The Burning City

by Larry Niven

  "Was your father a Lord, Shanda?"

  "Yes. Lord Horthomew. He was a politician and an officer of the watch, like Samorty."

  "How was he killed?"

  "I don't know," she said.

  Chapter 5

  When it was light, he waited outside Shanda's door. It seemed like a long time until she came out, but the sun was still very low in the east. He fidgeted, and finally said, "I have to piss, and I don't know where, and-"

  She giggled. "I told you- -the room is at the far end of the hall under the stairs. Didn't I tell you?"

  He didn't remember. Certainly he hadn't understood. He thanked her and ran toward the stairs.

  "Lock the door when you're inside," she whisper-called.

  The room below the stairs had windows too high up to look out, and a door with a latch. Inside a stream washed into a basin at his chest level, then spilled over into a trough on the floor. It was all clean, and nothing smelled. When he came out, there was a man waiting outside the door. He had the round ears of a kinless, and he looked like the man who had brought Samorty's armor. He didn't say anything to Whandall as he went inside.

  They ate in the kitchen. Serana fussed over them and didn't seem surprised to find Whandall was still there.

  "We're going to play in the big park," Shanda told Serana. "Will you tell Miss Batty for me?"

  Serana made disapproving sounds. "I'll tell Miss Bertrana you called her that." She didn't sound like she meant it. "You'll need a lunch. I'll fix up something. You be back by suppertime."

  They went to the courtyard where the clothes were drying, and Whandall selected a length of rope. He went to the tree branch and threw the rope over it and tied knots in the rope. With the rope there, he felt safer, because he thought that once he was over the wall no one could catch him in the chaparral. Not without magic.

  The Lords did magic. Everyone said so. Lord Qirinty made cups dance and pulled a dagger from thin air, but it was Lord Qirinty who had wished they could do real magic. But the stove was magic. It all made Whandall's head hurt. Learning things was not the same as understanding them . ..

  He started to climb the rope. When he got on the branch, he saw Shanda was climbing up. She wasn't good at climbing.

  "Help me up," she said.

  He reached down and took her hand and pulled her up to the branch. Then he looked around. One of the men with shovels had seen them climb up, but he only went back to work.

  "Can I get back in this way?" she asked.

  "You're not going out."

  "Yes, I am."

  "Shanda, the chaparral is dangerous. You'll get hurt and your stepfather will kill me."

  "I won't get hurt if you show me what to do."

  "No." He crawled along the tree limb until he was over the wall. She came right behind him. "No," he said again, but he knew it was no use. "Go back and pull the rope to the outside of the wall."

  Just near the wall the plants seemed weak and almost lifeless, but farther away they grew thicker. In a mile they'd be luxurious. Two miles farther were the first of the redwoods. "Those are wonderful," he told her. "Wait till you see them close."

  But she wasn't avoiding the plants. He stopped her. He showed her lord's-kiss and nettles and thorn bushes, and three kinds of touch-me. "Three leaves," he said. "Three leaves and white berries, and it doesn't just sit there. Watch." He saw a stick on the ground and examined it carefully before he picked it up. Then he rubbed his hands on one end and held it by the other end, moving it closer and closer to a large vine. At a hand's distance, the vine moved just enough to brush the stick.

  Whandall showed her an oily smear on the stick. "You wouldn't want to touch that."

  "Would it kill you?"

  "No, it just makes you swell up in bumps. The vine can kill you. Things it touches only hurt you."

  She still wanted to move too fast. He showed her some of the scars the plants had left on him when he was with the foresters. He made her follow just in his footsteps, and whenever she wanted to look at something, he slopped.

  There wasn't the ghost of a chance they would reach the redwoods today.

  At noon they stopped and ate lunch, then started hack. Whandall took his time, pointing out plants even if she'd seen them before. He 'd forgotten often enough, and Kreeg had had to remind him...

  She held a branch at the broken end. Glossy red-and-green leaves grew at the tip. "What would happen if I rub that stick on my stepmother's chair?"

  "Not the stick, the leaves. Shanda, really?"

