“Comply. Comply in a timely manner. Then do something that Mirami would not like at all if she knew of it. Be sure it is something to your benefit, not hers. Be sure she does not know of it. That way, my child, your accounts will always be in balance.”
Alicia thought she had been about seven years old when he had told her that.
“Your mother will always think she controls you. You will always know she does not,” he had said. “You will take pleasure in that. Your accounts will balance.”
Very well. Now it was time to balance the accounts. Mirami was getting out of hand, and it was time she had something else to think about. Alicia went to a cupboard, opened it, found a small box sealed with wax, cut the wax away, and opened the box to disclose several tiny boxes inside, each carefully labeled, several with the letter M, a couple with the letter C, for Chamfray. Chamfray was her mother’s “chamberlain.” She took a C-labeled box and carried it to the machine she had used to kill the woman at Woldsgard. A rack nearby was filled with small skull-shaped receptacles, rounded at one end, angled like a jaw at the other. The contents of the box—a few hairs, a few scraps of skin—went into one of the receptacles; the receptacle fitted into a little port in the fatal-cloud mechanism, clicking into place with a sound like a key turning in a lock, scrun-chick. She entered a certain code, then another one, thinking carefully as she did so. There would be no mistakes this time, even though this was only the second time she had used it. Since that time she had done it badly, she had studied the instructions, over and over. This time there would be no mistake. Finally, satisfied, she pushed a red button. The mechanism hummed. After a time, it stopped humming and clicked again as a small, cylindrical capsule extruded itself from the bottom of the device. The capsule was smooth, without markings except for the fine line that girded its middle, a line indicating that it would probably unscrew or uncap at that point. It was almost exactly the size of the tube one would attach to a pigeon’s leg, to carry a message.
The loft was four stories above her, and she relished every step of the climb. At the top, she sent the loft man away and took time to lean in the window, judging the weather. It had cleared completely; the skies were blue and warm; it was early in the day. She picked a large, strong-looking bird from the Ghastain cage, a bird that would make the trip well before nightfall. She held it gently, stroking it: such a nice, nice strong bird. The loft keeper at the court of King Gahls would open the capsule to get the message out just the way the loft keeper at Woldsgard castle had sometimes done when she sent a new copy of the cloud. They had never caught on to that. Stupid of them! One of Justinian’s cleaners, the one who swept out the lofts, had been bribed to provide a few pigeons. Though there had never been a message, she had sent copy after copy!
No copies this time! This one had been made correctly; once would be quite enough. The lofts in Ghastain, up on the highlands, were part of the castle itself, close to the living quarters of those who dwelt there. Close enough. The cloud would find Chamfray, all by itself. She returned to her cellar empty-handed, humming.
The little box lay where she had left it. The last time Alicia had been at court, she had taken hairs from inside Chamfray’s cap. Hairs with their little roots attached, the only kind that the mechanism could use. With that Tingawan woman, she had taken a fragment of glass from the edge of a wine cup. It was the only material she had, the only she could obtain! And then she’d made mistakes. Instead of killing swiftly, cleanly, it had been like cutting the Stoneway, chip, chip, chip. Like bleeding someone to death a drop at a time! It had taken far too long. If she’d been able to get some other material, she could have ended it earlier, but the princess had been too well guarded.
She would do it correctly for the other Tingawans, too, when she got around to that. Mirami had no idea that Alicia could use the Old Dark Man’s machines. Mirami knew he had the machines, but she had never been taught to use them. It had amused the Old Dark Man to keep her in the dark, to educate Alicia without her mother knowing of it. Mirami thought the Tingawan princess had died from poison because that’s the way Mirami always killed. Though Mirami did not kill for pleasure, she did it easily and without pity when it suited her. If it suited her plans to kill Alicia, she would do that just as easily.
