This had been space no one else wanted: unrentable, unusable, exactly the kind of space I had searched for since my bondage to House Mouselline. I had heard two fitters speaking of it, regretting that it would not do, for it had no heat, it had no light. I had made a modest offer for it, and the offer had been accepted. Within the limits imposed by my circumstances, the place was perfect. Inside were stone walls worn smooth by centuries and a stone floor old as time. Huge, ancient pillars supported the crushing weight of the upper floors. This had been the stable of a castle once, a monstrous fortification that had guarded the coast of a planet-bound people in the days of the last Regency, before the K’Famir had conquered the Welbeck people, slaughtered them (when they proved to be reluctant and untrustworthy as slaves), and taken over their world. Now the ocean had receded some distance, and the stable was almost a cellar, though it had kept a tiny window overlooking the enclosed garden. The grille allowed only an obstructed view of fruit tree branches, but the fresh, flower-scented air was welcome.
I shook my lantern to be sure there was fuel in it before lighting it. The place had at one time had water piped in for the animals. I had found the pipes, had worked away at them for a season with twists of wire, dragging out the rust and scale, making them workable again. I had found an old coal stove in an alley, had taken it apart with chisel and hammer, had carried it to my lair piece by piece and put it together again. It sat under the round hole where the flue of one just like it had no doubt inserted itself a hundred years before. Best of all, the place had a little, low, windowless room, no more than a closet, with a door that locked. The closet room was where I left it in the evenings, when I had to go out. If I carried it all day, I could not carry it all night, and the thing seemed to realize that. This evening I went to that room first, took off my outer clothing and detached it from me, shutting my mind against the sound, half growl, half sucking whine, when I pulled it away. It writhed into the darkest corner and did not move, even when I fetched water for it, for if it grew dry, it chafed me, and the abrasions burned like acid.
I poked up the fire in the stove, filled the kettle and set it over the flame, dragged the washtub into the middle of the floor, and took off my daily disguise. The gray wig first, then the padding around my body. As soon as the water was hot, I poured a sufficiency into the tub, stepped in, and gave myself the nightly sponge bath that washed away its residue, a slight stickiness that smelled of mold. When I had emptied that tub down the floor drain, I heated the kettle again, and yet again to give me enough water to sit in, legs over one towel-padded side, head leaning against the other. It was the best time of day: the feeling that time had stopped, the warmth of the stove on my skin, the softness of the perfumed water. House Mouselline sold essences to put in bathwater; Miss Ongamar had become an expert petty thief.
Bathtime was also time to review what I had heard during the day:
A neuter talking to another as it tried on ribbon trousers, discussing its patron’s purchase, from the Omnionts, of new technology that detected ship-shields. “They’re giving him an award for inventing it?” Crow of laughter.
A sterile female speaking of the breeding wife of her consort. “The stupid plassawokit can’t do a thing but lay eggs! It’s a wonder she doesn’t drop them in the public street.”
A trader’s wife telling the delightful story about her husband completely fooling buyers and charging them triple for merchandise. “Ridiculous Gentherans in their shiny little suits. No more brains than a glabbitch.”
I remembered everything, making cryptic notes so I would not forget. The cracked mirror I had taken from a trash bin let me examine my face, running my fingers along the pain lines, noting the dark circles that surrounded my eyes. I bore no scars, but there were other signs of the burden I had carried all these years. Even now, while I sat here in the comfortable warmth of my own place, it could reach out to touch me, its touch like fire.
When I was ready to leave my lair, I appeared much thinner. My hair was now curled at the sides of my head, like a mane. I had sprayed my legs in one of the currently fashionable colors, and they peeked seductively from the slits in the long, full trousers, topped with a multicolored, sparkling jacket discarded by a humanoid patron, expertly mended by myself. My face was entirely different, the eyes wider and brighter, the green-painted lips much fuller, while across my forehead and back across the center of my skull extended the bony protrusion of the K’vasti people, a humanoid race akin to the Frossians, who frequented the pleasure quarter both as buyers and bought. House Mouselline sold clothing, but it also sold cosmetic prostheses, and I had acquired an armamentarium of parts: noses, ears, forehead and jaw growths, mouthfuls of various teeth, as well as mittens and gloves that counterfeited the hands of a dozen races. I could make myself up to be a K’vasti, a Frossian, a Hrass. I had been all of these and a dozen others. I had found it necessary to be each and every one of them to find the things it wanted.
Sometimes I became virtually invisible, a nonentity clad in gray robes, my gray skin marred by oozing eruptions caused by exposure to the charbic root used to fumigate dwellings. Sometimes I emerged as a creature anatomically unlike myself, the effects managed by prostheses and skillful dressing. Sometimes I went out as myself, or almost myself, a humanoid that got itself up to appear attractive in order to be an acceptable client in the places I sometimes had to go. Or, as tonight, a K’Vasti who would be welcome in the secret quarter, where creatures with certain tastes congregated, where tonight, as every night, something quite dreadful would likely happen within my sight and hearing.
