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in the garden. But even if it had been the dead ofwinter, she would have been
up here, for this was the only place on the entire estate that gave an
unrestricted view down into thevalley below. And what she watched through the
eyepiece ofher bit of antique equipment was fascinating indeed. There wasno
breeze to stir the silken, silvery-blue folds of her dress, ordisturb the
simple, straight fall of her hair, nor to make breezes wave distant branches
between her and the interesting scene so far away in the valley. She felt
sorry for the tiny little figuresthat she knew by their drab tunics were human
slaves. First onebrightly-colored creature in scarlet paraded them out and set
them to work in the kitchen-garden. Then a second appeared, clad in a violent
blue, far too soon for them to have accom-plished much, and marched them off
to drill with weapons.
Then athird emerged from the stables, this one in bronze satin, and
ran them off into the farm-fields. What those poor bewil-dered slaves must be
thinking now, she could not even begin toguess.
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"Lady Morthena?" said a diffident voice from behind the El- ven lady.
"What are you doing?"
Lady Moth took her eye away from the eyepiece of the old-fashioned,
gold-and-bronze telescope, and turned to smile at her most recent guest.
"I am using an old device, my dear," she said to the younger woman in
a kindly voice, knowing that Lady Viridina wouldnever have seen such a thing
as a telescope. "In fact, it datesquite back to Evelon or at least, the lenses
in it do. It is called atelescope, and although I normally use it to examine
stars, at the moment I am using it to spy upon our neighbors." She pat-ted the
long cylinder of bronze, with ornate curlicues chased into the metal and
inlaid with gold wire, for it was a very old friend and long-time companion.
Lady Viridina's pale brow wrinkled with puzzlement, with a faint
frown on a face that was attenuated by long illness. "Whyare you bothering to
do that?" she wondered. "They already tellyou everything, don't they?"
"That, my dear, is what I am ascertaining for myself." Lady Moth put
her eye back to the eyepiece, and continued to makemental notes on the
movements of the Young Lords' slaves out-side the Great House. "In point of
fact, I rather doubt that theyaretelling me everything. For instance, there
seems to be somedisagreement down there about just who is in charge of what.
Just during the time I have been sitting here, I have seen one hapless group
of slaves herded from one uncompleted task toanother by three different Young
Lords." She chuckled, and herlaughter was echoed faintly by her companion, who
patted theknot of long, silver hair at the back of her head self-consciously.
"That is what comes with age, Viridina; suspicion. I stopped tak-ing things at
face value a very, very long time ago."
"So did I but the difference between us, I think, is thatyou found
other ways of finding out what you needed to know, andI didn't even try,"
Viridina said ruefully, twisting her hands in
the fine silk of her flowing and many-layered violet gown. "If I had,
perhaps "
She didn't finish the sentence, but Lady Moth was not aboutto allow
her to sink into self-recrimination. "If you had, I doubtthat it would have
materially changed anything. You and I were firmly under the thumbs of our
unlamented Lords, and no knowledge or even foreknowledge would have allowed us
tochange what happened to us. Knowledge is not always power."She smiled again.
"If it was, fond as I am of my Tower, it would be Lady Moth who ruled the
manor down there, and not thatrabble of Young Lords."
Lady Moth had known very well that there was going to be aslave
revolt when the Young Lords staged their own revolution against their elders.
Her own slaves had told her.She had al-ready taken herself out of her
disagreeable husband's home;she had made a bargain with him if he gave her the
lady-keep,which had been the Dowager-House attached to his estate,shewould
make no trouble for him when he filed a divorcementwith the Council. He had
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