Exiled: Keeper of the City

by Peter Morwood

  She thought for a moment, and then smiled the terrible smile of her kind. She had been watching the little doings of the vermin for some days now, and there was certainly a way that she could have her pleasure and yet justify it to her masters as having been for nothing but the good of the mission she had been sent to enact. Oh yes, yes indeed. That one.

  She turned her attention back to her pet and allowed herself a while more of its horror. Who knew how long it seemed to these creatures—minutes, hours—it hardly mattered. Her time was the only kind that counted, and she had all of it that she wanted in the world. It groveled before her in her mind, whimpering as it would have in the body, if it could have moved. Its body was still, held so by her power. She had learned some time ago that the creatures’ terrors increased if they could not move—if (even in mind) they had to sit trapped in their bodies, unable to cry out as they perceived her coming and what she intended with them.

  After a time she grew weary of this and turned to the business at hand. The overworld’s light was dimmed to almost its darkest, a deep crimson-golden glow. She looked through her pet’s eyes, made it get up, prepare itself, and take what it needed. Then she sent it out into the night.

  The city looked strange through its eyes—bigger, grander than she actually knew it to be. A pitiful place it was, and pitiful it was that these creatures thought it so grand. It was merely another indication of their true nature, which was that of beasts without reason, deluding themselves to think that they did. They would find out the truth about that, soon enough. Their little mockery of reason was no match for the old subtlety of her people, come among them again at long last for their undoing....

  Her creature did not have to be kept waiting long, once it was near the place where she planned to assuage her hunger. Through its eyes, down the quiet street, she saw the great rich building with all its lights. She smiled again and reached out to the building, then felt about there, delicately, for one mind in question. She found it swiftly. Its colors burned dark and angry almost all the time; it was one of those minds most apt to control, and control was not even what she needed here—just an aptitude to suggestion. She suggested to it that the vermin it was conversing with had designs on its life, and should on no account be dealt with. The conversation swiftly erupted into outrage on one hand, plain rage on the other, as accusations and denials flew. It was not very long before the vermin she desired turned its back on the one that she had prompted to make the accusation, and started to leave the great house.

  Her pet was ready. He followed the vermin, and he caught her, and the cord went around her neck like a tail, clenched tight, choked the breath out. That was when she moved, when she positioned herself in the overworld in such a way that the struggling soul should see her before anything else, before the underworld had even finished fading; should see her in her might, revealed, as she had not been able to reveal herself for too long now. The vermin’s soul saw her, and screamed in fear—and her will laid hold of it and forced it to silence: even its soul, which under any other circumstances would have been untouchable now.

  But other circumstances had come to pass. She lay before it now. She opened her jaws, It could not even cry out, now, and its terror filled her like wine, ran hot as blood.

  She made it drift closer to her, closer still. It cowered inwardly, but had no choice. Her fangs gleamed in the blood-colored light of the overworld, glittered with all the shades of final severance. No afterlife for this one—at least, none save one within her. The vermin’s soul would become part of her, part of everything it loathed. It might fight and resist at first, but not for long. Eventually it would will as she willed, for the destruction of its kind, and it would rejoice in that.

  All these things she allowed the vermin’s soul to perceive, and then bathed, wallowed, in its terror. It went on for a pleasant eternity, until she had had an elegant sufficiency.

  Then she moved, and her jaws closed, and the soul’s blood ran, screaming. It always managed to do that, somehow. She could not bring herself to care. She let it, let it swell out, then let it fade, savoring the sound like the fading taste of the blood itself on her tongue.

  Silence, then, and the blood-gold light.

  She sent her pet home and dismissed it to wait her next need, and then lay there for a long time, feeling the subsiding struggle in her gullet.

  Merely a foretaste, she thought sleepily, as the soul-blood digested slowly and began to run thick in her veins. Only a sharpener for the palate. Soon enough, this whole den of vermin, in a thousand different ways, at my pleasure.

  Soon enough ...

  •

  Reswen walked over to Dancer’s Street. He rated a litter, of course, if he had wanted one, but a day behind the desk always left him jangly and wanting a good stretch, and it was a pleasant walk over across town, into the tree-lined avenues of the mercantile and noble quarters, where the evening slipped in fragrantly under trees hung with lamps burning scented oil, and the occasional soft wind breathed in whispers through the branches. The moons were up, one low and golden, one high and cool, both at the half; shortly stars would be pricking through the twilight.

  How romantic, Reswen thought, in very ironic mood, and his paw stole to the bit of “dried fish.” What it really was, he hadn’t quite gotten up the nerve to ask Lorin, and Lorin had been too busy, rushing off to pick up something he would not specify from someone he would not specify. “Just don’t lose it,” Lorin had said. ‘I’m out of lizards.” And off he had gone, leaving Reswen open-mouthed.

