He had surprised her again. He could always do that, manage to know what no one suspected he knew, manage to do what no one suspected he could. Yet once he had done it, it always seemed right, inevitable.
“She irritates me,” Rahi said, “like a bed of nettles.”
“And why did we gather nettles?” He did not wait for her answer. “Because the plant is not evil, but harsh, and needs the right cook. Nourishing inside; irritating outside. There’s virtue in the Autumn Rose you’ve never found, lass: take it inside next time.”
Rebuke for rebuke, and although it stung, she could feel that he was right. She had never looked for anything in the Autumn Rose but what she knew she disliked. Finding that, she had been satisfied to despise her. She tried a last defense. “I have heard gossip that they might marry, Luap and the Rosemage.”
“Neither of them are such fools,” Gird said. “Nor are you, to believe it.”
“Well, if that’s your wish, I will study to adopt her as a sister,” Rahi said, half-joking. “No more quarrels, by my will.”
“You could have a worse sister,” Gird said. “She is as true as Luap once was false. Strange to us, but true.” He sounded very tired, now, and Rahi realized that it was nearly noon.
“I could make you a brew,” she said, half-shyly. “If Arya will let me use her hearth—”
His eyes brightened a moment. “That black stuff? No one else can do it right, lass, and if you’d fix that I’d be grateful.”
“Take your rest, then, and I’ll be up with it when it’s done.” This felt right, felt normal, even if it was the result of a drinking bout. She had Mali’s parrion, and her own skill; she knew she could mix healing brews better than most. She settled Gird with a cloth over his eyes and his feet propped up, then went back to the kitchen to ask permission to use the hearth.
She found Luap there, with a cook she had not met; Arya and Lia, the woman explained, had finished their day’s work. “Bakes the best bread, Arya,” the woman said. “But she trusts me to finish it now. I’m Meshi.”
Rahi explained what she needed, eyeing Luap, who looked completely comfortable as if he had been there awhile.
“Of course. No need to ask. The herbery’s through there—I expect you know—and I’ll just fetch the pot—” Meshi was a bustler, whose brisk busy movements around the room could make it seem crowded with only a few people in it. Rahi went out to the herbery, wondering why Luap seemed so relaxed with someone like that, and so tense with people she found more soothing. She found the herbs she needed, hardy aromatics that could be picked green until the first hard freeze. The rest of the ingredients were in the pantry, in neatly labelled pots and sacks: the same roots and barks used in cookery, most of them.
She set to work acutely aware of Luap watching her. Had he ever seen her at her own parrion? She couldn’t remember. She chopped, grated, and squeezed, as each ingredient demanded, then put all to simmer on the hearth. Meshi bustled past her one way and then the other, chopping vegetables into bowls, stirring them into a huge kettle of stew, taking Arya’s last batch of bread from the oven and putting the loaves on racks to cool, washing up behind herself as if she had an extra pair of hands. Rahi did not miss the looks Meshi gave Luap, or the occasional sharp glance she herself received. When she had the pot simmering to her satisfaction, Rahi offered to help with whatever Meshi had planned.
“Oh, dear, no—no need.” Meshi hardly paused in her path between pantry and kitchen. “I’m not rushed. Just you sit there and keep an eye on your own pot, so I won’t worry about it.” She came back from the pantry with an apronful of apples, and sat down to peel them. Rahi, rebuffed, ventured a smile at Luap. He nodded and gave her a smile that seemed more forced than natural… although after their earlier encounter she had to admit that only a forced smile would be natural.
“Meshi likes to feed people almost as much as I like to eat,” he said, with a nod to the cook. She smiled warmly at him, a curl of apple peel dangling from the knife.
“I like to feed those as know good cooking from bad,” she said. “Luap’s one to know if I change a single spice in my preserves.”
“My parrion was cooking and herblore,” Rahi said, feeling unaccountably shy.
“Was it now?” Meshi looked up, interested. “I thought you looked more deft than most who cook for need and not love. And you gave that up to be a Marshal, eh?” Rahi wondered where Meshi had been during the war. She looked to be Luap’s age, and perhaps, like many city people, she had simply stayed home and hoped the war would not disrupt her life.
