Dangerous Games

by Clayton Emery

  “You really are from far away, then. It’s this way all over the empire,” Mother said, creaking upright and fetching two bowls of porridge a girl had warmed by the fire. She and Sunbright ate with their fingers. “The nobles’re greedy. They’ve always been so, but as time goes by, their appetites increase and they want more. They take it from the commoners. Eventually they take too much, the commoners starve, and then the nobles do too. But they never see it comin’ and never try to stop it.

  “How much of the city have you seen? How many shops closed? How many people out of work? The workin’ class has been taxed—robbed—out of existence. Leather workers and milliners and blacksmiths couldn’t pay their taxes, so their shops’re taken and they’re thrown out of work. They starve a while, then choose: die or steal. The ones caught are executed or thrown into labor camps and worked to death. Anyone who complains about the oppression, bards singing or printers selling broadsides, or minor officials who know the poor’re also silenced, banished, or killed outright. The city guard are nothin’ but murderous thugs, out to collect graft and kill anyone who raises his eyes to a noble. Their watchword is Mind your betters.’ And down on the ground, they tell me—I’ve never been there—it’s better, and worse.

  “Worse,” she continued, “because farmers’re thrown off their land and made to wander. But here, we’re like fish in a pool, all fightin’ for crumbs. Folks can’t work, so families split up to find food. Children are abandoned … look at these lost souls Knucklebones has taken in. And the high-and-mighty archwizards don’t care, they only demand the guards grind down harder, punish more terribly.”

  Sunbright interjected, “But all that food in the marketplace. And the goods?”

  “For nobles only,” Mother sighed, shaking her head. “Their cooks and chamberlains’re the only ones permitted in the market once it’s open. Any commoners comin’ near would be beaten to death by silver. Oh, there are some folks still makin’ things. The archwizards have private workshops and hired artisans. They have cooks to prepare fabulous food for their endless parties, I’m told, and craftsmen to manufacture toys. Certainly they make flyin’ disks for the Hunt, so the nobles can kill peasants on the ground. They lark and game like blind children. But the nobles skate on thin ice that’s bein’ licked away from underneath by a changing tide. They can prop the empire with brutality, with magic, with money—but it can’t hold up forever.”

  “So what’s to happen?”

  Mother shrugged, said, “One day, sooner or later, the ice breaks. And the empire crumbles. And us at the bottom’ll be crushed first.

  “But the nobles’ll have a mighty rough landin’ too.”

  * * * * *

  Sunbright asked all the questions he wanted, for Mother liked to talk about big ideas, and her brood was not mentally inquisitive. They were too concerned with staying alive. The big man was Ox, once a wrestler, until his eyes were gouged out by city guarda. His tiny daughter was Corah. Their wife and mother was rumored to be dead, spirited off the streets one night in one of the guards’ many random sweeps. Aba and Zykta, foundlings, were the topknotted twins. A skinny boy was Rolon. Others came and went, Mother explained, and Knucklebones commanded them all. Their rules were simple: defend and share. They stole when they could, avoided the guards daily, fought when necessary, and occasionally brawled with other gangs under the city, but not often. Life was tenuous, yet the poor showed one another mercy. No one else did, not the noble archwizards, and not the gods.

  Sunbright nodded, deep in thought. For all their cooperation and organization, these folks were incredibly vulnerable. Even knowing little about the city, he could think of a dozen ways the nobles and their guards could crush these thieves. They could pump heavy gas such as infested coal mines down the tunnels and suffocate them. Or pour in oil and set it afire. Or loose trained dogs, or assassins guided by wizard eyes. Even a spell to divert a lake and flood the caves would do the job. Right now, the thieves only lived at the sufferance of the nobles, who were too preoccupied to wipe them out. He wondered if Knucklebones had considered these macabre threats, and planned for them. Or if she simply crossed her fingers and prayed.

  Sunbright learned more. Which archwizard families ruled the city. How they all deferred to crazy Karsus, and curried his favor for magical trinkets and new spells. Where the guards bunked and how they patrolled. How the thieves managed to avoid capture and death. How they could trip traps and time the guards’ rounds. How to penetrate a building sealed against the weather. Even how the fish was frozen. Out in the ocean were weirs, floating fish traps that funnelled fish inside. When an edible fish entered, it was instantly shifted hundreds of miles to a huge room spelled with a Veridon’s chiller, then separated out and sold.

