The Language of Power

by Rosemary Kirstein

  Rowan looked at it. “Hm,” she said, dubiously.

  Ona took no offense. “Yes . . . It doesn’t quite work with a dog and cats. I’d have to make the cats kittens, to be good tea cups . . .”

  “One can’t help but feel sorry for them.” But the drawing was marvelously well executed. The imagined tea set seemed as real as the existing one.

  Rowan understood why she had been brought here. But— casual conversation, Reeder had insisted. Rowan would need to maneuver events.

  She reached out one hand. “May I ?”

  With shy pride, Ona passed the folder over. Rowan scanned through the drawings, then looked up to study Ona’s delicate skin, her faded hair; the woman was at least in her mid-fifties. “Have you been drawing all your life?”

  “Oh, since I was a child. Unfortunately, nice pictures don’t pay the bills.”

  “I’d really like to see some of them,” Rowan said, with sincerity. Ona hesitated. “Steerswomen have to draw quite often.” And this was true. “I think I might. . . learn something.”

  Ona allowed herself to be convinced, and she led Rowan through a door beside the hearth, into a small room with its own little fireplace, cold. The room was used for storage, but a small, dusty cot with a bare mattress stood against one wall. Rowan sat on this, as Ona scanned the various boxes and crates that filled most of the chamber.

  Ona sighed, selected one at random, opened it. “They’re not organized at all, I’m afraid. Most of these are old studies for pots.” She sifted through the contents quickly, abandoned it for another. “I suppose I’m the sort of person who just can’t stand to throw anything away.”

  “You never know what might come in useful,” Rowan commented.

  Ona received no satisfaction from the box, moved it to the floor to gain access to the trunk beneath it. “Oh, this is old . . .” She pulled out a leather folder, opened it. “Here!” Ona was first delighted, then hesitant, as she passed a folder over to the steerswoman. “I was rather young then . . .” Prepared to be patient, Rowan opened it and examined the contents.

  Several awkward drawings of flowers, the same arrangement, seen from different angles: then suddenly and startlingly, a single bloom executed perfectly, to the spark of sunlight in a drop of dew on its petals, with all its companions in the vase, and the vase itself, mere outline and shadow. “This is lovely!” Rowan declared, immediately.

  Ona demurred. “It’s unfinished.”

  “No . . . No, it’s perfect.” It was as if the artist had captured, not the outer world, but the seeing mind, as it focused closely on one chosen detail.

  Rowan felt an undeniable tug of longing. In her own work, when she was required to draw objects or scenes, she did so with precision and accuracy. But she felt that this single flower, alone and glowing with reality, more truly captured Rowan’s own sight, her own heart, as she apprehended with crystal precision some small portion of the wider world.

  She looked up at Ona in amazement. “How old were you when you drew this?”

  Ona sat down beside her. “Nine, I think.”

  The other drawings in the folder were more typical of a talented child: static depictions of various adults, perhaps family members, simple landscapes, and many, many drawings of cats. Ona retrieved a second folder, opened it. “I was older here.” She passed it to Rowan.

  The difference showed immediately. The artist’s hand was sure, and Ona now used selection of focus as a tool, at will, to very good effect. “I wish I could do this . . .” Passing through the drawings, Rowan found a face that interested her, paused.

  A thin man with white hair, a long beard . . . She recalled the bricklayer’s description. “Is this the wizard Kieran?”

  “Yes, it is.” Ona was delighted. “Now, how did you guess that?”

  “Actually, I’m here in Donner to fill in some history . . . And Kieran is an interesting case .. . Are you aware that he altered his behavior? That people used to be afraid of him?”

  “Marel and Nid used to talk about Ammi.”

  “Nid’s sister.”

  “Yes . . . but that was so long ago. People do change.”

  Rowan held the sketch carefully, lightly resting it on the fingers of both hands. “He hardly seems malevolent.” With eyes closed, chin on his chest, the old man might have been anyone’s elderly grandfather, dozing in the sunshine.

  But most drawings, and especially drawings made by persons of real talent, more closely reflected the artist’s own evaluation of the subject than objective fact. “Did you like Kieran?” Rowan asked.

