"What is the meaning of-"

"You can guess the meaning, Bill," Anna said. "Can't you?"

All I could do was stare in stupefaction.

"It was a mummery," Anna said. "Only you never guessed it, did you? We did our research on our cla.s.smates' knightly kin-thank you for teaching us how-and we put it to good use. A shame you already wrote your paper and sent it off, isn't it? You're going to look a bit of a fool when the truth comes out."

I opened my mouth, but no words came out, only a bleat. "Marrr-"

"Marigold didn't know it was us," Anna said. "Nor did any of the Third Bedchamber. They couldn't have played their parts so well if they had. Oh, and there's one thing more that you don't know, loremaster.

After graduation, I'm not doing my squireship here at Castle Olansa. I'm doing it at court. My cousin has found me a place there. In fact, there'll be a steady supply of us tyros going up to court in the future.

You'll probably want to use your new position to make things as comfortable as possible for us, don't you think?"

"Or else," Elizabeth said.

"Don't you have anything to say, Bill? Your mouth is wide open. Don't you want to call us silly b.i.t.c.hes or stupid idiots or worthless dung?"

Marigold said, "Maybe that's enough, Anna. He looks sorry."

"Oh, he's sorry, aren't you, Bill? He's sorry he thought we were too stupid and too defenseless to take care of ourselves."

Anna stepped closer. She raised her forearm and I saw, through my numb horror, that the inside of the elbow had a tiny tattoo. Of clasped hands.

Suddenly I remembered that the emblem on Marigold's breastplate, the one that was always coming loose, was two clasped female hands.

"Your lore doesn't include everything," Catherine said to me. "We girls have lore among ourselves, you know. We go armored in each other."

"Whereasyou go armored in failure," Anna said, smiling, "unless you can be willing to change your armor. If you can no longer do something well, don't do it any longer. Give yourself to your new life completely, Bill."

"That'sus ," said Elizabeth, "we're your new life. Serving us as we come up to court, one by one by one."

"Never yore," a raven said. "Forever more." And I could say nothing at all, just gaze at them in horror: the stupid silly b.i.t.c.hes, the clasped hands, the unthinkable future.

Fun With Hieroglyphics

Margaret Ball

After thirty minutes of staring at a blank screen, I was finally inspired by the distinctive death-rattle sound of Norah's old Chevy coughing itself to a halt at the curb outside - not to words, but at least to action. I grabbed the mouse and clicked on the spreadsheet window I'd left minimized in the bottom left-hand corner of the screen. The resulting display of Dennis's and my finances was not a cheerful sight, but it was better than letting Norah look at the opening pages of my new book.

All 0,000 words and 0 K of it.

"Riva?" Norah called through the screen door as she came in with someone trailing her. "Is Jason ready yet? Oh, this is my friend Stephanie. She's a tech writer at Xycorp, that's why she looks like a grownup."

"How many times do I have to tell you, I'mnot a 'tech writer'? My t.i.tle is manager of hard-copy composition and distribution resources," Stephanie corrected Norah. A faint line showed between her two perfectly arched, perfectly shaped brows. Her mouth was painted a clear, bright red mouth-shape and her eyes were outlined with curving, dark brown eye-shapes that matched her hair. At least, I a.s.sumed it was hair. It didn't stick to her forehead or creep across her cheeks or cling to the back of her neck the way everybody else's hair did in Austin's spring humidity and heat.

"Whatever," Norah agreed cheerfully. She sank down in a wicker chair that creaked under her plump form. "How's the book coming, Riva?" She turned to Stephanie. "Riva's another writer, did I tell you?

But she never comes to Austin Writers League meetings-that's where I met Steph," she interpolated in my direction before looking back at Stephanie. "Her Salla and my Jason are working on some kind of truly dumb school project together."

"Theoretically," I agreed, happy to drop the subject of my nonexistent second book. "Theysaid they needed to do some research at the library. I dropped them off about an hour ago. They were going to take the bus home. But if I know them, they haven't started their research yet; they're still kvetching about the dumb project. Sorry, Norah. I'll bring Jason home when they show up."

