by Betsy James
Aieh stared at the tall stone walls. The Rigi ducked into alleys and doorways, nosed like fish into every hole in this gray stone reef. In the plaza the girl and her smith still beat the drum, and as the strange crowd poured round them, half neighbors and half seeming ghosts, they did not falter. Sweating, mouths open, they worked in a trance.
Streaming above their buried warrenhouse, the Rigi touched the fountain, the worn stone benches where gossipers had sat, the market stalls, the stone pillars grimed by the hands of children. The trees were loud with panicky grackles kept from their night roosts.
In front of the makeshift hospital Suni stood gaping, her baby on her hip and Rosie by one arm. Rosie tugged like a terrier on a leash. “Rose, be still or be spanked,” said Suni. “Oh, Lali Kat!”
With a squeal Rosie broke away and dashed into a flock of little girls. Suni ran after her.
There was no time to look for Nondany. The crowd broke out of the east gate; it passed the place where Ab Harlan had shouted through his trumpet. The sinking sun turned the fields green like a vision. The smoke from the burning farmsteads had thinned, it drifted over the river of people who jostled and wept and called, who leaned forward as though in a race. We left the road and took to the crisscrossing cattle paths, narrow and many, where there could be fewer ambushes. The hill was dark with bodies, like a plague of crickets.
We climbed past outlying farms and orchards. Chickens scratched in abandoned yards. Robin pointed: “Our house.” A cock crowed there, though his dunghill belonged to a heap of smoking stones. The cowshed still stood, forlorn, and I saw Nall looking at it; mostly his face was set. The drum kept us distant company, as, like migrating antelope, we left a trampled swath that led to the rocky cliffs.
Anything might wait for us above. When we came within a bowshot of the cliff’s crest, we would be easy targets. Queelic flapped along in his slippers, and I thought, He should take off that white shirt.
He pointed and said, “Up there.”
A dozen Rig warriors broke ahead and ran straight up the cliff like bobcats. I saw them against the stone, then against the evening sky. They vanished.
I said, “But you told them not to fight—”
“Wait,” said Queelic.
The mounting surf of walkers paused and spread. From the cliff’s edge one wiry arm waved, then another.
All clear. Come on. Let the tide pour in.
The crowd spread up the trails. Those who could climb swarmed the cliffs by toehold and foothold; the rest swept steadily up the paths, pooling at the top to stand, squinting, in the violent light that poured almost level over the western sea.
Queelic said, “I know the way from here.”
The plain I had crossed with Jake the turkey man was empty. Nothing moved on it that was not moved by wind.
To the south the scattered buildings of Upslope looked like a child’s abandoned blocks. Away by the cliffs I could see my father’s house; nearer, the modest grays tone where Ab Jerash lived with my aunt and his daughters. The guardhouse stood by the road well to the north of us, glowing in the low sun. A dead-fly bundle swung from the gibbet.
“This way, please,” said Queelic.
Shuffling, he led the river of walkers south toward the stone cluster of warehouses, accounting hall, Rulesward, and mansion that were Ab Harlan’s estate, barely a quarter mile away, hard angles set down in blowing grass.
Off among the inland hills I saw faint movement, like deer in flight.
Pao gazed there. “Mules,” he said. “Men on them. More men afoot.”
“Only men?” said Queelic. If all Upslope had fled, there would be women, children, wagons. But there had been no time for that.
Aieh, sharp-eyed but foreign to mules, looked and said, “Only men. Riding great black hares, spears and bows in their hands.”
“Paidmen,” said Pao.
“It’s not their home,” said Mailin. “Why defend it from such an army?” She looked back. “We are so many!”
“As many as the seals in the sea,” said Pao. Robin walked with her hand fast in his, her face turned away from the guardhouse.
I knew where my own people must be: locked in their houses, abandoned like the child’s blocks. I knew of no Leagueman who could use so much as a kitchen knife. They had always bought that work.
With a rustle like water, we walked through grass and scrub toward Ab Harlan’s mansion. We began to pass Upslope’s houses, set apart each with its low wall, its flower-less kale yard, and its stone walk. All windows were shuttered, all doors locked. No smoke rose from the chimneys.
