The Ozark trilogy (37 page)

And you do agree that it was-disgraceful.”

“I messed up your fan a tad,” said Responsible coldly, “but I did you no harm. And I believe Castle Traveller’s budget will run to a fan or two.”

“Sin,” said Granny Leeward, like a stone falling. “It was sin, what you did.”

“No,” said Responsible. “it was illegal. The two things are not the same.”

“Only a Magician of Rank has the authority to do what you did that day,” said the Granny, chopping off every word, “and
that’s
the illegal part. The sinful part is a woman even knowing what you obviously know, and having no more decency than to use that knowledge, and in full daylight before a dozen respectable people on top of
that.
And it was an ugly trick, missy, a purely ugly trick!”

“If there was sin-which I don’t admit to-it was in losing my temper and falling into the trap you and your kin set for me. I’d say that was more stupidity than wickedness.”

Granny Leeward gave her a narrow look, and as Responsible had expected, there came
 
a sudden look of understanding in her eyes. She’d be seeing that look a lot oftener than she cared to today.

“I see you’ve added a new wickedness to your inventory,” said the old woman, “You’re a
bold
hussy, I’ll grant you that.” Responsible sighed, and set her tray on the night table by her bed.

“Granny Leeward,” she said, “you’ve come to chastise me for my foolishness at Castle Traveller-call it sin if you please, I’ll not waste my breath arguing theology with you before breakfast. Well and good; I’m not proud of it. There you sat, leading me on and fanning yourself with that black fan; and all I had to do was heat up its handle a tad to advise you I intended to be treated with respect. There was no call for me to turn that fan into a handful of mushrooms-”

“Black and
rotting
mushrooms, wi
^t
h the smell of death on ‘em!” interrupted L eeward and Responsible, nodded.

“Quite right,” she said. “The black was appropriate, seeing as how
y
ou Travellers find it the only fit color for human use, but there was no call to make them rot in your hand. You caught me with a child’s trick, and I’m well and thoroughly ashamed that I took that bait. But it seems to me you made me pay for that already, Granny Leeward. How greedy for revenge
are
you?
”

The old woman snorted, and her face was stiff with contempt. “I wouldn’t want any misunderstanding between you and me,” she said, leaning back in the rocker and steepling her fingers. “Not any misunderstanding whatsoever. Might could be I should clarify this for you.”

“I’d be grateful,” said Responsible,

Granny Leeward counted the points off one at a time. “What you did to
me
,” she said, “practicing an illegal act of magic, and a foul one, on my person-that goes unpunished still. You lay for a day with deathdance fever, that the Magicians call Anderson’s Disease, as payment for carrying out your ugliness before the Family-that’s paid. Your offense to me still stands, and I’ll call that in when I choose; I don’t choose just yet, Responsible of Brightwater, not just yet. And that’s not why I’m here.”

“You’re not clarifying
much,
Granny Leeward, but your narrowness of spirit. Perhaps you could try a little harder?”

“There are six delegates from Castle Traveller as will sit in the Independence Room this day, and as saw what you did,” hissed Granny Leeward, “and they’re ready and willing to denounce you before the entire convention of delegates, the audience in the balcony, and those watching on their comsets. That make it clearer?”

“Mighty gallant, your men,” said Responsible. “It must make you proud.”

“A female such as you, missy, ought not to have the gall to ask for gallantry. Well on the way to being a witch, and clear the other side of being a fornicator, and you talk about gallantry? That’s for decent women, not for your kind.”

“You’re plain-spoken,” said Responsible. “‘That’s useful in a Granny.”

“Didn’t I say I’d take no sass from you? Your memory gone with your maidenhead?”

“A compliment is not sass,” said Responsible, with as much sass as she was able to muster. “I judge Grannys as I judge Mules, and you rank high. Now speak your piece.”

Those pale-blue eyes . . . she had not been surprised to see them like dead fish, but spitting blue fire was surprising. It would have been pleasant to think that the old woman might be tricked in return, brought to a sufficient pitch of fury to lead her into some indiscretion of her own, leaving the two of them in a more balanced position; but it wouldn’t happen. To begin with, they were alone, and if the Granny was being humiliated there was no one to see or know it but herself. And to go on with, Responsible was certain the woman knew nothing beyond Granny Magic, all of which was legal for her to use.

Granny Leeward leaned forward, stabbing the air with her pointing finger, and she laid it out for Responsible so there could be no confusion in any least particular.

“Either you stay clear away from Confederation Hall,” the Granny said, “where you cannot interfere in what’s none of your business and never has been, or my son will stand before the entire assembly this morning and denounce you-leaving out no details, keep that in mind’-and the rest of those as saw you will back him up. Now I reckon that is clear as springwater, but if it’s not I’ll be glad to embroider it for you same.”

Responsible sank back against her pillows and whistled long and low and silent. Now she’d heard it, it was obvious, but she hadn’t expected
it.
Which was an interesting measure of her strategic skills.

“Botheration,” she said aloud, and thought a word that she’d never heard spoken, though it was claimed to exist.

“Keep your botherations to yourself,” said the Granny, “and the Travellers won’t add to them. We’ve other doings to concern us, and telling that sorry tale about you would only use up another day on top of the one you wasted for us yesterday. But if you insist on coming into the Hall, spite of what I’ve said to you, we will waste that time, I promise you, and I’ll not scruple to stand in the balcony and add my voice to the testimonies.”

“I believe you have me,” said Responsible, taking another drink of tea. “All things considered.”

“That we do,” said Granny Leeward. “That we surely do, and if ever a female deserved it, you qualify.”

“Blackmail doesn’t burden your conscience, Granny?” Responsible asked.

