by Jo Clayton
“Mmm, give me a minute to think.” She passed her hand over her head, smoothing down the fine white halfcurls. “Sorceror… there are a lot of idiots who fool around with magic of one kind or another… uhhhm, how sure are you that man really is a sorceror?”
“Eh, it’s not everyone who snaps his fingers and makes a tigerman fetch for him.”
“I see. Yaril, what’s your brother doing?”
“Still watching the Dreeps. They’re up in the attics turning out the servants’ rooms.”
“Tell him to leave them to it and get back here.”
“He’s coming.”
There weren’t that many sorcerors around, at least not those who’d reached the level of competence in their arts that matched Taa’s description of the man he’d robbed. And, from what she’d observed in her travels when she was still wandering about the world, they all knew each other. So it was more than likely this one could give her some useful information about Settsimaksimin and less than likely he’d tell her anything unless she had a hold on him.
Jaril oozed through the door. “The search is about finished, but the Head Dreep, he’s not happy about it, he wants to get the hounds in and start over on the rooms, Kheren is having fits about that. I got the feeling the Dreep was walking careful around our Host, that he knew if Kheren complained about him, he’d be up to his nose in hot shit.”
“Hmm. Tua, I’ve got a deal for you. Listen, I’ll send the children for that egg if you’ll bring your sorceror here.”
“Why? Don’t get snarky if I don’t jump at the deal, but it’s my body and my life you’re playing with.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll take care of you.”
“He’s a sorceror.”
“And I’m Drinker of Souls and I’ll have his in my hands.”
“I don’t have a choice, do I?” ‘
“No. You might save us some time if you told Yaril and Jaril where to find Jizo’s House. Doesn’t matter all that much, the place is probably lit up and swarming with guards, the children could fly over the quarter and go right to it.”
“I talk too much.”
“Oh, I don’t think so. You’re getting what you want without risking your hide.” She chuckled. “Tua Tua, you’ve been working hard to worm this out of me, clever clever young thief playing pittypat games with the poor old demidemon, making her singe her aged paws plucking your nuts from the fire.”
He opened his eyes wide, angelically innocent, then he gave it up and grinned at her. “Was clever, wasn’t it.’
“Shuh. Be more clever. Tell the kids where to find the egg.”
He was a tall man with a handsome ruined face and eyes bluer than the sea on a sunny day. His fine black hair and the beard neatly groomed into corkscrew curls and the bold blade of his nose proclaimed him a son of Phras. He came in slowly, the thick, textured wool of his black robe brushing against boots whose black leather was soft and glowing and unobtrusively expensive. He wore a large ruby on the fourth finger of his left hand, his right hand was bare; they were fine hands, never-used hands, soft, pale with a delicate tracery of blue veins. He stood without speaking while Tua shut and locked the door and joined Brann who was sitting on the bed, Jaril-Mastiff crouched by her knee.
The silence thickened. Tua fidgeted, scratching at his knee, feeling the knife up his sleeve, rubbing the back of his neck, the small scrapes and rustles he made the only sounds in the room. Brann continued to sit, relaxed, smiling. She intended to force the man to speak first, she had to have that edge to counter the power and discipline she felt in him, to wrest from him the knowledge she needed. He’d spread a glamour about himself, he’d dressed in his best for this meeting, wearing pride along with wool and leather and power like a cloak, but he was dying, his body was beginning to crumble. He saw that she knew this and his eyes went bitter and his hands shook. His mouth pressed to a thin line, he folded his arms across his chest; the shaking stopped, but there was a film of sweat on his face and a crease of pain across his brow. He knew the egg was nowhere in the room. (It was with Yaril who was being a dayhawk sitting on the ridgepole of the Inn, the egg in a pouch tied to her leg; Brann had no way of knowing how close a sorceror had to be to retrieve his souls and was taking no chances.) “You called me here,” he said; his voice was deep and rich, an actor’s voice trained in declamation and caress. “You have something for me.”
“I have.” She put stress on the I.
“Give it to me.”
“Not yet.”
Dark power throbbed in the room, lapping at her with a thousand tongues. Brann kept her smile (though it went a little stiff), kept her hands relaxed on her thighs (though the thumbs twitched a few times); tentatively she tapped into the field and began reeling its energies into herself, scooping out a hollow he couldn’t penetrate. The young thief scrambled away from her, went to sit in the window, legs dangling, ready to jump if Brann faltered. The Jaril-Mastiff came onto his feet, muscle sliding powerfully against muscle, and padded noiselessly around the periphery of the zone of force protecting the man. He oscillated there for several breaths, looking from the sorceror to Brann (who was sitting unmoved, draining the attack before it could touch her) then he grew denser and more taut and when he was ready, he catapulted against the man’s legs, bursting unharmed through the zone and knocking him into a painful sprawl.
