Water Witch

by Connie Willis

  —Waiting for someone?—her father said.—Or is that your peculiar way of celebrating your astonishing success at dinner?—

  —Oh, shut up,—Deza said.

  —Really, you were marvellous. Had them all eating out of the palm of your hand. Especially the Tycoon.—

  —What is he up to?—Deza said frantically. She came and knelt by the mbuzi.—You have to tell me, father. I’m afraid of him.—

  —I don’t know, Deza,—her father said in a curiously flat, defeated tone.

  —How can you not know? You were the one who set it up, weren’t you?—

  —I set up a charming little con in which you played water witch to keep mama occupied until you had the son in a compromising position. I kept papa occupied with interesting stories about Mahali, in which I think now he was far too interested but which at the time I was grateful for since it gave you time to work. When the son was duly compromised, I stood ready to get a nice fat sum in return for the promise that we would go away. That’s all.

  —That’s all? That can’t be all.—She stood up.—Look at those pens under the stables. All those mbuzim and no water. And the pens open onto the karst. He knows all about the karst.—

  Her father’s voice suddenly sounded almost like Radi’s.—Gembone could command a high price on any planet.—

  —But where’s he going to get the ground water to make the gembone? Does he expect me to dig for wells in the karst?—

  There was a faint scratching inside the wall. Deza stood looking at the mbuzi a moment longer and then went to open the slipspace.

  CHAPTER NINE

  It had really irritated Radi that he should have to carry Deza’s mbuzi, as if he cared how the damn thing got up the stairs into its mistress’s bedroom. The episode was nothing more than a well-executed step in Deza’s plan to compromise young Edvar. The boy was practically salivating at the edge of Deza’s bed, helping her into it because her poor overused ankle wouldn’t let her get into it alone. Oh, it was cute the way her pants hiked up over the well-turned calf as she leaned back, but Radi didn’t believe for one second that her bodice ribbon had just happened to come undone again. She’d let the tortured boy close enough to see forbidden flashes of flesh, to smell her perfumed pillows, all of which would have Edvar imagining what it would be like to lie there with Deza. Too bad Edvar didn’t know his way around the slipspaces. He could have come back the way Radi had now. He made a soft noise, like a mouse scrambling somewhere in the walls. Deza didn’t keep him waiting.

  Deza looked about to burst with speech, which Radi silenced with a kiss. He hadn’t dared to risk a second power failure to turn off the listeners. The listeners were on, and the kiss, the quick kiss to keep the words behind her tongue did more to take his breath away, for her mouth was sweet and he lingered there. She slipped into his arms, her body fitting neatly against him, and she made a noise deep in her throat. Radi was too much the soldier to forget the listeners. Reluctantly he pushed Deza away, signing to her for silence at the same time. She nodded.

  Radi brushed her lips with his own before tiptoeing across the room to the heavy drapery where one of the listening devices was certain to be hidden. He had little trouble finding it, for the off-world wool was weighted at the bottom hem with real anchors that were similarly shaped but heavier. After he had extracted the listener, he went into the bathroom and put it in the bath sack. He threw a frilly petticoat over it. He wondered if there were a second device here in the bathroom, perhaps there in the eye of the sea-nymph tapestry that looked at the empty tub. He hung a towel over the wall hanging, wondering if it were only a listener or if somebody besides Edvar had lusted after Deza. He turned on the faucets, letting the water run noisily into the wooden tub.

  In the bedroom a single flambeau coiled over the dressing table cast a mellow light over the room, making soft shadows of Deza against the curtains as she struggled with a stubborn closure. She took a pin from her hair, stepping aside to catch the light better, then jabbed the pin through the fabric, twisting the closure hems together and cutting off the view of her bedroom from the courtyard.

  The mbuzi stumbled out from between Deza’s legs, its half-fossilized hooves sparkling even in the dim light, only a hint of how radiant they would become when the fossilization was complete. Deza, finished with the drapes, swept the mbuzi into her arms before she tripped over it again. The creature’s ears shook and it looked at her dolefully while she settled it into a nest of cushions on the bed. The creature’s nervous tremors made a gembone hoof clatter against the bedpost until Deza adjusted the cushions.

