Webster was furious from long imprisonment. Patience had kept him basketed by day, allowed only the shortest night flights for exercise. He bit her thumb to the bone when she reached in with a piece of lunch's mess-kettle mutton, then huddled stoic as she shook his basket – cursing while little drops of her blood flew – then threw it onto the tent's canvas floor and kicked it under the cot.
Sleety early-evening rain came in a gust, as if Lady Weather were angry also.
"Very well," Webster said from under there, speaking in a thin, weedy little croak that someone unfamiliar might not have recognized as speech. "Very… well."
It sounded like a threat, but was surrender.
Patience held her thumb down a moment to bleed it, then insisted that bleeding stop. Even so, it took a while. Webster's teeth, though few and small – a baby's milk teeth in fact – were capable, as he'd proved on a robin once.
When the thumb stopped dripping, Patience wasn't angry anymore, and went to hands and knees. Under the cot, through the basket's woven willow strips, pale blue eyes – the right, wandering – looked out at her. "Very well." Almost a whisper.
"Are you hurt?" She meant his wings.
"No."
"Oh, thank Who Comes," Patience said, reached in, and rolled the basket out while the Mailman scrambled to stay upright. No bitten thumb was worth damaging its wings. More expensive than any two or three occas, this was an embryo halted and kept halted at four months in the womb, while what were becoming arms, wrists, and fingers were encouraged to shape wing-struts instead, and anchorages of muscle were enlarged in the breastbone. All mind-managed, observed through slender glass tubes stuck inside a tribeswoman's belly.
Delicate work, not to be compared to the easier earlier interventions that almost always produced an occa – delicate work, and often unsuccessful. No apartment on the Common cost as much as one of these wonders. And this – she'd named him Webster, since he spoke so well, had forty-three words – this was Township property, not hers.
She set his basket on the cot, and unlatched the lid; Webster tried that constantly, but the method was beyond him, his fingertips too tiny. She took the lid off, and reached in to stroke and lift him out. He was withered, very small – a double handful – and brown as an old leaf, his round bald head the heaviest thing about him. He smelled of milky shit, and had left little slender yellow turds in his folded bedding.
"You bad boy… making messes." And he was a boy, or would have been; there was the tiniest pinch of spoiled cock and balls nested at his bottom.
Webster was still angry, said none of his words while Patience unfolded one of his comfort cloths and wiped him. She reached up to set him against the tent-pole, where he clung with skin wings and little nearly-legs wrapped around the wood, while she took the messed cloths from his basket and folded two fresh ones in.
"Want cheese?" Patience smacked her lips to demonstrate how wonderful the cheese would be.
Webster stared down from the tent-pole – little left blue eye looking straight at her, the other drifting away.
"Cheese?" Patience dug for the crock in her duffel. Table scraps were often fed Mailmen – little meat pieces they could munch and gum to slurry – but farmer's white cheese was recommended, mashed with goat's milk if possible. Both things produced south of the ice, and very expensive.
"Oooh, look at this… look at this!" She held a caked forefinger up to him. "If you bite, I'll make you sorry."
'Make you sorry' was a phrase all Mailmen were taught in training – when occasionally they were made sorry for flapping off the glacier flyway from Cambridge to New Haven and back again. Webster apparently recalled it. He closed his eyes, opened his mouth… and Patience felt eager wetness and heat, the rhythmic tickle of his little tongue as he licked and sucked the clots from her finger.
Five loaded fingertips later, Webster burped and said, "Fly?" – his first courteous word since their fight.
"Yes." Patience lifted him down and set him on her shoulder, which he clutched with fanned translucent amber wings. " – To Map-McAllen."
Webster understood 'McAllen' at least, and nodded. He had – as all completed Mailmen had – a perfect map stuck in his understanding by weeks and weeks of careful feeding of treats for remembering, weeks and weeks of careful scorching with candle flames for forgetting, say, where Map-Charleston, or Map-St. Louis, or Map-Philadelphia, or Map-Amarillo were, and their direction either way and any way. Scorching, as well, for forgetting the how-to-get-theres of much smaller places. All to fashion a messenger so superior to silly pigeons, who could only return where they came from.
"Not sunshine." Webster was a coward, and frightened of hawks.
"No," Patience said. "Moonlight." And turned her head to him for a puppy kiss. He didn't kiss very well… really only licked little licks.
