Angel Isle

CHAPTER

26

Dreamily, lulled by the hiss of the passing air and the rhythmic boom of the tireless wings, Maja watched the landscape stream away beneath them as the horses bore them north. She thought they’d seen a lot of the Empire on their long, slow journey south, but realized now that it had been almost nothing beside the things she would never now see.

That craggy range of hills with a great gorge running through, for instance, every cliff festooned with battlements and walls protecting what should have been a series of mighty citadels, but in fact holding no more than a few stone cottages with steep red roofs, piled almost on top of each other where they clung to the rock above the foaming water.

Benayu, after a week’s rest at Larg, was stronger physically, but still seemed dazed and faraway, coming to terms with himself, perhaps, in the same way he had done on their first journey north from Larg. Maja, relishing her recovery of her extra sense, hadn’t asked him to renew her shielding. So now she could tell that the costly-seeming fortifications had been built centuries ago by magic. But why here, and to what end? And how did the people who dwelt there now earn their living in such a seemingly barren place?

A yellow plain, featureless apart from one large dark patch like cloud-shadow. But the sky was cloudless, and above the patch, and nowhere else, forty or fifty huge birds circled. As the horses drew nearer Maja saw that the patch was an enormous herd of animals, several thousand of them. Antelopes? Wild cattle? And the birds vultures, hovering for prey? None of these, for as Maja watched three of the creatures below detached themselves from the main body and she could see that they were also birds, each the size of a pony, but flightless, with puny little wings. A moment later one of those circling overhead plummeted down and drove the strays back to join the main mass; then the rest of the flying ones seemed to notice the intruders’ approach and flew shrieking toward them. Saranja, riding on that flank with Striclan pillion, shouted a warning and swung Rocky away. Benayu and Ribek followed. Sponge dropped back as rear-guard, snarling over his shoulder. The birds, soon outpaced, turned back to their guardianship.

Then for a while they followed a river winding through a forest, fold after fold of tree-covered hills as far as the eye could see. Stretches of glassy-still water alternated with foaming rapids. Close above one of these, two massive chains had been stretched from bank to bank to hold two lines of rafts steady against the current. There were people on the rafts, wearing the normal bright-colored dress of the Empire. Each of the women on the upstream line carried a large gourd, from which she was steadily sprinkling small handfuls of what looked like some kind of seed onto the water where it flowed between the rafts. The rafts immediately above the rapids were spaced further apart so that the men on them could thrash the surface into foam with implements like flails. The foam was brilliant orange, which persisted all the way down the rapids until it was lost in the stillness of the pool below.

In the middle of a clearing beside the pool a boy about six years old, naked apart from a small gold crown, was sitting on an ornate throne watching the tumbling water. Either side of him a dozen yellow-robed men—priests, perhaps—stood with their spread hands raised in front of them as if they were causing the color change. None of the laborers above the rapids had even glanced up as the winged horses passed above them, so intent were they on their task. For a moment it looked as if the priests would also ignore the intrusion into their ritual, but then one of them shouted and pointed and they broke rank and rushed into the trees, stumbling over their robes as they ran. The boy remained, staring steadfastly at the sunset-colored rapids.

“What on earth was happening there?” said Maja. “It wasn’t magic. At least I couldn’t feel any.”

“We’ll never know now,” said Ribek cheerfully.

“No, we’ll never know now. Never.”

“We could go back and ask, I suppose. Only I doubt they’d be friendly, judging by the way those fellows bolted into the trees.”

“We’d be doing it all the time. Going back and asking, I mean. There’s so much. It was better on the road. There was time.”

“You want to get down and walk? You aren’t in a hurry to get back to the Valley?”

“Not specially, not for me. I know you’ve got to, because the horsemen will be going back to their wives and families before the passes close, and then you can sing to the snows and stop them coming back next year.”

“Assuming it works again. Won’t know till I’ve tried.”

