It was cold at Castle Brightwater; bitter bone-stabbing cold, the cold that comes when the skies are full of snow that refuses to fall; and the sky was a leaden sorrowful gray. No fires burned in any of the Castle fireplaces. The people in the towns and on the farms were better off by far than those at the Castle, because it had been for the most part a clear and sunny winter, and the solar collectors on their roofs had been adequate to carry them even through days like this one. The problems of keeping warm a hulking stone Castle designed with all the traditional drafty corridors and stairways were considerably more formidable.
Troublesome had gone through the gloom of the Castle like a wind added to the drafts that already whined there, with a fine disregard for the staff scuttling out of her way and the just-barely tolerance of the Family, shouting for Veritas Truebreed Motley the 4th, the Castle’s very own Magician of Rank. “Where is the man?” she had demanded as she tore up and down the halls and through the parlors, and “Where has he gotten to?” She got nothing for her troubles but shrugs and raised eyebrows, but she was accustomed to that; ten years’ practice being shunned toughened you up some.
She found him at last, by the simple expedient of looking everywhere there was, up on the Castle roof rubbing his hands together and cursing fluently in a spot where a tower kept off the wind but let the dim light by.
“It’s a fine thing,” he observed, glaring at her, “when it’s warmer outside the place you live in than it is inside, in the dead of winter. I’ve a good mind to move into that hotel down by the landing. I’d be more comfortable there, and I’m sure the company would be better. How did you find me, anyway?”
“Used an algorithm,” said Troublesome.
He made a face, not appreciating that word in her mouth, and went on as if she’d not used it. “And it’s finer yet, when a man can’t even find privacy on the bestaggering roof of a bestaggering Castle! First, it was one of the Grannys; and then it was Thorn of Guthrie—curse her narrow pointy little soul—and now, the Twelve Gates defend us all, it’s you! What’s next, ghosts and demons?”
“Morning, Veritas Truebreed,” said Troublesome calmly. “Nice to see you, too, I’m sure.”
“What do you want with me?” the Magician of Rank demanded, cross as a patch. “Whatever it is, the answer is either no, I can’t or no, I won’t—there aren’t any other answers at the moment.”
“Might could be you’re right,” she said, “and might could be you’re wrong. Long as we’re being all binary here.”
“Troublesome, you’ll provoke me,” he warned her, and she let him know how alarmed she was at that prospect.
“Besides which,” she added, “you were already provoked before ever I set foot on this roof. And you may go right on being provoked till you choke, for all I care.”
“Well?” Veritas Truebreed was blue with cold and purple with outrage, but he knew quite well she could outlast him. “Speak up, woman; what are you here tormenting me for?”
Troublesome looked him up and down, noting that he’d abandoned the elegant garments of his station for something that looked more like a stableman’s winter wear. Something nubby and bulky, with a thick lining and a narrow stripe and a capacious hood. It showed good sense on his part.
“I want you to wake up Responsible,” she told him.
“You want me to what?”
“I’ve been to Kintucky and back, Veritas, and I— “
“You’ve been to where?”
“As I said, Veritas Truebreed, I’ve been to Kintucky and back—never you mind how, just let me tell you it wasn’t easy and it was hardly what you might call a holiday excursion—and I’ve heard the whole sorry tale from the lips of Lewis Motley Wommack the 33rd his very own self, and you’d best hop it. Time’s a-wasting.”
The Magician of Rank stopped rubbing his hands together then, and blowing on them, and he leaned back against the stone of the tower, closed his eyes, and groaned aloud like a woman birthing.
“Only you could have brought this upon me. Troublesome of Brightwater,” he said at last through clenched teeth, when he’d done with his groaning, “only you! We don’t have trial and misery enough already; now we have to have this. Oh, for the power to do just one tiny Transformation... I’d turn you into a slimeworm, with the greatest of pleasure, I’d step on you with my shoe heel ... no, I’d set fire to you, right at the tender end where your little yellow eye was, and then— “
“Demented,” said Troublesome.
“What?”
