Master Smythe shook his head. “Ghause is the victim of her own vanity,” he said.
Gabriel nodded. “I’ve always thought so.”
Father Arnaud laughed, and so did Sauce. Bad Tom allowed a snort to escape him. “Comes by it honestly,” he said.
Gabriel pretended to fan himself with his hand. “If you are all quite finished,” he said.
“They love you,” Master Smythe said. “Laughing at you helps them deal with your tiresome arrogance.”
“You do just keep saying these things. You must be very difficult at parties.” Ser Gabriel nodded. “Can I try that thing?”
“He just wants to learn to blow smoke,” Sauce said.
Ser Gavin was unhappy and it showed on his face. He pulled on his own beard and then shook his head. “He’s going for Ticondaga? What are we doing to counter him?”
Master Smythe handed his pipe to the captain. “We’re trying not to be deceived. We’re trying not to tip our hand. He—you know who I mean—does not care a whit for Ticondaga. He wants Lissen Carak and what lies beneath it. But—but. Do you know how my experience of your reality functions?”
Silence fell.
“You can imagine from the intensity of our stares how much we’d like to know,” Ser Gabriel said. He coughed and handed the long pipe to Master Smythe.
Master Smythe laughed. “I had that coming. Very well. If I play no part in your affairs, I find it fairly simple to observe them in a general way. In fact, it is as easy as breathing for me to regard the general flow of your reality, past, present and, as you see it, future. Or, as I might put it in your excellent language, in your infinity of presents.”
He looked around. “But once I reach out to interfere—” He adjusted a cuff. He seemed to notice the back of his hand for the first time—stared at it, and as he stared it became less smooth, more like the back of a mature man’s hand. He raised his eyebrows as if surprised. “Hmm. At any rate, once I poke about, I change everything. As do all my kin. As do you, for that matter—heh, heh.”
He laughed for a moment. No one joined him.
“Bother. What I mean is that the closer I am to the action, the less I see. The fewer infinities of the present are eventuated.” He paused. “Understand?”
Sauce sighed.
Mag smiled. “Because you have chosen to interfere, you are in this sequence of events with us, and you can’t see much else.”
“Well said. Yes. But the delicate bit is that my presence here modifies the… the… the everything. It is a different everything than if I were not here. With our adversary and others also—I like the word interfere, it’s absolutely correct—with all this interference from my kind, none of us can see anything. It is possible that we’re drawing everything into a single thread.”
Mag spoke like a character in a passion play. “Fate,” she said. “Fate is when several of you all interfere together.”
“As perceived by you,” Master Smythe said. He raised his eyebrows. “At any rate, I know depressingly little about the next few months. But enough of us are now interfering that our adversary has to notice. Further, he’s pouring power into several of his shadows and his puppets and his tools, and the results will be… cataclysmic.”
“Couldn’t you do the same?” Tom asked. “I mean—if the bastard cheats, cheat back.”
Master Smythe nodded. “I already have. The sword by your side, Ser Thomas—the black powder that burns.” He put a hand to his chin. There was something wrong with the gesture, as if his arm joints had a little too much free play. “But if there are sides in this game, I represent a side that wishes for—the most powerful entities to play by the rules. I would hesitate to describe my side as good. I would merely emphasize that my side has a smaller body count and tends to minimize—” He glanced away. “Negative outcomes,” he muttered.
“That’s heartening,” Gabriel said. “We’re on the side with fewer negative outcomes. We could embroider that on the company flag.” He took a long pull at his ale. “I appreciate that you are not trying to be mysterious and difficult, but you are succeeding magnificently. May I try returning your words? You are saying that the more you help us, the less you can see of what’s actually happening. You are saying that there are several of you, which I guessed but I don’t think we’ve ever heard said plainly before. You’ll help us to a point, but to do more would jeopardize—” Here Ser Gabriel laughed. “Your moral convictions as a deity. Or a dragon.”
“Or whatever the fuck you are,” said Sauce.
“Yes,” Master Smythe said. “You are an apt pupil.”
