WORK RECORD
DANIEL AKAMARINO aka Blue Dan, Danny Blue
BORN:
Rainbow’s End
Line Family Azure
Family Azure has five living generations. 50 males (adults) aged 24-173. 124 females (adults) aged 17175. 49 children. Names available to adults: Teal, Ciello, Royal, Akamarino, Turkoysa, Sapphiro, Ceruli, Lazula, Cyanica.
RATED:
1. Communications Officer, Master Rating, first degree
2. Propulsion Engineer, Master Rating, first degree
3. Cargo Superintendent/Buyer, Master Rating, first degree
COMMENTS:
If you can get him, grab him. He won’t stay long, a year maybe two, but he’s worth taking a chance on. Let him tinker. He’ll leave you with a com system you couldn’t buy for any money.
Got eyes in his fingertips and can hear a flea grunt a light-year off. Have your engines singing if you let him. Good at turning up and stowing cargo. Lucky. Will make a profit for you more often than not.
A pleasant type, never causes trouble in the crew, but undependable.
Drifter. Follows his whims and nothing you say will hold him to a contract he wants to walk out on.
EMPLOYMENT:
1. Aurora’s Dream
Sun Gold Lines, home port: Rainbow’s End.
Captain: Martin Chrome
YS 765-769 apprentice prop eng
2. Herring Finn
free trader
owner/master: Kally Kuninga
YS 772-775 appr prop eng
Master Rating YS 775
3. Dying Duck
free trader
owner/master: Berbalayasant
YS 779-786 appr coms off
Master Rating YS 786
4. Andra’s Harp worldship
Instell Cominc lines, registered the Sygyn Worlds
Captain: Bynnyno Wadelinc
YS 788-791 comms off sec (788)
comms off frst (789)
comms off Comdr (790-1)
5. The Hairy Mule free trader owner/master: Dagget O’dang
YS 795-797 appr carg sup/ byr
6. Astrea Themis free trader owner/master: Luccan della Farangan
YS 799-803 Mst Eng
7. Prism Dancer
Sun Gold Lines, home port: Rainbow’s End
Captain: Stella Fulvina
YS 805-810 comms off Comdr
8. Astrea Themis
free trader
owner/master: Luccan della Farangan
YS 813-821 appr carg sup/byr
Mstr carg sup/byr YS 819
9. Herring Finn
free trader owner/master: Kally Kuninga
YS 825- Mstr carg sup/byr
SCENE: Daniel Akamarino walking along the grassy verge of a paved road, letting his arms swing, now and then whistling a snatch of tune when he thought about it. A bright sunny day, local grass is lush with a tart dusty smell, pleasant enough, a breeze blowing in his face heavy with the scent of fresh water.
A man past his first youth (his age uncertain in this era of ananile drugs that put off aging and death to somewhere around three hundred among those species where three score and ten had once been optimum), bald except for a fringe of wild hair over.his ears like a half-crown of black thorns, blue eyes, brilliant blue, they burn in a face tanned dark. He is tall and lanky, looks loosely put together, but moves faster than most and where his strength won’t prevail, his slippy mind will. A man not bothered by much, he seldom feels the need to prove anything about his person or proclivities; he mostly likes dealing with things but is occasionally interested in people, has quit several jobs because he touched down in a culture that he found interesting and he wanted to know all its quirks and fabulas. Impatient with routine, he drifts from job to job, quitting when he feels like it or because some nit tries to make him do things that bore him like shaving every day or wearing boots instead of sandals and a uniform instead of the ancient shirts and trousers he gets secondhand whenever the ones he has are reduced to patches and threads. He stays longest in jobs where his nominal superiors tell him what they want and leave him to produce results however it suits him. He has no plans for settling down; there’s always something to see another hop away and he never has trouble finding a place on a ship when he’s done with groundside living.
Daniel Akamarino is down on a Skinker world, nosing about for items more interesting than those the local merchants are bringing to the backwater subport where the Herring Finn put down (the major ports were closed to freetraders; technically the world was closed, but its officials looked the other way as long as the profits were there and the traders were discreet). He is getting bored with the ship; the Captain is an oldtime friend, but she is a silent woman settled in a longterm and nonstraying relationship with her comms Com; the engineer is a Yflan with a vishefer as a symbiote; two words a month-standard is verbosity for him.
Daniel Akamarino is mooching along beside a dusty two-lane asphalt road, enjoying a bright spring morning. Yesterday, when he was chatting over a drink with a local merchant, he took a close look at the armlet the Skinker was wearing on one of his right arms, flowing liquid forms carved into a round of heavy reddish brown wood. Tbday he is on his way to find the Skinker who carved it, said to live in an outshed of a warren a kilometer outside the porttown. Now and then a jit or a two-wheeler poots past him, or a skip hums by overhead. He could have hired a jit or caught the local version of a bus, but prefers to walk; he doesn’t expect much from this world or from the woodcarver, but it’s an excuse to get away from town clutter and merchants with gold in their eyes; he wants to look at the world, sniff its odors, pick up its textures and sound patterns, especially the birdsong. The local flying forms have elaborate whistles and a capacity for blending individual efforts into an astonishing whole.
Daniel Akamarino strolls along a two-lane asphalt road in a humming empty countryside listening to extravagant flights of birdsong; the grass verge having turned to weeds and nettles, he is on the road itself now, his sandals squeak on the gritty asphalt. A foot lifts, swings, starts down…
Daniel Akamarino dropped onto a rutted dirt road, stumbled and nearly fell. When he straightened, he stood blinking at an utterly different landscape.
The road he’d landed in curved sharply before and behind him; since it also ran between tall hedges he couldn’t see much, only the tops of some low twisty trees whose foliage had thinned with the onrush of the year; withered remnants of small fruits clung to the topmost branches. Real trees, like those in-his homeplace, not the feathery blue analogs on the road he’d been following an instant before. A raptor circled high overhead, songbirds twittered nearby, distractingly familiar; he listened and thought he could put a name to most of them. Insects hummed in the hedges and crawled through dusty gray-green grass. A black leaper as long as his thumb sprang out of the dust, landed briefly on his toe, sprang off again. He sucked on his teeth, kicked at the nearest rut, sent pale alkali dust spraying before him. If the sun were a bit ruddier and had a marble-sized blue companion, this could have been Rainbow’s End. But it was egg-yellow and solitary, and it was low in what he thought was the west and its light had a weary feel, so he shouldn’t waste what was left on the day boggling at what had happened to him. He took one step backward, then another, but the fold in spacetime that brought him here seemed a oneway gate. He shrugged. Not much he could do about that. He knelt in the dust and inspected the ruts. Inexpert as he was at this sort of tracking, it seemed to him that the heaviest traffic went the way he was facing. Which was vaguely northeast (if he was right about the sun). He straightened, brushed himself off, and started walking, accepting this jarring change in his circumstances as calmly as he accepted most events in his life.
Cradled in a warm noisy crowded line family, always someone to pick him up and cuddle him when he stubbed a toe or stumbled into more serious trouble, he had acquired a sense of security that nothing since had more than dented (though he’d wandered in and out of danger a dozen times and come close to dying more than once from an excess of optimism); he’d learned to defend himself, more because of his internal need to push any skill he learned to the limits of his ability than because he felt any strong desire to stomp his enemies. It was easier not to make enemies. If a situation got out of hand and nothing he could do would defuse it, he generally slid away and left the argument to those who enjoyed arguing. One time a lover asked him, “Don’t you want to do something constructive with your life?” He thought about it for a while, then he said, “No.”
“You ought to,” she said, irritation sharpening her voice, “there’s more to living than just being alive.” He gazed at her, sighed, shook his head and not long after that shipped out on the Hairy Mule.
He swung along easily through a late afternoon where heat hung in a yellow haze over the land and the road was the only sign of habitation; he wasn’t in a hurry though he was starting to get thirsty. He searched through the dozens of pockets in his long leather overvest, found an ancient dusty peppermint, popped it into his mouth. A road led somewhere and he’d get there if he kept walking. The sun continued to decline and eventually set; he checked his pocketchron, did some calculations of angular shift and decided that the daylength was close to shipstandard, another way this world was like Rainbow’s End. He kept on after night closed about him; no point in camping unless he found water, besides the air was warm and a gibbous moon with a chunk bitten out of the top rose shortly after sunset and spread a pearly light across the land.
Sounds drifted to him on a strengthening breeze. A mule’s bray. Another. A chorus of mules. Ring of metal on metal. Assorted anonymous tunks and thuds. As he drew closer to the source, the sounds of laughter and voices, many of them children’s voices. He rounded a bend and found a large party camped beside a canal. Ten carts backed up under the trees. A crowd of mules (bay, roan and blue) wearing hobbles and herded inside rope corrals, chewing at hay and grain and each other, threatening, kicking and biting with an energy that made nothing of the day’s labors. Two hundred children seated around half a dozen fires. Fifteen adults visible. Eight women, dressed in voluminous trousers, tunics reaching to midcalf with long sleeves and wide cuffs, head-cloths that could double as veils. Seven men with shorter tunics and trousers that fit closer to the body, made from the same cloth the women used (a dark tan homespun, heavy and hot), leather hats with floppy brims and fancy bands, leather boots and gloves. They also had three bobtail spears slanted across their backs and what looked like cavalry sabers swinging from broad leather belts; several carried quarterstaffs. The last were prowling about the circumference of the camp, keeping a stern eye on the children while the women were finishing preparations for supper.
One of the men walked over to him. “Keep moving, friend. We don’t want company here.”
Daniel Akamarino blinked. Whatever or whoever had brought him here had operated on his head in the instant between worlds; he wasn’t sure he liked that though it was convenient. “Spare a bit of supper for a hungry man?”
Before the man could answer, a young boy left one of the circles carrying a metal mug full of water. “You thirsty, too?”
A woman came striding after the boy, fixing the end of her headcloth across her face, a big woman made bigger by her bulky clothing. She put a hand on the guard’s arm when he took a step toward Daniel. “He’s a wayfarer, Sinan. Since when do Owlyn folk turn away a hungry man?” She tapped the boy on the head. “Well done, Mi. Give him the water.”
Hoping his immunities were up to handling this world’s bugs, Daniel gulped down the cold clean water and gave the mug back with one of his best grins.
“Thanks. A hot dusty walk makes water more welcome than the finest of wines.”
“You’ll join us for supper?”
“With enthusiasm, Thine.” The epithet meant Woman of High Standing, and came to his lips automatically, triggered by the strength and dignity he saw in her; she rather reminded him of one of his favorite mothers and he brought out for her his sunniest smile.
She laughed and swept a hand toward the circle of fires. “Be welcome, then.”
They fed Daniel Akamarino and dug him out a spare blanket. The boy called Tre drifted over to sit by him while he ate, bringing an older girl with him that he introduced as his sister Kori. Ire said little, leaving the talking to Kori.
“This is one big bunch of kids,” Daniel said. “Going to school?”
She stared at him, eyes wide. “It’s the Lot. It’s Owlyn’s month.”
“I haven’t been here very long. What’s the Lot?”
“Settsimaksimin takes three kids each year from each Parika in Cheonea. The Lot’s to say which ones. Boys go to be trained for the army or for Servants of Amortis, girls go to the Yrons, those are the temples of Amortis, and the one that gets the gold lot goes to the high temple in Phras.”
“Hmm. Who’s Settsiwhatsisname and what gives him the right to take children from their families?”
Another startled look at him, a long gaze exchanged with her brother, a glance at the trees overhead. “We don’t want to talk about him,” Kori said, her voice a mutter he had to strain to hear. “He’s a sorceror and he owns Cheonea and he can hear if someone talks against him. Best leave things alone you don’t have to know.”
“Ah. I hear you. Sorceror? Mmf. Probably means some git stumbled on this world and used his tech to impress the hell out of the natives. “You’re heading for a city, how close is it?”
“Silagamatys. About three more days’ travel. It’s a sea port. Tres seven, so this is his first trip. He hasn’t seen the sea before.”
“You have?”
“Course I have. I’m thirteen going on fourteen. This is my last Lot; if I slide by this time, I won’t leave Owlyn Vale again, I’ll be betrothed and too busy weaving for the family that comes.” She sounded rather wistful, but resigned to the life fate and custom mapped out for her. “We’ve told you ‘bout us. AuntNurse says it’s impolite to pester wayfarers with questions. I think it’s impolite for them to not talk when they have to see we’re dying to know all about them.” She was tall and lanky, with a splatter of orange freckles across her nose; wisps of fine light-brown hair straggled from under a headcloth that swung precariously every time she moved her head; her eyes were huge in her thin face, a pale gray-green that shifted color with every thought that passed through her head. She grinned at him, opened those chatoyant eyes wide and waited for him to swallow the hook.
“Weeell,” he murmured, “I’m a traveling man from a long way off…”
Much later, rolled into the borrowed blanket beside one of the carts, Daniel Akamarino thought drowsily about what he’d learned. He was appalled but not surprised. This wasn’t the first tyrant who’d got the notion of building a power base in the minds of a nation’s children. Clever about how he managed it. If he’d tried taking children out of their homes, no matter how powerful he was, he would have faced a blistering resistance. By having the children brought to him, by arranging what seemed to be an impartial choice through the Lot, he saved himself a world of trouble, didn’t even have to send guards with the carttrains. Sorceror? Oh yeah. Seen that before, haven’t you… Vague speculation faded gradually into sleep.
Having got used to him by breakfast (he was an amiable guest, quick to offer his services to pull and haul, doing his tasks whistling a cheerful tune that made the work lighter for everyone), they let him ride one of the carts. Tre and Kori sat with him. The boy was silent, troubled about something, the trouble deepening as he got closer to the city. For a while Daniel thought it was having to face the Lot for the first time, but when he slipped a murmured question to Ire, the boy shook his head. He was nervous and unhappy, he clung to Daniel for reasons of his own, but he wouldn’t talk about what frightened him. Kori knew, but she was as silent about it as her brother. She sat on the other side of Daniel, sliding him murmured information about Silagamatys and its waterfront that she had no business knowing if it was like most other such areas he’d moved through in his travels. She laughed at his unexpressed but evident disapproval of her nocturnal wanderings. He liked the mischievous twinkle in her eyes, the dry quality to her humor, the subtle rebellion in the way she carried her body and changed his mind about how resigned she was to the future laid out for her. Thinking about it, he was rather sorry for her; from everything he’d seen so far, this world wasn’t all that different from other agricultural societies he’d dipped into. Men and women both had their lives laid out for them from the moment they were born, which was fine if they fit into those roles, but hell on the rebels and the too-intelligent, especially if these last were women. Kori had a sharp practical mind; she must have realized years ago that there were things she couldn’t admit to doing or knowing and continue to live at peace with her people. Talking with him was taking a chance; what she said and what it meant. slipping out after dark to wander through dangerous streets, that could destroy her. He suspected her actions had something to do with her brother’s fretting, but he didn’t have enough data to judge what she was getting at.
After a while, he fished inside his vest and brought out the recorder he carried everywhere; he blew it out, played a few notes, then settled into a dance tune his older sisters had liked. The other children in the cart crowded about him; when he finished that tune he had them sing their own songs for him, then played these back with ornamental flourishes that made them giggle. Tre joined him with a liquid lilting whistle, putting flourishes on Daniel’s flourishes, the girls clapped their hands, the boys sang and the afternoon passed more quickly than most. After that, even Sinan stopped resenting him.
He caught glimpses of farmhouses and outbuildings, a village or two, no walls or fortifications in sight (obviously, invasions were scarce around here). They passed over a number of canals busy with barges and small sail boats; there was a lot more traffic on the water than there was on the road. He didn’t blame them, this world hadn’t got around to inventing effective springs and riding these ruts (even sitting on layers of blankets and quilts) was rather like a bastinado of the buttocks.
Midafternoon two days later, the carttrain topped a hill and looked down on Silagamatys.
Daniel Akamarino was playing his flute again, but broke off in surprise when his cart swung round a clump of tall trees at the crest of that hill and he saw for the first time the immense walls of the city and the gleaming white Keep soaring into the clouds.
“HIS Citadel,” Kori murmured, her voice dropping into the special tone she used when she spoke of Settsimaksimin but didn’t want to name him.”AuntNurse said her father’s brother Elias, the one who married into the Ankitierin of Prosyn Vale, was down to the city just after HE kicked out crazy old King Noshios; she said Elias said HE cleared the ground and had that thing built in two days and a night. And then HE built the Grand Yron just two weeks later and that only took a day.” Third in the line of ten, the cart tilted forward down the long undulating slope toward the city’s SouthGate. “We’re going to the Yron Hostel, it’s built in back of the main temple. They won’t let you in there, it’s just for people doing the Lot. Actually, you’d better get off soon’s we’re through the Gate. You don’t want HIM getting interested in you.” The city was built on a cluster of low wooded hills looking out into a sheltered blue bay. The usual hovels and clutter of the poor and outcast snugged against the wall, but most of the ugliness was concealed by trees that Settsimaksimin had planted and protected from depredation by poor folk hunting fuel. When Daniel wondered about this, Kori said, “HE said don’t touch the trees. HE said put iron to these trees and I’ll hang you in a cage three days without food or water and don’t think you can escape my eyes. And he did it too. HE said get your wood from the East Side Reserve. HE said Family Xilogonts will run the Wood Reserve for you. HE said you can buy a desma of wood for a copper, if you don’t have the copper you can earn a desma by cutting ten desmas, if there is no wood to cut, you can earn a desma by working for Family Xilogonts for one halfday, planting seedlings and looking after young trees. If anyone in Family Xilogonts cheats you in any way, tell me and I will see it doesn’t happen again.’
“Hmm. I didn’t expect that kind of thinking in a place like this. What do I mean? Ah Kori, just chatter, talking to myself.” He looked around at the brilliant colors of the fall foliage, smiled. “Seems to work.”
She scowled at him, unwilling to hear anything good about the man she called a sorceror, turned her shoulder to him and went into a brood over what he suspected was her vision of the perversity of man.
The cart bumped over the last humpbacked bridge and rumbled onto an avenue paved with granite flats, heading for the gaping arch of the gateway. He braced himself to withstand a major stench, if they couldn’t put springs on their rolling stock, clearly sewers were a lost cause, but as the carts rattled through the shadowy tunnel (the walls were at least ten meters thick at the base), there was little of the sour stink from open emunctories and offal rotting in the streets that he’d had to deal with when he was on a freetrader dropping in on neofeudal societies. The cart emerged into a narrow crooked street, paved with granite blocks set in tar, clean, even the legless beggar at the corner had a clean face and his gnarled knobby hands were scrubbed pale. The drivers of each of the carts tossed a coin in his bowl, got his blessings as they drove past.
A woman leaned from an upper window. “What Parika?”
The lead driver looked up. “Owlyn Vale,” she shouted.
The children in the carts jumped to their feet, stood cheering and whooping, swaying precariously as the iron-tired wheels jolted over the paving stones, until they were scolded back down by the chaperones. Followed by laughter, shouts of welcome, luck and remember this that and the other when they got settled in and were turned loose on the city, the carttrain wound on, rumbling past tall narrow houses, through increasingly crowded streets, past innumerable fountains where the houses were pushed back to leave a square free, moving gradually uphill into an area where houses were larger with scores of brilliant windowboxes and there were occasional small gardens and green spaces and the fountains were larger and more elaborate. Ahead, two hills on, a minareted white structure glittered like salt in sunlight.
Kori leaned closer to Daniel Akamarino, murmured, “We’ll be going slower when we start up the long slope ahead, you better get off then. If you want ships or work or something, keep going south, the Market is down that way and the waterfront.
“I hear you. Luck with the Lot, Kori.”
She gave him a nervous smile. “Um… She closed her hand over his wrist, her nails digging into the flesh; her voice came as a thread of sound. “Tre says we’ll be seeing you again.” She bit her lip, shook his hand when he started to speak. “Don’t say anything. It’s important. If it happens, I’ll explain then.”
“I wait on tiptoe.” He grinned at her and she pinched his wrist, then sat in silence until they started the long climb to the Yron.
He got to his feet, swung over the side of the cart, wide enough to miss the tall wheel. After a flourish and a caper and a swooping bow that drew giggles from the children and waves from the chaperones, he moved rapidly away along an alley whose curve hid the carts before he’d gone more than a few steps.
Though it was the middle of the afternoon, the Market was busy and noisy, the meat and vegetables were cleared off, their places filled with more durable goods. Daniel Akamarino drifted around it until he found the busiest lanes; he dropped into a squat beside the beggar seated at the corner of two of these. “Good pitch, this.”
The beggar blinked his single rheumy eye. “Aah.”
“Mind if I play my pipe a while? Your pitch, your coin.”
“You any good?”
“Don’t like it, stop me.”
“A will, don’t doubt, A will.”
Daniel fished out his recorder, shifted from the squat and sat cross-legged on the paving. He thought a moment, blew a tentative note or two, then began to improvise on one of the tunes the children had taught him. Several Matyssers stopped to listen and when he finished, snapped their fingers in approval and dropped coppers in the beggar’s bowl.
