The Brazen Gambit

by Lynn Abbey

  Ruari sat down again. "Telhami's angry at me. I never saw her so angry. I thought she was going to invoke the guardian and suck my bones into the ground."

  "Maybe she wanted to, but none of the other druids at that meeting this morning, except Akashia and Telhami, wanted to send zarneeka to Urik, and I don't think the guardian did either."

  Ruari shredded a blade of grass. "Can you really feel the guardian, or is that just more lies?"

  "No lies. I'm a lousy liar."

  Ruari swore softly and shredded another blade of grass. "I wish you'd never come to Quraite."

  "I wish I'd never seen a man poisoned by Laq, then I wouldn't have needed to come. You ready to go home?"

  Ruari said he was, but he was weak and wheezing before they left the grove. So they sat talking by the pool, getting past being enemies without becoming friends. The sun was setting when they returned to the village. Pavek went looking for Yohan, but the dwarf was gone, and so were Akashia, two farmers and five kanks: Telhami'd evoked a whirlwind to separate the ripened zarneeka from the sand, then she'd sealed it up and sent it on its way to Urik.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The air remained cool from the recent dawn when Akashia, Yohan, and two awe-struck Quraite farmers set out afoot from the market village of Modekan, headed for the brilliant yellow walls of Urik. After four day's travel kank-back across the wastelands, the farmers were eager to see the Lion-King's city; Akashia wanted to finish their business quickly, uneventfully.

  No one knew what Yohan was thinking-except that he didn't approve, and he hadn't said more than two words at a time since they left Quraite.

  It wasn't Modekan's Day for the Urik markets; they had the road to themselves. Akashia had ample time to relax, think, and get anxious again. They took some chances bringing zarneeka to Urik on a day when it and they weren't expected. She could hope that the Modekan registrar had reported to his superiors in the templarate, and that the repulsive dwarf they traded with would be at his procurer's table in the customhouse.

  And she could hope that the dwarf would shepherd the zarneeka powder to its proper destination: a thousand folded papers of Ral's Breath powder. But for that hope to become real, she had to hope, above all else, that Just-Plain Pavek was wrong about his former colleagues in the civil bureau.

  Akashia believed with all her heart that the chronic aches and illnesses of Urik's common folk were important enough to justify the risks she was taking. She believed, too, that her mind-bending skills coupled with druidry would be sufficient to protect her, her companions, and the three amphorae nestled in the straw-filled cart Yohan pulled.

  When she called her spells and her skills across her mind's eye, her confidence grew; then something would catch her attention at the side of the road or she'd see the shadow of Just-Plain Pavek lurking in the corner of her memory, and her calm would shatter.

  In her heart she believed Pavek was wrong about Urik's need for zarneeka and Ral's Breath but, try as she might as she walked, she couldn't convince herself that he was lying about the city's danger or the procurer's duplicity. Grandmother had agreed that Pavek spoke what he fervently believed was the truth. He was transparent in so many ways to both mind-bending and druidry; he'd never make a master of either craft-yet he could evoke the guardian and, somehow, he'd managed to enter Ruari's grove after Ruari had hidden himself inside it.

  She thought she could have found her young friend's grove and forced herself inside, but by every reckoning she and Grandmother had made, the challenge should have been far beyond Just-Plain Pavek's abilities.... Unless Ruari had welcomed him, in which case one of them might have slain the other, or-worse to consider-the two of them might have discovered that, where zarneeka and Urik were concerned, they were of like minds.

  And that would have been the end of the zarneeka trade: Yohan would have stood with them. And the remaining Quraiters, druid and farmer alike, were already more afraid of Urik and Urik's inhuman king than was necessary; they would have supported the recalcitrant trio. Quraite wasn't some idyllic community where everyone's opinion counted with equal weight and the heaviest position prevailed; such communities rarely survived a year, much less the generations that Quraite itself had endured. Grandmother's word naturally and rightfully outweighed everyone else's, but Grandmother would never be foolish enough to drag the community in a direction it absolutely did not want to go.

  As she was dragging Yohan to Urik.

