A Wizard in Peace

CHAPTER 19

Dilana glanced up from her embroidery, watching her husband furtively. It was winter, but he sat gazing at the garden beyond the window anyway. It was pretty enough, she had to admit, even buried under snow—or would have been, on a sunny day, but this one was overcast, and so was William’s face. Considering the case he had before him at the moment, that wasn’t surprising. She laid down the stretched linen, folded her hands in her lap, and said, “Would it be so bad as all that if young Charyg became a cabinetmaker?” William looked up with a start. Then he smiled and reached out to touch her hand. “How did you know what I was thinking?”

She returned the smile, clasping his hand: “You were quite upset about it when you came to dinner yesterday, and have been gloomy ever since. It’s not hard to guess. Come, husband—what harm in the boy’s going to apprentice to old Wizzigruf, if it makes him happy?”

“Perhaps because it would make his father sad.”

“Only for a while. He thinks the boy is taking a step back in the world, after all. But when Toby Charyg becomes a guildmaster, I suspect his father will be quite proud of him.”

“If he becomes a guildmaster,” William cautioned.

Dilana shrugged. “The lad has talent, we’ve all seen it in the scraps of wood he’s carved and the knickknacks he’s made for his mother. That cradle he gave his sister for her wedding was nearly a work of art. But even if he doesn’t, husband, isn’t it right for the lad to be happy?”

“Not if it makes his father gloomy.”

“If old Charyg really loves the boy, the lad’s happiness will make him happy,” Dilana pointed out, “and if the boy is sad being a merchant, that will make his father unhappy, too—and probably angry. They’ll quarrel, maybe even come to blows. No, surely it’s right for the boy to be happy.”

“Happiness isn’t something that’s right or wrong,” William grumbled. “It’s simply good luck.”

“If that’s so, I’ve been very lucky indeed.” Dilana squeezed his hand, then let it go.

He looked deeply into her eyes and smiled. “I too,” he said softly, “and I see what you mean, for it’s very right.”

“Then surely we all have a right to try to become happy.” “Have a right?” William frowned. “Odd phrase, that.” Dilana was suddenly tense; this was the delicate moment, and she hadn’t been able to see it coming. She turned to look out at the garden, choosing her words carefully, deliberately changing their meanings. “Surely something that is right, is something that we have, my husband. But some of those ‘rights’ are ours simply because we’re born. Everyone has a right to try to stay alive, for instance, and to defend himself or herself against thieves and murderers.”

“Yes, that’s true; certainly I can’t deny it,” William said slowly. “But life is something that happens to us whether we want it to or not, my love—though our parents may have some choice in the matter.”

His hand caught around hers again, and she looked up to meet the warmth of his smile with a glow of her own. “Happiness, though, doesn’t come with the first breath of life,” William went on. “It happens to you, or it doesn’t. Even those who choose their own mates often make mistakes; you can do all the things that you think will bring happiness, and still find yourself sunk in gloom. It’s not a right.”

“No,” Dilana said slowly, never looking away from him, “but you can try to be happy. Surely that much is a right, at least.”

William’s look turned thoughtful. “Perhaps,” he said slowly, and turned to gaze out at the garden again. “Perhaps…” Watching his face, Dilana breathed out a silent sigh of relief. It had been a very difficult moment, but she seemed to have managed it fairly well. Except, of course, that he was now deep in thought, though she seemed to have rescued him from his dark mood.

Still, she also seemed to have thrown away an intimate moment that might have led to a night of ecstasy. She sighed again, and reminded herself that they all had to make sacrifices for the Cause.

The night fulfilled its promise, though, and more. The next day, William gave his judgment: that young Charyg should be apprenticed to the village cabinetmaker. Then he took old Charyg into his study for a long, long talk. The merchant emerged looking somber, but no longer angry—and very, very thoughtful.

Later that spring, Dilana astounded both William and herself by conceiving. She was nearly forty, but somehow she survived the birth of her first child, and was amazed that William seemed overjoyed, even though the baby was a girl, not a boy. Three years later, he was having long “conversations” with their daughter, which generally meant listening to her prattle as she sat on his knee. Little by little, Dilana began to mention the rights baby Luisa had gained by virtue of being born, and as the result of William’s and her own decision to encourage that event. William assured her that he was thoroughly aware of his responsibilities to the child—but bit by bit, he began to believe that women’s rights had to be stated as clearly as men’s:

Thus the genuine magistrates who stayed in office talked of human rights with their new wives, and slowly, little by little, began to think of some changes to the government, ways following from that idea of individual human rights. Miles found that, although he didn’t have enough madmen to replace all the officials, he didn’t need to.

