The Chick Is In The Mail

'She should be, after what-'

'Shhh,' Catherine said. 'Here he comes!'

The girls held their breaths. Carefully the circle shifted, a feminine realignment to shield Marigold and Anna until Loremaster Gwillam had passed. However, he hurried past with no more than a single contemptuous sneer at the practice yard.

'He's going to pack,' Elizabeth said. 'He got a summons from Queen Eleanor's court. He leaves tomorrow.'

The two girls covered their mouths and giggled.

In the practice circle, steadily improving under Anna's careful tuition, Marigold's eyes were as bright as her armor.

* * *

I had nailed the lid of my box and packed the fragile items, such as the spell pool, in barrels lined with hay. The headmistress had given me a cheap cloak pin and a cold speech of farewell, the ungrateful bitch. As I checked under the bed for any forgotten items, I noticed the note pinned to my pillow.

Come to the wood at moonriseto meet Dame Cecilie.Methinks you will regret itif you do not.

My first reaction was outrage. Who would dare… The writing was large and round and girlish, an inkblot on one corner.

'Ever deplore,' said one of those damned ravens, and for some reason, a cold spear pricked my spine.

Bluebells bloomed in the wood, and honeysuckle and loosestrife and violets. Summer light filtered down between the green leaves, dappling the ground with gold. It was two days before graduation. The air was light and warm.

'Lloorrremmmaaasssttterrr Gggwwillaaammm…'

And she was there, First Dame Cecilie of Castle Thlevin… dressed in bloody armor, pale as death, one-armed until she moved.

'Hey nonny nonny, Bill,' she said, and threw away the carved stump of her severed arm. With both hands she pulled off the waxy death mask, and I was staring at Tyro Anna. A burst of laughter behind me sent me whirling to see the rest of the tyros rising from bushes and dropping from trees.

'What is the meaning of-'

'You can guess the meaning, Bill,' Anna said. 'Can't you?'

All I could do was stare in stupefaction.

'It was a mummery,' Anna said. 'Only you never guessed it, did you? We did our research on our classmates' knightly kin-thank you for teaching us how- and we put it to good use. A shame you already wrote your paper and sent it off, isn't it? You're going to look a bit of a fool when the truth comes out.'

I opened my mouth, but no words came out, only a bleat. 'Marrr-'

'Marigold didn't know it was us,' Anna said. 'Nor did any of the Third Bedchamber. They couldn't have played their parts so well if they had. Oh, and there's one thing more that you don't know, loremaster. After graduation, I'm not doing my squireship here at Castle Olansa. I'm doing it at court. My cousin has found me a place there. In fact, there'll be a steady supply of us tyros going up to court in the future. You'll probably want to use your new position to make things as comfortable as possible for us, don't you think?'

'Or else,' Elizabeth said.

'Don't you have anything to say, Bill? Your mouth is wide open. Don't you want to call us silly bitches or stupid idiots or worthless dung?'

Marigold said, 'Maybe that's enough, Anna. He looks sorry.'

'Oh, he's sorry, aren't you, Bill? He's sorry he thought we were too stupid and too defenseless to take care of ourselves.'

Anna stepped closer. She raised her forearm and I saw, through my numb horror, that the inside of the elbow had a tiny tattoo. Of clasped hands.

Suddenly I remembered that the emblem on Marigold's breastplate, the one that was always coming loose, was two clasped female hands.

'Your lore doesn't include everything,' Catherine said to me. 'We girls have lore among ourselves, you know. We go armored in each other.'

'Whereas you go armored in failure,' Anna said, smiling, 'unless you can be willing to change your armor. If you can no longer do something well, don't do it any longer. Give yourself to your new life completely, Bill.'

'That's us,' said Elizabeth, 'we're your new life. Serving us as we come up to court, one by one by one.'

'Never yore,' a raven said. 'Forever more.'

And I could say nothing at all, just gaze at them in horror: the stupid silly bitches, the clasped hands, the unthinkable future.

Fun With Hieroglyphics by Margaret Ball

After thirty minutes of staring at a blank screen, I was finally inspired by the distinctive death-rattle sound of Norah's old Chevy coughing itself to a halt at the curb outside – not to words, but at least to action. I grabbed the mouse and clicked on the spreadsheet window I'd left minimized in the bottom left-hand corner of the screen. The resulting display of Dennis's and my finances was not a cheerful sight, but it was better than letting Norah look at the opening pages of my new book.

All 0,000 words and 0 K of it.

