“Halt!” Therbin shouted. “Don’t touch the net!”
“What in hell is that?” the man asked.
“A helpful spell. Go inside for a while, Goodman,” Therbin said, trying to control his unwieldy weave.
“Who are you to tell me what to do, stranger?”
“There’s a danger of plague,” Therbin said, trying to control his temper. “Go in, curse you! I won’t tell you again!”
“Plague!” The man’s brows lifted in surprise, and just as quickly lowered. “It’s a cheat. You seek to rob us, or worse!”
“I am one of the king’s talents, you old fool,” Therbin said. The net pulled with the wind, trying to get out of his hands. Damn it, if only Olgrun hadn’t disappeared! He could have used the help clearing the way! “Get out of the way, and take your family indoors with you!”
The man looked indignant, but he looked as though he didn’t like the idea of getting tied up in the yellowing net. “King’s talent! King’s mendicant, more like!” He went into the nearest public house, pulling his dog after him.
Eddies of yellow powder began to whirl in on the surface of the street. The spider-stuff picked it up like a housewife’s duster. It seemed thicker as he went along, or perhaps he was just aware of it now. He wanted to choke the life out of the person who had brought the flowers to this place. He wanted to beat that person with a staff for ruining his day.
The pollen seemed to know it was under attack. Therbin shouted ahead of him to the townsfolk he saw to take cover. His net was fast filling with dancing yellow motes. His skin and hair were covered with them, and he spat handfuls out of his mouth. He must look as if he was trudging through blinding snow. His eyes were filled with burning dust as his heart was full of resentment. Where was Olgrun when he was needed?
A heavy figure bumped into him. Therbin looked up through the swirl of yellow powder at a grinning face.
“I’ve got it!” Olgrun said, shaking a leather bottle at him. “I have a cure! I know the answer to the problem.”
Therbin felt a moment of desperate relief, just before his temper exploded. “That’s you! Trying to ruin my plan so you can get all the credit!”
“What are you talking about?” Olgrun grabbed him by the arm. “Let’s get you out of here. It’s dangerous. The pollen can kill.”
“What are you talking about?” Therbin asked. “Why should I listen to you? You ran off without a word!”
“Well, you went first,” Olgrun said, maddeningly reasonable. “Why are you gathering up this pollen if you don’t think it’s harmful?”
“Why?” Therbin echoed, as the yellow powder spun around them, coating their clothes, skin and hair. “Why, you . . . I . . . well, the stuff’s noxious! I knew something was wrong. I never saw flowers sprout so fast without your bees.” A gust of wind hit the net, and they both scrambled for the edges. “Innocent folks were in danger, but you weren’t there to help me!”
Olgrun shook his head. He let go of the net and shoved the wineskin to Therbin’s lips. “Take a swig of this!”
Against his will, Therbin swallowed. “Pah!” he spat. “That’s horrible! It tastes like someone boiled a goat in it.” Within seconds, he felt the terrible anger leave him, to be replaced with shame. He looked at Olgrun, full of sorrow. “Oh, my friend, I apologize for my harsh words. Can you forgive me? I wasn’t in my right mind.”
“Neither you were,” Olgrun said, placidly. He gave him a tremendous slap on the back. “Come on, let’s work our talents together and rid this place of its ills.”
Therbin felt sheepish but relieved. “As you will!”
He drew the net up the street, now heavy with the fatal dust. Olgrun summoned a skyful of bees who bumbled under the roots of every purple flower they could find and left the stalks prone on the ground. Others flitted around the edges of Therbin’s net, gathering the pollen that escaped the sticky trap. When townspeople came out of their houses to protest, Olgrun stuck a fingerful of honey into their mouths. The familiarity provoked a couple of men to start fistfights, but Therbin was there with his spiderweb ropes to hold them back until the cure took effect.
“Nearly there,” he grunted, as they reached the west end of town. “I knew we could do it if we worked together.”
“Clever to clever,” Olgrun said, with a look of pride. Therbin gave him a grin. “What better life could a man have than to come up with a clever solution to a strange problem, with an equally clever friend at his side?”