“I had no choice,” Rahi said, feeling her face flush. She had assumed that everyone knew her story. “And now—”
“Raheli has no village to return to,” Luap said smoothly. “Surely you knew, Meshi…”
“Oh.” Now it was Meshi’s turn to flush. “I’m sorry. I should have known… it’s just these dratted apples… all full of core and I wasn’t thinking—” Her hands twitched among the peels.
“It’s all right,” Rahi said. “I must get used to those who don’t know the whole story.”
Meshi turned to her. “As you had a parrion for it, would you want to help with these apples?”
“Of course.” Rahi moved to the table, and picked up an apple. “Sliced or just cored?”
“Sliced, not too thin.” Meshi put an earthenware bowl between them. “If old Gird’s feeling better by suppertime, he’ll have some of it.”
They worked companionably until all the apples were sliced. Rahi got up to sniff her brew, and Mesbi continued with her apple dish.
Luap had snatched a slice on his way out, and Meshi laughed at him. “That man! There’s not another in this place like him. Those two, Arya and Lia, they don’t like him for being half mageborn, say he puts on airs, but I don’t see that. He likes to eat, but what man doesn’t?”
“He’s been with my—with Gird a long time,” Rahi said, stirring the brew. It smelled about right; she found a cloth to wrap the hot pan, and a mug for Gird to drink from.
Meshi stopped short and looked at her. “It’s hard for me to believe, Gird being your father. Him so fair and balding, and you so dark—”
“My mother,” Rahi said. “She was dark.”
“Ah. And a parrion of cooking, like you? Surely it came from her family, for old Gird, bless him, can hardly boil water.”
Rahi laughed, surprising both of them. “I know. When my mother died, he had to cook—and I learned very quickly.”
“It’s none o’ my affair,” said Meshi in the tone always used by those who say it anyway, “but your Da needs a family. Why not come here to live? You’d be happier in your parrion than off somewhere being a Marshal.”
Rahi smiled at her, but shook her head. “I have to be a Marshal,” she said. “I don’t quite know why, but I know it’s right.” Then she took the brew upstairs, and woke Gird from a restless doze. When he asked her the same question, she was ready with the same answer… and he smiled at her and agreed.
Chapter Six
I want to see the Marshal-General,” Aris said. Seri pressed close behind him.
“Run off, lad, and tell your Marshal your troubles,” said the big guard. The skinny one said nothing, but his eyes laughed. Aris felt his anger glowing, and fought it back. He knew what the Marshal-General thought of boys who lost their tempers. They had not come this far to make fools of themselves.
“The Marshal-General,” he said again. “It’s t-too imp-portant for just our Marshal.”
Brows went up on both guards. “Oh?” said the skinny one. “Would your Marshal agree?”
Aris just stared at them, one after the other. Finally the skinny one flushed, shrugged, and said, “Gran’ther Gird won’t mind young’uns. He never does.” The big guard glowered, but finally shrugged as well.
“All right, but you stop first at Luap’s and ask if the Marshal-General’s got other business right now. Upstairs, second door on the right.” He stepped aside, waving a vast meat
y hand. Aris and Seri scampered past. The guard yelled after them, “No running! This isn’t some alley, brats!” Seri giggled. Aris was at the landing before he figured it out: alley brats, just what everyone called them, but the guard hadn’t meant it that way. Exactly.
“We made it,” she whispered. “I didn’t think—”
Aris shushed her. Another flight to a passage… panelled walls, a floor of patterned wood, dark and yellow. Once it would have been polished; now it was clean, but scuffed. The first door on the right was closed. The next, open, gave on a sun-barred room lined with shelves. A tall man in Girdish blue sat at a table, facing away from them, looking at someone on a low pallet under the windows. Aris peeked around the door… the youth on the bed lay pale as milk, bones tight under the skin of his face, eyes deep-shadowed. Seri, bolder now that they were upstairs, rapped on the doorpost. The tall man swung around, finger to lips, then stared at them, clearly surprised. With a glance at the sleeping youth, he rose and came to the door.
