The Language of Power

by Rosemary Kirstein

  No help was possible. The event had occurred: huge, bizarre, distant, magical. People had suffered and died. Nothing could change it.

  Rowan said only: “I’m sorry.”

  Bel glanced up once, nodded, looked away, out the window.

  It was a warm day, unseasonably so. And a few days ago, a blizzard had kept Graceful Days from unloading . . .

  Rendezvous weather, as the Outskirters called it: one of the signs of recent use of Routine Bioform Clearance. Really, Rowan ought to have suspected. “Do you know where Kammeryn’s tribe was, last summer?” Rowan did care about the Outskirters as a whole, but among the warrior tribes, only Kammeryn’s people possessed, for her, faces.

  “South,” Bel said, regarding the empty air outside the window. “And I’m glad Willam’s left Corvus.” She turned back. “The wizards are too evil. I’d hate it if Will became like them.”

  Rowan sighed. “Yes.” She folded her hands before her on the table, sat gazing at them a moment. “But.” She looked up at the Outskirter. “Bel, no matter how clever we are, no matter how much we can discover, I believe that the common folk will, at the end of this, need magic. Even if we defeat Slado, or kill him, Routine Bioform Clearance will have to be reestablished according to its proper use, and maintained, and intelligently so. And who knows what other damage exists, somewhere out in the world”—here she gestured toward the window—“and still unknown to us.” Outside, a dog barked; a girl’s voice replied, in an aggrieved tone, exactly as if the animal had admonished her. A flock of pigeons, startled from the ground below, appeared briefly, vanished upward, and the window was empty again.

  “It’s not enough for us to stop Slado,” Rowan continued. “We need to correct what he’s done. It will take magic to do that. And I don’t know how to get it, other than from the wizards themselves. I wish we had a hundred apprentices, all of the common folk, learning what the wizards know.” A serving girl arrived at the table, smoothly slid dishes in front of Rowan, departed.

  “And what the wizards know best,” Bel said, “is evil. Maybe that’s what your apprentices would learn from them, in the end.”

  “All we would need is for just one of them to stay true.” Rowan looked down at her meal. “Oh, my.”

  Bel regarded the food, amused. “Do you have enemies in the kitchen?”

  “No . . . Exactly the opposite, or so I thought,” Rowan said. Before her: a bowl of gruel. She picked up her spoon and hesitantly tested it.

  In fact, it was excellent, as gruel went: salted and buttered, with a hint of some other flavoring that Rowan could not identify. Upon investigation, the tea pot proved to hold chamomile. The mug standing beside the tea cup seemed to contain milk.

  Rowan tasted. It was watered, tepid, and carried a trace of vanilla . . .

  She suddenly felt herself back in Alemeth, propped up on pillows, weakly sipping, from a mug held by a solicitous Zenna, exactly this same flavor—

  Rowan suppressed sudden laughter, which nevertheless escaped as a peculiar snort. The noise caused Bel to look at her askance. “I believe,” the steerswoman said, attempting to control herself, “that the staff think I’m ill.”

  “Why?”

  Rowan put down the mug, rubbed the side of her face with embarrassment. “Will spent the night in my room . . .”

  It took Bel a moment to understand; then she laughed, as well. “The smell!”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  Will said, as he pulled a chair from an adjacent table, “We heard a couple of night maids muttering about it outside the door.” He sat. “And the people at the bath-house had a few things to say to me, too.”

  Bel gaped at him. Eventually, Will said: “. . . It’s the hair, isn’t it?”

  “That wasn’t a wig?” the Outskirter asked.

  “No.” He ran his fingers through it, close to his scalp. The barber had corrected Rowan’s clumsy work, and Will’s hair was at least all of one length, but of necessity it was extremely short. Now clean and stark, pure white, its new texture sent it bristling in every direction. With his copper eyes and dark brows, the total effect was very unusual indeed.

  “What did you see that frightened you?” Bel asked him. Will repeated the explanation, as Rowan signaled again to the servers.