'Riva?' Norah called through the screen door as she came in with someone trailing her. 'Is Jason ready yet? Oh, this is my friend Stephanie. She's a tech writer at Xycorp, that's why she looks like a grownup.'

'How many times do I have to tell you, I'm not a `tech writer'? My title is manager of hard-copy composition and distribution resources,' Stephanie corrected Norah. A faint line showed between her two perfectly arched, perfectly shaped brows. Her mouth was painted a clear, bright red mouth-shape and her eyes were outlined with curving, dark brown eye-shapes that matched her hair. At least, I assumed it was hair. It didn't stick to her forehead or creep across her cheeks or cling to the back of her neck the way everybody else's hair did in Austin 's spring humidity and heat.

'Whatever,' Norah agreed cheerfully. She sank down in a wicker chair that creaked under her plump form. 'How's the book coming, Riva?' She turned to Stephanie. 'Riva's another writer, did I tell you? But she never comes to Austin Writers League meetings-that's where I met Steph,' she interpolated in my direction before looking back at Stephanie. 'Her Salla and my Jason are working on some kind of truly dumb school project together.'

'Theoretically,' I agreed, happy to drop the subject of my nonexistent second book. 'They said they needed to do some research at the library. I dropped them off about an hour ago. They were going to take the bus home. But if I know them, they haven't started their research yet; they're still kvetching about the dumb project. Sorry, Norah. I'll bring Jason home when they show up.'

'Well, it is dumb,' Norah said. 'Develop a 3-D diorama in an empty oatmeal box, illustrating the building of the Pyramids.'

'It does seem more like third-grade work than eighth-grade,' I agreed. 'But they've also got the option of staging a one-act play dramatizing some incident of Egyptian history.'

Norah groaned. 'Twenty-two eighth-grade girls playing twenty-two versions of Cleopatra and the asp.'

'Never happen,' I said. 'With Gene Kruzak teaching the Ancient History module, they'll never even have heard of Cleopatra. They probably think she's a charm you find at the bottom of the oatmeal box.'

'Your Salla knows about Cleopatra,' Norah said. 'I'll bet.'

'Salla's too strong a feminist to play that part. If they do a play, she'll probably rewrite Egyptian history to have Cleopatra recruiting an army and conquering Rome.'

If I hadn't said that, would it have saved us all from what happened? The Paper-Pushers don't believe in the power of words, for all they use so many of them. My people know better. Words-especially mathemagical equantations-call spirits out of the air. And other things.

However, at the time I didn't feel any frisson of warning. The cold chills were caused by Norah's renewing her inquiries about how the book was coming. She'd been too good a friend, for too long, for me to actually lie to her. I did sort of wish the intimidatingly competent Stephanie hadn't been there too, though, listening to my confession of failure with those perfectly shaped brows rising in perfect half-moon crescents above her eyes.

'Everything else I've written… ' I concluded, then glanced at Stephanie. 'Er, Stephanie, you don't read science fiction, do you?'

Stephanie gave me a patronizing smile. 'In my position, I'm afraid it's all I can do to keep up with the current psychological and technical literature.'

'Right. Well. You know, Norah, I'm not so good at making up plots. That first book was just about stuff that happened right here in Austin. And the stories I've been selling to anthologies are all based on things that happened… in my homeland,' I said, bearing Stephanie's presence in mind. 'Now my editor says she wants the new book to be set in this uni… I mean, country, not in Da… my homeland. And I haven't done anything to write about here, at least not since… that stuff in the first book.' Stephanie didn't seem offended by all the elisions; in fact, she didn't even seem to be listening. She was tapping one foot and staring off as if she could see right through the wall to the pile of laundry in our bedroom. Still, there was no point in bringing up my-unusual- background with somebody who didn't already know about it.

'You know what, Riva,' Stephanie said suddenly. So much for my theory that she'd spaced out ten minutes ago. 'I've met a lot of women like you, and I think I can help you.'

'You can?' Somehow Stephanie didn't seem like a good source for sword-and-sorcery adventure plots, but who knows? Maybe she too had a Past.

'Sure. You're one of the standard types,' Stephanie said. 'I bet you quit your job to raise the kid, right?'

'Well… Not exactly. I tried working part-time for a few years… '

'And it didn't work out! Exactly! It's just too hard for women to divide their attention between the career and the home.'

Actually, what I'd found was that after I hit thirty-five, working as a swordswoman-for-hire was too hard, period, but Stephanie was not interruptible.