Hidden Truth

by Dawn Cook

  She slid from her perch on a bale of linen and ran her eyes over one of the Hold’s glorified closets. There were four levels in the dry goods annex, their open balconies overlooking a central work area on the ground floor. The tall, narrow room was lit by the slits in the distant ceiling, angled to maximize the light reflecting in. It was bright, if not necessarily warm, as there were no wards here on the windows.

  Feeling slightly put out, she wandered over to the Hold’s stash of leather. She would look for Strell’s wheel, but first she wanted to find a swath of leather to make a new hat. She was blissfully knee deep in the supple sheets when there was a small scuff, and she knew Strell had returned. Perhaps he had fished his bucket out already and had come back to help her. “Strell?” she called loudly to the unseen floor. “What exactly does a potter’s wheel look like?” But it was Bailic’s voice that echoed up, and she stiffened.

  “Don’t you know?” he said in a smooth, mocking voice. “Your lack of education is appalling. But even you should know it won’t be with the fabric.”

  Alissa’s face warmed. She went to the railing and peered down to find Bailic gazing up in her general direction. His pale skin looked all the more obvious against his black Master’s vest. “Good afternoon, Bailic,” she said warily. She steadied herself, hoping he would go away quickly. She felt almost naked without Strell beside her to serve as a ready distraction.

  Using her voice to orient himself, he focused on her and gave her a slow nod. Silently he turned and wove his way past the mesh screens and barrels of waste cloth towards the tall cupboards behind them. “I can’t imagine what you want with a potter’s wheel,” he said. “But if you help me find what I need, I’ll tell you where one is.”

  Her refusal was hot on her tongue, but she hesitated as he turned his painful-looking eyes to her. They were rimmed in red from the sun’s glare, and he was squinting. A slight feeling of compassion whispered through her. But it was the idea of not having to admit to Strell she didn’t know what a wheel looked like that prompted her to ask, “What are you looking for?”

  Bailic rubbed his wet eyes and opened the cupboard to reveal stacks of bound paper. “High-grade paper. The ink dries faster on it.” Touching a sheaf of paper in what almost looked like a caress, he took a sheet, creased it sharply, then ripped it down the center. His eyes closed as he breathed deeply of the cut. “Second grade,” he mused, hardly audible. “You can tell by the smell.” And the scraps fell to the floor in a whisper of sound.

  “If I find some for you,” she said, “you’ll tell me where I can find a potter’s wheel?”

  “Yes,” he drawled as he took a second sheet. It met the same fate as the first, and the twin pieces of white drifted down.

  Alissa pulled her shawl closer as she descended to the first floor. “All right,” she agreed.

  “Done and done,” Bailic said, pulling back from his reach for another stack. He stoically waited until she was before him. “This shelf,” he tapped a finger on an empty one. “This is where I found it before. There is a symbol etched upon the face. Do you see it?”

  Alissa edged closer, reluctant to get too near him. “Yes,” she admitted. The faint tracings were too light for Bailic to see and too small for his fingers to discern. It read, “High-grade.”

  “Do you think it within your capabilities to match that symbol to another just like it?”

  “Yes,” she said shortly, not liking his tone.

  “We will see if you’re as clever as you would like to think,” he said. “Find it.”

  Willing to play the game of ignorance, Alissa dutifully reinspected the high-grade stamp and tried to match it to the rest, ignoring that she could read that all the remaining shelves were second and third grade. “Nothing like that mark here,” she said and closed the cupboard with a dull thump. The next cupboard was the same, as was the third. Bailic, who had moved himself and his tender skin to a shadow, was beginning to visibly chafe by the time she had been through all the cupboards and hadn’t found any. Shrugging, Alissa met Bailic’s forbidding frown.

  “I was right,” he muttered. “Either you are half-witted, or I have used it all. I’ll check again by hand tonight.” He turned on a heel and headed for the archway.

  Alissa stood waiting. “Where are the wheels, Bailic?” she called.

  “Hm-m-m?” He didn’t even slow, and she felt her face redden.

  “The potter’s wheel,” she prodded. “You were going to tell me where one was.”

