The Collected Short Fiction of C J Cherryh

by C. J. Cherryh

  Melot looked up at him, sweating; and he gave her no helpful clues what kind of knowledge this was or how close or friendly. "Well, when this Othis would give me trouble, my brother'd go and talk to him and put him off and sometimes master Othis'd sit and talk at him for hours— Well, maybe he told my brother something, maybe this other wizard— Hagon, Hagon's his name—" She looked again for clues and got none. "Well, he took exception, he did, to something, and somehow maybe this Othis and this Hagon were old enemies; so Hagon came into the Ram and he grabbed me and he wanted my brother to come with him or he'd mess me up good, he said, that was what he meant, anyhow. So Gatan went with him instead, me yelling after him and trying to stop him, but this Hagon he knocked me down, not with his hand, but just like I hit a wall, and he and Gatan went off in the dark.

  "Well, I was scared; and I hadn't got any help, this man I know, well, he wasn't taking on any wizard, so I went myself, and I hunted up Othis and tried to talk to him, but he was all—well, he shoved me off and called Gatan names and said as how Gatan had made a friend—a friend!—he oughtn't, and said as how he was going to get revenge on this Hagon and on my brother—" Melot drew breath. Her hands shook. She clenched them both on her knees and stopped the tremor. "This Hagon invested something in my brother, that's what Othis said; and Othis wants to put some kind of hold on him too; and now they got this problem, because they can't untangle it, and they've set up to have this duel to settle it, tomorrow, except—except—well, where's my brother in this? Who's going to see he doesn't get hurt? I mean, it's not right, Gatan never worked for either of them, they got no right, have they? They can't do that, fight over him, I mean. I figured you'd know it wasn't right, you'd just sort of like write a letter for me to these two, and maybe—maybe a letter where it could do some good, I mean like you were my lawyer and you were going to do something, but you don't have to really, I mean, just the letters, that's all. I got money enough for that; or I can get more if you tell me what. I mean, just scare 'em a little. That's all."

  "That's very interesting," the doctor said, and the heat went to Melot's face, a suspicion of condescension. "You're not a witch, then?" the doctor asked.

  "I wait tables."

  "But you're not a witch."

  "Man, there's no one got less luck than me."

  "Not born fortunate."

  "My mother coughed me out. Thought I was a stomach-ache." Melot clenched her fingers on her silver coins. "It was my birthday this Hagon walked in on, I mean, what kind of luck is that?"

  "How many days ago?"

  "Three."

  "How old are you?"

  "Thirty-three."

  "Interesting. Interesting." The lawyer hopped up from his stool and put his spectacles on, went over to a stack of books and pulled out the second from the top. He opened it on the table and leafed through it, unfolding pages into untidy charts. "What hour of the day?"

  "Third." The numbers came together out of nowhere and coincided, and Melot got off her stool and stood there with her hands clenched on her coins and her heart thumping away. "I got no luck, I never had any luck."

  "There are two kinds," the doctor said, and sent the shivers down her back.

  "You just write the letters, master Toth, that's all I want, I mean it's Gatan in trouble, not me."

  The doctor looked up over his spectacles, his dark eyes full of surmise and, for the first time, alarm. "Gatan's birthday."

  "Same. Same—we always, I mean, we always thought it was funny, like he had the luck I missed, charming folk was his talent, only he was four years later—"

  "The wrong one. Hagon got the wrong one. So did Othis." "What are you talking about?" The words came out blunt and plain and Melot felt a rush of panic. She laid her fistful of money on the table by the book. "I can't afford you doing all that. Just the letters. I mean, all you have to do is write what right is. They'll listen to you."

  The doctor hopped up and pulled out another book. He opened it and stood there riffling through it and reading here and there. "No, no," he said, and: "No, not here, not that, not here—"

  "I can't afford a lot!"