  As they talked, Mother tended Sunbright’s hurts, sealing the deep cuts, smoothing the lesser. The barbarian gnawed strips of raw fish to fuel the healing.

  Sunbright marvelled at the clever uses of magic, but Mother warned, “Yes, but, see, magic is the empire’s downfall. They use it for everything, and no one thing can solve all problems. But I’m tired and would rest.” She creaked upright, dragged her hood around her head, and patted Knucklebones’s blanket into place.

  “One more question, please,” Sunbright begged. “Whence comes the fresh air?”

  “Oh, that. Rolon!” The skinny boy pricked up his ears. “Show our guest where the air comes from. He should find that interesting.”

  The lad waved a hand toward the end of the tunnel, and Sunbright picked his way over the uneven floor to follow. The boy skipped like a goat from rock to rock, sometimes in pitch blackness. Sunbright plodded after him, slipping and banging his knees often, and his head occasionally.

  “What spells do you know?” Sunbright asked the boy.

  “Eh? Oh, not many. Healing, mostly. And I’m learning to talk to animals.”

  “That’s not much. I know catfeet, and color, smokepuff, mouse, tangle. Lots of spells. Knucklebones knows ’em all, though.”

  “I’m glad. You must need them.” He swore as he skidded on a slippery rock and barked his shin.

  “Are you a good fighter?” the boy asked.

  Sunbright smiled at that, said, “I haven’t been killed yet.”

  “Good. We need a good fighter. There’s things down here like to kill us.”

  “Oh? What things?”

  Sunbright found that curious. Mother hadn’t hinted of any dangers.

  “Uh …” the boy hesitated at a taboo topic. “Never mind. You come from down on the ground?”

  “Yes.”

  Sunbright didn’t press about the danger, but marked a mental slate to ask more later.

  By now, there were no more pipes or tubes or man-made structures, only broken rocks. Oddly, the tunnel grew larger the farther they went.

  “How long you been in the city?”

  “Just a few days.”

  “So you don’t know anything about how to live here?”

  “No. That’s why I need a guide. Someone like you.”

  “Don’t worry, then. I can show you everything there is in Karsus.”

  “Wonderful.”

  Suddenly the barbarian realized he could see Rolon’s silhouette, then his features. The breeze was fresher in his face. Ahead was daylight.

  “Here we go,” said the boy.

  Turning a corner, they saw white light reflected off gray rock. It came from a huge hole in the floor of the tunnel. That confused Sunbright, for he’d been expecting a hole above.

  “Better crawl,” warned Rolon. “This is scary.”

  The boy dropped to his knees, then his belly, and wriggled to the lip of the hole. Wondering, Sunbright crept alongside, his guts in a knot. He’d finally figured it out.

  Sneaking his nose past the rocky lip, he looked down into open air, to the ground a mile below. From this dizzying height, he could see green and gold rolling hills and distant slate-blue mountains. Edging the hills were crooked stone fences marking fields, and
a trout pond. Then, between him and the ground, he saw a gray hawk’s back. The high-flying bird was between them and the earth. High winds whirling into the cave gusted in his face and made his eyes water.

  Sunbright groaned involuntarily. He’d known in a vague way he was on an inverted floating mountain, but to actually see it was the stuff of nightmares.

  Suddenly he had a driving need to get back to the ground. The urge was so strong, for a second he pictured himself leaping up, diving through the hole, falling, falling, falling …

  Stomach twisting, Sunbright rolled over to eclipse the sight. He clung to rock with both hands. Something on the ceiling caught his attention.

  “Oh!”

  “What?” the boy asked, looking up.

  Sunbright pointed to long, shallow scratches in the smooth stone above. “This was a bear cave when the mountain was upright. Those are claw marks.”

  The boy peered, then looked back over the edge. “You live down there?”

  Sunbright rolled, looked again. The idea of a bear cave, a familiar, homey image, helped anchor him, cheered him. “I did,” he said. “Though not here exactly, and not in this time. But yes.”

