Ozark Trilogy 2: The Grand Jubilee Read Online Free PDF

follow from the senior Magician of Rank pointing out the satisfying parallels between the structure of the Articles and the notations of Formalisms & Transformations. When Responsible got through, there were not five unscheduled minutes available from the end of her welcoming speech to the Closing Prayer that would-so the lights recorded-be pronounced at six o’clock precisely that afternoon, just in time for supper. And Granny Hazelbide could tell by the backs of their necks and the set of their shoulders that the Traveller men were silently lamenting the loss of time before they could get on with what they’d be seeing as the real business of this Jubilee, and that the restraint was unsettling their stomachs. She wished she could of hoped they’d empty those stomachs as Responsible had hers, but it wasn’t likely. No doubt the Travellers had to answer some calls of nature, but the idea that one of them might be so human as to vomit went beyond the bounds of imagination. That would, after all, be waste.
    She felt the eyes of Granny Leeward on her then, her that was a Traveller born and bred, as Responsible had reminded her, and she didn’t like it. The woman was uncanny, and she held some trump card-that much had been clear from the way Responsible went white when her name was mentioned, as well as from the arrogance of her behavior. She’d all but shoved the other Grannys aside taking the central place in the balcony row this morning, and she hadn’t scrupled to do it without so much as a beg-your-pardon, either. Some trump card. Something that Granny Hazelbide had no clue to, but that came near unsettling her stomach.
    Wickedness in a Granny was unthinkable; they were human like any other human, and they could make mistakes, but in everything moral they were above reproach. And it therefore made no sense that she should suspect Leeward of evil intent . . . but something there nagged at her.
    Responsible had matters well in hand and needed no attention. She had turned the meeting over to her pettish uncle with casual ease and gone out into the hall to climb the stairs to the balcony. The men were still half stupored from the word patterns flowing over and around them, a situation Donald Patrick would no doubt put an end to in short order. He couldn’t talk for beans, never had been able to. But it was his meeting now, and Granny Hazelbide could afford to give her mind over fully to the problem of Granny Leeward, where logic did apply.
    No Granny could do deliberate evil, that was a given. It would turn inward and destroy her if she tried. She would sicken, and the evil would show plain in her eyes and in her flesh. Not Granny Leeward; the woman was rail-thin and had a nose like a fishhook, but she had the radiant bloom of health. It followed then, followed as the night the day (and praise be that had never failed yet), that Granny Leeward planned no wicked act toward Responsible of Brightwater or anybody else. She could not.
    And yet, wherever Granny Leeward moved, the other Grannys pulled away from her, drew back their stiff skirts. The woman that sat at her right hand now, Granny Golightly of Castle Clark, was not overfastidious. She was famous for her mischief, and for a certain cavalier disregard of the consequences of that mischief. Still she was edged to the right in her seat in a way that crowded her next neighbor and could not be comfortable, but preserved her from any chance of touching Leeward-it kept a full two inches of space between them. That provided the second given: it was not just herself, Granny Hazelbide of Brightwater Castle, as looked at Leeward and saw darkness puddling round her skirt-hems; it was all the Grannys.
    And that provided the third. Twenty-seven Grannys could not be wrong. She might be overly suspicious herself, because she had raised Responsible of Brightwater and knew the Travellers had set themselves to bring down the Confederation the girl was sworn to maintain. One or two