by Doris Egan
Scanned by Highroller.
Proofed by Aunti.
Made prettier by use of EBook Design Group Stylesheet.
The Gate of Ivory by Doris Egan
Chapter One
I was laying down cards in the marketplace when I got the latest job offer. "Here comes money," Irsa, the vendor next to me had said and moved out of the way so as not to scare him off. So I'd given him his fortune, all the usual sort of nonsense, and out he came with this. I hadn't expected it of him; he looked too respectable. True, he hadn't mentioned the exact nature of this job. But I'd been in the Square long enough—I thought—to know what that meant.
"I might want to hire you," he repeated, as though he expected a dim-witted foreigner like me might need it said twice.
"Move on," I said, picking up my Tarot cards. "Your fortune's been told."
"I'm serious," he protested.
"Please, noble sir. I'm well aware that people hired by Street of Gold Coin procurers are never seen again. Unless you want me for one of the Great Houses?" I smiled with polite rudeness. It was obviously out of the question. By Ivory standards, I'm not even pretty. Eight centimeters shorter than everyone around me, hair auburn instead of black—they wouldn't let me into a Great House as a domestic servant. Not that I felt I was really cut out for prostitution.
"I'm not talking about Gold Coin kanza." The word he used was Ivoran, and meant rotten flesh, animal dung, scum to the tenth power. I looked at him in surprise, as he'd intended. "I like your card-reading."
"Thank you, noble sir." I was as phony as any other market fortuneteller.
"I'm not a noble sir. 'Gracious' will do."
So he wasn't part of the nobility, although he dressed like it. More and more interesting. And it hadn't been easy to read his cards. Usually the marks responded, gave you answers, hints, facial expressions. "Someone I know has had an accident? Why, you must mean my great-uncle Hobar." Not this man. Total silence as I interpreted the pictures. It was unnerving.
He said, "You're not Ivoran. How did you end up here?"
I shrugged. "If you really want to know, pay me." To my surprise he brought out another coin and laid it on the ground before me. I shifted position on my rug. "Know, oh gracious sir, that this humble person who is I was born on Pyrene, far from—"
"You can skip the formalities. I'm not paying you as a storyteller."
I sighed. "I left Pyrene and went to Athena as a student. A classmate of mine had a father who was first mate on the Queen Julia, one of those big luxury liners out of Tellys. One of his wealthy passengers had reserved a suite for the full run, from Tellys to Athena to Ivory, and left at Athena. My friend talked his father into letting him use the suite—it was booked round trip—and take some friends along. It seemed like a great opportunity. You know—I mean, the gracious sir must be aware of what starship passage costs. If I hadn't gotten a scholarship to Athena, I'd never have gotten even that far. So I came along. That was two years ago."
When I stopped he said, "But you're still here."
"The gracious sir asked me how I came here. Not why I remain."
He dropped another coin. I scooped it up and added it to the others in my pouch. "I spent a happy month on your lovely planet, which is how long the Julia was in orbit. We went to the Lantern Gardens, the Great Obelisk, and the Lavender Palace. I'd heard about the sorcerers and magicians of Ivory, and while I knew they were fakes, I still wanted to see them. How many chances would I get to play tourist? My friends weren't interested in phonies, though. The night before we were due to leave they wanted to visit the Lantern Gardens again— they were fascinated by the naked floorshow, we don't have things like that on Athena. So I left them and went off to the Street of Gold Coins by myself—"
"Why the Street of Gold Coins?"
"Well, I didn't know where else to find a sorcerer. And I'd heard you could buy anything there."
He nodded. "Go on."
"I wish I could; unfortunately, I don't remember a lot of what happened next. I don't even know which building I went in. I have a vague memory of a small woman in a green robe, with black hair down to her knees, opening a door." I began shuffling my cards. This next part was embarrassing. "I woke up the next afternoon in an alley. My money was gone."
He laughed. "You were rolled."
"I was rolled." Because it's an old story doesn't make it funny. "The Julia was gone, my friends were gone—I did have some money, because they'd left it for me at the hotel. I've spent the last two years trying to make enough money to buy passage back." And barely making enough to live on. But if I let myself see how impossible it was, I'd go crazy.
