by Wendy Palmer
'We are travellers seeking shelter and food,’ said Trick, without a wince to so abuse traveller's privilege.
The old man looked from him to Mizzle and up at the clear sky, and opened wide the door. They followed him into a single room, with a kitchen space on one side of a large table, and a bed half-glimpsed behind a curtain on the other. An old woman stood in the kitchen, hands clasped in apron, watching them with malice not apparent in the old man.
'Please sit,’ said the old man and they sat, while the woman seized bowls and slammed them on the table. She ladled out stew from a pot she took from a hook over the fire.
Watching her, Trick noticed a pallet by the heath, obscured by the table until now. The old man blocked his view of it as he gave them bread.
Mizzle brushed against his arm as she took up her spoon, a light and burning touch meant only to warn him of what he already knew. Either the old couple slept in separate beds in a long-running marital dispute, or they housed a third person whose bed the old man tried to bar from view.
Trick gave up trying to see it and turned his attention to the food. He ate only because Mizzle did, but it was so good to have fresh hot food, thick salty broth with vegetables and a bit of rabbit. Their back was to the forest but they did not fear to hunt in it. And could he possibly imagine this shuffling old man or his angry hobbling wife hunting rabbit on the edge of the trees? If there was Illusion in their appearance, Mizzle did not seek to dispel it for him.
He finished his bowl and scooped up the dregs of the broth with his bread, freshly baked and full of rich nutty flavour. The old couple had stared at them all the while he ate, and now he glanced up sharply. They both ducked their heads and looked away.
Mizzle's own bowl was only half-empty and she pushed it over to him without looking away from the old man across the table. Trick took it and wished for her bread as well but in that she did not oblige.
When he was done, Mizzle pushed the bench back and stood. ‘We will take him.'
She got nothing but defiance from the old woman. ‘You won't have him.’ She clutched at her husband's arm. Clutched at his arm, but did not, Trick thought, mean him.
Mizzle eyes glowed, Trick would have sworn to it. She laid her hand flat on the table and it seemed a wind blew through the room and a boy sat on the pallet by the fire where none had been before.
In his first glance at him where he sat sheltered by the old couple, Trick knew his little-heeded conscience would never let him hand a child to Avenir. His second glance, against all expectation, told him he knew this boy.
'Mouse?’ he said. The same dark hair and dark-eyed wary glance and mute reproach. This was the stableboy from the barracks. ‘How did you get here?'
But the boy shook his head and gave him no sign of recognition. Trick turned to the old couple. ‘How did you take him from Port Told so quickly?’ Mizzle had forced a fast pace, and how could Mouse beat them here with no other horse tied up outside?
The old couple knew the game was over and pulled the boy to sit between them, old arms wrapping him and obscuring his face. All the same, Trick was sure it was Mouse, even when the old woman said, ‘He came here himself, he has been here for months.'
It had to be a lie, but could not be, given evidence of labour that he had seen outside. Only a young back and youthful strength could have done that work. He glanced aside at Mizzle and saw not confusion, not curiosity, but an implacable blankness. She would take the Illusionist back to Avenir and never care for his innocence. Indeed she bent over the table to grab the boy's shoulder, physically wrenching him from the arms of the husband and wife, who set up a squawking protest.
Mizzle used one hand to draw the boy away. ‘Gekizou,’ she cried and one of her swords sprang to full size in the other hand, flashing light in the firelit room. In that, Trick could not take part. He went for her sword arm and was batted aside. She turned with full fury on him, holding cowering boy and sword and looking at a disloyal ally.
'I will not support you in this,’ he told her from the floor, as if it mattered. He expected to die.
Something flitted across her face. She let go of the boy and kept the sword and walked out into the garden. She slammed the door shut and left Trick looking at Mouse and Mouse looking back at him.
Trick swore on a gasp of breath and got up. Out in the garden, clouds had come over the clear sky and his breath frosted out. Mizzle stalked the horses on the other side of the fence.