“You’ve seen the Ice-dragon. And Saranja’s got Zald. It’ll be all right. This time, anyway. And Benayu wants to get back to his sheep, and Saranja’s got to sort out about what happens to Woodbourne and see what everybody wants done about the forest…”

“And we won’t know that for several years. Valley’s never been quick to make up its mind…”

They had talked it over and over in the last few days since the Ropemaker’s unsettling last words about the new times coming. It was both hardest and easiest for Ribek. Hardest because he would have been perfectly happy to go back to the old times, with the Valley closed off completely, and easiest because he still knew what he wanted and what he had to do—to live as a miller at Northbeck and to keep the passes closed if he could.

Saranja and Maja were different. They’d both hated their life in the Valley. Why should they care what happened to it? Saranja had already tried to leave it once, and Maja might have done so too when she was older, supposing she’d had the nerve. But both of them, almost as soon as they were in the adventure, had assumed without thinking that the whole purpose of their lives, the one thing for which they’d been born, was to find the Ropemaker so that he could restore the Valley to what it had been for the past forty generations.

And now perhaps that wasn’t true any more. The Ropemaker had said those times were over, and they themselves must sow the seed of change. This was what they had tried to do when they met the Pirates on the hill above Larg, but it would take years—most of Maja’s lifetime, perhaps—before she got to see what kind of a tree had grown from their sowing.

And if these were new times, did it even matter from now on if there wasn’t anyone to sing to the unicorns, if no one ever again could hear what the cedars were sighing?

Anyway, how could the three of them decide something like that for themselves? The one thing that was clear to them was that somehow the whole Valley, everyone who lived there, had to choose. They had a few years more to make up their minds.

Benayu had been firm about that. There was one important thing he had to do when he got home, he said, as soon as he’d recovered from his efforts at Barda and Larg, and then he was going back to simple shepherding until he’d grown to manhood and come fully into his powers. At that point he would help Saranja seal the forest if that was what the Valley wanted—she couldn’t do it without him—and then make up his mind about his own future.

So, a few more years. Call it six. Six years for the Valley to make up its mind. And Ribek his.

They fell silent, thinking their own thoughts.

“I know what I want for myself, of course,” said Ribek after a while. “All the same, there’s a funny sense of letdown. I mean, we’ve done so much against all the odds, gone so far, fought brigands and demons, ridden flying horses, visited another universe, found the Ropemaker, destroyed the Watchers, saved Larg twice over. But…I don’t know…that last meeting…all right, we agreed a temporary truce—best we could hope for, best we could offer—but everything else is still up in the air. It was all too easy, though I suspect it might have been a great deal harder but for your friend with the unpronounceable name…”

“Blrundahlrgh,” said Maja. “Anyway, none of them could manage Kzuva.”

“Not the only thing you had in common. Sisters under the skin, if ever I saw a pair. Anyway I found the whole thing very strange and unsettling. Not how I’d want it to end, if it was an ending. I’m like you I suppose, except that it isn’t the magic I’ll miss. It’ll be not knowing anything that’s happening out here as a result of our efforts, not being part of it.”

“We haven’t quite finished,” said Maja. “We’ve still got to tell Lady Kzuva. I’m looking forward to seeing her house.”

They did that two mornings later, standing in the roadway, just as Tilja and her long-ago companions had done, and staring at the astonishing building. Maja had thought that she would know it already from that story, and yes, still the same river flowed calmly out of the wooded valley and under the massive bridges on which stood the same wonderful house, elegantly ornamented and pinnacled, more beautiful than any of the grand houses they had seen in all their journeyings. It was just what she’d expected, but yet she was not prepared for it. It was old, so full of its own placid magic, breathed into it through the accumulated centuries.

Grand steps led up to a big double door. At Ribek’s knock a wicket door opened and a footman in the green and gold livery of Kzuva came out. He looked them over briefly. Huh! Fifteenth graders, at best. Riffraff.

“Your kind go round to the courtyard entrance,” he said. “You can state your business there.”

“You mistake our kind,” said Ribek, speaking with all the authority of an Imperial delegate. “The brooch, Maja. Thank you. Now, sir, will you please take this directly to the Lady Kzuva. Put it into her own hands. She will know what it means. She will be exceedingly displeased if she learns that you have done otherwise than I ask.”

