Joel Rosenberg - [D'Shai 01] - D'Shai

by Joel Rosenberg - [D'Shai 01]

  “Imagine my joy.”

  Gray Khuzud joined the others down in the sand, and the juggling started: he, Fhilt, Enki Duzun and Sala passing juggling sticks back and forth between the four of them in a complex-appearing weave that had the crowd oooing and aaaahing.

  I was so jealous I could have spit—that was something I could have done, something I should have been in on.

  The juggling segued into Evrem’s normal second-night act, the shower of cobras. I turned away from the window until I knew it was over. I don’t like snakes.

  Gray Khuzud and Fhilt rejoined us in the third-story room. Both were sweaty, their naked torsos gleaming in the dim light, except where sand stuck to their bodies. Gray Khuzud exercised his seniority by being first at the washbasin, splashing water on with quick, economical cupping motions, then holding out his arms so that I could quickly towel him off.

  “Very nice juggling,” I said, sincerely. “Good snap on the tosses.”

  Fhilt bowed dramatically, his arms widespread. “Thank you, Eldest Son Acrobat. But you only speak the truth.” He slapped his hands together, then splashed water on his face and chest. “Ah, I am hot and sharp tonight. As soon as you’re healed up, let’s see if we can take the phantom club routine all the way.”

  I loved the idea, but I was a bit nervous about it. The notion of taking, the audience all the way along from juggling only real clubs to only phantom clubs was risky. Gray Khuzud could have done it, I’m sure, but maybe I couldn’t.

  As I dried him off, Fhilt leaned next to me. “What did you find?” he whispered.

  “Later,” I whispered back.

  “That’s what you said before. Tell.”

  “Nothing.” I shrugged. “Nothing I could use at all.”

  “That’s a pity,” Fhilt said, as though he meant that stands to reason.

  Gray Khuzud cleared his throat. “Let us play this town tonight, and leave the road for the road. Time for highwire.”

  I moved to the window.

  As always, Gray Khuzud’s timing was impeccable: as I looked out, Enki Duzun had gripped the tow-rope, and Large Egda was hauling her rapidly into the air, two full manheights above the highwire.

  She let go of the rope and lithely dropped to the highwire.

  There was a sudden crunch, and a twang, and something whizzed by my ear.

  “No!” I’m not sure whether I shouted it or heard it, or both.

  Enki Duzun fell the full three stories, off-balance.

  For a moment, I thought, I hoped, she was going to make the net, but she only hit the edge of it, then twisted and slammed down hard on the hard ground below, so hard I swear I felt it more than heard it.

  I was already running for the stairs. I stumbled and staggered down to the ground floor.

  The crowd was on their feet, voices raised in useless cries. I tried to shove my way through, not mindful of rank or status, but the press of bodies pushed me back. I shoved in, and out of the corner of my eye saw a thick hand snatching at a swordhilt, another fist raised to strike, both of them freezing in place when a harsh voice cut through the noise.

  “Let him through, all of you. Quickly, Arefai, Edelfaule, run and get the wizard.“ Lord Toshtai’s voice was level, but powerful.

  The crowd parted for me.

  Somebody was trying to pull at her arms, but I pushed him out of the way and knelt over her.

  She was bent in the wrong places, like a broken toy.

  “Help her up,” some idiot said.

  “No.” You don’t move a fall victim until the wizard arrives, you don’t let a fall victim move until the wizard arrives—you have to let him freeze their bones in place first.

  I brushed at her face, clearing the sand and blood away from the corner of her mouth, gently cupping her cheek in my hand. She tried to say something, I think—I could feel the muscles in her neck and jaw try to work—but then she vomited blood onto my arm, and then she died in front of me.

  Just like that.

  I held her in my arms, but her body was already cooling when Narantir got there.

  * * *

  8

  Stormy Night

  MY FATHER SAT alone in the dungeon. The barred rooms were empty; few remain long in Lord Toshtai’s dungeon. A dungeon isn’t where our beloved ruling class stores living people, not like the Foulsmelling Ones of Bhorlani do. No; our dungeons are for dead people, for those who know that they’re about to die, and for those who don’t know that they’re dead yet.

