Aspects, p.12
Aspects, page 12
“I almost said something … quite cruel. Again. It is an unforgivable trait.”
“You’ve no power to command me forgive or not. What did you think to say?”
“You have no power to compel my saying.”
“Then tell me something about your family. Freewill.”
“And have you owe me more of your hurts? Let them be buried.”
“Do you think I will not understand? When you so well knew my death’s-work?”
Varic said flatly, “My father was a far-province Coron of a particular kind. I can well believe his sort had to exist, once, and I can almost be convinced that it was necessary, once in raw old time. If he had lived, I might have learned how to tolerate and forgive and love him as my father; I am told that most of us do. But day by day I see more clearly that the world is well rid of him.…
“Your father,” he said suddenly and gently, “was he a good man?”
“I can recall his faults,” she said, “but yes, he was good, and kind, and just.”
Varic nodded. “I thought it would be so. I just wanted to hear it, before you went back to him.”
“Varic, he’s dead these many—”
“Milady Coron,” he said, “well I know.” He crumbled the rest of a muffin, tossed it to the birds and squirrels. “Let’s walk and say nothing awhile. Summer hath but hours to live.”
That was what they did, walking the straights and arcs of the trim planned streets, saying nothing. When something interesting appeared—a shop display, a fine bit of iron ornament, a spectacular window box—one would point, and the other nod. After a few minimi, they were carrying on a commentary all in gesture. When their circuit brought them around to the station, Longlight was nearly laughing, Varic smiling again.
The rest of the day’s travel passed idly. Silvern found an aged cavalry officer in the parlor to trade drinks and lies with. Readers of the Book and arcquet games took turns on the card table. Outside the windows, the vast Lescorial midlands flowed by; old sprawled towns and neat new planned ones, orchards and farms, roads the Quercians had first laid out. A rain shower passed over, soft drops on the carriage windows, only soothing. Anyone wishing to sleep had plenty of cows to count, or sheep, free choice.
Before dinner, in a quiet corner of the parlor, Longlight said to Varic, “The next time I am like to see you, all your City reasons will rule again. When I bid all good ’den tonight—follow me; set any wait you think proper, but follow.”
Which he did.
Very late, Varic had a dream of walking through mud, sinking with each step, driven on both by fear of the depths and some push of need he could not identify. It was dark; there were trees in front of him, which he saw in delirious clarity, and beyond them darkness. The moment he passed a tree, it vanished behind him and another appeared ahead. Any way he turned—and he was sure he was turning without knowing it—it was the same, endless corridors of trees. An owl cried unseen. The bog sucked at him, and his head began to hammer with the effort of motion. He began to rage at the mud and the forest. The anger felt good. It felt as if it might do something, something real.
Deep violet light, blacker than the darkness, burst from him. The trees quaked and the mud heaved. Trunks cracked and branches fell.
He stopped, staring. Needles and broken limbs lay on the ground. Varic took a step, and the brush bore him up; it crunched and shifted beneath his step, but it kept him above the bog.
So the trees would fall to anger, he thought, rage would harden the bog. Very well, then, very well. Anger was easily come by, rage was easily found—
A shout woke him. His face was pressed hard against Longlight’s bare shoulder; his arms were tight around her, his legs tangled with hers.
“Is it morning?” she said, though there was only blue moonglow through the window. There was no fear in her voice, no unease at all.
“Not yet. I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“I think I’m sorry to hear that.”
“We’ve a way to travel yet. Sleep now.”
She shut her eyes, and her breathing stilled.
Varic slid out of the bed. He rinsed his face and dressed, then walked back to the parlor car. It was dimly lit by two of the reading lamps, empty except for a dozing purser, who woke enough to ask Varic if there was anything he desired. Varic shook his head, went to the very end of the car, and sat down.
It would be dawn in about an hour. The nearly full moon was very low and cast long, deep shadows, black on silver. The morning was clearer than yesterday’s, though clouds of fog crouched in hollows. The train passed through a grove of tall poplars then, making the car very dark; the woods were misty and unreal, like the trees of his dream. He covered his eyes with a hand.
