Points of Departure

by Patricia C. Wrede

  But Acrilat was not one of the Great Gods; It needed something to use as a link with Liavek before It could act there. Until last spring, It had been using the Benedicti family as a tie to span the thousands of miles between Acrivain and the City of Luck. Granny had been particularly put out when Jehane Benedicti had brought this situation to her attention, for the Benedictis were related to her. The elder Mistress Marigand Benedicti was the granddaughter of Granny Carry’s next-from-youngest grandson, who had emigrated to Acrivain some sixty or seventy years previously. The fact that their Liavekan blood made the Benedictis the perfect link for Acrilat had not lessened Granny’s irritation in the least. She had been very short with Acrilat when she had cut the link and sent It packing.

  Granny scowled at her tea, and two of the cats made discreet departures from nearby chairs. Perhaps she should have stopped to ask a few questions before throwing Acrilat out so peremptorily. Well, it was far too late for that now. Granny gave herself a mental shake and returned to pondering her present problem. No matter how many ways she looked at it, she came up with the same answers. Acrilat still needed a link to Liavek, and the Benedicti family was still Its best and most likely prospect. But the original link between Acrilat and the Benedictis had been cut, so Acrilat could no longer work through them unless they initiated the contact.

  The conclusion was inescapable. One of the Benedictis was doing something remarkably stupid.

  Granny snorted. In her opinion, saying that one of the Benedictis was doing something stupid was like saying fish swam. The question was, which of the family was it, and just what was he or she doing? After a moment’s consideration, Granny went to get a sheet of paper, pen, and ink. She wrote a brief note and folded it, then drew on her luck to seal the letter. Jehane Benedicti had more sense than most of her family, and she owed Granny something. She would come. Granny paid the driver of a passing footcab to deliver the message.

  Jehane Benedicti’s arrival the following morning was heralded by four of the cats, who trotted through the open door ahead of her like an honor guard. Jehane herself paused in the doorway as if wondering whether she ought to knock when the door was already open. She was tall, with light yellow hair, troubled blue eyes, and pale skin that showed signs of recent sunburn.

  “Are you coming in, or have you decided to have another try at burning yourself red as a cooked lobster?” Granny inquired.

  “I thought it was mostly gone,” Jehane said, reddening further.

  “Your nose is peeling,” Granny said. “When you get home, put some aloe and eucalyptus oil on it. In the meantime, sit down and tell me what your family is up to now.”

  Jehane, who had just started to seat herself, jerked upright. “How did you know?”

  “If I knew, I wouldn’t be asking.” Granny gave Jehane a sharp look, then handed her a cup of tea and said more gently, “What is it?”

  “Nerissa’s joined the House of Responsible Life.”

  “Is that all?” Granny relaxed slightly. The House of Responsible Life was very nearly the last place in Liavek where Acrilat could find a foothold; the whole place was devoted to breaking ties, not making them. Jehane’s younger sister, at least, was safe.

  “All?” Jehane’s voice was incredulous. “They’re an order of suicides.”

  “The Green Priests are not an order of suicides,” Granny said calmly. “If they were, they’d all be dead. They are an order of people who plan to commit suicide, which is an entirely different thing. I should think that was obvious.”

  “Nissy’s done more than plan,” Jehane said bitterly. “She’s gotten her luck bound into that cat of hers, so when the cat dies, she will, too. And I used to like Floradazul.”

  Granny shook her head. “You Benedictis! Don’t any of you ever think things through? Floradazul was a spanking-new cat when I gave her to Nerissa; she’s got at least eight lives to go. Even if she wastes a few more getting kicked by camels, she has a good chance of lasting another seventy or eighty years. Nerissa will probably die of old age long before the cat does. Drink your tea.”

  Jehane sipped at her cup obediently. Her sharp-featured face wore an expression of doubtful concentration, as if she were trying to duplicate Granny’s calculations without really believing that cats had more than one life. Granny waited. Jehane would feel better if she worked things out for herself.

