From a High Tower

by Mercedes Lackey

  “We have one more week of Oktoberfest, and then we move out,” he said. “And now we need to start transitioning to our winter quarters, the abbey that Giselle has so graciously offered to let us use.”

  “I’ve heard from the builders I commissioned,” Rosa said immediately, not mentioning that those builders had been Elementals—dwarves, mostly, she’d said, but with a handful of brownies to make sure things were going to be comfortable. Dwarves tended not to think of comfort when they built, but rather making something substantial, that would last. If dwarves had their way, everyone would be sitting on stone furniture, at least, according to Rosa. “All of the repairs and needed additions are complete. I have a crew in place to start actually getting everything ready for us.”

  A crew . . . that would be the brownies? Giselle wondered.

  “They are headed up by a relative,” Rosa continued smoothly. “So I know that we can trust that things will be safe there and there will be no pilferage.”

  That clarified things a little. A relative. That will be a member of the Bruderschaft. Or an ally, but definitely human, and probably another Earth Magician. Excellent.

  “That was my next question. So if I were to start sending supplies, and possibly parts of the show ahead?” Kellermann asked.

  “I’ll make arrangements ahead of time from the nearest train depot. You can rest assured that everything will be safely stored in all the proper places by the time you arrive,” Rosa promised. “I’m intending to leave the company at the end of this stint in Freiburg, in any event, and journey on ahead to make absolutely sure nothing goes amiss. I can travel much faster alone, and I intend to go by rail most of the way. Once I leave you, I can be at the abbey in no more than three days. I’m arranging to have a horse waiting for me when I arrive at the station in Meiersdorf.”

  “Ah!” Kellermann said. “That is excellent.” Both Kellermann and Cody looked a little surprised and a little relieved at that.

  “You sure you’ll be all right alone?” Cody wondered aloud.

  Rosa laughed. “I have made journeys across three countries alone and never had a bit of trouble. I’ll be fine, I promise you. And if I do that, I’ll actually be there ahead of the first lot of supplies. It will not be the first time I have been responsible for a task like this. Anyone who thinks to cheat me or steal from you is going to discover that I open every barrel, cask, box and sack and double-check the contents.” She raised an eyebrow and patted the handle of the revolver that Cody had given her. She had proven to be a reasonably good shot with it and it was certainly easier to carry than her coach gun. “They will discover I am not a person to trifle with.”

  The Captain laughed. Kellermann just shook his head. “In that case, does anyone have anything to add or object to?” Kellermann looked around the group, but everyone seemed satisfied with the plans, and to have confidence in her competence. “Good. I think the entire scheme is a sound one. After Freiburg, we will run a smaller show. We’ll break down everything we won’t need for that show and ship it on ahead to the station at Meiersdorf.”

  Rosa nodded. “I’ll arrange for pickup there and see it all gets brought to the abbey.”

  “I’ll do as much purchasing of winter supplies as I can here, where the prices will probably be lower, and also send that on ahead,” Kellermann continued, as the rest of the company’s leaders listened and nodded approval. “The rest of our engagements are no more than three days each. I’d skip them altogether but they’ll offset the expenses of travel. But as I see the opportunity to pick up more supplies, I will, and either send them on ahead or we’ll bring them with us.”

  One of the men in charge of the cargo wagons spoke up. “If’n we pack tight for space, instead of fer how easy it’d be to unload and set up, if we pack up the Midway that way fer the year when we break down at the end of this here Oktober thing, we kin load a whole lotta supplies along the way on the Midway wagons.”

  Cody and Kellermann looked at each other. “I don’t see us needing the Midway after Freiburg,” said Kellermann. “It will be small towns. One show, two or three days running, for each.”

  “If that,” warned Giselle. “Once the snow starts, no one will want to watch a show in a tent.”

  “Once the snow starts, I ain’t a-gonna wanta be in a show in a tent!” protested the chief “wrangler.”

