Angel Isle

CHAPTER

23

Maja woke with an ache in her hip and a strange stiffness in all her muscles and joints. A few loose hairs were brushing against her mouth. Sleepily she raised her hand to push them away and found a whole mass more of them covering the side of her face. Where had they come from? Her own hair wasn’t long and silky soft like…

Yes it was, now. Her last memory of the previous evening was sitting with the others in the moonlight, thinking about Zara and the Ropemaker, with never a thought in her head about what was coming in the morning. Now it all flooded back in.

Trying not to wake the others by groaning, she pushed herself creakily up. It was a quiet clear morning, with the chill of the night still in the air. She never woke this early, even when sleeping on bare ground. She pushed a tress of her hair forward to where she could see it and combed her fingers out along it. It was a bit blurred—she must be long-sighted—but she could see that it was silvery white, and feel its fineness. There was lots of it and it was long enough to reach well below her shoulders. There were several pretty rings on her fingers. She couldn’t see them clearly enough to know what they looked like, but feeling them with her other hand she found that they’d be impossible to remove over the swollen knuckles. The fingers themselves must once have been long and elegant, but now wouldn’t quite straighten properly.

She ran their tips over her face, feeling the creases and wrinkles. She seemed to have high cheekbones above slightly hollow cheeks, but her nose was firm and straight. Her mouth felt a bit too small for such a face. There were smile lines at the corners. No sign of sag beneath her chin.

And something else, stranger still…

It took her a moment to grasp what had changed. Her extra sense was gone. Even when most strongly shielded by Jex or Benayu, with no glimmer reaching her of the magic beyond the shield, she had always been aware of it, just as when one closes one’s eyes one is aware of the possibility of seeing. Not now. It didn’t belong in this strange old body. It would come back as soon as she was Maja again, but she felt an odd sense of loss at its going.

She realized her bladder was urgently full. She was going to need to crawl to the rocks to help herself stand. No. What looked like some rather grand clothes had been neatly piled beside her bedding, with a silver-handled ebony cane propped across them. Using it she carefully eased herself up. Her bad hip shrieked at her as she rose from kneeling, but she forced herself through the pain and hobbled away.

Yesterday they had each found their own places for this sort of thing. Mercifully Maja had chosen one that didn’t involve any scrambling among the rocks, a small grassy platform at the edge of the cliff, facing eastward across the ocean. The sun had started to rise by the time she reached it. When she had done what she had to she stood for a while staring out to sea and letting the faint warmth of those first rays seep into her chill-stiffened limbs.

Did Benayu really need to do this to me? she wondered. Well, I suppose it means I’m not going to be a twelve-year-old girl trying to pretend to be an old woman. This creaking body will keep telling that’s what I am. I suppose it’s a good idea. And there was more to it than that. She wasn’t a twelve-year-old girl. She was a strong confident woman, used to being listened to and obeyed. She could be kindly enough to those who merited kindness, but very few people would be fools enough to offend her twice.

When she got back to the arena she found Benayu sitting cross-legged on his bedding, studying something in his lap. He wasn’t wearing his normal clothes, but some kind of uniform, green with gold trimmings. She half remembered seeing uniforms like that somewhere before. In a dream, was it…?

She peered at him, puzzled, and hobbled toward him, but her long-sightedness blurred him as she came nearer. He must have looked up and seen her.

“Good morning,” he said. “I hope you got a bit of sleep. I was a bit worried.”

“As you well might have been,” she answered, snappishly, and was startled by the sound of her new voice. Even the words were different from the sort she was used to saying.

“Though I can see the reasons for it,” she went on. “You have not yourself changed?”

“Easier for me if I don’t,” he said. “It’d be like doing everything through a screen. And we don’t want them to get it that most of the magical stuff is coming from me and Chanad. So I’m your servant-boy, carry your stuff around, give you a shoulder to lean on, that sort of thing. This is your household livery I’m wearing. Would you like me to help you dress?”

“I would prefer Saranja to assist me. But you may as well try to make me comfortable until she is ready to do so.”

She was pleased by how easy it seemed to play her new part, almost as if she’d done it all her life.

“Very well, ma’am,” he answered, and rose. Close up, his face was a blur, but she could tell from his tone that he was grinning.

“And you can take that smile off your face, young man,” she snapped. “I would not be seen in public to allow myself to be so spoken to by a servant.”

“I’m sorry, my lady,” he said, actually sounding a bit chastened.