“Can I ask you some questions?” Ser Gabriel asked.
Master Smythe drank. “Of course. But you understand that this is about entanglement with your… event sequence. The more questions I answer, the more entangled I am, even if I take no action.”
“Bless you,” Ser Gabriel said. “But that’s your trouble, not ours.”
“I agree,” said the dragon.
“Will Harmodius now change sides?” Gabriel snapped.
A pained look crossed Master Smythe’s usually immobile face. “Master Harmodius is far along the road,” he said. “So far that he may decide to be a side, rather than adopt one. It heartens me that he was so conservative with his powers in the recent contest. I cannot go beyond that.”
“Will de Vrailly kill the King?” Gabriel asked.
There was the sound of a dozen breaths all sucked in together.
Master Smythe let a trickle of smoke—artificial smoke, not his own—come out of his mouth. “The sequence, as it applies to the King of Alba, is now completely opaque to me,” he said. “I can’t see a thing.” He sighed. “But I do not see anything happening to the king except his becoming more of a tool.”
Ser Gabriel sat back. “Damn. How about this spring? Right now? The drove and the fairs?”
Master Smythe nodded. “Again, I am too close to all of these. My adversary must be very close to exposing me. But I see this much; Thorn has made alliance with the entity who calls himself ‘the Black Knight.’ They have both slaves and allies in the north—and elsewhere—and they are preparing a major effort. Their scouts have already entered the Adnacrags—indeed, a few foolish creatures attempted to pass my Circle and a dozen raids are aimed into the valley of the Cohocton even now. So yes—yes, I expect that you will be attacked on the road, and that efforts will be made to disrupt trade. My adversary understands trade.”
They all sat, digesting this packet of information.
“Will there be another attempt on the Emperor?” Ser Alcaeus asked.
“I’m not a prophet,” Master Smythe said with visible irritation. “And given your own hand in these events, you are perilously close to annoying me.”
Every head turned.
Alcaeus flushed. “I have chosen my side. I’m here.”
Master Smythe shrugged. “Any road, I’m too close to it. But I will say that any event that threatens the stability of the city is a threat to… everything.”
“How very enigmatic and helpful,” Father Arnaud said. “Will you attend the Council of the North? You are one of the important landowners.”
This sally caused Master Smythe to smile. “By your God, Father, that was witty.” He looked around. “No, I will not attend. We are, as I have tried to say, too close to the tipping point where our adversary detects my interference pattern. That would be very difficult for me. I cannot be seen to directly aid you or I am revealed. And then—then, we fail.” He shrugged. “Even this is an evasion. I can take certain actions—others are too revealing.”
“Because he is stronger than you?” Ser Gabriel asked.
Master Smythe frowned. “Yes.”
“Drat,” Ser Gabriel said.
“Is there a God?” asked Sauce.
“You don’t mince about, do you?” Master Smythe asked. “Child of man, I have no more idea than do you.” He took a long pull on his pipe. “I will say that as my kind is to your kinds, then
it would not surprise me to find an order of beings that were to us as we to you, and so on. And perhaps, above us all, there is one. And perhaps that one caring and omnipotent, rather than uncaring, manipulative, and predatory.” He shrugged. “May I share a hard truth?”
“Do you do anything else?” the captain snapped back.
“All practitioners of the art—of whatever race—reach a point of practice where they ask: what is real?” He looked around. Mag shrugged, as if the question was unimportant, and Gabriel flinched.
“Yes,” he said.
“If you can manipulate the aethereal by the power of your will alone, and shape it to the image you hold only in your head,” Master Smythe said softly, “then it behooves all of us to ask what the act of belief actually contains. Does it not?”
Sauce shook that remark off the way she’d shake off an opponent’s inept blow. “But you don’t know, yerself,” she said. “One way or another.”
Gabriel suddenly had the same almost feral look of understanding that Sauce had worn when she understood that the Muriens family now controlled the whole length of the wall. “You mean that—my whole life”—he took a breath as if it hurt—“is not by God’s will or his curse, but by an interference pattern of your kind creating my fate?”
