Amberlight

by Sylvia Kelso

  “Dhasdein.”

  Head bowed. Fingers clenched on the table rim. “Antastes . . . is the emperor.”

  “Can you see him?”

  “Tall. Stooped. Except when he remembers, for ceremonies. Going grey.”

  “Do you see him close?”

  “I—”

  A deepened breath. Eyes pressed shut.

  “I see him—close.”

  And for that, he knows the outrageous, the exorbitant cost.

  “At a ceremony. In front of me. I must be—on the . . . dais.”

  “How are you dressed?”

  A deeper breath. A look she has seen, when the physicians begin their work.

  “Armor. Ceremonial. Breast-plate . . .”

  “Trousers—or kilt?”

  The clenched fingers tremble. She can barely hear the word.

  “Kilt.”

  An officer, then. A cavalry officer, rather than a guardsman, even from the Imperial Guard.

  So easy. So simple. So smoothly that she might, for less risk and a lesser gamble, have asked it weeks ago. The answer to all the questions. The heart of the dilemma. The summit of all problems.

  Dhasdein.

  His hands still grip the table-rim. What he has done, she knows, he understands perfectly well. And understands the raw courage that makes him lift his eyes.

  But it is the qherrique that makes her go on, in the soft spell-voice, “How long ago?”

  The lightless depths stir. The brows come up. Startled, the present man stares at her. “Gods, that was the Flood-sacrifice”—autumn’s end, Tellurith knows—“it must be eight years past!”

  Then it is his turn to lie back in the chair, to breathe deep and wipe his face and savor mingled reprieve and infuriation. While Tellurith swallows disappointment. Dourly, prepares for the next gamble. “Do you remember the Imperial Guard?”

  “I remember—guard-duty. I was new. Riversend. Gawpers outside the palace. Apricot marble. Very beautiful. But impractical. All those little perimeter towers. The palace quarter. So many high-class . . . trees and things. Expensive—very expensive wine-houses. I think—it’s very new . . .”

  “You were young ?”

  “Very young—not my first post, of course. Not the Guard.”

  “Where was the first?”

  The sweat is running, this time, glinting snail-tracks on the thin cheeks. She has no doubt that he is trying, with all his self, to meet the price.

  “The first—I don’t . . .”

  “Where was the last?”

  “Amberlight.”

  The eyes snap open. The body snaps tense. The hands clench, one on the table edge, one round the wine-glass. Verrith and Azo are in earshot. Tellurith sits quite still. Even at the face, she doubts she has been in greater danger in her life.

  “Do you remember,” almost in a whisper, “who gave it you?”

  She is still holding her breath when the coal-black, steel-edged stare blurs. The body softens. And slowly, slowly, the hands undo. The head bends, that crow’s-wing of hair hiding the expression as he whispers, “I don’t know.”

  CHAPTER IV

  Quarter moonrise on Amberlight, flooding up beyond the white and gold quilt of city lights. A silver-pearl and shadow hemisphere looks in Telluir House-head’s window, under the great luminous window of the qherrique.

  “What do you know about the provinces of Dhasdein?”

  “Mel’eth. Riversrun. Shirran. Quetzistan. There’s the colonies too, the Archipelago. Wave Island, Gray Island. Greenhill . . .”

  “Wave Island?”

  “A damned ship-breaking broker’s tax, set by an Imperial governor and a pair of Imperial heptarchies!” Phalanx units, fifty men strong. “Imperial protection! Imperial blood-suckers! How many Wave Islanders ever taste their own wine?”

  At Tellurith’s raised eyebrow he growls and subsides. “Ah, you know how I feel . . .”

  By now, she knows very well.

  “Greenhill?”

  “North of Gray. Ship-builders. The galleys are famous, but I don’t think I’ve been . . .”

  Inwardly, Tellurith sighs. Two sovereign states and an empire make a large haystack. Especially when she has begun to doubt that one needle will be clue enough.

  “Shuya?”

  “President of Verrain. A very—large—lady.” Faintly, distractingly, now the black eyes smile. “With a reputation for, ah—intrigue.” Shuya’s list of lovers outdoes that of Dhasdein’s Crown Prince.

  “Do you see her?”

