Ozark Trilogy 2: The Grand Jubilee (29 page)

“Howsomever,” pointed out one of the men, “I’d rather deal with the Mules than with
that
lot.” And he jerked his head toward the Castle entry, with its doors thrown wide, where the nine distinguished visitors were still standing in a huddle waiting for things to begin.

“Right you are,” said another. “They give me the shivers, the whole nine of ‘em. And the sooner we’re out of their sight the better, I say. Unless there’s one of youall as fancies getting changed into a billy goat, or SNAPPED off to Castle Purdy ‘cause they don’t like the look of him.”

“What are they doing here anyway?”

The man that had expressed the strong preference for Mules over Magicians of Rank shrugged. “Can’t say,” he answered, “but Lewis Motley Wommack sent for ‘em. Sent an Attendant off on a Mule to Mizzurah, that’s got a Magician of Rank of its own, and got him to SNAP the invitation round to all the rest.”

“And they came?”

“Well, you
see
‘em there, don’t you? Like a pack of fancy birds, to my mind, more’n men.”

“You’d be better off to watch your mouth,” said the oldest. “You know if they can hear you out here?
I
don’t.”

“I just don’t understand why they came,” the first one muttered. “Who’s Lewis Motley that they should come when he calls ‘em? Now, I ask you, how do you explain
that?
He’s not even Master of a Castle!”

The Magicians of Rank were a tad surprised their own selves, most of them having been convinced almost to the last minute that they would ignore the whole thing. They were busy men, important men, and they had images to maintain. But when it came down to the wire, not a one had been able to resist the invitation from the young Guardian; the wording had been irresistible. He needed their help, it had said, “in a matter involving Responsible of Brightwater, a matter that can only be attended to by Magicians of Rank, and that requires the utmost secrecy.” And here, only slightly embarrassed, they were.

They saw one another rarely, but that didn’t keep the four from Traveller from commenting that the rest looked like a passel of females, or the passel so addressed from replying that
they
looked like a quartet of carrionhawks.

Veritas Truebreed Motley made a slight change in an ancient hymn. “How many points do you
expect,
gentlemen,” he asked them, “for darkening the corner where you are?”

Feebus Timothy Traveller the 11th didn’t hesitate a heartbeat. “One
dozen,
dear colleague!” he gave it back. “One dozen exactly!”

“Darkness,” added Nathan Overholt Traveller the 101st gravely, “is a prerequisite for the perception of color. If we four weren’t here, you five could not be seen at all.”

The two Farson brothers, Sheridan Pike the 25th and Luke Nathaniel the 19th, smiled that very limited smile that Castle Traveller allowed its residents, and moved closer to the other two. They had the solidarity that comes of fanaticism, and would be formidable if they chose to be. The other five, lacking that useful characteristic, moved uneasily away from them and pretended to be very busy discussing matters of great importance.

So it was that when Gilead of Wommack came down the steps to invite them up to the Meeting Room, she was treated to the sight of two clusters of magnificently garbed males. The Traveller contingent in its deadly black relieved only by the silver clasps that caught the folds of their robes at the shoulder. And the other five bearing the colors of their Family lines-Smith, Motley, Lewis, Guthrie, and McDaniels. But Gilead of Wommack was not interested in their costumes, not even in the Farson brothers’ strange acceptance of the Traveller black instead of the red, gold, and silver that was rightfully theirs by birth. She knew more about Magicians of Rank than that-it was their hands that you watched, their clever swift fingers and their supple wrists. That was where the danger lay, and where it would of stayed if you’d dressed them in feedbags and put milkpails on their heads.

“Welcome to Castle Wommack,” said Gilead briskly, determined not to appear intimidated. She’d seen them all at the aborted Jubilee, and they hadn’t eaten her alive; no reason to think they would do so here under her own roof.

“Thank you, Gilead of Wommack,” said Shawn Merryweather Lewis the 7th of Castle Motley, him that’d been kind enough to carry the message to the others. “We are ready to see your . . . Guardian . . . when he is ready for us-but would you remind him that we are busy men? We’d like to get on with this.”

