Dragon of winter and bear of summer. A friendly pass. Far too friendly a pass.
I set my placques in their rack facing Arefai and leaned back. Unsurprisingly, out came the lion of winter from ViKay.
Arefai counted it out several times before he called for the winter dragon from me. With what was in my rack and with three good placques in his own rack, he couldn’t help but sweep in all the placques.
Minch glared at me, like it was my fault. Well, I guess I could have slid him valuable pieces instead of worthless ones, but that’s not the way the game is supposed to be played. The idea is not to slip good ones to your opponent.
Not that ViKay cared, apparently.
Why she bothered wasn’t apparent to me until we completed the game.
“Score of eight hundred twenty-eight to five hundred seventy-six,” the servitor announced. “Two hundred and fifty-two to Lord Arefai and Lor—to Lord Arefai and Kami Dan’Shir.”
Minch towered over me. “Shall we call it an even three?” he said, laying down three oblong golden coins on the table.
I could practically hear the twang of my anus clenching. Nothing had been said about money. Nothing had been said about gambling. What if I’d lost?
He moved slowly, with almost exquisite gentleness, as though the thing in the world that most frightened him at the moment was being thought abrupt. More likely he was afraid of leaving himself open for an insinuation that he could not lose with grace.
Arefai gravely accepted the same payment from ViKay, and nodded his thanks.
It was easy not to laugh, because laughing would get me killed. It’s probably the oldest form of swindle. The Stranger, it’s called. Put together any game where it’s all-against-one and you’ll find endless opportunities to manipulate the situation to the benefit of the all and against the one.
It was easy not to laugh, because it was all I could do not to vomit. I mean, the game of placques has an elegance and grace that’s all its own, an iron symmetry in the distribution of beasts and seasons. On the other hand… Lord Toshtai was not ungenerous with his new dan’shir, but my stipend was two silver bice every fortnight. Three years’ earnings sat on the table in front of me. I wondered what the penalty would have been when I had been unable to pay, if we’d lost. I know what it is among peasants, and I doubted it would have been much gentler among our beloved ruling class.
ViKay looked at me somberly over the top of her screen. “I believe that Lords Everlea and Debray play next,” she said, no hint in her voice of any feeling more intense than the pleasant smile on her face.
Arefai nodded. “It has been pleasant that fortune so smiled on us,” he said.
Minch just nodded; perhaps his jaw muscles twitched fractionally, but mainly he just nodded.
Arefai and I rose. When peasants wager at contests of skill, it is the winner who stays until he loses, be the game placques, single-bone draughts, wrestling, or Kimmi-on-the-pig. I’m not sure whether our beloved ruling class does it differently just to differentiate themselves, or for another reason, but I’ve never claimed to understand them. ViKay and Minch would stay in an attempt to recoup their losses. This time, they won.
Eventually, the game ended.
“Brilliantly done, Kami Dan’Shir,” Arefai said. “It seems that the Way of the Dan’Shir includes the ability to play a fearsome game of placques, eh?”
Yes, yes, I’m a genius, now let me get out of here with my winnings and more importantly my skin intact.
“I was fortunate,” I said, trying to sound sincere.
He laughed, and his laugh was picked up first by ViKay and then Debray and Everlea. Minch didn’t even try to force a smile.
“Very well,” Arefai said. “Be that way. We shall see you at the wedding night reception at the hour of the bear.” I guess I let some of my distaste at the idea show, because he dismissed what he thought my concerns were with a gesture. “No, it’s not just nobles. You’ll find most of the… more honored bourgeoisie there as well, joining us in the celebration.” He grinned. “Particularly the local robers, who, so I hear, tire of spending most of their time gifting my ViKay with their best work.”
ViKay raised an eyebrow. “I will have you know, Lord Arefai,” she said, “that the only articles of clothing I have accepted as a gift are my wedding robes.”
Arefai chuckled. It was an easy laugh, and it made him hard to dislike. “Very well,” he said, offering her his arm as he turned to the rest of us. “We will see you in the hour of the bear.”
