I LEFT FOR Castle Lewis after the hunt breakfast, not staying for the hunt itself on the grounds that I had to hurry, and since that was obviously true no one made more than the objections politeness demanded. Mizzurah was so small, and so heavily populated, that anything but ordinary Muleflight was out of the question, and I flew through a blustery spring day, sedate and proper, and reached Castle Lewis only just before the sun began to go down behind the low hills. Sterling was bored, and so was I, and we did nothing fancy; just came down slow and easy over the broad lawn that spread round the Castle, and waited for developments. The wind was brisk enough that the Mule was shivering, and I got down and took an extra blanket from my pack and began rubbing her down.
Castle Lewis was small against the darkening sky, small and tidy, with a central gate and two towers to each side, and a tower at each of its corners. No frills, no fancy battlements and balconies, just a plain small sturdy Castle, and I liked the look of it.
The front gates opened as the sun slipped out of sight completely, and three men came running out with solar lanterns—economy here, I noted, and I approved. They’d been well exposed and threw a fine bright light across the grass, as they should do. One of the men put a shawl around me, very respectfully; one took over the task of rubbing Sterling down, making protesting sounds because I’d started the process myself; and the other stood stiff as a pole, waiting for something.
“Where is that woman?” demanded one of them, and called over his shoulder: “Tambrey! Tambrey of Motley! What’s keeping you, woman? Responsible of Brightwater at your gate half-frozen, and dropping with hunger and entirely tuckered out, and what are you doing in there, counting your fingers to see if you’ve lost one? Will you get out here?”
“I’m not that tired, Attendant,” I said sharply, “and not that cold, and not that hungry. I’ll last the night.”
“That doesn’t excuse her, miss,” he said firmly. “She knows her duty, and she’s expected to do it.” And he turned his head again and shouted “Tambrey!” and then made a remarkably expressive noise of disgust.
“It’s all right,” I said, “never mind the woman. One of you to take my Mule to the stables, and two to see me to my host and hostess—I can surely make do with that?”
But they wouldn’t have it that way, and we stood there in the wind while a soft rain began to fall in the deepening darkness, and I knew that I was up against it. The famous Lewis propriety, for which only the Travellers’ could be said to be more extreme. I could stand there and drown, for all they cared, I’d not enter their Castle attended by other than a female, and I envied my Mule. At least she was going to be warm and fed and dry, any minute now.
When Tambrey did appear, which to give her credit was not many minutes later, she didn’t come from the gates but out of the cedars that bordered the Castle lawn. She was a pretty thing, too, and I couldn’t see her being a servingmaid long; her hair was hidden by the hood of her cloak, but her face was perfection, and I was willing to place my bets on the rest of her
The men grumbled at her, but she paid them no mind at all, and from the way they dropped their complaining I was reasonably certain they were used to that, too.
“Welcome to Castle Lewis, Responsible of Brightwater,” she said, “and let’s get you in out of this damp this minute and a mug of hot cider in your hand!”
Oh yes. I had forgotten. I’d get nothing stronger than cider from the Lewises unless it came from a Granny’s own hand and was vouched for as being the difference between my total collapse and my blooming health. And not hard cider, either; it would be the pure juice of the Ozark peachapple, mulled with spices, and hot as blazes, and innocent enough for the baby that still hung safe outside the Brightwater church. The Lewises kept to the old ways with a vengeance.
We went through the gates into a small square courtyard, planted with low flowers in neat square beds, and raked paths between them, and on to where the Castle door shone wide and welcoming. In the door stood two I’d heard a great deal of, but knew hardly at all: Salem Sheridan Lewis the 43rd, and his wife, Rozasham of McDaniels.
“Here she is.” said Tambrey, handing me through the door like a package, so that the Lewises both had to step back a pace to avoid me running them down, “Responsible of Brightwater; safe and sound! Miss, Salem Sheridan Lewis the 43rd; and the Missus of this Castle, Rozasham of McDaniels.”
“Thank you kindly, Tambrey,” said the woman Rozasham, and the beauty of her voice caught my ear. I hoped she would sing for us, later, if the quality of her speech was any sign of her ability.