He shook out the recorder, slid it back into its pocket, watched as the beggar emptied his bowl into a pouch tucked deep inside the collection of rags he had wrapped about his meager body. “New in town.”
“A know it, an’t heard that way with a pipe ‘fore this. Wantin a pitch?”
“Buy it, fight for it, dice for it, what?”
A rusty chuckle. A pause while he blessed a Matysser who dropped a handful of coppers into the bowl. “Buy it, buy it, Hhn,” a jerk of a bony thumb at the Citadel looming like white doom over them, “He don’t like blood on the stones.”
“Mmm. Got a hole in my pocket.”
“There’s one or two might be willing to rent a pitch for half the take.”
“Too late for today. I’m thinking about belly and bed. Anyone round looking for a strong back and careful hands?”
“Hirin’s finished with by noon.”
Daniel sucked his teeth, wrinkled his nose. “Looks like my luck quit by noon.” He thought a minute. “Any pawnshops around? I’ve got a couple of things I could pop in a pinch.” He scratched at his stubble. “It’s pinching.’
“Grausha Kuronee in the Rakell Quarter. She an ugly old bitch,” he cackled, “don’t you tell her A said it. But she give you a fair deal.” He coughed and spat into a small noisome jar he pulled from his pocket; when he was finished, he recorked it and tucked it away. Daniel Akamarino had difficulty keeping his mouth from dropping open. Settsiwhatsisname had a strangle grip on this country for sure; he began to understand why the place was so clean. And why young Kori talked the way she did. “Tell you what,” the beggar said, “play another couple of tunes. A’ll split the coin and A’ll whistle you up a brat oo’ll run you over to Kuronee’s place.”
“Deal.” He took out the recorder, got himself settled and started on one of his liveliest airs.
Daniel Akamarino tossed the boy one of the handful of coppers he’d harvested, watched him run off, then turned to examine the shop. It was a dingy, narrow place, no window, its door set deep into the wall with an ancient sign creaking on a pole jutting out over the recess. The paint was worn off the weathered rectangle except for a few scales of sunfaded color, but the design was carved into the wood and could be traced with a little effort. A bag net with three fish. He patted a few of his pockets, frowned and wandered away.
A few streets on he came to a small greenspace swarming with children. He wandered between the games and appropriated a back corner beside a young willow. After slipping out of his vest, he sat and began exploring the zippered pockets. The vest was made from the skin of Heverdee Nightcrawlers, the more that leather was handled, the better it looked and the longer it lasted; on top of that, it was a matter of pride to those who wore such vests never to get them cleaned, so Daniel hadn’t had much incentive to dump his pockets except when he tried to find something he needed and had to fumble for it through other things that had no discernible reason for being in that pocket. He found a lot of lint and small odd objects that had no trade value but slowed his search. He sat turning them over in his fingers and smiling at the memories they evoked. It wasn’t an impressive collection, but he came up with two possibilities. A hexagonal medal, soft gold, a monster stamped into one side, a squiggle that might have been writing on the other. He frowned at it for several moments before he set it aside; he couldn’t remember where he’d picked it up and that bothered him. A ring with a starstone in it, heavy, silver, he’d worn it on his thumb a while when he was living on Abalone and thumbrings were a part of fitting in; since he didn’t really like things on his hands, he slipped it into a pocket the day he left and forgot about it until now. He put everything back but the lint and dug that into the soil under the willow roots, then leaned against the limber trunk and sat watching the children running and shouting, swinging on knotted ropes tied to a tall post-and-lintel frame, climbing over a confection of tilted poles, crossbars and nets, playing ring games and rope games and ball games, the sort of games that seemed somehow universal, he’d met them before cross species (adapted for varying numbers and sorts of limbs), cross cultures (varying degrees of competition and cooperation in the mix), ten thousand light-years apart. He smiled at them, thought about playing a little music for himself, but no, he was too comfortable as he was. The day was warm, the Owlyn Valers had fed him well at noon so he wasn’t hungry yet, he had a few coppers in his pocket and the possibility of getting more and he felt like relaxing and letting time blow past without counting the minutes.
When the sun dropped low enough to sit on the wall and the children cleared away, heading for home and supper, Daniel Akamarino got to his feet, shook himself into an approximation of alertness and went strolling back to Kuronee’s Place. He spent the next half hour haggling over the ring and the medal, enjoying the process as much as the old woman did; by the time he concluded the deal he was grinning at her and had seduced the ghost of a twinkle from eyes like ancient fried eggs; he got from her the name of a tavern whose host had a reputation for knocking thieves in the head and not caring all that much if he knocked the brains right out. He rented a cubbyhole with a lock on it and a bed that had seen hard usage. Not all that clean, but better than he’d expected for the price. He ate a supper of fish stew and crusty bread, washed it down with thick dark homebrew, then went out to watch the night come over the water.
The evening was mild, the air lazy and filled with dark rich smells, one more day’s end in a mellow slightly overripe season. Mara’s Dowry his folk called this last spurt of warmth before winter. Season of golden melancholy. I wonder what they call it here and why. He sat on an oaken bitt watching the tide come in, his pleasant tristesse an elegant last course to the plain good meal warming his belly. A three-quarter moon rose, a large bite out of the upper right quadrant. The Wounded Moon, that’s what they called it. He watched it drift through horsetail clouds and wondered what its stories were. Who shot the moon and why? Who was so hungry he swallowed that huge bite?
Something glittered in the dark water out beyond the ships. Dolphins leaping? A school of flying fish? Not flying fish. No. He got slowly to his feet and stood staring. A woman swam out there. A woman thirty meters long with white glass fingers and a fish’s tail. Shimmering, translucent, eerily beautiful, throbbing with power.
“Sweet thing.” The voice was husky, caressing. Daniel Akamarino turned. A dumpy figure stood beside him, a wineskin tucked under one arm; at first, because of the bald head with a fringe of flyaway black hair and the ugly-puppy face, he thought it was a little fat man, then he saw the large but shapely breasts bursting from the worn black shirt, the mischievous grin, the sun colored eyes that danced with laughter. ‘Godalau,” the ambiguous person said, “bless her saucy tail.” Heesh poured a dollop of wine into the bay, handed the skin to Daniel who did the same. Laughter like falling water drifted back to them. With a flirt of her applauded tail, the Godalau submerged and was gone. When Daniel looked round again, the odd little creature had melted into the night like the Godalau had into the sea, the only evidence heesh had ever been there was the wineskin Dan still held.
He settled back on the bitt, squirted himself a mouthful of the tart white wine. Good wine, a little dryer than he usually liked, but liquid sunshine nonetheless. He drank some more. Gift of the gods. He chortled at the thought. Potent white wine. He drank again. Sorcerors as social engineers. Giant mermaids swimming in the surf. Hermaphroditic demigods popping from the dark. I’m drunk, he thought and drank again and grinned at a glitter out beyond the bay. And I’ll be drunker soon. Why not.
The Wounded Moon slid past zenith, a fog stirred over the waters and the breeze turned chill. Daniel Akamarino shivered, fumbled the stopper back in the nozzle and slung the skin over his shoulder. He stood a moment looking out over the water, gave a two fingered salute to whatever gods were hanging about, then started strolling for the tavern where his room was.
The fog thickened rapidly as he moved into the crooked lanes that ran uphill from the wharves. He fought to throw off the wine. Damn fool, you going to spend the night in a doorway if you don’t watch it. He leaned against a wall a minute, the stone was wet and slimy under his hand and heavy cold drops of condensed fog dropped from the eaves onto his head and shoulders. He did a little deep breathing, thumped his head, started on.
A few turns more, as he left the warehouses and reached the taverns clustered like seadrift about them, the lanes widened a little; the fog there separated into clumps and walking was easier. He turned a corner, stopped.
A girl was struggling with two men. They were laughing, drunkenly amorous. The taller had a hand twisted in her hair while he held one of her writhing arms, the other was pushing his short burly body against her, crushing her against the wall while he fumbled at her clothing. Daniel sucked at his teeth a moment, then ran silently forward. A swift hard slap to the head of the skinny man-he squeaked and folded down. A kick to the tail of the squat man-he wheeled and roared; bullet head lowered, he charged at Daniel. Daniel danced aside and with a quick hop slapped the flat of his foot against the man’s buttocks and shoved, driving him into a sprawl face down on the fog-damped paving stones.
The girl caught at Daniel Akamarino’s ann. “Come.”
He looked down, smiled. “Kori.” He let her pull him into a side lane, ran with her around half a dozen corners until they left the shouts and cursing far behind. He slowed to a walk, waited until she was walking beside him. “Blessed young idiot.” He scowled at her. “What do you think you’re doing down here this time of night?”
“I have to meet someone.” She tilted her head, gave him a quick smile. “Not you, Daniel. Someone else.”
“Mmf. Couldn’t you find a better time and place to meet your boyfriend, whatever?”
“Hah!” The sound dripped scorn. “No such thing. When the day comes, I’ll marry someone in Owlyn. This is something else. I don’t want to talk about it here.”
“Mysteries, eh?”
“Come with me. Trd says you’re mixed up in this some way, that you’re here because of it. You might as well know what’s happening and why.”
“Tell you this, Kori, you’re not going anywhere without me. I still think you should go back to your folks and wait till daylight to meet your friend.”
“I can’t.”
“Hmm. Let’s go then.”
The Blue Searnaid was near the end of the watersecLion, a rambling structure sitting like a loosely coiled worm atop a small hill. This late, it was mostly dark, though a torch smoldered in its cage over the taproom door, a spot of dim red in a patch of thicker fog. Daniel Akamarino dropped his hand on Kori’s shoulder. “Wait out here,” he whispered.
“No.” Her voice was soft but fierce. “It’s not safe.”
“You weren’t worried about that before. Look, I’m not going to take you in there.”
“It’s not drunks I’m worried about, it’s HIM.”
“Oh.” He thought about that a moment. “Political?”
“What?”
“Hmm.” He stepped away from her and scanned her. “What’s that you’re wearing?”
“I couldn’t come dressed in my Owlyn clothes.” Indignation roughened her voice. “I borrowed this off one of the maids in the hostel.” A quick grin. “She doesn’t know it.”
“Kuh,” disgust in his voice, “after that mauling you got, you look like you’re an underage whore. I’m not sure I like being a dirty old man with a taste for veal.” When she giggled, he tapped her nose with a forefinger. “Enough from you, snip. Tell me the rules around here. The tavernkeepers let men take streetgirls into their rooms?”
“How should I know that? I’ve seen men taking girls in there, what they did with them…” She shrugged.
In the fireplace at the far end of the long room fingerlength tongues of flame licked lazily at a few sticks of wood; three lamps hung along a ceiling beam, their wicks turned low. There were men at several of the scattered tables, talking in mutters; they looked up briefly and away again as Daniel led Kori through the murk to a table in the darkest corner. A slatternly girl not much older than Kori came across to them. Her face was made up garishly, but the cosmetics were cracking and smeared and under the paint she was sullen and weary. Daniel ordered two mugs of homebrew, dug out three of his hoard of coppers. The girl scooped them into a pocket of her stained apron and went off with a dragging step.
“So. Where’s this friend of yours?”
“Probably asleep. Tre says she’s here, but I’m a day earlier than I arranged. I thought I could ask someone where her room was.” She considered a minute. “Maybe you better do the talking. Ask about a white-haired woman with two children. “
“You know her name?”
“Yes, but I don’t know if she’s using it.”
“Hmm. I see. Kori…”
“No. Don’t talk about it, not now.”
The serving girl shambled back with two mugs of dark ale, plunked them down. Daniel dug out another copper. “You’ve got a woman staying here, white hair, two kids.”
More sullen than ever, she looked from him to Kori. Her mouth dragged down into an ugly sneer.
Daniel set the coin on the table. “Take it or leave it.”
Without a change of expression, she brushed the coin off the table. “On the right going up, first room, head of the stairs.”
Shock and sadness in her eyes, Kori watched the girl drag off. “She…” Her hands groped for answers that weren’t there. “Daniel…”
He frowned; she was a child, sheltered, innocent, but truth was truth however unpalatable. “You’ve never seen a convenience close up before?”
“Convee…”
His hand clamped on her arm. “Quietly,” he whispered. “This isn’t your ground, Kori, you play by local rules.”
“Convenience?”
“She’s for hire like the rooms here. What did you think?”
“Any of those men…”
“Any of them, or all.” He smiled at her. “I thought you were being a little glib back there, talking about whores and what they did.”
“It’s not like Ruba.”
“Who’s Ruba?” He kept his voice low and soothing, trying to ease away the sick horror in her eyes. “Tell me about her.”
Kori laced her fingers together and rubbed one thumb over the other. “Ruba, our whore. She’s a Phrasi woman. She came to Owlyn oh before I was born. Some of the men built her a house. It’s away from the other houses and it’s a little like the Priest House. She lives there by herself. The men visit her. The women don’t like her much, but they don’t make her miserable or anything. They even talk to her sometimes. They let her help with the sugaring. Things like that. The only bad thing is they won’t let her keep her babies. They take them away from her. I’ve watched her since before I was old enough for the Lot. She’s happy, Daniel, she really is. She’s not like that girl.”
“How old is she?”
“I don’t know. Thirty-five, forty, something like that.”
“That’s part of the difference, another part’s how your people treat her. Forget the girl. There are hundreds like her, Kori. There’s nothing you can do for her except hope she survives like Ruba did. It’s better than being on the street. She won’t get hurt here. Well, not crippled or killed. And she’ll most likely have enough to eat.’’
‘
“The look on her eyes,” Kori shivered, tried a sip at the ale, wrinkled her nose and pushed it away. “This is awful stuff.” She watched Daniel drink, waited impatiently till he lowered his mug. “Where you come from, Daniel, are there girls like that?”
“I wish I could say no. We’ve got laws against it and we punish folk who break those laws. When we catch them. But there’s always someone willing to take a chance when they want something they’re not supposed to have.”
“What do you do to the ones you catch?”
“We’ve got uh machines and uh medicines and mmf I suppose you’d call them sorcerors who change their heads so they won’t do it again.” He took a long pull at the ale, wiped his mouth. “We’d better go wake up your friend, you have to get those clothes back to the maid before she crawls out of bed.” He stood, held out his hand. When she was on her feet, he looked her over again. “It would be a kind thing if you left the girl a silver or two, you’ve pretty well ruined her going home clothes.”
She closed her mouth tight and flounced away, heading for the stairs. He grinned and ambled along behind her.
Suddenly uncertain, she tapped at the door, not half loud enough to wake anyone sleeping. She started to tap again, but it swung open before her knuckles reached the panel. A young boy stood in the narrow dark rectangle between door and jamb, fair and frail with odd shimmery eyes.
“Brann,” Kori murmured. She reached under her hair and pulled a thong over her head, held it out, a triangle of bronze swinging at the bottom of the loop. “I’m the one who sent for her.”
The door opened wider. A dark form appeared behind the boy. “Come.” A woman’s voice, a rough warm contralto.
“Show me,” Kori whispered. “First, show me the other half.”
Snatch of laughter. A hand came out of the dark, a triangle of bronze resting on the palm. Kori snatched the bronze bit, examined it, turned it over, ran her thumb along the edge, then dropped both parts of the medal into her blouse. “If you’ll move back, please?” she said to the boy.
He frowned. “Him?”
“He’s in it.”
“Jay, let her in. Ahzurdan is fidgeting about the wards.”
With a small angry sound, the boy moved aside.
Daniel followed Kori inside. A lanky blond girlchild was setting an old lamp on the shelf at the head of a lumpy tottery bed. Just lit, the lamp’s chimney was clouded, a smear of carbon blacked the bottom curve. The shutters were closed and the smell of rancid lamp oil and ancient sweat was strong in the crowded room. A tallish woman with short curly white hair backed up to give them space, lowered herself on the end of the bed. The boy Jay dropped on the crumpled quilt beside her; the girl who was obviously his sister settled herself beside him. Arms crossed, a tall man in a long black robe leaned against the wall and scowled at everyone impartially. His eyes met Daniel’s. Instant hate, instantly reciprocated. Daniel Akamarino the easygoing slide-away-from-a-fight man stared at the other and wanted to kick his face in, wanted to beat the other into bloody meat. The woman Kori had called Brann smiled. “As you can see, the amenities are limited. Sit or stand as you please. There’s a chair, I don’t’trust the left hind leg, so be careful.” When Kori started to speak, she held up her hand. “Stay quiet for a moment. Ahzurdan, the wards.”
Ahzurdan dragged his eyes off Daniel Akamarino, nodded. His hands moved ed in formal, carefully controlled patterns; his lips mouthed silent rhythmic words. “In place and renewed,” he murmured a moment later.
“Interference?”
“Not that I can taste. I can’t be sure, you know. This is his heart place and he’s strong, Brann. A hundred times stronger than when I was with him.”
“HE has a talisman,” Kori said. “A stone he wears round his neck.”
Ahzurdan took a step toward her. “Which one? Which talisman?”
“I don’t know. Do they have names?”
“Do they…” He straightened, closed his eyes. “Yes, child, they have names and it’s very very important to know the name of the talisman he has.
“I’ll ask Tit if he can find out. The Chained God might be able to tell him. He’s given us other things like Daniel here being involved somehow in what’s going to happen. Aren’t you awake now because you got a notion I was coming a day early?”
Brann turned her head. “Ahzurdan?”
“There was a warning. I told you.” His dark blue eyes slid around to Daniel, slid away again. “Nothing about him.” His voice was low and dragged as if he didn’t want to say the words.
“I see. Young woman, your name is Kori Piyolss?” When Kori nodded Brann turned to Daniel. “And you?”
“Daniel Akamarino, one time of Rainbow’s End.”
“And where’s that?”
“From here? I haven’t a notion.”
“Hmm. Daniel Akamarino. Danny Blue?”
“I’ve been called that.” He gave her one of his second-best grins. “I’ve been called worse.”
“This isn’t going to hurt you,” she said. He raised his brows. “I need to know,” she said. “When that bronze bit came to me, it brought two tigermen with it who killed the messenger and tried damn hard to kill me.” Kori gasped, leaned against Daniel, clutching his arm so hard he could feel her nails digging into him. “Sorry, child, but you’d best know what kind of fight you’re in. Where was I? Yes, I have to know more about the two of you before we get into it about our mutual friend you know who. Yaril, Jaril, screen them.”
The two children were abruptly spherical gold shimmers. Warily, Daniel began to slide toward the door; before he moved more than a step, one of the shimmers darted at him and merged with him. A ticklish heat rambled about inside him, then focused in his head. A few breaths later, the shimmer whipped away again and was a young boy sitting on the bed, his sister beside him.
‘Jay?”
“Daniel Akamarino is like us, fetched here from another reality, he doesn’t know how or why. It’s a reality more like ours, no magic in it, no gods, their ships don’t sail on water but through the nothingness between suns.-The boy chuckled suddenly, reached out and stroked Brann’s arm. “He’s a sailing man, Bramble, not a captain I’m afraid, but he’s been just about everything else on those ships.”
Brann shook her head. “Idiot. Yaro?”
“It’s pretty much what you thought, Bramble. The girl is being driven by the Chained God who wants something from you. This Rd she’s talking about, he’s her brother, seven years old and not likely to live till eight unless something is done. When one priest dies, the god himself chooses the next and makes his choice known through fancy and extremely public signs. A little over two months ago, You-know-who’s soldiers tied Owlyn Vale’s priest of the Chained God to a stake set in the threshing floor and lit a fire under his feet and a few days after that the god told Tre he was it next.” Yaril lifted a hand, let it fall. “Not a profession with a great future.”
Kori sighed and went to sit in the mispraised chair. “Tres got maybe a week before the signs start.”
Daniel Alcamarino thought, uh huh, that explains what was bothering the boy. Kuh! Burnt to death. Me, I wouldn’t be worried, I’d be paralyzed. Gods, hah, gods tromping around interfering with ordinary people. Magic that’s more than self-delusion. Wouldn’t ‘ve believed it a few hours back. Which reminds me. “I met one of your gods, demigods whatever tonight. Two of them, actually. A ship-size mermaid and a little bald shemale with good taste in wine.” He slid the carrystrap of the wineskin off his shoulder. “Heesh left this with me. Care for a drink?”
“Tungjii and the Godalau!” Brann sighed. “Old Thngjii Luck sticking hisser thumbs in my life.”
“That’s what heesh called her. Godalau.” He squeezed wine into his mouth, held out the skin. “Tungjii, you said. Luck?”
She drank, passed the skin to the changechildren. “Point of view, my friend. Thngjii touches you, things happen. ‘S up to you to make it good or bad.” She hitched round to face Kori. “Chained God tell you where I was, or did you ask downstairs?”
“Daniel asked the girl.”