I sat in the garden by myself, looking down at the dozen golden coins in the palm of my hand, each decorated on the face with the sunrise seal of the Scion, and on the back with the likeness of a spread-winged springbug, a reminder that all wealth is ephemeral. I didn’t understand any of it, not really. The troupe could tour for a decade and never accumulate this much gold, but I had it in my hand for having spent a morning counting to nine and accepting the cheating help of Arefai’s bride-to-be.
Well, if nothing else, I owed ViKay. I didn’t doubt she would someday collect, and I wondered what form the repayment would be.
And, in fact, there were forms of repayment that wouldn’t bother me at all.
In the meantime, my pouch was heavy with gold, and my stomach was light with the lack of food. The wizards tended to eat well; perhaps it was time for another courtesy call on Tebol.
I found the two magicians high in Tebol’s tower, door open and windows unshuttered to let much-needed air and light into the dank and shadowed workshop. The two of them were bent over a worktable holding something that looked like the insides of a small animal and smelled every bit as bad.
“The Final Day comes. The end of the universe,” Tebol said. “See that lesion on the liver? Combine it with the growth on the gizzard and the stain on the sacrum, and what else could it mean?”
“Nothing,” Narantir said. “Fascinating.”
The Final Day. The end of the universe?
I cleared my throat. “How… how soon?”
They turned. Narantir’s gray robes had been splashed with something gray, greasy and disgusting, but Tebol was still neat as a pin. It didn’t take a dan’shir to decide that the spattered leather apron hanging from a nearby hook was what had kept his tailored gray robes spotless.
Tebol dipped his hands into a washbasin, rubbing them briskly in the soapy water before drying them on a towel. “How soon what?”
I spread my hands. ‘The end of the universe. The Final Day.“
The end of all that has ever been, or will ever be. I hadn’t really believed in it, not until now, but the two of them sounded so quietly certain of it that I couldn’t help believing.
“Oh, this,” Tebol made a dismissive waving gesture with his damp hands, then helped me to a seat. “It’s nothing. Take it easy, lad. Sit back and if you feel faint, lean over and put your head down between your legs. Deep breathing.” Smooth, sure fingers felt at two of my pulses, and then at the back of my neck. “I think he still is in shock from yesterday, Narantir. And look here, on his back,” he said, pulling at my tunic. “We missed some scratches from his fall. Have you any salted salamander salve?”
Narantir grunted. “He’ll heal.”
“Let’s get some lunch,” Tebol said. “I have a friend in the kitchens.”
“But the entrails—” I protested.
Narantir smiled. “That should teach you not to approach a wizard’s workshop unannounced. Among the least bad things that can happen is a fright.”
“Just a fright? But—”
“Those?” Narantir dismissed my concern with a flip of his hand. “Those are just mock entrails.”
“And what good are mock entrails?” I asked.
“Pleasure reading,” he said.
There was a spot in the gardens that I made note of: a small rise, well-screened from view from the plaza below by the pink and white flowered branches of a gnarled tur tree. The grassy knoll was rimmed by an irregular stone fence, fla
t and level enough to support a basket of food and two clay bottles of wine, that rose to the chest level of a sitting dan’shir. Hmmm… make that a leaning dan’shir; the stones were cold but pleasant against my back as I leaned back and took another mouthful of the sweet, straw-colored wine. It tasted of spring and flowers, and smelled vaguely but pleasantly of freshly scythed grass.
I rubbed a thumb against a bump in the cold stone. From this distance, or lack thereof, the bumps and hollows in the wall seemed random, as though the stone was unworked. From across the knoll, when the noon sun had hit it all just right from above, the shadows had turned the wall surface into a shadow drawing of the naked torsos of a dozen sweating muscular men, their arms linked, holding back the soil.
Sometimes it doesn’t pay to get too close, to get too caught up in details.
“The trouble with the nobility,” Narantir said from around a mouthful of mutton, “is that they don’t have enough to do.” He slurped at his goblet, managing to get most of the fluid into his mouth, just barely staining the front of his robes.