It was, after all, only a dream. He was no Archdreamer, sleeping true; he was no Archanything, had no sorcery at all, no more than he possessed Goddess. He had nothing at all that the quick hand of death or the long arm of distance could not separate from him. Until, perhaps, the Constitution was ratified; and if Brook were right, perhaps that would not do either.
The Talent was well enough if you could heal; there was always a demand for that. Even better was healing livestock: a good, studied horse-mender or cow-save could expect not only a pleasantly supplied life but admiration, even love, more so even than most priests.
Long ago there had been Archirons, but good steel and quality iron required constant high heat, and that was gotten more easily from a machine-drafted furnace than from sorcery.
It was an art in decline, that was the truth. The Ironway replaced the cloud-horse; the talking trance and the Long Mirror were supplanted by the click of the magnostyle. It was not impossible that in a few years some of the Lords Sorcerous would be giving up their seats to Lords Mechanic. That would blur the distinction between Lords and Commons, and after that, who could say? Perhaps the collapse of Parliaments and Republic, the rule of direct vote, all for all, what some called Poplicate and others King Mob. He thought of what Brook had said about Varic’s great work to follow the Revised Constitution. No, he told himself most firmly.
As long as there was work before him, as long as Strange House stood full of life and friendship, he had what he needed.
At approximately the same moment, Silvern was seated, fully dressed, in his compartment, reading. There was a knock at the door.
He admitted Longlight. She said, “I thought Varic might be here.”
“No. He must be in the parlor, or the restaurant. Shall we look for him?”
“Soon,” she said. “May I sit down?”
Silvern gestured toward a chair.
She sat, hands and feet together, looking unnaturally prim. “You’ve known him nighan twenty years, he said.”
“That’s so.”
“Does he ever frighten you?”
“Contrary to certain beliefs,” Silvern said very slowly, so that the words were like iron breaking gravel, “Palions are not incapable of fear. I think, having known him longer than you, I have been frightened by him as many times more in proportion.”
Longlight’s hands tightened.
Silvern said kindly, “Hunter’s sense sees hunter’s sense.”
“You say he doesn’t hunt,” she said, her dark eyes locked directly to his metallic ones, “but he’s no prey either.”
“Varic is among my dearest friends dear indeed, and there is no aid I would deny him. But some passages must be held by single soldiers.”
“I’ve known souls who were bright as the sun,” she said, “and some so black they went all nothing in a shadow. He’s bright, but it’s cold bright; he’s like the moon a thousand times. And he loves not Goddess.”
“Then he affects you more than She. No small thing.”
She smiled in spite of things. “I’ll have that on a blazon. In Quercian, so it will be taken for an ancient wisdom.”
Silvern laughed, a merry sound, no bitterness in it. “How he must have had to fight wanting you.”
“Am I being flattered?”
“You are. Respectfully so. Look here now, why don’t you come to the House? Strange would be delighted to meet you. And Edaire, and everyone there.”
“I’m expected…”
“Is it something a magnostyle can mend?”
“I have responsibilities.”
“Against that there is no appeal,” Silvern said, almost seriously. “But allow me to say this: Varic has suggested that I visit your territory. He wants the ground surveyed, for a country property. A hunting lodge, if such would meet with the Coron’s approval.”
“If I understand you rightly, the Coronage would be much enhanced by such a development.”
“Very good. Now, my responsibilities keep me at Strange House for the Equinoctials. But as soon as they end, I shall be available for Varic’s commission, and I would be both pleased to escort you home and happy of your advice along the journey.”
“If I return accompanied by a Palion,” she said thoughtfully, “then I have not come home from Lystourel with nothing.”
“I am certain my lady Coron knows her people well.”
