Exiled: Keeper of the City

by Peter Morwood

  Laas shrugged her tail gracefully. “We’re no different from your people, I would say. I’ve met some here who believe in nothing but money, and some who worship and sacrifice as if they were afraid the gods would notice if they didn’t, and stop them breathing, and many in between, who honor the gods when they think to, and honor the ones they like and ignore the others. And what about you?” she said, close to his ear. “You sitting there taunting poor Hiriv, whose brains are in his purse, or other mrem’s purses, rather. And he not smart enough to hear you doing it. What do you believe in, scornful one? You with your fine talk of Truth and Justice.”

  Reswen thought about that, then smiled slightly. “I’ll show you, later,” he said. “Meanwhile, what shall we do tonight?”

  “I thought you had made plans?”

  “Various possibilities, no decisions. We could go see the Games. There’s a session tonight.”

  “What games are these?”

  He paused for a moment, wondering how to explain it. Niauhu shared the delight and fascination of mrem everywhere with dance: the flow of it, the expression possible in bodies perfectly married with minds, dancing rage, delight, lust, pain, joy, in language that could not be mistaken for anything else. But the Niauhu, left somewhat to themselves, martial by habit and necessity, and eventually by habit and preference; they had evolved dance into forms that some of their Western kin would probably have found barbaric. Let them, Reswen thought; they were not sitting on the edge of the world with only the sword’s edge between them and invasion, with only a pocket of kindly weather and a few precious wells between them and the pitiless desert.

  Fumblingly, he tried to explain how in the Games, dance had become the expression of the spirit of war, with all its daring, danger, grace, power, and sudden death. The dancers who danced the Game were wagered on, mobbed in the streets, almost revered; the beasts who fell to them were honorably buried when they lost, had honorable revenge visited on them when they killed a Gamedancer. There were mrem who bet their whole incomes on the Games, lived for nothing else; some were ruined, and counted it worth it. Some made great fortunes, and were almost as revered as the Game-dancers for their skill—for indeed the betting pools were labyrinthine in their complexity, and a rightly placed scrap-of-claw bet could become a thousand claws-weight of gold ... always assuming that the Game-dancers put their paws right, and the gods were kind. The Gods were always invoked by the Game-dancers, and sometimes even remembered afterwards, if one survived. But the important question, in many parts of the city, was “Do you follow the Games?” Reswen followed them as a hobby, not a passion; but as a hobbyist, when he had time to spare for it, it interested him intensely, and he could discuss the Game-dancers’ statistics and habits in depth that might have surprised some who accounted themselves specialists.

  Laas listened to all this as they strolled into the city, and when Reswen trailed off after a while, she walked gazing quietly at the flagstones for a little ways before answering. “I have had so much lately,” she said softly, “of life-or-death matters, and great wagers....” She looked up again. “Perhaps something lighter?”

  Reswen shrugged. “There’s always the play.”

  “Tell me about it again.”

  He reached into his belt pouch and brought out the broadside for her to see. The printing on it was rough and smudged in places, speaking of printing done hastily from a rudely carved ironwood board, on one of the cheap presses belonging to a small criers’ firm. It said, in great fat letters,

  TONIGHT

  at the Play House

  the Lord Arpekh’s Mrem

  playing a Play of Merrie Contrasts and Humours a Prettv Fine new Fantasticall Satire entitled THE CLAW UNSHEATH’D

  (—and here there was a rough woodcut picture of a claw, with a drop of blood pendant at the end of it—)

  with Marvellous new Masks & Costumes,

  Never Before seen

  alsoe Musick Songs and Dances

  wrought for this Play and No other.

  The Play to begin

  about the Ninth Stroke on Tezhrue’s Bell

  ground Level 1 minim Galleries 2

  chairs 1 minim ea.

  wine 1/2 minim the Stoup

  and small Beere ¼

  No Passes for this Engagement

  Laas laughed again. “I think we should go see that,” she said. “Besides, you intrigued me. I’ve never seen anything at a play but something like The Passion of Lord Ssamos, His Betrayal By the Wicked Enuib the False, and Ssamos His Rising.” She chuckled a bit.

