Aftermath tw-10

by Robert Asprin

  The vertical bars of the window above him were thumbthick and set with scarcely more room than that between them. Star might have been able to reach through one of the spaces, but the caravan master was quite certain that his own big hands would not fit.

  "Are there going to be things like that door-monkey waiting by the windows?" Samlor asked the other man quietly. He nodded upward to indicate the opening he had studied.

  Khamwas shrugged in darkness relieved only by the strip of clouded sky above them. "I would expect human servants if anything," he said. "They're ... more trustworthy, in many ways. And from what I've gathered, Setios is a collector the way I'm a scholar. Neither of us, you understand, are magicians of real power."

  He paused and tucked his lip under his front teeth in doubt, then added, "The way your niece here appears to be, Master Samlor."

  "Yeah," said the caravan master without emotion. His left hand tou- sled Star's hair gently, but he did not look down at the child. "And he collected a demon in a bottle, among other things."

  Samlor grimaced, then went on, "Let's get out t' the street again. You wait, and I'll go talk to the fellow across the way there."

  "Ah, Samlor ... ?" Khamwas said.

  "Just wait here," the Cirdonian repeated. "I'm going across the street to talk with the watchman there." He nodded toward the guard shack on the construction site opposite.

  "Yes, of course," Khamwas said with enough disinterest to hint at irritation. "But what I wanted to say was-Setios, you see, may not be avoiding you. There's been a recent upheaval in the structure of, you see, magic. He may have become frightened and fled from that."

  The Napatan grinned. "He'll have left behind the stele I want to read, surely. Probably his whole collection, if that fear is why he left. And, as for this child's legacy"-he touched Star's cheek affectionately-"if we don't find it here, I'll help you locate it. Because you've helped me. And because I am honored to help someone as talented as your niece."

  "The plans of gods are one thing," said the manikin on his shoulder. "The thoughts of men are another."

  "Yeah, well," said the caravan master, then strode across the street with a swaggering assurance which immediately set him apart in a city where lone men habitually slunk. The watchman edged back from his window so that his eyes no longer reflected light.

  It took five pieces of Rankan gold and ten minutes cajoling the nervous watchman at the construction site before Samlor returned to his compan- ions with the house jack he had borrowed.

  "Khamwas," he said gruffly, "come help me with the window."

  Star was curled in the comer of the door alcove, dozing with the Napatan's cape for a pillow. Khamwas stood in front of her, watching the street as well as the caravan master. He was very slim without the bulk of the outer garment, and his bare chest was no garb for this night.

  "I, ah," he said, looking down at the child. "I thought it would be good if she got some rest, so - - - She's very like my own daughter, you know."

  "Wish I had more talent for what she needs," said the caravan master quietly, staring at the child also. "Wish I knew what she needs, what any kid needs. But you do what you can."

  He grimaced again. "Bring 'er along, will you? I need you at the side to hand me this jack when I'm ready for it"-he fluffed his cloak open to display the tool-"and I don't want her in plain sight on the street, even though it means getting her up again."

  The sky had closed in above the passage between the two buildings. It was as dark as a narrow cave, and for the time being the air was as motionless as that of a cavern miles below the ground. Samlor found his location by subconscious memory of the six cautious paces which had brought him beneath the window when he could see it.

  Samlor climbed to the window by bracing his hands and feet against the closely adjacent buildings. That wasn't hard, but he almost fell when he bent to take the jack which Khamwas raised to him. He was tired, and it was affecting him.

  Already.

  The window grate might have withstood a battering ram. The screw jack, butted against the stone sash, exerted its pressure sideways across the bars and their frame. The grating crumbled as the Cirdonian inexora- bly levered the jack through it, ignoring what the effort was doing to his fatigued muscles.

  With the last of his strength, Samlor lurched through the opening he had just torn and sprawled onto the floor of the room beyond.

  "Praised be Heqt in whom the world lives," murmured Samlor as his senses returned him to the world beyond his own effort and necessities. The marble floor beneath him was cold and slick with water. The glazed windows had not been closed the last time it rained; and that, from idle chatter overheard at the caravansary, had been more than a week ago.