  “A good Verrainer. Black as—Cataract mud. Likes a skau-weed pipe. Got a camel’s roar of a laugh.”

  “Do you see her close?”

  A very long pause. “Yes.”

  Tellurith suppresses the groan. But by now the process is routine. “How long ago?”

  A deepening frown. “Recent . . . but not the first. I think—” he knuckles his eyes suddenly, “I think I served in Verrain. I remember desert. Those vile mud forts. Camels. Camels from here to the horizon, strings of them six deep . . .”

  Guard-duty, border duty. Warding caravans.

  “Tellurith, what can I do?”

  “Eh?”

  “It isn’t going to come back. And if it did,” the black stare is solid as a bar, “you said it yourself. You can’t afford to let me go.”

  “Nothing’s certain . . .”

  “If you do, it can only be one way.”

  Her skin prickles. “That won’t be necessary!”

  “Not if I can do something—already am something—in Amberlight. What can I do?”

  Tellurith’s mouth opens to tell him and she yanks it shut.

  “I think I was good with figures. I remember—organizing a campaign, once. Somewhere in Quetzistan. There must be some­thing—in the House.” He knows already that he may never be al­lowed outside. “Surely, you could give me a trial?”

  Tellurith rubs the back of her head hard. Erases image of Iatha’s, Maeran’s, the Thirteen’s faces. “Figures. A trial. Yes.”

  * * * *

  “That’s ten bolts silk and half an ingot copper, fifteen darrin minted coin, the discount’s five percent. Take off three darrin for a chip Zeya made, shiftless cow . . . What’s the running total, did you add that up?”

  Hanni does not aim for cruelty. Told to take a raw off-sider, she has not flinched. Confronted with the Head’s outlander, she does not so much as gulp. Ensconcing him with the counting-slate as she runs through yesterday’s port-tallies, she is simply doing her job.

  “I—uh—what was the conversion for silk?”

  “Twelve darrin a bolt and you add a half if it’s dyed. Did you—oh.”

  “Take a dose of sleep-syrup.” Tellurith cannot help it. Coming round the dinner table, she begins to work her fingers into that hunched neck. “Don’t expect to learn it all in a day.”

  His shoulders are wincing tight. At that, they droop. She feels him sigh.

  “What is it?” Very quietly, her cutter’s voice.

  Silence. A struggle, she guesses, with masculine pride.

  Then, bitterly, “No time may be enough.”

  Tellurith lets her fingers question, Why?

  “I used to be quicker than that. I know—once, I could have picked this up in an hour—”

  “Moon-mother’s love, you’re a week out of bed. For the second time, after a mess where you nearly died—”

  Silence. Replying, too eloquently: Where I lost more than blood.

  Tellurith says firmly, “Give it a few more days.”

  * * * *

  “I’m sorry, Ruand.” Hanni, quiet and competent as a Head’s private aide has to be. And sure. “Maybe, one day he’ll manage it. But it would be better if he learnt somewhere—less important.”

 
“If I can take the risk—”

  “It’s not just his mistakes, Ruand.” Hanni’s eyes meet hers, the steady golden-brown of Amberlight. “I’m worried about mine.”

  Having a man around. Where no man should be, in the work-place of an Amberlight House.

  Apprentice to some other number-head, no. Degrade to house-work, even supply calculations, no. Yet what else is safe, demanding enough, possible, for an ex-soldier, high military agent, too intelligent mercenary who has already eluded the defenses of the House?

  Defenses. Yes.

  “Azo,” says Tellurith as her minder pads past, “would Alkhes make troublecrew?”

  Azo’s jaw drops. They are used to the name, now. And it does, Azo confides in an unguarded moment, make it easier to avoid ‘the dangle’ at inopportune times.

  “Mmm, if he was stronger.” As she ponders it, a glint shows. “Tell you what, Ruand. Wouldn’t take much.”

  * * * *

  Waning moon on Amberlight, presiding over Tellurith’s table, an over-ripe golden globe. A Tellurith distracted from House worries by that neat, new-washed presence across the plates, with its innocent black stare and its indubitably swollen nose.

  “Rot and gangrene, Azo, I didn’t say, Dent his face!”