  “Sounds like rather heavy theater,” Reswen said.

  “I wouldn’t know,” Laas said, thoughtful. “I’ve never seen any that was light. But surely I could use some lightness ... it would be a pleasure.”

  Reswen was afire with curiosity, but for the moment he said nothing. “What shall we do, then?” he said. “Walk till time for the play? Or eat first?”

  “Food, please,” Laas said. “Can we go where we went the last time?”

  “Heavens, yes,” Reswen said. “You don’t have to talk me into that! But Ishoa will be cross with me for not letting him know to expect us.”

  So off they went to the Green Square, and Ishoa did indeed scold Reswen at the sight of him, but bowed to Laas as he might have bowed to a queen with a misbehaving courtier, with an air of cheerful complicity. She smiled and played the part, and Ishoa put them at the same table as before, and sent them wine. It was early yet; there were few diners, few heads to turn at the sight of the policemaster. Reswen thought that just as well.

  Laas laughed again, looking around. “What’s funny?” Reswen said.

  She gestured slightly with her head in a direction behind Reswen. He turned, casually, and saw two of the table-waiting staff, who had been looking at them, turn suddenly away. “So?”

  Laas looked at him with a wry expression. “I don’t think they’re used to seeing you bring the same lady in here twice,” she said.

  Reswen went a touch hot, then cooled down again. “You may have a point,” he said. “Bear in mind: When one’s policemaster, it doesn’t do to become too well known ... it can be used against you, or by others, against your partner.... ”

  “But when your companion’s a criminal ... well.” Laas watched him, then smiled, letting him off. “No matter. How’s your bit of ‘fish,’ my friend?”

  Reswen patted it under his tunic. “Intact.”

  “Would you believe me,” Laas said, “if I told you I would not use ... “ She trailed off. “That I wouldn’t use it on you?”

  “I would be very curious why,” Reswen said. “But I might just believe you. Convince me.”

  She looked at him, and sighed. “No,” she said. “Tell me now: What are we going to eat tonight?”

  They went off into the inconsequentials of deciding about food. Reswen called Ishoa over, and Ishoa and Laas promptly got into a most animated discussion about spices, Eastern and Western, and how hot one could make meat if one tried. Reswen began to suspect that he had created a monster. When Ishoa threatened Laas with the prospect of baby bunorshan in firespice and verjuice, Laas tossed her head and dared him to go ahead and do it. Off went Ishoa, rubbing his paws together, and Reswen began to wonder whether he was going to survive dinner or not:

  “You really like that, don’t you?” he said.

  She beamed at him. “The meat tastes of something, here. It’s not bland. One can get weary of blandness. A little spice makes a lot of difference....”

  Reswen laughed out loud, and then choked stopping himself. “What’s funny?” Laas said.

  He made a rueful face. “One of my ... never mind. Someone I know described you, at first sight, as ‘a less highly spiced sweetmeat.’ ”

  Laas looked a touch rueful too, for a moment, and then chuckled. “Than Deshahl? Heaven, yes; but that was t
he point. No one looks twice at the second-class courtesan, not really. That makes her much the more effective of the two.”

  “Does it indeed?” Reswen said. He sipped at his wine. “You’ve been busy with the corn-factors,” he said. “A boring lot, most people would think ... but apparently you found them otherwise. They certainly found you so.”

  “Your eyes and ears are everywhere, I’m sure,” Laas said, and drank her own wine with an abstracted look. After a moment she put the cup down and said, “Why should I tell you anything? Convince me.”

  Part of Reswen’s mind began shouting, This is it, she’s about to talk! but he pushed that part of him away for the moment. “I can’t, I suppose,” he said at last.

  She smiled at him a little. “I could have sworn you were about to say, ‘Because I could throw you in gaol.’ ”

  “I was,” he said to his surprise, “but I decided that would be a silly thing to say. What about the corn-factors?”