“You don’t really think you can hold us here if we really want to go, do you?” Magistrate Flound said with a hard smile.

“Oh, yes,” Bade said, his voice soft as velvet. “Yes, I think we can hold you here no matter how badly you want to leave.”

“A mere five of you?—” Flound scoffed. He sat back with a sneer of contempt. “Against five hundred of us?”

“Five of us, and the Guardian with its thousand robots.” Actually, there were only a hundred robots on duty at any one time, but they moved around so often and so quickly that Bade was sure none of the magistrates could count them. “They could hold you fast even without we five jailers. In fact, we’re only here to watch for trouble signs the Guardian might not catch.”

It was certainly true that the master computer had never had to be a jailer before. The madmen had all wanted to stay.

Bade still wanted to stay, too, but not to wallow in delusion anymore. Hatred burned white-hot within him, and he wanted to be in Voyagend to visit the revenge of imprisonment on every magistrate brought to him. He would never forget his father’s angry shouts at Lado, their village magistrate, because the man had kept the father’s money, while turning Bade out of school for learning too slowly. (But what he had learned, he had learned well!) He would never forget the sight of his father in the stocks, with neighbors jeering at him and throwing rotten vegetables, the moldy pulp dripping down over half of Papa’s face. He would never forget his mother’s tears, or her loud arguments telling Papa to stop pushing the boy.

But Papa hadn’t been pushing Bade—he had only tried to give him the chance for the learning he so loved. Here in the Lost City, Bade had found that chance, and had spent hours in a learning carrel every day, with the Guardian feeding him pictures and words on a viewscreen, stopping to explain anything that he didn’t understand. He had still learned slowly, though not as slowly as with a village teacher who snarled and berated his students. The Guardian told him now that he knew as much as any magistrate, though he was behind in local events by a few hundred years.

Now, of course, Orgoru and the other impostor magistrates were sending back law books and history books, and their own observations on the intrigue that underlay it all. Little by little, Bade was catching up.

So he gave back hard smile for hard smile and told Flound, “You couldn’t want to break out of this city more than you do already. There isn’t a one of you who doesn’t ache for the reward and career boost that would come from telling the nearest reeve all about us rebels in this city, and letting the Protector’s spies know about our agents all over the land.”

Flound lost his smile, glaring in hatred at Bade.

The glare satisfied Bade’s need for revenge—a little. He leaned back in his chair, crossing his legs. “Yes, the Guardian hears everything you say, Flound.”

The magistrate’s eyes sparked anger at the impertinence of this peasant, addressing him without his title.

“Everything you say,” Bade went on softly. “You can’t plan an escape attempt without its knowing—and if the Guardian knows, I know.”

It wasn’t true, of course—the computer had audio pickups in every room in the city and quite a number in outdoor public places, but scarcely everywhere. It was quite possible to find some sheltered nook, some end of an alley, where the computer couldn’t hear—but it wouldn’t hurt for Flound and his lackeys to think the machine knew everything.

“How do you think the Guardian knew enough to send his skeleton to push you back, when you tried to climb the wall in the dead of night last week?” Bade asked.

Flound’s glare was a dagger, and Bade grinned in return, knowing the magistrate’s stomach was sinking as he began to believe the computer had overheard his planning with his score of confederates. Of course, the robot who had stopped them had really only been on sentry duty, making his rounds by a randomized schedule—but Flound didn’t need to know that. The man left Bade’s office with a snarl, and Bade allowed himself to feel the warm glow of triumph.

The house stood as near the wall as any, for a thirty-foot width of clear pavement circled inside the wall all around the city. But thirty feet was close enough for Flound’s purpose. Of course, the house was made of stone, like all the buildings that still stood in the ruined city—a very strange, ruddy stone, warm to the touch, but stone nonetheless, for what else could it be if it were so hard? The floors were made of the same stone, all flat, all one piece, and Flound marveled that the ancient builders had been able to find or cut such large sheets of rock. Maybe the old tales were true, maybe the ancients really had secrets of building, miraculous tools and methods that had been lost!

But the house was built around a courtyard, and the courtyard was paved with flagstones. Oh, Flound had found only a mass of weeds, but had dug down beneath them, then cleared away the dead herbage, exulting. Flagstones they were, though carved into beautiful shapes and fitted together like a puzzle—but separate stones, and the weeds sprouting between them, showed there must be dirt below!

