Werenight

by Turtledove, Harry

  Drago or Rollan could never have understood his open admiration of a sunset; his search for verses from Lekapenos appropriate to its beauty; his easy, friendly dealing with merchants and innkeepers, men at whom they would simply have barked orders. He felt like a flower, half of whose petals were seeing the sun for the first time in years.

  The presence of Elise beside him was a pleasant pain. She unsettled him more than he was willing to admit, even to himself. He was too conscious of her as a woman to bring back all the ease of talk they had once enjoyed. She stayed warm and friendly, but deftly avoided anything truly personal, seeming content with the inconclusive status quo. Her warmth extended farther than the Fox, too; her laughing responses to Van’s outrageous flirtation grated on Gerin’s nerves.

  Two days out from the capital, the travelers found lodging at a tavern in a little town called Cormilia. The lass who served them there was short, dark, and, though a bit plump, quite pretty; a tiny mole on her right cheek made her round face piquant.

  Something about her struck the Fox’s fancy. When he raised an eyebrow at her, she winked back saucily. He was not surprised when she tapped at his door later that night. While her thighs clasped him, she seemed hot-blooded enough for any man’s taste. But her ministrations, immensely pleasant in the moment, somehow left him less than satisfied after she slipped away.

  He knew he had pleased her. Her adoring manner the next morning spoke of how much. But the coupling only showed him the emptiness within himself. He was preoccupied and curt, and breakfasted without much noticing what he ate.

  When he and Van went out to the stable to hitch up the horses, he blurted, “You know, when Dyaus created women he must have been in a fey mood. You can’t live with them and sure as sure can’t live without them.”

  Though surmise gleamed in Van’s eye, he said nothing to that. He knew Gerin was a man who had to work things through in his own mind and often thought advice interference.

  A briny breeze from the Greater Inner Sea blew all day. They might have made the capital by evening. But Gerin did not relish trying in the dark to find his old friend Turgis’ inn; the great city’s maze of streets was bad enough by day.

  The coming parting with Elise also wrenched him more each mile he traveled. He was far from eager to speed it unduly. He decided to camp just in front of the last low ridge shielding the capital from sight. As darkness fell, the city’s lights put a glow on the eastern horizon and bleached fainter stars from the sky.

  In an area so densely peopled, night travel was no longer unthinkable. A brightly lit convoy of wagons and chariots rumbled past the campsite every few minutes, often with a mumbling priest to help ward off the spirits.

  Of this Van heard nothing, for he fell asleep almost instantly. But Gerin did not pass his watch in lonely contemplation. For the first time since the night Mavrix appeared, Elise decided to stay up a while and talk. The reason soon became clear: she was bubbling over with excitement and curiosity about the capital and the family in it she had never seen.

  She gushed on for a time, then stopped, embarrassed. “But this is terrible! What a loon I am! Here I play the magpie over all I’ll see and do in the city, and not a word of thanks to you, who brought me here safe through so many troubles. What must you think of me?”

  The answer to that had been slowly forming in the baron’s mind ever since he helped her slip from Ricolf’s keep. Her rhetorical question but served to bring it into sharper focus. He replied hesitantly, though, for fear of her thinking he was abusing the privilege their companionship had given him. “It’s simple enough,” he said at last, taking the plunge—the thought of losing her forever filled him with more dread than any Trokmê horde. “After Balamung and his woodsrunners are driven back to the forests where they belong, nothing would make me happier than coming south again so I can court you properly.”

  He did not know what reaction he had expected from her—certainly not the glad acceptance she showed. “As things are now, I cannot say as much as I would like,” she said, “but nothing would please me more.” Her lips met his in a gentle kiss that gave him more contentment than all his sweaty exertions the night before in Cormilia. She went on, “Foolish man, did you not know I cried last year when I learned your wound would keep you from coming to my father’s holding?”

  He held her close, his mind filling with a hundred, a thousand foolish plans for the future. The rest of the watch flew by like a dream, as it would have for any lover who suddenly found his love returned. If Balamung’s gaunt figure stood like a jagged reef between him and his dreams, on this night he would pretend he did not see it.

