A Wizard in Peace

CHAPTER 18

Thank you, Willem.” The magistrate smiled, then asked Bess, “Will you join me in drinking wine, maiden?”

“I will, and gladly, Your Honor.” Bess had to hide a smile at the memory of her mother’s warning not to drink wine with strange men. It had proved true, of course, but surely Mama hadn’t thought of her bibing with a magistrate!

“The burgundy, if you would, William.” The magistrate gestured to the seat opposite his own. “Sit, if you will, maiden.”

“Thank you, Your Honor.” She sat, reflecting that the master was far more polite than the servant. Maybe Willem felt the hint of rebuke, because he set the wineglass beside her even as she sat. “Thank you,” she said, eyes downcast, and knew from the warmth of the magistrate’s tone that she had guessed rightly.

“Thank you, Willem. You may leave us now,” the magistrate said.

The butler bowed and left. Bess sat straight in her chair, raising the glass to inhale the wine’s fragrance. She let her breath out in a happy sigh; there had been little enough wine in her life in the last two years. The aroma blended perfectly with the beauty of the garden before her, and in spite of the tension of her situation, she felt herself beginning to relax. She sipped the wine, let it roll across her tongue, and swallowed, savoring the flavor of a sun-drenched summer past, then looked up to see the magistrate gazing intently at her. She blanched, then lowered her gaze in confusion, angry with herself for dropping her guard so easily.

But it seemed to have been the wisest course of action after all; the magistrate noted, “You have tasted wine before, maiden, and know how to make that taste last.”

“Oh, yes, Your Honor,” Bess said, improvising quickly. “My father was a wine-maker, and taught us all that gulping wine was nearly a crime.”

He looked her up and down in a quick glance, though, and said, “That may be so, but the straightness of your posture, the way you hold yourself, the tilt of your head, speak of breeding and culture. How have you come to behave so much like a lady of refinement?”

I watched visual recordings of real ladies. But Bess couldn’t say that, of course. She improvised again. “When I came of age to marry, Your Honor, no man offered—so I went with several other young folk to the city, and found service with the family of a wealthy merchant. I mimicked his wife and daughters, and the housekeeper schooled me in proper carriage and behavior so that I could serve at dinners when the master entertained other people of consequence. I had learned fairly well when the reeve and his wife came to dinner, and the next day, they commanded me to come serve them.”

The magistrate had been listening with growing concern. Now he leaned forward intently and asked, “Did they treat you well?”

“Why … yes, Your Honor.” Bess stumbled over the words, for halfway through the sentence she realized he was worried that she might have been molested, forced to go to bed with the merchant or the reeve. “Both merchant’s wife and reeve’s lady were courteous and thoughtful mistresses. I scarcely saw their husbands, and their children were … well, as children are.”

“Imps and angels by turns.” The magistrate sat back, nodding. “I’m glad to hear life went so well for you. But you didn’t find a husband, so you went back to your home village?”

“Yes, Your Honor, when my mother’s health weakened and she needed someone by her. I’m her only child, so it came to me to go tend her. But she became quite well with me there.”

“No doubt simple loneliness was the cause of it.” Magistrate Kerren frowned. “How will she fare, now that you have left her again?”

“Well enough, I hope, for I don’t mean to be gone very long. If we can find Uncle Raymond, I can go home to tell Mama so that she can write to him. Have you found any trace of him, Your Honor?”

“Yes, Eben Clark found the entry in the book.” Magistrate Kerren picked up a scrap of paper and handed it to her. “He was called back to the Protector’s Town, and I have no doubt he was scarcely there before he was reassigned.” Before she could even ask, he said, “Eben Clark has already drafted a letter asking the provost where your uncle has been sent. It will go out with tomorrow morning’s post—but you’ll have to be patient, maiden. It could easily be three weeks before we have an answer, perhaps two months.”

