Will Power wh-2

by A. J. Hartley

  “How impressive,” said Renthrette.

  “It’s not meant to be impressive,” I returned. “It’s just a statement of fact. I lived on beer-real beer-for over a decade in Cresdon. I worked in a theater that was also a tavern, remember? Someone spiked my drink, and I don’t mean they put a shot of grain whiskey in my tankard. I mean they added something serious, some drug that would. .”

  “No one in the court would do such a thing,” Garnet said. “It’s completely implausible.”

  “And I’m telling you that it’s the only possibility,” I shouted back. “Someone in that court set out to discredit me, and they did so by. .”

  “Spare me your lies, you snake,” Renthrette snarled, cutting me off. “The insults you threw at the top of your lungs; the indecent suggestions you made to virtually every lady in the room, regardless of whether her husband or betrothed or admirers stood listening to every disgusting word; the people you offended. .”

  She paused, unable to finish. Then she looked me in the eye. Complete resolve came over her, and, when she spoke again, it was like watching a raging torrent freeze suddenly. “Last night, Will, you crossed the line. You have always walked a dangerous path, but last night you shamed us all, and that, as far as I am concerned, is it. Henceforth, do not speak to me. Do not associate with me. Do not even look at me. If you so much as mention my name I will find you and I will run my sword up to the hilt through your stomach. I will cut out your heart if you ever claim any kind of connection to me again. I have waited with you all night to tell you this, and now I am going. As soon as you are fit to walk (if you were ever fit for anything), leave this place. Forget my name and that of my brother and those who traveled with us. If I ever see Orgos, Mithos, and Lisha again, I will say you are dead-and that, I think, is a kindness more than you deserve. From this moment on, you are alone, as you always wanted to be.”

  Before half of this had sunk in, she was gone. Garnet faltered for a second. His eyes met mine and there was uncertainty in them, but he looked to his sister as she stepped through the door, and a hardness came into his face. “Good-bye, Will,” he said, stiffly. And with that, he followed her out the door.

  This was a bit of a setback. I had toyed with the idea of abandoning the party from the first day I had met them, but it was usually an empty threat. I needed them in this strange land and, though they could all get on my last nerve, I had grown to like them. Laughable though this now seemed, I had once thought that Renthrette might turn into something more than a friend. Garnet was a tougher nut, perhaps, but I had never really considered the possibility that they might just dump me on the side of the road. I had always assumed that I was just valuable enough to them to make them put up with my idiosyncrasies as I put up with theirs. Apparently this was not so.

  Yet, however much Renthrette fancied herself party leader, she did not speak for Lisha and the others. I had briefly flirted with the idea of brandishing my secret knowledge about Lisha as a way of derailing their righteousness, a way of showing that the person they respected most thought me useful, may think me somehow more trustworthy than them in ways I couldn’t quite explain. But I didn’t. I had promised Lisha, and that meant something. So did the sense that there was something more important than whether or not Renthrette liked me.

  Lisha had left me with a task, and whatever else it might achieve I figured that my one chance of staying with the party was by completing my assignment. I slept for one more hour and then dragged myself out of bed, washed, dressed in my new suit (its collar and vest front sponged as best I could), and stumbled out into the frosty morning.

  Oh, and I stole Renthrette’s dress. The one she had worn the previous night. She wouldn’t be happy about it, but I couldn’t slip any further in her esteem, so I just concentrated on not getting caught. I rolled the thing up as best I could and shoved it under my arm as I went outside. I did it because I needed it, though I’d be lying if I said that the fact that it would seriously piss her off didn’t add to the appeal.

  The cold air skewered my lungs like one of the elegant rapiers which had surely been aimed in my direction last night, and my head swam. For a moment I thought I would faint, which led me to sit with hurried clumsiness in the street. After a few minutes I struggled gingerly to my feet and walked to a small piazza where I found a pump, splashed the icy water on my face, and took a tentative drink. A gaggle of courtiers who were exchanging amused recollections about the evening’s frivolities caught sight of me and stared in hostile silence. I returned to my drinking, ignoring them as they turned pointedly from me and walked away. I drank a little more while they got out of the way, then set off again, miserable but determined.

  My stomach sloshed about as I walked, but my light-headedness passed and I felt no urge to vomit what I had just drunk. I begged a stale crust from a bakers’ shop, and, though I felt no desire to eat any more, I managed to keep it down. I sat for a while in the square by the library, feeling better apart from a pulsing ache in my temples. Now all I had to do was get into the library one last time. Then I could run, my tail firmly between my legs, from the city to Lisha, the one person on the planet who might still be pleased to see me. Of course, if I couldn’t get into the library-particularly if Lisha had gotten word of my evening’s activities-even her patience with me might reach its limit.

  I found my way to the exclusive little gallery of shops adjacent to the marketplace where I had sampled the chocolate bird. A quick glance at the wares in the overstuffed windows and my mission was clear. I took a long breath and tried to screen out the pain in my head. Then, selecting the most ludicrously sumptuous of a number of establishments dealing in cosmetics, I barged in as if I had sprinted across town.

