Exiled: Keeper of the City

by Peter Morwood

  Reswen did not change expression, but under his fur his skin itched a bit, as if remembering some old burn. It was just as well that people here thought that there were no more liskash. Panic could work against a city as effectively as invasion. But Reswen had been keeping his ears and eyes open for the lizards for years, and had (he had to admit) never seen so much as a scale’s worth of one, or heard even a breath of a rumor of their presence either here or among the cities of the desert’s far side. “Just Eastern mrem, sir,” said Creel. “Their clothes are easy to spot, and the harness on their burden beasts. Also the breeds of beast are different.”

  Reswen nodded. Though he asked only a few more questions there was no suggestion of haste in any of his words before he dismissed Creel with kindly voiced instructions to get cleaned up and rest. “Well now, Sithen,” he said after the scout had left the room. “What do you think of this, then?”

  “Interesting.”

  “Is that all?”

  “Not quite. Fascinating.” Reswen gave him a funny look and Sithen’s pointed ears twitched back. He made a steeple of his forepaw fingers and stared at them as if expecting they would contain all the answers he might need. “I mean, that the Easterners should show up in a manner so easy to track as a caravan …”

  “Perhaps they aren’t worried,” said Reswen helpfully. “Perhaps they don’t intend us harm. Perhaps—” the points of upper and lower fangs showed for just the merest instant, “—their mission is peaceful.”

  “Perhaps it is.” Sithen jumped on that bait far too readily, betraying—to Reswen’s mind at least—an absence of any personal opinion whatsoever.

  “And if so, what should we do about it?” Reswen was needling quite deliberately now; both of them knew it, and both knew equally that he was well within the rights of his rank to do so. He stared at the junior officer and waited patiently for some sort of comment.

  “We should, we should, we, er ...,” Sithen said, “we should make them welcome.” He paused, but in that pause read nothing either of agreement or disapproval in his commander’s face. Evidently Reswen wanted more. “And make sure that they know we knew of their approach.”

  “Excellent. Well thought out.” Eventually. “Then you’ll be in full agreement with what I think we should do now.” Even though Reswen hadn’t said what was in his mind, Sithen nodded almost as a reflex response. “Runner.” Reswen looked at him, then at the door, ‘and this time yelled. “Runner!”

  The mrem whose head came hurriedly round the door was wearing the yellow cross-belts of an official courier. He was also wearing a rather startled expression, because Chief of Constables Reswen wasn’t one to raise his voice for anything other than the gravest of emergencies. Reswen knew quite well that Sithen was staring at him for that very same reason, and he didn’t particularly care. “You,” he told the messenger, “get your tail in here right now.”

  He reached for a wax-faced writing tablet, looked at it, and glanced about for a stylus. There were none in sight; he and Sithen had been using brush quills for their work on the expense chits, and Reswen, whether for the sake of immediacy or drama he couldn’t have guessed himself, wasn’t inclined to waste the time to fine one. Instead he unsheathed the claws of his right paw and scrawled words swiftly on the wax, quite aware of the stares that his gesture was drawing from both Sithen and the courier. “Speed first, manners second,” he said briskly to no one in particular, then struck his official seal into the wax, snapped the tablet’s protective covers shut, slapped his seal again against the wax-impregnated leather strip that held it shut, then shoved the whole thing at the courier-mrem with an incongruous smile to back it up. “That to the Arpekh Session-Chamber, fast as your legs will take you. Send in another messenger as you leave.”

  “Sir?” Sithen ventured, very quietly, very cautiously, not quite sure what flea was in his commander’s fur and reluctant to get in the way of whatever was needed to scratch it.

  “Sithen,” replied Reswen. He didn’t look at the junior, already using his extended claws on the surface of another tablet. Stamp of seal, snap of covers, stamp of seal again and another brusque shove towards another waiting messenger. “That to the Garrison Captains. All of them. Action, immediate. It’s all there anyway. Move!”

  When the door had slammed behind the second messenger, Reswen’s relaxation was undisguised. “There,” he said. “That ought to cause the right sort of stir.”

