“Don’t you at least.” the High Head asked Edward, as the two of them breakfasted on little fish from the reservoirs, mushrooms, and honey pancakes, “don’t you at least miss passet for breakfast?”
“No, I don’t,” Edward said heartily. “I don’t mind if I never taste the stuff again.”
The High Head sighed and stared at the blue wall of his private dining room. It was becoming clear to him that he must be the only person in the citadel who actually liked passet. “How is the woman you had in the trance?” he asked, to change the subject.
“Coming along very nicely.” Edward poured himself more of the excellent coffee — the best thing, in his opinion, that ever came out of Azandi. “As soon as she came out of shock, I discovered she was a natural-born healer. So of course, I asked her to stay and help us in Healing Horn. But,” he added, with an odd, wistful little smile, “I’d still much rather have had the pretty one.”
“Zillah,” said the High Head. There was somehow no doubt which woman Edward meant. He knew a sudden surge of annoyance, even actual anger, that Edward had presumed to want Zillah, when it ought to be obvious she was — was what? In some discomfort, the High Head realized that he had been, in some odd way, regarding the woman Zillah as his. He seemed — he could not think how — to know her extremely well, in a special way, and he was certainly not going to let any other Horn Head take over the job of interviewing her. No, this was absurd. He should not be thinking this way. He had better let someone else (provided it was not Edward) speak with her in future. But he still thought he should ignore Brother Wilfrid’s complaint that Zillah was harming the vibrations by corrupting the servicemen. Brother Wilfrid was, in his way, a fanatic. Nor was there anything amiss with the vibrations. “I do, of course, lock their quarters with the strongest possible wards every night,” he said, possibly changing the subject again.
“I’m sure,” Edward said rather dubiously, “that is very wise.”
4
The women knew perfectly well they were locked in at night. “I can tell a ward when I see one,” Roz said, “even if I hadn’t tried to get past the veiling and found I couldn’t.” She paced up and down past the rows of sleeping cells. “What I don’t know is if they listen in on us or not.”
“Oh, they don’t,” Judy told her. “I asked Edward, and he was shocked I thought they would.”
“You asked?” Roz said. “You fool!”
“Why not? He’s nice. In fact,” Judy said, with rather tremulous defiance, “he’s so innocent, I feel a beast most of the time, knowing I’m here to undermine him.”
“We’re not here to be nice!” Roz said disgustedly. She marched to stand looming over the others as they sat about on the floor. “Okay. So we’re here trying to do the best we can without the virus-magic. It’s obvious from what we’ve all heard them say that the best way to undermine this place is to spoil the vibrations by getting as many of them as possible to break their Oath. I’ve been working on that principle anyway. I’m up to twelve. Two High Brothers and ten mages. How about the rest of you? Sandra? Flan?”
“Who made you leader?” muttered Flan. She hugged her knees and rocked like a Kelly clown. This gave her repeated little sights of the smug smile playing over Roz’s face. Confronted by that smile, she had not the heart to add Brother Instructor Cyril to Roz’s string of scalps. The look on the man’s face when she kissed him to shut him up — no, it was too much. And then Alexander, the dark young mage, was something very special.
But Roz was impatiently tapping a foot. So what could she say, except that her movement class somehow doubled every time she went near Ritual Horn? And dozens of other brothers crowded hopefully in the veiling of the doors. “Dozens,” she said.
“Yes, but how many?” Roz demanded.
“I’ve lost count,” Flan said airily, “except that they’re queuing up.”
“You can’t have managed more than fifteen in the time,” Roz said suspiciously. “Let’s call it fifteen. Sandra?”
Sandra seized gratefully on Flan’s lead. “They’re queuing up for me too, Roz.” Something surely was going to happen with High Brother Gamon soon; though, windbag as he was, it was going pretty slowly — so slowly that she didn’t kid herself that the other mages in Calculus had not made bets on whether it would happen at all. And Sandra was enjoying it, in a way she had never enjoyed it before. He was so courteous, so considerate. It was courtship, that was what it was, in the old-fashioned sense, and all the while there she was sabotaging his divinations. It was a shame. Sandra was aware that she might be beaming and that her eyes were a trifle misty. “Say fifteen,” she said hurriedly.
“Forty-two,” said Roz. She was looking rather less smug, now it seemed that Flan and Sandra had both exceeded her score by three. “Helen?”
Small, wry brackets grew around Helen’s mouth. She was well aware that Flan and Sandra were — at least — exaggerating, and she thought she understood why. She supposed she ought to shut Roz up by explaining what she was doing with the food, but she was fairly sure that Roz would dismiss it as too slow. Roz’s mind was not adapted to fine-tuning of this kind. And Helen was absolutely certain that Roz would not understand for a moment the way she had chosen to distract Brother Milo from what she was really doing. She had seen at a glance that Brother Milo was incorruptible. So she had told him that she had come to Kitchen to seduce him. Brother Milo had at once, and with great glee, dropped all his complaints about her lavish cooking and dared her to try. As far as he was concerned, Helen could do what she liked to the food as long as he kept his Oath. By now they were locked in this slightly strange contest, in which Brother Milo had to win without suspecting that Helen was letting him win, while Brother Milo tacitly ignored the fact that Helen was now ruling Kitchen. But Roz would certainly think this was just silly.
The brackets deepened round Helen’s mouth as she considered what to say. “You have to remember we’re all quite busy most of the time,” she said, with her mind on the bustle in the long chain of rooms, the heat, the smells, and attacks of hysteria from Brother Feno or Brother Maury, one them chasing a cadet with a ladle, and everyone else in fits of laughter.
Flan looked at her with respect and wished she had thought to say that. “Say six,” Helen said judiciously, and allowed her mouth to spread in a wry smile. Why was it, she wondered, that a great long creature like herself always, unfailingly, fell for small men like Brother Milo?
“Forty-eight,” said Roz. “Judy?”
Judy colored up. “Just the one. And,” she added tremulously, “that’s all there’s going to be.”
While Flan, Sandra, and Helen carefully kept their faces noncommittal, Zillah looked from one to the other and began to feel as desperately innocent as Edward, or even Marcus. Marcus — probably luckily, given the nature of Roz’s interrogation — was fast asleep across Zillah’s legs, clutching his new bag of toys. While Zillah had simply been enjoying herself, it seemed that the rest of them had been making a cynical attack on the virtue of the citadel. Well, it stood to reason. They had come here to make an attack of some kind. But it made Zillah see that she was a complete outsider here. And I bet Roz doesn’t even bother to ask me! she thought.