Tebol raised a slim finger. “That’s close enough to treason for one luncheon, Narantir,” he said. “Shtoi is no longer good enough?”
“Among ourselves we need shtoi?” Narantir gestured around him. “It’s said that even the walls have ears, but I’ve never heard it said of the grasses or the bushes or the breeze.”
Tebol didn’t answer. He had half of a juicy beefroll in his hands, but was managing to take it in small bites without fouling himself at all.
Me, I was enjoying a meatroll by the simple expedient of popping the whole thing into my mouth. Well-aged beef wrapped around crispy fried turnip cake that was almost too hot, the whole thing flavored with eye-watering pepper and savory garlic—there are worse ways to spend an afternoon than munching on such, and many worse ways than to spend an afternoon munching on such and washing it down with pale straw-colored wine.
“Then say it,” Tebol said.
Narantir shrugged. “Look at yon game-players,” he said, waving his hand toward where we had seen a claque of nobles gathered around the same placques table that, combined with skillful play and coarse cheating, had enriched my purse that morning. “Were Lord Debray, say,” he said, choosing one of the younger nobles, a boy of about fifteen, “an apprentice acrobat, what would he be doing at this hour?”
I had thought his question was just rhetorical, but both he and Tebol waited patiently for an answer. I swallowed heavily, wasting the taste of the meatroll.
“Sweating under the hot sun,” I said. “Either on the road between towns or at practice.”
“To little purpose, granted,” Narantir said, conceding his own point, “but at least to some purpose.”
“Each to his own, wizard.” I picked up a hard-boiled egg and tossed it lightly between my hands. “It takes effort to make it all look easy, and that’s part of the craft of it.”
I caught the egg in my right hand, then looped it high in the air, high enough that I could snag an apple from the basket and add it to the juggling. Juggling two things is trivially easy, unless you’re doing it with just one hand, which is what I had to do as I reached for a heavy knife. My right hand continuing to juggle the egg and the apple, I gave the knife a few preliminary tosses with my left hand, then threw it high in the air, spinning it hard.
From then on it was a matter of timing: catch the knife, spin it again, even harder, faster, then throw the apple up into the spinning blade. Do it wrong and the knife and pieces of apple will go off in all directions, only splattering you with sticky fruit if you’re lucky.
But time it right, throw everything with the proper tempo and sufficient authority, and the blade will cleave right through the apple without appreciably slowing, and you can reach into the whirring disk of steel and snatch out a knife by the hilt, and then properly shower an egg, a knife, and two halves of apple.
I did it right, then ended with a flourish that left the egg arcing high overhead, while the knife stood quivering in the ground between the two wizards, with me carefully setting half an apple down on each of their plates, then cupping my palms together just in time to catch the egg.
I cracked the shell with a knuckle.
Tebol’s mouth was split in a broad grin, and he tapped two fingers sharply against his wrist in applause, while even Narantir’s scowl was relieved by an expression that could have been a smile, perhaps.
“Plaudits, Kami Dan’Shir,” Tebol said. “I’ve never seen it done better.”
“Or to as little point as most of the nobility live.”
Tebol’s lips twisted. “You make too much of it all, Narantir. Consider the tree, eh?”
Narantir nodded. “There is that.”
I had to ask. “ ‘Consider the tree’?”
Narantir turned his stained palm upwards. “Look at it. Consider it,” he said, gesturing toward a gnarled savorfruit tree, its diamond-shaped leaves whispering gently in the breeze. “The tree maintains. The birds on its branches, they—”
“There aren’t any birds on its branches.”
The wizard glared at me for the longest moment, then without a further word, reached into his pouch and pulled out a small bundle of feathers, wrapped tightly with a leather thong. He started to untie the bundle, then shook his head and hefted it in his palm.
“Wait,” Tebol said, taking the feather packet from Narantir for a moment and then carefully extracting a half dozen feathers before returning the bundle to the fat wizard. “Let us leave that one out of it, shall we?”
