The old Woodlouse-kinden stooped to enter her room. He was hunchbacked and inclined forwards, but still he was perilously tall. She knew that his people hailed from the north of the Empire, and that beyond the imperial borders there were said to be whole tribes of them living in giant forests, amongst trees that decayed for ever and yet never fell. She could not imagine there being any other of his kinden than him. How could such stilting awkwardness produce warriors, farmers or anything but vague philosophers?
‘You are reckoned a wise man, Gjegevey,’ she told him. He waved the compliment off dismissively.
‘You are, mmn, kind to say it, madam.’
‘You play the doddering old man, Gjegevey, and yet you have been an adviser to emperors since my father’s days in power. No slave could survive so, without wisdom.’
He smiled, thin-lipped, never dispelling the eternal sadness that his grey face lent him. ‘But there are fools and, mnah, fools, madam.’ He pursed his lips appreciatively as she poured him a beaker of wine. ‘I know my place, and it is this: that when there is an, mmn, idea in the mind of all my peers, my fellow advisers, that none wish to say, then I speak it. It may then be, mmm, dismantled and matters proceeded with. If I were to ever voice an opinion that none could destroy then no doubt I would be, hrm, killed on the spot. It is a delicate path for a man to walk, but if one’s balance is accomplished, then one may tread for many years upon it.’
‘Many years,’ she agreed, passing him the beaker. He sipped and nodded, and she asked, ‘How old are you, old man?’
‘I stopped counting at the age of, mnn, one hundred and four, madam.’ The wistful smile came back at her wide-eyed expression. ‘We are a long-lived people – longer-lived, in any event, than your own. And I am not young, even for my kinden.’
‘I want to ask you something. I cannot think of anyone else who might even offer an opinion,’ Seda told him, inviting him to sit with a gesture. He perched precariously upon the couch across from her, still sipping at his wine. ‘A fair vintage this year,’ he murmured, but his eyes were watching her keenly from within their wrinkles.
‘On magic, Gjegevey,’ she said.
‘Mmn… Ah.’
‘An interesting response. Most would declare, without prompting, that there was no such thing, that it was a nonsense even to raise the matter.’
‘Is that what you wish me to say, madam?’
‘If I had wished such an opinion,’ she said, ‘I would not have called you over to speak to me. You are an educated man, and you were educated by your own folk before you ever fell into imperial hands. So tell me about magic.’
‘A curious matter, madam,’ he said. ‘I find myself, mmn, reluctant-’
‘Tell me nothing you would not wish repeated. But do not stay from telling me just because such a revelation might not be believed,’ she directed. ‘Magic, Gjegevey?’
‘Ah, well, my own people have uncommon views,’ he told her. ‘Most uncommon. I will, ahmn, share them with you, but I would not expect you to share them – if you understand – with me.’ At her impatient gesture he went on. ‘You did not know, I believe, that many of my kinden are Apt. We study, hrm, mechanics and the physical principles of the world, although in truth we build little, and that must be from wood in the main, metal being hard to come by in our homeland.’
‘I did not know that,’ she admitted. ‘And so, I would guess, that you cannot help me.’
‘Ah,’ he said, pedantic as a librarian. ‘Ah, but yet many of my kinden are not Apt and have no gift for machines, and yet follow, hrhm, other paths, the physical principles of the world and so forth and so on, that some might call magic. And so you see, we are in something of a unique position, my kinden. For we are not surging forwards into the, ahm, progress of the world of artifice, nor are we clinging grimly to the darkness of the Days of Lore. We are… in balance, I suppose one might say. And these two halves of our culture, they are not two halves at all, for each tries to share its insights with the other, and just occasionally, ahemhem, some gifted man or woman of our kind can understand the both. And so I can confirm to you, within the beliefs and the experiments of my kinden at least, that magic is very real.’
‘So why do we not believe in it?’ she asked. ‘If it is so real, prove it to me.’ Behind her challenging words, though, excitement was building.
‘Ah, but it is an interesting thing, that these things can so seldom be proved. If I were to perform some piece of, hrmf, magic for you, here in this room, you would claim a thousand ways it could have been done. Indeed, those ways might be exceedingly unlikely, but you would cling to them rather than accept the, mmn, the chance that magic, the eternal inexplicable, might be the true agent, and if you were strong enough in yourself, unafraid, unthreatened, here in your own chambers, well perhaps there would be no magic worked at all. It is a subjective force, you see, whereas the physical laws of the artificers are objective. A gear-train will turn without faith, but magic may not. And so, when your people demand, mmn, proof, there is none, but when you have forgotten and dismissed it, then magic creeps back into the gaps where you do not look for it.’
She had a hundred more questions, a thousand, but she bit back on them. It would not do to trust this man too much. ‘Tell me, though, Gjegevey,’ she said, thinking hard. She must know no more than her brother would expect her to know, but her brother, if Maxin’s spies reported this conversation, would expect her to ask about Uctebri. ‘Are you aware that, as well as your magic, the Mosquito-kinden are real?’
He regarded her for a second solemnly and raised a hairless brow quizzically. ‘The Mosquito-kinden, madam? You must think me very, hmm, credulous.’ And yet as he spoke he nodded once, holding her eye.
So, he believes us overheard, though not overseen. ‘So some myths are really no more than myths,’ she said, feigning disappointment. She had heard that the Spider-kinden had some Art by which they could spin strands of web from their fingers, that they formed these into words and shapes of secret import, while all the time talking about mundane things. She wished she had some similar skill.
‘Alas so, madam,’ Gjegevey said. ‘However, let me alleviate your sorrow at this discovery. Shall I, mmm, show you a little harmless magic?’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘You can do this?’
‘I would not like to put your hopes too high, and it is some long time since I attempted any such thing. However…’ He looked down at his hands, grey and long-fingered, and clasped them together, and when he pulled them apart… something came with them, something stretching and twisting between his fingers, flashing and flaring with colours.
It is a trick, she thought instantly. Some chemical or such. It was pretty enough, for a piece of foolery, and the old man was staring at her so very seriously. She opened her mouth to say something properly polite, and his voice came to her, very clear, without his lips moving or her ears hearing it, the words forming of their own accord in her mind.
The Mosquito your brother keeps, I know of him. Do not trust him. He is very old and wise.
She stared at his face, mouth open. Something lurched inside her. She had the horrible feeling that, in dealing with Uctebri the Sarcad, in coming to an agreement with him, she had stepped slightly out of the world she knew, into a world where things like this could happen.