotton bed jacket that barely reached to her tan hips. “Look around, will you? I tossed it somewhere.”
He found it behind the parlor chair. “Do you want your slippers?”
“I’ll work better without them. Earth and Air. Sit down.”
He sat facing the mirror. Agate stood behind him. “Who is the message for?”
“Freshet. Brook’s physician. I would suppose she’ll be at the Gate Park Hospital, but I can’t be certain. She’ll be in the City, though.”
“Of course. She won’t have gone far from Brook at such a time.”
Varic nodded. “It’s grave, yes.”
“Freshet. Fresh-et, Lys-tou-rel. Heal-er, hos-pi-tal. Couldn’t be better.”
“I don’t think I’d ever considered the disadvantages of an unmetrical name,” Varic said. “It must be a great convenience in Ferangard: Teph-ar Di-an-te, Or-ic A-dor-ni.”
“Varic.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Face the mirror. And don’t turn.”
“I know.”
“You also have a great deal on your mind. I can’t grow you new eyes in less than three days.”
“Very well.”
She sat on the floor behind him, began to speak softly and rhythmically. The air felt tense, charged. The room lights dimmed. The image in the mirror wobbled, then cleared, and the lights flared bright again.
“She’s not at the hospital,” Agate said. “Where shall I try next?”
“Let me think.… Oh, of course. Try Brook’s house. Walnut Row.”
“Wal-nut-Row. Same as hos-pi-tal. Good. Look forward.”
The chant started again. This time, the room lights faded entirely, and the mirror image cleared to show a woman sitting at a table, beside a lamp, playing a solitaire card game. The view was bulged, as in a spherical mirror.
“Eh, now? Oh, Varic. You look very curious, peering from a silver teapot.”
“My apologies, Freshet.”
“None needed. This is over Brook, after all.”
“Tell me what has happened.”
“His butler found him on the bedroom floor. It appears to be an apoplectic seizure.” She sighed. “His eyes look without blinking, until the lids are shut for him; they do not respond. He breathes quietly, his heart beats slowly. He is alive, and no more than that.”
“And recovery?”
“It has happened in similar cases, and it has mostly not happened. We both know Brook; I would like to say that, if there is a will left inside the body, it will find a way back. The Archipath I usually work with is away, and I am being cautious.…”
“Send a message to Master Whetstone. He will arrange something.”
Freshet nodded. “You are, if you don’t mind me using the word, his executor. What do you want me to do?”
After a long pause, Varic said, “What is to be done?”
“His brain is wounded, Varic. Even if we can locate his mind and then bring it back—it may be in pieces. What do you want me to do?”
Varic started to turn. Agate shouted, “Face the mirror!” and there was a sudden sheet of blue-white light. Varic winced and turned back. Agate said, in a ragged and angry voice, “It’s not a matter of minutes, and probably not hours. If he’s gone by the time you’ll reach him, he’s gone now.”
“Varic?” Freshet said, pressing her face close to her end of the Mirror. “Are you still there?”
“Have Whetstone find a sorcerer, but don’t act until I arrive. How much of the news is out?”
“None, so far as I know. The butler called me directly, and we haven’t yet moved him from the house. Being the holiday, there have been no appointments. There was a card from”—she picked it from the table, read the name—“Linnet, asking about dinner.”
“Linnet can be trusted. But … tell him gently.”
“Why, Varic, you surprise me,” Freshet said lightly.
“One other thing,” Varic said. “Is this definitely a natural illness?”
Freshet’s look darkened. “Oh, you vile little man,” she said, more sadly than angrily. “I have no reason to believe otherwise.”
“Thank you, Freshet. For everything. Is there anything I can do for you?”
“Spell me watching him,” she said wearily.
“I will be there as soon as I can.”
“Very well.”
“That’s all, Agate,” Varic said, and the Mirror image faded. Agate groaned, and Varic turned quickly.
“I’m fine,” she said, breathing deeply. “And I am sorry, Varic. You will send word if there is anything I can do?”
“I will.”
He helped her back to bed, hung her robe on the bedpost hook, and tucked her slippers beneath the step. “Now I have to disturb Edaire’s sleep.”
“A word before you go.”
He stood still.
“You thought it would be you, not Brook,” she said quietly. “That the bullet or the knife would take you, and Brook would go on, probably forever. It was never likely to happen that way, Varic; and with no lack of sympathy for Brook meant, I would ask you not to feel guilty that it has not.”
“Just a little ordinary grief, then.”
“Your grief is not ordinary, Varic. Not to me above all people.”
He kissed the tips of his fingers and pointed them at her. She nodded. He went out.
Breakfast the following morning was very quiet. Everyone but Agate, and of course Varic, sat around the table indoors, mostly still in nightclothes; there had been very little sleep since Varic’s departure. Even Gaily was subdued as she came and went with the meals, though she still had smiles for everyone and told the joke about the chicken and the pig who agreed to race to the breakfast table. “‘You win,’ said the hen, looking at the bacon and eggs. ‘I’m glad there wasn’t money on it.’”
Strange managed to laugh, and then they all did, Reccan merry with her hands. Brook excused himself to the Bright Room and prayers.
Hazel came into the breakfast room then, carrying a box covered with a painter’s cloth. “Excuse me, my lord Strange, honoreds, but Master Plumb told me to bring this to my lady Coron Longlight.”
“Thank you, Hazel,” Longlight said, and took the box.
“Shall I go now, honoreds?”
Strange said, “Stay just a moment, Hazel. You look worried. Is something wrong?”
“If I may ask you, honored.”
“Of course.”
“Milord Varic left the House very late last night. Mama Roan drove the carriage, and Mama Tacker was sad when she called me this morning. Milord Varic is always sad when he leaves the House, and he never goes away in the night like that.”
Strange said, “Come here, Hazel.” The boy went to stand by Strange’s chair. “One of milord Varic’s good friends in the City is very sick, and Varic had to go away quickly to visit him. You know how far away the City is.”
“Yes. Will milord Varic bring his friend here, to get well?”
Strange took Hazel’s hand. “I don’t know, Hazel. But that’s a very good idea. It may be that he will.” He looked across the table. “And now, I think milady Longlight has something for you.”
She took the cloth cover from the box, held it out to Hazel. The boy’s eyes went wide. Longlight said, “Go ahead. They are for you, an Evennight gift.”
Hazel carefully lifted one of the wooden Ironway coaches, turning a dowel-slice wheel with a fingertip, tracing the wood-burned window frames, making the snaps at the vestibule ends jingle. “Do you see, honored Edaire? They can train up!”
“I see, Hazel. Isn’t there something you should say?”
“Oh. Thank you, my lady Longlight. Thank you so much.”
“You are most welcome, Hazel. And your mother Roan helped me make them, and Master Plumb. You must thank them as well.”
“I will, Lady. Honored Edaire—could we go to the parlor?”
“I think we might, Hazel. Perhaps milady Coron would like to join us?”
“I would be delighted,” Longlight said. “It is ripe time that I should learn more about Ironways.”