Stealers' Sky tw-12

by Robert Asprin

  Silk had been known since the Ilsigi Kingdom. Mainland silks were thick and brittle compared to the fiber the Beysib Empire produced in vast quantities. They took dye poorly and, in any event, not even the Ilsigi alchemists had conjured colors like those the Beysib set in their silks. They shimmered in the sunlight; any fool could see Beysib silks were worth their weight in gold.

  Walegrin was not, therefore, surprised when the woman stopped to examine them, although how she thought she could buy silk when she was scared witless by a two-soldat fine was a question he couldn't answer. Why she would buy it was another puzzling question. For all its beauty, Beysib silk was not selling well in Sanctuary. It came in two equally impractical varieties: gossamer sheer that snagged and tore on a whisper and damasked over a horsehair foundation so stiff that the cloth supported itself.

  Perhaps in the Beysib Empire, where it was both cool and dry the year around, such cloth could be made into wearable garments. In Sanctuary, a person could be noticed in Beysib silk, but never comfortable. It was comfort, more than any sense of propriety, that drew Shupansea and the other Beysib women out of their bare-breasted costumes and into traditional Rankene gowns.

  The woman studied each length of fabric. She twisted it, and tugged it, and got down on her knees to examine the underside. The merchants began to get hopeful, then she started walking again.

  "What are you looking for?" Walegrin protested as his companion neared the expensive end of the wharf. "It's not going to get any cheaper."

  She looked at him as if he'd grown another head. *T haven't seen what I need," she announced, and kept moving.

  Walegrin tossed a round-bottom jug back to its owner and scurried to catch up with her. They approached the stem gangplank. Beysibs were buying from Beysibs, wailing in their peculiar language over merchandise only a fish could find attractive. The woman was moving slower now. She stopped beside a greasy man hawking ceramic snakes and indicated that she wished to bargain.

  The Beysib was almost as confused as the commander. The woman slashed her hand and shook her head as he lifted one garish reptile after another out of its case. Walegrin had a very crude understanding of the Beysin language, but if he had any hope of getting off the wharf before midday, he was going to have to intervene.

  He confined the woman's gesturing hands in his own. "The man's shown you everything he's got. You keep pointing at empty boxes, and he keeps telling you that there's nothing in them to sell."

  "You understand him ... ? Then, tell him I want to buy the dross."

  "The what?"

  "The dross ... Dross-the packing around his wretched statues!"

  "Dross?"

  Walegrin shook his head. He knew several fish words for garbage, a few of which would likely turn the merchant's bald scalp a brilliant shade of red. He knew the fish word for purchase-if buying a woman's time at a brothel was the same as buying something from a merchant. He opened his eyes as wide as he could and started talking. If his luck ran true to form he was about to create a scandal.

  The merchant roared with laughter. He slapped his naked belly and turned the crimson color Walegrin had so hoped not to see. His eyes bugged out. "You joking."

  Walegrin swallowed hard and, adding more gestures than he'd used the first time, tried again. He got the feeling that the greasy fish understood him well enough and that the third and fourth tries were simply for the amusement of the other Beysib who'd wandered over to watch the barbarian make a fool of himself.

  The ceramics seller guessed that the game had gone on as long as it could. The gales of laughter ceased; he flashed his fingers twice and muttered koppit, which had become the generally accepted name for any of Sanctuary's myriad copper coins.

  "Twenty copper bits," Walegrin told the woman.

  "Now explain to him that I will pay him forty when he comes back next time, but that I can't pay him anything now,"

  This time it took no effort at all for Walegrin to show whites all around his green eyes. "Lady, you must be out of your mind."

  She was stung by his sarcasm, but clung to her dignity. "I am a weaver. When I have finished with his dross it will be worth a hundred times his twenty copper bits."

  Walegrin dug into the pouch at his hip. "Fine. You can owe me. I'm not going to make a monkey out of myself telling your lunacy to this fish."

  Irregular copper disks rained into the merchant's hands. He poured them into his coin coffer, then demanded a silver coin for the box the dross was in. Walegrin threw the coin so hard it bounced, and disappeared between the planks into the harbor. The fish revealed his painted teeth. Walegrin was more careful with the second coin. Walegrin picked up the box carefully; it would have cost another five coppers for rope to bind it shut.