  “What, sir?”

  Reswen yawned before he bothered to answer, yawned, and stretched, and flexed so that sinews clicked in his back and neck and his claws slid involuntarily from their sheaths in his pads to leave small, pale parallel gouges in the surface of the desk. None of it was to insult Sithen, or to show superiority of rank of birth or anything else, and both mrem knew it from the set of ears and tail and whiskers; it was just so that Reswen could work the slow tide of tension out of his muscles and ready himself for whatever came next. Whatever that might be. “Oh, nothing much,” he said, far too calmly. “I’ve just given the Easterners something to see that I greatly hope they’re not expecting. And won’t like.” He paused a moment as a new sound filtered in from the city outside, then observed calmly, “That was quickly done.”

  As the sound, a muttering of rapid drumbeats, became plainer and louder as it spread across Niau from one garrison signal tower to the next, Sithen recognized the pattern of its rhythm and stared at his commander in disbelief.

  Reswen met the stare, held it, and then nodded. “Yes, Sithen. I am calling battle stations. Throughout the city. Let them think that Niau is like this all the time—and then let them start to wonder what our combat readiness is really like!”

  “The Arpekh won’t like it, sir.”

  “Yes. I know.” Reswen eyed the uncompleted expense chits as if they were a stack of used latrine wipes, and smirked a sort of self-satisfied smirk that Sithen had never, ever seen before. “I don’t expect them to like it. But I do expect them to wake up, just this once. Otherwise why do they need us at all? For this?” He gestured at the chits, then reached for his brush quill with a resigned air. “I hope not. We’ll find out soon enough.”

  “Your message?”

  “A hot dish of charcoal at the tail root of every elder presently dozing through whatever they’ve decided to discuss today. Well, they’ll have more to discuss then transport duties once that gets to them, and they’ll have to discuss it with me.”

  “Sir?”

  “Yes. It’s not quite martial law, Sithen my friend—but it’s close enough not to make a deal of difference. In the meanwhile, how much did you say we were paying Torth—three silvers?”

  “Yes, sir. Three, sir.”

  “Too much. I’ve always said so. Far too much ...”

  SHE LAY in the dark, unmoving, feeling the warmth. It was pleasant, but she knew it would not last much longer. Soon her surroundings would become cool, and thought and action together would be more difficult. This was, in a way, just as well; it would not at that time be to her advantage to move, or to think. There would be those on the lookout for either occurrence.

  Not forever, of course. Vigilance would relax, and that would be her time, to command as she would. Her heart grew quick and hot within her at the thought of how it would be then: the scurrying before her, the terror, the delight in the hopelessness of her prey. But for this while, her life would move more slowly.

  I shall indulge myself, therefore.

  It was a moment’s work for one of her training. She let her body go. It was her people’s art, no more a matter for thought, as a rule, than to move or eat. But she had had that innate talent sharpened for the work she had to do. For her, the bonds between body and soul were more tenuous than usual, more easily stretched to the limit. And her limit was farther out than others’. Where many another might strain and die of what she was doing, she could leap at the end of her soul’s tether
and stretch it over years and miles in a matter of seconds—then do works that others would find heavy going were they still in their bodies, and more firmly attached to the sources of their power.

  One movement of the mind, it took, to cast the skin: a shaking-off, a splitting. A moment of peculiar sensation accompanied the movement—a sort of fear at the premature shedding of a skin that one (theoretically) was not through with yet, the body’s terrified reaction to needs it did not understand. But at the same time there was a sort of bizarre pleasure about it, like the pleasure of shaking off a true cast skin, getting the wretched, stiff, dulled, scratchy business stripped off one’s limbs and body, and coming out sleek, cool, and shining at the end of it—made new again, as the gods had intended, youth periodically renewed, forever and ever.

  And when she came free of the sensations, the feelings of fear and pleasure, it was no longer dark. She reached up and out and looked around her, peering through the warm light of the overworld. Half regarded, below her, her body lay in its darkness, unmoving.