  Enki Duzun lay under a shroud, only her face visible. She looked more asleep than dead, if you didn’t look too closely.

  I didn’t look too closely.

  Gray Khuzud gripped my arm. “How could it happen, Kami Khuzud?” he said, more statement than question.

  Equipment fails, but not our equipment. Not if it’s properly checked.

  “Are you asking me if I checked the rigging?” I asked.

  He looked at me for a long, long moment. It was all clear. He was supposed to say something like:

  Of course I am not asking that of you, Kami Khuzud. Of course I trust you, Kami Khuzud.

  Of course I know that you checked it, that you would not have been careless with the lives of us all.

  Of course I know that you are not your sister’s murderer, Kami Khuzud.

  But he licked his lips and swallowed hard.

  “Yes,” he said. “I am not accusing, Kami Khuzud,” he said, grasping my shoulder. “Truthfully, I am not accusing. I am just asking.”

  I didn’t answer; I just turned and left, leaving the old man alone.

  The truth was out in the rain; it only took me a few moments to find it.

  The threatening clouds had rolled in, the storm was dumping rain down on the empty courtyard, and Enki Duzun was dead. Rain washes away dirt and blood; sometimes, if it rains hard enough, if it just slams down hard against you, it can wash away feeling.

  I stood in the cold rain, a bag of tools at my feet, the end of the highwire in my hand, and the storm raging overhead, skeins of lightning sometimes so bright they left the patterns behind in my eyes. The water mixed with tears as I stood out in the cold rain, the twin columns of the granaries looming darkly above me, just within the walls of the keep.

  The walls may have been high enough to repel an invader, but they provided me no cover from the rain; I was chilled to the bone. But perhaps a distant fury warmed me, if only a little, as I stood there, the evidence of my sister’s murder in my hands.

  The light flickered in the armory window, but it might as well not have. There was nothing I could do—even if I could make my way into the room, something I’d been barely able to do under favorable conditions, what was I to do? Challenge Refle to a duel?

  Assume for the moment that he wouldn’t summon the guards to have me hauled away before Lord Toshtai, postulate that he didn’t simply run me through, pretend he chose to turn his face from the fact that I was a peasant, what good would that do? I wasn’t a swordsman; he could simply toss me a sword and then hack me into little, bloody chunks. The members of our beloved ruling class didn’t turn their faces from a peasant’s impudence, not when they didn’t have to. It had been one thing to face Refle down in NaRee’s garden, but this was another.

  Lord Toshtai would hardly complain about him hacking a burglar to death. Or killing an attempted murderer.

  The lamps at the periphery of the courtyard still flickered in the dark and the rain. Even in that light, it was easy to tell that the wire either had been worn down by rubbing against the bracket or cut, and cut smoothly, by hard steel.

  I knew for a fact that it had not been worn down against the bracket. That would have taken weeks and months, and I had checked the gear just that afternoon. The Eresthais had checked it the day before; the troupe of Gray Khuzud does not go into a performance without its tack in order.

  So, strands had been cut. It was all clear.

  Refle had not been satisfied with simply beating me, simply breaki
ng my bones and bruising my flesh; when he had heard that I had been put back together, he had decided to take the next step, beyond hurting me. Most people who don’t use mahrir, wizard’s magic, assume that it can do anything; Refle didn’t know that Narantir had put only my bones together, leaving the muscles broken.

  The first use of the highwire in our show was when Large Egda lifted me up to the wire; he had just seen that yesterday. Clumsy Kami Khuzud was always first on the wire, because that made everybody else seem even more graceful.

  The wire was supposed to snap, sending clumsy Kami Khuzud dropping to the ground, removing Refle’s competition for NaRee’s affections with a dull, sodden thud.

  I wished it had happened just that way. I wished, as hard as I could wish, that I was a warrior.

  But wishing only makes wishes come true for wizards, and then only sometimes. I was just a clumsy acrobat, standing out in the rain, doing nothing of any value or importance.

