The rest of our group was nowhere in sight. The Caryatid told me our missing companions were all in the captain's cabin. "Looking at maps. Arguing about the fastest way to the Falls." She rolled her eyes. "As far as I'm concerned, we should just talk to people in Crystal Bay. They'll know what's best. If we let Gretchen choose our route, we'll gallop ten kilometers up some road, discover a bridge has collapsed during the winter, and have to come all the way back again."
The Caryatid was right: no sense relying on maps when we could get more up-to-date information with a few simple questions. And from what I could see of the town, Crystal Bay looked big enough to justify a stagecoach stop… maybe even a dispatching depot. Better to hop a stage than rent horses and strike off on our own.
Still, I felt a niggling urge to peek at a map, just to get the lay of the land-I'd feel better if I had a picture of where we were going. Accordingly, I headed to the captain's quarters with a blithe and jaunty step, nothing in my brain except cartographic curiosity… but that evaporated instantly when I bounced into the cabin and realized who was there.
Three heads turned my way when I entered. Three pretty faces. Gretchen, Annah, and Myoko: all my complications in one cramped little room.
Gretchen was mostly naked: wearing nothing but a crimson bra like the one I'd seen on the floor of her bedroom, and a pair of matching panties that were surprisingly demure by Gretchen's standards-no lace or frills or cut-outs. She looked up at me as I came through the door, but gave only a distracted smile. If I'd been some other man, she would have felt obliged to do something flirtatious (flash her cleavage, wiggle her hips, pretend she had to cover up to protect her "modesty"), but with me, she didn't bother. I considered that a compliment.
As soon as Gretchen had deigned to recognize my existence, she turned back to Myoko and said, "Well?"
Myoko took longer to collect herself-she looked flustered and even blushed slightly at my arrival. My rough-and-ready "Platonic" friend was betraying a hitherto unsuspected bashfulness… as if I were her husband and had caught her in flagrante delicto with a nearly nude woman. Not that anything salacious was going on; Myoko herself was fully clothed, and from what I could see, she was simply trying to unknot the lacings on the back of a red knit gown. No doubt the gown was Gretchen's, taken from that traveling case she'd packed the night before. Perhaps Myoko was merely embarrassed to be seen playing Gretchen's dressmaid. But it was a small cabin, and Myoko had no room to keep her distance from Gretchen's bare skin. As I watched, she surreptitiously tried to squeeze a little farther away, dropping her gaze to the knots she was trying to untie. "Don't rush me," she mumbled to Gretchen.
The blush burned more brightly in Myoko's cheeks.
Annah was behind the other two, higher than both because she was standing on the captain's bed. Like Gretchen she gave me only a distracted smile; then she went back to arranging Gretchen's hair. In the dim confined quarters, I couldn't see much of what Annah was doing, but I assumed she was making a braid. Annah had a reputation for braids: at the academy, girls sometimes tried to transfer to Annah's floor solely so she'd do their hair. Personally, I've never understood the female fascination with braids-braids always remind me of the ugly leather bumps on a crocodile's back-but I learned long ago to keep quiet on the subject.
Gretchen soon grew bored watching Myoko worry at the gown's knots, so she turned back to me. (Behind her, Annah made an exasperated sigh and tried to hold Gretchen's head still.) "So, Phil, darling," Gretchen said, "aren't you just amazed?"
I almost said, "By what?" The part of my brain devoted to self-preservation vetoed that initial response and frantically searched for some source of amazement I'd overlooked. Gretchen's body? Always delicious, but I couldn't see anything different from last night (except the absence of goose-pimples). The fact that Myoko and Gretchen weren't sniping at each other? Yes, that was amazing, but probably not what Gretchen meant. I looked around the room, knowing I was taking too long to answer, but unable to see anything but the three women… Gretchen in her underwear… the crimson gown…
Crimson? Sorcerer's crimson?
Gretchen's lingerie was the same color. And I'd seen a crimson bra in her bedroom the night before.
I blurted, "You're pretending to be a sorceress?"
Gretchen's eyes flashed. "No, silly billy-I am a sorceress. Do you think I buy all those shine-stones?"
My mouth hung open for an undignified length of time… but meanwhile facts were sorting themselves out in my brain.
Gretchen had grown up with sorcerers: her father employed quite a few to cast obedience spells on demons. Most children of wealthy families also received training in sorcerous fundamentals, partly to prepare them for managing spellcaster underlings, and partly to see if they themselves had any aptitude for enchantments. It wasn't necessarily good news to find you had a knack for magic-considering the nature of most arcane rituals, sorcery wasn't a respectable profession-but just as the well-to-do are allowed to draw and paint as long as they don't become artists, they're allowed to cast spells as long as they don't get too mystical. All of which argued it was possible that Gretchen had received substantial arcane tutoring from mages on her father's staff.
Then I remembered how Gretchen had suddenly been so interested when she heard I'd encountered a Sorcery-Lord. She'd immediately announced she'd accompany us to Niagara, where Dreamsinger was going to be. And now Gretchen was putting on crimson, the first time I'd seen her wear the color. Why? So Dreamsinger would recognize her as another dear sister on the Burdensome Path?
"Gretchen," I said, "seriously, seriously, Gretchen: this is a bad idea."
"What do you mean? A sorceress can wear crimson whenever she wants."
"Yes, but-"
"You don't think I'm real, is that it? I'm just some deluded brat? Oh that Gretchen, she might know a few tricks, but she's nothing special. Is that what you think?"
"What I think is that Dreamsinger is an unpredictable lunatic. Anyone who wants to meet her is suicidal."
"Well, maybe I am suicidal." Gretchen stormed forward the three steps it took to cross the room. The partly woven braid was yanked out of Annah's hands and flopped forward along the side of Gretchen's head. Gretchen ignored it; she gave me a fierce push, her hands hitting my shoulders, her eyes glaring into mine. "Have you looked at me lately, Phil?"
I was looking at her now. The braid hanging down by her ear had begun to unravel. "You aren't suicidal, Gretchen. It's not in your nature."
"Maybe not. But desperation is." She dropped her gaze; she glanced quickly back at Myoko and Annah as if trying to decide whether to talk in front of them. Then she took a deep breath and returned to me. "I'm good, Phil. I'm good at sorcery. I think." She gave a twittering laugh. "But I don't know for real, do I, darling? I've just… I've done nothing with it. Instead, I lived off my father's money. Slept with a lot of pretty men. Kept my sorcery to myself because I didn't want someone saying, Gretchen, the spells you're so proud of are really quite trivial…"
Her hands were still on my shoulders. She let her head slump against my chest. "Whenever I wanted to convince myself I was good, I'd whip up another shine-stone. The spell's actually quite complicated… at least I think it is. Then again, what the hell do I know?"