The Ozark trilogy (59 page)

“The problem,” said Nathan Overholt, “was not whether we could; it was a question of whether it was permitted to us . . . whether it was justified. You have answered that question for us.”

“Good,” said Lewis Motley.
“Good!
”

It was clear to the Magicians of Rank that Lewis Motley had no idea what lay behind their temporary confusion, and there was no particular reason why he should have. Mindspeech on this planet was supposed to be confined to them, to a rare and exceptionally talented Magician, and-for some unknown and outrageous reason -to the Mules. A Magician not sufficiently skilled to be a Magician of Rank, but beyond the ordinary, could mindspeak in a clumsy fashion, one or two semantic units at a time, with great and exhausting effort-it was a rare thing. Leaving out those exceptions, the Grannys and the Magicians had empathy to spare, but could go no further. As for Responsible of Brightwater, the news that she could use mindspeech, and his hint that there was more to it even than that, went beyond revelation. It was the Twelve Towers crashing down about their learned heads. He could not know that, but they did, one and all.

“Perhaps,” suggested Michael Stepforth Guthrie carefully, “it is only your imagination, Lewis Motley. You have been under a great strain lately, and the pressure of your new duties, isolated as you are here, and your brother only a short time in his grave, must be extreme. Please consider once again: are you
certain?”

And then there were nine Magicians of Rank leaping with varying degrees of nimbleness out of the way as the Guardian of Wommack threw the heavy table over into their laps.

“Months
I have lived with that witch prying and poking about in my head!” he shouted.
“Months!
At first it was only a moment, only a nudge now and then . . , then it was every day . . . soon it will be every hour of every day! Why she leaves me in peace in the nights now I cannot imagine, but I know it will not last . . . And you dare ask me if it is my imagination!
Imagination! I
may be imagining
you,
gentlemen, I may be imagining the beat of my own heart, I may be imagining this room and this chair and this tablebut I do not imagine the liberties that Responsible of Brightwater takes with my mind!”

The Magicians of Rank, back against the walls and the door, began to feel almost warm toward this arrogant stripling, for all that he had shown them less deference than he had shown their Mules. If what he said was true, and by his words it surely must be-if he had been mad they would have known at once, his mind was harried and fretful and fractious, but it was sound-if it was
true,
then at last they had their chance to revenge themselves! Even with one another, whatever it was she used to bind their lips held; they could not speak of the experiences they had shared. But they knew, every one of them knew, and for the opportunity to pay her back as she should be paid there was almost nothing they would not have offered.

Lewis Motley was breathing hard, and staring round him like a Mule stallion with a threatened herd. When the Magicians of Rank began moving toward him, speaking to him with the voices they used for the ill and the frantic, he had only one thing to say to them.

“Can you make her stop it?”

He had no interest in anything else they might be able to do, to him or for him.

“
Can you?
”

They were grinning at one another in a way that lacked dignity, but had enough of malice and sheer unfettered glee to make up for it. For a man to use mindspeech, unless he were a Magician, was illegal. For a
woman
to do so . . .

It would take all of them, and for once in their lives they would have to work together. But it was allowed. Her offense was monstrous.

“Yes, Lewis Motley,” they said, “we certainly can.”

They were nine ecstatic Magicians of Rank, and they could already taste the sweetness of revenge in their mouths.

Shandra of Clark was out of breath; first, there’d been dropping the eggshells into the batter for that morning’s cornbread and having to make a whole new batch, and the cook down on her for that; and then there’d been tripping over somebody’s small boy as had
no
business being in the staff hallway down the side of the Castle . . . and then going back for another pot of tea to replace the one she’d half spilled on Miss Responsible’s tray, and the cook down on her for
that.
She was determined this time to get up the stairs and down the corridor, and the tea delivered with no further mishaps.

