The Burning Ground

3. Settling into Linojin

Clutching the luth in her left hand, Yseyl turned from the table, shied as a novice in brown opened the righthand door for her. As she stepped through, she heard the Brother’s voice droning through the same set of questions for the next in line.

The door hushed shut and she found herself between high white marble walls that jagged through acute angles like the SkyFire sign on the Tale Cards. No time to stand gawking, she told herself and moved briskly along the slate pavement. From the corner of her eyes she could see damp streaks on the marble and remembered the ferns and anyas washing the walls. People here must wash this place every few hours to keep it so clean. God’s hot breath. Service. Me and a squeegee. Well, we do what we have to, I remember the time..

The thought broke in half as she stepped from beneath the walls into a place of blinding whiteness, open to the sky, the sun pouring in as if to cleanse her of all the ills that life had brought her.

All it did was make her angry. She felt small and dark, like a poison burr, and she wanted to spit that poison over everything. The powers here were trying to manipulate her as they had when she was a child. It hadn’t worked then, thanks to Crazy Delelan, and she wasn’t going to let it work now.

She charged across the enclosure, slapped her hands against the double doors with the Egg carved on them, split the Egg wide, and marched into Linojin.

And into a swarm of children circling about her, shouting at her, offering themselves as guides.

A small compact femlit came wriggling through the mob with the use of elbows and knees; she had a scrape on her nose, bruises on her arms, and eyes fiercer than a hunting boyal. Unlike the others, she wasn’t shouting, she just stood in front of Yseyl, head up, a challenge in every line of her body.

Yseyl smiled. She couldn’t help it. “Your name,” she said.

“Zothile. Call me Zot if you want me to answer.”

Yseyl heard the doors swing open behind her. The crowd of children rushed away to importune the new arrival. “Done, Zot. What’s your fee?”

“Copper a day, I take, you wherever you want to go and get you whatever you want.”

“Hm. I could bargain that down, I think, but I’m not going to bother.” She took a copper from her belt purse, tossed it to the femlit who plucked it from the air with a dart of a small scuffed hand. “Your first day’s pay. Take me to the Grave of the Prophet.”

Zot shrugged. “You call it. You want the Holy Way or the fast way?”

“Make it the fast way, hm?”

“Right.” Zot started off at a quick pace, leading Yseyl into a maze of narrow streets, dark and cluttered with mals sitting slumped against the walls or huddling in niches, many of them maimed by the war, a leg gone or an arm off at the elbow, a patched eye, a face so scarred it was painful to look at-or the wounds might be on the inside, the only evidence a constant shivering, a mouth moving in soundless endless speech, a dullness on the face. A few ferns passed by, ignoring the mals as Yseyl ignored them, moving along the center of the pavement with a quick pattering gait that carried them rapidly from turn to turn.

The smell wasn’t as bad as it had been in some of the coast cities Yseyl had visited in her first career as thief and her second as assassin, but there was a sour hopelessness that hung in the air which made a nonsense of the bright whiteness only a few streets away. Yseyl savored the sense this gave her of the rightness of things. It was, in its way, a recapitulation of her whole life.

She looked thoughtfully at the back of Zot’s head, then took a few quick steps to catch up to the femlit. “Changed my mind,” she said.

Zot’s eyes laughed at her, then went blank. “Thought you might. What you really wanting?”

“At the moment, some talk. Where?”

“Maybe I take you somewhere and me and my friends rob you?”

“Been tried another place. Didn’t work. Besides, you’ll get more if you keep your friends out of it.”

“You’re no Pilgrim.”

“Not since I was younger’n you.”

“I hear y’. Teashop round a couple corners.”

“Teashop?”

“‘What they call it. Backrooms ‘re something they don’t talk about with the Godmen. And what comes in y’ cup’s not tea if you know the right words.”

“Just so you know, I’m no spy either.”

“Hunh. I know that.”

“How?”

“I just know. Come on.”

Compared to some of the rat holes Yseyl had passed through in Icisel, Yaqshowal and Gajul, the Spiral Knot was painfully clean and well lit. “They polish the surfaces well, don’t they.”

