The Burning City

by Jerry Pournelle

  “Sure you can find us?” Whandall asked.

  “I know the language. How can you hide a wagon train?” Nothing Was Seen asked reasonably. “Tonight or tomorrow.”

  “I don’t remember their acting like this,” Hammer said. He had come up to walk beside Whandall as others drove their wagons. His sling was barely concealed and he had a bag full of rocks.

  “Nor I. Don’t show our strength yet.”

  The Toronexti seemed to be engaged in a ritual. One came forward holding a leather strip. Something was wrong with the hand that held it. Two fingers were missing right to the wrist.

  Because he was hidden beneath the masks and leathers, there was no other way to identify him at all.

  He unrolled the leather strip and held it in front of him as he spoke. “Greetings, strangers to our land. This is Tep’s Town. We are the Toronexti, spokespeople and servants to the Lord’s Witnesses of Lordshills, Lord’s Town, and Tep’s Town. You are welcome here. Your trade goods are safe here.

  “We regret that there is a small charge for this protection, and another for passage through our territory. Our inspectors will assess the charges depending on what goods you are carrying.

  “Do you submit to the authority of the Lord’s Witnesses?”

  “You have some proof of your authority?” Morth asked dryly.

  The Toronexti spokesman beamed. “We do! We have a charter from the Lord’s Witnesses.”

  “Ah.” Morth seemed boundlessly amused. “May I see it?”

  “Whatever for?” Whandall demanded.

  Morth shrugged.

  Half Hand turned to his colleagues. They huddled. Finally the spokesman emerged and said, “One of you may approach the charter. It is kept inside the gatehouse.”

  “Inside,” Whandall said to Morth. “So it won’t burn? I’m guessing.”

  “A reasonable guess,” Morth said. “Note the cook fire, to placate Yangin-Atep.” Louder he said, “I will approach. I am Morth of Atlantis, wizard to the wagon train of Whandall Feathersnake, whose fame is known to the four winds.”

  Morth went inside. Whandall conferred with Hammer and Insolent Lizard. “Did anyone see them last night?”

  Lizard said, “I thought I heard something up the road, but nobody came close, and I’d swear no one came through the forest.”

  “So they knew wagons were coming, but not how many,” Whandall said. “Maybe they didn’t bring their whole strength—”

  Greathand was shouting. “Hey, harpy!”

  The wagon train boiled with activity. Every armed man turned out. The women slammed the wagon covers closed. Hammer and Insolent Lizard were already running toward Greathand’s wagon before Whandall could react to the traditional shout of a wagonman for help.

  Two Toronexti stood menaced by Greathand and his hammer. Four more had drawn swords, and another held a spear. Greathand was shouting, the Toronexti were shouting, and no one understood a word…

  “What is this?” Whandall demanded.

  “We are Toronexti inspectors, and this man is resisting,” one of the Toronexti said.

  “Hold off, Greathand,” Whandall said. “If you please.” To the Toronexti: “Our wizard is inspecting your documents. Surely you can wait for this? Please go back to your guardhouse for instructions from your officers!”

  Interestingly, they did.

  “Not Lordkin,” Hammer said. “Not as I remember Lordkin, anyway.”

  “It’s an old puzzle.” Lordkin wouldn’t acknowledge any authority of officers and wouldn’t worry about charters in the first place. But he knew Toronexti only from the Lordkin’s viewpoint.

  Whandall drew his wagon owners around him. “This could be tricky. Watch me, and be careful. We do not want to fight. Stone, go see what’s keeping Morth.”

  Green Stone returned a few minutes later. “He’s looking at an enormous pile of parchment,” Stone said. “They won’t let him touch it, but one of them, a crazy-looking guy in a robe and a funny hat, is spreading out the stuff on a table. One of the sheets has huge writing that says ‘witnesseth’ and then some other stuff I wasn’t close enough to see.”

  “You can read it?” Greathand asked.

  Willow had taught all the children to read the languages of the Hemp Road, but—

  “Sure, it’s in that language Mother and Dad use when they don’t want us kids to understand them,” Stone said. “Morth taught me that speech. And the letters are the same as we use.”

  “Did Morth say how long he’d be?”