  Ona shrugged, sifted through the other pages. “Well enough, I suppose. He had an interesting face.” She paused at another drawing, a half smile on her face.

  Kieran again, and a child, about three years old, tugging at the hem of his cloak, a mischievous spark in her eyes. Ona had captured the child’s bravado, the wizard’s feigned unawareness, the varying degrees of interest and uninterest on the part of persons nearby, themselves mere vague silhouettes.

  Rowan laughed out loud. “That’s Reeder!” An adolescent, but instantly recognizable among the shadowy watchers by the back-tilt of his head, an arm at particular aspect to the body, an air of disdainful superiority. Rowan found Naio beside his friend, leaning against a wall, arms crossed, ostentatiously casual. By shaded outline only, Ona had rendered both easily identifiable.

  Rowan indicated the child. “Who is the little girl?” she asked.

  “That’s Saranna.” Ona saw the change on Rowan’s face. “Did you know her?”

  “Not well.” But Saranna seemed determined to haunt the steerswoman. I’ll find your murderer, Rowan promised the girl in the drawing.

  Rowan’s compliments inspired Ona to pull out a second chest, while the steerswoman continued to leaf through the thick folder.

  Tucked among the separate sketches was a slim folio of soft leather, tied with silk ribbons. Rowan opened it.

  A face she recognized: Reeder’s traveling companion on Morgan’s Chance, the boy who had died by wizard’s magic.

  Rowan looked up: Ona was sifting through the trunk, her back to the steerswoman. Turning the pages quietly, Rowan glanced at the other drawings in the folio. The same boy, at a younger age; again, and younger yet. . .

  The last showed a chubby-cheeked infant, wrapped in a blanket, cradled in Naio’s arms. Father and son were fast asleep in the same high-backed armchair that Rowan had used during dinner. Their faces were soft with sleep, half shadowed, half revealed by gentle firelight. Of all the drawings, only this one bore a title, in a neat, slanted hand: First Night.

  Rowan closed and tied the folio, gently laid it beside her on the small, cold, dusty cot, and returned to sifting through the other drawings.

  As she neared the last, Ona suddenly emitted a girlish squeak, and a longer, more mature laugh. Rowan looked up to find her yanking from the trunk one ribbon-tied stack. Ona caught Rowan’s glance, inexplicably turned red, laughed again, and held the folder protectively behind her back, attempting to look innocent. But she could not hold the pose, and covered her eyes with one hand, laughing harder.

  Rowan was bemused. “A collection of nude studies, I presume?”

  “Oh, no—” Ona assured her; then, “no . . . oh!” She suddenly recalled something, and grew even redder. “Well, but just my imagination, really—honestly, I can’t believe I kept this . . .”

  Rowan half smiled. “An old sweetheart, then,” she said; and she felt the smile vanish.

  She heard Ona’s reply only distantly. “Oh, no, just an infatuation . . . but I was thirteen, you know how girls are. And of course I drew all the time back then, and dreamed a lot. . .”

  Rowan found that her hands had dropped, holding the folder limply, elbows on knees.

  She was surprised at her own tiredness; she was tired to her soul; she had been treading a very thin line between honesty and deceit; it was no place for a steerswoman; the strain of it suddenly exhausted her.

  Rowa
n said: “Is it Slado?” There was an odd quaver in her voice. She looked up at Ona.

  The potter was surprised. “Do you know him?”

  “No. But I’m interested in him, and his history. I’d like to know what he looks like.”

  Rowan stated these words simply; and then merely waited. She no longer knew what expression was on her own face— hope, or hatred; anger, weariness, or hunger—but whatever it was that the older woman saw, it made Ona pause, made her think, made her puzzle.

  Then it made her, very visibly, decide not to ask.

  Instead, Ona untied the ribbon and seemingly at random pulled out one sheet. She handed it to Rowan.

  The steerswoman gazed, silent, for a long time. “How idealized is this portrait?”

  Ona stepped nearer and tilted her head. “A lot, I suppose . . .”