  Reswen dropped the thing. And what if it doesn’t work? he wondered as he turned the corner of Dancer’s and strolled down toward the lanterns hanging in front of Haven. What happens to me then? Is she going to leave me helpless, hanging on her every breath, like Aiewa and all the rest of them, like Mraal .... For even the Senior Lord had spent a night in her bed now, causing wild merriment among Haven’s H’satei staff. The report had been full of references to people being tied to couch legs and ridden around the room. Reswen had had to forbid the discussion of the report even in the constabulary, and had threatened to pull a few tails out by the roots if he found out who had leaked it outside the H’satei proper.

  Well. Whatever, he had to find out as quickly as possible whether his own trustworthiness was still in danger of being compromised ... if it was, then figure out something to do about it, for he could hardly simply resign from the force and the H’satei, There was a small matter of a promise made many years ago to a king now dead. Now that he had finally reached the position and power he needed to keep that promise, to protect Niau, and through it, the kingdoms of Ar, he could hardly just give up that power on a suspicion. And even without the promise, no one presently in any staff position whatever was capable of handling the situations going on at the moment; they were difficult enough to handle when one had had ten years’ experience. But what am I going to do?

  At Haven’s gateway he sighed, paused, and brushed at himself. It was a pleasure, however nerve-racking the meeting itself might be, to get out of uniform and into something more informal, something with a little more dash. For Reswen that meant a kilt of crisp cool ivory-colored cloth that perfectly picked up his lighter points, and no jewelry but one perfect ivory ring in his ear, and his father’s heavy gold signet, back in place where it belonged. A very understated effect, indicating someone somewhat conservative, but someone stylish ... and if it also indicated someone well off, there was surely no harm in that. He took one moment to preen down the difficult fur behind his ears, then straightened himself and headed into the courtyard.

  This entrance was a little different from the last one. This time people were watching for him. This time the Easterners’ servants met him at the door, bowed to him, and censed him with smokes of sweet-smelling spices, and offered him wine. This time the Haven staff lingered in the background, bowing him honor, and otherwise acting as if they had never seen him
before. He did the same with them, took a place on an offered couch, leaned back and sipped wine and ate dainties that were brought to him. Hortolans were much in evidence. He smiled a bit, and ate them without wondering too much who had noticed the preference.

  She came down the white stairs at the end of the guest hall after a few minutes. At the sound of her footstep he looked up slowly, bracing himself, as he had with Deshahl before, for the inner seizure, the clutch at the heart. But there was nothing: only a she-mrem in silk velvet the color of peat water and as fine as air, draping softly about her and caught to the shoulder with a stone the same yellow as her eyes. She laughed at him, very gently, as she came down and sat on the couch beside him.

  “I would offer you another cup,” she said under her breath, putting her paw on his, “but Hiriv is threatening to come down here and start thanking you again for saving his life. If we hurry, we can miss him.”

  Reswen bowed over her paw and said as quietly, “Right. We’re away.”

  They hastened out the front door, Laas chuckling softly as they went. It was a reaction that Reswen had not heard in some time: honest laughter from a she-mrem, not round eyes or nervous giggles or silent smiles. Behind them the cries of “Where did they go? Policemaster!—” faded away in the whisper of wind in the trees.

  “So where are we going, and are we going to be followed there?” Laas said. “Or do the police consider that having the chief of police with the person being followed is enough of a tail?”

  “One too many, perhaps,” Reswen said, and chuckled himself “As to where we’re going—”

  “Already you start evading,” Laas said, her voice scolding but humorous. “A poor beginning. How do you expect me to do anything but evade back at you when you start asking me questions?”

  “I’ll give it all the consideration it’s due,” Reswen said. “Meanwhile, I’d thought perhaps we might take in a play.”

  She looked at him with an odd combination of surprise and delight. “Somehow I hadn’t thought of you as a particularly religious mrem,” she said.

  He looked at her in some confusion. “Pardon?”

  “Religion. A play—you don’t have plays in your temples? Then where do you have them?”

  It took them a few minutes’ feeling their way around the subject for Reswen to realize that in the Eastern cities, at least, plays existed only as religious ritual, as solemn drama enacting the legends and desires of the gods. “Goodness,” he said. “No comedy?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Oh, heavens,” Reswen said, and began to laugh uproariously, and Laas started to laugh too. “What’s so funny?” he said, when he could get his breath.

  “You, laughing for no reason!” Laas said, and started laughing again.

  It took a few moments for both of them to get control of their laughter—though Reswen was a little sorry when it happened. She has a lovely laugh.... Is this thing working? If it’s not, I’m going to skin Lorin tomorrow .... “I can see I have some explaining to do before we get to the theater. Would you like a drink of something?”

  “Yes, but no wine, please,” Laas said. “I’ve had so much of it in the past few nights that my head swims just thinking of it.”

  Yes, I’m sure, Kanesh for example is something of a lush—

  “What’s his name, Lord Kanesh,” she added, after thinking for a moment, “he’s a terrible drinker.”

  Reswen breathed out as they turned a corner onto one of the main streets leading down toward the finer shops in town and the theaters. “Well,” he said softly, “we’re speaking very plain. Since you mention it, I dare say he is. So are some of the other people you’ve been with nights, of late. I wonder that you mention it to me so freely.”

  Laas looked sidewise at him as they walked, not a sly look, but a confiding one; her paw on his arm tightened a little. “I have no desire to play games with you,” she said.

