Hope and the Patient Man

by Mike Reeves-McMillan

  “Want to talk to you,” he said.

  “What is it, Master?” said Bucket.

  “Rosie,” said Dignified.

  “Ah,” said Bucket. “Yes.”

  “What do you mean?” said Dignified.

  “You’ve noticed how she is around you?” asked the gnome.

  “Yes. No?” he said.

  “She’s wearing new clothes.”

  “I noticed that.”

  Bucket’s already large eyes went even larger at this. Someone had taught Dignified once that that meant he was surprised.

  “Well,” said Bucket, “good. I think she wanted you to notice.”

  “Why?” asked Dignified.

  “Master,” said Bucket, “what do you know about men and women? I mean, about how men and women… interact?”

  “Nothing.”

  “When a woman…” began Bucket. “That is…” He scratched the back of his head. “I think she likes you,” he concluded.

  “Why?”

  “Why do I think that, or why does she like you?”

  “Either. Both.”

  “She likes you, Master, because you’re a good-hearted man, and because she finds intelligence attractive,” he said. “Or that’s my guess, anyway. I can tell she likes you, because, well, because of how she acts around you. How she looks at you when you’re not watching.”

  “What do I do?” asked Dignified. He felt like a mouse who’d been asked to sail a boat.

  “Well, Master,” said the gnome, “she’s taken extra care with her appearance, got nice clothes that suit her, taken care to smell nice. You could do the same.”

  “Don’t know how.”

  “Master, will you let me guide you?”

  “Of course.”

  “Can we take some time each morning for washing and shaving?”

  “Shave every day?”

  “Yes. A clean shirt every day, too. And I’ll get you some scented water for your skin.”

  “Why?”

  “Women like it. You like how Rosie smells, don’t you?”

  “Roses.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Should I smell like roses?”

  “No, Master. Spices, I think.”

  “She doesn’t want to eat me.”

  Bucket made a choking noise. “Um… of course not, Master. But still. And I should cut your hair.”

  “Why?”

  “To show you’re making an effort to look nice. Trust me.”

  “I trust you, Bucket.”

  “Good.”

  “And then there’s conversation.”

  Dignified looked at him, waiting for clarification.

  “You’re, um, not very good at it, Master. You’re supposed to ask people things.”

  “What things?”

  “Well, um, about… what they like to do, where they grew up, that sort of thing. You know, maybe let’s start by, if she asks you something about yourself, you tell her as much as you can… no, that might be too much. You tell her the first few things you think of, until she stops asking you more questions, and then you ask her the same thing she asked you.”

  “The same thing.”

  “Yes. That shows her you’re interested in who she is as a person. Even if the answers themselves aren’t very interesting to you, it’s still polite to ask.”

  “Polite.”

  “Yes, Master. I know that’s a difficult concept. It’s how people get along together. How they connect.”

  “But they don’t. People. Get along together.”

  “We do, don’t we? You and I? And you get on with the mage, and Mister Wheel, and Uncle Gizmo.”

  “True.”

  “It’ll be all right, Master,” said the gnome. “You’ll do fine.”

  Rosie wasn’t quite sure how she had fetched up in a cheap student tavern at the end of Oneday. Apparently Hope used to work there, when she was a student, because she needed money to get through university — which reminded Rosie yet again that other people’s lives were different — and her friends played music there, a wild, peasant sort of music that Briar said was called Heart and Bird. It had a steady rhythm and a soaring melody line. She rather liked it. Very different from the correct, formal music that her sister played on the orchestral, or the choral music that she heard in temple.

  Somehow or another she was here, though, with a glass of ale in front of her, giving her a giddy feeling, and they were hanging on her report of the day’s events with Dignified.

  “And then he looked down my… bodice,” she said, glancing down at herself and blushing. Briar began to clap.

  “Well done!” she said. “Excellent progress.”

  “He actually said ‘you smell good’?” asked Hope.