Maja leaned on his shoulder as she returned to where she had slept, and waited while he opened a folding canvas stool which she hadn’t noticed before, padded it with some of her bedding and helped her to sit.

“I hope you don’t think I overdid the aches and pains,” he said. “I copied them from Lady Kzuva. She’s actually the Landholder of Kzuva in her own right.”

“There’s a Lord Kzuva in the story we tell in the Valley. Zara used to be his household magician.”

“That’s right. Lady Kzuva’s his umpteen-greats-granddaughter. She’s a big northern landowner. Striclan told me about her. I’m sorry about your hip, but I was pretty tired and I’d got a lot to do. It’s much easier for me to copy someone whole than start fiddling about with bits and pieces.”

“I will put up with it,” said Maja. “You have in any case done more than simply copy her. I am, in some way, Lady Kzuva herself, with me, Maja, somewhere inside her.”

“Oh. I didn’t expect…Oh, yes, of course—I should have thought of that.”

“Very well. After all, I am used to my aches and pains. I find my long-sightedness rather more of a trial.”

“There’s a pair of spectacles in your reticule, along with other stuff you might need. Here.”

“Thank you. What is your name, young man?”

“I am Bennay, my lady.”

“Then thank you, Bennay. I think we may achieve a satisfactory relationship.”

“Very good, my lady.”

The spectacles ingeniously folded to fit into a narrow soft-leather bag. They sprang open at the touch of a button, and had a neat handle with a loop at the end. She slipped it over her wrist and used the handle to hold them in place. Immediately her vision cleared, so completely that she guessed that the lenses must be magical.

Angel Isle was at its most peaceful. The white seabirds were already at their business, calling and soaring. The lichen clung to the rocks. Ribek and Striclan were still asleep, both facing away from her so that she couldn’t see whether Benayu had changed them too; but just beyond Striclan Saranja was sitting up, stretching and yawning. She didn’t look any different from usual. A few years older, perhaps. Beyond her the horses were nuzzling into piles of fodder. Sponge lay beside Benayu with his head on his paws. There was no sign of Chanad.

Maja put the spectacles away, took a small brush and comb out of the reticule and started to tease the night tangles out of her hair while she waited for Saranja to dress. It was difficult to reach behind her head, but the hair was long enough for her to be able to drag it forward and comb the ends, which was where most of the knots were. The real Lady Kzuva would have had a servant to do this, of course, which was why her hands seemed clumsier than she’d have expected. It wasn’t just the creakiness of her joints. They hadn’t had any practice.

Saranja disappeared among the rocks and returned, dressed in her normal clothes. Instead of going back to where she’d slept she went and crouched beside Benayu to watch what he was doing. Maja could hear the quiet murmur of his voice as he explained something to her, and then hers, more briefly, asking a question. When they’d finished, Saranja came over to Maja.

“Good morning,” she said. “I hope you managed to sleep a bit. You’d like me to help you dress?”

“If you would be so good.”

“Yes, of course. Benayu says you’re playing the part to the hilt.”

“I am not playing the part,” Maja said sharply. “I am the part. I could no more speak like the Maja you know than I could skip rope. I take it you do not propose to appear before the Syndics dressed as you are.”

“I’ll change when I’ve done the horses.”

Dressing was a tedious process and painful at times, but the result was satisfactory—a splendid version of the women’s attire standard throughout the Empire, a long-sleeved dress, dark brown velvet laced with silver, the hem of the skirt rustling at her ankles, the front lacing up to her neck and finishing in a flurry of fine lace; a triple necklace of pearls and rubies, with a matching brooch; and a long scarf wound twice round her head so that it framed her face and the ends hung down either side almost to her knees; the blue beads on the tassels—sapphires in her case—announced her rank and status. One of her rings bore a jade seal, the rest glittered with jewels.

By the time they’d finished the others were up. Ribek and Striclan were wearing the normal outfit of most grown men in the Empire, but of finer quality than before and with more blue beads. Like Saranja, Ribek had changed little from what he’d been when Maja first saw him, apart from aging ten years or so, with graying temples and a bonier nose. With the buried part of her mind she’d been vaguely wondering how she’d feel about him, now she herself was so altered. Suppose two old lovers who’d long ago separated without rancor were suddenly to meet again; they might feel like this, she decided. Peculiar business, this, both of them living their lives in the wrong order.

Striclan, on the other hand, was a stranger who happened to look a bit like Striclan but was clearly someone else. His hair was cut short and he had a neat little moustache and beard, wore spectacles and held himself with a scholarly stoop.

