The Wide World's End (28 page)

“How . . . ? How . . . ?” Kelat said, gulping as he trod water.

“Don't know! One of Morlock's little devices. Said it was best to be sure—he had bad luck on the water.”

“Man thinks ahead,” Ambrosia agreed, with chattering teeth. “Except when it comes time to jump on a sea-monster's neck.”

Morlock had been more or less limp in her arms, but then he started and tried to get away.

“Hey, you!” she shouted in his ear. “It's over! Relax!”

“Sword,” he said.

“Death and Justice! Can't you just make another?”

“Sword.”

“It's—”

“
Sword!
”

“Fine! Fine! I'll get your little toy. Hang onto your pack, here. Don't let him slide off, you two.”

“Lady Ambuh-buh-buh-brosia,” Kelat stuttered, but she was gone under the water again.

She seemed to be angry at him, and he didn't understand it. Should he have jumped into the maw of the creature? He hadn't even had his spear. She hadn't done anything to aid or forestall Morlock either—she seemed to have stopped Deor from doing so. Why was he, Kelat, to blame?

Ambrosia reappeared with the strange crystalline sword and tossed it atop the floating packs.

“Let's follow Vornon's plan,” she said, “and beach ourselves north of the t-t-t-t-t-town. And hope the w-w-w-w-water doesn't kill us before we get there.”

It didn't, but it was a near thing. After an eternity of struggling in the cold, dark water, they finally dragged themselves onto the rocky shore. They lay there for a time, gasping. Then Morlock sat up and started fiddling with his pack.

“Morlock,” croaked Ambrosia. “What doing?”

“Dry clothes.”

“Stupid. Stuff's as wet as water.”

Morlock looked at her with surprise. He continued opening his pack and pulled out dry clothing. With a marked absence of shame, he stripped off his wet clothes, and by that time, anyway, the others were ferociously attacking their own packs.

When they were all dressed in dry clothes and more comfortable, Ambrosia said, “So how did you do that?”

“Water's gullible. Stitch runes through the packs that convince water to stay out. Easy.”

“You're easy,” she jeered. “That's what the girls on the waterfront tell me, anyway.”

A strange voice spoke next—inhuman, vibrant, crunching words like rocks. Kelat looked up to see a dozen mandrakes, armed with swords and spears, standing above them on the beach.

There was water in Kelat's ears and he hadn't quite caught the words. But, whatever they had said, it didn't sound friendly.

C
HAPTER
F
OURTEEN

Empty Sock

Sunberry pie garnished with sweet cream and a cup of smoke-root tea are not, in fact, cures for grief and loneliness, and they do not answer any of life's pressing questions. But Aloê wanted them and she could get them, and they were good enough for the time being. She sat in the garden of her favorite refectory, watching the sun's pale red light disappear from the River Ruleijn below, and slowly ate her pie and drank her tea and thought many a useless thing.

She started to feel like she was being watched, though, and she looked up to see Noreê standing at the door of the refectory with one of her many thains-attendant.

She raised her cup in salute and Noreê came over. The thain stayed at the door.

“Will you have something?” Aloê said. “The owner is a friend of mine, and a wonderful baker.”

“What did you want in the Arch of Tidings, Aloê?” Noreê said.

“I was trying to find out why you murdered Earno,” Aloê said pleasantly. “
That
you did is pretty well established, but the Graith will want to know
why
—”

“Is that supposed to be funny?”

“Not as funny as you browbeating me, as if I were one of the thains-attendant who worship you as the incarnation of God Avenger. I am your peer and the Graith's vengeancer.”

“We are not peers.”

“I stretched a point. You are almost my peer.”

Aloê placidly drank tea while the other woman fumed. She refilled her cup from the pot and gestured with it at Noreê, offering some. Noreê waved it impatiently away.

Eventually Noreê said, “I have a reason for asking.”

Aloê said, “I have a reason for not answering. If you want to tell me your concern, I'll listen.”

Noreê fumed. Aloê drank her tea. The pot was almost empty, and Aloê had just decided to get up and leave when Noreê said, “A message sock was tampered with.”

“Which one? And how do you know?”

“It was the one in
stranj
with Earno's. And I know because . . . one of the thains who keeps watch on the message room is one of mine. He checks the message socks routinely, and found that Earno's had been—disrupted. Its seal was broken and the palimpsest within removed.”

“And how did you know that I had been to the message room?”

“The thain on duty there tonight is another one of mine. She sent word to me of your visit.”

Aloê said, “Let's go.” She stood and walked away from the table, leaving Noreê to follow or not as she chose. She did eventually follow, hurrying to catch up with Aloê. By that time Aloê was at the door, exchanging pleasantries with the owner of the place. Aloê walked into the dark street with Noreê and the thain at her back. She strode ahead and let them follow her like an honor guard.

The Chamber of the Graith was nearly empty: only a few thains at the entrance, one under the dome with the broken Witness Stone, and one outside the Arch of Tidings.

“I thought Bleys might still be here, working at healing the Stone,” Aloê remarked to Noreê.

“He is here most of his waking hours,” Noreê conceded. “He thinks the pieces can be regrown together.”

“Regrown?”

“That's what he says.”

They walked on to the Arch of Tidings. There was a woman standing under the arch or entry, wearing the gray cape of a thain. Aloê didn't know her.

“This thain is one of yours?” Aloê said to Noreê.

“Yes.”

“Introduce us.”

“Vocate Aloê. Thain Veluê.”

“It's good to meet you, Thain Veluê.”

“Vocate.”

“Vocate Noreê is now going to tell you to take my orders in preference to hers.”

