Poor World

by Sherwood Smith

  “Come in, Cherene Jennet,” she said. Her voice was pretty, too.

  I entered to find a young, slightly built blond woman. I’d guessed Kessler and Alsaes were maybe half-a-dozen years older than Puddlenose or even Rel, no more than ten. This lady seemed closer to Rel’s age, though she was an adult and he wasn’t. Quite.

  “My workroom is back here,” she said, and I followed her trailing pale blue skirts to a magic chamber with the same weird smells and chemical stains that marked Shnit’s and Kwenz’.

  Dejain was an adept at dark magic.

  And I was expected to learn it.

  “Have you any questions, child?” she asked, moving behind a worktable. “You won’t mind if I continue with the project at hand?”

  “No,” I said quickly. And then — because I was curious, and it seemed safer than discussing magic — I said, “That Alsaes called me Kessler’s pet. I don’t get it — I just met Kessler yesterday.”

  “Alsaes,” Dejain said, and she laughed softly, a pleasant sound. “He’s Kessler’s oldest friend. Not very smart, so he’ll never see that he’s as high as he is only out of Kessler’s absurd sense of loyalty. But since that Sherwood boy failed him — just as well, for he knows nothing of magic — it seems that Kessler has selected you as a possible heir.”

  “A what?”

  “Surely you understood that?” Dejain looked at me with a kind of amused surprise. “Kessler is not known for convoluted speaking.”

  “Um, everything is so new, I am having trouble understanding it all,” I mumbled. “And I didn’t sleep well last night.”

  “Ah.” One of her brows lifted slightly, and I knew that she added meaning to my comment about sleeping. But she didn’t say anything.

  So I went back to the subject that interested me most. “Why me? Because Shnit hates me?”

  “That was certainly a priority, and it would explain Kessler’s sense of betrayal, and his anger, when the Sherwood boy turned him down, especially after the refusal of the tall one. What’s his name? Rel. Coming from a humble background, working hard to become so skilled. Everything Kessler wants in his leaders, yet Rel refused adamantly. You can see how that would infuriate Kessler. He does not like his gifts turned down.”

  Puddlenose hadn’t told me that. So he held things back out of embarrassment, too. And of course Rel had just sat there and Relled at me.

  “Then there is the fact that you appeared out of nowhere and rose, in an admirably short time, to the right hand of your queen — learning magic along the way, even if it’s the weak version of magic called ‘white’. All this indicates brains, hard work, dedication. Qualities that Kessler values. Then of course is Shnit’s tremendous loathing for you and the rest of your Mearsiean friends. And added to that is the fact that you look alike — ”

  “What?” I almost yelled WE DO NOT! and managed to keep it back.

  But it probably showed in my face because Dejain gave me another of those amused glances, then said, “Black hair, blue eyes, pale skin, small build, but tough. Quick.”

  “Tough?” I repeated faintly. “I’m not tough.”

  “You’ve courage,” she said. “As for the rest, it’ll come with time, and growth. Kessler will expect you to meet his own high standards — you should probably prepare for that now.”

  “High standards? You mean, he doesn’t just sit around and direct the fumbl — the final plans?”

  If she noticed the slip, she gave no sign, but continued to mix powders slowly into some kind of concoction.

  “Oh yes.” She laughed. “He hates showing off, so you might not see him at practice, but the fact is, it took him quite a while to find the best swordmasters, for that meant those who could best him.”

  “But he’s so short, for a grownup!”

  “But quick. And strong. Very. The result of years of single-minded focus on mastery.”

  I thought of Shnit, and said sourly, “It must run in the family.”

  She smiled. “It does indeed.”

  “You know — ?”

  She laughed. “Yes. I’m not as young as I appear, for I’ve been around more than a century. Mastering my own arts.”

  Horror wrung through me — for one of the most telling differences between light magic and dark was in the anti-aging spell.

