Guilt Edged Ivory

by Doris Egan

  We were midway down Tin Street. Ran looked irritably around for a route out of this neighborhood. "Doesn't this hook up with Grapefruit Alley somewhere?" he said, seemingly in my direction.

  "You're asking me? You've spent a lot more years in this city than I have."

  "But you're the one who's map crazy."

  This was true. I like to know where I am, in the larger scheme of things. Since philosophy gives no final answers, I make do with maps. I'd unofficially inherited a lot of them from Ran's grandmother—an incredible woman who'd never left the estate in all the decades since she'd married into the family, but who had closets full of starcharts, geological surveys, and plans showing the water-pipes under cities I'd never heard of. The servants were still running across them occasionally in pantries and under old sets of drawers.

  Grapefruit Alley leads into Trade Square eventually,

  so—"It would have to be in that direction," I said, pointing crosswise over the road.

  "There's a robemaker's in the way," he said, implying my contribution was less than helpful.

  "That isn't my fault. I didn't build it."

  Loden Broca looked from one of us to the other uncertainly.

  Ran kicked a loose stone with the edge of his sandal and we continued down the street. "How much did you owe?" he said, suddenly addressing Loden again.

  "About four, well, five, uh—I don't see what this has to do with anything."

  "Neither do I," said my husband disarmingly. "You brought it up."

  It took another few seconds for the logic of this to penetrate. Finally Loden said, unwillingly, "Five hundred and fifty tabals. But it only started out as three hundred."

  "Oh." Noncommittal.

  "The thing is, I'd missed a payment. And Kade kept giving me a hard time about it. He wanted something, and I don't own anything, except this ring, so… he said to give him that. So I did."

  "When?"

  "On the boat. You saw when he came up to get me. He was mad, because I hadn't paid him, and he saw my ring when I had my hand on the railing on the stairway."

  Ran and I looked at each other. I said, "You were wearing it openly when you got on the boat?"

  "I had it on my hand, if that's what you mean by openly."

  "And this was a spur-of-the-moment thing?" asked Ran. "Nobody had any reason to believe you'd take the ring off? Kade never demanded it before?"

  "No, it was the first time he'd mentioned it. I wore my ring all the time, you don't expect somebody to ask you for a family heirloom. But, look, I didn't think I was in any position to say no, especially with my house-brothers all over the ship. You aren't going to mention this to them, are you?"

  He said it so wistfully, like a little kid. Well—more like a little kid trying to get away with something.

  Still. If this was true, maybe we should give him whatever slack we could. After all, somebody was trying to murder him.

  Chapter 1O

  Loden Broca couldn't confirm Kylla's story about the sinister watcher on Catmeral Bridge. "I went down below before we were close enough to the bridge to see," he said. "Why, do you think that might have been the sorcerer? It was sorcery, wasn't it? Kade didn't just have some kind of weird fit? I mean, he never struck me as entirely normal."

  Ran stopped by a wide, unpaved opening between two buildings. "Grapefruit Alley," he said to me, pleased, bowing slightly as though he were presenting me with it as a gift. "It's a good half-kilometer from the robemaker's," he had to point out.

  "It probably curves around behind it when you get further in," I said. (It did.)

  Loden said, "Gracious sir?"

  Ran turned a courteously meaningless smile on him. "Thank you so much for your help, sir. Please take the rest of the morning off, with our compliments to your supervisor."

  Loden stood there a moment, looking bewildered. I felt a little sorry for him. "Do you have any enemies?" I inquired.

  "Well, uh, not really… there are a few people who've gotten mad at me sometimes… ah, why do you ask?"

  Ran took hold of my elbow and pulled me a couple of steps into the alley. "No reason," I said hastily. "Just wondered." Apparently we were not telling Loden Broca Mer-cia that he was a potential murder target. This did not seem quite right. But Ran always has his reasons for acting the way he does. I don't always agree with him, but he does have them.

  "Gracious lady?" asked Loden, still with that confused expression, like a just-born puppy trying to come to terms with its suddenly colorful lifestyle. Oh, it was a shame not to at least warn him.