  “Yes.”

  “I have never heard Dignified make a personal remark to anyone before,” said the mage. “Oh, this is working wonderfully!”

  “Thank you for all your advice,” said Rosie, in a weak voice.

  “Not at all,” said Briar. “Our pleasure.”

  At that moment, one of the tavern staff came by, a student by the look of him. He greeted Hope and Briar by name, collecting their glasses, and smiled at Rosie. “And who’s your friend?” he asked.

  “She’s taken, Swift,” said Briar.

  “Curses,” said the young man. “My luck continues. Another?”

  “Um, no, thank you, no,” said Rosie, flustered.

  “If you change your mind,” he said, with emphasis, “just call me.”

  “Seriously, Swift,” said Hope. “Taken.” He smiled mischievously at them all and headed back to the bar.

  “What just occurred?” asked Rosie. She usually took special care not to use formal vocabulary when speaking out loud, but the ale appeared to have had a disinhibiting effect.

  “A man just tried to flirt with you in a tavern,” said Briar. “I am the Realmgold of Making People More Attractive!” She bumped the sides of her fists together twice in a gesture of self-congratulation. Rosie tried to look offended, but couldn’t pull it off, and started laughing. The laughter turned to coughing, and then sobs, and soon she was sobbing her eyes out onto the rough wooden table. Hope shifted her seat round next to her and put an arm around her.

  “How much has she had?” she asked Briar.

  “That’s her first.”

  “The tankard’s still half full.”

  “I know. I don’t think this is drink-related.”

  Rosie tried to speak, but could only wave her arm negatingly.

  “It’s all right,” said Hope. “Let it out. People come in here and sob all the time. We did.”

  “More than once,” said Briar.

  Eventually, Rosie’s sobs became hiccups and sniffs, and she regained the power of speech.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  “Not at all,” said Briar. “Looked like you needed that. Are you all right?”

  Rosie nodded, lips pursed. “Only I never had anyone… nobody ever… I mean it’s all right for you, you’re both beautiful, men probably flirt with you all the time, but I…” she waved her hand in what she intended to be an illustrative manner. “And you’ve been so kind. And… it’s all so new. And…” She choked, and shed a few more tears while the other two women made soothing noises.

  “Oh,” said Hope, “speaking of new. That reminds me.” She pulled a book out of her bag and set it on the table at Rosie’s elbow.

  “Is that…”

  “Yes.”

  Rosie picked it up. It was cloth bound, with a title lettered on the spine: Love Matters. She opened it at a random page, and turned scarlet.

  “Ah, you found one of the diagrams,” said Hope.

  “Looks interesting,” said a male voice over her shoulder, the voice of the tavern worker who had flirted with her, and she slammed the book shut with a smack and hid her face in her hands.

  “Swift,” said Briar, “go away.”

  “Sorry,” he said, and presumably departed. She still
had her eyes covered. Her glasses would be covered in handprints.

  “It has text, too,” said Hope. “A lot of text. But also diagrams.”

  “I can’t read this,” said Rosie in a whisper. “What if my mother finds it? What if my father finds it?”

  “Are they in the habit of searching your room?” asked Hope.

  “No. They never come in there.”

  “Well, then.”

  “But…”

  “Just read the introduction to start with. If that doesn’t put you off, you can look at a few other things. You don’t have to do any of it if you’re not comfortable, but in my opinion you should know your options.”

  “Options?”

  “Yes. You have options, Rosie. There are things you can choose to do if you want.”

  “Options,” she whispered. “I have options.” She lifted her head and looked from one to the other of the two women. “I never had options before. Not these options. I mean, I know that there’s more to life than getting a man. I’ve turned down all the men my mother… well, actually, they all turned me down. That’s rather the point I’m getting at. But I would have turned them down. And my aunt… I have an aunt. She’s never been oathbound, by her own choice, and she’s perfectly happy that way. But… So… what I’m saying is… well, I’m saying thank you. For options.”