  “Well,” Bel said, “now that you don’t stink, I can greet you properly.” She rose. “Come on, stand up.”

  Will laughed, and did so; Bel flung herself at him, caught him in a bear-hug, and literally lifted him, briefly, off his feet. “Oof.” Then Bel switched to back-pounding, which elicited similar sounds. “Cease, woman!” he cried at last. “I’ll be bruised for days!”

  Bel stepped a pace back, grinned up at him. “You’re so tall!”

  “No, I’m not. I’m just taller than you are.”

  “My turn.” Rowan rose and gave him a quick hug. He smelled of rosemary-scented soap. Rowan’s head reached only to the center of his chest; at their last parting, they had stood nearly eye to eye.

  She released him and studied him a moment. He was no longer dressed in Dan’s spare clothing. He had acquired, from somewhere, a dark green cotton shirt, secondhand but freshly laundered; gray felt trousers; and a pair of very old gum-soled sailor’s boots.

  “Where is your bow?” Bel asked, as Rowan and Will reclaimed their seats. “Or don’t you use it anymore?”

  “I do,” Will said. “I hid it at the west edge of town, along with the rest of my gear.” The serving girl arrived and delivered Willam’s breakfast, watching him sidelong and wide-eyed; then she spared a speculative glance first for Rowan, then Bel, and then departed.

  Rowan watched her go; immediately upon her rejoining the other servers, the three female members of the group separated from the males and gathered into a clot to conduct an urgent whispered conversation.

  Rowan recognized the signs—as did Bel, apparently. The Outskirter reached across to poke Will in the ribs. “I think the ladies are finding you interesting.”

  Will’s mouth twitched. “It’s my hair. They’re wondering what frightened me, too.” He picked up knife and fork.

  “Not at all,” Bel said, sitting back to regard him with an almost proprietary pride. “You’re a handsome man. You should make the most of it.”

  “It’s not always the advantage you might think . . .” Will began on his eggs. “And now,” he announced with a determined expression, which seemed incongruously directed at his breakfast, “since we’ve managed to say hello properly, we’re going to say good-bye.” He looked up at Bel’s astonished face. “You can finish your breakfast first.”

  Rowan said: “Will and I seem to have a slight disagreement on this—”

  “What we have,” Willam said, “is a complete disagreement. But it’s no good. You’re both going to leave town, as soon as possible.”

  Bel recovered, and her eyes narrowed. “I hope you have a very good reason for giving me orders. Because I don’t take them well.”

  Willam did not flinch in the slightest; and this, Rowan thought, was a new thing in him. “I know. I understand. But you do have to go. I’m about to do something fantastically dangerous, and if it goes wrong, neither of you must be anywhere near me. You can’t be connected with this.”

  Rowan glanced about: there were no other diners present, and the servers were well out of earshot. She said: “Will is going to break into Jannik’s house.”

  Bel showed surprise, then intense interest. “The house that killed that little girl, when Kieran owned it.”

  “Yes.” Willam had heard the story from Rowan. “If she tried to go inside, she was dead as soon as she entered.”

  “But you think you can get in, yourself?”

  “I know I can. And once I’m in, I can get out. It’s what I’ll do in between that’s the problem.”

  “And what is that?”

  Willam glanced once at Rowan, then returned his attention to his meal. The steerswoman recounted for Bel the relevant portions of her conversation
with Will the previous night. She was halfway through the explanation when it occurred to her that she herself had, naturally and without thought, just taken an order from Willam—albeit an unspoken one.

  Bel listened; and when Rowan was finished, she turned to Will again. “And while you’re in the house, among these secret records—can you find out where Slado is?”

  And Rowan was frankly astonished that this very simple question had not occurred to her.

  It caught Will by surprise, as well, and he immediately lost the stubborn expression that he had maintained during Rowan’s recitation.

  He sat for a moment, jaw dropped. He closed his mouth, blinked, then discovered his fork, with a sausage slice, still in mid-air. This he carefully set down on his plate; and he gave himself to thought.

