The Language of Power

by Rosemary Kirstein

  “Demons!” she declared, and that, too, was inexpressibly funny. “I hear Demons!”

  Willam considered. “No, your ears are just ringing,” he told her, as if speaking to a child. “That might take a while to go away.You were very lucky. You could have ended up deaf.”

  “Lucky,” she confirmed, laughing happily, freely: lucky for the sweet air, that moved in her so easily now; for her body, which felt loose and weak, but present in every particular; lucky for the light she could see, the sounds she could hear— Abruptly, she remembered: fire in every nerve, each muscle clenched and knotted as if tearing from her bones, a blow, like a sledgehammer to her chest, and pain—

  Bel was seated on the floor before her, holding her hand, counting her pulse. Willam was stooped beside her, serious, but showing a growing relief.

  Above her, looking down: Joly, with Ruffo dithering beside him. “Gum-soled boots,” Rowan said.

  “You’re the steerswoman,” Joly said. “You’re the one he wanted.”

  “But she is a steerswoman,” Ruffo put in, “because, she survived, and that proves it. Jannik was lying to us all.”

  “No,” Rowan said. She shut her eyes. Her wits were still scattered, like startled birds. She tried to retrieve them, coax them back, pluck them from the rafters and corners of the room—

  Room. She was in a room. “I’m in the Dolphin,” Rowan said.

  “That’s right,” Willam told her. “Do you remember what happened?”

  She remembered pain clearly, but was unable to recover what immediately preceded it. She puzzled.

  “What did you mean by ‘no’?” Joly asked her.

  Will said, without looking up, “Give her some time. She’s not all here yet.” Beck appeared, with a small glass; Bel reached to take it, but Willam stopped her. “No. No alcohol. She could still stop breathing. Water.”

  “How do you know that?” Joly asked. He came nearer. “And how did you know what to do, what to try to do, for Naio?”

  Then Willam did look up, his copper eyes unreadable. “Something like it happened to me, once,” he said simply. “By accident.”

  Joly’s gaze narrowed, and he glanced down, at Will’s feet. Rowan wondered why, and she leaned forward to look down over Will’s shoulder. Her movements were wide, clumsy, weirdly loose.

  Gum-soled boots. Oh, clever. Good boy. “Everyone,” she said cheerfully, “everyone should wear them.”

  “Happened to you? How?” Joly asked. Willam said nothing. “Meddling with magic?” Joly speculated. His eyes grew hard. “Then you’re the one, the minion of Olin—”

  “No one here,” Bel said, “is a minion of anyone.” She rose. “And when Rowan said no, she meant, No, Jannik wasn’t lying—because he probably believes what he said. But it isn’t so.”

  “But if she’s the one he wanted . . His voice trailed off.

  “You think you should just give her to him? Whether it’s justified or not?” Bel moved, planting herself between Joly and Rowan. Seeing this, Willam rose, too, and placed himself solidly behind the steerswoman, resting his hands on her shoulders.

  And despite the fact that the world consisted only of now, with memory before but shadows and mist—despite this, the steerswoman knew with perfect certainty that never before in her life had she felt so completely protected.

  Violence before her, and magic behind her. With these, nothing could harm her.

  “Right now,” Bel said to Joly, “Jannik thinks Rowan has left town. There’s no reason for him to know different.”

  “The only way he’d find out,” Willam said, “would be from someone in this room. And you all know exactly what he’d do to her.”

  “But,” someone said, “she’d live. The wizard can’t hurt her, we just saw that.”

  “He can hurt her!” Willam said to the speaker. “If he had noticed she was wearing gum-soled boots, he would have just used more power. She would be just as dead as Naio.” He turned back to Joly. “Although,” Willam said, “if you handed Rowan over, I don’t think Jannik would kill her quickly. No. I’m fairly certain he wouldn’t.”

  Joly was a long time replying. “I have no intention of handing her over to the wizard.” And he looked down at Rowan. “But she’s very lucky that I didn’t know, before all this, that Jannik was looking for her.”