The Tansharians shied from those houses, but the Rigi rattled the garden gates, they leaped the walls to finger cabbage leaves and rap on the shutters. The drum throbbed, the late wind soughed in the grass. As we passed Ab Jerash’s house, I heard a child’s stifled weeping.
At Ab Harlan’s estate the walls were taller and topped by spikes. There was an iron gate with a latch bar as wide as a man’s hand, but it stood open; the paidmen had not cared whom they left vulnerable. We crowded through it into the heap of buildings intersected by wide, empty streets.
The streets had always been mostly empty, designed not for loitering but for hurrying down on business or to the Rulesward. The walls were long and blank, the corners sharp. Our rabble ran down them like water down gutters. At the central square, now in shadow, our footsteps echoed from the bare stone walls.
For as long as I could remember, I had passed through here every Rulesday with Dai and our father, my aunts and uncles and cousins, to sit on the hard benches of the women’s anteroom and listen to the dry, unintelligible murmur of the men reciting the Rules. The square had not changed.
There were no trees. No bandstand. The few windows that overlooked it were shuttered. All doors were flush with the gray walls, leaving no cubbyholes for whisperers, for kissing lovers—not that there would be lovers here, under the gray brow of the Rulesward. There were no bushes, no benches, no fountains, no flowers. No beer-sellers, no strolling singers, no cookie-hawkers and so no sparrows, no aimless dogs. From a parapet one impassive cat stared down. A pigeon clapped its wings.
The feet of the multitude were loud and hushed at the same time.
“Queelic.” My voice came in a whisper, for I had been small in this place. “Maybe Ab Harlan ran with his paidmen?”
Flushed and calm, Queelic shook his head. “His money’s here. I know where he’ll be.”
Around us the square filled with beings, thickened with shadow. Queelic led us toward the accounting house, which with Ab Harlan’s mansion formed the west side of the square. It had tall, many-paned windows—sunlight is cheaper than lamp oil—all blocked with ironbound shutters, pinned from the inside.
Queelic climbed the stone steps and banged on the studded door.
No one answered, of course.
He banged again. “Father! It’s me. Open up!”
No sound.
“Dad, I’ve got the key.” And Queelic, from his battered trousers, produced a ring of jingling keys.
Inside, the crash of a bar being dropped across the door. Then silence.
Queelic put the keys back in his pocket. “You ought to open it,” he said through the crack above the hinge. “If you don’t, I’ll ask these folks to break the shutters.”
At that a big Tanshari fisherman ran up the steps, pulling from his sash the hatchet he had hidden there. “Let us at them, sir!” he said. A crowd I recognized as the Reirig’s men came with him.
“Just a minute, please.” Queelic leaned left and right, trying to peer through the shutters.
The crowd shifted. A Tanshari girl of seven or so squirmed between their thighs and pattered up the steps. She was bare-chested, having swapped her blouse for a string of seashells, and she was quick; dodging the hands that grabbed after her, she patted Queelic’s elbow.
He frowned. “You’re to stay at the back.”
She tugged him down and whispered.
“Well
now, thanks,” he said. “I hadn’t noticed. This way,” he said to the crowd as the girl, dragging at his sleeve, led him down the steps and around the corner to an alley. Out of earshot of the big front door he said, “Her mother washes the floors, but not today, because there’s a war. She says there’s a servants’ entrance; it doesn’t have a bar.”
“We’ll smash the lock!” said the hatchet man, struggling forward. But when we had padded round to the grimy little door, we found it propped open with a mop.
“That’s our mop!” said the girl, and grabbed it. “Mother left it. If you don’t let the air in, you get mildew.”
As she spoke, a stout young woman came panting, snatched child and mop, spanked the one with the other, and dragged them both back into the crowd.
“Oh dear,” said Queelic.
He turned back to the door. Aieh said, “Keeo, be wary.”
The door was narrow and exhaled a musty breath of metal, paper, ink. Queelic stood gazing into the dimness.