“Hmm. Our mutual friend has Noses watching the place. Dan,” amusement danced in her eyes as she swung back so she could see both Kori and Daniel Akamarino, “our own Danny Blue, he tells me he saw two with message birds in the taproom last time he went down. So Him, by now he knows you’ve got to me. Something to think about. Eh?”
Daniel Akamarino rested his shoulders against the wall, crossed his arms; he wasn’t looking at Ahzurdan so he didn’t know how closely his stance mimicked the other man, though he could feel the powerful current of emotion flowing between them; the sorceror with a version of his name didn’t look like him, so it wasn’t a matter of physical double in a different reality, but there was some sort of affinity between them; no, affinity wasn’t quite the right word, it felt more ‘like they were two north poles of, a bipolar magnet, each vigorously, automatically repelled by the other. He cleared his throat. “If I were mm whatsisname, I wouldn’t fool with spies, I’d send a squad of soldiers and grab us all. Three adults, three kids, it’s not much of a fighting force.”
Brann smiled. “He knows better, Sailor. Ahzurdan here could whiff out a dozen soldiers without raising a sweat. Yaril and Jaril, they’d crisp another dozen and me, I’m Drinker of Souls. We’re wasting time; Kori, you’ve got to get back to your folks before they find out you’re gone. So. I’ve answered your summons and got whatsisname,” a quick smile at Daniel, “on my back for it. What am I supposed to do about him and if it’s not him, what?”
“Drinker of Souls.”
“Not that simple, child. Yes, I’ll call you child and you’ll be polite about it. I would have to touch him and there’s no way in this world he’d let me get that close.” She frowned. “Is that your plan? You said you had one.”
“‘S not MY plan exactly. Chained God told Tre what you should do is get to him and get the Chains off him, then he’ll go with you to get the talisman from HIM and that means Amortis won’t do what HE says any more and we won’t have to listen to the Servants of Amortis and if they try to set soldiers on us in the Vales, we’ll beat them back down to the Plains. And Tre won’t get burnt.”
“That’s the plan?”
Kori looked at her hands. “Yes.”
Brann shook her head in disbelief. “Miserable meeching mindless gods. How the hell am I supposed to take chains off a god if he can’t do it himself, how do I even get to him?”
Eyes on her laced fingers, Kori shook her head. ‘I don’t know. All I know is what Tre said. He said there’s a way to reach the Chained God. He said the god wouldn’t tell him exactly what it is. He said the god didn’t want HIM to know it. He said you’ve got to go to Isspyrivo Mountain. He said once you’re there, the Chained God will get you to him somehow.”
“Isspyrivo. Where’s that?”
“You’ll do it? You’ll really do it?”
“If you think that needs answering, you haven’t been listening. Now. Where is that idiot mountain?”
“On the end of the Forkker Vale Finger, you can see it from Haven Cove, at least that’s what um folks say when they think the kids aren’t listening. Haven’s a smuggler’s town; it’s not something they want us to know about; we do, of course. The men get drunk sometimes at festivals and they tell all kinds of stories about sea smugglers and land smugglers; one of them was about the time Isspyrivo blew and caught Henry the Hook on the head with some hot rock. It’s a fire mountain. They say it’s restless, they say it doesn’t like folk climbing around on it; they say it kills them, opens up under them and swallows them.”
“Hmm. Let me think a minute.”
Daniel Akamarino leaned against the wall watching her. Drinker of Souls. Hmm. I think I pass on this one. It’s an interesting world; if I’m stuck here, I’m stuck, no point in getting myself killed which seems likely enough if I hang with this bunch. He slid along the wall, closed his hand about the doorlatch. “Been fun, folks,” he said aloud. “See you round, maybe.”
Brann looked up. “No, Ahzurdan, I’ll handle this. Daniel Akamarino, if you leave, you walk into our enemy’s hands; you’re a dead man but not before he finds out everything you know. I don’t want to do it, but if you insist on leaving us, I’ll have to stop you and let the children strip your mind.”
“Nothing I can do about that?”
“Not much.”
He scowled at Ahzurdan. “He’d enjoy frying me, wouldn’t he?”
“I couldn’t say.”
Hands behind him, he tried the latch; the hook wouldn’t move, he applied more pressure, nothing happened. Across the room Ahzurdan was laughing at him soundlessly triumphant. Daniel ignored him and moved back to his leaning spot. “If I can’t leave, what about Kori? How does she get back to the hostel?”
Brann nodded. “If she’s going, it’s about time she went. Jaril, take a look downstairs, see what’s happening.” The boy flipped into his shimmershape, dropped through the floor. “Yaril, scout the outside for us, see what’s waiting out there.” The girl flitted away through the ceiling. “Dan um this is going to get confusing, Ahzurdan, I want to get Kori to the hostel without your ex-teacher tracking her. Can you fog his mirror or something?”
“Or something. Talisman or not, I’ve learned enough from his attacks to blur his sight. He’ll know I’m moving, he’ll know the general direction, but he won’t be able to see me or anyone with me. Earth elementals and ariels, I can handle those myself; if you and the children can remove the human watchers, we can get the girl back without him finding out who she is. The fog will be broad enough to cover the hostel and half the quarter around it, he can’t be sure where I’m going, but he’s not stupid, so he’ll guess fairly accurately what’s happening.”
“Kori, you hear?”
“Yes.” The word was a long sigh. She was pale, her eyes huge and frightened. Daniel watched her, understanding well enough what she was feeling now; she’d gone into this blithely enough, enjoying the excitement of her secret maneuvers; her brother’s life rested on her skills, but that wasn’t quite real to her. Settsimaksimin’s power wasn’t real to her. It was now. She was beginning to understand what might happen to her people because of her activities. No, it wasn’t a game any longer.
Brann got to her feet, crossed to stand beside her; she touched her fingers to Kori’s shoulder. “What do you want to do? You’re welcome to stay here.”
“I can’t do that. If I’m gone, HET do something awful to my folk.”
“Dan uh Ahzurdan?”
“These are his people, Brann; remember what I’ve told you about him, he’s always been extravagantly possessive about things that are his. When we… his apprentices finally broke away, he took it as a kind of betrayal. He won’t do anything to them unless he’s driven to it. As long as there’s no overt break, as long as he can strike at you, us, without involving them, he’ll leave them alone. The girl’s right. She has to go back.”
“Soon as the children are back, then, we’ll move. You’ll come with us, Daniel Akamarino.” She smiled. “I can almost hear your mind ticking along. Don’t waste your time, my friend. We won’t be too busy to keep track of you, don’t you even think of slipping off…”
hullo whipped up through the floor, changed. “Taproom’s cleared out except for a couple of drunks. Real drunks, I whizzed them and nearly picked up a secondhand buzz. I went outside and ran a few streets. Lot of men standing in doorways. I counted twenty before I came back, there’s probably twice that.”
Yaril dropped through the ceiling, fluttered into her girlshape. “He’s not exaggerating. They’re watching every street and path around this place, just about every bush. There’s another ring beyond that, almost as tight and beyond that two more, not so tight. There are even some little cats out on the water zipping back and forth through the fog. Must be a couple of hundred men out there. The landwatchers aren’t all that enthusiastic, standing around holding up walls, walking circles in the middle of the street, but seems to me that’s because nothing is happening. Let them spot us and they’ll turn as efficient as you want.”
Brann frowned. “I didn’t expect quite that many… we can forget about the boats and the first ring isn’t a problem, we can get most of them before they realize we’re out. Before He knows we’re out. It’s those next, what, you said three rings? They worry me. Did you scan the rooftops, Yaro?”
“Bramble! course I did. Some people were up there sleeping, there were several pairs of lovers intent on their own business, they wouldn’t give a fistful of spit for anything happening on the street. I didn’t see anyone alert enough to be a spy, but I won’t guarantee I didn’t miss someone.” She hesitated, turned finally to Ahzurdan. “Would he do something like that? Use dozens of visible watchers to camouflage two or three maybe a few more of his best Noses, so we take the guards out and don’t notice some sly rats sneaking after us?”
“He’s a complicated man. I’d say it’s likely.”
Daniel Akamarino watched the working of this odd collection of talents and began to feel better about being involved in this web. They put aside their antagonisms and concentrated on getting the job done, once they’d defined what the job was they wanted to do. It wasn’t a group that could or would stay together in ordinary circumstances, but nothing was ordinary about what was happening. Kori was obviously feeling a little out of it; she was fidgeting in her chair, making it creak and wiggle, not quite overtaxing the weak hind leg. He rubbed a thumb across one of his larger pockets, tracing the outlines of the rectangular solid snugged inside, a short range stunner; he eyed Brann a moment, then the children, then Ahzurdan, wondering if he could take them out and get away; his thumb smoothed over and over the stunner, no, impossible to tell what sort of metabolism the children had; they might eat the stunfield like candy. Besides, old Settsimaksimin had the ground covered out there. He liked the thought of that man operating on him about as much as he liked the idea of the children wiping his mind. When he brought Kori here he hadn’t noticed the watchers, but that might have been the wine, he still wasn’t all that sober, or it might have been worrying about young Kori and what she was up to; whatever, he wasn’t about to argue with the children’s assessment of the danger out there. Shapeshifters, shoo-ee, what a world. Contact telepaths, lord knew what else they were. He eased the zipper open, fished out the stunner. “Hey folks,” he said, “listen a minute. I think I know the problem. Brann, you and the kids have to actually touch someone to take him out, right?” She nodded, a short sharp jerk of her head. “And there are too many watchers out there to get at one sweep, right? So, if you could put them to sleep for say an hour, ten, twenty at a blow, and do it from say roof height, them being on the ground with no one near them, that would erase the worst of your difficulties, wouldn’t it?”
“It’d come close.” She leaned toward him, focused all her attention on him, wide green eyes shining at him. “What have you got, Danny Blue?”
“Being a peaceful man with a habit of dropping into places that don’t appreciate good intentions, I keep this with me.” He held up the stunner. It didn’t look like much, just a black box with rounded corners that fit comfortably in his hand, a slit in the front end covered with black glass, a slide with a shallow depression far his thumb in it that with a little pressure bared the triggering sensor.
Jaril sat straight, crystal eyes glittering. “Stunner?”
Daniel Akamarino raised his brows, then he remembered they, like him, were from somewhere else. “Right. Short range neural scrambler.”
“See it?”
“Why not.” A glance to make sure the thumbslide was firmly shut, then he tossed the stunner to the boy.
Jaril caught it, set it on the bed, switched to his energy form and sat over it for a few breaths like hen on an egg. He shifted, was a boy again. do. You letting Yaro and me use it?”
“You can handle it in the air?”
The boy grinned. “Ohhh yes.”
“Feel free. Need any directions?”
“Nope. We read to the subatomic when we have to.”
“Handy. That work on what they use here?”
“Magic?”
“I’m not all that comfortable with the concept.”
“Better get comfortable, tisn’t likely you’ll go home any time soon.”
“You?”
“Two centuries so far.”
‘‘Ananiles?’’
“We never bothered with those. Natural span of the species is ninety centuries.”
“Hmin.”
“You finished?” Dry amusement in Brann’s voice. “Good. We’ll run out of night if we keep this chatter going. Kori, anything else you need to tell me?”
Kori looked up from hands pleating and repleating the heavy cloth of her long black skirt. “No. Not that I can think of.”
“Jay, Yaro, from the little I understand of your chat with Daniel, it seems you can clear the way for us. How long will it take?”
The changechildren stared at each other for several minutes. Daniel Akamarino felt an itching in his head that rose to a peak and broke off abruptly as Jay broke eye contact with his sister. “We’ll zigzag, trading off, each one take a ring while the other flies to the next. I think we better do at least half each ring, maybe a bit more. Yam?”
“Time. You know how long it took me to check the full length of all four rings, maybe twenty minutes; this’ll go a lot faster. I’d say, ten minutes at most to do the ring sweeps, then we’d better go over the streets along the way to the hostel, zapping everything both sides in case sneaks are ambushed inside the houses. Say another five minutes, it’s not all that far from here.”
Brann threaded her fingers through her hair, cupped her hand about the nape of her neck and scowled at the floor. Ahzurdan cleared his throat, but shut up as she waved her other hand at him. A waiting silence. Daniel rubbed his shoulders against the wall, yawned. She lifted her head. “Go, kids, get it done as fast as you can, we’ll wait five minutes, then follow.”
Ahzurdan at point spreading his confusion over half Silagamatys, the four of them moved at a trot through the stygian foggy tag-end of the night, past bodies crumpled in doorways and under trees; through a silence as profound as that in any city of the dead. Halfway to the hostel the children came back, horned owls with crystal eyes and human hands instead of talons. One of the owls swooped low over Daniel, hooted, dropped the stunner into his hands and slanted up to circle in wide loops over them. They swept past the hostel and Kori slipped away. Daniel Akamarino watched her vanish into the shrubbery and spent the next few minutes worrying about her, when the building continued dark and silent, no disturbance, he relaxed and stopped looking over his shoulder.
8. Kori Piyolss Runs Into A Quiet Storm In The Shape Of Auntnurse.
SCENE: Quiet shadowy halls, doorless cells on both sides, snores, sighs, groans, farts, whimpers, creak of beds, slide of bodies on sheets, a melding of sleepsotmds into a general background hum, a sense of swimming in life momentarily turned low.
After a last look at Daniel Akamarino, Kori slid into the shrubbery of the Hostel garden, worked her way to the ancient wittli vine that was her ladder in and out of the sleeping rooms on the second floor. She tucked up the skirt, kicked off her sandals and tied them to her belt, set her foot in the lowest crotch and began climbing. The shredded papery bark coming to threads under her tight quick grip, the dustgray leaves shedding their powder over her, the thinskinned purple berries that she avoided when she could since they burst at a breath and left a stain it took several scrubbings to get rid of, the highpitched groans of the stalk, the secret insinuating whispers the leaves made as they rubbed together, these never changed, year on year they never changed, since the first year she came (filled with excitement and resentment) and crept out to spend a secret hour wandering about the gardens. Year on year, as she grew bolder, slipping slyly through the dangerous streets, only.a vague notion of the danger to give the adventure spice and edge, they never changed, only she changed. Now there was no excitement, no game, only a deep brooding anxiety that tied her insides into knots.
She reached out and pushed cautiously at the shutters to the small window of the linenroom, lost a little of her tension as they moved easily silently inward. One hand clamped around a creaking secondary vine, she twisted her body about until head, shoulders and one arm were through the window, then she let go of the vine and waved her feet until she tumbled headfirst at the floor; she broke her fall with her hands, rolled over and got to her feet feeling a little dizzy, one wrist hurting because she’d hit the stone awkwardly. She untied the sandals, set them on a shelf, stripped off the maid’s clothing, used the blouse to wipe her hands and feet, thinking ruefully about Daniel Akamarino’s comment; it was true then and doubly true now, no one would wear those rags. She dug three silvers out of her pouch, the last she had left of the hoard from the cave, rolled them up in the clothing, telling herself she would have done it anyway, Daniel didn’t have to stick his long nose in her business. She pulled her sleeping shift over her head, smoothed it down, eased the door open a crack and looked along the hall. Silence filled with sleeping-noises. Shadows. She edged her head out, looked the other way. Silence. Shadows. She slipped through the crack, managed to close the door with no more than a tiny click as the latch dropped home, ran on her toes to the room at the west end where the maids slept. No time to be slow and careful; dawn had to be close and the maids rose with the sun; she flitted inside, put the rolled clothing where she’d got it, on the shelf behind a curtain, and sped out, her heart thudding in her throat as one of the girls muttered in her sleep and moved restlessly on her narrow bed.
Struggling to catch her breath, she slowed as soon as she was clear of the room and crept along past the door-less arches of the sleeping cubicles; her own cubicle where she slept alone was near the east end of the Great Refectory. She was exhausted, her arms and legs were heavy, as if the god’s chains had been transferred to them, the old worn sandals dragged like lead at her fingers.
Sighing with relief, scraping her hand across her face, she turned through the arch.
And stopped, appalled.
AuntNurse sat on the bed, her face grave. “Sit down, Kori. There.” she pointed at the end of the bed.
Kori looked at the sandals she carried. She bent, set them on the floor, straightening slowly. Head swimming she sat on the bed, as far as she could get from her aunt.
“Don’t bother telling me you’ve just gone to the lavatory, Kori. I’ve been sitting here for nearly three hours.”
Kori rubbed at the back of her right hand, bruises were beginning to purple there, fingermarks. She didn’t know what to say, she couldn’t tell anyone, even AuntNurse, about the Drinker of Souls and the rest of them, but she couldn’t lie either, AuntNurse knew the minute she tried it. She chewed on her lip, said nothing.
“Are, you a maid still?”
Kori looked up, startled. “What? Yes. Of course. It wasn’t that.”
“May I ask what it was?”
Twisting her hands together, moving her legs and feet restlessly, Kori struggled to decide what she should do. Ahzurdan’s fog was still over this sector but it wouldn’t be there much longer. “You mustn’t say anything about it after,” she whispered. “Not to me, not to anyone. Right now HE can’t hear us, but that won’t last. Tres the next Priest. I’ve been trying to do something to keep him from being killed. Don’t make me say what, it’s better you don’t know.”
“I see. I beg your pardon, Kori. That is quite a heavy burden for your shoulders, why didn’t you share it?” Kori looked quickly at her, looked away. She didn’t have an answer except that she’d always hated having things done for her; since she could toddle, she’d worked hard at learning what she was supposed to know so she could do for herself. And mostly, people were stupid, they said silly things that Kori knew were silly before she could read or write and she learned those skills when she was just a bit over three. They took so long to understand things that she got terribly impatient (though she soon learned not to show it); the other children, even many of the adults, didn’t understood her jokes and her joys, when she played with words she got blank stares unless the result was some ghastly pun that even a mule wouldn’t miss. Not AuntNurse, no one would ever call AuntNurse silly or stupid, but she was so stiff it was like she wouldn’t let herself have fun. Without exactly understanding why, Kori knew that she couldn’t say any of this, that all the reasons she might make up for doing what she wanted to and keeping Tres trouble a secret, all those fine and specious justifications would crumble like tissuepaper under AuntNurse’s cool penetrant gaze.
“I suppose I really don’t need an answer.” Aunt-Nurse sighed. “Listen to me, Kori. You’re brighter than most and that’s always a problem. You’re arrogant and you think more of your ability than is justified. There’s so much you simply do not understand. I wonder if you’ll ever be willing to learn? I know you, child, I was you once. If you want to live in Owlyn Vale, if you want to be content, you’ll learn your limits and stay in them. It’s discipline, Kori. There are parts of you that you’ll have to forget; it will feel like you’re cutting away live flesh, but you’ll learn to find other ways of being happy. More than anything you need friends, Kori, women friends; you’ll find them if you want to and if you work at it, you’ll need them, Kori, you’ll need them desperately as the years pass. I was planning to talk to you when we got back.” She lifted a hand, touched her brow, let it drop back in her lap. “I’d still like to have that talk, Kori, but I’ll let you come if you want, when you want. One last thing, do you have any idea what your life would be like if you had to leave us?”
Kori shivered, rubbed suddenly sweaty palms on the linen bunched over her thighs as she remembered the girl in the tavern. “Yes,” she whispered, “I saw a girl. A con-convenience.”
AuntNurse smiled, shook her head. “You terrify me, child. I am delighted you got back safe and rather surprised, if that’s the kind of place you were visiting.”
Kori chewed her lip some more, then she scootched along the bed until she could reach AuntNurse’s hand. She took it, held it tight, shook her head, then gazed at AuntNurse, fear fluttering through her, sweat dripping into her eyes.
AuntNurse nodded, smoothed long cool fingers over Kori’s bruised and sweaty hands. “I see. Unfortunately you face the Lot come the morning, so I can’t let you sleep much longer than usual, Kori. You must eat, you’ll need your strength.” She got to her feet, freed her hand. “If I can help, Kori, in any way, please let me.” She touched Kori’s cheek, left without looking back.
Kori sat for several minutes without moving; in some strange and frightening way she’d crossed a chasm and the bridge had vanished on her. It had nothing to do with Tre or Settsimaksimin and everything to do with AuntNurse. With… with… Polatea, not Aunt-Nurse. Never again AuntNurse. Shivering with more than the early morning chill, she crawled into bed and eventually managed to sleep.
9. Settsimaksimin Watches In His Workroom And At The Court Of Lots In The Grand Yron.
SCENE: 1. Settsimaksimin in his subterranean workroom, idly watching his mirror, Todichi Yahzi back by one wall, noting Maksim’s comments, released for the moment from the onerous task of watching over the machinations of a number of very ambitious men.
