I SAT IN THE LIBRARY at Castle Motley, drinking coffee so strong you could of stood a spoon up in it easy, still weak-kneed from the recent shenanigans but pleased that I’d arrived here without any unbecoming incidents. Sterling had flown across the narrow channel to Mizzurah with nary a wobble, no more creatures of any size or description had joined me as I flew, and if there was an adventure headed at me for this station on the Quest it had yet to arrive. And I was willing to wait.
We were even having a pleasant conversation—something I’d been missing for quite a while now. Me and my host, Halbreth Nicholas Smith the 12th, and the lady of his Castle, Diamond of Motley. Just the three of us. There was a small informal supper planned for the evening, I’d been told, and a hunt breakfast the next morning, but no great to-do’s. That suited me; I had another slice of fresh hot bread with blazonberry jam, braced myself against the coffee, and relaxed.
Diamond of Motley was a placid woman, gone stout and not the least bothered by it, with her red hair wound around her head in a coronet of thick braids that was about as becoming as measles but otherwise perfectly suitable. She had eleven children and an unshakable serenity; just looking at her rested me. Hearing her say that she and hers were looking forward to the Jubilee delighted me.
“Diamond of Motley,” I said, “that does me good! It’s a great occasion for Ozark, and it should be looked forward to. I’ve not heard much talk along that line since I left Brightwater.”
“You’ve been where now, Responsible?” her husband asked me.
“McDaniels, Clark, Airy, Guthrie, and Farson.”
“A shame you had to miss Castle Smith,” said Diamond. “Who’d of thought there was still a cavecat left on Oklahomah?”
“I wouldn’t,” I told hec “But I learned.”
“Well, Smith’s gain is our loss,” said Halbreth Nicholas, gallant as you please, “you’re here the sooner. Think you missed anything in particular there?”
I looked at him, not sure what he meant, and he was tamping down his pipe and staring into it like he was looking for omens.
“According to a rumor as came this way,” he said carefully, still eyeing the tobacco, “Smith wasn’t expecting you anyhow ... it’s going round that there was a note sent asking you not to come.”
Ah, the close-mouthed Smiths; this would be their doing. Gabble, gabble, gabble, all the time.
“As it happened, that’s true,” I said. “They sent me a letter.”
“Signed by?”
“Dorothy of Smith—the oldest.”
Halbreth Nicholas lit his pipe and took a long draught. He was a Smith himself, and head of this Castle only because there’d been no Motley sons in the last generation. If my memory served me right, he’d be the second cousin of the blusterer that filled the same role at Castle Smith.
“She say why?” he asked me.
“They claimed a family crisis.”
“Hmmph.” He blew a fine smoke ring, and he watched it rise, and he said no more. Which was only to be expected. I wanted to say something comforting about everybody having relatives they’d as soon they didn’t have to own up to, but that sort of thing was the proper remark for a Granny, not a Castle daughter and I held my peace.
Diamond of Motley was not so inhibited—after all, it wasn’t her relatives. She asked me straight out, leaning over to pour me more coffee and push the jam dish closer to my plate:
“Does it make you suspicious of them, child?”
“You know what’s been going on at Castle Brightwater,” I said.
“Been on all the comsets. Soured milk, smashed mirrors, kidnapped babies, and such truck. Everybody’s heard all about it by now.”
“Well,” I said. “it’s one of those ‘which comes first: the squawker or the egg’ things, to my mind. If Castle Smith is guilty of all this mischief, then telling me not to stop by their door makes them look guiltier. On the other hand, if you’re guilty, doing something like that tips your hand so plain and easy that you can’t imagine anyone with half a brain doing it; that makes them look as innocent as the babe kidnapped. On the other hand, if you were guilty and wanted to look innocent, doing something so outrageous as that would be a canny move. It goes round and round.”
“So it does,” she said, “and what’s your own opinion?” The question put me in a very awkward position. There sat her husband, him a Smith by birth and close kin to those at Castle Smith this minute, and she asked me such a thing? She was a typical six, and properly named, and her husband stepped into the breach and saved me neatly.