From the courtyard the alley gate gave access to one of the twisting, narrow streets that tunneled toward the pleasure quarter. I walked freely, as might any one of the various races who thronged the area, four or five different sexes, some who had no gender at all, some bond, some free. Half a hundred eating houses were scattered on the near edge of the quarter, serving the foods of a hundred planets, several of them not only edible by humans and K’Vasti but deliciously so. Eating was my first intention. I would enter the quarter after I had eaten, but only as a last resort, if I could not come up with something to share with it in any other way.
Ahead of me, back against the wall, a Hrass huddled, the way they did, always appearing frightened to death. Possibly with good reason. Moved by an inexplicable urge, I went to stand behind it.
“You are Hrass,” I said in the creature’s own tongue.
“Soooo,” it replied, noncommittal.
I shifted to the K’Vasti dialect. “Can you understand me?”
“Soooo!” An affirmative.
“I have something to tell the Hrass. Earlier this year, Draug B’lanjo of the K’famir killed the Omniont Ambassador. He sent the body to the Omnionts, saying the Hrass had done the killing. Draug B’lanjo did this because he wants to take over the Hrass shipping routes.”
I turned on my heel and left him. If he talked to the wrong people, they would be looking for a K’vasti. Therefore, I must remember to burn the K’vasti prosthesis as soon as I got home, but not before, for the sharing had to be done every night before midnight, and today had produced nothing usable: no new scandals murmured across my bowed head, no crimes of violence or passion described while I stitched. No corruption uncovered or pretenses betrayed while I listened. So far as Bak-Zandig-g’Shadup was concerned, today might almost have been Eden, and therefore useless to me. Any daytime Eden had to be followed by a nighttime hell, with me doing as Adille had once done: walking the pain path, the horror road, the tortuous routes toward the terrible.
The thing fed on blood, pain, and death. If it knew where these things were, or would be, it would send me there. Sometimes, in the middle of the day, it would squeeze me, tighter and tighter, until I could not breathe, bringing me to the very edge of suffocation, in order to relish my panic.
“Miss Ongamar, are you quite all right?” Lady Ephedra would ask.
“Oh, quite, Lady Ephedra. A spasm of indigestion
, I think. Nothing severe.”
“You looked quite ashen there for a moment. Would you like to go home?”
I could not afford to lose a day’s allowance, as Ephedra Mouselline knew very well. The words seemed kind, but the intent was unmistakably minatory, and the thing relished this as well.
In those short times, each day when I was not at the command of it or Lady Ephedra, I sometimes thought of my own life and future. The time would come when my years of bondage were completed. Release from the thing was probably not possible after so long a time, but as my time of release approached, if I could encounter someone human or Gentheran, I could warn them. I had seen humans and Gentherans in the pleasure quarter. They were always closely watched by steel-helmeted security officers. I could not legitimately speak to a human as a bondslave, but I could, perhaps, as a K’Vasti, assuming my disguise would fool the officers.
If such an opportunity ever came, I would not ask for help for myself. I was as guilty as the worst of those I had observed. I knew that purposeful watching was in every respect as evil as the torture itself. Peering into the darkness of pain was the equivalent of inflicting pain. Watching torture was the equivalent of agreeing to torment. Making a spectacle of it was equivalent to doing the torture oneself. Yes. Whether the torture was real or only apparent, the watcher was guilty, for the watcher chose to see it, thereby creating an appetite. My pursuit of agony made me as heinous and depraved as those who committed it. No matter that I did it to save my life, or perhaps only continue what passed for my life, it was evil.
It would be better for me to kill myself than to continue as I was. Of all the choices I might make, that was the only good one, and I was determined to take the thing with me when I did it. I did not have the right to leave life with this duty unperformed, but I would hang on only until I could warn someone.
I Am Gretamara/on Chottem
One evening, as we sat on the porch of the Gardener’s house, watching the Gibbekot playing with Sophia, I wondered aloud what had happened to Benjamin Finesilver, her father.
The Gardener shook her head slowly and sadly. “You know that Mariah expected her father to send a doctor from the city of Bray. D’Lorn had hired a guide, a man named Bogge, who actually knew the way here, but shortly before the doctor was due to leave Bray, Benjamin Finesilver arrived at Stentor d’Lorn’s door. His carriage contained Mariah’s body, wrapped in cerements.
“Benjamin was sobbing, Stentor was blind with fury. Had Benjamin not been so obviously torn by grief, Stentor would likely have killed him on the spot.
“‘Was there no help for her?’ Stentor cried out.
“‘Only the Gardener,’ said Benjamin.
“‘The WHAT?’ demanded Stentor.
“‘The…local wisewoman, midwife kind of person,’ Benjamin said. ‘Everyone told Mariah to go to her, but Mariah wouldn’t go. She said you were sending a doctor from Bray…’
“‘And what had this woman to say?’
“Benjamin looked up, confused. ‘To say? Nothing. Mariah never went to her.’
“‘Wasn’t she summoned when Mariah was giving birth?’
“‘The Gardener can’t be summoned, sir. She is not…not a mere person. One has to go to the Gardener, not the other way round.’” The Gardener fell silent, her eyes following Sophia.
“I am surprised Benjamin knew that much,” I said.