  I threw the bag of tools over my shoulder as I went to the rigging and climbed up, into the night, into the storm. My bruises protested against the strain, but I didn’t care. It didn’t matter.

  The wind picked up, snatching at me, its cold fingers clawing at my face, but I climbed up to the highwire platform. The other end of the wire was still bolted there, and the bolt properly wired tightly in place, then glued into place.

  You don’t want the inner end of the highwire to loosen. Somebody might die.

  The adjustments are always done from the far side, whether that’s attached to a local surface or to our own outer platform, carried with our gear.

  I took out a chisel and hammer, and knelt on the platform in the wind and the rain, and hammered the glue into shards that were picked up and taken away in the wind and the rain, until I revealed the nut wired into place beneath.

  My fingers clawed at the wire, blindly. Tears in your eyes can blind you, if only for a while.

  Or perhaps they can make you see more clearly, if only for a while.

  I finally worked the wire loose, coiled it and stuck it in my pack.

  “You want to what?” The servitor on duty at the entrance to the residence wing of the donjon couldn’t have looked more surprised if I had told her I wanted to have her youngest child for dinner.

  “I would like to see Lord Toshtai, please,” I repeated as I stood there, dripping on the carpet.

  Anger plus judgment equals a constant, and there was a black fury inside me. I know that I was supposed to phrase my request for an audience formally, indirectly, euphemistically, making it impossible for somebody who wasn’t already determined to take offense to do so. But my sister was dead, cold, stretched out on a stone slab in the dungeon below, waiting for her funeral, and the light still flickered in Refle’s window.

  Across the tiled floor, the two warriors on duty eyed me expressionlessly, as though I was just a piece of furniture. I didn’t suppose that benign neglect would last if I were to barge through, past the slim woman in the rose tunic.

  Her fingers reached toward a bell rope, then stopped. I wasn’t sure whether I was supposed to be relieved or angered. I couldn’t have been much more angered.

  “No,” she said, as though to herself, then faced me directly. “Return to your quarters, Kami Khuzud; bathe yourself, and dress in your finest. I will have word sent to Lord Arefai and Lord Toshtai’s secretary that you, with all proper humility and formality, respectfully request an audience, should that at some point amuse him.”

  She reached out and touched my arm. “I am so very sorry about your sister, Eldest Son Acrobat.” Her eyes were wet.

  I turned and walked away.

  “You did what?” Evrem’s head spun to the side so fast that he startled the snake he was holding; it almost bit him. “Have you no consideration at all? For your father, for the rest of us, for me?”

  “Stick a cobra up your back passage, Evrem,” I said, tightening the drawstring of my trousers, then tying the knot with a quick, angry flourish. I’m good at flourishes.

  He looked at me for a long moment, then kissed the snake on top of its flat head with a gentleness that made me shiver, and put it back in its basket.

  Large Egda’s face was grave. “I could have caught her. If I had been there. Stop her with my body.”

  Fhilt looked pityingly at Large Egda. “The fall still would have hurt her, probably killed her.” He turned to me. “You don’t have enough to persuade Toshtai. I’m not even sure you’re right.”

  “I have to try.”

  Can’t you understand, Fhilt? Trying is all I have.

  Naked from the waist up, barefoot, I padded across the carpet and went through the mess that was my trunk until I found a clean silk tunic, and pulled it out. I checked it over for loose threads, finding one and trimming it with a candle flame.

  I slipped into the tunic and belted it tightly around my hips, ignoring the way the belt cut into my bruises. I picked up my shoes.

  No. A peasant is always properly dressed with or without shoes, with or without dung squishing up between his toes; and an acrobat spends most of his time barefoot.

  I will go before Lord Toshtai as I am, not as I wish I was. I am just an acrobat, not even a kazuh acrobat, and an acrobat is only a peasant.

  “You really think it was Refle.” Fhilt tilted his head to one side, as though something had occured to him. He shook his head as though to dismiss the subject.

  “Say it,” I said.

  “What?”

  “You’re thinking something—say it.”

  Fhilt raised a palm. “No, it’s not fair.”

  “Say it.”