The near-frozen rain peppered the tent's canvas as Patience sat on her cot, and using her small silvered-glass mirror for backing, while Webster watched from her shoulder, wrote a tiny note in tiny printing on a tiny strip of best-milled white paper.
fm better-weather, dear cousin louis, voss and 4000 cav going probably north to be bad in probably texas. now send webster back, yrs, p.
She reread it as Webster crawled down to the blanket beside her and thrust out a fragile little leg. It barely had a knee, had toes too small to count.
It seems probable, Patience thought. She'd heard the word 'north' spoken by a trooper in horse-lines. And a farrier cursing over the lack of replacement shoes for Voss until Boquillas del Carmen. So… probable.
She gently wrapped the strip of paper around Webster's leg – there were tiny soft bones in it – then looked in the covers for the piece of string she'd had ready to fasten the message on. She found the string on her pillow… and found also that she'd changed her mind.
"Why," she said to the Mailman, "should we make my so-old Cousin Louis look wise in Map-McAllen? Why let him interfere with my camp's campaigning? Though it would serve a certain rude ruler right, who threatened to pull me off my horse and hit me with a whip… Still, what could be more foolish than helping foolish Louis rise to Faculty, when he'll deny us credit?"
Webster watched her from the blanket.
" 'Oh,' he'll say, 'I knew it before, that cavalry coming up.' His so-old wife will agree. And you know, Webster, if Monroe's people lose severely in Texas, there will soon be no North Map-Mexico. And with no North Map-Mexico, no need for an ambassadress to it."
Patience unwrapped the note from the Mailman's leg, tucked the paper into her mouth, chewed thoroughly, and swallowed. "Instead, let's adopt the Warm-time attitude of wait-and-see."
"'Wait and see,'" Webster said, his voice thin as the piece of string, though he had no idea what those words meant. He had suckled his white cheese too greedily, and proved it by burping a mouthful up.
Howell Voss, having restrung the banjar with true cat-gut – two silver pesos a coil, shipped from Imperial Trading & Market in Cabo – leaned back on his cot and played a tuning chord, Warm-time G. Or so it was assumed. He'd long had the suspicion that ancient tuning was slightly different from the present's – different enough so the music said to have been theirs, notated as theirs in surviving copy-works, now probably sounded somewhat off.
He twisted his pegs, plucked… twisted his pegs again, and was in modern tune at least.
He'd just taken a singing-breath, when someone scratched at his tent-flap.
"I heard you tuning," Ned Flores said, stooping to come in out of gathering darkness. He wore an ice-spangled army blanket as poncho, and was pale as a weary girl. "- Thought I'd better interrupt before the camp suffered."
"You might remember that wasn't your sword hand you lost."
"No." Flores dropped the blanket, gently kicked open a folding camp chair, and sat. "But you wouldn't duel an officer for an act of mercy."
Voss sighed and set the banjar down. "Truly refined taste is so rare… And how is that wound? Should you be up and walking?"
"Well, after five days in a mercy wagon with a fresh-sewn stump, I'm glad to be up. As for this," holding out a thickly bandaged left wrist, " – not, by the way, as comic as your fresh-trimmed ear – I'm told I can have something made, and strapped on."
"What something?"
"Your Portia says, a hook."
"The doctor's not 'my Portia.' But I think a hook would do." The sleet was rattling, coming down harder.
"I've been considering tempered steel, Howell, forged from knife stock a flat inch and a quarter wide by a quarter inch thick – in-curving to a wicked fish-hook point. And, and its outer edge filed and sharpened."
"The whole outside curve of the hook?"
"Hollow ground to a razor edge. Hook in, slash out."
"Mountain Jesus. You'll have to be careful with that thing, Ned."
"Others… will have to be careful of it. I don't suppose you intend to share any tobacco. You're getting damned rude, Howell – or should I say 'General'?"
"A curtsy will do." Howell dug in a trouser pocket, tossed a half-plug over. "Don't take it all. That's Finest."
Ned bit off a chew. "Oh, of course it is; it only smells like dog shit. Who sells you this stuff?" He tossed the remainder back.
"Maurice."
"Maurice, the Thief of Reynosa?"
"He was acquitted. And that was about mules; the store was not involved."
Ned tucked the chew into his cheek. "Remind me, Howell…" he leaned far back in the camp chair, paged the tent-flap aside with his bandaged stump, and spit over his shoulder out into the rain. "Remind me to play pickup sticks with you again. For money."