“We can do without the roc, I suppose.” Narantir sighed, then gestured several times over the packet before throwing it high into the leaves of the savorfruit tree. I guess it caught on a small twig or something, but it looked like it was just hanging there, next to the leaves.
Birds swarmed into the tree from all different directions, chirping and tweeting and squawking in an arrangement that could only have been orchestrated by the tone-deaf. Crows called out their disdain in counterpoint to the blue warblers, who tilted back their heads to spill out incredible arpeggios, while robins sang and a single brayhawk screamed.
Tebol had a clay bird in his hands and was manipulating the beak. He raised the model to his lips and whispered a quiet word.
The singing and squawking and screaming of the birds cut out all at once, as hundreds of beady, birdy eyes looked down on us.
“As I was saying,” Narantir said. “Consider the tree. It maintains. The birds may find purchase in its branches. Some of them may eat of its fruit and others may take from it dead twigs to build their nests. But which has more dignity? The lower-class tree that lives but to live, to produce, or the noble birds, who exist only to squawk and bray?” One feather clutched between his fingers, he raised his right hand and gestured with his left.
The packet of feathers fell to bounce firmly off the head of Tebol’s clay sculpture, then thwocked firmly into Narantir’s palm, sending hundreds of birds flying in all directions, save directly over us.
“As I said,” Narantir said. “Consider the tree.” He bit into a meatroll.
“And consider that not only former acrobats can use broad gestures to make a point?” I asked.
He just smiled.
Chapter 12
A reception, an encounter, a noise in the night, and other calculations and miscalculations.
To the distant blare of silverhorns and the deep thrumm of a bassskin from the musicians at the far end of the Great Hall, Lord Orazhi received me with a smile on his thin face, perhaps a sad one. It was hard to tell.
“Good evening, Historical Master Dan’Shir,” he said, accepting my bow with the slightest of noble nods. “A pleasure to have you present this evening.” His black-and-silver robes, belted tightly across his thin waist, were decorated with a simple pattern of silken white flowers. Next to him, Lord Toshtai, in yellow belted with brown, loomed like an enormous belted egg yolk.
Two haughty silverhorns picked up a four-n
ote theme from the chimer, then lazily passed it to the baritone waterpipe, which liquidly, lazily toyed with it for only a moment before the zivver and a bassskin snatched it away.
Behind Lord Toshtai, old Dun Lidjun, his robes the color of summer straw, stood watching the world with eyes that neither rested nor flitted.
“And a good evening to you, Lord Orazhi, and you, Lord Toshtai, and you, Lord Dun Lidjun. I am, of course, honored, Lord Orazhi,” I said, bowing low.
I was about to complete the courtesy by dropping to my knees on the parquet floor, but Lord Orazhi ordered me to desist with a quick gesture that Lord Toshtai seconded with a nod. Old Dun Lidjun’s expression was the usual death sentence, waiting to be carried out against someone, although I never quite got the impression that just anybody would do.
I caught Edelfaule glaring at me from half across the room, while in another corner both Demick and Minch, surrounded by courtiers and courtesans, eyed me levelly. Minch raised his hand to his lips and spoke briefly behind it. If he hadn’t crooked his fingers quite so much, I likely could have read his lips enough to extract the gist of it, but I probably didn’t need anything else to worry about.
“I take it you have recovered from your fall?” Lord Toshtai asked.
I had thought that to be just for the sake of form, but he looked at me directly when I didn’t answer. Not with any hint of threat or menace on his broad, fat face, but with attention, perhaps, as though the rest of the universe could wait until Lord Toshtai had been answered by Kami Dan’Shir.
“Almost recovered, Lord Toshtai,” I said. “A few scratches here and there, the odd bruise, but nothing of any consequence.”
Lord Orazhi’s thin lips pursed for a moment, then relaxed. “I’ve given word to my head servitor to see to any special needs you may have. Don’t be afraid to be… bold in your requests.” He made an idle gesture toward a nearby servitor, and I found myself with a flask of some orange essence in my hands, the flask so cold that water was beading on its sides.
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