The Secret Country (25 page)

She was almost desperate enough to say something when Fence stopped and turned around to wait for them.

“I cry you mercy,” he said. “I am very weary. You may take the key on ahead.” He looked at them and grinned. “I see,” he said, and sat down on a step next to an arrow slit.

“You’ve been gone a
long
time,” Ellen told him, testily “And there aren’t this many steps anywhere else.” Ellen prided herself on being able to keep up with Ted or Ruth even though they were bigger; Fence’s grin must have irked her.

Her speech did not seem to irk Fence, but it certainly startled him. “Hast learned courage, then?” he asked her.

Laura’s stomach sank. She had been gladder to see Fence than she had ever been to see anyone. He might as well have been the person she loved best in the world. And now he looked to be more trouble than all the rest of them put together.

“Well,” said Ellen, “you’ve been gone a long time.”

“Longer for me than for you,” said Fence. He leaned his head on the stone wall and shut his eyes. Laura looked at him, and wondered if he was supposed to be that thin, and how old he was. She had thought he was older than Randolph, but he looked more like a young person who has had a hard time. She looked at Ellen, who shook her head and grinned.

“Two hundred and eight steps,” said Ellen.

Fence’s eyes jerked open. They were green, like Ellen’s. Laura wondered whether, under all the dust, his hair was like Ellen’s too. She had not thought that Fence was related to anyone in High Castle. He came from outside.

“How know’st thou that number?” Fence demanded of Ellen.

Ellen looked at Laura, who stared helplessly back. “I counted them?” said Ellen as if she were proposing the idea for consideration.

“How many times?”

“Isn’t once enough?”

Fence laughed, as if in spite of himself. “Hast been studying sorcery?”

“No,”
said Ellen.

“Thou?” said Fence to Laura.

“No.”

“Perhaps you ought,” said Fence, and stood up. Laura sneezed.

The door to Fence’s living chamber was carved like the door to the tower stairs, except that in the place of the jagged hole there was a perfectly round piece, surrounded with rays, like a sun. Laura and Ellen looked at each other. Fence unlocked the door with a plain key.

Fence’s living room had seven narrow windows, a bearskin on the floor, tapestries on the walls, a few carved chests and a plain table and chairs, all of dark wood, and a fireplace across from the door. It was disappointingly normal. Laura supposed that the interesting things were in the top room, and once she thought of it its weight settled over her spirits again.

Fence stood in the middle of the room with his head tilted, as if he were sniffing or listening for something.

“All seems well here,” he said, and made a sign in the air with his hand. The logs in the fireplace sprang into flame, and three lamps sputtered and burned bright. Laura jumped. This was much more startling than the blazing of their magic swords, because Fence had made so little fuss about it.

“You may set the table, if you will,” he said to them, and unlocking yet another door, a plain one this time, he took another flight of stairs up. Dust drifted through the air where he had stood, and Laura sneezed again.

“You’d think,” said Ellen grumpily, “that if he can light a fire just like that, he could keep the dust off,” and Laura knew that she had been startled too.

Only one of the chests opened, and the dishes were in it. They were thick, glazed, and white, with a colored border of great intricacy. Laura squinted at the border of a plate as she carried it to the table; they were too heavy to carry more than one at a time.

“Ellie!” she said, caught her foot on the edge of the bearskin, and let go of the plate. It landed on the stone floor with an enormous musical crack and broke into six pieces.

“Hell,” said Laura.

“What made you do that?”

“I was looking at the border.”

“While you were carrying it?”

“I
noticed,
” said Laura, upon the verge of tears, “that it’s like that tapestry again.”

“Huh,” said Ellen. “Does it have the sun or the hole?”

“The sun,” said Laura. “Fence’ll kill me.”

“I bet he can fix it.”

Ellen was finishing the table, and Laura was still crouched over the broken plate to see whether it might be mended, when Fence came back.

He did not look like Ellen after all. He had the same coloring, but his face was rounder, his nose shorter, and his hair both shorter and much straighter. It was still damp, and it looked as if he had cut it himself in the dark.

