Sure enough, Roz said, “Grand total of forty-nine! Not bad for two days. If we keep this strike rate up, enough mages will have enough fun to spoil every vibration going. A week ought to bring the fortress down.”
“Oh, but it won’t,” Zillah said. Five faces turned her way, Roz’s irritated, the others surprised, questioning and perhaps even faintly pleased. She tried to explain. “It likes fun — the citadel, I mean. Can’t you feel? People keep repressing it, and it’s just sort of itching for something to enjoy.”
Roz turned away. “Do try not to talk nonsense, Zillah. You just don’t have the training the rest of us have had. Everyone knows this is a serious, evil place.”
Zillah was somewhat consoled for this snub by Flan, who rolled over to whisper, “I like fun too. But don’t tell teacher.”
5
Tod found himself with sudden, immense popularity. Every serviceman and nearly every cadet was overnight his firm friend. Tod was amused. The speed of it amused him. So did the various approaches. Cadets in their second year, who were total strangers, came up to him with the serious, haunted look of those who were having strong second thoughts about being mages at all, and either chatted about Frinjen or offered to help with Tod’s work. Cadets in their first year bought Tod drinks at the buttery — Arth passet beer, as Tod informed Zillah, was far worse than the food — and tried to find out from him what might please Zillah. So did nearly all the servicemen except Rax. Rax, being Rax, simply asked what Tod would take for giving him an hour alone with Zillah.
To everyone except Rax, Tod said that Zillah would like toys for Marcus. He told them this because it displeased him that Zillah had apparently rushed aboard that capsule without even thinking that Marcus might need something to play with. It was one of several faults Tod found in Zillah. But to Rax, he said in a dark whisper, “I don’t advise it. She’s worse than the Ladies of Leathe. Five minutes with her could well blow your mind — it comes close to blowing mine, and I’ve got my birthright to help me!”
This, he thought ruefully, could almost be true. Whatever peculiar magecraft it was that Zillah possessed, he sensed it was very strong indeed. He was glad that she chose to exercise it so seldom. And anyone would defend Zillah from a lad like Rax. But he sometimes wondered why he held the rest off her. It was pure dog in the manger. That first afternoon when Zillah had been so pleased to see him, Tod had had great hopes. Then, the next day, he had come upon her sitting in a blue window embrasure, looking out into Arth’s blue empty sky, and realized that his hopes were just wistful phantoms. One glance at her sad profile, and he had known there was a wall around Zillah and that someone else was inside the wall with her.
“Did you come here to get away from — someone?” he had asked her, almost literally out of the blue.
“Yes,” said Zillah. The sadness of that one word was terrible.
“Then you’ve come to the right place,” Tod answered cheerfully, watching his hopes swirl away down an imaginary plughole. “You’ve got Josh and Philo and me to take your mind off it.”
He did wish she had not given him that particular grateful, friendly smile.
All the same, he and Philo and Josh spent every available spare minute with Zillah. When Marcus was not too restless, she sat in on classes with them, despite Brother Wilfrid’s sour looks, and seemed surprised at how much she learned even when she had to carry Marcus out halfway through most of the time. This was another thing about Zillah that irritated Tod. She was so plumb ignorant of magework. It was almost as if she refused to learn on purpose, and possibly encouraged Marcus to make a noise so that she could leave. He allowed that this was partly due to lack of confidence — someone, way back in Zillah’s history, had evidently sapped her confidence pretty badly — but he also suspected it was due to arrogance. In some secret place in her mind, Zillah felt she had no need to learn.
Josh had detected this too. Centaurs had somewhat the same arrogance. “Come on. Admit it. You’re proud of not knowing,” Josh said to her. And Zillah laughed guiltily, proving Josh right.
Tod knew he was finding faults in Zillah as a defense against falling in love with her. It was not only her looks. She was such good company too. They wandered about the citadel, talking of everything under three suns, and Tod found himself prattling to her as he had not found himself able to prattle since he left home.
“What is passet?” Zillah asked.
All three of them groaned. “A grain, lady,” Philo told her. “I’m told the centaurs used to live on it.”
“Only when desperate,” Josh protested.
“It grows dreadfully easily, particularly in the north of the Pentarchy,” Tod prattled. “It used to be what poor folk had to eat. When there was a passet famine, that was real famine. So the government tried to prevent famines by putting up a reward for growing passet — that was a few hundred years ago, and naturally no one ever remembered to repeal the law. There’s always a huge passet mountain. They make a lethal spirit out of it in Trenjen. But until I got to Arth, I always wondered what they did with the rest of it. Now I know. They just send it all here.”
“There are grain cellars full of it,” Josh said, pointing downward.
“We’ll show you if you like,” Philo offered.
“Oh, would you?” Zillah said. Her delight at the thought of going into the bowels of the citadel was so sincere that Philo wrapped his arms around her. Philo was one of those who was always embracing people he liked. This was what had caused him such trouble with the Brotherhood. But Tod suspected, from the look on Philo’s face, that it was not just friendship where Zillah was concerned; and he had a notion that Philo had discovered, like himself, that Zillah was only open to friendship.
No one else in the citadel believed it was just friendship. Philo and Josh were petitioned as often as Tod was for Zillah’s favors. Arth was filling with rumors and randy stories. Chief among them was one — which Tod thought might be fact — that the woman in boots had slept with every soul in Observer Horn and was open to any other offers. There was known to be some kind of bet on over the black girl in Calculus, and though the stories varied about the small, lively woman, there were jokes about the way Ritual Horn literally danced attendance upon her. Meanwhile Maintenance had opened a book upon the virtue of Brother Milo and the High Head. You could only get 2–1 on the chances of Brother Milo, but they were offering 100-1 that the High Head would not keep his Oath until the end of the week. There was some bitterness about the way the High Head seemed to exploit his position. He kept calling the women to his room. Zillah confirmed that she had been called in twice, and she confessed to Tod that High Horns terrified her.
“You’re not the only one,” Tod said. “I do dislike that man.” And he went off to collect toys for Marcus in a sack that Josh had filched from Healing Horn. Tod called it the Charity Bag. He took it around with them and watched with pleasure as it filled with mascot dolls, cubes and prisms and other hardware from Observer and Research, a wonderful model train made by a lonely Brother, a boat, and wax images from everywhere. It gave him enormous pleasure to watch Marcus tip them all out, crying, “Ooh! Doy!”
Tod turned to Zillah. “There. You see? I’m a truly expert uncle.”
By the third day, all of them except perhaps Marcus were sick of the blaze of attention. Instead of attending a parade in the square where Zillah got so giddy, Tod planted Marcus and his Charity Bag on Josh’s back, Philo took Zillah by the hand, and they all descended the ramps into the lower parts of the citadel to show Zillah the stores. Tod saw afterward that he should have persuaded Josh at least to stay for the parade. A solitary centaur is noticeable, present or absent. But at the time they thought no more about it than to laugh with guilty pleasure.