The Tanglewife
Soshem the Trickster, her cousin, came to Suya and gave her a philter to make her sleep so he could steal her away fir himself in the
confusion of the gods' contending. But when he carried her away, the stinging grit of the sandstorm woke her and she fled from him, becoming lost in the storm, and his dishonest plan was defeated.
— from The Revelations qf Nushash, Book One
AT TINWRIGHT STOOD FOR A LONG TIME in the muddy, rain-spattered street, surprised at his own timidity. It — wasn't going back to the Quiller's Mint that made him fret so, or even having to deal with Brigid, although he certainly hadn't forgot her cuffing him silly the last time he'd seen her. No, it was the line he was about to cross that frightened him. Elan M'Cory, sister of the wife of the Duke of Summer-field-who was he to have anything to do with her at all, let alone to meddle in this most profound and dreadful of decisions?
Courage, man, he thought. Think of Zosim, stepping forth to save Zona her¬self, the daughter of the king of heaven! Tinwright had been considering the god of poets and drunkards quite a bit-he was thinking of making him the narrator of the poem Hendon Tolly had demanded. Zosim had acted bravely, and he was but a small god.
God? He had to laugh, standing in the street with cold rain dribbling from his hat brim and running down his neck. And what of me? Me wasn't even much of a man, according to most. He was just a poet.
Siill, he thought to himself, if we do not reach, as my father used to say, our hands will always he empty. Of course, Kearn Tinwright had likely been talk¬ing about reaching for his next drink.
"Look what the wind has blown in." A sour smile twisted Brigid's month. "Did they run out of room up at the castle? Or did you leave some¬thing behind the last time you were here?"
"Where's Conary?"
"Down in the cellar trying to kill rats with a toasting-fork the last I heard, but that was hours ago. He never bothers to tell me anything-just like you." Even the false smile disappeared. "Oh, but of course, you don't remember me, do you? You were telling your wrinkled old friend just that while he stared at my tits as if he'd never seen anything like them."
At this time of the morning there were only two or three other patrons nodding in the dim lamplight-all flouting the royal licensing laws, which said that no one might visit a tavern until an hour before noon. Tinwright suspected it was because they had all slept on the straw floor and only re¬cently woken up. Conary, the proprietor, must be getting slack not to have noticed them, but it was fearfully dark in the place with the window shut¬tered against the winter chill and the fire not yet built up again.
Tinwright stared at Brigid, who had gone back to gathering tankards from beneath the stained benches. He was about to make an excuse for his last visit-for a moment a multitude of explanations swarmed in his head, although none of them seemed entirely convincing-but then, and some¬what to his own surprise, he shrugged his shoulders. "I'm sorry, Brigid. That was a shabby thing to say, about not remembering your name. But don't blame Puzzle for staring-you are something fine to look at, after all."
She looked hard at him, but her hand stole up and brushed a curl of her dark hair away from her face, as if she remembered all the sweet words he had whispered to her only the previous spring. "Don't try to honey-talk me, Matty Tinwright. What do you want? You do want something, don't you?" Still, she seemed less angry. Perhaps there was something to be said for a simple, truthful apology. Tinwright wasn't certain he wanted to make a regular practice of it, though. It would take up a lot of his time.
"Yes, there is something I'd like to ask, but it's not just as a favor. I'd pay you for your trouble."
Now suspicion returned. "The Three know that enough men come in here asking if I'll do the honors for their sons, but I can't say anyone's ever
conic in asking on behalf of his great-grandfather. I'm not going to let your ancient friend poke me, Tinwright."
"No, no, nothing like that!" It was too disturbing to think about, in fact, People Puzzle's age were done with the sweaty business of love, surely. It would be indecent otherwise. "I need to find someone. A… a tanglewife."
"A tanglewife? Why, have you got some castle serving-maid up the country way, then?" Brigid laughed, but she seemed angry again. "1 should have known what kind of business would bring you back begging to me."
"No. It's not… it's not about a baby."
She raised her eyebrow. "A love potion, then? Something to moisten up one of those wooden-shod harlots you're following around these days?"
He let out a long breath in frustration. Why must she make everything so difficult? Of course, she always had been a woman with her own mind. "I… I can't tell you, not yet. But it isn't the kind of thing you think. I need help to… to save someone a great deal of pain." His heart stuttered for a moment at the enormity of what he was thinking. "And I have another favor to ask, too." He reached into the sleeve-pocket of his shirt and pro¬duced a silver gull. He had needed to borrow money from Puzzle, money he had no way of paying back, but for once something greater than even his own self-interest drove him. "I'll give you this now and another just like it afterward if you'll help me, Brigid-but not a word to Conary. Bargain?"