2. Settsimaksimin on the highseat at the Court of Lots, in the Grand Yron. Picture an immense rectangular room, sixty meters on the long sides, twenty on the short, the ceiling fifty meters from the floor, utterly plain polished white marble walls with delicate traceries of gray and gold running through the white, a patterned pavement of colored marbles, ebony and gilt backless benches running two thirds the length of the long sides, two doors dressed in ebony and gilt in the short north wall, one at the west end, one at the east. At the short south wall (beneath Settsimaksimin but out far enough so he can see it without straining), a low ebony table with a gilt bowl on it, a bowl filled with what looked to be black eggs. To his left, about ten meters away along the west wall, near the end of the long bench, another table with another bowl, this one red, the pile of black eggs in it is considerably smaller than that in the gilt bowl. To his right, ten meters away along the east wall, a third table with a third bowl, this one blue, its egg pile about the same as that in the red one. A trumpet blares, two lines of children stream in, girls on the east, boys on the west.
Settsimaksimin lounged in his chair, bare feet crossed at the ankles and resting on a battered hassock, he sipped at a huge mug of bitter black tea; he’d discarded all clothing but the sleeveless black overrobe and the heavy gold chain with the dull red stone on it, the talisman BinYAHtii (I take all); his gray-streaked plait was twisted atop his head again and skewered there. The only evidence of his fatigue lay in his eyes, they were red streaked and sunk deeper than usual in heavy wrinkles and folds. He was watching the scenes skipping across the face of the obsidian mirror: the waterfront (he scowled as he saw the Godalau playing in the water and interfering old Thngjii ambling about the wharves,-stopping to talk to a ghostly stranger sitting on a bitt); the tavern where Brann and her entourage were (a place mostly blank because Ahzurdan had learned too-much for Maksim’s comfort from the attack at Kukurul and had tightened and strengthened his wards until there was no way Maksim could tease them apart or find a cranny to squeeze a tendril through; though it was a major complication in his drive to protect himself and his goals, he beamed proudly at the blank spot, a father watching his favorite son show his strength); the Hostel where the Owlyn Valers were settled in and presumably sleeping the sleep of the just and innocent, even the one that plotted against him; a sweep through the streets, flickering over the watchers he’d posted about the tavern, swooping to check out assorted nocturnal ramblers (he chanced on a thief laboring over the lock at the back of a jeweler’s shop, snatched him up and dumped him into the bay). Waterfront again (the man with the blurred outlines was still sitting on the bitt drinking from a wineskin and staring out over the water, singing to himself and getting pleasantly drunk, wholly innocuous except for that odd blurring; Maksim sat up and scowled at him, tried to get a clearer image; there were peculiar resonances to the man and he didn’t like puzzles wandering about his city; he shrugged and let the mirror pass on). Tavern again. He looked through the eyes of his surrogates in there, but nothing was happening downstairs. Hostel again. Dark and sleeping. Streets and those in them. Waterfront. Tavern. Hostel. “Now what have we got here?”
Up on the second floor a small form eased out a window and started down the vine that crawled over part of the wall near that window. A girl it was, skirt tucked up, dropping from branch to branch faster than most folk could negotiate a flight of stairs. He willed the mirror into sharper focus on her, smiled as she reached the grass, put her sandals on, shook out her skirt and smoothed down her flyaway hair. She darted into the shrubbery, moving with assurance through the darkness. Maksim sat up, laughter rumbling round his big taut belly. “Little ferret.” She reappeared in the street and began moving at a steady pace toward the bay. “Aaahhh,” he breathed, “it’s you, YOU, I’ve got to thank for this. Eh Todich, come see. There’s my great enemy, a girl, twelve maybe, a skinny little girl.” She clung to shadow as much as she could, but went forward resolutely, circling drunks and skipping away from a man who grabbed at her, losing him after she fled into back alleys and whipped around half a dozen corners; she didn’t pause to catch her breath but glanced around as she trotted on, oriented herself and started once more toward the waterfront, a thin taut wire of a girl seen and unseen, an image in a broken dream. “A girl, a girl, Tungjii’s tits, why does it have to be a girl? She’s got more spine than half my army, Todich; if she had a grain of talent and was a boy, ah what a sorceror she’d make. Danny Blue, my baby Dan, she’d eat you alive, this little ferret. If she weren’t a girl, if she had the talent. What’s that now?”
She whipped around another corner and slammed into two men. The taller man grabbed her arm, swung her hard against the wall, while his squat burly companion gaped blearily at her. The tall one laughed, said something, wrapped his other hand in her hair and jerked her head up. Ignoring her struggles, he looked over his shoulder at his friend, his rubbery face moving through a series of drunken grimaces.
The squat man flung himself at the girl, mashed her against the wall. He slobbered at her, began fumbling at the band of her skirt, using one shoulder to pin her other arm as she clawed at him.
“Drunks,” Maksirn growled, “filthy beasts.” He watched her struggles and her fear and her fury with an uncomfortable mix of satisfaction, compassion and shame. “You’re getting what you asked for, little ferret, you should have stayed where you belong.” By forgetting who and what she was, by working against him who had done so much for the people of Cheonea and meant to do so much more, she’d brought her shaming on herself. He had not the slightest doubt it was she who’d sent for the Drinker of Souls, the boy who carried the message came from Owlyn, what was his name? Toma something or other, dead now, it didn’t matter, though how she’d known of the Drinker and what she’d used to lever Brann into moving… well, he’d find out before too long. “I’ll have you, Owlet, you face the Lot tomorrow, yes, I’ll have you…” He scowled at the mirror, moved his hands uneasily, twisted his mouth into a grimace of distaste. A child. A clever devious spirited child. Her strength was nothing against those men, her arms were like twigs. He could save her as easily as he took his next breath, snatch those beasts off her, send earth elementals to crush them. He watched and did nothing. You have to learn, little ferret, he told himself, learn your limitations so I don’t have to punish you myself. He watched and shifted uneasily in his chair, his stomach churning. He rubbed at his chest under BinYAHtii as his heart thudded painfully.
The odd man from the waterfront came suddenly from the fog. He seemed to hesitate, then with a slap and two kicks disposed of the attackers. The girl put her hand on his arm, said something. “She knows him. Bloody Hells. He thumbed the mirror. “Sound you.”
For several minutes the only sounds were the slap of their feet, the diminishing yells from the squat man who was quickly lost in the fog, the drip of that fog from the eaves. Then the man slowed and spoke to the girl. Maksim clicked his tongue with deep annoyance; like his form the man’s words were blurred beyond deciphering.
“… “
“I have to meet someone.” The child tilted her head and smiled up at the man. Flirting with him, Maksim grumbled to himself, hot with jealousy, little whore. “Not you, Daniel. Someone else.” Daniel, Daniel, she does know him, Forty Mortal Hells, who is he?
“… “
“Halt! No such thing. When the day comes I’ll marry someone in Owlyn. This is something else. I don’t want to talk about it here. “
“… “
“Come with me. *** says you’re mixed up in this some way, that you’re here because of it. You might as well know what’s happening and why. “
“… “
“I can’t.”
“… “
Maksim watched them hurry through the fog until they reached the Blue Seamaid. He nodded to himself. I’m going to have to do something about you. Who are you? Owlyn Valer, yes. What’s your name, child? I’ll know it come the morrow. Scoundrel time old Maksi, you out-rascaled the Parastes, now a child is completing your corruption, I’ve never interferred with the Lot before this, but I can’t leave her running around loose. You’re going into the Yron training, my angry young rebel, you’re going to get that hot blood cooled. He listened to one side of the argument outside the tavern, guessed most of the man’s objections, saw his final shrug. The child’s got ten times your backbone, you fool. Why don’t you pick her up and get her back where she belongs? He considered doing that himself, it’d be easy enough; he put off deciding (though such dithering was foreign to him) and followed them inside. ‘‘
“… “
“Probably asleep. *** says she’s here.” Why can’t I hear that name? That’s the second time it’s blurred out on me. Someone is interfering, someone is working against me. He slapped his hand on the table, calmed abruptly as his heart started bumping irregularly. He closed his fingers about the talisman and squeezed until his body calmed and he could listen again. “… room was. Maybe you better do the talking. Ask about a white-haired woman with two children.’
“… “
“Yes, but I don’t know if she’s using it.-
“… “
“No, don’t talk about it, not now.”
Maksim stopped listening. He stroked the talisman, closed his eyes and reached for her intending to flip her back to the Hostel garden.
He couldn’t get a grip on her. What should have been simple was somehow impossible. He could feel her, he could smell her, he could almost taste the salt sweat on her skin but he couldn’t move her a hair one way or another. His eyes snapped open. “That man. That stinking scurvy scrannel scouring of a leprous dam. That canker, that viper, that concupiscent incontinent defiler of innocence, that eyesore, that offence to heaven and earth…” He blasted out a long sigh that fogged the mirror for an instant until he glared it clear again. Rubbing at his chest, he went back to listening since he couldn’t do anything else.
“.… come from, Daniel, are there girls like that?”
“… “
“What do you do to the ones you catch.”
“… “
She closed her mouth tight and flounced away, heading for the stairs, irritated by whatever it was he said. Maksim gave her a thin angry smile. That’s right, get away from him, girl. He’s not for you. When she’d put some distance between her and the man (he was getting up to go after her), Maksim tried once more to catch hold of her, but he couldn’t get a grip, she slid away as if she were greased. He, sat fuming, breathing hard; he couldn’t remember being so helpless since he was a boy in the pleasurehouse he’d stomped into the ground when he took Silagamatys and Cheonea from crazy old Noshios, His head ached and acid burned in his throat as he watched the girl and the man pass through Ahzurdan’s wards and vanish into that blank he couldn’t penetrate. He spent a few minutes probing at it again, if the man really was an energy sink, he ought to affect Ahzurdan’s work too. Nothing. Not a waver in Baby Dan’s weaving.
Maksim left the image tuned to the tavern and paced about the workroom muttering to himself, glancing occasionally at the mirror where nothing much was happening. He thought about sending his watchers to that room and taking them all, he thought about turning out the barracks, sending every man he had against them until they were drowned in dead men, unable to twitch a finger. N0000, Forty Bloody Mortal Hells, Danny Blue, had found some nerve, the woman of course, and Danny with nerve and resolution was by himself more than an army could handle. Amortis? He fingered BinYAHtii and was tempted but shook his head. Not here. Not in MY city. If he brought Amortis down, Tungjii and the Godalau were likely to join the battle and that would level half of Silagamatys. They’re in the plot on the Drinker’s side, AND WARNING ME, otherwise why show themselves to that man, that MAAAANN. Who was he? What was he? Filthy whiskery caitiff wretch, looked like any drifting layabout, he’d seen a thousand of them rotting slowly into the soil they sprang from. Soil he sprang from? What soil was that? Pulled here from a different reality? Why? What reality?
He stopped pacing and stared at nothing for several minutes, then tapped the mirror off, he didn’t need to see any more and he wanted his strength and total concentration for the next few hours’ work. He swung round to Todichi. Yahzi. “Todich, old friend, you’d best get back to your overseeing. Mmm. Report to me tomorrow after the Lot on the activities of the Council, I’d like your opinion on how well they’re doing and what the weaknesses of the form are, your suggestions on how I can improve it. Don’t let up on them, these next weeks are crucial, Todich. If I can get that council working, if I can craft something that will stand, no matter what the Parastes try…” He sucked in a huge breath, exploded it out. “Ready, Todich? Now!”
After alerting the guardians of that sealed cube of a room (sealed against magic, not air; like everyone else, sorcerors had to breathe), Maksim toed up the brake levers on the wheels of his tiltchair and rolled it to the center of his largest pentacle. When he had it oriented the way he wanted, he heeled the levers down again, stood rubbing thoughtfully at his chest and stared at nothing for a moment. With a grunt and a grimace he crossed to a wallchest, filled a cordial glass with a thick bitter syrup and choked it down, washed the taste away with a gulp of brandy. For several breaths he stood with his head against the door of the cabinet, his hands grasping the edge of the shelf below it, his powerful massive arms stiff, supporting most of the weight of his upper body, trembling now and then. Finally, he sighed and pushed away from the wall. There was no time. No time. He brushed his hand across his face, felt the end of his plait tickle his fingers. He pulled the skewers out, shook his head, looked down at himself and smiled. Not the way to confront the visitor he expected to have.
He slipped out of the workrobe, tossed it onto the tiltchair and padded across the cold stone floor to the place where he kept spare clothing. He drew a simple white linen robe over his head, smoothed it down and with a flick of his fingertips banished the creases from its long folding. There were no ties or fastenings, the wide flat collar fell softly about the column of his neck, the front opening spread in a narrow vee, showing glimpses of the heavy gold chain and a segment of the pendant BinYAHtii. He drew his hand across his face, wiping away the signs of weariness and the few straggles of whisker, smoothed straying hairs into place, pulled the black workrobe about him and dug out his rowan staff; he’d made it nearly a century ago, when he was out of his apprenticeship a mere two years, tough ancient wood polished with much handling, inlaid with silver wire in the private symbols that he alone could read. He laid it across the arms of the tiltchair, then went for a broom standing in the corner. There were four smaller pentacles at irregular intervals about the large one, marked out with fine silver wire laid into the stone; stepping into the pentacle the chair faced, Maksim swept it very clean, ran the broom over it one last time, then tapped the circled star into glowing life with the end of his staff. He swept off the larger pentacle until he was satisfied, put the broom back in the corner and crossed the silver wire to stand beside the chair. His massive chest rose and fell in an exaggerated sigh, then he tapped this pentacle into life, settled himself on the cushions and laid his staff once more across the arms. Reaching down past it, he pumped the lever until the chair was laid out under him, his back at a thirty degree angle to the floor. He closed his hands about the staff, closed his eyes and began assembling his arsenal of chants and gestures.
Aboard the JIVA MARISH, this is what Ahzurdan said to Brann: Magic words, magic chants, magic gestures, oh Brann, these are part of the storyteller’s trade, they’ve got nothing to do with what a sorceror is or does. Look at me, I say: JIIH JAAH JAH and move my hands so and so, and lo, I give you a rosebud wet with morning dew. Yes, it’s real, perfume and all. Yes, I merely transported it from a garden some way west of here where the sun’s not shining yet, I didn’t create it from nothing. I could teach you to mimic my voice, there’s not that great a difference between our ranges, I could teach you to ape my gestures to perfection, and do you know what you’d have? Nothing.
A sorceror works by will alone, or rather by will and word and gesture. The words and gestures are meaningless, developed by each student from his own private set of symbols, sounds and movements that evoke in him the particular mindstate and pattern of will he needs to perform specific acts of power. What you learn when you’re an apprentice is how to find these things and how to control the results. Then you learn how to use them to impress the clients. Among ourselves, we know that none of the words and gestures belonging to one of us could be used by another, at least not to produce the same effect. There is no power inherent in any word or sequence of words, in any sound or sequence of sounds, in any gesture or sequence of gestures; they are only self-made keys to areas of the will.
Ah yes, I know, claimants to mystical power have roamed the world from the time the moon was whole to this very day selling books of such spells and chants and sacred dances and charms and potions and all that nonsense, making far more gold from talentless gullibles than they’d ever gain from their own gifts, there’s always someone fool enough to want a shortcut to wealth and power, or even to a woman he has no chance of getting at, someone who’d never believe the truth, that everything a sorceror does is won out of self by talent and arduous study and ferocious discipline. That’s the truth, Brann, almost all the truth. I say almost, because there are the talismans. No one knows what they really are, only what they look like and how they might be used. There’s Shaddalakh which is said to be something like a spotted sanddollar made of porcelain; there’s Klukesharna which was melted off a meteor and cooled in the shape of a clumsy key; there’s Frunzacoache which looks exactly like a leaf off a berryvine, but it never withers; there’s BinYAHtii which looks like a rough circle of the darkest red sandstone; there’s Churrikyoo which looks like a small glass frog, rather battered and chipped and filled with thready cracks. There are more, said to be an even dozen of them, but I don’t know the rest. All of them mean power to their holder, you notice I don’t say owner, it takes a strong will to wield them and not be destroyed, they’re as dangerous as they are tempting. No, I don’t have a talisman and I don’t want one. I don’t want power over other men, I simply want to be left alone so I can earn a living doing things I enjoy doing. There’s intense satisfaction in using one’s talents, Brann. (He looked startled, as if he hadn’t connected his skills with her potting before this moment.) Was it that way with you, making your um pots?
Before Maksim began calling up consultants, he focused his will on the little he could make out of the man, two arms, two legs, a common sort of face, two blurs for eyes, a smear for a mouth and some sort of nose, a darkness about the lower face that looked like beard stubble, reddish brown skin, at least where the sun had touched him, though he showed a bit of paler skin when his shirt had moved aside, that time he slapped down the drunks attacking the girl. Looked bald on top, though that was more a guess than something Maksim saw clearly. He wore trousers and a shirt and a long sleeveless vest with many pockets that looked like they were sewn shut with heavy metallic thread, it didn’t seem logical but he kept the impression, it was a detail and every detail helped. Sandals, not boots. Maksim smiled to himself, the odd man had risked his toes, kicking the fundament of that chunky drunk; for an instant he lost some of his rancor toward him. But that was very much beside the point, a distraction, so he put emotion and image aside and focused more intently on the man himself, assembling a schematic of him he could used to direct his search through his index of realities.
He triggered the flow and the images began flipping before his mind’s eye. The world of the tigermen, hot steamy deeply unstable; the place (one couldn’t call it a world in almost any sense of that word) where the ariels swam along currents of not-air swirling about not-suns; the tangle of roots and branches that filled the whole of a pocket reality where he’d plucked forth the treeish and sent them after Brann, one immense plant with its attendant parasites and detachable branches; reality after reality, all different yet all the same in the power that thrummed through them, all these demon realities passed by without stopping, identified by the symbols he’d given them when he’d discovered them and explored their possibilities. A dance of shifting symbols, one flowing into the other, the whole dazzle a key to HIM; if an outsider could read them and follow their shifts he would know him to the marrow of his bones. That outsider would have to BE Settsimaksimin to read the symbols, and being him would not need to read them.
The demon worlds passed swiftly because they had no affinity with the pattern Maksim presented as key, but there were other realities he’d discovered, other realities he could reach into, one of them that busy place he’d snatched Todichi Yahzi from. Realities without magic in them, or at least without the kind of magic he could tap into, and therefore of no interest to him. Three of that sort of reality resonated with the oddman’s pattern; he tagged these and went on searching the index until he reached the limits of his explorations. He hadn’t sent his shamruz body searching for decades, it took too much energy, too much time, it was a luxury he couldn’t afford when he already had more power sources and demon pits that he needed. When he had to acknowledge that his body and the energy it contained, out of which he worked, was slowly and inexorably failing. So he left off searching and did not bother exploring the non-magical realities since there was nothing for him there. More than that, unlike the demon realities, those were immense beyond even his ability to comprehend. Immense in size and immensely various in their parts. He was uncomfortable there, reduced to a mote of spectacular unimportance; which was hardly an inducement to spend what he could no longer replace unless he had a need no other sort of reality would or could fill, Todichi Yahzi being one example of such a need.
He entered the first of these universes, set his construct of the oddman before him and swooped between the stars following the guide on a twisty path that set his immaterial head spinning. He visited one world after another, watched folk going about their business, they looked very much like the peasants and shopkeepers and traders in Cheonea and sometimes he understood what they were doing, the goods they were selling but not often, mostly their deeds were as incomprehensible as their words; even though he knew what the words were supposed to mean, he didn’t have the referents to make sense of what those folk found perfectly sensible. The guide construct was wobbling uncertainly with no evident goal, he wasn’t learning anything and he felt himself tiring, so he withdrew, rested a moment, then visited the second of the realities. Here the guide construct waffled aimlessly about with even less direction than before. Angry and weary, Maksim broke off the search and tried the third.
This time the pull was galvanic; the construct whipped immediately to a world swimming in the light of a greenish sun; it hovered over a stretch of what looked like seamless dusty granite spread over an area twice the size of Silagamatys. There were the mosquitolike machines on one part of it; on another, one of the metal pods these folk drove somehow between worlds, a huge hole gaping in its side. A tall bony blond woman with a set angry face snapped out orders to a collection of four-armed reptilians using peculiar motorized assists to load crates and bundles on noisy carts that went by themselves up long latticed ramps and vanished inside the, pod; now and then she muttered furious asides to the short man beside her.
“No, no, not that one, the numbers are on them, you can read, can’t you?” Aside to her companion, “If that scroov shows his face round my ship again, I’ll skin him an inch at a time and feed it to him broiled.”
The bony little man scratched his three fingers through a spongy growth that covered most of his upper body; he blinked several times, shrugged and said nothing.
“Sssaah!” She darted to the loaders, cursed in half a dozen languages, waved her arms, made the workers reload the last cart. Still furious, she stalked back to where she’d been standing. “Danny Blue, you miserable druuj, I’ll pull your masters rating this time, I swear I will, this is the last time you walk out on me or anyone else.”
“Blue wants, Blue walks,” the man murmured. “Done it before, ‘11 do ‘t again.”
“Hah! Mouse, if you’re so happy with him, you go help Sandy stow the cargo.”
“I don’t do boxes.”
