by Holly Lisle
No iridescent snow-haired beauties stood on the deck, but Ry had no doubt the ship was the Peregrine, or that the woman he had seen would prove to belong to the Peregrine’s crew.
Yanth was shaking his head. “Looks like a whore in her working paint,” he said.
“Ian said the mutineers sailed with a hold full of first-quality Ancients’ artifacts. I’d say they got good money for their treachery.”
Jaim pointed down the road, away from the ship, and said, “We seem to be drawing some attention. I suggest we pretend we just found what we were looking for elsewhere and move along.”
Ry didn’t spare the Peregrine another glance; he knew where it was and who was onboard. He walked with his two comrades back toward the town, toward their inn and their locked room and the bath they had been promised, which was to feature water both clean and warmed.
A woman approached them. In the style of Heymar, which was to say no style at all, she wore rubber boots that rose above her knees, and heavy homespun breeches, and a shapeless hooded shawl that draped around her shoulders, covering hair, clothing, and any weapons she might carry. It was testament to her beauty that on her the ugly clothing bore an air of proud daring. She smiled and said, “You are guests at the Long Comfort, are you not?” Her accent spoke of elegant dining rooms, of sweet music played softly, of exquisite silk dresses and measured dancing, and fine food served on silver platters and eaten with golden knives. She smelled of jasmine and musk.
“We are,” Ry said, keeping wariness from his voice, bowing slightly, smiling politely.
“Then you are invited to sit at table with Captain Y’tallin of the K’hbeth Rhu’ute.” The foreign words she said carefully. She was no native speaker of her captain’s language.
“I know no Captain Y’tallin, nor any ship named K’hbeth Rhu’ute,” Ry said, “and though I am honored by your captain’s generosity, I cannot imagine why he has chosen to so honor me.”
In her eyes, amusement flashed, quickly hidden by the formula of manners. “I am the captain’s first concubine, and as such am not privy to the reasons for your invitation. I only tell you that a litter will be at your disposal outside the door of the Long Comfort at the first ringing of Dard, should you decide to accept the invitation. And I give you this, the captain’s gift.” She slipped a little carved wooden box into his hand; it had been wrapped in puzzle-wire and ribbon in the fashion made popular by the Five Families, and would take some time to open.
He accepted it and bowed again to the woman. “I will give your captain’s invitation my fullest consideration,” he said.
“Then I shall hope to see you tonight.” She flashed a brilliant smile at him and for just an instant her shawl fell open, revealing an expanse of creamy skin and tight, high breasts barely covered by the sheerest of diaphanous silk blouses, between which nestled a fine gold neckchain stamped with the Masschanka crest. “I shall hope to see much more of you,” she murmured, softly enough that only he could hear.
The shawl flicked back into place and the woman turned and squelched away, ruining with her noisy exit the aura of mystery and excitement she’d managed to create in the few short moments she’d been with him.
Ry laughed softly.
“She was a pleasant piece of work,” Yanth observed. “Most beddable.”
Jaim snorted. “She struck me as a woman who would make her own grandmother first guest at a cannibal feast for the right price.”
Yanth was still watching her slogging back toward the harbor. “Wouldn’t any concubine? I simply observed that she would make a delectable morsel if served between the sheets, preferably raw.”
Jaim shook his head at Yanth and turned to Ry. “So, do we accept this dinner invitation?”
Ry was studying the box in his hand. “I haven’t decided yet. Let’s go back to the inn and see what sort of present the captain has seen fit to send.”