“Why, it’s like magic,” Therbin said, almost laughing now.
The nearly invisible bag was full of yellow powder now, dragging on the ground like a reluctant child. By the time Therbin crossed the town’s border and tied the mouth closed, the two were followed by a clamoring crowd, and the air was nearly clear. Olgrun’s bees flitted away, taking their dangerous burden with them. He bid them a sorrowful farewell. Therbin put a sympathetic hand on his shoulder.
“It’s a good cause,” he said. “Olgrun, they saved the lives of everyone in this town.”
“Oh, I know,” the big man said, his eyes welled up as he watched them go. “I wish no one had to die, though.”
A prosperously dressed man bustled up to them. “You two men are amazing!” he declared. “As fine a couple of magicians as the king’s enchantress herself! I am Mayor Vorder. We are glad you happened to visit us this day. Your talents, well, they are the best magics we have ever seen!”
“It’s not the best magic we’ve got,” Therbin said, with a wink at Olgrun.
“What? I thought talents were one to a person. What is your other skill?”
“Never you mind,” Olgrun said, slapping him heartily on the back. “How about a drink of something? My friend here is dry as a skeleton’s whistle. And after he’s had his fill I might take a sip or two.”
“Nonsense,” Therbin said. “We drink together, as always.”
“It would be our pleasure to hold a feast in honor of your accomplishments,” the mayor said, and the townsfolk added their acclaim. “We would ask you to stay with us forever, but we know the king’s law prohibits us. Anything else you wish for, it shall be yours.”
“I’ve got a present for you besides the pouch I owe you, Sir Spinner,” the tanner said, coming forward with a sheepish look on his face. “And for you, too, Sir Honeywalker.”
“And I have a bit of something for you, too,” the barmaid said, attaching herself to Olgrun’s side with a cheeky grin.
“Ah, we’ve got all we need,” Olgrun said, clapping Therbin on the shoulder. “But we’d be pleased to celebrate with you. It’s not every day a man can lose a friend and find him again. Let’s drink to the threads that tie us all together.”
“Sticky ones,” Therbin said, cheerily. “Ones that don’t let go too easily, I am grateful to say. We’ll take care to keep them bound tighter in future.”
“Cheers to that, my friend,” Olgrun said, and swept a bow to their host. “Mayor, in your own time.”
TROPHY WIVES
Nina Kiriki Hoffman
Alanna and I have been together most of our lives. She is the beautiful one, and I am the worker; at least, that’s how it looks to people who see us now. It is not how we began. I was a princess in a tower, and she was a drudge who worked for my father, tending all the machinery that kept me imprisoned and alive, and trained me in my terrible purpose.
All that changed when we found and ate the bondfruit.
We live more than half our lives beneath the surface now. Inside, we are all sorts of different people, and outside, we have tried on many different roles, but we also meld into one another as we share eyes and thoughts and conversation. Still, I am the one who doesn’t mind work and is driven mad by music, and she is the one who makes plans and minds details.
Alanna laughs and thinks, Tell them your name, Ylva. You always forget the important things!
Very well. My name is Ylva Sif.
Gwelf Kinnowar, currently married to Alanna, is the fourth hu
sband we have had between us, and when we first met him, we thought he was the best. He didn’t argue when Alanna told him that to marry her, he had to accept me into his household. He has plenty of money, and let us use it; and, though we live with him in various residences on planets where oppressive social conditions hold, he gives us freedom from the prevailing mores in the privacy of his house, so long as Alanna acts the perfect ornamental wife in public.
The first time Gwelf slept with another woman after the wedding, we lost faith in him. He didn’t betray us in any other way, though, so we stayed, even though in his travels he often slept with other women. The benefits of the marriage still outweigh the troubles, so we adjusted our hopes and attitudes and went on with our real job, which is rescuing people, as we ourselves have been rescued.
