Tin Horses and Paper Planes
Chapter 7 - Tea and Empathy
"...been spoken to in such a way."
"You've never been to the
Realm of the Unwanted, have you, love?"
DG paused in the doorway,
listening. The family often took afternoon tea together on a private
terrace - a custom, her mother had once informed her fondly, that had
been in practice since DG had been a baby - and it was an opportunity to
put aside their royal faces for a while and spend time together,
uninterrupted by affairs of the palace.
"I'm not a prude Ahamo,
but that man was simply vulgar."
DG didn't want to
interrupt her parents' conversation, but curiosity got the better of
her.
"Which man, Mother?" She gave her hands a cursory glance,
but they seemed okay - no signs of paint or engine grease to earn her
the look of gentle reproof the Queen was so good at. Using magic to
get your hands clean is probably against some ancient law, but you have
to admit, it works... Satisfied, she went out onto the broad terrace
to join her parents, wondering if there had been news about Glitch.
Iskra looked up and her expression softened, but DG was aware of the
annoyance that surrounded her in a crackling cloud.
"Your
mother's had a difference of opinion with Mr Cain." Ahamo was trying not
to smile, and DG relaxed a little. It couldn't be anything too awful,
if her father found it amusing. Don't be too sure, kiddo. He's got a
weird sense of humour.
Iskra sniffed irritably. "'A
difference of opinion' is hardly the way I'd describe it." Once DG had
taken her place, the Queen recounted the interview, to her growing
disbelief. "I know that you're fond of him, DG, but he has no respect.
If it were not for the service he has rendered to the OZ, I would have
him sent away that very minute."
DG stared at her mother,
wide-eyed. "Mr C- Wyatt actually told you to-"
"Right up the old
Brick Route," Ahamo chimed in cheerfully, and grinned as Iskra gave him a
scolding look. "Sorry, beloved, but you have to admit, the man knows no
fear. He wouldn't be such a bad choice to head up the Royal Army. You like
people to speak their minds. Didn't old Lonot once call you 'a silly
little girl with a head full of fancies'? And you took his sword off him
and offered to make him wear his own entrails as a hat, and see who
looked silly, then?"
"No, that's what you wanted me to
do." The memory brought a brief smile to the Queen's face. "In fact, I
sent him off to spend a week helping the nursemaid tend to Azkadelia, so
he'd have some basis for comparison."
"Ah, diplomacy," Ahamo
murmured fondly, and put his arm around her. DG regarded her mother, who
was gazing into the distance, her expression troubled. You're not
angry because he was rude, are you, Mother? You're angry because he was
right.
"Why don't we go down and see Ambrose this evening?
Together," she suggested tentatively. She'd long since stopped using
'Glitch' in her mother's presence. In the first few months after the
eclipse, she'd called him 'Ambrose' when he was connected to his brain,
'Glitch' when he wasn't, but that had been too much like dealing with
two separate people, and it hadn't taken DG long to realise that he was
already struggling with a raging identity crisis, and she wasn't
helping.
"Ambrose. My name is Ambrose. But... but you, and
Raw, and Cain..." And then a pause as he caught up with himself and
remembered that Wyatt Cain had gone home; DG recognised the little
flicker of dismay in his dark eyes. "You can call me 'Glitch'.
Reminds me of the good old days..."
She'd asked him again,
in the Brain Room, trying to keep her voice low and simultaneously
understanding that it was ridiculous to do so, when everything she said
must pass through the attendant Viewer in order to reach that remote,
floating mind in the tank.
"Those were the good old
days. Until you found me in that cage, I'd spent most of my time scared,
or lonely, or falling off, or over things." He'd smiled, but the
expression hadn't reached his eyes. "And then there was you, and
Raw... and Cain, and it was time that - that stayed. Not the circular,
same-again days I'd had before; time with definition to it. And I wasn't
lonely, then." Then his smile had grown warmer, though it hadn't
been enough to keep DG from lying awake that night, wondering if he was
lonely now. "Of course, being scared and falling off things persisted
for some time afterwards. Call me 'Glitch', if you wish, Highness. I
must learn to be both, or I'm doomed to be neither."
DG
recalled that she'd been about to correct him. I don't want to be
'Your Highness'. I'm just DG. But maybe she should listen to her
mother's advisor. Learn to be both, or you're doomed to be neither.
Iskra
favoured her with a wan smile. "Perhaps you should take your sister.
I'm sure Ambrose would-"
"I went to see him this morning. I took
some breakfast to him." Azkadelia had been sitting so quietly beside the
balcony that DG hadn't realised that she was there. "DG's right,
Mother. I'm sure he'd like to see you."
