Dardelan nodded acknowledgment, and his eyes held a measure of speculation that indicated I was not what he had expected. He led us through the house via a dark hall into a huge sunken room. It was windowless, being at the center of the dwelling, as near as I could make out. Two lanterns cast a murky light over the room’s occupants.
A subdued hum of conversation fell into silence as they became aware of us, and I felt myself suddenly to be the cynosure of all eyes. I bore the visual dissection in dignified silence, blinking and waiting for my eyes to adjust to the dimness.
After a long pause, a handsome older man, with smooth gray hair and eyes the same shade, rose and stepped forward into the lantern light. “So, the Misfit,” he said in a sneering voice. There was an arrogance in the way he eyed me from head to toe. I waited for him to introduce himself, but when he did not, taking into account his deliberate discourtesy and arrogant bearing, I guessed he was Malik.
I lifted my eyebrows and stepped farther into the room. “I will move closer to the light so that you may get a better view, should you wish to count my teeth and toes.”
An astounded silence met my words; then an elderly man gave a startled bark of laughter.
But Malik was too experienced a player to let this pinprick upset him. “You are even younger than the stripling,” he said disparagingly, as if my words had been callow rather than clever. And, in addition, he had managed to turn the words into a sideways jab at Dardelan.
“To be young is not necessarily to be weak,” Brydda said pleasantly. “Whereas to be old … but you know what it is to be old, don’t you, Malik. It renders the mind resistant to anything new.” As he spoke, he moved to stand near Dardelan, symbolically allying himself with the youth rather than with me. I was, I realized suddenly, truly alone.
Malik gave Brydda a stiff smile. “I am older, true, but I am proud of my years, for age brings caution and experience and wisdom, and these things are well in one who would command. But perhaps that is why you surround yourself with children and freaks, Brydda. With such an obedient and malleable following, you would have no need of age or its virtues.”
Dardelan colored slightly but wisely he held his tongue.
“I am no leader,” Brydda said mildly.
Malik snorted, and it must have been obvious to the others in the room that he regarded Brydda as a rival. His eyes came swiftly back to me. “Does it speak, we wonder?” he inquired brightly. “Or has your parrot exhausted its meager repertoire, Brydda? Perhaps you should have toiled harder to gift your little pet more words to play with.”
I had to bite my tongue to keep from showing anger before I spoke. “I speak when I have something to say, not to admire the sound of my voice,” I said flatly.
The rebel’s eyes glittered with malice, but his smile did not falter.
“Malik, this is Elspeth Gordie,” Dardelan said. “It is impolite for us to speak to a guest without using her name.”
“She is no guest of mine, boy,” Malik snapped. “I have higher standards. She is a gypsy halfbreed and a Misfit to boot.”
The man who had laughed earlier leaned forward in his seat, and I realized that prematurely gray hair made him appear older than he was. His face was unlined, and I guessed his age to lie between Brydda’s and Malik’s. He was far less robust in appearance than either of them, yet there was a craftiness in his eyes that suggested the muscle he used to reign was one of brain rather than brawn.
“There is not much to you but skin and bones, child,” he murmured. “Are they all like you, these warriors Brydda says you would bring to strengthen us?”
I saw then the part I was meant to play at this gathering. I was to be a pawn for these men to score against one another. Anger drove away my dreary sadness. I would be no one’s pawn. I made myself smile.
“Do you measure your followers by their mass, sirrah?” I asked sweetly. “We Talented Misfits measure ourselves by our deeds, and surely you of all people would concede that size does not always indicate courage or cunning or even strength.” I let my eyes fall momentarily to his own slender frame.
It was difficult to tell in the half-light, but I thought his pale cheeks flushed slightly. “I am Cassell,” he said at last. “And talk is cheap.”
“That may be so of rebel talk, sirrah,” I rejoined promptly. “But my words bear my honor; therefore, they are valuable indeed.”