"Well, itis dumb," Norah said. "Develop a 3-D diorama in an empty oatmeal box, ill.u.s.trating the building of the Pyramids."

"It does seem more like third-grade work than eighth-grade," I agreed. "But they've also got the option of staging a one-act play dramatizing some incident of Egyptian history."

Norah groaned. "Twenty-two eighth-grade girls playing twenty-two versions of Cleopatra and the asp."

"Never happen," I said. "With Gene Kruzak teaching the Ancient History module, they'll never even haveheard of Cleopatra. They probably think she's a charm you find at the bottom of the oatmeal box." "Your Salla knows about Cleopatra," Norah said. "I'll bet."

"Salla's too strong a feminist to play that part. If they do a play, she'll probably rewrite Egyptian history to have Cleopatra recruiting an army and conquering Rome."

If I hadn't said that, would it have saved us all from what happened? The Paper-Pushers don't believe in the power of words, for all they use so many of them. My people know better. Words-especially mathemagical equantations-call spirits out of the air. And other things.

However, at the time I didn't feel anyfrisson of warning. The cold chills were caused by Norah's renewing her inquiries about how the book was coming. She'd been too good a friend, for too long, for me to actually lie to her. I did sort of wish the intimidatingly competent Stephanie hadn't been there too, though, listening to my confession of failure with those perfectly shaped brows rising in perfect half-moon crescents above her eyes.

"Everything else I've written . . . " I concluded, then glanced at Stephanie. "Er, Stephanie, you don't read science fiction, do you?"

Stephanie gave me a patronizing smile. "In my position, I'm afraid it's all I can do to keep up with the current psychological and technical literature."

"Right. Well.You know, Norah, I'm not so good at making up plots. That first book was just about stuff that happened right here in Austin. And the stories I've been selling to anthologies are all based on things that happened . . . in my homeland," I said, bearing Stephanie's presence in mind. "Now my editor says she wants the new book to be set in this uni . . . I mean, country, not in Da . . . my homeland. And I haven'tdone anything to write about here, at least not since . . . that stuff in the first book." Stephanie didn't seem offended by all the elisions; in fact, she didn't even seem to be listening. She was tapping one foot and staring off as if she could see right through the wall to the pile of laundry in our bedroom. Still, there was no point in bringing up my-unusual-background with somebody who didn't already know about it.

"You know what, Riva," Stephanie said suddenly. So much for my theory that she'd s.p.a.ced out ten minutes ago. "I've met a lot of women like you, and I think I can help you."

"You can?" Somehow Stephanie didn't seem like a good source for sword-and-sorcery adventure plots, but who knows? Maybe she too had a Past.

"Sure. You're one of the standard types," Stephanie said. "I bet you quit your job to raise the kid, right?"

"Well . . . Not exactly. I tried working part-time for a few years . . . "

"And it didn't work out! Exactly! It's just too hard for women to divide their attention between the career and the home."

Actually, what I'd found was that after I hit thirty-five, working as a swordswoman-for-hire was too hard, period, but Stephanie was not interruptible.

"Now your daughter is old enough that she really doesn't need you, except to drive her places, and you're at loose ends. The home-based businesses you may have tried didn't work out," Stephanie went on. I couldn't contradict her about Salla, anyway. Since she turned thirteen Salla hardly said anything to me except, "Oh, Mooom!", "Will you drive me to the mall now?" and "How much longer are you gonna tie up the computer, I want to get on my chat room."

"What you need, Riva," Stephanie announced confidently, "is someone to help you reenter the professional world, get you started back in a career-track job. And I can do that for you."

"Um . . . " I didn't want to insult Stephanie, but shereally didn't look like somebody who would have any contacts at all with my old employers-people like Zolkir the Terrible and Rodograunizzo the Revolting.

Even if I'd wanted to get back into that business.

"Stephanie came to the Writers League tonight because she was recruiting tech writers for Xycorp,"

Norah put in.

"Andyou ," Stephanie announced, looking straight at me, "are just the kind of person I'm looking for!