The footman stared at him, glanced at the others again, stared rather longer at the three horses, wingless but still magnificent, and retired, closing the wicket behind him. They waited. Footsteps—more than one set—on the paving within. Both the big doors creaked open. Four footmen this time. They lined up, two either side of the entrance, and bowed as Lady Kzuva hobbled out between them. She raised her spectacles but merely glanced at her visitors, then gestured to the footmen, who retired, closing the big doors behind them but leaving the wicket open.

Now Lady Kzuva studied the visitors one by one, starting with Maja. Maja gazed back. This was the meeting she had been both dreading and longing for. There had been no mirror on Angel Isle, no rock pool so far above the waves; all she knew of Lady Kzuva’s appearance was what she had been able to see directly, arms and hands, the front of her body, her feet. Now she looked into deep brown eyes, enlarged by the spectacles, remarkably clear in one so old. She knew, from having seen through them, how they had given her a sense of needing to peer at the world, but there was no sign of that in Lady Kzuva’s expression. No sign either of fret or temper in the set of the small mouth or the many-wrinkled, soft, leathery-brown complexion.

The nose was straight and well formed, the stance erect, the whole effect proud without arrogance, dominant without contempt. No wonder the Pirates had been impressed.

“Maja,” she said.

Maja managed a curtsey of a sort.

Lady Kzuva smiled, amused.

“No need for that between us,” she said. “We know each other too…intimately. Is it not strange that we have never seen each other? And the Captain.”

“Not really, I’m afraid,” said Saranja. “I was a fake too, though at least I looked like me. But I’m really just a farmer’s daughter. And I can’t do much magic, either. My real name’s Saranja Urlasdaughter.”

“You are welcome in any guise under my roof, Captain. And Mr….? You have lost few years, I think.”

“Ribek Ortahlson, at your service, my lady. I was something less of a pretender. I am indeed a mill owner, though I own only one small mill. And the ability to call to the Ice-dragon does run in my family. I must explain, my lady, that we aren’t here in the hope of exploiting your hospitality. We would have understood if you never wanted to see us again after our intrusion into your life. But events took place after you left us which you will need to know about.”

“There is a great deal that I shall want to know. It was certainly very frustrating to be whisked away so much in the middle of things.”

“It may take some time, my lady.”

“No matter. I hope you can spare me a few days, at least. And Mr. Ruddya. You too have changed, but in some other fashion than the rest of you.”

“I was, but no longer am, a professional spy, my lady. I was reared from childhood by the people you call the Pirates to travel throughout the Empire and send my reports back to them. Part of my training taught me how to change my appearance.”

“Who ever would have thought that I should welcome an enemy spy through my door? But I do, and most gladly.

“And last but not least, my boy Bennay. I have been so worried for you. I am relieved and delighted to see you looking so well. And all those amusing wonders we appeared to accomplish flowed from you and Mistress Chanad. There has always been a magician in my household, so I am well acquainted with your kind. Not one of them, and they were grown men and women, could have accomplished one-twentieth of what you have done. How old are you?…Bennay is not your real name, I think.”

Benayu was looking a bit uncomfortable. He was usually a bit cocky about his abilities, but he wasn’t used to this kind of praise from this kind of person.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Benayu isn’t my real name either. That’s what I’m usually called. I’m fourteen.”

“Well, I hope you will not try anything of the kind again until you are at least five years older. I had a young cousin, not a magician, who…no, some other time. And here are Sponge and the horses. I am sorry to see them without their wings, but I suppose it was sensible. I will see that the horses are well stabled. There are hitching rings beside the stair. I do not normally allow dogs in my house, but I will make an exception for Sponge.”

“Oh, he’ll be all right,” said Benayu. “Stay with the horses, boy. I won’t be long.”

“Follow me, please,” said Lady Kzuva, and rapped on the door with her cane. Both leaves opened instantly. The four footmen bowed as she passed between them. Inside was a formal entrance hall with a grand flight of stairs. Lady Kzuva settled herself into a throne-like chair with carrying poles either side. The footmen stood by the poles, ready to lift, but she raised her hand and turned to a worried-looking elderly man, wearing a rather grander version of the household livery, who had been hovering near by.

“Rooms for my guests, Micha,” she told him. “They may be staying several days and will need their own quarters. Show them for the time being into the little library and bring them light refreshments. There are three horses to be well stabled and a dog who will remain with the horses. We will have supper in the Orchard Room. Make my excuses to the company in the dinner hall.