Salem Sheridan was another matter: His wife gathered me into her arms as if we’d known each other all our lives; but he snapped his fingers and ran everybody through their drill. Had my Mule been seen to and stabled? Good. And had my bags been brought in and taken up to my room? Good. And was the mulled cider ready in the east parlor? Good. And would Tambrey see to my unpacking? Good—and I was to have extra blankets, mind, it was going to be cold. And would supper be on the table in precisely one hour? Good! And it was all “Yes, sir!” coming the other way. It said something for Tambrey of Motley’s ingenuity that she’d been able to find her way past this one and into the cedars—there’d be no sloppy staff here.
I had time only to wash a bit, tidy my hair, and change from my traveling costume into something less elaborate, before suppertime, the cider still burning my throat. I was traveling light, as was necessary; there was the splendid traveling outfit, the blue-and-silver party dress, the gown of lawn for magic, some underclothes and a nightgown, a sturdy black shawl, and one plainer dress that I’d not yet had an opportunity to wear. And that was all.
I held up the last dress and looked it over dubiously; it had alternating narrow stripes of the Brightwater green and scarlet, with a neck cut low in front and rimmed in back by a high ruff of ivory lace that would require me to put my hair up. It had long sleeves caught at the wrists with lace-trimmed wide cuffs as well, and the stripes themselves were shot with silver-and-gold threads.
I’d seen nothing like it here; only modest high-necked round-collared gowns without ornament even to their cut. The Lewis crest was a green cedar tree on an azure field, with a narrow border of cedar-trunks russet round, and except for a button or two that bore that device I’d seen only the plain and the spare. Even Rozasham, presumably dressed for company, had been wearing a dress of a heather blue with a skirt scarcely full enough to swing with her hips as she walked, and plain little round white buttons down its high front.
True, I was a guest. And true, the conditions on a Quest demanded a certain amount of spectacle, and I had to abide by them. But I could see nothing in the garments that Tambrey had hung for me that would not of looked foolish at the Lewis supper table.
Well, there was my nightgown ... it was moss green flannel and had the proper cut and simplicity, and I couldn’t see that the Lewises would recognize it for what it was if I could keep my own face straight. I belted it with a narrow braid of gold cord, since it had no proper waist, and added a single silver pendant—a small flower meant, I believe, to represent a violet, but innocuous enough for any occasion—on a narrow green velvet ribbon. Then I used a matching ribbon to tie my hair back simply at the nape of my neck and looked at the effect in the long glass mirror in my guestchamber.
My grandmother would of been scandalized, my mother would of fainted, but I was of the opinion that I could get away with it. I only had to remember not to let a servingmaid see me in it tomorrow morning when she brought up my pot of tea. That would have meant the word going out that I’d either been too lazy to change into my nightgown and had slept in my dress, or that I’d been so addled I’d worn my nightgown to supper, neither of which would do.
Kingdom Lewis had just one product for sale—cedar; cut from the progeny of the three seedlings the family had somehow managed to nurse through the whole trip to this planet, and which now they alone seemed to have the skill to grow. Under any other touch the trees turned brown and died, like grass not watered, but the Lewises had the green thumb, one and all of them, and the rows of cedars grew stately in every spare field of the small Kingdom and all along its narrow roads. Even in the great Hall inside Castle Lewis, a giant cedar grew out of earth left open for its roots in the time of building, dropping its needles everywhere for the staff to sweep up but smelling like heaven, and every windowsill had a small seedling growing in a low bowl.
Nor had they stinted themselves in the use of the timber; The Castle gleamed with it, and the table at which I sat down to supper was a single massive slab of russet cut from the heart of an ancient monster of a tree and rubbed till it glowed like coals burned low in a hearth. They had had sense enough not to cover it up with some frippery cloth, either, and had set chairs round it of the same glowing wood.
Me in my nightgown, I drew one up and sat down, spreading my napkin in my lap, and I said, “This table is beautiful, Rozasharn of McDaniels. I’ve never seen anything to match it.” Nor had I.
“My husband’s great-great-grandfather made it with his own hands,” she answered, “and I do its polishing with mine.”
“It was a single plank?”
“That it was; they waited a very long time for a cedar to grow the proper size for this, and while they waited the Lewises ate off plain boards laid across trestles. Then the one bee made this table and all the chairs ... and no polish or oil has ever been set to it except by a Missus of this Castle, all these years.”