"Yes, I will – and what the fuck happened at This'll Do?"
"What's the Warm-time for it? Got… 'too big for my britches.' "
"Elvin always gets that wrong." Howell bent to pick up the banjar.
"Please don't. I'm an invalid."
"Healing music." Howell commenced soft strumming. "So, what happened at This'll Do?"
Ned shifted his chew. "Absolute dog shit… Well, nothing as wonderful as the Boca Chica thing, from what I hear. Our Sam standing aside to watch you make an ass of yourself – which, by some miracle, you did not."
"Which – by some miracle, Ned – I did not." Howell struck a chord, then lightly muffled it with his fingers. Struck… muffled. Struck… muffled.
"At This'll Do, I thought… Howell, I thought there was a very good chance to beat those people."
"You did?"
"And I would have, if they'd had the usual old fart commanding them."
"But they didn't; I know. He gave us a hard time. Rodriguez, one of the new ones."
"So" – Ned leaned back to spit again – "a lot of our people killed. All my fault."
"Ned…" Howell plucked out a soft fandang rhythm. "What in the world were you doing down there at all? And with only half a regiment of Lights? Why would Sam send you? We could have waited for those people to come up, get into real trouble."
"Oh, both of us thought it seemed a good idea."
"At the time."
"Yes. Seemed a good idea at the time."
"Mmm…"
"Change of subject from my command blunders, Howell… I'm interested in going up into Texas with you. Map-Fort Stockton."
"No."
"No?"
"If you were four weeks better healed, Ned, you wouldn't have to ask. I'd have asked for you."
"I can sit a horse."
"Not for a three-day ride north, and then a fight. You're not going."
"I'm not going…"
"No, you're not."
"And if Sam says I am?"
"You're not going."
"Well… play me a tune on that fucking thing, if you're going to sit there with it."
Howell bent his head to the instrument, watched his large hands as if they were another's, and picked out a swift, soft, twanging melody.
"That's not… not terribly offensive." Ned, grown paler, leaned back to spit the chewing tobacco out.
"'Camp Ground Racers,' supposedly," Howell said. "But I doubt it."
Ned sat back with his eyes closed, listening.
"Ned?"
"I'm not dead. Though I'm sure I look it."
Howell stopped playing, set his instrument aside. "Come use my cot. Lie down for a while."
"Tell you something funny, Howell…"
"Come on, lie down."
"Tell you something funny." Eyes still closed. "I have – had – always assumed I'd be next in line. Take command under Sam. Take command if anything happened to him. Always assumed it would be me."
"Ned – "
"And of course, that very assumption demonstrated I would never be any such thing. But I didn't see it."
"Stop the horseshit, and lie down."
"I don't know how it happened." Ned sat up, looked across the tent as if there were distance there. "When Sam and I were kids, I led, more often than not. Then, when we got older – when the fighting started – I don't know how it happened. Just… after a while, people were coming to Sam and saying, 'What now?' "
"Ned – "
"They asked him. They didn't ask me. And that fucking This'll Do thing is beside the point. I've made damn few mistakes in seven, eight years fighting. I've been a hell of a commander. Better than you, Howell, Light Cavalry ranging."
"That's true."
"It wasn't that I made mistakes. It was just that people didn't come to me and say, 'What now?' "
"Come on." Howell got up, took Ned's good arm. "Come on. Lie down and get some rest."
Ned stood, and staggered. "Lie down, or fall down. Not ready for Map-Fort Stockton, after all…"
Coming back from john-trench in gusting sleet – and regretting he hadn't moved into his rooms at the fort, after all – Sam heard music, banjar playing from Howell Voss's tent on officers' row. Bright music; surprising how lightly those big fingers strummed… It was a temptation to walk over, sit laughing, listening to sleety rain and music, while talking army. Three years ago, even two years ago, he would have done it. But the distance of governing had grown between them, or seemed to have, which made the same difference.
Voices over there. Ned; certainly off his cot too soon after wagoning in. – Interesting that loneliness was never mentioned in the old tales of kings, presidents, generals and heroes. Those men and women somehow told as sufficient of themselves, and never, after crapping, walking alone under freezing rain.
Going down tent lines to the third set-up, his boots scuffing through ice-skimmed puddles, Sam heard- another conversation – one-sided conversation, it sounded. He scratched at the canvas flap. "May I enter?"
