Sisters in Fantasy

by Edited by Susan Shwartz

  Hallah untied the strings, pulled the veil away, and tucked it down her shirt. “Not working,” she said. “It’d take a fool to break Truce, and I hope I’m not that.” She took the box from her pouch. “By your favor, I’m looking for a game. I am Ivory cusping Silver.”

  Thonsane relaxed. “By whose favor, eh?”

  “Hallah Myur, Mistress.”

  “Hallah Myur, working or not, you’re apt to make my patrons nervous. I’ll tuck you in an alcove… mmm… over there, I think.”

  Thonsane plowed through the crowd, grabbed a snoring caravanner by his collar and belt, hauled him to the door, and dropped him on the steps outside, came striding back, waving a Pot Girl to her. She watched with a judging eye as the girl cleaned off the table, fetched a lamp, filled it with redeye oil, and lighted the floating wick. As the light brightened in the alcove, she rubbed a forefinger beside her nose. “If I can’t scare you up a better, I’ll give you a game myself, awhile on, say half an hour or so should you care to wait that long. I’m new Ivory looking to better myself. Wine, ale, or shag?”

  Hallah Myur straightened her legs, slid down in the seat, cuddling the glass on her stomach, sipping at the dark brown shag whenever the glow it threw round her subsided a little.

  There was a noisy surge as a mob of seamen came in and pushed toward the bar. A gap opened in the crowd, and she saw Zisgade Neisser sitting on a bench near the door; he’d shed his grays and was wearing nondescript laborer’s clothing, his long hair was stuffed up under a knitted cap, though a ragged fringe was combed forward, sweeping across his eyes. Hallah looked quickly away, grinned down at the empty glass.

  Another glass of shag and a pewter tankard in one hand, the other closed on the shoulder of a smallish man she urged along ahead of her, Thonsane came pushing through the crowd. The man’s face was an assemblage of stains and bruises, wrinkles folded in on wrinkles, as if it has been lived in for several lifetimes, none of them easy, a hammered-thin, sun-faded, trouble-worn copy of her teacher.

  Thonsane set the glass in front of Hallah, the pewter tankard across the table from her. “Aezel. Gold,” she said. “Hallah Myur. Talk. Game or not, whatever’s your choice.” Shouting broke out across the room.

  Muttering curses, Thonsane strode off, elbowing through the gathering spectators.

  Aezel slid along the bench, gulped at the wine, set the tankard down. “Who taught you, Hallah Myur?” His voice was slow, soft, with an accent she couldn’t place, a hint of a hit in the words.

  She opened the chess box out into the chessboard, set aside the cubbies with the stones, said, “Tarammen tai Peli, who earned his Mastery in Klymmavar from Ruska tyan ta Marssa, who earned hers from Zongari of Prena, who earned his from Andan Jarna.” She smiled, her second genuine smile since she’d come to Atwarima. “I can go on for another half hour with the pedigree. Tarammen tai made sure I knew it. For three years I had to recite the list for him before he’d lift a stone.” She touched the board with her fingertips, moved it across the table so he could see it. “The names are graved in the ivory squares, there’s his”— she reached across the table, touched the tip of her forefinger to the penultimate name, then slid her finger to the last—“and that’s mine; he passed the set to me as a Death Gift.”

  Aezel touched the ancient wood and the yellowed ivory with gentle fingers. “A fine thing,” he said, pleasure husking his soft voice. He pushed the board into the middle of the table so both could reach it without straining, then he sat back, laced his fingers across his hard little paunch and began a litany of his own Masterline.

  When he finished, they set up the game and began.

  At first she was too aware of the noise around her, of the other customers drifting over to watch, of Zisgade moving in, his coffee eyes boring into her, of the circling memories. But as the game went on, all that vanished and she saw nothing but the stones and their patterning. Twice before she’d tipped into a state where her stones moved in a wave that built and built, sweeping the other stones away before them, but she’d never felt it so strongly as now.

  It was not a slow game; there were no long, labored pauses on either side. Aezel was her match and more, a Gold in truth, keeping pace with her, doing all he could to check the wave and turn it aside.

  And he did it. Her wave beat against his wall and fell away.

  She’d overwhelmed him almost everywhere, yet he managed to preserve a handful of stones and herd them into the rare and powerful pattern called the Gorfellay, the ultimate defense of an ultimate Master.