  His face passed through a series of evolutions: speculation; caution; a sudden displeasure at one particularly disturbing idea; a growing interest as he pursued another; disbelief; tentative reevaluation. At one point he made to speak, then stopped himself, and seemed to pass through the entire analysis a second time.

  Eventually he came back to his surroundings, looked at Bel, Rowan, then Bel again, and said, slowly: “I think I can locate the place where he lives, generally . . . In fact”—here he showed a disbelieving astonishment again—“that should be ridiculously easy . . . But I’m fairly sure that a lot of people live there, or nearby, so it’s probably a very big place. I can’t tell you where he is inside it, or even whether or not he’s there at the moment.”

  Rowan could hardly believe this turn of luck. “That much by itself would be immensely helpful,” she said, with feeling.

  Bel emitted a satisfied “Ha!” and sat back. “Now tell me how to kill a wizard.”

  Will became serious again. “By surprise,” he said. “It’s the only way.”

  “Good,” Bel said. “That’s my plan, exactly.”

  Rowan did not comment; simply killing Slado might not be the proper solution. It remained to be seen.

  Bel went on, “Now tell me what might go wrong when you’re in Jannik’s house.”

  “There will be guard-spells.”

  “And those gum-soled boots won’t help?”

  Will was surprised. “You know about that?”

  “Rowan told me. Sailors and steerswomen. But it’s just the boots.”

  “Well, there’s more than one kind of guard-spell. If I’m not careful, and clever, anything might happen.”

  Bel said: “You could die.”

  Will winced, nodded. “And then Jannik comes home to find Corvus’s runaway apprentice, dead in his house. But even if I do get out, if I haven’t done everything perfectly, Jannik would know that someone had been there. And that’s the thing.” He became urgent. “Rowan, you haven’t kept quiet about being here. By now, half the city probably knows about you. If Jannik finds that someone was in his house, among his records, at the same time that a steerswoman was asking questions about Kieran, and about Slado—Specifically, the steerswoman named Rowan, the one who caused so much trouble six years ago, the one—” Bel raised one hand slightly, to warn him to moderate his voice. He continued, very quietly. “—the one who Jannik was ordered to kill, six years ago. The one he failed to kill.”

  Silence. Then Rowan said, cautiously: “But when I spoke to Corvus, after all that, he said that no one was interested in me any longer.”

  “That’s right. Because they thought you were some wizard’s secret minion, and they were more interested in who that might be. But if you’re in Donner, at exactly the time someone manages to break into Jannik’s house, then you’re a minion who has too much power. They’ll start looking for your master again—but they won’t wait to find him. They’ll deal with you right away. Probably Jannik himself will want to do it. He’ll drop everything else.”

  Unfortunately, Rowan could find no flaw in Will’s reasoning.

  Bel said: “So, Rowan has to leave town. And she has to do it before you make your attempt. And she has to do it in plain view of as many people as possible.”

  Will said, “That’s right.”

  The Outskirter nodded. “I agree.” She resumed eating.

  Rowan sat slack in amazement. “Bel!”

  “No,” the Outskirter said through a mouthful of sausage, “he’s right.”

  Willam showed immense relief. “Good. It’s really the best thing—”

  “We are not leaving the city!”

  “Who said ‘we’?” Bel asked Rowan. “You’re the problem here. You go, I stay.”

  Rowan’s astonishment was complete. “What?”

  Willam looked from one to the other. “No, Bel, you ought to go, too. There’s no reason for you to be involved.”

  “Yes, there is.” The Outskirter continued on her breakfast, nonchalant. “You’re about to do something fantastically dangerous. That means that you need someone to watch your back. I’ve been watching Rowan’s back for the last two days. It’s one of the things I’m good at.”

  He shook his head. “But Bel, this is magic—”

  “I have no intention of leaving here!”

  “Your own magic didn’t stop you from being jumped in the dark,” Bel said to Willam. “Where would you be now if you’d been alone, as you’d thought?” She indicated him with her knife to make the point. “Dead. Or being dragged back to Corvus, for who knows what sort of punishment?”