Aris had heard the tales. Gird’s luap, the Marshal-General’s scribe and friend, was supposed to be mageborn on his father’s side. Royal, whispered some. King’s bastard. Uncanny, born with great powers but promised not to use them. Can’t trust that kind, most muttered, making one or another warding sign. Their Marshal said the same, glowering when another leaf of Gird’s Code came down, scribed in the luap’s elegant hand. To Aris, he looked like just another tall, dark-haired adult. An uncle or father, not a grandfather, and no more magical than a post. Seri pinched him. His mouth came unglued, and he said, quietly enough, “Sir, they said downstairs to tell you we’ve come to see the Marshal-General.”
The tall man had graceful brows, but they still rose. “Children, now, they’re letting in to pester the Marshal-General? Or do you bear a message from your Marshal or some judicar who could not come himself?”
“It’s our message, sir!” Seri pushed past Aris; she knew his temper and its limits. Her single braid hung crooked over her shoulder, already fuzzy with escaping hairs, for all that she had rebraided it neatly just before they came into the Upper City. “The Code says, sir, that all come equal before the Code—”
His wide mouth quirked. “True, young judicar, but it also sets up the courts in which to try cases; not all come before the Marshal-General.”
“This does.” Seri gave him a flat stare for his amusement, and his face sobered. “It is a matter the Marshal-General must decide, and we must see him. If he cannot see us now—”
“If you’ll allow, I’ll let him know you’re here; so far as I know he has no one with him.” The man slid past them, and strode down the hall. Aris looked at Seri, not knowing whether to follow or not. She leaned against the doorpost, peeking in. “I wonder if he’s dying.”
Aris looked too. Unbidden, his magery stirred; he squashed it down. “I think he must be,” he said.
“You should,” Seri said, flicking him a glance. “Even if we haven’t seen the Marshal-General yet.”
“It’s against the Code; it’s not right.”
“You should.” He wondered if the Marshal-General himself were that certain; Seri had the rooted integrity of a tree, that cannot be but what it is. Were all the old peasant breed like that, so sure of themselves, so all-of-a-piece? What would it feel like? He himself, his magery flickering inside him, often felt he was made of shadows and flame, shapeless except in opposition to each other. He could just remember, in his early childhood, someone explaining that light existed by itself, but shadows only when something stood before the light. Now Seri nudged him into the room. “Go on, Aris. I’ll tell the Marshal-General—”
The boy—man?—on the bed was older than either of them; Aris could tell that, but not how old he was. He would be tall, if he stood, and would grow taller yet, if he lived. Can I? he asked himself. He had never actually healed someone so close to death, not a human person, not someone so large. Did that make a difference? He wasn’t sure. Seri nudged him again. She would not give up, but she had no parrion of healing, the way her people thought of it. Our people, he reminded himself. He and Seri were one people, whatever anyone else said. She had stood by him in the grange, and he would stand by her… meanwhile, he felt his mage powers lean toward the sick youth, as if they could reach out of himself.
He came closer. From the shallow, uneven movement of the chest, he deduced lung trouble: he knew that much from animals. Was the thinness from that, or from not being able to eat for coughing, for lack of breath? With a sudden lift, he felt the power take him over, an exhilaration like none other unless birds of the air felt this way, swooping and gliding. He let himself flow with it, barely aware that he murmured words he’d overheard in childhood. His hands glowed; he laid them carefully on either side of the youth’s sleeping head, ran them down to his shoulders, then over his chest. Something prickled in his palms, harsh as nettles or dry burs. He wanted to pull back, but knew he must not. Behind him, he heard Seri’s indrawn breath, but he paid no attention to it. She had seen him do this before; she always gasped, but he had learned it meant nothing. She would watch and wait, and be there when he had done.
Darkness retreated slowly, grudgingly, from his light; he could feel, in his hands, the slow withdrawal of something dire from the youth’s body. He had no name for it, and it didn’t matter. The light either worked, or it didn’t; when it worked, it healed old wounds as well as new ones, fevers as well as wounds. If he could hold his focus until all the damage had been repaired, the youth would wake whole and free from pain, healthy as if he had never been sick.