“I’ve seen a few housethings made from cedar,” I said. “Chests, usually.” And I stroked the satiny wood. “But nothing like this.”
“Magic-chests’” breathed a child at my right hand, and aimed my head to see him better. He was young, and his chair not tall enough to bring him much above the edge of the tabletop, but not young enough to be willing to submit to the indignity of sitting on a stack of pillows; he made do by craning his neck.
“My son, Salem Sheridan Lewis the 44th, called Boy Salem,” said his father from the head of the table, and he introduced the other five children that had joined us for the meal. And the Granny, the youngest on Ozark and one of the sternest—fifty-nine-year-old Granny Twinsonel. I bid them all a good evening, and helped myself to the soup.
Salem was a patient child; when the introductions had gone all the way around and the grownups were eating, he said it again, but this time he was asking.
“Magic-chests?” he asked me. “All of cedar?”
“Usually,” I told him. “Because it keeps everything so safe.”
His dark blue eyes shone, and I found him a handsome child despite the lack of three front teeth and the presence of a crazy-quilt assortment of scrapes and scabs and scratches. I expect he had fallen out of one or more of the cedar trees recently.
“What’s in a magic-chest, Responsible of Brightwater?” he asked me then, and he held very still, waiting for me to answer. Which meant he’d asked it before, and it had done him no good. It would do him no good this time, either.
“Herbs and simples and gewgaws,” I said casually. “And garlic.”
“In a cedar chest?” The child was shocked, and I chuckled.
As it happened, the Magicians did keep their garlic in their magic-chests, but they saw to it that the smell of the stuff was on hold while it was in there.
“That’s right,” I said. “Garlic.”
“When I am a Magician of Rank,” said the boy with utter solemnity, like a Reverend pronouncing a benediction, “I won’t do that. Or I’ll make a Spell to take the smell off so it doesn’t spoil the wood.”
Smart little dickens, that one. I could tell by the twitch at the comer of his stern father’s lips that this was a favorite child— the name told me that in any case—and that his promise was noticed. But the Master of the Castle spoke to him in no uncertain terms.
“When you are a Magician of Rank!” he said. “Many a long, long year of study lies between you and that day. Boy Salem, if it ever comes—which I doubt. And many a difficult examination. You had best get your mind off garlic and concentrate on learning the Teaching Story you were set this week—you didn’t have it right yet last night, as I recall.”
“Or,” added a sister who looked to be about thirteen, with the same pansy blue eyes but considerably less scuffed up and battered as to the rest of her, “you’ll end up like your cousin Silverweb.”
“I’d not be such a ninny as that,” scoffed the boy, “not ever! You know that, Charlotte.”
“Silverweb of McDaniels?” I set my soup spoon down and used my napkin hastily. “Has something happened to her?”
“Nothing serious, Responsible,” said Rozasham of McDanieIs, “and nothing that can’t be mended. She’s been left too long unmarried, and this is where that sort of thing leads to.”
“I hadn’t heard,” I said. “What’s happened?”
“Well,” said Rozasham, “as I understand it Silverweb decided you needed somebody to be guardmaid—or companion, who knows? to be company at any rate—on your Quest. And that young one packed a pair of saddlebags, stole a Mule from the McDaniels stables, and started off after you.”
“She didn’t get far,” observed her husband, handing the meat platter down the table. “Her daddy caught up with her before noon the following day and took her straight back to Castle McDaniels.”
“For a licking,” said the one they called Boy Salem.
“Not for a licking,” corrected Granny Twinsorrel. “Boy Salem, you’ll never make a Magician if you don’t learn to turn on your brain before you begin rattling off at the mouth. Young women of fifteen don’t get lickings, it wouldn’t be proper.”
The boy snorted, and wrinkled up his nose.
“Not fair,” he said. “Not fair atall.”
“What did they do to her?” I asked reluctantly, not really sure I wanted to know. I had high hopes for Silverweb, and I bore a certain guilt for having ranked her when I was at Castle McDaniels.
