Rosemary Kirstein - Steerswoman 04 (18 page)

“And we just didn’t know what was coming. So we stood up.”

“And I took your hand. I remember that …”

“And when he reached us, he didn’t say a thing, for a bit.”

“And then he did say a thing, and he said it like he’d never
thought of it before.”

“He said: ‘How do you support yourselves?’”

“Wait,” Rowan said, and looked from one to the other. “He
paid you no wages?”

Both heads shook. “Fifteen years,” Earner said. “Not a
penny.”

“He’d seen us, you see, putting in that little garden over
by East Well. Told us he liked our work, and from now on we’d do his garden.”

“And that was that.”

“The family supported us, all those years.”

Earner sighed. “Hard times, all around.”

And the steerswoman realized what was coming next. “He
started paying you for your work.”

Earner leaned forward, despite the fact that it clearly took
great effort. “He walked back into his house, came straight out again, took my
right hand, and poured a fistful of silver and copper into it.”

“It was a lot of money!”

“It wasn’t fifteen years’ worth of wages—”

“No. But a lot of money, still, all at once.”

“I don’t think he’d counted it out at all. I think he just
snatched up whatever was on hand …”

Rowan found this extremely interesting. “And did he begin
paying you regularly after that?”

Lorren’s faded brown eyes grew wide, and the tilted head came
nearly erect. “A silver coin, each and every week after!” Rowan was amazed.
“That’s an excellent wage indeed.”

“Yes, it was!” Earner said, with feeling. “With an extra
sil—

ver, each Winter Solstice!”

“Two Solstices, that was, and then he died.”

“What a shame, the little children were so sad …”

Rowan sat forward, elbows on knees, folded her hands. “Do
you know how he died?”

Outside, clouds slipped past the sun, and the window edge
permitted a narrow block of light to fall on Eamer, painting the right side of
the blue silk jacket with a light sheen of gold. Lorren lifted one arm, laid an
ancient hand on the fine white cloth that covered the table, spread fingers
more bone than flesh. The cloth seemed to glow with sunlight, seemed to reflect
light and heat back upward, through the translucent skin. “Old age,” Lorren
said. “So we were told.”

Eamer’s head shook, slowly. “I don’t believe it.”

“No …”

“Why not?”

Earner said, “He wasn’t old. Not really. We thought so at
the time, of course. He looked a hundred years old to me, then. But now …”

“We know what old is, now,” Lorren said, still quietly regarding
the cloth, the light, the glowing hand. “He wasn’t old. Not like this.”

“He was tall,” Earner said, eyes gazing into the far
distance beyond Rowan. “He was thin, but he stood straight. He had all his
teeth, and he had all his hair.”

“Well, not everyone loses their hair …”

“Yes, they do.” Earner said, returning to the present, and directed
a twisted smile at Lorren. “Everyone. If they last long enough.” And Lorren
chuckled.

“Perhaps magic kept him strong,” Rowan suggested.

“Now, see,” Earner said to Rowan, emphasizing the point with
one raised finger; the entire arm trembled. “That’s the thing. If the two of us
can last this long, all on our own, it wouldn’t be age that takes someone with
magic in his hands. No …”

“How old are you?” Rowan asked, suddenly needing to know.
She felt herself in the presence of some wonderful natural phenomenon, like a
tall, spreading waterfall, a trackless expanse of deep forest, a wild cliff of
many peaks, cutting the sky, eternal.

Both Lorren and Earner had to think long on this question.
“I’ve seen a century, at least … ,” Lorren ventured.

“And I’m five years older.”

Rowan nodded, deeply pleased. She decided that she loved
them. And it seemed to her that they certainly were a couple, but she remained
unable to guess who possessed which gender—or, for that matter, whether their
genders were opposite. She tried to recall what local custom prevailed in Donner
concerning such matters, and discovered that she had not the slightest idea.
And local customs did vary wildly across the known world. Rowan decided not to
disturb these lovely people with a possibly upsetting question.

She returned, instead, to the matter at hand. “If Kieran did
not die by natural means—” An immediate reaction on both faces stopped her.

Lorren said: “Slado.”

