By the time I step out of the suddenly vacated hostelry, my assailants have been apprehended. It appears that Lynesse has at last revealed her true nature, and she and Esha have rallied some local constables. When I appear, everyone abruptly defers to me, and I realise that I, as the putative victim of their crimes, am expected to have some hand in the judicial process. This is, of course, just piling contamination on contamination. I am, frankly, not only the last but the worst anthropologist. I’m lucky nobody is coming back to read my reports. I’d be on the first ship home.
The thought of that is so bleakly funny that I laugh at it, which silences everyone. I look at the host and his accomplices, who are going to suffer for a long time with their wounds. I honestly don’t want to make my failings any worse than they are. I kneel down by them, where they are being held with their faces close to the mud. “I’m afraid you will be in pain for quite a while, and you may suffer long-term neurological damage. And the radiation may well mean you can no longer have children, any of you. In fact, best that nobody goes inside the building for at least seven days to let things subside, OK?” Despite their intentions, it all seems like an overreaction on my part, and I wish I’d kept on clicking through the responses until I reached something more moderate. However, my words make a grand impression on the crowd, in a way I can’t understand. Enough that the malefactors are allowed to get up and abscond, apparently punished enough. Which is . . . good? Except I feel that I’ve just made things worse.
Lynesse seems impressed at my forbearance, though. That lightens my mood a little. I almost feel good-humoured, just in this moment. Perhaps I can leave the DCS to cool off for a little while. I feel . . . in place, even if my place is that of the frightening outsider. I am a part of a cultural script that these people understand, and that is a weirdly comforting thought. I have not belonged for a long time. As I was the solitary occupant of the outpost, there was nothing to belong to.
Lynesse
THE CROWD WAS PLAINLY not about to disperse any time soon, and so Lyn decided to take control of the situation. She’d already had to reveal just who she was, and she wore the copper gorget at her throat now, marking her out as on royal business. Which she wasn’t, of course, but it wouldn’t be the first time such trinkets had been misused. It was cold and uncomfortable about her neck, and she would dearly love to be rid of it.
But the people of Wherryover plainly felt they were owed a tale, and Lyn decided that, her cover blown, she may as well capitalise on the situation.
“Yes, I am Fourth Daughter of the Queen, trusted emissary of my mother in times of crisis,” because if you were going to lie then make it a big one. “She has heard of the threat arising across the river in the Ordwood, and has called upon her ancient bargains with Nyrgoth Elder, last of the ancient sorcerers. I travel with him now, to confront the demon and banish it back to its twisted realm of darkness!”
Many of her listeners had fled here across the river from the Ord, and she got a more enthusiastic response than she’d been expecting. The dozen squabbling fiefdoms of the forest were nobody’s priority, neither rich nor strategically useful, and usually at one another’s throats. The idea that the queen of Lannesite would go further than grudgingly allowing the refugees onto her soil was more than most here had expected. With good reason, as Lyn well knew.
Word would now race back to the palace on burning feet, and her mother would wax marvellous wroth, as the songs had it, but by then Lyn and her companions would be across the water and confronting the demon. And returning home with a confronted demon to her credit would set everything straight, she was sure.
Speeches made, and Esha off securing ferry passage over the river, she approached the sorcerer, who was sitting on a bench outside the inn. He looked up as she approached, and actually smiled, which took her aback. She had grown used to his stern, disapproving expression, as though nothing in the mortal world could truly touch or interest him in any way. Now there was a slight twist at the corner of his mouth, and it made him seem infinitesimally younger and more vulnerable.
They had tried to take his horns. She recalled stories of sorcerous beasts whose horns, when severed, would grant the bearer strange powers or cure maladies, and apparently the villainous innkeeper had believed the same of sorcerers. Her fault, for finding them such wretched digs, but she had hoped to pass through the place without much notice, hiding her own identity in the sorcerer’s shadow. When it had all kicked off, she had a moment of utter disgust at her own naivety, at how bad she was at this. And then the sorcerer had not even been offended, had taken it all in his solemn stride and not even cared that she was here without royal writ.
“That was a great doom you pronounced on them, Nyrgoth Elder,” she said to him respectfully.
His expression—now he had expressions—was oddly uncertain. “I don’t understand you, Fourth Daughter,” he said, in that odd way, titles without proper names so that she wondered if she should just be calling him “Sorcerer” to his face like an insult.
“When you prophesied your attackers would never bear or sire children, and cursed the inn,” she prompted. “That was true magic.” Probably such things were commonplace to sorcerers, but she had been deeply impressed. To kill someone’s entire line with but a word, every generation to come, was a true wizard’s retribution. They’d be more careful with their hospitality in Wherryover from now on.
Nyrgoth Elder looked abruptly irritated. “There is no magic, merely the proper application of universal forces.”
Lynesse nodded slowly. That seemed to her to be a scholar’s definition of magic, and the sorcerer was suddenly ill-tempered. She had no wish to provoke him even though she didn’t quite understand the grounds for his offence.
A moment later he had his blank face back on, that spoke only detachment from her and her ignorance. “I apologise,” he told her levelly. “I am not supposed to talk to you of such things.” And that, of course, was probably true. Sorcerers were jealous of their secrets.
Esha came back then. “Lyn, all ready to go.” She pressed a new sword into Lyn’s hands to replace the heirloom the flying monster had ground up. “Ferry wasn’t sure whether to charge double for the sorcerer or take us for free.” She grinned broadly. “And I have something special I picked up last night. One of the refugees had some piece of the demon. I thought the Elder could take a look at it.” She looked enquiringly down at the wizard, who unfolded up from his sitting position. As with all his movements there was neither age nor youth to the movement, as though he was outside time.
On the way to the dock, Esha fell back to match steps with the wizard, and Lyn heard her murmur, “Far be it for me to advise the Elder . . .”
“Speak,” from the sorcerer.
“You have not been much amongst people in the long years since the reign of Astresse Once Regent?”
“That is true.”