She glared at him, but throttled back the words that bulged in her throat, stalked off and spent the rest of the time Maksim watched inspecting the carts as they rolled past her and rushing over to the loaders to stop and reorder what they were doing.
Maksim opened his eyes, ran his tongue along his lips; for several moments he lay relaxed in the chair breathing slowly and steadily; he licked his lips again and managed a smile. “Danny Blue. An analog with you, Baby Dan? Odder and odder.” He stroked long tapering fingers over the staff, knowing every bump and hollow and nailmark, taking comfort in that ancient familiarity. “If she was a shipmaster here, I’d say Danny Two was cargomaster and she’s fussing about him going off and leaving her to do the stowing. Sounds like he makes a habit of it, disappearing on his obligations to go off and do what he wants. A pillar of milk pudding when it comes to providing support. Why him? Who’d be such a fool as to bring THAT MAN here? Forty Mortal Hells, what good is a twitchy cargomaster to the Drinker of Souls? Who’s in this idiotic conspiracy?” A quick unhappy halfsmile, then he pushed himself up and levered the chair to vertical so it supported his back and head and his feet were planted firmly on the footboard. He was wearier than he’d expected to be and that worried him. The Lot’s tomorrow, he thought, just as well. His stomach knotted, but he forced the misery away. Children die; children always die, they starved by the hundreds when the Parastes and their puppet king ran Cheonea, they died of filth and overwork, they died in the pleasurehouses and under the whips of those fine lords. What’s the death of one child compared to the hundreds I’ve made healthier and happier? It was an old argument, he felt deeply that it was a true argument, but when he took the child who drew the gold lot to Deadfire Island, the child who was miserable at leaving his parents and excited about seeing the marvels of the Grand Yron in the holy city Havi Kudush deep in the heart of Phras, when he took that child and fed his life (or hers) to BinYAHtii, he found his rationalizations hard to remember.
He glanced at the wallcabinet, wondered if he should take another dram of the cordial, but he didn’t want to break the pentacle and have to lose more energy reactivating it. Reluctantly he spread his hand over BinYAHtii and drew on it; it was restive and hard to control, but the disciplines of that control were engraved in his brain by now, in his blood and bone, so he dealt with the brief rebellion so quickly and effectively he hardly noticed what he was doing. When he was ready, he smoothed his hair again, straightened out his linen robe and the soft black overrobe, pulled BinYAHtii through the neck opening and set it flat against the snowy linen. He swung the staff around and held it vertical beside him, then he began to chant, letting his deepest notes ring out, the sound filling the chamber with echoes and resonances.
“I0 I0 DOSYNOS EYO I0 10 STYGERAS MOIRO I0 I0 TI TILYMON PHATHO I0 I0 LELATAS EMO.”
And as the echoes died he gestured with hand and staff in ways both erotic and obscene (which is one of the reasons he did most of his primal magic in private; a sorceror in many ways is stuck with what his submind dredges up for him; powerful magics require powerful stimulants no matter how upsetting or ridiculous they might seem to onlookers.)
“PAREITHEE, OY YO ROSAPER ROSPALL. PAREITHEE ENTHA DA ROSPA.”
He beat the end of the staff against the stone three times, the sound faint after the power of his reverberant basso. A misty column appeared in the smaller pentacle.
The mist thickened and solidified into a creature like a series of mistakes glued together. A cock’s comb and mad rooster eyes, spiky gold feathers, a black sheep’s face where the beak should be, narrow snaky shoulders and torso, spindly arms with lizard hands-and lizard skin on them, male organs bulging in a downy pouch, huge heavy hips and knees that bent the wrong way, powerful in the wrongness, narrow two-toed feet with lethal black claws on the toes. Rosaper Rospall whined and panted and swayed in the small space allotted to him and fixed frantic evil eyes on Maksim.
Maksim let his voice roll (not so solemn and sonorous this time, he was fond of the deplorable little gossip), “Rosaper Rospall, I demand of you, tell me who among the gods are plotting and working against me.”
Rospall’s arms jerked with each of the words, his hands flew about with feeling gestures; he whimpered as he touched again and again the burning unseen wall about him. His blunt muzzle writhed in a way to confuse the eye and sicken the stomach, but he managed a few words. “No one works against you, chilo, no one no want no cant no can none works against you.”
Maksim frowned. Rospall never lied, but his truths were strictly limited. He reworked his next question. “Mmgjii and the Godalau are scheming against someone, perhaps several someones. Who is it? Who are they?”
“Juh juh juh, scheme dream stir the pot not not who but what.”
What’s the what?”
“BinYAHt.”
Maksim’s eyes snapped wide, then he smiled and nodded. “I should have been expecting that. Amortis is in this?”
“Amortis disportis cavortis, BinYAHt’s the hook in her, who cares, the fisherman dances to her tugging, hugging, happy sappy Amortis. No. No change for her no danger in her.”
Maksim nodded, answering his own thoughts more than Rospall’s words. “Who works with Thngjii and the Godalau, who set the hook in them and got their help?”
“In the wind, a whisper, Perran-a-Perran, lord of lords, piranha of pirhanas, he consents, in the wind, a whisper, Jah’takash perverse, spitting snags and checks and worse your way, in the wind a clink of links, the Chained God blinks and blinds and minds the mix.” Hooting laughter. “From the rest no nay or yea, they gossip and they play. And they wager who will win and when.”
Maksim felt a tremble of weakness deep within, saw Rospall’s bold black eyes get a feverish glow. Enough, he thought, I’ve got enough to think on now. He gathered himself, let his voice roll out, filled with power, never a tremble in it. “APHISTARTI, OY YO ROSAPER ROSPALL, APHISTARTI ENTHA DA ROSPA.” And his hands moved again through their erotic dance.
The visitor’s body shuddered, for a moment he seemed to fight his dismissal, then he broke into fragments and the fragments faded.
Maksim didn’t move until the last wisps of the presence had vanished utterly, then he sighed, shuddered, lay back limp in the chair, eyes closed. For several minutes he lay there breathing deep and slow. Finally, as the need to sleep began to overwhelm him, he forced his eyes open, used the staff to lever himself out of the chair. He stood and stretched, yawned enormously, then flicked himself up to his bedroom for a few hours of the sleep he needed so badly.
Todichi Yahzi cooed protests as he hovered about watching Maksim dress himself for the Lot ceremony. “Sleep,” he warbled, “anyone can see you are exhausted, Mwahan, you do not need to be there, you do not enjoy being there, why do you go?” He repeated this until Maksim snarled him into silence.
Later, as Maksim strode through the murmuring park toward the Yron, he regretted his harshness and made a mental note to apologize when he got back. Poor old Tbdich, he kept pecking and pecking at a place, but he couldn’t know how sore that spot already was. One had to take responsibility for one’s acts, one doesn’t slide away and pretend that nothing’s happening. He’d set that burden on himself in those wild first days when Cheonea teetered on the verge of a slide into chaos. when he knew he’d have to use BinYAHtii. The stone had to be fed when it was used or it fed itself from the user. Forty years he’d fed BinYAHtii, ten times a year, once a month. Forty years, once a month he’d walked this path and climbed to the high seat behind the austere stone railing and watched the children file in. Self-flagellation, reminding him not to forget why he was doing these things. If he allowed himself to be corrupted by wealth, power, by the infinite capacity in the human soul for self-justification, then these children were torn from their parents for nothing, then one of the three chosen died for nothing at all.
At his private entrance the waiting Servant opened the door for him and bowed him inside.
“Kori.” Polatea’s voice broke into confused dreams suffused with sick anxiety.
Kori stirred, sat up, rubbed at grainy eyes. “What time…”
“Breakfast in five minutes; wash and dress, come down as soon as you can, I’ll save some food for you. “ Polatea brushed the straggles of hair out of Kori’s eyes. “You can sleep some, more, if you want, after the Lot.”
“If I’m not chosen. “
A long sigh. “If you’re not chosen.
Tre looked her over. “Your skods are crooked. “
Kori clicked her tongue, adjusted the covered cords that held her headcloth in place. She and Tre were together in the Hostel court, waiting to be put in line. She used one end of the headcloth to rub at her eyes, not sure she could manage to keep on her feet till the Lot was over; she felt as if she were walking two feet under water that was sloshing about, threatening to knock her over. “I got everything done,” she muttered, hiding her mouth behind the corner of the cloth. “It’s started. “
Tre stepped closer, nestled against her. “You think it’ll make any difference, Kori? Do you think she’s got a chance against HIM?”
“A chance? Yes. There’s more than just her. Daniel’s in. You didn’t dream?”
“No. -
Sinan blew the cow’s horn and the lines began sorting themselves out, girls in one, boys in the other, eldest at the front. The gave her arm a last squeeze and drifted back to the end of his line, he was the youngest boy this year. She was two from the front of her line. Dessi Bacharikss was two months older, Lilla Farazilss a week and a half. Dessi’s twin Sparran led the boys’ line, he was a tall rather skinny boy with a wild imagination and a grin that was starting to make Kori’s toes tingle. He looked around at her winked, then straightened and sobered as the signalhorn hooted and the lines began to move.
Maksim watched the children file in, grave and rather frightened, their sandals squeaking on the polished marble. Ignoring the boys, he scanned the first few girls, smiled tightly as he saw Kori’s red-eyed, weary face. He crossed his arms, his hands hidden in the wide black sleeves of his heavily embroidered and appliquйd formal overrobe, began the gestures and the internal chant that would bring the blue lot to Kori’s searching fingers. His smile broadened a hair. There was no sign of the interference that had protected her last night.
Kori thrust her arm deep into the bowl; the capsules seemed oddly slippery this year, it was a breath or two before she could get hold of one and bring it out. She took a deep breath and moved on, hearing the capsules rattle behind her as Sallidi Xoshallarz reached for hers. She crossed to the gilt bowl, tried to ignore the feeling that HE was staring down at her ill-wishing her; it was easier to grab this time, she got her second egg and went to take her place on the girls’ bench.
It is done. I have her, little ferret, ah what a fine fierce girl she is, tired now but she doesn’t give in to it. Look how straight and bold she sits, waiting to see if fate will pass her by. Not this year, little ferret. Your last year, isn’t it. You shouldn’t have got so busy with things you don’t understand. We’ll have to do something with you; not one of Amortis’ whores, that would break you faster than marrying one of your clod-cousins and disappearing into the nursery with half your mind shut down; lunm, you could be trained to teach… With some difficulty he repressed the laughter rumbling in his belly. Not with what you’re apt to teach my restive folk. Would you like to be a scholar, child? I wonder. I could send you east to study in Silili. Study what? Magic? Have you got a talent there? There’s something in you that calls to me. Yes, you have a talent in you waiting to unfold, oh child, if you deny it, how terrible for you. I’ll make you see it. Why weren’t you born a boy? It would be so much easier if you were born a boy.
The black capsules grew sweaty in her hand; she changed hands and wiped the sweaty one surreptitiously on her overtunic. Over half done. Tivo capsules for every Owlyn child. Kori didn’t feel like a child any more; she wanted this to be over with so she could get back to Owlyn and get her life in some sort of order again. Maybe because she was so tired, she wasn’t much worried this time, not for herself anyway; so many important things had happened to her the past two months, she felt bone deep sure the Lot would pass over her, one more thing would be just too much. She watched the girls file past her going to take their places on the bench and wondered which of them would get the blue lot and be kept here in the Yron, then wondered which one would get the gold, would it be a boy or a girl this time? If I had a choice, she thought, I’d take the gold, how terribly exciting to go so far away. Havi Kudush. A wonderful magical name, it stirred desires in her she didn’t want to deal with and had to keep pushing away. She gazed down at the enigmatic black eggs. The capsules each had a ball of lead inside them, most were simply gray, one was painted blue; the girl who got that one stayed at the Yron to study as a teacher or if her tastes and talents ran that way, to serve as one of the temple whores. Kori’s mouth twitched. She fought her face straight and swallowed the smile. Polatea would scold her for saying whore, but that’s what they were, those that called themselves Fields of Amortis, plowed and replowed those fields if the gossip she heard was true. Gahh, that was almost as bad as that girl in the tavern. One of the balls in the boys’ bowl was painted red, the boy that got that one went to the army to learn a soldier’s trade or into the Yron schools to study how to Serve. But the gold yolk, oh the gilt one, the child who got the gilt one went to Havi. Kudush and did wonderful things, she was sure of it. Have a golden yolk, she thought at the black things in her hands, if you can’t have the good old safe and steady leaden gray, have a golden yolk. She glanced quickly around, lowered her eyes again. I couldn’t stand it if I had to stay here.
Sarana Piyolss, the baby of the line walked past her. The drawing’s over for this year, Kori thought. Now we find out who got the colors. Two doors opened beside the High Seat, two small processions filed down the narrow steps slanting from both sides of the high dais, first a Servant dressed in white linen, white leather sandals, short white gloves, then a boy and a girl, also dressed in white, carrying a wide shallow basket between them.
Deep silence in the court, a sense of almost intolerable waiting. One servant stopped before Sparran, the other before Dessi. Their movements slow and measured, as close to synchronized as a good marching team, they took the capsules from Sparran, from Dessi, opened them. Together both the Servants intoned NO and let capsules and lead balls fall into the basket. They moved to the next in line, repeated their movements, repeated the NO, then the Servant on the girls ‘ side stood before Kori. His face impassive, he took the damp capsules before her, broke one. A plain lead ball rolled on the palm of the white glove; he broke the second capsule. A blue ball, nestled next to the gray.
Kori stared at it, unable to believe what she saw. She lifted her eyes. HE was looking at her. You, she thought, you did it to me on purpose. She opened her mouth, then clamped it shut. What could she prove? Nothing. She’d just bring trouble on her kin if she protested. She glared up at the huge dark man on the High Seat. I’ll get out of this somehow, she thought fiercely, I will, you can’t beat me so easy as that.
You aren’t stupid are you, little ferret. Yes, it was me did that to you. I doubt you’ll ever thank me for it, but you should. I hated old Grigoros when he sold me to the House, but he did me a favor. He smiled as Kori dropped her eyes to clenched hands when the Servant shouted BLUE; when he pushed it at her, she took the blue ball with angry reluctance, then sat staring at the floor, refusing to look at Maksim or anyone else until the RED and GOLD were announced. He saw her shoulders tremble; she turned her head, glared up at him again, but this time there was a triumph in her face and eyes that he didn’t understand. What have I missed? There’s more to you than I thought, warrior girl. What is it? I will know, child, in the end I will know. He got heavily to his feet and stood watching as the Servants led the chosen children (two boys and the girl) up the stairs to stand beside him. He could feel the heat of her anger, the intensity of the effort she was making to keep silent.
He lifted his hands. “It is done.” His voice rolled out and filled the court. “Honor the chosen and their lives of service, honor yourselves for the grace of your compliance. For three days the city is yours, rejoice and be content.”
He watched them file out. The youngest boy kept turning to look up at the chosen, anguish in his face; he stumbled against the boy ahead of him, but straightened himself without help and went stiffly out the door. Maksim glanced at the girl and saw an echo of that anguish in her face. Your brother, is it? Is that why the triumph, that he was passed over this year? I will know. But not now. He bowed he head in a stately salute to the children, but he didn’t speak to them, merely made a sign for them to be taken away. He stood at the balustrade looking out over the empty court until the last sounds faded, rubbing absently at his chest. He had to be at Deadfire Island when the boy arrived, but that was a good six hours off and he wasn’t sure how he wanted to pass those hours. He needed sleep. He had to listen to Todichi Yahzi report on the activities of the council he’d assembled and decide who he wanted to add or delete, what other changes he needed to make. He had to take a look at the blank spot and see if Baby Dan had moved himself and the others out of Silagamatys which would mean he could turn Amortis loose on them. He tapped long fingers on the marble, irritated by the hurry of all this, then snapped to his workroom to start with the easiest and most urgent of the things he had to do.
10. Fighting Their Way To The Chained God: Brann, Yaril, Jaril, Ahzurdan And Daniel Akamarino, With Some Help From Tungjii And The Godalau.
SCENE: Daniel Akamarino finds a ship for them, discomforting Ahzurdan who is locked into the room because he can’t leave the wards without endangering himself and the rest of them. On the ship Skia Hetaira traveling between Silagamatys and Haven.
“Had a bit of luck.” Daniel Akamarino squatted by the beggar, held out the wineskin. “Found me a patron.”
“Aah.” The old man squeezed a long stream of the straw gold wine into his toothless mouth, broke the flow withdut losing a drop. He wiped his mouth, handed the skin back. “An’t swallowed drink like that sin’ one night of Parast Tampopopea got drunk’s a skink and busted six kegs in the Ti’ma Dor.”
“Luck,” Daniel said and smiled. He squirted himself a sip, chunked the stopper home. “Quiet day.”
“Some. Lot day. Come afternoon, it’ll perk up. You thinkin about a pitch?”
“Nuh-uh. Patron wants to sail tonight. She hates fuss, she wants to go out like a whisper.”
“Aah.” The old man’s warty eyelids flickered, the tip of a pointed whitish tongue touched his upper lip, withdrew. “A like the way you play that pipe.
“I hear.” Daniel slid the carrystrap of the wineskin over his shoulder, shifted out of his squat and brought out the recorder. He looked at it, thought a minute and began playing a slow rambling bluesy tune that made no demands but slid into the bone and after a while took over enough to bring crowds drifting around them. He ended it, raised a brow. The old man closed his eyes to slits and looked sleepy. Daniel laughed, played a lively jig, then put the recorder away. The small crowd snapped fingers enthusiastically, but Daniel was finished for the moment, at least until they paid something for their pleasure. He sat as stolid and sleepy as the old beggar. With a flurry of laughter, they tossed coins into the begging bowl and wandered off, some returning to their stalls, others drifting about looking for bargains.
The old man collected his coin, stowed it away. He blinked thoughtfully at the skin, ran his tongue around his teeth. “Real quiet, aah?” He scratched at the gray and white stubble on his wattles. “Wanna keepa neye lifted for sharks.”
“Hard to know where the sharks are if you don’t know the waters. “‘
“Aaah: Eleias Laux’s lookin for cargo, might go without if ta patron meetzis price. Skia Hetaira, thatzis boat.” He took the wineskin and drank until he seemed about to drown, stopped the flow with the neatness he’d shown before. “Way down west end. Black boat, ketch, flag’s a four point star, black on white. Lio, eez hived up at the Green Jug. Eatzis noon there.” He glanced at the sun. “‘Bout this time a day, more often than not.” He held out the skin. “Gi’m a stoup ‘r two a this and eez like to sail ta patron to the Golden Isles, no charge.”
Daniel Akamarino got to his feet, yawned and stretched. He smiled amiably at the old man. “G’ day to you, friend,” he said and strolled away.
“How’d you know he’d know?”
Daniel looked down, startled. Jaril was walking beside him, looking up at him with those enigmatic crystal eyes. “Been on a lot of worlds,” he said. “There’s always someone who knows, you just have to find him.
Or her or it, whatever. That old man, he’s got the best pitch in the. Market which means he’s got some kind of clout, I don’t have to know what kind, just that it exists. There’s this, he’s no muscle man, must be shrewdness. Brains and information. Means he knows what’s going on where.”
“And now you’re going to hunt out Eleias Laux?”
“Mmm, might.”
“That’s a funny wineskin.”
“Funny how?”
“It’s not all that big.”
“Mmm.”
“Should be near empty the.way you been squeezing it. Isn’t, is it?”
“Lot of funny things on this world. You might have noticed.”
“We have noticed that. Some of it’s been done to us.” The boy grinned up at him. “How’ve you been feeling lately?”
“Herded.’’
“You’re not alone.”
“What I mean. Takes more than one to make a herd; company’s no blessing, if it’s just that.”
“You right. Give me a drink?”
Daniel raised a brow. “You?”
“Did last night.”
“Why not.” He tossed the boy the skin, watched him drink, took it back and drank a draft himself. It was chilled, just the right temperature for the taste, a computerized cooler couldn’t have done better. Tungjii Luck. magic wineskin, what a world.
They ambled through sunny deserted streets, past shops whose keepers were gone off somewhere leaving a clerk behind to watch the stock and doze in the warmth and quiet. Lot day seemed to mean waiting for Owlyn Valers to burst loose with their warrant to spend what they wanted, freely as they wanted; the bills would be paid from Settsimaksimin’s pocket (which meant eventually from taxes and tariffs and fines). Jaril was silent and frowning, a small thundercloud of a boy.
“Can’t really fight gods,” he said suddenly, grave now, a touch of bitterness putting bite into his voice.
“Either they squash you right out or they sneak up on you and cut your legs off and you bleed to death.”
“Sneak up? That mean what I think it does?”
“Don’t know. The talismans Ahzurdan was talking about can make them do things. A good sorceror can block them out. Brann and us, we were mixed up in a fight between a clutch of witches and a god. She used Brann to get past their defenses. Complicated plot, took more than a year to set up, used maybe hundreds of people who didn’t know they were in it. Even looking back I couldn’t say who all was in it or how much what they did mattered in the blowup. You can’t win even if you win, they keep coming back at you, get you in the end. Or you die and they get you then.”
