by Jo Clayton
1
The wide bed creaked as Brann rolled onto her side. Maksim muttered a few shapeless sounds without waking enough to know what he was protesting. She finished her turn and lay on her back, staring at a ceiling swimming in green-tinted light. The sun was barely above the horizon, shining directly in through the tight profusion of vines Maksim had coaxed across the windows. Given his choice he would come grudging out of bed sometime past noon and would have hung thick black curtains over the windows, but Brann needed a free flow of air and a feeling that the outside penetrated the room, that she wasn’t shut into something she couldn’t escape from. The vines were a compromise. She smiled at the shifting leaf-shadows; the light that came through in the very early morning was such a lovely green.
Maksim was sleeping soundly again now the nights were cooler and Brann was once more sharing the bed with him. Solid, meaty, comforting to sleep against once he settled down, he was a furnace that got hotter as the night went on, a blessing-in winter but impossible when the nights heated up. When the hot season arrived, Brann moved into the other bedroom and Maksim was once again tormented by the bad dreams that wracked his sleep when she wasn’t there to chase them off; he’d lived a long time and done things he refused to remember; he had reasons he considered adequate at the moment but they didn’t ease his mind when he looked back at them. During the day he pottered contentedly enough about Jal Virri, reading, working in the many gardens beside the sprites who tended the place, but when night came, he dreamed.
Braun and Maksim slept together for the comfort they took from each other, body touching body. They shared a deep affection. One might have called it love, if the word hadn’t so many resonances that had nothing to do with them. Maksim found his loves in Kukurul, young men who stayed a night or two, then left, others who loved him a longer time but also left.
Brann went through a short but difficult period during the first days they spent on Jal Virri; she wanted him, but had to recognize the futility of that particular passion. It was a brief agony, but an agony nonetheless, a scouring of her soul. His voice stirred her to the marrow of her bones, he was bigger than life, a passionate dominating complex man; she’d never met his equal anywhere anytime in all her long life. She shared his disdain for inherited privilege, his sardonic, sympathetic view of ordinary men; her mind marched with his, they enjoyed the same things, laughed at the same things, deplored the same things, were content to be quiet at the same time. Anything more, though, was simply not there. She too went prowling the night in Kukurul, though it was more distraction than passion she was seeking.
There was enough of a nip in the air to make her snuggle closer to Maksim. He grumbled in his sleep, but again he didn’t wake. She scratched at her thigh, worked her toes, flexed and unflexed her knees. It was impossible; how did he do it, sleep like that, on and on? She never could stay still once she was awake. Her mouth tasted foul, like something had died in it and was growing moss. Her bladder was overfull; if she moved she’d slosh. She pressed her thighs together; it didn’t help. That’s it, she thought. That’s all I need. She slid out of bed and scurried for the watercloset.
When she came back, Maksim had turned onto his stomach. He was snoring a little. His heavy braid had come undone and his long, coarse hair was spread like gray weeds over his shoulders; a strand of it had dropped across his face and was moving with his breath, tickling at his nose. She smiled tenderly at him and lifted the hair back, taking care not to wake him. Lazy old lion. She shaped the words with her lips but didn’t speak them. Big fat cat sleeping in the sun. She touched the tangled mass of hair. I’ll have a time combing, this out. Sorceror Prime tying granny knots, it’s a disgrace, that’s what it is. She patted a yawn, crossed to the vanity he’d bought for her in Kukurul a few years back.
The vanity was a low table of polished ebony with matching silver-mounted chests at both ends and a mage-made mirror, its glass smooth as silk and more faithful than she liked this autumn morning. Maybe it was the green light, but she looked ten years older than she had, last night. She leaned closer to the mirror, pushed her fingers hard along her cheekbones, tautening and lifting the skin. She sighed. Drinker of Souls. Not any more. I don’t have to feed my nurslings now. They’re free of me. She stepped back and kicked the hassock closer, sat down and began brushing at her hair. There was no reason now for the Drinker of Souls to walk the night streets and take life from predators preying on the weak. The changechildren could feed themselves; they weren’t even children any more. They came flying back once or twice a year to say hello and tell her the odd things they’d seen, but they never stayed long. Jal Virri is boring; Jay said that once. She paused, then finished the stroke. It’s true. I’m petrified with boredom. I’ve outlived my usefulness. There’s no point to my life.