This time his brows raised. “Well, you can talk a good fight.”
I sensed I had won a slight victory but did not press the point. A movement on the other side of the room caught my eye. When the man who had made it rose, it was all I could do not to gape. It was the Elii I had known as a girl at the Kinraide orphan home. The orphanage guardians there had always predicted that Elii would die of the rotting sickness as his father had, for he had led orphans questing for whitestick. But he showed no sign of ill health. Nor did he show by word or gesture that he remembered me.
For that I was grateful, since he had not known me as a gypsy but as an orphan. And perhaps the simple answer to that was that I had changed, too.
He shook my hand and looked into my face, and I remembered that he had always been prone to judge by instinct rather than by the words people offered. The man alongside him had a stern, ascetic face and disdainful eyes, and wore his yellow hair in two flaxen plaits. Dardelan introduced him as Tardis’s representative, Gwynedd.
Dardelan moved me past the silent Murmrothian to a hugely obese man named Brocade, who did not trouble himself to rise. He might have been brother to the Teknoguildmaster, except that where much of Garth’s bulk was muscle, Brocade was like a plump, overstuffed powder puff. He was dressed in as much lace and silk as any maiden would wear on her bonding day. From Brydda’s lecture, I remembered this man was a staunch ally of Malik’s and resisted the temptation to ask Cassell if this was the sort of size he liked behind him.
Brocade had a haughty, self-important air as his eyes swept over me disparagingly. “The creature is very badly dressed considering the importance of this meeting,” he said in an affected tone. “Are all your Misfits the same color as you? I am not fond of that darkish skin color, for as a rule, such belongs to people of inferior mentality.”
I was too dumbfounded by this absurdity to respond.
A drawling and unusually accented female voice arose from the darkest corner of the room. “This is a very interesting observation, Brocade. I must be sure to mention it to Bram and the tribes when next we speak.”
I turned with the rest to see a woman unfold herself from a couch as gracefully as a cat. Standing, she was at least a head taller than any man in the room and possessed of considerable exotic beauty. Her skin was a striking yellow-gold, and her tawny eyes were slanted up at the outer edges. Her hair was as straight and black as combed silk and cut perfectly level at her jaw and across her brow. The hair and eyes and graceful movements made her appear almost catlike, and the impression deepened as she displayed an amused, feline smile.
Yet the look she bent on Brocade was anything but amused, and he swallowed convulsively, numerous chins wobbling in alarm as her fingers slipped casually to the hilt of an ornate knife in her belt.
“I did not mean to insult your people,” he bleated. “Your color is not the same as this creature’s.”
“What has color to do with anything?” Jakoby asked, for I knew it must be her. She wore voluminous trousers, a long tunic belted at the hip, and flat sandals.
Her fingers caressed the hilt of her knife absently, and Brocade followed the movement with bulging eyes. “I meant no offense,” he said.
“None taken,” Jakoby said pleasantly. “Provided you retract your statement. But if you wish to stand by it, then I must demand a bout to see whether your pale skin really reflects greater wit than other colors.”
“A … bout? You can’t mean I should wrestle you? A woman?”
Her brows arched. “Is my gender also cause to think me inferior?”
“No! I—I—I retract!” Brocade s
tammered, mopping his damp brow with a scrap of silk.
Jakoby gave a throaty laugh of derision; then she turned to me and held out her long hand. I put mine into it, expecting her to shake it, but instead she seemed to weigh it in hers thoughtfully as she stared into my eyes. Then she turned my hand over and examined the palm minutely. After a long moment, she closed my hand into a fist but kept it in her own hard grip, looking again into my eyes.
“A good hand, girl. One that must grasp many threads of destiny. A hand whose owner is at once open and true, and yet who is the keeper of terrible secrets and a seeker of them.”
Before I could wrench my hand away, Jakoby released it and turned to face the rest of the room.
“I vote for an alliance with this girl’s people,” she announced.