Laura gaped at him, however, not because of how he looked but because of what he was wearing. He had put on black robes embroidered with stars and comets and constellations and galaxies and universes. They were every color you could think of, and they drew your eye into themselves until you had forgotten what you were looking at and wandered lost in glory.

Laura, who was nervous enough when she did know what she was looking at, jerked suddenly back from these marvels and discovered that she had cut her finger on the broken plate.

“Dear heaven,” said Fence. “What an omen. Clear we it up, child, before Randolph sees it. He will conceive that it spells his doom and commit some rash act.”

It was impossible to tell from his tone if he was joking. Laura put the cut finger in her mouth and gingerly began to stack the jagged pieces. “Can’t we fix it?”

Fence, moving in a swirl of fire and darkness, came across the room to look, and Ellen blinked and dropped a cup onto the bearskin.

Laura glared at her. “How come you’re so lucky?”

“Clean living,” said Ellen, staring at Fence.

Fence knelt beside Laura, gathering his robes out of the way, and inspected the remains of the plate. He smelled faintly of burning leaves. Laura wondered if it was the robes.

“I think not,” said Fence after a moment. “The pattern is broken here, you see.” He put a finger on a cracked border, where the stylized sun from which the animals fled was split across its center. He took the pieces upstairs with him and came back with a broom for Laura.

She knocked two mugs from the table with its handle, but neither of them broke. Fence favored her with precisely the same look Patrick had given her when she tripped on the bridge. That Fence had far more right to give it did not make it any easier to stand up under.

Fence gave them some mulled wine. Laura did not think it tasted as good as it had smelled when he was heating it, but it was better than cold wine. Ellen gulped it as if it were hot chocolate, and grinned at Laura. The firelight made her look a little wild.

When they heard footsteps on the stairs, Fence stood up from the hearth like a flurry of fireworks, and there was a dagger in his hand. It was silver, with the blue stones. He did not put it away until Randolph and Patrick had come in, set down their burdens, and closed the door behind them.

“You,”
said Patrick to Ellen and Laura, “can carry what’s left back down.” He sat on the floor and breathed.

“You need not have brought so much,” said Fence.

“Children have great appetites, and thou art half starved,” Randolph told him.

“Not starved,” said Fence. “Say rather, burnt away.”

Their eyes met across the sparkling table, and held. Laura stared at them, fascinated. Randolph looked like a cat which is seeing things that aren’t there. Fence looked like someone who has been sick for a long time.

“Didst thou lock the stairway door?” Fence asked Randolph.

“Aye.”

“Hath any other the key to’t?”

“What?”

“’Twas unlocked when I came to’t. These say ’twas so this morning.”

“Three demons,” said Randolph, abstractedly. He pushed a hand through his hair, righted the circlet again, and scowled. “Well, sit we down regardless. Our wits will not suffer from food, and thine of a certainty suffer for its lack—nay, say not again. I know the look of magic, and I know the look of hunger.”

He began pulling things from the hampers and thumping them down upon the table. He seemed nervous to the edge of irritation. Fence came around the table and sat down at the end of it.

“Fence,” said Randolph, “I prithee, set not thy back to the door.”

“There speaks the warrior,” said Fence, and smiled at him.

“Oh, no,” said Randolph, “here speaketh the wizard. I never feared what might come through a door till thou hadst me in thy keeping.”

Fence smiled again, and stayed where he was. Randolph jerked his head at the children and sat down at the other end of the table. Laura sat on Fence’s right, Ellen on his left. Patrick sat between Laura and Randolph.

Laura, as usual, found one or two things she liked and one or two she could stand, and ate a great deal of them. She noticed that Fence ate steadily, but not as if he were interested, and that Randolph ate almost nothing. His gaze slid about the room, always returning to the door behind Fence. Patrick and Ellen ate a great deal of everything and got very sticky.

About halfway through the meal, Fence spoke over the crackle of the fire and the sound of crunching.

“What is the temper of the court?” he asked.

“Uncertain,” said Randolph.

Fence looked at Laura, who said what she had been wanting to say for some time. “Who was that snake lady?”

