Except for two. Felkoi was up on the road, and while he didn’t rush out and lend a hand with either the rope or the body, I had the feeling that he wanted to. I understood, or at least thought I did. Shame is something subtle, and if his brother had done what Felkoi perhaps thought he had done, it was shameful for their whole family, were anybody to find out.
They would find out.
Everybody would know, if I had anything to do with it.
If.
If that were Lord Toshtai’s decision, which I doubted. If he decided that Refle was guilty of a covertry, it was much more likely he would order old Dun Lidjun to take offense at something Refle said than shame the whole family by exposing him.
“That which is not seen is not,” and all. All he would have to do is turn his face from it, and handle the matter in the manner of D’Shai.
Not good enough, not good enough by half. Our beloved ruling class erects monuments of steel and stone for their fallen; I’d erect one of shame for my sister.
But how?
Fhilt and I lowered Enki Duzun’s body into the hole. It seemed lighter than it should have been, as though the old stories about how the soul flees the body the morning after death are true, as they may even be. I don’t know; I don’t know much.
The other person up on the road was NaRee, sitting on a rented white pony, it whitewashed from ears to hooves, she immaculate in her finest funeral whites, as though this was a bourgeois burial.
That earned her an occasional glare from Sala, who didn’t understand—it was NaRee’s way. NaRee wasn’t flourishing her status; she was trying to honor my sister.
But none of us was on balance that day. When NaRee gestured to me, the hesitant quirk of her fingers almost eloquent in its awkwardness, all I could do was shake my head.
I needed her, but I couldn’t be with her. Not today.
We D’Shai lie to ourselves too easily, if incompletely; the troupe began practice in the corral as though it was just another day.
Almost... Nobody wanted to walk on the low wire. It waited in the bright sun, the cable burnished to an almost mirror brightness, a balancing pole leaning up against the platform on either side, one of the Eresthai brothers waiting at each platform.
While Gray Khuzud and Fhilt practiced tumbling run after tumbling run, Large Egda went through his usual set of squats, perhaps grunting less than usual. Sala’s stretches flowed into dance, and then into juggling, until she had a full eight of her rings flying into the air, flowing around her in a silver stream.
The low wire stood waiting in the sun.
I balanced easily on the board and roller, whipping a wand, a knife and a small wooden ball first through a simple shower and then into a circular juggle.
Perversely, everything worked well: not only didn’t I drop anything, but the board held every bit as firm and steady beneath my feet as solid ground could have. I almost wished that I couldn’t do as well; I kept looking for Enki Duzun’s smile of approval, and of course it wasn’t there.
Everybody kept deliberately not looking at the low wire, as though that would make it go away. Every once in a while, one of the Eresthais would check a turnbuckle or clamp, as though that would do any good.
Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. I let my gear drop to the sand, and climbed up onto the fence, leaning on a balancing pole for support. I let the balancing pole fall away, stepped out on the wire, my arms out to my side.
And fell to the sand.
One of the Eresthais helped me back up to the platform, holding out a balancing pole in silent offer.
“No,” I said, with a shake of the head, as I stepped out once again onto the cold wire, my arms out to one side. Balance is everything. The long arms of a balancing pole put your point of balance safely beneath the wire; the pole does the work. But when you’re walking the wire by yourself, you have to do it all yourself, to move your arms and more importantly your balance, your center, directly over the wire.
Or fall. I fell again, and tried again.
Gray Khuzud reached out a hand and helped me to my feet. “Enough for one day, Kami Khuzud. Tomorrow.”
The three elder members of the troupe and the two Eresthais had gone to bed, to pretend to sleep; Fhilt, Large Egda and I were the last to bed, as usual. Fhilt, Egda and I sat on the steps of Madame Rupon’s porch, looking out at the town, and at the flickering lights in the castle above the town, and at the stars above.
Our time, for the three of us, sitting out under a star-splattered sky that refused to be dulled by the sadness that should have had the stars weeping.