“Keep on as you’ve been, Shandra of Clark,” she muttered to herself as she went along, “and you’ll spend the rest of your life stuck in the back kitchen of this Castle peeling things and taking dressdowns from the rest of the staff, see if you don’t.” That wasn’t her plan for her life; she intended to work her way out of the kitchen and into the affections of a certain young man with good prospects-but first she had to get out of the kitchen.

Responsible’s door . . . there! She stopped, balancing the tray carefully on one hand, and smoothed her hair down, and then she knocked softly three times.

“Your tea, miss, and good morning with it,” she said, hoping she sounded more agreeable than she felt. The cook had been
really
mad at her, and considering it was two dozen squawker eggs wasted, that was reasonable.

She waited for an answer, and passed her time admiring the door. If ever she did have a house of her own, she wanted just such a door. Boards of ironwood, set vertical, and the top arched to a high peak, and then the whole thing painted a proper blue. And the doorknob had set in its center a Brightwater crest-she wouldn’t have that one, of course-in glorious bright colors you could near see in the dark. And the horseshoe nailed above the door was a dainty thing of silver, no rough and (admit it!) rusty iron such as she had over her own door on the Castle’s top floor. Time she polished
that,
for sure.

“Miss Responsible?”

She knocked again, and frowned. Miss Responsible was an early riser, saving always that day after the Granny’d potioned her, and lately she’d been up so early that several times she’d come down after her own tea and caught the staff just coming into the kitchen. Shandra fancied having her own house to run, but she didn’t envy Responsible of Brightwater the managing of this great hulk of a Castle, thank you, not one bit she didn’t.

She knocked sharper, and then clucked her tongue, irritated. Now she’d be getting it in the kitchen for being gone too long right in the middle of making breakfast!

If it’d been some doors, she’d of opened it-not looked in, of course, but just opened it a crack-and called right into the room. But nothing would have brought her to that at this door, or either of the Granny’s, nor the Magician of Rank’s either. Warded doors she’d keep her hands off of unless invited, now and forevermore, and she had no intentions of having Miss Responsible do . . . something. She wasn’t sure just what Miss Responsible could do, but she gathered it wouldn’t necessarily be pleasant, and she had no desire to test it out. It was said Miss Responsible was right clever with Charms and Spells.

There being nothing else to do, she took the tray back to the kitchen one more time, and told the others that Responsible of Brightwater wasn’t answering her door this morning.

The cook set her arms akimbo and made a fuss like she’d made over the eggs, only more so.
“Are you
for sure of that, Shandra?” she demanded. “Seems to me your mind’s dead set this morning on seeing if you can’t do the day backwards and hindside
to.
Did you knock? Loud enough so as you could tell somebody was knocking?”

“Three times three times, I did! And loud, the last time.
And I
called out. And it’s cruel of you going on and on about the eggs like I did it on purpose-”

“I’ll have none of your sass,” said the cook, and Shandra closed her mouth abruptly. She stood a head taller than the cook, and likely outweighed her by twenty pounds, but Becca of McDaniels was a true Five, she’d as soon take your head off as look at you, and she ran the Brightwater kitchen the way her husband ran its stables. No sass, no slack, and no time to breathe from the minute you got there till you were through
by the clock.

“Yes, ma’am,” said Shandra of Clark. “Begging your pardon.”

“You knocked, and you called, and no answer, you say?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Then you take that tea, which is strong enough now for goatdip, I expect, and you go straight to one of the Grannys and you tell them what you just told me. They aren’t as impressed by wards as we are.”

“Nice having two Grannys in the Castle, don’t you think, Becca of McDaniels? It makes a person feel safe.”

“If you don’t hightail it, and right this instant, it’ll take a sight more than a couple of Grannys to keep you safe, young missy!”

Shandra gulped, and followed instructions. Down the hall again, up the stairs again-only one flight, praise the Gates, the Grannys were both on the second floor-down
that
hall, and she almost ran into Granny Hazelbide coming out to breakfast already.