  Bailic hesitated in the mouth of the tunnel. “The agreement was that if you found the paper, I would tell you where it is. You didn’t find any, so I don’t have to.”

  Alissa’s jaw dropped. “You know but won’t tell me? It’s not my fault there’s none here!”

  “Even so.” He plucked a thread from his sleeve and dropped it with a look of annoyance.

  “But that’s not fair!” she cried.

  Bailic took three quick steps toward her. His face was red, and the scar that ran from his ear and across his throat stood out sharp and obvious. “Be still,” he snarled, and Alissa backed away, frightened. “An agreement is an agreement. Because you don’t like the outcome, it doesn’t follow it will shift itself to please you.” Turning, he strode away, his long vest furling about his ankles.

  “What a pile of sheep dung,” Alissa muttered as he disappeared, disgusted for having tried to help him. Snatching up the torn pages, she sniffed at the ragged edges. They smelled like paper. Bailic was right, she thought sourly. A potter’s wheel wouldn’t be here. She would try the castoffs annex next door. Alissa tucked the sheets in one of the cupboards and followed Bailic’s path back to the Hold proper.

  As she stepped from the tunnel into the great hall, she heard the faint sound of Bailic’s door slamming. “Maybe I should just tell Strell I don’t know what one looks like,” she said with a sigh, but remembering Bailic’s words of scorn, she decided not to. “I can find it,” she said boldly, stomping to the head of the last tunnel and feeling her way down its black, gently sloping path. “I know it has a wheel on it.” With that, she stepped into the chaos that was the castoffs.

  She stood for a moment, her confident smile fading as her eyes went to the distant ceiling. The narrow storeroom was jam-packed with clutter. This was where Bailic piled everything that wasn’t fastened down, and the mess was atrocious. Even if she knew what she was looking for and somehow found it, they would never be able to get it out of here.

  Pride kept her from admitting defeat. She yanked the tarp off the nearest pile to find footstools, covered to keep their embroidered colors from fading. Struggling slightly, she tucked the cover back. The next revealed a mound of glorious tapestries, and she flipped through them until their weight overwhelmed her curiosity. The third tarp was tied, and she peeked under it to find empty frames. Wondering what Bailic had done with the pictures, she reached for the next.

  Alissa continued toward the back of the annex, finding baskets, jars, chamber pots, curtains, shelves, everything. It was nearly time to begin supper when she reached the cooling shade of the far wall. Turning about, she put her hands on her hips and blew a strand of hair from her eyes. Ashes, she thought. The clutter was overwhelming. She was making no headway at all. Tired and disheartened, she pulled a badly gouged end table from the mess, set it next to a battered trunk, and sat down. Her head thumped back against a stack of slatted crates, and she watched the light sift through the still air.

  It was cold in the shadows; no one could have been back here in ages. Alissa’s eyes drifted across the tower of trunks. It looked as if someone had packed up their entire life and piled it away to be forgotten. She leaned closer to the trunks, feeling the beginnings of a frown. Something was written on each and every one.

  “Connen-Neute?” she whispered, recalling the figure Useless had shown her when he explained the Master had gone feral. Stiffening, she half turned and inspected the crates behind her. They were labeled the same. She was sitting amon
g a feral Master’s belongings!

  Alissa stood up, wiping her hands nervously on her skirt. The tower rooms where the Masters once lived were full of possessions, but everything had been protected by painful wards that cramped her fingers and singed her thoughts with even an accidental touch. The day she had investigated the tower had ended with her incapacitated by an agonizing headache caused by the repeated jolts of power across her tracings. She hadn’t been able to pick up a thing. But here there were no wards at all. Maybe.

  She touched a trunk with a tentative finger and smiled. No ward—it wasn’t even locked—and so she lifted the lid to find it was full of books. Her smile softened as she breathed in the scent of paste, sinking to her knees to run her fingers over the bindings. Books were rare, but her papa had always brought her one from his frequent trips. At least, that’s where her mother said they had come from. Opening the cover of the first, Alissa found “Connen-Neute” written in a childlike scrawl. A feeling of sad remembrance filled her as she read the title.