“Now, my friends, I have business to complete. Beyond that I will clear my diary as far as I am able. And you must tell me your tale this evening. All I know is that I lay here in a coma for two nights and a day, and woke on the morning of the second day from the strangest, strongest dream I have ever known. And now you have brought this brooch to my door to tell me that it was no dream, but true.”

It was well toward midnight before they finished. Lady Kzuva asked a hundred questions along the way and remained alert to the end. When it was over she sat silent for a while, then smiled and shook her head.

“To my mind,” she said, “the strangest part of it all is this. Here we were, all the so-called grand and powerful of this great empire, living in constant dread under the rule of the Watchers but not daring to band together to do anything about it, while you five, a simple miller, a farmer’s daughter, a shepherd boy, a—shall we say wandering scholar?—and a child, accomplished the thing without any help from any of us. And then, almost as an afterthought, except that it was no afterthought but supremely important, though it was not in any way your responsibility, you brought about the possibility of peace with a powerful nation whose ships have harried our shores for centuries.”

They stayed five days at the House of Kzuva. Lady Kzuva spared them what time she could, canceling any business that wasn’t pressing. She spent one whole morning visiting some of her mills with Ribek and Maja, and talked earnestly with Striclan about the condition of the Empire and the mind-set and culture of the Pirates. At one point she asked Maja to be with her as she sat in judgment on two disputes between her people, both involving accusations of witchcraft.

“My magician Stindul is good enough for most things, but at heart he is a scholar,” she said. “He doesn’t understand the peasant mind.”

One case was simple enough. The plaintiff was accusing his neighbor of causing his peach crop to fail.

“The trees belong to me,” explained Lady Kzuva, “but I take only a third of the fruit. Still he needs to account for the failure to me, so he is trying to blame it on his neighbor rather than his own laziness in failing to keep the trees well watered. I would simply like to be sure before I pass judgment.”

Maja closed her other senses as far as she could and concentrated. No, there was no made magic there, only an ancient and obvious human magic.

“They just hate each other. That’s all,” she said.

The other case was more interesting. A man’s legs were infested with a horrible maggot which was eating him away from the inside. His wife was accusing another man of causing the affliction, because she had rejected his advances, saying that she would remain faithful to her husband. The husband had been carried into court so that Lady Kzuva could see for herself. The accused man said it had been the other way round, and the wife was taking advantage of the illness in vengeance for his having rejected her.

There was no spell, Maja could tell at once, and the accused man had no magical powers. But…but…

“Can we look at the husband close to?” she whispered.

She followed Lady Kzuva down to where the man was lying on his litter, sockless and shoeless, with his baggy trousers pulled above the knees to show the disgusting state of his legs. The woman knelt beside him.

“It’s his left shoulder,” Maja whispered.

“And his upper body is unaffected?” said Lady Kzuva.

“There’s nothing wrong with it,” said the wife.

“I would like to be able to compare clean flesh with the diseased part,” said Lady Kzuva.

“But it’s his legs!” exclaimed the wife. “There’s nothing wrong—”

“Nevertheless, I wish to see for myself. Please do as I say.”

“But—”

“Justicer, will you remove the man’s jacket and shirt, please.”

The wife rose and watched pale-faced while a court official knelt and bared the man’s torso. As the wife had said, there seemed to be nothing wrong with it.

“On his back,” whispered Maja.

“Roll him over,” said Lady Kzuva.

“No!” screamed the wife.

High on the shoulder blade was a small crude tattoo—a snake, perhaps, but looking at it carefully Maja saw it was meant to be some kind of worm. Whatever it was, it was nasty.

“That’s what’s doing it,” she muttered.

“A sigil of some kind,” said Lady Kzuva.

“That’s right,” said the man. “I’d a bit of an ache there, and Carna got this fellow…Carna…? What…?”

“You will need to explain yourself,” Lady Kzuva told the woman calmly.

The woman started screaming. The two justicers hurried her away. Servants carried the sick man off to the household magician to see what he could do for him.