  The old dwarf trod silently between the traces of the handcart. He'd resisted her attempts at conversation since they left Quraite. Yohan had spoken vehemently against Grandmother's decision to dispatch zarneeka to Urik while Pavek and Ruari were still hidden in Ruari's grove. But in the end, Yohan had swallowed his objections. He'd helped to separate the zarneeka powder from the sand in the ruins of the stowaway. When Grandmother invoked a diminutive whirlwind to whip up the gritty mixture, he'd held a winnowing against it until his feet were buried in grit. She'd stood behind the sieve with a tightly woven basket, collecting enough yellow powder to fill three amphorae. And then he'd harnessed the kanks-all the while looking over his shoulder at the path Ruari and Pavek would have taken if they had returned together.

  But the path remained empty, and they'd left the village before sunset without knowing what had happened between the templar and the half-elf-exactly as Grandmother had wanted it.

  Because Grandmother was wiser than all the rest of them together. And Grandmother knew the right thing for Quraite to do where zarneeka or anything else was concerned.

  "You'll see," Akashia assured her plodding, sullen companion. "Everything will fall into place. You'll be headed home before sundown, I promise. There's nothing to worry about. There won't be any trouble at the customhouse-"

  "The elven market?" Her mind filled with the wonders she imagined among its tawdry tents and shanties. She'd heard about the market from the Moonracers since she was a little girl, but in all her fifteen trips to Urik-she'd kept careful count-she'd never done more than trek from the gate to the customhouse and back again. Except, of course, this past time when they'd encountered Pavek, and Yohan had led them to the dyers' plaza where lengths of brightly colored cloth had threatened more than once to distract her from the interrogation.

  Any excuse to visit the elven market was an almost irresistible temptation-especially if cautious Yohan was suggesting it.

  Then the imagined wonders faded: "We gave our names to the Modekan registrar...."

  "Three itinerant peddlers with trade for the customhouse," Yohan recited in rhythm with his walking.

  Yohan had been trekking the zarneeka to Urik since before she was born. He'd taught her what to do and say, and she never told the truth about their names or merchandise to the village registrar. "They won't suspect? Won't come looking for us?" He shrugged; the amphorae shifted in the cart. "Not in the elven market. Templars don't go into the market, not alone. We'll be on our way home, like you said, before they start looking for us. If they start looking for us."

  She pondered temptation for a little while. The dazzling yellow walls-cleaned and replastered after the Tyr-stormlifted up in front of them, the freshly repainted portraits of the Lion-King were blurred, but colorful at this distance. The great, dark opening of the gate was visible as well, and the road was still empty ahead of them. There wouldn't be a line. Elven market or customhouse, they'd be into the city and out again in record time.

  But the inspectors would ask questions. She had to be ready to use a mind-bender's subtle art, and that meant she had to have her words and images memorized before they reached the gate.

  "Are you certain?" she asked.

  "Nothing's certain-except that Pavek knows the procurer we've traded with. Whatever truth Pavek's telling us, I don't want to come face-to-face with that procurer until we're sure what's already happened and what's likely to happen next. That hairy dwarf's got muck all over his hands; he's not to be misted. That much is certain."

  Of all the races,
dwarves were the most consciously proud, of their appearance. Yohan's distrust of the procurer had its roots in the disgust he undoubtedly felt each time they stood before that stained yellow robe. Under different circumstances, she would have discounted her companion's advice for that very reason. Today's circumstances were as different as they could be, but she made one more attempt to resist temptation.

  "Grandmother wants us to learn about the purity and strength of Ral's Breath. We'll have to visit the customhouse anyway-"

  Yohan spat into the dust at the side of the road. "Wouldn't trust a customhouse templar's answer to that question, no matter who or what he was. We've got to visit an apothecary or two ourselves, Kashi, if we want to take those answers back with us."

  "Will there be apothecaries in the elven market? Will there be anyone?" she asked suddenly. "The Moonracers said they'd withdrawn-"

  Another wet splatter marked the dust. "Elves! It's not their market, just the only place where they can set up to trade. Get rid of the tribes and the market will be a little cleaner, a little safer, that's all. There's a little of everything in the market, including apothecaries, licensed and otherwise. The rest will come looking for us as soon as we've talked to the first. That's the way of the market. We can buy and sell at the same time. I'll do the talking."