She stared at the coin in real surprise. "I'll not help you murder some¬one," she breathed, but she looked as though she wasn't even certain about that.
"It's… it's complicated," he said. "Oh, gods, it is horribly complicated. Bring me a beer and I'll try to explain."
"You'll need another starfish to pay for the two beers, then," she said, "-one of them for me, of course! — if I'm to be getting that whole gull."
He couldn't remember the last time he had visited the neighborhood around Skimmer's Lagoon in daylight-not that he had come here so many times. It was surprising, really, since the Mint, the tavern in which he had lived and spent most of his time, was only a few hundred steps away on the outer edge of the lagoon district. Still, there was a distinct borderline at Barge Street, which took its name from an inn called the Red Barge at one end of it: except for the poorest of the Southmarch poor, who shared the lagoon district's damp and fishy smells, only Skim¬mers spent much time in the area. The exception was after nightfall,
when groups of young men came down to patronize the various taverns around the lagoon.
Tinwright turned now onto Barge Street and made his way along it toward Sealer's Walk, the district's main thoroughfare, which ran along the edge of the lagoon until it ended in Market Square in the shadow of the new walls. There was no sun to speak of, but Tinwright was grateful for such light as the gray, late-morning sky offered: Barge Street was so narrow that he could imagine Skimmer arms reaching out to grab him from door¬ways on either side. In reality, he saw almost no one, only a few women emptying slops into the gutters or children who halted their games to watch with wide, unblinking eyes as he passed. There was something so un¬nerving about these staring children that he found himself hurrying toward Sealer's Walk, a street he knew fairly well, and where he might find a few of his own kind.
Sealer's Walk was perhaps the only part of Skimmer's Lagoon that most castle folk ever visited, fishermen and their women to purchase charms- the Skimmers were said to be great charmwrights, especially when it came to safety on the water-and others to visit the lagoon-side taverns and eat fish soup or drink the oddly salty spirit called wickeril. Many though, es¬pecially from outside Southmarch, came for no purpose more lofty than to see something different, because Sealer's Walk, the lagoon, and the Skim¬mers themselves were about the strangest things that anyone in the March Kingdoms could see this side of the Shadowline. Even visitors from Bren-land and Jael and other nations came to the lagoon, because outside of the lake-folk of Syan and a few settlements in the far southern islands, the Skimmers of Southmarch were unique.
Their food came almost entirely from the bay and the ocean beyondthey ate seaweed! — and even wickeril tasted like something scooped from
the bottom of a leaky boat. The long-armed Skimmer men wore few
clothes above the waist even in cold weather, and although the women
generally wore floor-length dresses and scarves wrapped around their |i
heads, Tinwright had heard it was only for modesty-that they were no more susceptible to the cold than were their menfolk. In other circum¬stances, as with some female travelers he'd seen, even an occasional woman from Xand, bundled in secrecy to the eyeballs, he'd found the mystery quite appealing, but something about Skimmer women was different. He'd heard men boast of their exploits among the lagoon women-tellingly, though, never in front of Skimmer men-but he himself had never been particularly
tempted, liven in the bawdy house behind the Firmameut Playhouse, the knocking-shop Hewney and Teodoros had liked so much, Matt Tinwrighi had never found the Skimmer girls particularly interesting. They had cold skin, for one thing, and even bathed and perfumed they had an odor In-found disturbing-not fishy, but with a certain undeniable whiff of brine. And even the naked faces of Skimmer girls were disconcerting to him, al¬though he could not actually say why. The shape of their cheekbones, the size and slant of their eyes, the almost complete lack of eyebrows-Tinwright had always found them obscurely shuddersome.
Still, there were worse places to visit than Sealer's Walk; Tinwright had even been looking forward to seeing it again. It had a vigor unlike any other part of Southmarch, even the exciting bustle of Market Square. When the catch came in each morning just before dawn, or the fishermen who went far out to sea returned at evening, the place was alive with strange songs and exotic sights.
Today, though, the district seemed much more subdued, even for the doldrums of late morning. The people were quiet and fewer were on the street than he would have expected. Most of the men he saw seemed to be gathered at the site of a recent fire, where a row of three or four houses and shops had burned. Half a dozen adults and twice that many children were picking through the blackened rubble; a few turned to look at him as he passed, and for a moment he felt certain that they were staring angrily at him, as though he had done something wrong to them and then returned to gloat.
As he passed a fishmonger's warehouse, two other Skimmer men gutting fish with long, scallop-backed knives also stopped to stare at him, their heads swiveling slowly as he walked past. It was hard not to imagine some¬thing murderous in their cold-eyed, gape-mouthed gazes.