“Oh, Granny Hazelbide, I’m glad to see you!” said Shandra. “You’ll pardon me for holding you from your breakfast, I hope, but I’ve knocked and knocked and I can’t rouse Miss Responsible, and the cook said as I was to come tell you and you’d see what was up.”

“She did, did she?”

“She did. If you’d be so kind, Granny Hazelbide.”

“Nothing that pleasures me more of a morning than traipsing up and down the stairs with the servingmaids,” said the Granny, “you tell Becca of McDaniels that.
I
have nothing better to do with my time.”

“Yes, ma’am., Granny Hazelbide. And thank you kindly, ma’am.”

“You were any more humble, you’d disappear altogether, you know that?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The old woman humphed, and gave the floor a good one with her cane, but she followed Shandra briskly enough, grannying at her all the way, and the girl managed to keep her face straight even through the part about the epizootics, till she stood once again at Responsible’s bedroom door and gave it three knocks.

Back at her came the silence, and she turned to the Granny. “You see?”

“Where’s that girl got to now?” grumbled Granny Hazelbide, and she reached right out and grabbed the doorknob that Shandra of Clark wouldn’t of touched for ten dollers, nor for fifty either. And then Shandra did feel strange, for the Granny snatched back her fingers as she would have done from a live flame and cried out “Double Dozens!” like her voice was scorched, too.

“Granny Hazelbide? Is something the matter?” quavered Shandra of Clark.

“Girl, you set down that tray-right there on the floor’ll do-and you go get Granny Gableframe, fast as you can hoof it, and send her here to me! Go!”

Shandra did, fast as she could as instructed, and then she fairly flew down to the kitchen to tell, stopping only to grab the tray as the two Grannys disappeared into Responsible’s room.

“The Grannys sent me away!” she said, right out, before Becca of McDaniels could have at her again, and she set the tray of tea down on the big kitchen table so hard the teapot rattled. “They said for me to
scat!”

“And?”

“And they both went into Miss Responsible’s room . . . and they did
not
close her door behind them. Which means they were afraid to touch it, seeing as how it burned Granny Hazelbide the first time!” Shandra clutched herself tight with both arms and wailed, “Oh, Becca of McDaniels, I’m plain terrified!”

She had to tell it all, then, and everybody gathering round to hear, until the cook shushed her in no uncertain terms. “It’s none of our business,” she said, grim of eye and lip, “but the breakfast is. And if we’re to know what’s going on, we will; and if we’re not, life’ll go right along just the same. Now turn to, and no more nattering and lollygagging.”

“But if-”

“Turn
to!
” thundered the cook, her hollering twice as big as anything else about her, and that was that. If they died of curiosity, they’d just die of it. And 5handra berated herself for an idiot; if she’d “forgotten” that tray she’d of had to go back up after it and she might of been able to find out something, and as much trouble as she was in already it wouldn’t have made a scrap of difference. Trust her to make a mistake when all it got her was broad words, and then do a thing right when the mistake would of been worth it!

Up in Responsible’s room, the two Grannys stood, one on each side of her bed, and pondered.

“She’s breathing,” said Granny Gableframe.

“Barely.
Just
barely. There’s none to spare, Gableframe.”

“The mirror clouded over.”

“But see her bosom? Still as my own hand-not a move, not a flutter.”

Granny Hazelbide laid her fingers to the girl’s throat and pressed, hard, below the joint of the jaw.

“Pulse
there,”
she declared. “It’s not thumping and pounding, but a pulse it surely is. She’s breathing.”

“Tsk!” went Granny Gableframe. “Now what
ever
do you suppose?”

“You? You’re senior to me-what do
you
think?”

Granny Gableframe pinched her lips tight and shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said slowly, “I surely don’t. But the wards on that door weren’t put there just to keep out the servingmaids, I can guarantee you that . . . see that mark on your palm where you gripped the knob? Looks like you’d gone and picked a handful of coals up out of a fire!”