  She twisted a thick lock of brown hair around her fingers, thinking her way through a tangle of doubts. "If we sell zarneeka in the market, we've got to tell them how to dilute it with flour to make Ral's Breath."

  The portraits of Urik's master had grown larger, clearer as they walked. Hamanu's robes were a brilliant sapphire blue. The glass orbs of his eyes flashed with reflected sunlight, looking straight at her. Or so it seemed.

  "We've never done that. We're not supposed to do it. We trade zarneeka to the Lion-King's templars and the Lion-King sells Ral's Breath to Urik; that's the way it's always been, Yohan. If something goes wrong-"

  "Nothing's going to go wrong. We'll buy and sell and be gone. If the Ral's Breath we buy is as bitter as it's supposed to be, we know where the liar is. We can deal with him when we get back to Quraite and then come back to Urik at our regular time, same as before, with no one the wiser. If Pavek's told us the truth and what we buy is no good-well, Grandmother can decide what we do next.

  Curled hair slipped off her fingertips. "Going to the elven market will be safer than going to the customhouse?"

  "Remember: I'll do the talking."

  "Once we get inside the gate," Akashia corrected; she was the mind-bender. Dealing with templars was her responsibility.

  They approached the inspectors and regulators gathered outside the gatehouse. A yellow-robed pair harassed a merchant while the rest idled in the shade. New laws, regulations, and rewards for wanted criminals were written in red on the gatehouse wall, as usual, a list of warnings and enticements for anyone who dared to read them. She stole a glance while they waited for someone to give them the onceover. Pavek's name was still written there, still wanted for unspecified crimes against his city. The letters were fading, though, and the price on his head had not risen.

  A weary-looking yellow-robed woman left the shade. She asked the usual questions; Akashia stared directly into her eyes as she answered them. "We have trade today in the elven market." She kept her voice low and even. "The seals on our goods are all in order. We're no different than anyone else who's come through the gate today. You can think of no other questions worth asking."

  "May we enter the city?" she asked after a moment.

  The woman nodded. The Quraiters each dirtied their thumbs in a bowl of waxy ink and left a unique impression on the tattered scrap of parchment the templars were using for today's tally-strip.

  "Don't forget: Come back through here before sundown, or you'll owe six bits each, and ten for the cart."

  She smiled. Several shade-hugging inspectors whistled through their teeth. One offered to pay her poll-tax if she'd wait for him beside the Yaramuke fountain at sunset. She kept walking, never flinching or missing a step, and the whistling stopped before they reached the massive gates. The farmers gawked with their faces pointed skyward. She had to call them by their true names to get their attention and keep them close to the cart as they entered the always-crowded, always-busy streets.

  They smelled the market before she saw it: a dizzying blend of spicy delicacies floating atop the sharper scents of natron, pitch, and artisans' charcoal fires, and, of course, the ever-present sweet aromas of decay.

  Yohan paused on the cobblestone verge of the market. He adjusted his grip on the cart traces and looked at each of the farmers before letting his stare come to rest on her.

  "Stay close," he warned them all. "If you've got to look for something, look for a signboard of a striding lion with a pestle. That's the apothecaries' license we're looking for."

  "What about unlicensed-"

  Yohan cut her short with a slash of his finger. "The difference between licensed and unlicensed doesn't show on the signboard. Remember: stay close."

  And they did. She wrapped her hand lightly around one of the traces; that gave her more freedom to look for a pestle-it seemed that every hawker's sign displayed a striding lion-as they wandered the market. Traders hailed them from every ramshackle doorway of cloth, wood, or bone. Bold, ragged children begged for ceramic bits or offered to sell pieces of bruised fruit obviously scavenged from the gutters of Urik's more reputable markets. One child leapt into the cart and grabbed two handfuls of straw before she and the fanners could chase him away.

