Chicks - The Chick Is In The Mail Part 7

"Let me guess," Mother Berchte said. "Father Fluss gave you blastberries to let you get away this time."

Jeweline stared at her. "How did-?"

"I'm not stupid, girlie," Berchte snapped. "But you are. Start paying attention to the pattern and maybe you'll win."

"What the h.e.l.l is that supposed to mean?" Jeweline snapped back. "There isn't any pattern."

"Of course there is. It's why you haven't rescued your sisters yet."

"You're crazy as a cat in a violin shop." Despite the angry snarl in her voice, Jeweline had edged forward until she was right next to Mother Berchte's rocking chair. Her head barely reached Berchte's chest, even though Berchte was seated. Na.s.sirskaegi admired her from his corner and nibbled a bit of hay in an extremely suggestive manner.

"Look for the pattern." Mother Berchte's needles clicked faster and faster until her fingers were a blur.

"I've already given you the first lesson: never settle for less than the best. The second lesson is that everything happens in threes. You've had your third visit with Father Fluss, if that pouch at your waist is filled with sleepyseed like I think it is. This is your third visit to me. And in a moment you'll be making your third try to rescue your sisters."

"What about the armor?"

"You've already destroyed two sets, girlie," Berchte grumped. "You're on your own there. I don't knit this stuff for free."

"Is it true that you take your goat to bed with you?" Jeweline asked abruptly.

Berchte stopped knitting for a moment and lashed out a hand. It caught Jeweline squarely across the face. She cried out and stumbled backward to the mouth of the cave.

"Don't be rude," Berchte told her mildly. She tried to pick up her knitting, but ended up staring down at her lap in puzzled astonishment instead.

"Over here," Jeweline called.

"s.h.i.+t," Berchte muttered into her lap.

"You're good at guessing," Jeweline continued. "I'll bet you can guess what I want next." Berchte glared across the cave to the entrance where Jeweline was brandis.h.i.+ng the missing knitting needle. "Maybe I'll take up crocheting."

"Yeah, right. Come on-you know what I want. Three lessons, three meetings, three rescues. And three s.h.i.+rts."

Berchte met Jeweline's eyes for a long moment. Then she nodded once and jerked her head at the old, rusty hauberk Jeweline had abandoned on the stony floor. It was still rusty, but when Jeweline picked it up, the holes vanished and the rust fell away, revealing glowing chain links that crackled and hummed with power. Jeweline tossed the needle toward Berchte's chair. She s.n.a.t.c.hed it out of midair and slid it back into her knitting.

Knitone, purltwo. Knitone, purltwo.

"I'd have given it to you anyway, you know," Berchte said.

"Uh huh." Jeweline shrugged out of the ruined s.h.i.+rt and into the good one.

"Like you said," Mother Berchte told her, ignoring the sarcasm, "three visits, three rescues, three s.h.i.+rts.

All part of the pattern. You also have to make a third choice."

Jeweline blinked. "What were my first two?"

"To try rescuing your sisters and to seek the help you needed."

"And my third?"

"Whether you want to stay in the pattern or not," Mother Berchte said. "Whether you really want to rescue your sisters."

Jeweline narrowed her eyes warily. "What makes you think I don't?"

"You're the youngest. You're probably the prettiest. And they picked on you all your life because of it, didn't they? Now you're going to show your sisters once and for all that you're the smartest, the bravest, and the most resourceful. Do you honestly think your sisters will be grateful and pile affection on you?

That they'll kiss your fingers and beg forgiveness for all the nasty things they've done?" Mother Berchte spat into the fireplace and the flames flared green. "I guarantee you they won't. They'll blame you for the raid. They'll blame you for your brothers' and parents' deaths. And they'll blame you for not rescuing them earlier. Oh yes, girlie-they will."

"I have to rescue them. They're my sisters," Jeweline said stoutly, though there was doubt in her voice.

"And sisters can be the cruelest of all," Mother Berchte said. "They made fun of you for learning swordwork from your brothers, didn't they? They called you names and gossiped about you and spread rumors that you handled your brothers' blades as well as their swords, didn't they?"

Jeweline flushed and looked away.

"Meanwhile," Berchte continued, knitting needles still clicking on her lap, "you have a man waiting for you in the river at the bottom of this mountain. And maybe if you kiss him, you'll see he isn't as ugly as you thought." "He isn't ugly," Jeweline said quickly, then blushed again.

Berchte gave a knowing nod. "The fool likes you, girlie. He never gaveme blastberries and sleepyseed.

So choose: your ungrateful sisters or him. Or walk away entirely. No one's forcing you to complete the pattern."

"You're a b.i.t.c.h," Jeweline said. "A horrible old b.i.t.c.h."

"Life's the b.i.t.c.h, girlie," Mother Berchte said affably. "That's your third lesson. You can leave now."