  She nodded, grinning.

  "Well, she won't die. She'll itch and scratch."

  "It's magic?" Shanda asked. "If it's magic it won't work at all inside the walls. That's what my stepfather says."

  That would explain the cook fires, Whandall thought. But not Qirinty's dancing cups.

  "I'm going to try it," she said.

  He stood under the rope as she climbed it, in case she fell. She waved from the top and was gone.

  It had been a glorious day.

  He was out of the chaparral before the light of sunset died, but the night was turning misty. When Whandall reached the hilltops, he could see fog curling in from where the harbor had been. He watched it for a time, humped above the land. Then he heard shouts. Had someone seen him? Water Devils, perhaps someone worse. He couldn't see anyone, but he ran into the fog, running as hard as he could until he was exhausted.

  Fog was all around him as he caught the stench of the Black Pit. The Pit itself was not to be seen. What he saw was dark shadows racing toward him.

  He ran back the way he had come, but he was too tired to run far. When his breath ran out he trailed to a stop.

  He hadn't heard a sound.

  He'd seen... what had he seen? Dogs or wolves, but huge. But nothing chased him now. He had to get past the Pit to get home, and someone had chased him up the hill. A band was more dangerous than shadows.

  The shadows came again as he crested the hill. This time he watched. Bent to pick up a sharp-edged rock in each fist, and watched again. He wished with all his heart that he already had his Lordkin knife. He had outrun them before and he could again... but they were only shadows. Wolf-shaped shadows, and something much larger, racing silently toward him.

  They were less real as they came near. Whandall yelled and swung his rocks to smash skulls, and then he was among them, in them, and breath-

  less with wonder. They were pockets in the fog: half a dozen wolf shapes all merged now into one thrashing bubble of clear air. The larger shape was a cat as big as Placehold's communal bedroom, armed with a pair of lungs very like Lordkin knives. Then that too was part of the bubble, thrashing as it fought the wolves, and Whandall could watch the shadow shapes of huge birds wheeling above the misty slaughter. They'll never believe me. But what a day!

  Chapter 6

  He had carried his own clothes in a bundle. Now he put them on over his new ones, so that he could get back to Placehold safely. It took all day. After noon, he ate the roll that Serana had given him. The waning moon was high when he got back home. Hungry, he checked out the tables and cookpot for leftovers. That got him nothing but sticky feet. He crept into the sleeping room and fell asleep at once.

  In the morning his toes remembered the clean blond wood that floored Lord Samorty's kitchen as they squished across Placehold's sticky flagstones. In the roar of Placehold's shouts and laughter and curses he remembered the busy quiet around Serana.

  He tore a piece of bread off what Wanshig had gathered. Wanshig jumped, then laughed. "Where did you gather the new clothes?"

  His sisters and cousins all looked at him. "Pretty," Rotunda said. "Are there more?"

  A Lordkin should have guile, even with his own kin. Whandall wanted to think about what he had seen before he talked about it. There was no way to explain that gathering was not a way of life to the Lords and those who worked with them.

  So ... "Clothesline at a house off of Sanvin Street," Whandall said. "Kin-less h
ouse, nobody looking, but there wasn't anything else worth gathering."

  "Too bad," Wanshig said. "Ready for knife lessons?"

  "Sure."

  They practiced with sticks. Whandall was still clumsy. He'd have been killed a do/.en times it they'd used real knives.

  "Next year." The uncles who'd been watching the lessons were sure about it. "Next year."

  The Lordsmen fought with spears and swords, not with the big Lordkin knives. Whandall thought about the Lordshills, where even the gardeners lived us well as Pelzed and Resalet did. The Lordsmen would live even better than gardeners. Fighters always did. His uncles would never be able to teach him to light the way Lordsmen did. But someone might. He knew he had to go back.

  I le washed his new clothes, but he could think of no place to dry them where they would not be stolen. He carried them as a damp bundle when he took to the roads four days later. They smelled of damp.

  His path ran through Flower Market. He kept to shadow when he could, and the windowless sides of buildings, and was still surprised to get through untouched.