  "Sorry, can't chat," I said, as Ran set a walking pace that took us deep into the alley and around the corner of a building with remarkable speed.

  "Why aren't we telling him?" I asked, when he'd slowed down enough for me to get sufficient breath.

  "We're doing this for Jusik Porath," Ran said, "whatever he may think. He gets our first report, not somebody in the Mercia agency."

  "But in a situation like this—"

  "A situation like what? We still have no hard evidence, only suspicions."

  "But if Loden's telling the truth—"

  Ran finally slowed down a little. He glanced back along the curve of the alley. "Then we'll visit him later and suggest that he take care."

  I considered that as we walked. Within a few minutes we reached the beginning of the market stalls that line Grapefruit Alley all the way up to Trade Square. Every other cart was a food cart, and the smells would detour a truckload of monks on their way to the Court of Contemplation. Heavily spiced meat of every description, cut into cubes and stuck on sticks; cut into slices and added to hot rice; shredded into a dusting of protein and sprinkled over yellow and white vegetables. Raw vegetables and fruits in the cart next door, and eight sorts of flavored water in the cart beyond that. There were stationers, too, and dollmakers, and all the usual mishmosh of Ivoran businesses, but Grapefruit Alley was—contrary to all appearances—the gourmand's heart of the world. Not even the bustling cookshops around the Square itself could match these dirty-looking vendors, who'd handed down their three meters of turf from parent to child since as far back as anyone's ever heard. One of the refrigerated carts we passed was stocked full of Py-renese beer; how the beggarly seeming gentleman behind it managed that, when the most exclusive restaurants in the city were often out, was a mystery.

  A mystery. I glanced over at Ran. "What are you going to tell Jusik?"

  "Nothing, maybe, for the moment. We don't know anything for certain yet."

  "Maybe, but I don't feel right leaving Loden twisting in the wind while we get our thoughts together."

  So we walked along in more silence, getting our thoughts together. I said, "Let's try Kylla's theory."

  "The mysterious stranger on the bridge?"

  I saw it had occurred to him, too. "Why not? We don't need a boat to test that one. You just need to stand where the sorcerer stood, to start a backward trace—so let's go to the south railing of Catmeral Bridge, Ran, and see what we can see."

  The alley turned into a straightaway around that point, cutting diagonally across the streets in the center of town. A long way off in the distance I could see the opening into the bright sunlight of Trade Square. You could almost hear the noise from there. Ran said, thoughtfully, "We do seem to be going in the right direction for it, don't we." The section of the canal crossed by Catmeral Bridge is half a mile north of the Square.

  I grinned. I had to admit that Loden Broca or no, I was curious about this thing with Kade, and hanging about on open bridges in the midday sun seemed a small price to pay, at least at that moment. Just then my gaze fell on a cart-stall piled to overflowing with blossoms of red, white, violet, blue, and burnt gold—and the violet ones were versions of the unidentified bouquet Kylla had carried so jauntily away with her last night.

  The fat face of an old woman was framed beyond the heaps of flowers; her head just topped the merchandise. "Oh, Ran! Look! Could you—"

  He trudged over t
oward the cart. "I know," he said mournfully. "The little purple ones."

  He handed over a coin—I didn't even have to advance it to him—and all the way up to Catmeral Bridge I carried a huge bunch of lavender bells in my sweaty hands.

  Midway over the bridge we stopped and looked southeast, down the canal. The waters were dark and still. Not many folks used the canal these days; farther up, the neighborhood watch had had to institute stiff rules about garbage dumping. That was ten (Ivoran) years ago, before my time. "The Year of the Big Stink," they called it. Kylla was just entering her teens then, staying with friends in the capital,

  and she told me she'd gone the whole summer drenched in perfume, like every other person who could afford it. The street vendors had all had little shelves set underneath their carts, covered with cologne bottles for passersby to purchase if they ran out of supply.

  I watched a ragged boy play in the dirt near the edge, ignoring the glare of noon sun. He looked down at the water, then went back to his play—it wasn't the sort of water you felt tempted to swim in, regardless of the summer heat.