  It was a book of short, humorous stories of a misguided squirrel and his efforts to remain calm in the most trying of circumstances. Whenever the poor thing had lost his temper, he had ended up in a terrible stew. Alissa remembered her papa reading to her from this. It had gone a long way in teaching her four-year-old spirit the difficult art of self-control. Her smile faded, and she closed the book with an uneasy snap. What had her papa been doing with a copy of a raku child’s book that taught self-control?

  Next was a book that compared the symmetry in nature to that in mathematics. This one, too, she had studied from, and beginning to frown, she dug deeper. There was a slim, unfamiliar volume about music, an entire stack devoted to the movement of the stars, an enormously thick one concerned about the dynamics of closed populations, and another on how to manipulate them to achieve a desired trait. Three loose-leaf volumes were penned by Connen-Neute himself and seemed to consist entirely of notes referring to the craft of paper production. Half the trunk contained book after book of dates, accomplishments, and activities that she idly riffled through until realizing they were Connen-Neute’s private journals. Flushing, Alissa put everything away and shut the trunk with a thud.

  “All right, then,” she whispered as she stood and tucked her hair back behind an ear. Her eyes slid to the crates, and spotting a familiar word peeping from between the slats, she bent closer. “High-grade?” she breathed, her eyebrows rising. Not believing her luck could be that good, she cast about until she found an easel and used one of its legs to pry open the crate.

  “Paper.” Grinning, Alissa gazed at the stacks bound with a thick gray ribbon. This would explain the carefully written notes she had just found concerning its crafting. Clearly, Connen-Neute had mastered the art of papermaking, and if a Master bothered to learn how to make something, it was going to be the very best.

  Alissa teased out a single sheet and tore it in two. Taking a slow, deep breath, she fancied she could smell almonds. “Odd,” she whispered, and tried it again. Once more the rich scent of stored sunshine mixed with the gray, cold smell of forgotten memories.

  The torn paper went into her pocket, and she lifted out a bundle. If Bailic wanted more, he would have to ask. Terribly pleased, Alissa clambered across the abandoned furniture and practically danced her way to the great hall and up the stairs to Bailic’s room. Standing before his door, she smoothed her hair and knocked politely, if not smugly.

  “A bargain is a bargain,” came his muffled voice. Smirking, she knocked again.

  “Go away!” Bailic shouted.

  This time she pounded the door with a fist. “You don’t listen very well,” she heard. “Perhaps if I box your ears it will help.”

  The door was yanked open, showing Bailic tight with anger. “Your paper,” Alissa said dryly as she dropped the heavy package at his feet. It hit the floor in a loud thump, startling even her. He quickly stooped to pick it up and set it on a nearby table. His ink-stained fingers ran lightly across the gray ribbon to untie it. Still having not said a word, he predictably tore a sheet in half.

  “This is Connen-Neute’s work,” he breathed, his eyes distant. “Where did you find it?”

  “Good enough?” she said, refusing to follow him past the one-way ward on his door.

  “Yes. Yes, it’s fine, but where was it? I thought the last had been used ages ago.”

  “Where is the potter’s wheel?” she demanded.

  Bailic chuckled, and Alissa froze. “You learn fast, girl.” He met her eyes. They looked almost normal in the half-curtained darkness of his room. “I can see why the piper has allowed himself to tolerate you,” he said, arching his eyebrows in a way that made her decidedly uncomfortable. Drawing herself up, she took a casual step back, tugging her shawl closer.

  “An agreement is an agreement,” he sighed, “and you seem to have gotten the better end of it—this time. He rubbed gently at the scar on his neck, and she felt a stirring of unease. “I enjoy a good bargain. I used to live for them, you might say, being a plainsman. Would you be interested in another?”

  “No.” Not caring if Bailic could tell she was scared, she backed to the stairs.

  “Indulge me,” he said with a simper. “At least hear me out.”

  She nodded. If she didn’t humor him, he might not tell her where the wheel was.