“I could expect no sooner.” Bess leaned forward, reaching out to Kerren but not too far. “Oh, thank you, Your Honor! Thank you again and again for going to such trouble for me, a poor stranger!”

“I am more than pleased to have been able to help.” Kerren’s smile was warm, then turned bleak. “You’d be surprised how rarely we are able to really help any one citizen with such a problem.”

Bess’s heart went out to him; the man really cared about people, not just power. “Please tell me if there’s any way in which I can show my gratitude!”

“Why, there is.” Kerren’s smile came back as his gaze met hers. “Dine with me and tell me of your joys and sorrows, so that I may be a little less lonely for a while.”

“Why … gladly, Your Honor.” Bess dropped her gaze to her wineglass. “But everything I’ve done is very ordinary. I can’t think any of it would be very interesting.”

“I’ve found that most people’s lives have moments that would interest anyone.” Kerren lifted a small silver bell and rang it.

The butler came in. “Your Honor?”

“We’ll begin the meal now,” Kerren replied.

“Very good, Your Honor.” The butler signaled, and a maid came in with a tray. She placed bowls of soup before them, and Kerren picked up his spoon as he said, “Begin with your family. You have mentioned your mother. Was childhood happy?”

“Oh, very happy, Your Honor!” Silently, Bess blessed the research department—in this case, Lord Corel, or Corin, as he really was. Corin had written out a full description of everyone he could remember in his hometown of Milorga, including the Raymond who had joined the Protector’s Army, and his widowed sister with her poor, sickly daughter. Gar had sent someone back to Milorga to see what had changed in the years Corin had lived in the Lost City—who, Bess didn’t know, but it couldn’t have been Corin, for whoever it was had asked questions that every villager would have known: Did the widow still live in her cottage? Had Raymond come home? He or she had brought back the answers: The widow still lived, but her daughter had gone away shortly before—no one knew where—and there were dark mutterings about walking into the woods late at night.

Raymond’s fate was unknown—but another agent had somehow discovered that he had been sent to put down an uprising that had cropped up overnight around a deranged shepherd who claimed people’s lives were controlled by supernatural beings. An astounding number of people had pledged loyalty to him, finding that his delusions explained the bleakness of their own lives and held some hint of making them better. When the magistrate had tried to arrest the shepherd, his people had fought back fiercely, repelling his watchmen. The magistrate had sent to the reeve for help, but the people had fought the reeve’s troops to a stalemate, and he had called for more help. The Protector had sent every man who could be spared within a hundred miles of the uprising. Raymond of Milorga had been one of them, and had died on the battlefield. Since the commanders hadn’t known much about their hastily gathered soldiers, no one had thought to write a letter of sympathy to his sister back home in Milorga.

Bess had read the tale, shedding a few tears for the poor, lonely mother and her simpleton daughter. She had some notion of how they must have felt, outcast and ignored. Now, though, she could tell Magistrate Kerren these bare bones of a life, sure that if he thought to send to Milorga to confirm her tale, he would indeed find a widow whose daughter had left town, and if the local magistrate there had no record of her going, why, such things could be easily lost—an absentminded clerk forgetting to jot an entry in a book, or a preoccupied magistrate forgetting this particular detail. In any event, he would probably not want to admit that one of his villagers had left without his leave and not been caught. As to Raymond, if Kerren did indeed learn his fate, there would be no one to contradict Bess’s version of it.

So she prattled on, telling him of her own growing-up, and filling the tale with amusing little anecdotes, some of which had really happened, using all the graces and artifices she had learned during the glittering dinners of mock lords and ladies. Kerren laughed, and asked questions and made comments; she could almost see the tension leaving him in wave after wave.

Fish followed soup, and meat followed fish. Gradually, Bess became the questioner, and Kerren’s answers became longer. Bess threw in the occasional observation of her own: “Surely the Protector can’t have an endless supply of magistrates, Your Honor.”

