Page 4 of Into the West

By this time, he was at the mouth of the river that trailed into the Lake, draining out of the swamp that was several leagues along. This was where most of the mages had made their own little camp of boats. Most ordinary folk liked the idea of mages, but didn’t care for living anywhere near them. There were, after all, the occasional clouds of stinking smoke, accidental fires, and certainly odd lights and sounds at all times of the day and night. Mages, on the whole, did not much care for living around ordinary folk, either. They were, to say the least, a bit eccentric. Many of them had been bullied in their childhoods by “ordinary” folk. And when they were among other mages, they didn’t have to explain behaviors like pacing for hours, muttering, or suddenly leaping up in the middle of something else to run to “try something out.”

The Mender was here. He was a young protégé of Sai’s who showed a remarkable aptitude for putting the Dolls to rights. A great many of them had come through the Gate injured, on fire, or both, and he had been the first to volunteer to try to fix them. He still hadn’t found a way to free the animating vrondi from the fabric and wood shell, but he could make them as good as new when they needed repairs without putting them in pain.

The Mender had a tent on the shore, although he lived in a barge with five other mages. The tent, one of the ones that had been brought here to establish the beachhead for the migration, was for his work. The flaps were tied wide open to let in air and sun, and Kordas rode up to it and tethered Arial to a tent-peg before ducking inside.

Delia hung on Doll Ivy’s every word, as the Doll described Kordas’s one-sided fight with the man who had beaten and broken another Doll that Ivy had not put a name to. And when Ivy reported that Rose and other Dolls were taking the broken one to the Mender, Delia was torn—part of her wanted to go to the Baron, but the other part of her knew that although she did not have any kind of magic, the Mender found her of great use, and would probably want her. Duty won out, and she knew she would get to the Mender faster than the Dolls could bring the victim, so what she told him could give him time to prepare.

When Rose, Cobweb, and Trout arrived with the poor victim cradled among them, the tent was already prepared, with new “bones” laid out, fabric ready for patching, and a big bag of lamb’s wool sifted full of sand and pre-enchanted for stuffing. This was one of the first things that the Mender had intuited, and the writings on the subject—once the Dolls had found them in the barges-full of records they had stolen—had confirmed it. One of the things that made the Dolls possible in the first place was that their “stuffing” was full of tiny crystals holding magical energy, and what was sand if not billions of tiny crystals?

The Mender had a name, but he was so nondescript, with his plain brown hair, unflappable expression, and forgettable face, that at this point everyone just called him Mender, and he seemed to like it.

With the victim laid carefully on a clean cloth, the first thing that the Mender did was place both hands over a spot in the middle of the Doll’s chest where the vessel containing the bound vrondi was. After a moment, the Doll let out an unaccustomed sound that was very like a sigh.

“Well,” the Doll said. “Not feeling anything at all is a small price to pay for not feeling pain. This is strange.”

The Mender took away his hands and smiled. “Everyone says that,” he replied. “Including humans. Now, let’s see what damage was done. We’ll start with your arms.”

Between them he and Delia got the poor thing undressed—if you could call the rags the Doll had adopted “clothing”—and the first thing they both did was to hunt for the nearly-invisible knot that ended the seam holding the Doll’s arms to their shoulders. Delia found hers first, teased the long ending of the thread out of where it had been buried in the stuffing, and carefully unpicked the knot. The thread holding the Dolls together was also enchanted and the Mender didn’t yet know how to make it, so when they took a Doll to pieces for any reason, they had to retain the thread and reuse it.

The Dolls had told the Mender that this was the usual case back at the Imperial Capital; the thread apparently could only be enchanted while it was being spun, and there was only one mage who could enchant and spin.

Fortunately the fabric of their bodies was perfectly ordinary canvas, or Delia wasn’t sure what they would have done about the Dolls who had come out of the Gate on fire. How awful that must have felt, Delia thought, but fortunately for everyone, repairing counts as healing up for them, and we could fix them.

The thread seemed to resist damage to a remarkable degree, and did respond to spells to restore it to perfect condition.

With the arms detached from the shoulders, and a quick check showing that the clever wooden ball-joints were undamaged, the next task was to find the knot that ended the seam holding the upper arm together and unpick that seam, carefully saving every scrap of stuffing. This was where Delia was coming in very handy to the Mender; she was a deft seamstress, and her Fetching Gift gave her the equivalent of an extra hand. Plus, of course, having someone on the other side of the Doll repeating what he was doing cut his time of assembly and disassembly in half.

The Doll bones were strange things, made of wood with windings of copper strung with crystal beads. The Mender didn’t know how to make those yet, either—but he did know how to transfer the spells from the broken bones to the new ones. Then he fitted the joints together—the sound of them snapping into place had been unnerving at first, but now it sounded satisfying to Delia—and they sewed the mended limbs back together, making sure that the canvas was as tight over the stuffing as skin was over muscle. By the time Kordas arrived, they were stitching up the last seams, ending each one with that special secure knot, and burying the long tail beneath the canvas skin and deep into the woolen stuffing.