No one objected to his moving in and making the house his own, neither Bade nor the Guardian nor any of its “robots,” as Bade called them—its strange smooth-boned eerie skeletons with their heads like eggs, with jewels for eyes, jewels that Flound had already learned could shoot out spears of light, spears that burned and cut like swords. He told himself he didn’t fear the creatures, but he was very glad they didn’t object to his taking the house for his dwelling, or to his having a dozen friends in to talk and drink every day.

To talk and drink, six of them, while the other six dug beneath the flagstones, boring a tunnel under the plaza toward the wall. Then that six would come up and wash in the amazing streams of water that sprang at a touch from the wall into the huge tub, and the next six would go down, each taking his turn at shoveling, each taking his turn at filling the baskets and hauling them out. The pile of earth mounded high around the walls of the courtyard, but who was to see except Flound and his friends? He congratulated himself on his cleverness, and kept on digging.

“Surely Flound and his friends must have realized that any city protected by a wall would have constant searches for sappers undermining that wall!” the Guardian protested.

“They might have thought of it,” Bade agreed, “but the only such searching they know of, is men walking around the wall with long rods to thrust into the earth. They don’t see your robots walking around with probes, so they assume you’re not checking.”

“I forget that such intelligent men know nothing of sonar,” the Guardian sighed. “Are you sure you won’t let me teach them, Bade?”

“Not until the revolution is over, and won,” Bade said in an iron tone. “They have us outnumbered, after all. Let’s keep them at every disadvantage we can.”

“If you must,” the computer said with a tone of resignation. “But it goes against my twelfth programming directive, Bade.”

“Yes, a teacher by instinct as well as training.” Bade smiled without mirth. “I definitely can’t complain, since I’ve benefited so much by your instruction. But you have directives of higher priority, Guardian, one of which is to keep these men imprisoned for the security of the movement which is trying to restore the freedom you were programmed to protect.”

“Someone somewhere must have taken the concept of order in society too far, when the people fell out of contact with me,” the computer lamented. “Still, you are correct, Bade—we must keep them in. Surely, though, we can let them know that their tunnel will be closed before they can use it.”

“No, let them think they have succeeded.” Bade’s mouth drew into a thin, cruel smile. “Their disappointment will be all the sharper, and they will be that much less likely to try again. We must convince them that you’re unbeatable, Guardian. Our fight is virtually won, if they stop trying.”

“I confess I do not understand human thought processes well enough to disagree with you, Bade,” the computer acknowledged. “From what little I do know, though, it seems quite cruel.”

“Oh, it is,” Bade agreed, “but the suffering they would cause if they escaped, would be much more cruel by far.”

It was a good excuse, he realized, but acknowledged that it was just that, an excuse, and nothing more. The truth was that he would enjoy seeing the dismay and hurt on their faces, when they finished their tunnel and found it was useless. Revenge on one magistrate was sweet, but revenge on them all would be far more satisfying still.

They had to tunnel down quite a bit, for sure enough, the wall was deeply set in the earth. Finally they were ready for the final bit of digging, under the six-foot width of the wall and up. They waited for a night without a moon, gathered in the house during the day, and laughed and joked loudly, clinking glasses and giving all the evidence of a party. As darkness fell, they lit the lamps, kept the party going for another hour, then gradually slackened the noise, put out one lamp at a time, and finally gave the appearance of a sleeping house, filled with saturated partygoers who hadn’t bothered to go home—sensible enough, when none of them really had a home here.

Then, in the middle of the night, they went out to finish their tunnel.

Flound himself dug the last few feet to the surface with a will, grinning like a demon, filling basket after basket, which his comrades passed back from man to man until they dumped it in the courtyard, then passed it back empty. The shovel bit and shoved through. Flound held back a cry of triumph as he quickly battered at the hole, widening it, pushing back the edges, pounding the grass down with the back of the shovel …

… and paused as he saw two long, thin gleaming legs stretching up from the edge of the hole. With a sinking heart, he followed them up to the crosspiece that served as hips, the flattened tank that served as ribs, the pipe-thin arms and skeletal hands, and finally the ruby-eyed egg of its head.

“You really must not come out, Magistrate Flound,” the robot said.

Flound stared in horror while his friends jostled close, asking, “What is it? Why have you stopped?” Then the two who could see around him saw the robot, and moaned.