“No, there are only a thousand fifty-three of us,” Kerren replied, looking surprised; most peasants assumed the Protector’s men were infinite in number. “But there are two hundred twelve reeves to whom they answer.”

The conversation ranged over politics, history, and literature, even making forays into art. Kerren seemed to grow more and more surprised with every answer.

“Where did you learn to read, lass?”

“Oh, the magistrate’s clerk was good enough to teach me, sir, so that I could read to my grandmother when she could no longer get about much. I’ve read all his books to her in the last few years—except the ones about law, of course.”

“Of course.” The magistrate looked dazed. Pleased, but dazed.

Over an after-dinner cordial, the two of them grew quite philosophical, speculating about how the world might have come to be, how people had grown upon its surface, and whether there could be any kernel of truth underlying the myth that all their forebears had really come down from the stars above.

When it was quite dark outside, and both of them were feeling a bit dazed, the butler came in and said, “The maiden’s chamber is ready, Your Honor.”

“My chamber!” Bess sat bolt upright in wide-eyed surprise and open alarm—and secret elation. “Your Honor, I can’t impose on your hospitality!”

“Where else will you stay?” Kerren pointed out. “You have no relatives here, and you must stay two months, so you surely won’t have money enough for an inn.”

“I can find work…”

“I shall not forbid it, but I don’t think you’ll find many openings just now. In any event, the courthouse has a guest wing, and you shall surely be one of my guests until you can make other arrangements.”

“Well … if I really will not be putting you out…”

“The Protector provides.”

“But I must do something to earn my keep.”

“Why, yes.” The young magistrate smiled and caught her hand. “You shall dine with me every night.”

Bess smiled and dropped her gaze, blushing. “Magistrate, I shall be honored!”

“And I shall take great pleasure in your company.” Magistrate Kerren dropped her hand with a smile. “Of course, we might run out of conversation. Do you think two months will be long enough?”

Two months was more than enough.

Dilana listened with full concentration as Magistrate Gorlin told her about the case that had come before him that morning. He didn’t look at her, only gazed at the garden while he spoke, his brow furrowed, and Dilana’s heart went out to him because of the pain in his voice. She made sympathetic noises from time to time, and couldn’t help noticing, with the back of her mind, how dear Gorlin’s profile had become to her in the last few months.

He certainly wasn’t handsome, though she could see that he might have been in his youth. For a man in the fullness of middle age, though; his chin was too small for the fleshiness his face had taken on, his nose too big, his lips too full. But they were sensitive, those lips, showing every trace of the pain he was feeling; staring at them raised familiar sensations within her, and she was delighted to find that she could feel them still.

From their conversations—almost daily—she had come to know how deeply he cared for the people he’d been sent to govern, how much he shared their pains, but how cautious he was about sharing their joys. He was a lonely man, and seemed determined to remain so for fear of the grief of parting that he knew must come in a few years. He hadn’t remarried yet, and was dangerously close to the end of his first six months in this assignment, at the end of which he had to marry somebody, anybody.

Dilana had already pondered the riddle of why he had never been promoted to reeve, then found that he had only applied once. He could have been afraid to try again, not wanting to be turned down—but she thought it more likely that he wanted to work directly with the people of a single village, not order fifty other magistrates, only seeing the actual people he governed when they appealed a legal case to him.

She was becoming impossibly fond of the man. Why couldn’t he see it!

“That two sisters should be ready to tear each other apart over a single cow their father left, the one thing of all his belongings that he didn’t will to one or the other!” Gorlin shook his head with sorrow approaching grief. “It makes me glad magistrates can’t own their own houses or furniture, and not much else but the clothes on our backs and the money we’ve saved!”

“It’s certainly not what their father could have wanted,” Dilana agreed. “Of course, I suppose he could have been one of the cruel ones who delights in causing trouble, one of the few who die cackling with delight over the way people will fight over their estates.”

Gorlin shook his head again. “From all I hear about him, he was a good man who prided himself on providing for his wife and children. What could have set them against each other so?”

