“You intend to deceive the emperor?” Samber asked.
“I think it would be our best course,” Ithinia said. She smiled. “Unless our uninvited friend kills him.” She gestured toward the corner where Demerchan’s representative had sat.
All that was there now, though, was an empty chair.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The tapestry rippled slightly as it settled into place, and then stilled, and suddenly it no longer looked like a mere piece of cloth, but like an opening leading out of the fourth-floor bedroom onto a grassy, sunlit slope. Hanner quickly pulled his hands away from the rod he had just set into brackets, and then climbed carefully down from the chair he stood on.
“It’s beautiful,” Nerra said, staring at the image. “Where is it?”
“Nowhere,” Hanner said, kicking aside the dusty old tapestry he had replaced. “It’s not in the World at all.”
His sister threw him a look. “Really?”
“Really. When I was in there, I couldn’t hear the Calling at all, not the faintest, most distant whisper.”
“Then why did you go flying off the instant you came out?”
“Because I came out a mile north of where I went in, for one thing, and for another – you know how when you step out of a dark room into the sun, it seems much brighter than when you went in? My mind had adjusted to not hearing the Call, and wasn’t ready when it suddenly came back as strong as ever.” He shook his head. “I don’t remember much after that, but I remember the shock of stepping back through into the attic and being hit by the full force of it.”
“We had a lot of theories,” Nerra said. “That maybe the Calling was stronger in there, or that the return tapestry focused it somehow. I don’t remember whether anyone suggested the truth.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Hanner said. “There isn’t any Call anymore.”
“Are you going to test it?”
Hanner hesitated. “Is the attic… It looks the same…”
“After you smashed your way out,” Nerra said, “the other warlocks put it back exactly the way it was, down to the smallest particle of dirt. That was before they decided the tapestry was too dangerous to try again – or before they discovered no one would volunteer to try it, anyway.”
“Then the return tapestry ought to work.”
“Are you going to test it?” Nerra repeated.
“I’m not sure I should,” Hanner said. “I mean, if something goes wrong, I might be stuck there, and I don’t want to be. I haven’t even seen how my children turned out yet. I haven’t talked to Alris.”
“Well, I’m not going to test it,” Nerra said. “I have a husband waiting for me, and two children of my own.”
Hanner nodded. “Of course,” he said, gazing thoughtfully at the tapestry.
“Maybe one of those people from thirty years ago would risk it.”
“Maybe,” Hanner said quietly. Then a little more forcefully, “Maybe, yes. Come on.” He turned, and led the way downstairs.
Rudhira was waiting for them on the second floor. “Did you find what you were looking for?” she asked.
Hanner looked at her for a moment before replying, “Yes, we did.”
“That’s good. There are more people downstairs who want help.”
“They can wait,” Hanner said. “Rudhira, do you have anyone to stay with? Anywhere to go?”
“You,” she said. “And here.”
Hanner blinked. “No one else?”
She glared at him. “Hanner, it’s been more than thirty years, and I didn’t have much of anything back then, either. I had some regular customers back in Camptown, and some friends among the other girls, and I got along well enough with the guards and the local tradesmen, but none of them were all that close. I didn’t have any sisters, the way you do, or brothers. I didn’t have a husband, or parents, or children, and except for you and the other warlocks, everyone I knew is thirty-four years older now. They probably don’t even remember me – and that’s the ones who are still alive. Who else could I have? And I never had a home to go to; I was sleeping in soldiers’ beds, or on tavern floors, before you found me on the Night of Madness. If you throw me out, it’s a hard choice whether to go back to the streets of Camptown, or just head directly to the Hundred-Foot Field, or maybe give up completely and see if I can get a fair deal on Slave Street.”
Hanner didn’t really see why that would be so hard a choice, since she was still as young and beautiful as she had been before the Night of Madness. Whoring might be a horrible way to make a living, but it surely must be better than begging or slavery.
He didn’t say that, though; it wasn’t his business. Instead he said, “I wasn’t going to throw you out. I was worried that…that you might be missed.”
“Anyone who missed me has had thirty years to get over it.”
Hanner could not argue with that. Mavi hadn’t waited for him, and he had been gone only half as long as Rudhira. “There’s something I want to show you, up on the fourth floor,” he said.
She eyed him suspiciously, and threw a glance at Nerra.
“We aren’t going to hurt you,” Nerra told her. “We need a volunteer to test something, though.”
“Something magic?” Rudhira asked. “And presumably dangerous, if you’re worried about whether anyone will miss me if I don’t come back.”
“It’s magic, yes,” Hanner said. “It’s not exactly dangerous. I mean, it won’t kill you. Come upstairs, and I’ll explain.”
“You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to,” Nerra assured her. “But we’d appreciate it if you at least took a look at it and gave it some thought.”
Rudhira essayed a curtsey. “For you, Lady Nerra, I will take a look.”
Together, the three marched back up the two flights to the fourth floor, and into the front bedroom where two dormer windows overlooked High Street, and Hanner’s Transporting Tapestry hung on the north wall.
Hanner stepped aside as soon as he was through the door, and watched as Rudhira took in the hanging tapestry, its sunny colors so bright they seemed to glow, and the discarded old non-magical tapestry lying heaped on the floor. She glanced at the canopied bed and the twin night-stands badly in need of dusting, at the gold-edged ewer, the unlit oil lamps, and the other furnishings, and Hanner could see her dismissing them as irrelevant and focusing her attention on the magical hanging.
“Is that what it appears to be?” she asked, standing well back and studying the scene from a safe distance.
“It’s a Transporting Tapestry, like the ones the wizards brought for the people from the other two Ethshars,” Hanner replied. “If you walk up to it and touch it, you’ll step through into the place in the picture.”
“That’s what you want me to test?” Rudhira frowned. “Where’s the difficulty? It either works or it doesn’t, right? Or is there some way it can go horribly wrong?”
“I don’t think it can go horribly wrong,” Hanner said. “It worked fine seventeen years ago. But we aren’t completely sure you can get back.”
“I can’t just turn around and walk back through it?”
“No,” Hanner said. “It’s not there on the other side. You’ll be in an empty field, with no way to come back through this tapestry.”
“I see,” Rudhira said. She looked over the tapestry, not moving any closer to the fabric. “You say it worked seventeen years ago? Someone went through it?”
“I did,” Hanner said. “I wanted a place where warlocks would be safe from the Calling.” He gestured at the tapestry. “I found one, in there. But then I came back out, and was Called before I could tell anyone it was safe.”
“So there is a way out?”