The Rebellion (41 page)

T
HERE WAS A
moment of astonished silence before Malik leapt to his feet with a snarl of fury.

“I do not know how things are done in Sador, madam, but here we talk before deciding such issues as whether to ally ourselves with the likes of this creature.”

“You talk. I have decided,” Jakoby pronounced imperiously.

If the moment had not been so fraught, the look of baffled and impotent fury on Malik’s face would have been comical.

“Jakoby, we honor you and know that your ways are different,” Brydda interposed smoothly. “Were we in your land, we would abide by your customs. But this is our land, and here decisions among allies are made by a majority decision through a vote, taken from all participants after everyone has had their say.”

The Sadorian grunted and flung herself into a seat with feline grace. “Very well. Talk,” she said in an openly bored tone.

Malik looked perfectly furious, and the other rebels were clearly discomforted by her contempt. I tried to imagine this domineering gold-skinned woman at a guildmerge, where everything was decided by consensus, and failed utterly.

“Lady,” Dardelan said, “you are a chief in your land. This, my father told me, is the Sadorian way, to choose the best and brightest by means of ritual challenges and then to allow them to lead without interference. But this is not Sador, nor is it
Sadorians whom you will battle. The Council, the soldierguards, and the Herder Faction are Landfolk, and perhaps in this light you may concede that there will be times when we will know better how to deal with them. Maybe you will learn something useful from observing our ways, just as we will learn from you. Isn’t that the advantage of an alliance?”

Jakoby made no response to this speech, but she had lost her bored expression.

“On behalf of the western bloc, I would like to say—” Cassell began, but Malik cut him off by snorting rudely.

“ ‘On behalf,’ Cassell? Do you have signatures over letters from Radek and Madellin explaining their absence and entitling you to represent them?” Malik demanded.

“We have come to an understanding—” Cassell began, but Malik interrupted him again with a loud laugh.

“An understanding—a very vague and useful term, is it not?”

Cassell flushed with anger, but he was not quick enough to compose a cutting rejoinder.

I glanced at the Sadorian, wondering how she felt about their petty bickering. It was no great advertisement for Land ways.

Elii rose to speak. “I want to know what these Misfits can do,” he said in his gruff accent. “I thought that was what we were here for.”

“That is what I was trying to say earlier when I was interrupted,” Cassell interposed with a dark look at Malik.

“I am not concerned with her tricks,” Malik said flatly.

“I would like to hear what Elspeth has to offer,” Dardelan said diffidently.

Brocade laughed coarsely. “No doubt you would, but we speak of war, boy, not bedsports.”

Dardelan flushed bright red, and I felt the blood from my own cheeks.

“If you would conduct a war the way you conduct this meeting, then I think it
best
if you stick to bedsports,” I snapped.

Brydda’s eyes warned me to be careful; a display of temper would undo any favorable impression I had managed to make.

“I suppose Misfits know better than human beings how to run a meeting,” Malik sneered.

Anger surged through me. Malik’s continued attempts to label me and his implication that we were neither normal nor human would not stop until I had answered him decisively. Yet I would remain calm and dignified if it killed me, I vowed.

The effort of keeping my temper leached all emotion from my voice, and when I spoke, it sounded curiously toneless. “We do not consider ourselves abnormal but only possessed of certain additional abilities. We lack nothing that any other human being has in the Land, excepting perhaps a place in the order of things. It is the Council who names us Misfit, along with dreamers and defectives. I do not know whether we conduct meetings better, but do I know that our aim when we meet is not to use words as sly daggers but to exchange information.” Sensing I had their undivided attention for the moment, I shifted to address the room rather than Malik.

“I came here today to offer you the opportunity to find out how my people can help you win your rebellion against the Council. Yet I am treated with as little courtesy as if I were your enemy. You insult me and sneer, and from this, I might judge that you wish me to depart.”