  “I still don’t like it,” Jehane said at last.

  “Has it done Nerissa any harm?” Granny said irritably.

  “No,” Jehane said thoughtfully. “I don’t think so. She’s more sure of herself now, and I think she gets along better with the rest of the family. She’s even found a theater that’s doing an Acrivannish play, and we’re all going.”

  “All of you?” Granny said. Her eyes narrowed. “What play is it?”

  “When Lilacs Strew the Air,” Jehane replied, surprised. “I don’t know who wrote it.”

  “Hmmph. Well, who’s performing it, then?”

  “The company at the Desert Mouse,” Jehane said. She hesitated, then added in a doubtful tone, “The first performance is next week, if you think you’d be interested.”

  “Oh, I’m interested,” Granny said dryly. An Acrivannish play, with most of the Benedicti family in attendance, sounded like something Acrilat would find useful. Very useful. But there was no point in disturbing Jehane by explaining. “Tell me about the rest of your family,” she said to Jehane.

  Jehane did so, with the scrupulous and slightly wary politeness of someone who is waiting to be told the real reason for the peremptory summons she had received. Her brothers, Gillo and Givanni, had sold the winery her father had bought them and purchased a fishing boat. Her brother Deleon, who had run away nine years before, was still missing. Her sister Marigand was pregnant again; Isobel had (for the third time) refused to marry the suitable youth her parents had found for her; Livia was engaged to a thoroughly unsuitable Hrothvekan. Jehane herself was beginning to feel the need of some occupation, preferably one that paid. She did not say that her parents had ceased receiving money from Acrivain, and would therefore eventually run out of funds to live on. Granny, who had learned those facts and more through channels of her own, saw the worry in Jehane’s eyes and did not press her.

  “It’s about time you decided to do something with yourself,” Granny said instead. “What are you, twenty-six? Well, better late than never. Don’t let me keep you.”

  Jehane left a few minutes later, her expression announcing to the world that all Liavekans were completely unaccountable, and Granny Carry was the most unaccountable of them all. Granny waited until she was well out of sight, then went out and hailed a footcab. “The Desert Mouse,” she told the runner, and they set off.

  The Desert Mouse was a shabby little theater in Sandy Way. Granny took one look at the signpost and knew her instinct had been right. “When Lilacs Strew the Air,” the playbill announced in large black letters, “An Acrivannish Play by Deleon Benedicti.” So this was what Jehane’s missing brother had been doing for the past nine years. Granny thought for a moment, then drew on her luck and wove a small, subtle spell to make herself easily overlooked. Deleon Benedicti was unlikely to recognize her, for his mother had never bothered to bring any of the males of the family along on her duty visits to Granny, but there was no sense in taking chances.

  The interior of the theater was just as shabby as the outside. There were perhaps a hundred seats, and even in the dim light it was clear that the cushions had seen better days. A rehearsal was in progress on the small stage, presumably of the upcoming Acrivannish play. Granny snorted softly and slipped into a chair at the back to watch.

  The rehearsal was proceeding in fits and starts; every time it looked as if a scene was actually going to get going, a tall, elegant woman would stop everyone to change the emphasis on a line or move one of the players three feet backward. Deleon Benedicti was easy to pick out; his pale skin and yellow hair identified him instantly as a Farlander. He was a very pretty y
oung man, Granny thought as she studied him, but troubled. And there were undercurrents between him and the rest of the players that she didn’t like at all. Acrilat had had plenty of material to work with here, that was obvious. But was this just one of the god’s mad whims, or did it have some specific purpose in mind?

  The scene on stage was approaching some kind of climax. Deleon stepped forward and began to speak. “Acrilat, thou art crueler to thy servants than to thine enemies. Those who hate thee prosper, and those who love thee suffer entanglements of the spirit.”

