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

by Joel Rosenberg - [D'Shai 01]

  “Mmm.” He was interested, despite himself. He rubbed his fingers across it. “How could you tell?”

  I shrugged. “If so, there ought to be some marking underneath, no?”

  He nodded. “Metal is stronger than wood.—What would that tell you?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. I’ve always liked puzzles, though, and one thing I know about them is that you can’t tell what matters ahead of time.”

  “Ah.” He nodded. “So, you look at everything?”

  “Yes, Lord.”

  “Well, then,” he snapped his fingers, beckoning to the nearest maid. “You there—run down to the quarters and bring back an artificer—Merk Ven Dun; he’s got a strong arm. Quickly, girl, quickly.”

  The wood was not quite notched—it was more compressed, indented, along where the knife had slid.

  I measured the distance from where the line of compression was to where the cable had been. It seemed about the distance from the edge of a sword to a part I didn’t have a name for.

  “May I, Lord?” I asked Crosta Natthan.

  “Eh?”

  “Your sword?”

  “Oh.” He drew it quickly, and reversed it with a too-practiced flip. Those who become warriors late in life never quite seem to get that sword-as-an-appendage way of handling it.

  I took the cord-wound hilt in my hand. Just like the one in Refle’s workshop, it seemed lighter than it looked—a large juggling wand is much heavier.

  I slid the sword along the doorframe. “What is the name of this part? The edge of the part where it’s ground?”

  “The break, it’s called,” he said. “This part of the sword is the break. It was the break of a sword that made that indentation in the wood?”

  I shrugged. “Perhaps,” I said, handing the sword back.

  He slid it into its sheath. “And what has this all told you, Kami Khuzud?”

  “It’s hard to say,” I said. That was true enough. It was hard to say that it didn’t tell me anything useful, but I didn’t see any point in letting anybody else know that. “Now, these rooms, along here—what are they for?”

  Crosta Natthan frowned for a moment. “I still do not care for assassin’s questions, but it probably won’t do any harm, not this time. This room,” he said, indicating the one next to ours, “is occupied by two of Lord Edelfaule’s concubines; the next, by three men of our lord’s personal guard.”

  “Who has access to the rooms?”

  “Eh?”

  “Who comes and goes here?”

  Not that it would make any difference; I’d already known that once you got inside the donjon itself, there were guards only on the residence wing, where Lord Toshtai and his family and their closest retainers lived, not in the servants’ wing, not in the main tower, the kitchens, the dungeon, or the stables.

  Crosta Natthan shrugged. “Not Lord Edelfaule—his women visit him in his quarters. The scullery girls go in and out all the time, of course—the chamberpots are emptied and cleaned every morning, and the linen is changed every third day. The florist delivers fresh flowers once a day to the concubines, and twice to the soldiers. Meals are sometimes taken in the rooms, so one of the cooks’ runners might be up here at any time.”

  “Might Lord Refle come up here?”

  The Chief Servitor nodded. “Of course. There is always work being done on some piece of armor or armament, and Refle is hardly going to trust the delivery of arms to bourgeois or peasants, is he?”

  “Would you know if Refle was here the night before last?”

  He pumped his sword in its sheath with a loud snap. “Lord Refle,” he said, his voice cold, “may have been here, or he may not. I would not know. Will there be anything else?”

  I shook my head. “No, Lord.”

  He turned and walked away.

  I sighed as I watched Crosta Natthan’s retreating back. For a moment, I’d been treating a member of our beloved ruling class—albeit a raised member—as another person, and not just a dangerous object.

  I’d forgotten myself; assumed humility is as much a key to one’s safety as ...

  ... as the clamp that held the cable tight, and taut.

  “Kami Khuzud?” Large Egda was behind me. I hadn’t seen him come up.

  “Yes, Egda?”

  “Practice. The Eresthais have to put up the new cable and clamp.”

  I shook my head. “Not until I’m done.”

  I hate flying, particularly with the safety harness on. There’s something insulting about the long rope attached first to the broad waistbelt and then to the pulley overhead, the end of the rope belayed below by the Eresthais.