  Khamwas called from the alley, his words blurred but the worry in them clear.

  "It's all right," the caravan master said, then realized that he wasn't sure he could understand the croaked words himself. He gripped the window ledge, fragments of the grate chiming around his knees.

  "It's all right," he repeated, leaning back through the opening by which he had entered. "Just a minute and I'll find"-his hand brushed a tapestry beside the window-"yeah, just a second and I'll have some- thing for you t' climb by."

  He ripped the hangings down and dangled them from the window for his companions. Samlor no longer cared what damage they did to this place-so long as they got out of it soon.

  The window was scarcely visible as a rectangle, and the still air smelled of storm.

  There was a discussion below. Star came up the tapestry, flailing her legs angrily behind her. There was a pout in her voice as she demanded, "What is this old place? I don't like it."

  Maybe she felt something about the house-and maybe she was an overtired sever-year-old and therefore cranky.

  There wasn't time to worry about it. The caravan master gripped the child beneath the shoulders with his left arm and lifted her into the room. Star yelped as her head brushed the transom, but she should've had sense enough to duck.

  "My staff. Master Samlor," said Khamwas.

  The Cirdonian leaned forward and caught the vague motion that proved to be the end of an ordinary wooden staff when his fingers en- closed it. Behind him, the room lighted vaguely with pastel blue.

  Star shouldn't have done it without asking; but they needed light, and a child wasn't a responsible adult. Samlor slid the staff behind him with his left hand while supporting the tapestry with his right hand and his full weight to pin the end to the floor.

  The Napatan scholar mounted gracefully and used Samlor's arm like the bar of a trapeze to swing himself over the lintel. Only then did the caravan master turn to see where they were and what his niece was doing.

  Star had set swimming through the air a trio of miniature octopuses made of light. A blue one drifted beneath the ceiling frescoed with scenes of anthropomorphic deities; a yellow one prowled beneath the legs of a writing table sumptuous with mother-of-pearl inlays.

  The third miniature octopus was of an indigo so pale that it barely showed up against the carven door against which it bobbed feebly.

  "Where's ..." Samlor said as he looked narrowly at Khamwas. "You know, your little friend?"

  Tjainufi reappeared on the Napatan's right shoulder. The manikin moved with the silent suddenness of an image in an angled mirror, now here and now not, as the tilt changes. "The warp does not stray far from the woof," he said in cheerful satisfaction,

  "Khamwas," the Cirdonian added as he looked around them, "if you can locate what we're after, then get to it. I really don't want t' spend any

  longer here than I need to."

  "Look, uncle," Star squealed as she pranced over to the writing desk.

  "Mommy's box!"

  Samlor's speed and reflexes were in proper form after his exertions, but his judgment was off. He attempted to spring for the desk before Star got there, and his boots skidded out from under him on the wet marble. Because he'd swept the long dagger from his belt as part of
the same unthinking maneuver, he had only his left palm to break his fall. The shock made the back of his hand tingle and the palm bum.

  Khamwas had retrieved his staff. He stopped muttering to it when the Cirdonian slapped the floor hard enough to make the loose bars roll and jingle among themselves. "Are you ... ?" he began, offering a hand to the sprawling bigger man.

  "See, Uncle Samlor?" said the child, returning to the caravan master with an ivory box in her hands. "It's got mommy's mark on it."

  "No, go on with your business," said Samlor calmly to the Napatan. He felt the prickly warmth of embarrassment painting his skin, but he wouldn't have survived this long if he lashed out in anger every time he'd made a public fool of himself. "Find the stele you're after, and then we'll see what Star's got here."

  He took the box from the child as quickly as he could without letting it slip from his numbed fingers. Even if it were just what it seemed-a casket of Samlane's big enough to hold a pair of armlets-it could be extremely dangerous.

  Much of what Samlor's sister had owned, and had known, fell into that category, one way or another.

  Khamwas's face showed the concern which any sane man would feel under the circumstances, but he resumed his meditation on-or prayers to-his staff.