  Granny stiffened. Deleon was declaiming, with considerable spirit, the chief and most effective of the invocations of Acrilat. Even in Acrivain, that particular invocation was almost never recited in entirety, though its beginning was used in several more common prayers. Deleon had not had the sense to stop with the opening lines; he had made the entire text into a speech in his play.

  The enormity of this stupidity was appalling, but worse quickly followed. Deleon and a beautiful woman with an overly theatrical air even for a player began miming gestures for a sorcerous duel. Despite the frequent pauses for consultation with the director, Granny could see the pattern those gestures would make when they were performed in unbroken sequence. Summoning and hypnotism. And Acrilat did not need to work through trained wizards with invested birth-luck; all it needed was an opening. This would give it one.

  Granny frowned thoughtfully through the remainder of the rehearsal. She might be able to persuade Deleon or the director of the Desert Mouse to alter the play, but Acrilat would only try something else. She was reasonably sure she could frustrate the mad god’s attempts to penetrate Liavek, but she had better things to do with her time than to run about watching Acrilat like a sailor eyeing storm clouds. She rose from her seat and made her way slowly backstage, in search of information.

  A dark young man with a wispy moustache was sitting on the floor behind the curtain, looking from the scene being enacted on the stage to a complicated chalk diagram on the floor in front of him. He looked, Granny thought approvingly, as if he had a goodly share of S’Rian blood in him.

  “Naril!” the deep voice of the director called. “I want to check the timing of the effects this time; watch your cues.”

  “Ready, Thrae,” the moustached man called back. He looked worriedly from the diagram to the stage again and began muttering under his breath.

  Granny watched for a few minutes, and her eyes narrowed as various aspects of the stage magician’s spells unfolded before her. She waited patiently until the director stopped the action to explain, at some length, the importance to the scene of each player’s making certain precise movements at certain specific times. As Naril stopped muttering and sat back with a sigh, Granny stepped forward and loosened the threads of the spell that made the players overlook her.

  Naril started, then scrambled to his feet. “Who’re you? What are you doing here? Thrae doesn’t like visitors during rehearsals!”

  “I’m not exactly a visitor,” Granny replied absently, looking him over. “S’Rian, are you?”

  The stage magician blinked and glanced uncertainly toward the stage. “Well, partly,” he said politely. “My father’s a Kellan.”

  “Would that be Farro Kellan?”

  “He was my grandfather,” Naril said, staring.

  “Ah.” Granny nodded in satisfaction. “Time flies.”

  “I’d be happy to talk to you about my grandfather, if you’d come back after the rehearsal’s over,” Naril said. “Or if you’d give me your name and directions, I could come and see you.”

  “You,” said Granny, “are a refreshing change from most of the idiots I’ve had to deal with lately. I do not wish to discuss your grandfather, but you are welcome to visit me if you wish. I live on the Street of Trees at the top of Mystery Hill. My name is Tenarel, but most people call me Granny Carry.”

  Naril’s eyes went wide, and he swallowed hard. Then he pressed both palms to his forehead and bowed deeply. “How may I serve you, Ka’Riatha?”

  “So you’re well-educated in addition to being unnaturally polite,” Granny commented, but less acerbically than usual. “Very nice, but don’t get carried away. I want to know whatever you can tell me about those people out there.” She gestured with her cane toward the argument on the stage. “Who they are, what they’re like, who is friendly with whom, who irritates whom, that sort of thing. In as few words as possible.”

  “I—” Naril glanced toward the stage as if hoping something would occur to give him a reprieve, then took a breath. “I’ll try, Ka’Riatha.”

  He did better than she had expected, and Granny was hard-put to control her reaction. The relationships among members of the company of the Desert Mouse were nearly as complicated as those of the entire Benedicti family. Deleon was, naturally, one of the worst offenders. The boy was, Naril said, in love with one of the players, a black-haired girl named Calla, and had been for nearly two years (though he thought he had hidden it from the rest of the company). Instead of pursuing her, Deleon was living with a different member of the cast, a man of striking good looks in his mid-twenties named Aelim. They had made this arrangement the previous year, shortly after Calla had begun visiting the House of Responsible Life.