  But, even free, I hate flying. It hurts.

  From the ground, it looks effortless: you grab on to the trapeze, then let it carry you into the air easily, gracefully, momentarily a bird in flight as you leave one for another, or for the waiting arms of the catcher, sometimes spinning as you go, other times simply flying, back arched in pleasure and tranquillity.

  All is illusion.

  From the ground, they don’t hear the grunts of strain and pain, the creaking of joints that can’t be completely cushioned by even the most powerful muscles. And—every man does this at least once; I’ve done it precisely three times, and remember each incident intimately—the uncontrollable scream you make when you catch the bar properly, grip it tightly, jerking your body to an instant stop ... and suddenly realize you’ve forgotten to tighten your crotch-strap.

  It is not funny.

  I spat on my aching hands, then tried to work a knot out of the middle finger on my right hand. It felt like a betel nut under the skin.

  It doesn’t matter how thick your calluses are, or how strong your hands: letting your whole weight fall, repeatedly, onto a wooden bar only a bit thicker than a sprained thumb hurts. Being caught is only a bit better. Maybe it is like being a bird in flight—but maybe birds don’t like flying any more than I do.

  Large Egda, sitting uncomfortably on the far trapeze, pumped up into a vigorous swing, then sat back, catching his ankles on the padding surrounding the trapeze’s wires. It’s not comfortable, but the padding is the difference between feeling discomfort and having the wire cut into muscle and tendon.

  Time for me to go. Timing is everything, and everybody knew my timing was off.

  Holding the bar of the outer trap, I started to count down. “Three. Two.—”

  “No.” Gray Khuzud gripped my shoulder. “You’re rushing. Don’t be in such a hurry—you want to land squarely, not abruptly. Count with me,” he said, gesturing at Large Egda to maintain his pace, then waiting for the right moment. “Three. Two. One. Go.”

  Gripping the bar, I pushed off. Wind whispered vague threats and imprecations in my ear.

  Swinging is worse than simply hanging from a motionless bar: at the bottom of the arc, the spirits of the trapeze pull down, trying to pull you off the bar and smash you down into the net or ground below.

  I swung, and just short of the top of my swing, I brought my legs up and let go, pulling my knees into a gentle tuck. The universe spun once around me, no center to cling to, until Large Eg-da’s hairy hands rolled out of the insanity and gripped my wrists, and then pulled me back through the long arc of his upswing. My back and shoulders were still badly bruised, but I held my groans inside; I couldn’t let out a scream in front of Gray Khuzud.

  For a moment, at the top of the swing, I can understand why better acrobats, why real acrobats, love flying most of all: for that one moment, at the very peak, you’re free of the bonds of gravity, of the spirits of earth and rock that try to pull you down.

  Large Egda released me at that moment, and we used that time, that instant, to turn me around. This time I gripped his arms, above the thick fists he formed to make his wrists firmer for my clasp, and pulled him through his swing.

  I looked up and spotted the empty trapeze high above me, and as Large Egda and I rose, I pulled up on his arms and released almost perfectly, flying to
it, only having to adjust my hands at the last moment as I gripped the bar, then flew up to the platform, where Gray Khuzud’s and Fhilt’s eager hands reached out and secured me. “Adequate,” Gray Khuzud said. “Barely adequate. Again.”

  None of the servants were used to being interrogated by the likes of me, including Varta Kedin, the leading third-floor maid, a slim, older woman whose white hair seemed more drained of color than the vibrant gray of Gray Khuzud’s.

  She never put down her cleaning-rag as we talked, crooked fingers wrapped in the linen, working sinuously as she caressed the shoulder-level woodwork of the upper hall with polish and affection.

  The carvings were a series of good Mesthai bas-relief—middle period, single-knife work, from the time before the traditionalists gave way to the modernists’ innovations of fitting the tool to the task, and the vigor and strength of Mesthai carving was lost to an unending war of various styles, ignoring the content.