He was comforted to see she had sheathed the one sword rather than drawing the other to make a fine pair.
Her fine-boned hands clenched into fists and relaxed. ‘You think to disallow me from this?'
She was under scant control. He had a suspicion now and asked the flat-out question to see if she would answer. ‘What's the matter with you, Elvish?'
She did answer, after a long pause and a long breath. ‘The cloak,’ she said. ‘The stone in the cloak, I need it.'
He remembered that first time he had sensed anger from her, the closing of eyes and the blank shell she had been. ‘You use this to control yourself?'
She brought her hands together, fingertips pressed to fingertips, and focussed on the cathedral arch of her own hands. Trick let her, not wanting to panic her with his own impatience. Three breaths she took and said, ‘I channel impulse to it so I will not be overwhelmed.'
'Well,’ he said. ‘I think you might need that stone then.'
He was almost sorry when she looked at him at last but something seemed to relax in her. ‘Then we will take the boy.'
He couldn't. He had finally found the limit of his dissipation. ‘Not to Avenir.'
Again, he had the feeling of being balanced on the knife-edge of life and death, all centred on Mizzle's tendril-thin self-control. He felt Linnet try to shove him off it, and bit his tongue hard on flippant provoking words. He would say nothing now, while Mizzle weighed up his life.
'Find another way,’ she said, after long thought. ‘You find another way and we do not need the boy.'
Trick had guessed, in the breathless silence of her consideration, that she had learnt from Dester to second- and third-guess her own first impulse, and had been content to let her think. That this was her solution dismayed him.
But he took the reprieve and turned back to the cottage. Mizzle came after him up the path. Suddenly a huge man in armour sprang from the ground in front of him, swinging a massive sword.
Trick swore and threw himself backwards. He hit the ground rolling and came up with a snow-covered branch. He swiped at the warrior, but the branch passed straight through the massive chest. As he tried to regain his balance, the warrior drove the sword at him and the tip of it passed through his ribs. He fell back, clutching the wound. Mizzle made her swords appear and slashed at the armoured man, cutting through the armour like butter. The warrior bellowed and disappeared.
Mizzle turned to Trick on the ground. He clutched at a cut that was oddly painless. He took his hand away and saw no wound, no blood, not even a tear in his shirt.
'An Illusion,’ he said. He still struggled to disbelieve his own eyes. He had felt that sword go in.
She pulled him to his feet. ‘If I had not been here, that Illusion may have killed you. Do you still wish mercy for the boy?’ The brief swordplay seemed to have discharged the last of the black cloud about her.
He half-laughed, not sure, and pushed open the door just ahead of her. Mouse sat between the old couple, head bowed, and he was sure. All three stared at him as if he was the axeman.
He sat and meant to tell them what he planned to do. Instead, he asked, ‘Have you no twin?’ The boy shook his head slowly. ‘Is this your true appearance?’ He could not abide not knowing. If had just been appearance he might have nodded to coincidence or an unknown brother except both Mouses were mute. But he had a nod from the boy and a nudge from Mizzle to confirm it.
He set his chin on his hand and his elbow on the table and tried to find some difference between the frightened
boy sitting opposite him and the stableboy in Port Told. Mizzle nudged him again and said in his ear, ‘He is not the same boy.'
She had seen Mouse the stableboy, he remembered, when he had followed him out the barracks gate for his own mysterious reasons. ‘You can see some difference?'
'They look exactly the same,’ she said. ‘But this one is not the same boy.'
Trick realised she knew something and that she was not prepared to discuss it, impatient and tightly reined-in. He let it drop. ‘You'll come with us.'
Mouse just went ashen and the old couple seized him, weeping into his hair and crying for mercy. Trick recoiled and wished he had chosen his words with more care.
'We won't hand you to Avenir,’ he said, raising his voice. ‘But we cannot defeat him without you.'
Mizzle raised her head and did not look displeased and Mouse took a breath and another, but the couple held Mouse tighter.
'You cannot take him,’ said the old woman.
'We need him,’ said the old man.