  “You get eaten by bears down there, I heard.”

  “No,” Sunbright chuckled. “At least, not many do. It’s a fine place. I’ll take you there someday.”

  “You will?” The boy’s voice was a pipe of excitement.

  Sunbright was surprised himself, but he meant it. “Yes,” he said. “Living in the air, under a poisoned city, is no life for a boy, or anyone. It’s too far from the natural order of things, the way the gods laid out our lives. I have no idea what, Rolon, but we must do something.

  Your lives here are too fragile. A good start would be to get down there.

  “But to do that,” he muttered, “I’d need Candlemas.…”

  * * * * *

  When the two returned, Knucklebones was waiting. With a nod of her head, she steered Sunbright back down the tunnel and Rolon away.

  Out of Rolon’s earshot, she told the barbarian, “We need to talk.”

  “Very well.”

  Sunbright waited patiently, and for some reason, this irritated her. Her single dark eye flashed as she demanded, “Can you fight that well all the time?”

  In answer, he extended both arms, showed her scars beyond counting. “I’ve gained these and lived to tell it.”

  “Can you steal? Thieve? Find things without getting caught?”

  Honest, he shook his head and told her, “I know naught about thieving. In my homeland, we gather the supplies we need. Sometimes it’s easy, sometimes a struggle, but no, we’ve no need to steal anything. But I can learn.”

  She puffed. “What are you trained in, besides brawling?”

  Sunbright scratched a scar idly. Knucklebones had illuminated stripes along her wrists for light, but their ghostly glow did little to light their faces. “To tell the truth, I was training to be a shaman.”

  “A what?”

  “Oh,” Sunbright fumbled for words. “Um. A healer among my people, but more than that. A warrior, but more a prophet, a seer, a reader of portents. Dreams are very important, for they teach us—”

  She cut him off with a wave of her hand and said, “Why was your training interrupted? Did you rebel against your teacher?”

  “What? Oh, no,” he said. Now he fiddled with his hands, jamming his thumbs in his belt. “You learn on your own by embarking on a spirit quest. But I lost the ability to learn along the way.”

  “How?”

  “I was sucked dry by a—” He stopped and looked around uneasily. This tunnel could match the Underdark, and be just as haunted. “—by a thing that sucks spirits. I lived, but there’s, uh, a hole in my soul. It’s a wound that won’t close.”

  Like the ache in his heart for the lost Greenwillow.

  “Just what we need,” snipped the woman. “A big booby with holes in his guts and probably his head. Well, we’ll let you stay until Ox feels better. After that, just remember I give the orders, and you better hop to.”

  “Agreed,” said Sunbright solemnly. “May I ask you a question?”

  Immediately suspicious, she snapped, “What?”

  “How long have you lived in these tunnels?”

  “Since before I can remember. I’m a foundling. Do you know what that is?”

  The shaman-to-be ignored the sarcasm. “Where did you get that knife? It looks elven.”

  “It is, I’m told. It came with me, inherited since forever.”

  And without another word, she stalked off down the tunnel to the homestead.

  Sunbright was left talking to himself in the dark. “Another thing I forgot to add. Shamans are teachers. But you need to have the student listen in order to explain something.…”

  Chapter 9

  Karsus was away. No one knew where. With all the inbred intrigue of the empire, Candlemas first suspected that everyone knew but wouldn’t tell, but even pestering folks couldn’t make them spill secrets, and he concluded that really, no one knew where Karsus had gone. This was both mysterious and frightening, considering how heavily the empire depended on the man.

  Assigned no particular tasks—no one could even guess what Karsus wanted Candlemas to do—the friendless mage wandered the halls, laboratories, workshops, animal collections, and libraries. Everywhere were fascinating magical works, most of which he couldn’t understand, but idleness made him itchy. At least, slaving for Lady Polaris, he’d had too much work to be bored. Uselessness was a new sensation.

  Finally, he sought out Lady Aquesita. He told himself he was merely being useful, seeking out Karsus’s only living relative for practical advice. But in fact, he had a nagging doubt something else pushed him. Another weird sensation he couldn’t finger.