  “What’s the matter with it?” Radi whispered. “It certainly can’t be cold in here.” With the night breeze cut off by the closed curtains, the bedroom already was stuffy.

  “It’s frightened,” Deza said, poking another cushion behind the mbuzi and looked around for yet another, as if the creature’s comfort were her greatest concern. “The Tycoon thinks I’m a real water witch…” she turned, still looking for a pillow, her face more frantic than the task could possibly warrant. If the mbuzi was frightened, Deza was terrified.

  “Deza,” Radi said, catching her hand and pulling her close to him. “You managed dinner perfectly. Why so fearful now?”

  “I didn’t handle it well at all. I still have no idea what he wants. And I think he knows all about me. My instincts tell me to leave. The con isn’t going right. I should have stayed away.”

  “The con’s going fine, both of them,” Radi said. “Tomorrow the wife will take you to her pile of rocks and you’ll select a few geodes for her. Once you get the wife off the Tycoon’s back, he’ll pay less attention to you, too.”

  “I don’t think so,” Deza said.

  “Of course he will. All this undue attention is because of her appetite for rare native treasures. Once she’s satisfied, her husband will be, too, and you’ll only have young Edvar to deal with. I know you can keep him at arm’s length until we leave.”

  “Leave?” Deza said. She looked away from the mbuzi and straight into Radi’s eyes. “You mean together? You and me?” She spoke as if the thought were new and startling. The strange thing was that it was precisely that to Radi, for it just now occurred to him that he would, that he must take Deza with him when he left, that he must not let her go, that he could not take the chance of never seeing her again.

  “Yes, we’ll leave together,” Radi said impatiently. “You don’t really want to marry Edvar, do you?”

  “I never marry any of the marks. But how soon can we leave? I’m afraid to wait.”

  Radi had been thinking of a dignified exit, after the marines had arrived and camped outside the compound, after Radi found out what value gembone and mbuzim had on Kalmar, aside from a component of jewelry. “I didn’t mean we’d bolt tonight, Deza.”

  “But, Radi,” Deza said, cutting him off. “I don’t think you understand. The mbuzim must be given groundwater if their bones and hooves are to fossilize, and…”

  “I know that. The Red City won’t give him Maundifu water, not until it knows what he wants it for. Perhaps not even then. If gembone suddenly has become important off-world, Sheria can have her own herds.”

  “Sheria?” Deza said. “Who is Sheria?”

  He couldn’t resist. “The princess of the Red City. The real one. Oh, don’t worry, I haven’t said anything to the Tycoon. Besides, your con hasn’t been to impersonate Sheria, has it? I thought you were some dispossessed princess thrown out like Akida’s daughter and trying to get the throne back.”

  “What?” Deza said, but it was as if she were not really listening to what he had said at all. She sat down on the bed net to the mbuzi and put her arm around its neck.

  “There’s no reason to be jealous. Sheria may be my betrothed, but, what’s the matter, Deza?”

  She had put her hands up to her head as if it suddenly ached. “I don’t know,” she said curiously. She tried to rise, holding onto the bedpost, and nearly swooned. Radi caught her up
in his arms. He lifted her onto the bed, setting her down gently on the coverlet. “Deza, tell me what’s wrong,” he said again. He didn’t believe for a second that she would attempt one of her silly tricks on him, as if he were no brighter than Edvar. She really had swooned. Her skin was clammy and pale, her muscles limp. Even the mbuzi knew something was wrong, for it stood up and bleated pitifully, staring at its mistress all the while.

  “Deza,” Radi said, stroking her cheek with his hand. Her facial muscles felt like steel beneath the silken skin, tense and taut and clenched. But her eyes opened and focused on him.

  “I thought you were a pirate,” she said. “I never even made the connection. I should have. I remember…” She leaned back and closed her eyes again.

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t honest with you in the beginning,” he said, genuinely concerned. “I suppose I assumed you saw through my disguise the same way I saw through yours.”