“You’re demented. Mad. Plain crazy. And I’ve heard enough and a few buckets left over from you. I’m not interested in the twisted inventions of your imagination, Veritas Truebreed. I am interested in having you wake up my sister—bringing in all the other Magicians of Rank you need to help you at it, if that’s required, and I suppose it is, though it’s mighty curious that it takes nine-to-one odds for one small female like Responsible—and I’m interested in seeing if the Grannys are right that that will improve things around here a tad. Either you leave off your drivel and come along to get started on that, or I’ll push you off the roof—how’s that for managing without Formalisms & Transformations? Nothing fancy, O Mighty Magician, just shove you right off and let you try the effect of the stone down there in the courtyard on the very same body you came into this world with. You’ll squash, I expect, and the Holy One knows you deserve it.”
He opened his eyes and sighed, and she wondered impatiently what was next. There are only just so many meaningful noises in the sigh & moan & grunt & groan category, and he was running through them at a great rate.
“It can’t be done,” he said simply, and that surprised her. “I’m more than willing, but it—cannot—be—done. Don’t you think we tried?”
Troublesome hunched down beside him and regarded him seriously. This didn’t look to be at all funny, if he spoke the truth.
“You explain,” she said. “Right quick.”
“When we realized what we’d done,” said the man, making vague hopeless gestures, “we tried right away to undo it. The Mules weren’t making more than about ten miles an hour by then, some of the boats were a knot or two faster, whatever was left of the energy that had been fueling the system was winding down fast ... but since it had taken all nine of us to put Responsible into pseudocoma we had a feeling it would take all nine to get her back out again. We all got here; and since you were yammering about the difficulties of your jaunt to Kintucky, allow me to observe that there was nothing easy about that—but we did get here somehow. And in the dead of night we stood round her bed and we did everything we knew, and made up a sizable amount of stuff that had never been tried before ... and we kept at it until there was barely time for some of us to get out before people saw us leaving. Whether everyone got back home again, I don’t know ... and I’m not sure I care. But we did try, Troublesome.”
“And what happened?”
“And nothing happened. The only difference between pseudocoma and real coma is that the victim of pseudocoma does not deteriorate physically or mentally. Otherwise, it’s exactly the same—and we did a good job of it. Oh yes; that’s a downright magnificent pseudocoma we put her into. She went right on just as she was.”
“Do you understand it?” Troublesome asked gravely.
“No, of course we don’t understand it, curse your insolence for asking! We ought to understand it ... do you have to rub my nose in it? Does that give you pleasure?”
“That’s my sister,” she reminded him. It was no time to make her ritual speech about having no human feelings.
“And the hope of the world.”
To her amazement, she saw that there were tears on his cheeks, running in rivulets down into his beard; it wouldn’t do to let him know she saw that, and she devoted her attention to watching a seabird wheeling above them. It must have gone demented, too, she thought absently.
“We were so careful,” he mourned beside her. “One thousand years of being so careful. Keeping the population small, so that there was always abundance. Balancing every substance that went into the soil and the water and the air, and every substance that came out, to guard its purity. We made a paradise ... no crime, no war, no disease, no crowding, no hunger, no— “
“I remember, Veritas Truebreed,” Troublesome cut him off. “I was up on a mountaintop a good deal of the time, but I do remember. And I’d rather hear explanations than memorial services, if you don’t mind.”
“We have some guesses.”
“Guesses? What kind of guesses?”
He didn’t answer her, and she turned to look at him, tears or no tears.
“I said, what kind of guesses?”
“They ought, by rights, to be secret ...”
“Oh, hogwallow, you fool man! Secrets, at a time like this!”
“Maybe you’re right,” he said, “and I’m too tired to care any more ... and nobody’d believe you even if you weren’t too mean to tell, so what does it matter? We assume—just assume, mind you, we’ve no proof—that there was something about Responsible that was essential to the functioning of magic. She had no powers, of course, beyond those of any other female; don’t misunderstand me.”
“You’re a liar, Veritas—I told you I had the whole story from that poor piece of work at Castle Wommack, and he had a few words to say about Responsible’s powers; seems as how he mightily disliked being subjected to them.”
“Even on Old Earth,” said the Magician of Rank stiffly, “in the times of utter ignorance of magic, there were rare individuals capable of mindspeech—as there were rare individuals seven feet tall. Your sister is a freak, as those were freaks, with no knowledge or control of her abilities. But she is something else, something ... a catalyst, perhaps? Somehow, whatever she was, taking her out of the system of magic brought it to a full stop. And pseudocoma takes magic—you can’t put someone into it, nor take them out of it, with solar energy or electrical energy or any other kind. By the time we realized what had happened, there was no energy left—without her—for us to use to cancel the coma. So far as I know, that’s the way of it. And if you could get all nine of us together in her bedroom again, which I doubt, since the ships aren’t sailing and the Mules aren’t flying, it would be the same as it was. Just the same as it was ... “
“You were fools,” said Troublesome. “Plain fools.”
