From a High Tower (7 page)

As the sun went down, the dancing began in earnest, as did the eating and drinking. Fortunately for her growling stomach, which was
not
convinced that beer was food, some of her fellow hunters were inclined to beer-induced generosity. A pretty serving girl brought an enormous platter of grilled sausages, fresh bread, mustard and sauerkraut that had been ordered by one of the others at the table. He magnanimously paid for it all and invited them all to share in it. Giselle picked up a fork, stabbed what looked like a fine specimen of knockwurst and got a generous slice of rye bread before it all vanished. She was very, very hungry at this point, and feeling the beer, and very much wanted something to soak it up before it really got to her head.

As darkness finally fell and the great bonfire near the Maypole was lit, she began thinking about getting to her horse. And that was when she felt a heavy hand fall on her shoulder, and all the chattering in the vicinity suddenly stopped. She froze, her insides growing cold. This . . . was not a well-wisher. The eyes of her fellow feasters told her that much.

“Gunther von Weber?” rumbled a deep voice from behind her.

She turned in her seat, and saw that the person who had seized her shoulder was dressed in an army officer's uniform. She didn't know enough about such things to judge what his rank was, but there was a great deal of gold braid on his shoulder, and several medals on his chest. A man of considerable girth, with a shaven head and a square, red-flushed face that looked altogether too much like a boar's, he looked as if his spike-topped helmet was too tight for his head. With him were four more soldiers. She blinked at him in confusion. What could they possibly want with Gunther?

“Sir, I am, and might I ask what your business is with me?” she said, cautiously.

“I will be asking the questions!” the man snapped. “What is your age? Where are you from?”

“Twenty—” she replied without thinking. “The nearest village to me is Leinsdorf—”

“Ha!” the officer barked, as if he had caught her in something. “Well? Is he in the Leinsdorf rolls?”

A fifth fellow moved into the light from the torch nearby and leafed through a large leather-bound book. “No, Captain.”

The hand clamped down harder on her shoulder, and the captain shook her, rattling her teeth. “So, boy, why aren't you on the rolls?”

Startled, too startled to think first, she blurted the first thing that came into her mind. “What rolls?”

The captain's eyes narrowed, and he gritted his teeth. “The military service rolls! The ones you were supposed to sign when you became sixteen!” The captain actually sounded offended that she didn't know—or—no—he sounded as if he didn't believe that she didn't know, and was angry. His next words confirmed that. “Don't pretend you don't know!”

Well, of
course
she didn't know . . . but he clearly wasn't going to believe her. Not only that, but before she could say anything else he had hauled her up out of her seat and propelled her into the custody of his four men. Before she knew it she was being frog-marched into a building, hands bound behind her in irons, and directly into a small room with a desk with a lamp on it and an iron-framed bed just visible behind a folding screen. Two of the soldiers shoved her against the wall opposite the desk and left, closing the door behind them. The captain sat himself down behind the desk and opened another book, taking a pen out of an inkpot, as the soldiers closed the door.

Well, this is a fine fix.
She was more irritated than angry at the moment. It wasn't as if she didn't have a perfectly good way to get out of this mess. It would just mean she'd never be able to come back here as Gunther and take part in shooting contests. That was annoying. She'd probably have to find an entirely new district and make up a new name, perhaps even dye her hair.

“Captain—” she began.

“Quiet!” the captain barked. “You're being enrolled in the Army, boy, and from this moment you'll only speak when questioned! Now. Full name.”

Giselle sighed theatrically, and he looked up at her sharply, anger written all over his face at her presumed insolence. “My name is Giselle Schnittel,” she replied flatly. “And you are going to find a difficult time explaining why you inducted a woman into the Army.”

At first, his mouth dropped open and his piggy eyes bulged in shock. Then his face reddened with even deeper anger. “What do you take me for, boy?” he shouted. “Do I look like a fool to you?”

She allowed her voice to drift up into a girlish lilt. “And do I sound like a boy to you?” she retorted. “I'm poor. I need money. Shooting contests are an honorable way to get it, but they would never let a girl enter. So I became ‘Gunther,' and I won them fairly and rightfully.”

His eyes narrowed, and . . . something in his expression made her blood run cold. This was not going as she had thought it would . . .

But she was not fourteen anymore, and she was not defenseless anymore either. She felt steel settle into her spine. She was not going to be a victim this time; she concentrated a moment on summoning her allies of Air.

Within moments she had a half a dozen, all what she called “night-sylphs”—creatures that looked much like her childhood friends but were . . . more capricious. Not openly malicious, but their humor was darker, and a little cruel, and they were far more curious than the sylphs that came by day. They circled around the room a moment, then settled on the rafters. They were semitransparent, though of course they were completely invisible to anyone not an Elemental Magician; all had batwings and long, thick, dark hair, long enough that it dangled far past their feet and they were virtually clothed in it. Like her hair, when she didn't cut it frequently. They stared down at the Captain and Giselle, waiting, with a look of keen expectation on their faces. Unlike the sylphs of the day, the night-sylphs thrived on high emotion, and there was plenty of that here.

“Well,” the Captain said, his voice boiling over with menace. “We'll just see how much of a woman you are. And if you are lying to me, the first thing I'll do when you're inducted is to have you beaten within an inch of your life.”

He doesn't care which I am now, because either way he's going to get something he wants . . . he thinks.

He got up, moving far more quickly than she had expected for such a fat man, and straight-armed her into the wall, knocking the breath out of her.

And she knew what was coming next. He'd yank open her coat and vest, and tear open her shirt, expecting to prove she wasn't a woman. And as soon as he saw she was—well, there she was, a woman in man's clothing, who presumably had no men to protect her, and all alone with him. And what proper woman would be cavorting about in men's clothing anyway? Only loose ones, like that notorious writer, George Sand! Even people who were illiterate knew about women like that!