  “But once I’m inside, there’s nothing you can do.”

  “What about outside the house? What if someone sees you going in?”

  “Bel—” Rowan said.

  “Or coming out? How can you tell if some couple hasn’t ducked into the shadows to play tickle? And won’t they be surprised to see you?”

  “Bel. Willam.”

  “Or some lost drunkard hasn’t stopped in the middle of the street to get his bearings? Who knows who he’d tell?”

  Will became thoughtful. “That’s true.”

  “If you give me a signal, like a whistle, when you’re ready to come out, I’ll whistle back when the way is clear—”

  “Pardon me—”

  “You’re starting to make sense . . . Will admitted.

  “Good. Then it’s settled. The steerswoman goes. In fact, Graceful Days is still in port. If everyone sees Rowan climb on board and sail away—”

  “Excuse me!” They stopped, turned to Rowan. “I am definitely not leaving.”

  The others traded a glance. “I was hoping she’d be sensible,” Will said.

  “I think you’re asking that of the wrong person.”

  They studied her. “I guess dragging her away by force would be visible enough—”

  “That’s true.”

  “People might comment, though.”

  “And may I point out that I am actually still present in the room!”

  “Do you happen to have some sort of sleeping spell?”

  “Not on me. But the apothecary probably has some poppy extract. That should do just as well.”

  “There’s some in her pack.”

  “Really? I say, that’s handy.”

  “We’ll just slip it in her tea.”

  At this last exchange, Rowan’s outrage vanished. She knew for certain that Bel would never attempt such a thing; the Outskirter’s sense of honor would forbid it.

  The steerswoman composed herself, spoke seriously. “Willam,” she said, “how sure are you that you can actually enter the house?”

  He answered with reluctance, but obvious honesty: “I’m absolutely sure of that much.”

  “Bel, if Willam is going to be rifling through a wizard’s records, learning something of Slado’s past actions, and possibly his future plans, not mention the chance of finding out where Slado lives when he’s at home—I intend to be present.”

  “Wonderful. And if he makes a false move, you both die.”

  “Will? Is that true? If a guard-spell inside the house catches you, would it kill us both?”

  He was forced t
o admit: “I don’t know.”

  “Then it seems to me that we’ll increase the chance of one of us escaping with the information. And Bel, with you outside, even if the worst happens and we both die, you at least will be able to tell the Steerswomen what we’ve learned so far.”

  Bel considered. “It does improve the odds. . .”

  Willam disliked this line of reasoning very much. He made to speak twice, angrily, stopped himself, and when he turned to Rowan, she expected a glare; but instead there was, again, that open concern, that pleading distress, that she remembered so well. “Rowan, listen to yourself— ‘If we both die.’ Tell me, lady, is this information worth dying for?”

  She held his gaze. “Death is a risk,” she told him, “not a certainty.”

  “People have already died,” Bel said. They turned to her. “My people. And soon enough, yours. We have to stop Slado. You know that. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here.”

  Two men entered the dining room, carrying a large wicker basket of fresh linen tablecloths between them. The serving girls observed their arrival with annoyance, broke up their conversation, and set to replacing used tablecloths with fresh.

  “I don’t like this,” Will said, his gaze on the empty window. He seemed to be addressing only himself, with quiet vehemence. “This was supposed to involve only me. No one else should be hurt, no one else should be put in any danger.”

  Bel said: “You can’t make that choice for us.”

  “We are involved, all three of us,” Rowan said. “That being the case, perhaps we should get the whole thing over with as soon as possible.”

  Will brought his gaze back from the distance with difficulty. “No,” he said. “Two days from now.”

  “Why then?” Bel asked; then suddenly leaned aside to look past Rowan’s shoulder in surprise.

  A tug on the steerswoman’s sleeve. Rowan turned, looking up, then down.

  It was the handkerchief boy from the kitchen. He stood before her, silent, wide-eyed, hands behind his back.

  “Yes?” No words, and no change in expression or posture. “May I help you?”