From a High Tower (33 page)

“Tell Cody an' Kellermann 'bout what?” The very two people they were talking about strolled up at that moment on their way back to their tents; evidently they had remained behind to continue discussing the arrangements for the move into winter quarters.

Quickly, Giselle explained about the unseen “watcher” that had been plaguing her for the past two weeks. It was a great relief to her that neither of them treated her as if she was overdramatizing anything.

Or worse, making it up. Because if she hadn't been the subject of this intense and intrusive regard,
she
would have a little difficulty believing in it.

“If'n I was home, I'd'a say it was likely 'nother mage tryin' t'figger a way t'steal yer power,” Cody said, finally. “My Ma—she's the Master in the fam'bly—she warned me 'bout that. Gen'rally fer a feller, it's a purdy straightforward ritual murder.”

The way he paused made her mouth go dry. Rosa filled in what Cody had not said grimly. “And for a woman, it's violation,” she said, mincing no words.

Giselle found herself clutching the side of her
vardo
as her mind flashed back across the years. In her mind's eye, she saw “Johann Schmidt,” if that had indeed been his name, as clearly as if it had been yesterday. She saw him kneeling over her, just before Mother burst through the door of her room and attacked him. The cruel expression on his face made her shudder even now. And now . . . now she wondered. Had he known what she was? Had stealing her power been his plan all along? She felt her knees going a little weak, and steadied herself.

“Giselle, are you all right?” Rosa asked in concern.

“Yes . . . yes, I am,” she said, and shook the memory off. “Just, I never knew that before. And it might explain something that happened to me a long time ago. Please, don't concern yourself about it.”

“How can I not?” Rosa demanded. “You are as white as snow!”

“Giselle,” Cody said slowly, using her real name as he rarely did. “You kin tell us. Ain't we friends?”

We are . . . and I have trusted them with so much more. . . .
Steeling herself she told them, briefly, what had happened. As briefly as she could manage. And it was still hard; she was shaking before she was done.

“Could . . .
that
person be the one who is stalking you now?” Rosa wondered. “Do you recognize anything about the sense you are getting? Magicians are known to hold grudges for a lifetime. If you thwarted him, or someone else did, he might never give up.”

“Only if he could survive a four-story fall,” Giselle said, trying to keep from clenching her teeth.
But when we looked for him, he was gone. He must not have been alone. Could whoever took his body away be . . . but how on earth would that person know who I was, or that I was the girl in the abbey tower?
It seemed ridiculous. She was supposed to be an American, not a native to the Black Forest. Her public persona and her public name were different. There was nothing, nothing at all, connecting “Rio Ellie” to Giselle of the abbey.

But what if that doesn't matter? What if all that matters is that I look enough like what he remembers to make him fixate on me?

“Whoever
it is, we will make sure you are never left alone,” said Kellermann, instantly. “Do you have the feeling you are being overlooked now?”

“No,” she said instantly. “Not since we began the meeting. I think such things bore him, and he must have known I would come straight back to my
vardo
where he cannot see me. Fox, Rosa and I all warded it against any intruding eyes. Once I am in my
vardo,
I am invisible.”

“So he does not know that
we
know, now. All the better.” Kellermann nodded. “So long as you always remain within the show walls, I do not think anything can happen to you. But to be sure, do not accept packages or letters that one of us has not examined first. And do not trust
any
message that is given to you that purports to be from anyone in the show. Anything that must be told to you, I will tell you in person. Even if it is an emergency.”

“That is an excellent plan,” Giselle said, feeling extremely touched. Any other time, she might have been irritated—but she'd been watched for a fortnight, was no closer to knowing who was watching, and was beginning to feel more than a little paranoid. She was aware that these self-appointed tasks had the potential of adding yet more burdens to Kellermann's already too-busy day. He would not have insisted on this if
he
was not sure it needed to be done. “And I cannot thank you enough. I don't want to burden you more than you already are.”

But Kellermann waved off her concern. “I see you often enough to pass on whatever needs to be said in the course of the day,” he replied, then bowed. “Think nothing of it, and it is my pleasure to be able to assist you in something. And now, it is more than time for all of us to sleep. Perhaps more ideas will come to us then.”

“Perhaps,” she replied, and went into her
vardo.
She knew it well enough now that she didn't need to light a lamp to move about, and there wasn't much she needed to do. She'd wash in the morning. Right now, she just needed to add a little more wood to the stove, and then get rid of her clothing and bundle herself into bed. The wood was beside the stove, and the padded leather mitten she used to open the stove was on top of the wood. She blew on the coals to bring them to life, and carefully stocked the stove for the night. Her clothing went on the bench, folded, and her warm, heavy flannel nightdress was on the bed. Soon, she was in the bed, under a new eiderdown, staring up at the ceiling of the bed cubby.

But her last thought before sleep was troubling. For she and Mother had found no sign of “Johann Schmidt,” all those years ago after his fall. He was not below the tower where he should have fallen, and Mother had not been able to find any trace of how he had gotten away. Nor had the two experienced Bruderschaft hunters.

In fact, except for the fact that she and Mother had
seen
him, fought him, and watched him fall, there was no evidence that he even existed.

So if he had survived the initial fall, which seemed wildly unlikely, where
had
he gone? He would have been seriously injured; Mother had thrust him out the window in such a way that he would have tumbled to the ground without any control. Who or what had rescued him? How had they gotten away without a trace and without Mother knowing? Where had they gone after their escape?

