Ozark Trilogy 1: Twelve Fair Kingdoms by Suzette Haden Elgin Page A

said, looking clear over my head and out the window, “and you are now in perfect condition. And leave off your spurs, you’ll mark up the stairs. We’re waiting for you—patiently—down in the small Hall.”
    “And your bill? For services rendered, Michael Stepforth?”
    “Courtesy of the house,” he said. “No charge.” He raised both his hands in the mock-magic gesture of the stage magician, fanning his fingers open and shut and open again. And then he turned on his heel and swept out of the room, the cape swirling about him. And the gulls made a soft little noise and disappeared.
    I thanked the Attendant and walked into the Hall, where I had spent a number of reasonably pleasant Hallow Evens and Midsummer Days over the years. There had been children then, and costumes and candy, and cakes and beer and an atmosphere of frolic. There was none of that today.
    They sat in high-backed chairs about a table at the far end of the room, filling a windowed corner through which I could see the sun going down. Myrrh of Guthrie. The previously absent James John, looking rumpled. Michael Stepforth Guthrie. Two unmarried sons in their late teens, whose names I did not remember. And one Granny, whose name I did know. Whatever else I might neglect, I did not neglect the Grannys; I had a file on every one of them, and I knew it by heart, and they didn’t gather an Ozark weed that I didn’t know it. This one was a harmless old soul, name of Granny Stillmeadow, that specialized in liniments and party Charms, and I chose the chair next to hers and let her pat my knee.
    Supper appeared the minute I took my place, and by the time I’d been introduced to the two boys it had been served and we were well into it. And if Myrrh of Guthrie was serious about the Reception and Dance scheduled for that same evening there was surely no time to fool about. I didn’t recognize the beast that I was eating, but I recognized it for a beast, and I knew both the vegetables. And I was sure they wouldn’t poison me in front of the servants, so I fell to. And I listened.
    Castle Parson, it appeared, had been sending bands of traders across the Wilderness to the Guthrie docks, and offering higher bids for supplies than those authorized to the Guthrie personnel. The Guthries were willing to allow that that might have been due to an unfortunate incident in which a charge set by a Guthrie mining crew had caved in a gem mine on the very edge of Kingdom Parson. However it seemed that although the mine was in Wilderness Lands and therefore technically common property, the Parsons felt that the Guthries were demanding more than their share of the profits from the mine, which meant their miners might just conceivably have been harassing the Guthrie miners who set the charge. (What the Purdys had been doing through all this, and whether they’d been getting any of their legitimate share of the profits, was not mentioned.) But it did come up that a Purdy had managed to get himself killed—according to both the Guthries and the Parsons, it was deliberate, which I found it hard to believe, even for the Purdys—in a spectacularly disgusting way. (Granny Stillmeadow was of the opinion that only a Magician of Rank could of arranged it, considering the curious shape the body had assumed before it was found.) And this getting killed had happened in the Parson Castle Hall, while the Guthries were there protesting the latest iniquity perpetrated by the Parsons, and a Parson Granny had cried “Privilege!” and they’d had to call a three-Kingdom hearing, which by law had to be held on common ground in the Wilderness, and was still going on, and that was costing an arm and a leg and another arm. And a Purdy spy had hacked her ridiculous way through the Wilderness to tell the Guthries that the Parsons were stealing them all blind by working another gem mine on the Purdy’s southern border; tunneling from its Wilderness entrance clear under the Guthrie lands—which