  “He said give him a quarter hour, but it wouldn’t make much difference. Whatever that means. Dad, there was something else scrawled across the ceiling in big black letters. ‘I killed Sapphire my wife. I burned my house to hide her corpse, but Yangin-Atep’s rage took me and I burned more. Fire surrounded and killed me. But I am not Yangin-Atep’s! I am kinless!’”

  Some old memory was knocking at his skull, demanding entry, but there just wasn’t time. “All right. Time to get ready. We’ll have to let them inspect the wagons,” Whandall said. “The only thing we have to hide is gold, and that’s hidden as well as it can be.”

  “Those bottles aren’t hidden,” Hammer said. “A whole wagonload!”

  “Leave those to me.”

  Morth returned chuckling. “It’s a charter all right. And regulations. What they can collect, what they can’t. In theory they’re limited to one part in ten, except they can collect up to nine parts in ten of any tar being imported.”

  “No one would bring tar into Tep’s Town,” Whandall protested.

  Green Stone said, “One part in ten isn’t all that bad—”

  “Then there are the exceptions,” Morth said. “Whandall, that document seems to have grown over the fifty years or so when there was still trade from outside into Tep’s Town.”

  “I don’t remember there ever being any land trade,” Hammer protested.

  “Neither do they, nor does anyone living,” Morth said. “But there are still regulations and rules, and what it amounts to is they can take anything they want if they read it all closely enough.”

  “And they’re sure to have read it,” Whandall said.

  “Well, no, they haven’t,” Morth said. “They can’t read. Except for that one, the odd one with the robe, who keeps babbling about old crimes. Egon Forigaft.”

  “Forigaft.” A Lordkin name. Again, the old memory would not come.

  “He appears to be their clerk. They treat him with an elaborate respect that he does not deserve, but Whandall, he is the only one of them who can read. They don’t care what that charter says, I think. They will take what they believe is in their best interest.”

  “Maybe that’s why these costumes, and showing us the charter,” Whandall mused. “They’ve never seen foreign trade. Let’s find out.”

  He strolled rapidly up to the gatehouse. “Noble Toronexti,” he said. He’d learned long ago flattery was cheap goods. “We are the first of our kind in many years. Others will come, bearing many goods, cook pots, pottery of the finest make, skins of exotic animals. Furs and feathers and gems to adorn your women, all this can we bring, but none will come if we do not return happy.”

  The Toronexti officer grinned behind his mask. “And what do you bring this time?”

  “Little of value, for this is an exploration. But we do have these, as gifts for your officers.” He waved, and one of the boys brought a cheap carpet, laid it down, and unrolled it. Three bronze knives lay there, with half a dozen showy rings with glass stones, the kind that Whandall was accustomed to giving Hemp Road children as trinkets.

  The Toronexti scooped them up eagerly, carpet and all. The officer eyed Whandall’s knife. “Yours is even more elaborate—”

  “Take it if you like.” The Toronexti was already stepping forward as Whandall said, “That’s how I got it.”

  The Toronexti officer stopped. He eyed Whandall’s ears, then his tattoo. “You have been here before.”

  Whandall said nothing
.

  “A good way to get a knife,” the Toronexti said. “What more have you brought?”

  “There will be more of value when we leave,” Whandall said.

  “If you trade well.”

  “We will.” Whandall sighed. “I show you the most valuable thing we have.” He waved again, and Green Stone brought another cheap carpet. Curse, Whandall thought. I should have realized they have no real carpets here. They’ll all want them!

  Stone unrolled the carpet. Twelve black glass bottles were nested in wood shavings.

  “I know the people of Lord’s Town will pay well for these,” he said. “Let’s think, now. The Lord’s Town kinless will give me more for these bottles than they’d give you. A lot more. Because I don’t work for the Lords.” Whandall watched the tax man’s face: was that still an insult? And would the man see past it, to see that Whandall was right?

  “With,” the tax man said. “Work with. Show me those two.” He pointed to the smallest bottles.

  “The little ones?”

  “They’re finer work.”

  Whandall’s face didn’t change as he realized the Toronexti had nothing like glass bottles. They were common enough outside, but he had never seen a glass bottle in Tep’s Town! They must not be in the sea trade.

