“I don’t doubt it’s some god’s power,” said the Marshal-General. “But you’re the one they gave it to, and you’re the one must decide how to use it. Now: the two of you will come with me, and have more to eat than you’ve had lately, by the look of you.”
Aris found himself standing, but with the Marshal-General’s arm half-supporting him. His vision reddened, then cleared; he looked at the youth on the bed, who had slept through all this undisturbed. He’s tired, Aris thought. Seri gave him one of her looks; he was not sure what it meant, but he would find out. She always told him. The other man, the Marshal-General’s luap, had another look, or series of them, that flickered across his face like cloudshadow over a meadow. In the aftermath of using his power, when he felt unusually sensitive, he felt the man’s own magery as something cold and hard, and wondered that he could have missed it before.
“Food,” said the Marshal-General, and urged him forward. Then, to his luap, “I’ll take care of these two for now, but find them a place to sleep. Wherever they’ve come from, they aren’t going back today.”
Out in the passage, with its scuffed patterned wood, and along it to the right. The Marshal-General said, as they passed a door, “That’s my room, if you need me later, but I think you should eat and rest now. The kitchen’s down this stair.” Aris stumbled in the change from lighter passage to darker stair, and the Marshal-General’s arm steadied him. Seri padded behind, silent for once.
The kitchen, warm, smelling of rising bread dough, some kind of stew, lit by both fire and windows open to an enclosed courtyard, promised safety and comfort. Aris sank down on a bench beneath a window and let himself relax. Seri sat beside him; the Marshal-General murmured to someone working at a long table, and fetched a cut loaf of bread. The other person vanished into a dark door, then reappeared with a jug and brought over jug and several mugs. A tall woman, that was, wearing an apron over trousers and tunic. “Milk,” said the Marshal-General, pouring it into the mugs. He handed one to each of them, and then lifted his own. Aris sipped, cautiously. Sometimes his belly objected to milk or meat after a healing; this time it lay quiescent. The milk slid down, cool and sweet. The Marshal-General sliced the loaf, and offered it. Seri fished a dirty lump of salt from her pocket and offered that on an open palm. The Marshal-General pinched off a bit without speaking, sprinkled it on the bread, and waited until she took a slice to bite into his own. Aris swallowed the last of his milk, and filled his mouth with bread and salt.
They had eaten bread and stew, and drunk more milk than Aris had had in several years, before Gird let them talk more about it. Aris felt sleepy with all the food; Seri looked ready to leap at some task, her braid already more than half loosened, the tendrils curling around her face, her eyes sparkling. In the kitchenyard, in the shade of an old apple tree, the Marshal-General looked like an old farmer, not a judicar—and certainly not like what he was. But food had not dulled his wits, Aris found.
“—and your father was a mageborn noble?” he asked. “Did he have the power of healing?”
“No, sir.” Aris numbered his father’s magery, what he knew of it, on his fingers: light, fire, sending arrows where he would. “He died when I was very young—” In the Marshal-General’s war against the magelords, though it would be rude to say so. “—but no one ever said he could heal. Nor my mother either.” Seri made a small noise; Aris hoped that would be enough for her. She had never liked his mother.
“And both are dead now?”
“No, sir.” He said no more, even when Gird’s eyebrows rose in a clear demand for more information. Seri took over.
“She went off with another ’un, sir, after the old lord was killed. He didn’t want Aris, her new man didn’t.”
Gird looked at Aris; Aris said nothing. Whatever Seri thought, his mother was his mother, and he would not speak ill of her. Gird turned to Seri. “So, then—how long ago was this, and how long have you known him?”
Seri grinned, glad to take over “I’ve known him always; we grew up in the household together. Aris was youngest, and they were always busy—”
“And I was small for my age,” Aris added. “Easy to misplace in a crowd.”
“And you had none of your father’s magery,” said Seri. “He didn’t know what you did have.” She turned back to Gird. “My mother’s sister was Aris’s nurse; ’twas not her fault he grew no larger. But she was blamed for it, and then his mother wouldn’t have him by because he fretted so about sickness. They thought he was afraid of it.”
