Nothing. Nothing but foul straw.
He swore at himself inwardly, all the parts of his mind which had thought this was a bad idea now hollering all together, Stupid, let’s get out of here, this is ridiculous, there’s nothing here—He ignored them and for the next few moments made it his business to climb down as quietly as possible.
There was the crunch of a footstep on the flagged path.
Lorin froze in the shadow of the box, watching another shadow move toward him. It knows, he thought. It knows I’m here. It’s sent someone—
But the constable passed him by without even a second look. Evidently this part of the house and garden was considered secure, and the constables were none too concerned about it.
Lorin breathed again when he had gone, and looked around him. The stable blocks ended here, but the exercise yard went on for a ways, and there was a part of it that he could not see off to the left, shielded by more plantings and trees. Lorin stole toward it softly.
Here the ground was just gravel, dotted here and there with beast droppings. Some beast-harness was hung out here on roofed racks, and there was another of the boxes. It stood all by itself, its pull-bar held down like the other’s with a big rock. There was no canvas drape over this one, but in all other ways it was identical.
Lorin stepped along as softly as he could ... a difficult business on gravel, but he managed. This time he walked up the pull-bar, scrambling up the front of the box by the pawholds built into it for a driver or inspector to use.
Panting again, he paused, then looked down through one of the air slits. His heart sank. Nothing. Nothing but more foul straw. Idiot, idiot, his brain began singing—
There was a movement ... and the eye was gazing up at him. It was a dull eye, slitted ... and about as big as Lorin’s head.
His breath got caught somewhere south of his ribs. There was the sound of a whuff of breath—then another, and another one, quicker than the second.
It’s waking up!! he thought, and snatched the piece of parchment out of his cloak, and held it up ... and then realized that it was too dark to read the spell.
Oh gods! he thought, shoving the parchment back into his cloak—no good dropping it where it might cause questions, or worse, get someone to look inside this box. Hurriedly he recited the rune. It was a short one, thank heaven, and he got the intonation right. He dared not look down into that air slit again to see what was happening inside. But he could hear the sound of breathing getting faster in there—
He felt the spell’s effect settle down over him, dulling everything, all sight and sound. Lorin didn’t waste any further time. He jumped down off the box and began to run. And yet he couldn’t help himself; he paused to look—
He was sorry for that. He was sorry for the sight of the great towering shape of fire that leapt up out of the box. The fire was not real, as most people in Niau would understand real, but it would kill if it once touched him. The only advantage he had was that he was invisible for the moment, even to the sight and senses of another magic-worker. The question was how long it would last....
He ran, ran out of there as fast as he could. He heard the step of the constable coming, veered to miss him—then changed his mind and ran full tilt into the poor creature. Better that he shouldn’t go back there until things had become quiet again ... until whatever wards the creature had to keep the nonwizardly away from there had been reestablished. Lorin and the constable went down together in a heap; Lorin scrambled to his feet and was off again. Behind him he heard the constable start shouting. He heard his partner call curiously from the front of the house, then head around after him. Lorin ran into him, too, on general principles, and knocked the poor creature to the cobblestones of the front courtyard … then loped out the front gates without stopping.
He did not stop till he was nearly a mile away, and there he sagged against the garden wall of some house in the Whites and moaned softly to himself. All his worst fears were true ... and now he was going to have to do something about them.
Liskash. Oh gods, a liskash.
He was going to have to do something.
But what?
•
The Lloahairi embassy, by comparison to Haven, was a rather drab place. It was as big, and well enough furnished, but there was an air of the furnishings being old and not well tended; genteel decay, Laas thought, glancing around her at the door, soon not to be so genteel, if they don’t get someone in here to do something about the upholstery....
She was ignored for the first little while. Hiriv and Rirhath and the other merchants got most of the attention, and of course there was Deshahl, turning her talent indiscriminately on whatever hapless creature happened into range. Most of the Lloahairi males in the room were already gathered around her, paying her compliments or looking unsheathed claws and messy death at one another behind her back. She never noticed; but then that was her way, to walk into a room and leave wreckage behind, tempers and relationships shattered.
But Deshahl’s thoughtlessness suited Laas for the moment; she had other business. She paused by the sideboard to eat and drink while sizing the place up. One large downstairs hall; toward the back of the hall, a stair down, a stair up. She was not used to houses that had cellars—none of them did in Cithiv, possibly due to the little earth tremors that were so common. Indeed all Niau seemed inordinately solid to her. It was strange to see so much building in stone rather than timber.
By Reswen’s description she recognized Maikej: a wretched little sour fruit of a mrem. Laas sighed. For some reason, about half the mrem she had ever been told to work on matched his description: self-important, full of themselves, humorless, busy about things that there was no need to be quite so busy about. But it’s probably just as well, she thought. Full of themselves, they are, indeed; so full that they never bother turning inward to find if there’s any more. And since they never do, they never have the strength to resist me, or the wit to know what’s happening to them. Poor fools.