  Granny listened to the remainder of Naril’s dutiful recital with only half an ear. So one of these players had an interest in the House of Responsible Life, did she? And it was Nerissa Benedicti, who worked at the House of Responsible Life, who had found out about the play and told the rest of the family. Granny didn’t like the smell of this at all. “What’s this Calla person like?” Granny said abruptly.

  “She’s…very decided,” Naril said cautiously. “And sure of herself. She doesn’t like to see people do things she thinks are foolish.”

  “Likes to meddle, does she?” Granny said.

  “Naril! What’s the matter back there? You missed your cue.” A long arm yanked the curtain back to reveal the strong-minded director. The woman took in Naril and Granny in one glance and said firmly, “No visitors backstage during rehearsals. You’ll have to leave, mistress.”

  “I’m not a visitor,” Granny said. “I’m a customer. I wish to buy a ticket to the first performance of this play.”

  “Of course, mistress,” the director replied smoothly. “If you’ll come up to the front, we can take care of it immediately.”

  Granny nodded a goodbye to Naril and went to purchase a ticket, specifying a seat in the center of the front row. Then she left the theater; there was nothing more for her to do at the Desert Mouse. She took a footcab back through the Canal District and Old Town to the Avenue of Five Mice. There she entered a large, square, three-story house, plastered a pale green and half covered with ivy, which stood on the corner of Five Mice and Neglectful Street.

  “A good death to you,” said one of the green-clad youths seated at the table just inside the door.

  “Not for another couple of centuries,” Granny said. “Where does the Serenity of this order keep himself these days?”

  “Second floor, third door on the right,” the second youth said. “Ask for Verdialos, if you get lost.”

  Granny nodded her thanks and went briskly up the stairs. She turned in at the proper door and found herself in a large, untidy room that smelled of warm leather, soap, and old books. At one side of the room, a tall, pale-skinned, yellow-haired girl of about seventeen sat at a table, copying something from a crumbling piece of brownish parchment onto a clean sheet of white paper. A black cat was curled contentedly on a pile of papers near the edge of the table. “Nerissa Benedicti,” Granny said. “I should have expected it.”

  Nerissa looked up. “Granny Carry!” she said in the tone of someone who did not know whether she was pleased or sorry to have been surprised in this particular fashion.

  “I’m glad your memory hasn’t failed you,” Granny said to Nerissa. “Hello, Floradazul,” she added, holding out a hand to the cat.

  The cat sniffed politely at
the hand, then began to purr. “Were you looking for me?” Nerissa asked cautiously.

  “No,” Granny said. “But you Benedictis turn up all over, whether I’m looking for you or not. Has Verdialos changed rooms, or was I misdirected?”

  “This is Verdialos’s room,” Nerissa said. Her expression had gone closed and wary. “I didn’t know you knew each other.”

  “We don’t,” Granny said, and raised a mental eyebrow at the expression of relief that flashed quickly across Nerissa’s face. “I’ve come to pay my respects to the new Serenity of this House.”

  “Verdialos has been Serenity for nearly six months.”

  “Then it’s about time I came, isn’t it? Where do I find him?”

  Nerissa provided directions, looking slightly less wary. Granny nodded and turned to go. At the door, she paused and looked back. “You’re doing better for yourself than I’d expected,” she said. “When your parents give you trouble over joining a church of hopeful suicides, come to me and I’ll take care of it.” She shut the door on Nerissa’s astonished gape and went looking for Verdialos, the Serenity of the House of Responsible Life.

  She tracked him down at last in a musty-smelling room, half-buried in account books. Verdialos proved to be a medium-sized man with brown eyes and a round, expectant face that was clearly misleading. He turned when he heard Granny’s cane on the floor and came forward to welcome her.

  “You’re Verdialos?” Granny said before he could speak.

  He gave her a quizzical look and nodded, obviously amused. “You were looking for me?”