Authors: R. A. MacAvoy
I did so, and the soldier ran to the hall and out the door, skidding on the flagstones. He left behind both his sack and his saber.
“He’s not sick at all, Nazhuret,” said Powl, washing his hands. “It’s just that you have grown unused to people. And if another sneak thief happens by, please boot him out and don’t detain him. I want to remain as invisible as possible up here. It’s not as though I own this building, after all.”
“You don’t?”
His glance at me showed he was very pleased with himself. Powl was wearing a new hat over his half-bald head: a russet felt with flecks of red and blue. “Oh, no. It belonged to Adlar and now, since the man’s suicide, to his heirs—not that they are likely to have any interest in astronomy.”
“The astronomer killed himself?” I had forgotten that.
“Yes. Hanged himself from that crossbeam there. I merely found him.”
Very clearly did I remember how that first afternoon I had seen Powl dangling, booted feet in the air, from the window-shade pull, and I felt much more in the stomach at hearing this than I had when the soldier had tried to slice off my head.
Powl put his arm over my shoulder. “Don’t go green, lad. We all die. You’ve done so already, haven’t you?” When this had no effect, or at least no good effect on me, he continued, “… and by the by, are you aware that for now there is no one at Sordaling School, not master, instructor, or student, and probably no one man of the king’s regular forces who could stand against you?”
As I stood gawking, almost offended by such an outrageous statement, Powl went to assay the damage to the lenses in the bag. “Of course, men’s skills vary a lot day to day, and then the arts of war are a very minor study. You still have very bad grammar,” he added, and I was sensibly relieved.
As the summer of my second year in the observatory drew to a close, I passed some sort of balance point in my studies. It occurred to me one evening, as I was setting up the telescope for a clear night’s watch that this period of my life would end as all the others had ended, and unless I got the influenza again, or Powl hit me on the head too hard, there would be time after. I had no notion yet what that time would contain, but the fact that it interested me changed my attitude to my present studies.
I began to decide myself when I should sit, when I should work out, watch, and (of course) grind glass. I faced the bricks in the early morning after feeding the stove. I did exercises after breakfast and studied in the heat of the day.
Within a week after I had passed this point of balance (though I said nothing aloud), Powl started to take me on excursions. He arrived in the morning with a rucksack stuffed with coarse-weave linen, the same as my summer outfit, and I had the educational experience of seeing my dapper teacher make a peasant of himself.
That first day we went nowhere much, just down the deerpath to the road and right, until we came to a knot of men repairing the road, where Powl stopped, sagged against a tree, and gossiped with them, adopting a strong Zaquashlon accent and idiom for the purpose. In this conversation I first learned about the war of the previous year and the death of the old king, and very surprised I was, too. My single attempt to interject myself into the conversation met a startled glance from the smudgy crew and a nudge from Powl that almost knocked me down.
“Don’t you want me to talk properly?” I asked him when we had left them behind us. “You have been correcting my pronunciation and grammar for two years!”
“I want you to talk like a courtier and write like a scholar,” he answered. “But by choice—not because you have no other language.”
“I have three, thanks to you.”
“Weel, learn ’tother new,” said Powl, and for the next two weeks he spoke nothing but South Zaquash and made me do the same.
We went to the Royal Library at Sordaling, and I was flinchy as an owl in my townie clothes, which now were too tight across the shoulders (though no shorter in the legs, alas) and two years out of style. Walking down the River Parade took great courage; though I knew I had broken no laws in leaving the school, had anyone recognized me, I surely would have broken and run. My old life and my new one seemed to batter their realities against one another, and there was only my same ugly face in the reflection of every shop window to tie them together. As we passed the flower market, the sight of Powl moving before the scenes of my young recreation was unnerving, because so natural. A well-dressed and very graceful gentleman strolling a street of gardens and fine shops.
I was the element out of place.
In the library Powl showed a pass that served to admit us both and he disappeared into the history shelves, leaving me to follow my own impulses.
I was not familiar with the classification, since our school library used only ten categories and alphabetical listing within them, but I found a volume of very expert prints, hand-tinted, of tropical birds, and that kept me for some time. After that I found the section called Celestial Mechanics and was amazed to discover that almost all their information was obsolete or simply inaccurate. Most of the telescopes described were of the open refractor variety, consisting of a large spherically ground lens on a pole and a hand-held eyepiece that the observer chased around with until he had found the focal distance for himself. Irritating as squatting in nettles.
Powl had found another book of pictures, and he lowered it down atop my small stack. It was a catalog of military costumes, and that he wanted to show it to me I found amusing. Every sign on my part of interest in the arts of war was met by Powl with denigration or irony, and yet his own preoccupation with the subject ever surpassed mine.
The picture portraying the Velonyan mounted in armor was a very fine
etching of a blond man, handsome in face and large in scale, seated on a heavy horse and wearing
heavier plate. It was titled “THE DUKE OF NORWESS, IN ACTION AGAINST
REZHMIA.”
“What do you think?” Powl asked me.
“We studied that campaign. Disastrous. I think he must have been half boiled and half frozen going into the eastern desert in that. Even twenty-five years ago people must have known how to dress for a dry climate.”
Powl stared rather sharply, and I apologized for the volume of my voice. Living in total solitude does not encourage modulation.
“The Rezhmian excursion was not in all ways a failure, Nazhuret. And concerning the picture, I meant to show you… the quality of the reproduction. Look at the fineness of the lines.”
I admitted it to be striking.
“Even for talents of twenty-five years ago,” he added, with more than his usual irony. “Look at this other one.”