• • •
The puzzle-wire, beautifully but fiendishly wound, gave up its secrets slowly. Before he even got to the box, he unwrapped three other gifts. First a lustrous pearl, oddly bluish in cast, of ordinary size. Then a bit of translucent white stone, carved into the shape of a tiny, beautifully detailed fruit tree by someone with extraordinary patience and too much free time. Finally, a silver coin unlike any he had ever seen. It was no bigger than the tip of his little finger and, like the stone tree, was exquisitely detailed. On the front, a woman staring forward, her heavy-lidded eyes, full lips, and oval face somehow both seductive and regal; on the obverse, a winged man, nude and powerfully built, holding a longbow and some sort of flask. Both sides of the coin had writing around the perimeter, but it was almost too small to see, and even had it been clearly readable, Ry could find nothing familiar in the shape of the script.
He and Yanth and Jaim looked at the three tiny treasures, then at each other.
Ry shrugged. “I don’t know what to make of them. Either of you care to make a suggestion?”
“Not yet,” Jaim said.
Yanth was more daring. “The captain wishes to tell you that he is a midget. Or that he has a very small amount of money and would like to own an orchard by the sea. Or . . . or . . .” He grinned. “I guess I have no idea.”
The box had no visible seam; it was a puzzle-box, beautifully made of a dozen kinds of wood, inlaid with geometric designs in ivory and tiny flower-starred vines of greenwood and shell. The vines circled out from a different inlaid flower on each of the six sides and wove through the ivory trellises. The box itself could have been the gift, but it rattled and whatever was inside was much heavier than wood.
Ry tried different strategies to open it—tapping the corners, trying to slide panels, and finally pressing the central flowers. When he did that, he discovered that each flower would depress slightly, but pressing one would cause the others to pop back up.
“I’ll get a brick,” Yanth said. “We can smash it open.”
Ry arched an eyebrow at his friend. “No. That’s all right. I’ll get this.”
He worked a bit longer, but without success. Jaim, who had been looking over his shoulder while he worked, finally said, “I think I see the pattern.”
“I’m damned if I do.”
“Try pressing the flowers by season of bloom.”
Ry stared up at his friend. “The season of bloom? How in all the hells would I know that?”
“The central motifs are all common flowers in Calimekkan gardens.”
“And you know how much time I’ve spent gardening.”
Jaim held out a hand. “May I?”
Ry gave him the box without a word.
“Silkflower. Early spring,” Jaim said, pressing one center. He turned the cube. “Nightmarch—late spring. Then sweet devil’s heart—first of the rainy season, for about two weeks. Climiptera, also called Janisary rose—blooms right after sweet devil’s heart, through the rest of the rainy season. Then cattle bole—right as the dry season starts.” His finger rested over the last flower. The other five remained depressed this time. “The last is chilly slippers, which blooms at first dawn during the coolest and driest part of the year.” He handed the puzzle-box back to Ry. “Your gift. You should open it.”
Ry sighed. “One of these days you must tell me how you knew that.” He pressed the final flower, and the box fell apart in his hand. In the center of the little panels lay a heavy gold ring, thick and massive, set with a flawless cabochon sapphire the size of a wren egg. The gold was heavily carved in fanciful forms—twisting vines again, like those of the box, with monkeys and deer and parrots peeking out from behind.
“Good gods,” Yanth said. “That ring would buy passage around the world. Why would the captain give it to you?”
Ry shook his head and closed his eyes. An elusive scent tickled his memory. He lifted the box to his face and sniffed. Different woods, glues and resins, the fingertips of the person who had last touched the contents of the box—different than the hands that had held the outside. He open
ed his mouth slightly and breathed the scent through his parted lips, tasting it; then through his nose again.
Faint. Terribly faint, and masked by the wood, by the resins. But there.
He licked the spot on the wood where the scent was strongest, hoping to taste something that would make that enigmatic scent clearer.
Frustrated, he opened his eyes, found his friends studying him with patient curiosity. They knew his eccentricities, after all.
“Anything?” Yanth asked.
“Nothing clear. There’s something familiar about the scent, but it’s so faint I can’t quite make the connection.”
“Familiar. You think it’s trouble?”