Jeweline gave Mother Berchte once last look, then spun and marched out of the cave. Berchte picked up her knitting again. Knitone, purltwo. Knitone, purltwo.

Na.s.sirskaegi bleated a question.

"She's going to rescue her sisters, of course," Berchte replied gruffly. "But I don't think she's going to stay with them. Not anymore."

Knitone, purltwo. Knitone, purltwo. Wire unwound steadily from Berchte's cable spool and Berchte allowed herself a heavy sigh. She had gotten a young girl to start thinking for herself, and that was nice.

But she was really going to miss Father Fluss.

Arms and the Woman

Nancy Kress

The hour after the third-year cla.s.s in Advanced History of Armor Styles was supposed to be my research time, but a tyro knight had asked to see me, and of course tyros are so sacred that we mere loremasters must drop everything and counsel them, no matter what valuable papers might miss the Loremaster Quarterly deadline. To make it worse, the apprentice turned out to be Tyro Marigold. I have little patience with stupid people; it is my only fault. Marigold is the stupidest apprentice that Castle Olansa has ever had. By far.

"Loremaster Gwillam, I'm beinghaunted ," she said, sitting on the edge of the wooden bench in my study, her blue eyes perfectly round. The emblem on her breastplate was upside down. I reached over and twisted it to its locked and upright position.

"If you're being haunted, then go get a spell from Father Martin."

"I can't, because-"

"Don't tell me you 'can't.' You know tyros are exempt from hauntings during all of training except vigil week." Although probably she didn't know. Certainly I hadn't been able to teach her much about chivalric lore. Why should Father Martin have been any more successful teaching her about death duty? "I can't see Father Martin about this because-"

"Don't tell me 'can't,' girl! Just do it!"

"-the ghost is my aunt, First Dame Cecilie of Castle Thlevin!"

That, of course, put a different cast on the situation. I leaned forward and scrutinized Marigold carefully.

No, she wasn't lying. Her pop-eyed blue gaze looked genuinely baffled, and genuinely frightened.

Besides, she was too stupid to lie.

Which was what made the situation interesting. Ghosts almost never choose relatives to haunt for their tuitions. Obviously an unstilled ghost has to haunt someone to learn whatever lessons it failed to learn in life, but usually relatives are part of the reason they didn't learn the lesson in the first place. Wisdom deficits tend to run in families. Most ghosts need to go outside the family to discover the principles they didn't see ill.u.s.trated in life. So why was a First Dame haunting her own niece?

And whyMarigold ? What could a tyro this stupid-she was dead last in the lists for jousting, hunting, arcana, military strategy, fencing, astrology, and heraldry-possibly teach anybody? The only award Marigold had ever won, in three years at Castle Olansa, was Miss Congeniality, and I suspect that was a pity vote by the other tyros. The tyromistress is constantly trying to eradicate their sentimentality, but with thirty-three teenage girls in the tyro cla.s.s alone, it's difficult.

Marigold squirmed under my close inspection, looked away, looked back, nervously fiddled with her armor emblem, which again ended up upside-down. No, she wasn't lying.

"Tyro, when did you last see the ghost of First Dame Cecilie?"

"Last night! At midnight, Loremaster. Oh, she was so aw-ful! She wore full armor-breastplate, tace, ta.s.set, pauldron, all of it-and was smeared with blood! And she had no . . . no right arm!" The young voice was filled with horror. The right arm, the sword arm.

"All right," I said. "You may go."

"G-go? But . . . but what should I do?"

"Nothing, until I send for you again. That will be this evening. I need to think."

At the mention of thinking, Marigold nodded reverently, in homage to a foreign activity. She tiptoed out, so as not to disturb my thinking, her armor clanking on the stone threshold. When she'd clanked out of sight, I closed the door to my study and posted a watchraven. I needed to use everything at my disposal, both scrolls and spells, to learn what I could about First Dame Cecilie of Castle Thlevin.

"What did he say? What did he tell you?" The tyros crowded around Marigold in the Third Bedchamber.

They had just come in from strength training and the smell of strong healthy sweat perfumed the summer air. "What's he going to do, Marigold?"

"He's going to think."

The other residents of the Third Bedchamber nodded sagely, but Tyro Anna frowned. She was first bedin the First Bedchamber, top of the lists, and wouldn't have ventured this far near the bottom for anything less momentous than haunting by a relative. Anna was tough, smart, and much resented, although this did not save her from Loremaster Gwillam's sarcasm. Some of the other girls turned to stare at her coldly.

Anna said, " 'Think'? That's it? What action is he going to take on your behalf, Marigold?"

"He's going to send for me this evening," Marigold said. She smiled, glad to have been able to produce information for Anna, whom she admired. It was a smile of exceptional sweetness; Marigold possessed neither jealousy nor malice.