  The doctor pulled down his spectacles and turned and looked at her. "Melot Cassissinin. I'm not a wizard myself; I'm a specialist whose talent just happens to be keeping track of books and things in books. And that little talent has got me a few others— My clients usually don't come in broad daylight and my fees aren't as straightforward as you offer. The door downstairs, for instance. Hagon himself did that. Othis has contributed a few things about the place. Conveniences. They're very expensive for a wizard. But they pay them. They pay whatever I set, because I have a small talent at research—which means, madam, that no single wizard can master all of them, or many of them; a wizard's investment is too much and too deep in too few books to have any appreciation of interrelated consequences. My investment is shallow, but very, very wide. I am not, precisely, a barrister. I do not plead cases. I'm a consulting lawyer, which is quite another thing. I do not sue nor do I defend or prosecute. I merely advise. Do you understand, Melot Cassissinin? Nor do I practice a law which has to do with justice. I practice the law of nature. I render a simple service to those who meddle in it. I advise of consequences. So I suggest you have a seat, young woman, and wait."

  "It's tomorrow."

  "Yes. Quite. So is sunrise. The question is inevitability. Do sist down, madam, and don't utter a word, if you please."

  Melot subsided over to the low stool she had sat on before, sank down and hugged her arms about her knees, her knees against her chest, watching as Dr. Toth went striding down the long line of shelves against the wall and pulled down one book after another. He carried them back to his desk, dumped them atop the last, pushed his spectacles up his nose and began leafing through the pages while dust flew up and danced in the light like stormclouds. "No," he said. "No, and no." And slammed the books shut one and the other, and got up and dumped them onto the stack beside the desk.

  "If—" said Melot, thinking of the letter she had come for.

  "Hush!" the master snapped, and folded one arm and rested the other hand on his brow, standing there with his head bowed and his eyes squinched shut.

  The air chilled, not like a wind, like something had instead leached the warmth and the life out of it. That cold reached into Melot's bones and into her muscles and she could not shiver, she could only sit and sit. Then of a sudden the doctor flung up his head. "Ah!" he said, strode off on his long legs and whirled about to point a finger at her. "You! Stay on that stool. Touch nothing, hear!"

  "Yes, s-sir."

  He spun and strode off again, out the magical door and thump, thump, thump down the stairs before the door had shut; while Melot tucked her cloak about her and shivered and shivered, thinking of the small darkness with the teeth she had imagined on the stairs, in the hall below. It might have been a cat, might have been a dog or even some rat, but it had died here, it had become something awful; it lived here and it could have gotten in when the doctor opened that door, and it hated visitors, O, gods, gods, gods. Melot she sat with her teeth chattering in the shaft of light from the window and with her head spinning and her muscles weakening in their shivers.

  At last she ducked her head down against her knees and shut her eyes and tried to get the shivers out, because she was Melot Cassissinin, after all—nobody much, but she walked the streets not with a mince or a flinch, but with a sure, businesslike stride that announced to the world that here walked a woman who wanted no trouble but who was prepared to make it. And that for the thing with the teeth, for she had a sharp square heel and a quick foot and a set of lungs that would bring the house down and bring master Toth on the run. So she rested as she could after the cold had taken the strength out of her and she waited and she waited while the sun crawled across the floor and left her in the dark. The beam wandered the length of the hall and lost itself in the stacks of books, so that only one tall mountain of them was alight.

  Suddenly a c
andle lit itself, sending another chill into the air.

  Thump, thump-thump, thump—Up the stairs. Up and up the stairs, and round the turn, as the magical door opened and master Toth came in with an armload of books.

  Melot started to stand up, started to blurt out a What now, and swallowed it and sank down again on her numb backside, because Dr. Toth paid her no more heed than if she had been another stack of books. He set his books down on the stand where the candle was, flung open one and another of them, threw a sheaf of paper onto the lot and sat down on the tall stool, immediately dipping a quill into an inkpot that uncapped itself. Another small chill.

  And Melot's stomach growled. She clenched her arms across her belly, trying to silence it. Tried to think of something else. The rumbling came again, loud; and the pen-scratching stopped. Dr. Toth looked at her through his spectacles as if she were something objectionable on his carpet, then pushed his spectacles a degree higher and started writing again, flipping pages and making the candle-flame shake and shadows dance.