  Beyond Flower Market nobody lived, or so he'd been told. He saw occasional dwellings but was able to avoid them. When he reached the ridge it was nearly dark. He thought of staying in the chaparral, then laughed. He knew a better place.

  The Black Pit was stench and mist and darkness, and a misty blur of a full moon overhead. The moon lit shadows that came bounding to greet him. Wolves as big as Whandall himself, all in a leaping pack. Birds big enough lo pluck him from the ground. Two cats bigger than Whandall's imagination. Hubbies in the fog, they merged in a frantic seething bubble, and Whandall laughed and tried to play with them, but he touched nothing but fog.

  Rumor spoke that the Black Pit had swallowed people. He shied from going too deep into it. He didn't want any more of that alien stench, either. I le spread some marsh grass over a flat rock and lay down on that. With two layers of clothes around him, he wasn't even particularly cold.

  Half asleep, he watched another shadow edging toward him several feet above the black swamp. It was rounded and almost featureless, and the ghosts already around him made shadows to interfere with what approached. It was even bigger than the cats. Sleepily he watched it come and tried to guess its shape, then fell asleep still wondering.

  The gardener's boy's clothes were still damp when he put them on at dawn. His own Serpent's Walk garments were underneath. He wasn't cold, just sodden. He walked his clothes dry before he reached the broad wagon path that must be Sanvin Street.

  When he got to the barren lands, a wagon came up behind him. The kinless driver looked at Whandall and stopped. "Need a ride?"

  "Yes, thank you." He hesitated only a moment. "Sir."

  "Climb on. I'm going to the harbor. Where are you headed?"

  "To see... friends. At Lord Samorty's house."

  "Inside, eh? Well, I'll let you off at the fork. Hup. Gettap." The two ponies drew the cart at a pace faster than Whandall would walk. The kinless driver whistled some nameless tune. He was a young man, not much over twenty.

  The cart was filled with baskets with the lids tied on them. "What is that?" Whandall asked.

  The driver eyed Whandall carefully. "Who did you say your friend was?"

  "Shanda."

  "Samorty's daughter?"

  "Stepdaughter," Whandall said. "Sir."

  "Right. Your father work for Samorty?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Explains the shirt," the driver said.

  Whandall widened his eyes and looked up at him.

  The driver grinned. "If you was to look in one of those baskets you'd see cloth just like what you're wearing. My cousin Hallati has a loom in his basement. Weaves that cloth, he and his wives and daughters. We sold a stack of it to Samorty last month."

  Halite. Whandall had never heard the name, but he would remember it. How many other kinless were hiding valuables?

  "Hope we can move Halite out soon. I don't like this drought much. Gets dry and those Lordkin jackals get ugly. Almost got my cousin's place last time. Almost," the cart driver said, and pulled the animals to a stop. This was the road to the Lordshills. Whandall got out and waved a good-bye.

  There were different guards when he got to the gate. They didn't pay much attention to Whandall as he came up the road.

  "Don't remember you," one of the guards said. "Where do you live, boy?"

  "Lord Samorty's house-"

  "Oh. Gardening crew?"

  "Yes, sir."

  The guard nodded. They didn't bother to raise the barrier, but it was easy to walk around it, and the guards were already talking about the weather by the time Whandall was inside.

  There were big houses and wide streets. Palm trees grew at regular intervals, in patterns. The houses were grand. Something more, something weird. Thirty houses shouldn't be quite so similar, though no two were identical; but neither should they remind a boy of a stand of redwoods or a range of hills.

  Like a redwood, like a granite hill, each house looked like it had been in place forever. Like... Whandall stepped back and looked around him, because he could feel how the shock changed his face. Anyone who saw him would know he was a stranger, staring as if he'd never seen a long street lined on both sides with houses, none of which had ever been burned and replaced. The flower beds-they were shaped and arranged to fit around the houses! Not one structure showed any sign of haste, of Get a roof on that before the rain starts! Or Use the beams from the Tanner house-they don't quite, but the Tanners won't need them anymore. Or Just do something to shelter us-don't bother me; can't you see I'm grieving?