“You’ve got, what did you say? ninety centuries less a few.”
“Doesn’t matter, long as we’re stuck here, the end’s the same.”
“Gives you time to work out a way to get home.”
“Can’t go home. You heard what they call Brann.”
“Drinker of Souls. So?”
“You saw what we are, Yaril and me. Back home we drank from the sun. Slya, that’s the god I was telling you about, she changed us, then she helped us change Brann so Brann could feed us. We live on life energy, Daniel Akamarino; if anything happened to Brann, we’d starve.”
“Why tell me?”
“Because we’re frightened, Yaril and me. Him in the tower there, he’s strong, you don’t know how strong. He hasn’t exerted himself yet, not really, Yaril and me, we don’t know why, but even with those offhand tries, he nearly killed Brann twice and the second time Ah-zurdan was there and he stood like a stump doing nothing until Yaril singed his ear. We don’t like him, we don’t want him about, but Brann won’t send him away. Even when he tells her she should, she won’t. We don’t know why, but we’re afraid it’s because the gods messing with us won’t let her. You’re affined to him, Daniel Akamarino, but you’re a different sort of man.” Jaril gave him a twisted smile. “You don’t want to be in this, but you are. Yaril and me, we want you with us and ready to do something when Ahzurdan fails her.”
“Which reminds me. Since you’re in a talking mood, Jay, why am I let off the leash this morning when last night Brann wouldn’t let me out of the room without.Ahzurdan to babysit?”
They pressed up against a wall to let a heavily loaded mulecart clatter past heading uphill for the Market, then went round a corner and moved west along the busy waterfront road, dodging carts and carrypoles, vehemently gesturing traders, crowds of merchants with their clerks. The morning wasn’t quiet here, it was deafening, hot, dusty, filled with a thousand smells, ten thousand noises. Daniel pulled Jaril into a doorway to let a line of porters trot past. “Well?”
“Lot day,” Jaril said. “He’s always there. In the Yron. When the Lots are taken. He can’t overlook us without his mirror. He’ll be away from it for maybe another hour. And I’m here.” He giggled, amused at the thought. “I’m babysitting you.”
“Mmf.” Daniel left the doorway, sidled between two carts being loaded by men shouting jokes at each other, their overseers darting here and there, pushing shoving yelling orders that were obeyed when the men got around to it or ignored if they counted them silly. Runners not much older than Jaril seemed were darting about, carrying messages, small packages, orders, the shrill whistles that announced them adding to the crashing pounding noise that broke like surf against the walls of the warehouses. A few meters of this and Daniel sought an unoccupied doorway. “Jay, if you’re going to haunt me, can you do it as something besides a boy?”
“Why? Plenty of boys like me about.”
“I know. Just a feeling Laux will talk more without an extra pair of ears to take it in.”
“Hmm. Why not. Dog be all right?”
Daniel chuckled. “Nice big dog?”
“All teeth and no tail.”
The man and the big dog strolled the length of Water Street until they reached a quieter section and smaller boats, one of them a slim black ketch with a black and white flag hanging in silky folds that opened out a little whenever the fleeting breeze briefly strengthened. Hands clasped behind him, Daniel inspected the craft. “Wet and cold.” The dog nudged his leg. “All right, I give you. fast.” The boy dozing on the deck lifted his head when he heard the voice, squinted up at Daniel. Daniel produced one of his everyday smiles. “Where’s Laux?”
“Why?”
“Business. His.”
The boy patted a yawn and gazed through the fringe of dirty blonde hair falling over his eyes. After a minute, he shrugged. “Green Jug. Be back here a couple hours if you wanna wait.”
“Where’s the Jug from here?”
“Back along a ways, there’s the Kuma Kistris, the one with a double spiral on the flag, black and green, alley there between two godons, leads up Skanixis Hill, follow it, Jug’s near halfway up.”
Daniel found two coppers, tossed them to the boy, strolled away grinning. Jaril hound was already two moorings away doing an impatient doggy dance in front of a boat with a green and black flag.
“Eleias Laux?”
“Who wants to know?”
“Someone wanting passage out.”
“Paying or working?”
“Paying. Five, two of ’em kids.”
“Hmm. Sit.” He was a little spider of a man, M’darjin with skin like aged walnut polished to a high shine, dressed in well-worn black trousers and tunic, a heavy silver earring with moss agate insets hanging from his left ear, linked plates that shivered with every breath he took, drawing the eye so that most people who met him never noticed his face and remembered only the flash of silver and the gleam of agate. The earring glittered wildly as he glanced at the hound, looked dubious, relaxed as Jaril settled placidly to the floor by Daniel’s feet. He pushed his plate aside, emptied his winebowl and was about to call for more wine when Daniel slid the skin off his shoulder and offered it.
Laux pinched at his nose, looked from the skin to Daniel’s face. “Be you insulted if I say you drink first?”
“I’m a cautious man myself, be you insulted if I want another bowl?”
Eleias Laux laughed and snapped his fingers for the serving girl.
When she brought the bowl, Daniel filled it halfway and sipped at the straw colored liquid, smiling with pleasure, taking time to do it justice. When the bowl was empty, he set it down, raised his brows.
Laux nodded, watched warily as the wine streamed out. He drank, widened his eyes, took another mouthful, let it trickle down his throat. “Now that is a thing.” He grinned. “Not your best plan, friend. You just raised the price a notch.”
Daniel shrugged. “Luck’s meant to be shared. I was mooching about the wharves a few nights back, when it was foggy, you remember? saw the Godalau swimming out in the bay and this bald little shemale offered me a drink, left the skin with me.”
“Tungjii Luck?”
“Couldn’t say, but I’ve been drinking wine since and passing it around here and there and the skin’s about the same as it was when I got it. I figure it’s just old Tungjii sticking hisser thumbs in and why not enjoy it while it’s here. Think you might be willing to slip out tonight, head round to Haven, no fuss?”
“How quiet?”
“Like a ghost’s shadow.”
“Might could. You walking round loose?”
“Far’s I know. Hound here says so and he’s good at nosing out nosy folk. You don’t want to know more.”
“True, true. Five gold each.-
“Ahh now, have yourself some more wine and think on this, two silver each adult, one each for the kids.”
“The wine I’ll take, but don’t you fool yourself; drunk or sober I’m not about to wreck myself for anyone. No discount for kids, they’re worse than dryrot on a boat. But seeing you’re a friendly type, I’ll think on taking a bit, of a loss. Three gold each. You bringing the hound here, another gold for him.
“No hound. What about this, five silver each, with a gold as bonus when you set us down on the shore of Haven Cove.”
“Mmmmm.” Laux drank and smiled, a friendlier sheen in his brown velvet eyes; if he had armed himself against the seduction in Tungjii’s wine, his armor was leaking. “Ohhhh, I’m feeling so warm to you, my friend, I’ll tell you what. Five silver each, a gold as bonus when you’re on the fine black sand of Haven Cove, sweetly out of sight from Haven herself, and five gold as trouble quittance, to be refunded if trouble keeps away.”
“Mmmm.” Daniel filled the bowl pushed over to him, filled his own. “Five silver each, a gold as bonus when we’re landed, five gold as trouble quittance, paid over the minute trouble shows.”
“Now now… what do I call you? give me something.
“Daniel.
“Now Daniel, don’t be a silly man. Trouble comes, nobody has time to count out cash.”
“Point made, point taken. Five silver each, a gold as bonus, two gold as trouble quittance, to be refunded if no trouble shows; my patron guarantees the cost of any repairs.”
“Ah, now that might be a good deal, saying your patron’s the right sort. You willing to say who he is?”
“I won’t be mentioning that she doesn’t want her name spread around. I’ve heard you’re a man of discretion and wisdom. She’s called Drinker of Souls.”
“Exalted company, hey, gods and demigods all round.” Laux sat hunched over the winebowl, a long forefinger like a polished walnut twig stirring the plates of his ear dangle as he stared past Daniel at shadow forms he alone could see. He said nothing, but Daniel could read the argument going on inside, an argument he’d been in himself, never coming out with the same answer twice. Daniel waited without speaking for the struggle to end, fairly sure what the answer would be. Laux knew well enough he could be jumping into a maelstrom that could suck him under, but he was visibly bored with the mundane cargos he ferried in and out of Silagamatys and something deep and fundamental in him was tempted to try the danger, especially if he could be sure of coming out of it reasonably intact, his boat in the same condition.
“Mmh!” Laux straightened, shifted his focus to Daniel. “Yes. Tell you what, considering what’s likely to be involved and how likely it is bystanders get chewed up and spat out when powers start to feuding, and this isn’t trying to screw you, Daniel, just me taking care of me, how ‘bout instead of your patron’s giving me her word, she gives me two hundred gold surety to hold for her till the bunch of you put foot down on Haven Cove’s black sand. No one in his right mind would try cheating the Drinker of Souls. The rest as before, five silvers each, a gold as bonus, four gold trouble quittance.”
“Done.” Daniel grasped the hand Laux extended, gave it a brisk shake, settled back in his chair. “How’re the tides, can you leave around sunset today?”
“Tide’ll be standing, my Hetty don’t draw enough to worry about the sandbars at the bay’s mouth. As long as the wind’s good (give old Tungjii’s belly a rub) we’ll go.”
They sat in silence a while, sipping at their wine, Laux leaning over his elbows, Daniel lounging in the chair, straightening up to fill the bowls whenever they showed bottom. There were a few other drinkers and diners scattered through the comfortable gloom inside the taproom, talking together in muted tones and generally minding their own business. “Waiting for the Lot to finish,” Laux said. “Everything’s waiting for that.”
“Not Water Street, Laux.”
“Call me Lio, yeah you right, they’re not waiting, they’re stocking up for the run. Leaves the rest of us neaped.” He shoved out his bowl, watched the pale gold wine sing into it. “Cheonea’s neaped these days.”, He sipped and sighed. “Sold my Gre’granser in the King’s Market here when he was somewhere about six. He said you couldn’t hear yourself think for a mile all round the port it was that busy. Most of it under the table, but that didn’t seem to matter. My Granser’s mum was a freewoman Gre’granser sweetered into the bushes, means he was born free. Him he was prenticed out on a merchanter when he made six. He took to the smuggling trade and trained his sons in that. Ahhh, it was a wild trade then and Haven was a wild town, it never stopped, you know, moonset was busy as sunset, ships coming in and going out, half a hundred gaming houses wide open, a Captain could win a fleet or lose everything down to the skin, man or woman make no matter. There was a woman or two had her ship and you didn’t want to mess with them, Granser used to say, they didn’t bide by rules, got you howsoever they could.” He dipped his finger in the wine, drew a complicated symbol on the dark wood.-Never saw any of that myself. Him in the tower, he shut down the slave market and cleared out the hot brokers and he put the tariffs down to nothing almost on spices, silk and pearls and the like so an honest smuggler can’t live on the difference. Aah, Daniel, the past some years I’ve been thinking of moving on to livelier shores.-A long silence, voices drifting to them, clanks of china as serving girls began to clear the tables. “Might do it yet. Trouble is, them already there won’t like newcomers nosing in, that kind of thing gets messy. Starve for a couple years, maybe get killed or turned, no contacts, no cargo, I tell you, man, it was a sad year when Him he kicked out the king and started on his Jah’takash be damned reforms.” He fell silent, brooding into his wine.
Jaril stirred. His claws scratched at the floor, his teeth closed closed on Daniel’s leg not quite hard enough to break the skin. Daniel blinked, looked down. Jaril got to his feet and started for the door.
Daniel knocked on the table. When Lio Laux looked up, he said, “Got to go, my patron’s not the kind you want to keep waiting. See you sunset.”
Lio grunted, lifted a hand, let it thump down, Tungjii’s wine was wheeling round his head and he was lost in old days and old dreams.
Ruby shimmers slid off the opaline scales of an undulant fishtail and bloodied long white fingers combing through the waves; the Godalau swam before the Skia Hetaira as the ketch slipped swift and silent from the bay. A scruffy little figure in ragged black sat on a giant haunch and waved to Daniel Akamarino. He waved back, jumped when he felt a hand on his shoulder. Brann. -I haven’t got used to it yet,” he said.
“What? Oh yes, you come from a place where you have to imagine your gods and they keep going abstract and distant on you.” She leaned on the rail beside him. “Sounds like paradise to me. No gods to tie strings to your ankles and jerk you about. Hmm. Maybe one day I’ll jump high enough to break the strings and land in a reality like that.”
Daniel shaded his eyes, picked out the translucent tail that flickered across the sky some distance ahead of them, more guessed at than seen. “It has its drawbacks. At least here there’s somebody to notice you’re alive, might be all round bad vibes, but that’s better than being ignored. Where I come from, live or die, the universe won’t notice. I’ll wait a while before I decide which sort I prefer.” He laughed. “Not that I have much choice. Tell me about Tungjii.”
“Tell you what?”
“A story, Bramble, tell me a tale of of ‘Tungjii. It’s a lovely night, there’s nothing much to do, get drunk, sleep, watch the wind blow. I’d rather hear you talk.”
She laughed. “Such a compliment. Your tact is overwhelming, Danny Blue. Why not. A warning tale, my friend. Heesh is an amiable sort, but you don’t want to underestimate that little god. So. There’s a land a long way east of here, a land that was old when Popokanjo walked the earth, before he shot the moon. In that long long long ago, in the reign of the emperor Rumanai, a maretuse whose maret was a broad domain at the edge of the rice plains came to consider himself the cleverest man in the world, yet he had to keep proving his cleverness to himself. Every month or so he sent out mercenary bands to roam the silk road and snatch travelers from it to play games with him, games he always won because he set the rules and because he really was very clever in his twisted way. Each of his conscripted guests played game after game with him until the miserable creature lost, his nerve or, was killed or began to bore the maretuse. His landfolk did their best to keep him entertained with strangers because that meant he wouldn’t turn his mind to testing them. And they were loyally discreet when Rumanai’s soldiers came prying about, hunting the bandits interfering with the Emperor’s road and the taxes it brought to his treasury.
The land prospered. In their silence and because they took the spoils he passed out among them, the horses, the dogs, the tradegoods, even some of the gold, the landfolk also shared his guilt. But the peasants on the land and the merchants in the small market towns told themselves that their hands were clean, they shed no blood, they did not lift a finger to aid their master in his games. That they profited from these was neither here nor there. What could they do? It was done and would be done. Should they starve by having too queasy a stomach? Should their children starve? Besides, the travelers on the silk road knew the dangers they faced. And no doubt they were little better than the maretuse if you looked into their lives. Thieves, cheats, murderers, worst of all foreigners. If they were proper men, they would stay home where they belonged. It was their own fault if they came to a bad end. So the Ambijaks of maret Ambijan talked themselves into silence and complicity.
The day came when the mighty Perran-a-Perran, the highest of the high, lord and emperor of all gods, took a hand in the matter of the clever maretuse.
Old Tungjii was sitting on a hillside munching grapes when a messenger from the high court of the gods came mincing along a sunbeam, having a snit at the common red mountain dirt that was blowing into every crevice and fold of his golden robe. Old Tungjii was more than half drunk from all the grapes heesh had been eating because heesh had been turning them to wine before they hit hisser stomach. Heesh was wearing common black trousers like any old peasant, the cloth worn thin at the seat and knees and a loose shirt heesh didn’t bother to tie shut, letting the wind and grape juice get at fat sagging breasts with hard purple nipples. Heesh was liking the warm sun and the dusty wind that sucked up the sweat on hisser broad bald head. Heesh was liking the smell of the dust, of the crushed grass and leaves underneath him, the sounds of the grape pickers laughing a little way off and the shepherd’s pipe someone was playing almost too far away to hear. Heesh certainly didn’t want to be bothered by some sour-faced godlet from the Courts of Gold. But old Fishface (which is how Tungjii privately thought of the god-emperor Perran-a-Perran, how heesh muttered about him when rather too drunk to be discreet) was nasty when one of his undergods irritated him, especially one of the more disreputable sorts like the double-natured Tungjii. So heesh spat out a mouthful of grapeskins and lumbered to hisser broad bare feet.
“‘Tungjii,” the messenger said.
Tungjii smiled, winning the bet heesh made with hisserself that the godlet’s voice would whine like a whipped puppy. Heesh nodded, content with the perfection of pettiness old Fishface had presented him mer with.
“The maretuse of maret Ambijan is getting above himself,” the messenger said, his lip curled in a permanent sneer that did odd things to his enunciation even while he spoke with a glasscutting clarity. “The foolish man is thinking about plotting against dearest Rumanai, the beloved of the gods, the true emperor of Hinasilisan. He has convinced himself he deserves the throne for his own silly bottom.” The messenger made a jerky little gesture with his left hand meant to convey overpowering rage and martial determination. Tungjii reminded hisserself sternly that old Fishface didn’t like his subgods to giggle at his official messengers. “Perran-a-Perran, Lord of All, Lord of sky, sea and earth, Emperor of emperors, Orderer of Chaos, Maker of man and beast, Father of all…”
Tungjii stopped listening to the roll of epithets, let hisser senses drift, squeezing the last drops of pleasure from the day. Even old Fishface’s eyes glazed over during one of these interminable listings of his attributes and honors, finishing with the list of his many consorts, the only one of them of any interest to Tungjii being the Godalau with her moonpale fingers and her saucy fishtail. The two of them had played interesting games with hisser dual parts. Horny old Tungjii was a busy old Tungjii in spite of hisser unprepossessing outer envelope and found hisserself in a lot of lofty beds (the messenger would have been shocked to a squib to know one of those beds belonged to Perran-a-Perran). A girl’s laughter came up the hill to himmer and heesh blew a minor blessing down to her for the lift of pleasure she’d given himmer.
… of all gods, Perran-a-Perran commands Tungjii the double god to go to Ambijan and stop this blowfish from poisoning the air and punish his overweening folly for daring to plot trouble for the God of all god’s dearest dear, the emperor Rumanai.’
‘
Tungjii yawned. “Tell him I went,” heesh said and was gone.
Some time later a fat little man was riding along the silk road on a fine long-legged mule, drowsing in a well-padded saddle, content to let the mule find the way. If anyone had asked, the little man would have blinked sleepy eyes and smiled, showing a mouthful of fine square teeth, and murmured that the mule was smarter than him and the questioner combined so why bother the good beast with such foolishness.
The snatchband came down on him as the day reached its end, rode round him in the dusk, demanded he follow them which he did without a murmur of protest, something that troubled them so much they rode through the night instead of camping some miles off the road as they usually did. And two of them rode wide, scouting the road again east and west because they suspected some ldnd of ambush. None of their victims had exhibited such placid good humor and it made them nervous. The scouts came back toward morning and reported that nothing was stirring anywhere. This should have reassured them, but somehow it did not. They gave their mounts grain and water, let them graze and rest a few hours, then were on their way again when the dew was still wet on the grass. The little man rode along with the same placid cheerful acceptance of what was happening, irritating the snatchband so much that only their very great fear of the maretuse kept them from pounding him into a weeping pulp.
So uneasy were they that after they delivered the little man and his mule to the maretuse, they collected their belongings and rode south as fast as they could without killing their mounts, intending to put a kingdom or two between them and Ambijan. The horses survived and ran free. Tungjii liked horses. A tiger ate one of the men. Another fell off a bridge into a cataract and eventually reached the sea, though mostly in the bellies of migrating fishes. A third helped to feed several broods of mountain eagles. Tungjii liked to watch the great birds soar and wheel. The fourth and fifth stumbled into the hands of trolls and fed a whole clutch of trollings. All in all, the snatchband contributed more to the wellbeing of the world that one summer than they had in years.
The maretuse had the little man brought before him. “What is your name?” he said.
“Guess.”
“Insolence will get you a beating. That is a warning.”
“A wild boar can tromp and tear a hunter. It doesn’t mean he’s smarter or better than the hunter, only that the hunter’s luck has turned bad.
“Luck? Hunh. It doesn’t exist. Only degrees of cleverness and stupidity.”
“Old Tung j ii might argue with you on that.”
“Tungjii is a fat little nothing men dream up so they won’t have to face their inadequacy at dealing with the world and other men. Tungjii is nothing but wind.”
“Heesh wouldn’t argue too much on that point. Wind and the random crossing of separate fates, that’s chance not luck, but there’s a tiny tiny crack there where Tungjii can stick hisser thumbs and wiggle them a bit.”
“Nonsense. A clever man scorns luck and reaches as high as his grasp will take him.”
The little man tilted his head to one side, clicked his tongue against his teeth. “Cleverness is a war, but a soldier is a soldier.”
“What do you mean by that? If anything.”
“You’re the clever man. Tell me.”