  Mindful of the possibility of someone on another world getting my records (I got here, after all), here’s a quick explanation. The light magic anti-aging spell works only if you perform it before the change called puberty (disgusting word), which hits people on Sartorias-deles when they reach their full growth. If you try it after, it simply won’t work. But if you do it as a kid and then change your mind and dissolve it, you finish growing. Dark magic will stop you at any age, but if you dissolve the spell, your body catches up with time all of a sudden, and also, it does weird things to you over time.

  Light magic cooperates with the magic of the world, which is why the spells are longer and they are hard to hold — and they sometimes fail. Dark magic forces magic from the world; it, too, is hard to hold, but that’s because there’s so much power built that the spell can consume the magician who isn’t strong enough to hold it. And the magic is spent, it doesn’t go back into the world when the spell ends. That’s where the names come from — dark meaning absence of light, or magic used up. This is why so many dark magic sorcerer-rulers ruin their kingdoms. Clair says they don’t care about the future, they want power now, at any price.

  I almost told Dejain that I’d stopped growing, but held that back. She seemed friendly enough, but little things tweaked at me: Kessler’s ‘absurd sense of loyalty’; her dark magic concoction, which was setting up a vapor that made my head buzz in a weird way; her attitude about Kessler’s goals. Like it was all no more important than a game.

  She’d been talking while I was thinking. Her quiet, sweet voice was almost lost in the eerie, distant buzzings that the vapors in her potion caused in my head.

  “... goal is to reach the point at which there is nothing I do not know how to control, or do not have access to controlling if I so will. My present project here relates to minds and mental access. We used to have these abilities inborn, did you know that? And will again.”

  “I didn’t know,” I said. My voice sounded distant as well.

  “I learned slowly, on my own, mostly. It will not be so difficult for you. Think of the knowledge. The power you’ll have in ten years!”

  I did, and for a brief time, was tempted to join in wholeheartedly. What could be so wrong with promotion by merit?

  But not by force, I thought hazily. People have to want change, and then wouldn’t they choose it for themselves?

  No answer — of course. My thoughts were also slowly growing distant, though strangely, a portion of my attention remained curiously clear. It was as if, for a moment, I heard all the voices of the world, or an echo of them. Happy, sad, busy, sleepy, angry, dull, making music, making food ... everyone and everything. I knew then, I knew I had no right to choose for them all.

  And so I let go the dizzying prospect of all that knowledge. The surge of regret and longing and sorrow and fear snapped my wits back to the here-and-now.

  I looked through my own eyes again, instead of inside, and discovered I had been watching her move from object to object as she briefly explained its purpose.

  “You’ll need to study my books, of course, and I will presently begin you on an appropriate sequence of preliminary studies. First, though, I suspect Kessler will require you to learn the world’s map, so that he can instruct you in the rudiments of strategy. Temporal strategy.” She smiled sweetly, and laid her hand on the table. “I have my own strategy. For example here, and elsewhere, I can assemble all the basic components of a person. To create life, a mind, now that is an intriguing goal!” She turned back to her concoction. “My goals for now are contiguous with Kessler’s. I provide magical services, and he supplies me with subjects for experimentation from among his prisoners.”

/>   My blood turned into ice.

  “Have you any questions, child?” she asked. “I have been talking for a long time, and I hope to some purpose.”

  She wanted a response. Pure fright cleared my head enough to enable me to say, “No, ma’am. As you say, I’ve lots to learn from Kessler first.”

  Right then, he seemed the saner, safer choice between the two!

  Dejain smiled again, and dipped her pretty chin in a nod. “As well. His expectations are high. You’d do well to put your energies into his work for a time. You’ll have more leisure to begin our work soon enough.”

  “All right,” I said, about as subdued as I’d ever spoken to any adult I didn’t trust. I was thoroughly spooked.

  “Come back if questions do occur, child. In the meantime, do not dismiss Alsaes so lightly. He has none of Kessler’s brilliance, but he’s adept with petty cruelties. He already sees you supplanting him in the place he deemed his, and if you overtly make of him an enemy he will do his best to make trouble for you. And Kessler does have a temper.”