When Mirami found someone more talented than someone already in her employ, the former employee usually died, though sometimes they simply disappeared. Children were no different. Alicia had once overheard her mother say that children were merely anchors for attaching oneself to men one wished to use. Well, Mirami had already used Falyrion, so the children she’d had with Falyrion were disposable. She hadn’t finished using King Ghals, so Rancitor was in good odor at the moment. Hulix, however, would not last long as Duke of Kamfels. Alicia had read her mother’s attitude toward him. He was only a pawn, holding a square until someone else moved in and took him. Alicia had long ago decided not to be another pawn.
The Old Dark Man had come for her and found her weeping.
“What’s this? Why are you going on like this?”
“Mother. She killed him. She killed my father. I saw her.”
“Your father?” He made a strange chuckling sound. “You mean Falyrion?”
“My father, yes. She killed him.”
“And you loved him.” His voice was serious, calm, but with something sharp in it.
“I do love him! And I can’t say anything to anybody or she’ll kill me.”
“Yes. Probably. But you remember what I taught you about keeping your accounts balanced?” He chuckled. “Usually what she does is of no concern to me, but I have a special need for you, Alicia, so I have taught you how to keep yourself safe. If you have paid attention?” He had tipped her head, glared into her eyes. Still sobbing, she had nodded. That night he didn’t take her anywhere. That night he went away without taking her anywhere or doing any of the things he sometimes did to her. The “procedures” that hurt. Sometimes they hurt a lot, but learning to use the mechanisms was worth it!
No doubt Mirami had killed a lot of people before she killed Falyrion, but the deaths had never touched Alicia. Her father’s death was different. She had seen her father lying on the bier. His hands were cold. His face was still. He wouldn’t take her riding anymore. He wouldn’t show her how to fish or read her stories of the Before Time. He wouldn’t take her for surprise picnics into the forest. Mirami could kill whom she liked and Alicia didn’t care, but Mirami had no right to kill Alicia’s father. This death she would not forgive. That was when she really paid attention to the Old Dark Man’s strange words. That was when she really focused on keeping her accounts balanced, in order to be safe, yes, but that wasn’t the only reason.
She hadn’t been blamed for Justinian’s flight, so she could assume she was still safe, still in reasonable favor. Her meetings with the Sea King’s ambassadors would remain secret. It was clever of the Sea King to hide them in the refugee villages, among the Becomers! One day, however, when she had time to search Wold for what the Tingawan had hidden there, the Sea King would put such power into her hands that Mirami would no longer matter. Until that time it was expedient to set the Tingawans aside and at least pretend to attend to family business.
This thought led her to wonder why, since the family business was so important to Mirami, with all her spies and agents and little people passing on bits of information, she had not foreseen Justinian’s leaving. She always seemed to know everything before it happened, but she had not known this! In fact, such immediate action was utterly unlike Justinian’s usual behavior. He was slow to act, usually. He liked to think about things. Perhaps the cursed Tingawan princess had made his plans for him before she died! More than merely perhaps. She had done so! If Alicia needed a reason to hate Tingawans, that was a sufficient reason!
Of course, Mirami had not foreseen that the Sea King’s people would approach Alicia, either. Mirami had not foreseen that Alicia might prefer to have plans of her own. Mirami was not omniscient. Cheered by
this, Alicia drummed her fingers, crossing things off her mental list, eventually coming to the subject of her most recent annoyance: Jenger.
If he had reached the Vulture Tower, he was now arranging to abduct the Tingawan females and assassinate the one called Bear. If he succeeded, well and good! The prisoners could be kept at the Old Dark House indefinitely. A few times she had kept prisoners alive for years. Well, almost alive. And if Jenger had not succeeded, it really didn’t matter, because the Tingawans could be killed later. She could simply send a pigeon to the Vulture Tower, telling Jenger to return to Altamont. This would tell her if the route was safe for her to use.
However, Mirami had said they had time and Jenger had been behaving very oddly of late, not as amusing as usual, more subdued. Perhaps he suspected he was about to be replaced. Servants who reached that point were sometimes driven to play games of their own. Well, since a little delay was allowable, she would wait a day or two before sending archers by the same route Jenger had taken. The shafts would be a bit drier by then; they could report on the condition of the tunnels when they returned and they could bring Jenger back with them. As a matter of fact, they could take a pack animal or two and bring back everything in the tower. If Jenger had been playing games, there would be some evidence of it.
