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

by Joel Rosenberg - [D'Shai 01]

  The guard extracted one and tested the edge against the side of my arm. It was cool and smooth. Unsurprisingly, it left only a white mark on my skin that vanished momentarily—it was a practice knife, after all; surprisingly, he tested each of the other five knives against my arm before closing the box and slipping it back in my pack.

  The search concluded, the door opened, and two guards led me down a long hall, the white stone smooth and cold beneath my feet, past screened-off rooms, some of them dark and silent, others with flickering shadows playing enigmatically on the surface of the translucent paper screens. Lord Toshtai’s compartment was marked only by the twin swordsmen standing outside.

  The door slid aside and again I was in Toshtai’s presence. He wasn’t alone, of course. I wonder if even his wives ever saw him alone. I didn’t ask; it never came up.

  Two blades slid from their sheaths; the two guards had drawn their swords and had stepped forward into a ready position, not quite eying me, standing like statues, waiting. To Toshtai’s left, Arefai raised a finger as though in warning, echoed by Felkoi.

  Between them, his beefy face a mirror of his guilt, was Refle.

  A warrior would have shouted a battle cry and leaped for him, but even a warrior wouldn’t have gotten within ren, cut in half by the guards, or by Arefai. A peasant wouldn’t have gotten that far.

  Toshtai sat on a low cushion at a knee-table, bent over a puzzle, trying to fit some square bone tiles into a rectangular stone frame, his flipper-like hands surprisingly graceful as he toyed with one of the tiles, ticking it against another, his attention focused on the puzzle, not on the rest of the room.

  He was fresh out of a bath, too, apparently; his hair seemed wet, not merely slicked back.

  Toshtai finally deigned to notice me and my guard; we dropped to our knees.

  “Puzzles,” he said, quietly, possibly to himself; then his eyes caught mine. “Do you like puzzles, Kami Khuzud?” He spotted a move, and set a tile down; it clicked into place, bones rattling on stone.

  I’ve never given it much thought, I thought. That wouldn’t do as an answer, but I couldn’t lie to Toshtai, not with him looking at me.

  “I haven’t ever given it any thought, Lord Toshtai,” I heard myself say. My anger had faded to fear, and hopelessness, and desperation; I trembled.

  Arefai glared, but Lord Toshtai smiled.

  “Ah. Come here, young peasant acrobat, and give it some thought.” He spread his hands. “Now, we have two dozen square tiles, from this one,” he said, picking up a tile the size of a fingernail, with a single hatch mark on it, “of one fren square, to this one,” he said, picking up another much larger one, marked with the symbol for two dozen, “which measures precisely twenty-four fren across. The box measures seventy fren across. The problem, and a pretty one it is, is can the tiles be laid into the box?”

  I’ve never had a mind for figures, but I tried to calculate it out. One plus two is three. No, it is two tiles across, so it is four tiles ...

  “Pretend your worthless life depends on it, shitfooted fool,” Arefai said, his hand on the hilt of his sword. Arefai may have been friendly for a member of our beloved ruling class, but he was a noble and I was a peasant, after all.

  Toshtai silenced him with a quick frown. “No, no, Kami Khuzud, don’t calculate it—solve it.” Toshtai placed the smallest tile in my hands. “I’ve always had a fondness for puzzles. My son says that you have a puzzle for me. You will try to solve my puzzle, and I shall look at yours.”

  The trouble with dealing with members of our beloved ruling class is that they make the rules, and I didn’t have any idea as to what the rules were. Except that I had better try hard to figure out the problem Lord Toshtai had set me.

  Actually, I’ve always liked games and such, and a game is a puzzle. My sister did, too—but Enki Duzun had never been able to beat me at inverting draughts.

  There didn’t seem to be any obvious way to do it, so I picked up the largest tile and set it in—wait. The box was seventy ren on a side, and the largest tile was twenty-four ren on a side. So the others running down the side had to add up to no more than seventy fren.

  It was a strange thing; a pattern snapped into my mind, and I laid the tiles in the box quickly.