“Now, we don’t know that …” But Earner clearly suspected,
as well.

“Bet he did it.” Lorren’s brown eyes receded and vanished behind
a squint of distaste. “I bet he thought he’d get Kieran’s holding.”

“No, he was too young. He couldn’t have learned all that
much, yet.”

“And that’s why he didn’t know any better.”

“What was he like?” Rowan asked.

Identical expressions of deep displeasure. “Like Kieran,”
Earner said. “The Kieran-before. Exactly like.”

“No, not exactly. The old Kieran never went about town the
way Slado did. Though the new Kieran did, a bit.”

“Well, that Slado, he was hardly more than a boy. A lad that
age would, wouldn’t he? Out to the taverns, off riding …”

“He had a horse.”

“Who tended the horse?” Rowan asked, hoping for another informant.

“He stabled it at the Dolphin, same as Jannik does.”

Rowan decided to ask among the stable hands; perhaps their
predecessors’ names were still remembered. “Did Slado have any friends among
the folk?”

This took some thought. “None that I ever saw,” Lorren said.
“Saw him chatting, sometimes. People his age, for the most part.”

“Did he ever speak to you?”

“Hm.” Earner squinted. “Can’t recall …”

“Yes, he did. You remember. He complimented the roses, that
time.”

“Ah, that’s right; but the roses were terrible that year! He
didn’t know what he was talking about.”

“He was just saying it to say it. I think Kieran told him to
be nice.”

A grunt. “Like that would work. Slado paid out that compliment
like it pained him to do it.”

“But wasn’t it Slado who told you that Kieran was gone?”
They shook their heads, the movements almost synchronized. “No,” Lorren said.
“That was Jannik.”

“And Kieran had already been gone some time, I think.”

“Six weeks, at least,” Earner said. “Less than seven.”

“Now, how do you remember that?” Lorren inquired, pretending
disbelief.

A smile. “Six paydays with no wages. I was counting.”

“But he might have been off with his dragons for part of
that …”

“Can you give me the range of dates for those six weeks?”
Rowan asked.

Surprise, and long thought, with much blinking on Earner’s
part, and
hm’s
from Lorren.

“It was summer …”

“Pruning the cherry tree …”

“But I think we had to do that twice, that year …”

“What about the day Kieran first paid you?”

They looked at her, and in perfect unison recited year,
season, month, day, and day of the week. They laughed, and Earner added:
“Around five o’clock in the morning.”

“We’re not likely to forget that!”

“Nor to forget the wizard himself. It’s interesting …
fifteen years of rudeness, arrogance, and even sometimes cruelty, and only two
of kindness. But it’s the kind wizard we remember best, in the end. That’s a
lesson for us all, I think.”

Lorren nodded. “Yes. Hearts can change. Even the heart of a
wizard.”

Rowan found it interesting, as well. Given more time,
possibly everyone would have come to feel as fondly as the old gardeners did
toward the wizard of Donner. “And when he died,” Rowan prompted, “it was Jannik
himself who gave you the
_news.
^,,

Lorren sighed. “Yes. We came to work one morning, and found
some things had already been done …”

“The flats of tulip bulbs we’d left there the previous
morning. Some of them were gone …”

“Planted. So we started on the rest …”

“And after a bit, I noticed there was someone behind me. I
thought it might be Slado, because his shadow was too small for Kieran …”

“But it was a stranger.”

“A little round man, with a pointy beard—” Eamer’s hand
pantomimed the shape, knuckles to chin, fingers moving stiffly. “—dressed in
green. And he told us that our services were no longer required.”

“Because he liked to keep the garden himself.”

“And he does, too. Not as well as we did, of course …”

“But you’ve got to respect a man who likes to keep a
garden.”

“You do. All the magic he wants, but he just gets right down
on his knees and puts his own fingers into the dirt. Got to respect that.”

“And he specifically said that Kieran had died of natural
causes?”

“That’s right. ‘The old wizard has finally passed on.’”

Apparently Jannik himself did consider Kieran to be old
enough to simply pass away—or at least, in front of the gardeners, made a show
of seeming to think so. “How did Slado react to Jannik’s presence?”