  Star's palm-sized creatures of light continued their slow patrol of the room. The caravan master seemed to have broken into a large study. There was a couch to one side of the door and on the other the writing desk with matching chair. The chair lay on its back, as if its last occupant had jumped up hastily.

  "Open it, uncle'" Star demanded.

  Khamwas still murmured over his staff, so the caravan master got up with caution born of experience and walked over to the writing desk. A triple-wicked oil lamp hung from a crane attached to the desk top. It promised real illumination when Samlor lit it with the brass fire-piston in his wallet.

  "There's no oil, Uncle Samlor," said Star with the satisfaction of a child who knows more than an adult. She cupped her hand again and turned it up with a saffron glow in the palm. The creatures of light still drifting about the room dimmed by comparison. "See?"

  The bowl of the lamp was empty except for a sheen in its center, oil beyond the touch of the wicks. Only one of the three wicks had been lighted at the lamp's last use. When the flame had consumed all the oil, it reduced the twist of cotton to ash. The other wicks were sharply divided into black and white, ready to function if the fuel supply were renewed.

  Setios had really left in a hurry.

  "Fine, hold the light were it is, darling," Samlor said to his niece as calmly as if he were asking her to pass the bread at table. The casket wasn't anything which the Cirdonian remembered from his youth, but the family crest-the rampant wyvern of the House of Kodrix-was enameled on the lid. Beneath it was carved in Cirdonian script the motto Samlor's parents had never forgiven him for running high-risk, high- profit caravans like a commoner instead of vegetating in noble poverty. But they'd lived well-drunk well, at least-on the flies he snatched for them, and the money Samlor provided had bought his sister a marriage with a Rankan noble.

  Which couldn't save Samlane from herself, but was the best effort possible for a brother who didn't claim to be a god.

  The lid did not rise under gentle pressure from his left thumb. There was no visible catch or keyhole, but the little object had to be a box-it didn't weigh enough for a block of solid ivory. Samlor put his dagger down on the desk to free his right hand ...

  And read the superscription on the piece of parchment there, a letter barely begun:

  "To Master Samlor hi! Sami If you are well. it is good. I also am well.

  I enclose w.........

  The script was Cirdonian, and the final letter trailed off in a sweep of ink across the parchment. Following the curve of that motion, Samlor saw a delicate silver pen on the marble floor a few feet to the side of the desk.

  Samlor set down the ivory box, and he very deliberately kept the weapon in his hand. From the look of matters, Setios might have been better off if he'd been holding a blade and not a pen a week or so earlier. Instinctively, the caravan master's left arm encircled Star, locating the child while he turned and said, "Khamwas. This is important. I think I've been doing Setios an injustice, thinking he'd ducked out to avoid me."

  The other man was so still that not even his chest moved with the process of breathing. The absolute stillness was camouflaged for a mo- ment by the fact that the octopuses threw slow, vague shadows as they circled the room- The manikin on Khamwas's shoulder was executing some sort of awkward dance with his legs stiff and his arm akimbo.

  "Khamwas!" the caravan master repeated sharply. "I think we need to get outta here now."

  Tjainufi said, "Do not say, 'I will undertake the matter,' if you will not."

  Almost simultaneously, the Napatan shook himself like a diver surfac- ing after a deep plunge and opened his eyes. He stood, wobbling a little and using the staff for support. His face broadened with a smile of bright relief.

  "Samlor," he said, obviously ignorant of anything that had happened around him since he dropped into a trance. "I've found it-or at least we need to go down."

  "We need to-" began the caravan master angrily. Tjainufi was watch- ing him. The manikin's features were too small to have readable expres- sion in this light, but the creature must think that ...

  "Look," Samlor resumed, speaking to-at-Tjainufi, "I don't mean I want to get out because we found what / wanted, I mean-"

  "Oh!" said Star. There was a mild implosion, air rushing to fill a small void. "There's nothing inside."