  “Disguise,” Deza said, as if it meant something very different from what he had said. “Why didn’t you march straight to the compound under the red banner instead of sneaking in like pirates?” She did not sound like she even cared what the answer was.

  “We planned to until the majini was wrecked. The priest was killed, and we’d lost all our weapons. We had no way to pick up the marines we planned as a backup. It seemed wiser to come in the back door.” He chafed Deza’s cold hands between his own. “After the reception we got, I can see it was the only way in. We of the Red City are grateful for your assistance and in your debt.”

  “That is a thing I never thought to hear a prince of the Red City say to me.” She closed her eyes again, smiling faintly. The mbuzi bleated in Radi’s face, and Radi pushed it aside to pour water into the cup, really alarmed. Could she somehow have been poisoned at dinner? She sounded so strange, almost drugged. And her skin was so clammy, as if she were in shock.

  She was still deathly pale, but her eyes were open and truly looking at him. He tried to dab her with water, but she put a hand up to stop him. “Not water,” she said, “I don’t need any more water.”

  He stopped and sat down on the bed. “What happened?”

  “I think… it’s hot in here. I have on heavy wool clothes and about twenty layers of underwear. I think I got a little overheated.”

  He continued to look at her. Whatever had made her so distressed, even ill, was over now. She lay looking up at him, the color returning to her cheeks, her eyes smiling at him almost impishly.

  “I need to get undressed,” she said, with a subtle emphasis on the word need.

  “Let me help you,” Radi said, reaching for the waistcoat laces.

  “I wondered when you’d think of it,” she said, smiling openly now. Her fingers were quick to part the fold in his priest’s robe and slip inside the garment. Her hand was warm against his flesh, no sign of the cold that had come over her just moments ago. Radi leaned over to kiss Deza, easing her out of the waistcoat and blouse and tugging at the resisting ribbons of the camisole.

  “Why is it these drawstrings are untied at all times except now?” he murmured, nuzzling at her ear.

  “Here, let me help you,” she said, nimbly untying the laces that she so often used as bait. She was not teasing now. She loosened the drawstrings and sat up, still pressed against Radi’s body, to lift the camisole over her head.

  The mbuzi stumbled from its cushions and stood staring over Radi’s shoulder at her. She stopped cold, her arms poised to pull the camisole off, and waited as if she were listening. For a moment, Radi was afraid she was getting ill again. Then she bit her lip and smiled at Radi.

  “We seem to have an interested audience,” she said. “It’s staring.”

  Radi looked over his shoulder. It was indeed staring at them through its slanted, pupilless eyes. “Let it,” he said, and reached for her. “I get to see you. Why shouldn’t it?”

  “No!” Deza said, and then more softly, “Put it in the slipspace.”

  Radi got up, took the mbuzi by the scruff of its woolly neck and deposited it on the narrow landing behind the slipspace. He shut the door. Deza was tossing pettipants into a fluffy heap until she had to feel as cool as custard in the hot room. As he turned, she lifted the camisole over her head and stepped out of the last pair of pantaloons.

  There was one nice thing about priests’ robes. They came off completely with one shrug. Radi remembered thinking briefly of young Edvar as Deza moved smoothly into his arms. Deza and her father had been wrong in thinking that the boy’s devotion could only be held by keeping the promise of Deza out of reach. Radi was with Deza now, and having her was not going to lessen his feelings toward her. But they were right in knowing the promise was not going to compare with the reality. Nothing, no one could compare with Deza.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Deza came abruptly awake. For a moment, she thought her father was pressing gently on the side of her neck to awaken her to danger. She slowed her breathing to the even shallowness of sleep and listened. She could not hear anything, but she had the distinct feeling that the sound that had brought her awake had been close. The slipspace maybe.

  She fluttered her eyelids and turned over, murmuring. The quick glance had shown her that the room was dark, but nothing else. She couldn’t tell whether the slipspace was open or not. No light was leaking through, but she was not sure it would. The slipspace was very steep. She lay still, wondering whether to risk Radi’s name.