  Elise fought sleep until Math rose to add her light to that of Elleb, whose nearly full disc rode high in the south. The baron watched her face relax into slumber, murmured, “Sleep warm,” and kissed her forehead. She smiled and stirred, but did not wake.

  When Gerin told Van what he had done, the out-lander slapped his back, saying, “And what took you so long?”

  The Fox grunted, half annoyed his friend had been able to follow his thoughts so well. Something else occurred to him. “We need to start right at sunrise tomorrow,” he said.

  “What? Why?” Van did not seem to believe his ears.

  “I have my reasons.”

  “They must be good ones, to make a slugabed like you want an early start. All right, captain, sunrise it is.”

  They topped the last rise just as the sun climbed over the eastern horizon. It flamed off the Greater Inner Sea and transformed the water to a lambent sheet of fire, dazzling to the eye. Tiny black dots on that expanse were ships: merchantmen with broad sails billowing in the fresh morning breeze and arrogant galleys striding over the waves like outsized spiders on oared legs.

  Elise, who had never seen the sea, cried out in wonder and delight. She squeezed Gerin’s hand. The Fox beamed, proud as if he’d created the vista himself. Van also nodded his appreciation. “Very nice, captain, very nice,” he told the baron.

  “If that’s all you can find to say, you’d likely say the same if Farris herself offered to share your bed.”

  “She’s your goddess of love and such things?” At Gerin’s nod, Van went on, “I’ll tell you, Fox, that reminds me of a story—”

  “Which I’ll hear some other time,” Gerin said firmly. Straight ahead, on a spur of land thrusting out into the sea, lay Elabon’s capital. All his attention centered there.

  A thousand years before, he knew, it had been nothing but a farming village. Then the Sithonians came west across the Sea, and the infant city, now a center for Sithonian trade with the folk they deemed barbarous westerners, acquired its first wall. Its inhabitants learned much from the Sithonians. Little by little it extended its sway over the fertile western plain, drawing on ever greater reserves of men and resources. Soon it swallowed up the Sithonian colonies on the western shore of the Greater Inner Sea.

  Nor could the Sithonians come to the aid of those colonies, for Sithonia itself, divided into rival confederacies led by its two greatest city-states, Siphnos and Kortys, fell into a century of bloody civil war. All the while, Elabon waxed. No sooner had Kortys at last beaten down her rival than she had to face the army of Carlun World-Bestrider, whose victory ended the Elabonian League and began the Empire of Elabon. A great marble statue of him, ten times as high as a man, still looked east from the shore. It was easy to spy, silhouetted against the bright sea.

  Not far away from Carlun’s monument stood the Palace Imperial. Gleaming like an inverted icicle, it shot a spearpoint of marble and crystal to the sky. An eternal fire burned at its apex, a guide from afar to ships on the Inner Sea. Round it was a wide space of well-trimmed gardens, so the palace itself almost seemed a plant grown from some strange seed.

  Near the palace was the nobles’ quarters; their homes were less imposing by far than the Emperor’s residence, but most were far more splendid than anything north of the Kirs.

  To Gerin’s mind, though, the rest of Elabon wa
s the Empire’s true heart. Men of every race and tribe dwelt there; it boiled and bubbled cauldron-wise with the surge of life through its veins. There was a saying that you could buy anything in Elabon, including the fellow who sold it to you.

  The Fox could have gazed on the city for hours, but from behind a gruff bass voice roared, “Move it there, you whoreson! Do you want to diddle the whole day away?” The speaker was a merchant, a loudly unhappy one.

  Gerin waved back at him. “This is the first time I’ve seen Elabon in eight years,” he apologized.

  The merchant was not appeased. “May it be your last, then, ever again. You stand gawking, you boy-loving booby, and here I am, trying to make an honest living from tight-fisted nobles and little bandit lordlings, and all my thirty wagons are piling into each other while you crane your fool neck. I ought to set my guards on you, and it’s a mark of my good temper and restraint that I don’t. Now move it!”