  Rowan could not see Bel’s face, but she saw when the Outskirter tilted her head slightly, heard the change in Bel’s voice. “I like you,” she said to Joly; this took him by surprise. “You remind me of myself. You’d protect your people. That’s proper. But Jannik didn’t give you the chance, did he, to protect your people? He killed first, talked later. That’s what you’re living with in Donner.”

  Joly considered these statements. Then he sighed, and pulled out a nearby chair, and began to sit.

  Something he saw interrupted him. “Marlee,” he called, across the room, “please stay here for the moment. Until this is resolved.” He looked around; Rowan realized that the room was nearly empty. “Who has left?” A few names were mentioned, then more. “Are any of those people who know you by sight?” Joly asked Rowan.

  In her mind, Rowan clutched at birds that were not there. She gave up. “Mayor,” she said, honestly, “I’m not quite myself.”

  “Is she going to stay addle-pated?” Joly asked Willam.

  “I didn’t. Rowan.” She looked up at him: directly up, which made his face upside down in her view. “What’s the square root of four thousand and ninety-six?”

  It had to be an integer; he was not likely to ask for a fraction. And 4,096 was not so very large a number. It was not worth working out the square root: she merely scanned squares of numbers below one hundred. “Sixty-four,” she said.

  “And the square root of that?”

  Ridiculous: this took no thought at all. “Eight.”

  “She already has her wits,” Willam said. “She’s just still a bit stunned.”

  “How soon can she travel?” Will glared at Joly: a sudden, sharp anger. The mayor did not waver. “I want her away from the city. As soon as possible.”

  “Tomorrow morning,” Bel said.

  “No sooner than that?”

  “We have business in town tonight.”

  Rowan felt Will’s hands tighten on her shoulders.

  Bel turned to Willam: “Will she be herself by twenty-three hundred?”

  “Bel—” he protested.

  “Their seyoh is working in the dark. That’s wrong. He needs to know what’s going on, in order to do what’s right.” Seyoh, Rowan thought: the leader of an Outskirter tribe. Joly, suddenly, did remind her very much of Kammeryn.

  At this, the steerswoman realized that all her memory was in place. “I feel better,” she told everyone. Although, apparently, she had not yet recovered her social graces; she had announced the fact as cheerfully and artlessly as a child.

  “Good,” Bel said. “Now, everyone listen.” She glanced about, securing the people’s full attention. Then she turned back to Rowan, and spoke in the formal mode. “Tell me, lady: why are you here in Donner?”

  And at this cue, Rowan’s mind, seemingly of itself, composed the information to answer. For a moment Rowan observed the process as if from afar; and then she entered it fully:

  Kieran. Latitia. Unexpectedly, Slado.

  One man turning good; another becoming evil.

  An occurrence, one event happening on one specific night; and everything afterward falling from that, all the world shifting on that point.

  One event. One fact.

  The steerswoman said: “I’m here because power rests on knowledge. And no knowledge should be secret.”

  “Good.” Bel took a chair, pulled it near, climbed up to stand on its seat. “Now,” she said to the people, “listen to me.”

  And the Outskirter said, to Rowan’s astonishment:

  “Once upon a time . . .”

  Bel told it all.

  From its innocuous beginning, with Rowan discovering
, in the course of her travels, the odd, flat, blue jewel; and becoming curious, as a steerswoman does; and asking questions; and finding at first as her only answer, the sudden interest of every wizard in the world—

  Somewhere later in the tale, Rowan thought: I would have told it differently. She would have begun with the fallen Guidestar, spoken next of the destruction of the Outskirts, and what would result from it. She would have given them information.

  But Bel, Rowan knew, was an artist. For her own people Bel had composed an epic poem, now circulating among the Outskirter tribes, moving across the land with a life of its own. The steerswoman was surprised that Bel had come to know Rowan’s people so well that she could have constructed this: the Inner Lands version of the same tale, cast in familiar form, calling forth all the ways and manners of proper tales, drawing one in, moving the heart.

  Rowan saw now that truly, this was the only way the story could be told. The information was intact, but participation in its unfolding made the knowledge each listener’s personal possession.