That long groan again ... it was getting boring, especially since he was in no pain.
“You were, you know,” she said, happy to twist the knife.
“We didn’t realize,” he protested. “We had no idea that she mattered that way ...” And if someone had told them, he thought to himself, if they’d been warned, it would have changed nothing. They wouldn’t have believed it. They had hated Responsible of Brightwater so much, and they had so welcomed a legitimate opportunity to punish her for humiliating them, he knew that no amount of warning could have held them back.
“You do not know the hours,” he said slowly, “the countless hours I have spent standing beside her all by myself ... trying things. Hoping I’d jog something loose, find the right thread accidentally. Because whatever it is that she is for, that is still intact. That’s still there, if I could only get at it.”
“How do you know that? How can you possibly know?”
He raised his eyebrows at that, and he admonished her to think. After all, he pointed out, she had a reputation for wisdom as well as wickedness. And, goaded like that and held in the fierceness of his eyes wanting to get back at her for the way she’d spoken to him, she saw it.
“Ah,” she breathed, “you’re right! Otherwise, if it were otherwise, she’d be like someone in true coma ... she’d be curled tight and wasting away and— “
“And all the rest of it. Yes. And she’s not. She looks exactly as she looked the hour we did our work, and that can mean only one thing—all that is left of the energy of magic is concentrated there in her, keeping her from ever changing.”
Something in his tone caught her attention, and she looked at him close, and marveled at the way of the world. Revelation followed upon revelation.
“You hate her,” she said. “She’s your own kin, grew up here under this roof playing on your knee and riding piggyback on your shoulders—and you hate her worse than sin! Why?”
Veritas Truebreed squared his shoulders, and he met her eyes, but he said not one word. No one not a Magician of Rank was ever going to know the answer to that question, not from his lips. Not ever.
“It must have been hard,” murmured Troublesome. “All those years, pretending to be helpful ... playing at being loyal.”
“It was.”
Troublesome went back down into the Castle, her breath making little white puffs in the air, and she found Grannys Hazelbide and Gableframe, and told them.
“It seems,” she wound it up, “that you went through all of this and gave up the last of your treasure things—not to mention a certain amount of discommodance on my part—all for nothing. It’s a shame.”
“No,” said Granny Gableframe firmly. “It wasn’t for nothing, young woman. In no sense of the word. We traded an ignorance big as this Castle for a whole pot of knowledge, bubbling and simmering this minute. I’d say as it was a fair trade. We’re not out of it, mind you, not by many a mile, but we at least know how we came to be where we are.”
“Knowledge,” said Granny Hazelbide, “is for using. Now we have some, the problem is how we put it to use. And for that. Troublesome, we don’t need you. No call whatsoever to keep you from your homeplace any longer, and we’re grateful to you for what you’ve done, however much it sticks in my craw to say it. We’re beholden to you.”
“Hazelbide, you exaggerate,” said Granny Gableframe.
“You know any other living soul on this earth as would of done what Troublesome did?” demanded Granny Hazelbide. “Gone off in the cold and damp in a leaky boat with a bribed crew, on what was ninety-nine-to-one a wild goose chase? Gone off and chanced being stranded forever in a wilderness, dying all alone in some Kintucky briartangle? Just because we asked her to, and no other compensation offered?”
“Flumdiddle!” said Gableframe. “The fact you raised Troublesome’s addled your brain—which it can’t tolerate much of, I might add. That’s her own sister as lies in there, and it’s her own people as are suffering. She had as much to gain from this as any of us, and more than some, and I’ll be benastied before I’ll say we’re beholden to Troublesome of Brightwater! The idea!”
“One more time, Gableframe,” said Granny Hazelbide, tight-lipped. “Just one more time, I’ll tell you ... Troublesome has no natural feelings. Responsible could die this minute, putrify right there on her bed, and her sister’s only complaint’d be the smell. And that goes for every sick baby and hungry tadling and suffering human on the face of this world, you have my word on it. If she helped us, we’re beholden. You care to be benastied as well, that’s your choice.”