  Gerin twitched the reins and got the horses moving. Van chuckled. “Fellow sounds like a sergeant I knew once.”

  Like any town south of the mountains, Elabon had its ring of crucifixes. Because of the city’s size, the crosses made a veritable forest. Bright-winged gulls from off the Inner Sea squabbled with ravens and vultures over the dead meat on them. The stench was overpowering. Elise produced a wisp of scented cloth and pressed it to her nose. Gerin wished for one of his own.

  Expanding through long years of security, the capital had outgrown three walls. Two had vanished altogether, their bricks and stones going to swell the growth. Only a low ridge showed where the rammedearth core of the third had stood.

  Gerin took the wagon down the city’s main street. The locals affectionately called it the Alley; it ran due east, arrow-straight, from the outskirts of the capital to the docks, and was filled with markets and shops from one end to the other. The Fox drove past the Lane of Silversmiths (a trade Kizzuwatnans dominated), the pottery mart where Sithonians and Elabonians cried their wares, odorous eateries serving the fare of every nation subject or neighbor to the Empire, the great canvas-roofed emporium where wheat imported from the northern shore of the Inner Sea was sold, a small nest of armorers and smiths (the baron had to promise Van they would come back later), and so much else he began to feel dizzy trying to take it all in at once.

  Beggars limped, prostitutes of both sexes jiggled and pranced, scribes stood at the ready to write for illiterate patrons, minstrels played on every corner, and, no doubt, thieves lurked to despoil them of the coins they earned. Running, shouting lads were everywhere underfoot. Gerin marveled that any of them lived to grow up. He pricked up his ears when he heard one shouting, “Turgis!” His head swiveled till he spied the boy.

  “Snatch him, Van!” He steered toward his target, talking the horses to calm in chaos.

  “Right you are, captain.” Van reached out and grabbed up a ragamuffin whose first beard was just beginning to sprout.

  “You can lead us to Turgis?” Gerin demanded.

  “I can, sir, and swear by all the gods and goddesses no finer hostel than his exists anywhere.”

  “Spare me the glowing promises. I’m known to Turgis. Tell me, lad, how is the old butterball?”

  “He’s well enough my lord, indeed he is, and generous of food, though sparing of praises. You turn left here, sir,” he added.

  Within moments, Gerin was lost in the maze of the capital. He did not think Turgis’ hostel had formerly been in this district; the old fraud must have moved. His guide, who called himself Jouner, gave directions mixed with shrill abuse directed at anyone who dared block the narrow, winding back streets. The abuse often came back with interest.

  Jouner was also extravagantly admiring of his charges—especially Elise. She blushed and tried to wave him to silence, not recognizing that his manner was part professional courtesy. Still, the Fox heard sincerity in the lad’s voice, too.

  Most of the houses in this part of the city were two-storied, flat-roofed structures. Their whitewashed outer walls defined the twisting paths of its streets. Despite occasional obscenities scrawled in charcoal, from the outside one was much like another. But within the austerity, Gerin knew, would be courtyards bright with flowers and cheerfully painted statuary. Some, perhaps, would be enlivened further by floor mosaics or intricately patterned carpets woven by the Urfa.

  Poorer folk lived in apartment houses: “islands,” in Elabon’s slang. Solid and unlovely, the brick buildings towered fifty and sixty feet into the air, throwing whole blocks of houses into shadow. More than once, jars of slops emptied from some upper window splashed down into the street, sending passersby running for cover. “Watch it!” Van bellowed up. An instant later, two more loads just missed the wagon.

  “That’s one of the first things you learn to watch for here,” Gerin told him, remembering his own experience. “They hold the high ground.”

  When at last the travelers came to Turgis’ establishment, the baron was agreeably surprised by the marble columns on either side of the entranceway and the close-cropped lawn in front of the hostel itself. “Go right in,” Jouner said, scrambling down. “I’ll see to your horses and wagon.”

