A Gathering Of Stones

2

For two days and two nights they poked about in Hennkensikee, the walls constraining them, the only interiors open to them the great warehouses where dour old women spread silks on padded tables and squeezed the last tiny copper from the circling bidders. Trithil Esmoon reclaimed her hithery and the old women leaned toward her as if they smelled her sweetness, sniffed it in to compare with ancient memories the scent rewakened in them, tumbling over themselves to answer her questions.

While Danny Blue and Trithil Esmoon played their cover games in the fragrant dimness of the warehouses, Felsrawg explored the city, insofar as she could, plotting thieftracks on its walls, climbing and entering in her mind the needle towers and tall square houses with their high-peaked roofs and ogeed windows. Shuttered windows, unglazed, outsider eyes blocked by wood-and-ivory screens carved in intricate serpentines pierced and repierced, the wood age-dark and tougher than iron, Fingers and mind both itched as she read the chances; she wanted to climb those walls and work her way past the screens, to puff in the sleep powders and prowl in darkness hunting for the treasures she knew lay inside. She watched the colored liquids of her skry ring shift and coil beneath the crystal as they registered and reacted to the wards and traps; a glance was all she needed to know how weak and careless the ward-setter had been. She could slide through slick as a serpent slipping down a mousehole. She kept moving, ignoring the Lewinkob who turned to look at her and follow her with their eyes. Twice she was stopped by one of the armored S’supal, the Wokolinka’s amazon guards. She played Second Daughter with zest, exulting as she fooled them; the cockiness might have sunk her, but they knew Matimulli and discounted it. By evening on the second day she’d got all she could and was beginning to repeat. She went to the meeting that night filled with impatience, irritation and anxiety. The sooner the job was done, the sooner she could claim the antidote.

Simms drifted about, his hair damped and darkened, his gray and black clothing and his stocky shape much like the other Lewinkob men walking around him, though he lacked the billowing beards they favored. He went into pocket parks, havens of greenery open to the public, and made himself available to the ghosts who blew about the streets, courts and public spaces, looking wistfully after the locals who more or less ignored them. He let them tell their stories and listened to their complaints, slipping in a word now and then to nudge them in directions he wanted them to go. When he wasn’t talking to ghosts or doing his own thieftracks, he was leaning against walls, staring vacantly at the sky, listening to the ancient bricks tell their long creaky tales. By the evening of the second day, he too was beginning to hear things twice.

Danny Blue strolled around the room, checking the wards he’d woven about the windows and set into the threshold of the door; there was almost dust on them, they were so untouched. Carelessness on the guardians’ part, but he wasn’t about to fault them for it. He opened the door a crack and set the ward to admit three, then snap closed again. Witches made him nervous, he liked them best when they were tired or lazy. Against possible overlooking, which they could do through anything belonging to the city, he’d brought an old sheet from Arsuid. To keep it from being contaminated when he wasn’t using it, he left it rolled within a warded leather sack which he hung from a peg beside the wardrobe. He took the sheet from the sack, snapped it open and spread it on the floor. He stepped onto it and lowered himself until he was sitting cross-legged. The others were elsewhere at the moment, though they were due to join him soon. He was content to sit and wait, to enjoy these few blessed moments alone. Because she was supposed to be his concubine, Trithil Esmoon was sharing his room and his bed. She was always there, always… Last night she’d turned to him, all warm and enticing and he told her to shut it off; he didn’t trust her an inch and wasn’t about to give her that kind of hold on him.

He thought about that, grimaced. It’d been a long dry spell. Last time he’d had a chance at sex, he’d been with Brann and got knocked cold because he was too rough with her; it was enough to put anyone off his stroke to get half the life sucked out of him in medias res as it were. He thought about that now, uneasy because he wasn’t reacting to Trithil as he’d expected to. Even when she turned on the hithery. He worried it around and around, then decided he could live with it. He decided he needed the sense that there was at least some reciprocity involved, more than mingled sweat, spittle and other fluids. She was a splendid fake, but fake she was, and he couldn’t forget that no matter how skillfully she counterfeited her responses. He couldn’t forget how cold and uninterested she was when she dropped the mask. He thought about Felsrawg and smiled as he pictured her. Her passions burned from the bone out; she prided herself on her gambler’s face, but a child could read what she was feeling. She’d make a scratchy armful, but she wouldn’t be boring. She was making signs like she’d be willing to try it out and see what happened. He rubbed at his chin, shook his head. Remember, old Dan, she might look frank and frisky and forthcoming, but she has orders to off you and take the talisman; if you doubt she’d do it, you’re playing head games with yourself.