  “We’ll take every show we get to do as a bonus,” Kellermann promised. “And once the snow starts, we will not stop except to camp until we reach the abbey.”

  “Don’t be fooled by light flurries,” Giselle added, frowning a little. “There is no real road to the abbey, and the last part of the journey will be over rough land.”

  Kellermann looked over the heads of the others to where the chief carpenter of the show stood. “Can you have runners made for all the wagons in a week?” he asked.

  The carpenter spit tobacco into the spittoon in the corner of the tent and nodded. “Skids is simple. Plenty of good wood hereabouts, and four skids for each wagon ain’t gonna add much to the load. If’n this was gonna be for use all winter, I’d want iron skids, but wood ones’ll git us there.”

  “Get it done,” Kellermann said. “I’ll leave that in your hands.” He looked around. “Is there anything else?”

  “There prolly will be, but we kin handle it when it happens,” the chief wrangler said, laconically.

  “All right then. Git t’yer beds. We have ’nother week of hard work ahead.” Cody brought the meeting to a close. Rosa and Giselle left together.

  “Any more of your watcher today?” Rosa asked, quietly, as they headed for their vardos. “He doesn’t seem to have let up at all.”

  “Yes. It doesn’t seem to be more, or more intense, but if I’m not outside the show grounds, it’s off and on all day.” By this point, Giselle was less fearful than angry. She had tried getting her sylphs to find whoever it was, but they said it was not someone using a sylph or any other Air Elemental to do his watching for him. Fox had tried some other way to find the watcher—some Pawnee magic, he wouldn’t give her any details—and he didn’t have any more luck.

  “It has to be by scrying, then, and good luck with tracing it back if you don’t already know who it is,” Rosa decided. “That means the likeliest is a Fire or Water Magician, although . . . it could be Earth. There’s a technique for scrying using a mirror made of obsidian or flint that works for some Earth Mages.”

  They had to pause for a moment as a couple of the cowboys walked past them, chewing tobacco and speaking about the horses.

  “But don’t you know who the magicians in Freiburg are?” Giselle asked when they were out of hearing range. “Can’t you at least check to see if it is one of them?” She was getting rather desperate at this point, after two whole weeks of feeling those eyes on the back of her head. Every evening, Rosa would ask if the unseen watcher had given up yet, and every evening she would have to say no.

  But Rosa shook her head as they reached their vardos, and paused beside Rosa’s. “Most of the magicians in cities are not part of the Bruderschaft,” she said. “It’s different in a village or a small town, where there generally aren’t more than one or two, and quite often there’s none. So being part of the Bruderschaft is an advantage, even if you don’t live at the Lodge, because if there is something going on that you cannot deal with yourself, you can call on the Bruderschaft.”

  Giselle nodded, and pulled her woolen shawl closer around herself. Over the course of their stay here it had gotten colder. Very soon she was going to need a coat or a cloak—or both, because if it got cold enough she could wear a cloak over a coat. “Now that I think about it, I believe Mother might have gone to help the Bruderschaft a time or two.”

  Rosa nodded, and leaned against the side of her vardo. “Most magicians in the country make a point of knowing at least a few others. But in the cities, well . . . there’s no advantage at al
l to being in a Lodge if you are the sort that doesn’t care for being dragged into other peoples’ problems. Magicians are people; plenty of them want to be left alone, and there are always the ones that use their abilities selfishly. That’s not against the law or even our customs, or anything like that, but . . .” she shrugged. “You can imagine how someone like that would feel about constantly being asked to do this or that for the common good.”

  “Like a rich man being asked to give to the poor,” Giselle grumbled, already disliking these people, and she didn’t even know who they were. “It isn’t as if they couldn’t spare a bit to keep someone from starving. But when you see them being approached, often as not from the way they react you’d think they were being asked to sacrifice a limb.”

