by Dave Duncan
Skjar was incredibly ancient and yet forever new, because it was built of wood, following its ancient skill in boatbuilding. Year by year it was culled by rot, earthquakes, winter storms, or chance fires. Frena had not been gone a thirty and yet she could see changes—Triangle burned down to bedrock, the new bridge between Sheeplick and Honeycomb open at last.
The air was sticky and stale, reeking of food and garbage and close-packed people.
"What did you mean when you said fanners would pray to holy Ucr to stay away? He is their god also."
Verk chewed his lip while easing the onagers through a teeming little market, trying to keep moving without letting Dark and Night clear a path with their teeth. "I spoke out of turn, mistress."
"Continue doing so. Answer me!"
He flashed her a momentary glance, then went back to looking straight ahead. "I beg leave to remain silent. The master would disapprove of what I almost said."
So now they were to be confidants, were they, she and this metal-plated servant?
"I won't tell him, I promise."
Night flashed a hoof out sideways, sending a plump matron reeling into her companions. Curses and threats flew. Verk was remarkably adept with obscenities when he wanted to be. Surprisingly, when the incident was over and the chariot moved again, he returned to Frena's question.
"In hard times farmers see their children starve, mistress. In good times crops fetch bad prices. City mouse always eats better than country bull."
"What has that got to do with Ucr?"
"Ucr looks after his own, they do say."
"Meaning?"
He sighed. "Meaning, in hard times farmers must borrow food to live, mistress. Those that have lend to them that have not. And then the lender forecloses, so he ends up gaining land for a fraction of its worth. Farmer becomes serf, and his children less than that... so they do say," he added with another quick glance.
Frena shuddered. "Are you implying that Father does that?"
"Never, never, mistress! Aee! It would be a poor swordsman who said he guarded a monster, now wouldn't it? Who could trust him?"
She knew that the man was mocking her; she dared not comment in case she made even more of a fool of herself. No servant had ever dared speak to her so frankly. Verk was showing her a whole new way of looking at her father and, by implication, at herself.
Up the long sloping bridge to Grand, higher yet to Ossa's Leap, over the masts of a ship to Dead Ringer, then Live Ringer, and steeply down to Temple ...
"And you really have no idea why Father has sent for me?" There had been no hint of the matter in the tablets he had sent her about the new stables less than a sixday ago.
"He did not confide, mistress. Mouths can hold converse but not secrets, they do say."
"You mean you heard rumors?"
"I did not," Verk said firmly. "Not a mouse squeaked."
So the decision had been sudden. The tablet Father had sent to Kyrn had been cracked, as if fired in haste.
"Yesterday—did anyone come to see Father yesterday?"
After a pause, Verk said, "None that he had me watch over, mistress."
The pause felt like a clue. He was coaching her, as if he had been sworn not to tell her something and wanted her to ask the right questions.
"Did you escort him anywhere yesterday?"
"Not I. Nor Uls."
Then who? "But he did go out?"
The next pause felt like a refusal. The wheels rumbled slowly the whole width of Eelfisher before the swordsman spoke again.
"They do say so, mistress."
Frena pondered her next move. How many questions did she have left? "Without his usual guards?"
"With no guards."
She thought Aee! It was catching. "But he never does that!"
Verk chewed his lip for a moment and eventually said, "Well, he did have the Werists."
"Werists? Did you say Werists?"
"Wearing satrap's stripes. Brought him back later, no harm done."
"I'm glad to hear it!" She could not recall the palace ever sending Werists to fetch her father. She doubted very much that Satrap Eide would have had anything to do with that outrage. She sensed the hand of his wife, Saltaja Hragsdor, the real ruler of Skjar and all Vigaelia. "Was Father expecting them?"
"At dawn? Tearing off shutters? Slaughtering watchdogs? Any other man would have been in bed, but you know the master, never sleeping ..."
"There was a fight?" she cried.
"Aee, no! Swordsmen don't argue with Werists, mistress. It's part of the law—we don't even have to try to fight Werists!"