Alanna was in the balcony room looking out over Haladion, the planet where Gwelf’s main residence was. Alanna and I loved the balcony room. The mansion was built into the side of a cliff, among a cluster of others, and below the cliff lay all the world: at the base, the market town Risen, and beyond it, farmlands, with the spaceport to the west, ringed by businesses that catered to offworld travelers. Near the spaceport was the technomall for people who liked to shop for factory-made things in person.
Out beyond the farmlands lay the forest, with the Fang Mountains rising in the distance.
Alanna dialed controls on the focusing window and peered down at the central market square, where the servants of cliffside mansions bought fresh produce from the farmers. “Ripe sakal,” she thought.
I was in the kitchen, a level below, checking our stores and making a list. I paused and styled sakal on my list. “Much?”
“Going fast,” she thought. “Oh! Perberries! Only three pints left! At the SunGlo booth.”
“On my way.” I shut the list, grabbed a carrybag, and headed for the door. In the purification room, I dipped into the amber scent bowl and dabbed it at my wrists. I pulled on an outer robe and hooked my veil across my lower face, then coded through the privacy portal and entered the communal elevator bank. My pod opened a moment later onto the public access foyer to the outdoors at the base of the cliff. Others came and went in various pods.
Outdoors, the heat and scents and sounds were intense. Meat cooking, bread baking, the faint taint of scoot fuel, though no mechanized transport was allowed in the city core except float carts to carry home one’s purchases. Voices called as people spoke to each other in person or at a distance.
I headed to the market. At the SunGlo booth, all the perberries the vendor had on display were gone, but she saw the sigil on my hood and smiled at me. As a farm worker, she wore no veil or head covering; she was outside the life lived in houses and only another farmer would look at her as a wife. So the people professed to believe, anyway. One heard stories.
“I knew you’d be by, Ser Sif,” the vendor, Vigil, said, and reached under the table for a whole flat of perberries.
“Thank you, Vigil.” I pressed my thumb to her pay pad without even discussing price. Sometimes it was worth paying extra.
“Oh, no! I wanted some of those,” said a low voice to my left. I turned to see a stranger, her hood unmarked by house. Her eyes were large, dark, liquid, under narrow black brows, and she wore a very plain outer robe, dusty light blue with one line of white at the hem. Her veil was opaque, giving no hint of who she was beneath. “Someone at the clay booth said you had them,” she said to Vigil, “and I so hoped.”
“Maybe we can arrange something.” I opened the compartment in the carrybag for fragile perishables and slid the flat in, activating the stasis field that would hold my berries safe.
Ask her who she works for, Alanna thought-whispered; she was present behind my eyes, as I was behind hers.
“Whose house are you affiliated with?” I asked.
The stranger’s eyes looked frightened. “I can’t say,” she whispered.
“Come with me for coffee and I’ll sell you some of my berries. Thanks again, Vigil.”
“I have other shopping,” said the stranger as I tugged her toward Kalenki’s Tea House. They had rooms in the back where women could unveil.
“I’ll help you with it when we’ve finished our talk. I can see you’re a stranger here. I can show you all the best bargains.” I raised my voice. “Kalenki!”
“Ser Sif.” He smiled at me and twirled his waxed mustache. “The sandalwood room?”
“Please.”
He gestured us toward the back, and I led the stranger to my favorite room, its walls fretted with carved wood, its scent warm and spicy. It had a heavy curtain that almost muffled outside sound and kept those within private enough to speak in low voices without fear. I took the bug zapper from the pouch at my waist and scanned the room for hidden ears. None today.
I settled onto the pile of cushions covered in white and red satin stripes, leaving the blue and green cushions for my guest, with the low inlaid-wood table between us. She looked at me, and then at the cushions, and then at her slippered feet.
She doesn’t know how to sit! Alanna thought. Who is she?
“Sister, hold your skirts gently and sink down onto your rear,” I said.
She grasped her outer robe in both hands and let herself sit, teetering. Then she straightened and looked at me with great intensity.
“If you are here stealthily,” I said, or Alanna said, “what is it you intend? How did you even find a sigil-less robe?”