“Well, that’s always the best assumption. It would help if we could figure out what the gift meant. The pearl and the single tree and the coin and the ring . . . hells, even the box, perhaps—I have the feeling that they’re supposed to mean something, only I’m too dull-witted to figure out what.” He looked at Jaim. “You saw the pattern in the flowers. Do you see any pattern here?”
Jaim sighed. “Well . . . perhaps. Pearls have always represented layers. Chip off the outer layer of a pearl and another pearl, equally perfect but smaller, lies just beneath. And beneath that another, and another, until you reach the center. The fact that it’s blue . . .” He shrugged, palms outspread. “I don’t know. Many people attribute significance to different gems and their colors, but I’ve never paid much attention to that. I have no idea what a blue pearl might signify.”
Ry glanced at Yanth, who snorted. “Don’t look to me. When I buy a gemstone, I don’t get it to convey some silly message. I buy it because I like the way it looks on me—or on the girl I give it to.”
Ry looked back to Jaim. “The carved fruit tree . . . I’d guess that to stand for the Sabir crest if we’re assuming the giver of gifts actually knows something about you.”
“There are two trees on the Sabir crest, one which feeds good fruit to the friends of the Sabirs, and one which feeds poisoned fruit to their enemies. Which is this?”
“Assume poison until proven otherwise,” Yanth said.
Jaim nodded agreement. “The coin . . . I can’t even begin to guess the meaning of that. Perhaps one of the images on it is significant; perhaps the importance lies in the place where it was minted, or the time.” He sighed. “The box and the ring leave me equally confused. They seem to belong together, but they don’t seem to hold any meaning in and of themselves, except perhaps that the person inviting you to dinner has the wealth to give them.”
“Perhaps that’s it.” Ry stood, the rest of the contents of the box and the pieces of the box itself lying on the thin mattress of his cot. “But now I’m not sure what to do.”
“We go, I think,” Yanth said. “And we take our weapons.”
“Oh, I knew I would be going. My question was whether I should take the two of you with me—where all of us could be trapped—or leave you behind to come after me if something goes wrong, knowing that if I do, you might not be able to reach me. I’m not even certain that the two of you were invited.”
“Which is all the more reason to take us with you when you go. If their goal is to get you there alone, you can’t give them that.”
Ry paced. “I’m not sure what I’ll do.”
Outside the door, someone knocked. Ry opened the door and found Shrubber’s wife, Kelje, standing there. “Your bath is ready,” she said. “You’ll have to hurry, though—the water is hot enough now, but it won’t stay that way for long.” She smiled shyly. “There’s a curtain up for you, and one warmer pot for each of you when you call.”
“I’ll go,” he said—first dip in clean water was the prerogative of rank. “Stay here until I get back.”
He took a change of clothes with him, stripped in the kitchen, then realized he wasn’t alone. He heard female whispers coming from the pantry. He didn’t look over. Instead, he stretched high, faking a yawn as he did, and twisted from side to side with his hands locked behind his back as if getting at a persistent crick in his spine. He was rewarded by admiring little oohs, and recognized the voices. The chambermaid and the evening tavern girl.
He dropped his dirty clothes in a pile by the stove, for he had agreed beforehand that Kelje would have the girl clean them for him, and stepped behind the curtain strung across one corner of the kitchen. The tub was generous enough in size, and Ry was pleased to see that it had been cleaned. He tested the water—a bit too hot, but he’d never minded that. He slipped into the bath, and grinned as he heard the chambermaid and the tavern girl whispering in the pantry beside the kitchen.
“He has very fine shoulders, doesn’t he?”
“Good legs.”
“And all his teeth—I saw them when he smiled. They’re very white.”
He washed himself slowly, enjoying hearing his good qualities enumerated.
“He looks so strong. And I wonder where he got that scar.”
He took the pitcher that sat beside the tub, dipped it in the water, and poured the water over his head—and then lathered his hair with the soap Kelje had provided, and poured water over himself again, so he missed quite a bit of their conversation. When his ears cleared, he heard one of the girls say, “When he calls for his warming pot, I’ll carry it to him.”
