Past Imperative

by Dave Duncan

  “Er, leadership?”

  “More than that, much more. It’s a faculty to absorb their followers’ admiration and focus it. A charismatic leader can persuade men to believe what he tells them to believe, to die for his smile, to follow him anywhere he goes; the more he demands of them, the more they are willing to give. He grows by their loyalty and induces more loyalty because of it. Generals, politicians, prophets—sometimes actors have charisma.”

  Creighton paused in his dressing, and sighed. “I once saw Irving play Hamlet! Incredible! Half the audience was weeping, and I don’t just mean the ladies. You must believe in faith healing? Well, in extreme cases, a charismatic leader can literally inspire miracles. And a chovihani has charisma. You’ll see.”

  Hunger and lack of sleep had made Edward short-tempered. Argument burst out of him before he could stop it. “Come, sir! Charisma is one thing. Magic’s something else!”

  “Is it? Sometimes it’s hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. So you plan to enlist, do you?”

  Thrown off-balance, Edward said, “Of course!” His country was at war—what else could he do? Let the beastly Prussians take over Europe? If they won, they’d attack the British Empire right afterwards anyway. They had to be stopped now.

  Creighton sighed, and bent to scrabble through a pile of socks. “Well, I suppose I might have felt the same at your age. Do you know Germany has invaded Belgium? The British and French are going to try and stop them, and sheer hell is going to stalk the plains of Flanders. The oracular reports are terrifying. The last few days have darkened the entire century. But I suppose at your age you feel immortal.”

  “It is my duty!”

  The colonel straightened up and scowled. “I think you have a greater duty, although you don’t know it yet. I think I have a duty to your father to save his only son from being hanged for a crime he did not commit. But I’ll make a bargain with you. My friends and I saved you from an assassin. We’ve rescued you from a murder charge that would undoubtedly have sent you to the gallows. We’ve cured your leg. I think you owe us a little something, don’t you?”

  Put like that, the question had only one answer.

  “I owe you a lot, sir, a devil of a lot.”

  “Too bloody Irish you do! I’m calling in my debt, Exeter. Pay now.”

  “Pay what?” Edward asked grumpily.

  “Parole. I want you to—I demand that you—put yourself under my orders. You will obey without question!”

  “For how long?”

  “One day. Until dawn tomorrow.”

  “That’s all? Then we’re quits?”

  “That’s all.”

  “You’re asking for a blank check!”

  “How much did you have in your account last night?”

  Creighton was not without charisma himself. Edward could not meet those eyes glittering under the hedgerow brows.

  “Thruppence! Very well, sir, I agree.”

  “Right. Word of honor, of course?”

  Strewth! What did the cocky little bastard expect? Edward stared cold fury at him and said, “I beg your pardon?”

  Creighton nodded placidly. “Good. Then make yourself respectable and come on out. Rabbit stew for breakfast, I expect. Or pheasant, if we’re lucky.” He pushed rudely past Edward and headed for the door.

  “Sir? What did you mean—”

  “Without question!” Creighton snapped, and disappeared down the steps.

  There was indeed stew for breakfast, and it might have contained rabbit. It certainly contained many other things, and it tasted delicious to a hungry man. Edward tried not to think about hedgehogs and succeeded so well that he emptied his tin plate in record time.

  He sat on the ground in an irregular circle of Gypsies, mostly men. Woman flitted around in attendance, never walking in front of a man. The women’s garb was brighter, but even the men seemed dressed more for a barn dance than for country labor. There were about a score of adults in the band, and at least as many children, most of whom were hiding behind their elders and peering out warily at the strangers. The campsite was an untidy clutter of wagons and tents and basket chairs in various stages of assembly. Heaps of pots and clothespins indicated other trades. A dozen or so horses grazed nearby, and the skulking dogs seemed to belong.