  Lord Toshtai raised an eyebrow. “Amazing. I thought it unlikely,” he said, turning to the writing desk at his elbow. The fat lord picked up a brush and inkpot, quickly sketching a diagram of the tiles’ arrangements, before unceremoniously dumping the tiles back on the table. “The tiles were a present from Lord Ronoda,” he said, “and I thought intended to frustrate me.” He popped a sweetmeat into his mouth, and then rubbed his hands together, whether to clean them of crumbs or in pleasure I couldn’t tell. His fat face was passionless, as always. I couldn’t even tell if he was just idly toying with me or if he really was up to something.

  “Now, I understand that you have another puzzle for me, another puzzle of life and death, Kami Khuzud,” he said. “Is it in there?” He quirked his fingers. I didn’t understand what he meant by it, but Arefai did—he slapped my hands aside and took my pack, and dumped it on the floor.

  “Well, boy, what is the puzzle?”

  I didn’t understand, but I at least had a way to proceed. “This cable is the puzzle, Lord Toshtai. It was the highwire. It snapped while supporting my sister.”

  I couldn’t go on. My voice caught in my throat.

  I tried to say something, but Arefai shook his head and held up a hand, silencing me. Wait, he mouthed.

  “I told you, Lord Toshtai, I told you,” Refle said. “The peasant—”

  “Acrobat,” Toshtai said, correcting him.

  “Whatever pleases Lord Toshtai. The acrobat, then, sniffs after my intended, and seeks to blame me for the clumsiness of his sister.”

  “Interesting,” Arefai said. “I didn’t note Enki Duzun’s clumsiness. I thought the peasant girl quite nimble.” His voice was deceptively smooth, like the edge of a knife, but his lips where white. “Tell me how grace is supposed to balance someone in midair. Tell me now, armorer.”

  “Arefai.” Toshtai hissed once. “Be still, Lord Arefai. I am displeased, my son,” the Lord said, gently. “You bring fire and anger to a pleasant discussion of puzzles. Is there a reason?”

  “I am very angry, Lord Toshtai,” Arefai said. “Somebody beat this boy—and secretly, hidden in a hood. Now his sister has died in a suspicious accident—this is not permitted in Den Oroshtai. It’s an attack on your rule, Lord.”

  “A great friend of the peasants is Lord Arefai,” Toshtai mused. “I hadn’t observed this. Nor have half the peasant girls on the outlying farms, I’ll wager.”

  “No, Father. Not the peasants. I am your man, always. If any person or even a bourgeois wants to chastise or slice up a peasant, let him do so. Look.” Arefai stalked over to me and slapped me twice on the face, hard. My face stung. It wasn’t the first time I’d wanted to kill a member of our beloved ruling class, and if I kept still, it likely wouldn’t be the last.

  I kept still.

  “But there are standards to be kept,” he went on, “obligations to be met. If Refle wants this acrobat dead, let him kill him openly, in daylight. Let him do it cleanly, not try to steal a life in the dark.”

  “You would shame me unfairly, Lord Arefai,” Refle said, “if you say that I would skulk and run.”

  “Please, Lord,” Felkoi said. “My brother didn’t kill the girl. He wouldn’t do such a thing.”

  “Or beat the boy?” Arefai asked. “I saw Kami Khuzud’s bruises—they’re still there, under his tunic.”

  Refle almost started at that, but he kept his composure.

  “Narantir,” Arefai went on, “will speak of his broken bones. Were these self-inflicted?”

  “A footpad, perhaps. It may not be permitted, but it happens, even in Den Oroshtai,” Felkoi said.

  “And the death of his sister?”

  “An accident, manifestly,” Refle said. “Or his
own clumsiness in not taking care of his tools.”

  “Ah.”

  Lord Toshtai smiled, although at what I wasn’t sure. “I commend you on your vision.” He returned his attention to the coil of cable. “It is a pretty puzzle, indeed. You see, Refle, most of the wire strands appear to have been cut, perhaps, or long rubbed against something else smooth. Did it long rub against something smooth, parting the strands, Kami Khuzud?”

  “No, Lord.”

  “Perhaps then the strands were cut?” He looked to Refle, then back to me. “An interesting puzzle, Kami Khuzud. You seem to be good at puzzles. Solve this one for me, Kami Khuzud.” For a moment, a glimmer of anger crossed his face. “It would be a shame if my evening were ruined deliberately, would it not?”

  His evening ruined ...

