Wizard and Glass

'They're done.' And you know they 're done, she did not add. Idid em while you were sitting before your glass, poking at that sore on your mouth.

Aunt Cord dropped a chunk of creamery butter into her muck—Susan had no idea how the woman stayed so thin, really she didn't—and watched it begin to melt. For a moment it seemed that breakfast might end on a reasonably civilized note, after all.

Then the shirt business had begun.

'Before ye go out, Susan, I want ye to take off that rag you're wearing and put on one of the new riding blouses Thorin sent ye week before last. It's the least ye can do to show yer—'

Anything her aunt might have said past that point would have been lost in anger even if Susan hadn't interrupted. She passed a hand down the sleeve of her shirt, loving its texture—it was almost velvety from so many washings. 'This rag belonged to my father!'

'Aye, Pat's.' Aunt Cord sniffed. 'It's too big for ye, and worn out, and not proper, in any case. When you were young it was mayhap all right to wear a man's button-shirt, but now that ye have a woman's bustline …'

The riding blouses were on hangers in the comer; they had come four days ago and Susan hadn't even deigned to take them up to her room. There were three of them, one red, one green, one blue, all silk, all undoubtedly worth a small fortune. She loathed their pretension, and the overblown, blushy-frilly look of them: full sleeves to flutter artistically in the wind, great floppy foolish collars . . . and, of course, the low-scooped fronts which were probably all Thorin would see if she appeared before him dressed in one. As she wouldn't, if she could possibly help it.

'My 'woman's bust-line,' as you call it, is of no interest to me and can't possibly be of any interest to anyone else when I'm out riding,' Susan said.

'Perhaps, perhaps not. If one of the Barony's drovers should see you—even Rennie, he's out that way all the time, as ye well know—it wouldn't hurt for him to mention to Hart that he saw yer wearing one of the camisas that he so kindly gave to ye. Now would it? Why do ye have lo he such a stiffkins, girl? Why always so unwilling, so unfair?'

'What does it matter to ye, one way or t'other?' Susan had asked. 'Ye have the money, don't ye? And ye'll have more yet. After he fucks me.'

Aunt Cord, her face white and shocked and furious, had leaned across the table and slapped her. 'How dare thee use that word in my house, ye malhablada? How dare ye?'

That was when her tears began to flow—at hearing her call it her house.'it was my father's house! His and mine! Ye were all on yer own with no real place to go, except perhaps to the Quarters, and he took ye in! He took ye in, Aunt!'

The last two orange sections were still in her hand. She threw them into her aunt's face, then pushed herself back from the table so violently that her chair tottered, tipped, and spilled her to the floor. Her aunt's shadow fell over her. Susan crawled frantically out of it, her hair hanging, her slapped cheek throbbing, her eyes burning with tears, her throat swelled and hot. At last she found her feet.

'Ye ungrateful girl,' her aunt said. Her voice was soft and so full of venom it was almost caressing. 'After all I have done for thee, and all Hart Thorin has done for thee. Why, the very nag ye mean to ride this morning was Hart's gift of respect to—'

'PYLON WAS OURS!' she shrieked, almost maddened with fury at this deliberate blurring of the truth. 'ALL OF THEM WERE! THE HORSES, THE LAND—THEY WERE OURS! '

'Lower thy voice,' Aunt Cord said.

Susan took a deep breath and tried to find some control. She swept her hair back from her face, revealing the red print of Aunt Cord's hand on her cheek. Cordelia flinched a little at the sight of it.

'My father never would have allowed this,' Susan said. 'He never would have allowed me to go as Hart Thorin's gilly. Whatever he might have felt about Hart as the Mayor … or as his patrono … he never would have allowed this. And ye know it. Thee knows it.'

Aunt Cord rolled her eyes, then twirled a finger around her ear as if Susan had gone mad. 'Thee agreed to it yerself, Miss Oh So Young and Pretty. Aye, so ye did. And if yer girlish megrims now cause ye to want to cry off what's been done—'

'Aye,' Susan agreed. 'I agreed to the bargain, so I did. After ye'd dunned me about it day and night, after ye'd come to me in tears—'

'I never did!' Cordelia cried, stung.

'Have ye forgotten so quick. Aunt? Aye, I suppose. As by tonight ye'll have forgotten slapping me at breakfast. Well, I haven't forgotten. Thee cried, all right, cried and told me ye feared we might be turned off the land, since we had no more legal right to it, that we'd be on the road, thee wept and said—'

'Stop calling me that!' Aunt Cord shouted. Nothing on earth maddened her so much as having her own thees and thous turned back at her. 'Thee has no more right to the old tongue than thee has to thy stupid sheep's complaints! Go on! Get out!'

But Susan went on. Her rage was at the flood and would not be turned aside.

'Thee wept and said we'd be turned out, turned west, that we'd never see my da's homestead or Hambry again . . . and then, when I was frightened enough, ye talked of the cunning little baby I'd have. The land that was ours to begin with given back again. The horses that were ours likewise given back. As a sign of the Mayor's honesty, I have a horse Imyself helped to foal. And what have I done to deserve these things that would have been mine in any case, but for the loss of a single paper? What have I done so that he should give ye money? What have I done save promise to fuck him while his wife of forty year sleeps down the hall?'

'Is it the money ye want, then?' Aunt Cord asked, smiling furiously. 'Do ye and do ye and aye? Ye shall have it, then. Take it, keep it, lose it, feed it to the swine, I care not!'

She turned to her purse, which hung on a post by the stove. She began to fumble in it, but her motions quickly lost speed and conviction. There was an oval of mirror mounted to the left of the kitchen doorway, and in it Susan caught sight other aunt's face. What she saw there—a mixture of hatred, dismay, and greed—made her heart sink.

'Never mind, Aunt. I see thee's loath to give it up, and I wouldn't have it, anyway. It's whore's money.'

Aunt Cord turned back to her, face shocked, her purse conveniently forgotten. ' 'Tis not whoring, ye stupid get! Why, some of the greatest women in history have been gillys, and some of the greatest men have been born of gillys. 'Tis not whoring!'

Susan ripped the red silk blouse from where it hung and held it up. The shirt moulded itself to her breasts as if it had been longing all the while to touch them. 'Then why does he send me these whore's clothes?'

'Susan!' Tears stood in Aunt Cord's eyes.

Susan flung the shirt at her as she had the orange slices. It landed on her shoes. 'Pick it up and put it on yerself, if ye fancy. You spread yer legs for him, if ye fancy.'

She turned and hurled herself out the door. Her aunt's half-hysterical shriek had followed her: 'Don't thee go off thinking foolish thoughts, Susan! Foolish thoughts lead to foolish deeds, and it's too late for either! Thee's agreed!'

She knew that. And however fast she rode Pylon along the Drop, she could not outrace her knowing. She had agreed, and no matter how horrified Pat Delgado might have been at the fix she had gotten herself into, he would have seen one thing clear—she had made a promise, and promises must be kept. Hell awaited those who would not do so.

3

She eased the rosillo back while he still had plenty of wind. She looked behind