“I am,” Aris said. “I didn’t know what to do, then.”
“And now you do?” asked Gird.
“Not… completely. There’s too much—Seri’s people have ways of healing with herbs I don’t know, and she’s told me of hearth-witches who can draw pain and lay it on stone or iron. But I know some of what I can do with magery.” He yawned, fighting the sleep that tried to overwhelm him. He felt he’d been running for hours, or heaving stones. Why was healing, that required only concentration, such hard work?
“He needs to sleep,” he heard Seri say. A chuckle shook the shoulder he leaned against.
“I can see that for myself, child. Let the lad rest, then, and you tell me your tale. You’re not mageborn-bred, are you?”
A snort from, Seri. “No, sir. Not a drop of magic in me, just peasant common sense.” You have magery, Seri, but it’s not my kind, Aris thought, then drifted into sleep.
He woke on a pallet on the floor, a clean soft pallet. The room was almost dark; the window above him glowed deep blue: late evening. He heard no one near, and stretched at leisure, his spine crackling. He loved to think of the little spine-bones clicking against each other in some language he didn’t know. Cats stretched, but he never heard their spines crack. He blinked at the window; one star had pricked dusk’s curtain. As he watched, another, and two more. He felt safe, and happy, and thought of going back to sleep. He would wake early, if he did, but no matter. Then he heard voices in the distance, coming nearer. Seri and the Marshal-General, still talking. He grinned in the dark. Seri could talk all night and half the day; now that she’d decided she liked the Marshal-General, he’d have a time getting rid of her. She had missed her grandfather after he died.
“He should be awake,” Seri was saying. “And if he goes back to sleep now, he’ll wake with a headache before dawn. He always does.”
The Marshal-General’s voice carried a hint of humor. “So what should we do, lass, to keep the lad healthy?”
“Feed him. He won’t think he’s hungry, but he needs it.”
The light they carried warmed the passage outside, began to gleam on the edges of the furniture. Aris grabbed his wandering mind by its scruff. This was not the time to fall into a trance and let the light play in his mind. So far the Marshal-General had been understanding, but he mustn’t push his luck too far. He sat up, rubbing his eyes, as they came in. With the candlelight, the window looked darker, more true night.
“Aris—” An edge to Seri’s voice, a warning. Did she think he’d let himself be caught by light-trance in front of the Marshal-General?
“I’m awake,” he said, yawning hugely. “Just woke.” He looked for the Marshal-General; in candlelight, his broad lined face looked entirely different. “I’m sorry, sir, I fell asleep and keep yawning.”
“Seri explained.” A long pause during which Aris wondered if Seri had explained too much, then, “Come, lad—there’s soup and bread left for you.”
He stood without assistance, and didn’t argue about the meal; Seri was right, as usual. By the time he’d eaten two bowls of soup, and three slices of bread, he felt solid to himself, firm on his feet. The Marshal-General, he saw, recognized the difference.
“So, lad—are you able to tell me your side of it, or would a night’s rest improve your tale?”
“I’m fine now, sir.” He felt Seri stir, beside him, but she said nothing.
“Good. You’ll need the jacks, I expect, and then come up to my
office; Seri can guide you.” The Marshal-General pushed himself up and left the kitchen. Seri gathered the bowls and the end of bread.
“I’ll help,” said Aris, but she shook her head.
“You go clear your mind, Ari. The jacks are across the court, through the gate: there’s torches. And the washstand’s by the well. I’ll do this.” When he came back in, all traces of his late supper had vanished; the kitchen looked vast and bare in the candlelight, warmth radiating from the banked fire on the hearth. The cooks had put beans to soak; the faint earthy smell made him think of cellars and small-gardens. Seri took his hand, one quick clasp, then led him back upstairs. He thought he could find Gird’s office on his own, but he was glad of her company.