He came at last to narrow Silverhook Row and turned right as Brigid had told him, following its wandering length for a few hundred paces until he found the tiny alley that seemed to match her description. On either side loomed the windowless backs of tall houses, blocking out all but a sliver of the gray sky, but at the end of the short, dark passage stood the narrow front facade of another house, with a few steps leading down to the door.
Tinwright was about to knock, but stopped when he saw the long, knurled horn, as long as a man's arms outstretched, hanging over the door. A superstitious prickle ran up his back. Was it a unicorn horn? Or did it come from some even stranger, more deadly creature?
"Planning to steal it?"
He jumped at the unexpected voice and turned to see a short, lumpy shape blocking the entrance to the alley. Thinking of the Skimmer men with their scalloped blades he took a step back and almost fell down the stairs. "No!" he said, waving his arms for balance. "No, I was just… look¬ing. I've come to see Aislin the tanglewife."
"Ah." The figure took a few steps forward; Tinwright balled his fingers into fists but kept them behind him. "Well, that would be me."
"You?" He couldn't help sounding surprised-the voice was so low and scratchy he'd thought it a man's.
"I do surely hope so, drylander, otherwise I've been living someone else's life this last hundred years." He still couldn't see much of her face, which peered out of a deep hood. He could see the eyes, though, wide and wa¬tery, yet somehow quite daunting even in the darkened alley. "Move out the way, you young clot, so I can open the door."
"Sorry." He sprang to one side as she shuffled past him. He felt uncom¬fortable watching her mottled hand reach out with the key, so he turned his eyes up to the great horn above the door. "Is that from a unicorn?"
"What? Oh, that? No, that's the tusk from an alicorn whale taken up in the Vuttish Seas. Unless you're in the market for a unicorn's horn, that is, in which case I could be persuaded to change my story." Her laugh was halfway between a gurgle and a hacking cough, and she emphasized it by leaning into him and jabbing him with her elbow. If this really was Aislin, she smelled to the high heavens, but he found himself almost liking her.
The door open, she went gingerly down the steps. Tinwright fol¬lowed her inside and found himself beneath a ceiling so low he could not stand straight and so crowded with objects hanging from the rafters that he might have been in a hole beneath the roots of a huge tree. Dozens of bundles of dried seaweed and other more aromatic plants, sheaves of leathery kelp stems and bunches of flowers brushed his face everywhere he turned. Countless charms of wood and baked clay dan¬gled between the drying plants, spinning and swinging as he or the tan¬glewife brushed them, so that even just standing in one place made him dizzy. Many of the charms were in the shape of living things, mostly aquatic beasts and birds, seals and gulls and fish and ribbony eels. Those not hanging from the ceiling had been set out on every available surface, including most of the floor.
Tinwright had to walk carefully, but he was fascinated by the profusion
of animal shapes. Sonic even hail little glass eyeballs pressed into the clay or glued to the wood, making them seem almost alive…
"Ah, there you are, small bastard," said Aislin suddenly, to no one he could see. "There you are, my love."
The black and white gull, which had been staring back at Tinwright so raptly he had thought it only another particularly well-made object, yaw ped and shrugged its wings. Tinwright flinched back and almost fell over. "It's alive!"
"More or less," she cackled. "He's missing a leg, my Soso, and he can't fly, but the wing should heal. Still, I don't think he'll go anywhere-will you, my love?" She leaned down and offered her pursed mouth to the gull, which pecked at it in an irritated fashion."You have it too good here, don't you, small bastard?"
Aislin had taken her hood off and unwrapped her head scarf, freeing a bristling tangle of white hair. Her face showed the usual Skimmer features, eyes far apart, lips wide and mobile. Like other old Skimmer-folk he'd seen she also had a curious hard look to her skin, as though instead of sagging and growing loose as ordinary folk's flesh did when they aged, hers had begun to turn into something thick and rigid. Even the curl of inky tattoos on each cheek and at the bridge of her nose seemed to be disappearing into the horny flesh like unused roads disappearing under grass and weeds.
"Will you have something to drink, then?" she asked. "Warm yourself up?"
"Wickeril?"
"That muck?" She shook her head. "Wouldn't drink it. That's for Perikali sailors and other barbarians. Black Wrack wine, that's your drink." She slid between dangling charms toward the corner of the little house where pots and pans hung from wooden pegs-the kitchen, you'd have to call it, Tinwright supposed. She was shaped like a brewer's barrel, but with¬out the heavy cloak she moved with surprising nimbleness through the confines of her crowded nest.
"What's it made with?" he asked-"Black Wrack" didn't sound all that promising.