Three, instead of four. I knew what it felt like to be a wagon with three wheels.
The musicians practiced off in the night, the silverhorns moaning a slow dirge, broken only occasionally by a listless run on the zivver, dragged down by the thrumming of the bassskin. Fhilt toyed with a stick, drawing in the dirt for a few moments, then scratching it out with his foot.
“They’re not good tonight,” he said.
I didn’t say anything to that; I just stepped off the porch and walked a short way onto the path, out of the light.
I’ll always miss you, Enki Duzun.
But missing her wouldn’t bring her back. Proving that Refle had killed her while trying to lay a trap for me wouldn’t bring her back.
Sometimes I have to wonder about what happens after we die. Do we await another turn on the Wheel, the way the Bhorlani claim?
Or do peasants return to the soil in spirit as well as in body, the way we were taught? Does anybody know? Can anybody know? My father used to say something about how if you live your art properly, you can’t die, because the art lives on, but Enki Duzun hadn’t had the chance to live it out, not yet.
“Is it better if we don’t talk about it?” Large Egda asked.
“Stupid question.” The stick snapped in Fhilt’s hands. “ ‘Is it better if we don’t talk about it,’ ” he said, slurring his voice to mimic Large Egda’s awkward mouth. “Yes, it’s better if we don’t talk about it. It’s better if we don’t think about it, it’s better if it never happened.”
“Idiot,” I said, turning around.
“It’s not Large Egda’s fault that the Powers gave him three men’s strength and a hare’s brain.”
“Not him. You,” I said. “You’re the idiot. No, not an idiot. An idiot doesn’t know what he’s doing. You’re worse: you’re a traitor to her memory.”
“Me?”
“Did you ever see Enki Duzun make fun of Egda? Once? In her memory, you’ll treat him like dung? In her memory, you’ll make things worse?”
He squared off across from me. “Don’t say that to me. I loved your sister, Kami Khuzud. She could not have been dearer to me if ... she couldn’t have been.”
I laughed in his face.
And he slapped me, hard, then staggered back, as though I had been the one to slap him.
“No, no.” Fhilt’s eyes were wide and white. “Kami Khuzud, you can’t, I mean—” In all of our mock battles and threatened confrontations, neither of us had ever actually hit the other. Enki Duzun had always stopped things before they got that far, a brake on our misbehavior.
Fhilt called out for me as I turned and walked off into the night.
When I came back, they had both gone to bed.
* * *
10
Tears on a Pillow
WHEN YOU DON’T know what else to do, go back to the beginning. That’s what my father always taught me, and that’s what I believe.
The beginning.
I stood alone in the dark, in the street outside Madame Rupon’s, the wands and balls and rings scattered at my feet.
The night was cool, and dark, barely lit by the lanterns on the porches of the houses of the Bankstreets, and the stars above.
One ball.
It’s the most basic juggle: you throw one ball up in the air, and let it fall intp your hand. You really only have to control one thing at a time, but you have to
control that fully.
You really do.
I threw one ball up in the air with my right hand, and let it fall into my left hand, not snatching it out of the night, but merely throwing and placing it precisely, thinking about each step as I did it. And then I did it the other way, throwing the ball from my left to my right, precisely, perfectly, the way you can do it only with practice or kazuh. It’s important to get the form right. Get the form right, and everything else falls into place.
And then two. First throw the ball in the left hand toward the right, and before it arrives, throw the ball in the right hand toward the left. Then do it the other way: the right hand first. Throw-throw. Pause. Throw-throw. Pause. That pause, that moment of robbed time makes it harder to juggle two than three, but you have to do it in order.
Three. Adding the third ball is simple, and turns a herky-jerky motion into a flow of catch-left throw-left catch-right throw-right.
I reached out my right foot and worked a fourth ball onto my instep, then kicked the fourth ball into the flow. And then a fifth, and a sixth, turning the simple shower into a constant motion of catch and throw.
I held the flow, stayed in the stream of catch and throw until my shoulders began to ache, and my eyes began to hurt with concentration.