"Oh, Weather…" Unbuttoning canvas. Then the Boston girl's sleek head, white face. "It's the leader of all!" It was difficult to find her pupils in eyes so dark. The wind spattered her face with tiny flecks of ice.
"A freezing 'leader of all.'"
"A moment." More unbuttoning, then the flap drawn aside.
"Ice-rain!"
For a moment, Sam saw no one who could have said it. Then the girl's little creature moved down the tent-pole, opened its mouth, and said again, "Ice-rain!"
It was the first time Sam had seen the thing – known to all the camp, of course, despite some effort to conceal it – as more than shadowy motion in its basket. More, proved unpleasant.
"Webster loves ice-rain," Patience said, closing the entrance flap behind them. "He loves what hawks hate."
"But you haven't sent him flying." Sam brushed meltwater off his cloak.
"Not yet." She stood, observing him. "Are you going to fight the Kipchaks now, or wait? Fight seriously, I mean, not these little scootings back and forth across the border."
"Well… I would prefer the little scootings back and forth."
"Please sit; my tent is your tent… So, you are going to fight him seriously – and would have to be allied with Middle Kingdom."
Sam lifted his sword's harness from his back, then shrugged his cloak off and laid it along the tent's canvas floor. He sat on the girl's cot, the sword upright before him, resting his folded hands on its pommel. "We're discussing the possibility, Ambassadress."
The girl clapped her hands together. "It's going to be a war!" Couldn't have seemed more pleased.
"I would appreciate it – the army would appreciate it – if you could delay a report of that possibility. Delay it… three weeks? Four?"
"And why should I do that, Captain-General?"
"Well, you've already delayed sending your…?"
"Mailman. Webster is a Mailman."
"Ah… well, you haven't yet sent him to report our cavalry's preparations to go north. And there was no disguising that from someone already in camp."
Patience stared at him, head slightly turned. Perfect pale little face. Perfect teeth. "I haven't sent him – for my own reasons."
"Then might you also… pause, before reporting the possibility of a larger movement to the Boston people in Map-McAllen? Again, for your own reasons."
The Boston girl smiled. It seemed to Sam to be a smile in layers, like a bridal cake – but one baked in sweet and bitter layers. "You believe that pride is my fault? Wishing to be ambassadress to greater and greater?"
"I hope so."
"But, milord, New England doesn't want you winning – you and that fierce Queen – against the so-brilliant and, I believe, very handsome young Khan." No smile now.
"I know. But New England – Boston – is going to be disappointed, and will have to await a later occasion. If I live, and the Kingdom fights with us, Toghrul will probably lose."
"And you say that – why?"
"Because he's certain of victory… and victory's never certain." Sam stood with his sword in his hand, bent to pick up his cloak, and swung it to his shoulders. "Also, the Khan enjoys war. I don't. His enjoyment is a weakness."
"I see."
"And, in exchange for three or four weeks of silence – your little friend not flying to Map-McAllen – you can come with our army to the River war, and see everything. You can come and hover above the dying, like Lady Weather."
"Mmmm…" Patience thrust out her lower lip like a child. "You are a bad man, to tempt me."
Her little monster toed the tent-pole where he clung, and called, "Weather."
… Outside, in darkness, Sam trudged a long diagonal of freezing mud behind the Boston girl's tent, over to the next setup's small, canvased toilet trench. A Light Infantry corporal, one of Margaret's Headquarters people, sat behind the screen, balanced on the poop-pole and peering through a little gap in the rigged canvas. A great horned owl, huge golden eyes furious under soaked feathers, shifted on his right wrist with a soft jingle of jess-bells.
The corporal stood up. "Sir."
"Sorry to stick you with this duty, Barney. She probably won't be sending her creature tonight. Probably won't be sending him at all."
"If she does, sir, Elliot'll hear it fly, and go kill it."
The owl, Elliot, hissed softly at its name, and fluffed its feathers.
"Who has the daytime, now?"
"Elmer Page, sir. Civilian. He's got a hunting red-tail."
"Okay. In the morning, tell Citizen Page that his help is much appreciated. – And Corporal, remind him politely to keep silent about it."
"Sir."
Sam walked down to the tent. Finding the entrance flap unbuttoned, he set it aside, said, "May I?" and ducked in.