Verk was shamed, furious. He and the others had been made to look irrelevant. Her father admitted that a man had to be either stupid or very brave to join the guards' guild, for an extrinsic wearing a sword was a red rag to a Werist. And if the Werist turned on the man, a red rag was all he would be.
What had provoked Father's unexpected summons to the palace yesterday and why had it caused him to send for her?
Eelfisher to Chatter Place and then to Blueflower. There Frena was on home ground, amid familiar smells of tar and fish and saltwater, hearing the sounds of rattling oxcarts, wailing seabirds, creaking windlasses. Masts and sails moved between houses. The sparkling crystal freshets that drained the lake had divided and merged, widened and grown brackish, and finally spread out into shipping channels, salt and foul; greasy outlets to Ocean.
Her earliest memories were of her parents' home on Fishgut Alley, on the island called Crab, which faced out directly over Ocean. Her mother had kept house upstairs while her father ran his chandler business downstairs—although by the time her fuzzy childhood images cleared, he was already expanding into adjacent quarters and larger interests. That building had long since been replaced by warehouses.
Year by year Horth Wigson had extended his reach, doubling and redoubling his worth and workforce. Everything he turned his hand to turned to gold. He owned all of Crab now, except for one jetty on the northeastern corner. He owned most of Blueflower, which adjoined Crab on the west so that the two of them enclosed the basin of Weather Haven, a natural harbor secure enough to give him an advantage over all his competitors. Year after year he tore down more hovels, built more warehouses, extended his mansion. Any footprint-size patch of ground in Skjar was precious, yet Horth's windows overlooked a private park. He imported full-grown trees and was planning his own zoological collection. His residence outshone the palace of Satrap Eide.
As the onagers hauled the chariot across the bridge from Blueflower to Crab, Frena broke a long silence. "You will drop me at the door, Verk, and then go straight back to Uls. He will rest better if you are there."
Verk shot her a startled look and almost knocked over a woman carrying a water jug on her head. She screamed abuse after him.
"Tomorrow," Frena said, in what she hoped was the same calm and confident voice, "you will bring Uls to the Healers on Chatter Place. I will tell Master Trinvar to send someone with gold to wait for you there. And tonight I will tell Father what happened and insist that it was all my fault. I promise," she told his skeptical expression. "I think he has a lot more on his mind now than a lost sword and a scrape on my arm."
"My lady is kind," Verk said. He did not argue, so she must have found the best solution to their problem.
six
BENARD CELEBRE
was wakened by daggers of light stabbing through his eyelids. For a moment he thought it must be Cutrath coming to kill him, and his heart leaped in terror. But it was only Thod, his depressingly cheerful apprentice, all dewy-faced and doe-eyed.
"Twelve blessings this fine morning, master!"
"And on you," Benard growled. "Water?"
"At once, master!" Darkness returned as Thod dropped the tarpaulin and ran over to the well.
Benard sat up, wincing at the resulting thunderclaps inside his head. He could hear priests warbling morning hymns, accompanied by screaming roosters in the surrounding houses. He could h
ear voices as people went by on their way to prayers. His shed stood in a corner of the abandoned builders' yard behind the new Pantheon, almost the only empty space in Kosord. As a home it was sadly cramped, just three walls of mud brick and the fourth only a curtain of oiled cloth hung from a beam, but he could work in there in rainy weather. The interior was a catastrophe of clay models, faience figurines, tubs of raw clay, tottering heaps of chisels and mallets, balks of timber, jars of paint, bags of coloring for glazes, boxes, baskets, polychrome tiles, boards for sketching, and gods knew what else. One thing old Master Artist Odok had signally failed to teach his best pupil was tidiness.
Hiddi... His body still hankered after Hiddi. Had she really been the vision she had seemed, or had her beauty been only in the bedazzled eye of her beholder? He must not judge the child for choosing to serve the god of madness. What seemed to him like utter degradation might be better than the life of a peasant's wife, endlessly producing short-lived babies.