Malik’s eyes sparkled with triumph, and anticipation of his disappointment enabled me to infuse a sweetness I did not feel into my words. “Yet, in case not all who are in this room share Malik’s opinions and attitudes, I will speak my piece in spite of all his efforts to stop me.” I hurried on before the furious rebel
could cut in. “I have told you that we have additional abilities, and that is so. There are among us those who can communicate mind to mind over some distance. These we call
farseekers
. In a rebellion, with one such at your side, you could constantly exchange information and intelligence among yourselves and seek advice without leaving battle posts.”

I sensed I was speaking well, for all but Brocade and Malik had lost their skeptical looks and were listening intently—even the stern, silent Gwynedd.

“Others among us have the ability to empathise—that is, to receive or transmit feelings. Such an ability at your command would enable you to strike fear or doubt into a soldierguard captain at the crucial moment in a battle, or even to send love and friendship into the hearts of attacking forces to confuse and distract them.”

Malik laughed, but no one paid any attention to him. I felt a wild thrill. I had them!

“Some of us can communicate with beasts, which would enable us to project instructions and conflicting commands to enemy horses, thereby defusing a mounted charge.”

“That fingertalk of Brydda’s,” Malik sneered.

I shook my head, refusing to let him shake my confidence or control. “Brydda’s success at his fingerspeaking is admirable, but communicating with beasts, for those who have the Talent, is generally done via the mind as with farseeking. Were I nearby or even some distance away, I could reach out a voice from my mind to the horse on which a soldierguard is mounted and, provided my request was polite and reasonable—”

“Polite!” Cassell sounded startled and amused.

I looked at him gravely. “I find courtesy serves in any situation. Don’t you?”

He looked faintly abashed.

“Of course,” Malik jeered, drowning out whatever answer Cassell might have made. “We could all take a lesson from this and curtsy to our dogs and goats before breakfast.”

Brocade guffawed loudly. “I think I can conduct my forces without advice from my horse.”

I resisted the urge to suggest his horse could probably do a better job of it and went on to point out that, apart from our additional abilities, there were others among our number who had trained themselves as warriors and who were prepared to stand beside the rebels and fight.

“Are there other abilities?” Jakoby asked.

I glanced at her but did not let her catch my eyes. “Some of us have herb lore and are healers,” I said, keeping my fingers crossed that she would not persist. “All of our abilities we would place at your disposal if we were allied, in the hope that by defeating our common enemies, the Land will become a place where we can all live in peace, without persecution or slavery.”

“A pretty speech,” Malik sneered. “But the heart of the matter is that you wish to trade your dubious and unproven additional abilities for acceptance among normal humans.” He turned his burning eyes to the others. “We oppose the Council because of its misuse of power, not for its attempt to clean the human race of holocaust poisons and mutations. If we were to accept aid from these Misfits, we would have to give up trying to cleanse our race of deformity and mutation. Such a move would say that, hereafter, we will permit any freak or defective obscenity not only to live, but also to exist alongside us, to share our Land, our food, our crops; to bond with our sons and daughters.”

There was a charged silence, and I felt frozen by the hostility in the faces that turned to me.

“She is a Misfit, and I see no monster,” Dardelan said softly. “Is she the kind you mean when you speak of freaks and mutants, Malik?”

The boy had formidable subtlety, and I wondered what the father must be like, to have such a son.

“She is not visibly deformed,” Malik conceded with ill grace. “But what of those she represents? No doubt they have sent her precisely because she was the most comely among them. After all, they would not send a monster, would they?”

“There are none among us whom you would see in a crowd and know as Misfits,” I said. “None of us is physically deformed.”

I stopped, for this speech soured my mouth. I could not compromise what I believed, not even to win these people.

I looked directly into Malik’s eyes. “But were such a one to come among us, grossly deformed or not, we would not turn them away excepting that they were deformed of spirit or soul.”

From the corner of my eye, I saw the Sadorian shift involuntarily as if the words held some goad, but when I looked, her face was impassive.