Felsrawg pushed the door open, stalked in with the coiled energy of a hungry puma. She dropped onto the sheet and sat fidgeting with one of her knives. She kept glancing at the door, frowned impatiently when Simms came strolling in and settled beside her on the sheet. She turned the frown on Danny Blue. “Where’s the boor?”

Danny shrugged.

Felsrawg took a bit of soft leather from one of her pockets, began polishing the blade. “Leader, hunh! Old cow would do more.”

“Take over, do it better.”

“Don’t think I wouldn’t if I could handle wards and witches.”

“Then shut up till you can.”

“Hah.” She stopped her hands, stared pointedly at the mussed bed. “I can see where you’ve got your mind on other things, but couldn’t we get this klatch moving? If the hoor wants to know what’s happening, we can catch her up when she gets here.”

“We wait. The ward is open till she crosses the threshold.” Felsrawg made a spitting sound, went back to polishing the blade.

Twenty minutes later Trithil came undulating in. She stripped off her veil, tossed it on the bed and took her place on the sheet.

Danny waited until he felt the ward click shut, then he flattened his hands on his thighs and looked at each of the others. “Any ideas about getting across those bridges to the Henanolee Heart?”

Simms pursed his mouth, shook his, head. “I went an’ leaned ‘gainst one of the gate piers this end the firs’ bridge. Bridge be trapped. “‘Larums an’ sinks. Either the S’sulan drop on you, or y’ get dropped to the eels that live in the straits ‘tween the islands. What 1 know ‘bout the S’sulan, better the eels. Ghosts say this: the S’wai, that the witches, they lower’n the belly of a starvin’ snake. What they mean, the S’wai they tired. Burnt out. Been a long, hard season an’ it coming up on Closeout so they lutist’ down, doin’ the min, y’ know.”

Felsrawg slid the knife back in its bootsheath. “Yeh. You’d expect them to have tightasses here where they let foreigners in, knowing how these Lewks see us all, but t’ain’t so, Laz old Sorce. You pick a wall, any wall, I’ll go up it like it was flat and clean out everything behind it without a peep from the ‘larms. The wards are in pitiful shape. Creamcheese here, everywhere.”

“Perhaps not creamcheese.” Trithil slid a fingertip over and over the dome of the star sapphire in her thumbring. “But not far from it. The Maskab Kutskab spent the afternoon complaining about her S’sulan, she says they’re spending more time in taverns than on the street. Half the time they’re drunk out of their skulls on sounnash wukik or sucking the ton off some male whore. The other half, they’re slicing pieces off each other in knife duels. When she wasn’t carping, she was drooling over the hell she’s going to put them through come Closeout. She didn’t say much about the other islands, except some mutters about Maskabi too lazy to do their own breathing, Wokolinka’s kin who got their places through toelicking or worse. I believe that confirms what our tame thieves are telling us.” She gave Felsrawg a mocking smile, looked coldly at Simms, then lowered her eyes to the thumbring and contemplated the pulsing of the star.

“So,” Danny lifted his legs. “We go round the traps and climb the walls. I thought it might come out like that. My first thought was a boat. Any ideas?”

Simms shrugged. “Ne’er been on a boat ‘n m’ life till Pisgaloy.”

Felsrawg clicked her tongue, the sound expressing her disgust. “Nor me.”

Trithil lifted her eyes briefly, shook her head went back to watching the star.

Danny shook his head. “And you’re all island born. Well, we fall back on something I did a while ago. It’ll make things easier, but it’s noisy as… well, never mind that, we’ll just hope there’s no sorceror around to hear me working. Trithil, I need the room, find some other place to wait. You’ve all had supper? Good. Get some sleep. We go two hours after midnight.”