She left him in the passage outside the lighted room, with a single hug. Inside the room, the Marshal-General sat with another man, the luap, and when Aris tapped at the doorpost, they both looked up to stare at him. “Come on in, lad,” said the Marshal-General. “Come and tell me your story, and Luap here will write it down.”
Aris felt a mild reluctance to talk in front of the luap—Luap, he must be called—but with the Marshal-General’s eye on him, he could not argue. He took the stool the Marshal-General pointed out, and wondered where to start. What had Seri already said? He didn’t want to bore them. Luap, he noticed, had what looked like an old, rewritten scroll on the board in his lap. Luap smiled at him.
“Start by telling me your name, if you will, and what you know of your history.”
Perhaps Luap had not taken down what Seri said. Aris began with his name, his father’s name, the place of his birth. That was enough of family, he thought, and said, “When I found I could heal—”
“Wait.” Luap held up his hand. “Were you the only child?”
“No, sir. But the youngest, by several years; my next older brother had already begun arms training when I was born. That’s why I was so often alone with Seri and her family and the other servants; my parents were away at court, or visiting other domains, or—by the times I remember at all—at the war.”
“Do you read, then?”
Aris nodded. “Until near the war’s end, I had a tutor my father provided. He taught me to read and write and keep accounts, and I taught Seri—”
“A servant’s child?” Disbelief edged the Marshal-General’s voice at that.
“She’s my friend,” Aris said. “It was more fun, to have someone to read with, to write to, and as for accounts, she is faster than I. It was a game to us.”
“So,” Luap said, with a glance at the Marshal-General, “Seri was your companion in childhood, and much of that was during the war. Did your tutor instruct you in magery?”
“No, sir. He had none himself; he said my father would have me taught later, if I showed any ability. But then my father was killed, and my mother—” He stopped, feeling the heat on his face. His mother could not have known what he overheard; surely no child was supposed to hear things like that. He had tried to forget them.
“Seri said your mother married another lord after your father died in battle,” the Marshal-General said. “Seri said the other lord didn’t want to bother with you. Is that what you think?”
The last time his father had been home, his mother had said those things he wished he’d never heard. I didn’t want the last brat, she’d screamed. It’s not my fault he’s too young to help. There was more, that he carefully did not remember. Then his father had come for that last moment, scooping him into a tight hug, telling him to remember. Not what he’d just heard, he was sure: his father could not have known, any more than his mother, that he’d been awake with a headache. If only you had the magery, his father had whispered. But it’s too late, now. He had been frightened; he had started to cry, partly with pain of his headache and partly with fear, and his father had put him down gently and gone out the door.
Aris realized too much time had passed, and his hands had knotted in his lap as they did when he thought about his mother. “She— she grieved at my father’s death,” he said finally, in a low voice. “The lord Katlinha swore to protect her.”
His throat closed on another memory he had not quite buried. The lord Katlinha’s long black moustaches, which had fascinated him with their stiff curl. The lord’s hand stroking Seri’s cheek and neck, and the drawling voice in which he’d said, “Of course you can bring your sweetling, lad, though you’re really too young to appreciate her…” Something wrong: he had realized suddenly that Seri was frightened, Seri who was never frightened—her eyes dilated, her breathing shallow. “But you’ll both have to mind me,” the lord had said, laughing at something Aris couldn’t understand, because Seri afraid was nothing to laugh about.
Then his favorite pup, the lame one, had chosen that moment to nip the lord’s other hand, and the lord’s hard bootheel had stamped. The pup squealed, Seri jerked free, Aris had flung himself at the injured pup, ignoring the lord’s command to let the beast die. In the end the lord had shrugged. “I’ll have you, lady, if it’s your will, but I won’t bother with that worthless scrap. There’s no mageblood in him; you said you weren’t willing, and no doubt you withheld yourself.”
They had gone, and left him. He and Seri had run off to join the blueshirts, with the surviving servants, and spent the last of the war fetching water and digging trenches for the peasant army. That he could say; he could not say the other.
“The lord didn’t want another son,” he said, half-gasping with the pain of remembering it.
“And your mother?” The Marshal-General’s voice held no anger, but also no space for refusal.