  “Our pleasure to give,” said Hope after a moment. It was the conventional thing to say when thanked, but the way she said it, quietly, sincerely, made it more than a convention.

  The following day, Rosie hummed as she prepared to go to work, despite having been awake late into the night. With the extra touches and her tired slowness, it took her longer to get ready, and, descending the stairs with a song in her heart, she crashed to a stop as her mother appeared in the hall.

  “Industry,” she said. “Good morning.”

  “Good morning, Mother,” said Rosie, and went to go around her. Mother sniffed.

  “Are you wearing perfume?”

  “Yes, actually.”

  “And… what are you dressed in? You weren’t wearing that last time I saw you going to work.”

  “I got new clothes.”

  “You bought your own clothes?”

  “Yes, Mother. I’m twenty-seven.”

  Mother looked her up and down. “Whose idea was this?”

  “A friend suggested it.”

  “What friend?”

  “Mother, I’m late for work.”

  “You can take time to talk to your mother. Who has been giving you… clothing advice?” Her pause to choose a word (and, probably, reject the word “fashion”) was punctuated by another look up and down Rosie’s body.

  “I work with a mage who introduced me to a gnome seamstress over in the old town,” said Rosie, resigned to the fact that she wasn’t getting out the door without answering the question.

  “I must say, it isn’t a look I would have chosen for you.”

  “Mother,” said Rosie, suddenly finding her confidence, “that’s rather the point. Do move out of the way, please, I’m late.”

  She left her mother staring after her. Mother was not so ill-bred as to let her mouth hang open, but she conveyed that impression.

  At the lab, Dignified looked… different. Bucket had cut his hair, she realised, and he was freshly shaved and dressed in clean clothes. She greeted him, something she had fallen out of the habit of doing since he never responded, and he startled her by saying “Rosie” in reply.

  “You look nice,” she said.

  “So do you.”

  She blinked in confusion. Who had taken Dignified away, and where had they found this look-alike?

  That seemed to be it, though; he turned to the nearest board and switched to technical Dwarvish.

  When Bucket turned up with lunch, though, Dignified took a break and sat down with her, rather than continuing to tinker.

  They fidgeted.

  They glanced at each other, separately, and then away.

  Their gazes met and tangled and they yanked them apart.

  Rosie cleared her throat. Talk about… what could she talk about?

  “So,” she said. “Tell me about your family.”

  “They’re all dead,” he said, and her heart sank. There was a ringing silence for far too long.

  “My mother when I was little,” he continued, to her surprise. “My father and uncle… did I tell you about the prison?”

  “No,” she said.

  “It was my fault,” he said. “I made our printing machines and our ink so good that the Realmgold’s agents, the old Realmgold, this was, found out that it was my father’s shop that was printing pamphlets against him. Raided us. Father and I got locked up. Uncle wasn’t there. He… my mother’s brother, he was an inkmaker. I was apprenticed to both of them, my father the printer and my uncle the inkmaker. They were both… political. Father printed pamphlets, but he never harmed anyone. Uncle… Uncle made bombs.”

  “Bombs?”

  “Yes. When we were arrested, Father was hurt, and they put him in the prison hospital. Uncle tried to break him out with a bomb.”

  “What happened?” Rosie asked, in a hushed voice.

  “He used too much explosive. He wasn’t very good at making bombs.”

  “So…”

  “They both died. Some other people, too.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Fifteen.”

  “Oh, Dignified,” she said, and reached out her hand to clasp his, without even thinking about how he didn’t like to be touched. She remembered, then, and tried to take it back, but he put his other hand over hers. His expression didn’t change at all as big fat tears started to run down his face.

  They sat there saying nothing for a while, not moving, while he wept silently. Then he pulled out a rag and wiped his face on one of the less greasy parts.

  “Tell me about your family,” he said.