31
THERE WAS A moment of astonished silence before Malik leapt to his feet with a snarl of fury.
“I do not know how things are done in Sador, madam, but here we talk before deciding such issues as whether to ally ourselves with the likes of this creature.”
“You talk. I have decided,” Jakoby pronounced imperiously.
If the moment had not been so fraught, the look of baffled and impotent fury on Malik’s face would have been comical.
“Jakoby, we honor you and know that your ways are different,” Brydda interposed smoothly. “Were we in your land, we would abide by your customs. But this is our land, and here decisions among allies are made by a majority decision through a vote, taken from all participants after everyone has had their say.”
The Sadorian grunted and flung herself into a seat with feline grace. “Very well. Talk,” she said in an openly bored tone.
Malik looked perfectly furious, and the other rebels were clearly discomforted by her contempt. I tried to imagine this domineering gold-skinned woman at a guildmerge, where everything was decided by consensus, and failed utterly.
“Lady,” Dardelan said, “you are a chief in your land. This, my father told me, is the Sadorian way, to choose the best and brightest by means of ritual challenges and then to allow them to lead without interference. But this is not Sador, nor is it Sadorians whom you will battle. The Council, the soldierguards, and the Herder Faction are Landfolk, and perhaps in this light you may concede that there will be times when we will know better how to deal with them. Maybe you will learn something useful from observing our ways, just as we will learn from you. Isn’t that the advantage of an alliance?”
Jakoby made no response to this speech, but she had lost her bored expression.
“On behalf of the western bloc, I would like to say—” Cassell began, but Malik cut him off by snorting rudely.
“ ‘On behalf,’ Cassell? Do you have signatures over letters from Radek and Madellin explaining their absence and entitling you to represent them?” Malik demanded.
“We have come to an understanding—” Cassell began, but Malik interrupted him again with a loud laugh.
“An understanding—a very vague and useful term, is it not?”
Cassell flushed with anger, but he was not quick enough to compose a cutting rejoinder.
I glanced at the Sadorian, wondering how she felt about their petty bickering. It was no great advertisement for Land ways.
Elii rose to speak. “I want to know what these Misfits can do,” he said in his gruff accent. “I thought that was what we were here for.”
“That is what I was trying to say earlier when I was interrupted,” Cassell interposed with a dark look at Malik.
“I am not concerned with her tricks,” Malik said flatly.
“I would like to hear what Elspeth has to offer,” Dardelan said diffidently.
Brocade laughed coarsely. “No doubt you would, but we speak of war, boy, not bedsports.”
Dardelan flushed bright red, and I felt the blood from my own cheeks.
“If you would conduct a war the way you conduct this meeting, then I think it best if you stick to bedsports,” I snapped.
Brydda’s eyes warned me to be careful; a display of temper would undo any favorable impression I had managed to make.
“I suppose Misfits know better than human beings how to run a meeting,” Malik sneered.
Anger surged through me. Malik’s continued attempts to label me and his implication that we were neither normal nor human would not stop until I had answered him decisively. Yet I would remain calm and dignified if it killed me, I vowed.
The effort of keeping my temper leached all emotion from my voice, and when I spoke, it sounded curiously toneless. “We do not consider ourselves abnormal but only possessed of certain additional abilities. We lack nothing that any other human being has in the Land, excepting perhaps a place in the order of things. It is the Council who names us Misfit, along with dreamers and defectives. I do not know whether we conduct meetings better, but do I know that our aim when we meet is not to use words as sly daggers but to exchange information.” Sensing I had their undivided attention for the moment, I shifted to address the room rather than Malik.
“I came here today to offer you the opportunity to find out how my people can help you win your rebellion against the Council. Yet I am treated with as little courtesy as if I were your enemy. You insult me and sneer, and from this, I might judge that you wish me to depart.”