“Shame on you, darlin’,” he told her “putting the young woman on the spot like that. How can she say right in front of me and under my own roof that she suspects my close kin of treason against the Confederation? At least let her finish with her food before you throw her into a bog like that!”
“Oh,” she said, “you know, I didn’t think?”
“I’m sure you didn’t,” he observed, and he touched her cheek gently. It was clear he doted on her; and that was nice. “But you must try, now and again.” Then he surprised me.
“Would you like to know what I think?” he asked abruptly.
“Indeed I would. If you’re willing to say.”
“I am,” he said. “Delldon Mallard the 2nd, for all he’s my cousin, and his three brothers with him, never have had sense enough to pound sand in a rat hole. They’re ornery enough to do the kind of foolishness that’s been coming down, that’s a point against them; and they’re silly enough not to see that they’re surrounded on all sides by Families loyal to the Confederation, and would be well advised to run with the pack at least until the Jubilee gives us all a chance to see how the land lies. But, and nevertheless. I don’t think they could of carried it off this long without making some fool mistake that would of given them away—that’s a point for them. And furthermore, Granny Gableftame’s at Castle Smith, and I don’t believe she’d put up with it for a minute, nor do I believe they could put it past her, Now that, my dear, is what I think.”
“And so thought the Clarks,” I said, nodding my head. “Including Granny Golightly.”
“Wicked old lady, that one!” put in Diamond of Motley. “Downright wicked!”
“Grannys aren’t wicked. Diamond,” said her husband firmly. “They’re just contrary, and it’s expected of them. She’s a tad worse than some of the others, might could be ... but she has an image to live up to.”
“And,” I concluded, “so think I. I don’t believe Castle Smith is in this.”
“And the others?” They asked me together, right in chorus.
“The McDaniels and the Clarks, not a chance of it,” I said. “As for the Airys, you know how they are, I don’t know where they get it from. The Guthries and the Parsons, from what I can tell and the tales they’re spinning, are bent on carving up one another and the poor Purdys along with them. If they’ve thought of the Confederation in the last two months, I’ll be surprised, and the Jubilee? If they don’t want to go, they just won’t. And everything you said of the Smiths applies to the Purdys ... if they were playing these tricks they’d of betrayed themselves early, early on.”
“And us, my dear?”
I smiled at him, and had some more coffee. “I just got here,” I said. “Suppose you tell me how you feel about these things.”
“It won’t take long.”
“All the better.”
“Mizzurah is a mighty small continent, and it’s right off the port bow, if you’ll allow the figure, of Arkansaw and all that feuding and carrying on. We’ve got the Wommacks and the Travellers on our flanks, and a hell of a lot of ocean—beg your pardon, ladies—all around, and nobody but Castle Lewis to rely on should all of the others decide to move in on us. Guthries, Parsons, Purdys, Wommacks, and Travellers, that is. They have us cut off completely from Marktwain and Oklahomah.”
“Which means?”
“Which means we’re in an interesting position, if you like interesting, but a chancy one. You’ll find the Lewises as strong for the Confederation as the Airys, though a mite less drivelly about it, and they’d stand firm in any crisis; but they’re even smaller than we are, they couldn’t hold out a week. And we couldn’t defend them. Therefore, I tell you quite frankly, Responsible of Brightwater, that Castle Motley stands for the Confederation of Continents, and does so openly—but you can’t count on us for anything dramatic.”
He was right, if unromantic. Mizzurah was the smallest of the six continents, and it sat all alone in the middle of the oceans with its three great neighbors hemming it on all sides. Castle Motley was in no position to make rash promises.
“But you’ll be at the Jubilee?” I asked him, hoping.
“We’ll be there,” he assured me. “You heard my wife; her and the children, they’re looking forward to it, and a lot of our staff. It’s a rare chance when we can get away and see something besides our own Castle yard. We plan to leave very shortly, as a matter of fact, because we’re going by water everywhere we can—no Mules for my household, thank you, except flat on the solid ground, and no more of ‘em then man’s absolutely required. But we can’t offer you anything else but our presence, and no daring political moves—you might as well know that.”
