As his side, Tyn Lydar hummed tunelessly, the swinging of her legs sending irritating judders through the wood of the bench.
He met the eyes of the two other patients. They were commoners, both of them female, and one of them was definitely a prostitute. They regarded him with hard expressions, glancing at Tyn Lydar as much as they dared with a mixture of revulsion and curiosity.
It was bad enough being a man in this place without the Tyn along. Physic Finna probably performed all sorts of unsavoury jobs for women of a certain type. Why on Earth would Katriona want to come here to this abortionist’s abattoir...?
He shook his head disapprovingly. The prostitute looked pointedly away.
How he wished they had gone to the Morthrock family physic. How he wished Katriona had not brought the Tyn along.
He looked at his companion sidelong. “You are close to my wife.” He tried not to sound disapproving. Katriona had made it obvious how important the Tyn was to her.
Tyn Lydar stopped humming and swinging her legs suddenly and menacingly, like the cessation of birdsong in a wood that tells a dracon is near. She turned her wrinkled face up to his, and he shuddered.
“As close as one such as I can be to one such as her, aye, that it so, Goodfellow Morthrock,” she said.
“Only I suppose you must be, or she would not have invited you here.” He paused. The hard wooden bench pressed into his buttocks uncomfortably. Perhaps he really should lose some weight. “She will be alright, won’t she? Why did she wait? A week, and after a meeting with that louse Grostiman! She must take care of herself!” He crumpled his handkerchief and gripped his cane. “You must know. I mean to say,” he added hurriedly, “the Tyn have the sight and whatnot, but I do not wish to impose or—”
“Or pay a price for such knowledge as I may give?” said Tyn Lydar. Broad white teeth appeared in her wrinkled face, the flesh of a nut peaking through its shell. It was a disturbing smile. Demion was reminded of dracons again.
“Well,” said Demion uncomfortably. “Quite.” He stuffed his handkerchief away for the umpteenth time and wrung his cane for wont of something better to do with his hands. If he held them up, they would shake, he just knew it.
“Be not afraid, young Morthrock,” said Tyn Lydar sympathetically. “I’ll put no geas on you, nor exact a price for simple conversation. Yes, she will be fine, and no I will not say what is with her, that is hers to say, not mine.”
“You know?”
Tyn Lydar cocked her head at him. Her brown eyes twinkled with mischief. “We got the sight, said so yourself, but what she has any can see, only you don’t.”
Demion coughed. When he had run the factory he let his Tynmen deal with the creatures. If he were honest with himself he was frightened of the Tyn. They were uncanny, magical, dangerous if handled badly. As a child he had wept at the sight of them and huddled behind his mother’s skirts. Lydar was old as the hills and had been the Morthrocksey band’s leader since the mill was built, and probably forever before that. She remembered what he was like as a boy.
“Goodtyn, that’s what Kat calls you, yes?” said Demion.
“Ooh, now it is marks of respect. Perhaps this world has a little kindness left for my kind.”
“I... I... I am merely trying to be polite,” Demion coloured.
“No need to be on my behalf, so high and mighty a goodfellow as yourself,” said Tyn Lydar. She stared at the slightly more respectable looking woman across the way. The woman looked back with a frightened, questioning expression. Lydar shook her head gently. The woman fell back against the bench’s backrest in relief.
“Sorry,” said Demion. “I... Sorry.”
“Sorry is not needed. Your manners are welcome,” said Tyn Lydar. “Your father treated us kindly, and he respected our ways, but politeness was a courtesy he did not afford us.”
“He did not afford politeness to many people.”
Tyn Lydar chuckled. “This is true. He was a great man in some ways, less than great in others. Like all men.”
“I wish I were more like him,” said Demion, downcast. He paused and took a deep, embarrassed breath. The floor suddenly seemed very interesting, and he tapped at it with the ferrule of his cane. “I know what they say about me. That I am useless, and tubby. That I have let the she-dracon into my yard. My wife runs my father’s factory. She just took it over, and I let her, by all the hells, I encouraged her. Gossip is so hurtful. I am not insensitive. People assume if my wife can order around my staff, she can order me around, and that I must languish under the iron rod of the Kressinds.”
“They do say that,” said Tyn Lydar. “They say it a lot.”
“But the truth of it is,” he said, banging his cane on the parquet decisively, “I don’t care. I was beyond glad to have the mill taken off my hands. I was rather expecting that I would have to pull myself together and step forward, run the company to impress her, you know. I never wanted to. I couldn’t even manage that for my father. But I would have done, if it made her happy. You know what she’s like. She does not like weak men, and I am a weak man. My father always forced me to take an interest, and I couldn’t. All that dirt, and squalor. The smells!”
“Happy to leave us in it,” said Lydar.
“Yes,” said Demion guiltily. “She opened my eyes to that.”
“You love her a long time. I saw. I saw you as a boy when her father brought her to your house, to the mill.”
“The sight again, eh? It must be dashed useful,” said Demion weakly. His humour was insipid, under the current circumstances.
“Heh. I used my eyes!”