  A young man, not tall, but well formed, gazing into the distance with a noble expression. Wind sent his long hair flowing back from his face. A cloak was thrown over one shoulder. His left hand rested lightly on the ornate hilt of a sword hung at his waist.

  Ona searched through the other drawings, selected another. “This one is more real.”

  The same young man seated at a small table, nursing a cup of tea. He was gazing off to his right, at something that was not depicted. His hair was now shown with the more typical crisp auburn texture, and his face was less perfectly symmetrical. His expression was one of cautious evaluation; Rowan wondered what he was watching.

  She studied him, feeling no sense of identification at all: the man she had been searching for, for these last years—but nothing startling, no sign of power.

  Such a very young man. “Did you ever speak to him?”

  “Only once. Right then, in fact. He saw me, and saw I was drawing him. I started to put my things away, but he said he didn’t mind, I should go on . . . But I was so flustered—” Ona slipped a third drawing over the others.

  On a page nearly blank, faint, preliminary lines: the set of shoulders, the shape of the head, positioning marks for the features. The inner edge of the hair was present, with one stray lock falling past the broad cheek. The left eye had been started, the lower lid from inner to outer corner—

  —and from there, a dark, slashed black line to the edge of the page and off it, as if at a sudden jerk of the artist’s hand.

  Ona said, “I just couldn’t bear him looking straight at me . . . I swept up my things and ran out. He laughed.”

  Ona sat down beside the steerswoman and considered the aborted portrait. “Do you know,” she said, “I’d forgotten about this one. So long ago . . . You think of the feelings of your youth with a sort of fondness, I think. Across these years I’ve remembered only that I had a sweet infatuation with the mysterious wizard’s apprentice. But seeing this again, it’s like I’m right back there . . .” She paused. “I stopped drawing him, after this.” Ona took the sketch from Rowan’s hand, held it at arm’s length, regarding it as one regarded the face of a person standing nearby. She shook her head. “The way he looked at me . . . I don’t know . . . I’d never seen anything like that. Not like you look at a person. He looked at me like I was . . . some sort of thing. Some interesting thing.” She handed it back to Rowan.

  “I suspect,” Rowan said, “that the wizards hardly regard the common folk as persons at all.”

  “But Kieran wasn’t like that.” Ona spoke with feeling. “I’d heard the story of Ammi, and all, but really, I thought that Nid must have told it worse than it was, because Kieran loved children. And . . . And he was kind, too, often, to anyone.”

  Kindness, again. Always, it seemed, in his last years, kindness from Kieran.

  Rowan sighed. “I don’t suppose you’re willing to part with these?” She held up the two drawings.

  Ona winced. “You take them. Now that I’ve seen them again, I won’t miss them. I think I’d rather remember that dreamy girl, so sweet on the magical boy.”

  5

  “And that, I suppose, is what you consider ‘discretion,’ ” Reeder said bitterly.

  The steerswoman did not reply. They passed one street lantern, another, candles glowing softly behind oil-paper panels. Beyond and around, silhouettes of dark buildings stood, with the occasional gentle light leaking from slitted shutters.

  Some explanation to Naio and Ona had been necessary. Rowan had chosen, again, the simplest: a steerswoman’s log-book from forty-two years ago, information from that time incomplete, and Rowan’s job being to fill the gaps. Perfectly true, and Naio had accepted it easily, even with some interest in how one went about solving such a problem. Ona had seen Rowan’s reactions in the back room, and clearly knew that there was more to the matter; but she had not pressed for details.

  “If this man is as dangerous as you say—”

  “You’d rather I had continued callously to manipulate your friends, to treat them like tools?”

  “Yes!” He spoke quietly, but vehemently. “They’ve had misery enough from wizards. If you’ve placed them in any danger, I’ll—” He balked at exactly what he might do. Really, he could do nothing, short of violence. And the steerswoman was armed; he was not. Rowan did not bother to reply.

  They walked in silence for some time. More street lamps, where moths tapped softly against the oil-paper. Rowan recalled the magic street lamps at Wulfshaven harborside, a gift to that city from the wizard Corvus. She wondered briefly how he and his own young apprentice were doing.