"What do you think? Don't you know what wrack is? Seaweed! Grandsire Egye-Var protect you, boy, what do you expect? You wanted a tanglewife- what do you think 'tangle' means? Seaweed, of course."
Tinwright didn't say anything. He hadn't known-he'd thought it was just the word for an old woman who made healing simples and… and other things.
"What do they call someone like you in a place where they don't have seaweed- or Skimmers?"
She chortled with pleasure, a sound like a joiner's rasp. "A witch, of course. Now drink this. It will take the hair right off your chest."
Aislin was frowning as she emtpied her cup. She clearly contemplated pouring herself yet another, but instead sat back in the room's only chair with a sigh. Tinwright was balanced much more precariously on his stool, especially after finishing his own cup. He couldn't remember how much of the smoky wine he'd drunk while trying to explain the difficult, frighten¬ing business that had brought him, but he had downed more than a few. The wine was almost as salty as blood but still quite refreshing, and his fear had receded into a general smear of unconcern. He stared at the old woman, trying to remember how exactly he had come to this strange place.
"It's not that I have any scruples, boy," she said. "And I'm not frightened of much of anything, which you can see by me letting you in here in the first place."
Tinwright shook his head. Soso the gull gave him a baleful look and feinted toward his ear. The bird didn't seem as fond of the poet as he was of Aislin, and he especially didn't like it when Tinwright moved-he'd given him a few painful pecks on the ankles and hands already. "What do you mean, letting me in? I wouldn't hurt you."
"Hurt me? Should say not-I'd pop you like a bulb of rockweed, boy," she said with an evil, self-satisfied chuckle. "No, because you're a drylan-der… what was your name?" She stared at him, blinking slowly. "Ah, never mind. Because you're a drylander, and your kind isn't much liked around here just now."
"Why?" There was no resisting the notion, once it had crept into his head, that Aislin the tanglewife looked and sounded like nothing so much as a huge, gray-haired frog in a shapeless dress. It made conversation tricky. That last cup of wine wasn't helping, either.
"Why? By the Grandsire's soggy cod, boy, didn't you see? Big piece of Sealer's Walk burned down? Who do you think did that?"
Tinwright stared aghast at the goggle-eyed Skimmer woman. "It wasn't me!"
"No, you fool, and be glad it wasn't, but it was drylanders from up in the town, a gang of them, young and stupid and hateful. Three of our people were killed, one of them a child. Folk around here aren't very happy."
"Why did they do it?" Suddenly he understood the way some of the Skimmers had watched him and a chill swept over him. "I hadn't heard anything about a fire."
"You wouldn't. We take care of our own, and what happens here doesn't interest the ordinary run of casde folk-not unless the whole place went up in flames and threatened the rest of the town." The tanglewife settled back again, waving her broad hands as though to waft away a foul smell. "It's been bad ever since those Qar creatures crossed the Shadowline. We folk are different-they used to call us kilpies and sea-fairies, did you know? — so things go bad for us. It happened when they came the last time, too, in my great-grandmother's day. Everyone was driven out of South-march by them, eventually, but our folk were driven out first-and by our own neighbors."
"Sorry." The cursed wine had fogged his brain-how had they started talking about this? "What's… what's a Kwar?"
"You're not quite saying it right, but close enough for a drylander. Qar is another name for the Old Ones living beyond the Shadowline-the Twilight People." She stared at him for a moment."You've been sitting here much of the afternoon, boy. Better get up and going before it turns dark. I don't think it's going to be a good night for someone like you to be wan¬dering around land-legged on Sealer's Walk."
"Right, then." Tinwright stood up, sketched a somewhat uneven bow, and began to bob through the dangling charms in search of the door, doing his best to ignore the black and white gull pecking aggressively at his feet.
"What are you doing?" Aislin called. "Didn't you come here to buy something from me?"
He stopped, a thought suddenly gnawing at his mind. "Ah. Yes."
"You have no head for Black Wrack, boy, that's certain." She grunted as she lifted herself to her feet. "Let me get to my powders and potions. Don't sit down again, you'll fall asleep."
After she had been gone for no little time (a span during which Tin¬wright and the gull eyed each other with feigned disinterest) she came back carrying a small stoppered glass bottle no bigger than a child's thumb.
"This venom comes from an octopus out of the southern seas-a small thing you would never think to be so deadly. Dip a needle in it and use that one drop only. Just that, and her journey will be painless. But be careful with it or you will murder yourself. This poison knows no master."
Tinwright took it and stared at the thing in his hand. It was hard to
know for certain through the blue glass vial, but the fluid inside looked c le.n.ind harmless as water. "Careful…" he breathed. "I'll be careful."