Jaril-Mastiff untangled himself and trotted over to Brann. She laughed, scratched between his ears and watched the sorceror collect himself and get shakily to his feet. “Are you ready to talk?”
He brushed at his sleeves, unhurried, discipline intact. “What do you want?”
“Information.” She smiled at him. “Come. Relax, I’m not asking that much. Sit and let’s talk.”
He shook his robe back into its stately folds, straightened the chair he’d knocked awry in his sprawling fall and settled himself in it. “Who are you?”
“Drinker of Souls.” Another smile. “What name do you answer to?”
Another thoughtful pause. “Ahzurdan.” His blue gaze slid over her, returned to her face, touched the short delicate curls clustered over her head, again returned to her face. “Drinker of Souls,” he said. “Brann,” he said.
She frowned. “You know me?”
He glanced at the boy in the window, said nothing. “Turn him loose,” she said. “That’s what he’s here for.”
Abruptly genial, he nodded. “Isoatua, the contract is complete.’ He raised a brow. “Go and don’t let me see you again.”
Tua scowled, turned his shoulder to him. “Fenna meh?”
“A minute. Jaril?”
The mastiff came onto his feet, yawned, was a glitnmersphere of pale light. It drifted upward, whipped through Ahzurdan before he had time to react, then returned to Brann and shifted to Jaril the boy. “He means it,” he said.
“You heard, ‘Ilia. Next time be a bit more careful what you lift.”
Tua started to say something, but changed his mind. Ignoring Ahzurdan he bowed to Brann, strolled to the door. With a graceful flick of his wrist, he unlocked it. When he was out, Jaril turned the key again, put his head through the wall. A moment later he ambled over to Brann. “He’s off.”
“Thanks. Ahzurdan.”
“Yes?”
“How do you know me?”
“My grandfather was a shipmaster named Chandro bal Abbayd. I believe you knew him.”
“Shuh. You hear that, Jaril? Three. That’s not coincidence, that’s plot. Miserable gods are dabbling their fingers in my life again. All right. All right. Nothing I can do about it. Look, Ahzurdan, there was an attack on me a few days ago, a tigerman slid a knife between my ribs. No, I don’t think you sent him. I’m reasonably sure someone called Settsimaksimin wants me dead. He came close, not close enough. I have no doubt he knows that by now. What I want from you is this, anything you can tell me about him.”
“Ah.” He slumped in the chair and let the glamour fade. There was a broad band of gray in his thinning
hair, streaks of gray in his beard, the whites of his eyes were yellowed and bloodshot. He had high angular cheekbones in a face bonier than Chandro’s, at least as she remembered him, strongly defined indentations at the temples, deep creases running from his nostrils past the corners of his mouth. A face used by time and thought and suffering, a lot of the last self-inflicted. “What did you do?”
“I suspect it’s something I’m going to do.”
“I see.” He stroked his beard, no longer trying to hide the shake of his hands; red light shimmered in the heart of the ruby. “You’re prepared to trust what I say?”
She smiled. “Of course not. I trust my ability to interpret what you say. So you’ll do it?”
“Yes.”
“No reservations?”
“No.”
“Jaril, tell your sister to get down here. Ahzurdan, you look awful. Come over here, get rid of that robe. When Jaril gets back with Yaril, I’ll see what I can do about knitting you together again.”
Ahzurdan unknotted the thongs of the pouch; he paused a moment, his eyes looked inward, he thrust two long fingers inside and touched the crystal. His face wiped of expression, he stood rigidly erect for several minutes as the souls flowed back into his flesh. When it was done, he tossed the pouch onto the bed and dropped beside it. “I’m a fool,” he said. “Don’t trust me, I’ll let you down every time.”
“Sad, sad, how terribly sad.” Brann snorted. “Before a binge that might mean something, not after.”
