(Luis)
I needed a general cover identity to use in Hasty. It didn't need to be deep, or mean anything. All it needed to do was deflect attention. Mislead. And an accent can mislead. The Shuffling dumped a bunch of Flemish and Spanish at what would become known as Aarschot, and they intermarried till their old languages disappeared—before my time—leaving mainly a few cuss words. But the nearby settlement of Nedreby had been all Swedes, and kept the tongue. Three of my fellow novices at Aarschot had been from there, and I learned to mimic them.
While I'd been away at Kato, Carlos got to know Father Sando, Pastor Linkon's assistant, who it turned out is a Swede from Ilanoy. So I rode to Sugar Grove and talked with him. He said my put-on accent was good enough to fool non-Swedes at least. "Just don't lay it on too thickly," he warned. "It might draw attention instead of deflecting it."
I'd be out of luck if someone spoke Swedish to me, of course, but so far as Sando had ever heard, there was only one settlement in Sota where people spoke the language, so it wasn't much of a risk. "Tell people you're from Grassmark," he said. "It's in the barony of La Cienega, in the Duchy of Oak Groves. Not many people in Hasty even recognize a Swedish accent. They'll just know you have an accent." In the Royal Domain, he went on, there are a lot of Swedish names—the Youngblood, or Ljungblad clan was Swedish originally—but they married so much outside the community, their descendants speak only Merkan.
So I decided to borrow the name of my old Nedreby friend, Arne Asplund. Sando said it was as good as any.
The next morning I wore a floppy, hand-woven grass hat. I'd shaved for my meeting with Eldred, so my "beard" was only stubble, hardly noticeable. But workman's clothes completed the disguise well enough.
I rented a rowboat with an awning, and anchored it maybe seventy yards from the royal dock, in the Sancroy a little above the Misasip. I was willing to give this project two days—no more—though from what Paddy had said, two weeks might not be enough. I really needed to get about other business, but I also wanted Kabibi to have more information. At least that's how I explained it to myself.
Tahmm told us in lecture once that some people claim you can enforce your will on the physical universe—when conditions are right, and you're acting on the advice of your muse. But according to Tahmm, that's backward. How it really works, he says, is your muse knows the moment-to-moment odds for certain possible events, which is the closest we can come to knowing the future in a free-will universe. It can tell you when the time is ripe: when your chance is best. Nudge you, whisper to you to do such and such. That's what muses do.
And you can feel that nudge, if you're paying attention, and you choose to. It's up to you. And if your mind isn't too fixed on something else, or wallowing around in counter-intentions or fears or resentments or anger or poor poor thing or what-have-you—you may act on that nudge, that impulse. And the outcome may make it seem like the universe obeyed you.
Anyway there I was on a beautiful June morning, sitting under the little awning in my rented boat, holding a fishing pole but not watching the bobber. I hadn't even baited my hook; didn't want the distraction of a fish. It was the royal dock that held my attention. After ten or fifteen minutes, two young women and a man walked out on the dock. The women sat down on a cushioned bench, while the man, an armed guardsman, stood at a sort of parade rest forty or fifty feet from them. To give them privacy no doubt. Presumably they were waiting for a boat to pick them up.
I took the spyglass from my shoulder bag and looked them over. It looked like an ordinary pocket spyglass, foot long, but the optics had been designed by a technician at the Academy. The awning put me in the shadow, and the frame, and my floppy hat, broke up the silhouette; so at that distance the risk of being noticed was minor. The guardsman looked no more than twelve or fifteen feet away, and held a crossbow cranked and ready. But he was paying no attention to a fisherman seventy yards off.
It was obvious at once which twin was which. Switching on my belt com, I set it to "record," and began examining Mary and her aura, speaking quietly, telling what I saw. After two minutes or so I focused on Elvi and repeated the procedure. Their auras were as different as their facial expressions.
When I'd finished describing Elvi's aura, I turned back to Mary. She was looking at something, and pointing downstream toward the Misasip. I promptly capped my spy glass and put it back in my bag. Sure enough, the royal pleasure boat was approaching, with two servants or guards at the oars. They passed not more than thirty yards from me.
For whatever reason, I pulled my hook from the water, attached a ten-inch sucker from my bait bucket, and tossed it back in. The pleasure boat loaded the girls and their guard and pulled away from the dock, upstream against the current of the Sancroy. In my direction. Suddenly something hit my bait hard, and I horsed on the pole. A twenty-five-inch pike arced through the morning sunlight to land flopping in my boat.
And what do you know! Mary pointed at me, laughing in delight, clapping her hands! It gave me a chill; a good kind. I wasn't sure what our muses were up to, but something. I stayed there for a couple more minutes, then pulled the anchor up and headed back to the rental dock.
From her spontaneous response to the flying pike, and from an instant of essence contact so light and natural you could wonder if it had actually happened, I'd learned important things about Mary Youngblood. Especially—and this took me by surprise—I'd learned it was time for her to leave the palace. To change from Daddy's girl to Mary's girl. And now I knew what Kabibi's mission was.
I just didn't know why.