She took a cup of wine and drifted over in that general direction. She had told Deshahl earlier in the day that she had business with this little creature; she was to stay away from Maikej. This was a lie, since Hiriv had given her no such directions, but Deshahl had long since learned not to question Laas, and for the moment she was busily holding rapt as many of the junior embassy staff at once as she could, savoring the aggregate of their small crude lusts like a plate of cheap sweetmeats. Glutton, Laas thought scornfully.
There. He turned. He saw her. Now, Laas thought. She hardly had to do anything consciously any more. Their eyes met, she reached out without moving, reached in with the mind, fastened claws deep in the tender places, tugged. Tugged. And the hot blood of the mind flowed. Maikej, a number of strides away, froze still, and the slits of his eyes dilated round in a breath’s time from the backlash of the force with which she hit him. Laas smiled, a demure smile, and set the claws in deeper, set them heart-deep, tugged. Come here. Come here, little mrem, little slave.
For that was it, with this one. She felt his response, felt instantly his desire to be made small and helpless by anyone, but especially by her. Laas kept the rising revulsion off her face. This would certainly explain the way he behaved, as Reswen had described it to her: he went about antagonizing everyone in hopes that some one of them would see through him, strike back at him, reduce him to helplessness and expose the small frightened groveling mrem he really was to the world. And that would certainly be reason enough for him to have hated Shalav so, for she had so exposed him; just because he desired humiliation didn’t mean he enjoyed it. A dangerous one to deal with for long, Laas thought, as she drew him closer, but fortunately, I needn’t; and while he’s under my eye, he’s safe enough. He won’t be long out of it, tonight, if all goes well.
He walked over to her. It looked very casual, that walk, but Laas could feel his muscles trembling with the sudden desire to
cast himself at her feet. He was bewildered, dazed, he wanted nothing but to please her, to do whatever would please her enough that she would somehow do this one secret thing that would make him dissolve in a glory and ecstasy of abasement. So the key, Laas thought, is to humiliate him, and inveigle him into letting me have my way by promising perhaps to do what he wants later. And then later, when I refuse ... that itself will be humiliation of exactly the kind he wants.
So she set about it. She wanted permission to move about the embassy freely; she made him give it to her, luring him into it, suggesting that she would possibly see his room, later, but not escorted, oh no; mrem would talk. She would find her way there herself. Surely he understood, surely he would speak to his staff and make it all right. And so he would. She felt his muscles jerk to go instantly to do it, and she murmured the suggestion to him, and he took the request as a command. She felt his brief spurt of ecstasy as he did something against his better judgment, did it because this beautiful mrem told him to and she had to have her whims gratified if she were to maybe, maybe, do what he wanted.... She steeled herself against it, bowed a little thanks to him, swayed against him, let her perfume fill his nostrils, flicked a wicked tongue against his ear, felt the heat fill him and fill him and leave him helpless—felt him wallow in the helplessness, in anguish and desire—
She detached herself gracefully from him, and went off to get another cup of wine to wash the taste of him from her mouth, and indirectly from her mind. That was always the worst of it. The flavor would fade as the creature’s arousal did; but for the moment, wine worked very well to mask the flavor, to drown it briefly in her own giddiness. Laas had been conscious for some time now that wine was getting to be too good a friend. It was marvelous, by contrast, to be able to be with Reswen and not need the anodyne; to drink something innocuous like sherbet, and rest against a mind that did not smell of the sewer, that even in its heat burned clean. Endlessly better than the sweaty, reeking stews she found herself in sometimes. She desperately hoped that the wizard, later on, was not going to be one of those.
The wizard, now. There would be her great problem. There was of course no guarantee that he would be here at all; but if he was.... Laas sipped her wine and wondered. Will he recognize me? She had seen Masejih only a few times, when he was with Usiel, conferring on the details of some spell in the loft of the little house in Cithiv. Usiel had introduced her as “his ward,” but as far as she knew hadn’t bothered to explain any further, and for all she knew, Masejih thought she had been a servingmrem or some such. And if he did, so much the better. I don’t think he would even remember my name, if he thought me a slave or a drab; and even if he did remember it, I doubt he would believe that the same mrem would now be a high-class courtesan. So perhaps I’m worry for nothing—
But more pressing was the question of whether he would be susceptible to her. Oh, such things as lacknot root, such as Reswen had been given by Lorin, were common enough in the East: but one would have to know that one was going to run into a charismatic, to be prepared for the eventuality. What would make him prepare for such a thing? Unless someone had told him. Spies are everywhere.... But there seemed to be few spies here who knew or suspected what she was. It was as Hiriv had said: The Western people did not much believe in magic, and so were helpless against it.
Except for one of them, Laas thought, who believes in it enough to use it to protect his city. The prudent, careful, frightened creature—
Laas leaned against the sideboard, and shook a little. It was still much with her, the memory of Reswen holding her as if to protect her against magic, and how the terror of it burned in his bones until she could feel it without even the benefit of her talent. How can he care for me, really, she wondered, when he holds magic in such terror, such loathing? But there was no question of it; he did. It was most unsettling.
Then she shook her head, ruefully, and smiled and drank wine. I can’t seem to get him out of my thoughts .... Maybe there are more kinds of magic than the kind done in dark places, with circles and mutterings....