So I relaxed my shoulders, and closed my eyes, and kept up the shower as I called for the kazuh of the acrobat, to let it propel my arms for me, to guide my way for me.
Nothing happened, except my arms got more tired, the tendons in my shoulders burning.
I couldn’t find it; it wasn’t there. They say that any problem can be solved with kazuh, or put into proportion. Keep everything in balance, they say, and the rest falls into place.
Hah.
I let the balls fall about me, into the dust, into the night.
“Very deft, young acrobat,” a harsh voice whispered from out of the night.
Refle stood behind me, his brother at his elbow. “But not quite deft enough, eh?”
“Shh, Refle,” Felkoi said. “The boy’s lost his sister; be still.” He didn’t apologize to me; a noble doesn’t apologize to a peasant. This was as close as he could come.
“I’d venture the young acrobat wonders what we’re doing here, eh, brother?”
Felkoi didn’t answer him.
“We are returning home from an evening visiting with my intended, Kami Khuzud,” Refle said. “A very pleasant evening. You know, Ezren Smith told a story that you might find amusing—”
“Be still, Refle,” Felkoi said, with less patience. “Leave him be.”
Refle looked at me silently for a long time, not a word passing between the two of us.
I wanted to say, I know you murdered my sister, and somehow I’ll prove it.
He smiled, and in that smile was a confession.
You’ll never prove it, he mouthed, and, after a quick glance he mimicked raising and lowering a truncheon, his body blocking his brother’s view.
Just as you never proved I broke your bones.
I took half a step forward, but Refle’s hand dropped to his swordhilt. No. That would make it too easy for him.
“Let us go, Felkoi,” he said.
The two of them turned and walked away.
“Very interesting,” Fhilt said from behind me. “Everybody seems to be out of balance tonight.”
I turned. He stood on the porch, leaning idly against a column, a couple of braces of knives—real juggling knives, not practice knives—in his hands. “Not a good night for juggling, eh?” The apology was in his tone, and it was as much apology as I was likely to get. Somehow, I never seem to get a real apology.
“No,” I said. “Everything seems out of balance.” Which was all the acknowledgment Fhilt was going to get.
He nodded, briefly. “Ever wonder,” he asked, “if you could juggle the knives differently? I mean,” he said, taking up a position to my side, about a bodylength away, “instead of being sure that they rotated half a turn, or a turn and a half, or two and a half turns, making them rotate a whole turn? Or two? Or three?”
He tossed a knife to me; it flipped end-over-end through the dark, thunking comfortably, hilt-first, into my rising palm.
“Try it,” he said. “Throw it at me, point first.”
I looked at him a long time. “Don’t tempt me.”
“What was it you said, Kami Khuzud? ‘In her memory, you’ll make things worse?’ Will you, Kami Khuzud? Throw the knife to me, or at me.”
I threw it, but it felt wrong; at the last moment, I tugged wrongly at the knife.
Fhilt snatched it out of the air, anyway.
“Not good, Kami Khuzud.” He stooped to the flower beds and took up a clod of dirt, setting it on the top weatherbeaten step. “Try to hit that, or the riser, just above that.”
He put the four knives into an impromptu shower, catching some by the hilt, snatching at the blades of others.
Knives flickered in the lamplight, and then one twisted in the air toward me.
I caught it by the hilt, and threw it. The knife thunked into the wood, just above the dirt clod.
“Very good, Kami Khuzud,” Fhilt said. He pulled the knife from the wood, and considered the blade for a moment before wiping it on his tunic. “Good night.” He turned away, and then stopped himself. “I’ll probably forget, again. Things are so out of balance.”
“That they are, Fhilt.”
Obedient to command as always, I picked up the props, cleaned them, and put them away before I went to bed.
There was a flask of Crimson Tears on my pillow; I drained it and slept without dreams.