  It made him uneasy.

  He didn't know what Lord Samorty's house would look like from the I rout, but it had to be near the wall. He worked his way eastward until he was sure there was only the one layer of houses between him and the wall, then north until he could see the big tree. After that it was no problem finding his way around the back of the house to the fountain. He washed his hands and face and feet without waiting to be told to.

  "1 didn't really think you would come back," Shanda said.

  "I said I would..."

  "A Lordkin's promise." There was not much warmth in her smile, but then it brightened. "You promised to show me the redwoods."

  He thought about that.

  "I have leathers. For both of us." She showed him a box hidden under the bed in her room. "I got them from the gardeners. They don't use them anymore."

  Whandall examined the gear.

  "It's good, isn't it?" Shanda demanded.

  "It's good enough," he admitted. "But we'd be out all night."

  "That's all right; Miss Batty will think I'm visiting," Shanda said. "I'll tell her I'm staying with Lord Flascatti's daughter. Miss Batty will never check."

  "But-"

  "And my stepmother wouldn't care if I never came back. We'll take lunch and dinner and-"

  Whandall looked up at the sun, low in the west. "It's way too late-"

  "Not today, silly. In the morning. Or next day. You don't have to get back today, do you?"

  He shook his head. If he never came back, his mother would worry about him a little, but she wouldn't do anything, and no one else would care much. Not unless they thought he'd been killed by kinless.

  "Did you try that stick?"

  Shanda grinned. "That same night. On Rawanda's chair! Yes! It gave

  her a little red rash, and it itched her for two days. I think it still does." Her face tell a bit. "Samorty must have got some on his arm, because he got a rash too. I guess he knew what made it, because he yelled at the gardeners about it, and the gardeners yelled back, and they all went out to look for a poison plant, but they didn't find any. I didn't want to hurt Samorty."

  Good, Whandall thought. And better that she hadn't been caught, and no one knew where she had been. Or who she had been with...

  A little red rash. Whandall had given leaves of that same plant to Lord Pelzed, and they'd used them on Bull Fizzle boy
s. No one died, but a dozen of them were useless for a week, and Pelzed and the Bull Fizzle Lord had made a treaty not to do that again. Pelzed had been pleased. But here it was just a little red rash. Plants lost power here.

  "Let's get something to eat," Shanda was saying. "Serana doesn't think I eat enough. She'll be glad to see you."

  The kitchen was warm and dry and smelled of foods Whandall could only guess at. Serana filled his bowl with soup and heaped bread on the table, then apologized for not having anything for him. "Will you be staying for dinner?"

  "If that's all right," Whandall said. "Ma'am. This sure is good."

  Serana smiled happily.

  They watched the gardeners, but they avoided everyone else. Shanda showed him the carp pools, with bright colored fish. A pair of servants got too curious, and Whandall was frantically trying to find answers when Shanda laughed and ran away with Whandall following. She led him to another part of the yard.

  There was a small, queer house, too small for Shanda and way too small for Whandall. There were rooms no bigger than a big man, and tiny passages they could crawl through, and open walls. The curious servants had followed. Whandall had to wriggle like an earthworm, but he followed Shanda deeper into the maze, into twists and shadows, until no eyes could reach them.

  He felt a moment of panic then. If this place should burn! They'd be trapped, wriggling through flaming twists. But the gardeners were all kin-less, weren't they? And he wouldn't show the little girl his fear. He followed Shanda deeper yet.

  There was a small room at the center, just big enough for both of them to sit up.

  "Why is it so small?" Whandall asked.

  "It's a playhouse. It was built for my little brother, but he doesn't like it much, so I get to play in it."

  A playhouse. Whandall could understand the notion, but he would never have thought of it. An entire extra house, just for fun!

  After dinner they lay on the balcony above the courtyard und listened to the Lords talk.

  Four men and three women lolled on couches that would have looked really nice in the Placehold courtyard. No one said anything until an elderly kinless brought out a tray of steaming cups. Lady Rawanda passed them to the others.