Malik’s eyes sparkled with triumph, and anticipation of his disappointment enabled me to infuse a sweetness I did not feel into my words. “Yet, in case not all who are in this room share Malik’s opinions and attitudes, I will speak my piece in spite of all his efforts to stop me.” I hurried on before the furious rebel could cut in. “I have told you that we have additional abilities, and that is so. There are among us those who can communicate mind to mind over some distance. These we call farseekers. In a rebellion, with one such at your side, you could constantly exchange information and intelligence among yourselves and seek advice without leaving battle posts.”
I sensed I was speaking well, for all but Brocade and Malik had lost their skeptical looks and were listening intently—even the stern, silent Gwynedd.
“Others among us have the ability to empathise—that is, to receive or transmit feelings. Such an ability at your command would enable you to strike fear or doubt into a soldierguard captain at the crucial moment in a battle, or even to send love and friendship into the hearts of attacking forces to confuse and distract them.”
Malik laughed, but no one paid any attention to him. I felt a wild thrill. I had them!
“Some of us can communicate with beasts, which would enable us to project instructions and conflicting commands to enemy horses, thereby defusing a mounted charge.”
“That fingertalk of Brydda’s,” Malik sneered.
I shook my head, refusing to let him shake my confidence or control. “Brydda’s success at his fingerspeaking is admirable, but communicating with beasts, for those who have the Talent, is generally done via the mind as with farseeking. Were I nearby or even some distance away, I could reach out a voice from my mind to the horse on which a soldierguard is mounted and, provided my request was polite and reasonable—”
“Polite!” Cassell sounded startled and amused.
I looked at him gravely. “I find courtesy serves in any situation. Don’t you?”
He looked faintly abashed.
“Of course,” Malik jeered, drowning out whatever answer Cassell might have made. “We could all take a lesson from this and curtsy to our dogs and goats before breakfast.”
Brocade guffawed loudly. “I think I can conduct my forces without advice from my horse.”
I resisted the urge to suggest his horse could probably do a better job of it and went on to point out that, apart from our additional abilities, there were others among our number who had trained themselves as warriors and who were prepared to stand beside the rebels and fight.
“Are there other abilities?” Jakoby asked.
I glanced at her but did not let her catch my eyes. “Some of us have he
rb lore and are healers,” I said, keeping my fingers crossed that she would not persist. “All of our abilities we would place at your disposal if we were allied, in the hope that by defeating our common enemies, the Land will become a place where we can all live in peace, without persecution or slavery.”
“A pretty speech,” Malik sneered. “But the heart of the matter is that you wish to trade your dubious and unproven additional abilities for acceptance among normal humans.” He turned his burning eyes to the others. “We oppose the Council because of its misuse of power, not for its attempt to clean the human race of holocaust poisons and mutations. If we were to accept aid from these Misfits, we would have to give up trying to cleanse our race of deformity and mutation. Such a move would say that, hereafter, we will permit any freak or defective obscenity not only to live, but also to exist alongside us, to share our Land, our food, our crops; to bond with our sons and daughters.”
There was a charged silence, and I felt frozen by the hostility in the faces that turned to me.
“She is a Misfit, and I see no monster,” Dardelan said softly. “Is she the kind you mean when you speak of freaks and mutants, Malik?”
The boy had formidable subtlety, and I wondered what the father must be like, to have such a son.
“She is not visibly deformed,” Malik conceded with ill grace. “But what of those she represents? No doubt they have sent her precisely because she was the most comely among them. After all, they would not send a monster, would they?”
“There are none among us whom you would see in a crowd and know as Misfits,” I said. “None of us is physically deformed.”
I stopped, for this speech soured my mouth. I could not compromise what I believed, not even to win these people.
I looked directly into Malik’s eyes. “But were such a one to come among us, grossly deformed or not, we would not turn them away excepting that they were deformed of spirit or soul.”
From the corner of my eye, I saw the Sadorian shift involuntarily as if the words held some goad, but when I looked, her face was impassive.