“Ah!” said Master Smythe. “That is, in fact, exactly what I mean.” He paused. “But not just my kind, children of men. All kinds. Your reality is the very result of the interference pattern of an infinite maze of wills. What else could it be?” He smiled, the smile of the cat about to eat the mouse. “Your kind twist the skein of fate, too. You yourself, ser knight. Mag, here. Tom Lachlan. Sauce. Alcaeus. All of you.”
Gabriel drained all the ale in his cup.
“Fuck you all, then,” he muttered.
Mag glanced at him. “I have a question, too,” she said quietly.
Master Smythe’s eyes rested on her. She met his squarely. And smiled. He had beautiful eyes, she thought.
“The Patriarch,” she began.
“A very worthy man,” Master Smythe said.
“He suggested—mm—that living on the frontier—with the Wild—had some effect on our powers.” Once she began to speak, it appeared that Mag wasn’t sure what she was asking.
Master Smythe pursed his lips. “An astute observation to which I will add one of my own. When two cultures face off in a war, do you know what the most common result is?”
Mag swallowed. “One is destroyed?” she asked, her voice suddenly husky.
Master Smythe shook his head as if she was an inept student. “No, no,” he said. “That scarcely ever happens. They come to resemble one another. War does that.”
“So you’re sayin’—” Mag paused. “That we are coming to resemble the Wild?”
“Mag, the Wild is a term of art used by men to describe all of us who are not men.” Master Smythe smiled wickedly. “Women might do well to join us, but I digress.” He seemed to find himself very funny, and he gasped silently for a moment. When no one joined him, he sighed. “The Wild is not a conspiracy. It’s a way of life. But the longer you are in contact with us, the more like us you’ll become. In fact—” He shrugged. “In fact, those with the long view would say that men—and women—are more adaptable than any of the other interlopers here, and are learning the Wild all too well.” Master Smythe spread his fingers on the table and looked at them with real curiosity. “You know that all the other races fear you. And that you are the—is there a nice way of putting this? The favourite tools of all the Powers. Inventive, endlessly violent, not terribly bright.” He smiled to take away the sting.
“Weapons?” Gabriel asked, his head coming up. “Tools?” He thought for a moment. “Defenders?”
“Goodness, ser knight, you don’t imagine you are from here, do you?” asked the dragon.
“Stop!” Bad Tom said. He got to his feet. “Stop. I’ve had eno’. Ma’ head hurts. I don’ need to know the secrets of the universe. I’m not altogether sure you aren’t talking out o’ your smoky wee arse.”
Father Arnaud got to his feet. He’d never agreed with Tom before, but it seemed a good place to start. “I’m not sure that they can handle any more, Master Smythe. The reality men build is more fragile than they know.”
“You are wise,” Master Smythe said. “Would you like to have back your power to heal?”
Father Arnaud reacted as if he had been struck.
Ser Gabriel rose and stood by him. “That was cruel,” Gabriel said.
Master Smythe looked puzzled. “In truth, I mean no cruelty. The good father—a worthy man, I suspect—has lost his powers due to the workings of a tiny creature… bah, it’s almost impossible to explain. But he thinks it is mysterious, perhaps mystically tied to his sin.” Master Smythe shrugged. “I understand feeling of sin. I believe in the pursuit of excellence, and I have failed myself. Too often.” He smiled like a man who grins through pain. “Perhaps this is why I fancy humans so much. Here.” He slapped Father Arnaud on the back and turned, just as the young woman with the broad shoulders entered with two foaming pitchers of ale.
She curtsied without spilling a drop.
“Do you like trout fishing?” Master Smythe asked.
The young woman lit up like a newly lit lantern. “I love the little ones in the high mountain streams, my lord,” she said.
“Yes,” he said. “They’re beautiful when they are young.” He placed the tray on the table and turned back to the room full of knights. “Good evening, allies. Or friends—I’d rather have some friends. The worst is coming. But as I said before: what we do is worth the doing. That’s all the reward we get.” He raised a mug.
All of the people in the room raised theirs. “To victory,” he said.