“I have found,” Dilana said slowly, “that when such quarrels grow so tall, their roots are deep in the past.”

Gorlin looked up in surprise. “What an insight! But what manner of roots could they be?”

“Jealousy,” Dilana said, “and envy.” She remembered her own childhood and shivered. “He might have favored the one over the other, so that the first grew steadily prouder of his regard and more jealous in not wanting to share it, while the worm of envy bored deeper and deeper into the other’s heart.” In her own case, she now knew, that worm had bred the delusion that she wasn’t her father’s daughter at all, but the cuckoochild of a distant prince.

Gorlin nodded, his eyes glowing. “Of course that would explain the bitterness within them! The first is trying to hold on to everything of her father’s that she can, thinking them to be signs of his love, while the other is frantically trying to grasp whatever last shreds of him she may!”

Dilana explained. “If she couldn’t have his love while he was alive, she can at least have his goods now that he is dead.”

“And now that I think of it, he left most of his belongings to the younger sister, and only a few to the older! Fool that I am, I thought it was because the elder’s husband was richer than the younger’s!” Then he frowned. “Still, how does that help me. judge between them? I can’t give one cow to two women! I’ve already suggested that they sell the beast and split the money, but both raised a howl at that.”

“Of course,” Dilana said softly, “if wealth isn’t really what each wants.”

“Yes, certainly,” Gorlin agreed. Then he grinned, thumping the arm of his chair in delight. “We’ll give them each something of their father’s! He already left his bull to the younger, I’ll insist it be bred to the cow, then hold the beast in escrow until the calf is born! The elder sister shall have the cow, and the younger shall have the calf bred from both her father’s beasts!”

“That won’t content either one of them,” Dilana warned. “Each wants her father all to herself, and if she can’t have him, at least she can have what belonged to him.”

“Then I shall decree the calf to be his, since it came from both his beasts, and they shall have to be content with my judgment, or go to the reeve!” He chuckled. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they both start claiming the calf, saying that the other sister can have the older animal!”

“Why, so they shall!” Dilana exclaimed in surprise. “Then neither of them can complain if you give the cow to the other!”

“No, they can’t, can they?” Gorlin turned to her, his eyes warm with ardor. “What a gem you are, to see so easily into their hearts!”

Dilana blushed and lowered her gaze. “I’m only remembering what I’ve seen happen all my life, Your Honor.” “Then I must have that memory by me, or I’ll misjudge again and again!” Gorlin rose from his chair, towering over her, reaching down to take her hand.

Dilana gazed up at him, letting her hand follow his willingly, her heart thumping.

Gorlin sank to one knee and spoke deep in his throat. “I knew I would have to ask this again, but I never thought to really want it—yet I do, and more than ever! Fair lady, will you marry me?”

“Oh, yes, Your Honor,” Dilana answered, her voice faint, then fainter still as his lips came to her own. “Yes, William, yes.”

One by one, the real magistrates were kidnapped away to the Lost City and the care of Bade, the Guardian, and its skeleton staff, who kept them soundly caged and explained why their imprisonment was necessary. Of course, they had the free run of a whole city, even if it was in need of a bit of maintenance, and most of them were more than ready for an extended vacation anyway. Indoors, at least, they had genuine luxury, more than they had ever known, complete with gourmet food and fine wines, so they recovered from their initial indignation pretty quickly, and only one or two made any attempt to escape.

The rest bent their efforts to studying the new system the rebels were trying to put into place, and to figuring out how to use it to their own advantage.

In their places, false magistrates frantically learned all the details of their new jobs, then settled in to doing their best as administrators, and to gradually swaying their guardsmen to their new beliefs in individual rights and personal freedom. Year by year, more and more of the magistrates and reeves were really cured madmen.