  "They throw this stuff into the harbor at the end of the day," the commander complained. "It's garbage. You've paid halfasoldat for garbage you could have fished out of the water tomorrow morning."

  She would have preferred to whisper; she would have preferred not to reply at all, but he was her partner now and she felt she owed him an answer. "I know that, but once the salt water touches the dross, it's ruined."

  "Lady-"

  "Theudebourga. My name is Theudebourga."

  Walegrin scowled. "Lady, how can you ruin garbage?"

  Theudebourga proceeded to tell him. The wharf was still crowded; they had to go slowly. By the time they had returned to the cart Walegrin knew more about the pernicious effects ofseawater on garbage than he'd wanted to know. Thrusher took one look at the pair of them and instinctively knew to ask no questions until after the box was loaded and the woman on her way.

  "The Vulgar Unicorn's probably serving by now," the hawk-faced man suggested. "You look like you could use something to take the taste from your mouth."

  The commander allowed himself to be led from the wharf in silence. The Vulgar Unicorn was open, but it was undergoing one of its infrequent cleanings. The shutters and doors were wide open, the common room was awash with sunlight, and workmen were busily repairing a month of damage. The two soldiers kept going until they found themselves beyond the Maze.

  Once the Shambles had been as rough a neighborhood as the Maze, though without the Maze's perverse reputation. Later it had swarmed with the dead, the half-dead, and the other assorted leftovers of Sanctuary's magic troubles. Now it was the quarter where newcomers made their homes in abandoned buildings. It was factious enough that the soldiers knew it as well as they knew the Maze, but there were also signs of prosperity. Well-fed children in carefully mended clothes played games beside their mothers, who created gardens wherever sunlight touched the ground.

  Not all these diligent women were from way beyond Sanctuary's newly painted walls. Some had been widowed in the years of chaos, some had seized their opportunity and exchanged the Promise of Heaven or the Street of Red Lanterns for ordinary domesticity. Walegrin knew most of them by name, and a few of them much better, but it was understood these days in Sanctuary that you didn't talk about the past without invitation.

  The Tinker's Knob was typical of Shambles taverns: salvaged from the wreckage, it had a lingering charred odor, and a cellar no one cared to enter after sundown. Its sole claim to fame, and the inspiration for its name, came from a hammered plaque depicting the exploits of a singularly well endowed tinker.

  Walegrin looked right past it.

  "Want to talk?" Thrusher asked, pushing a wooden mug across the table.

  The commander shook his head, but the skeleton of the story rose out of him. "What's happening to this place?" he asked rhetorically. "An honest soldier helps a foolish woman buy garbage from a merchant whose ancestors were snakes and fish."

  Thrusher shook his head. "You could've left when the orders came. You could still leave," he stated the obvious.

  Walegrin drained his mug and poured another from the pitcher. He hadn't seriously considered throwing his lot in with the Stepsons when they left. In three years he could convert his officer's commission into a
tidy pile of gold and enough land to support a handful of heirs. All his adult life he'd been planning for that conversion. Yet he stayed in Sanctuary where there was no guarantee the Torch or the prince would acknowledge the years he'd spent in the Empire's service.

  "Damn your eyes-this is my porking home!" He slammed the mug against the table somewhat more forcefully than he'd'intended. The entire room went wary. Thrusher sat back in his chair, taking careful measure of his commander between cautious sips of ale.

  There was no doubt the last few years had aged Walegrin. Gods knew, those years aged everyone they hadn't killed. Age had softened the angles of the commander's face, giving it the semblance of wisdom without compromising its strength. He was a good deal calmer than he'd been before leading his men back to the city of his birth with the secret of Enlibar steel almost five years ago.

  Thrusher reckoned he might head north to the capital himself if the haunted, self-cursed Walegrin reappeared-and with that reckoning, the lieutenant got a handle on his friend's problem.

  "Women, eh? The woman on the wharf?"