"Have you made friends here?"
"I don't see that that's any of your business, gracious sir."
He brought out another coin. This was a good day for me.
"No real friends, no relatives, no guildmates. No one to care if I live or die, which was a problem when my tourist badge expired." Among the higher classes of Ivory, murder is considered a practical craft, rather like needlepoint. A noble who wants to keep his hand in might pick off a passing stranger on the way home from a hard day in government. Tourists are exempt, by Imperial decree; they wear large red badges, prominently displayed. When mine expired, flickering to a burnt-out black, my spirits went out with it.
"I want to hire you," he said, a slight variation on his first statement: I might want to hire you.
"For what?"
"To read cards. Not these," he said, seeing my eyes go to the Tarot deck in front of me, and dismissing it with a contemptuous gesture. "I have my own cards. Come with me and I'll test you on them."
This could get too deep for me to swim out. "Gracious sir, I'd better tell you right now that I 'm as phony as any other magician on Ivory. I can't read cards. I just make them up."
"You think our sorcerers are fakes." He smiled. "You've been here two years, but you still haven't learned much about Ivory. Rest easy, your lack of talent doesn't matter. The virtue is in my cards, not in the person using them."
He put out his hand and helped me up.
And so I met Ran Cormallon. His office was a house in a street I had never seen before, in a quiet part of town. The furnishings told me he was wealthy, but I had known that much from the way he was dressed. There were six beautifully appointed rooms—tapestries, paintings, computer screens in cabinets of inlaid marble-wood—all empty of people. We walked over wine-colored rugs embroidered with intricate calligraphy.
The innermost room of the top floor contained one large marble-topped desk with one chair behind it. I thought that Cormallon would sit, but he motioned me to it. "Open the drawer." I did so, slowly. A corner of gold caught my eye—a case for a pack of cards? Seeing my hesitance, Cormallon reached in and brought it out. He opened the case and spilled the cards on the desk. "Shuffle them," he said, "stack them, do whatever it is you do." When I had them shuffled and stacked neatly on the marble desktop, I looked at him. "Now read them," he said.
I turned over the top card. It showed a man sitting in shadow, bound and gagged. It was very realistic, with gradations of shade I'd never seen before in a deck of cards. "I don't even know what they're supposed to symbolize," I protested.
"When you're more used to them, you can tell me what they symbolize. This one is The Prisoner. Go on; you're doing better than you know.''
I turned over the next one. It was an ancient water ship, with a smoke stack; as I put it down a picture flashed through my mind of a different ship, a modern pleasure vessel. I touched the card again, and this time I was looking through a porthole into one of the cabins. Ran Cormallon was stretched out on a bed, reading a notebook; a young woman sat cross-legged on the carpet, her dark hair held back by a red jeweled pin. I coul
dn't see what she was doing. I took my hand away from the card and looked at Cormallon. "I don't suppose you've been on a boat recently.''
He smiled. "Go on. This time see if you can tell me something new."
"With a woman," I said slowly, "who pins her hair up with a red pin."
"Go on," he repeated. "The next card."
I turned over the next card and dropped it hastily. It felt hot. I looked at the picture and saw an Ivoran house on fire, flames shooting up around the white stone.
Cormallon was watching me closely.
"It's hot. I can't touch it."
"Try the next one."
I put my hand on the deck, then drew back in pain. "They're all hot, gracious sir. I can't get near them."
He nodded, replaced the three cards in the deck with no apparent difficulty and returned it to the drawer. "You can drop the 'gracious'… since I'm to be your employer. ''
"You're taking it for granted, aren't you, that I'll take the job?'' Though there was no doubt in my mind that I would. The money alone would have decided me, and I was overwhelmed by what had just happened.
"If you hadn't already decided to take it, you wouldn't have been able to do what you just did."
"I didn't get very far, though." When he didn't reply, I said, "Why did the cards become hot? And what about that building on fire—"
"A temporary problem, I'm sure—it may have something to do with your predecessor in this position. She was involved in an accident, which is why I had to find a replacement."