Iskra looked between her
daughters, trapped. "He won't remember me. I'll only confuse him."
"He's
already confused. I think -" Azkadelia glanced at DG for support, and
DG nodded, relieved that she had decided to speak up. Someone needs
to say it, and Mr Cain's way doesn't seem to be working. "We
think, Azkadelia continued, "you might be avoiding him."
"My
dear, that's preposterous," Iskra countered uncomfortably. "I've spoken
with Ambrose many times since he came back to us. We've discussed the
Sunseeder at length, and the changes he's made to the design. It's all
very interesting, although I don't pretend to understand half of what
he's saying." She tried to smile, but there was a hint of desperation in
her attempt at lightness.
"But that's just it, Mother - you
only speak to him while he's in the - while he has a Viewer with him so
that he can work." Azkadelia's tone was gentle, but her gaze was direct.
"I don't believe I've ever seen you talking to him outside of there,
and when he remembers to come to Court dinners you always put him right
down the table, away from you."
We're all trying really hard
not to talk about his brain, aren't we? DG thought. 'While he's
in the Brain Room'. We don't talk about what's floating in that tank, or
mention the zipper, or call him Glitch. She moved to perch on the
arm of the padded settle where her parents sat, so that she could take
her mother's hand.
"He's still Ambrose. Sooner or later, Mother,
you're going to have to talk to him without a Viewer there to try and
make out nothing's changed." She felt her eyes well with tears, and
blinked them away vigorously. "And if it was me, I'd want to do it
sooner, because..." She shook her head. "Wyatt's right. The doctor
doesn't have any answers, and he doesn't seem to be in a hurry to find
any. Can't we find someone else, even if it's just for a second opinion?
Aren't there experts over here? Neurologists and things?"
"I,
ah... I know a brain surgeon," Ahamo volunteered quietly. There was a
silence, while all three women stared at him. "I do," he
insisted. "Well - he was, years ago. Quite a reputation in the City, he
told me once, but he upped and left when they started looking for..." he
faltered, glancing at Azkadelia. "When they -"
"When the
Sorceress started recruiting medics to headcase the people she couldn't
bully or bribe. It's all right, Father. You don't have to keep on
treating me as if I'll fall apart at the first mention of that
creature," Azkadelia protested, but she dropped her gaze after a moment,
and DG felt a sudden rush of sympathy for her. You still feel
responsible for what happened to him, don't you? Even though it was all
the Witch's doing.
"I'm sorry, Az. I'll put the kid gloves
away. Anyhow, when things started getting hot in the City, the refugees
started showing up. Some of them just wanted out of the regime, but
there were those she'd marked out as useful, and the Realm of the
Unwanted was the one place you stood a chance of getting lost in. Doc
Oxley showed up about five years after I got there, and the Realm
swallowed him up just the same as everyone else." Ahamo shrugged. "Of
course, he might not even be there any more. It's not exactly the kind
of place where folks retire and grow daffodils."
'Push up
daisies' is more like it. DG was sceptical. "Could we trust him? The
whole place was full of con-artists and mercenaries."
Ahamo
nodded. "I know - I was one of them." Azkadelia rolled her eyes and he
grinned. "I'm not telling her anything she didn't already know," he
protested easily. "Anyway - doesn't that qualify me to say if we could
trust him? You have to be good at working people out if you want to stay
alive down there. Doc Oxley's all right."
"Shouldn't we just
call the Royal Hospital and send for a doctor from there?" DG asked,
unconvinced. "Someone with recent experience? You can send a fa- a Telex
to the City, can't you Mother?"
Iskra didn't answer, and DG
looked up, about to ask the question again. The queen was looking
fixedly ahead, and her eyes were brimming, her lips pressed together to
keep them from quivering. "Mother?"
"I failed him. I failed all
of you." Iskra whispered. DG and Azkadelia both broke in at once.
"No,
Mother, you can't blame -"
"You didn't fail any- "
"My
darlings, be still. I did what I thought was best, but I could have done
so much more. And Ambrose, poor, faithful Ambrose - I have
stayed away. DG, you were so young, you must barely remember him as he
was. To see him now, so - so diminished and muddled... it breaks my
heart to see him that way, and so I save myself the pain and avoid his
company."
Ahamo had said nothing throughout this exchange, but
now he put his arm around Iskra and pulled her to him, kissing her hair
tenderly.
