Free Ozark Trilogy 2: The Grand Jubilee by Suzette Haden Elgin Page A

much sass as she was able to muster. “I judge Grannys as I judge Mules, and you rank high. Now speak your piece.”
    Those pale-blue eyes . . . she had not been surprised to see them like dead fish, but spitting blue fire was surprising. It would have been pleasant to think that the old woman might be tricked in return, brought to a sufficient pitch of fury to lead her into some indiscretion of her own, leaving the two of them in a more balanced position; but it wouldn’t happen. To begin with, they were alone, and if the Granny was being humiliated there was no one to see or know it but herself. And to go on with, Responsible was certain the woman knew nothing beyond Granny Magic, all of which was legal for her to use.
    Granny Leeward leaned forward, stabbing the air with her pointing finger, and she laid it out for Responsible so there could be no confusion in any least particular.
    “Either you stay clear away from Confederation Hall,” the Granny said, “where you cannot interfere in what’s none of your business and never has been, or my son will stand before the entire assembly this morning and denounce you-leaving out no details, keep that in mind’-and the rest of those as saw you will back him up. Now I reckon that is clear as springwater, but if it’s not I’ll be glad to embroider it for you same.”
    Responsible sank back against her pillows and whistled long and low and silent. Now she’d heard it, it was obvious, but she hadn’t expected it. Which was an interesting measure of her strategic skills.
    “Botheration,” she said aloud, and thought a word that she’d never heard spoken, though it was claimed to exist.
    “Keep your botherations to yourself,” said the Granny, “and the Travellers won’t add to them. We’ve other doings to concern us, and telling that sorry tale about you would only use up another day on top of the one you wasted for us yesterday. But if you insist on coming into the Hall, spite of what I’ve said to you, we will waste that time, I promise you, and I’ll not scruple to stand in the balcony and add my voice to the testimonies.”
    “I believe you have me,” said Responsible, taking another drink of tea. “All things considered.”
    “That we do,” said Granny Leeward. “That we surely do, and if ever a female deserved it, you qualify.”
    “Blackmail doesn’t burden your conscience, Granny?” Responsible asked.
    Granny Leeward sat straight and pale. “We walk a narrow line at Castle Traveller,” she said. “We keep the old ways, and there’s none of the rest of you as does. We know, the Gates be praised, the difference between a sin and its name. That’s a difference not to be despised, nor yet forgotten.”
    “Explain me that, Granny Leeward-and its application in this matter of you and me. I don’t see it.”
    “I’ll explain you nothing! You need moral instruction, you’ve a Granny here, and a Reverend as well, though he’s a poor thing. This universe has one primary law--as ye sow, so shall ye reap and we abide by that. I come here as no instrument of blackmail, Responsible of Brightwater; I come as an instrument of justice!”
    “I wonder,” mused Responsible, and the Granny drew herself up in the rocker, bridling all over with outrage. Responsible had heard about people bridling, and read the phrase, but this was the first time she’d ever seen it.
    “On Old Earth,” she said casually, “there were those so convinced of their purity, so sure they were instruments of justice, that they put others to the rack and the fire out of concern for their immortal souls. Now I suggest to you that you might want to keep that in mind your self, Granny Leeward. There’s ugly, and then there’s ugly.”
    Granny Leeward stood up like she’d sat on a straight pin, shaking all over with a rage she wouldn’t stoop to express, and Responsible made a mental note-this was one who did not handle well any criticism that struck at her morality. It might