Wheel of the Infinite

by Martha Wells

  Rian jumped and caught the top of the palisade, hauling himself up to look over and scraping his hands on the rough wood. The court was empty, the house dark. On the far side there was firelight and a couple of lamps near the kitchen hearth, but if anyone was there they were keeping quiet. Marada only had a few maids and six or so menservants; considering the size of the processions that Kushorit nobles routinely dragged along to their entertainments, she would have most of them with her. If her servants were anything like those in the Sintane, any left behind would be dozing until their mistress returned. Drums and cymbals made a counterpoint to unfamiliar stringed instruments from the noble's house as Rian scrambled over the top of the wall and dropped to the packed dirt below.

  He crept toward the back of the house. On the lower floor the screens had been dropped between the pillars, closing off what should be storage and the bathing area and quarters for the servants. Rian didn't mean to go up through the inside of the house anyway. He froze as a voice spoke softly from the kitchen area and another answered. Two at least, he thought. The words were incomprehensible but then according to the gossip Marada's servants couldn't or wouldn't speak Kushorit.

  Rian waited long enough to be sure the two weren't about to jump up and investigate any suspicious noises, then he continued to the back of the house. There he climbed up the outside of the great corner pillar, feeling for hand- and footholds in the carving. The wood was slick with damp and it was hard going. It occurred to him that being caught sneaking into the chambers of a foreign noble lady who was a guest of the Celestial Emperor himself was a transgression likely to badly upset even the usually serene Kushorit. The explanation that he was only looking for signs that she was a poisoner and a murderess was not likely to be well received either. Worry about that when it happens, he told himself.

  He reached the railing of the veranda and climbed over, dropping down to a crouch. The house stayed quiet and dark, and the low mutter of voices continued from the outdoor kitchen. He slipped into the nearest doorway.

  A small cage lamp had been left lit in the inner hall and he picked it up. If he stayed away from the doors and windows on the far side, the light wouldn't be seen from the kitchen area just below. He skirted the edge of the common room, the light gleaming off the lacquered woodwork and the colors in the wall paintings. The room was bare except for the low table and the cushions that must have come with the place. He passed on into the sleeping rooms.

  The house was larger than theirs but not so well laid out, the individual rooms bigger but not so many of them. The first few he looked into were also oddly bare. The bed cushions had been unrolled so he supposed they were occupied, but their owners had left little sign of their presence behind. The Ariaden had moved into their house in force with puppets, stage paraphernalia, children's toys, dishes, and discarded clothing. This house looked like theirs had the day they had arrived.

  Then he reached a large chamber at the back and paused in the doorway, baffled. It was anything but bare. The floor and the bedding were littered with silk wraps in jewel-like colors, the wooden chests covered with scent bottles and tangled jewelry, jade and pearl gleaming softly in the light from the lamp.

  He took a slow step into the room, by habit careful not to disturb anything, though it looked as though an ox had already trundled through. So she has the laziest servants in Garekind, or wherever she comes from. Funny that she let them get away with it. Rian had lived in the private chambers of both the Lady Holder of Riverwait and the Holder Lord of Markand, and been well acquainted with the personal lives of many nobles as part of his duties, and he knew people of that class didn't live like this. The room smelled foul, too, a sickly sweet, rotten odor.

  He poked around in the fall of silk on the floor with the toe of his boot and uncovered another blaze of color. He knelt to look more closely, pushing the crumpled fabric aside to reveal a Berani carpet. It was a large one, almost half the length of the room, deep red trimmed with black, with figures of stags and big cats and a whole bestiary of mountain animals picked out in gold and silver threads in exquisite detail. Rian whistled silently in appreciation.

  These carpets came from lands far to the north and had to be carted over miles of frozen mountains before even coming within reach of the Sitanese traders, who paid raw gold for them. The Holder Lord of Markand, the biggest pig's ass in creation, had had one not a quarter this size and kept it properly hung up on the wall to prevent it being soiled. Rian knew what that one had cost, and this, with finer colors and so much larger, must be worth far more; it had to be one of those gifts from the Celestial Emperor they had heard about.

  And she treats it like sawdust. Rian lifted aside a length of indigo silk to see a broken bowl and a large dried stain of brown sauce. That was the source of the foul odor. Ants had found it and a trail of them led away under the other debris. He stood, shaking his head. The Lady Marada was one thing on the outside and something else on the inside. That was worth notice in itself, but it still didn't prove anything. It didn't make her interest in the priest Veran anything other than sympathetic and it didn't mean she had killed him.

  He started to search in earnest, sifting through the scarves and robes and the other litter on the floor and the bed. He sniffed the scent vials and checked the scattered collection of jars of creams and colored powders, but they seemed to contain nothing harmful. He searched the two chests at the back of the room, but they held only folded linen. The chest at her bedside was next and he shifted double handfuls of tangled gold chains, hair ornaments, arm and ankle rings off it before he was finally able to lift the lid.