She set the brush down and gazed into the mirror, examining her face with clinical objectivity, considering its planes and hollows as if she were planning a self-portrait. She hadn’t been a pretty child and she wasn’t pretty now. She frowned at her image. If I’d been someone else looking at me, I’d have said the woman has interesting bones and I’d like to paint her. Or I would have liked to paint her before she started to droop. Discontent. It did disgusting things to one’s face, made everything sag and put sour lines around the mouth and between the brows. Her breasts were firm and full, that was all right, but she had a small pot when she sat; she put her hands round it, lifted and pressed it in, then sighed and reached for the brush. It won’t be long before I have to pay someone to climb into bed with me. She pulled the bristles through the soft white strands. Old nag put out to pasture, no one wants her anymore.
She made a face at herself and laughed, but her eyes were sad and the laughter faded quickly. Might as well be dead.
She rubbed the back of her hand beneath her chin and felt the loosening muscle there. Death? Illusion. Give me one man’s lifeforce and I’m young again. Twenty-four/five, back where I was when Slya finished with me. No dying for me. Not even a real aging, only an endless going on and on. No rest for me. No lying down in the earth and letting slip the burden of life. How odd to realize what a blessing death was. Not a curse. Well… once the dying was finished with, anyway. Dying was the problem, not death. I wonder if they’d let me? She got to her feet, looked over her shoulder at Maksim. One massive arm had dropped off the bed; it hung down so the backs of his fingers trailed on the grass mat that covered the floor.
She went out, walked through rooms filled with morning light, swept and garnished by one of the sprites that took care of the island, the one they called Housewraith. The kitchen was a large bright room at the back. She pulled open one of the drawers and took out a paring knife. She set the blade on her wrist. It was so sharp its weight was enough to push the edge a short way through her flesh; when she lifted the knife, she saw a fine red line drawn across the porcelain pallor of her skin. She put the knife down. It wasn’t time yet. She wasn’t tired enough of living to endure the pain of dying. Boredom… no, that wasn’t enough, not yet.
She set the knife on the work table and drew her thumb along the shallow cut, wiping away the blood. The cut stung and oozed more blood. Rubbing her wrist absently against the side of her breast, she wandered outside, shivering as the frosty morning breeze hit her skin. For a moment she thought of going inside and putting on a robe, but she wasn’t bothered enough to make the effort. She looked at her wrist; the cut was clotted over; the blood seepage had stopped.
Ignoring the bite of dew that felt like snowmelt on her bare feet, she walked down the long grassy slope to the water and stood at the edge of the small beach listening to the saltwater lap lazily at the sand and gazing across the narrow strait to a nearby island, a high rocky thing sculpted by wind and water into an abstract pillar, barren except for a few gray and orange lichens. All the islands around Jal Virri were like that; it was as if the lovely green isle had drawn the life out of them and spent it on itself. Arms huddled across her breasts, hands shaking
though they were closed tight about her biceps, her feet blocks of ice with smears of black soil and scraps of grass pasted on them, she watched the dark water come and go until she couldn’t stand the cold any longer. It’s time we went to Kukurul again, Maks and me, or me alone, if he won’t come. She stood quite still for a breath or two. I don’t think I’m coming back. I don’t know what it is I’m going to do, but I can’t vegetate here any longer. She turned and walked back toward the house. I’ve been sleeping and now I’m awake. I never could stay in bed once I woke up.
2
“Hoist it, Maksi.” She jerked the covers off him, slapped him on a meaty buttock. “Wake up, you bonelazy magicman, I need you.”
He grunted and cracked an eye. “Go ‘way.”
“Uh-uh, baby. You’ve slept long enough for ten your size. Pop me to Kukurul, luv. I woke up wanting.” He closed the eye. “Take the boat.”
She took his earlobe instead and pinched hard.
“Ow! Stop that.” He grabbed for her arm, but she jumped out of reach. “Witch!”