Randolph laughed. “Well put,” he said. “She is the Lady Claudia, sister to Lord Andrew. I had thought thou knew’st her.”

“Well, I’ve seen her,” said Laura.

Fence looked at Randolph. “What did she want with thee?”

Randolph looked back at him amused.

“Apart from the obvious,” said Fence.

Laura nearly dropped her knife. She wondered when one of them would say, “Not in front of the children.” This was clearly one of the conversations in which that would be said just as you began to understand what they were talking about.

“Well,” said Randolph, “she wants that, when the time comes, I should vote with her brother on the matter of dragons.”

Laura, seeing the conversation drift of itself away from intriguing subjects, leaned over to Patrick and whispered, “Do you remember any Lady Claudia?”

“Shut up,” said Patrick, quietly but forcefully.

“Vote!” said Fence, scornfully. “The council is an advisory body, no more. What needs the King thy vote, or any man’s? A wilt do as a wilt.”

“So I told Claudia.”

“And?”

“Still she stayed.”

Fence grinned, and Laura’s ears pricked up.

“No,” said Randolph. “Do not flatter me. Still she seeks to persuade me that her brother hath the right of it; not for my vote, but for that she thinks I have the King’s ear.”

“Doesn’t he?” said Laura to Patrick.

“She?” said Fence. “She? She knows better than any the power of magic.”

“She knows nothing of it,” said Randolph, staring; “she thinks it a matter for fools and children.”

“And so she should,” said Fence, “if thou, a magician, hast believed she thinketh so.”

“What?”

Fence stood up, staring in his turn. “Do you not know?” he said. “She was my apprentice, and she failed.”

Nobody moved, and the fire hissed. Randolph was looking at Fence as if he thought Fence was crazy. “No,” he said, as if Fence had given him the wrong answer to a problem in arithmetic. Fence looked at him. “When?” said Randolph.

“Four summers ago.”

“And where was I?”

“Feren,” said Fence. Laura had never heard the name before, but it seemed to satisfy Randolph.

“Why did not the court buzz with it on my return?”

“Claudia is a secretive child,” said Fence. Laura blinked; Fence looked closer to being a child than Claudia had.

“Well,” said Randolph.

Fence pushed his chair back and went to the hearth for more wine. Randolph looked into his own cup, shook his head, and put his hand to his forehead. The stone in his ring caught the firelight and dazzled Laura’s eyes. Vague shapes fled across her vision, purple and white and green. Looming over them all like a monstrous setting sun was the face of Claudia. Laura realized that it was the same face she had seen in the sword when they roasted marshmallows by the Well of the White Witch. She blinked, and the sight was gone. Fence was sitting down again, and Randolph had picked up his cup.

“Perhaps we should speak of this later,” said Fence to Randolph, and Laura sighed.

“No doubt,” said Randolph. “Matthew hath manuscripts of Shan which need thy skill, and thou hast not yet spoken to thy spies.”

He smiled at Laura, who felt a qualm. Across the table she saw Ellen’s eyes get big.

“I thought to feed them first,” said Fence. He looked at their empty plates, and Laura stifled an urge to grab the nearest food and start gnawing. She was afraid she knew what was coming.

“Who shall begin?” said Fence. “Ellen?”

There was a pounding on the door.

“Oh, come
on,
” said Ellen. Laura jumped. Patrick picked up his knife and looked grim. Randolph leaped up, jarring the table and spilling his wine exactly as Laura would have if she had jumped up. His dagger was in his hand.

Fence stood up slowly and went to the door, holding his hands a little out from his sides as if he were doing a balancing act. “Who goes there?”

“The King commands your presence,” said a voice, loud but a little breathless.

Fence’s hands fell to his sides. He shrugged. Then he opened the door. Lord Andrew stood there. He was flushed from his climb, but he seemed pleased. What
now,
thought Laura.

“When do lords run errands?” Fence asked him. Laura knew that this was half of a proverb, or riddle, or something of the sort, but Andrew did not seem to know it. It would be just like Andrew not to.