The horse was much lighter and so was the rider. He wore no flowing robes and no armor except a leather cuirass, and his black hair flew behind him in a braid. “Also very good, Powl. Mostly artists make the Red Whips look like so many apes. This one looks at least human.”
“True, O scholar, but note that the picture is not one of the pony brigands, but a knight of the Sanaur of Rezhmia itself—one of the fellows who made such a disaster of that campaign.”
He slammed the book shut almost on my nose.
Walking out of the library, Powl was very quiet—offended, I guessed. I wasn’t sure in what way I had blundered, so I kept my mouth shut and waited for him to tell me. He did, before we had reached the gates of the old part of the city.
“It is a provincial, narrow-minded attitude to see another group of people as looking more like animals than our own race,” he stated, his face pointed straight ahead.
“I didn’t, exactly—”
“They say we have faces like horses.”
This was a new idea. I played with it for a few city blocks, evaluating each innocent passerby. “For some the idea has merit,” I said to Powl in an attempt to be truly broad-minded. “The traditional Old Velonyan nobility is supposed to have a long face with high-bridged nose and straight mouth, though few, indeed, fit that model.” I extended my observations to my teacher himself, with his oval face; neat features; and wide, wide gray eyes. I was convinced, nonetheless, that Powl was Old Velonyan nobility. “But I don’t think your face looks at all like a horse.”
Now he looked straight at me. “Neither does yours,” he said without smiling.
I think it was on that same day trip that Powl and I noticed the robbers ahead beside the road. I saw a movement, and by the twitch of his nose, I think Powl smelled them. There were two of them, and I could see at least one heavy club waving brown against the black and white woods as its carrier settled in place for the pounce. Powl and I drifted to a stop a good hundred fifty feet away and conferred.
“There’s been a lot of that,” said Powl very calmly, facing me to the north but with his attention locked northwest, along the road. “What with the flu and the war and all.” He scratched his chin and cracked his back; a very picture of nonchalance.
“So what shall we do about them?” I asked, feeling a youthful eagerness to display myself.
Powl scanned the country, not turning completely away from the twin black humps, which were now motionlessly waiting ahead behind the first row of trees. “I think we might turn off here and come back to the road perhaps a mile farther along. There are some very interesting growths of fungus I have seen in these oak woods that I would like to visit anyway.”
“Not this early in the spring, Powl. No fungus now. Besides, shouldn’t we teach them a lesson?”
He winced. “Nazhuret, I have difficulty enough teaching you lessons, without sparing effort for common brute marauders.” Powl stepped daintily onto a deer track that crossed the road very near where we had stopped. I plucked at his sleeve and did not follow.
“But if we leave them, won’t they attack the next poor traveler and perhaps kill him?”
My teacher looked bleakly down at me and smoothed his smooth hair further. “Zhurrie, lad,” he said in heavy Zaquash, “I can see now your life to be a bushel of trouble packed down.”
He led me onto the deer track on the other side of the road, the one that ran behind our unwitting criminals.
I had a great deal of fun creeping up upon our enemies. The temperature in these shadows had maintained winter’s last carpet on the ground, but it was too warm to crunch beneath foot. Powl was equally as quiet as I but less amused, being more concerned about the condition of his boots in the soppy, thawing snow.
“I begin to see why you keep me dressed like a peasant,” I whispered to him, for my tailored jacket was impeding my movement considerably. He did not answer.
It was not a difficult approach, for our quarry had their ears and eyes fixed on the stripe of road before them. Up until now I had had hopes—fears, actually—that they would turn out to be mere road menders, or honest laborers retired for a midday nap. But as we came within thirty feet of them, I could hear them talking, and their subject was our disappearance, and whether it was worth following us along our shortcut for purposes of overtaking. The man to the left (my side) believed it was worth the extra effort, while his partner demurred.
They were no good at waiting; they wiggled constantly, and I spied the flash of a dagger in the hand of Powl’s man. “Should we run at them?” I mouthed to Powl.
“Not unless they see us.” He crawled forward on his hands and feet, exactly like a cat, and a feline interest began to illumine his smooth face. He no longer worried about his cuffs.
I kept pace with him, expecting to be noticed at any moment, but much to my surprise we crawled all the way to the men’s rag-booted feet without notice. They had meanwhile decided the game was not worth the candle and were setting back to wait for easier prey.
Powl gave me the nod.
I had never hit a man who was down on the ground, or tried to hit one (except, of course, for Powl), and out of sportsmanship I tapped the fellow on the shoulder so he should at least know I was there. He turned without any particular alarm and craned up his head at me, and then with a bellow he floundered up, swinging the knob-headed club at me. I hopped in before it and was at his right side as it swung. From behind him I grabbed his right hand and pinched until he dropped his weapon, and I locked that hand over his left arm with my own left and slid my other hand over his right shoulder, under his chin, and around his jawbone. He struggled, but I had him nicely and I was very proud of myself.
Powl, who had casually kicked his opponent in the jaw before the man could rise, came now and stood before me. “Fine, my lad. But what will you do with him now?”
“Take him to the provincial marshal?” I hazarded. “I don’t think the authority of the Sordaling Constabulary extends so far out.”
The fellow struggled harder. Though he could not get rid of me, he could lift me off my feet. Powl stood before us and watched for a few moments, one hand cupping the other elbow, chin resting on two fingers. For the first time, he looked amused by the affair.
“Nazhuret, I have spent many years of my life avoiding involvement with officialdom in all aspects, high and low. It is far more of a grief than simple roadside cutthroats, and if you wish to survive free and happy you will follow my example.”
“Then what do I do with him?” I asked, my voice bouncing as I bounced. My prisoner next tried to step on my foot.