“Master, forgive me,” she said. “I speak out of turn.”
“I thank the Fire you have spoken so, whether it is out of turn or not,” he replied. “I—I am here to learn to be Master and I am failing even to relearn to be human.” He glanced at the fire again, and it gave a little leap and flicker, like a smile and a wave. “It is not surprising no one can treat me as human, for I am no longer human. But what the people of Willowlands and I still have in common—should have in common—is Willowlands itself; and yet I hear nothing anyone says to me, about the great work of Willowlands, consultation after discussion after ritual after debate—I hear nothing, except as if clumsily translated from a foreign language. I see my Circle’s mouths moving and I hear the clatter their tongues make: and I understand nothing. Till I have begun to believe that I have indeed forgotten the language—the language of the land. I cannot be Master here if I cannot hear my people; when I can barely remember to say ‘yes thank you’ when a table servant offers me food.” He murmured something she could not quite hear, full of hissing syllables, which she guessed was the language of Fire, and then he continued, “Any Elemental priest would say we are all one beneath the three humours of the world; but the priests of each humour relinquish the other two…as if, perhaps, if we went out into the world again, we would hear only one word in three of what any ordinary human said. Perhaps I have heard only one word in three of what anyone here has said to me.
“I was prepared for this or something like this; I thought I was prepared. But I believed that we would reconnect in the land—I would not have come otherwise—and that has not happened. I have begun to fear that perhaps I do hear the land any more either.”
“Do you?” she said. She did not think that this speaking out of turn was much worse than her last, although to ask a Master if he could feel his own land was beyond any conceivable breach of etiquette, of law; if she had thought of it, she would have expected lightning—the Fire of the sky—to strike her dead before she finished saying you. But she did not think of it. She thought of her land—their land—which so badly needed its Master, and what she heard in Willowlands’ Master’s voice was despair. She knew despair, and she would draw him away from it if she could, both for the land’s sake and for his own—and for hers. And perhaps if a Chalice could not speak openly to her Master, no one could. “Do you hear your land speak?”
He was silent; silent long enough that she might have thought of what she had said, of the perfidy and faithlessness of the query she had dared put to her Master. But she did not think of it. She thought only of what he might answer her; and prayed for him to say that he was still Master.
“I believed I did,” he said at last. “I felt—something—the moment the carriage bringing me here crossed the boundary from Talltrees. I have thought that part of my exhaustion was not merely that a priest of Fire can no longer live as human, but that the land—my land—drew me back toward it so quickly that I was torn in two, between it and my training in Fire; that it needed my strength, and drew it remorselessly from me, when I had little to give. I lay awake all the first night here, listening, when I was so weary I could not stand, and when what I heard seemed half dream….”
His voice trailed away and she said quickly: “No, it is often like that for me too, still; I have thought it is because I am so new to it and because I was not called to it and bred up in it the proper way, but snatched, almost stolen, out of my old life and thumped down in this one. I think perhaps it is like dreaming, but like dreaming as a breeze is like a storm wind. If all you know is breezes then your first storm wind is—” And then finally, belatedly, it occurred to her to whom she was speaking and what she was saying, and she stopped and caught her breath—half in terror, half in shame—but even as she did she thought, He speaks to me clearly enough. Tentatively, because this was neither the time nor the place, she felt for her own landsense, and it was right there, close, solid, steady—closer and steadier than she would have expected it to be, if it were not also responding to the presence of the Master.
He said: “This morning, now, your words to me, have been the first human words I feel I have truly heard since I arrived five months ago. I thank you. You give me hope.”
And then the Grand Seneschal appeared in the doorway, and glared at them both as if he couldn’t help himself, before coming to make his obeisance to the Master with a smooth, respectful face. His apprentice, Bringad, followed him, looking worried; Bringad always looked worried. Then several more people arrived, Circle members and attendants and a few more apprentices; then the factors for farmers and woodskeepers, for whom this meeting had been called; and more bows and greetings were given. The woodskeepers’ factor, Gota, to whom she had once reported, had never once looked her in the face since she became Chalice. She acknowledged his respectful greeting with a hand gesture that his downturned eyes should be able to see, and sighed. Soon everyone who was to attend this meeting was present, all standing behind their chairs, waiting for the Master to sit first.
The Chalice took up her goblet and hesitated; she had thus far always chosen to stand by the main doorway during all House meetings, in whichever room they were in. This was the least controversial place for the Chalice to stand. She hadn’t yet had time to learn the rules about standing by a window, which were complex, to do with the cardinal directions, the seasonal angle of the sun, the position of the House, and the earthlines that ran through the demesne. The maths oppressed her, though she often thought wistfully of being able to stand in sunlight.
It was also perfectly proper for the Chalice to stand by the Master’s right hand.
But when she looked at him, with the thought barely half formed, she saw him with a little shock, for it was as if the conversation they had just had had not happened—and yet the absence of pain in her right hand told her that it had. But the great cloaked figure standing by the fire held power and authority as it held darkness; their conversation could not possibly have been what she seemed to half remember it had been about. He might be strange, alien, no longer human; but he could not be doubted. This was the Master. She turned toward the doorway.
His voice stopped her. “Stand by me,” he said, and took two long, loping, silent steps to the tall chair at the head of the table. Two Housemen stood by it, waiting to slide it forward as the Master sat down. He sat, and the Housemen stepped back—a little too quickly, a little too far—and the Master raised his right hand, and the cloak fell back from it. She saw, in the low morning light, that a few fine hairs grew on the back of it, just as on a human hand. She shifted her grip on her goblet, proudly turning the back of her own unblemished right hand toward the company, and took up her place at the Master’s side.