  The people listened.

  At the point when Bel reached her and Rowan’s first meeting with the fourteen-year-old boy with the talent for magic, the steerswoman realized that Willam was still in place, standing behind her, his hands on her shoulders. And it seemed to her now that it was more than protection; it was a declaration of affiliation. He is with us. This is his story, too.

  Rowan closed her eyes, leaned her head back against him. When she opened them again, he had stooped down to study her face. “Do you want to sleep?”

  She did not. She wanted to hear the tale, all of it. Perhaps Bel would continue, she thought, perhaps not stop at the present, but tell on: through all the struggles ahead, beyond the pain and terror that lay waiting in every dark adventure. Rowan wondered how it would end.

  Willam was still regarding her, with solicitous patience.

  The steerswoman said: “I’m so very tired.”

  He helped her to her feet, and the tale-teller paused, and all the listeners watched as Willam gently led the steerswoman away.

  Rowan woke.

  The room was quiet, and the light: a soft candle glow that did not flicker, but pulsed, once, twice, then steadied.

  She was not alone. She said, uncomprehending: “Reeder?”

  “Don’t be alarmed.” He looked up from his hands, which he had been studying idly. “I’m only here to ensure that you don’t stop breathing in your sleep.”

  Rowan rubbed grit from her eyes. “But, Willam, and Bel—”

  “Your friends are occupied in discussions with Joly and the council, and the other remaining witnesses. My presence was not needed, as I’ve already made my position clear.”

  Rowan remembered, and sought words to adequately express her emotion. “Thank you for not betraying me.”

  He permitted himself a small twitch of a smile. “Thank the Outskirter.”

  She studied him. He seemed himself again: controlled, held at distance. Although, she noted, the disapproval he usually exuded was absent.

  He accepted her scrutiny, perfectly composed. “You ought to go back to sleep. You have”—he picked up something from the table, something that trailed a string; he tilted the object to the candlelight—“four hours left.”

  Willam’s tiny clock. Reeder set it down, and turned back. “Ah, yes, and I’m to ask you how you feel.”

  She took inventory. She felt, for the most part, a heavy weariness, as if she had been swimming for some long distance. Her ears still rang, but only faintly, a high, distant whine. The skin of her chest, below the collarbone and above her breasts, stung as if from some abrasion. She shifted a bit, pulled her collar forward, and looked down.

  Still there: five lines on her skin, like the hand of a skeleton. She wondered if the marks were permanent.

  Reeder watched with eyebrows lifted, as if mildly surprised that so dignified a person as herself would make so intimate an inspection in the presence of a stranger.

  Her left leg ached dully; however one could hardly expect it to do otherwise, after two days’ riding. Rowan was surprised that it was no worse.

  But her right heel hurt. She sat up to examine it.

  It had been bandaged while she slept. She did not remove the light wrapping, but considered the sensation of what lay beneath. It felt like a burn.

  “He didn’t even touch me there,” she said.

  “If you’re inclined to make a more complete inspection, of all your body parts, please inform me. I prefer to be absent.”

  “My other body parts seem all to be in the right places,” Rowan said, settling back thoughtfully.

  “Fortunate. I’m to speak sternly to you if you show no inclination to rest; please assume that I’ve done so.”

  Rowan rubbed her face. “I don’t think I could sleep . . .” Although, really, she ought to.

  “I suggest that you lie still and close your eyes. Eventually, sheer boredom will work its effect.” He leaned back in the chair, crossed his legs, adjusted the lay of his trouser leg. “If you feel someone shaking you, it will only be me, reminding you that air is necessary for life.”

  “I don’t believe I’ll ever forget that again.”

  She slept; it felt like forever.

  She was aware, in her sleep, of a hand about to touch her. She woke a moment before it did.

  Bel, with a satisfied smile, leaning back. “I see your instincts are all in place.”

  Rowan sat up, pushed her hair back. “How soon?”

  “We have an hour to go. You should change your clothes, and wash up. You smell like a horse that’s been struck by lightning.” She paused. “Will doesn’t want you going into Jannik’s house.”