I was ready to ask more questions when he brought out my advance. It was more money than I'd seen in the last six months.
"Thank you, gracious—ah, Ran."
He blinked. "A plain 'sir' will do. I know Athena makes less use of formality than we do, but there's no need to go overboard."
"Yes, sir." I took the money.
On the way back to the market I realized what the woman on the ship had been doing. She had been dealing out cards.
Trade Square Marketplace is the loudest, busiest, and most dangerous corner of the Imperial Capital, which is the loudest, busiest, and most dangerous corner of Ivory; which is not a planet known for its peaceful style of living. But it was the only place lawless enough to let a stranger earn a living, and the only place well-organized enough to protect me while I earned it. The Square only looks like chaos cubed; those of us who sold there knew it was as carefully run as a Pyrene military maneuver. I paid a weekly fee to the Merchant's Association—a non-official, profit-making organization—and was not disturbed by thieves, cutthroats, pickpockets, or policemen. Irsa sponsored my membership in the Association; she was the closest thing to a friend I had here. I went straight from Ran Cormallon's office to her fruit stall in the market.
"Cormallon," she said thoughtfully. "They're big fish. Not one of the six Houses, but one of them that claims to be seventh. Specialize in sorcery, I hear, and other things less respectable. Lots of money there. Didn't I tell you when I saw him?"
"But how much of that money am I likely to see, do you think? Can I trust him to let me stay around when the job is over? Burial fees are so much cheaper. And I didn't like—" I paused. I hadn't liked the way his offer of employment came hard on the heels of my admission about my lack of family. I may be a dim-witted out-lander, but I was well aware that I was probably the only person in the market that day who wasn't protected by some sort of kinship web.
"If you ask, I'd say the Cormallons are rich enough to be able to afford a little honesty. They've got their good name to consider, too—they've always honored their contracts. I'd work for them myself if they made the offer. For certain, if it was that young sparklehawk who was here today doing the offering." She grinned. Irsa was fifty-eight; she had nine children, and about as many teeth. "I don't ask questions," she went on, "no, I was well brought up. But if he's paid you already, that's a good sign."
I'd trust Irsa's judgment about the ways of Ivory before my own, or in fact before anyone's I'd met so far. I said, "What about my membership in the Association? If I let it lapse, will I be able to get in again?"
She shrugged. "It's a risk. If you—" A man in a red embroidered robe leapt suddenly on an older man in brown who had been fingering the bronze cups in an adjoining stall. The two fell, pushing Irsa's cart back and upsetting one of her piles of fruit. She pulled the cart back farther as they scrabbled on the ground. She was standing perfectly still, her eyes following two rolling pellfruit across the dirt. The man in red had a hotpencil, which he pressed against the other's temple. The victim's face contorted. "It's not fair," he said, in a shaking voice. "You weren't—supposed to—"
"I was within touching distance," said the man in red.
The other was dead. Irsa went to pick up her pellfruit, stooping with a look of disgust on her face. "Aristocrats, both of 'em," she said as she returned to me, one large round fruit in each hand. She raised an arm to wipe sweat off her face with the back of her robe. "You'd think they had better places for that sort of thing. Why, dear," she said to me, "you look a bit scretchy. It's all this sun, makes everything seem more important than it is. I know you weren't brought up to it, dear, but so what if two fools choose to end their quarrel in front of us? It's happened before, it will happen again. Ishin na' telleth!" She looked around for something to give me to cheer me up, and ended by giving me what she gave anyone in distress: a piece of fruit. It was all she had to offer.
I asked the innkeeper where I stayed for the name of a reliable bathhouse. I usually carried jars of water from the well in the innyard up to my room, but I felt I deserved a treat.
"Asuka baths are good," he said to me. I'd just paid my last week's bill, and I could see him wondering.
"A good day in the Square," I said, smiling. He'd been patient about my not knowing the customs when I first came here. I could have paid him the next three months in advance, but I didn't want him to wonder too much. At that time I still had to carry all my money in the belt around my waist. No Ivoran bank would accept me, since I wasn't on the Net.