“Wind!” The maretuse settled back in his chair. -It is my custom to invite a traveler into my house and match him at a game or two. Be aware that if you lose, you will be my slave as long as you live. And you will lose because you are a fat little fool who believes in luck. But you will choose a game and play it or I will peel the hide off your blubber and feed it to you strip by strip.”
“And if I win, what will I win?”
“You won’t win.”
“It’s not a proper contest if there isn’t a prize for both players.”
The maretuse forced a laugh. “You won’t win, so what does it matter? You name my forfeit.”
The little man clasped his hands over his hard little belly, closed his eyes and screwed up his face as if thinking were a struggle for him, then he relaxed, smiled, opened his eyes. “You will feed my mule.”
“Done.” The maretuse waved his servant over with the Jar of Lots. He was rather disappointed when the Lot did not turn up one of the more physical games. His guest was such a plump juicy little man he’d looked forward to chivvying him through the Maze of Swords or hunting him in the Gorge of Sighs, but he was pleased enough with the chosen game. He was a master strategist at stonechess and no one in the Empire, even the masters in the capital, had ever defeated him. Sometimes he won with only a few stones left, sometimes he crushed his opponent under an avalanche of stones, but always he won. Five years back when he was in Andurya Durat for the Emperor’s Birthday, one of his games passed into legend. It lasted fourteen days and less than a dozen stones were left on the board and both players had to be carried off and revived with tea and massage.
He didn’t expect the game to last long, a few hours at most, then the guest would lose and he would dip again into the Jar and lose again and dip again until he lost his nerve entirely and was only good for tiger feed. The maretuse was a trifle annoyed at his snatchband. The little man had an amiable stupidity that was apparent to the bleariest eye; they should have let him go on his way and found someone more challenging.
He had the board set up, along with bowls of ansin tea, bowls of rosewater and hot towels, piles of sausage bits, sweet pork, seven cheeses, raw vegetables, finger cakes and candies. Honest food to give this fool some spark of wisdom if anything could and keep the game from being too short and boring.
Hours passed.
Servants lit lamps, replenished the food, moving with great care to make no sound at all to disturb the concentration of their master. At first they were pleased to see the game continue so long because a hard, taxing contest kept the maretuse quiet for a long time. But when dawn pinked the hills they began to worry. The maretuse had never lost before and they didn’t know how he would take it. Experience of his moods when he was irritated made them fearful. The next pot of the guest’s tea had a dusting of dreamsugar in it. The little fat man took a sip, grinned at them, then emptied the cup with a zesty appreciation and continued to sit relaxed, looking sleepily stupid and unremittingly cheerful. And the servants grew sick with fear.
Midafternoon came; sunlight fell like a sword across the table.
The maretuse watched his guest drop a stone with calm finality to close the strangling ring about the largest portion of his remaining stones. He could fight another dozen moves if he chose or he could capitulate. “Who are you?” he said. “No man this side of the world is my match. Or yours.”
The little man grinned and said nothing.
“I’m not going to let you leave here, win or lose.” A nod. That inane grimace was still pasted across the round stupid face.
“Feed your mule, you said. I will pay my forfeit. What does the beast eat? Oats? Straw? Grass?”
“You’ll see.”
The mule came titupping daintily across the marble floor though no one saw how it got from the stables into the house.
The youngest daughter of one of the gardeners was playing among the bushes, content to watch caterpillars crawl and ladybugs whirr about, lines of ants marching frantically to and fro and a toad like an old cowpat blinking in the shade of a flowering puzzlebush, flicking out his white tongue when it occurred to him to snatch and eat a hapless bug that fluttered too close. Crawling about among the bushes and gathering smears of dirt with a total lack of concern, she passed the long windows of the gameroom where the maretuse and his guest were concluding their match.
She stopped to stare inside and saw the mule come titupping in and giggled to see a beast in the great house coming to tea just like any man.
The little man waved at her and she waved back, then he turned his head over his shoulder and spoke to the mule. “The maretuse,” he said, “has agreed to feed you, Mule.”
The mule opened his mouth. Opened and opened and opened his mouth.
The maretuse struggled to move but he could not.
The little man swelled and changed until heesh was Tungjii male and female in hisser favorite wrinkled black. Ignoring the terrified man, Tungjii walked over to the long window. Heesh opened it and picked up the gardener’s daughter.
“Dragon,” she said.
-Yes, ‘ Tungjii said, “a very hungry dragon. You want to come with me?”
“Uh-huh. Dada too?”
“Not this time. Do you mind, little daughter?”
She looked gravely into hisser eyes, then snuggled closer to himmer. “Uh-uh.”
Tungjfi began walking up the air, grunting and leaning a little forward as if heesh were plodding up a steep flight of stairs. At first the gardener’s daughter was afraid, but Tungjii’s bosom was soft and warm. She relaxed on it and felt safe enough to look over hisser shoulder.
Fire spread fron one edge of the world to the other. “Dragon?”
“The Dragon Sunfire. He is living there now.”
“Oh.”
And to this day Ambijan is a desert where nothing much grows. The few Ambijaks left are wandering herdsmen and raiders who worship a dragon called Sun-fire.
“Dragons too? What a world.” He rose from the coil of rope where he’d been sitting, stretched, worked his shoulders, glanced at the black sea rolling ahead of them. The Godalau was still out there, swimming tirelessly along. “Barbequed peasant. Rather hard on those who disturb the status quo, don’t you think? I’ve known a few emperors who needed a bit of disturbing.”
She hitched a hip on the rail, took hold of a handy shroud. “It’s a story. Probably didn’t happen. Could happen, though. Don’t go by heesh’s looks, Tungjii is dangerous. Always. The one who told me that story, he was a dancer whose company I was traveling with right then; Tungjii was his family patron. That gardener’s daughter, you remember? When she was old enough Tungjii married her into Taga’s family and promised to keep a friendly eye on them. They learned fast not to ask him for help. Heesh always gave it, but sometimes that help felt like five years of plague.” She ran her eyes over Daniel Akamarino, looked puzzled. “Which makes me wonder why he fetched you here. Him or some other god.”
-Why not accident? The god snatched for whatever he could reach.”
“You haven’t met tigermen or ariels or some of the more exotic demons sorcerors can whip into this world with something less than a hiccup or a grunt. And that’s nothing to what a god can do when he, she or it makes up its corporate whatever to act.”
“Don’t tell me it’s him,” Daniel jerked a thumb toward the cramped quarters belowdeck. “Just because our names match?”
“Who knows the minds of gods, if they’ve got minds which I’m not all that sure of, or why they do what they do?” Her hands had long palms, long thumbs, short tapering fingers; they were strong capable hands, seldom still. She ran her fingers along his forearm, feathery touches that stirred through the pale hairs. “Why you?” Her mouth had gone soft, there was a thoughtful shine to her eyes.
He trapped her hand, held it against his arm. “Why not.” Still holding the hand, he moved around so he could sit on the rail beside her, relaxing into the dip and slide of the boat. He slid his hand up her back, enjoying her response to his touch; she leaned into him, doing her version of a contented purr as he moved his fingers through the feathery curls on her neck.
Lio Laux came up on deck, moved into the bow and stood watching the intermittently visible Godalau, then he drifted over to Daniel and Brann. “I thought you were swinging it some. Not, huh?”
“Not. When do we make the Cove?”
“Hour or so before dawn, day after tomorrow.” His ear dangle flashed in the moonlight, brown gleams slid off his polished bald head. His eyes narrowed into invisibility. “Given there’s no trouble?” There was a complex mixture of apprehension and anticipation in his voice.
Brann’s head moved gently in response to the pressure of Daniel’s fingers. “I haven’t a notion, Lio Laux.” Her deep voice was drowsy, detached.-“We have… eyes out… should something show up… we’ll go to work… no point in fussing… until we have to. ‘
Lio Laux pinched his nose, considered her. “Let’s hope.” He walked away, stopped to talk to the blond boy, the one-eyed Phrasi, the Cheonene, the members of his crew still on deck now that the sandbars were behind them, then he went below again.
“This boat’s too crowded,” Daniel murmured. “Unless the hold…”
Brann grimaced. “Wet. Smelly. Rats.”
“Offputting.”
“If you’re older than fourteen.”
“Me, even when I was fourteen, I didn’t turn on to rats.” He stopped talking, moved his mouth along her shoulder and neck; close to her ear, he murmured, “What about putting Danny One in with the rats?” He moved his hands over her breasts, his thumbs grazing her nipples.
She shivered. “No…”
“Be right at home. Rat to the rats.”
She pulled away from him, strode to the bow. After a minute she ran shaking hands through her hair, swung around. “I can dispense with you a lot easier than him, also with stupid comment.”
Daniel watched her stride across the deck and disappear below. He scratched his chin. “Didn’t handle that too well, did you.” He looked down at himself, thumbed the bulge. “Danny’s blue tonight, ran his mouth too long too wrong.”
The Wounded Moon shone palely on the long narrow Skia Hetaira as she sliced through the foamspitting water of the Notoea Tha, and touched with delicate strokes the naked land north of the boat, a black-violet blotch that gradually gained definition as the northwestering course of the smuggler took her closer and closer to the riddle rock at the tip of the first Vale Finger, rock pierced again and again by wind and water so that it sang day and night, slow sad terrible songs and was only quiet one hour every other month.
Brann sat on the deck, her back against the mast; the melancholy moans coming from the rock suited her mood. Ahzurdan said the air was clotted with ariels, a great gush of angry angel forms passing to and from Silagamatys, carrying news of them to Settsimaksimin, helping him plan… What? Ahzurdan was working with half the information he needed, he didn’t have the name of the talisman Maksim wore, he didn’t know how far Maksim could press Amortis. He had a strained weary look, but he wouldn’t let her feed him energy as she did the children, though she offered it (having energy to spare after prowling the foggy streets of the water quarter after the others went back to the Blue Seamaid); he was in a strange half-angry state she didn’t understand, though she couldn’t miss how deeply he was hurting. He was carrying the full load of defending them and neither the children nor Danny Two were helping the situation with their irrational hates-no not exactly hates, it was more a fundamental incompatiblity as if they and Ahzurclan were flint and steel bound to strike sparks whenever they met. She looked up. The children were flying overhead, elegant albatrosses riding the wind, circling out ahead of the ship, drifting in and out of knots of cloud, cutting through the streams of ariels they couldn’t see. She felt rather like a juggler who’d been foolish enough to accept the challenge of keeping in the air whatever her audience threw at her. Any minute now there might be one thing too many and the whole mess would drop on her head.
She listened to the moaning rock and found the sound so restful she drifted into a doze in spite of the damp chill and the drop and rise of the deck under her.
Some time later, she had no idea how long, Ahzurdan was shaking her, shouting at her. As soon as she was awake, he darted away from her to stand in the bow, gesturing in complex patterns, intoning a trenchant series of meaningless syllables interspersed with polysyllabic words that meant something to him but made no sense in the context
The children flew in circles over the mainmast, their raucous mewing cries alerting everyone not already aware of it that something perilous was about to happen.
In the northwest an opaline glow rose over the horizon and came rapidly toward the Skia Hetaira, resolving into the god Amortis striding to them across the dark seawater, blond hair streaming in snaky sunrays about a house-sized face, her foggy draperies shifting about her slim ripe body in a celestial peekaboo, shapely bare feet as large as the Skia Hetaira moving above the water or through it as it swelled, feet translucent as alabaster with light behind it, but solid enough to kick the waves into spreading foam. The hundred yards of female god stopped ten shiplengths away, raised a huge but delicate hand, threw a sheet of flame at the boat.
Hastily the two albatrosses powered up and away, their tailfeathers momentarily singed, drawing squawks of surprise from them, the flame splashing over them as it bounced off the shield Ahzurdan had thrown about the Skia Hetaira.
Amortis stamped her foot. The wave she created fled from her and threatened to engulf the boat. The deck tilted violently, first one way then another, leaped up, fell away. Ahzurdan crashed onto his knees, then onto his side and rolled about, slammed into the siderails (narrowly escaping being thrown overboard), slammed into the mast; he clutched at the ropes coiled there and finally stopped his wild careering. Gobbets of flame tore through his shielding, struck the sails and the deck, one caught the hem of his robe; they clung with oily determination and began eating into canvas, cloth and wood. Vast laughter beat like thunder over the Skia Hetaira and the folk on her. Amortis stamped again, flung more fire at the foundering boat.
As the first splash reached them, Brann dived for Ahzurdan, missed and had to scramble to save herself. She heard muted grunts and the splat of bare feet, managed a rapid glance behind her-Daniel Akamarino with only his trousers on and absurdly the magic wineskin bouncing against his back. When Ahzurdan grasped the mast ropes and stopped his careening about, Brann and Daniel caught hold of the straining sorceror, eased him onto his knees and supported him while he gestured and intoned, gradually rebuilding his shield.
Lio Laux and his two and a half crew struggled to keep the Skia from turning turtle and when they had a rare moment with a hand free, they tried to deal with the fires (fortunately smoldering rather than raging, subdued though not quenched by Ahzurdan’s aura). At some indeterminate moment in the tussle Tungjii arrived and stood on the deck looking about, watching with bright-eyed interest as Ahzurdan fought in his way and Lio in his. Heesh wriggled himmer’s furry brows. Small gray stormclouds gathered over each of the smoky guttering fires and released miniature rainstorms on them, putting them out.
Out on the water Amortis stopped laughing and took a step toward the Skia, meaning to trample what she couldn’t burn.
An immense translucent fishtail came rushing out of the waves, lifting gallons of water with it, water that splashed mightily over Amortis and sent her sprawling. Squawling with rage, she bounded onto her feet, bent and swung her arms wildly, grabbing for the Godalau’s coarse blue-green hair. The Godalau ducked under the waves, came up behind the god and set pearly curly shark’s teeth in the luscious alabaster calf of Amortis’ left leg; the Blue Seamaid did a bit of freeform tearing, then dived frantically away as Amortis took hold again, subdued her temper and used her fire to turn the water about her into superheated steam that even the Godalau could not endure.
A stormcloud much larger than those raining on the ship gathered over the wild blond hair and let its torrents fall. Clouds of gnats swarmed out of nowhere and blew into Amortis’ mouth, crawled up her nose and into her ears. Revolting slimy things came up out of the sea and trailed their stinking stinging ooze over her huge but dainty toes.
Amortis shrieked and spat fire in all directions, drawing on her substance with no discretion at all; more of the sea about the Skia grew too hot for the Godalau, driving her farther and farther away, until she could do nothing but swim frantically about beyond the perimeter of the heat, searching for some way, any way, she could attack again. Tungjii’s torments whiffed out fast as he could devise them, his rain melted into the steam that was a whitehot cloud about the whitehot fireform of the god; rage itself now, Amortis flared and lost her woman’s shape, sinking into the primal form from which she was created by the dreams of men, from which in a very real sense she created herself.
On deck, battered and exhausted, Ahzurdan faltered. More fire ripped through the shield. A worried frown on hisser round face, Tungjii rained on the fires and flooded most of them to smudgy chars, but the water was so hot around the Skia that steam drifting over the decks threatened to burn out mortal lungs and roast the skin off mortal bodies. The busy little god sent eddy currents of cooler air to shield hisser mortals, but heesh was more pressed than heesh had ever been in all hisser lengthy existence. The sea itself was so hot that the timbers of the hull were beginning to steam and smolder. Laux’s seamanship and the desperate scurrying of his crew had managed so far to keep the Skia Hetaira upright and clawing in a broad arc about the center of the fury, far enough out so the heat was marginally endurable, but let Ahzurdan falter again and the Skia and everyone on it would go up in a great gush of flame.
Brann felt Ahzurdan weakening, felt it in her hands and in her bones. She pressed herself against him, whispered, “Let me feed you, Dan, I can help but only if you let me. I did it when I cleansed you before, let me help you now.”
He nodded, unable to stop his chant long enough to speak.
Brann let her senses flow into him; usually she had one of the children to help with this, but they were gone, out beyond the shield doing she didn’t know what. She fed a tentative thread of energy into him, working cautiously so she wouldn’t distract him, that would be almost as fatal as his collapse from exhaustion. As she got the feel of him, she fed him more and more, draining herself to support him.
Only peripherally aware of the struggle on the deck, Yaril and Jaril flew again and again at Amortis, their birdshapes abandoned. Fire of a sort themselves, her fire couldn’t hurt them, but they were too small, too alien to damage her in any satisfactory way, all they could do was dart at her eyes while she still had eyes and distract her a little; when she altered to her primal form there was nothing at all they could do with her except use their odd bodies as lenses and channel small streams of her fire away from the Skia, which they did for a while until the futility of their acts grew depressingly apparent. They flicked away from the stormcenter and merged in consultation.
*Brann,* Yaril pulsed, *she handled the Treeish, with a bit of help from us; do you think she might be able to drain that bitch?*
*I think we better try something, this can’t go on much longer. *
*Ideas?*
*Make a bridge between her and that thing. We can focus its energies, that’s what we’ve been doing, isn’t it?*
*And Brann handles the pull. Right. Let’s go talk to her.*
They flicked through the shield, bounced up and down in front of her until they had her attention, then merged with her and explained their plan.
Brann scowled at the deck. “We’ve got about all the fire we can handle now.” She spoke the words aloud, listened some more. “You’re sure it’s different? Yes, I
do remember the Treeish. They weren’t gods or anything close to it and it hurt like hell handling their forces.” A listening silence. “I see. Channeled force, a limited but steady drain. She laughed. “Nice touch, defeating Amortis with her own strength. I agree, there’s not much point in going on with what we’re doing, she certainly can outlast us no matter how much of that fire she throws at us. So. The sooner the better, don’t you think?”
The children emerged from Brann, darted back through Ahzurdan’s shield and hovered in the heart of the fire, glimmering gold spheres faintly visible against the crimson flame flooding out of Amortis_ They melded into one and shot out curving arms until they extended from Amortis to Bram in a great arc of golden light. As soon as both ends of the arc touched home, Brann PULLED. And screamed with the agony of the godlife flowing into her, alien, inimical, deadly fire that almost killed her before her body found for itself a way of converting that fire into energy she could use. She absorbed it, throttled down the flow until it was a source Ahzurdan could take in without dying, of it She fed him the godlife, filled him with the godlife, until he glowed translucent alabaster like the god and used the god’s own substance to make the shield so fine a filter that heat and steam and eating fire were left outside and the water that came through was the black cool seawater that belonged to the Notoea Tha in midautumn nights. And the air that came through was a brisk following breeze, cool almost chill. And the tumultuous seasurface subsided to the long swells that came after storms had passed. The Skia Hetaira settled to an easy slide through abruptly edenic waters and Lio gave the helm to his mate so he could begin an inspection of his ship; he strolled about assessing damages, adding trauma penalties to the repair costs he planned to lay on Brann’s surety pledge. He was a bit wary of pushing her too hard, but figured a little fiddling couldn’t hurt.
Beyond the semi-opaque shield sphere, Amortis slacked her raging, let her fires diminish as she began to be afraid; she shut off her outpouring of her substance and recovered her bipedal form so she could think about what was happening. The arc between her and Brann was draining off her energy at a phenomenal pace; if it went on much longer she would face a permanent loss of power and with that, a loss of status so great she’d be left as nothing more than a minor local fertility genius tied to some stupid grove or set of stones. A last shriek of rage heavily saturated with fear, a shouted promise of future vengeance, and she went away.
The golden arch collapsed into two globes that bobbled unsteadily, then dropped through the shield onto the deck and flickered into two weary children.
Tungjii strolled over to the entwined trio, tapped Daniel’s arm, pointed to the wineskin and vanished.
Brann stirred. She didn’t let loose of Ahzurdan, for the moment she couldn’t. She throbbed and glowed like an alabaster lamp, her bones were visible through her flesh. Ahzurdan was like her, glowing, his bones like hers, a dark calligraphy visible in hands and face.
He stirred. With a hoarse groan of utter weariness out of a throat gone rough from the long outpouring of the focusing chants, he dropped into silence and let his hands fall onto his thighs. The shield globe melted from around them and the Skia Hetaira glided unhindered on a heaving sea.
The Godalau swam before them once more, her translucent glassy form like the memory of a dream. The raging winds were gone, the steam was gone, the water was cold again about the ship, the only reminders left of that ferocious conflict were the blackened holes in the sails and the charred spots in the wood.
Daniel eased himself away from Ahzurdan and Brann, sucking at his teeth and shaking his head when he saw them still frozen, unaware of his departure. He looked down at his hands and was relieved to see them comfortably opaque, no mystical alabaster there, just the burnt brown skin and paler palms he was accustomed to seeing. His bones were aching and his body felt like it had the first time he went canoeing with the Shafarin on Harsain, the time he decided he wanted to find out what the life of a nomad hunter was like. That was one of his shorter intervals between ships, when was it? yes, the time he walked away from della Farangan after one loud slanging match too many. Afterwards he went to work for a shiny ship to get the grit out of his teeth and the grime out of his skin. And the taste of burnt gamy flesh out of his mouth. Stella Fulvina and the Prism Dancer; quite a woman in her metallic way, uncomplicated. You knew where you were with her and exactly what you’d get. Restful to the head though she worked your butt off. He unslung the wineskin and thumbed out the stopple. The wine burned away his weariness. He sighed with pleasure and after a moment’s thought, splashed a drop of it on a small burn, grinned as the blackened flesh fell away and the pain went with it. “Tungjii Luck, you’ve got great taste in wine, you do.” He grimaced at Brann and Ahzurdan, crawled to the pale limp changechildren lying on the deck a short distance off. “Here,” he said. “Have a drink. Give you the energy to keep breathing.” He looked at them and laughed. “Or whatever else it is you do.”