“I escaped from a ship,” she whispered. “I was sold into marriage, and the ship was carrying me to my husband in all luxury. I had a library. I knew Haladion was our only stop, and I studied everything in memory about it. I made this robe myself.” She straightened, glanced around the room, fixed on me, as though realizing she was being too direct. “You aren’t police?”
Just then, Kalenki whistled a warning and came in to take our order. “A big pot of spiced coffee, Ser, if you please,” I said, “with all shades of color for it. Some of the lace biscuits as well.”
“Your wish, Ser,” he said, with a head bob, and dropped the curtain again.
I turned to the stranger.
“No, assuredly I am not police, just curious. I will not betray you.”
“How can I know that? Have I given too much of myself away already?” She pressed the heels of her palms to the sides of her head and groaned. “I am so stupid.”
Kalenki whistled again. His assistant brought the tray of purification, with its two basins of warm water, two cloths, a bowl of powdered soap, and a second basin for rinsing; also the censer with its fragrant smoke, redolent of roses, through which we could pass our hands before we drank. Kalenki himself carried in the coffee tray and set it on the table.
“Thank you. You are gracious,” I said, and pressed my thumb into the pay pad he presented, tapped a tip into the options screen.
“Always a pleasure to have you visit, Ser,” he said and followed his assistant out.
After he left, I tied the curtain closed, then settled on my cushions. “There, they have gone and we may unveil without fear of men’s eyes on us.” I unhooked my veil. The stranger stared at my face as though it were a lifesaving liquid she could drink with her eyes. I wondered why. I had been to many worlds, and on most of them, I was considered ordinary. “I am Ylva Sif,” I said.
She did not drop her veil or offer a name. Rudeness, but perhaps she did not realize.
I showed her how to cleanse her hands, then poured coffee for both of us. “Have you tried our coffee before?” I asked. She shook her head. I handed her a cup with room left for colors. “Here is cream. This is cinnamon. This is pepper, and this, clarified butter. This is caramel syrup, and this holds serenity, and here is agitation. This—” I lifted a small spoonful of pale powder—“is clear-eye.” I sprinkled it over my own drink, added a dollop of cream and two lumps of dark sugar, stirred with a cinnamon-flavored stick. “Here are chocolate shavings. These are sweeteners—sugar, rain sugar, invisible sugar, low-processed s
ugar, flowersweet. We consider coffee an art, one it takes time to master. You can start with something sweet and something white.” I pushed the doctorments tray toward her and sat back to sip my own mixture.
Alanna was with me for the first sip. We both found that the best, and always shared. My mouth said, “Aah.” I felt hers smiling too.
The stranger mixed cream and flowersweet into her coffee, lifted it toward her mouth, and encountered the dilemma I had presented her with. As a stranger, she did not know how to drop her hood over her face and drink below the veil, as one did in the presence of strange men. Finally she unhooked her veil and we saw her face. Alanna and I studied it closely. She was young, beautiful, tense. A small red flower hung on her left cheek beside her mouth, but whether birth-mark, tattoo, or more temporary stain, I could not tell.
She had generous lips and a narrow nose, not at all native to Haladion, but we already knew that. Dark freckles sprinkled across her nose and upper cheeks. She took a cookie and gave us a chance to study her teeth; they were narrow and pointed. She wolfed the sweet, then took another and another. “Forgive me,” she muttered. “I’m so hungry. I had only a few coins on me when I left the ship, and I dare not use my credit wand. I was about to buy food when I heard there were perberries here. They come from my world, and I haven’t tasted them since I was a child.”
“My manners,” I said. I opened the carry-bag and drew out a pint of berries. “Please accept these as a gift.”
Her skin paled, making her eyes look larger and darker than ever. Her freckles looked like fallen stars of night against a light sea. She nodded and reached for the berries, too anxious to be polite. “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” she whispered and plunged both hands into the little veneer box, scooped up a double handful of dark berries and pressed her face into them.
When she lifted her face from the berries, some of the small seeds clung to her face. The stain they left was the same color as the flower on her cheek. She selected one squashed berry and put it on her tongue, then leaned back with eyes closed. Her smile started small and widened.
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