“I longed for Katriona. I wanted her for so long. When she married Arvane... He was so dashing, and brave. He was... he was not me. I thought I might die from sorrow.”
“Instead he died, and now she is in your bed.”
“I felt perfectly wretched when he fell! Can you imagine me in a battle?” spluttered Demion. “He was a real man. I never expected her to love me after him, but I had to ask for her hand. I would happily have given her everything simply to have her by my side, even if she hated me. And I did. But then the most marvellous thing happened.” Demion blinked fast. His voice was hoarse. Oh gods, he thought. Don’t let me cry in front of the Tyn. “She started to love me too.”
“Love you she does, for what you are in there,” Tyn Lydar poked him hard in his chest with her bony finger. “Not what you think you should be. You humans, always try to be what you are not rather than living what you are. I speak from knowledge when I say this brings only sorrow. Be true to self, do not seek change. Change cannot be undone.”
Demion nodded. “I agree. So let other men mock me for my wife’s yellow-band ways. You see,” continued Demion, “I cannot lose her. If she is ill, with the blood cough, or the sweats... I... If she died.” He fumbled out his monogrammed handkerchief again and blew his nose loudly.
Tyn Lydar grasped his hand in her small brown fingers. There were hard as wood, and rough with years of work. She smiled, then burst into a low purring laugh. “Foolish boy, you are blind.”
Demion frowned in confusion.
“What do you mean? She fainted. It could be anything!”
Tyn Lydar’s laugh became uproarious and she patted his hand. He found it the most comforting thing in the world.
The door to the physic’s office swung open. Finna was a no-nonsense looking woman in her mid-fifties. Her hair was iron grey, most of it hidden under a scarf. Sleeve protectors covered her blouse’s arms. An apron covered her skirt. Her hands were pink from a fresh scrub. The scents of soap, vinegar and warm copper gusted out of her office.
Katriona came out, pale-faced, her lips clamped so tight they were a thin, bloodless white.
She stood before Demion, arms out stiffly. She took a deep breath.
“What is it?” Demion asked fearfully.
She looked down at him, the most peculiar expression on her face. She was having trouble speaking.
“Dear hus
band, I am pregnant,” she said all in a rush, then burst into tears.
He stood up and dropped his cane with a clatter. He took her wrists in his hands.
“My dear, that is... that is the most marvellous news!”
She looked up at him, her nose red, and tears streaming down her face.
“You are not cross?”
Demion was perplexed by this new side of his wife. “Why on either Earth or Twin would I be cross with you? I am so very, very happy!”
She cried more, and fell into his arms.
“But my dear Kat, are you not happy? Why do you weep?”
She thumped him hard on the back and clasped him hard to her.
“Of course I’m happy, you silly oaf.”
He patted her back softly as she wept, completely confused. Tyn Lydar winked at him from the bench.
For what must have been the millionth time in his life, Demion Morthrock found himself dumbfounded by women.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Home to Mogawn
IRON WHEELS CLACKED hypnotically on iron rails, tickety-tick, tickety-tick, fast as a bird’s heart. The train sped out of Karsa City. The last of the brown suburbs dwindled, replaced by hedged fields clinging to steep valley sides colourful with summer flowers.
Countess Lucinia Vertisa was going home.
Grey skies rolled over grey hills. At the height of summer, Karsa could still look like a land in mourning. The few bright days of orange-gold sun was the intrusion of happy memories into nameless grief. It was going to rain. Again. Rain follows summer tides as surely as war follows peace, went the old saying. The old sayings looked to be holding true.
Lucinia’s wealth afforded her a private compartment. Her injured leg rested on a padded footstool beside a small table set for morning tea. Cakes and cups besieged a small glimmer lamp, whose crystal pendants tinkled with the crossing of every rail joint. She stared at the window, not at the landscape on the other side, where her reflection stared glumly back. Her stupid, mannish face had been made even less attractive by a patterning of shiny burn scars all down the left side. The disfigurement was temporary, but although she would never let anyone know, the marks appalled her. Though she pretended artfully not to care, Lucinia Vertisa wanted very much to be pretty.
She clucked at her vanity. She was a countess, she had her own castle. She had the finest mind in Karsa. Her name was a touchstone for those wishing to advance the cause of women. She was finally respected among the circles of academe, and yet it was not enough. She wondered if everyone were as dissatisfied as she was, as grasping for the next thing; if a turnip farmer with a good crop wished for just one more turnip, or the Emperor of Ocerzerkiya wished for more gold to count.
A pretty nose. Delicate features. Full lips. That is what she wished for in the place of her hateful father’s face. She would trade everything for that. She knew the yearning would not be stopped were it to be so. There would always be something else. Knowing so didn’t help.
Mansanio had told her to love what she had, one night when she drunkenly wept on his shoulder. He had gone. More than that, she had thrown him out. Was he a scoundrel for making a pass at her, or was she a monster for rejecting his affections?
She shot the face in the window a fierce scowl. After leaving Perus she had delayed returning to Mogawn for a few weeks, staying in the city to quicken her recovery. During her convalescence she had avoided reading the papers. It was time to put that right.