Women who've been shunted out of the mainstream of professional work by our society's s.e.xist att.i.tude towards child-rearing, looking for a way back in . . . "

"Umm . . . I don't have much of a resume," I pointed out.

Stephanie waved her hand airily. "I can take care of all that. Youhave writing experience. And Norah's told me about your past life."

I glared at Norah.

"Any woman with the guts to do what you've already done - to leave your child's father and your homeland, to immigrate to the United States and start a new life from scratch - well, it's clear to me that you have what it takes to make it in the trenches of office politics."

And it was becoming clear to me that Norah hadn't told Stephanieall about my past life.

She leaned forward and took my hands. This close, the fervor in her eyes was almost hypnotic. "I need you, Riva. Xycorp needs you. Thissociety needs you and women like you."

"Writers?"

"Strong women. Women who can roll with the punches and come up fighting."

Hmm. Maybe being a technical writer wouldn't be so boring after all. At least it seemed to call for skills I really had.

"Of course," Stephanie said, "you'll have to dress professionally at work."

I looked down at my jeans and T-shirt, visualized my old working outfit in its box under the bed.

Somehow I had a feeling that a bronze chain mail corselet and thigh guards were not quite what Stephanie had in mind.

"What's wrong with these clothes?"

Stephanie and Norah looked at each other and there was one of Those Silences. You know the kind Imean: the kind where you realize that you've just revealed your total ignorance of the game and total unworthiness to play.

"I'm sure," Stephanie said finally, sounding considerably less sure than she had up to now, "that we can find something for you."

"Finding something" turned out to be somewhat more work than I had envisioned. Take shopping malls, for instance. I used to sneer at the ladies who got their exercise by walking up and down the length of an air-conditioned mall because they couldn't stand to work up an honest sweat. After Stephanie and I had been through Barton Springs Mall three times in one afternoon I had more respect for them. If nothing else, their feet were considerably tougher than mine, which ached from instep to heel, with separate factions of rebellious nerves lodged in each toe. As a member in good standing of the Bronze Bra Guild, with forty individual kills and several successful campaigns to my credit, I had too much pride to complain. I did reflect, however, that the Guild's training, which relied heavily on forced marches through the desert, running up mountains, and combat sparring, could reasonably be augmented by a few more endurance tests. In short, I had never trained for so many hours of walking on concrete floors. Of course, on Dazau we hadn'thad concrete . . . .

By the time Stephanie p.r.o.nounced herself satisfied with a gray suit that simultaneously concealed my chest and hobbled my knees, together with a set of undergarments that had been constructed by someone with bridge building and other major engineering feats on his mind, I was too tired to care about the funny-looking shoes that made me look as if I were walking on tiptoe. I couldn't tell if they fit anyway; my feet were going to hurt no matterwhat I wore. Ice packs seemed like a good choice.

All this may explain why for once I didn't mind when Salla staged her usual homecoming routine. This consisted of yelling, "I'M HOME!", slamming the front door, grabbing a handful of cookies and a c.o.ke from the kitchen, and shutting herself in the cubbyhole we called a "study," where she could simultaneously watch TV, log on to a chat room with her friends, and talk on the phone. This was known as "doing homework." Some days I regretted the pa.s.sing of the time when she'd wanted to tell me every detail of her day. Today, though, I was perfectly content to lie on the bed listening to my feet throbbing.

The longer Salla spent on the phone, the louder her voice got. That would have been okay with me, too, except that the walls of our house were made from something with all the sound-baffling qualities of a damp cardboard box. Thin cardboard. So I had the dubious pleasure of listening to one side of a conversation that seemed to consist entirely of, "No way!", "Hedid ?" and "Nof.u.c.king way, dude!"

"Salla," I called, "are you aware that I can hear every word you're saying?"

"That's okay, Mom," she yelled back, "I only reveal my innermost thoughts on the chat room. Right now I'm online with a nice old man in Copenhagen who likes little girls."