And then she saw him, and her mind cleared, with her own fear this time. Masejih came strolling down the stairs from the gallery level, splendidly dressed in a sky-blue kilt that set off that gray-blue fur most strikingly, and around his wrists were bound bands of silver with smooth blue stones in them, and around his neck a collar to match, heavy and ornate. The green-blue eyes, like gems themselves, surveyed the place, lazy, cool, untroubled, opaque.
Laas held quite still, working to calm himself, as Masejih surveyed the room. She looked elsewhere, drank her wine, did her best to make sure she was part of the background at this point, nothing more. Masejih walked lazily over to another sideboard, took a drink, and strolled over to where Maikej stood talking to one of the Easterners, slowly regaining his composure.
She watched him from behind for a little while. His stance and manner were those of complete ease, perhaps even contempt for most of the company. Certainly there was some contempt for Maikej, and Laas had to admit to herself that the contrast between the two was striking, and not at all in Maikej’s favor. Placed next to the cool and elegant ease of Masejih, and the size and solidity of him, the puny, light-voiced, pompous Maikej dwindled to a small thing, an insect shrilling under the shadow of the foot that could crush it if it liked, but disdained doing so. They were talking, Maikej a little hurried and nervous, trying to sound important; Masejih nodding, sipping his drink, murmuring occasional comments that always brought Maikej up short and made him stammer hurried answers. I can’t think what made them choose this little bug as an ambassador, Laas thought; he can’t say anything without looking as if he’s hunting excuses every time he opens his mouth. He must have paid someone off.
But there were more important things to think about. Laas glanced idly around the room, avoiding looking at Masejih for the moment, considering how she might manage to get herself most innocuously introduced to him. She had learned long before that for a seduction to be most successful, the other party must think that it was their idea. Laas glanced casually around her. There were various Lloahairi, some of her own people—but she disliked mixing with them while she was working; there was a danger of their eyes or manner giving her away. Let’s see....
But Laas found then that, all unwittingly, she had laid just the right groundwork for what she needed to do. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Maikej murmur something in Masejih’s ear, saw them both glance her way. Then, even through the noise and merriment of the crowd, she heard Maikej laugh—that particular laugh that makes she-mrem everywhere roll their eyes and want to leave the room. Laas, though, turned to the mrem standing near her at the sideboard, some Lloahairi cultural attaché, and made brilliant but essentially meaningless conversation for a few moments, while the situation between Maikej and Masejih sorted itself out.
The young attaché, a stocky young black-and-silver tabby, was flattered beyond belief that such a beautiful she-mrem should even look at him, much less speak to him and begin asking him intelligent questions about his work. Laas put forth her talent; she did not set the claw deep in this one, just more or less drew it down the skin of his mind, a hint and promise of something that might happen later, if time allowed and the gods were kind. Dazzled, though not sure by what, the youngster stammered compliments, offered service in the old courteous manner, and otherwise became visibly far-gone in adorable yearning. Laas smiled at him kindly—he really was a nice young mrem, another one who, like Reswen, burned clean when he burned hot—though he was not properly burning at the moment, merely in the early stages of smolder.
Laas let this continue for a moment or so, then turned as if to get herself another cup of wine. The young attaché naturally would not let her do any such thing, and laughing gently at his cheerful abjectness, she acquiesced and followed him to the nearby sideboard, using the movement to allow her a glance past Maikej and Masejih. They were still standing together, and stil
l both watching her, Maikej with a poorly concealed leer on his face, Masejih with a small secret smile. Laas read that smile, and Masejih’s stance, and needed no confirmation from her talent to know what had happened. Maikej had made a serious mistake in drawing her to Masejih’s attention. Masejih had just decided that Maikej was not going to taste this little sweetmeat; oh no. He was going to find a way to steal her from under Maikej’s nose.
She allowed her eye to be caught by Masejih’s, she held it for a fraction of a moment, as she walked, then let it go, with no change of expression but the slightest cooling, a look that would say to Masejih, Oh indeed; you think so, do you? I am not interested.
With a he-mrem who meant well, the look would have cooled him instantly. It did no such thing with Masejih, which relieved Laas a great deal. She was also relieved that, at least for that fraction of a moment when their eyes met, there was no least sign of recognition. He did not know who she was; he did not know what she was doing to him.
Unless, of course, he has already sensed my power, and dismissed it….
There was no way to tell. Lorin seemed to think that one properly trained could tell a charismatic quickly, and defend himself against her, but Laas had no idea whether Masejih had the right kind of training. She knew him primarily as a spell-worker, not one for deep thinking, but for using magic like a hammer or a knife, as a tool, not as a philosophy. So perhaps she was safe. Or perhaps not. It was a gamble, but at worst, she would use her talent to no effect ... and have a night’s lovemaking with no result. Inwardly she shrugged; that had happened often enough before and it had never bothered her.
Until now, that is, when what the other person felt had begun to matter. At least, when it was Reswen. And how will I bear to lie down in this mrem’s arms and find that he is not Reswen, and never will be?
Exiled: Keeper of the City Page 29
