So she built it, with Taem crouched elbows‑on‑knees beside her; and the Weird who was her son would pattern it to the browns, and the ariel and the gray would spread it too. She returned the challenge Jin had made. She had just insulted him, remaking the pattern that was the Styx.
She stood up, dusting off her hands, rose without needing Branch’s offered hands. Someone added a handful of stones to what she had done, embellishing the insult. There was laughter at that.
But it was nervous laughter. And afterward, she thought, they would be whispering aloud within the Tower, talking with voices, not daring Pattern what they thought where calibans might read.
Elai is finished.
If she goes herself, she’ll not come back.
If Jin comes here, there’ll be revenge; only fishers might survive– only might.
But if she steps aside– we have no stability.
“Go away,” she said, and they went. Their going let the wind come at her pattern and blow the sand in streamers across the stone, as if the wind were patterning back at her and mocking her folly.
MaGee stayed. Only MaGee and Scar. Even Taem and the other Weird had gone. The solitary gray retreated with other calibans and ariels, a retreating skein of lithe bodies and tails flowing down the entry to the Tower.
Shall I go? MaGee signed.
“I want to ask you something.”
“Ask,” MaGee said.
“If we should fall–will the starfolk do anything?”
“No,” MaGee said slowly, “no, I don’t think they will. They only watch what happens.”
“Does this amuse them?”
“They want to see–they’ve waited all these years to see what Pattern you’ll make. You. The Styx. No. They won’t intervene.”
This was a thunderclap of understanding. She saw the look Magee had, like a caliban well‑fed and dreaming in the sun. MaGee knew what she had said, had meant to let that slip. Elai spread her fingers at MaGee like the lifting of a crest.
“Yes,” MaGee acknowledged the curse. “The absolute truth, old friend. That’s what they’ve been up to all these years.”
A wider spread of the fingers.
MaGee lifted her head, blinked lazily as Scar could do. Defiant, as Scar could be, defying her in a way that was silent and more subtle than her son. “You can’t keep much secret from Jin, can you?” MaGee asked.
“No.” Pattern‑blind starfolk could keep their movements secret from each other. Cloudsiders swam in the knowledge of patterns like a sea. What she had done this morning flowed across the river; and the word would flow back again to Jin like a rebounding wave. I’m coming, man‑who‑wants‑the‑world. I’m bringing all that ever escaped Green’s hands. I’ll take your towers, I’ll erase you and all you are.
“MaGee,” she said, suddenly, thinking on this, “you’re not in the Pattern. Not really. Tell me in words what you’d do if you were me. Maybe it would confuse them.”
For a moment then MaGee looked less than confident. “No.”
“Then you do know something.”
“What would I know? What would I know that calibans don’t? Oh, I’d confuse things. Maybe not in a way you’d like. Don’t make me do that.”
“My rivals would take you,” Elai said, “Jin, Taem, Paeia–They’d want you to use. Taem and Paeia’d treat you all right. But Jin’s another matter. They have different ways on Styxside. Do you want that? Give me advice.”
MaGee set her jaw and ducked her head, then looked up. “First thing, I’d get the conflict out of here. Away from the Towers and the fields. But that, you’re going to do.”
“Calibans say that much.”
“What else do they say?”
“We’ll meet upriver.”
“What kind of war is that,” MaGee exclaimed, “when you know where you’ll meet? That’s not war, that’s an appointment. They’ll kill you, Elai, you know that?”
Elai felt a chill. “Come with me. Come with me to meet with Jin, my friend.”
“Up the Cloud? To fight a war?”
Elai made the affirmative. MaGee thrust out her lip, a pensive look as if it were just some ordinary venture she were considering.
“Oh, well,” MaGee said, “sure.”
And then, from nowhere: “You should have built your ships, Elai.”
“What’s that mean?”
“You should have, that’s all.”
“You think I’ll die?”
“What would you leave behind you?”
MaGee had a way of walking ground others knew better than to tread. Elai lifted her head and stared at her like some drowsing old caliban. “Don’t know that. No one does, do they?” She walked away, beside Scar’s huge length, stopped near his tail‑tip. “Never wore leathers myself. Got some, though. Wished I could, now and then, just take Scar and go.”
“Ships,Elai .”
She stared at this insistent starman. “Was that what I was supposed to do? Was that what you were waiting for?” She recalled a day on the beach, the launching of her boats, a starman watching from the shore. “Of course,” she said softly when MaGee answered only with silence. Her heart plummeted. Of course. Scar had chosen her for one reason; of course starmen also came equipped with reasons. She was the creature of others. That was what it was to be First. She was self‑amused and pained.
And she walked toward the wall, stood there looking seaward. “Give Jin ships?” she asked Magee. “If I’d made them, he’d have built them too. He’d have patterned how they are. We talk to each other–have for years, back and forth. Takes days. But I always know where he is. And what he’s doing. And he knows me. Hates me, MaGee. Hates me. Hates what got from the fingers of the Styxsiders. Ships. That could be something. He wants the world, he does. Wants the world. He’ll break those men.”
“Who? Genley?”
“Don’t know their names. Three of them. His starmen.”
“How do you know these things?”
There was dismay in MaGee’s voice, in her eyes when Elai turned around. “Calibans talk to you,” Elai said quietly. “But you don’t hear all they say. You don’t know everything, starman. Friend.”
“I’ve got to warn the Base, Elai.”
“You keep quiet with that com. They’d do nothing, you say. That true?”
“I think it’s so.”
Elai looked her up and down. “You’ve gotten thin, MaGee. Leathers might fit you. You come with me, you keep that com quiet. You’re mine, you hear?”
MaGee thought about it. “All right,” she said.
Later that day, Paeia came, grim and frowning–came, quite tamely, into hall, her caliban behind her. She had not brought her heir, came armed with only a knife; and stood there in front of the chair she had stood behind so often when Ellai had ruled.
“You’ve read how it is,” Elai said, from the authority of that chair. “I’m going upriver. You too.”
Elai watched Paeia draw a breath, a long, slow one. Paeia folded her arms and stared. Her face might have been stone, seamed and weathered as it was. She had braided her grizzled hair, with beads in the strands. Had taken her own time about coming, to look her best. Had thought long about coming, maybe–whether it was a trap, whether she might die.
“With you,” Paeia said.
“I’m no fool,” said Elai. “I don’t want us weak. You tell me you’ll be by me, I don’t ask any other promises.”
Paeia went on thinking a moment. “I’ll be there,” Paeia said. And truth, there were no other promises she could have asked. Both of them knew that.
“Taem’s coming,” Elai said.
“Then, First, you are a fool.”