  “Many thanks, lad,” Gerin said as he descended. He gave the boy a couple of coppers, then helped Elise down, taking the opportunity to hug her briefly.

  “Have a care with that Shanda horse,” Van warned Jouner. “He snaps.”

  The boy nodded. As he began to head for the stable, Elise said, “A moment. Jouner, how do you live in this stench?”

  Puzzlement crossed Jouner’s face. “Stench, my lady? What stench? Travelers always complain about it, but I don’t notice a thing.”

  Turgis met the travelers at the front door. His bald pate, brown as the leather apron he wore, gleamed in the sunlight. A smile stretched across his fat face, the ends of it disappearing into a thick graying beard. “You appear to have come up in the world a mite,” Gerin said by way of greeting.

  “Crave pardon, sir? No, wait, I know that voice, though you’ve had the wisdom to hide your face in hair.” Turgis’ grin widened. “A cocky young whelp by the name of Gerin, badly miscalled the Fox, not so?”

  “Aye, it is, you old bandit. Also Van of the Strong Arm and the lady Elise.”

  Turgis bobbed a bow. “You have a most lovely wife, Fox.”

  “The lady is not my wife,” Gerin said.

  “Oh? My lord Van—?”

  “Nor mine.” Van grinned.

  “Oh? Ho, ho!” Turgis laid a finger alongside his nose and winked.

  Elise spluttered indignation.

  “Not that either,” Gerin said. “It’s a long story, and more complicated than I like.”

  “I daresay it must be. Well, it would honor me if you tell it.”

  “You’ll hear it before the day is done, never fear. Turgis, it does my heart good to see you again, and to know you’ve not forgotten me.”

  “I, Turgis son of Turpin, forget a friend? Never!”

  Gerin had hoped for that opening. “Then no doubt you recall just as well the promise you made the night I left the city.”

  The smile disappeared from Turgis’ face. “What promise was that, lord Gerin? We both looked into our cups too often that night, and it was a long time ago.”

  “You won’t wriggle out as easy as that, you saucy robber. You know as well as I, you gave me an oath if ever I came this way again I’d have my rooms for the same rate as I had them then!”

  “What? You insolent whelp, this is a whole new building—or had your oh-so-perfect memory not noticed that? Are you fain to hold me to a drunken vow? May your fundament fall out! And the way prices have risen! Why, I could weep great buckets and your flinty heart would not be so much as—”

  “An oath, damn your eyes, an oath!” Gerin said. Both men were laughing now.

  Turgis talked right through him.”—softened. Think of my wife! Think of my children! My youngest son Egginhard would study wizardry, and for such school, nothing less than which is
his heart’s desire, much silver is needed.”

  “If he would be a conjurer, let him magic it up, and not have his father steal it.”

  “Think of my poor maiden aunt!” Turgis wailed.

  “When I was here last, your poor maiden aunt ran the biggest gambling den in the city, you blood-sucker. An oath, remember?”

  “As my head lives, only a third more would satisfy me—”

  “On that your head would live entirely too well. Would you be known as Turgis the Oathbreaker?”

  “May all the grapes in every vineyard you own turn sour!”

  “Don’t own any at all, truth to tell: too far north. Is your memory jogged yet?”

  Turgis hopped on one foot, hopped on the other foot, plucked a gray hair from his beard, and sighed heavily. “All right, I recollect. Bah! The innkeeping trade lost a great one when you became a pirate or baron or whatever it is you do. I’m sure you’re a howling success. Now go howl and let me lick my wounds—or do you carry courtesy so far?”

  “What do you think, Van?” Gerin said.

  His comrade had watched the altercation with amusement. “Reckon so, captain, if your friend can fix me up with a hot tub big enough for my bulk.”

  “Who dares call Turgis son of Turpin a friend of this backwoods bandit? Were I half my age and twice my size, I’d challenge you for that. As is, however, go down this corridor. Third door on the left. You might follow him, Gerin; even your name stinks in my nostrils at this moment. And for you, my lady, we have somewhat more elegant arrangements. If you would care to follow me …?”