Zot grinned. “Us maggots we know how to duck the broom.” She led Yseyl to a booth at the back of the room where the light wasn’t so intense and customers were thin on the ground.

Yseyl slid in and sat with her hands resting lightly on the table, her head on the incurve of the high wall separating this booth from the next one. She smiled at Zot. “I was hohekil before it had a name. Lot of them in here?”

Zot knocked on the table. “You want to know who runs them?”

“That, too.”

“Humble Haf-um, that’s the Brother of God who runs us all, Hafumbua’s his long name-Humble Haf digs up excuses to shove most of the hohekil out of Linojin. Doesn’t like ’em. Thinks they mean trouble. He’s Imp born, but he don’t even like Imp hohekil. Anyway both sorts end up in coast villages trying to feed themselves off the sea. If you lookin’ for someone, you likely find ’em there.” She stopped talking as an old mal shuffled over. She ordered tea and sandwiches and waved a hand at Yseyl. “She payin’.”

Yseyl nodded, counted out the coppers. When the mal shuffled off again, she raised her brows. “Pushing your luck, young Zot. So sing a bit more for your supper. Tell me about the big one, the one who keeps Impix and Pixa hohekil from killing each other.”

“Him? It’s a mal named Noxabo. The knot of hohekil who stay, they live near the Sea Gate round the Broken Twig, that’s the inn old Fashile owns, xe was anya to a coast trader from Sithekil just south of here. Storm shoved him into the Fence which ashed him and fed the ashes to the fish.” Zot shrugged. “Happens all the time. If kishin’ Ptak let us have weather reports, well… Anyway, Fashile and xe’s fern Jawele had kin here, so they brought their coin and set up a place for hohekil. Jawele, she died a couple years ago. You want someone who don’t like Ptak a lot or Humble Haf or much else, Fashile fits fine. And like I said, Noxabo lives there.”

She kept talking as the old mal shuffled toward them carrying a loaded tray, but switched to describing the city in more neutral terms. “To find your way around, all you have to remember is that the Grand Yeson and the Radio Tower mark the exact center of Linojin and the Progress Way cuts the city in half. North of the Way, in the west quarter you have the Chapter Houses of the Brothers of God, the Anyas of Mercy, the Sisters in Godbond. In the east quarter you have the Grave of the Prophet, the Speakers’ House, the Seminary and the Speakers’ Park.” She took the plate of sandwiches from the mal and set it between the two of them, pulled her drinking bowl in front of her, nodded as Yseyl did the same.

“South of the way, in the west quarter you have the Orphan Halls, that’s where I live, and boarding houses for workers and lots of small family houses and some bigger ones for merchant families who made their stash and got away from the coast while they still had it.” Zot inspected the sandwiches, took one. “You want to pour the tea? I take two spoons sugar, but that’s all. In the east quarter you have the hostels for the Pilgrims and a few places for the folk who take care of them. And on the boundary between, out near the wall where Humble Haf won’t be offended by the stench of commerce, there’s the Market. And you want to be sorta careful who you tell your business to, hm?”

“I noticed. Your hint was strong enough to flatten a skazz. How do you go about getting to be a guide?”

“You have to be older’n seven and younger’n thirteen and you or your folks have to get one of the Godfolk to speak for you.” Zot scowled at her. “You askin’ about me, this Bond Sister at the Hall, she got me the place. Nothin’ special, she does it for all the kids, she gets money to run the Hall that way.”

“And expects you to be grateful, hm? Don’t need to say. I know the feeling.” Yseyl nodded at the rest of the sandwiches. “I’m not hungry. You want those?”

The sandwiches vanished inside Zot’s shirt. “So what’s this leading up to?”

“You’re twelve pushing thirteen, aren’t you? What happens after that?”

“Look, I’m a guide. You get off on sob stories, find yourself a whore. You want, I’ll show you where and that’s it.”

Yseyl grinned at the femlit. “Vumah vumay, no one ever said I had any manners. What this is leading up to, I’ve got some things to sell and I need to know a buyer who’s reasonably honest and no gossip.”