Over his shoulder I saw the dusky cavern of the high-ceilinged room where, being neither man nor servant, I had never been. It was crowded with the shapes of high tables, tall chairs. Faintly ruled lines of sunset marked the shutters on the west wall.
The crowd jostled from behind. Still Queelic hesitated. “He has bodyguards,” he said. “Paidmen, but well paid.”
Aieh ducked under his arm and listened into the dark, sniffing like a vixen. “Only one man,” she said. “Very frightened. He was here, but he has gone.”
“He’s got a hiding place farther in,” said Queelic. He motioned with one hand. “Come on in, folks. Quietly, please. Most of you will have to wait outside. But don’t worry,” he said. “We’ll send him out to you.”
The tide flowed after us into the accounting room. The big front door was opened, and the shutters were thrown back to let in the stain of sunset and the thump of the drum. The crowd poured in among the ledgers and pens. They stroked and fingered, picked up and put back, snuffed and listened. I thought, They’re all Rigi now.
Nall touched nothing. I looked for Hsuu, could not find him. Robin crowded forward between Pao and Mailin; as she looked around, the grief in her face grew mild with wonder.
“Did he work here?” she said to me. “Dai.”
“Not long. He was terrible at it.”
“I’m glad he got to have his cow.”
Queelic nudged his way to the back of the room. We followed him to a small door with a plain stone lintel, shut.
“He had it built in case of trouble,” said Queelic. “It’s where he takes his ladies.” He rapped politely. “Father! We’ve come.”
Silence.
Then, from the other side of the door, a barely audible voice said, “I’ll give them money!”
“Ah,” said Queelic. The crowd riffled, a school of fish turning.
“We don’t want money, Dad.”
Silence.
The Rigi could be still as owls; the Tansharians, too, grew still.
“We?” said Ab Harlan.
“We.”
Silence.
“Queelic.”
“That’s not my name anymore, Dad.”
“Son!”
“Yes.”
“Get in here!”
“Come out, Dad.”
Some moments passed. I wondered whether it was dark where Ab Harlan was, a closed box.
Then the voice, a little higher, said, “What army is that?”
“It’s Downshore and—”
“Bright boy!” said Ab Harlan. “Twisting the old man’s arm! I’ll give you Downshore’s business!”
“I’ve got it.”
“I’ll give you the profits. All of them. It seems you can deal with those folk, go do it! You know how I—”
“It’s you they want to talk to.”
A monosyllable behind the door.
Queelic said, “There are quite a few of them.”
“It was the paidmen,” said Ab Harlan. “Out of control. I tried to stop them but they were mad dogs, ‘Bring us the witch girl, or we’ll kill you,’ they told me. They hate women—horrible, they’d have torn her apart but I held them back, I said we’ll reason with those natives, reason’s what distinguishes us from them. Singe ‘em a little, they’ll get some sense, eh? Nobody likes to be hurt. A few injuries of course—can’t play with knives without a nick or two, now can we? Eh, heh!” Pleading laughter. I thought of his soft big body pressed at the latch in the dark, the smell of him. “I wouldn’t have hurt her,” he said. “She’s Ab Drem’s daughter.”
Silence in the accounting hall.
“Queelic. Tell them we’ll have another look at the books. What the devil are you doing, meddling with natives? Tell them we’ll iron out any discrepancies. It’s impossible to do any amount of business without discrepancies.”
“It would be a good idea to go over the books.”
“We’ll go over them together! Line by line, fair and square. Tell them—”
Mailin said in her clear voice, “Ab Harlan, we owe you money What we owe, we will work fairly to pay.” She looked around at her townsfolk. Their faces were ashamed, defiant, as though to say: We’ve paid that debt already, in children, in ashes, in heart’s blood.
Yet there were nods here and there. Backs straightened. Mailin said, “We will pay. I promise for all of us.”
“What the hell?” said Ab Harlan. “Queelic—are you in business with a woman?”
“Several,” said Queelic.
“I know who’s in there!” said a clear, childish voice. The cleaning lady’s daughter had escaped; she held the mop and pointed with it. “That fat man!”
“For god’s sake!” said Ab Harlan. “Kids? Queelic, you bloody dolt—I thought you’d brought an army!”