Busy with these plans, she left her secret room, which locked itself behind her. Also behind her, she left the remaining hair and fingernail fragments from Bear’s betrothed in far-off Tingawa, along with the hairs she had obtained from Bear’s barber in Wold. The current haunting would go on for a while longer before she had to strengthen it. Bear’s hair in the seeker, the girl’s hair in the sending machine, the two linked. Wherever he was, her essence would be all around him. He would be smelling her, hearing her, feeling her. Alicia could let that situation alone for the moment.
An unintended result of Alicia’s temporary abandonment of her devices was that the ghost possessing Bear weakened and for a few days, Bear—who could not scout the way south until the roads cleared somewhat—stopped lecturing Xulai about moving into the house at the edge of the abbey lands. Xulai gave thanks for this, however temporary it might be. She was finding the weathery days an interim she had needed, a few days to get used to herself before she and Abasio needed to act. Also, Abasio had time to get the cephalopod book into his library. He said it was a leftover from a time when nanotechnology had been able to do remarkable things. Not all ease-machines, he claimed, had been evil.
Xulai found this to be true when Abasio put the strange helmet on her head and she entered the library, where she met Ollie. Ollie was “the Orphan,” who had been—no, who was—Abasio’s love. Xulai spent so much time in the helmet with Ollie, walking and talking and drinking tea—all of which seemed completely real—that she came to regard Ollie as a close, loved friend, someone she could tell everything and anything to, how she felt, how she didn’t feel, how angry she became at some things without knowing why. Ollie understood them all. Ollie had felt many of the same emotions for the same reasons. Ollie was glad Xulai had met Abasio. She hoped they would be friends, even lovers if they liked. In the world of the helmet, she said, jealousy just wasn’t interesting enough to bother with. Living people had short lives and didn’t have time to love many people—nor love them well—but when one was immortal, as the people in the helmet were, one could love one or a dozen or a hundred others. Immortals had time to love everyone they found compatible. There were many people in the helmet besides the Orphan, all of them living very genuine and consequential lives in their strangely wonderful, inconsequential world.
That evening, she sat in Abasio’s wagon, telling him of all this, his arm around her as it often was, his cheek against hers. She said the word “love,” and his arm tightened. She turned toward him and met his lips. She thought dazedly that it was her first kiss; Oldwife Gancer had told her about first kisses, waxing romantic for such a practical person. It wasn’t a surprise, was a surprise, was a fantastic, wonderful surprise—especially that she did not have to decide anything at all. What happened after the kiss was a silent clap of thunder, something that should have shaken the sky so that everyone heard it, though later it seemed no one had either heard it or seen the lightning that preceded it, the luminous, effulgent air that seemed to burn without heat, the fiery air that held them at the center of a great crowd. She had felt them, the people, felt their eyes, calm and studious and concerned, and yet they two had been quiet and private as though they had hidden themselves in the depths of a forest while it all happened, and after a while, happened again. They did not even speak of it. They did not need to speak of it. They knew what had occurred and how it had been witnessed; they were sure of that, though not sure why. The whole thing was simply too much for a why.
“Do I need to tell anyone?” she whispered. They were lying on his bed, covered by a feather quilt.
He was lying dazed beside her, conscious of the immensity that had come to surround them from some strange, evanescent, utterly unidentifiable source. He summoned consciousness with some difficulty and made a slightly shrugging motion with the shoulder her head was lying on. “Do you feel you should tell someone?”
“No,” she said. Though she might tell Precious Wind. Sometime. If it mattered. If, for example, she found herself—pregnant. Well and well, so, if she were, they would decide what to do on their way to Tingawa. She had sworn to get there; this would not interfere.
Later that evening she returned the librarian’s book. “Did you find what you needed?” he asked her, aware of her eyes for the first time. They had a depth to them he could not quite—“perceive” wasn’t the right word. What was the right word for something one knew was there that one could not sense in any normal way? All he could do was repeat himself: “Did you find what you needed?”