She unfolded the Karsan Herald she’d bought at the station. The sky cast out a harsh illumination that made reading unpleasant, so she angled the broadsheet to better catch the steady blue light of the lamp, and commenced familiarising herself with the world again.
The broadsheet’s narrow columns were crammed with advertisements of dubious veracity for everything from tooth whitening powder made of white lead, which she knew to be toxic, to cheap love philtres of “genuine” Tyn make, which almost certainly had never been within a mile of the Tyn.
Only the first few lines of each news story were included on the front page beneath tight headlines, presenting her with a frustrating hunt through the inner pages for the rest. The actual news that she was interested in was hidden in a morass of false claims and gossipy tidbits. Still, she supposed if anything really important had happened in Maceriya since her departure, it might have been a little more prominent. “Civil War in Old Empire,” that sort of thing.
She found what she was looking for, hidden under an advertisement for a new kind of metal stamping machinery.
Maceriya Declares Candidate, read the headline.
Further information regarding the selection of the Maceriyan candidate for the post of High Legate, recently vacated owing to the decease of prior office holder Vichereu. Comte Raganse, Comte of Outer Perus, was almost universally selected by the Maceriyan Diet of Nobility in an assembly held two days since, on Twinday, 27th of Gannever month. The King...
Here the line was clumsily cut, with no indication of where the story continued. She was forced to search through the innards of the paper for its conclusion.
...Lovix of Maceriya, gave his full and unconditional backing to the selection of the Comte, who currently presides over the Maceriyan Government alone, the children of his peers Juliense, Comte of High Perus, and Arvons, Comte of Low Perus, slain in the atrocity at the House of the Assembly, being in their minority. That the Comte rule alone is unprecedented in recent history, the last instance being one hundred and four years ago. As for the promotion of one of the Comtes to the candidacy for the office of High Legate, this is a novel occurrence in the history of the Alliance of the Hundred Kingdoms. Suggestions from members of the Three Houses of Karsa that this is a naked attempt to seize power by a single man intent on making himself dictator have been roundly denounced by the Maceriyan regal ministries. At present, the lack of an ambassador from Karsa, who was also killed along with Duke Abing of the Naval and Interior Ministries in the attack on the Assembly leaves our government unable to respond, or to further press the Maceriyans on their intentions. Outcry from the eastern Kingdoms has been particularly loud. The lesser lands of the Central Ruthnian Plateau wait to see what the declaration of the Isles will be. In the opinion of this correspondent, one misstep could precipitate a dissolution of the current state of amity that exists between our countries, and a return to the uncertain years of hostility that so bedevilled the Kingdoms in centuries past.
There were references to other stories at the bottom of the column, regarding the arrival of new embassy staff on 13th Gannever, and the ensuing two-week delay in the choosing of a new ambassador. The surge in religious observance following the rumoured return of the gods was mercilessly lampooned in the paper.
Lucinia had had enough, and folded the paper away.
“No more politics and foreign adventures,” she said. She wished to return to her castle in the sea, lick her wounds, and proceed with her research.
Had she read further, she would have learned of the disappearance of the Morfaan emissaries and Garten Kressind following the duel between the Morfaan Josanad and Kyreen Asteria, but she did not, and so remained ignorant of these developments for some days to come.
THE TRAIN DEPOSITED the countess at Mogawn-On-Land’s lonely station. She and the local tailor disembarked, no one else. Mogawn-On-Land was her property, as were most things within five miles of its ruined temple. The tailor was keen to help the station’s sole porter arrange her bags in the tiny waiting room. She attempted to engage him in conversation, but a combination of his natural shyness and her station being so exalted over his derailed her efforts. He declined her offer of a few pennies as thanks, and was off as quickly as decorum allowed. She leaned on her stick and watched him walk down the tree-lined lane toward the village centre. Raindrops streaked the window.
“He’s in a hurry, goodlady,” said the porter, who was a sight more talkative than the tailor.
“He means respect,” she said. “But his behaviour sadde
ns me. My family have ruled this place for a long time. I had hoped that he would feel comfortable speaking with me.”
The porter dropped his permanent smile. He swept his cap off his head and held it in both hands humbly. “If you would forgive my saying so, goodlady, the villagers here grumble that you don’t speak much with them. They say that you are more interested in your numbers and mechanisms and all that, and have no interest in their lives or what they do. Since Goodman Mansanio left your employ, we see precious few people from the castle on the land, and it rubs them raw it does. Especially when they say that the old lord came down here regular, and was a respected expert in the sowing of corn and husbandry of animals and that.”
Lucinia pulled a face. The mention of her father always darkened her mood. No one but her knew how cruel he was. The villagers judged her unfavourably against him, she knew. That’s why she kept away. From celebrity to hag in the space of six hundred miles. Life was unfair.
“They are right,” she said. “If it makes any difference to them, next time you are in the village tavern, you can tell them from me that I am sorry.”
“Begging your pardon, countess, but you should tell them yourself.”
She looked at him properly for the first time. He was young and attractive, well-muscled if slightly stooped from the demands of his work.
No, Lucinia, she told herself. She needed to improve her reputation. Bedding commoners in her own village wouldn’t do anything for that.
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