“Packed her off to Castle Airy in disgrace,” said Salem Sheridan. “And to the tender care of all three of the Grannys there. Seven weeks and a day, she’s to be servingmaid to those grannys. I do expect that will have some effect on her.”
Poor wretched Silverweb ... I knew what that would mean. She’d hem miles and miles of burgundy draperies, and then be made to take the hems out and do them over till her fingers bled. She’d boil vats of herbs half as tall as she was, stirring them for hours at a time with a wooden staff. And she’d pick nutmeats—they’d have her doing that with bushels of nuts, staining her fingers black where they weren’t bleeding. And scrubbing the Castle corridor floors with gritty sand. And worse.
“Oh, what ever made her take such a notion?” I asked, cross in spite of feeling sorry for her.
“Like I said,” said Rozasharn, “she’s been left too long unmarried. Silverweb’s going on sixteen, and that’s far too old. It’s a wonder she’s not done worse.”
“And she may have,” put in one of the older children. “Our daddy says Silverweb of McDaniels could very well of dressed like a man and kidnapped that baby out of your church, Responsible of Brightwater! He says she’s plenty big enough and strong enough—and bold enough, too.”
“I was there,” I protested, “and I can’t believe that, not atall! I’m sure it was a man ... and I’m sure it wasn’t Silverweb of McDaniels. She’s a fine young woman. I give you my word on that; she’s just maybe a bit strong-minded.”
“She ought to have a husband and two babies to occupy her energy by now,” said Salem Sheridan, “and I fault her parents for that. Though I agree she’s got to be punished for running off, and for taking the Mule without permission, and the rest of it. That’s fitting, and expected.”
“She’ll live through it,” said Granny Twinsorrel. “And maybe she’ll learn a thing or two about pride.”
“Now, Granny—” Rozasharn began, but the woman cut her off sharp.
“Pride is all that’s keeping that one spinster,” said Granny Twinsorrel, “simple pride. Her father’s offered her three marriages, each one fully suitable, each of me men with land and a homeplace and a good future ahead of him. And Miss Yellow-Haired High-and-Mighty wouldn’t accept any one of the three. Two fine men from Kingdom Guthrie, and one of our own—and none of them good enough for her. Pride, that is, and it’ll lead her to no good end.”
“They say,” said Rozasharn, “that she has ambitions. And if that’s true, she’ll make no marriage, Granny Twinsorrel.”
She has ambitions. In front of the children, that would mean that Silverweb intended to become a Granny the hard way, and go virgin to her grave; and there was no reason for a woman to do that unless she had her eyes out for a chance to become a Magician as well as a Granny. Which was “having ambitions.”
I frowned into my soup, but went back to eating it. Silverweb was none of my business, and no reason for her to come between me and my supper
The rock that whistled past my ear went into the bowl of mashed sweet potatoes, which weren’t enough to slow it down any, and on beyond to hit the far wall with a resounding smack. Whoever had thrown it had put considerable muscle behind it, and I couldn’t say it made my stomach calm. But not a one of me Lewises moved, or paused in their eating, or turned a hair, so far as I could tell. An Attendant stepped forward from the door and picked up the rock, and went off with it somewhere, while the Lewises went right on with their meal.
“Rozasharn of McDaniels,” I said, my voice more a quiver than I’d intended it to be, “how many more of those are we likely to be favored with this evening?”
“Half a dozen, maybe,” she said. “Maybe a few more, maybe a few less.”
“Well, don’t you mind having rocks thrown at you like that?”
“Gracious, child,” said Granny Twinsorrel, “those rocks aren’t being thrown at us. It’s a bit of fuss in your honor— started about the time you crossed the border of Kingdom Lewis, I calculate, which is why we were a mite disorganized when you arrived, and will stop when you move on. We don’t plan to pay the fool thing any attention, it will only make it worse.”
“Nobody’s been either hurt or bothered,” said Rozasharn soothingly. “You’ll notice there’s not even dust in the potato dish.”
“We can put up with it,” said Boy Salem, backing her up. “Besides, I like to see what it does.”
What it did next may have amused Boy Salem, but it didn’t amuse me in the slightest. Nobody wants a live lizard in her soup, and since Rozasharn of McDaniels was so calm about all this I strongly wished it had been in her bowl instead of mine.