But that was the limit: his own strength, his own concentration. He could feel the sweat trickling down his face; he knew his sight narrowed to a single core of light, and he dared no attention to interpret what his eyes could see. Only with the vision of power, which perceived each strand of disease or injury, which knew when the light had worn or driven it away, dared he perceive. Hearing had gone, and most of eyes’ sight, and even the sense of where he was, when the last dark shadow fled. At once, his power snapped back into him, and with it, all his strength. He fell, knowing he was falling, trusting Seri to be there, to catch him, as she had been from the first time he’d used this power.
Hearing returned while he was still crumpled untidily on the floor. Seri’s voice, sharp, and a deeper rumble somewhere overhead.
“—because I told him to, sir! He would not break your law, but—”
“Will you just stand back, child, and let me see the lad. I’m not going to hurt him. He’s fallen.”
“He always does,” said Seri, somewhat more calmly.
Another voice—the man they had first met. “You mean he’s done this before? Healing?”
“Yes, of course. He’s always done it, until the new Code came out, and the Marshal said he couldn’t. That’s why we came.”
Aris managed to open his eyes. His vision had not cleared: would not, for some little time. But he could see Seri, standing stiffly, ready to fight if she had to, and the man whose office this was, and a great lump of a man who must be the Marshal-General. Aris swallowed, with difficulty, and smiled. “Please don’t worry,” he said to the Marshal-General. “I’m all right.”
The man grunted, and came nearer; Seri moved out of his way, scowling. “You’re the color of cheese-whey, lad, and your eyes no more focus on me than a newborn’s. If this is ‘all right,’ I would hate to see you sick or wounded.”
“Is he all right?” Aris asked. The Marshal-General, so close, looked even bigger, heavier, almost as if a great oak had chosen to move and lean over him. He glanced down, half-expecting roots instead of worn boots.
The other man answered, in a lighter, clipped voice that carried some emotion Aris could not read. “He’s got the color you had before; he’s sleeping peacefully and breathing normally, and I could swear he’s gained a half-stone… I suppose we’ll know when he wakes.”
The Marshal-General’s hand, hard and warm, cupped Aris’s chin. He felt no fear; her
e was nothing uncanny, but strength and gentleness allied. Less frightening than his father’s steward had been, less frightening than his father, for that matter.
“Lad—from what your friend says, you knew you broke the Code, to use such magic.”
“Yes, sir.” He didn’t try to explain.
“Your friend says you did it because she told you to—was it then her fault you broke the Code?”
He could feel himself turning red, hot to the ears. “No, sir, of course not!” He quoted carefully: “ ‘Let each yeoman take heed for his own deed, for if one counsels wrongly, yet the ears which listen and the hands which act belong to the doer.’ ”
“Mmm. You have learned to recite, but yet you do not obey. What then should the judicar say, in such a case?”
Behind the Marshal-General, Seri opened her mouth; Aris shook his head at her. “It is my deed, and my fault, sir. I know that. But… but the boy was so sick, and if I waited he might not live. That’s why we came, to ask you to amend the Code to allow healing. The judicar should say I was wrong, and punish me—but you, sir, can amend the Code.”
“To save you punishment?” The Marshal-General’s face gave nothing away to his still blurred vision. Aris shook his head. “No, sir. Even if you amend the Code, I broke your rule before you changed it. But others who heal won’t have to be punished later.”
“Alyanya’s flowers!” Strong arms gathered him into a rough embrace. “D’you really think I’d punish a boy who healed another, who gave his power until he looked near death? If you need punishment, the way your power wounds you is punishment enough. I had thought the healing magery all destroyed, and all rumors of it lies, with the sick charmed perhaps into thinking themselves well. But I saw this myself, saw you heal—”
“It’s not really me, sir; it’s the power,” said Aris. He was too old to let himself be comforted like this, but he wished he weren’t. He had never had that much of it. “It’s the light—”