“See!” Malik declared. “She has said that she and her kind would accept grossly deformed mutants, as long as they possess these Talents. And with such a philosophy, how many generations before we would be reduced to a herd of howling beasts? Rather the Council should continue to prevail than that. The thought of allowing mutants to exist alongside normal, decent Landfolk is an obscenity to me and one I could never condone.

“But,” he went on quickly, striding to the center of the room, “if your own values and decency are not enough to let you see what the ultimate outcome of this alliance must be, then think on this: These Misfits are little more than children,
despite all the abilities they claim. Is that not so?”

He shot me a look of icy interrogation.

“The majority of us are young, that’s true, but—”

“There you are. Condemned out of her own mouth,” Malik cried. “Are we to act as wet nurses to monstrous children in the very midst of battle? Is it not a burden rather than an asset that we would gain in shackling ourselves to her people?”

“Youth means nothing,” Elii said sharply. “I was a youth when I set up my rebel group. It’s guts and brains that count, not age—and this girl sounds to me as if she has enough of both. I’ve no love for mutants, but she is no freak. And if her people can do what she says they can, then they would give us an advantage the Council and the soldierguards could never counteract.”

There was a moment in which I thought Elii had actually won them over for me.

“Your brain is surely addled from whitestick,” Malik snarled. “Oh yes, by all means, invite these freaks to fight alongside you, Elii. And while you are at it, employ the cripples and the scum that clog the lanes of every city street and would as soon cut our throats as guard our backs. But in the remote chance that you would win with such a force, remember that you will not easily set them aside when war is done.

“I will seek out instead the best and worthiest to fight behind me, and though my force be less in number, it will prevail, for it will be made up of true humans, not distorted copies and ghastly shadow creatures. Every one of my force shall know what they are and be proud of it.”

“Your instinct for drama never ceases to enliven our meetings,” Brydda said, as if the whole of Malik’s impassioned
diatribe had been nothing more than a puppet show for the rebels’ amusement. “However, it might be as well to point out that this meeting is not to decide the future of the human race but merely to ascertain if this girl’s people can aid us when we rise against the Council.”

His dry businesslike tones diminished the effect of Malik’s wild rhetoric, but the gray-eyed rebel was not done yet.

He stepped up to Brydda, his eyes narrowed. “I am not a fool,” he hissed. “You want these Misfits to join us, and you connive with soft words and wiles to this end for some secret purpose of your own that eludes my reasoning.” He swung to face the others. “Ask yourselves that, too, my comrades. Why does Brydda Llewellyn support an alliance with them? Is it that he seeks control of the rebel forces with their help?”

“My father also favors an alliance,” Dardelan said coldly. “Do you also claim Bodera has secret purposes?”

Malik gave him a startled look, as if a duck had suddenly defended itself against a vicious dog.

“Do we need them?” Cassell asked, and the others turned to stare at the older man. “I ask if we need these Misfits, regardless of how useful they will be. Can we win without them? It seems to me that is a question we ought to be addressing.”

“There are more soldierguards than there are of our people,” Brydda said. “The simple answer is that we need everyone we can get.”

“No!” Brocade shrieked. “I say we dare not take them among us, no matter how great is our need. Misfits are despised by Lud. If we accept them, it is the same as rejecting Lud, and we will be punished with another plague or some worse thing than that. Lud will visit disaster on us, and perhaps because of their eldritch aid, we will lose when we would have won.”

I cast a look around the room and saw that all the rebels, even Elii, were looking thoughtful. I had underestimated fat Brocade badly.

I swallowed, and found my mouth dry with fear and tension and too many empty words. In that moment, I glanced at Malik. His eyes looked straight into mine, filled with naked loathing. His eyelids fell like shutters over the expression, but the hatred was burned irrevocably into my mind. In that instant, I understood that there would be no winning Malik’s vote and no compromise. Not ever.

“Cassell was right in asking if we need them. I say we do not! This is a war we will wage, and to win it, we need only good armor and weapons and the warriors to use them—strong, committed adults. But most of all, we need strong centralized leadership.”

The others were all nodding approval, the question of alliance shunted neatly aside.