Anna said, "That's not action, that's postponement of action. Did he say anything else? Try to remember!"

Obediently Marigold racked her mind. "Nooo . . . that was all."

"Then keep me informed of your next visit to him," Anna ordered, and swept out of the room.

Catherine muttered, "That one will be having to haunt somebody herself, someday. To study humility."

"Oh, never mind her," Elizabeth said. "Tell us again about the ghost, Mar!"

Obligingly Marigold described yet again the terrible armless figure in the long red robe, while the Third Bedchamber s.h.i.+vered and squealed.

After six hours of scrolls and spells so intense that my head hurt, I knew much more about First Dame Cecilie than she would have liked me to know. Or anyone else, either. I poured myself an ale, watched the glory the sinking sun made of my small stained-gla.s.s window, and pondered amid the litter of my small library.

First Dame Cecilie had been born into an undistinguished yeoman family-Marigold's family-in West Riding, forty-seven years ago. She had been tested in the usual way at her woman-ceremony, and, astonis.h.i.+ngly, had proved to have ability in knighthood, lore, war counsel,and barter. Only at childlove and housewifery had she scored low. Several castles had made her a bid, and her proud parents had chosen knighthood at Castle Treffin, very ivy-rank. Cecilie had easily become first bed in the First Bedchamber, and at cla.s.s knighting she'd won every honor open to her. She'd left Treffin to join Princess Margaret's army, then invading the Sixth Kingdom, and distinguished herself in several battles. She'd married a beautiful and wealthy landowner, Duke Michael of Kern, and had done such a superb job of reorganizing and leading his household forces that no one had dared challenge the duke's army.

That had apparently been the problem.

Cecilie had had nothing more to do. There was no war to fight. She'd borne Michael twins, beautiful daughters, but she had no talent for housewifery or childlove, and her daughters did not fill her days. The house steward, a woman just as formidable as Cecilie, successfully resisted Cecilie's efforts to take over the household barter. Cecilie grew more idle, more bitter, and more desperate. Michael did not understand. They got separate bedchambers.

Finally Cecilie took to pretending she had a lover. This gave her an excuse to go away for a week at a time. Away from the estate, she disguised herself as a foreign knight and entered second-rate tournaments where credentials weren't checked too closely. Naturally, she won them all. She was toogood, and someone traced her real ident.i.ty. There was a scandal, and Cecelie was disgraced. Michael divorced her. She was disarmored by the Parfait Gentle Knights a.s.sociation. Her birth family disowned her.

But there was more. After a few years, Cecilie tried the foreign-disguised-knight routineagain , and again she was exposed. After that, she holed up for a few months in an abandoned monastery in the wilds of North Riding. Naturally I couldn't summon up what had happened there; even the lingering-spirit-of-a-place was thick with spells. But no one else entered during Cecilie's stay there. I am sure of that. And when she emerged, she had only one arm.

She entered the second-rate lists a third time, was not recognized, fought badly (she had, after all, only one arm), and was killed in her second tournament. She was buried, an anonymous knight, in a greave yard.

I'd brought my watchraven inside my library when I'd finished working. Now I raised my goblet to it.

"The most major scroll of my career, raven. Perhaps of any loremaster career!"

The raven stared at me from his s.h.i.+ny flat black eyes.

"There are only two possibilities, you know. Cecilie was completely unable to bend with fate. Marigold bends with everything anyone asks of her. Marigold is too close a relative for haunting under any but the most extraordinary circ.u.mstances, which always means that no one else's actions have ever matched so closely the dead ghost's mistakes, nor ever will. There are hundreds of people that Cecilie could have observed in order to learn ordinary flexibility. No, it's an extraordinary event. And there are only two possibilities, raven!"

It stared at me impa.s.sively.

"Either Tyro Marigold, too, will cut off her own arm, in some way that will teach Cecilie her death lesson. Or-listen to this!-we have here an example of the rarest of all death tuitions. There hasn't been even one in the last century. If Marigold doesn't cut off her own arm-then the haunting is areversal ! It won't be Cecilie who learns from Marigold, but Marigold who learns from Cecilie! And either way, I can write the scroll before it happens, and have it ready to go! I will be famous, you stupid bird! I will be called to Queen Eleanor's court! I will be revered and consulted and rich and never see this dump of a training castle again! What do you think ofthat ?"

A mistake. If I hadn't been so exhausted and jubilant and ale-wild, I would never have asked a raven a direct question. They have a limited vocabulary, all of it irritating.

"Clever bore."

"Oh, shut up. What do you know? You're as stupid as Marigold and the rest of the giggling tyros!"

The raven stared at me, unblinking.

Marigold and her best friend, Tyro Catherine, stood outside the loremaster's chamber, clutching hands.