  She'd opened the box, Samlor saw as he turned. His emotions had gone flat-they'd only be in the way just now-and his senses gave him frozen images of his surroundings in greater detail than he would be able to imagine when he wasn't geared to kill or run.

  A narrow plate on the front of the ivory box slid sideways to expose a spring catch. When the child pressed that-the scale of the mechanism was so small that Samlor would have had to work it with a knifepoint- the lid popped up.

  To display the inner surfaces of the ivory as highly polished as the exterior; and nothing whatever within.

  Star was looking up at him with a pout of disappointment. She held the box in both hands and the ball of light, detached from her palm, was shrinking in on itself and dimming as its color slipped down through the spectrum.

  For an instant-for a timeless period, because the vision was unreal and therefore nothing his eyes could have taken in-Samlor saw blue- white light through a gap in the cosmos where the whorl of white hair on Star's head should have been. It was like looking into the heart of the thunderbolt ...

  And it wasn't there, in the room or his daughter's face-for Star was that, damn Samlane as she surely was damned-or even as an afterimage on Samlor's retinas when he blinked. So it hadn't really been there, and the caravan master was back in the world where he had promised to help Khamwas find a stele in exchange for help locating Star's legacy.

  Which it appeared they had yet to do, but he'd fulfill his obligations to the Napatan. He shouldn't have needed a reminder from Tjainufi of that.

  "Friend Khamwas," Samlor said, "we'll go downstairs if you want that. But"-his left index finger made an arc from the parchment toward the fallen silver pen-"something took Setios away real sudden, and I wouldn't bet it's not still here."

  Khamwas caught his lower lip between his front teeth. He was wearing his cape again, but the caravan master remembered how frail the Napatan had looked without it.

  "The man who looks in front of him does not stumble and fall," said the manikin with his usual preternatural clarity of voice.

  "Samlor," said the Napatan, "I appreciate what you say ... but what I seek is here, and I've made a very long-"

  "Sure," the caravan master interrupted. "I just mean we be careful, all right?

  "And you, child," Samlor added in a voice as soft as a cat's claws extending. He knelt so that Star could meet his eyes without
looking up. "You don't touch anything, do anything. Do you understand? Because if the only way to keep you safe is to tie you up and carry you like a sack of flour-that's what I'll do."

  Star nodded, her face scrunched up on the verge of tears. The drifting glows dwindled noticeably.

  "Everything's going to be fine, dearest," the caravan master said, giv- ing the child an affectionate pat as he rose.

  It bothered him to have to scare his niece in order to get her to obey- while she remembered-but she scared him every time she did something innocently dangerous, like opening the ivory box. Better she be fright- ened than that she swing from his arm, trussed like a hog.

  Because Samlor didn't threaten in bluff.

  Khamwas said something under his breath. His staff clothed itself in the bluish phosphorescence it held when the caravan master first met him in an alley. With the staff's unshod ferule, the Napatan prodded the study door, lifting the bronze latch. When nothing further happened, he pulled the door open with his free hand and preceded Samlor and Star into the hall beyond.

  Samlor touched the latch as he stepped past it. Not a particularly sturdy piece-typical for an inside door, when the occupant is more concerned with privacy than protection. But it had been locked, which meant somebody had paused in the hallway to do so with a key after he closed the door.

  Otherwise, it would have to have been locked from the inside by some- body who wasn't there any more.

  In the old Ilsigi fashion, a balustraded hallway encircled a reception room which pierced the second floor. There was a solid roof overhead rather than the skylight which would have graced a Rankan dwelling of similar quality.

  The stairwell to the ground floor was in the corner to the left of the study door. Khamwas's staff, pale enough to be a revenant floating at its own direction, swirled in that direction.

  "The, ah," Samlor said, trying to look in all directions and unable to see anything more than a few inches beyond the phosphorescent staff. "The doorkeeper. It's not ... ?"

  "We wouldn't meet it even if we opened the front door ourselves from within," said Khamwas as he stepped briskly down the helical staircase. "It isn't, you see, a thing. It's a set of circumstances which have to fit as precisely as the wards of a lock.