“Didn’t… didn’t want me,” said Aris, eyes down. It was his greatest shame, that he had been the kind of boy a mother would not want.
“Did she know you had magery?” asked Luap.
“No, sir. She was sure I had none; my brothers, she said, had shown it younger than I did.”
A silence followed. Aris looked up to see that the Marshal-General’s face had contracted in a black scowl. Luap stared at nothing, across the room. Finally the Marshal-General shook out his shoulders and looked at Aris. “Well—she was wrong, quite clearly. When did you find out what powers you had?”
“It was the puppy.” He hadn’t told them about the puppy; he tried to make it brief, and avoid that difficult moment with Seri. A favored pet, accidentally injured, and the pressure of his grief. “The cowman had already told me I was good with animals,” he said. “I liked the stables and byres; the beasts were quiet with me, and the men showed me how to work with them. But all I’d done was what they told me, until the puppy.” The huntsman had said it was hopeless; the cowman had said the same. Broken spine, soon death, and the sooner the better; the huntsman wanted to put the pup out of its misery. He had burst into tears again, and again an adult had been disgusted with him, though this time not cruel. Yer not cryin’ ’bout the pup, the huntsman had said. Yer cryin’ ’bout yer ma and da and that sun-lost count, may he die in the dark.
He had held the whimpering, shivering pup, that had made such a mess in his arms, and felt Seri behind him, also shivering. Then the familiar prickle he had felt so often before without doing anything—without guessing what it was. His hands itched, stung, moved almost without his knowing. He ran a finger down the pup’s back to the soft pulpiness where the count’s bootheel landed. He tried to imagine what should be there, what it should feel like. The pup rolled in his hands suddenly, squirming, and slapped his face with its wet pink tongue… and he’d fallen asleep where he sat, with Seri holding his head.
By the time he’d wakened, the pup had run off somewhere; Seri, the cautious, had said it was best. Before he could argue with her, the remaining servants had rushed in with word of an advancing peasant army. He never saw the pup again, to be sure he’d healed it. But in the next few seasons and years, he had plenty of opportunities to try out his powers. Seri argued for caution, for secrecy, but later helped him use—and hide—what he could do.
“I thoug
ht at first it was for animals only,” he explained, now once more calm, with the story far enough from his mother. “After what the cowman said—well—I asked to work with the beasts, wherever I was, and found I could help them. Seri said to start with little things, so if I couldn’t do it, it wouldn’t matter so much. Scratch on a cow’s udder, a sore teat, lameness from stepping on something sharp, that kind of thing. I couldn’t always heal it, but I could usually make it better. Then one place at lambing time, the shepherd wanted my help because my hands were so small—”
And lamb after lamb he delivered, in the cold rain of that week, had lived… they had all lived. The shepherd, who had taught him the old hard truth that sheep are born looking for a place to die, had taken his hands and spread them, looking for the gods’ mark, he’d said. He’d found nothing, but Aris had slept for a week when the lambing was over, so deep asleep that Seri had had to clean him where he lay, like a baby. It was natural, then, when the shepherd’s wife’s next baby came out blue and still, for the shepherd to thrust the limp bundle into his hands and growl, “It’s a lamb, lad—save it!”
“The baby lived?” asked the Marshal-General.
“Oh, yes. She’s a healthy child; it was just something about the birthing.” He paused, trying to think what to tell next. Not how frightened he had been; Gird wouldn’t want to hear that. The shepherd had assumed his talent came from Alyanya; he himself wasn’t sure. The only magery he’d seen was a dance of light by his father and brothers when he was very small, one Midwinter Feast. He’d been told Esea gave them magery, and that made sense, for the light dance. But healing? No one had even mentioned the possibility. In that remote village, once the war passed, all anyone cared about was sowing and tending and harvest, the daily routine, into which he fit happily. No one really cared how he healed, or where the power came from, so long as it worked.
“But you had no family—who’d you live with?” asked Luap, leaning forward. Aris grinned and spread his hands.