  Walegrin grunted and spun his mug between his fingers. He preferred not to talk about women. His father had been killed because of a woman -killed and thoroughly cursed. Walegrin wasn't certain that he'd inherited the curse; his half-sister, Illyra, said he hadn't. But even S'danzo Sight couldn't say for certain where ordinary bad luck left off and a curse began.

  For Walegrin, the dividing line between luck and curse ran straight through Chenaya Vigeles. Chenaya was the sort of woman a poor man dreams about: beautiful and wealthy, sensual and wealthy, eager and wealthy. When Molin Torchholder said the palace needed eyes and ears at the sprawling Vigeles estate, Walegrin volunteered. Even then Chenaya had a reputation that would have given a wiser man pause. And that led to the question: Was it bad luck or stupidity that catalyzed a curse?

  Chenaya took a fancy to him, much as a breeder fancies a particular bull or stallion at the stalls. She'd taken him to her bedroom and given him experiences he could never afford on the Street of Red Lanterns. For a week, maybe two, but certainly no more than a month, Walegnn dwelt in heaven. Then Chenaya figured out just whom her lover worked for. Molin Torchholder's distrust of his niece was a paltry thing compared to Chenaya's hatred of her uncle. A lesser woman might have killed him while he lay defenseless in her bed, but not Chenaya.

  The battle lines were drawn and Walegnn of the garrison was both weapon and battlefield. When Chenaya was finally driven from the cityno thanks to the Torch-Walegrin forswore the company of women. He'd need to take a wife when he converted his commission, but a wife was not necessarily the same as a woman. She's back.

  The word came a month ago, in the midst of the awkward investigation into the midnight assassination of the Torch's estranged wife and Chenaya's father.

  Be my eyes, my ears, again.

  This time Walegrin risked his carefully nurtured patronage with Sanctuary's most powerful bureaucrat. She'll kill me, he'd argued, which, though true, wasn't the real reason he feared Land's End. He knew he wouldn't mind dying if she took him upstairs first. The Torch hadn't pressed the issue, and Chenaya had yet to cross Walegrin's path, but the commander couldn't talk to a woman without thinking about Chenaya. He was as jumpy as a cat on a griddle.

  Thrusher knew about Chenaya. There wasn't a man in Sanctuary who didn't know something about the legendary Chenaya. Thrusher even knew about Walegrin and Chenaya. He'd asked for details at the beginning, and, after receiving a florid description of experiences he would never know himself, lost interest. He didn't know how Chenaya haunted Walegrin's idle thoughts; he couldn't imagine confounding Chenaya with a timid, scrawny weaver.

  They finished the pitcher and returned to their patrolling. Their camaraderie was broken for the moment. The afternoon was an endless succession of circuits along the wharf and past the customs and storage houses. The big black ship had pulled in all but one of its hoists. The fish merchants were up at the palace making private transactions, but in general the fish stayed to themselves. Cross-culture brawls were the exception rather than the rule.

  The big black ship might stay in the harbor a week or more, but after the first day few paid any attention to it. Walegrin returned to a commander's duties. Once a day he went over to the caravan gate to inspect whomever the other officers might have recruited. Walegrin pointed out that the recruit would receive the same wages as a soldier in the Rankan army-five soldats a month, less expenses-but he never said the recruit was, joining the Rankan army. Business wasn't brisk, but the ranks were starting to fill. The third watch, formerly made up largely of Zip and his semi-feral commandos, was reinstituted. The two existing watches were reorganized. Thrusher went to the new unit and Walegrin found himself training a wet-behind-the-ears lieutenant named Wedemir.

  Wedemir was short and dark, like Thrusher, but with a round face and flat forehead that fairly shouted Wriggly. He gave his age as twenty-two, the same age Walegrin was when he jumped from soldier to officer. Walegrin judged that the man was young for his years. At the very least Wedemir wasn't burdened with the shield of distrust that Walegrin had carried through his teens and twenties. There was no faulting Wedemir's record. He'd been on the barricades through the worst of the anarchy and seen things, no doubt, that he'd never told his dose-knit family.

  "My father's Lalo, the artist," the boy said defensively as he and Walegrin left the barracks on a get-acquainted patrol.