If he
had
been an Air Magician trying to steal her power, why hadn't she sensed that? Why hadn't her sylphs?

And was there any way that the watcher really
could
be him?

There were no answers. But her dreams were troubled.

The show had been packed up the night before, and the company moved out as soon as the first light of predawn lightened the sky. Kellermann had arranged with a local baker at a coffee house to have steaming rolls and coffee delivered in the darkness, and the cooks had precut slices of cold ham, beef, and cheese, and kept out bowls of butter, and they all ate a solid breakfast standing beside the cook wagons, with nothing for the cooks to pack up but the rinsed cups, and the sugar and cream. The cowboys grumbled that the coffee wasn't strong enough, but Giselle noticed that they drank the milk cans that the coffee had been brought in dry.

Hot rolls and butter, ham and cheese and plenty of coffee and cream were
her
idea of an ideal breakfast, so she began the day in a good frame of mind. Evidently this was too early an hour for the watcher, for as they drove down the road that paralleled the railway, Giselle felt no eyes on her, to her intense relief. Lebkuchen and the show horse Polly had worked out their differences and pulled alongside each other willingly. There was plenty of light thanks to street lamps within the city, and by the time they were actually past the point where the gaslights ended, the sun had crested the horizon.

Within an hour, they were well outside the city. Had the watcher recognized what was going on last night, or had he concentrated on Giselle, and missed the fact that the show tent was coming down, the midway packed up, and the canvas walls packed away? She had tried to stay away from all that activity, hoping to mislead him if all he was watching was her.

She'd never felt his gaze this early; it always began around midmorning, as if he was a late riser.
With any luck,
she thought, as she chirped to the horses, and got them past a pushcart they were eyeing with suspicion,
by the time he wakes up, he won't be able to find us.

It felt good to be on the road again.

They were by no means the first to leave the Oktoberfest, but also not the last, merely the largest. The enormous beer tents were all put up by local
bierkelleren,
and were coming down today; the pretty girls that waited on the tables would go back to their regular lives, as daughters and housewives. This was a yearly bounty of income that many counted on to pay for Christmas.

Smaller shows had left earlier to get into winter quarters. Most of the single-tent shows had stayed, getting the last pfennig they could eke out before the lean season—or at least, before they could do some business at the
Christkindlesmarkt
here or in another city.

But soon, they would all be gone, and there would be nothing festive until it was time for the
Christkindlesmarkt
. That would not be held in the great field, but in the city square and spill out into the streets beyond it. Stalls would have everything that one could want to prepare for Christmas: gifts, decorations, baked goods, foods from the potatoes to the goose to be roasted. There would be food to eat and hot things to drink, because shopping was a taxing business. And since people needed to be entertained while they shopped, there would be that, too, although it would have to compete with groups singing carols and the local brass bands. Many of the people of Freiburg who had come to meet Giselle had asked if she and the company were staying for Christmas, and had described the
Christkindlesmarkt
in great detail.

She wished she could see it. As so many things, since she had spent all of her life alone in the abbey with Mother, she had never seen a
Christkindlesmarkt.
It sounded delightful, and a great deal less overwhelming than the Oktoberfest had been. It would have been even better, since she would not have been performing, but would have had leisure to see and do things herself.

Another year, perhaps.
This time next year the show would be on its way home to America, hopefully with everyone's pockets stuffed full of money. And she could come to Freiburg, stay in a nice little hotel, shop, go to a play and concerts, see the university and the cathedral
 . . .
and surely by then, the vexing problem of the unseen
watcher
would have been solved.

Meanwhile it was far more important to get this entire cavalcade back to the abbey and under stout shelter before the worst of the winter weather set in. Christmas would be great fun with all of them there. She wasn't sure how Americans celebrated it, but given the zest with which they met
any
occasion to celebrate, they surely had some delightful, if slightly mad, traditions themselves. There probably wasn't enough goose in the district to feed all of them, but there would be plenty of other things, and already Kellermann had sent wagonload after wagonload of supplies ahead. And this would be the first Christmas she had ever spent with so much company!

And finally, at long last, after four solid weeks, she could look forward to an entire day in which she could be
herself,
and not “Rio Ellie.” Today would be an entire day in which she would not be performing—for sitting there in her “camp” and answering questions was performing, an even more intense sort of performance than being in front of the audience in the arena had been.

“I am so glad we are going!”
One of the sylphs flitted up out of nowhere, her pale-blue butterfly wings looking altogether out of place amid the falling leaves.
“There are too many people in that place. And too many stinks! Ugh!”

“Are you coming with me all the way to the abbey, Flitter?” Giselle asked her. Flitter had been the only sylph to tag along from Neustadt. Giselle had no idea why she had followed the show across so many miles. Perhaps she was just so amused by the show she had decided it was worth the effort of coming along. Sometimes sylphs took on a notion and were actually able to hold onto it for months at a time.

“Yes. I want to meet your friends there. I think I might want to stay there. The meadow where I grew up is all under bricks now.”
The sylph alighted on the rump of Lebkuchen (who took no notice of her) and sat there.
“I want to see a beautiful meadow again. I would like it if there were not many humans about. I am tired of noise and I have not found anywhere else that I want to stay, yet.”
Clearly she didn't feel the cold, since even though Giselle was bundled up in that fine loden wool winter cape she had been given, with mittens and the hood up and a knitted scarf wrapped around her neck, the sylph was still clothed in little more than a few gauzy ribbons and her long blond hair.