  My sister lay motionless in death on a stone slab, all that she had been, all that she was to be gone forever, and the fat lord of Den Oroshtai thought that less than his ruined evening.

  Sometimes I wonder if our beloved ruling class is really of the same species as the rest of us.

  “Yes, Lord,” I said, the words cold, salty ashes in my mouth. “It would be a terrible shame for your evening to be deliberately ruined.”

  I thought I’d kept the sarcasm out of my voice, but Refle started to rise, stopping only at a glare from Arefai.

  “Such sulking,” Toshtai said, ignoring the byplay. “One would think that an indignity has been visited upon your person just now, Kami Khuzud,” he went on, “if I did not turn my face away from it, for it never happened. Go, acrobat—I will think on the puzzle, and you will look into it for me. You will need to bury your sister tomorrow—begin the day after. See if you can find the solution.”

  “Lord?”

  A shadow of irritation crossed his face. “Find out how this wire came to be cut, how your sister came to die. Examine things. Talk to those in the castle; see if they saw someone cutting the wire during the time in which it must have been cut. Then tell me how your sister came to die, show me how your sister came to die.” His lips thinned fractionally. “I want to know.

  “You may leave now.”

  As I rose, Toshtai turned to Refle. “You have the honor of pouring, Lord Refle. It would please me to drink some of the Crimson Bud Essence; yes, yes, sprinkle the peppers heavily on the surface.”

  * * *

  9

  Breakfast and Burial

  ENKI DUZEN’S CHAIR was empty at breakfast, and we just ate.

  “Could you pass the preserves, Sala?” Fhilt asked.

  Morning sunlight flooded through the window of the breakfast room, gaily splashing across the table, across plates and pots piled high with rashers of bacon and mounds of steaming boiled oats. Sala picked up a fundleberry crock for a moment and balanced it on the palm of her hand before shaking her head and simply setting it down gently in front of Evrem.

  My father looked at me, and I looked at him, the two of us wordless. I had always thought of gray as a lively color, because it was the color of Gray Khuzud, and there wasn’t anybody with more life and kazuh in him than Gray Khuzud. Not this morning. This morning, gray was a dull, dead color.

  His eyes were red, his lined face sallow, not merely with sadness, it seemed, but with an infinite weariness. I doubted that he had slept any more than I had.

  One of the Eresthais quietly elbowed his brother and whispered; the other—no, Eno; Enki Duzen had always remembered them by name—Eno pulled the bread over and carved off a slice.

  Fhilt took a hard-boiled egg from a serving bowl and made a quick flourish with it, then sighed and set it down on the table, rolling it under the palm of his hand to crack the shell, peeling it with no grace at all.

  “You aren’t eating, Evrem,” Gray Khuzud said. “We have much to do today; and you must eat.”

  “But—” Evrem started to say, gesturing to the half-eaten slice of bread and jam on the plate in front of him, and to my empty plate. He started to rise.

  “No,” Gray Khuzud said. “Don’t leave.”

  Large Egda gripped Evrem’s arm, and while he is not the most dextrous of men, when Large Egda grips something, it stays gripped.

  “No,” Gray Khuzud went on, as though he was talking to Evrem, “you must eat. It’s important that we all eat, that we go on.”

  I gestured to Large Egda to let Evrem go. The big man thought about it for a moment, then opened his hand. Evrem shrugged and sat.

  “We all must eat,” Gray Khuzud said. “The show goes on tomorrow, and we must rehearse today. I’ve been thinking about how to change the act, now that Enki Duzun is ... is no longer with us, and we will have to practice, and make it smooth.”

  Evrem didn’t answer; he just rubbed at his arm and glared at Large Egda.

  We all must eat.

  I cut myself a piece of bread and took a bite. It tasted like an old tunic.

  Sala spooned some boiled oats onto her own plate, then dropped a spoonful of butter on them.

  Egda picked up the spreading knife and held it in the palm of his hand, staring at it as though ... as though, I don’t know, maybe as though he wanted it to get up and dance around, maybe as though he expected it, needed it, to get up and dance around.

  But it didn’t. Nothing moves itself. The rings, wands, traps, and all the rest of the equipment are without spirit; we lend them ours.

  Or not. Fhilt just quietly ate his egg.