"You had better." Her laugh was sharp and raw."There's enough in there to kill a dozen strong men. 1 don't like handling it, myself. I had an acci¬dent once." She sat down heavily. "And it goes without saying that from here out, you don't know me and I don't know you. I've no qualms about much of anything but I don't want trouble with the Tollys. So remember, if someone comes down here asking about me and blue glass bottles, some¬one will come looking for you in turn. Understand?"
"Yes." Those Skimmer men testing the blades of their fish-gutting knives as they watched him pass was a picture he wouldn't soon forget. The Black Wrack in his stomach seemed to sour and bubble. He hesitated for a mo¬ment before carefully putting the little flask into his sleeve pocket.
"Grandsire's sake, boy, wrap it in something," she said, disgusted. "Here, take this bit of kelp leaf, that's thick enough. If you fall down and break the jar while it's sitting in your shirt like that, you'll never get up again."
When he was finished Tinwright was feeling ill indeed. He stared at Ais-lin for a moment, swaying, then swiveled toward the door.
"Didn't you forget something?"
"Pardon?" He turned back."Oh, yes. Thank you. Thank you very much."
"No, you daft herring, my money. That's a gull and two coppers you owe me." She smirked. "And I'm giving you the lovesick poet's rate."
"Of course." He fumbled out the money, handed it to her. After a mo¬ment's assessment, which seemed mostly to consist of running her thumb around the circumference of each coin, she whisked them down the gap in her shiny, wrinkled bosom, an expanse which looked like nothing so much as a well-worn saddle. "Now be on your way. And remember what I said. Better you drink that whole jar right now than breathe a word to anyone of where you got it."
Feeling as though some poison had already taken away his powers of thought and speech, Tinwright nodded and staggered toward the door, then out into the cold gray day, or what was left of it.
When he reached Silverhook Row he turned to look back down the alley. Aislin the tanglewife stood in her doorway beneath the great length of pale horn, staring at him. She lifted a hand as if to wave him farewell, but her strange, pop-eyed face had gone cold and remote. She turned and went back inside.
Matt Tinwright hurried out of the lagoon district as fast as he could,
acutely conscious of both the fast fading afternoon light and the tiny jar full of treason and murder concealed in his shirt.
Opal came back from market with her sack mostly empty and her face full of worry.
"You look terrible, my old darling," Chert told her. "I'll only be gone up to the castle for the day. I'm sure there's nothing to fear."
"I'm not worrying about you," she growled, then shook her head an¬grily. "No, of course I'm worried about you, all caught up in this big-folk madness again. But that's not what's bothering me. There's nothing to eat in this house and scarcely anything to be had even at the market."
"Why is that?"
She snorted. "You are a dunderhead, Chert! Why do you think? The cas¬tle is surrounded by fairy folk, half the merchants won't send their ships here to Southmarch, and there's no work for the Funderlings. Surely in your time loitering around the guildhall you must have heard something of that?"
"Of course." He scratched his head. She was right: it wasn't as though there were no ordinary problems. "But Berkan Hood, the new lord con¬stable, promised that he'd put two hundred of ours to work repairing the castle walls, so Cinnabar and the rest are saying not to worry."
"And what are they going to pay them with?" She had her shawl off now and was washing her hands vigorously in a bowl of water. "The Tollys are already spending money hand over fist trying to lure merchants to bring in food and drink for Southmarch, not to mention the ships they've had to buy and mercenary seamen they've had to hire, all to protect the harbor."
"You heard all this at the market?"
"Do you think we spend all day talking about vegetables and sewing?" She dried her hands off on her shapeless, oft-mended old dress and Chert felt a pang that his wife had nothing nicer to wear. "Honestly, you menfolk. You think you do it all yourselves, don't you?"
"Not for years, my good old woman." He laughed ruefully. "Not since I've had you around to keep me straightened out."
"Well, just go and talk to the boy before you disappear for the day. He's had a bad night and I have a hundred things to do if I'm going to make a meal out of these sad leavings,"
• • •
Flint was sitting on the bed, his while gold hair disarranged, his line dis-tant and mournful.
"I low are you, lad?"
"Well." But he didn't meet Cherts eye.
"I wonder if that's really true. Your mo… Opal says you had a bad night." He sat down beside the boy and patted his knee. "Did you not sleep well?"
"Didn't sleep."
"Why not?" He peered at the pale, almost translucent face. Flint looked as though he needed sun. It was a strange thought-he certainly couldn't remember ever thinking it about anyone else. Of course, most of the peo¬ple he knew never even saw the sun if they could help it.
"Too noisy," the boy said. "Too many voices."
"Last night?" It was true that in the early part of the evening Cinnabar and some of the other Guildsmen had stopped by to talk about where Chert was going today, but they had been gone by the time the darklights came on. "Really? Well, we'll try to keep it more quiet."