  “Oh. Well. I live with Mother and Father and my younger brother Constant. My older brother Punctual is oathbound and has his own house not far away. My sister Opportunity is oathbound too; she lives in Gulfport. Everyone is in the family business, more or less, though I’m stepping back for a time to, um, work here.”

  “Family business.”

  “Yes, my great-grandmother on Mother’s side was an inventor too, and my family owns manufactories and other investments. I used to manage the other investments, but I’ve handed that over to Constant now.”

  “What kind of things did she invent?”

  “Oh, well, you’d find that interesting, given all the work you do with compressed-air machines. She invented the very first pressure weapons.”

  Dignified stiffened, and his face closed like a furnace door. He tore his hand out of her grip, rose, and stalked stiff-legged out of the little kitchen. Rosie called his name, but he didn’t stop or acknowledge her. She heard his bedroom door, off the main lab space, shut decisively.

  Chapter Fifteen: Bridge Repair

  Alerted by heavy, arrhythmic knocking, Hope put down her pen and opened the door of her flat to a distraught Rosie.

  “Sweetie,” she said, “what’s happened? Why are you crying?”

  “I hurt Di-Dig-Dignified,” Rosie sobbed.

  “Oh, Rosie. Come in. Tell me all about it.”

  They sat on the floor cushions and Hope held Rosie as she choked out the story.

  “And then I asked Bucket what was wrong, and he explained about how Dignified always swore he’d never invent weapons, because of his uncle, and I felt so terrible. I’d do anything to put it right, whatever he asked.”

  “Not your fault, Rosie. Not your fault.”

  “But I…”

  “Shh. Shhh. Deep breath in. Out. Now, say aloud, ‘I didn’t know I was going to upset Dignified.’”

  Rosie dutifully repeated this.

  “Say, ‘I had no reason to think that I would hurt Dignified.’”

  Rosie repeated the words.

  “Say, �
��I didn’t mean to hurt Dignified.’”

  She said it, and added, “But…”

  “No but. We’ll go in later and sort this out, all right? He’ll sleep for half the day, he always does when he’s upset. When did it happen?”

  “Around midday, maybe a bell after.”

  “So he’ll be awake by a bell after midnight, and he’ll want to work. But we’ll go in and talk to him and fix it all up. I’ll get you a cup of tea.”

  Hope chose tea-herbs with soporific properties, and Rosie was soon drooping.

  “Here. Why don’t you lie down on the floor cushions and have a rest?”

  “All right. I do feel tired.”

  “Yes, and you need a rest before we go out in the middle of the night. That’s it. Look at me now. Do you want to go to sleep?”

  “I… all right,” said Rosie in a fuzzy voice.

  “Can I help you?”

  “Yes.”

  Permission received, Hope was able to work a quick sleep-spell which caused the already drowsy Rosie to drop like a kitten. She had been slowly regaining the ability to cast small spells without straining. Hope went to her room, set her alarm clock, and worked the spell with Patient the Eagle to get some sleep herself.

  The alarm woke her at midnight, and she washed her face, dressed, and roused Rosie.

  “Thanks for coming with me,” said Rosie, as they left the flat, “especially at this hour of the night.”

  “I’m used to it,” said Hope. “And I wouldn’t let you walk alone.”

  “We’re going to walk?” said Rosie. The defensive crouch that she used to hide her height became more exaggerated.

  “Have to. Horse buses go off before midnight, cabs too. And the airhorse is still at the manufactory. It’s a pity. That’s why I got the airhorse — that’s why the airhorse was invented, in fact — to get me safely from home to the lab at unsociable hours.”

  “It’s not safe?”

  “We’ll be fine,” said Hope, in a tone that was more confident than she felt. She had been attacked once, though they hadn’t been able to prove in court that the man intended to attack her. Her silent boots and an amulet-based spell which reduced the amount of light around her would have to suffice. They set off, not carrying a light of their own, but using the reddish street lights that were designed to preserve night vision.