Free Lens of the World by R. A. MacAvoy Page B

sword dances to swordplay, Powl spent less time at the observatory: from morning to noon, usually, unless a clear night without moon tempted him to stay over. He also was more cheerful than he had been, that look of appraising worry removed from his oval face. He had lost his incipient plumpness and was more dapper than ever.
    I thought perhaps he had taken a new mistress in that place he went to and came from every day, and I almost followed him to see. Almost. I had no hope of escaping unobserved.
    I wondered if our eccentric, metaphysical undertaking (he had taught
me the word “metaphysical,” along with many others equally impressive) had lost savor
for him and he was now using me for the sake of his own regular workouts only. I wondered, as I went
through my day’s schedule of stove, study, combat, delicate optical equipment,
brick-beholding, stove again, dinner, wood-gathering, and laundry, whether I still was the Nazhuret
returned from the dead or an unpaid servant of less than average mentality.
    I felt a fool, and I felt totally in the power of Powl.
     
    Who was he? I had always wondered what history was hidden behind the simple syllable, that very common name. Though in the beginning I had considered him too polite (and too tastefully dressed) to be of higher class than gentry, in this year his natural arrogance had time to shine through the overlay, and I was firmly convinced my teacher was of noble or royal birth. His scorn of anything smacking of birth privilege only gave evidence toward this, for no one can be as contemptuous of the aristocracy as an aristocrat.
    Perhaps I thought this way merely to maintain my own self-respect. If I were to be as thoroughly bested by anyone as I was daily bested by Powl, let him be an opponent of the very highest rank. Let him be a baron, a viscount, an earl…
    (At this time I had no politics and fair manners. I still have no acceptable politics, but my king knows I have no manners either and can be equally abrupt to the gold cloak and the woolly shirt. Now I don’t care who knocks me down.)
    Either Powl had an income enough to support his high dress and moderate appetite as well as my enormous appetite and rough weave, or we were supporting us both on the lenses I made. I had no experience with the standard of lens grinding in the city, but I suspected my wares wouldn’t run to tailored shoulders with gold piping, or three-inch lacquered heels.
    A burgher might easily have supported me as I was, but what burgher would show so little interest in his business as to spend half his waking hours as Powl did? And how would a Sordaling burgher come to be far and away the best man in hand-to-hand combat I had ever encountered, or the smoothest saber fencer, deadly with the Felink tribesman’s dowhee (which resembles a hedge trimmer remarkably), and a rapacious scholar besides?
    And lastly, what man of any rank could spend so long in communion with another as Powl did with me—to give so much in instruction and so little of himself?
    I would go, in the afternoons, along the paths of the woods toward where people lived. The observatory was not in a complete wilderness, certainly; it was only a few hours’ walk from the city. There were two households and one cemetery in easy reach. I would prowl the frozen forest mulch in rag-wrapped feet or slog amid the thaw in my clogs until I found myself close enough to a human residence to spy easily, and then I would squat down and peer like an owl.
    One place belonged to a turner, and when the weather was passable he would haul his lathe outside and cut his chair legs in the sunshine. I found this activity very entertaining, much like lens grinding and much different. He tied and piled his product under the steep eaves of the house, like cordwood, and once a week a van of one heavy horse came along the road and hauled it all away.
    The turner made only one style of leg. I know, for in dry times under the full moon I stole in and