When Lady Kzuva was busy, she arranged amusements for her visitors, riding or learning the elements of hawking in the woods, boating on the river, and so on. Saranja and Striclan usually absented themselves for at least part of the day. Ribek decided that when he was home he would have a hawk of his own, so he spent any time he could in the mews, watching the falconers train their young birds. It became obvious to Maja that she’d have to have one too when they were married, and then she got hooked herself.

Benayu spent most of his day in the library, working through shelf after shelf of old magical volumes, accumulated by generations of household magicians, and talking them over with Stindul. Strangely, the long hours of concentrated study of his craft seemed to have an almost medicinal effect on him, both body and spirit. They saw this clearly on the fourth evening.

Lady Kzuva was listening to Saranja talking about her time among the warlords, and at the same time, as she often did, casually fingering the brooch on her head-scarf. She must have noticed Maja watching her, because she smiled and said, “I think I shall wear it for the rest of my days.”

“I’m afraid it was much prettier with the horses,” said Maja.

“Yes, but that makes very little difference to me. It is not why I wear it. I can always put them there in my mind.”

“Do you want me to do something about that?” said Benayu.

They stared at him. Not once on the journey north from Larg had he shown the slightest interest in practicing his art, either for pleasure or purpose. He grinned.

“Got to start somewhere,” he said. “Touch it again, my lady. Now do what you said—put them there in your mind. Ready, Maja?”

One brief, easily endurable pulse, a twitch of Lady Kzuva’s arm, and the silver horses were back in their place beside the tree.

Benayu looked thoughtful for a moment, nodded as if confirming a decision, then yawned and stretched, as if waking from a long, soul-restoring sleep.

“Next stop, the mountains,” he said.

It was their last evening in the House of Kzuva. They had decided so after breakfast that morning. As far as Maja was concerned, she didn’t mind how long she stayed. She was already fond of Lady Kzuva. She felt a bond with her, like the family bonds she should have had, but never did. But Ribek had to get back to Northbeck. Though it would be a month or more before the time came to sing to the snows and close the passes, what harvest there was after the ravages of the horse people would be in by now and it was high time that the mill became busy again.

So far, Maja had assumed that she would go back with him, but after that the next few years, until she could marry him, were something of a blank for her. All her imaginings and longings had been focused on what came beyond that, and even the thought of that long wait, so close to him all the time, was beginning to make her vaguely uncomfortable. She would have put it off if she could.

But Saranja too wanted to get back to the Valley. She wanted to get the whole business of Woodbourne over and done with, so that she and Striclan could settle into their life together. And Benayu needed to get home in time for the great autumn sheep markets. So the time had come to move on.

Lady Kzuva had given them no hint of her own feelings, no sign either that she was wearying of their presence or that she wanted them to stay longer. Only, when they told her about their decision later that morning she sighed and said, “Well, I suppose you are right. And I too have business to catch up with. We will talk about it at supper this evening.”

The Orchard Room was Maja’s favorite among all the wonderful rooms in the house. It was medium-sized, pretty rather than grand, with carved panels on three walls. The fourth consisted entirely of windows that could be folded all the way back, opening onto a pillared verandah and beyond that the so-called orchard, which was really a flower garden with lawns running along the river. There were just enough fruit trees to justify the name. That evening the servants had hung hundreds of little lanterns among their branches.

“I cannot give you oyster-and-bacon pie so far from the sea,” said Lady Kzuva. “But my cooks have done the best they can. Nothing too rich, I told them, just before a journey. This wine, on the other hand, is the oldest I have. The grapes were harvested in the year I was born. I must warn you that it is very strong, which is why it has kept so well, so drink it sparingly, and take plenty of water.”

Maja had never tasted wine before the journey began, and then hadn’t cared for it much apart from the wine that Chanad had given them that evening on Angel Isle. They drank this one out of little silver goblets, only half filled. It was a deep greenish yellow. Intense odors fumed off it. She had no need to taste it before its inward magic exploded in her mind, so vividly that she seemed to be somewhere else, a landscape that she could feel almost as if she could see it, a steep, scree-strewn slope so barren-seeming that she would not have thought that anything could grow there. But there were the rows of vines, only shoulder-high to her, but heavy with fruit. The harvesters were working among them, singing. The river glistened below, with a little town on its further bank…

“Maja, come back,” said Ribek’s voice. “You haven’t even tasted it yet. It’s astonishing.”