I wondered if he knew anything that I didn’t, and couldn’t see what I’d lose by asking.
“Halbreth Nicholas, do you expect some daring moves from somebody else?”
He knocked out his pipe and set it down, and then he counted out his propositions with the side of one palm on the flat of the other
“First,” he said, “there’s already those trying to scuttle the Jubilee outright. Correct?”
“Correct.”
“I think you’ll be able to stop that ... this Quest of yours is an exaggeration, but it’s caught people’s fancy, and I believe they’ll come to see what happens next, if for no other reason. Dragons and a tourney in the courtyard at Castle Brightwater, maybe?”
I grinned at him.
“Second,” he went on, “assuming, as I do think we can assume, that there will be a Jubilee, even if one or two of the Families boycott it—and frankly, I doubt that strongly; like I said before, every one of them is curious, and if anything’s going to happen they don’t want to miss it—if the Jubilee does come off as scheduled, I look for a formal move to dissolve the Confederation.”
“Happens every time we meet,” I said. “That would be no surprise.”
“Not exactly,” said Halbreth Nicholas, “not exactly. Nobody’s proposed that seriously within anybody’s memory. No, what always happens is the move to cut it back to one day a year; and then that’s voted down ... by how much depending on how the Wommacks are wobbling that month.”
“My dear,” said Diamond of Motley, “I’m afraid I really don’t see much difference. In effect, that is.”
“Oh, there’s a difference,” he said, “yes, there is. True, that ritual meeting would make the Confederation an empty pretense, a regular little bug of a planetary government and not worth spitting at. But so long as it met even that long, they’d only have one meeting’s worth of satisfaction. Brightwater’d move to return to meeting four times a year, Castle Lewis’d second, and the vote would go as usual—seven to five or eight to four. Dissolving the thing, meaning no meetings atall, would be quite a different thing altogether.”
I felt a chill between my shoulders ... not that I hadn’t had the same idea cross my mind, but if it came this easy to him there might be many others sharing it.
“You think they could do it, Halbreth Nicholas?”
“I think they’ll for damned sure try.”
“But do you think they can bring it off? The vote has always gone against them, even on the meeting cutback ... “
“But weak votes, young woman, weak votes,” he said solemnly. “You can’t count on the Wommacks, them and their curse. It may well be you can’t count on the Smiths, considering this latest development. If all our neighbors pulled out, I’m not prepared to say you could count on the Motleys or the Lewises, either.”
“Halbreth Nicholas Smith,” said Diamond of Motley, so shocked her spoon rattled in her cup.
“My dear,” he said, “we must face facts. Castle Motley is not self-sufficient, nor Castle Lewis either. If Alkansaw, Kintucky, and Tinaseeh decided to blockade us so that no supplies could be shipped in from Oklahomah or Maiktwain, just where do you think we’d be? We can grow vegetables and fruit here, and raise a goat or two, but that’s about it. No sugar. no salt, no coffee, no tea, no metals, no supplies for the Grannys or the Magicians, no manufactured goods to speak of. And where do you think our power comes from, Diamond of Motley? It comes from the Parsons and the Guthries, who can equally well cut it off. No law says they have to sell to us.”
“Our windmills,” she said. “Our solar collectors—and our tides.”
I tried to imagine the population of Mizzurah managing with its windmills and its solar technology and its tides, with all the huge hulking bulk of three continents cutting off both wind and water on three sides, and it raining or cloudy three quarters of the year or more, and I admired Halbreth Nicholas for not smiling. She was a good woman, was Diamond, but she hadn’t much grasp of logistics.
“No,” he said, but he said it respectfully, “I’m afraid they wouldn’t suffice, Diamond. The Lewises, now, they are just pig-beaded enough that they might go the rest of us one better!”
“Withdraw from the withdrawal, you mean.”
“Exactly. And live on greens and goatmeat, and burn ... oh, candles, for all I know. They might. But not us, Responsible, and I want that understood. I’ve many families here depending on me and they’re not expecting to go back to Old Earth standards and the year 2000. And I don’t intend to ask it of them.”
“You’d vote for dissolving, then.”