  “Very well, then.” He pursed his lips for a long moment. “It won’t do any harm; you’ve thought the same thing. If it wasn’t an accident, if you’re right that Refle boobytrapped our gear, then if you’d only have left NaRee alone, your sister would still be alive.”

  Large Egda loomed over him. “You take that back. You don’t say that to him.”

  “Egda, you idiot, it doesn’t matter whether or not I say it: it’s true.”

  “You take that back.”

  Large Egda’s hands reached out for Fhilt, but the big man was slow, always slow. Fhilt ducked beneath Large Egda’s arm and swung his elbow, hard, into Egda’s side.

  Egda’s breath left him in a whoosh. Fhilt brought back his elbow for another strike, but I slipped between them, shoving Fhilt aside, and turning toward Large Egda.

  “Stop it, the both of you.”

  Large Egda, ignoring the pain, was still reaching out for Fhilt.

  I put my hand on his chest as he moved forward. It was like trying to stop a falling tree: my feet slid back on the floor.

  “Stop it, Egda,” I said.

  The words did what force couldn’t. Large Egda didn’t stop looking at Fhilt, but he did stop walking forward.

  Fhilt stood apart, a thin smile creasing his face. “I don’t need your help, Kami Khuzud.”

  I didn’t much care whether or not he did. A bit of innocent roughhousing is part of troupe life; fighting among troupe members is wrong, it’s not part of the Way.

  Egda rubbed at his side, his dark eyes never leaving Fhilt. His face was flat and gray, clay molded by a careless sculptor. “You don’t say things like that about Kami Khuzud,” he said.

  “Just leave it be, Egda.”

  Egda’s forehead creased. “I know I’m stupid, Kami Khuzud,” he said, his voice plaintive. “Can’t help it. I will never get any better. You are smart. You tell me where I’m wrong. What could you do to make it fair for Refle to hurt Enki Duzun?”

  I shook my head. “It’s not a matter of fair.”

  “Should be.” He turned to Fhilt. “You think you are smart. You tell me, you tell me how Kami Khuzud being with NaRee makes it right for Refle to hurt Enki Duzun.”

  “It’s not that simple. It’s not a matter of right, it’s a matter of—oh, I can’t explain anything to you.” Fhilt threw his hands in the air and stalked out
of the room, just as Sala bustled in, her eyes red and puffy.

  “Oh, Kami Khuzud, he didn’t mean it. Your father is sorry, really he is.” Always watching after me, after us, as usual.

  “Sala.” I swallowed, but couldn’t go on.

  “It’s so hard being accused of something you didn’t do, I know, Kami Khuzud, but you have to live with it, sometimes.”

  “Why, Sala,” I said, forcing a smile, “that almost made sense.”

  “What? Don’t try to confuse me.” She pressed me to her ample bosom. “Kami Khuzud, I am so sorry. I didn’t have a chance to tell you, to tell her, to ...”

  One of the many things I don’t understand is why we all talk only in halting, stilted voices to people in grief, saying only that which has been said a hundred thousand times before, a pliant procession of moving mouths going back through time, to the beginning, when the First God made man out of dung, water, and straw.

  I held her tightly. Sala was the closest thing to a mother I’d had for more years than I cared to think about; she was the only thing that Enki Duzun had ever had as a mother.

  Those that we love sometimes soften us. My anger, at least for the moment, was gone, and with that, my resolution.

  Of course, that was the moment that two of Lord Toshtai’s warriors, each wearing light bone armor, a sword, and a grim expression, stopped in front of the door.

  “Our Lord Toshtai will see you now,” the senior said, each word carefully paced. I had once watched a woodcutter chop down a tur tree with just that even rhythm.

  The guard at the door held out his hand for my pack; I handed it over without protest. He dumped it out on the table and examined it, silently handing back the pack itself, then dumping my various tools in it, as well as the cable coil.

  He opened a wooden box. “What might these be?”

  “Practice knives,” I said, reaching for one. “They’re for juggling when you don’t—”

  “No.” One of the warriors at my side grabbed my wrist, neither gently nor roughly. Firmly, as though he had strength to spare.