“How … how did you know?” Flound croaked.

“We could hear your digging, Flound.” Bade stepped up just behind the robot.

“That is a drastically oversimplified description of sonar,” the robot objected.

Flound glared pure hatred at Bade.

The jailer permitted himself a very small smile. Inside, though, his elation soared.

Flound wouldn’t be able to accept losing, though, Bade reflected as he paced to the top of the wall hours later, watching the city begin to glow in the false dawn. Flound would have to keep trying, especially since it had become a contest between himself and Bade. His pride would make him engineer a much more serious breakout attempt, or Bade misread his prisoners completely. They were all intelligent, and most of them were aggressive and competitive too. Keen minds joined with restlessness and the bitterness of defeat. They would never be able to accept prison like gentle sheep. The next try would be massive and violent, and some of the magistrates might die.

Part of Bade looked forward to that with an almost greedy anticipation—but part of him felt the shame of not doing his job well. He was supposed to be a jailer, not an executioner, Gar had been very insistent on the importance of none of the magistrates being hurt. He said it was vital to their success that the rebels seem to be not villains, but rescuers—and for that, all their prisoners had to come out alive and well cared-for. Bade had to find some way to make them satisfied with their captivity.

How? He bent his mind to the task for hours, thinking in his slow but methodical way. As evening came on, he left his office, not wanting the robot with the dinner tray to find him—he wasn’t hungry, being too deeply embroiled in thinking, in trying to find the answer to the puzzle. He could have asked the Guardian, of course, but he had begun to realize that the machine had its limits, and one of them was in looking into people’s hearts and understanding how they felt.

He paced the battlements as the sky darkened. The moon had risen when he asked himself why he was happy to stay here, guarding sullen and hostile men. There was the revenge, of course, but by itself, that couldn’t have been enough. No, there was something else, something more, and if he were honest with himself, he would have to admit. The answer sprang into his mind, and he stopped, staring into the night, then began to feel jubilation rise within him—for he had realized that he was enjoying this puzzle-solving very much, then remembered that he always had. He was not only willing, but eager, to stay and be jailer, because he enjoyed the constant competition, the constant need to outthink the hated magistrates.

If he were willing to stay because of the pleasure of the contest, wouldn’t the magistrates be willing, too?

Of course, his challenge was keeping them penned in. What other challenge could he find for them, other than the need to break out?

Learning. They all enjoyed learning, or had the drive to force themselves to it to gain their goal. He could spread a veritable forest of knowledge before them, and give each of them a hunting license.

First, though, he had to give them a reason to go hunting, a quarry to chase.

What could a band of bureaucrats want, that would make them willing, even eager, to buckle down to the work of learning facts they had never known existed?

The answer burst into his mind like a lamp flaring into brightness.

The merchant’s face was dark with anger as his wagon rolled into town. The driver was silent, eyeing the merchant beside him warily.

“Stop here!” the merchant commanded, and the driver drew up in front of the courthouse. People stopped and stared, and a guard came hurrying up. “Here now! Keep your load going! You can’t just stop in the middle of the road!”

“Stop where he tells you,” the merchant told the driver, then leaped down from the wagon and strode toward the courthouse, anger in every stride. Caught between two rule breakings, the guard dithered a minute, looking from one to the other. The driver gave him a sympathetic look, and the guard’s head snapped up in indignation. “Wait here!” he snapped, and turned to dash after the merchant. But it was too late, the man had already gone through the door, and by the time the guard caught up, was already telling the bailiff, “Tell the magistrate I wish to see him!”

“Indeed.” The bailiff gave him a bland nod and waved the guard away. “And who shall I say requires to see Magistrate Lovel with no word of warning?”

“Branstock, a merchant in cloths and notions! Be quick, man, or your chance may be gone and the trail grown cold.” The bailiff suddenly became much more attentive. “What trail?”

“The trail of the bandits who robbed me! If they hadn’t thought my anger amusing, they might well have taken my life, too, and that of my driver! Do you mean to laugh at such matters?”

“I assure you, sir, I do not. Ho, Breavis!” The bailiff waved to someone in the courtroom, and a man with ink-stained fingers came out. “This is Breavis Clark, clerk to Magistrate Lovel,” the bailiff said by way of explanation. “Clark, this merchant is Branstock, with a report for His Honor that I don’t think he’ll want to delay. Will you show him in?” Then, to Branstock, “Your pardon, merchant, but I must hurry away to set my men on the trail of these bandits. I shall speak to your driver while you speak to the magistrate. Good afternoon!” He nodded and turned, walking quickly.