  Walegrin grunted. Wedemir's mother was Gilla. His younger brother died in the False Plague Riots and his sister waited on the fish in the palace. Walegrin knew all that and more from the Torch's dossiers. For the moment, the commander was more interested in the movements of a woman coming from the Justice Hall toward the West Gate. He led Wedemir, still prattling about his family, toward the practice ground where Thrusher was explaining the difference between right and left to the newest recruits.

  "I don't think they were ever very happy about me joining. Not that they'd ever say anything outright ... Well, my mother wouid, but not my father ..."

  The woman turned. Walegrin caught a glimpse of her profile before Thrush's recruits came between them, not long enough to be sure if the woman was Chenaya or not. Probably not. Chenaya had little cause to come to the palace, and when she did she was usually dressed for war.

  "Something wrong, Commander?" Wedemir asked.

  Walegnn snapped to attention. He hadn't realized how much time he spent absorbed in his own thoughts until Wedemir had been glued to his side. Thrusher knew how to be invisible; Wedemir didn't. It wasn't the young man's fault, but it kept both of them from relaxing.

  "Wait here, I want to get something from the tower room."

  "Can't I get it for you?"

  "Gods below, you're not my servant, you're an officer in the R-" Walegrin caught the untimely word on the tip of his tongue. Just that morning the prince had proclaimed a reduction in the hearth tax without once mentioning Ranke or the Emperor. Whatever they were officers of, it wasn't the Rankan army anymore. "Just slay here!"

  Wedemir froze on the spot. Walegrin took the tower steps two at a time. What he wanted was another glimpse of that golden hair to tell him which way not to go with Wedemir. He leaned out over the railing. The men on duty looked with him and at him. The commander spotted his quarry arguing with a water seller. The angle was still bad; he couldn't see her face.

  "What're you looking for?" one of the soldiers asked.

  Walegrin gripped the rail with both hands and thought fast. "I was looking to see if there were crowds gathering anywhere. Problems. Disorderlies. Don't want to bore my new lieutenant."

  "It's as quiet as a clam," the second soldier confirmed, still scanning from street to street. "Just the way you like it."

  "But there's been complaints coming in all day from the Uptown. Something died, from the sound ... er, smelt of things. Nothing serious, though, an' it's not going anywhere so I haven't sent anyone," the first soldier added.

&nb
sp; "Something died?" the commander asked.

  "We had at least four people come down here since dawn to say that they can't stand the smell. We got nothing more than that. Nobody's seen what died, they just say it smells worse than the charnel house going fulltilt."

  The golden-haired woman headed west. Uptown was east.

  "We'll check it out."

  Walegrin would have gone Uptown regardless of the gold-haired woman. The soldiers in the tower had been recruited from the men who came to Sanctuary to work on Molin's walls. To them, Uptown was just another quarter.

  Wedemir's face tightened when Walegrin joined the words died and Uptown in the same sentence. Refiexively, the young man checked his weapons; just as reflexively, the fingers of his right hand made an Ilsigi wardsign. The commander didn't blame him, though he had no personal faith in gestures or amulets.

  They went through the gate at a twenty-league pace. Urgency radiated from them, and the few people on the streets scuttled under the eaves to let them pass. The stench rose like a wall across Safe Haven.

  "What died?" Wedemir asked, for although the odor was unlike anything in his experience it was profoundly organic and decayed.

  Walegrin shrugged and adjusted his headband. Safe Haven was empty, all the windows were tightly shuttered. The commander could follow his nose, or he could trust his instincts. He chose his instincts and left the street for an alley and a flight of worn, stone steps. Wedemir was right behind him. Anyone who lived through that night would never forget this path.

  They emerged in a burnt-out courtyard. The Peres house looked pretty much as it had since it burnt. Storms had tumbled a few more of the beams and a skeletal tree, but no one scavenged here for wood or charcoal. After the False Plague Riots there'd been a dozen burnt-out quarters; now only Peres remained. And would remain at least so long as anyone remembered.

  A pillar of fire had surrounded the Peres house that night. It reached from the depths of hell to the heights of heaven. It illuminated a war between gods and demons, if not good and evil. Magic fueled it, and when it collapsed all magic was gone from Sanctuary. No one came straight out and said the Peres quarter was cursed,.or blessed, by what happened, but it was shunned.