“Teh.” said Granny Twinsorrel. “Now that was rude.”
“Can I fish it out?” asked Boy Salem. “Is it real? Can I get it out for you?” He was fairly hopping up and down in his chair
It was real enough, about four inches long, and a bright poisonous green. It put back its narrow head and hissed at me, and I fancied it was a little warmer there among the potatoes and the jebroots than it cared to be.
“Never mind, Boy Salem,” I said disgustedly “I’d best do it myself, I believe.”
Granny Twinsorrel’s voice came sharp and sudden. “Don’t you put silver to it, young woman!” she told me. “It’s not the creature’s fault. Use your fingers.”
I knew that much, but I didn’t sass the Granny; I reached into my soup with two careful fingertips, caught the little animal by the tip of its tail, and lifted it out into the air still spitting.
“Can I have it?” demanded Boy Salem. The child was outrageous, and his brothers and sisters stared at him in amazement. Eben Nathaniel Lewis the 17th, twelve years old and already with a rigid look to him like his father, turned that look on Boy Salem in a way that would of frozen the child stiff if it’d had any power behind it.
“A Spelled creature like that, Boy Salem?” said Eben Nathaniel. “Your head’s addled!”
The Granny stepped over to my chair and took the lizard from me, which was a good deal more appropriate than letting Boy Salem have it for a pet, and a servingmaid slipped the bowl of soup away and replaced it with a fresh one, and handed me a new spoon.
Whereupon a small frog, same shade of green, croaked up at me from among the vegetables. And I set the silverware down again.
If this was the beginning of an adventure, I didn’t fancy it; there were quite a few nasty and downright dangerous things that would fit into a soup bowl.
“Keep changing the bowls,” ordered Granny Twinsorrel, without a tremble to her voice, and we sat there while the process went on.
Bowl three, a much larger frog, darker green.
Bowl four, a skinny watersnake, banded in green and scarlet and gold, and about as long as my forearm.
Bowl five had a squawker in it, which was at least a change from the reptiles.
“Granny?”
“Hush, Rozasham,” said the woman; she was made of ice and steel, that one was, and she hadn’t yet even bothered to behave like a Granny ... certainly she’d yet to speak like one.
“You, young woman,” she said, “just keep changing the bowls; and you, Responsible, you keep taking the creatures out. We’ll see how this goes.”
She stood at my left hand and I passed her whatever I got with each bowl. I must say the children were fascinated, especially when, after the tenth move, the bowl itself suddenly grew larger.
The Granny made a small soft noise—not alarm, but it showed she’d taken notice—and Salem Sheridan Lewis set down his own spoon and spoke up.
“I don’t like that,” he said. “I don’t like that atall.”
I didn’t like it either and I didn’t know that I was going to like what came next in my alleged soup. There were several possibilities ... it could go from harmless creatures to poisonous ones, and I moved back from the table enough to dodge if a snake that killed was to appear coiled up before me next. It could go to nasty creatures, along the line of the squawker but dirtier—say, a carrion bird. Or it could go to things, and that left a wide latitude of choices.
“Responsible of Brightwater.” said Salem Sheridan, “put your spoon in that bowl—this has gone too far.”
But Granny Twinsorrel raised her hand, her index finger up like a needle, and shook her head firmly.
“No, Salem Sheridan,” she said, “we’ll see it out awhile yet.”
“Responsible of Brightwater is our guest!” Rozasham of McDaniels protested.
“As were Halliday Joseph McDaniels the 14th and his wife and son, at Castle Brightwater not too many days past,” said the Granny.
“I am sorry about that,” I said, keeping my eye on the soup bowl as I talked, “but I was truly not expecting mischief right in the middle of a Solemn Service. And I am sorry that yourall’s supper is being spoiled on my account, I assure you.”
“This is more fun than supper,” said Boy Salem.
“This is more fun than a picnic,” said Charlotte, and there was general agreement among the young ones. And I had to admit that from their point of view it was all very entertaining; no doubt they’d be pleased to have me back any time, even if it meant they all went hungry while I was there.