Trick understood. Their concern had never been for the boy's fate, but for their own. ‘We'll bring your grandson back.’ He tried not to sound too disdainful, since he was not sure his own motives would have been different.
Mouse shook his head at him and Trick figured his first guess was wrong and they had a son of their dying years. But Mouse pushed a slate board across to him, covered in neat chalked writing that he kept obscured from the husband and wife as he handed it across.
They sheltered and fed me and will not let me leave, Trick read. I must deliver a message to Kiara Valley.
Sorry was scrawled hastily at the bottom.
So. Mouse hedged his bets. He wrote a speech asking their help to escape the old couple, and while he wrote it sent an Illusion after them and added an apology when it failed.
Mouse omitted a whole barrel of information and tried not to let the old couple know his plan. Trick had no such compunction.
'The boy is a prisoner here and wants to leave,’ he said. Beside him, Mizzle straightened.
Mouse frowned. Snatching back the slate, he tapped hard on the line about sheltering and feeding him.
'I don't care what they did for you when you were running from Avenir.’ It was a guess but had to be a good one, for Mouse went white again. ‘Now you're slave labour for them and I'm taking you.'
Mizzle stood and stretched her hand out to the boy. But Mouse grabbed the old woman's arm and shook his head, determination etched across his fiercely stubborn face. As if he had written it on the slate, his meaning was clear. He would not help them fight Avenir unless a solution was reached with the old couple. The alternative was to take him prisoner as Trick had already discovered he could not do. Mouse gambled on him holding to that resolution.
'Please, sir. Please.’ The old man's hand shook.
'We'll die without him to help us through winter,’ said the old woman.
Trick felt his patience quiver, and Mizzle's snapped. ‘Enough,’ she said. ‘Then he will come back to you once he has helped us against Avenir.'
But then Mouse looked desperate and shook his head again.
Trick swore and Mizzle slapped the table and turned a hostile look on him.
'Promise to let him go in spring,’ was the only compromise he could think of under her lamplight eyes.
'And next winter?’ The old woman began to resemble a quibbler in the marketplace.
Trick guessed he had about ten beats of the heart before Mizzle took Mouse by force and handed him to Avenir as prisoner, LightElvish behaviour be damned. He resisted the urge to put a restraining hand on Mizzle, one sure thing to break her control. ‘You can't hold him forever. He must have worked off his debt to you by now.'
'We risked our lives to shelter him when that Wizard was after him, giving him his Line not to be crossed,’ said the old woman. Her voice had gone triumphant, her hands on the boy not protective but possessive. Mouse nodded solemnly. ‘He is ours unless you offer us a replacement.'
Here was the crux. ‘Lady,’ he said, half to the old woman, and half to Mizzle who might think it fair exchange. ‘If you think I'll stay here—'
'Not you,’ she said, so scornfully he felt offended. ‘Bring our son back to us and you can have the boy.'
Trick was acutely conscious of Mizzle's eyes on the back of his neck and her cousins on their trail, gaining with every moment they were forced to delay. ‘Where is this son?’ he asked, knowing it wouldn't be close.
'He went away for the Second Day War and never came home.’ The old man leant forward as he told them this, as intent as if he had never told anyone before.
Trick flung up his hands, driven to Livanian gestures by complete frustration. ‘That was twenty years ago. He's dead.'
'He's not!'
Trick was beginning to intensely dislike the old woman. ‘We're not chasing after a dead man.'
She leapt up as if she had never hobbled, snatched a letter from a shelf and flung it at him. He read it and saw what she wanted him to see. The letter was dated after the Second Day War and the son spoke of being home on the heels of the letter.
Mizzle sat down again and took the letter from him. She looked at it, not reading it, he was sure, and dropped it to the table. ‘We will go.'
The old woman dropped a deep and abidingly nasty curtsey, bowing low as they left. Trick followed Mizzle down the path. He had not known she was capable of such sympathy, and had to assume her intention was not as she had said.
He untied Bet, shaking his head. ‘Now what?'