  Creighton sat at the far side, deep in conversation with the ancient chovihani. Edward could hear nothing of what was being said, although there seemed to be some hard bargaining in progress. The few words he overheard near him were in Romany. He could not but wonder what the masters at Fallow would say if they could see him now in his grotesque garb. His wrists and ankles stuck out six inches in all directions. He was barefoot because he had been unable to find any shoes to fit him. The only part of his apparel not too small for him was his hat, and that kept falling over his eyes.

  A slender hand reached down to his plate. “More?” asked a soft voice.

  “Yes, please! It’s very good.”

  He watched as she carried the plate over to the communal pot and heaped it again with a ladle. Her dress made him think of Spanish dancers, and she was very pretty, with her head bound in a bright-colored scarf and her dangling earrings flashing in the sun. Her ankles…Some ancient instinct caused him to glance around then. He saw that he was the object of suspicious glowers from at least half a dozen of the younger men. Good Lord! Did they think?…Well, maybe they were right. Not that he had been considering anything dishonorable, but he had certainly been admiring, and that was forbidden to a gorgio. Nevertheless, he smiled at her when she gave him back the plate. She smiled back shyly.

  Eating at a nomad’s campfire, he could not help feeling he was slumming, yet he knew that these were a proud people, and to them he was probably as out of place as a naked Hottentot at a dons’ high table in Oxford. There was a lesson there and he ought to be learning from it. The guv’nor would have been able to put it into words.

  The second helping he ate more slowly, feeling sleepiness creeping over him—he hadn’t really slept at all in the night. There were so many things to think about! Could he trust Creighton, in spite of what the man had done for him? He was certainly being evasive. He claimed to have visited the guv’nor at Nyagatha, and he had known about Spots. He had pointedly avoided saying where he had come from, except for cryptic references to somewhere called “Nextdoor.” He had contrasted it with “Here,” without stipulating whether “Here” meant England or all Europe. The Service he talked about—what government did it serve? Some semiautonomous Indian potentate? The Ottoman Empire? China? China was in disarray, wasn’t it?

  Everywhere was in disarray now, and yet Creighton had never once hinted at the possibility of the war interfering with whatever his precious Service served. And what could the Chamber be? He had certainly implied that it was in some sense supernatural; if it was, then the Service must be also.

  So what on Earth did that make Nextdoor?

  Replete, Edward returned his plate to the owner of the ankles and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. He wanted a wash and a shave, but sleep would do for starters.

  Creighton called his name and beckoned.

  He walked around the fire, being careful not to step on anything sharp. Creighton was paying court to the old woman. Perhaps she really was a phuri dai, a wisewoman, but Edward knew enough about Gypsies to know that their leaders were invariably male. Furthermore, the man beside her was sitting on a wooden chair, while everyone else was on the ground. That made him unusually important. Edward went to the man.

  Boswell was probably in his sixties, thick and prosperous looking, with a patriarchal silver mustache. His face was the face of a successful horse trader, unreadable.

  Edward doffed his hat respectfully and said, “Latcho dives.”

  The man’s mustache twitched in a smile. “Latcho dives! You speak romani?”

 
“Not much more than that, sir.”

  Still, Edward had scored a point. Boswell said something very fast in Romany—probably addressed to his mother, although he was watching Edward to see if he understood, which he did not.

  Edward bowed and squatted down before her, alongside Creighton. She looked him over with the most extraordinary eyes he had ever seen. Her gaze seemed to go right through him and out the other side and back again. He barely noticed anything else about her, except that she was obviously very old. Only her lustrous Gypsy eyes.

  “Give me your hand,” she said. “No, the left one.”

  He held out his hand. She clutched it in gnarled fingers and pulled it close to her face to study. He was able to glance away, then. He raised a quizzical eyebrow at Creighton, who frowned. Then the old woman sighed and closed his fingers into a fist. Here it came, he thought—you will go on a long journey, you will lose a close friend, your dearest love will be true to you although you may be troubled by doubts, et blooming cetera. She was going to be disappointed when she told him to cross her palm with silver.