Maja blinked and returned to the Orchard Room.

“I was there. Where the grapes were grown,” she said, and described the scene.

“Yes, you were there,” said Lady Kzuva. “What is more, you were there then, in the year of my birth. Next year those vines were stricken with a disease and had to be grubbed up and burnt before they infected the rest of the vineyards. They were very old, and all attempts to grow them elsewhere had failed. This wine will never be made again.”

Their chairs (which Lady Kzuva preferred because the piles of cushions that were the custom in most of the Empire were too low for her comfort) were arranged along one side of the table so that they could all see out. They ate and drank for the most part in silence, watching the stars come out and the lamps mimicking them more and more strongly below as dusk deepened into night. It isn’t only the wine, thought Maja. There will never be another evening like this. She sighed.

“You echo my thought,” said Lady Kzuva. “I rue your going, but I understand you must go. Before that, as I said, I have a proposal to put to you. Tell me, each of you, how you see your own immediate futures. Let us start with Saranja and Striclan—forgive me for assuming from what I have seen of you that you propose to share whatever future that is.”

Maja couldn’t see them from where she sat, but there was a pause—while they looked at each other, she guessed. Striclan must have nodded or something, because it was Saranja who answered.

“I don’t know. It depends what’s happened at Woodbourne. Presumably everybody thinks I’m dead. My brothers can’t inherit it, if either of them’s still alive, because it descends in the female line, so it would go to the nearest female cousin who can hear the cedars. I suppose one of my brothers might marry her. I just don’t feel I can leave it all up in the air. Anyway, I know I don’t want to live there, or like that. Striclan can do anything, so I suppose he could be a farmer, but I couldn’t. I don’t have the patience. That’s one of the reasons why my father was always so angry, besides the farm not actually belonging to him. He made himself a good farmer because he hated to see anything done badly, but it wasn’t what he wanted to be. I’m his daughter. I could easily go the same way. We’ve talked about it a lot, Striclan and I, but we haven’t got anywhere, except that if we can find someone to take over Woodbourne we’ll probably come back to the Empire. I don’t know what we’ll do.”

“A good spy can always find employment,” said Lady Kzuva. “Now Bennay—Benayu.”

“There’s one more thing I’ve got to do,” said Benayu. “I’ve been saving up for it. Resting. Getting ready. After that I’m going back to shepherding—a bit of hedge magic, perhaps, charms for sheep scab, that sort of thing. One day, perhaps, but nothing much bigger, not for a long while.”

“I think that is very wise,” said Lady Kzuva. “This is not good sheep country, and I know you would prefer to be among the mountains, but you will always be welcome under my roof. Perhaps you can use your lesser powers from time to time to bring yourself here for a short visit, and read in the library and talk to Stindul.

“Now, I have kept Ribek and Maja for the last. I am not going to pretend that I do not know—that all of us do not know—that Maja has strong feelings for Ribek, which perhaps when she is older Ribek will be able to return. And you in your turn may have detected that there is a special bond between Maja and myself. When you came to my door I used the word ‘intimate’ to describe it. I chose the word casually, but I was right. For a little over two days we were one person, distinct still in our oneness, but one despite that. The experience has left us with a tie that is stronger than that between twin sisters, closer than that between passionate lovers. It will last until I die….”

“Not even then,” said Maja. “Not till I die too. Even then…”

“That is my hope,” said Lady Kzuva. “Now I am telling you this because when you hear my proposal you might very reasonably guess that it arises from a desire to keep Maja to myself. Not so. I rejoice at your affection for Ribek, and his for you. I should rejoice if it were to ripen into adult love. I hope to rejoice at your wedding, though I have to be carried there on a stretcher. If I were to die on that very day I should die happy.

“But meanwhile, what is to become of Maja? Where is she to live? I would very strongly suggest that it should not be at Ribek’s mill. The balance you presently maintain on the border between strong affection on Ribek’s part and what I know to be genuine love on Maja’s will become increasingly precarious as Maja grows toward womanhood—”

Normally none of them interrupted Lady Kzuva. Ribek did now.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about that too,” he said. “It’s not going to be easy. And anyway, it’s far too soon for her to make up her mind the way she has. Striclan and I are almost the only men she’s ever got to know. She needs to meet boys her own age—Benayu doesn’t count. She needs girl friends to talk to about them. Experience of the world too. Again, what we’ve been doing doesn’t count—ordinary life isn’t like that. You’re suggesting she comes back here? It’s up to her, but I’m all for it.”