“Ah yes.” He stroked a hand down his beard. “You see me not quite at my worst.” He sighed. “A man is destroyed most effectively when he does it himself. Have you tasted the dreams of ru’hrya? No? You’re wise not to bind yourself to that endless wheel.” When she reminded him she couldn’t work through thick wool, he managed a half smile and began unfastening his robe. “There’s some pleasure in the smoke, a deep stillness, a gentle drifting, you’re floating in a warm fog. But the thing that brings you back again and again to the smoke is the dream.” His hand stilled for a moment, he looked inward again, pain and longing in those blue blue eyes. “The dream. You’re a hero there. Colors, odors, textures, they’re so alive they’re close to pain but not pain. Everything you do there comes out right, you’re not clumsy there or a fool or a victim. You live your life over again there, but the way you wanted it to be, not the way it was or is.” He stood, pulled his arms free and let the robe fall about his feet. Under it he wore a black silk tunic that came to mid-thigh and black silk drawers that reached his knees. He was perhaps too thin, but was well-muscled and healthy despite a week-long binge on dreamsmoke; in an odd way his body seemed a decade younger than his face. “You can’t forget them, the dreams, your body screams at you for the smoke, but that’s not important, what you hunger for is the other thing. You despise yourself for your weakness, but after a while you can’t stand knowing how stupid and futile you are and you binge again. And as the years pass you binge more frequently until the day comes when you do nothing else and you die still dreaming. I know that. I’ve seen it. The knowledge sits in my mind like a corpse. I run deeper into the smoke to escape that corpse and by doing so I run toward it, toward my degradation and my death. I came to Jade Halimm to find you, Brann; I came to beg you to free me from this need. Use your healing hands on me, Brann, make me whole. I’ll tell you everything I know of Cheonea and Settsimaksimin, I’ll go with you to help you fight him and you will need me, even you. Cleanse my body and my mind, Brann, do it in memory of the joy you and my grandfather shared that he told me about more than once, do it because you need me even if you think you don’t, do it out of the generosity of your soul.”
“What makes you think I can do what you can’t?”
He smiled wearily. “Tungjii’s laughter in my head, Brann.”
“Slya’s crooked toes! If I could… if I could climb the air… aah!”
“What?”
“That miserable menagerie of misfits that makes toys of us and dances us about to amuse themselves. Listen. I spent the last hundred years as a potter, a damn good one, sometimes even great. I was content working my clay, chopping wood for the kiln, all that. Then there comes this messenger from out of the past, the children of Harra Hazani who was once a friend of mine are calling me to keep a promise I made her some two hundred years ago. And right away I’m lying on the grass with a knife in my back. And when I’m getting ready to go kick my enemy where it hurts, what happens? I’m sleeping peacefully in an expensive room in a highclass inn and I wake up to dogs howling and a young thief climbing the wall outside my window, and lo, he’s the grandson of another old acquaintance of mine, and lo, he’s in this mess because he just happened to steal the souls of a sorceror who just happens to be the grandson of another old friend and lover. I said it before, this isn’t coincidence, it’s a plot. Those damn gods are jerking me around again.”
“What are you going to do about it?”
“Shuh, what I’d like to do is go back to my pots.-“But?”
“What choice do I have? There’s my sworn oath and there’s a man who wants to kill me. So. Now that that’s over with, stretch out. On your stomach first. Yaril, help me, make sure we’re not interrupted.”
Her hands were warm and surprisingly strong. He thought about her chopping wood and couldn’t visualize it. Soft hands. No calluses. Short nails, but cared for. She worked with her hands. A potter. He suppressed a shudder, but she felt it. “It’s nothing,” he said. “A troubling thought, no more.” Her fingers moved in small circles over his head then drew lines of heat along his spine. Energy flowed into him, for once he felt as vital as he did in the dreams, yet more relaxed. He grunted as she pinched a buttock. “Talk,” she said.
“Mmmm… loyalty… where does it end? That’s the question, isn’t it. He was my teacher… unh, don’t destroy the flesh, Brann, I do enough of it, I don’t need help… I suppose that is a fourth noncoincidence… I was twelve when he took me… there’s an intimacy between master and apprentice… thumps and caresses… leaves its mark on you… yesss, that feels good… he was an odd man… difficult… rumors… there were other apprentices… they talked… we all talked… about him… listened… one rumor I think might be true… that he was sired by a drunken M’darjin merchant on an overage Cheonene whore one night in Silagamatys, he had the look… he was clever… fiercely disciplined… he’d work like a slave day after day, no sleep, no meals, a sip of tea and a beancake, that was all, both of them usually cold by the time he remembered them… but when the thing was done, he’d drown in the wildest debauchery he could find or assemble… sometimes… depending on his mood and needs… he took one or more of us with him… he always had four or five apprentices… one year there were nine of us… he dribbled out his lessons to us… enough to keep us clinging to him… and he had favorites… boys he bound closer to him… he fed them more… fed them… us… something like love… like living in an insane cross between a zoo and a greenhouse… yes, that’s it, we clawed and rutted like beasts and put out exotic blooms to attract him…