“If it was clear that that was the way it was going—yes. Regardless of how the Lewises might decide. It’s not my druthers, young woman, but it’s the facts of life. We are dependent on Arkansaw, Kintucky, and Tinaseeh, and there’s no way to change that short of moving the continent of Mizzurah to a new location just off your coast. Are your Magicians of Rank up to a project like that?”
Moving Mules was one thing; moving continents was quite another; I didn’t try to answer
“Law, but you’ve made a gloomy day of it, Mr. Motley!” said his wife. “I hope you’re proud of yourself!”
I was quite sure he wasn’t; in fact, I was quite sure he was ashamed. He would of liked to hear himself saying that if the vote came to end the Confederation his delegates would be right there at the front telling the rotters to do their damndest and to hell with them. Begging the pardon of any ladies present, of course. That went with the image he’d of liked to have of himself. But he was a practical man, and an honest one, and he knew he’d do what went with that. Diamond of Motley was right; he’d made it a gloomy day.
I went off to my room to rest for a while before supper, and found a servingmaid waiting there, pretending—not very skillfully—to still be unpacking my saddlebags and clearing up. She looked eleven, but had the frail look of a Purdy to her, too, which meant she was probably my own age or a bit more, and her hair was falling down from the twist she’d put it in and hanging down around her face. My fingers itched to set it right—I can’t abide a sloppy woman—but I didn’t know her and I couldn’t take liberties.
“Hello, young woman,” I said, friendly as I could manage in my dreary mood, “are you having a problem with some of those things? What is it, a fastening you can’t get loose?”
“No, miss,” she said, “I’m managing.” And dropped my hand mirror on the floor, smashing it to smithereens. No magic, just plain fumblefingers.
“Oh, Miss Responsible, I’m sorry!” she said, and bit one finger. She’d be chewing on her hair next. “I’ll get you another one, miss, there’s a hundred of ‘em down in the corner of the linen room! What do you fancy, something plain? Or a special color? The Missus has a weakness for a nice pale blue, and flowers on the back ... “
Her hands were trembling, and her voice was a squeak, and I stared at her long and hard while she dithered about the variety of mirrors the Motleys had to offer for as long as I could stand it, and then I told her to sit down.
“Miss?”
“Do sit down,” I said, too cross to be gentle, “and tell me what is the matter with you. And your name.”
“My name? Is there something the matter with my name?”
She had to be a Purdy; her eyes were wild like a squawker got by the neck.
“I did not mean to imply that there was anything wrong with your name, young woman,” I said, “I just asked you what it might be.”
“Oh!” she said. “Well, I hoped ... I mean, only the Wommacks have women as aren’t properly named, and—”
“That’s not true,” I interrupted, wondering if she’d had any education atall. “I daresay there’s no Family on Ozark that hasn’t had a girl or two Improperly Named over the years; the Grannys aren’t infallible. The Wommacks just did it more spectacularly than anybody else ever has and got famous for it, that’s all.”
As they surely had. It hadn’t been a matter of naming a Caroline that should have been an Elizabeth; they’d named a girlbaby Responsible of Wommack, and it had been a mistake. That’s a sure way to get famous.
One more time, I thought, and asked her: “Will you tell me your name, then, and what the trouble is?” And if she wouldn’t I fully intended to put her over my knee for her sass.
“Yes, miss,” she said. “Ivy of Wommack’s my name.”
A two. She was properly named. And I was right glad I had not let it slip that I’d taken her for a Purdy.
“And your problem?”
She stared down at the bed she was sitting on and gripped the counterpane with both hands, silly thing, as if it wouldn’t of slid right off with her if she’d done any sliding herself.
“Oh, Miss Responsible,” she said in a tiny, tiny voice, “I have all the bad luck I ever need, I have more than anybody’d ever need, and I don’t need any more, and I’m afraid—oh, law, miss, they say there’s been a Skerry appeared!”
Well. That did take me aback a bit, and I sat down myself.
“Who told you so, Ivy of Wommack?” I demanded.
“Everybody!”
“Nonsense. You haven’t talked to everybody.”
