Orson Card - Maps in a Mirror - The Short Fiction of Orson Scott Card

“Chamberlain, have Ansset’s possessions put together and readied for shipment to Alwiss. The prefect there is Timmis Hortmang, prepare a letter of explanation and a letter of mark. Ansset will arrive there wealthier than anyone else in the prefecture. Those are my orders. See to it.” He turned his head downward and to the right. Both Riktors and the Chamberlain moved to leave. Ansset—and therefore the guards who had lasers trained on him—did not.

“Father Mikal,” Ansset said softly, and he realized that the words had been a song.

But Mikal made no answer. He only got up from the chair and left the chamber.

Ansset had several hours before nightfall, and he spent them wandering through the palace and the palace grounds. The guards dogged his steps. At first he let the tears flow. Then, as the horror of the morning hid again behind the only partly broken block in his mind, he remembered what the Songmaster had taught him, again and again, “When you want to weep, let the tears come through your throat. Let pain come from the pressure in your thighs. Let sorrow rise and resonate through your head.”

Walking by the Susquehanna on the cold lawns of autumn afternoon shade, Ansset sang his grief. He sang softly, but the guards heard his song, and could not help but weep for him, too.

He stopped at a place where the water looked cold and clear, and began to strip off his tunic, preparing to swim. A guard reached out and stopped him. Ansset noticed the laser pointed at his foot. “I can’t let you do that. Mikal gave orders you were not to be allowed to take your own life.”

“I only want to swim,” Ansset answered, his voice low with persuasion.

“I would be killed if any harm came to you,” the guard said.

“I give you my oath that I will only swim, and not try to break free.”

The guard considered. The other guards seemed content to leave the decision up to him. Ansset hummed a sweet melody that he knew oozed confidence. The guard gave in.

Ansset stripped and dove into the water. It was icy cold, and stung him. He swam in broad strokes upstream, knowing that to the guards on the bank he would already seem like only a speck on the surface of the river. Then he dove and swam under the water, holding his breath as only a singer or a pearldiver could, and swam across the current toward the near shore, where the guards were waiting. He could hear, though muffled by the water, the cries of the guards. He surfaced, laughing.

Two of the guards had already thrown off their boots and were up to their waists in water, preparing to try to catch Ansset’s body as it swept by. But Ansset kept laughing at them, and they turned at him angrily.

“Why did you worry?” Ansset said. “I gave my word.”

Then the guards relaxed, and Ansset swam for an hour under the afternoon sun. The motion of the water, and constant exertion to keep place against the current took his mind off his troubles, to some extent. Only one guard watched him now, while the others played polys, casting fourteen-sided dice in a mad gambling game that soon engrossed them.

Ansset swam underwater from time to time, listening to the different sound the guards’ quarreling and laughing made when water covered his ears. The sun was nearly down, now, and Ansset dove underwater again to swim to shore on one breath. He was halfway to shore when he heard the sharp call of a bird overhead, muffled as it was by the river.

Ansset made a sudden connection in his mind, and came up immediately, coughing and sputtering. He dog-paddled in to shore, shook himself, and put on his tunic, wet as he was.

“We’ve got to get back to the palace,” he said, filling his voice with urgency, putting the pitch high to penetrate the guards’ sluggishness after an hour of gaming. The guards quickly followed him, overtook him.

“Where are you going?” one of them asked.

“To see Mikal.”

“We’re not to do that—we were ordered! You can’t go to Mikal.”

But Ansset walked on, fairly sure that until he actually got close to the emperor the guards would not try to restrain him. Even if they had not been present for the demonstration of Ansset’s skill in the Great Hall that morning, the story would surely have reached their ears that Mikal’s Songbird could kill two men in two seconds.

He had heard the call of a bird as he swam underwater. He remembered that on his last night of captivity in the ship, he had heard the cry of another bird high above him. But never, never had he heard another sound from outside.

And yet where the flatboat was the city noise had come loudly, could be heard clearly below decks. Therefore even if the boat was his prison, it had not been moored by that house. And if that were so, the evidence against the former Captain of the Guard was a fraud. And Ansset knew now who in the court had taken Ansset to use as an assassin.

They were met in a corridor by a messenger. “There you are. The Lord Mikal commands the presence of the Songbird, as quickly as possible. Here,” he said, handing the orders to the guard who made decisions, who took out his verifier and passed it over the seal on the orders. A sharp buzz testified that the orders were genuine.

“All right then, Songbird,” said the guard. “We’ll go there after all.” Ansset started to run. The guards kept up easily, following him through the labyrinth. To them it was almost a game, and one of them said, between breaths, “I never knew this way led where we’re going!” to which one of the other guards replied, “And you’ll never find it again, either.”

And then they were in Mikal’s chambers. Ansset’s hair was still wet, and his tunic still clung to his small body where it had not yet had time to dry from the river water.

Mikal was smiling. “Ansset, my Son, it’s fine now.” Mikal waved an arm, dismissing the guards. “We were so foolish to think we needed to send you away,” he said. “The Captain was the only one in the plot close enough to give the signal. Now that he’s dead, no one knows it! You’re safe now—and so am I!”

Mikal’s speech was jovial, delighted, but Ansset, who knew the songs of his voice as well as he knew his own, read in the words a warning, a lie, a declaration of danger. Ansset did not run to him. He waited.

“In fact,” Mikal said, “you’re my best possible bodyguard. You look small and weak, you’re always by my side, and you can kill faster than a guard with a laser.” Mikal laughed. Ansset was not fooled. There was no mirth in the laugh.

But the Chamberlain and Captain Riktors Ashen were fooled, and they laughed along with Mikal. Ansset forced himself to laugh, too. He listened to the sounds the others were making. Riktors sounded sincere enough, but the Chamberlain—

“It’s a cause for celebration. Here’s wine,” said the Chamberlain. “I brought us wine. Ansset, why don’t you pour it?”

Ansset shuddered with memories. “I?” he asked, surprised, and then not surprised at all. The Chamberlain held out the full bottle and the empty goblet. “For the Lord Mikal,” the Chamberlain said.

Ansset shouted and dashed the bottle to the floor. “Make him keep silent!”

The suddenness of Ansset’s violent action brought Riktors’s laser out of his belt and into his hand.

“Don’t let the Chamberlain speak!”

“Why not?” asked Mikal innocently, but Ansset knew there was no innocence behind the words. For some reason Mikal was pretending not to understand.

The Chamberlain believed it, believed he had a moment. He said quickly, almost urgently, “Why did you do that? I have another bottle. Sweet Songbird, let Mikal drink deeply!”

The words hammered into Ansset’s brain, and by reflex he whirled and faced Mikal. He knew what was happening, knew and screamed against it in his mind. But his hands came up against his will, his legs bent, he compressed to spring, all so quickly that he couldn’t stop himself. He knew that in less than a second his hand would be buried in Mikal’s face, Mikal’s beloved face, Mikal’s smiling face—