  And they liked the smallest ones. Whandall remembered Green Stone’s tale of the spirals of bottles made by Morth’s magic. They’d left thousands of bottles smaller than these! What might they be worth here?

  Later. Carefully Whandall lifted out the two tiny bottles. As he put one in the Toronexti’s hand, he winked at Morth.

  The wizard did nothing Whandall could see, but the bottle broke into a paste of sand and putrid liquid that ran on the officer’s fingers.

  “Curse!” Whandall exclaimed.

  “Curse indeed. What is that?” the Toronexti demanded.

  “Extract from civet cat glands,” Whandall said. “It is used to make perfume.”

  “Perfume? That?” He reached for the other bottle. It too broke into putrescence.

  Whandall stared, bug-eyed, and cried out as if strangling. Then he put a third bottle in the tax man’s limp hand. Again the glass crumbled into sand and stinking liquid. The Toronexti flung it away with a curse. The other tax man broke into wild laughter. “Magic? Magic doesn’t work here, you fool!”

  Morth said, “I’m sorry, Feathersnake! These magic bottles will disintegrate at the touch of anyone in this cursed town. They’ll have to be emptied over a basin!”

  “You say the kinless of Lord’s Town will pay for this? To make perfume?” the Toronexti officer demanded.

  “Well, they do in Condigeo!”

  “Then let them do it! We certainly don’t want that stuff. The bottles now—”

  “Another time,” Morth said. “They can be made without magic. I had not realized the backwardness of this place.”

  “Backward? Us?” But the Toronexti guard was laughing. “So what else do you have?”

  “Little, for we thought those the best things to sell.”

  “Why’d you think that?” the Toronexti asked craftily.

  “We speak to ship captains,” Whandall said. “We learn. What, would you know all the secrets of a master trader?” He smiled broadly.

  Behind him his wagoneers had arrayed themselves. Greathand leaned on a two-handed sword, point down. Hammer and some of the younger kinless idly held slings and rocks. Green Stone held an ax and wore a big Lordkin knife. They all smiled and listened to their wagonmaster. And stood with weapons ready.

  Whandall had no trouble reading the Toronexti leader’s thoughts. The wagoneers might be telling truth—there were more and richer trains to come if this one came out whole. There were thirty armed men, more than the strength the Toronexti had brought today. The wagon train would be more valuable coming out than going in, and it would come at a time when they could bring their entire strength.

  “Do you have more of those rings?”

  “A dozen, as a gift,” Whandall said.

  “Food?”

  Whandall threw down a box of dried bison meat.

  The Toronexti grinned. “Pass, friends.”

  CHAPTER

  72

  The trail crossed the Deerpiss a final time. “Now,” Whandall told Green Stone. “We’ll see Tep’s Town as soon as we’ve got around this grove.”

  The town lay ahead, down a gentle slope. Thirty men armed and wearing Lordsmen armor blocked the road. They stood to attention, not menacing, but there was no way around them.

  “Bandits,” Green Stone shouted.

  Whandall stood on the driving bench and gestured violently at the following wagons, both hands out, flat, empty, pushing down. Put down your weapons! Green Stone saw the urgency in his father’s face. He rushed back to the others, urging calm.

  Whandall dropped from the wagon. He stepped forward, the big engraved knife prominently sheathed. “Hail.”

  “Hail.” The spokesman was elderly, his face hidden in the Lordsman helmet and armor, but the voice sounded familiar. “Whandall Feathersnake. We have heard the stories.” He turned to speak to someone behind him, a man hidden by the ranks of guardsmen. “It’s him, Lord. Whandall Placehold, returned.” He turned back, looked at the caravan, and turned again. “Come back rich, he has.”

  “Peacevoice Waterman,” Whandall said.

  “Master Peacevoice Waterman to you, sir!” There was some amusement and no malice in the voice. “Not surprised you remember me. Sir.”

  “Is that Lord Samorty in command, then?”

  “No, sir, Lord Samorty is dead these five years, sir.”

  Somehow he was surprised. But Lords did die; they only seemed to live forever. “May we pass? We come to trade,” Whandall said.

  “Up to the commander, sir!”