"It's too crowded," Flint said. Before Chert could ask him to explain, he added: "I have bad dreams. Very bad."
"Like what?"
Flint shook his head slowly. "I don't know. Eyes, bright eyes, and some¬one holding me down." His chest heaved with a sob. "It hurts!"
"Come on, lad. Don't be feared. Things will get better, you've just had a rough time." Helplessly, Chert put his arm around him and felt the child's entire body shudder.
"But I want to go back to sleep! Nobody understands. They won't let me sleep! They keep calling me!"
"Lie down, then." He did his best, half helping, half forcing the child back into the bed. He pulled the blanket up to his chin. "Ssshhh. Go to sleep, now. Opal's just in the other room. I have to go out to work, but I'll be back later."
Flint miserably allowed himself to be stroked and soothed into a thin, restless slumber. Chert got up as quietly as he could, desperate not to wake him.
What have we done to that boy'? he wondered. What's wrong with him? Odd as he was before, he was always alert, lively. He seems only half alive since I found him down in the Mysteries.
He didn't even have the heart to talk about it to Opal, who felt the boy's
distraction and strangeness even more than he did: he only waved to her as he passed, tying on his tool belt.
"Vermilion Cinnabar had a message for you from her husband," Opal called.
Chert stopped in the doorway. "What's that?"
"She said to tell you that Chaven wants to see you again before you go upground."
He sighed. "Why not?"
The physician was waiting in the middle of the mirrored floor of the Guild's great hall. Several Funderlings were preparing the hall for the next meeting, politely avoiding him as he stood staring down, like children cir¬cling an absentminded father. For the first time Chert's own people looked small to him in their own great hall.
The physician didn't look up even after Chert coughed politely. "Chaven?" he said at last. "You wanted to speak to me?"
Startled, Chaven turned. "Oh, it's you! Sorry, so sorry, it's just… this place. I find it strangely… restful is not the right word, not quite. But it is one of the few places where my cares, they just… slip away…"
Chert had never felt the presence of the Lord of the Hot Wet Stone to be particularly restful, even in statue form. He looked up to the image of Kernios sunk deep in the ceiling, then down to the mirror-version below their feet. Being suspended, as it were, between two versions of the black-eyed, somber-faced earth god seemed even less soothing, especially when the mirroring rendered Chaven and himself as blobs with feet in the mid¬dle and heads at each end, suspended halfway between Heaven and the Pit. "I heard you wanted me."
Chaven dragged his attention away from the representation of the god. "Oh, yes. I just felt I should talk to you again about what you should say."
"Fracture and fissure, man," Chert cursed, "we've been over this a dozen times already! What more can there be to say?"
"I am sorry, but this is very important."
Chert sighed. "It would be different if I were actually going to pretend to know something I don't, but if he asks me something I don't know an answer for I'll just make important-sounding humming noises, then tell him I need to confer with my Funderling colleagues." He gave Chaven an annoyed look. "And then, yes, I'll come right to you and tell you, and find out what to say."
"Good, good. And what will you look for to know if it's my mirror?"
"A dark frame of cypress wood, with wings that open out. It is carved with pictures of eyes and hands."
"Yes, but if there's no frame, or if he's put a new one on it?"
Chert took a deep breath. Patience, he told himself. He's been through a great deal. But it was more than a little like dealing with a drunkard, some¬one forever trying to shake the last dribbles of mossbrew out of an empty jar. "The glass itself has a slight outward curve to it."
"Yes. Good!"
"May I go now? Before Okros decides to ask someone else to do it instead?"
"Will you write down anything you are unsure about? It will help me understand what Okros is trying to do. Do you promise?"
Chert said nothing, but tapped the slate hanging on a string around his neck. "Really, I must go now."
Worriedly repeating all that they had just discussed, Chaven followed him to the door but, to Chert's relief, went no farther, as if he did not want to travel far from the reassuring presence of the earth lord and the haven of the guildhall's great room.
Chert hadn't been out of Funderling Town for many, many days-was it almost a month? — and he was surprised by the obvious differences since the last time he'd been upground. The spirit of ragged camaraderie he'd seen everywhere in the castle had now just as obviously expired, overcome by weariness and fear of the unchanging siege conditions, the strange, sus¬pended watchfulness that in some ways was worse than even a real and im¬minent danger of attack.
The faces bundled up in scarves and hoods were red with cold and very grim, even as he reached the Raven Gate and the vicinity of the royal res¬idence itself, where at least the people did not yet have to worry about starving. Still, these comparatively well-fed courtiers had a wolfish look about them, too, as though even the most kindly and cheerful of them were spending a large part of their thoughts considering what they were going to do and to whom they were going to do it when things became really bad, when they would have to struggle to survive.