  She was looking at him again, darn it!

  “You’ave been unjustly blamed for a terrible crime.” Her voice amused him. It was straight off the back streets of London, almost Cockney.

  “That is true!” He tore his eyes away and reproachfully glanced at Creighton.

  “I told Mrs. Boswell nothing about you, Exeter.”

  Oh, really? Edward would have bet a five-bob note—if he had one—that Creighton had told the old crone a lot more than he thought he had.

  “You will go on a long journey,” she said.

  Well, Belgium was a good guess, and quite a long journey.

  “You will have to make a very hard choice.”

  That could mean anything—pie or sausage for supper, for instance. “Can you be more specific, ma’am?”

  Creighton and Boswell were listening and watching intently. So was everyone else within earshot.

  Mrs. Boswell twisted her incredibly wrinkled face angrily, as if recognizing Edward’s disbelief. Or perhaps she was in pain. “You must choose between honor and friendship,” she said hoarsely. “You must desert a friend to whom you owe your life, or betray everything you hold sacred.”

  Edward winced. That sounded too specific!

  “If you make the right choice, you will live, but then you will have to choose between honor and duty.”

  “I beg your pardon, ma’am. How can honor and duty ever come in conflict?”

  She turned her head away suddenly in dismissal, and he thought she would not answer, but then she added: “Only by dishonor will you find honor.”

  Bunk! Edward thought, more nettled than he wanted to admit, even to himself. “Honor or friendship, then honor or duty…Do I get a third wish?”

  She did not reply for a long moment. Just when he had concluded that she would not, she whispered, “Yes. Honor or your life.” Then she waved him away without looking around.

  Soon the Gypsy caravan was ambling along the lanes of summer England, heading Edward knew not where. Creighton, having snared his victim with an oath of obedience, now refused to answer questions, or even hear them. Time for forty winks, he said.

  “How are you at dancing?” he inquired brusquely while they were undressing.

  Edward admitted he could probably manage a slow waltz.

  “And how are your teeth? Any fillings?”

  “Two.”

  “Pity.” Creighton stretched out on the lower bunk in his underwear.

  “Are those necessary qualifications in recruits to the Service?” Edward clambered into the upper berth, banging his head in the process. Even with the windows open, the wagon was stuffily hot.

  “Very much so,” said a smug voice from below him. “A knack for languages helps. How many can you speak?”

  “Usual school set: French, Latin, Greek. A bit of German.”

  “You took the medal in German. How about African?”

  “Bantu.”

  “Which Bantu?”

  “Embu, of course, and Kikuyu. A smattering of Meru and Swahili.” That sounded like bragging, so he added, “Once you’ve got a couple of them, the others come easily. Anyone can read Italian or Spanish if he knows French and Latin.”

  Creighton chuckled at something. “A faculty for language helps, but you’re far too young. If it wasn’t for the Filoby Testament, I’d throw you back. I was looking for men in their fifties or sixties. Women even better. Didn’t find any.”

  In five minutes the man was snoring.

  37

  DRAGONS HAD A NOTORIOUS DISLIKE OF WATER, BUT when Dragontrader had coaxed Starlight to cross Narshwater, the others had followed. He had relegated Sister Ahn to the fourth mount, named Blaze, and insisted that her sword be bound to its pack. There had been another fight over that, but she had yielded when he pointed out that the hilt would still be within her reach.

  “What pass is this?” Eleal asked wonderingly as the procession raced northward over the grassy hills of Narshslope.

  “No pass,” he growled. He was still mad. “Dragons don’t need passes. Your hill straps all right?”

  She nodded. In fact the belt was uncomfortably tight, but having seen Starlight scramble down a temple wall, she had a strong suspicion she was going to need it.

  The sun was climbing higher, shedding real heat. Soon a valley enclosed them, providing shelter from the wind, and she began to feel warm—a rare sensation in Narshvale. A few hours’ sleep would be nice, and she remembered Gim’s remark about the bread shop in Morby with regret, but obviously the fugitives must hurry on their way. The Narsh guard would discover Sister Ahn’s deception soon enough.