  Hallah Myur rubbed at her back and sighed; she could go on playing, hoping to catch him in a mistake, but the mistake would most likely be hers. She lifted her hand, let it fall. “Draw?”

  “Agreed.” He went limp, yawned, lay back with his eyes closed, exhausted but content.

  Hallah looked around. The watchers that had collected about the alcove were scattering, stretching, yawning, wandering toward the bar, talking avidly about the game. Zisgade was gone; no doubt he left when he saw the game was going to last awhile. Stone-chess gave him hives, he said; he hated the times when Kihyayti’an made him watch the play. She began tucking the stones into their cubbies. “Hah-hey,” she said. “I loathe crowds.”

  “Ah.” Aezel sucked up the last of his wine, raised a shaggy brow. When Hallah nodded, he summoned a Pot Girl to refill the tankard. When she’d gone, he tapped his thumbnail against the pewter in a monotonous clack clack clack clack…

  Hallah Myur shuddered. “Stop that, will you?”

  “You want something.”

  She scowled at him. His eyes had an odd shine to them, a fugitive green phosphor. “Another game,” she said warily. “By your favor, gold Aezel.”

  “That’s not it.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I offer a trade, silver Hallah. What you want for what I need.” His thumbnail tap tap tapped against the pewter.

  She leaned forward, her eyes on the thumb then lifting to meet his. She said nothing, but it was clear enough that Curse Truce or not he was going to lose that thumb if he kept on.

  He flattened his hand on the table. “Will you trade?”

  “Swear faith.”

  “By Koaysithe, I…”

  “No! Swear by Stone.”

  “Why not.” He laid his hand palm down on the ancient chess box. “I swear by Stone and my Master’s Grave, what I say is true, what I say I do.” He took his hand back, shifted his wrinkles in another smile. “Well, silver Hallah?”

  “Why not.” Whatever she did, she was up to her neck in carrion with the crows coming at her. “I have a daughter.” To her annoyance, her eyes stung and her jaw started to tremble. She took a gulp of shag, set the glass down with a thump. “I lost her. Thought she was dead. She wasn’t even two yet. I saw her today. At the Swearing. I want to know if she’s happy… no… that’s not right… if she’s…” She rubbed her thumb along the heavy glass, but didn’t drink this time; things were ragged enough. “I need to know without… intruding… I need to know… because…” She wiped at her mouth with a shaking hand and finished in a rush. “Because how she is, that’s the fulcrum my future turns on, do you understand?”

  “Yes.” He sipped at the wine, wrapped his hands around the tankard. “I can do that. I can show you your daughter’s state.”

  “What’s the price?”

  “You.”

  “My soul?”

  He laughed, a deep rumbling chuckle. His eyes flattened, and his hooky nose grew more prominent. “A shapeless drift of smoke? I want you. Hands and head.”

  “There’s the Truce.”

  “We know. That’s not it.”

  “We?”

  He lifted a hand, let it fall.

  “Stone Oath binds you.” Hallah slid along the bench until she was near the end. “Only you.”

  “I and we”—he waggled his hand—“same thing. Up to you. Yes or no?”

  She was tired. That was bad. She got impatient and
reckless when she was tired. Take it slow, she told herself. A step at a time. “One for one,” she said finally. “Find out for me how my daughter’s doing, and I’ll cede you one service—your call. We can go on from there.”

  “Done.”

  5

  The last strands of the snare

  Thonsane appeared at the alcove, waited without a word until they slid from the booth, then led them up the stairs at the end of the bar and into what at first seemed an ordinary bedroom, perhaps a little cleaner than most, lit by a single candle on a battered table beside the bed.

  When Thonsane pulled the door shut, the room changed.

  The candle vanished. Points of light exploded about the dark undefined space, expanded into fist-sized globes that swam and bobbed about, clustering and moving apart like fireflies on a summer evening.

  The walls were gone; trees marched to infinity on every side, merging in the distance into a murmuring darkness. A stream appeared from near where the door had been, spread into a pool, narrowed again and meandered on to vanish under the trees. Rowan trees bent over the pool, dropping their blossoms onto the quiet water.

  There was the smell of woodlands, of grass and leaves and damp earth, punctuated by sharp peaks of pine and oak.