Benard dragged himself upright and began picking his way through the disorder. He felt as if he had not slept at all, and apparently he would not be eating today either. His pelf string had held at least a dozen twists of copper last night when he went off with Nils to celebrate, but now it was bare. Even the epochal torment in his head could not have cost that much, so he must have bought matching headaches for half of Kosord. Granted that the priests were better at commissioning work than paying for it, when they did pay him, the sudden riches never lasted long. So he survived on his fee from Thod's family, a bag of meal every sixday, and the next was not due until tomorrow.
If he lived that long.
Werist Cutrath was an infuriating, unnecessary, unwanted complication in the life of a man who wanted nothing more than to spend the entire day chipping stone. Benard's needs were few: his art, his art, and his art. Once in a while he enjoyed a riotous celebration like last night's. He appreciated women, women appreciated him; although most of his friends were humble folk, he had worshiped holy Eriander in some of the best bedrooms in Kosord. There was one woman he loved to desperation but could not have. The last thing he needed was a fight to the death with Cutrath Horoldson, especially when there could be no doubt as to whose death.
He grimaced as Thod opened the drape again, hurling sunlight everywhere. Benard accepted a jug of Kosord's fetid, lukewarm well water and drank greedily. Thod hopefully located a chisel and maul.
"No hammering yet," Benard said. "I need a board."
"At once, master." Thod put a brave face on his disappointment. He liked nothing better than to spend the entire day chipping marble as Benard directed, convinced that this would build muscles to impress the light of his life, Thilia, daughter of Sugthar the potter. Thod was eagerness personified, laboring untiring from dawn to dusk, five days out of six. Whether he possessed enough of an artist's eye to please holy Anziel was another matter.
"But first, run and ask Thranth if I can borrow his good loincloth again. And his sandals!" he shouted as Thod took off like a stone from a sling. Thranth was his brother, a harness maker, and relatively wealthy.
Benard tied up the curtain and squinted out at the day. Although Kosord had no good building stone, it did own a quarry of warm-toned marble that was perfect for sculpting golden Vigaelian bodies. Three great blocks stood around in various stages of completion. Mayn, goddess of knowledge, was the easiest of the Bright Ones to portray, because only Her hands were visible, holding Her traditional distaff and spindle, but he was pleased with the way the stone revealed the woman inside—trailing folds where fabric hung loose, smooth surfaces when it clung to flesh at shoulder or advancing knee, even hints of the face under the veil. Almost as if the marble were transparent. Praise the lady.
Next to Benard's kiln stood a roughly hacked out Sinura, goddess of healing, wrapped in Her snake, but no one except Benard knew that the raw block nearest the shed contained Weru, god of storm and battle, just waiting to be exposed.
By the time Thod came trotting back from his brother's harness shop, Benard was rummaging in his cluttered nest. "You haven't seen my razor anywhere, have you?" Vigaelians reacted badly to black beards.
They found the razor but not the polished scrap of bronze he used as a mirror. In his present state he was likely to skin himself anyway, so he let Thod shave him while he—Ouch!—planned his visit to the palace.
"Lot of teeth lying around the streets this morning," Thod remarked shyly.
"Teeth? ... Um, yes." Ouch! As well as instructing his apprentice in his craft, a master should set a good example of proper civic behavior, but knuckles as bruised as Benard's could not be explained away. Nor could his hangover be concealed. He told the tale, stressing the mitigating circumstances of betrothal celebration and damsel-rescuing, and not mentioning divine intervention.
Thod made admiring noises when he heard about the fight. "Do you know who this rapist was, master?"
"Cutrath Horoldson."
"The satrap's son?" Fortunately Thod was stropping the bronze blade on a fragment of tile at the time, or he might have cut his master's throat. "But he's a Werist! Oh, master, master! That's suicide, to hit a Hero!"
Possibly, but it had been worth it. Since childhood Benard had been waiting for the news that he was either about to be packed off to a home he barely remembered or put to death for something done by someone else. Now he could die happy, remembering Cutrath spread out in the dirt.
"I trust in the lady to help me out of this."