  They are always faces; even now, the Mesthai consider any other subject beneath their notice. This series of carvings was part of the Comedy of Pain cycle: hurt expressed in the frown of a young girl and the open-mouthed shriek of a middle-aged man, by the false laugh of a roly-poly graybeard and the grim clenched jaw of a sweaty-browed woman.

  Some details of the pained faces had been blurred and softened by the same decades of polishing and rubbing that had brought out the fire and color of the wood—must everything be a trade?

  “But exactly when were you in the hall outside the room?” I asked, trying to put it another way.

  “It was the hour of the bear, but I am always in and out of the hall in the hour of the bear.” She stopped to examine one of the carved faces, then work some polish deep into a high wooden cheekbone. “I always polish the woodwork during the hour of the snake, and prepare the rooms during the hour of the bear.”

  “Who did you see the night before last?”

  Who did you see, the night that Refle murdered my sister?

  She considered one of the faces: a flat-nosed woman, her wide eyes and barely open mouth probably originally intended to portray horrid fascination, now rubbed down to mere horror.

  “I don’t know. The usual. Lord Crosta Natthan came through, as he always does, checking on my work.” She spat on her cloth and buffed harder at an invisible blemish. “As though I need it. Ver Hortun, and Bek De Bran, I think. Their—” she stopped herself.

  “Yes, yes, that’s their room there,” I said, waving away the issue of assassin’s questions. “They’re in and out of it all the time, I suppose. And Lord Refle was around, of course, and—”

  She nodded.

  I kept my smile inside. “Do you know where Lord Crosta Natthan is at the moment?”

  “Lord Crosta Natthan,” I said. “I need your help.”

  “Yes, Kami Khuzud?”

  “I would like guards put on the doorframe we were examining—the wizard and I are cooking up a solution to the puzzle, and it’s important that it not be disturbed. The Eresthais can put up another clamp, but they’re not to move this one.” I didn’t want the Eresthais disturbing the evidence, such as it was.

  Or anybody else.

  “Yes, Kami Khuzud.” His eyes were cold and gray. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”

  I had been going to do it myself, but I couldn’t help pressing my derivative authority, just to see how far it would go.

  “Yes. In half an hour, you can have a runner sent to Narantir’s workshop and ask him to join me. Tell him I’ll be in the bath.”

  The wizard, accompanied by Lord Arefai, caught up with me in the bath. I was stretched out on the hot stone bench, letting the steam wash all over me in preparation for my final plunge into the cold spring water that burbled into the oaken tub outside the bathhouse.

  The idea is that first you clean yourself thoroughly, with soap, tepid water, and sponges—and then you sweat, and then you wash, and then you sweat again, and wash again. It is supposed to make women’s skin softer and men’s muscles harder, but I like it because it makes me feel clean, deep-down clean in a way that I never get any other way.

  Members of our beloved ruling class use the bath, too, but for them it’s traditionally done late in the hour of the octopus, as a preparation for dinner; it was only half past the ox, and I had plenty of time. The classes do not mingle in the bath, but it’s no more socially awkward for peasants like me and members of our beloved ruling class to use the same bath than it is for us to eat carrots that are pulled from the same dirt. “That which is not seen is not,” and all that.

  I had taken the tongs down from their peg to wrestle another few rocks from the fire in the center of the bath, and thrown on a handful of wet chumpa leaves, inhaling the steam and mildly heady smoke before pouring a pail of water on the bench and stretching out. Stone is usually cold, but the constantly stoked fire in the pit under the bath house keeps everything somewhere between achingly hot and literally blistering—the water provides a few moments of respite, before the stones again grow too hot.

  I had grown comfortable in the heat—I can adjust to anything, given enough time and patience—when the door swung open and an icy blast of air chilled my back from the ankles to the scalp.

  I looked up to glare at Narantir, opening my mouth to say something indiscreet, but I changed my mind and quickly rose and bowed as Arefai walked in behind him, my hand coming up as of its own volition to rub at my cheek.