  “That wasn’t so hard now, was it?” Bailic leaned confidently against his doorframe and crossed his arms. “I can do much for you,” he said, “almost as much as you can do for me. Your eyes are very keen. The way you found the paper is almost beyond belief. I would never have been able to find it that quickly. When the book is open, stay and be my eyes. I can guarantee your safety for the time you’re in my service. Think of it,” he said, leaning forward, and Alissa backed up another step. “There will be a war. There will be a new order. I will instigate it, and I will choose who will prosper and who will fail. Wouldn’t it be pleasant,” he murmured, “to have the ear of the one making such decisions?”

  “I understand,” she whispered, feeling ill.

  Nodding, he smiled as if she had said yes. “You will consider my offer?”

  Thinking only of escape, Alissa fixed her face into a careful neutrality. “Yes.”

  “Good. I put the wheels in the stables.” He hesitated. “Bring me your answer anytime.”

  Quite sure that was an invitation she would never take up, she left, feeling unclean. She wanted to tell someone what had happened, a confession to purge herself, but she wouldn’t tell Strell, afraid he might do something to antagonize the fallen Keeper. Telling Useless would only gain her a lecture. Talon wouldn’t care. This, she decided, she would keep to herself. But at least she had found Strell’s potter’s wheel.

  6

  “Late again, Piper?” Bailic stood alone in the practice room while the sun rose beyond the surrounding hills. He wasn’t surprised. But that didn’t mean he was going to accept the piper’s excuse.

  Bailic forced his tension away as he topped off his cup of tea from the cloth-covered pot. He had found it here waiting for him along with his breakfast: porridge made with tea instead of water. At least the girl was up in a timely fashion. He might keep her when all was said and done. Someone who knew him might be pleasant, when the world shifted to suit him. And the world was going to shift.

  The steam from his cup drifted upward to obscure his already fuzzy sight. Bailic held himself still and sent his thoughts out to find the girl and the piper. The kitchen was empty, as were the stairs. His eyes narrowed as he found them in the Keeper’s hall. The rising sun warmed his back, and knowing his limit had been reached, he moved to his chair into the shadows. Slumped in its rigid shape, he leaned to run a caressing finger over the book of First Truth, resting on a small table beside him.

  Wanting to jolt his student out of his complacency, Bailic had brought it down with him this morning. It would serve as a reminder to the piper as to why he was here and not burnt to ash. An extra incentiv
e, Bailic thought, for his pupil to work harder. His student clearly needed some encouragement.

  There had been very little progress since giving the piper that dusting of source two weeks ago. Apathetic would be the appropriate word to describe him. The plainsman seemed to understand; he asked all the expected questions, gave all the right answers. But there had been no movement to actually do anything. Bailic’s own instruction had relied heavily upon Tolo-Toecan entering his thoughts and showing him exactly what he wanted. As a Keeper, Bailic couldn’t do this. It made things all the more difficult.

  Frowning, Bailic set his tea beside the book. There would be improvement today, or he would take it out on the girl. It was a cumbersome way to get things done, though. Perhaps he should go back to his old techniques. He had broken stronger men than the piper. He couldn’t kill him, but there were lots of permanent things that weren’t fatal. The piper was too sure of his immunity. He needed a reminder of how tenuous his situation was to encourage him to apply himself more stringently. It was likely the man was simply prolonging his lessons until the snows melted and he had a chance to escape.

  “But there is no escape,” Bailic said, running a finger over the ancient tome. “I will open his mind to wisdom as surely as I will eventually open your clasp.”

  The book had thwarted his every attempt at entry. Upon first gaining possession, he had concentrated his efforts upon the heavy clasp. After bloodying his fingertips, he had tried his knife. Now his blade lay tucked under his pillow, shattered into three pieces by the book’s protective wards. He had been lucky. It could have been him.

  With that thought tight in his mind, he had cautiously tried to open it with his own ward. His first, tentative attempts had been met with a mild resistance, but each succeeding ward he set provoked a correspondingly more severe reaction until now even the smallest ward would result in a protective field. Attempting to remove the field only caused the book to strengthen its protection. Trying to touch it before the field dropped on its own would result in a sharp, painful dart of energy lancing through his tracings. The mild singe gave him a headache that could last for days.