'Take me to where this Second Day War happened.’ Mizzle had already mounted, waiting with the clouded midday sun caressing her and her silver eyes shining like the moon.
'Mizzle,’ he said. ‘We can't find the son. We might as well bring them bones and tell him he's dead.'
'I do not care about the son,’ she answered. ‘But there was a scent about the letter which tells me a herb grows where it was written. I can use it.'
In a spell against Avenir, she meant, with battle-light shining in her eyes. And her intent, as she had honestly said, was to go, not to return with the son. He had assumed it, was disappointed in her regardless, and did not suggest they do otherwise. Leaving stubborn honourable Mouse to his fate here was objectively better than giving him to Avenir. His conscience could be assuaged by that titbit and he turned his back to the cottage and mounted Bet.
His first impulse was to take Mizzle down into the plain where the first days of the war had been fought, but that wasn't right. The letter had been written just before the muster was dismissed, from the final camp in the hills back towards the Giant's fire and the pursuing DarkElves.
Fortune had utterly turned Her face from him. ‘We can't,’ he said on a sigh. ‘It's back the way we came and I don't know that either of us want to meet your family halfway.'
Mizzle hesitated and hesitated and finally said, ‘They will have been scattered and not yet had time to regroup.'
Trick looked at her, wanting to ask and not sure if he should. She cast a glance skyward and said, ‘I sent a call to the Giant when we passed his fire. He defends the hills against them.'
He turned Bet and headed her across the bridge and north between the river and the forest edge, with Mizzle riding beside him. ‘That's nice of him,’ he said, for something to say, while his tenacious memory went off on wildfire search.
Mizzle smiled faintly. ‘It is more a vendetta against DarkElves than a favour to me.'
He heard her only on the edge of what he was thinking. ‘You said there was a man there at the Giant's fire, who had been there for years.'
'Yes,’ she said, with a slanted glance in his direction, as if she already knew something and was waiting for him to catch up.
Trick rubbed his eyes. He was already short of sleep and the meal at the cottage had made him feel it. Now he struggled to understand why she looked at him like that. ‘But it can't be the son because he meant to come home and I can't see the p
rospect of sitting by a Giant's fire for a lifetime tempting him from that.’ Unless his mother's always been a harridan.
'It did not,’ Mizzle said. ‘The man I saw was chained by the fire.'
Now he knew why she looked at him so. ‘Why didn't you tell me before?'
'I did not think you would care,’ she said, off-hand and devastatingly close to true.
'I didn't know,’ he said, skirting around her flat assessment of him. ‘You should have—'
'I?'
She silenced him with a single word and a raised eyebrow. He hunched his shoulders and stared sullenly ahead.
'You think badly of me for not doing things you yourself would not do.’ Mizzle did not accuse him. She just said it, like commenting on the weather.
He shook his head, but not to deny her. How did a DarkElf see through him so easily? The more he cursed her, the worse he felt about himself. Only Linnet had kept him on the path of right. That his conscience had finally stirred on behalf of Mouse was surely her lasting influence, like the weight against his heart. He changed the subject.
'Explain to me how you knew Mouse in the cottage was not Mouse in the barracks?'
Mizzle lifted her hands and let them fall. ‘They were different. They felt different.'
She could not explain, not in Bourchian. DarkElvish surely had a word, but he would not ask for it. ‘I don't know how that could be.'
Mizzle tilted her head, looking across at him. ‘Human magic does not allow a person to take another form?'
'Illusions do. But you said it wasn't.'
'It was not. We saw the boy's true form. The stableboy was the impostor.’ She stared out between Skye's ears. ‘I felt it, I thought I did. A rare, a dangerous magic. But there is always a flaw. Why did he follow us?'
He was about to scoff. Who would waste magic pretending to be a stableboy in Port Told? But he stopped himself. She was in a strange mood, speaking soft and to herself and he didn't want to awaken her. Besides, why did the pretend-Mouse, new and watchful stableboy, follow them?