There was a brief, tense silence. Finally Noreê said, “Very well. Veluê, Vocate Aloê is tasked with avenging the death of Summoner Earno. While she is, we must all help her as we can. I must ask you to consider her orders as higher than my own, or, indeed, anyone else's.”

“Except your own conscience, Veluê.”

“Anyone else's at all,” Noreê said urgently, as if she considered talk of conscience frivolous.

Veluê's dark eyes went from Aloê to Noreê and back again. “I will do so, Vocates.”

“Thanks,” Aloê said. “Show me this sock that's been tampered with.”

Veluê led the way to a scrinium with several message socks in pigeonholes. “This is the one,” she said, pointing.

“Did you discover it?”

“No, to my shame. That was the day man—Curruth is his name.”

“When?”

“Yesterday.”

“Chaos eat his bones.”

The other two Guardians looked at her in surprise.

“And mine, too. Earno's message sock was stolen, Noreê.”

“Oh. Indeed.”

“Indeed. And I sat in this room some days ago and sent a message to the necrophors, never thinking there might be evidence about his murder in this room.”

“There still might be,” Noreê said thoughtfully.

“How so?” Aloê asked. “The sigil is broken. The palimpsest within is gone.”

“But message socks work because the two enclosures, and the palimpsests within them, are bound in talic
stranj
. There might be a talic impression in the message sock of the hand that removed the scrip and broke the sigil, disrupting the
stranj
.”

“We couldn't run around reading the palms of everyone in the world . . . but we could start with those who likely had access.”

“Yes.”

“Let's do it, then.”

“The impression, if there is one, will only be readable once; perceiving the talic pattern will disrupt it. Should I look for it, or should you?”

Aloê thought for a moment. “It'd be best if we look together, wouldn't you say? It doubles our chances of finding this fellow. Unless there's some reason we can't join perceptions for this purpose.”

Noreê's wintry face was briefly warmed by a smile. “No, you're right. That would be best.”

Noreê was the greatest seer in the world, with the possible exception of Bleys, a couple of deranged recluses in New Moorhope, Ambrosia Viviana . . . and perhaps some of the mind-sculptors in the Anhikh Kômos. Aloê never ventured on an act of the Sight in her presence without some qualms of embarrassment. But she had more important things to think about now than her ego: she braced her feet so that her body could stand in semi-consciousness and let her mind ascend the invisible steps to visionary rapture.

The eye of her mind opened and she found her talic self standing apart from the slumbrous glow of her body. Near to her in intention was Noreê, whose talic self was like a river of icy light. Aloê extended her coppery selfhood to mingle with that of the older, wiser, crueller woman. The shock of joining was deep: Aloê was used to sharing it with Thea, but Thea was gone. . . . Never mind. Never mind. They were joined.

They moved in united intention toward the violated message sock. The sigil had a spidery multibranched mark on it—the shock of spellbreak. The sock itself. . . .

She/they thought they/she saw some words! Earno's last message. They/she impressed the forms, but did not read them. Nothing is so hostile to the rapture of vision as language.

Within the sock . . . not a talic impression, but the reverse of one . . . not the image but its impress in the receptive matter of the enclosure. The sense of a specific person's absence. She/they did not recognize it. But they/she took the impress of that also.

“Return,” said Noreê with her mouth, as if she were not in rapture at all. Aloê hardly heard it through her distant ears; she felt it directly in her selfhood. Which was hers alone again: Noreê had disentangled herself and descended from rapture already.

It took longer for Aloê, a timeless time. But at last or instantly the eye of her mind closed and the eyes of her body opened: she stood alongside Noreê in the hall of messages.

“It was a letter to Morlock,” Aloê said thoughtfully. “Oh, Chaos on crutches. That's no good.”

“Is it not?” asked Noreê thoughtfully. “I remember something about ‘make you king' and ‘consider Lernaion an enemy.'”

“After the Battle of Tunglskin, Lernaion said to Earno, ‘They will make that crooked man king,' or something like that. Earno must have decided to warn Morlock about it. This doesn't tell us anything that I didn't already know.”

“I didn't know it,” Noreê said. “And it may help us more than you think. Do you bear an impress of the thief?”

“Yes.” Aloê closed her eyes: the sensation was still clear in her mind. “More of an un-press—a sense of what the thief exactly is not. I'm not putting it well.”

“It can't be put well.”

Aloê opened her eyes to see that Noreê was smiling at her again. “Tell me something, Vocate.”

“Yes?”

“You discovered this some time ago. Why did you wait to read the imprint in the message sock?”

Noreê said, “Why do you suppose?”

“I suppose that you thought I was the thief, and you wanted to test that suspicion before you revealed your knowledge.”

“Your shot strikes close, but not exactly in the center ring. I feared you might be the thief, and waited until I was sure you were not. You were a good choice for vengeancer, Aloê—none better. But I didn't trust the man who proposed you. I had to be sure.”

“And now you are.”

“Yes. And you of me, I hope.”

“Within limits. I still think you're crazy on the subject of the Ambrosii.”

Noreê shrugged uneasily. “It may be so. Intuition guides me very strongly. But to surrender to intuition is also to surrender to prejudice and other impulses that arise from the dark places of the mind. Everything has its cost. But I see what I see. It should not matter for this purpose, though: I can't believe that Morlock would murder Earno and leave you to investigate the crime . . . unless you were somehow implicated. As you are not, plainly.”

Aloê yawned. “Beg your pardon. A long day for me. Noreê, will you meet with me tomorrow morning and help find the thief? If he was not the murderer, he must have been acting at their behest.”

“Surely.” Noreê put a gentle hand on Aloê's shoulder. (The same hand had broken the neck of Osros, Third of the Dark Seven of Kaen.) “Rest, child. I'll come see you in the morning.”