  With patience, Whandall said, “Then let’s talk to the commander—”

  Waterman’s face didn’t change. He turned and shouted, “Whandall Placehold wishes to speak with the commander, Lord!”

  The hidden Lord said something in a low voice. “Lord says a quarter hour, Master Peacevoice!” a guardsman shouted.

  “Quarter hour, sir!” Waterman said. He returned to a position of rigid attention. When it was clear he wasn’t going to say or do anything else, Whandall went back to the wagons.

  Morth was grinning. “Interesting.”

  “Why?” Whandall demanded.

  “Look.” Morth pointed. A small cart drawn by one of the big horses the Lords used had pulled up behind the ranks of guards. Three workers had taken a small tent from the wagon and were busily setting it up. Another set a charcoal burner down. It was clear from the way he handled it that it held a live fire, and sure enough, he put a tea kettle on top of it. Another worker brought a table, then two chairs, went away for a while, then returned with a third chair.

  The kinless workers were dressed all in yellow and black shirts. Whandall remembered Samorty’s gardeners, but those weren’t the same colors. Morth frowned. “Quintana,” he said.

  “Say?”

  “Those are Quintana’s colors,” Morth said. “And it appears from his age that that’s Lord Quintana himself. He must be seventy years old now, and no magic to help. And he came himself. Whandall, they are certainly taking you seriously.”

  “Is this good?”

  Morth shrugged.

  A corporal came up to them. “Whandall Feathersnake, Lord Chief Witness Quintana requests your company at tea,” he said formally. “And asks that you permit the sage Morth of Atlantis to accompany you.”

  Morth’s grin turned sour, but he said, “We will be delighted. Come, Whandall.”

  It was Whandall’s turn to grin.

  A servant stood behind Quintana and held his chair as Quintana stood. “Whandall Feathersnake, I am delighted to meet you. Morth of Atlantis, it is good to see you again. You look younger than the last time we met.”

  “Indeed, I am younger, Lord Quintana.”

  Quintana s
miled wryly. “I don’t suppose you can sell me anything that will do the same for me?”

  “Not so long as you insist on living in that blighted area you call the Lordshills,” Morth said.

  “Ah. But elsewhere?”

  “Nowhere short of the distant mountains,” Morth said. “I’ve found a wonderful place half a hundred days’ walk west by north—”

  Quintana nodded. “Hardly surprising. Please be seated, Wagonmaster, Sage. I can offer you tea.”

  Weak hemp tea with a smoky flavor of tar. Morth sipped and made appreciative noises. Whandall smiled: the Lord wasn’t trying to drug him.

  “May I be blunt?” Quintana said. “Wagonmaster, what are your intentions?”

  “We bring trade goods,” Whandall said. “Some fit for Lords. If we have reason, we will send in more wagons with more goods. I had hoped to make camp at Lord’s Town.”

  “There is no suitable accommodation for all of you there,” Quintana said. “We can offer lodging for you and the Sage in Lord’s Town, but there is no place for all of you, and I am certain you would prefer to remain together.”

  “Oh, yes.” Get separated, here?

  “So. Welcome back to Tep’s Town,” Quintana said.

  Morth chuckled.

  “You are amused, Sage?”

  “Mildly so,” Morth said. “And curious as to why the chief witness would come personally to greet a trader.”

  Quintana’s expression didn’t change. “We are not often visited by wealthy caravans.”

  “Even so, I would wager this is the first one you have met.”

  “It is also the first I have seen, as you must know. And I grow old; I grow bored.” Quintana said. He stood abruptly. “I grow frail. Master Peacevoice Waterman will escort you to a suitable camping ground. Perhaps I may visit you there. Welcome to Tep’s Town.”

  Whandall invited Waterman to ride on the wagon with him.

  “Don’t mind if I do, sir,” Waterman said. “Not getting any younger.”

  “Beaten up any boys lately?” Whandall asked conversationally.

  “A few,” Waterman said. “Comes with the job. Didn’t fancy you’d have forgotten. Sir.”

  “Truth is,” Whandall said, “that was nicely judged. Here.” He pulled the sleeve from his left arm. “I can’t forget, no, but I can still pick things up. I wonder if you’ve seen the teller Tras Preetror lately?”