  By now he’d oriented himself somewhat. Karsus controlled the top of a low hill called Mystryl’s Mound by some. There had originally been two mansions atop it and a half dozen smaller ones encircling it. As his importance grew, Karsus had bought or been given all of them, and the city had erected an encircling wall and called the entire complex Castle Karsus. The eccentric magician had then, as if to put his own stamp on it, had the buildings linked and modified and added to, with some torn down or turned at a crazy angle, until the whole sprawl was brain wrenching to look at. The most disturbing aspects for Candlemas were the doors that opened from third floors into midair, or the winding staircases that just stopped.

  But Lady Aquesita had been given a smaller mansion—Candlemas suspected she’d coveted the gardens—stripped all rococo from her sight, painted it a lovely rose, and concentrated on improving the grounds. So his sandals crunched on plain white gravel as he wended his way to her “simple cottage” of only sixty-odd rooms and its acres of gardens both symmetrical and wild.

  A manservant conducted Candlemas to a stretch of garden behind a tall screen of blue-green spruces. There Lady Aquesita directed a dozen gardeners in the planting of a wagonful of cuttings and small bushes. She wore a gown of spring green that featured gold lace tucked and folded to hide her ample curves. She was issuing clear and polite orders for the plants’ placement when Candlemas rounded the corner. Oddly, she stopped in mid sentence to brush back her hair and smile brightly.

  “Good day, milady.” Candlemas found his stomach fluttering as he spoke, as if he’d eaten rye bread and beer for breakfast. “I, uh, just came to see you. Or, how you were doing. Or, rather, uh, whether you knew where your c-cousin was. Karsus, I m-mean.” Damn it, why was he stuttering?

  Aquesita licked her lips and fussed with her hair some more. “Good day, Master Candlemas,” she said brightly. “I trust you’re well.”

  She glanced at the servants and gardeners, told them to carry on, then took his arm to lead him along another path. Candlemas supposed she had some secret to convey. He found the touch of her cool hand tingly, as if she were enchanted. Or enchanting him.

  “I’m so glad you’ve come, Candlemas. I wanted to
show you some of my work. I like to show off my gardens, and I get so few visitors.”

  The mage nodded vaguely. He’d come to ask about Karsus, though. Or had he already? He couldn’t recall. What was wrong with him?

  She seemed to read his mind, saying, “Oh, Karry is away. That’s Karsus, my little cousin. No one knows where, least of all unimportant me. But he’ll return shortly and throw the whole castle into a tizzy. But I suspect you want something to do in the meantime. You seem the responsible, productive sort I so admire. I suggest you find an unused bench and work at whatever you like. Any of the apprentices will fetch whatever you need. Karry has nine hundred of them, I think he said once. I’m sure someone as clever as you can think of lots to do.”

  Candlemas found himself grinning like an idiot. He hadn’t felt clever lately, actually the opposite, since he knew less magic than most of the apprentices. But her words made him feel clever, against all logic.

  “That’s kind of you, Lady Aquesita. I was wondering—”

  “Please, call me Sita,” she interrupted. Her smile seemed brighter than the sun. Her cheeks rounded nicely, he thought, and were dimpled at the corners enticingly. Funny he’d never noticed that on a woman before.

  As they strolled along a blue slate path, Candlemas suddenly wasn’t concerned about Karsus at all, only walking and talking with Sita. Perhaps the outside air had infected his brain, sucking out the nourishment. His feet felt lighter too, and the grass and flowers smelled heavenly.

  “Oh, I can keep busy,” he assured her. “But what did you want to show me? I’d love to see anything you find interesting. What were you directing so competently back there?”

  Strangely, she blushed, and tightened her grip on his arm, tugging his elbow to brush her round bosom. When Candlemas jerked away, she deftly drew him back and said, “Speaking of work, that’s more of mine. As I mentioned before, my lifelong project has become the gathering of the cream of the empire. Inside, I’ve tried to collect the most beautiful artifacts our people can fabricate. Out here, I collect their natural works.”

  She stopped at a long raised bed of small flowers, all the colors of the rainbow jumbled in soft petals.