Wild Magic

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The Ladroa-vivi was the last gatt (wharf) on the north side of the River, standing more than half a mile past the Wood Bridge. There were a small house for the Shindagatt (when there was one) and a rotting warehouse which was empty except for dust, spiders in the rafters, and the occasional drunk. Its interior smelled of urine and death and no one went there except those drunks or fugitives hiding with the spiders to get above the stench and away from the light. Once or twice a month the Shinda guards searched the place, confiscated any contraband they found hidden there. The Shinda Prefect who ran the city threatened repeatedly to bum it down, but he never did.

The sheds and groves around Ladroa-vivi were the meeting ground for idle porters and truant slaves, thieves and vagabonds, diseased habatrizes and overage Salagaum; they played dados with loaded dice, kucha with cards so old the cheatmarks were more legible than the pips, jiwa-bufa with bones the rats had eaten clean and stones from the River. Or they smoked tumba or drank raw mulimuli from clay jugs. Or sniffed fayyun, or smoked bhaggan, or dumped handfuls of the dust of dried pepepo-a caterpillar fed on crazyleaf-into the slugs of mulimuli and went so far off that half the time they never came back. Or ingested other drugs from the pharmacopoeia of self-destruction.

Those who hung about kept their eyes open and trusted to agility and luck to shelter them from danger-as did the Kassians, the bee-priestesses of Abeyhamal, who ventured here to bind up wounds, set broken legs, and dose the hallucinating with purges and settlers.

While Reyna Hayaka was busy knotting the painter, Ailiki leapt onto the gatt and sat on her haunches waiting. Reyna laughed, then lifted Faan up beside the beast. He set the basket on the planks, gathered the skirts of his robes to keep them clear of the muck, and climbed quickly up the short ladder.

“Something new, eh?” A Wascram smuggler with Connections, the self-appointed Shindagatt of Ladroavivi stepped, from behind a tree and stood at the top of the gatt, his hands on his plump hips, his elbows out.

Reyna slid the basket handle over his arm, swung Faan up and held her against his breasts, half hidden by the folds of his outer robe. “Ulloa, Chez,” he said. “Nothing to interest you.”

“Playpretty?”

“No! I don’t go that route, you know that.”

“Some a you clients do.”

“They don’t tell me. I won’t have it.” He turned, putting his shoulder between Faan and the Shindagatt. “Two pradh and you don’t say.”

Chezar Joggaril rubbed at his broad broken nose; for a moment Reyna thought he was going to argue the price, then he shrugged. “Verna,” he growled.

“One hour?”

“Bring it youself.”

“I said.”

“No trade, just coin; I’m not in the mood for games.”

Chezar shrugged. “Leia got female troubles,” he muttered. “Needs some more a that red stuff.”

Reyna shifted his hold on Faan who was starting to wriggle, wanting down. He patted the child to quiet her and frowned at Chezar… “I’ll bring a bottle. You sure that’s it?”

“Same as last time.”

“Vema.”

With the mahsar Ailiki trotting behind him, Reyna strode into the trees. He stepped over a sprawled mule-head, started to circle around a game of jiwa-bufa scratched into the hard dry earth. One of the players, a Salagaum, looked up, pushed straggling gray hair out of his eyes.

“‘Loa, Rey.” He wrinkled his brow, swayed on his knees, and peered hazily at Ailiki. “What’s that?”

“Ulloa, Jumsi. Pet I picked up. ‘Loa, Morg, Jago, Huz.”

He moved quickly through the trees, emerged from them into a nameless wynd filled with refuse, cats and stray dogs, stopped for a moment to resettle the child in the curve of his ann. “Faan, sweeting, honeychild, be quiet now. Like a little mouse.” He touched her mouth, shook his head. “There’s danger here, danger until we reach Beehouse. rm going to cover you with this robe and I want you to stay very very quiet, shhh…” He hefted her higher and tugged his outer robe over her. “K’lann! wish I knew how you turn into solid lead.”

He strode along the wynd, slowed as he turned into Verakay Lane, the longest and widest of the streets in the Edge; /Wild followed close behind him, a small gray-brown shadow.

“‘Loa, Rey.” An old Fundar woman leaned out a window, a soppy cloth trailing from her hand; she flapped it at him, splattering washwater over everything beneath her. “What you got there?”

“‘Loa, Thamman.” He waved at her, went quickly on.

A line of Naostam boys went running past, stuttered to a stop, swung round, and shouted obscentities at him. He paid no attention to them; they were just echoing their fathers. He had Naostam clients, but they refused to know him when they passed him on the street.

He heard the clank-clash of a pair of Shinda guards before they turned the corner ahead of him, retreated a few steps and ran down a wynd between two tenements, then worked back to the Lane, dodging through porters and laborers, handcarts and oxcarts, scurrying cut-purses and lounging out-of-works squatting around jiwa-bufa circles drawn in the dust.

