Uneasy Alliances tw-11

by Robert Asprin

  Shawme unballed her clenched fists and rubbed her eyes with her hands. As the dream's terror fled, joy filled her and crested into exultation. She was really here! She'd made it out of Ratfall!

  So all of this was true and real-the down coverlet she pulled up against her naked shoulders, the lavender-scented oil lamp ready to light by her bed as night came on, the beautiful sunset-because even in Sanctuary, the night could be beautiful when you were safe inside the walls of a fine house instead of lurking cold and vulnerable on the streets.

  And it was all real because of Zip. Zip had noticed her, all right, when she'd come to him with the treasures she'd found on the Downwind beach. Zip had looked at her with focused eyes for the first time and Shawme's heart skipped a beat. You couldn't do any better than Zip. Zip was the fantasy lover of all the young girls in Ratfall and half of Downwind. Zip's power could shield you, Zip's connections could get you anything, even out.

  In front of Zip, Shawme had bitten her lip and pretended she wasn't about to swoon. She had to be grown up and impress the PFLS leader for her plan to work. The PFLS-Popular Front for the Liberation of Sanctuary-was working with uptowners now. Zip's connections were legend in the shanty towns. She'd smiled bravely and said, "I found something -things you'd want. I'll give them, for a price."

  And he'd let her show him, let her tell him, what she'd found-a bronze rod that turned noble metal to dross, an amulet of uncertain value, a rusted knife whose edge could be coaxed to life. There'd been one other thing she hadn't shown him, but that was her secret, still.

  And the PFLS leader had seemed to be impressed, and said, "What's your name, girl, and what do you want for these?"

  She'd replied, as cool as if she dealt with handsome rebel leaders every day, "I want out of Ratfall. I want a room in the Aphrodisia House. I want to be one of Lady Myrtis's girls and meet a noble lord and marry well." Her chin was high, to show she knew the ways of the world and the implications of what she was saying. As she spoke, she ran spread hands down her bodice and over her hips as she'd seen a whore do once, when she was uptown in the Maze where men could afford to buy a woman's favors and women sold themselves for money rather than having to give themselves for survival.

  Zip's eyes had narrowed, his mouth had twitched. He'd stroked his stubbled chin and gazed ruminatively at the treasures she'd found. Then finally he looked up from under his black sweatband and said, "That's what you want, I'll see what I can do. But leave these with me, or somebody might take them from you and you'll have nothing to trade but what you started with."

  She'd been suddenly uncomfortable under his stare, a different look than he'd had on him before- It seemed to go right through her clothes and she thought, terrified for an instant so that she'd begun to shake, he was going to ask her to demonstrate her expertise, such charms as could qualify a girl for Myrtis's, the finest house in all of Sanctuary's red-light district.

  If he had asked, all chance of Shawme's escape to luxury and bright tomorrows would have been dashed on the spot, for Shawme had no idea what a man like Zip would want from a woman, let alone a professional woman.

  In point of fact, Shawme had no idea what to do with a man, except run from them and throw whatever you could at them if they got too close. If you didn't do that and they grabbed you, the next thing you knew you were battered, bleeding and pregnant.

  But it wasn't that way for the uptown women of the Aphrodisia House, and ever since she'd found that out, Shawme had wanted to go there.

  So when Zip's voice deepened, she was terrified. If he found out she knew nothing about the job she'd demanded in exchange for the treasures she had, he'd never help her. And if she ever was to let Zip do what men did to women, she'd have to know what she was doing. Or else he'd laugh.

  Men always laughed at virgins.

  Shawme's virginity was still a problem now, after a week at Myrtis's. She'd meant to tell Myrtis, when the time was right. But the time had never been right. Zip had gotten her the interview, and sent her uptown with an escort. She hadn't returned to Ratfall again, not for the whole two weeks since then.

