Will Power

they’ve adjusted to the court rather better than you have?”

“Yes,” I said. “Odd, really. I’ve always prided myself on being flexible, on being able to play any role I was given, while they’ve always seemed rigid, unbending, and intolerant of whatever seemed suspicious. I guess the palace doesn’t seem suspicious to them.”

“And you? Are you suspicious?”

“No,” I said, quickly and without much thought. “I don’t think so. There are strange things about the whole city, but I suppose you’d find that everywhere.”

“I suppose,” agreed Lisha, noncommittally.

“What are you thinking?” I pressed. “You think something is wrong?”

“Probably nothing. I’m just not sure of a few things. I told you that I have word from the city via some of the few people who will talk to me.”

“Does that include the girl who picked me up?”

“Rose? Yes. She doesn’t know anything about me, but she likes to talk, and I have learned much from her. She. . has contact with some of the courtiers from time to time.”

“You mean. .”

“Outside the city, people are not so wealthy as in it. Much of what is made or grown out here goes into Phasdreille, and many of the laborers struggle to make ends meet. Rose, like many others, has found a way to bring in some more money. That way she can keep her family, and her children, respectably.”

“Ironic.”

“Irony is a luxury many cannot afford,” she answered. I dropped my eyes a little, but she smiled. “Come now, Will. Before you came here, your hide was a good deal tougher. I suggest you thicken it again, if you can. It may yet prove invaluable. But that wasn’t my point. Rose and others like her told me of the arrival of people they called Outsiders. When you first reached the city, you created something of a stir. It seems that these Outsiders have been expected for some time. And though their interest in you has strangely dwindled lately, your first appearance prompted a good deal of excitement and some anxiety. Your names were on everyone’s lips for a day or so, and then, quite suddenly, you were forgotten. Garnet is now a horseman of the fair folk. Renthrette is a court lady often seen in the company of the much esteemed Sorrail. Will Hawthorne has vanished from sight and, it seems, from memory. Rose spoke of you several times when you first came to Phasdreille, but when I sent her to get you, she appeared to have no recollection of you. It is, as you say, odd.”

“I guess I’m kind of forgettable.” I shrugged.

“But that’s the thing,” she said. “You’re not. You should stand out, because you’re not like them. You don’t look like them and you certainly don’t think like them, so why have people stopped talking about you?”

“Maybe I’m just the wrong kind of different,” I said.

She looked at me sharply, and then nodded, as if I had said something shrewd or profound. “There’s also this attempt on your life,” she continued. “I don’t know, Will. It’s all very strange. It sounds like two separate entities- one goblin, the other human-want you dead. The cloaked figure only intervened when it seemed that the goblins might spare you. Why do two groups who hate each other both want you dead? And then there’s the Orgos apparition in the forest. Do you have any ideas?”

“Not really,” I confessed. “The goblin said, ‘I have no faith in prophecy, Mr. Hawthorne.’ Could our arrival have been foretold somehow? It might explain why there was such interest in us at first. Then when it turned out that we either weren’t what was prophesied or that the prophecy was bollocks, or whatever-then they lost interest in us? I don’t ordinarily believe in such things, of course. . ”

“Of course.” Lisha smiled dryly.

“But this place is crawling with things I didn’t believe in, so I’m sort of at sea in a leaky kettle. Maybe there was some kind of prophecy that seemed to refer to us.”

“And then it became apparent that you weren’t the prophesied Outsiders after all,” Lisha suggested.

“That’s possible,” I mused. “But maybe a few fringe groups still think we’re worth killing just in case. The Assassins’ Convention, which I seem to have walked in on, took place some time after we fell from grace in the eyes of the king.”

“We need to find out more about this prophecy, if it exists,” said Lisha, rising and starting to pace the room. “I wish we could get Garnet and Renthrette out of there. I worry that. .”

“What?” I asked, since her voice had trailed off into nothing.

“I don’t know,” she said, unsure of herself. “It’s just a feeling, an uneasiness. I don’t like the idea of them getting too. . involved with the court in Phasdreille.”

“If you say the word,” I answered with a dry and knowing grin, “they’ll jump back into line like their tails are on fire and you have the only bucket of water in the world.”

“I don’t know, Will,” she said, “but I hope so.”

She sat down again and stared at the tabletop as if her mind was miles away.

“I wish Mithos and Orgos were here,” I said suddenly. It was the first time I had said it, and I was rather surprised by it. It was as if my private anxiety had been skulking through the jungle of my head for days, always a few feet from the path I was on, and had chosen this moment to ambush me.

“I think they are still alive,” she said, looking at me in that compassionate but penetrating fashion of hers which always made me feel like she’d walked in on me as I was getting out of the bath.

“Based on what?” I demanded. I hadn’t intended to sound hostile, but I did not want to be patronized by groundless hopes.

“I just feel it,” she said. “Or rather, I do not feel they have died.”

“Why would you?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps I wouldn’t,” she said. “But we have been together a long time and I think their passing might register in me somehow.”

Her eyes held mine throughout this curious speech. I hesitated only a second.

“That is the stuff of stories, Lisha,” I said. “Brothers, friends, twins, parents, and daughters all die daily, and their loved ones are none the wiser till some grim-faced messenger arrives at the door. I’d love to think we were all connected by some sort of spiritual bond, some connection, but I have seen no evidence for it, and plenty to the contrary. I don’t believe it.”

“You are right not to,” she said. “I don’t believe it either. I merely hope that it might be true. Wishful thinking, perhaps, but I feel it nonetheless.”

I shrugged, unconvinced, and began feeling depressed as a result. She smiled a little, as if this endeared me to her or reminded her of something she liked in me. Though she was the one talking fancifully and I was the cynical realist, she managed to make me feel, as usual, like a child. I smiled again and she clasped my hand impulsively.

“I am glad you got here,” she said. “I needed to hear a voice of skepticism in this curious place. But now you must go back. I cannot come with you, and I feel that some of our answers still lie in the city. I will move in what limited way I can and gather information from the few safe sources available to me, but I have no wish to be hounded to earth and executed as a goblin spy.”

“Where should I begin?”

“With the prophecy, I suppose, though how you will go about that without putting yourself in danger, I do not know. Beware of trying to sour the city for Garnet and Renthrette too quickly. They may turn against you.”

“Again.”

“Quite. In fact,” she added, “now that I think of it, it might be better if you don’t tell them I’m here.”

“You want me to lie to them?” I said, pleased by the idea.

“No,” she insisted. “I just want you to keep what you know of my presence to yourself. For now.”

I grinned. One day I would get some real mileage out of this, her trusting me over them. Still, it was unlike her to mislead her friends.

“I just think it might be for the best,” she added. “For them, I mean. We’ll tell them soon.”

“We don’t need to,” I said.

She ignored that.

“Be careful, and bring me word through Rose,” she said. “I will send her to the bridgehead gate two days from now and every day thereafter. If I can, I will come in the coach; otherwise, you should give her any letters for me that you have. I think she can be trusted, and I do not think she can read. Leave no writings in your quarters as