“They want me to secure the Coronage,” she said. “If I won’t have heirs, at least take a lover who will. We had nearly a century of that, just after the Middle Kingdoms ended—the age of the Consorts Visitant, an’s called. But ‘secure’ means a few things, and we needn’t have ’un all at once.”
“Then you will visit.”
“Then I will.”
“Then we should find our friend and tell him. And by now there should be fresh tea and hot bacon in the restaurant.”
* * *
Some hours later, on another Ironway train a distance to the south, the train captain encountered a passenger at the fore end of the single sleeper, smoking in the apse. The man wore a green-and-black checked suit, a high-collared white shirt; his dark brown hair was loose and long. His face was thin, fine-boned, almost pretty. He gestured amiably with his white clay pipe.
The captain thought about telling the man not to stand in the apse, but just nodded and went by. Country gentlemen with no sense of fashion tended to be very unpleasant when told the rules. Besides, he had other things on his mind.
The captain went on into the chair carriage. It was a third-class car, fixed wooden bench seats padded with carpet. In the last seat on the right, a frayed brown sack of a man was sitting, his hat on and a scarf around his neck; he was hunched over a small book with a fancy leather binding. The captain stopped for a moment, looking sidelong at the man, who ignored him; then he went to the front end of the car, where one of the pursers was waiting.
“Is that the fellow?” the captain said.
“Been there with his book since Bluehollow Halt,” the purser said. “Hasn’t stirred except to turn pages. No baggage at all. Didn’t take tea.”
“Maybe he doesn’t like tea. Did you see a ticket?”
“Showed me one from Archways Cross to Coldmere. That’s the point of it.”
The captain thought. This train had passed through Archways Cross six hours ago, before dawn, and would reach Coldmere in another hour and a half. Bluehollow Halt, where the rumpled man had boarded, was halfway between—and the Halt was not much more than a water tank and a coal bin, an unlikely place for passengers at any time. It all seemed rather irregular. “Anything odd about the ticket?”
“The ink was smudged. Though he’s all a bit of a smudge, isn’t he? If he’s got a plate to his name, I’ll count it a wonder.” She looked suddenly doubtful. “Unless—he couldn’t be one of those eccentric sorcerers, could he? With the old book and all.”
“I doubt it. No baggage, you say?”
“Just that book, and whatever’s in his pockets.”
“Sorcerers generally have some gear. At least a Linkman, or a carpet satchel. Well, no harm in a look.”
They went back to the seated man. The captain said, “Your pardon, honored.”
“What am I supposed to pardon?” The man’s voice was a brassy squeak; the tone might have meant anything.
“May I examine your ticket?”
“She saw it.”
“I’d like to.”
The man closed his book, tucked it inside his shapeless coat, rummaged around within it for a moment, and produced a crumpled ticket.
“You didn’t get on at Archways Cross,” the captain said.
“I should think I know that.”
“How did you come to board halfway along?”
“It’s a tiresome story and I don’t choose to tire you with it. Is there something wrong, young man?”
The captain looked closely at the ticket. “This is punched twice.”
“She punched it twice. I didn’t ask why. Suppose you know what you’re doing.”
The captain looked at the punches. Train crews’ punches had different patterns. But the creased ticket had snagged on something, and a bit was torn away; it could have been the same punch, but—“Did you punch it twice?” the captain said.
“No, cap’n, I didn’t. Look how beat up it is. That could’ve hid the old hole. And he hardly wanted to give it up.”
“You hardly wanted to touch it,” the old man said with a particularly unpleasant cackle.
“It’s a used one, isn’t it?” the purser said hotly. “You got it out of a trash bin, or maybe someone’s pocket.”
“Is that indeed what I did?”
“It seems to me,” another voice said from behind the two train crew, “that there was quite a bit of commotion in this carriage just after Bluehollow Halt.”
The captain and purser turned. The man in the green checked suit was standing in the doorway, tucking his pipe into a pocket. “Something with the tea cart, I recall.”