  She'd been taught to bathe herself, to deal with her moon flow, to make herself soft and beautiful, to keep from getting pregnant. But she'd been taught nothing of how to rid herself of the awful curse of virginity.

  Or of how to please a man.

  All the other girls-older girls, poised girls, wise girls with gold rings in their ears and gemstones in their noses-assumed she knew her trade. They were arch and competitive, and their gossip had teeth. If they found out, she'd be driven from here, back down to Ratfall. Like in her dream.

  But no one had found out, and Shawme was going to go downstairs this evening, for the first time. Tonight, she would be among those in the great salon, posturing and fanning themselves, luring men upstairs.

  Tonight, Shawme would become the woman she was pretending to be.

  She'd lied about her age, said she was eighteen, when she was years younger. But no one had noticed. All the other girls were too busy counting conquests. Who came to see you mattered most here. Who came more than once, who became your regular, who your regular knew and what kind of gifts he brought you. It was a different world.

  And she was on its threshold. Her heart calmed, she stretched in her bed, watching the sunset slink into dusk, the colors no more beautiful than the garments the girls downstairs wore. Myrtis had given her the smallest room, the plainest clothes, the lowest percentage, but only because Shawme was the new girl.

  "Except for Zip, you wouldn't have this bed at all," Myrtis had told her, not unkindly. "We've got a waiting list down to the White Foal Bridge. You'll have to make your way here, make friends, develop regulars. Then you'll have your own money, and we'll settle up what I've advanced you against a piece of your gross."

  Shawme hadn't even known what a "piece of your gross" was, until she'd gotten up yesterday early and snuck out of the house to meet Merricat at Promise Park.

  Merricat was Shawme's only uptown friend, a girl apprenticing at the Mageguild because of her shadowy, powerful aunt up north. The two girls had met on the beach one day, and been fast friends ever since.

  When they'd met, Merricat had been crying as she beachcombed, and Shawme had drawn her knife, ready to protect the other girl if she could. Merricat's tears, it turned out, were tears of unrequited love for Randal, the powerful mage who served the Stepsons.

  So they'd had something in common, both girls unnoticed by the men of their dreams. Merricat had confided all about Randal, and Shawme had told of her hopeless love for Zip.

  Then together they'd concocted this scheme, that was supposed to make Zip notice Shawme, come to the Aphrodisia House some day and sweep her off her feet. "After," Merricat had said wisely, with a nod of her prim little chin, "you have mastered the womanly arts better than anyone else. To make Randal love me, I must become a wondrous adept."

  Merricat had given Shawme a spell to hide her virginity yesterday, given it with a frown: "I'm not very good at this-yet," she'd cautioned. "So be careful."

  Merricat was shorter, rounder, and fairer than Shawme, with a plump face and button eyes and all the softness of good breeding. Yesterday when they met, Merricat had had her peregrine, Dika, with her, the gift her aunt had sent to qualify Merricat for Mageguild apprenticeship in the first place.

  "I trust you!' Shawme had replied, rubbing her tanned arms because suddenly she didn't.

  "Trust Dika, it's his doing. Lightning and thunder, I hope it works." Merricat was suddenly solemn. She leaned forward on the park bench:

  "And you'll tell me, promise. What it's like. Who it is ... everything. Or I'll curse you. You wouldn't want that."

  As long as Dika didn't curse her too, it probably wouldn't hurt worse than growing up in Ratfall, Shawme thought. Out loud she said, "Of course, a soon as ... it ... happens, I'll put the lantern in my window. But won't you know, by magical means?"

  Merricat lived in constant fear of being found wa
nting, of failing in her apprenticeship. "I should know," she said, her full lower lip beginning to tremble, "but I probably won't. I'm not good enough, Shawme," she said, a whine edging her tone. "I'll never-"

  "Shush, bitch," said Shawme sharply, and then regretted the gutter talk up here where words meant different things. Shawme took Memcat's fine, soft hand and squeezed it hard before letting go. "You're better than you think. Dika knows it. He's not flying away."