There weren’t enough of them for all the positions, of course—so the cured madwomen spread throughout every province, working their way into the affections of real magistrates, as Bess and Dilana had done. In Voyagend, they had learned from the Guardian how to make conversation and to carry themselves as real women of the upper class; they had learned to speak in cultured tones, to walk and move with grace and style. After being cured, they had learned history, politics, literature, the arts, and the sciences from the Guardian. Plain or not, they had huge advantages over village lassies when it came to catching the attention of educated men.

Most of them married magistrates and reeves new to their assignments. The others became servants in official households and gradually came to know their employers better and better. A reassigned magistrate couldn’t take his wife and children along, but no rule said he couldn’t take along a female servant whom he had found especially useful—and when he settled into his new village, he was quite likely to choose a woman he already knew and whose company he enjoyed, for his next wife.

The inspectors-general were more difficult, for the obvious reason—nobody knew who they were. Still, it was possible to make guesses, possible to assign teams of men to follow travelers and join merchants’ caravans, and one inspector-general after another went to the Lost City. Bade and the Guardian found that they were much less likely to accept their imprisonment willingly, though; or to be swayed to the ideas and ideals of the New Order. After all, they had given up more to gain their current rank in the Old, and that rank was very high; each of them. had very real hopes of becoming Protector, or at least a minister. They had labored all their lives to achieve it, and weren’t about to throw it away by eliminating the Protector and his office, nor the system in which they held so much power.

Miles conferred with the Guardian, and finally sent the inspectors-general to a separate ruined city, one guarded much more closely by its computer and robots. For them, at least, the imprisonment was real—still luxurious, but nonetheless real. Women came to join them, though—women who weren’t very pretty, but knew how to use cosmetics to make the most of the looks they had; women who walked gracefully and spoke in cultured tones, women who knew the arts and the sciences, who could talk with the exiled inspectors-general about history and politics. Gradually, even these hardcase adherents of the Old Order began to think there might be something to be said for the New.

“Your Honor, come quickly!” The butler appeared in the doorway, looking harried for once. “Magistrate Plurible is coming! He’s sent a runner ahead; he’s only a mile away!”

Magistrate Athellen—formerly Lord Llewellyn in delusion—looked up from his desk, face ashen. Usually visiting magistrates sent word ahead, and he had plenty of time to prepare, but this surprise visit scared him thoroughly. In desperation, he fell back on the stratagem he had used before. “Tell Constable Garrick and Watchman Porry to come into my study, quickly! Tell Mistress Paysan to prepare a quick tea! I’ll hurry and change into my formal robe!”

“I must assist Your Honor!”

“There’s no time! You set the preparations in motion!” Athellen bolted from his desk.

The formal robe still held the blackjack and dagger hidden in its folds from its last such use—in fact, Athellen had begun to take comfort from knowing they were always there. He shaved quickly, ducked back into the empty study to prepare the teacups, and was out in front of the courthouse five minutes before the coach rattled around the curve of the road.

The horses stopped, and the footman jumped down to open the door. Magistrate Plurible stepped down and toward Athellen, arms spread wide, a smile of greeting on his face, a smile that froze, then died as he saw who was waiting for him.

Athellen’s worst fears had come true—but he remembered what Miles had told them all to do if this happened. After all, sooner or later, some of them were bound to meet people who knew the man they were pretending to be. It was just Athellen’s bad luck that it had been sooner.

He stepped forward with a broad smile. “Magistrate Plurible! You do me great honor!” Then, close enough for Plurible to hear a whisper, Athellen hissed, “Yes, I know I’m not who you expected to see, but there’s an excellent reason, and no one else must know of it!” Aloud, he fairly trumpeted, “Come into my study; and take refreshment!”

Sudden dread filled Plurible’s face, but it was quickly masked. He whispered, “As you say, Inspector.”

Athellen turned away, arm in arm with Plurible, hiding a surge of elation. The man had assumed he was an inspector-general impersonating a magistrate—and whatever reasons there might be for such an action, they had to be horrible.