  “Exactly. But if it’s any comfort, magicians who only use their powers for selfish purposes don’t get any help when they are in trouble.” Rosa paused with one foot on the steps to her vardo. “But to get back to our wretch . . . whoever it is has to know now that not only are you a Master, there are two other Masters here who helped you ward your wagon. Yet whoever it is only seems interested in you. That makes me think it has to be someone you’ve had some sort of encounter with in the past.”

  Giselle shivered, and the shawl wasn’t helping with the cold sensation of vague fear Rosa’s statement made her feel. “Me too. But I can’t think who it could be.”

  “Well, think of the bright side. It might not be anything sinister at all! It could just be you have a very shy admirer.” Rosa laughed, but Giselle frowned. She didn’t like that any better! If someone was an admirer . . . it might sound romantic to be gazed on from afar, but the reality was, it was extremely uncomfortable to know you were being watched but not know by whom!

  “In a way, that seems worse,” she complained. “Why would he sneak around like this when I’m out in public all the time? Why would he hide himself? I haven’t been unkind to a single person who’s approached me, even when they were horribly intrusive.”

  “Because he might not be a he. It might be a she.” Rosa’s eyebrows arched, as Giselle’s jaw dropped. “Yes, I am implying what you think I am implying. But I will come right out and say it. It might be a female who finds you attractive in the romantic sense.”

  “But . . . but . . . but . . .” Giselle sputtered, her brain coming to a complete halt. How was that even possible?

  “It happens, in nature, and with humans, my dear friend,” Rosa said, sounding more sympathetic than Giselle had expected. “Wolves, swans, geese, all of these sometimes mate with their own gender. Sometimes boys prefer boys, romantically, and girls prefer girls. Any priest would tell you that is an abomination, but in the Bruderschaft we are more . . . pragmatic. Frankly, we don’t care. It harms no one, so why should one care who someone else loves? The only time it’s been awkward for me was when I knew that another young lady had gotten a pash on me, and I am afraid my affections don’t tend in that direction, no matter how ‘mannish’ I may act.” She shook her head. “That may be the case here. You have a secret admirer, and she is afraid she will be rebuffed.” She waited, watching Giselle, as someone over in the camp played a harmonica into the night.

  Giselle finally got her brains to work again. “No,” she said firmly. “No, I really do not think so. This does not feel at all as if someone is shy, nor does it feel as if whoever is doing this admires me in the least. This feels distinctly unfriendly, I’d even say hostile at times.”

  The harmonica player switched tunes to something livelier. “Then it has to be either someone you have encountered in the past that considers you unfriendly or even an enemy, or someone who thinks that you have somehow wronged him, or . . . it might be a magician hoping to steal your power.” Rosa sucked on her lower lip.

  “How likely is that?” Giselle asked. She frowned in consternation. “Mother never said anything about . . . something like that happening.”

  “About as likely as the other possibilities.” Rosa thought for a moment, as the harmonica player gave up for the night. “In that case, your best defense is to never be out of the company of one of us. Don’t answer any invitations that ask you to go somewhere alone. Once you’re on the road again, never leave the compound. I think it’s time to tell Kellermann and Cody about this.”

  “Tell Cody an’ Kellermann ’bout what?” The very two people they were talking about strolled up at that moment on their way back to their tents; evidently they had remained behind to continue discussing the arrangements for the move into winter quarters.

  Quickly, Giselle explained about the unseen “watcher” that had been plaguing her for the past two weeks. It was a great relief to her that neither of them treated her as if she was overdramatizing anything.

  Or worse, making it up. Because if she hadn’t been the subject of this intense and intrusive regard, she would have a little difficulty believing in it.

  “If’n I was home, I’d’a say it was likely ’nother mage tryin’ t’figger a way t’steal yer power,” Cody said, finally. “My Ma—she’s the Master in the fam’bly—she warned me ’bout that. Gen’rally fer a feller, it’s a purdy straightforward ritual murder.”

  The way he paused made her mouth go dry. Rosa filled in what Cody had not said grimly. “And for a woman, it’s violation,” she said, mincing no words.