  A splutter from the kitchen. Opposite her a bubbling chuckle, the first spontaneous sound of joy she has ever heard him make.

  “It is a trouble-school, Tel.”

  “Tel?”

  The grin broadens. “I can’t very well use ’Rith.”

  “Blighted impudence. Use ‘Ruand.’ You’re nothing but a raw recruit!”

  She scowls tremendously. As convincingly as the thunderous tone. The black eyes sparkle, a youthful imp’s. As once by that bed-side, something clenches on her heart.

  “I did think I was half-cooked . . .”

  Azo and Tellurith chorus, “Ha!”

  And he laughs outright, softly, unmistakably, and begins to describe the bout, with malicious awareness of his silenced audi­ence. With a gaiety, a fulfillment that briefly obliterates her own skirmish for the day.

  A special Thirteen-meet. Dinda has sent an embassy, direct from Cataract. A highly influential embassy, with presents to en­tice and military muscle to impress, for a tyrant whose subjects pour downRiver in search of work and life, who is in the stick-fork of desperately needing Amberlight and ardently desiring its ruin.

  “His statue,” Eutharie of Prathax complains superfluously, “doesn’t wane until next summer.”

  “And now he wants the new one before spring.” Quite as needlessly Denara of Winsat taps the blazoned parchment. “And bigger as well!”

  Kuro goes to the heart of it. “What’s he going to pay?”

  “Thirty silver ingots—”—“Higher barter-rate—”—“Workers, that’s ridiculous—!”—“He’s got nothing else—!”

  The voices form their usual melting pot. And suddenly, inexplicably but absolute as the qherrique’s own, another voice fills Tellurith’s ears.

  “Does anyone,” she finds herself demanding, “care what he does with it?”

  Silence: eyes slanted, in polite embarrassment; disbelief.

  At that expression part of her rises in incomprehensible rage. Part of her knows what to do next, part of her knows where the impulsion is coming from, even as some other, saner element howls, What are you doing?

  “We know—now—they use them on each other. Do we ever ask,” memory of the Dhasdein kinglet complacently tallying his salt-cakes, his copper ingots, his minted gold. Suppressed image of their price winding out across his province’s western waste. Verrain’s slave caravans. Irate outland voice detailing the Imperial military grip upon Wave Island, source of that luscious red wine. “Do we ever ask what they do to their lands?”

  Silence again.

  Until Denara in the president’s chair averts her eyes as from some obscenity, and says, carefully blank, “Amberlight’s work is to ease the work of ruling. To see our work is given in good faith.”

  “And what about the taker’s faith?”

  “If we interfere in the business of sovereign states—how long can we expect them to respect ours?”

  * * * *

  “Stop her!”

  Querya’s response is pure reflex. A snatch, a twist, bringing a strangled yell in reply. But with the catch made, seasoned troublecrew turns and frankly stares. Her second and back-watch, Desis cannot look away from the alley-mouth, but her neck shouts, What in the pits!

  “Bring her here.”

  Querya brings her, fighting like a maniac. Ten, twelve, fourteen? Who could guess, in River Quarter winter rags, with River Quarter starvation under the gapped teeth, the snarls of hair, the screaming face wizened with panic as much as famine and cold? The only certainty is that dart and cannon off a House-head foolish enough to sortie down an unscouted alleyway; and if she really thought to snatch a Head’s brooch from her very lapel, was it madness that drove her?

  Or what depth of need?

  “What were you trying to do?”

  River Quarter beggar. Uphill Head. What could she explain? What could Tellurith hear? The screams intensify, losing all coherency. The only thing she understands is her fate.

  “Rot and gangrene . . .”

  Tellurith grabs a shoulder, and through the ensuing convulsion, stares.

  At her own hand, clean, manicured, brown against the gold-brocaded cuff of her double-wool, fur-lined winter coat. Her daytime winter coat. Against the sodden ruck of cotton, with some sort of wadding under it, over a shoulder thinner than a bird’s. At the gold buckle of her boot, next to that filthy blue-tinged foot thrashing in the mud.

  Tellurith opens her hand. Her mouth opens to say, “Iatha, give her—”

  Ten fiels, fifty fiels, thirty silver darrin. A hundred? More?