"Praise the Beautiful One!" Thod agreed, looking puzzled.
Benard did not explain, because he wasn't sure exactly what he was going to do. Certainly he was in mortal danger. No Werist, especially one as new to his collar as Cutrath Horoldson, could ignore such an insult. Any other man would flee the city, but Benard was a hostage on parole. The day he failed to report to the palace guard, he would be an outlaw, an escaped prisoner, fair game for anyone. The only people who could possibly restrain Cutrath were his parents. Lady Ingeld would certainly intervene if Benard asked her to, but even a peaceable artist drew the line at hiding behind a woman's skirts, and Cutrath probably wouldn't listen to her anyway.
He would obey his father, but the satrap was no friend of Benard's. Horold might side with his loutish son and specifically order him to avenge the family honor, or he might choose to regard the incident as a criminal offense and sentence the culprit to be flogged, branded, or hanged as the fancy took him. Since no other solution found its way through Benard's thundering hangover, those risks would have to be taken. He was a firm believer that where there was life there was hope.
♦
Hurrying off to the palace, clad in Thranth's smart linen cloth with the sun hot on his back, Benard felt reasonably respectable. He had combed out his black tresses, oiled them, and tied them back with a red headband some girl had given him once, which he had rediscovered a few days ago under a jar of umber pigment. He carried a plank of balmwood that Thod had sanded clean for him. Mud brick would last forever if it was kept dry, but every heavy rain would undermine a wall or two somewhere. As often as not the whole side of the house would then be flattened and rebuilt, raising the level of the street and converting the next flood into a neighbor's problem. Thus, through uncounted generations, Kosord had lifted itself high above the plain. The highest point of all was the temple of holy Veslih, surmounted by the bronze canopy above Her sacred fire. Around that, in splendid confusion of roofs and levels, sprawled the palace and everything else, descending higgledy-piggledy to the outlying shanties of the poor.
The palace was approached up wide steps of bricks glazed white and green and red. More polychrome bricks adorned its walls; sunlight flamed on the bronze pillars flanking its high doorway. Just inside that was the guard room, to which Benard must report each day. In the ten years since he was apprenticed to Master Artist Odok, he had forgotten this duty only once; the unpleasant results had improved his memory dramatically.
At full strength Horold's host numbered mor
e than twenty sixty, although he normally kept only two hunts in Kosord itself, billeting the other three in other cities. His satrapy, covering about a third of the Face, contained many other hosts whose leaders were nominally subordinate to him, but any Werist put in charge of an army soon developed revolutionary ambitions. The Heroes found peace an elusive concept. Even summer training exercises were regarded as failures if they did not get out of hand.
Compared with the rest of the host, the palace guard was a joke, a handful of men too old or maimed to fight plus a number of boys in training, all under the command of Flank-leader Guthlag, who should always be seen as early in the day as possible. Benard found Guthlag on his usual bench, rolling knucklebones and quaffing beer with three young Werists sporting the white sashes and leather collars of cadets. By noon they would owe him a fortune; before sunset they would win it all back. It seemed as if he had made a good start on his drinking already, for his pall had sagged into a clumsy rumple, while the youngsters' looked sculpted, not a fold out of place.
He scowled at his visitor with bleary pink eyes. "Early for you, isn't it? Did you wet the bed or did she just kick you out?"
To any man except a warrior, Benard would have retorted along the lines of "We thought we heard you coming back," but one could never trust a Werist's sense of humor, not even Guthlag's.
He bowed, which made his head throb harder. "Lord, the miserable low-life Florengian beetle reports that he is present as required."
"You were a slug yesterday. How did you get promoted?"
"Lord, that was before she kicked me out."
Elderly Werists were rare. Guthlag Guthlagson—that patronymic meant that his father was either unknown or had refused to acknowledge him—had run with the Kosord host back in the days of State Consort Nars Narson, before the coming of Stralg. Werists were not supposed to outlive their leaders, and Nars's hordeleader had certainly died with him in the massacre. Old Guthlag's survival was never explained.