  “I could be killed, you know,” she said, “for telling you anything at all. They would make it look like an accident, I’m sure.”

  “I’d investigate your murder, though,” Reswen said, trying to make it sound light.

  “That wouldn’t be much consolation to me at the time,” Laas said.

  “Well, I suppose not....” He pretended interest in his wine for a moment, then said, “But how would they ever find out?”

  She gazed at him over the rim of the winecup. “You think you’re the only one who has hired ears?” she said. “We have our own ... or so I’ve been warned.”

  Reswen considered that. He had long suspected it, and now found himself wondering about the big spender in the marketplace, and other such matters. “Well,” he said. “I can’t convince you. I won’t try. I’m doing my job as best I can, protecting what matters to me.”

  “So am I,” said Laas.

  Reswen drank his wine and was still. Something hung in the air, balancing like a winged thing in an updraft, wavering, pushed up on a wind, pushing against it.

  “Reswen,” she said. She had never called him by his name before, or at least not without the title. Now, at the sound, something like a shock ran down through him, up again, rooted in his spine, and lifted the hairs all along it. His tail bristled in alarm. “Reswen,” she said, and all the hairs that had begun to lie down stood up again. “I don’t know what to do, truly I don’t. There are odd things going on. I don’t understand them.”

  He held still and concentrated on breathing until his fur calmed down somewhat. “Tell me what your honor permits,” he said, “and maybe I can help.”

  She drank wine, then looked up and smiled brightly. Ishoa had arrived, carrying a tray with bowls of something steaming on it; some sort of broth. Both of them made anticipatory noises as the broth was put down in front of them. It was aromatic, and quite clear, except for slices of some tiny green pod floating in it. For a few minutes, while Ishoa hung about waiting for a reaction, they made appreciative small talk, and then Reswen made the mistake of biting into one of the little green pods instead of merely swallowing it. His mouth went up in flames like some tenement in the Shambles after an arsonist had gone by, and Ishoa went away in satisfaction, rubbing his paws again. Laas gave Reswen bread and otherwise made compassionate conversation while he recovered himself.

  “I am never coming back here again,” Reswen said finally. “The mrem’s a sadist.”

  “Reswen,” Laas said again, and Reswen swore softly, for there went the fur again.

  “You said you weren’t doing it,” he said, aggrieved.

  “I’m not,” she said, just as aggrieved, and then they both looked at one another and fell abruptly silent.

  “All right,” he said, “go ahead. I’m sorry.”

  “The corn-factors,” she said.

  “Yes, right.” He was still eating bread, trying to kill the fire.

  “Why should I be asking them if they would like not to have a crop next year?”

  He looked at her, bemused. “That’s no great mystery,” Reswen said. “I have an idea that one of the main responsibilities of our friend Hiriv’s priesthood is to limit the grain available to your cities, so that—well. He limits the available supply, and the price goes up as a result. Didn’t you know that?”

  “Surely,” she said, and drank some more broth. This time she was the one who bit down on a little green pod by accident. “Oh, gods!!” she said. Reswen looked resigned and handed her bread.

  A few minutes later she said, “It still seems very odd to me. We came all this weary way to set up quotas for grain shipment. Now I’m told to see who would be willing to have an ‘accident’ happen to their crop. Fire, drought, blight, just crop failure, explainable in any way one likes. They get paid, almost as well as they would for growing the crop.”

  Reswen thought about that. “Another way to force your grain prices up,” he said. “The priests get even more for their bread at festivals—extort more from those they allow to grow it or sell it successfully, for the privilege of doing so. It’s dirty, but not all that strange.”

  Laas shook her head. “I think there’s more to it.”

  They both played with their soup for a couple of moments more until it was gone, both of them staying very clear of the little green pods. A server came to take the dishes away, and for the moment they touched paws, while they sipped their wine, to confuse anyone who might be watching.