  I glanced over at Ran's left hand, where the cadite ring sparkled. He'd scared me when he put it on, but he'd said shortly that (a) it was necessary and (b) he could handle it. His mood hadn't exactly been upbeat, so I didn't press my concerns.

  "So far, nothing," said Ran. He said it grimly. His tone went beyond the temperature and a walk through the less glamorous parts of the capital. He hadn't been at his best since we stepped into Grapefruit Alley, in fact, so I turned to him and touched his arm to get his attention.

  "What's the matter?"

  He sighed, and said gently, "I suppose you mean beyond the fact that Kylla's unhappy and I've been taken for the assassin of a first son of the Six Families. And beyond the fact that Stereth Tar'krim is another possible suspect. And beyond the discomfort of this entire morning."

  "Yes, beyond all that." Those were all things I had every faith he could handle.

  "All right," he said, "I'm angry. I've been thinking about this ever since Loden Broca told us about his ring, and getting angrier with every step."

  "Angry?" It took me completely by surprise. "What is it, what are you angry about? You've always taken this kind of thing in stride!" Whatever I meant by "this kind of thing"… sorcery, assassination, the general distrust of humankind.

  "Whatever sorcerer did this—" He took a deep breath and let it out. "Whatever incompetent fool—" Another breath. "It wasn't enough that he acted in public; he targeted the wrong man, too. And not because it was one of those accidents that 'happen because we are in this world.' Because he was careless and stupid and didn't give the same thought to this you or I would give to planning a dinner menu—"

  "But he couldn't have known Loden would lose the ring. Loden said it himself: Who would have the nerve to ask for a family heirloom?"

  "What difference does it make?" His face was slightly flushed; he really was angry. "Using an object like a ring is brainless to begin with, when you're dealing with something as permanent as death. I've been training to be a sorcerer since I was eight years old, and seeing negligence like this—something I would have avoided when I was eight—" His fists came down on the railing, and he let the rest of the sentence go. Finally he said, "What's he doing being a sorcerer? Throwing mud on all our reputations, leading clients to distrust us. And beside that—besides that, it tramples over the field itself. The beauty of sorcery is based on symbol and function being allied, on everything having its proper aspect, on dancing the dance so carefully— Theodora, sweetheart, it's so beautiful when it's all done the way it should be done. I know you're not a practitioner, but you've studied it now; you must see that."

  I saw that not agreeing at this moment would be tantamount to a divorce. And truly, I did almost see. I nodded.

  "And this fool thought he could do it as crudely as pointing a gun at someone. Even that takes experience and training."

  I didn't know what to say, so I took the safer route and said nothing. A moment later Ran took hold of my arm and said, hoarsely, "Let's finish the sweep of the bridge and find this kanz." We started down the midpoint of the arc.

  Dancing the dance, he'd said; like "The Other Side of the Mirror," that I'd danced (granted, with several errors) on the afternoon that Kade died. Dances on Ivory are complex and never spontaneous, unless you're a trained and acknowledged artist; great sorceries, too, I supposed.

  He stopped suddenly a few meters away, with the look of someone who'd been punched in the stomach. The fact that he wore the ring still bothered me; I ran over to him and grabbed one arm, in case he had a sudden desire to dive in the canal. "I've got it," he said. "Gods! I didn't think we'd get a trace this quickly. I figured he was proba-

  bly just some stranger Kylla saw." He looked over at where my hands still gripped him. "What are you doing?'

  I let go. "You made me nervous."

  He blinked and shook his head slowly. "My dear tymon. Really."

  "Be that way, then, but don't expect me to dive in after you if you end up in the canal."

  He smiled. "This way." He pointed southwest, back in the direction we'd come.

  We walked down the bridge, with me still watching him narrowly. No point in not being careful. For some reason my suspicious nature seemed to cheer him up, because he slipped one hand around my waist, beneath my outerrobe (so no one would notice and be scandalized), and said, "I haven't asked you to recite the hundred and ten laws of magic in a long time."

  "Don't tell me we're going to have a review quiz now."

