“The king is dead, and by my hand,” she said. “If you do not allow murderers in your army, you will not want me. Otherwise—”
Gird felt that his head was full of apricot syrup: sweet, cloying, thick. He dragged his thoughts through it, just able to think So this is what that charming is about! Whatever had happened to the magicks of the other magelords, this one had full measure and running over. He struggled with his tongue, which wanted to say “Yes, lady,” and dug his fingernails into his palms. It helped a little.
“I wish you’d stop that,” he said, somewhat surprised at the even tone in which it came out.
Her mouth opened, and her cheeks paled. “You—are not afraid.”
Humor tickled the inside of his mind, thinning the rich syrup of her magicks. “No, but I am getting angry. I don’t like tricks.”
“It’s not a trick,” she said. The pressure of her sweetness increased; it was hard to breathe.
“Trick,” insisted Gird, through the honeyed mist over his eyes. “Same as luring a fly to honey, and swatting it. You might try honesty.”
All at once, the magicks were gone, his mind clear, and the woman’s face had gone all white around the mouth. That had gone home hard, though most of the magelords didn’t seem to regard honesty as much.
“I did,” she said between clenched teeth. Without the magicks, her face was older, not unlovely, but no longer a vision of beauty and terror. The dark hair had silver threads in it; the face had fine lines, a touch of weather. “I tried honesty, back then, and that brought me exile. And when I tried again, my duty to the king—ah, you would never understand!” She turned away from him, a gesture Gird read as consciously dramatic.
“You killed him,” Gird said, deliberately flat across that drama.
“I killed him.” She faced him again, and now he saw tears glittering in her eyes. Did she really care, or was it all an act? Women he knew cried noisily, red-faced, shoulders heaving, not one silver tear after another sliding down ivory cheeks. “I trusted him; he was my liege. And then—”
He was tired of her dramatics, and wholly out of sympathy with her kind of beauty. “Spit it out, then, lass, or we’ll be here all day—” It was the tone he used on his own folk, the young ones, the frightened ones. On her it acted like a hot needle: she jumped and glared at him.
“He sent me away because I would not give up my weaponcraft and magery to be his queen, or so he told me then. I loved him dearly, and thought he loved me; there was no Rule requiring me to give up the sword as queen. I thought it his whim, and tried to talk him out of it, but he would not. I went into exile heartsore, like any girl whose betrothed turns her away. When he was imprisoned I knew it; he called in the way of our folk, though he had no need to call me. I would have come. When I took him from the prison where your folk had him, when I’d fought our way past the walls to safety, he told me he’d sent me away because of foretelling. Because he’d been told he’d need me someday. So he set conditions he was sure I would not understand nor agree to, to force me to refuse him, and then to leave the court. I had been honest those years, true to him and his memory: he had lied to make use of me. No love, no children, no freedom for my own life—”
It was the sort of thing the women talked about, back home, stories and gossips about unfaithful lovers, men cheating women of a promised marriage, women’s vengeance on them. The men, Gird had to admit, had their own gossip, muttered into their mugs of ale, or half-whispered from man to man during shearing time, with guffaws and backslappings. Still, it sounded just as petty from this magelady as from any village girl; he was surprised she hadn’t come up with something better.
“And for that injury you killed him?”
“For that, and for the king he was not. By Esea’s Light, he had enough of the old Seeing to know what went on. Marrakai would have helped him stop it if he’d wanted to, but he could not be bothered.”
“And from that act of—honesty—” Gird let the word trail out, and watched the blood flood her face. “You came here, and used your magicks on me. Why?”
“I thought you would not give me hearing, but kill me first. It was only to buy that much time—”
“And you found that time worth the cost?”
“It did you no harm,” she said.
“You.” Gird leveled both index fingers at her. “It cost you, mageborn lady. It cost you my trust.”
“But—”
“NO!” He hammered the table with both fists. “No. You listen, mageborn, and then see if you want to dare our mercy. This you did, this use of magicks to charm me into listening, this is exactly what we despise. To keep yourself safe and put others in peril, to use weapons we cannot bear: this is unfair, unjust, and we will not let you do it.”
“What do you know about justice?” she snapped.
“More than you. I would not use my strength against a child to take what was not mine—no, not if I hungered. I know what fair exchange is—”
“You’ve been talking to kapristi—”
“Aye, and listening, too. Weight for weight, work for work, honest labor for honest wages, no chalk in the flour and no water in the milk: that’s fair exchange.”
“And what did you exchange for this wisdom?” She was still scornful, ready to be very angry indeed.
“What they asked for it: when we gain the rule, to bind ourselves to respect their boundaries evermore. To allow gnomish merchants in our markets, at the same fair exchange humans use.”
“That is all they asked?”
“ ’Tis more than they got from you, all these years, so they said. They want a peaceful, ordered land nearby, one content with its borders; they want fair dealing.” Someone came in then, an excuse to dismiss her. But he could not quite dismiss her from his mind. Her image clung there, disturbing. He wished she would leave; it was going to take all his influence to keep the others from attacking her. They might even think she had charmed him.
Several nights later he heard music from the far side of camp. Strings, plucked by skillful hands, and sweet breathy notes of something not quite like a shepherd’s reed pipe. A voice, singing. He stiffened. He knew that voice, knew that honeygold sweetness. Damn the woman, he thought. Her with her arts, she’ll get us all killed.
He chose a roundabout way to her; he could not have said why. Perhaps the sentries would be less alert, listening to the singing? But no. They challenged him, every one, with a briskness he found irritating rather than reassuring.
She sat well back from the fire, cradling the roundbellied stringed instrument and listening to another woman play a wooden pipe three handspans long. Gird watched her from the shadows. That long bony face, the hollows of the eyes—she had grace, he had to admit. Her hands moved, her fingers began touching the strings again, bringing out mellow notes from her instrument. They wove around the pipe-player’s melody and tangled Gird’s attempt to follow either instrument alone. One of the men began to sing, a horse-nomad song. “Fleet foot the wind calls, run from the following storm—” The magelady joined in, again that golden tone he mistrusted. Her voice ran a little above the tune, patterning with it, but in no mode Gird knew. He scowled, ready to be angry. All at once her eyes met his. Her voice slipped, and found itself again.
No. He would not listen to her. He would not look at her. She was betrayal, treachery: she had killed her own king. Magelady, born to deceit and mastery. He was himself: peasant: Mali’s husband. Mali’s dead, whispered some dark corner of his mind. Raheli’s father, then. Broad and blunt, and liking it that way—he would not let himself be seduced by mere grace and golden voice.