  “My wits are back,” Rowan said, leaning forward to reach for her pack; Bel rose, and put it on the bed. “I’ll probably limp, but I’m certain I can run, if we should need to.”

  The Outskirter nodded. “That’s what I told him. But that’s not it. He still doesn’t want anyone else taking the risk. Especially now, especially you, after what Jannik did.”

  Rowan found a clean blouse, pulled her own over her head, and tossed it aside. “I am definitely coming.”

  She noticed Bel regarding her chest, narrow-eyed. “It looks far worse than it is,” Rowan informed her. The steerswoman’s gold chain lay draped across the skeletal hand, as if a ghost were trying to snatch it away.

  “If you say so . . .”

  The image reminded Rowan: “My ring.” She rose, finding her heel painful but endurable, and reached into her pocket.

  Nothing. She searched further; a hole . . .

  Bel held the ring up, between thumb and forefinger. “Someone found it on the floor in the common room.”

  Rowan took the ring, slipped it on her scarred left hand. “Good,” Bel said. “Now you’re yourself again.”

  Rowan addressed herself to the ewer and pitcher, the soap and towel, that lay waiting on the table. Bel sat on the end of the bed, and pulled up her knees. She watched the steerswoman. “I’ve given Joly my names.” Rowan stopped short.

  Bel, Margasdoter, Chanly. An Outskirter possessed three names, the first used casually, the matronym and line name very sparingly. Knowledge of an Outskirters names was proof of connection, and could protect one from attack by that person’s tribe.

  But Bel’s own names meant far more. They were known now to all tribes, a password among all the Outskirters. “You don’t think it’s too soon for that?” Rowan asked.

  “He’s the leader of this city. His people will meet my people one day. When they do, they will know each other.” Bel unfolded herself, and climbed off the bed. “Someone’s bringing food, and strong tea. The boots are Enid’s.” She reached past Rowan to take Willam’s magic clock from the table. “I’ll go tell the others that you’re up, and they should get into position.”

  Rowan was at sea. “Others?”

  “We’ve enlisted some help,” Bel said. “We need it.”

  Ro
wan washed, dressed. Tea was brought in, and toast, and eggs. The serving girl, with an almost proprietary air, insisted that Rowan eat immediately. “I won’t take no, and that’s a fact.”

  “Thank you,” Rowan said, bemused. She recognized the young woman from the dining room, three mornings ago, and from the incidents in the common room. “You were very brave,” Rowan told her.

  The servant chuffed, and shifted her shoulders, pleased at herself. “And Jinny nearly giving it away, the goose. Had to think fast, or she’d have spilled. Think your hair will go white, like what happened to your friend? And is he planning to stay in town, do you know?”

  “No. On both counts.”

  “That’s a shame. I’ll break the news to Jinny.”

  She left when Rowan settled down to the meal; and it occurred to the steerswoman that she would not have many more of the Dolphin’s exceptional meals. Breakfast tomorrow, if all went well, and then all three of them must leave.

  As she poured more tea, her glance fell on the letter, still sitting where she had left it. And because speculation on the coming events would do her no good, and she could use a distraction, she opened it, and arranged the pages to read while she finished eating.

  The envelope had been addressed by a scribe; but the contents were in Artos’s own hand, cramped but neat.

  As Rowan expected: the news of Willam’s escape—but also, many sad apologies on Artos’s part.

  Rowan had asked him to befriend Willam, and try to watch over him as best he could; the duke confessed that he had failed in this, that his good intentions had faltered in the face of his own duties, and the many requirements of Willam’s. They had drifted apart.

  Had Artos suspected that all was not well, had he realized that, for whatever reasons, life under the wizard’s hand had become unbearable to Willam, every resource at the duke’s command would have been called upon, nothing would have been too much to ask. Artos would have moved heaven and earth to help the apprentice escape.

  Now, Artos said, Willam was alone, out in the wide world, fleeing. No one knew where he was, nor how to help him. Artos blamed himself.