  “Because they wouldn’t work?” he said.

  “Hardly.” She was silent for a moment, then said, “I simply saw that you were someone with whom deceit would be a mistake. You know what I am, and what I’m doing. Anyone with eyes would know it. But so few mrem have eyes....”

  “True,” Reswen said, and smiled a little. It was one of the things about life that still astonished him. Since he had first started seeing things—occurrences, motivations—and realizing that other people could not see them, his life’s course had been laid out for him. But at the same time he found it astonishing that people could not see the facts and images laid out right before their eyes, and in fact sometimes would not; and it also amazed him that it was necessary to have a job, an official position, for people who saw things, to report on them to people who did not. “But if you chose to play games with me,” he said, “they would work?”

  She glanced down, refusing to meet his eyes. And this time he felt it, the clutch, the almost painful realization that he would do anything for her, anything at all—

  Then she met his eyes again, and the feeling passed off, leaving him shocked, breathing hard. “No,” she said. “As you see.”

  He was silent for a moment.

  “You are a magician,” he said, quite baldly. “A charismatic, my adviser calls you. Don’t you know we have laws against that, in Niau? I could have you put to death.”

  “And precipitate a pretty little diplomatic incident,” she said, with kindly scorn. “I rather doubt it. Besides, you have no proof. All you could say in a chancery would be that everyone who sees me wants me. And since you want me too, and other people have noticed it, that would hardly be a charge that would be taken seriously. Besides, I’m a courtesan. Everyone is supposed to want me.”

  Was that a touch of bitterness, Reswen wondered? He opened his mouth to ask, then paused. There was something so fragile about her— “Should I start the interrogation now,” he said, “or shall I wait until we eat? You would like dinner, wouldn’t you? There’s time before the play.”

  “Do wait, please,” she said, and turned a look on him that was a mockery of the coquettishness he had seen her use on, say, Kanesh. “I daresay your patience will be rewarded.”

  He took her to the Green Square. They knew him there, but never made a performance of his arrivals. Their discretion suited him; it was better that the head of the H’satei should not become too well known, as he was to the common lag of people. They waited in the doorway for a moment for the host to come over, and Laas looked around her with obvious delight. It was an eating-house set in a walled garden, lush with big trees that had more of the scented-oil lanterns hanging in their branches, and. there was a small fire in a brazier at the middle of the seating area, burning sweetwood to take off any chill that might set in later. In fact, calling the place an eating-house was a misnomer, since everything was outdoors. There was only a sort of rustic woven reed awning over the pits and hearths where the cooking was done, to keep the rain and the wind away. Chairs and tables were made of the same reed, woven together with curiously carved wood, the tables topped with wood highly polished. Off to one side, against the wall, a tiny stream ran down over stones to a pool, and there was the occasional glint of blue or silver from the fish swimming in it.

  Ishoa came over from a table when he saw them standing there: a big honey-colored mrem, pausing at another table here, tossing a word over his shoulder to a patron there, hurrying without making it obvious. “The owner,” Reswen said in Laas’ ear. “Discretion’s own soul, wrapped in fur. Sometimes I wish he worked for me.”

  “You mean there’s someone in this town who doesn’t?” Laas said.

  Reswen smiled as Ishoa finally got to them. “You should have let me know you were coming tonight, sir,” he said. “I would have saved you the good table by the pool.”

  “I didn’t know if I was going to be able to make it until late, Ish,” said Reswen. “There aren’t any bad tables here
. Just give us the best you’ve got.”

  “Absolutely. If the charming lady will come this way?” Several minutes later they were seated in what was certainly the best table in the place, no matter what Ishoa might say, under one of the wide-leaved lass trees, a silver filigree lamp on the table to match the ones hanging above them. The murmur of the other diners’ voices mingled with the rustle of leaves. Laas leaned on her elbows, looked about her. “This is very lovely,” she said. “The right neighborhood for a seduction.”

  “Or an interrogation?”

  “That’s what a seduction usually entails,” said Laas. “I find out what you like ... and then I give it to you.”

  Reswen made a wry face. “And then I find out what you like ... and give it to you.”

  “Equable, don’t you think?” she said. “What shall we drink? Interrogation is dry work.”

  “A sherbet, perhaps?”

  “What’s a sherbet?”

  Reswen looked at her with mock astonishment. “How can you live next to a desert and not know what a sherbet is?”

  “What makes you think I live next to a desert?”

  “No fair your asking the questions,” said Reswen. “Half a moment.” One of the servingmrem came over to the table. Reswen ordered, then turned back to Laas, “You’re in for a treat.”

  “That’s what Deshahl said,” Laas said.

  “Oh, indeed!” Reswen had occasionally heard rumors about various of his lady friends comparing notes about him in private, and that favorably; but this meeting was something of a different business. “And how would she know? She’s never been closer to me than arm’s length.”

  “Neither have I,” said Laas, “but I don’t have to be. If one has the ability to ... attract ... one also knows when interest is returned. And to some extent how it would be returned, and in what coin.”