Bang and clatter behind the door. “Get back,” I said. Slams, profanity, the clink of metal. Nall slipped to the doorjamb and flexed his back, ready to spring.
The door swung open under Ab Harlan’s left hand. With his right he was restoring the authority of his cravat. He said, “Let’s talk.”
His face went slack.
His little eyes, shrewd in their fat, darted left and right; his open mouth made a black hole in his face.
“I’ve brought the Rigi, Dad.”
Ab Harlan tried to slam the door. Nall had his knee against it. Ab Harlan made the sound a knife lets out of a pig. Then, “Get out!” he said. “Get them out!”
“You know about the Rigi.”
“Rigi!” He was seeing us all now: Nall, gaunt and scarred; me in my ragged shift; Aieh, naked except for her silver sealskin; Queelic, tousled and sunburned and bootless; and, crowding behind him, women and men in fur, shadowy, with shining eyes. He smelled pelt and skin. He shrieked, “There’s no such thing as the Rigi!”
“They’re as real as the stars, Dad.” Queelic’s voice was pure, exultant. “As real as zero.”
“Get them out! Get them out!”
Queelic looked over his shoulder. “You wanted to talk with my father. Here he is. His name’s Harlan.”
“Harlan,” said the Rigi. The people of Tanshari made way for them to move forward, as if Ab Harlan belonged to them.
Queelic said, “Where’s Hsuu?”
Ab Harlan had backed into his hiding place, a small, dark parlor full of everything a Leagueman publicly does not have: cut-glass decanters, silk daybeds, goblets of rhinoceros horn. The Rigi slipped in after him, like dogs sticking to a scent.
“Harlan,” they said. They touched him. Night with its dreams was coming; they could hear the drum. They fingered his hair, stroked his face. “O Harlan!”
He screamed, a high, gibbering squeal like a monkey’s. They soothed him with whispers. He had been lost, was found; they did not so much take hold of him as absorb him, passing him among themselves as if drawn by an undertow, out of his little box, through the high room, and into the night.
Queelic watched. “Ah, Hsuu,” he said. “There you are.”
Over the sea of bodies I saw Hsuu beyond the outside door, small against the darkening square, his arms outstretched like a lover’s. It was toward him that the current of hands flowed, like tide to the Gate.
Ab Harlan’s pale face bobbed on the waters. Our eyes met. “Ab Drem’s daughter!” he cried. “Call them off! Call them off! I’ll give you back your brother!”
33
Fire upon the water,
Fire upon the wave,
Light above the grave,
Light upon the stone,
Alee, alay, alone;
Until the hand that plays
The watery fiddle lays
It down upon the chair,
And the winged mare
Crops mortal hay,
Alee, alay,
Be still this day
Charm to Calm Demons. Tanshari.
ROBIN SCREAMED. Ab Harlan flung up his hands. Queelic said, “What does he mean?”
For no one had thought to tell him. Not even me.
“In Detention,” I said. “Dai—to pay for Ab Seroy.”
“Oh no, Kat!” He dragged his eyes from his father’s drowning face. “Come on,” he said, and ran.
Nall said to the Rigi, “Keep,” as one might tell dogs to guard a goat. There was no need. Ab Harlan’s eyes were rolled back white. Hsuu spoke his name.
“This way,” said Queelic. Next to the bunker was a low, thick door. He had the key. It opened on a narrow corridor, and we ran down it, even Robin big as she was, striking against one another in our haste, against the walls. We ran down steps. Through grated side doors we saw the gloom of storehouses—kegs and crates and sacks, sealskins bundled by the hundred. We came to a second door, narrower still. I ran not wanting to run, not wanting to come sooner to what Dai might be, chanting over and over in my mind, I’ll love you still, I’ll love you still.
Beyond the narrow door was a passageway smelling of metal and stale air, lit by windows high and dim. To left and right other doors led into tiny rooms, each windowless, cramped as a woodbox. Metallic sheen of screw and hook and blade. In one room only a plain black box.
I’ll love you the way Nondany loves the maimed boy. I’ll love you still.