The devil take you,
she snarled in her mind.
I need no man to protect me!

“Take his breath!”
she shouted to the night-sylphs above her. There was a flash of puzzlement in his eyes—well, this was not the reaction he expected. But there was no time for him to do more than have that instant of puzzlement. Because the night-sylphs reacted immediately to her order.

Quicker than the tick of a clock, they dove down on the captain and enveloped his head before he even had a chance to respond to what must have seemed to him like the cry of a mad person, wrapping their long hair about his face and neck. He couldn't
see
them, of course, but he could most certainly
feel
what they were doing. They could not do
much
in the physical world, but they most certainly could make air move, and they made it all move out of his lungs.

She could see his head
through
them. He clawed at his throat, trying to gasp, and unable to. His eyes bulged, and he staggered backward, tripped, and fell behind his desk. The padded carpet meant he didn't make much of a noise, and it seemed he wasn't thrashing. But then again, his ramming her into the wall hadn't brought his men running into the office to see what the matter was, so perhaps they were used to violent sounds coming from within.

Sadistic bastard.
She felt her mouth forming a silent snarl. Well, he had just taken on an opponent that was going to give him a taste of his own back.

But she didn't want to kill him, after all, so she added, quickly, “Once he is unconscious, give him his breath back,” and turned her attention to getting herself out of those irons.

She closed her eyes and concentrated all her attention on her hands and wrists. The irons had been made for a man's bigger hands and thicker wrists and were very loose on her. Loose enough that she was certain she could get them off. She might lose some skin doing so, but she was sure she could get them off.

It was all going to depend on relaxing her hands while at the same time trying to squeeze them into the smallest possible shape . . . which was not the easiest thing to do, when you were crushing them
and
scraping the skin off. . . .

Painfully. And soon they were damp with blood.

At least the bleeding is making them more slippery.

She ruthlessly closed herself off from any distractions, the better to concentrate, and finally sensed the manacle on her left hand moving past the first knuckle of her thumb. By this time she was sweating freely, and unashamedly crying a little in pain, since by this time it felt more as if she was degloving the skin of her entire hand, not just scraping a little off.

And then, after agonizing moments—her left hand popped free! Now able to bring her hands in front of her, she managed to keep herself from tearing at her right wrist by an act of pure will, and slowly forced the other manacle off as well. Her wrists were definitely scraped and bleeding, but to her relief the damage wasn't as terrible as it had felt. Now she looked for her sylphs—and the captain.

“Where are you?” she called softly, when silence and an apparently empty room met her searching gaze.

“Master . . .”
came a small voice from the other side of the desk.
“The man fell down and we let him go, but he is not moving.”

An ice-cold chill went down her spine at that. Surely not—

But her luck was well and truly out, because as she hurried around the desk, it was obvious that the captain was quite dead. He was completely still, his face set in an expression of horror, and his eyes—

Her first reaction was acute nausea, followed by terrible guilt, as the half-dozen sylphs looked up at her with solemn eyes. They might be a
little
malicious, but they never deliberately went past frightening their victims a bit. This was neither expected, nor welcome, to them either. What could have gone wrong? She had only intended for him to fall unconscious, long enough for her to escape! She hadn't wanted to
kill
him!

Too late for that . . . he was stone dead. And there was no bringing him back.

Her mind went black for a moment, then restarted like a balky horse and galloped off at a manic pace.
I was the last person with him. They'll blame Gunther no matter what.
She had to get out of there, and . . .

And first she needed to lock the door. With luck, no one would try it for a long time, and when they did, they might think that the captain wanted privacy. That should buy her a few hours. Moving as quietly as she could, she flipped the lock, then went back to the corpse on the floor as the night-sylphs watched her, waiting for her next request.

Part of her was appalled that she was thinking so clearly and quickly with a man lying dead near her. Part of her remembered the ugly look in his eyes, so like the man who had tried to rape her, and was not sorry at all for what had happened. And the third part of her ignored the guilty part and the part that was insisting he got what he deserved, and that was the part that was in charge.

She tore her handkerchief in half and wrapped her wrists with the two pieces. She took back the purse of prize money that he had confiscated, but stole nothing else, although there was a powerful temptation to go through his pockets. . . .

But if I am caught and I rob him now, they will say I killed him to rob him. But if I leave him untouched, there is a bare chance that someone will believe me if I say he became so angry with me that he dropped dead of apoplexy.

“Go ahead of me and warn me of anyone in my path,” she whispered to the sylphs, who seemed just as eager to leave that room of death as she was. As they whisked through the little cracks in the walls around the window, she, who could do nothing like that, eased the window open and looked cautiously out of it. There was no one in sight, and the Maifest was still in full and joyous cry, judging by the light and the lively music in the direction of where the field would be. So she eased herself over the sill, made sure she had left nothing of herself or her property behind with a last glance around the room, and closed the window behind her.

Then she bent over and ran for the inn's stable, where her horse and all her belongings were. Ordinarily that would be a bad place to leave property, but Giselle's wicked little mare was trained to let no one into her stall but Giselle herself. She was as good or better than a guard dog.

Where did I leave my hat?
She wondered irrelevantly, as she moved from one shadow to another, listening for the sounds of footsteps under the faraway music of the Maifest. It hadn't been with her in the captain's office.
I must have left it at the beer stall. . . .
If this had been a situation where she was likely to be tracked by another magician, that would have been a catastrophe, but there hadn't been the least sign of another Elemental Master, not even an Elemental Magician, in the entire town. The hat could safely be left behind. She
certainly
wasn't going to go back after it now.