“Well, that’s something, at least,” Branstock said, looking a little mollified.

“I assure you, sir, we don’t take banditry lightly in this township,” the clerk told him. “Follow me, please.” He led the way to the magistrate’s study. “Wait,” he advised, and the magistrate looked up through the open door, looked up in inquiry. “Your Honor, a merchant who wishes to lodge a complaint,” the clerk said. “He was robbed within your township. Bailiff Jacoby has gone to attend to it, but Branstock still wishes to speak with you.”

“Yes, certainly, come in at once.” The magistrate rose.

The clerk stepped aside to let Branstock in. “Thank you for seeing me, Your Honor,” he said, and Breavis frowned, for the man didn’t sound anywhere nearly as respectful as a merchant should when speaking to a magistrate. But his tone seemed not to matter to Magistrate Lovel—or if it did, it served as some sort of signal. His face went rigid at sight of the merchant, and he said, “Close the door, please, Breavis Clark.”

Clark did, but with misgivings. It wasn’t unheard of for the magistrate to go behind closed doors with a visitor, provided he were male, but never at first meeting. Unless …

His stomach sank. Could this very ordinary seeming merchant be an inspector-general?

It would explain the magistrate’s reaction to his tone, instead of the rebuke Clark had expected from official to merchant—but by what signal had Lovel recognized the secret inspector?

No doubt by one only magistrates learned. Whatever the case, there was one thing of which Breavis Clark was certain—he would never really know for sure.

The magistrate waited for the door to close, then threw his arms around the merchant. “Miles! Praise Heaven! At last someone I can truly talk to!”

Miles felt the trembling in the man’s arms, and knew all over again the fearful tension under which his agents lived. “Poor, brave soul, to live so much apart from your own kind! But your wife, Lovel—isn’t she, at least, a consolation to you?”

Lovel stepped back to hold him at arm’s length. “A mighty consolation to be sure, but not one with whom I can share the truth about my work. She is beginning to wonder why she hasn’t become pregnant, though.”

“Let her wonder,” Miles advised. “If you start to love her, our enemies will have enough of a hold over you—but if you had a baby, they would really be able to twist you by threatening the child.”

Lovel nodded. “And if we fail, she can always claim she was deceived, quite truthfully, and find another mate—but if she has a baby by an impostor, she’ll have a much harder time remarrying.”

“And the State, of course, won’t support the child of an impostor,” Miles nodded.

Lovel released him and gestured to a chair. “Sit down, sit down, and I shall ring for tea!”

“It would be pleasant,” Miles admitted, sitting, “but before you do, I had better tell you the details of the mythical bandits you’re sending your bailiff to track.”

“Yes indeed! What will he find when he reaches the place with all his men? And where is that place, by the way?”

“A mile outside the town, on the main road. They’ll find the tracks of a dozen horses—we had to unharness our beasts and ride them back and forth, and off into the woods, six times—and a few bits of cloth on the bushes. The tracks disappear into a river. When your men don’t find the bandits themselves, you can send to the magistrates all around you, and three of them will tell the same story…”

“Japheth, Orgoru, and Minello.” Lovel grinned, sitting behind his desk. “We have to stick together, don’t we?”

“We do indeed.” Miles smiled. “That should be enough. You can call for tea now.”

“Of course.” Lovel leaned back to pull on a rope. The door opened, and he said to the guard who looked in, “Tea, strong and dark! Quickly, tell her!”

The guard nodded and closed the door, with a frown to answer Miles’s glare—but afrown that gained a distinct look of foreboding before the panel shut to hide him.

“What of the others?” Lovel asked. “Tell me all the news!” Miles launched into a brief account of all the agents he had seen in the last month. “Etaoin’s bailiff and watchmen are all beginning to agitate with him for guarantees of safety for the peasants, and Lucia’s first child was born in October. Her husband is already seeing that women…”

The door opened, and the maid came in with the tea.

“…must be able to march through your township without worrying about assaults on their virtue,” Miles went on without missing a beat. “Even if you have the bandits in your gaol, can you guarantee the good behavior of your town’s young men?”

“Not guarantee, of course—no one ever can,” Lovel replied as the maid put down the tea tray, wide-eyed. “But we’ve only had two charges of assault since I’ve been here, and both those young men have been scourged and pilloried, so I doubt anyone else would be eager to imitate them.”