  She turned away from it and set her will on her desire, commanded the light to carry her to the place she wished to see. And instantly she hung far above it, gazing down as if she were one of the winged ones.

  It was a small place. It was cold. There was little fire about it. It lay on the fringes of the world, the farthest frontiers of the warm places. A bad place to want to have dealings with. But she had her commands, and in the manner of her people, the commands of her lords were as her own will.

  The town was a wretched little thing, barely more than a collection of hovels, by the standards of her people. Water ran in its streets—if one could dignify them by that name. The buildings were crude. The walls were thin things; surely an army could breach them without much trouble. Just once, just for a moment, she teetered on the edge of rebellion and wondered why one of her talents had been required to deal with this pitiful place, overrun with vermin, these vermin with fur....

  But the rebellion lasted only a moment; then her obedience found her again, and she settled into it gladly. She did not mind doing this work, though it seemed a small one. Vermin these creatures were indeed, and not to be considered in the same breath with her people; but at the same time, vermin had to be watched, lest they breed more swiftly than they had in past years, and become a threat. And these were in some danger of doing so, she had been told. That was why she had been commanded to look into them—to consider the matter, and see what attention and action might be needed.

  For a while she simply watched the place, as one might idly watch a nest of insects, just before kicking it. From this height, certainly there was something of a resemblance. The half-built, crude look of the place, as compared to the elegant architectures of her own people; the scurrying of the little creatures in the street, wearing their ugly scraps of clothing, doing their toy businesses, as if they were real people—it was all rather pitiful, rather loathsome. Upstarts, she thought with scorn. Sometimes she found it hard to understand how they had ever come to be a matter of concern to the Lords in the first place. Who had taught them cities? Who had taught them language, or the use of tools? It had to have been some tribe of her own people; certainly there was no way that these beasts, these furred things, could ever have managed the discovery of civilization by themselves. She wondered whether the Lords in their wisdom did indeed know who was responsible, and whether they had been punished, and how many years the punishment had lasted, in its manifold subtleties. Some she had heard of had gone on for a long time indeed. When one was as long-lived as one of her people, there was no surprise about that....

  She bent her attention a little closer. The action in the rough little streets grew more apparent, as did the lifefire of the vermin. A muddy-colored sort of fire it was, by her people’s standards: something to do with the fur, she supposed, or their frantically hasty minds. Their lives made fires that burned quick, but not clear; they left an odd taste when her mind brushed them. She shook her head at it, as if trying to shake it away. She could not allow herself to be distracted by inconsequential things.

  She let her true body sink lower, until she seemed to perch atop one of the squalid rooftops and gaze down into a teeming street. How they jostled one another, how they rushed, these creatures! No stately grace about them, no slow ponderousness of movement, hard-gained with survival to a dignified old age. Just scurrying, hurrying, all to no apparent purpose. Though, she thought scornfully, doubtless they think their own inconsequential businesses to be important enough.

  No matter. That will change soon enough.

  Indeed it would. Stretching her senses out in the pallid light of this place’s overworld, she could smell the minds she wanted, the ones she had been told to look for. Not by name—did they even have names?—but the emotions were clear enough to her: clear as the track of a tail in the sand. Though poor little rodent-scratchings their petty passions and desires were besides the thoughts and feelings of one of her own people—slow, subtle, careful, but fierce as the snap of jaws at the end of it all. Her tongue flickered reflectively at the taste of the little minds, the greed, the hunger, the jealousy and impotent rage. They would serve her purposes well enough. Her servants would seek out the bodies in which those minds lived, and through them she would work. It was a very choice irony. By their own claws, would these vermin be brought down: by their own acts, their own passions. And her kind would rule here once again, as they had been meant to long ago.

  What should have been, would now be. It was a good thought. She sank back into her body, into the darkness, and hissed with the pleasure of what would come ... the thought of the running blood….