And kept secret…

They came into the study. “Take a seat, Your Honor!” Athellen waved his visitor to a chair as he went around behind the desk. “May I introduce you to my trusty Constable Garrick and Watchman Pory!”

The two officers bowed. Plurible nodded to acknowledge them as he sat, then turned back to Athellen. “What does all this mean, Inspector? I know I can’t be told all of it, but surely you can give me some small hint. Is my old friend Athellen in trouble?”

“I wouldn’t like to use such a word,” Athellen said, and rang the small bell on his desk. A side door opened, and the butler ushered in a maid, who set down the teapot.

“Explanations must wait till you have a cup in your hand!” Athellen insisted. “You have been traveling all morning, at a guess, and need refreshment!”

“It would be welcome,” Plurible said reluctantly. Clearly, he would rather hear the news first, but dared not say so. He took the cup and sipped. “Now, sir?”

“Yes, now.” Athellen took a long sip, playing for time, then sat back and said, “Not in trouble, no. Your old friend Athellen, though, needed … a rest.”

Plurible stiffened in alarm. “A collapse?”

“I would rather call it exhaustion,” the fake Athellen said, “but it’s bad for morale for people to know of it—so when it came time for reassignment, we sent him to a secluded retreat, and I took his place.”

“Thank heavens it could be managed so neatly!” Plurible sighed. “Is he recovering quickly?”

“I hope so, but no one has told me anything.”

“Of course, of course,” Plurible muttered, and sipped again. A quick glanced showed Athellen the thoughtful look on his visitor’s face. At a guess, Plurible was revising his estimate of the fake Athellen’s rank downward from inspector-general to one of the second-rank bureaucrats who kept all the records of the land and coordinated all the reeves—specifically, one of the group of troubleshooters who were always kept ready for such occasions. No one knew for sure if they really existed, but nobody really doubted it, either. Plurible sipped again, then asked, “What will you tell the people here when he has recovered?”

“Oh, we’ll arrange a mid-term reassignment, and explain that another magistrate died unexpectedly,” Athellen assured him. “Of course, it’s possible the doctors will insist he take the whole five years as a vacation; I’ve heard of it happening.”

“Yes… To write his … impressions of … duh peeble he … hazzz governed.” Plurible sipped again, then looked up, blinking bleary eyes.

“I think the journey has tired you out,” Athellen said, fairly oozing sympathy. “Perhaps you should nap before dinner.”

“Nnno, nnno! Mid … day … zleeb? Nev … nev…” But Plurible’s eyes closed, and he slumped in his chair.

Porry stepped forward just in time to catch the teacup before it fell. “How much of the drug did you put in his teacup, Your Honor?”

“Enough.” Athellen rose. “Put him to bed, and watch over him. Then, Porry, go into the forest and…”

“Hoot like an owl and tell the forester who answers that we need a replacement.” Porry nodded. “I remember, Your Honor.”

“Good.” He watched the two men carry the magistrate out, then rang the bell again. The butler came in. “Your Honor?”

“Are my watchmen making Magistrate Plurible’s men comfortable, Satter?”

“Quite comfortable, Your Honor.” The butler’s face showed his disapproval. “They’re already half drunk.”

Athellen nodded with satisfaction. “Tell the watchmen to keep it up, and tell Plurible’s men that their master has suddenly taken ill and gone to bed in one of my guest rooms. They have the afternoon to relax, but they must stay in the courthouse compound. They will probably be staying the night, so tell the bailiff to make arrangements.”

“As you will, Your Honor.” Satter’s tone left no doubt as to his opinion of the events, but he bowed and left to carry out his orders anyway.

Athellen sank into his chair with a sigh. The crisis was past, and successfully survived—or the first stage, of it, anyway. Still, he didn’t doubt that the men the Guardian would send would successfully cart away Plurible and his drunken watchmen, leaving a new and false Plurible in his place. Athellen heartily hoped he would never again meet someone who had known the real Athellen.