“Right,” said Bear with an unconvincing smile. “I’m sorry to have upset you all, but I am not accustomed yet to thinking of Xulai as a . . . grown woman.”
“Who perhaps should not be gallivanting around with a grown man we don’t know very well,” said Oldwife pointedly.
Xulai went to hug her. “Then you must get to know him better, Oldwife, because I like him very much.”
That night, Xulai dreamed. The dream began as the other dream had begun, herself a tiny tree in a tiny, constricting pot. The roots sought a crack; the pot broke; the roots reached for fertile ground and the tree grew. She felt herself growing. From the bottom of her trunk, four great branches reached out and up, each with twigs innumerable sprouting in all directions, leaves flourishing. Then, deep in the taproot, she felt something. It was newness without a name. It had no scent, flavor, or feel, no dimension or shape; it made no sound. It was like a demand that moved upward through the tree, the root first, then split and ran first along the fronts of two branches, then across the back. It paused, then ran across the tops of the other two branches, then returned along their bottoms before going upward into that part of the trunk that grew above the branches to the very top, permeating the tree until it was part of the tree, existing in every way the tree existed, inseparable, indefinable as any particular thing and yet new: an arrival.
In her dream, she wondered at it, wondered where she might find it, like locating taste on her tongue or smell in her nose. Perhaps she could feel it the way she could feel movement in her own body. If she moved a finger she knew it . . . and yet, if the movement was effortless, how did she know the finger had moved? She would not know. If the movement was unconscious and without effort, as when she turned over in her sleep, she would not know she had moved. She would know that her body moved only if and when she did it intentionally or it was done to her while she was conscious enough to be aware of it.
So this new thing, this permeation, might do things without her knowing it? Or it might do things that she would recognize only if she had intended them to happen?
“It’s yours,” a voice whispered. Perhaps it was Fisher’s voice. Perhaps it was someone else’s. “No one else can use it. No one else will do anything with it. Only you, when you need to.”
There were several tavern-like places at the abbey where the men and women of various kinds and professions could get together to drink beer or ale or mead or cider and tell stories and hear what news was to be heard. Abasio had found out where all of them were and which people were likely to go to which ones. That night he went to the Warrior’s Helm, where the troops quartered nearby were said to congregate along with other people of the heartier and more physical professions. Horsemen went there. Stone layers went there. Abasio bought himself a pitcher of beer and sat at a corner table, where he soon attracted three or four other thirsty people willing to talk about what they were up to or planning. He heard about the new irrigation system for the vegetable gardens that lay just outside the south walls of the abbey and the several dams and holding ponds that would have to be built or had already been built. He heard about the disaster at the old iron mine, where three men had been trapped and rescued only after some hours of frantic labor.
“Oh, where’s that?” asked Abasio.
He heard about the improved armor that the smiths had devised for the troops who had ridden off to Netherfields, or ended up there, for some evidently had thought they were headed to Woldsgard, but Prince Orez was already at Woldsgard, so that hadn’t been necessary.
“Oh, is that so?” said Abasio.
“Bird-loft keeper says so,” said his informant. “He hears about the messages that come through, hangs around a little, you know, while people are reading ’em. Don’t think he’s supposed to, but he always has, and he keeps us up on the news.”
“That’s the way of it most places,” said Abasio.
“That’s him over there,” said the talkative one. “The old fellow with one arm. Used to be one of us.”
“And ‘us’ would be . . . ?”
“The boys and me, we’re armor. The old fellow there was a fine soldier, they tell me. Of course, he was younger then.”
When the talkative one left, Abasio worked his way over to the corner where the bird-loft man was sitting. He introduced himself, offered to buy a drink, and told the man he’d heard about him.
“Abasio’s my name. I’m a traveler. Justinian, Duke of Wold, mentioned you, but I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your name . . .”
The old man laughed. “They call me Winger. Acshurly it’s Whinger, Solomon Whinger, but Winger stuck, ’cause of the birds, you know. They called me Solo Winger ’cause I only had one wing left.”
Abasio laughed enthusiastically. “Well, the duke spoke highly of you. He showed me his bird lofts when I was there. Wonderful man, beautiful lofts, too. I asked him how many birds he had; he said he supposed he had a thousand or so.”
“Woun’t doubt it,” said the bird man appreciatively as Abasio filled their two mugs. “He gets word from all the Orez sons ’n’ the prince ’n’ the places south, ’n’ the abbey here,’n’ mor’er less everwhere.”
“It’s a long list.” Abasio nodded. “I saw all the signs on the wall that tell where the birds come from. That’s a lot of different places.” He had not only