  Reswen, after a moment, said, “I was going to ask you: Why are you telling me this now? You said, not until your job was done—”

  “It is,” she said, “or so I’m told.”

  Reswen considered that. “Who are you reporting to?” he said.

  Laas eyed him. “I really think I should leave you some things to find out.” There was a warning glint in her eye, though; no anger about it, just caution.

  Reswen nodded, sipped at his wine again. “Apparently the trade treaties are about to be signed,” he said. “Your merchants and ours seem to have reached agreement on just about everything.”

  “That’s what I hear,” Laas said. But she still looked faintly troubled.

  Reswen said nothing, and was rescued from having to by the arrival of the bunorshan on a platter full of grain, first toasted, then boiled. Ishoa stood nearby while the servers put the food on the plates, left small grain-scoops next to clean tongs, and retired. Reswen tried the bunorshan, then ate grain, very fast, for several minutes, while Laas laughed at him. Ishoa very genially brought over a flask of iced wine. It helped ... just barely.

  For a while Reswen and Laas ate and suffered happily, the tears running down their faces from the sheer heat of the spice. “I’m going to make that mrem the city torturer,” Reswen said between cups of wine. “How I never noticed this hidden aptitude …”

  “You’re an innocent,” Laas said, “that’s the problem.”

  Reswen gazed at her in astonishment. “Pardon?”

  She waved the tongs at him, fighting to get down a particularly violent mouthful, and then said, “You do look for the good in people, Reswen. I’ve noticed. It’s rather unusual in a chief of secret police.” Reswen, astonished, took another mouthful of the bunorshan and once more spared himself having to do anything but fight the food down. It put up a valiant struggle and made him pay dearly. “Your younger officers worship you because of the way you deal with them. You may make them work their tails off, but you give them chances—”

  “I am a bundle of suspicions and fears, most of them well-founded,” Reswen said in an I-deny-everything voice, “and I beat my junior officers every day. But they’re all masochists, that’s the problem.”

  “You are full of fur balls,” Laas said. “Talk truth to me! You just like excitement and disguises and doing secret things, that’s all. So by hard work and careful planning, you’ve gotten yourself into a position where that’s al
l you have to do: dress up in rags and sneak around, or hide behind curtains and eavesdrop—yourself, or others working for you—” She chuckled at his discomfiture. “Reswen, I told you ... one with my brand of, ah, talent, can feel the response. Something underneath the basement at Haven responds very well to me....”

  Reswen covered his eyes. No wonder the reconnaissance had been, as Krruth said, “so dry.” “Who else knows?”

  That cautious glint again. “Those who needed to.” Then the glint died away, and Laas looked slightly somber. “At least, those whom I thought needed to. I’m beginning to wish I hadn’t told them.”

  There was a little silence, and they went back to the bunorshan and fought the last scraps of it down them. “If all bunorshan tasted like that,” Reswen said at last, wiping away the last of the tears, “they’d be safe from mrem forever. At least from mrem without your fondness for hot food ...”

  Laas poured out a last cup of iced wine for them from the flask Ishoa had left. “Look there,” she said, “you’ve drunk it all.”

  “I’ve drunk it all? Look at you, you could teach a fish!” They laughed crazily, perhaps a little more crazily than necessary. “No harm in it,” Reswen said, “as long as whoever may be watching us thinks we’re drunk. Not that we are, of course.” He hiccupped decorously.

  Laas looked cheerful mockery at him. “When is this play we’re going to, O sober one?”

  “Oh heavens,” Reswen said, “when did you last hear a gong?”

  “Some time ago. An hour, perhaps.”

  “Late again,” he said with resignation. “I’ve never been on time for a play in my life. No reason to start now, I suppose. You didn’t want a sweet, did you? No, of course you didn’t. Come on, we’re going to be late!” He got up hastily from the table, caught her by the paw.

  “If we’re going to be late anyway, why shouldn’t I have a sweet?” Laas said, laughing, but there was no point in it, they were halfway out the garden gate already. Ishoa waved a tolerant good-bye to them.