  "Just a hypothetical problem, Theodora. If you were going to assassinate Kade, would you have used a ring?"

  "Considering your strong views on the matter,.as you've only just expressed them, I'm not likely to say yes, am I?"

  "Humor me, and give me your best answer."

  We were off the bridge and getting farther from the dark waters of the canal, so I put my mind to the problem. "No. I would treat it as a variant of the search hierarchy, using inside and outside traits. I would place the spell on the person himself, and tie him to it by definition."

  "The definition being?"

  "Well, I'd have to research who Kade was. Rings, clothing, and general appearance would be outside traits; I'd leave them for the icing on the spell. The heart I would base on inside traits, where you're less likely to go wrong. In Kade's case, I don't know—greed for money is an inside trait, and he seemed to have that, though probably half the people on the boat that day did, too—"

  He interrupted. "Never mind, tymon, you've made my point. You're already ten times the sorcerer this idiot is, even just in theory. It's a pity you don't have the gift."

  "I read your cards for you well enough."

  "Because the virtue is in the deck. You'd be a top-rung professional if you were gifted yourself."

  It was nice that he thought so, since the Cormallons lived and died by sorcery; it was their vocation and avocation; they followed it like an art and a sporting event. But I had no desire for the gift. I got pleasure from reading the cards (for reasons too voyeuristic to do me credit), but beyond that magic held no great allure for me. Maybe I'd seen them all working too hard at it for it to keep its romance. Or maybe it was just that there were so many other horses crying to be ridden—the scholarship of folklore and storytelling, my training in tinaje, even the recordkeeping and accounting expected of me at Cormallon—for me to want to submerge myself in artistic obsession.

  Still— "You think I'd approach magic with the proper flair?" I asked, pluming at the compliment.

  "Well, you'd be patient and careful," he said, dwelling instead on my grayer virtues.

  There you are: You can't bother my Ran with murder or sabotage, but carelessness upsets him. Ah, well, we must take our compliments where we find them in this world. We continued, following the sorcerer's trace back the exact route we'd taken, till the street we were on emptied into the noisy expanse of Trade Square. Here open ten
ts and awnings sprouted in multicolor abundance and vendors sold rugs, pots, fruit, weapons, live fowl, themselves, challenges at gaming contests, lucky names and numbers, promises of expertise in any field wanted, tickets to the Imperial Dance Company, baths in battered old metal tubs, displays of balance and agility, feats of memory, lessons in spoken Standard, recycled car parts… I'd set up daily shop here myself, back when I'd first gotten stranded on Ivory without money or work, and with no connections to supply either.

  We stepped into the controlled chaos and my gaze went at once to the spot by the wall where I used to sit beside Irsa, who sold fruit from a cart. But it was the height of the day; there were too many people passing for me to see if she was there. "Irsa!" I yelled, hoping to see a face pop up from the mass of strangers. As I squinted, Ran tapped my arm and pointed to the ring. "We're getting closer," he said loudly, against the noise. I squinted at the ring instead. It didn't look any different to me than it was before.

  "How can you't—" I began.

  The crowd in front of us parted, and a groundcar made its way slowly through. I stopped in my tracks and stared at it. Who would be fool enough to drive a groundcar through Trade Square? Even wagon and carriage drivers took care to detour to the streets around. The unlucky car was low-slung, covered in durasteel, with no way to peer inside at the no-doubt impatient face of the driver.

  Suddenly it accelerated sharply, causing the knot of people remaining to jump aside; there was cursing, and somebody gave a piercing scream, in apparent pain. I stood, rooted, for an eternal millisecond, before my fear seemed to pick me up bodily and toss me out of the way. The groundcar barreled through. I rolled on the ground, not the only person down there, and the noise of the marketplace dwindled to a distant hum backing the main sound of my beating heart. I put my hands against the ground to push myself up, and felt how shaky and weak they seemed. Hands on either side of me helped me to my feet. Long-taught reflexes reminded me that nobody in Trade Square takes hold of you unless it's to distract you from their pocketpicking, and without thinking about it I tried to shake them off.