  They made an odd couple. Narantir was, as always, a walking pile of rags and fat, his stained robes belted with a simple piece of rope, barely containing his belly, his smile a mocking leer in his untrimmed hedge of beard. Arefai, also as usual, was arrayed in a carefully matched outfit of forest green tunic and wheat-colored pantaloons. Earthy brown leather sandals, belt, and scabbard completed the field-and-forest effect.

  “Your pardon, Lord,” I said, grabbing at a cloth and wrapping it around my waist. While most peasants are body-conscious, that isn’t a problem that a member of a traveling troupe can maintain; you too often are sharing close quarters. “I’d thought it only the hour of the ox, and—”

  “It is, lad, it is,” he said, dismissing my concern. “Sit-sit-sit. No, better—we will accompany you as you sluice yourself off and dress. You may do that now.”

  And a great honor it is, I didn’t say, to have your lordship watch as I dip my buttocks in ice-water.

  “Yes, Lord,” I said, dropping the cloth and walking past him. Arefai and Narantir following, I stepped through the dangling leather straps of the heat-curtains and vaulted into the tub, splashing through the floating ice chips on the top—the castle bath was regularly stocked from the ice cellars.

  The shock of hitting the water took my breath away, as it always did, but I managed to keep my scream under water, letting it bubble away.

  Control, after all, is just another form of balance.

  Still, as I got out, wiped myself down, and quickly dressed in drawstring trousers and a macrame tunic, I couldn’t help shivering. I was chilled to the bone.

  “Walk with us and talk with us, Kami Khuzud,” Arefai said. He smiled, as though he wanted it to sound like an invitation, not a command. Not that there’s a lot of difference between one and the other, not in D’Shai, not when issued by a member of our beloved ruling class.

  The three of us walked out into the afternoon, two of the castle’s warriors falling into step three paces ahead of us, another two behind. I didn’t like the way that the one in front, on the left, kept his short horn bow in his hand, but while there was menace in their manner, none of it seemed directed at me.

  I glanced behind—both of the warriors following us had their bows strung. Out of the four-man guard of honor accompanying Arefai, only one was solely a swordsman.

  The wind picked up, bowing the branches of the jimsum trees and whipping dirt and dust into the air, and into my wet hair.

  “This way, perhaps,” Narantir said, indicating the path down through the bracken to th
e east of the castle.

  The swordsman, a gaunt fellow with funereally sunken eyes, shook his head momentarily. “Let us have it cleared, Lord. I’m concerned about your safety.”

  “The bracken is thick enough,” Arefai said.

  “Yes, Lord, but the path itself? I think not; we will take the proper precautions, if it please you.”

  “Wait.” Narantir held up a hand. “It will take only a simple spell, Lord,” he said as he reached into his plain canvas wizard’s bag, pulling out a piece of blue chalk, beckoning at the nearest bowman. “Come here and extend your arm, if you please?”

  The bowman looked skeptically at him, but then, at Arefai’s nod, came over. Grunting, the wizard bent to rub his fingers on the packed dirt of the trail, and then rose to rub the same fingers against the bowman’s arm. He made a few quick chalk marks on the arm, then produced a bluish stone hanging from a thong—I’m sure he took it out of his pouch, but it looked like he snatched it out of the air.

  Narantir stroked the stone, then the arm, and lifted the stone to his lips for a moment. The chalk marks on the arm flashed into flame, and the bowman’s arm jerked momentarily, although he didn’t make a sound. Silence while in pain is a mark of honor among warriors.

  I’ve always wondered why they don’t just get themselves muted.

  The stone hung from the end of the thong, doing nothing more active or interesting than just hanging there as Narantir studied it.

  “It would appear to be safe, Lord,” Narantir said. “There is nothing resembling a warrior down the path.” He eyed the stone skeptically. “And probably no human at all; I made the runes sloppily on purpose.”

  Arefai scowled. “All this just to take a walk.”

  One of the guards smiled, but it wasn’t a pleasant smile. “Part of the Way, eh, Lord?” he more said than asked.

  I expected Arefai to snap at him, or rebuff the familiarity—warriors are only barely part of our beloved ruling class—but he just nodded casually.