“If I were, I wouldn’t need you.”
He groaned and sat up. “You don’t need ine.”
“Come on, Maksi. Housewraith decided to make breakfast this morning. It’s spelled to wait, but I’m hungry. I’ll take the boat all right, but I want you with me.”
He shoved tangled hair off his face and looked shrewdly at her. “What is it, Bramble? Something’s eating at you.”
“No soulsearching before breakfast, if you please. I’ve run your bath for you, I’ve had mine already. I’ll wait twenty minutes no more, so it’s your fault if your eggs are cold.”
3
The fire crackled briskly behind the screen; the heavy silk drapes were pulled back to let in the morning sun. Brann paced back and forth, her body cutting through the beams, her shadow jerking erratically over the furniture. She swung round, scowled at Maksim. “Well?”
“Of course I’ll go with you. Matter of fact, I’ve been thinking for several days now it’s time for another visit.” He rubbed his hand across his chin. “What’s itching at you, Bramble-all-thorns?”
“The usual thing. What else could there be?” She turned her back on him and stared out the window.
“I don’t think so.”
“Oh you.”
“Me.”
She moved her right arm in a shapeless, meaningless gesture; she started to speak, stopped, tried again, had even less luck finding words for what she wanted to say; the trouble was, she didn’t know what she wanted to say. “I’m useless. There’s nothing to do here.” She turned round, hitched a hip on the windowsill. “Nothing real.” She lifted her hands, let them fall. “I don’t know, Maksi. There’s no point to anything. Nothing I try… works. I tried potting, you know that, you shaped my kiln for me. It was horrible. Everything I did… mediocre… bleah! At Shaynamoshu I was content a hundred years. Happy. Here…? I paint a pretty flower, don’t I. Dew on the petals, pollen on the stamens, you can see every grain. Lovely, right? Horrible. A dead slug has more soul. Useless, Maksi. Out to pasture like a broke-down mare. Even the damn gods don’t need me anymore. Maybe I should go to Silili with you and give Old Tungjii a boot in the behind. Maybe something would come of that.”
“It probably would. I doubt you’d be pleased with whatever it was.”
“Pleased? That doesn’t matter. It’d be something to do. Some reason to get out of bed in the morning. To keep on living. You know what I’m talking about; you’re restless too, magicman.”
“Brann, I…”
“No. You don’t need to say it. I know what’s going to happen. You’ll go to Silili to see your protege through her Passage Rite and you won’t come back. Why should you?”
“Thornlet, come with me.” He lay back in his chair and laughed at her and let his voice boom out, dark velvet rubbing her bones. “Come wandering with me and see the world. Sure somewhere there’s a prince who needs his bottom whacked, a lord to be taught his manners, a bully who needs his pride punctured. Let us go out and do good, no matter how much chaos we leave behind us.”
“Ah Maksi m’luv, you’re such a fraud, you evil old sorceror, you bleed at a touch and put yourself to endless inconvenience. I don’t know. Maybe we just need some hard living for a while so we can appreciate peace again.
Anyway, let’s scratch our ordinary itches and see what comes of that.”
4
Kukurul. The place where seapaths cross. The pivot of the four winds. If you sit long enough at one of the plaza tables of the cafй Sidday Lir, it’s said you’ll see the whole world file past you. Kukurul. Expensive, gaudy, secretive and corrupt. Its housefronts are full of windows with screens behind them like the eyes of Kukrulese. Along the Ihman Katt are brothels for every taste, ranks of houses where assassin guilds advertise men of the knife, women of the poison cup; halfway up the Katt there’s a narrow black building where deathrites are practiced for the titillation of the connoisseurs, open to participation or solitary enjoyment. At the end of the Ihman Katt is the true heart of Kukurul, the Great Market, a paved square two miles on a side where everything is on sale but heat, sweat, and stench. Those last are free.