Well. I had to move sometime, if only to go to the bathroom. I hobbled to the study and looked over Salla's shoulder. The chat-room log showed nothing but the usual string of ba.n.a.lities:

SoMch2dI4: blah FadeSoSlow: oaky SoMch2dI4: blah SoMch2dI4: Do u know Y jess is so mad at mark?

FadeSoSlow: no SoMch2dI4: i c FadeSoSlow:so are you gonna do the f.u.c.king a.s.signment?

SoMch2dI4: Yeah SoMch2dI4: if I don't my parents will KILL me SoMch2dI4: they are like totally paranoid about school

"You got that right, anyway," I told the back of her head, "but what happened to the dirty old man from Copenhagen? You enticed me in here under false pretenses."

Salla giggled. "Come on, Mom. You know I wouldn't be dumb enough to chat with anyone like that."

She paused and pretended to think for a moment. "Unless, of course, he hadcandy . . . "

"So what's the 'f.u.c.king a.s.signment'? And why aren't you doing it now?"

"Just aminute , Mom!" Salla typed, "got2go, my mom is ha.s.sling me," and logged off.

"It's that dumb thing for the ancient Egypt study unit, okay? You know, we gotta do a diorama in an oatmeal box, act in a dumb play, or . . . h.e.l.l, where's the d.a.m.n a.s.signment sheet?" She rooted around in her backpack, tossing several empty juice boxes and a collection of ponytail holders onto the floor, and finally pulled out a crumpled sheet of paper. "Or find some other original and creative way of dramatizing ancient Egyptian life and making it real to your fellow students," she read with a sarcastic twist of her lip.

I hadn't seen this piece of paper before, and the decorative markings around the edges made the hairs on the back of my neck rise. I took it from her. "Where did you get this?"

Salla sighed again, more elaborately. "From Mr. Kruzak, where else?"

"But thesesymbols . . . " An old phrase from my apprenticeship to the wizard Mikhalleviko came to my mind. "Sacred carvings."

"Mom. They're just old Egyptian writing. Hieroglyphs. Nothing to get bent out of shape about. I got a cheat sheet off the Net that says what they stand for and how to p.r.o.nounce them. See, this one means 'star' or the sound 'sba,' and this one means . . . " Salla's eyes drifted to the top of her cheat sheet and she looked confused. "And it says right at the top of the page that the word 'hieroglyph,' literally means 'sacred carvings.' How'd you know that?"

"I've . . . seen them before. Some of them, anyway. On Dazau they're . . . a wizard told me once that they were extremely potent magical symbols from the Old Tongue, only most of them had been lost and n.o.body knew exactly how to p.r.o.nounce the ones that are left, so it was dangerous trying to invoke them;you never knew quite what you were going to get." Some of the results Mikhalleviko had gotten while experimenting with Sacred Carvings Magic were enough to wake me up screaming in the middle of the night fifteen years later.

"Way coool," Salla said. "Too bad Dazau magic doesn't work here."

"Thank goodness." I took a deep breath, tried to calm my fluttering nerves, and remembered just how much my feet hurt. "So what are you going to do for your project?"

Salla's three-cornered grin should have warned me, but I was thinking about those peculiar shoes and wondering whether I'd actually be able to stand up on them. "Something original and creative, of course.

That's ten points extra."

"Like what?"

"When I figure it out, I'll tell you." Salla sat back in her chair and stared at me with that opaque look she'd developed around her thirteenth birthday. It meant, "Go away, don't bother me, information will be dispensed on a strict need-to-know basis."

So I did. I needed to rest up before tomorrow, anyway. Stephanie had scheduled me a six-hour appointment at Hair Apparent. I had no idea how anybody could spend six whole hours cutting hair, but I figured I was about to find out. What I didn't realize was that I shouldn't have been worried about the remodeling of Riva - I should have been thinking about Salla home alone with the computer for several hours. We'd had Call Trans-Forwarding and a link to Furo Fykrou via Virtual Service Provider for years, ever since I'd been a commuter mom with an address on the Planet of the Paper-Pushers and a day job as swordswoman for Duke Zolkir; and Iknew Salla had figured out how to access all that stuff.