Zot stared at her a moment. “You come to Linojin the Holy City looking for a fence?” She refilled her drinking bowl, added the sugar and bent over the bowl, stirring the lukewarm tea with a vigor that sent the spoon clinking loudly against the porcelain.

Yseyl looked at the straggly black hair falling past the closed face and wondered if she was going to get any answer at all, then Zot lifted her head, her mouth stretched into a broad white grin. “Today?”

Mehll looked like one of those round dolls Pixa mals carved for their children from sija wood, the base sphere filled with lead shot so that when you tapped it, the doll rocked back and forth but didn’t tip over. Xe’s face was round with a cascade of chins and a web of smileywrinkles digging into the soft pale flesh. Eyes like plum bits in a hana bun flicked from Yseyl’s face to her hands as Yesyl laid out on a black display cloth some of the pieces from her stash.

“This and this…” Yseyl’s forefinger nudged a brooch, then a necklace. “I acquired in Icisel. The rings come from Gajul. I’ve had them for several years now.”

+You get around some.+ Mehll pulled an embroidered length of cloth hanging from the ceiling. A beam of yellow sunlight touched the display cloth, making the gems shimmer and glitter like the sea on a summer day. Xe fixed a glass in xe’s eye, lifted the necklace, and began inspecting it.

“So I do.”

Zot sat on a stool in a corner, reading one of the books Mehll kept on a shelf there; she was very much at home in this place-which Yseyl found interesting.

It was a comfortable room, shadowy except for that one bright ray, filled with armies of small carvings and decorated boxes and other intricate ornaments of a size to fit in the palm of the hands. As the shadows shifted in the room, they leaped to the eye and sank back into obscurity a moment later.

Mehll set down the last of the rings. +Nice pieces,+ xe signed.

Yseyl raised her brows.

+I don’t haggle, dear. I know what I can sell these things for, and I subtract my profit. What’s left I pay you, if you choose to take it. Which is four hundred grams silver. What do you say?+

“I’ll say it’s fair, and I’ll take it.” She reached for her backpack and lifted it into her lap as Mehll opened a cashbox and began counting coins into a balance scale. She leaned back in the chair, turning her head so she could see Zot who was bent over the book, her body shouting her immersion in what she was reading. That was as good an endorsement as any words would have been. “I’ve a feeling you know people better than most, Anya Mehll.”

+So?+

“I’ve got a problem. No. Better to call it a puzzle. I think I want to talk to you about it.”

For several minutes Mehll signed no response, just kept adding coins to the pan. When the weights balanced, she tipped the coins into a leather pouch, pulled the drawstrings tight and pushed it across the table toward Yseyl. +My question is do I want to listen? I don’t think so. There’s a darkness in you that worries me. I feel myself being sucked into it and I won’t allow that. Do what you have to do, but let me be. Let Zot be.+

Yseyl didn’t touch the pouch. She folded her arms on top of the backpack and gazed coldly at the old anya. “I earned that darkness the hard way, Anya. I’ve stalked and killed nine men in the past three years. Offworld arms dealers. Vumah vumay, more than that, but I don’t count the others.”

+You’d better go. Now.+

“The tenth dealer I stalked convinced me to let him live by giving me something. I can open a hole in the Fence, Mehll. Anywhere, anytime, with no alarm. A hole big enough to let a ship sail through. I want to lead people away from this stinking war. But I’m a thief and a killer. My ixis counts me dead and anyway, they always thought I was crazy. Probably right, too. You see my puzzle? I’ve got this wonderthing, but how do I use it?”

+Why me?+

“Anya. And what you do. You can read I’m speaking my truth, and you might be able to look beyond that to what’s really there. And that.” She nodded toward Zot. “How many children read those books?”

+They say Humble Haf loves his cat.+

Yseyl nodded wearily. “If you won’t hear, then you won’t. Think about it. Think about sailing to Sigoxol, walking free on land where there’s no war.” She lifted the money pouch and stowedit in her pack. “Eh, Zot, let’s go find me a place to stay.”