  Dragons in motion spread out and she had no one to talk with. The saddle had begun to chafe already. Yesterday at this time she had just begun plucking chickens—she cocked a mental snoot at the temple. Pluck your own fowls, Mother Ylla! The day before, the oracle had spoken, and the day before that she had unmasked Dolm. On Ankleday she had been an aspiring actor looking forward to a ride on a mammoth. Life had been very simple back then.

  For half an hour or so the fugitives raced up a brush-filled valley, climbing steeply alongside rapids and waterfalls. Trees were rare in Narshvale, and no other obstacle was a hindrance to dragons. Eventually the valley curved off T’lin Dragontrader’s preferred path; he put Starlight at the slope. At the top, he called a halt to let the mounts catch their breath, and they automatically closed up near one another.

  Eleal was astonished how high they were already—perched on a windy, grassy ridge with all of Narshland spread out before them, cupped within the icy peaks of Narshwall and dappled by shadows of clouds. Even in summer it was more tawny than green; hard country good only for grazing. Here and there she saw the scars of mines. Gim was staring at it all openmouthed.

  “Never seen it like this before?” she asked.

  He shook his turbaned head. “I’m not like you. I’ve never been anywhere! Well, I’ve been everywhere down there.” He waved at the valley. “We go on picnics sometimes, Mom and Dad and the girls and me. Thunder Falls, up there. Daisy Meadow over there. You know, you can walk across the whole land and back in a day, if you own some good boots. You can walk from one end to the other in two days—Dad did, once.”

  Eleal would not want to try that, but a strong man probably could. “There are smaller vales,” she said helpfully. “And some larger. In Joalvale there are places there where you can hardly see mountains at all!”

  Gim looked suitably impressed. “Sussland is much bigger, isn’t it?”

  “It’s broader,” she said. “Not much longer, maybe. Lower, hotter.”

  “Tell me about the festival,” Gim said, but mention of their destination had reminded Eleal that she had prophecies to fulfill.

  Sister Ahn was sitting as erect as
she could on Blaze, one gnarled hand behind her, clutching her precious sword. Her haggard face seemed relatively content and unthreatening. Before Eleal could question her, though, T’lin Dragontrader intervened.

  “Sister, I don’t suppose your prophecies tell you which is the best way through this?” He waved irritably at the jagged rock and ice filling the northward sky—gray and white, with hardly a speck of green in view anywhere.

  “No.”

  “Or whether Ois will contest our passage?”

  “She may.” The nun sniffed. “She wishes to stop Eleal and myself, but you and the boy may die also. I cannot say.”

  T’lin uttered his inevitable snort. “Religion is such a comfort in times of need!”

  “Holy Tion will shield us,” Gim said devoutly. “We are pilgrims to his festival.”

  “Indeed?” For the first time, Ahn showed some interest in him. “You plan to play your lyre for the god?”

  “I’ll enter if Dragontrader will permit me to.”

  T’lin snorted again. “Think you can win a rose, do you?”

  “Oh, no!” Gim looked down at his boots and mumbled, “I’d be honored just to try.”

  The red beard parted in a toothy smile. “You might win the gold one.”

  The idea had occurred to Eleal a moment before T’lin spoke. Gim turned his face away quickly and said nothing.

  The dragon trader shrugged, apparently regretting his ridicule. “Oh, never mind. I think we’ll try for that gap there. Looks like a good place to be eaten by snow tigers.”

  Eleal saw her chance. “Sister, will you tell me now what is going to happen in Sussland?”

  The old woman frowned, and then nodded. “Certainly! In fact I should probably give you some instructions as soon as possible, because the holy testament does not specify exactly which day the wonderful event will occur.”

  “Instructions?”

  “Yes. There may not be time after we arrive, you see? Unless you are already experienced, of course.”