  Another rumble from her stomach. Melot hugged herself and sucked in air and tried to tense her muscles, which only started a shiver. Gods, gods. He would throw her out. He was only interested in his books. He did all this work and there was a fee; and she sold her other dress and Gatan's clothes, and her cooking pots and her mother's ring, and then she sold what she never had sold for money, except once for a doctor for their mother before she died. And it all came to those coins and a dull cold terror that they were not enough; that it was only the books interested Master Toth and he was working on wizard's business never thinking at all about Gatan or herself. She was only a lump sitting here bothering him in his work. It could not be a letter he was writing. What he had said he would do she could not make out, but it was all as if he was not in the habit really of doing anything beyond handing out advice; and what could she do with advice against a pair of wizards?

  Her stomach rumbled again. The pen stopped scratching and she looked up as he looked down his spectacled nose at her.

  "In the cupboard there," he said brusquely with a wave of ink-stained fingers. "Eat what you like, for the gods' sake, and watch where you're walking."

  "Yes, sir." She looked desperately where he pointed; and got off her stool onto numb legs, limped over where a small path through the stacks led to a cupboard. A candle lighted there on the counter, blink. She shivered and carefully opened the doors, found a plate of bread and fresh seed-cheese and a bottle of wine. All fresh. All as if they hadn't been lying in a cupboard all day. The air inside was chill, and the wine bottle cold as she poured into a chill cup; and the knife cold as she cut a little bread and cheese.

  Then she thought again and put it on a tray and walked timidly, fearfully up to Master Toth; but she knew how to get up to a table and deftly fill a cup with never bothering a gentleman. She set it there on the stack nearest and slipped back to feed herself, a bit of seed-cheese wrapped in bread and wine—gods, such wine, the Ram never served the like. It hit her empty stomach and made her head spin as she tidied things and closed the cupboard.

  More candles lit. The sun was going. The pen scratched away and stopped as Master Toth took a drink of wine and a left-handed nibble of cheese while he kept reading, all hunched over his books. The cheese slowly disappeared. He took up the pen again. Scratch-scribble, hastily.

  Melot crept back to her stool and sat down again, blinking owlishly. She was unbearably sleepy, three days with never but a little sleep and that dreadful, in a shameful bed. The wine sat in her stomach and hummed in her veins and whispered in her skull like bees in a hive.

  "We have it," Dr. Toth announced suddenly, "we have it!"—startling her awake, startling her hands to her sides hunting the edges of the stool among her skirts as the doctor held up his paper. "Woman, up, don't dawdle! There's precious little time."

  She stood and wobbled. Dr. Toth slid down from his perch and came and seized her by the arm, dragging her with him.

  "But," she said.

  "Time," he said. "Come along, walk, woman. Melot Cassissinin. Good gods, keep your feet under you. I trust you know where this Othis lodges."

  "Can't you magic it?" She caught her balance as the door opened and left the stairs gaping darkly in front of them, with him dragging her along in the dim light of candles which lit themselves in the stairwell, above the books and the litter. "Can't you—"

  "A practical suggestion if I had the wherewithal. I'm not wont to have to race with fools. Tomorrow you say. But which tomorrow, tomorrow of the dawn or tomorrow of the wizards, or tomorrow of the clock? Do you know? No, I thought not." Thump, thump, around the turning and down into the first hall, into the bizarre maze of books, all the candles in the sconces agleam. "Do come on, woman."

  "Yes, sir. Yes, sir." Melot skipped and ran as best she could being hauled upon in time to his long steps. The door opened for them, and the wind skirled the candles and they went out onto the porch and down, down the steps to the nightbound street.

  Melot was staggering when they had reached the Avenue, reeling along with the doctor's fingers clamped upon her wrist and tugging at her to more haste. She ran and ran still, and brought up short against the doctor's side when he stopped and gave a piercing whistle.