  •

  The Arpekh’s summons, in the form of a troop of their larger and more imposing guards, was outside Constables’ House and hammering the door for admittance within the half hour. Reswen was faintly surprised that they had taken so short a time to send for him, for the Council of Elders were very literally what their title suggested, wealthy noblemrem of advanced years who ground slow and small when reaching a decision over trading rights, but who were equally renowned among the mrem of Reswen’s generation for turning that slow, careful consideration into farce when rapid action was required. How much they knew of how they were regarded, Reswen didn’t know, or care.

  But he didn’t keep the guard-troop waiting, even so.

  •

  “What the council is at pains to understand, Commander Reswen, is why you chose to order out the city cohorts without consulting us. And indeed, why you deemed the order necessary at all.” Councillor Mraal looked from side to side, and his fifteen companions nodded as sagely as they could—all except Councillor Aratel, who had nodded off.

  He’ll have to go, thought Mraal irritably. Venerable old age was necessary in an Elder, but there were limits even to that most basic requirement. More to the point, Mraal could see that the Chief of Constables, far from looking suitably contrite, was gazing at the sleeping—and now both audibly and visibly dreaming—councillor with a barely concealed smile curling at his whiskers.

  Aratel mewed shrilly in his sleep and paddled his forepaws a bit, upsetting the stack of terribly important-looking papers which he, like most of the other councillors, had apparently had placed before him before admitting their errant Chief of Constables for what had been intended to be mild verbal chastisement and which was now becoming an embarrassing comedy of errors. “Lord Arpakh, the facts of the case speak for themselves,” observed Reswen pleasantly, still looking in a very pointed sort of way at Aratel.

  Mraal considered the various options which irritation had sent flickering through his mind, then reconsidered them and discarded the lot. Reswen, after all, had only said aloud what he himself had thought on several occasions in the past while. That Aratel was too old even to be an Elder any more, was long overdue for honorable retirement to his mansion, and even longer overdue for replacement by someone a good twenty ye
ars younger. Most to the point, Mraal knew just the mrem for the job....

  “Very well.” Mraal conceded the first point with as good grace as he could manage while wishing that someone, anyone, would give Aratel a good hard nudge under the ribs before he did something to really spoil the Arpekh’s dignity. “We allow that you felt time would be lost by endeavoring to consult—or dare I say awaken—” Mraal smiled stiffly and was gratified more by Reswen’s surprise at the unexpected joke than by the appreciative soft laughter of his fellows, “—all the members of the council. But what must yet be explained is your reason for sounding battle stations in the first place. Niau is not under attack, surely?”

  “Not yet, Lord Arpakh.” Reswen’s statement caused just the sort of sensation that he plainly intended it should, for Mraal saw relief and satisfaction quite unconcealed on the policemrem’s face.

  What game are you playing now? Mraal wondered, and said “Explain,” with just the right impatient emphasis. Reswen did, and with sufficient clarity for even the finally-awake Arpakh Aratel to understand his reasoning. Mraal listened, sitting quite, quite still with not even the twitch of a whisker or the expansion of a spindle-narrow pupil to reveal what he was thinking. Inwardly he was applauding Reswen, as he had never suspected he would applaud any of the Quiet Ones. If what Reswen said was true, and. there was no reason for him to fabricate something so easy to disprove, then his high-and-heavy-pawed actions both as Chief of Constables and Head of H’satei were no more than an indication that he was doing the job for which the Council and the city paid him.

  As for the Easterners who accompanied the approaching caravan—assuming that Second-Oct Recruit Creel had indeed seen them and not simply imagined their presence after cooking his brain too long in the desert sun—what, oh what were they doing coming here in the first place ...? Mraal looked at Councillor Aratel as the name of the old mrem’s replacement drifted through his mind again. Erelin ... Always assuming that he could force the proposal through. Aratel had many supporters, or at least many who would be reluctant to see so compliant a councillor removed from the Arpekh in favour of one so much younger, and most likely much less amenable to bribes. Almost of an age, indeed, with that impudent ginger-furred whippersnapper Reswen. Mraal smiled a bit at that. It would probably be no bad thing for the city, no matter what anyone who stood to lose might say.