"Milord." Neckless Peter, in a hooded brown robe too big for him, stood up from behind a small camp desk.
"Sit," Sam said, set his sword against the tent's wall, and let his cloak fold to the floor. "What are you reading?"
"Please…" The old man gestured to his cot. "I was writing, sir. A record… a memoir of our doings."
"Well…" Sam sat on Peter's cot, and stretched to ease his back. "Well, if you're troubling to do that, you may as well write the truth. No use wasting the work on inaccuracies."
"The truth, sir. Yes."
"Sit, Peter. Sit. And let me thank you for the use of your toilet trench. An inconvenience, but necessary."
"I understand. And the watchers have courteously stood aside for my necessities."
"Still, my thanks… We're going to have a dinner, Peter, at the fort. In… oh, about a glass. I'd like you to come over. Any guard will direct you to officers' mess – one of those all too appropriate Warm-time names."
"Yes, sir."
"Peter, smile for me. You're not on the menu."
The little man smiled. "But perhaps your officers would prefer I not come."
"My officers' preferences, I think, we can set aside in favor of good advice from you. And, by the way, I won't permit questions about Toghrul Khan that might offend your honor as his teacher."
The little man sat looking at Sam – a librarian's regard, as if Sam were a copybook that might prove interesting. "There are… there are two things that may prove useful, and that Toghrul would not mind my telling you."
"Yes…?"
"First, I've seen that you and your people – officers and soldiers – are friends."
"Not always, Peter. But usually, yes."
"Toghrul Khan has no friends."
"Mmm… A disadvantage, when friends might be needed. An advantage, when friends might be lost."
"That's so, of course, sir. And second, I believe you are sometimes afraid. The Khan, however, is afraid of nothing and no one."
"Now that's very useful. Very much worth knowing."
"Yes, so it seemed to me."
"Then…" Sam bent to pick up his cloak, stood to fasten its catch at his throat. "We'll see you at dinner?"
The old man got up from behind his desk. "Yes, milord."
"'Sir.' Or 'Sam,' if you prefer."
"Sir."
"And bring an appetite, Peter. It'll be army food, but plenty."
"I will."
"By the way" – Sam paused at the tent's entrance – "since you're now in our councils. I'm sending Howell Voss north, with all our cavalry assembled. North into Texas. First, as a counterblow to the Khan's harassment across the Bravo to the west… And second, for a more important reason."
"Heavens," Neckless Peter said – a perfect use of that wonderful old word. "A 'counterblow.' Toghrul will find that… interesting."
"So I hope," Sam said, set the tent-flap aside with his scab-barded sword, and ducked out into sleet become snow.
An Entry – which, I suppose, must be only a footnote to my history of North Map-Mexico and its Captain-General. In his person, the young man represents his land and people so well that that alone may be his guarantee of command. Young, strong – certainly ferocious, but never, I think, wantonly, carelessly. A fierce shepherd of the mountain shepherds' country.
He sat on the edge of my cot, and the light of my lamp went to him so he seemed outlined, vibrating with energy to be released as, supposedly, did the internal engines of wheel-cars on Warm-times' hard black roads.
A sturdy, broad-shouldered young man, sandy hair cropped short and shaved at his neck – looking very much like a countryman come to a fair to wrestle for prizes. A prosperous young countryman though marked by harsh weather, dressed in good cloth, soft leathers, fine boots. His forearms thick as posts, his large hands as fat with muscle as most men's fists.
He sat, elbows on his knees, and spoke to me – welcomed me, really, into his close company. A closeness likely to cause me difficulties with Eric Lauder…
What marked him commander? The light that seemed to go to him was surely only my attention. So, his calm… yes. A readiness to act – certainly that; when he wears his long sword, its grip hovers over his right shoulder like an odd impatient demon, close enough to whisper in his ear.
It seems to me, considering, that the marker of his command lies in the great division, a canyon's space, between the young man as plainly seen – intelligent, forthright, absolutely capable – and the infinitely subtle expression in his eyes. Eyes the color of those semiprecious stones comprised of mixtures of light brown, light green, and light yellow, seen sometimes in streams run down from the mountains of Map-California.
In his eyes was nothing forthright or simple, but rather complication, inquiry, examination… and an odd affection – perhaps for me, perhaps for everyone.
When he left, I sat as one sits after reading an important copybook, of which only a portion has been understood.