  It held more crumpled silk, more chains and armlets, a headpiece with jade lappets, and in the bottom a wooden box, inlaid with polished stone. Rian lifted it out and opened it, expecting more jewelry or another neglected Imperial gift. Probably cracked sun-diamonds, or spilled godwine, to judge by what she did with the carpet. The box contained a ball of ivory or soft stone, carved with a complex design. It wasn't Kushorit, oddly enough. Every available stone or wood surface in the Empire had carving on it, and Rian felt he would have been able to recognize Kushorit work now if he was half-blind. This was unfamiliar. He turned it over thoughtfully. The lines were less elegant, the hand not as skilled as most Kushorit work. There were no flowers or people worked into the design, and it was strangely asymmetrical. The candlelight touched it, turning the dull surface to pearl, then to an opalescence that almost seemed to glow. Rian realized a heartbeat later that the light was coming from within the stone.

  He closed the box and sat back on his heels. That's... interesting. He hadn't known what he was looking for when he had come here, but now he had the strong feeling he had just found it.

  He started at a sharp voice from the front of the house. His time had run out. He dumped the box and a handful of jewelry into one of the silk shawls and wrapped it up into a makeshift bag. If the thing was as important as it looked, they would miss it quickly; let them think he was a thief and it might buy a little time.

  Rian bolted down the passage back to the nearest door, then out onto the veranda. He heard running footsteps from around the front of the house and vaulted the railing.

  He hit the ground and fell, rolling to help absorb the shock. Ignoring the pain that shot through his right knee, he scrambled to his feet and ran for the palisade. The bundle slowed him down on the climb; as he reached the top someone grabbed his leg.

  He kicked backward, connected with solid flesh, and was free. He hit the ground on the other side and heard shouting and a gate banging open. He ran for the other canal, away from the torchlit street and the more crowded avenue. Rian wondered how quickly the thief-takers would respond; considering this neighborhood was so close to the Palace, they would probably be here with dismaying speed.

  There were large buildings fronting this canal, and in the dark they didn't have the elegant lines of the houses behind him. He ran between two of them and saw there were barges pulled up on the dirt und
er the pilings of the one on the right. The place stunk of fish and tar.

  As he reached the muddy edge of the bank he heard voices and ducked down behind a piling. He eased forward enough to see the front of the building. Balconies overhung the water and another barge was floating at a lamplit dock that extended out into the canal. There were three men onboard, but they hadn't seen him. They were standing around a lamp mounted on the side of the barge, passing a jug and discussing the unreliability of other boatmen not present.

  Rian glanced back up the alley toward Marada's house and saw figures with lamps and torches gathering in front of it. Marada might not have many servants, but she hadn't hesitated to rouse her neighbors in the emergency. He needed to get away from here, far away, fast. One of the men on the barge stepped off onto the dock and started to untie the mooring rope. The barge was about fifteen feet long, piled with baskets and bales. It’s better than nothing, he thought grimly.

  He opened the shawl and scooped out the jewelry, shoving it down into the soft mud near the beached boats for the boatmen or some lucky beggar to find. He wrapped the shawl around the box more tightly, then tied it around his neck.

  The boatmen were pushing the barge away from the dock with heavy poles, creating ripples and splashes. Rian crept through the straggly grass to the bank, slid over the stone embankment and into the water, the noise of the barge's movement covering any sound he made.

  He pushed away from the bank, toward the middle of the canal. The water was cool and at first he could touch the bottom, but it rapidly dropped off. The barge was drifting out from the dock and the lamp wasn't throwing much light over the sides. One man was poling at the front and the second at the back. Rian took a deep breath and went under.

  He came up slowly at the side of the barge, just his eyes and nose above the water, and caught hold of the slimy surface of one of the pontoon logs. On the bank men were searching under the pilings of the building next to the shipping business. The boatman who had remained behind was running toward them with a lamp.

  "What's all that?" a voice from the barge above his head asked.

  "Who knows?" was the philosophical answer.

  Rian relaxed a little. The barge had been caught by the slow current in the center of the canal and it would have taken forever to turn it and bring it back to the dock anyway. The box was bumping into his chin. He hoped the water didn't hurt it. Or break it. If the ball was like that grey glass bubble the enspelled boy had carried into their camp outside the city... Then I’ll be dead so fast I won't know it.

  The search party on the bank was left behind as the barge drifted smoothly down the canal. Buildings rose on either side, tall like the shipping house, some with lamps glowing in windows or on balconies. The barge reached the point where this canal met one running north-south, and both boatmen came to this side to pole off the bank. Rian clutched the box and ducked under the surface. He stayed under as long as he could, grasping the slippery logs and waiting for the barge to turn into the other canal. It did, just before he ran out of air, and he came up again as the barge straightened out and was caught by the new current.

  Just as he decided he had put enough distance between himself and the search, the houses lining the banks began to show more light and there were suddenly people everywhere. There were torches on the docks and water stairs, and pleasure craft with awnings, and flowers tethered near the bank. Music and voices drifted out over the water and the light outlined the shapes of trees in lush gardens between the buildings. The barge passed one house with four levels of balconies, all crowded with people, and the lamplight sparked off bronze and gold and bright colored silks. Rian sunk down until only his eyes and nose were above the water. Fortunately all the light on the bank would only make the center of the canal that much darker and the reflections on the water were sure to confuse the eye.