The castle itself looked different, too. The walls around the Inner Keep were built over with wooden hoardings and crawling with guards, the greens were full of animals (mostly pigs and sheep) the wells were guarded by soldiers, and there seemed to be twice as many folk as usual milling in the narrow roads and public squares. Still, when he showed the letter from
Okros he received only cursory attention before being allowed through Haven's Gate, although he thought he heard a few of the guards mutter un¬complimentary things about Funderlings. That was certainly not the first time in Chert's life such a thing had ever happened, but he was a little sur¬prised by the vehemence in their voices.
Well, bad times make bad neighbors, he reminded himself. And there were al¬ways rumors that the king fed us-as though we were animals in a menagerie, in¬stead of us earning our own way, which we always have, fust the kind of thing to make the big folk resentful when times are hard.
It was disturbing to find that Okros had openly usurped Chaven's resi¬dence in the Observatory, but Chert supposed it made sense. In any case, he was not even supposed to know Chaven, so he certainly wasn't going to say anything about it.
A young, jug-eared acolyte in an Eastmarch robe opened the door and silently led him to the observatory itself, a high-ceilinged room with a slid¬ing panel in the roof, permeated with the smell of damp. Okros rose from a table piled with books, brushing off his dark red smock. He was a slender man with a fringe of white hair and a pleasant, intelligent expression. It was hard to believe he was the villain Chaven believed him, even though Chert himself had heard Brother Okros talking to Hendon Tolly about Chaven's glass.
In any case, he would let discretion rule. He bowed. "I am Chert of the Blue Quartz. The Guild of Stone-Cutters sent me."
"Yes, you are expected. And you know much of mirrors?"
Chert spoke carefully"! am of the Blue Quartz. We are part of the Crys¬tal clan and a mirror is merely an object made from crystal or glass, so all Funderling mirror-work is overseen by us. And yes, I do know some few things. Whether that will be enough for your needs, my lord, we shall see."
Okros gave him an appraising look. "Very well. I will take you to it."
The scholar took a lantern from the tabletop and led Chert out of the high-ceilinged observatory and down a succession of corridors and stair¬ways. Chert had been in Chaven's house before, of course, but not often, and he had little idea where they were now except that they were travel¬ing downward. For a moment he became fearfully certain that the man was taking him to the secret door Chert himself had employed when Chaven lived here, that he knew exactly who Chert was and what had brought him here, but instead, when they had gone down several floors, the little physician opened a door off the hallway with a key and beck
oned him inside. An object covered with a cloth stood in the middle of an otherwise empty table, like an oddly shaped corpse waiting burial-or resurrection.
Okros removed the cloth with careful fingers. The mirror was just as Chaven had described it, but Chert did his best to look at it as though he had never seen it or heard of it before. Carved hands, the fingers spread in different arrangements, alternated with crude but compelling eyes around the dark wood of the frame. The curve was there, too, just enough of a convexity to make the reflection slightly unstable to a moving observer: in fact, it was disturbing to look at it for more than a few moments.
"And what exactly did you wish to know, my lord?" Chert asked care¬fully. "It looks like an ordinary… that is, it looks as though it is… unbroken."
"Yes, I know!" For the first time, Chert could detect a hint of something strange under the physician's words. "It is… it does nothing."
"Nothing? I'm sorry, what…?"
"Don't pretend you are ignorant, Funderling." Okros shook his head an¬grily, then calmed himself. "This is a scrying glass. Surely you and your peo¬ple did not think I would send for help to deal with an ordinary mirror? It is an authentic scrying glass-a 'Tile, as they are sometimes called-but it remains dead to me. Do you still pretend ignorance?"
Chert kept his eyes on the glass. The man was not just angry, he was frightened somehow. What could that mean? "I pretend nothing, Lord, and I am not ignorant. I just wished to hear what it was you wanted. Now, what more can you tell me?" He tried to remember Chaven's words. "Is it a problem of reflection or refraction?"
"Both." The physician seemed mollified. "The substance seems intact, as you see, but as an object it is inert. As a scrying glass, it is useless. I can make nothing of it."
"Can you tell me anything of where it comes from?"
Okros looked at him sharply. "No, I cannot. Why do you ask?"
"Because the literature of scrying glasses, and the unwritten lore as well, must be applied to that which is known, to help discover that which is un¬known." He hoped he didn't sound too much like he was making things up (which he was): Chaven had told him a few facts and a name or two to drop when the occasion seemed to warrant, but there was no way of know¬ing ahead of time precisely what Okros would want to know. "Perhaps I could take it back to the Funderling Guild…"
"Are you mad?" Okros actually put his arms around the thing as if guarding a small, helpless child from a ravening wolf "You will lake nolh-ing! This object is worth more than Funderling Town itself!" He stared at Chert, eyes narrowed to slits.