  Aezel crouched on a hummock of grass, a wide shallow drum on his hairy thighs; brown-brown brindle hair, stiff, straight, and thick covered him from just below his ribs to the split hooves where his boots had been. He tapped at the drum with nails like claws and drew an odd, whispery rattle from the parchment head.

  Thonsane laughed; it was a wild, eerie sound, deep-throated, frightening, and disconcertingly infectious.

  Hallah turned.

  Like Aezel, Thonsane had shed her clothes. Her hair was loose, long black tresses shifting about her body as she moved. Wide curving horns spread from her temples, alabaster horns glowing like the crescent moon.

  “Look into the pool and think of her,” Thonsane said, her voice a braiding of echoes.

  Hallah shivered. They were showing her too much. She felt trapped. Stone Oath, that was her anchor, her one point of stability, and she clung to it as she took the two steps to reach the water. She was going to kneel, changed her mind, and squatted.

  Something like a breeze brushed past her face and blew ripples on the pond, sending the rowan flowers scooting to the far bank. The water steadied, smoothed into a mirror.

  She saw a bedroom with narrow windows set high in the walls and alabaster lamps sending out soft yellow light.

  A woman was stretched out on a divan, propped up by pillows. She was sipping from a heavy, opaque glass, her face flushed, her coppery hair straggling loose from the elaborate braided crown she’d worn to the Oath Swearing. When the glass was empty, she fumbled among the pillows, pulled out a square bottle, and filled it again, tilting the bottle and shaking it to get out the last drops. She gulped at the liquid, shuddered, coughed, went back to sipping.

  A door opened and a girl came in, a tall, tender girl still on the child’s side of puberty, with red-gold hair fairer than the woman’s hanging down past her waist.

  Hallah gasped, closed her hands into fists. Her daughter’s daughter. !Maytre!

  The girl stopped, clamped her wide mouth into a grim line as she saw Rowanna. “You promised,” she said, her voice trembling, angry. “You said you wouldn’t. He’ll do it, you know he will. You want to get put out the door?”

  Rowanna’s hand started shaking, spilling the liquor on her hand. She set the glass on the table beside the divan, spilling more in the process. “You—” she cleared her throat, wiped her mouth—“you don’t understand, Bree. Baby…” She started crying, held out her hand. “Baby, he’s going to…” The girl didn’t move, so she pulled her hand back, got clumsily to her feet, and stood swaying. “He’s sold you, Briony.”

  “What?”

  “He told me this morning. He dangled you on the ship, and the Vramheir took the bait. The Bridegroom.” She laughed unsteadily. “Don’t you think that’s funny, Bree? All the way from the Pearl Isles to meet his bride, and he picks up a trinket for himself on the way.”

  The breeze blew again and broke the mirror.

  A moment later the bedroom was back. Aezel was sitting on the bed looking tired and sleepy, Thonsane was standing with her arms folded, her back against the door. Hallah Myur got to her feet.

  Aezel cleared his throat. “Was it enough?”

  “Yes. What do you want from me?”

  He smiled, the wrinkles of his face spreading and sliding back. “We can look into the Toyaytay if we’re careful, but we can’t get past the Curse.” He shrugged, spread his hands. “And there’s no one we could trust who’s inside right now. We want you to carry something to the Yih Ma’yin Sa’aetinn.”

  “Is she apt to scream at shadows?”

  “No. She has asked a question. She awaits an answer.”

  “Do you have a plan of the Toyaytay or must I jump blind?”

  “We have. You’ll see it.”

  I’m a fly in a spider’s web, she thought, and I can see only a little of it. I don’t like this. Do I have a choice? No. “One for one,” she said aloud. “That was a joke, wasn’t it. !Maytre! I’m a fool. Let it be done. Hands and head. If you get my daughter out of there, and my daughter’s daughter, and swear to keep them safe and in comfort, I swear by Stone I will serve you till my life’s end.”

  “And if we ask you to do something you don’t like?”

  Hallah laughed. It was a hard unhappy sound. “Considering how I’ve earned my bread, there’s not much I find beyond me. Distasteful, yes, impossible no.” She moved impatiently, clasped her hands behind her. “I’m not a puppet to dance to your strings; if you want work done well, you’ll let me do it my way. Set me goals and turn me loose.”

  “There might be complexities that can’t be explained, complexities that require a certain style of act.”