“All his own work,” said Saranja. “He used his own hair for the whiskers. He had the gum and glasses in his shoulder bag, but everything else he just changed somehow. He’s full of tricks. Comes of being a spy, I suppose.”

“Where is Chanad?” said Maja. “Is she all right?”

“She’s a lot stronger. Apparently the Ropemaker passed on some of his powers to her, as well as his official ring, same as Zara did with Benayu, but she’s still got to get used to them. She’s gone ahead to deal with the Pirates’ magicians. We’re going to have something to eat, and then Benayu’s going to make us invisible and take us to their control deck so that we can see what’s going on before they know we’re there. We’ll just pop up when it suits us.”

Breakfast was a simple, homely meal, porridge, fruit, little cold sausages, bread and butter and cheese, warm milk, or water—all perfectly edible, but Maja felt oddly dissatisfied and crotchety. It must have showed, for Benayu rose and came across. (He knew better than to read her mind.)

“May I fetch you anything, my lady?” he said.

“Thank you, Bennay. I am accustomed to something particular at this hour. I cannot tell you what it is, but if you could arrange something…”

“Very good, my lady.”

He stood for a moment in one of his trances. A salver appeared in his hands. On it were a pretty cup and saucer, a matching pot with a spout and a jar with a lid. Carefully he filled the cup from the pot, gave it to her, took the lid off the jar and offered it to her. She took out three small round biscuits, put them in the saucer and inhaled the rich, spicy steam that rose from the cup. The ache in her hip eased at the first sip. Magic, she guessed.

“Thank you, Bennay. Just what I needed,” she said.

“Very good, my lady.”

Beyond him she saw Ribek’s lips twitch. She produced what she was confident was a formidable glare.

“I see no cause for amusement in an old woman needing certain comforts after a night in the open,” she said. “We would all do well to become the people we are supposed to be, as far as we can. A superficial resemblance is not enough. We cannot afford to appear before these barbarians as a troupe of actors, or they will sense the deception. I was already asleep when you made your decisions last evening, so would you be good enough to introduce yourselves to me now?”

It wasn’t in Ribek’s nature to quail before a glare, but he accepted her rebuke with a nod.

“Yes,” he said, “you’re quite right. The sooner we get used to it, the better. We are representatives of a coalition of different interests in the Empire who combined to destroy the Watchers. Saranja and I are using our own names. I’m a mill owner, and I represent industrial interests, just as you represent the big landowners and agriculture in general.”

“And I’m going to be Captain Commander in the Women’s Regiment of the Imperial Army,” said Saranja. “I can’t be anyone grand, like you, because the Pirates probably know there aren’t any women generals, but there’s a lot of disaffection in the lower ranks of the army, Strick told us. I’ve seen a bit of fighting among the warlords beyond the Great Desert. But I’d better go and get the horses done, so I can dress the part too.”

Striclan’s thin lips moved into a smile as he watched her go.

“I’m looking forward to this,” he said. “Well, I’m Alkip Ruddya. I represent the Imperial Administration. I was Under-secretary in the department dealing with the registration and control of supernatural affairs, Magdep for short. I assembled our coalition at the request of my own Permanent Secretary and several of his colleagues of equal rank.

“There is a further point about yourself that you should know. Chararghi society was originally matriarchal. The men went off to hunt or fight and the women controlled the homestead. The trait persists. Even powerful men such as those we will be meeting have an instinct to respect women such as yourself.”

“We sound a formidable enough group,” said Maja, “few though we are. There are no professional magicians among us?”

“That is deliberate,” said Ribek. “One of the things we want to persuade the Pirates about is that they won’t be able to walk all over the Empire now that the Watchers are gone. So far they’ve just been nibbling away at the edges from the protection of the sea. They know almost nothing about the interior. So if they find that three of the four of us, who aren’t professional magicians, seem to have considerable magical powers…”

“But none of us have them. I certainly have nothing of the sort. The opposite, if anything.”

“You will appear to have them. Look, the simplest thing would be if I tell you how we hope the show will go. We aren’t in any hurry. It’ll be much easier for Benayu and Chanad if they’re close inland, where their powers are stronger. The Pirates are planning to anchor off Larg this evening and come ashore in the morning. All right?”

He was still talking when Saranja came back. The dress uniform of a female Captain Commander in the Imperial Army was a brass helmet with a purple plume worn over a shorter version of the standard head-scarf framing the face. Below that a dark olive jacket, tight-laced up to the collar, with gold epaulettes, belted in at the waist; short, many-pleated skirt over close-fitting breeches; black boots, belt and belt-pouch, highly polished. A light curved sword hung from the belt.