  "What's wrong with them? Are they that hungry? Should we offer them something?" she whispered anxiously to Yohan.

  "Stay close," was his only reply, repeated through clenched teeth as the raids became more frequent.

  Every dwelling or stall in the elven market seemed equally old, equally dilapidated and despairing. There were no signposts for the streets that met at odd angles and irregular intervals. Had she not heeded Yohan's warning and kept dose to the cart, she'd have been quickly and hopelessly lost. The tumult of noise and color, so attractive in her imagination, grew less so when it devolved into hostile stares and furtive bent-mind probes of her inmost thoughts.

  She was unprepared for that Unseen onslaught from anonymous minds. In her previous visits to the city, she'd dealt only with templars-broken, mean-spirited individuals, each and every one of them, but, by their master's order, untrained in the arts of the Unseen Way.

  No stray curiosity or inquiry penetrated the defenses she'd learned from Telhami, but time and time again she caught an unwelcome glimpse into another mind. The imaginations of those who dwelt in the elven market were as foul as the sewer channel in the middle of the so-called street they followed.

  The market was not her grove; the confidence she'd felt when Telhami upbraided her about the dangers a city-man like Pavek posed to any solitary woman evaporated like morning dew. Her grip on the cart trace progressed from feather-light to a panicky clench.

  One of the fanners shouted that his knife had been stolen. He plunged toward a twisted alley, determined to catch the culprit. Yohan intervened quickly, hauling the farmer back to the cart and staring down the hard-faced denizens who swarmed out of nowhere, ready to support the thief, not them.

  "Nothing happened," Yohan assured me grumbling mob.

  "But my-" the poor farmer wailed, until Yohan pinched bis wrist to quiet him.

  "Everybody, move on." Yohan used a commanding tone she'd never heard from him before.

  "We ought not have come here," she whispered.

  He replied with a grunt that could have meant anything at all, then pivoted the cart sharply on its left wheel. They went down a rubbish-strewn alley to the lion-and-pestle signboard he'd somehow spotted during the fracas.

  "Wait here," he told the farmers. "Sing out if anything happens."

  His hand on her arm guided her into a dusty shop. The proprietor, a human woman of indeterminate age, pushed away from a table covered with fortune-telling c
ards. The long red gown she wore might once have belonged to a wealthy woman, but the silk embroidery threads had been plucked out and now the lush floral patterns were mere dots and holes across the cloth.

  "What's your pleasure?" she asked with a voice coarsened by too much wine and too little fresh air.

  "You need to ask?" Yohan gestured toward the fortune-telling cards.

  Akashia recognized the ritualized rudeness that passed for civility in the city. She used the style herself with the yellow-robes. It didn't bother her, or it hadn't until Just-Plain Pavek became a man in her mind, not a templar. And it bothered her even more with this woman who, on second glance, was only a few years older than she was herself. But the shop was filled with magic-laced things she could not name and the air itself was thick with Unseen inquiries; she held her peace, staying close by Yohan.

  "Ral's Breath." Yohan's arm dropped quickly from hers; the old dwarf was embarrassed.

  "You've come to the wrong place, then. Never sold the baby powders; never will." And staring bluntly at Akashia's belly, the woman let out a snorting, bitter and private chuckle. "Good luck. You'll need it."

  "Why?" Akashia asked, disregarding Yohan's admonition that she be quiet while they were in the shops.

  "You won't find any, that's why. It's gone. Old Breath, new Breath, good and bad: it's all gone. Sold or confiscated by the yellow-robes."

  "Confiscated?"

  "Where've you been, girl? S'been weeks since the orators harangued that the stuff'd been tampered with." She swore and wiped a weepy nose against a dirty sleeve. "Never worked much anyway, 'cept with babies and old men. But it's gone now."

  "Would you like some?" she asked gently.

  Yohan's fist clamped over her elbow like a vise.

  "S'all been confiscated. Ain't none left in the city. You got some, you keep it far and away from me. Don't carry no stuff from the rotted-yellow customhouse. Don't want no rotted yellow-robes bustin' in here, roustin' me outta house and home."