“Wait,” said Lady Kzuva. “There is more to my proposal than Maja simply coming back here. You tell me there is going to be a peace conference. I have every intention of participating. I shall renew Maja’s acquaintance with Syndic Blrundahlrgh—I of course did not experience it directly—and accompany her on part of her travels. With the disappearance of the Watchers there will be intense power struggles in Talagh. I shall throw my support behind Chanad and persuade my fellow Landholders to do the same, and so on.

“Where do you three, Saranja, Striclan and Maja, fit in? The case of Striclan is obvious. I doubt if there is anyone living who has his experience and knowledge both of the Empire and the Pirates’ culture and politics. Simply to have him there as my adviser would be invaluable. Saranja, as a member of our truce delegation—”

“But I was a complete fake!” said Saranja. “Everybody will know that I wasn’t ever a Captain in the Imperial Army, and then they’ll realize that the whole delegation was fake.”

“You are mistaken. Maja, if you would be kind enough to look in the top right-hand drawer of the bureau there…There is a sheet of parchment, with wax and seal beside it….”

The parchment was thick and creamy. Elaborately penned writing filled one side.

“Now that little silver dish. Thank you. Take one of the candles from the table and tip it a little sideways over the parchment and hold the dish in your other hand to catch any drips from the candle…A bit lower…that’s right.”

Wide awake this time, Maja watched the scarlet pool of wax forming, and then Lady Kzuva’s many-ringed fingers pressing the seal firmly into the wax. Much better than I managed, she thought. I wonder what the penalty is for forging a Landholder’s seal. Death, at least, I should think.

“Among the less absurd privileges Landholders possess,” said Lady Kzuva, “is that of appointing an officer to a regiment in the Imperial Army. All Landholders travel with an armed escort, which will be much more effective if one of them can act with the full authority of an Imperial commission. Congratulations on your appointment, Captain Saranja, of the Women’s Regiment of the Imperial Guard. You will see that the commission predates our conference at Larg.”

Ribek laughed aloud, and Striclan too. Saranja stared at the parchment. Maja had never seen her so put out. She turned white, then red. Her mouth opened and shut several times before she could speak.

“Oh,” she said at last. “Oh…Thank you. Thank you very much. I don’t know what to say.”

“You have already said it, my dear. I should add that I do not expect you to be a mere ornament in my train, though you will certainly be that. But you are manifestly a woman of action, full of fire and purpose, a born soldier, one whom others will follow. We may well have need for that. And your horses—they are now wingless?”

“I can give Rocky his wings again if I want to.”

“And the other two,” said Benayu. “I can fix that for you.”

“Again, an obvious asset. Finally Maja. You shall come as my ward, my dear, so it is natural that you should accompany me. But in many circumstances in which we may find ourselves, with unchecked magic now loose in the Empire, your special talent may prove invaluable, as you have already shown me in my little courtroom.

“And more important to me than any of your separate gifts is that I can be confident, both from the story you have told me and from what I have seen of you, that I can trust you completely.

“Now, unless you have any questions, I suggest that I should leave you to talk my proposal over among yourselves, and you can tell me in the morning what you have decided.”

She unhooked her cane from the arm of her chair and waited for one of them to help her to her feet. Nobody moved. Maja looked at Ribek, who had already turned to her. He raised his eyebrows. She nodded. He pointed at her. Surprised, she turned to Lady Kzuva.

“Yes, please,” she said. “Thank you very much.”

“I was about to say the same thing, rather more elaborately,” said Striclan from the other side.

“Me too,” said Benayu.

“Excellent,” said Lady Kzuva. “Nothing moves quickly in the Empire. I shall need to send to Talagh at once, to prepare the ground, but I should like to be on the road as soon as the snows are gone. If you can be here by then, well and good. Otherwise you will need to find me on the road somehow. With wings on your horses you will travel far faster than I.”