Mahnk Peshalla stood in the door of his tavern waving a fan lazily back and forth. He had the high cheekbones, narrow face and beaky nose of his caste, rat-tail mustaches and a thin beard twisted into long tight ringlets; though he was poor Biashar, the son of a merchant who’d lost everything when a ship he’d invested in never came back, he had two official wives (of the three that Biasharim allowed themselves) and was more generous to beggars and streetfolk than most, sponsoring a score of Wascram boys in the Edgeschool. When he saw Reyna, he flicked the folding fan shut, slapped it against his arm. “Rey,” he rumbled in a voice like a barrel rolling down a gatt, “What you got good?”

“This and that, Mak, this and that.”

Louok the Nimble was standing atop an overturned washtub making silver cemms dance between his dark fingers, the coins glinting in the morning light, changing to copper shabs, then back again, appearing and disappearing. “Now you see it,” he chanted, “now you don’t, silver into copper, yes, that’s the way it goes, copper into air, my hands are empty, my pockets, too, yet see and see, silver.” He paused in the middle of his handdance, waved to Reyna, whistled a snatch of a tune popular in the Joyhouses, went back to his performance, milking a rain of coins from the air and dropping them into a large boot. He upended it, shook his head when a moth flew out, tossed the boot to one of the Wascram boys crouched by his feet, and went on with his performance as the boys moved through the crowd, collecting coins from his audience.

On the other side of the Lane Zinar the Porter shifted his load. “‘Loa, Rey,” he yelled, “Tell Dawa the Lewinkob silk’s in.” He slapped at the bale on his head. “He should get up to Horry’s fast, or it’ll be gone.”

“Gotcha, Zin.”

Quiambo Tanish went hurrying by, his arms loaded down with supplies for the school. He waggled an elbow at Reyna, slowed for a few steps. “Tell Pan to come by school tomorrow, I’ve got the talk cleared through the Manasso Head.”

“Will do, Tan.”

He fended off more men and women who had greetings for him, messages for Dawa or Jea, the other Salagaum living with him at the Beehouse, the Kassian Tai or Panote ^.the Doorkeeper, nodded at them, waved, brushed hastily past. The mahsar stayed close to his heels, drawing a few stares but no comments.

The Verakay Beehouse was a blocky red-brick building rising three stories to a flat roof with a split-wood fence poking like spiky Cheoshim hair above a waist-high parapet. There was a bee carved within a cartouche above the heavy outer door and the bellpull was an amber bee on the end of a tough thin cord braided from the gut of a large fish caught in the Koo Bikiyar, stretched, rolled, and kiln dried. The followers of Abeyhamal Bee Mother avoided metals as much as they could.

Reyna let Faan slide down until she was standing on the stoop, hidden from the street by the flare of his overrobe, then he yanked at the bellpull.

The wicket slapped open and Panote peered out; he smiled, slid the shutter closed, and opened the door. He was an ascetic Naostam in service to a foreign god, TannabSs of Felhidd, a pacifist warrior god who decreed his servants should be so proficient in self-defense they would never have to use their arts. “Rey.”

“‘Loa, Pan. Tanish says come by tomorrow, he’s got the talk approved. Tai. around?” Reyna bent, tapped Faan on the shoulder, and gave her a gentle push.

The child circled warily around Panote, went trotting over to the cape rack that stood at the far end of the small square entry; she smoothed her hand down the shining wood, patted the only cape hanging there.

“Ahsan, Rey. Diyo, she’s come in. Washed her hair Dryin it up on the roof.” Panote rounded his eyes. “And who’s that? A visitor or…”

“Her name’s Faan. That’s all I know, she doesn’t speak Fadogur.” Reyna rubbed at his jaw. “If Thi agrees, she could be living here for a while. Silence is best on this, Pan.”

“Vema, vema.” Whistling a bouncy tune, he shut the door and dropped the bar into its hooks. He canted his head and inspected Faan with bright black eyes. “Char-mer,” he said, then went back into his room. As Reyna slipped off the overrobe and hung it on its knob, he heard the rhythmic thumping of the doorkeeper’s ritual exercises.

“Faan, come along.” He stooped, took her hand and led her through the door beside the rack into a large square court filled with bloom, two trees, one a willow, one a flowering plum, a fountain in the middle and patches of short springy green grass. Morning shadows darkened the court, but the treetops shimmered with sunlight and the water droplets were diamond bright. Beyond the fountain an outside stairway jagged up the wall to a door in the roof-fence.

Faan looked around, started talking, words tumbling out of her, none of which Reyna understood.

He shook his head. “Come along, honey, I want you to meet someone; maybe she’ll know what you’re talking about.”