  “Thanks for the warning,” I said, and left.

  Even though the outside air had gotten even hotter, I was glad to get away from the bone-aching chill of Dejain’s rooms.

  I wandered back up the street, watching groups of people at various chores, from unpacking or transporting supplies to running in those neat, orderly lines. Brilliance? I thought skeptically. He just seems crazy to me. But then, so does she. Of course two crazies would think each other great.

  Me, I just had to figure how to get myself, the girls, and the itchfeet out of there, preferably with our hides intact.

  Diana ran by with one of those squads. They flashed across a street and disappeared behind a barracks building, moving in the direction of the practice areas. I was tempted to follow, and then wondered if that was a good idea.

  Why not? I stopped, uncertain what to do next. So far it seemed I was free to do what I wanted, except Kessler hadn’t told me where the girls were staying or what jobs they’d been assigned to. All that stuff about being his heir — maybe he expected me to just ignore the girls and devote myself to learning his tasks.

  So that I could launch my career by killing Clair.

  Again that cold nastiness trickled through my veins.

  Would I get the girls in trouble if I went and found them? Everyone seemed so orderly and purposeful. Everyone but me.

  Was I being tested again?

  I sighed, then started up the street at a brisk, purposeful pace. Kessler did say he expected me to ‘convince’ the feet to change their minds. I could use that as an excuse to visit them — if anyone asked.

  The prison air was just as stuffy as ever, but at least it was cooler than the outside air; after I’d toiled up the street I really needed some shade.

  The guards ignored me after one glance, and no one else spoke to me. I marched in like I had important business there, and felt my way down the steps. “Puddlenose?” I called. “You awake? Tell me when to stop.”

  “Right there. Welcome to our palace. Take the most comfortable chair. Got any news?” he added as I picked the lock with my little finger and slipped inside their cell. My eyes began slowly to adjust to the murk.

  “I’m supposed to be convincing you to join,” I said, kneeling down on the dirt. “So, will you see the error of your ways?” I spoke in Mearsiean, of course, but I felt uneasy about hinting at the truth more than with a sarcastic tone.

  Even so, I saw Rel shake his head slightly, and look away. In disgust?

  Annoyed, I turned my back on him and scratched Kessler’s name in the dirt, then I pointing down at it. Puddlenose bent over and traced his finger lightly in the grooves I’d made, then he swiped it smooth again, sat back on his heels, and sighed softly.

  Christoph, meanwhile, said cheerily, “You’ll have to keep working on us, CJ. Meantime, think you could get us some scissors?” He blew at his hair, which hung down in his face.

  “I don’t remember,” Puddlenose murmured softly, rubbing his eyes. “I was too little.”

  So much for Puddlenose recalling some obscure but crucial detail about Kessler’s past that would help us.

  I had a sudden thought. “Can you even move? I mean, if you did get — if they let you free?”

  Puddlenose reacted, but the light was too dim for me to make out his expression. My question startled him, that much I could see, but not why.

  “Not a lot,” Puddlenose admitted, after a long hesitation. Then in his usual joking voice, “Mostly I watch the light change.”

  “You can tell what time it is?” I asked, amazed.

  “See? In the stairway? There is a little reflected light. I’d say it’s about noon.”

  “Yuk,” I said, horrified. The light was barely perceptible to me now. Christoph said, in Shelanian — his home language — ”Puddlenose sleeps — ”

  “Think I’ll catch up now,” Puddlenose said, and stretched out carefully.

  Christoph went on, “We two are lazy, but Rel does a few million pushups a night. We figure it’s enough for all three.”

  I gave Rel a sour look. He would, of course.

  “Wake me if they remember our grub,” Puddlenose murmured.

  I could barely see his outline; he turned his back and curled up.

  “Sleeps a lot,” Christoph commented. “I guess it runs in the family.”

  I didn’t say anything for a short time; I felt like something important had been hinted at, but I was missing it. Then it occurred to me that they hadn’t been all that glad to see me, and I’d assumed that a visit would cheer them up.