  Large Egda bounced the spreading knife on his palm, once, then took it by the blade and flipped it up into the air, holding his palm out, as though he expected the knife to smack right into it.

  It didn’t; the knife clattered on the table, sending other cutlery flying.

  “No,” Large Egda said. “Not right.” He picked it up, and tried again. Again it clattered on the table.

  “No. Not right.” He slammed his hand down on his thigh with a meaty thunk, then picked up the knife. “I have to do it right, not just do it.”

  My father raised his eyes. “Egda,” he said, wearily, shaking his head. “Shh. No. Leave it be, for once.”

  “Oh, yes,” Large Egda said. “Oh, very much yes,” he said, with a quiet conviction that brooked no argument. “We will not leave it be today,” he said, reporting not an opinion, but a law of nature, a fact about the world.

  “No, not today, not of all days.” Sala’s eyes were almost glowing.

  Fhilt’s jaw was as tight as mine.

  Large Egda bounced the knife again. This time, it would have knocked the saltwell over, except that Fhilt’s hand was already there, and by the Powers the knife slapped firmly into his palm.

  He lifted the breadknife up and let us all see it.

  There are brothers and sisters of flesh, and of spirit, they say.

  While we never much liked each other, at that moment my brother of the spirit Fhilt gripped the knife tightly, his hand shaking, his knuckles white, then his grip loosened, and with a quick “Don’t move, Egda,” he tossed the knife high into the air, so perfectly high, so beautifully high that it almost touched the beam overhead before, falling and spinning, it slapped into Large Egda’s palm.

  The big man gripped the spreading knife eagerly, his grin broad. “Sala. Preserves.”

  “Pass him the preserves, Gray Khuzud,” Sala said. “Sometimes unexpected troubles solve other problems.”

  Gray Khuzud looked at her woodenly.

  She tossed her head, then reached over and stood as she picked up the stone pot.

  “Very well,” she said, her voice high and shrill. “If you won’t, then I will.” She dropped it, catching it deftly on the side of her naked foot, then foot-tossed it into a high arc that took it forward and over her shoulder, and then—“Quickly, Kami Khuzud, quickly”—caught it on the instep of the same foot.

  The foot fell, and rose, and I stood quickly to snatch the pot out of the air, leaning back as I rolled it across my chest to my other hand, flipped it high and caught it on my own heel, and then tossed it to Fhilt.
/>   He couldn’t have seen it through his tears, but he caught it anyway, snatched the spreading knife from Large Egda’s loose grip, and slowly, tauntingly dipped it into the pot while Evrem and Sala each sawed away at an end of the breadloaf.

  I picked up the two slices and slapped them around the gobbet of preserves, catching it but a fingersbreadth in front of my father’s face.

  Yes. We mourn you, Enki Duzun, but we won’t stop celebrating your life, not for a moment.

  I set it down on his plate. “Eat, Gray Khuzud.”

  For a moment, it all hung in the balance, and I knew it could go either way ...

  ... but then he picked up the bread and preserves, and then he just ate.

  Sunwise, the sky was clear and cloudless. Too clear; too cloudless. It would have more in keeping with our mood for there to be a storm holding off just long enough for us to bury my sister at the edge of a cornfield.

  There had been a storm yesterday, and it had felt like it would last forever, but it had fled.

  If Narantir had been a Great Wizard, I would have wondered if it had been his doing; he had seemed to like Enki Duzun. But he was a simple sorcerer, a minor magician, and the storm had run away of its own doing.

  Peasants are always buried in fields. From dirt and straw and dung were we created; to dirt and straw and dung we return.

  So-be-it.

  Large Egda dug the hole all by himself, and made it so deep that he couldn’t even climb out of it; Gray Khuzud, Fhilt, Evrem and I had to haul him out on the end of a rope. I’m not sure why he dug so deeply; even if there were foxes and wolves in the area, they couldn’t have dug down very far.

  Or maybe I do know, at that. Maybe when you can’t do anything that addresses the heart of the matter, you have to do what you can, and if the only thing you can do is to dig a hole in the ground, then you dig that hole with all the will and strength and dedication at your command.

  He came out of the hole half-naked and dirty, as were the rest of us: a typical D’Shaian peasant funeral party.