you rated on the manhood scale, and a few other things.”
“And you concluded?”
“You have nerves of steel and balls to match. In the five generations I have seen, the family has produced no finer Magnus. I am proud to be related to you.”
He blinked. “Then tell me all the other things you held back.”
Justina sighed. “If I told you the moon was blue, would you believe me?”
“No.”
“If you saw it blue, would you believe?”
“Yes.”
She almost smiled at that, which would have been a mistake. Most people would hesitate, suspecting a trap, or waffle about asking for another opinion. Wulf never had doubts.
“You had no handler. Comfort and counsel are what handlers are for. Talent grows in of its own accord and at its own pace, like adult teeth or body hair. We can do little more than advise and reassure. You were taught that the strange powers you were starting to develop were the work of the devil, and you dared not tell people about them. You suppressed them. You invented those Voices.”
“I heard them, I tell you! St. Helen and St. Victorinus.”
She shook her head. “You imagined them. Did they ever tell you anything you didn’t pretty much know already, or could guess? Or that your talent wouldn’t reveal to you? Like the pain you felt when you started experimenting in earnest. That came from guilt and fear of hellfire. Once you gained confidence, the pain disappeared.”
Wulf pouted disbelievingly and straightened up as if his body weighed tons. “What are the words of the jessing oath?”
“Lady Umbral and I will lead you through them.”
He shook his head in exasperation. “Then answer me the most important question of all-where do our powers come from? From God or Satan?”
“You are not ready to know that yet.”
Wulf stood up and stepped back into nothingness.
He had vanished, gone nowhere, stayed in limbo. Queen of Heaven, why hadn’t she warned him about limbo?
CHAPTER 27
Vlad was not the first man of his troop to return to the castle. Having some misgivings about his current mount’s footing, he left the bearer-of-glad-tidings role to a couple of the youngsters, and fortunately neither of them slid over the edge in their race down the road. By the time he reached the gate, a welcome party had assembled to cheer the returning heroes. In fact, none of them had done a piddling thing, but he couldn’t give the credit where it was due, and that angered him.
His w;
“Ring your bells, my lord bishop!” he bellowed in his loudest battlefield voice. “The Lord has smitten the heretics as he smote the Midianites. God’s wrath fell on them as an avalanche, burying hundreds or thousands of them and closing the pass. Gallant is saved and the Wends are crushed. Ring your damned beg-your-pardon bells!”
Then he stomped back out again, while the bishop was still belaboring heaven with his thanks.
Back at the castle, Vlad stripped off his armor, established that His Babyship the count was believed to be in the solar, and ordered some food to be sent there. It was now Saturday, he decreed, since the sun had set, meaning red meat and none of that salt fish sewage.
The rumors had preceded him, so everyone he met wanted to confirm them, and a celebratory riot was already under way in the castle. It did not extend into the solar. Otto and Anton were slumped in chairs, scowling ferociously and clutching wine bottles with the air of men determined to get drunk as fast as possible. The only other person present was a woman he did not know.
“Wulf get back?” he demanded anxiously.
Anton said, “Yes. Hear we won.” And took another drink.
Vlad found this morbidity decidedly eerie. He started with the stranger, putting fists on hips and giving her his best bearded-monster glare. “I am Vladislav Magnus.”
She held wine, also, but in a glass. She nodded. “The last time I saw you, you were a lot less hairy and about one-third the height. I’m your Great-aunt Kristina.”
“And a sor… I mean Speaker?” She must be about a hundred years old!
“Of course. My working name is Justina.”
He choked back a couple of military expressions and went down on one knee to kiss her hand, the one without the glass. “And since these two drunks are apparently past talking, will you tell me what the problem is?”
“ Their problem,” she said, “is that Cardinal Zdenek called them in and left them on their knees while he gave them a thorough chiding. Their dignity is sorely hurt.”
“Called them in-to Mauvnik? Tonight? Sata… Speaking?”
She nodded again. “In all my days, I have never seen talent being splattered around as wildly as it is here in Castle Gallant just now. If the Inquisition decides to take notice, it will have a feast day.”
Otto spoke for the first time. “It wasn’t just our dignity. Zdenek is threatening to turn both of us over to the Church unless we give him Wulfgang.”
“Give him Wulfgang,” Vlad echoed, but the words still made no sense. He stood up.
“Speakers,” his aunt said, “are required to be bound-we call it ‘jessed’-by a workaday, a non-Speaker. It makes us a little easier to live with and better behaved. The cardinal feels that he needs and deserves a falcon on his wrist, although he already has several he can call on.”
Vlad headed to the bottle table. “My youngest brother, Aunt, may not be of the full twenty-one years the law recognizes, but he is a Speaker and, as of today, a battle-hardened warrior whom I admire enormously. Who in the good God’s creation is going to order him around, or give him to anyone? Gramercy! If I wanted him to pass the salt, I’d ask politely.” He glanced around the group. “Where is Wolfcub, anyway?”
“We don’t know,” she said. “He went into limbo, and I can’t trace him until he returns to the world. He’s utterly exhausted and I’m frightened he may go to sleep there.”
“And if he does…?” He guessed from her expression that he didn’t want the answer.
A knock on the door announced a page bringing the long-awaited food. Vlad took the tray himself, telling the boy to close the door and Anton to clear a space on the table.
Provisioned with a cold goose leg and his wine bottle, he made himself as comfortable as possible on the larger of the two available chairs. Otto had snapped out of his uncharacteristic sulk to start explaining about Wolfcub. Not just Zdenek, he said-a coven called the Saints also wanted to “jess” him. Then there was another coven, which Father Vilhelmas had belonged to, and which might want revenge. And there was the Church, which feared all Speakers it did not control. Since Speakers could find a man anywhere, running away would be a mere confession of guilt. By the time Otto had finished his summary, Vlad understood the prevailing mood of gloom. He tossed the bone in the fire and went back to the manger for more hay. “So what are we going to do?”
Silence.
“I’m waiting for the superior of my order,” Justina said. “Lady Umbral. She is the best fixer in Christendom, though I wonder if even she can untie this knot.”
“Explain ‘fixer.’” Well laden, Vlad returned to his seat.
“She’s matchmaker to senior nobility, arbitrator of quarrels, advisor to crowned heads… The world would be in a much worse mess if she didn’t exist. Only a Speaker can heal a prince who fractures his skull in the tilting yard, or cure a bishop’s leprosy. If the Amsterdam merchants hear that a Venetian galley has sunk with a cargo of spices, they can raise their prices. When a king starts mustering his army, his neighbors want to know that right away. Nothing travels faster than falcons. There are never enough of us.”