  “I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing,” I muttered. “It’s weird. Now everything feels kind of like a test, but I don’t know the rules.”

  “It is a test,” Rel said. “You know the stakes.”

  Everyone’s lives. That was obvious. Annoyed, I said, “So I’m too dumb to figure that out, right?”

  “Everything you do is indeed a test,” Rel said again.

  I opened my mouth to blast him, and then shut it. When I restated his words in my mind, they came out everything I did was being watched.

  I already knew that Kessler and his gang were pret-ty good at spying. So ... if I was being watched, did that increase the danger the boys were in? And then I had it — of course it did. I’d joked, when I came in, about switching them to Kessler’s side, but I realized with an inner jolt what Alsaes had meant — what Kessler expected. I was supposed to get the boys to join up. And at some point, Kessler, or Alsaes, was going to ask me for the boys’ answer, and then what?

  I heard Alsaes in my mind: We’re going to have one very soon.

  An execution.

  How could I have missed what he meant? Because I thought he was an idiot, of course. But even idiots can carry out threats.

  I said, “Can’t you guys join? Like us? For the same reason?”

  “No,” Rel said.

  At once all my rotten feelings about lying came flooding back.

  I got up and left before I got so mad I ruined everything by giving him the benefit of my opinion about Noble Sacrifices and Obnoxious Boneheads.

  I was now in such an angry mood I really needed to be by myself and calm down. I stalked out of the jail into the full heat and glare of noon, and boom! All my tiredness and headache came clanging back.

  I crossed the street, sidling a look at Kessler’s window. The desk was empty; he wasn’t there. Relieved, I walked inside the building. The air was less hot, though not even remotely cool. Still, there was a faint breeze — there were a couple windows open somewhere.

  I kept going down the hall and stood looking in at the cot where I’d spent the night before. Was this to be my room, then? No one had assigned me to one of the barracks. Where did Kessler sleep? I hadn’t seen a bedroom in this building, but it didn’t make any sense for him to traipse down to one of the barracks, and then back again to his office. It didn’t fit right with what little I had s
een of his personality, either.

  I stepped closer to the cot, feeling all the aches back again. My eyes stung from tiredness, and anger, and underneath it all that terrible awareness of my lie to Kessler, and the sense that I wasn’t going to be able to weasel out of this one alive. Me, or the others whose lives depended on me. And the disaster would be my fault.

  I flopped down on the cot, and on came the questions like a pack of wailing ghosties.

  Should I have said “No!” and let them stick us all in the jail? Would we really be better off waiting for a custom-designed execution? Who would be chosen to go first, and who would be forced to watch?

  I heard again Rel’s quiet but emphatic No. Like there was no other alternative. No honorable alternative? So he’d rather be croaked than pretend to cooperate?

  But if so, then why was he doing all that exercising?

  Gnarg.

  I covered my face with my hands, wishing I could block my thoughts like I blocked out the light. After a time my hands slid down, and my wild imaginings turned into dreams, and I slept.

  Not good sleep, either. Heavy, uneasy sleep. In fact, take it as truth that I never slept well during this entire mess.

  I woke up abruptly with that terrible feeling one gets when one isn’t alone. I brushed my damp hair off my face and peered up through blurry eyes to see Kessler standing in the doorway. Checking on me. Why? There was no “Sleep tight!” or even “Oh, excuse me!”

  I sat up, slightly dizzy, and rubbed my eyes again. When I nerved myself to open them, the doorway was empty. Definitely checking on me. Why?

  Because something was going on, natch.

  So I straightened up, reminded myself that (despite what overgrown clods with their fine notions of Honor and Nobility might think) I had a job to do, and it wouldn’t get done hiding in that room.

  So I stomped through the door — feeling that brief moment of relief when the clean-up spell divested me of grit and grime — and snuck to the office. Kessler was standing at the window reading papers by the slanting afternoon light.

  “Sleep? When there’s so much to do?” he said by way of greeting.