Troublesome chuckled, and Granny Hazelbide said: “See there?”
They were sitting there together, the two old women rocking quick and hard to show their irritation, and Troublesome still grinning, when the Mules began to bray in the stables, and Granny Gableframe said, “There’s somebody coming—listen to that racket!”
“Probably Lewis Motley Wommack the 33rd,” observed Granny Hazelbide. “Swam all the way here for penance, and crawled the rest of the way when he ran out of water,”
“For sure it’s a strange Mule to bring all that on,” said Granny Hazelbide. “That’s all we need now, when we should be setting our minds to how to use what we’ve learned—company. Botheration!”
“Don’t you get awfully tired of that?” asked Troublesome.
“Tired of what?”
“The formspeech. Having to go ‘botheration’ and ‘I swan’ and ‘flumdiddle’ and ‘mark my word’ and all the rest of it. Do you keep it up when you’re all by yourselves and nobody around to say, ‘Eek! I heard a Granny talking normal talk like anybody else’?”
The Grannys drew themselves up in outrage, right together like they’d practiced it, and Troublesome chuckled some more. There was nothing more fun to tease than a Granny.
“Troublesome of Brightwater,” said Granny Hazelbide stiffly, “just you go and see who’s come—or what’s come, might could be that’s more near the mark! I wish to goodness it would be young Wommack, I’d pull every hair of his beard out one at a time ... but well not be that lucky, it’ll be somebody useless, or worse. You’ve had your thanks, missy, and we’ve had your sass, and now we’re even—make your young bones useful and see what’s come to pass.”
But Troublesome didn’t have a chance to more than straighten up from her chair before a knock came at the door; and when they called, “Come in!” it was a servingmaid of Brightwater and an Attendant from Castle McDaniels, the latter looking as if he’d fall over if you blew on him.
“I’m here,” he blurted out, “with a message for Miss Troublesome. Law, but I was scared to death she’d be gone before I got here ... Miss Troublesome, I’m pleasured to see you.”
“First time in her life she ever heard that!” said the two Grannys together, and Troublesome allowed that it was, and the young man hurried to explain himself.
“I don’t mean as how I’m happy to see her,” he said hastily, stumbling into the doorframe and causing the servingmaid to put a sturdy hand to his elbow to help him out. “Don’t misunderstand me; it’s that I’m happy to see she’s not gone yet. If you see what I mean.”
“The distinction’s a mite subtle,” said Granny Gableframe, “But we won’t hold it against you, whatever it might mean, seeing as how it’s clear you’ve had a hard ride and a long one and can scarcely stand on your feet, much less orate and do declamations. What are you after with Troublesome of Brightwater, young man?”
“Message from Castle McDaniels, ma’am,” he said, bobbing his head. “And it’s urgent.”
“Then deliver it,” snapped Troublesome, running out of patience. “Before you fall over. It’ll be more practical that way, by a good deal. And don’t mumble. When I get urgent messages brought in to me at a last gasp like this I like them to be turned over with clarity.”
“Troublesome!” Granny Hazelbide was fairly quivering. “Will you not tease the poor young man, for all our sakes!”
“Oh, that’s all right. Granny Hazelbide,” said the Attendant from McDaniels, trying not to lean on the servingmaid. “I’ve been warned about her already, at some length. Missus McDaniels, her that was Anne of Brightwater, she talked to me about Miss Troublesome for it must of been a good hour and a half. I expected horns and a tail on her, if you want to know the truth of it.”
And Troublesome chuckled some more. For a day that had begun with spoiled food and bad water and a crew of sick and surly men on a leaky boat, this one was turning out to have its good parts.
“Well, then,” she said. “You’ve seen me, and you’re disappointed I don’t live up to your expectations. That’s clear. Now pass on the message, and you can be on your way and get some rest. Just speak right up.”
“You’re to stay here,” said the Attendant.
“I’m to stay here? That’s it? That’s your urgent message?”
“Because Miss Silverweb’s coming,” he told her. “She wasn’t quite ready to leave when I was, and she couldn’t of kept up with me if she had been, I’m sure—I was told to ride hard all the way and not spare the Mule or me either one. But she says you’re to stay right here until she gets here, never mind how anxious you are to leave, and never mind how much there’s people encouraging you on your way.”
“Miss Silverweb said that?”
“Yes, miss. And her mother as well.”