  Giselle found herself clutching the side of her vardo as her mind flashed back across the years. In her mind’s eye, she saw “Johann Schmidt,” if that had indeed been his name, as clearly as if it had been yesterday. She saw him kneeling over her, just before Mother burst through the door of her room and attacked him. The cruel expression on his face made her shudder even now. And now . . . now she wondered. Had he known what she was? Had stealing her power been his plan all along? She felt her knees going a little weak, and steadied herself.

  “Giselle, are you all right?” Rosa asked in concern.

  “Yes . . . yes, I am,” she said, and shook the memory off. “Just, I never knew that before. And it might explain something that happened to me a long time ago. Please, don’t concern yourself about it.”

  “How can I not?” Rosa demanded. “You are as white as snow!”

  “Giselle,” Cody said slowly, using her real name as he rarely did. “You kin tell us. Ain’t we friends?”

  We are . . . and I have trusted them with so much more. . . . Steeling herself she told them, briefly, what had happened. As briefly as she could manage. And it was still hard; she was shaking before she was done.

  “Could . . . that person be the one who is stalking you now?” Rosa wondered. “Do you recognize anything about the sense you are getting? Magicians are known to hold grudges for a lifetime. If you thwarted him, or someone else did, he might never give up.”

  “Only if he could survive a four-story fall,” Giselle said, trying to keep from clenching her teeth. But when we looked for him, he was gone. He must not have been alone. Could whoever took his body away be . . . but how on earth would that person know who I was, or that I was the girl in the abbey tower? It seemed ridiculous. She was supposed to be an American, not a native to the Black Forest. Her public persona and her public name were different. There was nothing, nothing at all, connecting “Rio Ellie” to Giselle of the abbey.

  But what if that doesn’t matter? What if all that matters is that I look enough like what he remembers to make him fixate on me?

  “Whoever it is, we will make sure you are never left alone,” said Kellermann, instantly. “Do you have the feeling you are being overlooked now?”

  “No,” she said instantly. “Not since we began the meeting. I think such things bore him, and he must have known I would come straight back to my vardo where he cannot see me. Fox, Rosa and I all warded it against any intruding eyes. Once I am in my vardo, I am invisible.”

  “So he does not know that we know, now. All the better.” Kellermann nodded. “So long as you always
remain within the show walls, I do not think anything can happen to you. But to be sure, do not accept packages or letters that one of us has not examined first. And do not trust any message that is given to you that purports to be from anyone in the show. Anything that must be told to you, I will tell you in person. Even if it is an emergency.”

  “That is an excellent plan,” Giselle said, feeling extremely touched. Any other time, she might have been irritated—but she’d been watched for a fortnight, was no closer to knowing who was watching, and was beginning to feel more than a little paranoid. She was aware that these self-appointed tasks had the potential of adding yet more burdens to Kellermann’s already too-busy day. He would not have insisted on this if he was not sure it needed to be done. “And I cannot thank you enough. I don’t want to burden you more than you already are.”

  But Kellermann waved off her concern. “I see you often enough to pass on whatever needs to be said in the course of the day,” he replied, then bowed. “Think nothing of it, and it is my pleasure to be able to assist you in something. And now, it is more than time for all of us to sleep. Perhaps more ideas will come to us then.”

  “Perhaps,” she replied, and went into her vardo. She knew it well enough now that she didn’t need to light a lamp to move about, and there wasn’t much she needed to do. She’d wash in the morning. Right now, she just needed to add a little more wood to the stove, and then get rid of her clothing and bundle herself into bed. The wood was beside the stove, and the padded leather mitten she used to open the stove was on top of the wood. She blew on the coals to bring them to life, and carefully stocked the stove for the night. Her clothing went on the bench, folded, and her warm, heavy flannel nightdress was on the bed. Soon, she was in the bed, under a new eiderdown, staring up at the ceiling of the bed cubby.