“Follow me, please,” Gilead replied. “He’s waiting upstairs in the Meeting Room.”

“We’re your guests,” put in Feebus Timothy Traveller, “but there’s something that must be said. This innovation-this title of `Guardian’ rather than `Master’ as custom dictates-we don’t approve of it, not one of us. A Castle without Master
or
Missus; that’s not proper, Gilead. Granny Leeward has asked that we express her objections in the strongest terms, and we concur.”

Gilead was not a formidable woman, and she still bore the silent displeasure of the two Grannys; but she was no coward, and she was a true Six-her loyalty to her Family and her devotion to its members were her ruling qualities. She faced the Travellers, all nodding their solemn agreement, and she spoke up clear and confident.

“At least,” she said, looking them straight in the eyes, “this Kingdom will never have a
Pope!”

They drew back from her, white and furious; that had struck home, and it told her a few things worth passing along to the Grannys later. Jacob Jeremiah Traveller, all alone at Booneville on Tinaseeh with nobody to challenge his authority for thousands of miles, and no comset to grant anybody an occasional peek at his doings, must be busy demonstrating to the people of his Kingdom what a heavy yoke a burning faith could be.

“And how are we to address this . . . youngster?” spat Feebus Timothy.

“Try `Mister Wommack,”‘ she said pertly. “Or just `Lewis Motley’-he doesn’t suffer from delusions of grandeur, gentlemen:’ And she turned her back on the two groups before the tension could grow any worse, or her traitorous knees fail her, and led them after her, feeling ice between her shoulder blades at the idea of what those nine pairs of hands might be doing that she could not see. Just as
well
she could not see, if they were in fact about their mysterious flickering business; she wouldn’t see it coming, whatever it was, and she’d no desire to.

But nothing happened; and they were at the Meeting Room door, where one Senior Attendant stood casually with folded arms, waiting. “Here,” Gilead said to him, “are the nine Magicians of Rank of this planet, come to see Lewis Motley. Will you take them in, please?”

Lewis Motley Wommack sat at the head of the table, smiling at them as they came through the door. He wore the Wommack seagreen, a color that was as appropriate to his copper hair and beard as it was to the sands of the beach. The long narrow robe was of a soft woven stuff suitable for the summer heat; it had no collar and no cuffs, just the elegant sweep of a well-cut and well-sewn garment, and the Wommack crest on a heavy enameled pendant hung round his neck on a leather thong. On his right hand was a gold ring with the same crest, and his feet were clad in plain low boots of green-dyed leather, narrow-cuffed. He sat in a worn heavy chair at the head of a small round table, and that was all. And the sum of it was wholly regal.

It was not what the Magicians of Rank had expected.

“Should you lose your youthful figure, Lewis Motley Wommack,” said Sheridan Pike Farson the 25th to break the speculative silence, “that garment you wear will become something of an embarrassment.”

The young man gave him a long considering look, and Sheridan Pike was astonished to discover that he felt rebuked. He had not experienced those eyes before; Responsible of Brightwater could have told him something of the dangers they posed.

“Be seated, gentlemen,” said the Guardian, as if the remark had not been made. “Anywhere you like, please. There is wine there, and ale for those who prefer it. I thank you for your courtesy in responding so promptly to my invitation, and for taking time from the pressure of your duties to come to my aid.”

The Farsons glanced at each other, and Sheridan Pike touched his brother’s hand with his fingertips, like moths lighting, spelling out in the ancient alphabet of bones and knuckles the single message-”Beware his eyes.” And Luke Nathaniel Farson spelled back-”And his speech.”