As the children drank and flushed with returning color, Brann and Ahzurdan finally eased apart. Brann lifted one hand, pointed at the sky. A great white beam of light streamed from her bunched fingertips and cut through the darkness before to melt finally among the clouds. She closed her hand and cut off the flow. Ahzurdan waited until she was cooled down, then bled off his own excess charge much the same way, though he used both hands.
Daniel grinned at Jarll, reached for the skin. “Much more and you’ll be crawling, Jay.”
The boy giggled. “Still get there.”
“Yup, give it here anyway.” He took the wineskin to Brann, she was still glowing palely as if her skin was pulled taut over moonlight, but she looked weary as death and worried. “Tungjii’s blessing,” he said. “Makes the world look brighter.”
She found a smile for him and took the skin. Tungjii’s gift worked its magic; she flushed, her eyes acquired a new warmth, her movements a new vigor. She touched Ahzurdan’s arm. “Tungjii’s blessing, Dan.”
His head turned stiffly, slowly, dull blank eyes blinked at her. The ravages of the godlife were visible in his face, even more than the utter weariness of body and spirit. He took the skin, stared at it for a long moment before he lifted it and squeezed a wobbly stream of wine at his mouth, missing more than he hit. Daniel started to help him steady himself, but Brann caught his reaching hand and held it away. “No,” she said. “Not you. Not me.”
Ahzurdan lowered the skin, fumbled at his mouth and neck, trying to wipe away the spilled wine. He was looking all too much like a punchdrunk fighter, his coordination and capacity for thinking beaten out of him. Brann took the skin from him and gave it to Daniel. “Go away a while, will you? I’ll take care of him.”
Daniel Akamarino shrugged and went to sit on the rail. He watched Brann get her shoulder under Ahzurdan’s arm and help him to his feet. Her arm around him, she helped him stumble across the deck and down the ladder to the cramped livingspace below. Before she quite vanished, she turned her head. “On your life, don’t wake us before noon.”
Daniel flicked the dangling stopple. “Women,” he said.
Lio Laux leaned on the rail beside him. “Uh huh.” He rubbed a burn hole in his shirt between his thumb and forefinger, shredding off the charred fibers; eyes narrowed into dark crescents, he looked up at the sails, holed here and there but taut enough with the following wind, then squinted round at the deck. “Expect more of that?” He snapped thumb against midfinger and pointed his forefinger at a charred place in the wood.
“Me, I don’t expect. This isn’t my kind of thing.” Daniel passed the skin to Lio. “You might want to put some of this on your burns.” He held out his arm, showed the pale spot where the charred skin fell off. “Seems to be as useful outside as it is in.”
“Hmm. You don’t mind, I’ll apply it to the inside first.”
The rest of the voyage passed without incident. Two hours before dawn on the next morning, Lio Laux landed them on the black sand of Haven Cove, gave Brann back her surety gold and sailed out of the story.
11. Maksim And Kori, A Digression.
SCENE: In Maksim’s chambers high above the city.
“Sit down, I’m not going to eat you.”
Kori sneaked a glance at him, looked quickly away. Everyone said how big Settsimaksimin was and she’d seen him tower over the Servants and the students at the Lots, but he was far off then and she hadn’t realized how intimidating that size would be when she was not much more than an arm’s length away, even if it was the length of his arm. Eyes on the floor, she backed to a padded bench beside one of the tall pointed windows. She folded her hands in her lap, grateful for the coarseness of the sleeping shift they’d given her at the Yron. She didn’t feel quite so naked in it. She stole another look at him. He was smiling, his eyes were warm and it startled her but she had to say it, gentle, approving. She wondered if she ought to worry about what he was going to do to her, but she didn’t feel bothered by him, not like she was when that snake Bak’hve looked at her. Frightened, yes, but not bothered. She ran her tongue over dry lips. “Why did you snatch me here like this?”
“Because I didn’t want to make life at the Yron more difficult for you than it is already.”
“I don’t…”
“Child, mmmm, what’s your name?”
“You don’t know it?”
“Would I ask?”
His deep deep voice rumbled and sang at her, excited her; she forgot to be frightened and lifted her head. “Kori,” she said, “Kori Piyolss.”
“Kori.” Her name was music when he said it; she felt confused but still not bothered. “Well, young Kori, you wouldn’t like what would certainly happen to you if anyone thought I was interested in you. I’m sure you have no idea what lengths some folks will go to in order to reach my ear, and that’s not vanity, child, that’s what happens when you have power yourself or you’re close to someone with it. You’re a fighter, Kori, yes I do know that. I’ve watched you plot and scheme against me; unfortunately, I did not know who it was that plotted soon enough to stop you. Ahh, if things were other, if I had a daughter, or a son even, if he or she were like you, I would swell with pride until I burst with it. Why, Kori? What have I done to you? No, I’m not asking you that now. I will know it, though, believe that.”
She gazed defiantly at him, pressed her mouth into a tight smile that was meant to say no you won’t.
He chuckled. “Kori, Kori, relax, child, I’m not going into that tonight. I’ve got other things in mind. You were right, you know, I fiddled the Lot, I wanted you out of Owlyn, child, I wanted you where you won’t make more trouble for me. You might as well forget about going back there. Think rather what you’d like to do with your life.”
She blinked at him. “What do you mean?”
am not going to permit you to teach, Kori, I’m sure you see why. You don’t want to be a holy whore, do you?”
She swallowed, touched her throat, forced her hand down.
“It’s not a threat, child; but we do have to find something else for you. You’ve got a talent, did you know it?”
“Um… talent?”
“Why weren’t you born a boy, Kori, ah, things would be so much simpler.”
“I don’t want to be a boy.” She couldn’t put too much force into that, not after the talk with Polatea. She wrinkled her nose, moved her shoulders. It was a funny feeling, talking to the man like this, she felt free to say things she couldn’t say to anyone not even Tre; it seemed to her Settsimaksimin understood her, all of her, not just a part, understood an in a funny way approved of her. All of her. He was the first one, well, maybe Polatea was the first, but Polatea wanted to close her in and if he meant what he was saying, it seemed to her he wanted to open out her life to new things, splendid things. Aayee, it was hard, she was supposed to hate him for what he’d done, for what he was going to do when he found out about Tre, was he playing with her head already? She didn’t know, how could she know? “What I’d really like,” she said, “is not to stop being a girl, I am a girl, it’s part of what makes me who I am, I like who I am, I don’t want to change, what I want is to be free to do some of the things boys get to do.” She scratched her cheek, frowned. “What did you mean, talent?”
“Magic, child. Would you like to study it?”
“I don’t understand. “
“There are schools where they teach the talent, Kori; there’s one, perhaps the best of them, in a city called Silili. It’s a long way from here, but see you get there if you think you might like to be a scholar.”
“Why?”
“Nothing’s ever simple, Kori, haven’t you learned that by now? Ah well, you’ve had a sheltered life so far. Why? Because I like you, because I don’t like killing my folk, don’t scowl, child, didn’t your mother ever tell you your face could freeze like that? Yes, you are mine whatever you think of that and yes, I am not lying when I say I loathe killing I do what I must.”
“No. You do what you want.”
“Hmm. Perhaps you’re right. Shall I tell you what I want?”
“I can’t stop you. No, that isn’t honest. I would like to hear it. I think. I don’t know. Are you messing with my head, Settsimaksimin?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I don’t want to see you frightened. I don’t want to feel you hating me.”
“I can’t do anything about that?”
“Not now. If you develop your talent, the time will come when no one, not even a god, can play with your feelings and your thoughts, Kori. Take my offer. Don’t waste your promise.”
“Why are you doing this? I don’t understand. Help me understand. Are you like Bak’hve the Servant in Owlyn, do you want me? I don’t think so, you don’t make me feel bothered like he does.”
He frowned. “That Servant, he approached you, suggested you lie with him?”
“No. Not yet, he hasn’t worked himself up to it yet.”
“Hmm. I’ll put a watch on him; if he’s got a penchant for young girls, he goes. And no, Kori, you’re right, you don’t excite me that way. Do I shock if I tell you, no girl or woman would?”
“Oh.” She wriggled uncomfortably. “You said you’re trying to do something. What is it?”
He gave his low rumbling laugh, settled into his chair, put his feet up on a hassock and began to talk about his plans for Cheonea.
Her head whirled with visions as immense as he was. What he wanted for the Plain sounded very much like the kind of life her own folk lived up in the Vales. How could that be bad? There was a fire in him, a passionate desire to make life better for the Plainsers. How could she not like that? His fire called to the fire in her. Maybe he was playing games with her again, but she didn’t really think so. She felt her mind stretching, she felt breathless, carried along by an irresistable force like the time she fell into the river and didn’t want to be rescued, the time she was intensely annoyed with her cousins when they roped her and pulled her to the bank; though she thanked them docilely enough, she went running back to the House, raging as she ran. She quivered to the deep deep voice that seemed to sing in the marrow of her bones. She understood him, or at least a part of him, there was no one he could share his dreams with, just like her. No one who could follow the leaps and bounds of his thought. She could. She knew it. But she also knew her own ignorance. In addition to her dreams and enthusiasms, she had a shrewd practical side. Though her life was short and severely circumscribed, shed heard more than a handful of one-sided stories meant to justify some lapse or lack. Men who let their fields go sour, women who slacked their weaving or their cleaning, children who had a thousand excuses for things they had or hadn’t done. She’d told such stories herself, even told them to herself. So how could she judge what he was saying? Measure it against what was there before down on the Plain? What did she know about the Plain except some ancient tales her people told to scare unruly boys? Trouble was, how could she trust those stories? She knew how her folk were about outsiders, nothing outsiders did was worth the spit to drown them in. What else did she know? Really know? What he did about the wood. Yes. That rather impressed Daniel Akamarino. How he kept the city clean. Bath houses for beggars even. The slave markets were gone. But girls still sold themselves on the streets and in the taverns they were conveniences provided with the beds and the bottles. The pleasurehouses were gone, older girls on fete eves told dreadful tales of those places, tales that would have had them scrubbing pots for a month if one AuntNurse or another had caught them. But Settsimaksimin’s own soldiers burned the Chained God’s priests and would burn Tre if she couldn’t stop it. The thought cleared her head and chilled her body.
She looked up. He was watching her, yellow cat eyes questioning her silence. Momentarily she was afraid, but she thought about Tri and everything and straightened her back. If she could stop it here, if she could make him see… She took a mouthful of air, let it out with a soundless paa. “There’s one thing,” she said. She rubbed at her forehead, pushed her hand back over her hair, afraid again. He saw too much. What if he saw Tie “You let us alone for over forty years. Except for the Lot. And we got used to that and it was kind of exciting coming down to the city and having it ours for three days. You let us live like we always lived. No fuss. And then, no warning, you send your soldiers to the Vales and the Servants. We don’t want them, we don’t need them. We have the Chained God to look after us. We have our priests to bless us and teach us and heal us and wed us each to each. At least, we had them before your soldiers burnt them. Why? We weren’t hurting you. We were just doing what we’d always done. The Servants gave the orders to the soldiers, but they were your soldiers. Why did you let that happen?”
“Let it happen? oh Kori, I couldn’t stop it, I was constrained by things I promised decades ago. Let me tell you. Fifty years ago I took Silagamatys from the king.” He gave her a weary smile. “I had a thousand mercenaries and a few dozen demons and the skills I’d acquired in a century’s hard work. I took the city in a single night with less than a hundred dead, the king being one of those. And it meant almost nothing. He had less say in how Cheonea was run than the scruffiest beggar on Water Street. The Parastes and the vice lords, the pimps, the bullies, the assassins and the thieves, they ran Cheonea, they ran Silagamatys, they ignored me and my pretensions, Kori. It was like trying to scoop up quicksilver; when I reached for them, they ran between my fingers and were gone. All I had accomplished, Kori, was to tear down the symbol that held this rotting state together. SYMBOL! That vicious foulness, that corrupt old fumbler. He was the shell they held in front of them, he was the thing that kept them from going for each other. I had to cleanse the city somehow, I had to put my hand on the hidden powers if I wanted to change the way things were and make life better for the gentle people. I worked day and night, Kori, I slept two hours, three at most. I think I looked into the face of every man, woman and child inside the crumbling walls about this cesspool city. I caught little weasels that way, weeded them out and set them to work for me in the granite quarries, cutting stone to rebuild those walls. The wolves slipped away on me except for a few of the stupider ones. Every Parika on the Plain was a fortress closed against me and the Parastes reached out from behind their walls to strike at me whenever they saw a chance to hurt me. I held on for five years, Kori, I got Silagamatys cleaned out, I got my walls built. But Cheonea outside the walls was drowning in blood. The wolves were turning on each other. I don’t believe that chaos reached into the Vales, but it couldn’t have been a happy time there either; there were desperate men in the hills who stole what they needed to stay alive and destroyed what they couldn’t use to appease the rage that gnawed at them. I could have cleansed the Plain too, Kori, as I cleansed the city, if I had another hundred years to spare and the strength of a young man. I wasn’t young, Kori, I had limits. And I had this.” He pulled the talisman from under the simple white linen robe he wore, brushed his hand across the stone. “There’s a price to using it, I won’t speak of that, child, it’s my business and mine alone. I didn’t want to use it, but I looked into myself and I looked out across the Plain and I called Amortis to me. I used her because I had to, Kori. For the greater good. Oh yes. I know. My good, too. Either I forgot my dream or I corrupted it and myself. You understand what I did and why. I promised her Cheonea, Kori, I could compel her to some things but to do all that I wanted, she had to have a reason for helping me. Cheonea was that reason. I left the Vales alone as long as I could, Kori, I talked with her, I teased her, I even was her lover for a while.”‘He gave her a sad wry smile. “Not a very satisfactory one, I’m afraid. I can’t claim virtue for trying to save you folk from Amortis’ greed. The runes I read, the bones I cast, the stars in their courses all told me that going into the Vales would destroy me.” A long weary sigh. “I’m tired, child, but I’ll keep fighting until I die. Cheonea will be whole and it will be a good place to live. If I have a few more years, just a handful of years, what I’ve done will be so strong it won’t need me any more. I won’t let you take those years from me, Kori. I won’t let you be hurt, but I will kill you if I have to, do you understand that?”
“Yes.”
“Will you tell me what you’ve done and why?”
“No.”
“Do you understand what you are saying to me?”
“Yes. ‘
“It’s war between us?”
“Yes.”
He touched the tips of his lefthand fingers to the stone.
“In one hour Amortis herself goes after your champions, Kori. Would you like to see what happens?”
“Yes.”
“Hmm. Some hundred years ago it seems to me I asked if you would like to be a scholar.”
“Yes.”
“Does that merely mean you remember the question or is it your answer?”
“I remember the question and yes, I think I would like to be a scholar.” She gazed at fingers pleating and repleating the coarse white wool of her shift. “If you don’t break me getting out your answers.”
He laced his fingers over his stomach, his yellow eyes laughed at her. “Kori, young Kori, there’s no need for breaking. You’ve no defense against me, making you speak will be as simple as dipping a pen into an inkwell and writing with it.”
“Why all this talk talk talk, then? Why don’t you get at it? Do you expect to charm me into emptying myself out for you? You could charm a figgit out of its hole and you know it, but you’ll have to take what you want, I won’t, I can’t give it to you. Why are you wasting your time and mine like this? Do it. Get it over with and let me go.”
“Am I, Kori, wasting my time?”
She looked up, looked down again without saying anything.
“You don’t understand what I’m trying to do? How much it is going to mean to ordinary folk?”
“I do understand. They aren’t my folk.”
“Yes. I thought it was that. Your brother?”
She folded the cloth and smoothed it out, folded and smoothed and tried to ignore the pressing silence in the high moon-shadowed room.
“How is he involved in this? A baby like that.” When she continued to not-look at him, he got to his feet, held out his hand. “Come. Or do you hate me so much you refuse to touch me?”
Her head whipped up; she glared at him. “Not fair.” His rumbling laugh filled the room, his eyes shone with it. He waggled his huge hand. “Come.”
Settsimaksimin ran his tongue over his teeth as he looked round the cluttered workroom. With a grunt of satisfaction he strode to a corner, brushed a pile of dusty scrolls off a padded backless bench and carried it across to the table where the black obsidian mirror waited, dark glimmers sliding across its enigmatic surface. He scowled at the dust on the dark silk, lifted the tail of his robe and scrubbed it vigorously over the cushion. Kori resisted a strong impulse to giggle. He was so massive, so powerful, so very male, but his play at hospitality reminded her absurdly of AuntNurse Polatda arranging a party for visiting cousins. When he straightened and beckoned her over, she gave him her best demure smile and settled herself gracefully, grateful for once for all those tedious lessons.
He drew the ball of his thumb across the mirror. “Show thou.” As a scene began to develop within the oval, he dropped into a sagging armchair, shifted about until he was comfortable, propped his feet on a rail under the table,and laced his long dark fingers over his solid stomach.
Kori watched white sails belly out against black water, black sky, and lost any urge to laugh when she saw the towering figure of the god come striding across the sea.
Squawling threats, Amortis vanished. The gold arc broke apart. The translucent shell dissolved. The sea smoothed out. The boat came round and sliced once more toward Haven Cove.
“Well.” Settsimaksimin pushed his chair back and stood looking down at her. Kori couldn’t read anything but weariness and regret in his heavy face, but she was terrified. Helpless. No place to run. Nothing she could say would change what they’d just seen. All she could do was hold the rags of her dignity about her and endure whatever he planned for her.
He loomed over her, leaned down; very gently, a feather’s touch wouldn’t be softer, he brushed his thumb across her mouth. “Speak thou,” he murmured. “What have you done and how? Why have you done it?”
She struggled to resist, but it was like being caught in the river, carried on without effort on her part. The story tumbled out of her: Tre’s peril, Harra’s Legacy, the Cave of the Chained God, Toma and the medal, Daniel Akamarino, the Blue Seamaid and all that happened there, what Brann organized to get her home unseen (she fell silent a moment and stared as he burst out laughing. I stopped watching, he said to her, before any of that went on. All that effort wasted), the Chained God’s command to come to Isspyrivo, take the chains off him, return with him to destroy the talisman that Settsimaksimin was using agairist a god.
When she finished and fell silent, he brushed her lips a second time with his thumb, stepped back. He pointed at the bench. “Bring that. There.” He pointed at the center of a complex of silver lines, a five-pointed star inside a circle with writing and other symbols scattered about it, within the pattern and without; he didn’t wait to see her do it, but whipped away, robe billowing about him as he strode to another corner; he came back with a long, decorated staff. He looked her over, nodded with satisfaction, tapped the silver circle with the butt of the staff. The wire began to glow. “Don’t move,” he said. “Don’t cross the line. There will be dangerous things beyond the pentacle; you can’t see them and you don’t want to feel them. You hear me?”
“Yes.”
He stopped beside a second small pentacle, activated that, moved to the largest. There was an odd looking chair in it, big, made from a dark wood with tarry streaks in it, his chair, even before he settled into it, its shape suggested him, she could see him sitting in it, his massive arms resting in the carved hollows in the chair’s arms, his long strong feet fitting in the hollows of the footboard. He stepped across the dull gray lines, smoothed his hands over his hair, tucking in the short straggles that made a black and pewter halo for his face. With a complicated pass of his flattened hand, he wiped the wrinkles and dust smears from his robe, then he tapped the pentacle to life, climbed into the chair and settled. himself into a proper majesty, the staff erect in its holders, rising over him, its wire inlay catching the light in slippery watery gleams. He turned his head to look directly at her (she was on his right off to one side), grinned and winked at her as if to say aren’t I fine, then faced forward and began intoning a chant, his voice filling the room with sound and beats of sound until her body throbbed in time with the pulses.
“PA OORA DELTHI NA HES HEYLIO PO LIN LEGO IMAN PHRO NYMA MEN
ТЕЛЕГРАМКанал с обзорами, анонсами новинок и книжными подборками
Книжный Вестник
Бот для удобного поиска и скачивания книг
Книжный Бот
Свежие любовные романы в удобных форматах
Любовные романы
О психологии, саморазвитии и личностном росте
Саморазвитие
Детективы и триллеры, все новинки
Детективы
Фантастика и фэнтези, все новинки
Фантастика
ВКОНТАКТЕ