"Sorry, my lord. I only thought…"
"You will remember that it is an honor even being called to consult. 1 am the prince-regent's physician-the royal physician! — and I will not be trifled with."
Chert suddenly and for the first time felt frightened, not just of Okros himself-although the man could call the guards and have Chert locked in a dungeon in moments if he wished-but of his strange feverishness. It re¬minded him more than a little of the odd behavior he had seen from Chaven. What was it about this mirror that turned men into beasts?
"If anything," Okros said, "I should come and examine the library in Funderling Town. The Guild would make it available to me, of course."
Chert knew this would be a bad idea in many ways. "Of course, my lord. They would be honored. But most of the knowledge about subjects like these glasses cannot be found in books. Most of it is in the minds of our oldest men and women. Do you speak Funderling?"
Okros stared at him as though he were joking. "What do you mean, speak Funderling? Surely no one down there speaks anything but the com¬mon tongue of the March Kingdoms?"
"Oh, no, Brother Okros, sir. Many of our older folk have not left Fun¬derling Town in years and years and they speak only the old tongue of our forefathers." Which was not entirely a lie, although the numbers who could only speak Old Funderling were tiny. "Why don't you let me go back to the Guild with your questions-and my observations too, of course-and see what answers I can bring back in a day or two. Surely for someone as busy as yourself, with all your responsibilities, that would be the best solution."
"Well, perhaps…"
"Let me just make a few notes." He rapidly sketched the mirror and its frame and made notations in the margin just as he would have while plan¬ning a particularly intricate scaffolding installation. When he had stalled as long as he could, he remembered something else Chaven had told him, which had made no sense but which he wanted Chert to discover. There had been some artful way he had wanted Chert to pose the question, but
he couldn't remember, so lie just asked bluntly. "Have you seen anything unusual in the mirror? Birds or animals?"
Okros looked at Chert as though he had suddenly sprouted wings or a tail himself. "No," he said at last, still staring."No, I told you it was lifeless."
"Ah. Of course." Chert bowed, hung his slate around his neck, and backed toward the door. He no longer thought Okros quite as friendly and harmless as he first had. "Thank you for the honor of asking for us, my lord. I shall consult with my fellows in the Guild and return soon."
"Yes. Well, just do not wait too long."
Chert had his hood up against the cold, so even though she was twice his height he nearly walked into her when she stepped out of the shadows near the Raven's Gate. Startled, he stopped and looked up, but it took him a moment to recognize her-he had only seen her once, of course, and that had been well over a month ago.
"You're the one who came to my house," he said. She still had the same distracted look, like a sleepwalker. "You never told me your name."
"Willow," said the young woman. "But it does not matter. That was someone's name who is gone now, or has changed." She did not move on. Clearly, she wanted something, but Chert began to feel if he did not ask her she might never disclose it, that they would both remain standing here until night fell and then dawn came again.
"Do you need something?"
She shook her head. "Nothing you can give me."
Chert's patience, never his best feature, had been tested beyond belief this year, and it seemed the tests were far from over. "Then perhaps you will ex¬cuse me-my wife will be holding supper."
"I wish to speak to you about the one called Gil," she said.
Chert suddenly remembered. "Ah, of course. You were very attached to him, weren't you?" She didn't speak, but only watched him attentively. "I'm very sorry, but we were both captured by the fairy-soldiers. They let me go, but their queen, or their general, or whatever she was, sentenced Gil to death. He's dead. I'm sorry I could not do more for him."
She shook her head. "No. He is not dead."
He saw the look in her eyes. "Of course. His spirit lives on, no doubt. Now I must go. Again, I'm sorry for how things happened."
The young woman smiled, an almost ordinary thing, but it still had a
quality of ineffable strangeness. "No, he is not dead. I hear his voice. He speaks to Lady Porcupine every day. She hates what he has to say, because he speaks with the king's voice."
"What are you talking about?"
"It does not matter. I only wished to tell you that I heard Gil speak of you just yesterday, or perhaps it was today." She shook her head, as though Chert must know how hard it was to remember when one last heard from dead people. "He said he wished he could tell you and your people that they are not safe beneath the castle. That soon the world will change, and that the door will open under Funderling Town and dead time will escape." She nodded as though she had performed some small trick with an ac¬ceptable level of skill. "I am going now."
She turned and walked away.
Chert stood in the lengthening shadows, feeling a chill crawl across his body that was out of all proportions even to the cold day.