"Well, it'll make up for the fluteplayer. He's off."
"The fluteplayer's gone?" I'd heard him play every evening since I came.
"Dirty kanz skipped without paying for the last two weeks. Said he had a job in the north, and the next thing I know his room's empty." He shrugged and spat into an engraved copper vessel behind the counter. "Ishin na' telleth. It's too hot to get excited about." He went back to his record book. "Try Asuka," he called to me as I headed for the door. "Good family."
Asuka was expensive, but well worth it. It was one of the tallest private buildings in the capital, over twenty stories high, with grayglass walls and an aviary garden in its inner courtyard. I was met at the doors by two female guards, both dressed in gray, who gave me a rather perfunctory weapons search and handed me over to the people inside with a friendly slap. "Facial, massage, manicure, body painting?" they asked me.
"Just a bath." The man behind the desk handed me some towels and a woman took me up the grav to the tenth floor. We walked down a long hallway, the woman first with a gun in hand. She coded an alphabox in the wall and a steel door slid aside. "All steel walls and floors," she said, stepping inside. "Weapon-proof glass—good view of the park. Soap and extra towels here; this controls the temperature. The rooms on either side of you are empty. Please note that Asuka personnel all wear gray. If anyone in gray is harmed for any reason, we hold the client liable. If you have any questions, this will call the desk." She bent over, twisted the taps on and off, then straightened up and looked at me. "Is everything to your satisfaction?''
"Fine."
"How long will you want the room?"
"Two hours, I think."
"Should we notify you when that time is up, or wait for you to call?''
"Ah, no, you can call me."
She nodded and stepped into the corridor. "Enjoy your time with us." The walls closed seamlessly behind her. I threw the towels down on the floor and steppe
d into the bath. It was almost two meters long, and wonderfully deep. If I filled it all the way, it would go past my head. I faced the window and let the water run over my feet. Oh, this was more like it. I hadn't had such a bath since Athena—no, I'd never had such a bath.
In the park below it was spring, all green and white and budding. A hot day for spring, though, a reminder of how bad a summer in the capital could be. I wondered how many more summers I would have to spend here before I made my passage money. I'd begun to think it was impossible, and now here was this Ran Cormallon, dripping gold coins, providing me with hope and this lovely soak in the tub. "As long as it's not too danger-ous," I said aloud, swishing about in the water. My voice echoed off the walls.
I was just a scholar, trying to get my degree. I hadn't planned on a two- or three- or five-year hiatus, but I was handling it, I thought, in the true spirit of Athenan rationalism. Mmm—they should have tubs like this on Athena. They wouldn't dream of having them on Pyrene, my birthplace; nonutilitarian, a waste of time and space. I had no kind memories of Pyrene, not of my creche-guardian, my teachers, my classmates. It was years before I could acknowledge that anyone could be happy on Pyrene; that, in fact, most citizens were. The best thing they'd done for me was to give me my scholarship to Athena at the age of twelve. They had expected me to come back with my degree, of course, and revise municipal sewer systems, or some such. I changed my citizenship as soon as I touched ground on Athena and never looked back.
Brian Lonii, a guide for new students, met me at the port. I told him what I wanted to do, steeling myself for his contempt; and wonder of wonders, he did not speak of my debt to the state, but only laughed and took me to the top of the Scholar's Beacon, where I could see the parks and buildings and labs of North Branch spread out to the horizon. He took a picture of me there, with the railing and the sky behind me. I wish I had thought to bring it with me when I boarded the Julia.
Within a week I'd moved in with Brian's cluster. In two weeks I changed my field of study from technical administration (Pyrene's designation for me on my application) to cultural anthropology; and a year later I changed it to cross-cultural legends and folk literature. I spent half my waking hours getting language implants— I was the only undergraduate I knew who spoke Ancient English, Chinese, and Hebrew. I completely overlooked Ivoran. But then, it was a living language, and what folk tales can be gotten from contemporary life?
