Wild Magic

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Penhari held the lamp close to the panels on the right side of her bed. “Shoulder… diyo, shoulder high, him not me.” The panels were carved with fertility signs, embarrassing even now when she was looking closely at them for the first time in years. She snorted as she remembered the disgust she felt when he showed her what to move. “One half turn so what was hanging is now standing high. Abey’s Sting. The minds of these men.”

Something clunked. The panel opened a crack, groaning as it moved. She pushed at it and with diffi-

culty got it wide enough to let her move the lamp into the stifling darkness beyond. “Spiders, tchah!”

She set the lamp on the bedtable and went for the broom Desantro had taken to leaving in the water room so she wouldn’t have to haul it back and forth each day.

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The panel in Wenyanim’s bedroom cracked open.

Penhan froze as she heard voices and other sounds.

She placed the broom carefully in the corner between wall and paneling, blew the lamp out, set it down and leaned against the crack. Listening.

The voices were muffled. A man and a woman, not in the bedroom but in one of the rooms beyond. She couldn’t make out the words, but she didn’t really need to.

She caught hold of the panel, tried to ease it farther open, winced as it groaned.

“Wha’s zat?” A woman speaking.

The man’s voice rumbled, impatience sharpening a few of the syllables so she could hear them, but she still couldn’t make out what he was saying.

“Come from in here.” The woman sounded closer. Penhari held her breath and waited,

“Rats, that’s all. Come on, you can’t go in there. That jegger’s nose could sniff a leaky keups like you five days gone and fifty miles off.”

Chambermassal. Hunh. Talking about rats. Nay, mice. Overrunning the place the minute the cat’s away. How he dares… Wenyarum would skin him screaming if he knew…

“I swear I heard somethi g.”

“Can’t have. No one comes here but that yatz.”

“Don’t… I don’t like inhere. If he found us…”

“K’lann, Hlakki, he’s down in Pili groveling around in dung and ashes with his ass in the air, tonguing ol’

Prophet’s filthy feet.”

– You don’t knooow.”

“Sure I do. Comma hee-er, bebesha. Ahhh, soft, soft…”

“Don’t! I don’t like it here, I wanna go.”

Penhari grimace at the sound of scuffling, glass breaking then a slap and the patter of feet, the slam of a door.

The Chambermassal cursed, stomped out, was back before Penhari could get to her feet. She heard the clinic and clatter of the glass; then the brisk rasp of a scrub brush. A moment later the door slammed again.

She waited a long dreary time before she shoved at the panel again.

After lighting the lamp at the nightglow, she went cautiously into the next room, wrinkled her nose at the stink of brandy. Fool. When the General got back… She frowned. If he came back…

She set the lamp on the desk, went round it to inspect the elaborate carvings of the paneled wall. This is harder… not so many cues… “Where was it? Where… was…” He always brought her in here and had her take the gold from Famtoche’s Mizam, made her stow it in the cavity.

“Diyo, got it.” She pressed the bosses, smiled as a small square of iron-faced wood sprang at her. The opening was a foot square and an arm’s length deep.

She began taking the canvas bags from the stash, setting them on the desk, not altogether surprised to find some of them much lighter than they should have been.

She emptied the stash, began going through the bags. At least half of them were plumped out with crumpled paper, there to make a show. She tossed these back inside the hole, put the others in the shoulderbag she’d cobbled together from a pillow sham and some strapping.

Penhari looked at the piles of coin scattered about the bed. Not much gold left in the mix, mostly silver and copper. Abey be blessed, the last sack still had its fifty-two gold pieces intact; the General hadn’t had time to raid that one. “How am I going to work this? I’m going to have to trust her, that’s all.” She counted out the fifty silver cems for the boatman and his boat, set that aside, counted a hundred more of the broad silver coins, added two gold millefurs, tied them up in a bag, they were Desantro’s fee. She took the rest back to the sham-sack and closed the panel on it. It was as safe there as in her jewelry box, safer probably.

She dropped on the bed, rubbed her hand across her face, then grimaced at the streaks of black dust and sweat. Bath. Then work on the clothing, get the jewels tucked away. I can sleep in the daytime. Five days. It sounded like forever when Desantro said it. Abey’s Sting, I’m going to have to work my fingers off