  There was the nearly inaudible closing of a door and then a murmur of voices. A man and a woman. The servant girl? Edvar’s father? Surely Radi had not been fool enough to leave her room by the door. The woman was whispering, but the man spoke in a low even voice. It was not much louder than the woman’s whisper, but Deza recognized the timbre of the voice. Edvar. Edvar at her door? Edvar and the servant girl? Edvar and the girl and a plan to get Deza out?

  Despite the subdued way Edvar had acted at supper, Deza’s brain was sending her sharp negatives. No. The sound that had brought her awake had come from within the room or possibly from the room below. Maybe Edvar and whoever was in the hall with him had scared the intruder away or merely into the cover of the slipspace, and the sound of its shutting was what had awakened Deza. Whatever, the voices she was hearing now had nothing to do with it. Deza was glad she had not risked a whispered name. Radi would hide from others but not from her. She turned over again, sighing and tugging at the covers, until she was up against the wall, near her knife. She quieted her breathing to nothing and waited.

  No one in the room. Or someone in the room as skilled as she. Deza slid her hand down beside the wall for her knife. The voices were clearer now, the woman’s whispering petulantly. “When will she do it? You know what your father has planned for her. That could take days.”

  “He won’t like your doing this, Mother.”

  Mother. What if Radi hadn’t told Harubiki last night? He would not have anticipated the planted geodes would be needed so soon. Perhaps he had intended to wait until morning to tell her. Even if he had told her, she might not have had time to doctor the geodes and return them to the heaps Edvar’s mother had collected. Nothing in this waterforsaken place was working like she’d planned.

  Deza had a sudden impulse to bolt through the slipspace and out the back door. She stifled it, listened hard a few more seconds, and got quietly out of bed. She felt her way to the door through the dark room. There was a little grayish light coming through the heavy wooden shutters. It must be close to dawn. The fire had gone out. Deza shivered in her thin bedshift. She put her ear to the crack by the door jamb.

  They were standing no more than a door down from hers now, still arguing, the wife in that sulky whisper, Edvar in the slow, reasonable voice that actually made Deza wonder if he had more sense than she gave him credit for.

  “It won’t take that long. Her father said she just picks up the orbs and holds them to her cheek and she can tell if they’re true or not.”

  “But why can’t it wait until they
get back? Deza has enough to think about without you bothering her with this silliness.”

  “I would hardly call orbs silliness when they cost a great deal more than you have ever made with your mbuzim. Certainly Deza has a lot to think about. She is trying to think how to dangle both you and that young priest.”

  “That isn’t fair, Mother, Deza is…”

  “A little slut. It breaks my heart to see the way she manipulates you when you could have any girl back on Kalmar that you wanted. She doesn’t care for you at all. She’s probably had a hundred men, maybe even in her own bed in our house, maybe at this very moment there’s a man in her bed. But I’ve put up with it for your father’s sake, so he could be king of this horrible planet or whatever it is he wants. I’ve put up with it, and I should get something for it. I consider the orbs small payment for the pain she’s caused me.”

  “You’re just as bad as Father, always thinking what you can get out of Deza. She’s a person, Mother, not just something to use for your own ends. That’s why.…” There was a pause before the mother started in again, and Deza had the feeling that he had intended to say something and been stopped, not by his mother’s whining, but out of his own better judgment. Deza wondered what it was he had been going to say.

  “Using her? What do you think she and that father of hers were doing if not using us? They hadn’t been here two days when that awful man came to me asking for money, money mind you, so that she’d leave you alone. Of course I refused. I knew your better judgment would prevail in the end and you would see her for the hussy that she is.”

  Refused, indeed. She had practically begged her husband for the money. Deza’s father had been sure that she would get it in only a few more days, especially if Deza continued to go about with her blouse untied. But now Deza wondered if her father had been right. The Tycoon might already have been plotting this scheme that would what? Surely not make him king of Mahali. There was no such thing, unless he planned to take over the City in the Red Cave, and Deza would surely be no help to him there. She was positive her father had never claimed an intimate knowledge of the city’s defenses. That would have been far too risky even for him, and besides, that would have been a scheme he might have tried for himself, but since the story was that Deza had been banished as an infant from the Red City, she could hardly be of any use. And it was Deza he had wanted even then, before her father died.