They’d all been sitting while Ribek talked. Striclan rose and kissed Saranja’s hand. She flushed, adding to the aura of romantic dash, but collected herself and turned to Maja, drew her sword and saluted her. The salute looked exactly right, long practiced, though it couldn’t have been anything she’d done before. As with Maja, she wasn’t acting the part, but being it. Her body knew how to do that.

“Thank you, Captain,” said Maja. “We are grateful that you were able to join us.”

They ate their midday meal off a table and sitting in chairs, while Benayu waited on them. He ate separately when they had finished. Maja’s old body told her that it was used to a nap at that point, so she had one, sitting upright in her chair, and woke refreshed. Then Ribek asked her permission to join her and they talked for an hour or more about their imaginary lives. He was a self-made man, she learned, having inherited a small water mill in a distant northern valley, done well by good luck and hard work, bought more mills and was now a wealthy industrialist with three children already in the business. To Maja, it all seemed perfectly real, as true as anything her buried self knew about him. And in another way he was still the same Ribek, himself through and through. He showed no sign at all of being overawed either by her high social standing or her formidable presence. As for herself, she had no need to invent. Every minute that passed, more of the real Lady Kzuva’s knowledge, her memories, her experience of the world was there, present on Angel Isle. She told Ribek the name of the pet greyhound she had had when she was a child. She couldn’t have done that when she’d woken.

Benayu had stood throughout a respectful distance away. At one point Maja had thought of beckoning him over to ask how long the effect of the potion he’d given her that morning would last, and whether it would be a good idea to renew it before they set off, but though his eyes had been looking toward where she sat he’d clearly been in one of his trances. Now, however, he came over with the salver already in his hands, and when she’d taken the cup and thanked him he turned to the others.

“Your pardon, ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “I think we should practice invisibility. It’s not as easy as you’d think, because you won’t be able to see each other. But if you all hold hands that’ll stop you bumping into each other. It makes it simpler for me, anyway. You don’t want to move around more than you can help, but if you have to you’ve got to remember where the others are and leave them room to get past things and so on. I may be too busy to put thoughts into your heads, so you’ll have to pass messages along the line by squeezing or shaking the next person’s hand. If you’ll please hold hands you can sort that out between you now, and then I’ll fetch the animals.”

Invisibility was, as he’d said, much harder than Maja would have thought. She was at the right of the line so that she could use her cane, and she knew where her hands and feet were in relation to herself, but not in exact relation to the ground she was standing on except by looking down through her own feet and seeing where the grass was pressed flat. And she couldn’t have told to within several inches where the end of her cane was. They practiced getting out of Benayu’s way without jostling each other when he walked toward them, and only got it right after several tries.

“I suppose that’ll have to do,” said Benayu at last, and they returned to visibility. “Here is your brooch, my lady. Shall I pin it on for you?”

“Please.”

The brooch was a silver plain bar bearing three horses, their bodies overlapping, grazing beside a tree. Even at that scale, Maja could tell which horse was which. She nodded and he pinned it onto her dress. She turned and saw that Rocky, Pogo and Levanter were no longer where they had been, though Sponge still lay there, drowsing untroubled.

“Well, there’s clearly no question of our sneaking up behind some general and peering over his shoulder while he looks at a map,” said Ribek. “Hello, there. Coming along for the ride?”

The last few words were spoken to a golden squirrel that had come scampering up behind, climbed his body as easily as if it had been a tree trunk, and was now perched on his shoulder. A small white owl floated soundlessly down and settled beside Saranja’s left epaulette. A dark green snake slid to Striclan’s feet. He picked it up and lifted it so that it could loop itself round his neck. Something brushed against Maja’s cheek. When she reached to investigate it clambered onto her forefinger. She inspected it through her eyeglasses—a large, furry-bodied moth with rich brown wings that flickered with purple sheen where they caught the light. She lifted it so that it could settle onto her head-scarf.

“It matches your eyes, my lady,” muttered Ribek.

She smiled, accepting the compliment.

“No doubt they have a purpose, but I think I must have dozed off.”

“We felt it might impress the Pirates if—”

But Ribek’s explanation was interrupted by Benayu.

“All set, ladies and gentlemen? I’ll be going ahead to choose a clear spot on the command deck for you. If you’d be so kind as to hold hands again…”