  “Is it ready?” I demanded in a loud, impatient tone. “Is it ready? Come on, I don’t have all day.”

  “Is what ready?” said a venerable old lady behind the counter. She was absurdly made up with cheeks of a uniform flamingo-pink and a blue-green shadow in the sockets above her eyeballs. She was sixty-five if she was a day.

  “The package my mistress ordered!” I screamed back. “She wants it immediately.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” said the shopkeeper, with a glance at one of the serving girls who was ministering to another customer. “A package?”

  “Yes, a package!” I spluttered. “Two complete wigs, face powder, lip tint, and colored spectacles.”

  “And this was ordered when?”

  “Last week. Maybe earlier. You must have it. She needs it now and she said she’d never employ you again if it wasn’t. .”

  “Now, let’s not be hasty,” the old woman cut in. “Your mistress’s name is. .?”

  I glanced pointedly around the store. Several ladies paused in their perusal of false eyelashes and hairpieces and regarded this little scene with interest.

  “My dear lady,” I began, as if offended, “surely you do not expect me to utter the name of so venerable a court lady as my mistress before common ears.” I leaned close to her. “She is a little. . sensitive. . about what time is doing to her beauteous features. Surely you would not have me. .”

  “Certainly not!” exclaimed the shopkeeper. “But it would help if I knew. . You say she has employed our services before?”

  “On a regular basis.”

  “As a personal dresser as well as supplier?”

  “Indeed,” I confirmed.

  “And she is more advanced in years than say, myself?”

  This seemed tough to imagine, but I nodded knowingly.

  “Would I be correct in saying that her name began with-” Here she leaned close to my ear. As I struggled not to keel over at the stench of her perfume, she breathed the letter “W.”

  “The very same,” I smiled, remarking to myself how easy this had turned out to be.

  “Then I am scheduled to meet with her this afternoon.”

  “Err. . yes,” I said, “or, rather, you were. She wants you to send this package to her today, t
hough it seems my fellow the valet did not relay this information to you.”

  “I think not.”

  “It would not be the first time,” I said, sighing at the fallibility of servants. “But that is no matter. If you can compose the package now, then she will meet with you tomorrow instead of today and will pay you then.”

  “At the usual time?” asked the shopkeeper.

  “Half an hour earlier, please,” I said, for no particular reason.

  I left the store with a parcel of brown paper, which I opened as soon as I got to a side street. Despite having to time my actions around the motions of passersby, it took me no more than five minutes to slip on Renthrette’s dress, powder my face after the courtly fashion, rub a little of the red grease on my lips, and don the ringlet wig. This last item was perhaps the most risky, but it was also the most essential. It was an odd sensation, returning to my days playing ladies on the stage, doubly so because I wasn’t actually on stage at all, was actually in an alley where being discovered could get me into real trouble, and it took me a few minutes to steel myself for my return to the main street. As soon as I slipped the tortoiseshell spectacles with their bluish lenses (such as I had been assured were “absolutely the first choice of all the right courtiers this season”) onto my nose, Will Hawthorne effectively vanished. My disguise wouldn’t stand careful scrutiny, particularly from someone who knew me, but I had spent the bulk of my theatrical apprenticeship playing women and had often been told that I did it well; better, in fact, than some actual women. I was never sure what that meant, but I took it as a compliment. And now, moving back through the elegant streets of Phasdreille, I clung to the idea like it was the banister of a steep and narrow staircase.

  I reached the library and made straight for one of the guards monitoring the side entrance. He was a little taller than most of the “fair folk” and his limbs were heavier, more aggressively powerful-looking than the sinewy strength of the other troops. He caught sight of my rapid approach, but his gaze was blank. I touched the fringe of my wig self-consciously and proceeded.

  Fishing into my stocking-padded cleavage, I produced a sheaf of official-looking papers marked with sealing wax. I was taking a chance, of course, but I hadn’t seen much devotion to learning outside the privileged circle of the court, despite the magnificence of the library. That a lowly sentry would be able to read seemed unlikely, and I might thus get away with the fact that what I was brandishing was actually the formal invitation to the king’s banquet, the same banquet at which I had so endeared myself to the Phasdreille elite.

  The guard’s eyes stooped to my face expressionlessly.

  “Lady Fossington,” I announced, modulating my voice and conscious that I was perspiring slightly. “I’m here on behalf of the Committee on Textual Rescription.”

  I paused and gave him an expectant look as if this made my business clear. His brow wrinkled slightly and his mouth opened, but he said nothing while his eyes strayed to the document I was holding. I could tell at a glance that he was taking in the parchment and the official-looking seal rather than the words, so I held it up for him to get a better, but no more helpful, look.

  As he did so, I kept talking in a rapid and slightly nasal manner. “At the second semiannual general meeting, the committee reviewed the minutes from the previous meeting and found certain items of business unresolved. The most major of these was the updating of the list of titles to be permanently erased from all but the Former Titles list. But my business today is more directly concerned with item four on the original meeting minutes-that is, what is now item 2b on the recent meeting agenda: Maintenance Subsistence Levels for Book Redirection and Clarification of Furnaces. The earlier think tank report on this matter suggested that said furnaces were not adequately monitored for the accumulation of post-incineration written matter detritus, which was directly impacting the efficiency of said furnaces in subsequent acts of textual modification by means of incandescence. According to the report, said accumulation was inversely proportional to said furnaces’ available volume and may have further repercussions correlating to issues of temperatural generative capacity. My task is to make detailed observations on the post-incineration condition of said furnaces in order to ascertain the necessity of further detritus removal operations.”