“You’re taking your clothes off?”
“I thought maybe he’d like some company in his bath.”
Ry froze. He didn’t mind being admired, but he most definitely did not want company in his bath—and he knew if the girl came, offered her naked charms, and he turned her down, she’d either accuse him of buggering little boys and leave nasty things in his bed or his food, or else she’d screech and yell rape and he’d have to find someplace else to stay. Assuming, of course, that the locals didn’t hang him first—and that would be a big and risky assumption.
Forget the warming pot. He was clean enough, he decided.
He got out of the water, drying himself off with the coarse towel Kelje had provided, and threw his breeches on without thought to his appearance. He didn’t bother with shoes or socks or underwear or shirt, and when he’d given the laces a cursory tug and tie, he hurried out of the kitchen and up to the room, only catching the barest hint of the whispered disappointment behind him.
Jaim looked up from studying the mechanism of the puzzle-box, his face a portrait of startlement. “That was a very fast bath, Ry. The water must have been ice.”
“The water was perfect. I simply didn’t fancy the company.”
“The . . . company?”
“Apparently I paid too much for the baths. They seem to come with a girl.”
Yanth’s face lit up. “Oh, do tell.”
Ry explained the two girls hiding in the pantry.
“And you didn’t stay?”
“Which of them could compare to Kait?”
Yanth looked prim and said. “Well, we wouldn’t know that, would we?”
Jaim, uncharacteristically, was smiling. “I rather liked the look of the chambermaid,” he said. “Nice little thing, good curves, wide hips.”
Yanth said, “I’d take both of them, myself.”
Ry said, “I’ll let the two of you figure out who’ll go first, then. Just don’t leave your fight in the water—we’ve no idea what we’ll be facing tonight. And mind the bells—I don’t want us rushed to leave.”
“We’re all going, then?” Jaim asked.
“Yes, I think we are. We’ll have a better chance of handling whatever they throw at us if we go together.”
He pulled off his breeches and dressed again, this time doing it carefully. He wasn’t wearing fine clothes—that would be too out of character for the person he was pretending to be—but he was wearing clothes that were clean and not too badly worn. Leather breeches and a soft linen shirt in pale green, dark green leather vest, green wide-brimmed felt hat with copper trinkets around the band.
Once dressed, he sat down with the gifts the concubine had given him, and tried
to figure out what message they were supposed to send. He had a long time to think. When Jaim and Ry finally came back, more than a station had passed. They both looked well scrubbed, well sated, and very pleased with themselves.
And he knew nothing more than he had when the concubine presented him with the gifts and the invitation.
Chapter 35
Crispin and his men filled the airible’s benches. Their weapons clanked and rattled at their sides; their packs formed mounds on the floor. They sat in silence as the steady thudding of the engines drew them ever closer to Galweigh House.
Crispin stared at the city that slipped below him. Only the faintest of lights shone all the way up through the haze of smoke from the burning dead. What a price to pay for the destruction of the Mirror of Souls—half the city dead, including most of his own Family, and for what? The knowledge wasn’t gone. He could—he would—build another Mirror as soon as he had his daughter back. He would be an immortal. He would walk across the face of Matrin as a god for the rest of eternity.
But Ry and his bitch and her uncle owed him now for more than stealing away his daughter. The second Ulwe was safe, they were going to pay.
“How much farther, Aouel?” he shouted.
The pilot turned and said, “You can see it through my window.”
The smoke that clogged the valleys didn’t touch Galweigh House. It crouched atop its mountain as if astride an island beset by curling white seas, touched by moonlight—a cold and forbidding ruin. No lights burned within the House, but Crispin knew his enemies hid in there. The Mirror had died there, the magic had exploded from there, and his prey waited there. Huddled in the darkness, scared little rabbits with the wolf digging down into their den.