You could tell a person’s station on Ozark by their speech. There was the formspeech of the Grannys, a carefully artificial register of exaggerated archaic vocabulary and intonation-especially intonation. There was the speech of the ordinary citizen, that had undergone all the normal processes of language change, but whose speakers prided themselves on its roughness and its lack of pretension; they spoke as boones, however crowded they might live. There was the flowing mellifluity of the Reverends, required of them only in the performance of their duties, but often taken up for all purposes as a man grew older in the profession. And then there was the speech of the Magicians of Rank, restricted to those nine, laboriously learned along with the Formalisms & Transformations, intended to force respect by its elegance and elaborate usage, as artificial in its way as the mode of the Grannys. Lewis Motley Wommack the 33rd had spoken only a few dozen words, and they might indicate nothing more than his excellent brain and even more excellent education; on the other hand, there was a suspicious ring to them. The mode of the Magicians of Rank, unlike that of the Grannys, ought not to be easy to assume; most citizens had no contact with a Magician of Rank in all their lives.

“Gentlemen?” The Guardian of the Castle was waiting, and they took their chairs, with a mild scuffle over who should be at the dividing line between the Travellers and the others, and that dubious honor falling at last to Lincoln Parradyne Smith. Lincoln Parradyne was uncomfortable; the contrast between the self-made King he had at home and the utter elegance of this youth was striking. When he returned to Castle Smith he thought he might try some fine-tuning . . . perhaps convince Delldon Mallard to remove some of the gems from the crowns and settle for less sumptuous robes at least around the Castle and on non-state occasions.

“I will not waste your time,” said Lewis Motley, “I am well aware that your duties call you, and that your leisure is limited. I call you here only because I have nowhere else to turn, and I have reached the outmost limits of my own endurance in this matter. The task of rendering assistance to me in my quandary is appropriate only to your group; therefore, I have called upon the nine of you for succor. You are the sovereign remedy, so to speak.”

That settled it, if what came before had not; he was using their register, the speechmode of the Magicians of Rank. It was a subtle declaration-but of what?

“Your manner of speech, sir-” began Feebus Timothy Traveller, ready to express the displeasure felt by all of them, but Lewis Motley cut them off.

“The `sir’ is not called for,” he said. “Nor will it ever be-I have no interest in such things. As for my manner of speech”-he smiled again, and looked all round the table-”it is said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

“And now,” he went on, “if you are all comfortable, I would be pleased to present my problem. It is, as I told you in the invitations, a matter regarding a woman-Responsible of Brightwater.”

That changed things. A moment before the only emotion in the room had been the chill of disapproval and angered pride; now the nine leaned forward as one man, their pique forgotten. If there was one thing that united them, other than their shared duties and privileges, it was their hatred of the woman he named; perhaps the most difficult task Veritas Truebreed Motley had to deal with, living as he did under her very nose, was hiding that hatred from everyone except her. He knew it was useless to try to fool Responsible, even if he had cared to. The Magicians of Rank were like preybeasts that have caught a scent; they had been nine, now they were one.

“You are not fond of the daughter of Brightwater,” mused the Guardian, watching them. “That is indeed curious; except for you, Veritas Truebreed, I should have thought you would of had no dealings with her to arouse your emotions. I am astonished, gentlemen, at the way in which one mystery often lies behind another, only to reveal a third and a fourth beyond.”

“You assume a great deal,” said Michael Stepforth Guthrie the 11th, he of Castle Guthrie itself, known planetwide for his skill and for his delight in elaborate mischief. There was no mischief in his voice now.

“Where there is knowledge, one need not make assumptions,” said Lewis Motley calmly. “Is that not a general maxim, gentlemen?”

He took the medallion bearing his crest in his fingers, stroking it lightly, smiling at them, that maddening constant smile, and waited; and Michael Stepforth Guthrie spoke again.

“What is your problem with Responsible of Brightwater?” he asked roughly. “She is Thorn of Guthrie’s daughter. The Mistress of my Castle, Myrrh of Guthrie, is her grandmother. I know her better than anyone here except perhaps Veritas Truebreed, who has the misfortune to share her roof-and I know no reason she should have drawn your notice. She is not even a pleasure to a man’s eye, Lewis Motley . . , and less by far to a man’s ear. What have you, an ocean and two continents away, to do with Responsible of Brightwater?”

The Guardian’s face hardened, and for a moment they saw not a youth of nineteen but a glimpse of the man he would one day be, when he had more years to his credit.