The Buttoned Sky Part 9

"Take this rucker and find a bed for him. Jump!"

"Yessir." Dawvys, a plump fellow with no hint of his enormous endurance in his look, motioned Rack out of the library.

Ewyo said, "Well! How are you, Nirea? Your sister Jann and I have been worrying."

"I'm all right."

"Did you suffer indignities at the hands of that crazy miner?"

He looked like a d.a.m.ned red-faced bear, she thought, and surprised herself by saying, "Revel treated me with--with much consideration."

"Huh! Wouldn't have thought it. You want to sleep?"

"Don't bother about me," she said, turning. "Get on with your pressing business, father." She went to her room and lay down on the satin-sheeted bed without even removing the tattered rucker's clothes.

For a long while she lay there, thinking. Then she did a thing that no one could ever have convinced her she'd do till that day. She changed into a sheer black gown, after bathing of course, and slipped downstairs to her father's private room.

She had never been in it, no one but Ewyo had; she had no clear notion of what she was looking for. But an army of questions warred in her mind, and it seemed to her that there were secrets she must discover: answers which she had never looked for, explanations for things she had always taken for granted.

For instance, she thought, turning the handle slowly and without noise, why were the gentry the gentry? Why did the G.o.ds allow almost anything to her kind, when the ruck had no rights? She shook her head. All her breeding said she was mad, yet she opened the door of the private room and walked in.

Dawvys whirled from where he had been bending over a huge leather-bound book on a table. His face was white, but it cleared of panic when he saw her.

"The Lady Nirea moves silently."

"What are you doing here?" she asked sharply.

"The same thing you mean to do, Lady. I'm seeking the answers to certain problems."

"Can a rucker read minds like a globe?"

He laughed. "It was an obvious guess, Lady."

"And have you found answers, Dawvys?"

He sighed. "I cannot read, as the Lady knows. No rucker reads."

She watched his face a moment. "Stay here," she said. "_I_ can read."

"The Lady of the Mink is kind," he said, bowing. The t.i.tle did not shock her. Strangeness on strangeness!

The book was full of queer writing, like none she had ever seen. Instead of letters that each stood alone, the letters were joined, each word being a unit without a break; and they seemed to stand up a little from the page, not being sunken into the paper as all printing was that she had seen.

With difficulty she read a few sentences.

"This day the third in the month of Orbuary I did feed the G.o.ds, more than forty of them in the morning and twenty after eating. I am so weak I can hardly hold this pen."

"What does it mean?" asked Dawvys.

"I don't know." She flipped a page. "This day did hunt the fox, he being a strong untiring trapper who was found with forbidden ale cached in his house, and chased him over eight mile before he went to earth in a spinney, where the dogs found him and tore him to bits. Afterwards did feed nine G.o.ds, who have drained me so I cannot see but in a fog," she read aloud.

"That's your father speaking," whispered Dawvys, "He hunted a trapper last month."

"But how is it down here, if it was Ewyo? The books were made many years before my grandfather was born. No one makes books now. The art is lost."

"Nevertheless, I think Ewyo made this one himself. Unless it's a prophecy of the G.o.ds." He turned the book over. "What does it say on the outside?"

She read it with cold grue inching up her back. "Ewyo of Dolfya, His Ledger and Record Book."

"Then he did make it."

"How? How could he? The art is lost!"

"Many things the ruck believed have been proved false in these last hours," Dawvys said. "Perhaps the gentry's beliefs are equally wrong."

She left the book and went to a desk by the oiled-paper window. A drawer was partly open. Inside was a big heap of dandelions, thick gra.s.ses, and wild parsley. She remembered Jerran's taunt, "Your father eats dandelions!"

"Dawvys, why are these here?"

"I don't know, Lady. I gather them and the squire eats them, but why, I can't say."

There was a sound at the door. Dawvys sprang toward the brocaded hangings, too late; Ewyo thrust in his head, black rage on his features.

"What in the seven h.e.l.ls are you doing here, Nirea?"

The habits of a lifetime couldn't be overcome by a day in the presence of the Mink. She said quickly, "I saw Dawvys come in, father, and followed him."

"Oh. Good for you. Dawvys, report yourself to the huntsman for a fox!"

Dawvys bowed and went out. She breathed freely; he would escape, and still she'd saved herself. What Ewyo might have done to her, she didn't know, but she feared him when he was roused.

She yearned to ask him about the book and the weeds, but didn't dare.

She pa.s.sed him and went to the resting room, where she occupied a chair for an hour, blankly pondering the tottering of her universe.

At last she stood up. She was a gentrywoman, she had guts in her belly.

Why shouldn't she ask her father questions? Before she could think about it and grow scared, she went searching, and ran across her sister Jann.

Jann was twenty-four, a tall ash-blonde woman with snaky amber eyes and pointed ears who lorded it over the household.

"Have you seen Ewyo?"

"He's in the private room."

She headed for it, and Jann ran to catch at her arm. "You can't disturb him there!"