Brann patted at her face with a square of fine linen, removing some of the dust and sweat that clung to her skin. It was one of those fine hot airless days that early autumn sometimes threw up and the Market was a hellhole, though few of the shoppers or the shopkeepers seemed to notice it. She pushed the kerchief up her sleeve and lifted a graceful vase. Eggshell porcelain with an unusual glaze. She frowned and ran her fingertips repeatedly over the smooth sides. Unless she was losing her mind, she knew that glaze. Her father’s secret mix and Slya’s Breath, never one without the other. At Shaynamoshu she’d tried again and again to get that underglow, but it was impossible without the Breath. She examined the lines and the underpainting. It wasn’t her father’s work or that of any of his apprentices, but there was something there… the illusive similarity of cousins perhaps. Biting at her lower lip, she upended the vase and inspected the maker’s mark. A triangle above an oval, Arth Slya’s sigil. The glyph Tayn. The glyph Nor. These were the potter’s seal. Tannor of Arth Slya. She carried the vase to the Counting Table. “Arth Slya is producing again?”
The old man blinked hooded eyes. “Again?”
“You claim this is oldware?”
“Claim?” He shrugged. “The mark is true, the provenance can be produced.”
“I don’t doubt the mark, the glaze alone is enough to guarantee it.”
“You a collector?”
“No.” She smiled as she saw the glitter in his eyes fade before that cool negative. “Earthenware is at once too heavy and too fragile to survive my sort of life. I will take this, though, for the pleasure it gives me. It’s a cheerful thing when a dead loveliness comes to life again. Twenty silver.”
He settled to his work and his pleasure. “New or old, that’s Arth Slya ware. Silver is an insult. Five gold.”
When the bargain was concluded, Braun had him send the vase to the Inn of the Pearly Dawn where she and Maksim were staying. She left the Market and strolled down the Katt to the cafй Sidday Lir, confused by the conflicting emotions awakened by the vase. She was pleased because her father had left workheirs; she was jealous because that place was hers by right and talent. She wanted to go home. Home? Arth Slya? What made her think that place was home more than any other patch of earth? Kin? She couldn’t claim them, who would believe her. If they believed her, they’d back away from her, terrified. And could she blame them?
She chose a table with a view out over the harbor and sat watching the ships arrive and depart, wondering if one of them was a trader like Sammang’s Panday Girl, like her working the islands north and east of the Tukery, like her calling in at Tavisteen on Croaldhu where Brann had started her wandering. She wallowed comfortably in nostalgia as she sipped at the tea and enjoyed the dance of the ships and the streaming of the ladesmen working the wharves below;
she wondered what the Firemountain Tincreal looked like these days, whether the eruption and the weathering of two centuries since had changed her out of all recognition, wondered if she’d recognize the descendants of her kin if she saw them. Was there any more reason to go back to Arth Slya than there was to return to Jal Virri? I’d like to see it again, she thought. I’d like to see what the ones who went back made of it.
When the teapot was empty, she sat considering whether she wanted more tea or should call for her bill and return to the Inn for a bath and a nap until it was time to go looking for something to warm her bed. Before she reached a decision on that, she saw Jaril walking down the Katt and settled back to wait for him.
The changer wound toward her through scattered tables, drawing stares enough to make him uncomfortable; Brann watched him shy away from a clawed, hand reaching for his arm, pretend he didn’t hear a half-whispered suggestion from a Hina woman of indeterminate age, or drawled comments from a group of Phrasi highboms lounging at three tables pushed together. He looked a teener boy, fourteen, fifteen years old, a beautiful boy who’d somehow avoided the awkward throes of adolescence, hair like white-gold spun gossamer fine lifting to the caress of the wind, elegantly sculptured features, crystal eyes, a shapely body that moved with unstudied grace. He pulled out a chair and sat down, fidgeted for several moments without speaking to her.
“Add a few warts next time,” Brann said, amused. She felt suddenly happy. Her son was come to visit her. She looked past him. Alone? “Where’s Yaro? Saying hello to Maks?”
“No,” he said. “Yaro’s not with me.”
She eyed him thoughtfully, caught the attention of a waiter and ordered a half bottle of wine. When he’d gone, she said, “Tell me.”
Jaril touched a fingertip to a drop of spilled tea and drew patterns on the wood. “Remember the swamp before we got to Tavisteen? Remember what happened to me and Yaro there?”
