—Shakespeare, Macbeth, I, iii
SEVEN
Currents turn awry
1
“Well, I don’t think it’s fair!”
The king and queen of Krasnegar were eating breakfast and Princess Kadie was adjusting the universe to fit her needs and wants, as usual.
There was no one else in the great hall. As always in early summer, the whole castle seemed deserted. Almost everyone was over on the mainland or gone fishing. Rap had been spending much time in the hills, checking on the livestock, but he’d taken a night off to come home and get to know his family again.
He awoke from a reverie, realizing that Inos had not answered Kadie’s comment and so must be leaving it for him. Someone had eaten all his porridge . . . didn’t matter, he wasn’t hungry now.
“Sorry! I was daydreaming. What was the question?”
His daughter impaled him with a disapproving expression she had inherited from her mother. “I don’t think the corporal should be allowed to have Gath on his team!”
Several responses were available: What team? for example, or Why not? or even What corporal? although that one would probably prompt a screaming fit—except that he hadn’t witnessed any fits from Kadie for a while. The twins were growing up, and she was doing it faster than her brother, which was to be expected. Kadie was thirteen and a half going on thirty. This morning she was dressed as if to attend a wedding, which was normal.
“Why isn’t it fair?” he asked.
His daughter tossed her black mane in exasperation. “Really, Daddy! A fencing contest where one of the players is . . . uses . . . Well!”
He must be behaving very stupidly if he was Daddy. “Uses what, Kadie?” he said, applying a parental glare of moderate intensity.
She dropped her eyes. “Well, everyone knows!” she muttered.
“Knows what?”
“That Gath is a seer, of course! That’s why it won’t be fair to let him be on the boys’ team. No one can ever lay a button on him. Not even the corporal!”
Rap glanced at Inos and saw a flicker of the distress she showed every time Gath’s powers were discussed. She blamed herself, of course, which was stupid.
And this argument was unnecessary at the moment. Summer had barely opened the causeway again and yet Kadie was planning a winter fencing carnival. Kadie had become a complete fanatic about fencing, predictably infecting all her friends. Rap still had not adjusted to the idea of girls fencing, but he had certainly learned not to laugh at it when Inos was within earshot.
“I didn’t know Gath had even been near the gym,” he said. “I certainly didn’t know he’d taken up fencing.”
“He hasn’t. Not like the rest of us.”
“Well, that helps even out the odds, surely? If he doesn’t practice, it does. I can guess what his defense is like. How’s his attack?”
“Awful! The corporal says he isn’t aggressive enough.”
“There you are then. It cancels out.”
Kadie rose with great dignity. “I see. Fairness is relative! Boys are different. Of course! Now, if you will excuse me, dear Mama, darling Papa, I have an appointment with my coifeuse. But I still consider it very . . . er, unfair . . . to permit occult abilities in mundane athletics!”
“Kadie!”
Again the princess tossed her hair—Rap wondered what Inos would say if he proposed a law making long hair illegal in the kingdom. No, he wouldn’t risk it.
Kadie sat down in a sulk. “Just because you won’t let me talk about them doesn’t mean that everyone else doesn’t know.”
“Now, wait a moment, love,” Rap said. This ought to be investigated. He knew how he had suffered from having a reputation for magic in Krasnegar, and he had been several years older than his son was now. “What exactly does everyone know?”
His daughter pouted. “They know you can’t sneak up behind Gath. Throw something and he isn’t there. Flip a coin and he’ll call it right a dozen times in a row!”
“Gath will really show off like that?”
“Yes!” Kadie said. Then she added, “Sometimes.” That probably meant, “Once.”
“Then I apologize and I agree he shouldn’t be allowed on a fencing team.”
Kadie bounced up jubilantly and withdrew, flouncing off along the great hall.
“Sounds like Gath’s adjusting,” Rap said hopefully.
Inos nibbled a piece of crusty roll, eyeing him with a fond smile in her so-green eyes. “Oh, I think so. Remember telling me once that all occult talents had a mundane equivalent?”
“No. Did I say that? Sounds like a pretty dumb remark.”
“One of your best, dear. But I think in Gath’s case it may be true. He’s always had a sort of talent for staying out of trouble.”
“Kadie makes up for it.”
Inos shook her head. “Kadie’s normal. Gath . . . He hasn’t come to me with a bleeding knee since he was a toddler, and some days I seem to spend half my time being court nurse, bandaging battered children. It’s very rare for Gath to be involved when the gang of them gets into really serious mischief. He’s always just somewhere else.”
There might be some truth in that. Troublemakers were noticed, but good behavior tended to be overlooked. Gath had never been a problem. “He’s got too much sense,” Rap said.
“He’s not stupid,” Inos agreed, “but he’s no mental giant, either. At his age it can’t be experience, so what is it?” She reached across the plank table and clasped her husband’s hand. “He’s managing, that’s what matters!”
“If he’s showing off for the other kids, then he must be.”
“His friends are starting to adjust, too. You look! Quite often now he wanders around with that dreamy old smile of his as if he hasn’t a care in the world.”
“Or can avoid it if he has?” Rap hated to think about foresight and premonition, because they always tied his mind in knots. Even as a sorcerer, he had never completely understood them, and much of that arcane understanding was now lost to him. His mother had been a seer, able to foretell such things as the sex of babies. Or so he’d been told—he didn’t remember her very well. Gath’s talent was different, though. At times he seemed to be living a few minutes ahead of everyone else.
“Here he comes now,” Inos said. “And what did I tell you?” Gath was sauntering along the room toward them, a gangling boy with his hands in his pockets as usual and his hair a silver bird’s nest. His expression suggested that he was finding the world interesting but not threatening.
Kadie wasn’t the only one starting to sprout. Gath had always been tall for his age, and of course it was the big ones who went over the wall first. He was still a kid, but he was almost as tall as his mother, all spindly arms and legs.
He sprawled on a bench, stretching out his oversized feet. “It will be soon,” he told his father solemnly.
Rap swallowed the greeting he had been about to pronounce. “What will be what soon?”
“A good morning.”
Rap glanced up at the windows. Rain in Krasnegar was a rare event, but there was certainly rain falling now. And that was fortunate; because he had a whole mountain of bills of lading to inspect. The first ships had arrived. If there was anything missing, anything Krasnegar might need over the coming winter, then the orders must be sent back at once or there would be no time for delivery before the ice came in again. The rain would keep him dutifully working indoors, not wasting time in frivolous pursuits.
“It stops in about half an hour,” Gath explained seriously. Rap gave him a baffled look. He suspected he had just noted a twinkle in those deep gray eyes, but he wasn’t sure. A thirteen-year-old should not be inscrutable like that! “I have a pile of accounts to go over this morning with Master Gracker.”
“No, sir. You and me go down to the docks.”
Now, that was a specific prophecy! Whatever powers his faun grandmother might have had, Gath’s range seemed to be little over an hour, or two at the most. Moreover, as far as Rap had been able to discover, he was limited to knowing things before he should know them. He apparently could not prophesy for others. He knew the rain would stop because he would see it stop.
So what happened if Rap rushed him down to the dungeons and locked him up there for an hour, so that when the rain did stop he couldn’t know that the rain had stopped? That would mean he couldn’t have made the statement he’d just made, wouldn’t it?
Except that Rap would never do any such thing.
And now the boy had just come out with another extremely specific, verifiable prophecy, something he rarely did. What happened if Rap refused to go down to the docks? This was going to be interesting, because Rap had no intention of going down to the docks this morning. He had far too much work to do. Why should he . . .