“I doubt that Benjamin did know it until after Mariah was dead. Certainly it was more than Stentor could accept,” said the Gardener. “Benjamin tried to explain that the women of the town had tried their best, but Mariah would not take their advice. Then Stentor asked about the child. Benjamin had no more wit than to say, ‘I did not wish to endanger a newborn upon the road, so I left her in safety with the Gardener, sir…’
“And that was the end of Benjamin Finesilver, Gretamara. His departure from life went unnoticed save by several faithful and tongueless servants of Stentor d’Lorn who were ordered to see him on his way. The following day, while Stentor was locked in his chambers, raging with grief, Bogge, the wanderer he had hired to take the doctor to Swylet, came to the palace and was turned away by the gateman. ‘He doesn’t need you to take the doctor. It’s too late for the doctor. His daughter’s body has already been placed in the tomb of her family.’
“Bogge was uncertain what propriety demanded of him in such a case. ‘Should I speak with the Lord? I have already spent some of the money he paid me…’
“‘If I were you, I’d stay away for a time,’ said the gateman. ‘Likely the Lord doesn’t want to be reminded of it. As for the money, it was probably little enough. I’ll tell him you came and offered.’
“And so the gateman did, sometime later, after Bogge had departed for some other place. Only then did Stentor d’Lorn realize the consequences of his haste in disposing of his daughter’s husband. Benjamin would have known the way to Swylet. Bogge had claimed to know the way, but the gateman knew neither where Bogge had gone nor when he would return. None of the wanderers currently in Bray knew of Swylet or Bogge.
“Since that time, Stentor has sent his agents here and there in fruitless searches for a mountain place known as Swylet. The name does not appear on any map known to the archivists; it is not mentioned in any account cited by explorers-cum-amateur-geographers.”
“How do you know this?” I asked.
“I was there,” said the Gardener. “I needed to know, for Sophia’s sake, and I could not know truly unless I was there.”
“You could not know what he was thinking?” I asked.
The Gardener shook her head. “Except as his actions betrayed his thought, no. Almost all humans are at least partly my people, but not he. He is as dark to me as a K’Famir or a Frossian. I do not know what he thinks or feels, but I know he has not given up the search. He has willed everything to his granddaughter, setting aside only a sizable reward for whatever person shall return her to Bray.”
I shivered at the fate of Sophia’s father and the darkness that dwelt within her grandfather, and I thought it was as well that only the Gardener and I knew where the heiress of Bray might be found.
I Am Naumi/on Thairy
When I was taken for life-service, the Escort helped me aboard a small flier and directed me to take the seat nearest the single window.
“Flown before, boy?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, first time is always memorable. From that seat you’ll get a good long look at Thairy from the route we’re going.”
“Where are we going?” I wondered, as the words left my lips, if I was even allowed to ask questions.
“Academy,” the Escort replied. “You’re being taken directly to the academy at Point Zibit. That’s across Gentheren country from here. You ever met a Gentheren?”
“No, sir.”
The man laughed. “Well, of course not, and neither have I, nor are we likely to. You just settle yourself back there. If you start to feel sick to your stomach, tell me right away.”
“Yes, sir.”
The flier went gently upward, the Escort glancing back occasionally to see whether I was going to be all right or not. Not that he’d hold it against me if I wasn’t, but I supposed washing out the flier wasn’t one of his favorite ways to end the working day.
I amazed myself by feeling exhilarated. Excited, in a nice way, and eager to look down on Bright, so tiny, like the little toy village I remembered having…no, seeing somewhere. No, it was one I’d imagined, when I was a child. Strange. I didn’t really remember having it, just…knowing about it. The toy village moved away from beneath us as we followed the road, the one I had never followed farther than the quick route to the swimming hole. It wound over little hills, past tiny farms with toy barns, and as we climbed higher, whitish dots appeared in the fields. Cows, maybe, though they seemed too large. After a while the road began to twist back and forth like a serpent, we went steeply upward, and I was looking down on mountains. Every now and then a house roof wi
nked sun in my eye or a stretch of narrow river glinted silver amid the endless carpet of trees.
We went higher yet, crossing a great cracked slab of red cliffs onto a tableland even more thickly forested than below. There the trees were interrupted by wide streams, sizable lakes and towns where piers thrust out into the water. Suddenly there was only water. What I’d seen earlier hadn’t been lakes at all. They’d been…inlets, that’s all, inlets. This was the lake. Or maybe it was a sea. Only seas weren’t high up, like this. Seas were down in bottomlands.
“The Upland Sea,” said the Escort. “Impressive, isn’t it. This mesa is huge, the size of a continent, and it’s higher at the edges than in the middle. They say it’s what’s left of a caldera, the edges are the rim-rock, the middle had a lot of ashes in it. Water filled it up, then ate waterfalls down the edges, washed out some of the ash after every rain, every snow, gradually wore it down to where it is now. Gentheren country. There’s the city.”
He turned the flier on its side, so I could look down. A city made of glass and trees, a wide grove of trees, monumentally tall and joined together with spider silk bridges and canopies.
The Margarets Page 14