“Everybody I’ve talked to, then,” she said stubbornly. “They’re all talking about it, and they’re all worried.”
“And what are they saying? Besides just, ‘There’s been a Skeny appeared.’”
“There’s an old well, down in the garden behind the Castle church, miss—the water’s no good any more, but oh, it’s pretty, with vines growing all over it and the old bucket hanging there, so it’s been left. And they say that last night— there were full moons last night, miss—they say there was a Skerry sitting on the edge-rim of that old well. Just sitting there.”
“At midnight, I suppose.”
“Oh yes ... just at midnight, and under the full moons. Oh, Miss Responsible, I’m glad I didn’t see it!”
She hadn’t much gumption, or much taste. I would dearly have loved to see it, if it was true. A Skerry stands eight feet tall on the average, sometimes even taller; and there’s never been one that wasn’t willow slender: They have skin the color of well-cared-for copper, their hair is silver and falls without wave or curl to below their waists, male or female. And their eyes are the color of the purest, deepest turquoise. The idea of the full moons shining down on all that, not to mention an old well covered with wild ivy and night-blooming vines ... ah, that would of been something to see and to marvel on.
Except there were a few things wrong with the whole picture.
“Who told you they saw the Skerry?” I insisted. “Who?”
And I added, “And don’t you tell me ‘everybody,’ either.”
“Everybody in the Castle is talking about it,” she said. Drat the girl!
“Not the Master nor the Missus,” I said. “I’ve been with them these past two hours, and I’ve heard not one word about a Skerry.”
“Everybody on the staff, I meant, miss. It was one of the Senior Attendants … he’ll go far. They say he knows more Spells and Charms than the Granny, and he’s a comely, comely man ... he was down there by the well last night with a friend of mine”—she looked at me out of the comer of her eye to see if I was going to make any moral pronouncements about that, but I ignored her; and she went on—”and they saw it, sitting there in the full moonlight, all splendid with the light fair blinding on its long silver hair, they said.”
“And then they told everybody.”
“Well, wouldn’t you?” she asked me, and I had to admit that I might have. You didn’t see a Skerry every night, much less under full moons at midnight in a Castle garden.
“But you notice they didn’t tell the Family,” I said. “That’s mighty odd, seems to me. Seems to me that would of been the first thing to do.”
The girl rubbed her nose and stared down at the floor, scuffing one shoe back and forth. Not only sloppy, but wasteful, too.
“The Housekeeper told us not to,” she said sullenly. “She carried on about it till we were all sick of listening—what she’d do if we bothered the Master and the Missus with it ... bothered them, that’s how she put it!”
“Well?” I asked her. “Do you have any inkling in your head why she might of taken it that way?”
She sniffled. “I don’t know,” she said. “I just know I’m scared. And it’s not fair—I already had my share of bad luck.”
“Ivy of Wommack,” I said patiently, “have you given this tale any thought atall? Other than to fret yourself about it, I mean?”
“What way should I be thinking about it?”
“Well, for starters, where do the Skerrys live?”
“In the desert on Marktwain,” she said promptly.
“Quite right. In the desert on Marktwain. The only patch of desert on this planet, girl, and left desert only out of courtesy to the Skerrys. They were here first, you know, and it was desert then.”
“Yes, miss.”
“And since that’s true, and Skerrys can’t live outside the desert, why in the name of the Twelve Gates and the Twelve Corners would one turn up on Mizzurah, many and many a long mile from its desert, and of all unlikely places, sitting on a well brim? Skerrys hate water, can’t abide water, that’s why they live in the desert!”
Her mouth took a pout, which was no surprise.
“Really,” she said, “I’m sure I’m no expert on Skerrys, and it wouldn’t be proper if I was, and as to how it got here, my friend says it would have to be by magic, and she got that from the Senior Attendant, and he’s on his way up in the world—he’s no fool!”
“Tell me again,” I said. “Exactly. What did they say?”
“Kyle Fairweather McDaniels the 17th, that’s the Senior, and my friend—never mind her name, because she wasn’t supposed to be out of her bed at midnight, much less with Kyle Fairweather—they say that they were down by the well and they saw the Skerry as plain as I see you.”