“I’m sure I did, Elder Wordswell. I’m sure when I find out what it was, the answer will be there.”
“You’ve copied the book?” he asked, astonished.
“Oh, the book. Yes. Someone is remembering it for me,” she said, astounding him yet further.
Virtually overnight, the drifts melted down; Abasio took Blue out onto the fields south of the abbey and rode him a bit, asking him please to fancy it up so they wouldn’t look like idiots. Blue said fancying it up would make them look more like idiots, but he did it anyhow. Blue had met fancy horses; he knew what horses could be trained to do. If the man wanted prancing, very well, prancing he would get, and dancing with this foot, then that foot, so that any observer would get a very false idea about what kind of horse Abasio was riding. Such horses had been trained out of having any minds of their own. Blue had no time for such horses, though he had plenty of time to notice that during their riding sessions no men in armor went into the anytime dining room.
“When are you going to dye the horses?” Xulai asked that evening.
“You don’t have school tomorrow or the next morning, right?”
“It’s a holiday they have here, a kind of feast day.”
“Both mornings I’ll go out where I’ve been exercising Blue, you’ll come along on Flaxen, and I’ll pretend to be giving you some pointers on riding. That’s to get people used to your being out there. The second night, I’ll hitch up Blue and drive the wagon away south. I’ve found a place to hide the wagon where it’ll be safe, an old half-fallen-in building, maybe a cabin or barn, in a small hidden canyon with a little stream in it. The wagon will fit inside. I’ve already cut some trees to hide it. I’ll change Blue’s appearance that night and pack the things we’ll need for the trip. I rode on south the day before the storm; there’s a farmer southerly a few miles who had a mule for sale. I bought it and told him I’d pick it up in a few days.
“The morning after I go, you take Flaxen out to the field, just as we’ll have been doing. There’s a corner of the field where you can’t be seen from the parapets. You’ll move in and out of that area several times, then from that area move into the trees. Circle the fields, stay inside
the trees, and go on farther south, parallel to the road. When you can’t see any part of the abbey anymore, not even the tower, you can get onto the road, but keep watch and get off of it if anyone’s coming. I’ll meet you along the way.
“I’ve bought some boy’s clothes, ostensibly for my nephew. You’ll need a name. Think of one that pleases you. The clothes are already in the wagon. Anything else you need to take, you’ll need to smuggle down to me over the next couple of days.”
“The mule will carry what we can’t?”
“Yes, but we should still keep our belongings light. You won’t be a girl, remember, and we both should look a bit scruffy and travel worn—decently clean, but not polished. I’ve found a cap that’ll cover your hair if you can braid it up.”
“I’ve been practicing.”
“Now, one final thing: It’s been my experience that no matter how good a plan is, things can go wrong, so one should always have another plan in place, just in case. If anything happens to delay you, I’ll wait with the wagon! One day, two, seven, whatever, I’ll wait with the wagon. If you need me or need to let me know something, can you send your friend?”
“If I knew where you were, certainly,” said the fisher, sticking his head out of Xulai’s jacket pocket, which was deep and wide enough to hide him completely, though he had grown some in the last few days.
Abasio nodded. “You heard what I told Xulai. Follow the road until you’re well out of sight of the abbey. Look for a long straight stretch with outcroppings of red rock on the right-hand side. It’s the first red rock you’ll see. Directly across from the third outcropping, on the other side of the road, you’ll see three big pine trees in a straight line. Right now there’s a pile of brush I cut and stacked between the leftmost and middle tree. I’ll spread it around to hide the wagon tracks when I take the wagon in. Behind the brush, follow the tracks.
“Now, that’s if you’re delayed. If I’m in the wagon and everything is all right, there’ll be a straight line of flat stones between the first and second tree, where the brush is now. I figure if anyone takes me out of there, I’ll have a chance to scatter those stones with my feet, or Blue will. If the stones are scattered, go away.”