It always made her giggle a little when, thanks to the sand in the wool, the needle ended up sharper and cleaner than it had been when she started.

The Mender had restored feeling to the Doll once the bones were replaced, and she was fairly certain the stitching was causing them pain, but the Doll accepted it without complaining.

“How are you feeling now?” Kordas asked the Doll, looking into their sketched-on eyes.

“This one is much improved,” the Doll replied, as they slowly sat up, and gingerly moved their limbs, trying them out. “Much thanks to the Mender and Lady Delia.” Kordas wordlessly handed the Doll some clothing from his saddlebags.

The Doll took it . . . with a moment of hesitation. “This one shall return these when—”

“No need,” Kordas interrupted, a little gruffly. “It’s the least I can do to make up for what happened to you.”

“Then this one thanks you.” The Doll got into the clothing—which just looked a bit uncanny, and Delia glanced away—then bowed to Kordas. “And this one thanks you, not only for coming to this one’s rescue, but for exiling the human. This is not the first time he has harmed a Doll. It was only the most violent.”

Kordas went a little pale at that, but quickly recovered. “If anything like that happens again, I want to know about it,” he said, his voice a little harsh. “Immediately. And hereafter if someone mistreats a Doll, you Dolls are authorized to get the nearest of my Guard and come deal with the offender. I’ll—actually I’ll add that to my speech.” He ran his hand through his hair. “I need to go work out that speech,” he added with an air of distraction. “Now that I know you’re all right, I should get back to that.”

With that, he turned abruptly and left, with Delia’s gaze upon him still.

“Would you mind staying here for a little longer to help me clean and organize?” the Mender asked.

She didn’t sigh, but . . . those were servants’ duties, and she had been doing a lot of servants’ duties lately. Of course, that was because the servants had been doing a lot of other duties since they all got here. Well, even a young female servant was probably physically stronger than Delia was. And most of them had some acquaintance with the kind of work that needed to be done around the lake. And most of them wouldn’t complain about being asked to step outside of their old duties and pick up a shovel to dig latrine trenches, or a hand-scythe to gather grasses and weeds for the grazing animals, or help with mending or cooking. She couldn’t help but feeling a bit put-upon, but before the feeling had a chance to set in, something would happen, like she’d see Isla with the sleeves of her gown rolled up above her elbows, helping in their communal kitchen. And then she’d feel guilty for feeling put-upon.

Well, helping the Mender isn’t nearly as bad as trying to herd those three nephews of mine. Little Jon wasn’t bad, but Restil and his brother Hakkon could be like a pair of twin ferrets, into everything, and there one moment and gone the next. Freed from the duties of being pages, and because of their background, too young to really be put to any useful work, they were treating all this as the best holiday ever. She was very tired of being dragooned into “watching” them, because they treated her as a challenge to escape from, and when they disappeared, it was a given that within the mark she’d be summoned by someone who was very annoyed to “come get them out of their mischief.” They’d already tried to ride every beast short of a horse that was large enough to ride, and she shuddered to think what would have happened if the sow they’d tried to turn into their pony had had her piglets with her at the time. They poked their noses into the laundry and nearly got scalded for their trouble, they’d long since been banished from every communal kitchen for trying to filch food, and after the ram-riding incident none of the shepherds wanted them near the sheep and goats. The cowherds had threatened to drown them if they bothered the cattle again. The goose-girls had set the ganders on them, and the roosters had defended their flocks with spurs, so they were at least keeping clear of the fowl on their own. They each seemed to have the energy of six Delias, and so far she hadn’t been able to think of anything that would occupy them safely. And even if she did, chances were if they saw a bird or a butterfly they’d run to chase it.

She couldn’t even hide from her sister in her own boat—because it wasn’t just “her” boat anymore. Just as her three nephews had been quartered with their parents—fully filling up that barge—she’d had five female servants put with her. So there was absolutely no privacy, and no escaping the fact that if Isla was heard to call Delia’s name, there would be at least five people who would be sure to tell Isla that “I’m sure I saw your sister in her barge.”

Well, I am halfway around the lake from Isla right now, and I’d rather help the Mender than run my feet off after those boys. So she smiled. “If another pair of hands is useful to you, then I am all yours.”

“Very much so when working on a Doll as badly hurt as that one was,” the Mender said, coloring a little, and making her think he probably didn’t have much experience being around girls. “Your Gift was exactly what was needed to hold things without obstructing my vision. A pair of invisible hands is extremely useful.” The two of them began picking up all of the varied and somewhat odd things he needed when he was mending a Doll. She’d done this twice before, and knew where everything was now. “May this be the last time we Mend a Doll here at Crescent Lake,” he said, as she carefully retrieved every thread of magical fluff and stowed it away. “I wish we could stay, but I can easily see why we can’t.” At her glance of puzzlement, he elaborated. “I’m Landwise. That might be why I’m good at putting the Dolls back together. I can feel the stress so many people all in one place is putting on this area. To be honest, the best thing we can do for this lake is leave it before we’ve started ruining it.”