Miles nodded, back in character as Branstock. “Let’s hope not. Still, bandits daring to waylay travelers so close to the edge of your town aren’t the most encouraging sight.”

The maid poured the tea.

Lovel waved away Branstock’s objection—and the maid. She curtsied and went out as he was saying, “I have no doubt the bailiff and his men will…”

The door closed behind the maid.

“…have the men in irons soon enough,” Lovel finished, then doubled over in silent laughter. So did Miles.

When they had managed to recover themselves, Miles wiped tears from his eyes and said, “What a pair of charlatans we are!”

“More than a pair of us, Miles,” Lovel chuckled. “Many more, I hope.”

When Branstock left the courthouse in the middle of the afternoon, Lovel came out of his study looking somber. “Tell the bailiff to see me as soon as he returns,” he told his guards, and when the bailiff came home to report failure—the trail of the bandits had mysteriously disappeared—Lovel told him gravely, “We seem to have overlooked some rather serious matters, bailiff,” and went on to give him a list.

The bailiff, of course, immediately summoned his watchmen and proceeded to give them a lecture—so there was no question about it in anyone’s mind, and by noon of the next day, everyone in town knew that “merchant Branstock” had really been an inspector-general-in disguise, as they always were.

The tinker strolled along the high road, his pots and pans clanking and clattering to the rhythm of his steps—and to that rhythm, he sang,

“Oh, mistress mine, where are you roaming? Oh, mistress mine, where are you roaming? Oh, stay and hear! Your true love’s coming…”

He’d been singing it for the last mile and was growing very tired of it when at last a band of men in worn homespun clothing stepped out of the woods to surround him. “We’ll have those pots and pans, tinker.”

“Oh, spare a poor man, sir!” the tinker cried, and backed away—straight into another bandit, who chuckled in his ear and clamped a hand on his arm.

“All right, then, we’ll take you, too!” the first bandit cried, and the men surrounded him, forcing the tinker into the trees, squalling protests.

When they were a few hundred yards from the road, though, the bandits let go of the tinker, and their leader ducked his head in greeting. “Well met, Miles.”

“Well met indeed!” Miles sighed. “I could have sworn I’d go hoarse from singing that dratted song! I thought you had men guarding every mile of roadway in this district.”

“Every mile, yes—but you had to pace half that mile before you passed me,” one of the other bandits said. “I recognized the song, though, and knew that you wanted a conference right away.”

“That I did,” Miles sighed, and swung his pack off his back. “What a relief!” He rubbed sore shoulders.

“What did you need to tell us?” the bandit leader asked. “Send word to the city—Reeve Plumpkin in Dore Town will be replaced next month. His replacement will be Magistrate Gole, coming from Belo Village.”

“He’ll be driving up the south road, then.” The bandit leader’s eyes glittered—they didn’t get a chance to place one of the cured madmen as a reeve very often. “We’ll be ready for him—and we’ll hold him until the city can send us a man to take his place. Where’s Plumpkin going?”

“North to Milton Town. Rumor has it that he’ll be promoted to inspector-general.”

“What a coup that would be!” one of the bandits breathed. “A blow for the New Order indeed,” Miles agreed, “so tell the city to send two men.” Then the glow died from his eyes, and hunger replaced it. “Tell them to send Ciletha, too, to meet me a mile outside of Grantnor.”

A few of the men gave lascivious grins at that, but the leader only looked sympathetic. “Of course, Miles. No doubt she’ll have a lot of news for you.” He glared darkly at the bandit who opened his mouth with a ribald look on his face. After a moment, the man closed his mouth and lost his leer.

Ledora had tried to catch a magistrate, but one of the local girls with less mind and more beauty had caught him instead—so she had found a place as a cook with a reeve’s guardsmen. The Reeve’s Guard was a small army a thousand strong, and as she dished food onto their plates, she heard them talking about comrades who were ill. She spent her free hours seeking out the sick ones and curing them, and before long, she had become the army’s nurse. That gave her time alone with men who were feeling too poorly to try to molest her, but well enough to listen to the occasional word she dropped about the ways in which they were all just virtual puppets of the Protector and his reeves and magistrates. The soldiers turned thoughtful as they recovered, and now and again at mealtimes, she heard them discussing the ideas she had planted. Her bosom swelled with pride at the good work she was doing for the New Order, and she prided herself on how quietly and secretly she had done it—until the heavy hand fell on her shoulder.