“To victory,” they all repeated. Master Smythe bowed. Then he took the young woman’s hand. “And the avoidance of negative outcomes.”
“Sir?” she asked.
“We’re going fishing,” Master Smythe said.
The door closed behind them.
Mag shrugged. “The girl wasn’t protesting,” she said.
“Oh, my God,” Father Arnaud said aloud.
Gabriel released a long breath, as if he’d been holding his for a long time. “Just so,” he said.
Morning came—earlier for some and later for others, and for a few, lucky or terribly unlucky as the case might be, there had been no sleep and now there was work.
For Nell, there were six horses to prepare. There was the captain’s magnificent eighteen-hand stallion, Ataelus, a new acquisition from Count Zac, a black demon with a changeable temper and a vicious bite. But on this crisp early day in Marius, Ataelus behaved himself with decorum. His only sign of equine restlessness was engendered by a mare—every few minutes, he’d raise his great head and pull his lips back over his teeth. But he was too well-bred to give voice to his thoughts.
Nell liked him. She put a lot of effort into his glossy black hide. He had four white stockings, which was judged unlucky by Albans and lucky by the steppe nomads of the east. Nell worked her way through her wallet of curry combs, coarse to fine, working at the horse with careful sweeps, wary of the places where his coat changed directions. She hummed as she worked.
She had every reason to be happy. Yesterday, the captain had praised her—by name—for her work. The wound on her face was healing nicely, with a little help from Mag, and would not leave a scar. Best of all, the new archer with all the muscles had made his views clear last night by running his tongue over her cheek.
Eventually she’d had to put a thumb in his side to curb his enthusiasm a little. What he had in mind led to babies, and she had other plans, but it had been delightful nonetheless.
She hummed Sauce’s song. No young cuckoos for her.
When she had three horses done, she went and woke him up. Once she’d made her views on intercourse plain, he’d become a fine companion and a source of warmth. And of fun.
Boys were like horses, Nell had found. A firm
hand on the reins, and never a sign of fear, and all went jogging along. “Hey! Sleepy head!” she said, and gave him a loving kick in the ribs.
He mumbled, threw an arm out and got a mouthful of straw.
“Drums will beat any minute now, boyo. Get your muscular arse out of the straw. Ser Bescanon loveth not his defaulters. Hey!” He rolled over to avoid her, and she jabbed calloused thumbs into both his sides.
He exploded out of the straw like something out of the Wild.
She dissolved into giggles.
He tried to kiss her, and she reached into her belt pouch and handed him a five-inch length of liquorice root. “Your mouth smells like the jakes,” she said. “We have standards here, boyo. You took the captain’s silver—get moving.”
He rolled over, his dirty-blond-brown hair full of straw. “What do I do with it?” he asked.
“Farm boys,” she said, rolling her eyes. She was exactly one year from being a farm girl herself. “Captain says that cleanliness keeps you alive and that dirty soldiers die.” She spoke with the conviction of the convert. She knew damn well that the company were cleaner than any enemy they’d met except the Morean guards.
“Do I have to wash?” he asked, as if asking if he had to be turned into a snake by a sorcerer.
“Wednesdays and Sundays when you ain’t fighting,” she said. “Wash and clipped and shaved. When you been wi’ us a year, you can have a beard, but only if the primus pilus says so.”
“By Saint Maurzio!” the boy said. “You have a rule for everything.”
“Yep!” Nell said. “Now get your arse moving. I’ve been working an hour already.”
Out in the inn yard—as big as the drill field of many a castle—the Keeper had allowed four bonfires to burn all night. A hundred men and women were gathered around the four fires, all working—men brought wood, or arranged straight-sided kettles, or stirred them.
Nell took the boy by the hand and walked him across the yard to Ser Michael’s mess. The great knight himself was nowhere to be seen—no one expected knights to cook and clean unless they were in the shit. But his new squire, Robin, was sitting in his pourpoint with his master’s golden knight’s belt of heavy plaques across his knees. He and a pixy-faced Morean girl were polishing the plaques with rags dipped in ash.