“Or whatever the fuck you are,” said Sauce.
“Yes,” Master Smythe said. “You are an apt pupil.”
“Can I ask you some questions?” Ser Gabriel asked.
Master Smythe drank. “Of course. But you understand that this is about entanglement with your… event sequence. The more questions I answer, the more entangled I am, even if I take no action.”
“Bless you,” Ser Gabriel said. “But that’s your trouble, not ours.”
“I agree,” said the dragon.
“Will Harmodius now change sides?” Gabriel snapped.
A pained look crossed Master Smythe’s usually immobile face. “Master Harmodius is far along the road,” he said. “So far that he may decide to be a side, rather than adopt one. It heartens me that he was so conservative with his powers in the recent contest. I cannot go beyond that.”
“Will de Vrailly kill the King?” Gabriel asked.
There was the sound of a dozen breaths all sucked in together.
Master Smythe let a trickle of smoke-artificial smoke, not his own-come out of his mouth. “The sequence, as it applies to the King of Alba, is now completely opaque to me,” he said. “I can’t see a thing.” He sighed. “But I do not see anything happening to the king except his becoming more of a tool.”
Ser Gabriel sat back. “Damn. How about this spring? Right now? The drove and the fairs?”
Master Smythe nodded. “Again, I am too close to all of these. My adversary must be very close to exposing me. But I see this much; Thorn has made alliance with the entity who calls himself ‘the Black Knight.’ They have both slaves and allies in the north-and elsewhere-and they are preparing a major effort. Their scouts have already entered the Adnacrags-indeed, a few foolish creatures attempted to pass my Circle and a dozen raids are aimed into the valley of the Cohocton even now. So yes-yes, I expect that you will be attacked on the road, and that efforts will be made to disrupt trade. My adversary understands trade.”
They all sat, digesting this packet of information.
“Will there be another attempt on the Emperor?” Ser Alcaeus asked.
“I’m not a prophet,” Master Smythe said with visible irritation. “And given your own hand in these events, you are perilously close to annoying me.”
Every head turned.
Alcaeus flushed. “I have chosen my side. I’m here.”
Master Smythe shrugged. “Any road, I’m too close to it. But I will say that any event that threatens the stability of the city is a threat to… everything.”
“How very enigmatic and helpful,” Father Arnaud said. “Will you attend the Council of the North? You are one of the important landowners.”
This sally caused Master Smythe to smile. “By your God, Father, that was witty.” He looked around. “No, I will not attend. We are, as I have tried to say, too close to the tipping point where our adversary detects my interference pattern. That would be very difficult for me. I cannot be seen to directly aid you or I am revealed. And then-then, we fail.” He shrugged. “Even this is an evasion. I can take certain actions-others are too revealing.”
“Because he is stronger than you?” Ser Gabriel asked.
Master Smythe frowned. “Yes.”
“Drat,” Ser Gabriel said.
“Is there a God?” asked Sauce.
“You don’t mince about, do you?” Master Smythe asked. “Child of man, I have no more idea than do you.” He took a long pull on his pipe. “I will say that as my kind is to your kinds, then it would not surprise me to find an order of beings that were to us as we to you, and so on. And perhaps, above us all, there is one. And perhaps that one caring and omnipotent, rather than uncaring, manipulative, and predatory.” He shrugged. “May I share a hard truth?”
“Do you do anything else?” the captain snapped back.
“All practitioners of the art-of whatever race-reach a point of practice where they ask: what is real?” He looked around. Mag shrugged, as if the question was unimportant, and Gabriel flinched.
“Yes,” he said.
“If you can manipulate the aethereal by the power of your will alone, and shape it to the image you hold only in your head,” Master Smythe said softly, “then it behooves all of us to ask what the act of belief actually contains. Does it not?”
Sauce shook that remark off the way she’d shake off an opponent’s inept blow. “But you don’t know, yerself,” she said. “One way or another.”
Gabriel suddenly had the same almost feral look of understanding that Sauce had worn when she understood that the Muriens family now controlled the whole length of the wall. “You mean that-my whole life”-he took a breath as if it hurt-“is not by God’s will or his curse, but by an interference pattern of your kind creating my fate?”
“Ah!” said Master Smythe. “That is, in fact, exactly what I mean.” He paused. “But not just my kind, children of men. All kinds. Your reality is the very result of the interference pattern of an infinite maze of wills. What else could it be?” He smiled, the smile of the cat about to eat the mouse. “Your kind twist the skein of fate, too. You yourself, ser knight. Mag, here. Tom Lachlan. Sauce. Alcaeus. All of you.”
Gabriel drained all the ale in his cup.
“Fuck you all, then,” he muttered.
Mag glanced at him. “I have a question, too,” she said quietly.
Master Smythe’s eyes rested on her. She met his squarely. And smiled. He had beautiful eyes, she thought.
“The Patriarch,” she began.
“A very worthy man,” Master Smythe said.
“He suggested-mm-that living on the frontier-with the Wild-had some effect on our powers.” Once she began to speak, it appeared that Mag wasn’t sure what she was asking.
Master Smythe pursed his lips. “An astute observation to which I will add one of my own. When two cultures face off in a war, do you know what the most common result is?”
Mag swallowed. “One is destroyed?” she asked, her voice suddenly husky.
Master Smythe shook his head as if she was an inept student. “No, no,” he said. “That scarcely ever happens. They come to resemble one another. War does that.”
“So you’re sayin’-” Mag paused. “That we are coming to resemble the Wild?”
“Mag, the Wild is a term of art used by men to describe all of us who are not men.” Master Smythe smiled wickedly. “Women might do well to join us, but I digress.” He seemed to find himself very funny, and he gasped silently for a moment. When no one joined him, he sighed. “The Wild is not a conspiracy. It’s a way of life. But the longer you are in contact with us, the more like us you’ll become. In fact-” He shrugged. “In fact, those with the long view would say that men-and women-are more adaptable than any of the other interlopers here, and are learning the Wild all too well.” Master Smythe spread his fingers on the table and looked at them with real curiosity. “You know that all the other races fear you. And that you are the-is there a nice way of putting this? The favourite tools of all the Powers. Inventive, endlessly violent, not terribly bright.” He smiled to take away the sting.
“Weapons?” Gabriel asked, his head coming up. “Tools?” He thought for a moment. “Defenders?”
“Goodness, ser knight, you don’t imagine you are from here, do you?” asked the dragon.
“Stop!” Bad Tom said. He got to his feet. “Stop. I’ve had eno’. Ma’ head hurts. I don’ need to know the secrets of the universe. I’m not altogether sure you aren’t talking out o’ your smoky wee arse.”