"The war was bound to leave casualties, love. He knew
the danger, and he faced it. And he's still alive - that's more than be
said for many who stood up for the OZ. You've nothing to reproach
yourself for."
And that was half true. It's not your fault the
witch hurt him, Mother. If we're all stepping up to take some blame, I
ought to be first in the queue; I let her out. But if you don't go and
see him now, because it makes you feel guilty to look at the zipper... I
can't make excuses for you. DG said none of this, but her wide blue
eyes were badly suited to subterfuge. Iskra studied her sorrowfully for
a minute, then nodded.
"No more excuses. This evening, if he
isn't too tired, I'll visit him." The tears that had been building
finally spilled over, but Iskra waved away the handkerchief DG offered,
producing one of her own from a neatly concealed pocket in her skirts
and drying her eyes briskly. "And I'll talk to Spicer. He had that look
he always wears when something is preying on his mind."
"We'll
both go."
"We'll all go," DG spoke a second after
Azkadelia, and they swapped conspiratorial glances before turning to
look at Ahamo, who shook his head.
"I think I'll sit this one
out. Four's company, but five's getting dangerously close to a mob.
Besides, it's you girls he'll want to see. I'll set up camp in the Rose
Room - send a few Telexes. There's a bunch of City officials who all
came down with a convenient case of food poisoning just in time for your
mother's birthday, and I bet they're all just as conveniently recovered
now."
"I'm sure they had some reason for their absence," Iskra
tucked the handkerchief away. "Though I doubt it was poor digestion.
I've yet to find a Councilman who was unable to stomach even the most
challenging of banquets."
Ahamo smirked. "I doubt they'll admit
to it, but what they're all suffering from isn't a shade of green around
the gills, but a big streak of yellow running down their backs. They're
afraid of being attacked if they leave Central City."
"The
Longcoats wouldn't dare come anywhere near the Old Road, would they?" DG
asked, perplexed. "I thought -"
"No, not by renegade Longcoats.
By your everyday, average folk in the country. Farmers. Ranchers. Maybe
the odd rogue Papay Runner. Now people are getting back to normal,
they're starting to ask questions. Like 'how come even when the rest of
us were scraping to survive, Central City had enough food, liquor and
money to go around?' I can't see them chasing after the City council
with pitchforks and horse-whips, but they might change their minds if
they'd heard the council stonewalling - hah - when we said we were
planning to have the gatehouse taken down." He rolled his eyes. "Can't
have undesirables just wandering into the City, can we?"
DG
thought about Antoine Demilo's rolling sleaze emporium. Yeah, they
must really be worried about their standards slipping. "I suppose
we're lucky that Doctor Krantz was here already. Sounds like we're way
down people's To Visit list." The Queen cleared her throat gently.
"I
will ask Doctor Krantz to suggest a fellow physician to lend his
expertise. The two of them, working together, may provide the answers we
seek." A hint of sharpness crept into her voice. "I will not be
accused of denying Ambrose the help that he requires."
"In that
case, I'll send word to the Realm and see if I can't scare up Doc Oxley,
as well," Ahamo asserted. "He might be some help, even if he isn't a
hot shot city doctor."
Iskra rested her head against his
shoulder, looking a little happier now that the conversation had moved
on to more practical matters. "If you think that he would be of help,
then by all means send for him, my dear. I will, as in all things, be
led by you."
Ahamo smiled, his eyes meeting DG's, and he winked. Why
do I get the feeling he's heard that before? she wondered, amused
in spite of herself.
"Your Majesty, Your Royal Highnesses..."
DG
jumped, then tried to pretend that she hadn't. "Mister Rawlins, have
you ever thought about wearing a bell? Maybe something in brass? Little
coronets embossed on it to go with the buttons?" The tall man, whom
Wyatt would have instantly recognised as his impatient guide, inclined
his head in a way that would have made the deepest of bows seem cursory,
and approached the Queen, sinking smoothly to one knee. He held out a
flat, wooden box, lifting the lid so that Iskra could take out a folded
page from within.
A nod from Mister Rawlins. That's
practically a belly-laugh, coming from him. DG considered pressing
her advantage and seeing if she could raise an actual smile on the man,
then she caught sight of her mother's expression and all thoughts of
teasing the austere manservant fled.
"Mother?"
Iskra
looked up from the note, dismayed. "It's from Spicer. He says that
Ambrose has had another seizure. He's called for Doctor Krantz."
DG
gazed at her, anxiety rising slick and bitter in the back of her
throat. Suddenly, the thought of summoning a renegade brain surgeon from
the Realm of the Unwanted didn't seem quite so impulsive.