The entity responsible for all this fooled us, next go-round. It was neither a coiled poison-snake, nor a carrion bird, nor yet a loathsome mess of stuff mixed and coiled—another possibility—that gazed up at me. It made the children clap their hands, all but Eben Nathaniel, who was old enough to know better. And I felt Granny Twinsorrel’s hand come down hard and grip my shoulder.
“Is it real, too?” breathed one of the little girls, before Boy Salem could put in his two cents’ worth.
“Certainly not,” said their big brother Eben Nathaniel with contempt. “There’s no such thing.”
And the boy had it right. There was no such thing as a unicorn, not on Old Earth, not on Ozark, and what sat before me was only an illusion. But it was beautifully formed. About eleven inches high, not counting the gleaming single horn all fluted and spiraled, as pure white as new snow, with its flawless tiny hoofs delicately poised in the soup broth and its beautiful eyes perfectly serene, soup or no soup. It even had about its neck a tiny bridle of gold, with a rosette of silver.
“That now,” said Granny Twinsorrel, “you’ll not touch! That’s torn it. Just put your silver spoon in the bowl, Responsible of Brightwater.”
The children were crying out that that would kill it, and Rozashara of McDaniels was reassuring them that you can’t kill what doesn’t exist, and Salem Sheridan looked grimmer than a lot of large rocks I’d seen in my time.
Like a soapbubble, the instant my silver spoon touched the soup, the creature disappeared with an almost soundless pop. I sat there thinking, while Boy Salem—who had mightily wanted to keep the little unicorn, and I didn’t blame him, I would of liked to have it my own self—was comforted. The Granny picked up the offending bowl and handed it to the servingmaid, who looked scared to death but managed to ask, “Shall I try again, then?”
“One minute,” said the Granny. “Just keep your places and hold on. I intend to have my supper this night, and have it in peace.”
She plunged her hand deep into her skirt pocket—which showed me she’d either been prepared for at least some of this or always went prepared, just in case—and pulled out wards enough to seal off a good-sized mansion. The noses of the children quivered some at the reek of the garlic, and I.didn’t blame them. I was sorry I dared not take off the smell ... but we’d had scandal enough, I judged, for one evening. Garlic that didn’t smell and worked nonetheless would have been an offense to decency, and we’d just have to put up with the current odoriferous situation for the sake of the little ones.
When every door and window was properly warded the Granny went back to her chair and sat down.
“Now,” she said, “let us begin again, before we all starve and none of the food left’s fit to eat. Let the soup be served, and give Responsible of Brightwater a different bowl again, and put fresh hot broth in everybody else’s.”
“The Granny’s put out,” said the servingmaid in my ear, as if I couldn’t of seen that for myself, and she set down a fresh bowl of soup at my place. Where it stayed soup, though I took my first bite gingerly, I had no interest in something like a mouthful of live worms and straight pins.
“Responsible of Brightwater,” said Salem Sheridan Lewis then, all of us sedately eating our soup, “because I approve of the Confederation of Continents, and because I despise mischief—not to mention treason—I approve of this Quest of yours. Our Granny has explained clear enough the manner in which it must be done and the reasoning behind it—and as I say, I approve. But I’ll be right pleased when you are safely home again and we Families can go back to a normal way of life. Unlike Boy Salem there, I don’t care for this sort of thing ... it stinks of evil as well as the garlic.”
Another apology seemed in order, and I made it, but he waved it aside.
“You’re doing what’s necessary,” he said, “and from what we’ve heard—and seen!—it hasn’t been pleasant for you so far No need for you to be sorry for doing your plain duty.”
Rozasham of McDanieIs paused between two bites and looked at Granny Twinsorrel.
“Granny,” she asked, “is Responsible in any danger? Any real danger I mean, not just folderols like this exhibition at my table?”
“Don’t ask, Rozasham,” said Granny, “you’ll only rattle cages. Just eat your supper.”
“There’s berry pie,” somebody said, and I was glad to hear it. It would take more than a few creepy-crawlies in broth to spoil my pleasure in berry pie.
“What I won’t do,” Salem Sheridan Lewis went on, as if nothing had been said in between, “is have any celebration of all this. It does not strike me as seemly in any way, and I won’t have it.”
“But, my dear—” Rozasham began, or tried to begin; he went right on without so much as pausing.
