“Who ever would have thought that I should welcome an enemy spy through my door? But I do, and most gladly.
“And last but not least, my boy Bennay. I have been so worried for you. I am relieved and delighted to see you looking so well. And all those amusing wonders we appeared to accomplish flowed from you and Mistress Chanad. There has always been a magician in my household, so I am well acquainted with your kind. Not one of them, and they were grown men and women, could have accomplished one-twentieth of what you have done. How old are you?…Bennay is not your real name, I think.”
Benayu was looking a bit uncomfortable. He was usually a bit cocky about his abilities, but he wasn’t used to this kind of praise from this kind of person.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Benayu isn’t my real name either. That’s what I’m usually called. I’m fourteen.”
“Well, I hope you will not try anything of the kind again until you are at least five years older. I had a young cousin, not a magician, who…no, some other time. And here are Sponge and the horses. I am sorry to see them without their wings, but I suppose it was sensible. I will see that the horses are well stabled. There are hitching rings beside the stair. I do not normally allow dogs in my house, but I will make an exception for Sponge.”
“Oh, he’ll be all right,” said Benayu. “Stay with the horses, boy. I won’t be long.”
“Follow me, please,” said Lady Kzuva, and rapped on the door with her cane. Both leaves opened instantly. The four footmen bowed as she passed between them. Inside was a formal entrance hall with a grand flight of stairs. Lady Kzuva settled herself into a throne-like chair with carrying poles either side. The footmen stood by the poles, ready to lift, but she raised her hand and turned to a worried-looking elderly man, wearing a rather grander version of the household livery, who had been hovering near by.
“Rooms for my guests, Micha,” she told him. “They may be staying several days and will need their own quarters. Show them for the time being into the little library and bring them light refreshments. There are three horses to be well stabled and a dog who will remain with the horses. We will have supper in the Orchard Room. Make my excuses to the company in the dinner hall.
“Now, my friends, I have business to complete. Beyond that I will clear my diary as far as I am able. And you must tell me your tale this evening. All I know is that I lay here in a coma for two nights and a day, and woke on the morning of the second day from the strangest, strongest dream I have ever known. And now you have brought this brooch to my door to tell me that it was no dream, but true.”
It was well toward midnight before they finished. Lady Kzuva asked a hundred questions along the way and remained alert to the end. When it was over she sat silent for a while, then smiled and shook her head.
“To my mind,” she said, “the strangest part of it all is this. Here we were, all the so-called grand and powerful of this great empire, living in constant dread under the rule of the Watchers but not daring to band together to do anything about it, while you five, a simple miller, a farmer’s daughter, a shepherd boy, a—shall we say wandering scholar?—and a child, accomplished the thing without any help from any of us. And then, almost as an afterthought, except that it was no afterthought but supremely important, though it was not in any way your responsibility, you brought about the possibility of peace with a powerful nation whose ships have harried our shores for centuries.”
They stayed five days at the House of Kzuva. Lady Kzuva spared them what time she could, canceling any business that wasn’t pressing. She spent one whole morning visiting some of her mills with Ribek and Maja, and talked earnestly with Striclan about the condition of the Empire and the mind-set and culture of the Pirates. At one point she asked Maja to be with her as she sat in judgment on two disputes between her people, both involving accusations of witchcraft.
“My magician Stindul is good enough for most things, but at heart he is a scholar,” she said. “He doesn’t understand the peasant mind.”
One case was simple enough. The plaintiff was accusing his neighbor of causing his peach crop to fail.
“The trees belong to me,” explained Lady Kzuva, “but I take only a third of the fruit. Still he needs to account for the failure to me, so he is trying to blame it on his neighbor rather than his own laziness in failing to keep the trees well watered. I would simply like to be sure before I pass judgment.”
Maja closed her other senses as far as she could and concentrated. No, there was no made magic there, only an ancient and obvious human magic.
“They just hate each other. That’s all,” she said.
The other case was more interesting. A man’s legs were infested with a horrible maggot which was eating him away from the inside. His wife was accusing another man of causing the affliction, because she had rejected his advances, saying that she would remain faithful to her husband. The husband had been carried into court so that Lady Kzuva could see for herself. The accused man said it had been the other way round, and the wife was taking advantage of the illness in vengeance for his having rejected her.
There was no spell, Maja could tell at once, and the accused man had no magical powers. But…but…
“Can we look at the husband close to?” she whispered.
She followed Lady Kzuva down to where the man was lying on his litter, sockless and shoeless, with his baggy trousers pulled above the knees to show the disgusting state of his legs. The woman knelt beside him.
“It’s his left shoulder,” Maja whispered.
“And his upper body is unaffected?” said Lady Kzuva.
“There’s nothing wrong with it,” said the wife.
“I would like to be able to compare clean flesh with the diseased part,” said Lady Kzuva.
“But it’s his legs!” exclaimed the wife. “There’s nothing wrong—”
“Nevertheless, I wish to see for myself. Please do as I say.”
“But—”
“Justicer, will you remove the man’s jacket and shirt, please.”
The wife rose and watched pale-faced while a court official knelt and bared the man’s torso. As the wife had said, there seemed to be nothing wrong with it.
“On his back,” whispered Maja.
“Roll him over,” said Lady Kzuva.
“No!” screamed the wife.
High on the shoulder blade was a small crude tattoo—a snake, perhaps, but looking at it carefully Maja saw it was meant to be some kind of worm. Whatever it was, it was nasty.
“That’s what’s doing it,” she muttered.
“A sigil of some kind,” said Lady Kzuva.
“That’s right,” said the man. “I’d a bit of an ache there, and Carna got this fellow…Carna…? What…?”
“You will need to explain yourself,” Lady Kzuva told the woman calmly.
The woman started screaming. The two justicers hurried her away. Servants carried the sick man off to the household magician to see what he could do for him.
When Lady Kzuva was busy, she arranged amusements for her visitors, riding or learning the elements of hawking in the woods, boating on the river, and so on. Saranja and Striclan usually absented themselves for at least part of the day. Ribek decided that when he was home he would have a hawk of his own, so he spent any time he could in the mews, watching the falconers train their young birds. It became obvious to Maja that she’d have to have one too when they were married, and then she got hooked herself.
Benayu spent most of his day in the library, working through shelf after shelf of old magical volumes, accumulated by generations of household magicians, and talking them over with Stindul. Strangely, the long hours of concentrated study of his craft seemed to have an almost medicinal effect on him, both body and spirit. They saw this clearly on the fourth evening.