  “Tchah! You couldn’t choose a needle to pry up a stone. Use me right and the job is done, wrong and I break and ruin the work.”

  “Yes. I see. Speaking of ruin, you have a choice before you, Hallah Myur. Pay Membruda’s Son for what he’s done to you or bring your daughter out. You can’t do both.” He held up his hand to stop her protest. “We aren’t being arbitrary; it’s a matter of what we can do, not what we want.”

  Hallah stared past him at the dull gray wall, shadows from the candle dancing on it. “Membruda’s son,” she said softly. “As a matter of abstract justice, the blat needs his throat cut.” She shook her head, wiped her hands down her sides. “He’s gas on the belly; one fart and he’s gone.” She managed a small smile. “My daughter’s more important. So. Show me the plan of the Toyaytay and let’s get started.”

  6

  The first delivery

  Feltsoled busks groping for a toehold, Hallah Myur wriggled backward through the small window over her cot. She found one of the cracks between the courses of stone she’d seen from the outside, worked the rest of her clear, and started moving cautiously along the wall.

  Clouds were thickening across the face of the moon, and she could smell damp on the air; she spent a thought on hoping it wouldn’t rain until she got down, then concentrated on working around the nearest corner and up the turret wall. When she reached the roof, she rolled over the parapet and went swiftly along it, bent over to keep her head from showing, until she came to the lacy iron spires that marked the family gardens of the Alayjiyah.

  She pulled on her leather palms, caught hold of the top crossbar, and swung over, then went cautiously down the wall, shifting from crevice to crevice, dropping the last dozen feet into the soft loam of a flower bed. She scratched the earth over the marks of her busks, rearranged the flowers, then flowed along the wall until she reached a window.

  “I mean no harm to anyone within,” she whispered before she touched it. “I am only a messenger.”

  Say that to yourself and to the air, Aezel told her. Over and over. And believe it
. And the Curse will slumber while you work.

  A slide and wiggle of a thin blade took care of the catch; she eased the casement open and slipped inside. For several breaths she stood listening intently while her eyes adjusted to the increased darkness. No problem. Aezel was right. Once she was past the outer walls of the Toyaytay, there wasn’t much security to worry about. Except the Curse. Always excepting the Curse. She crossed the room, a sewing room the plan called it, charging the blowpipe with black kumunda dust as she moved.

  “I mean no harm,” she whispered to the dark. “I am only a messenger.”

  She eased the door open a hair and pressed the bulb. A moment later she heard a muted thump. She nodded, pressed filters into her nostrils, and left the room.

  She stepped over the last guard, tried the door.

  Locked.

  She ran her fingers around the latch, located the lock plate—and the key protruding from it. Key on the outside. !Maytre! Joyful betrothal, this. I begin to smell a pattern. She turned the key and eased the door open, slipped inside, collapsing the blowpipe and sliding it into a pocket.

  The Yih Ma’yin’s breathing came soft and steady from behind curtains yellowed by the glowcandles on the bedstead. Her busks soundless on the stone floor, Hallah hurried across the room, pushed aside the bed curtains, and bent over the sleeping girl.

  The Yih Ma’yin had her father’s nose, which was not a blessing, but she’d found the rest of her bones in another place; and while she wasn’t pretty, Hallah suspected she was attractive enough when she was awake. She slept clenched in a knot. Stubborn, angry maiden, ready to run from a wedding she didn’t want. Hallah pressed her palm over the girl’s mouth, pinched her earlobe. “Wake up,” she whispered. “I’m sent by friends. You know who.”

  The Yih Ma’yin’s eyes snapped open, and she managed a nod, her head moving under Hallah’s hand.

  “Don’t say anything, just listen.” Hallah took her hand away, peeled the spelled khihy leaves from the small white pebble Aezel had given her. “Put this in your mouth and walk out. No one will follow you. The taste’s the guide. Sweet means you’re on trail, sour means you’ve strayed. It’ll take you where you want to go.” She set the pebble in the Yih Ma’yin’s hand, folded her fingers over it. “Count twenty after I’m gone. Safer for you that way, less chance guards or a curseman will light on you by accident. Oh yeah, here’s your door key.” The Yih Ma’yin’s eyes glinted as Hallah dropped it on the bed. “Lock the door and leave the key in it, maybe they’ll think you’re still inside.”