Granny Leeward sat straight and pale. “We walk a narrow line at Castle Traveller,” she said. “We keep the old ways, and there’s none of the rest of you as does. We know, the Gates be praised, the difference between a sin and its name. That’s a difference not to be despised, nor yet forgotten.”

“Explain me that, Granny Leeward-and its application in this matter of you and me. I don’t see it.”

“I’ll explain you nothing! You need moral instruction, you’ve a Granny here, and a Reverend as well, though he’s a poor thing. This universe has one primary law--as ye sow, so shall ye reap and
we
abide by that. I come here as no instrument of blackmail, Responsible of Brightwater; I come as an instrument of justice!”

“I wonder,” mused Responsible, and the Granny drew herself up in the rocker, bridling all over with outrage. Responsible had heard about people bridling, and read the phrase, but this was the first time she’d ever seen it.

“On Old Earth,” she said casually, “there were those so convinced of their purity, so sure they were instruments of justice, that they put others to the rack and the fire out of concern for their immortal souls. Now I suggest to you that you might want to keep that in mind your
self,
Granny Leeward. There’s ugly, and then there’s ugly.”

Granny Leeward stood up like she’d sat on a straight pin, shaking all over with a rage she wouldn’t stoop to express, and Responsible made a mental note-this was one who did not handle well any criticism that struck at her morality. It might be useful to know that one day. And while she had it going, she drove it home.

“And it doesn’t burden your conscience that you Grannys are charged to
help
me, not hinder me?” she demanded. “I find that curious.”

The Granny’s face closed, shut, and if the rage was still there she mastered it. She gave no sign that she’d heard Responsible’s last question.

“I’ll leave it to you to furnish your excuses for your absence,” she said, looking right through the girl. “You lie easy enough, it should cause you no special trouble. Just you stay away from the Hall. And I’ll have your word on it.”

“You have it,” said Responsible wearily. They were tiresome, these Travellers, with their never-ending insistence on guarantees. “And now you
do
have it, I’ll thank you to leave. I have work to do, and I’d best get at it.”

Granny Leeward headed for the door, but she stopped there long enough to shake her finger some more and say a few sentences on the subject of pride going before a fall, and peace coming to them as deserved it and misery to those as didn’t, and just deserts. Responsible rode this out in silence-she had no intention of easing any wounds she might have inflicted on this one-and the time finally came when the woman had either exhausted her supply of moral justifications or tired her own tongue, and she went out the door, leaving a vast silence behind her.

Responsible lay there and whistled her way through three choruses of “Once Again, Amazing Grace,” as a calming measure, and gave her situation some careful thought.

Under her bottom pillow, for example, there was a cylinder no bigger than a needle, and in it a list written on pliofilm and headed “Things To Do When I Get Home.” Weeks it had been there, shoved out of sight till she could find time to tackle it, and there’d been nights when she’d had the feeling it burned her head right through the feathers and heavy pillowslips. Might could be she’d make her way through some of the items on that list after all, while she was staying away from the Hall.

And then, might could be she’d take advantage of the opportunity to just
lie
here? She was that tired.

She reached under her pillow, knowing the foolishness of the lying-about idea, and took out the cylinder, unscrewed the top, and pulled from it the sheet of pliofilm. It had been so long curled it wouldn’t lie flat, of course, and she hadn’t any inclination to take it over to her desk where she could spread it on the leather surface to cling properly; she made do with gripping its edges and ignoring the way it wound itself round her fingers.

Eight items she had written there, she noted with disgust. Eight tasks. And when she’d set out on the Quest in February there’d been only the first. Somehow, riding back into Brightwater in April, there’d been the idea in her head that she could get them all out of the way before the Jubilee. Like many another fool idea she’d had lately.

First of all, there was the task she’d set out with: to go over the Castle’s secret account books, those that couldn’t be trusted to the Economist and required her personal attention.

Next came the matter of determining whether there really had been a Skerry seen at Castle Motley; and if there had been-which she doubted even more strongly now than she had when the servingmaid had blurted out the tale to her-declaring a day of celebration separate and special for the event as custom demanded. It’d be a tad late, but better a tardy observance than none at all. Provided she found any evidence that the servingmaid’s story had had a scrap of truth to it.

Third was the promise she had made in the night to the Gentle, highborn T’an K’ib. She had given her word: the Gentles would be involved in
none
of the Ozarkers’ doings, as already specified by the treaties signed centuries ago. Furthermore, Responsible intended to see that every inch of the Gentles’ territory taken from them by the careless mining operations of the Arkansaw Families was restored, and restored in either its original condition or with improvements to the ancient race’s own specifications. T’an K’ib had not insisted on that, treating it as a minor matter, but Responsible saw it differently. The Arkansawyers knew quite well where the boundaries of their lands joined those of the Gentles, and the temptations of a few tons of ore or a vein of choice gemstones were no excuse for violating those boundaries.

Fourth, she had to see to the matter of the growing prejudice against the Purdys. Prejudice was one of the things that had driven the Twelve Families from Old Earth in the first place. They’d all been white, sure enough, but they’d heard more than they cared to tolerate about “ignorant hillbillies” and “white trash” and they’d seen the black and brown and yellow peoples of Earth suffer at the hands of ignorant and vicious people their own color. And now, somehow without anybody’s remarking on it as it grew, the Purdys had become the “white trash” of this planet. When anybody did a stupid thing, the first remark you heard was “A body’d think you were a Purdy born and raised!” Nasty, that’s what it was, and she would
not
have it; it shamed her that she had not noticed it sooner.

You didn’t put an end to prejudice by proclamations, though; it grew slow, and it died slower. What was required was for the next few groups of Purdy girlchildren to spend their Granny School time spread all round this planet, clear away from the constant expectation of the grown-up Purdys that they would always fail in whatever they did. A few dozen confident, self-assured Purdy females to go home and do missionary duty-that’s what was called for.