Wizard and Glass

papers, one in our house and one in Rimer's files, saying it's ours. Aye, and to have horses again. Only three, 'tis true, but that's three more than we have now. And against that? To lie with him a time or two, and to bear a child, which millions of women have done before me with no harm. 'Tis not, after all, a mutant or a leper I'm being asked to partner with but just an old man with noisy knuckles. 'Tis not forever, and, as Aunt Cord says, I may still marry, if time and ka decree; I should not be the first woman to come to her husband's bed as a mother. And does it make me a whore to do such? The law says not, but never mind that; my heart's law is what matters, and my heart says that if I may gain the land that was my da's and three horses to run on it by being such, then it's a whore I'll be.

There was something else: Aunt Cord had capitalized—rather ruthlessly, Susan now saw—on a child's innocence. It was the baby Aunt Cord had harped on, the cunning little baby she would have. Aunt Cord had known that Susan, the dolls of her childhood put aside not all that long ago, would love the idea of her own baby, a little living doll to dress and feed and sleep with in the heat of the afternoon.

What Cordelia had ignored (perhaps she's too innocent even to have considered it, Susan thought, but didn't quite believe) was what the hag-woman had made brutally clear to her this evening: Thorin wanted more than a child.

He wants tits and arse that don't squish in his hands and a box that 'll grip what he pushes.

Just thinking of those words made her face throb as she walked through the post-moonset dark toward town (no high-spirited running this time; no singing, either). She had agreed with vague thoughts of how managed livestock mated—they were allowed to go at it 'until the seed took,' then separated again. But now she knew that Thorin might want her again and again, probably would want her again and again, and common law going back like iron for two hundred generations said that he could continue to lie with her until she who had proved the consort honest should prove her honestly with child as well, and that child honest in and of itself . . . not, that was, a mutant aberration. Susan had made discreet enquiries and knew that this second proving usually came around the fourth month of pregnancy … around the time she would begin to show, even with her clothes on. It would be up to Rhea to make the judgment… and Rhea didn't like her.

Now that it was too late—now that she had accepted the compact formally tendered by the Chancellor, now that she had been proved honest by yon strange bitch—she rued the bargain. Mostly what she thought of was how Thorin would look with his pants off, his legs white and skinny, like the legs of a stork, and how, as they lay together, she would hear his long bones crackling: knees and back and elbows and neck.

And knuckles. Don't forget his knuckles.

Yes. Big old man's knuckles with hair growing out of them. Susan chuckled at the thought, it was that comical, but at the same time a warm tear ran unnoticed from the comer of one eye and tracked down her cheek. She wiped it away without knowing it, any more than she heard the clip-clip of approaching hoofs in the soft road- dust. Her mind was still far away, returning to the odd thing she had seen through the old woman's bedroom window—the soft but somehow unpleasant light coming from the pink globe, the hypnotized way the hag had been looking down at it…

When Susan at last heard the approaching horse, her first alarmed thought was that she must get into the copse of trees she was currently passing and hide. The chances of anyone aboveboard being on the road this late seemed small to her, especially now that such bad times had come to Mid-World—but it was too late for that.

The ditch, then, and sprawled flat. With the moon down, there was at least a chance that whoever it was would pass without—

But before she could even begin in that direction, the rider who had sneaked up behind her while she was thinking her long and rueful thoughts had hailed her. 'Goodeven, lady, and may your days be long upon the earth.'

She turned, thinking: What if it's one of the new men always lounging about Mayor's House or in the Travellers' Rest? Not the oldest one, the voice isn't wavery like his, but maybe one of the others . . . it could be the one they call Depape…

'Goodeven,' she heard herself saying to the man shape on the tall horse. 'May yours be long also.'

Her voice didn't tremble, not that she could hear. She didn't think it was Depape, or the one named Reynolds, either. The only thing she could tell about the fellow for sure was that he wore a flat-brimmed hat, the sort she associated with men of the Inner Baronies, back when travel between east and west had been more common than it was now. Back before John Farson came—the Good Man—and the bloodletting began.

As the stranger came up beside her, she forgave herself a little for not hearing him approach—there was no buckle or bell on his gear that she could see, and everything was tied down so as not to snap or flap. It was almost the rig of an outlaw or a harrier (she had the idea that Jonas, he of the wavery voice, and his two friends might have been both, in other times and other climes) or even a gunslinger. But this man bore no guns, unless they were hidden. A bow on the pommel of his saddle and what looked like a lance in a scabbard, that was all. And there had never, she reckoned, been a gunslinger as young as this.

He clucked sidemouth at the horse just as her da had always done (and she herself, of course), and it stopped at once. As he swung one leg over his saddle, lifting it high and with unconscious grace, Susan said:

'Nay, nay, don't trouble yerself, stranger, but go as ye would!'

If he heard the alarm in her voice, he paid no heed to it. He slipped off the horse, not bothering with the tied-down stirrup, and landed neatly in front of her, the dust of the road puffing about his square-toed boots. By starlight she saw that he was young indeed, close to her own age on one side or the other. His clothes were those of a working cowboy, although new.

'Will Dearborn, at your service,' he said, then doffed his hat, extended a foot on one bootheel, and bowed as they did in the Inner Baronies.

Such absurd courtliness out here in the middle of nowhere, with the acrid smell of the oil patch on the edge of town already in her nostrils, startled her out of her fear and into a laugh. She thought it would likely offend him, but he smiled instead. A good smile, honest and artless, its inner part lined with even teeth.

She dropped him a little curtsey, holding out one side of her dress. 'Susan Delgado, at yours.'

He tapped his throat thrice with his right hand. 'Thankee-sai, Susan Delgado. We're well met, I hope. I didn't mean to startle you—'

'Ye did, a little.'

'Yes, I thought I had. I'm sorry.'

Yes. Not aye but yes. A young man, from the Inner Baronies, by the sound. She looked at him with new interest.

'Nay, ye need not apologize, for I was deep in my own thoughts,' she said. 'I'd been to see a … friend … and hadn't realized how much time had passed until I saw the moon was down. If ye stopped out of concern, I thankee, stranger, but ye may be on yer way as I would be on mine. It's only to the edge of the village I go— Hambry. It's close, now.'

'Pretty speech and lovely sentiments,' he answered with a grin, 'but it's late, you're alone, and I think we may as well pass on together. Do you ride, sai?'

'Yes,but really—'

'Step over and meet my friend Rusher, then. He shall carry you the last two miles. He's gelded, sai, and gentle.'

She looked at Will Dearborn with a mixture of amusement and irritation. The thought which crossed her mind was If he calls me sai again, as though I were a schoolteacher or his doddery old great aunt, I'm going to take off this stupid apron and swat him with it. 'I never minded a bit of temper in a horse docile enough to wear a saddle. Until his death, my father managed the Mayor's horses … and the Mayor in these parts is also Guard o' Barony. I've ridden my whole life.'

She thought he might apologize, perhaps even stutter, but he only nodded with a calm thoughtfulness that