“Walked right up and touched it, did they? Said howdeedo?”
“Miss!”
“Then how did they know it was a Skerry?”
“Well, miss, what else is eight feet tall and has copper skin, and silver hair as hangs down to its knees? I ask you’”
“It was sitting on the well, Ivy of Wommack, not standing. You said so yourself. How could they see that it was eight feet tall? And as for the copper skin, a bit of Hallow Even paint will do that—I’ve done it myself, and I’ll wager you have, too— and a silver wig’s easily come by.”
“They were sure.”
“Were they?”
“They were.”
“They were out where they should not of been, doing what they should not of done—”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Well, I say it, missy,” I snapped at her, “and I say it plain, and between their guilty consciences and the moonlight, it was easy for anybody atall to play a trick on them. And more shame to them for scaring the rest of you with such nonsense ... what trashy doings!”
“You don’t believe it, then, miss?”
“Certainly not. Nor should you, nor anybody else.”
She sat there beside me, quieter now, though she’d switched from wrinkling up the counterpane to wringing those skinny little hands that looked like you could snap them the way Michael Stepforth Guthrie’d snapped my ribs. Only with no need for magic, nor much strength, either,
“Feel better now. Ivy of Wommack?” I asked her finally, and I hoped she did, because I wanted a rest and a read before my supper. I was willing to finish unpacking for myself, if I could just get rid of this skittish creature.
“You know what’s said, miss,” she hazarded. I wished she would stop wringing her hands before she wore them out.
“What?” Though I knew quite well.
“That if a Skerry’s seen,” she breathed, and I could hear in her voice the echo of a Granny busy laying out the fines, “that there has to be a whole day of celebration in its honor. A whole day of no work and all celebration ... or it’s bad luck for all the people that know of it. And I’ve worked this livelong day, and so has all the staff!”
“That, I suppose, is why your ‘friends’ spread the news around,” I said. “Sharing out the bad luck.”
“Maybe,” she said. “Might could be that’s why.”
“Covering their bets,” I said tartly. “If they didn’t really see a Skerry, no harm done. If they did, the bad luck that comes from not following the rules gets spread out thin over the whole staff, instead of just falling on the two of them. You think that over, Ivy of Wommack.”
She sighed, and allowed as how I might be right, but she didn’t know, and I occupied myself with sending her on her way. She’d forgotten all about finishing my unpacking, fortunately, and it took me three minutes to do what she’d left and fix what she’d messed up, and then I stretched out on the bed bone-naked under the covers and took up my most trashy novel.
There was a certain very small, you might say tiny, bit of risk here. For a Skerry to show up on Mizzurah, at midnight, or at any other time, might fit right into some Magician of Rank’s idea of an adventure for this particular stage of my Quest. And if so, I was asking for powerful trouble—maybe not right now, maybe not for a long time, but someday it would come—if I didn’t speak up and demand the day of festival to honor its appearance.
Furthermore, if a Magician of Rank had teleported a Skerry out of its desert and onto the edge of the Motleys’ well, the Skerrys were not going to be pleased about that. Not at all pleased. They’d asked precious little of us, when The Ship landed; just to be let alone. And whizzing one around the planet in the middle of the night was distinctly not leaving it alone as promised.
I tried to remember when a Skerry had last been seen, putting my microviewer down for a minute ... not in my lifetime, I didn’t think. In my mother’s, perhaps; it was dim in my memory. But that Skerry had come walking out of the desert on Marktwain of its own free will, and had walked right down the street of a town on the desert’s edge in broad daylight. It had been an honor, and I believe Thorn of Gutnrie said there’d been festival for two whole days ...
No. I made up my mind. It had to be a trick, played on the Senior Attendant and his foolish lady friend, and no more. For my benefit, perhaps, meant to distract me and delay me if I believed it, but only a trick all the same. No Skerry would cross all the water between Marktwain and Mizzurah and sit on a well in the middle of the night for two young Castle staff to gawk at. And no Magician of Rank would dare tamper with a real Skerry in that way.
I was not going to take any such obvious bait, and that was all there was to that.
I went back to my book.