  More magic? She blinked. There was the least small chill; but it might have been the wind. And there down the Avenue came a public cab, a-rattle on the pavings, one of the wheeled sort, the cabman jogging along at a fair pace—a cabman without a hire, at this hour, just where the doctor needed him. Melot blinked in amazement and as the cab rattled up to a stop by the curb—"Wizards' Row, fast as you can," the doctor said to the cabman, tossed him a coin that made his jaw drop, and opened the door himself and flung Melot in, the third only time in her life she had seen the inside of a cab—

  "—but, but," she said, smothered in her skirts as the doctor shoved her over against the wall and wedged himself in, "Dr. Toth, that's wrong, it's the Rains, it's—" But the cab was off, rattling along fit to make her teeth clack. "Wizard's Row," the doctor said firmly. And the cab lurched and jolted. For that coin that had sailed through the moonlight with a wicked golden glint the cabby would run his gut out. He was doing that, and the wheels jolted and bounced. Melot clenched her jaws and clenched her fist on the hanging-strap and swayed this way and that with the doctor as they bounced along, clack, thump, and a missing stone, thud-clack. Her breath refused to come back. Her brain reeled. But I can't pay, that was gold he threw to a cabby-man, and that's all it is to him, he's rich, rich as a priest and rich as a lord, and I'm nothing, my money's not enough for him and he's young and handsome and I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, can't even pay him that way, nothing I can offer—

  —Does he take souls? Is that what he trades in?

  Thud-clack-clack. She heard the cabby panting now, felt the cab steady into that holding pace now the cabby had come to his senses and realized he had to stay alive and stay moving. It was a long, long way; but the man had gold, had gold enough to buy the cab and a soul or two, might be . . .

  Thud-clack. Sway and skid at the corners, jog and jounce. In time Melot heard the cabby panting up ahead as if his gut would burst and his life-blood spew, but he ran on, and they swayed and bumped one against the other, the doctor in his fine coat and her in her cloak, and outside the windows of the cab the neighborhood changed and changed again. The cab slowed to a walk a while, picked up: they kept moving, by fits and starts.

  And at long, long last they stopped altogether, and the cab tipped, and the cabby came round to their window, panting like a beached fish. "What number was you wanting, milor?"

  The doctor peered out. "Close enough," he said, and flung the door open and gave the man another something in his hand. The cabby stood there while Melot got out, and tried to help her; but there was dark running from his nose in the moonlight. Melot felt his hand shake and when she stepped clear the cabby just stopped and collapsed there on the curb, head between his knees. And the doctor grabbed Melot's
wrist and pulled her along willy nilly.

  Down the street, the peculiar street where more magic was than was comfortable anywhere, and some of the houses with their peculiarities . . . like fire and smoke; like ice and a permanent shimmer of recent rain. Melot quaked in her steps and came on, panting and desperate as the doctor started up long wooden steps to an unpretentious house of beams and towers.

  The door-emblem blinked at them and the door swung wide with a gust of chill hardly worse than that all up and down this street, chill to sting the lungs and make a body glad of a cloak. Candles sprang to life inside, and an old man came out of a brighter-lit room.

  "Dr. Toth," that one said—a wizard, sure he was a wizard. "What's this?"

  "An excellent question," the doctor said, and dragged Melot with him as he swept into the lighted room—a library, but ever so much neater and cleaner than his own. Melot goggled at the giltwork and the leather bindings and the lamp in dragon shape and the brass camel that held up a table on which rested an interrupted dinner and an open book.

  "Do look lively, woman!" The doctor spun her round by the arm and her startled eyes fell full on the wizard, for wizard he must be, a small gray man in a blue robe, with sad mustaches and lively blue eyes. "What does she seem like?"

  "Why—no one, no one in particular—"

  "Ah," said Dr. Toth, and he pushed Melot into a chair near the camel-table; he took the divan and helped himself to the wine. "Have some, my dear?"

  Melot reached. The goblet he put in her hand weighed ten times what it seemed, and she slopped the wine over in her startlement. Gold, it was gold. She blinked at one and the other of them, and looked doubtfully at the gray wizard as he sat down on the remaining chair.

  "Read this," said Dr. Toth, and handed the gray wizard a paper from his pocket. "Does that make sense?"

  The gray wizard held it up to his eyes and adjusted it this way and that in myopic concentration. His mouth moved and stopped moving and he looked up with his blue eyes wide. "Who does this describe?"