“We never saw that.”

“Hadn’t seen the young fellow at all, for a couple of days
…”

“And we never saw him again.”

“But you did have opportunity to watch Slado and Kieran interact,
earlier?” Indications in the affirmative. “How did they seem toward each other
?”

Further conversation, and the picture began to emerge.

On Slado’s arrival, Kieran had made a point of introducing
Lorren and Eamer (“‘The finest gardeners in the Inner Lands!’—and he should
know, being a wizard, so it must be true …”), to which simple social nicety
Slado reacted with perplexity, and glances askance at the old wizard.

During the first few months, when the two were seen together
in the garden or about the city, it seemed that the master regarded the
apprentice with a kindly interest. There was no comradeship displayed, but
neither was there evidence of the sort of close discipline that sometimes was
enacted by masters of more common professions—although what conditions
prevailed when both were out of sight, during Slado’s actual instruction and
training, no one ever saw. Still, Kieran seemed not to dislike his apprentice.

Somewhat later, the gardeners on occasion noticed Kieran observing
Slado, from a distance, with an expression of vague disappointment.

On Slado’s part, there was first careful respect, then a
respect rather more hesitantly granted; then one both carefully formal and
emotionally neutral—when the master was looking. Behind Kieran’s back, or in
his absence, when the wizard was mentioned in conversation: a clear and
unmasked disdain.

One summer afternoon, when Kieran was taking his tea in the
garden, as was his habit on fine days, Eamer, working alone, observed the
wizard deep in thought. Whatever subject Kieran was considering, it was one
that disturbed and saddened him; and his tea grew cold in the pot, and the
sweet-cakes that he so enjoyed were entirely ignored.

Young Slado wandered out of the house, book in hand, to sit
on the stone bench under the cherry tree. As he passed into Kieran’s view, the
wizard glanced at him, once, then looked away; but during that glance and
after, as Eamer noticed, Kieran’s expression did not alter in the slightest.
The gardener could not help but think that the subject of Kieran’s
contemplation had been Slado himself.

Then followed a period when Slado was never seen in public
without Kieran being present. The master kept the apprentice close by his side
during every sort of casual interaction or activity that Kieran routinely
engaged in—which Slado seemed to endure, but never enjoy.

At one point the two were observed—not by the gardeners, but
by an acquaintance who reported it to them—outside Saranna’s Inn, where a
celebration was in progress. They were at some distance from the crowd, and
Kieran, who was facing the observer, was speaking to Slado at length: very
sternly, but calmly, and with no apparent rancor.

“It was after that that Slado told us the roses were
lovely,” Eamer said.

Lorren nodded. “Kieran was telling Slado that it doesn’t
hurt to be nice.”

“A possibility,” Rowan admitted.

Some time after that Slado’s free time became his own again.
And Kieran continued as before, benevolent, cheerful, seeming happy with the
world in general, conducting his star parties for the children.

“I assume those only started after Kieran’s personality altered?”
Rowan asked.

“That’s right. After that, but before Slado turned up.”

Then came the period with only the apprentice on hand, seeming
to go about his days as usual; then Slado was absent; and then Jannik appeared.

“But, you know,” Lorren said to Eamer, “there was one day,
before then, when Kieran came out in the morning again.”

“He always came out in the morning, to bid us good day.”

“Yes, but this was early, like that first time, when he gave
us the money. I remember, because I was worried he was going to change back.”

“Did he look like he’d been up all night?” Rowan asked.

Lorren thought, but came to no clear conclusion. “If he had,
it wasn’t a hard night, not like that first time. He looked happy enough …
no, more like pleased. Like he was pleased about something, some particular
thing.”

“I don’t remember that …”

“It was early. All the stars were still out, but he had that
magic lamp lit in the garden, the red one, so I saw him well enough. He lifted
his hand hello, but I thought he wanted to be alone, so I waved back, but
didn’t say anything. I think … I think it was close to the end, then. Close
to when he passed on …

“Was that the last time you saw him?”

Lorren indicated in the negative. “There was a puppet show
in town, and I saw him handing out some coppers to a group of children, so they
could go. That was the last time, for me.”