“In my great-grandmother’s time his powers cast down Ulmoth and destroyed his monstrous followers. He is the last of the ancient race of makers,” Lyn says, glancing at me with such hope and wonder that I almost look over my shoulder to see what superman she has seen there. My readouts spike: probably I should be flattered, but my natural, suppressed reaction to all this is to feel sick about it. I put up a hand to forestall any more, but it is too late.
“This is a great matter,” Jerevesse says. “My people have been days knowing only defeat.”
“Then let us bring victory,” Lyn says immediately. She has lit up, because she is being taken seriously, but the only reason is me, and I am not . . . I am not . . .
I am impassive. I am clinical. What a fascinating folk ritual, yes. Worthy of a footnote when I return to the outpost. “Primitive Beliefs and the Negative Results Thereof,” a monograph by Nyr Illim Tevitch, anthropologist second class.
Lynesse
LOOKING ON THE SORCERER’S impassive features, Lyn envied him his calm. She would trade a night of agony and weeping for being able to face up to failure while the sun shone. And yes, she had crept back to spy on him, with her new sword in hand in case there was a beast. She had seen his mask come off. There was a story she had been told as a child, about a magician who lived for a hundred years, and every dawn he was handsome and unlined as a youth of four Storm-seasons, but (as his unwary bride discovered) each night he aged all of his years, all at once, becoming a wizened, stick-limbed horrible thing. Nyrgoth Elder did not age, for all that he had seen out his centuries. Instead, what came on him at night was what she could only assume to be a lifetime’s dread and fear and anguish, all the little emotions that little people had to battle, but which a sorcerer, it seemed, could just put aside for later. She felt horribly guilty for violating his trust, bitterly envious of this new demonstration of his power. It was not a magic spoken of in stories, and yet right then it seemed more useful than any casting of the lightning or commanding of monsters.
Esha had also spied on the sorcerer, Lyn had discovered shortly before he rejoined them. Worse, she had laid a blanket over Nyrgoth Elder, because the Coast-people would never dream of letting a travelling companion go without. Which meant the man knew they had not kept to their word, which made it hard to face him, even though he hadn’t seemed to care.
And then he was still calling her by her familiar name, shorn of her honorific, and now even asking her to call him likewise, and that was worse, so that she was thinking of that storybook sorcerer who, despite his power had still wanted a princess for his table companion and his bed. She was waiting for the moment when she called upon his power and he named his price. She had, after all, put herself into just such a story by knocking at the door of his tower. She should have remembered how such tales went. And I am caught in it now, and cannot just change my mind. The wizard is right here.
And so she would have to make the most capital she could of it, before he turned that sternly dispassionate visage to her and made his demands. She could, at least, bring a little light back to the people of Watacha.
She wondered who the real Jerevesse Third Daughter was, behind the mask of civic responsibility. Was she another delinquent heir, not close enough to inheriting to be valuable, not trusted enough to go with her mother? Or was she the devoted and dutiful daughter, always being passed over for important tasks and yet a diligent keeper of the keys while others made state visits or met with diplomats? No way to find out, not with things as they were.
This next part was going to be the easy bit, though. Jerevesse had sent out heralds to proclaim a Petitioners’ Circle—outside the walls, because there was nowhere within the city that so many could assemble. By the time Lyn and her companions arrived, a scaffold had been raised for them to stand on, and a grand crowd had gathered, likely more than Lyn’s mother had ever needed to address at once. Yes, for a mere headcount, very impressive, but Mother never had such a desperate audience either. Usually the Circle was because some group or other had a grievance, against the court, against other citizens, against brigands or foreigners. Representatives chosen beforehand would step forwards and recite how the problem had affected them, with the clear implication that the Crown should be doing something about it. After they were done, the queen or her representative would make a considered response, accepting, rejecting, proposing. Sometimes the Circle would be back the next day, the petitioners explaining how the suggested action would be insufficient to remedy their woes; sometimes the queen’s speaker would make it plain that some woes were to be endured. As the woes were frequently tax related, this was not uncommon, but overall such Circles were a part of any state’s good governance, and the ruler who ignored them or refused to call them was risking less lawful means of expression.
Jerevesse at least did her own speaking. She stood on the scaffold and called to her people, and heralds at intervals within the crowd passed on her words. She expressed a profound hope that her mother and the soldiers would return with good news shortly, which wish everyone plainly shared and nobody believed in. Then she gestured at Lyn and announced, “The plight of the Ord has not been ignored by those beyond our borders. Not every back has been turned against us. I bring before you Lynesse Fourth Daughter of Lannesite, most powerful and resplendent of our eastern neighbours!” Larding the bread a bit thick there, because Lannesite seldom got on well with the forest kingdoms and usually tried to play them off against one another. The crowd was less than impressed, but Jerevesse was not done.
“‘Where are the soldiers of Lannesite?’ you have asked,” she declared, and Lyn shuffled uneasily, because that was plainly what a lot of them were indeed asking. “Where is the gleaming armour and the Firebird banner?” Jerevesse went on, and held her hands up to forestall the growing murmur of discontent. “I ask you, if the ranks of Lannesite had come across the river to us, how glad would you truly have been, to see them? How long before you would have asked your neighbour, ‘When will they leave, do you think?’ And every court and nation has its ill-thinkers. I know that if our own army was within the walls of Lannesite Urban then some would ask, ‘Why must we leave?’”
She even managed to spur a little murmur of humour with that barb, and Lyn decided that the Third Daughter had been left behind because of her skills and not her deficiencies. Not like me at all, then.
“Instead, Lannesite brings to our aid something of more worth than swords or arrows,” Jerevesse continued. “More even than the silver blood of their royal house who stands before you. Stand forth, petitioners; bring Lynesse Fourth Daughter your complaints.”