“I know the conditions,” he said. “I know there must be some mark of your visit, and I’ll not interfere with the course of things by denying you that. But it will not be a playparty, or a festivity, or a hunt—nothing that implies I enjoy or condone such devilment as we’ve just watched. Tomorrow morning, after an ordinary breakfast—properly warded, if you please, Granny Twinsorrel, and no frogs in the gravy for my breakfast biscuits, thank you!—after a perfectly ordinary breakfast, we will have a parade. A solemn, I might say, a dignified, parade. Three times round the Castle, three times round the town, with Responsible riding between me and Rozasham. That satisfactory, Responsible of Brightwater?”
“Quite satisfactory,” I said. “But I’d like to put in a word.”
“Go right to it.”
“I understand your feeling about what happened just now, but I’m not at all sure that it’s got anything to do with wickedness.”
What I meant was that I was a lot more convinced that I could lay all this to Granny Golightly and her Magician of Rank hotting up my Quest for me than to the traitor behind the misuse of magic on Brightwater. But Salem Sheridan Lewis was not interested in my opinions.
“Magic,” he said, looking at me like a bug on a pin beneath his gaze, “is for certain purposes. Crops. Healing. Weather. Dire peril. Naming. It is not for the usage we saw it given at this table, and I’ll have in the Reverend and the Granny both as soon as you’re gone to clean out the last trace of it. I have no trouble atall recognizing sin when I see it, young woman.”
I held my tongue.
“Now,” he went on, “this parade. We’ll begin at seven sharp, and anybody not there on the mark will be left behind. Is that clear? Not to mention what will happen to any such person when we get back—I want our support set out unmistakable for all to see, and be done with it.”
“You stand for the Confederation, then?” I asked, while the berry pie was being handed round. It might not of been necessary, but I liked my knots well tied, and this was a man of strong opinions.
“Responsible of Brightwater,” said the Master of Castle Lewis, in a voice like the thud of an iron bell-clappel; “if every last turntail Kingdom on this planet votes against us, Castle Lewis stands for the Confederation. We’ll be at the Jubilee, never you fear. And our votes where they belong.”
“Hurrah!” shouted Boy Salem. Unfortunately. An Attendant scooped him out of his chair like a sea creature out of its shell, and off he went—reasonably quietly—under the young man’s sturdy arm. There was apparently a standard procedure in these cases.
I rested easy that night at Castle Lewis. Granny Twinsorrel warded my room double, and my nose had grown dulled to the garlic by the time I finally found myself in one of the high hard narrow beds the Lewises considered regulation. Not even a dream to disturb me. But the sun that came flooding through my windows in the morning woke me early enough; and when Tambrey of Motley knocked at my door with my wake-up tea she found me already in my traveling dress, sitting sedately in a cedar rocker waiting for her, and only my bare feet to show I’d not been up long.
I drank the tea slowly, enjoying the peacefulness of the morning, and the well-run propriety—a tad constraining, but well-run—of this Castle, and gave over my thinking to how I’d doll Sterling up for this parade. It had to be elegant, and it needed to be memorable, but I must not overdo it or I’d offend my host. It was a neat little problem, and the kind of thing I liked to ponder over, a good way to begin a morning.
I settled finally on something a bit beyond what Salem Sheridan Lewis would of liked, and a bit less than what Sterling would have—she was vain, even for a Mule. Rosettes in her ears in the Brightwater colors, and streamers braided in her tail—which I could triple-loop, for good measure—and me in my splendiferous traveling garb.
We went three times round the Castle, and three times round the town, as specified, the people lining the streets in Sundy best and cheering us on our way, holding up the babies to gawk at the glitter going by. Salem Sheridan even unbent so far as to put a single Attendant at the head of the parade with a silver horn, and allowed him to blow one long note at every third corner.
But I did not get to hear Rozasham of McDaniels sing even one ballad, not even one hymn, though I asked politely enough as we returned from our three times round. That would have been too much like frivolity to suit either Rozasham’s husband, or Granny Twinsorrel, or for that matter; Eben Nathaniel Lewis the 17th.
“She sings in church,” said Salem Sheridan, “and does a very good job of it. And that’s sufficient.”
It was days like this that I could see the advantages of the single state most clearly.