  Reeder stopped abruptly, and turned to her. “What do you plan for this former apprentice, this most evil man in the world?” His tone was harsh with sarcasm. “You want to find him, that much is obvious. What will you do when you do?”

  “Are you certain that you want to know? You didn’t earlier.”

  “I don’t care anymore.”

  “Very well then.” She planted herself solidly, looked up at his shadowed face. “I do intend to find him, if I can. When I find him, I plan to speak to him. When I speak to him, I shall require him to justify every evil act he has undertaken; and if he cannot, if I find his reasons insufficient to the destruction he has caused, I will see him dead.” She stood, merely waiting for him to speak.

  His pale green eyes were now dark in the darkness. “And what evil is it that he is doing?”

  “Murdering people. In very large numbers. Some quickly, by magic directly. Others, slowly, by starvation and forced conflict. Us, eventually.”

  “ ‘Us’?”

  “The folk of the Inner Lands. So far, only the warrior tribes of the Outskirts have suffered.”

  “Barbarians,” he said, disparaging, uncaring. “They’re all far away.”

  “As you say. But Slado’s magic will one day render the Outskirts uninhabitable. And at that point, far away will become right here. The Outskirters will move inward. They will be hungry. They are warriors. They’ll take what they need. Do you think that can happen peaceably?”

  “And exactly when will these great hordes of barbarians descend upon us?”

  “I don’t know. But think of what Jannik’s been doing lately, and Olin. Watch them. I believe they are preparing for war.

  “Slado is the master of all wizards,” she went on. “I don’t know to what extent he directs their everyday actions, but I know that when he speaks, they must obey. That being the case, I regard him as personally responsible for their indifference to suffering, and their casual cruelty.

  “The Outskirters have children, too, Reeder. I’ve seen their children, dead. I watched one girl die, weeping from pain, because Slado had sent magic down from the sky, and she had gotten in the way.”

  “And you.” Ironic, condescending. “One steerswoman, one wandering question-asker. The judge, jury, and executioner of the master of all wizards?”

  She flared anger inside, at his tone; but she answered him simply and directly. “If need be.” Above Reeder’s head, moths gently battered at the light, tapping; from behind Rowan, far up the street, in the deep dark, another tappi
ng, faint.

  The pool of lamplight did not extend far. “And I’ll continue to ask my questions—as any steerswoman would,” Rowan said, more quietly. “People answer steerswomen’s questions—that’s known, that’s accepted. Any blame that falls will fall on me, the asker. And now, we ought to part, and we ought to do so in a manner that looks both casual and friendly.” She put out her hand, spoke louder. “Thank you for dinner, and the wine, and the company.” Reeder ignored her hand. The tapping had ceased. Rowan noted the last location: thirty feet away, behind her.

  In full sunlight, the beggar must see through the thin cloth over his eyes, to some degree; in lamplight, far less, unless he had removed it. Rowan doubted he would risk compromising his disguise. He would be unable to discern her and Reeder’s expressions.

  Rowan assumed control, took Reeder’s slack hand in her own, shook it, clapped him on the shoulder, and walked away, in no hurry. Eventually, she heard Reeder’s steps crunch as he departed. Somewhat later, at the limit of her hearing, the tapping resumed.

  Rowan made absolutely certain that the beggar was following her and not Reeder before altering her course to lead more directly to the Dolphin.

  The common room was crowded, despite the late hour. The caravan would be leaving in the morning, and its captain was occupied with last-minute details. He sat at a long table with his drivers and guards around him and a collection of excited travelers hovering about, asking questions, checking their arrangements. Dan sat at the end of the table, and seemed to be standing drinks for the entire lot.

  The group occupied fully half the room; the other half was empty, but for a lone drunkard snoring by the fire. Beck, looking very sleepy, was on his knees beside the man’s chair, mopping a spilled mug of ale.

  Rowan chose a small table on the empty side of the room, against the back wall, far from the firelight. One candle in a red glass bowl cast a dim puddle of light, faintly pulsing, like a heartbeat, on the tabletop. Rowan sat.