* * *
11
Trapeze
OBEDIENT TO COMMAND as always, I started the investigation, such as it was, the next morning. I didn’t know when Lord Toshtai was going to send for me, and with a bit of luck, perhaps I could find out enough by then to fix the blame on Refle.
I started with the door frame, the place where we ourselves had clamped the cable into place.
The mounting staple was still in place; I didn’t have the tools to remove it, and the Eresthais, who did, were still in town. They would be in sometime in the hour of the horse. I could take a look under it later, and maybe find something. What, I wasn’t sure—perhaps Refle had been considerate enough to impress his signature ring into the wood.
Sure.
I looked down the hall as though I was seeing it for the first time.
In a sense I was; it just hadn’t occurred to me to wonder what the three other rooms down our side of the hall were for. The other side was a long expanse of bas-relief between two circular stairways, broken in the middle by another hall that led toward the central wing of the donjon.
Refle had a residence somewhere in the castle, for certain. If it was one of these rooms, that might be another loop in the knot of his noose.
Down at the far end of the hall, a pair of maids were down on their hands and knees cleaning the floor, one washing, one drying. Members of our beloved ruling class don’t like to slip on marble. Neither do the rest of us, although we all too rarely have a chance to walk on it, to feel the mirror-smooth coolness beneath our feet.
“What are these other rooms used for?” I asked.
“You there, what are you doing there?”
I turned to face Lord Crosta Natthan, the castle’s chief servitor. Today Crosta Natthan was all in off-white, from the creamy silk ribbon binding back his hair, down through a soft cotton tunic of almost formal cut, tightly belted with bleached leather. His pantaloons were primly blousy, their cuffs tucked into the tops of his soft slippers.
There was no hint in his manicured nails, precisely cut hair, or supercilious sniff that he had been born bourgeois. Lord Toshtai had elevated him probably in small part in recognition of his abilities in managing the house as the previous chief servitor’s assistant, probably in large part because it enabled Crosta Natthan to better handle noble residents.
Or perhaps I’m just being
skeptical. Perhaps Lord Toshtai had elevated him because he had decided that the Powers had made an error, and that Crosta Natthan had been born from the wrong womb.
Of course.
“I asked what you are doing there,” he repeated. “Answer me. Quickly, now, boy.”
“I am asking questions, Lord Crosta Natthan,” I said. “Of the maids.”
“And why are you doing this?” He arched an eyebrow, as though he was examining a full chamberpot that some poor liar had sworn empty.
“Lord Toshtai told me to.” I thought that would be enough for him, but it wasn’t.
“I will not believe that Lord Toshtai told you to ask them assassin’s questions.”
“Your pardon? Assassin’s questions? I’m sorry, but I don’t understand.”
“Who sleeps in this room and who sleeps in that room is no concern of somebody who does not live in the castle, young peasant.”
I bowed. “As you say, Lord. It’s my stupidity; I apologize.”
“Very well.” He dismissed it with a wave. “You may be gone, then.”
I opened my mouth, closed it, and opened it again. “Yes, Lord. When may I see Lord Toshtai?”
“Why would you wish to do that?” There was just the tiniest touch of alarm in his voice, although his expression was still blandly correct.
“To have my stupidity corrected, Lord. In my idiocy, I thought that he said to me, ‘Do whatever is necessary to find out how this wire came to be cut, Kami Khuzud. See if anybody knows something that will let you discern who cut the wire during the time in which it must have been cut.’ ”
That wasn’t exactly how Lord Toshtai had put it, but it was close enough.
For a moment, I didn’t know how Crosta Natthan would react, but then his shoulders loosened just a trifle, just the way a beginner’s do, when he knows he’s going to drop the clubs and can’t do anything about it.
I seized the moment.
“Here, Lord. Come with me,” I said, quickly walking down the hall to the room we had been using. I tapped the mounting staple. “I think somebody cut the wire. Probably by slipping a very sharp, very good knife underneath, here, and cutting at the cable.”
Joel Rosenberg - [D'Shai 01] - D'Shai Page 13