The captain looked at the purser, who said, “Sandy had a row with one of those kids, opened a packet of sweets he couldn’t pay for. I may have looked up, but I didn’t double punch.”
“Have you compared the punch marks, captain?” the man said. “I think that Purser Lighter, here, employee number one four one six eight, was using a half clover, half square.”
There was an abrupt silence in the end of the car. Even the old man looked up, his mouth a small O.
The captain said quietly, “You know a bit about procedure, honored.”
“I keep an eye on what’s happening, Captain Stones. Number nine two two three. Now, I’d noticed the scholar here, as I was waiting to buy a tea, and I thought I’d offer him the hospitality of a tea in my cabin. If there’s a question about his ticket, however…”
The captain looked again at the purser, who said, “I … could have hit it twice.”
“Then I think we’ll assume you did,” the captain said firmly. “Pleasant trip, honoreds.” He handed the ticket back to the old passenger, nodded politely, and walked forward. The purser followed.
“Would you accept my invitation?” the gentleman said, and the old man said, “With the greatest pleasure.” They went aft. The man in the checked suit opened the door to a drawing room compartment, ushered the other into the parlor. The bedroom door was shut. “Do sit down,” the gentleman said. “I’m afraid I lied. There isn’t any tea.”
The old man sat down, and said, “I really do not know what to say,” in a voice that was not an old man’s.
“‘Thank you, but I didn’t want any tea’?”
“Lix,” Inspector of Ironways Edaire said, “this isn’t your compartment.”
“It was paid for by a hard-goods merchant from somewhere around Windscapel. We met in the station tavern at Two Blades last night. He wanted to buy some fellow commercial traveler a pint or five, and once he found out I was also in sashes and eaves”—Lix shrugged, palms up—“nothing would do but that we continue the conversation. I don’t think he was quite aware we were boarding. Mere minimi after that, he was asleep. I did present his ticket to the cabin-car purser.”
“Who didn’t check the bedroom?”
“No. The wheel noise just barely covers his snoring, too—do you mark it?”
“I congratulate you on how well you do my job.”
“Accepted thankfully.”
“I don’t suppose that would be one of your friend’s suits you’re wearing.” She raised a hand. “Only borrowed, I know.”
“Oh, Edaire, please.” Lix opened the wardrobe and displayed two hanging suits, in at least as overstated a pattern as the one he wore, but fully half again as broad. He moved close to Edaire, displayed the fraying at his cuffs, the thin patches at the elbows. “By your grace,” he said, and unbuttoned the jacket to show an enormous L-shaped tear in the white linen shirt, neatly stitched up. “Some years ago, the old Coron of Whitewater gave me this, part payment for entertainment at his daughter’s eighth birthday party. It is my country gentle’s suit; you can tell it would never pass in the City.”
Edaire nodded. “That was rude of me, I’m sorry. I know you’re no thief.”
“I knew you weren’t an old man, either,” Lix said lightly, “but I didn’t go around telling people.” He reached inside the checked jacket, brought out a wooden object: a taddelix, the emblem of Lix’s trade and the source of his name. It was a polished wood block as long as his hand, with a hinged wooden spoon on each side. This one was in a fine, polished cherrywood, and it had a small brass bell set into one end. Lix shook it; it made no noise. The wooden sounders were fastened by a silk band that must have been crimson once, and a thick felt cylinder held the bell clapper. “All tongues silent, you see.”
Edaire said, “How far did you intend to travel?”
He tossed the taddelix in the air with his right hand, made a taffy-pulling gesture with both, then caught the clacker in his left. “As far as would.”
“Say to Coldmere, then. That’s my destination, and the captain won’t be surprised when you vanish.”
“A fine town. Not that long a hike from Whitewater Town, either; perhaps I should see if the Coron will have her father’s suit mended for a song. And on the subject of clothing—do you have something more like yourself to wear? Or may I bring you a damp towel, to cure your premature age?”
“I’ve a bag waiting at Coldmere station. And I won’t change the other until we’re off. It might frighten the purser.”