“Hmmmph.”
Troublesome gnawed on her braid, and the Grannys stopped their rocking, and Granny Hazelbide pointed out that considering the number of days she’d lost already another one couldn’t do much harm. Or another two.
“Did she say why?” Troublesome asked the Attendant.
“Miss?”
“Did either of those women say why I was to wait?” asked Troublesome impatiently. “I can’t see much point to it myself. I don’t even know Silverweb of McDaniels, except that I believe I changed one of her diapers once. She for sure does not know me. Why should I wait for her?”
“Well,” said the Attendant, “I can’t say as I understand it. But I can tell you what they said to me.”
“You do that, then,” said Troublesome.
“Miss Silverweb, she said I was to tell you just this: you stay here, because she knows how to wake up Miss Responsible, but she needs your help to do it. And that’s all.”
The silence went on and on, and the Attendant leaned more and more obviously on the servingmaid, who fortunately showed no sign of collapsing under the strain, and when Troublesome spoke at last her voice was hesitant.
“You say that Silverweb of McDaniels knows how to wake my sister ...”
“So she claims, miss. I’m just passing it on, as I was bid.”
Troublesome turned to the Grannys.
“Well?” she asked them. “Is it likely? You know the girl ... any reason she should know what nine Magicians of Rank don’t?”
“Miss Silverweb’ll be here by morning at the latest,” pleaded the Attendant. “And if I’ve got here and told you, and you’re gone on anyway, I won’t dare go back, I can tell you. Missus Anne was most particular about that. ‘If she doesn’t wait for Miss Silverweb, don’t you bother coming back here,’ she said to me. And I’ve worked there, and done my job right, more’n six years now. Shows where hard work won’t get you.”
“Troublesome,” said Granny Gableframe, speaking right up, “I can’t say honestly I know any reason why you should stay. Rumor is, Silverweb of McDaniels’ gone some kind of religious lunatic, shut up all the time in an attic praying and carrying on. Not that I don’t hold with prayer, mind you, indeed I do, in its place—but they say Silverweb carries it to and beyond extremes. On the other hand, reason or no, what’s the harm? What’s one more day to you? You’ve got no appointments to keep on your mountain, what’s a few hours more or less at Brightwater?”
Troublesome gave it a minute or two for real, and a minute or two for tormenting them, and then she nodded slowly, and the Attendant went limp with relief and very nearly did fall down.
“All right,” said Troublesome. “I don’t suppose it can make any difference; and I don’t mind admitting I’m curious. I’ll wait for the child. Pray with her if need be.”
“She’s no child. Miss Troublesome,” said the Attendant, very serious in spite of his exhaustion. “You wait till you see her—that’s no child, nor ever will be again. Nor no woman, either.”
“Well, what is she, then?”
“You’d best wait and see for yourself,” the Attendant said, and that appearing to be all he could manage, that Grannys motioned for the servingmaid to take him away. Which she did, murmuring soothing words to him all the way down the corridor.
“Youall don’t know anything about this?” demanded Troublesome, arms akimbo. “This is no Granny mischief, cooked up between you?”
“Honestly,” said Gableframe. “How you talk.”
“Your word on it or off I go this minute,” declared Troublesome.
“Phooey,” said Granny Gableframe right back at her. “It’ll be a fine day when I give you my word on anything. As soon give my word to my elbow. And who are you to doubt a Granny’s word?”
“Troublesome,” put in Granny Hazelbide hastily, “I’m with Gableframe on that. But you said you’d stay. And you know this is no scheme we planned for you. We’ve got no heart these days for schemes. Leave off your nonsense, now, and keep your word.”
“And so I will,” said Troublesome. “I beg your pardon, I forget sometimes the way things have changed in this world. Up on that mountain ... I don’t see it the way youall have to.”
“Understandable,” said Granny Gableframe. “Not natural; but understandable.”
“I suppose they’ll make me sleep in the stable,” Troublesome fussed.
“I’ll put you up in my own room if they try it,” said Granny Hazelbide. “I’m not afraid of you, and that Twelve Gates knows I’m used to you.”
“I’d rather stay in the stable.”
“Suit yourself. Just so’s you stay.”
“My word on it, to you and to my elbow,” said Troublesome solemnly, crossing her heart elaborately with one finger. “I’ll wait for little Silverweb and see what she’s got to offer.”