  Rian was thinking of the wild river and the large number of dangerous things that inhabited it when he felt something twine around his thigh. He gripped the wet log and fought the urge to throw himself out of the water and up onto the barge. Then a large white flower bumped him in the head and he realized they were passing through a small underwater forest of lotus. Telling himself not to be an idiot, he shook his leg free and sunk down in the water again.

  Then the buildings abruptly dropped away and the barge passed a short canal that seemed to lead into a vast area of empty water. Rian realized it had to be the western baray, the large square reservoir that was half water supply and half holy symbol of something or other. He let go of the barge and let himself drift toward the bank.

  When the barge had passed on, he untied the shawl and set the box up on the stone embankment, then hauled himself up after it, the water weighting his clothes, making it an unwieldy process. Finally he was able to sit on the edge. The night breeze was cool and he pulled his shirt off and wrung it out, then drew the Holder Lord's siri to check the coating of oil on it.

  There were stands of trees and several temple complexes around the baray, great dark mountains of stone in the night, only a few lamps or torches to mark doorways. Another temple stood on a stone island in the center, a round one with little towers topped by elaborate cupolas. It wasn't lit and looked tantalizing and mysterious in the night, the water reflecting back the moon-shaped portal of its doorway. Rian made plans to come back some quiet night and explore. It occurred to him that dark magic, demons that crossed ancient protective barriers, and the chance of being taken as a thief all notwithstanding, he was glad he had come to this city with Maskelle. Especially with Maskelle.

  He eyed the little wooden box, sitting innocuously in the sodden shawl. He just hoped they hadn't come to it too late.

  ***

  Much later Rian was trudging down the street that paralleled the moat on the Marai's east side, almost home. It was still an hour or so until dawn. He had avoided the whole area around the Baran Dir and the main gate into Kushor-An out of caution, in case one of Marada's servants had seen him running across the court. Consequently he had gotten lost. The lesser gate he had chosen led out into one of the suburbs where craftsmen and laborers lived, where the houses were much smaller and closer together, though most of them still had room for garden plots and breadfruit or banana trees. The streets didn't follow the even plan of the other areas, and the north-south canal he was using as a landmark was further out than he had thought. By climbing a tree he had seen the torches that burned high in the tops of the Marai's five towers and gotten pointed back in the right direction.

  As he rounded the large house at the top of their street, he stopped abruptly and sank back into the bushes next to the palisade. Three men in breastplates and helmets stood under the gate lamps of the house across the way. They were talking to a sleepy porter, who was shrugging and pointing to another house down the street. Our house, Rian thought. Constabulary he might have expected, but not this. The crests on their helmets resembled those of the men who had come to the post compound after the Celestial One's entourage had arrived. Something else going on here.

  On impulse, Rian ducked back between the houses, toward the canal. Near o the stone bank was a small shrine dedicated to some odd little spirit with several arms and more heads. He had seen it in the daylight yesterday. It would have looked like a demon except that the faces on all the heads were smiling in far too friendly a way. Fumbling in the dark, Rian dug at the mud next to its base, making a hole. He worked the box into it, still wrapped in the damp shawl, and scooped dead leaves and grass over it.

  Dusting his hands off on his pants, he started back to the street. He could have worked his way back along the canal and gone in through their back gate, but he didn't know if Maskelle was still at the Marai, and if they really were after him, he didn't want to lead them right down on top of her. He also knew from Markand that if they were after you, avoiding them temporarily never did you any good. The only way to dodge trouble permanently was to run for the outer city gates and not come back, and there were too ma
ny reasons he didn't want to do that.

  Rian went down the street without trying to conceal himself, stepping around the mud puddles left by the last rain. The night air was heavy with damp and the scent of wet greenery. The guards were gone from the gate of the house across the way, but a prickling on the back of his neck told him they hadn't left entirely. Morning life was starting to stir behind the palisades, and through the occasional open gate he could see sleepy cooks stoking the domed bread ovens.

  He was almost home, crossing in front of a dark house with a closed gate, when a man stepped out from behind the corner of the wall in front of him, flicking up the shield on a lantern. Rian stopped, reached for his sword hilt, but then hooked his thumb on his belt instead, pretending to just now realize that this wasn't a footpad confronting him. He could hear two more coming up behind him.

  The one facing him took a couple of steps forward, slowly, eyes narrowed suspiciously. He was no ordinary guardsman. He wore the wrapped silk trousers and open brocaded jacket that Rian had seen on the wealthier passers-by in the streets, but over it he had a heavy leather swordbelt studded with figured gold. The lamplight struck glints off the gems in his rings and the archer's wristbrace he wore. Rian read the combination of finery and utilitarian weapons and knew this man was of the warrior-noble class, who formed the officer corps of the Empire's armies. The man said, "You are the Sitanese who came here with the Voice of the Adversary?" He spoke the Kushorit words slowly and carefully, obviously expecting the barbarian not to understand.

  "Yeah. What's it to you?" Rian folded his arms, not wanting to be stabbed from behind by some overeager recruit.