  “Let her go.”

  The child hurtles like a loosed wolf into the alley-mouth. Querya’s eyebrows actually rise before she looks away.

  Tellurith grunts and heads back to the vehicle by the warehouse door. Feeling the middle-winter southerly scythe about her ribs, the splatter of gathering rain. Hearing her own words, up in that exquisitely warm noonday workroom, how long ago?

  We are one city, with a limited number of folk, and a great deal of land. A great deal of wealth.

  Dispossessed clan-folk. Docker brats. Outland jetsam. Why can’t the Quarter expose boy-babies like the Houses do? They know too many men make trouble. Why can’t they ever learn?

  She stares around her, at the bedaubed warehouse wall, the obdurately cleared and paven freight-way and the filthy alley behind her, the warehouse manager, snug in an outdoors coat to see her off, the scatter of unemployed stevedores beyond, hunched and crowded, shivering, in a wind that speaks to the marrow of snow.

  A great deal of wealth.

  Her brows come down and stay there in a slow, enduring frown.

  * * * *

  “Ah—Ruand—where do we go from here?”

  Verrith has waited to intercept her, in the main hall, behind the massive outer doors, first bulwark of the House. Swirled in on rain and snow-wind from another dock-side sortie, Tellurith is reluctant to stop. But Verrith would not be here without cause.

  “He knows all the hand-to-hand stuff. He just had to remember street fighting . . . ambushes . . . tactics. What now?”

  Tellurith stands between the inner door-wards and a very ugly presentation bust of some ancient Head, her retinue jammed at her heels. Knowing the lore-path of troublecrew as well as Verrith does: after hand-to-hand fighting, weapons. Blades, slings, bows. Hand-guns.

  Guns firing light.

  Powered by qherrique.

  “And if he could use a weapon, Ruand,” Verrith’s eyes are anxious now, “what about the rest?”

  The lore of House lay-out, weak
spots, exits and entry-ways, passwords and guard-routines. Troublecrew’s secrets. The heart of the House.

  Tellurith swipes at mud on her leggings, silver-threaded leaf-brown, daubed with broad black spots. “Leave the guns out. Teach him,” her tongue stumbles, her breath stops. She wrenches her will past. “Teach him the rest!”

  * * * *

  “’Rith, I have borne with all the other idiocy, but this is too much.”

  Iatha’s quirk, the House-steward’s apartment has a long dormer window, with a garden view. Over the tower’s shaft of fret-worked light, Tellurith can just catch the glow, as of a pearl-fed fire. Qherrique, dreaming in the rain.

  She takes another sip of wine-cut coffee and wriggles her stockinged toes. “Shall I tell him to count bullocks in the Kora, then? Give him a rice-planter’s stick? Send him down to the wharf?”

  “Put him in the tower!”

  The snap speaks a demand long restrained. The silence adds, Where he belongs.

  “’Rith, for the Mother’s love. Zuri’s having pups. An outland dangle, taught the passwords—knowing the House-ways—the troublecrew’s ways—and this of all dangles, of all outlanders, oh, for the Mother’s love, ’Rith, think!”

  Open anguish. A plea from her oldest friend. From the conscience, the other heart of the House.

  Black eyes glowing, smiling, a lithe wiry body losing its uncertainty, regaining command and skill and life.

  “Iatha—he’s not like our men. And he’s not back to—usual—even yet. Rot it, he’s got a mind that eats things like fire. If we keep him, we have to give it fuel.

  “Or else,” cold now, a rock’s certainty, “he’ll find it. And it’ll be worse than running away.”

  “Then for the Mother’s love, put him where we can control it! In the tower!”

  “No!”

  * * * *

  Zuri is more amenable. Alkhes is a fine brawler, an excellent street-fighter, with a leader’s wits, she would be happy to have him on her crews any time.

  “Except?”

  Zuri files her nose again.

  “Is it the guns?”

  Zuri’s eyebrows make one short tic. “With a sleeve-sling, with a throwing-knife, he could beat most of us to a shot.” Tellurith’s belly jerks. “We mostly use guns long-distance anyway. And if it comes to it, he need never go outside.”