  The blank look in the soldier’s eyes tried to hide, but it wasn’t going anywhere. He hesitated, trying to look engaged, then nodded. I pressed the advantage. “So if you would conduct me on a tour of the furnaces so that I can complete my examination, I’m sure that the library staff and the king’s palace will be appreciative.”

  “Oh,” he said. “Right. Yes, ma’am.”

  And I was in.

  The next trick was to lose my guide. That might prove more difficult. The soldier chaperoned me everywhere I went and insisted on guiding me straight to the room I had already been in. He watched me as I poked around in the embers of the fireplaces, sifting through ash, and taking little scrapings of burned matter from the chimney lips with the point of my knife. Periodically I would pause to sniff significantly. Once I even tasted the gray-white powder, all the while scribbling meaningless words and figures on my sheet of paper. This clearly fascinated the trooper, and he showed no signs of leaving me alone for a second. We moved from room to room, seeing nothing I hadn’t already seen. I was in continual dread of bumping into Aliana or someone else who would be less accepting of my story.

  “This is the last one,” said the guard as we entered a small circular chamber with a dead hearth in its center.

  “What about the brass doors at the end of the corridor there?” I asked.

  “There’s no furnace there,” he said. “This is the last one.” The look on his face was completely guileless. He was unaware that anything significant had been said. As far as he was concerned, he was telling the truth.

  No furnace. So Aliana’s story about the source of the heat behind those doors had been a lie.

  So what was through those doors, I wondered? I had to see, and I was fast running out of time. I had not been spotted, hadn’t run into Aliana, and, though I hadn’t knocked my absurd wig off, I also hadn’t learned anything, and the soldier was still gazing rapt at the way I was pawing through the cinders of all those Redirected and Clarified Texts. It made me nervous, having him watch so closely while I did nothing. I tried to distract him.

  “Nice room,” I said, glancing around at the heavy timber beams and imposing stonework.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Must have taken years to build,” I added, aimlessly making conversation until I could think of a way to get rid of him.

  “Yes,” he said. “I’ll be a mason when I retire from the army.”

  “Really,” I said, “how very interesting.”

  This was said sarcastically, nastily even. I thought vaguely that offending or belittling him might make him leave, but he apparently misread my remark altogether. That’s the trouble with idiots: You can’t even offend them without working overtime.

  “Yes,” he said. “It’s a family trade.”

  “Well, you mustn’t try anything too intellectually challenging,” I tried.

  His face showed nothing. In fact, he seemed, if anything, strangely distant as he began to reply. “My great-grandfather first helped to hew and shape the stone which was laid as the foundation of this structure. You see those buttresses? He carved those himself, with nothing but a chisel and mallet. He worked until his hands bled, refusing to rest until the job was done to the best of his ability. The intricacy of their carving is unmatched, and, a hundred years later, they are still as even and flawless as the day they were finished. Since then the goblin armies have broken upon this fortress like waves against cliffs and it stands still. He taught the trade to my grandfather, who taught it to my father, and my father taught it to me. My hammer has been passed down through our family since the days of that great-grandfather in whose memory we set a small diamond into its handle. Soon I will continu
e his work.”

  An odd chill had started to come over me halfway through this speech as it began to resonate through my mind. It was like smelling something that invokes some ancient memory which you can’t quite place. The experience left me confused and, stranger still, a little afraid. He finished his speech and gazed back at me, as if just realizing that I was there.

  “A hammer passed through generations,” I said. “That must give a fine sense of continuity and history. I didn’t think people did that with tools. More with weapons. You don’t have an heirloom weapon passed through the family as well, do you?” I ventured.

  “An axe,” he said. “My great-grandfather bore it when Phasdreille was besieged by a vast goblin horde which crossed the river to sack the White City. He rode with a cavalry force raised in the borderlands, and they met the goblin ranks as they lay outside the great city. The horsemen caught the goblins unawares and routed them, though many tall and fair soldiers fell in the battle. My great-grandfather survived, but he was killed shortly afterward. That was the last time he wielded his mighty axe. With it he struck down many dozens of goblins, cleaving a path through their ranks until he came upon their chieftain: a huge brute dressed in red and black, great ugly spikes on his helm and a weapon like a vast cleaver in his massive claws. My ancestor faced the beast and, after many blows were struck on both sides, felled him, cleaving his skull in twain. But the goblin was wearing an iron collar and the axe was notched, though it is still functional, and we set a diamond taken from the goblin chief and set it into the haft. I don’t carry it because it is not regulation-issue for sentry duty, but I long for the day when I can wield it as he did in the open field of battle.”

  “Shouldn’t you be guarding the door?” I suggested hurriedly, anxious to get rid of him and the strangeness he suddenly seemed to exude.