  Merricat reached up, onto her shoulder to stroke the peregrine who perched there. The bird cocked its head at Shawme and opened and closed its beak once as if in agreement.

  "He's right, Merricat. Got to go before I miss breakfast."

  "And I miss bedcheck. Good luck with Zip."

  "Good luck with Randal."

  So the two friends had parted, Shawme armed with a root of dried mandrake on a thong that was supposed to keep her secret safe from discovery.

  Keep it safe, tonight. Tonight she would lie abed with her first man. She rubbed her tawny arms, stroking the fine sun-paled hair on them. She hoped he would be beautiful, bold and not too old. She wanted him to be just like Zip, with a full head of hair and a lithe young body, with high cheekbones and the fire of revolution in his eyes . - -

  But he could as easily be a fat, greasy-lipped merchant from the Street of Weavers, or a drover from Caravan Square. There were no gods left alive in the part of Ratfall that had spawned Shawme from the chance meeting of an Ilsig matron and a soldier who, from Shawme's blue eyes, was probably Rankan.

  No gods to pray to, but prayers aplenty. Shawme closed her eyes and chanted. "Red light, love light, first light I see tonight. Wish I may, wish I might, have the boy I love tonight."

  Quick as a spooked cat, she opened her eyes and there, out the window, she saw the first lights flare along the town's skyline. Against the torpid blue of early evening, they seemed like an omen. Zip would come, she was sure of it. Come to make sure that Shawme had a customer on her first night at Myrtis's. Come to make a woman of her.

  Sliding out from under her coverlet, she clutched the mandrake root around her neck on its thong. Thanks be to Merricat's magic, everything would be all right ... she could just decide whether to wear her blue dress, or her red one.

  For a girl who'd never before owned even one dress, but only cast-off shirts and trousers, beggar's rags, choosing between two new and filmy dresses with low cut bodices and gilded laces was no small challenge. When she'd donned the blue one and was padding down the Aphrodisia House's stairs, male laughter was already rising over the raucous strains of music from the downstairs saloon.

  And tucked beneath that dress, tightly bound with a scarf to her thigh, was the other thing she'd found on the beach that night, the weapon she hadn't shown to Zip, the weird artifact from the sea that Merricat had squinted at, frowned over, and told Shawme that she'd better keep.

  The guard was changing in Sanctuary, and nowhere were the winds of chaos more keenly felt than in the Mageguild.

  Even Merricat, who hadn't been an apprentice very long before pillars of fire uptown had signalled the coming of the New Era, knew that. She could see it in the faces of the adepts, in the hunched shoulders of the handsome, mysterious and nameless First Hazard.

  She could feel it in her classroom sessions when a real mage was teaching, as Randal was this evening. Usually, when Randal taught the gathered apprentices, Merricat found herself daydreaming. She'd watch Randal's freckled face and envision it gazing fondly on her in some secluded bower to which he'd whisked her for private lessons. She'd stare at his prodigious ears and taste what it would be like to nibble them. She'd meditate on the strong arms of the warrior-mage in his adept's robes and wonder what it would be like to feel them around her.

  But not tonight. Tonight even Randal-who always made Merricat feel calm and safe and less afraid of being exposed as an untalented imposter among the students-even Randal seemed tense and wan.

  The lesson was in progress, though, and Merricat tried hard to concentrate.

  "... go to your trances, and then we'll start adventuring up among the planes. On each plane we visit, you'll have time to look around, meet denizens. When you meet a denizen, be sure to remember its name. The eventual object of this lesson," Randal said in a sharp voice that forced Merricat's attention away from daydreams, away from schemes to get Randal alone on pretext of discussing Shawme's plight, away from everything ...

  "... the object is, eventually, to reach the twelfth plane, where you will encounter a spirit guide, a connection to help you negotiate among netherworld powers. This is magic of the most potent sort, magic of the kind that will stay with you lifelong and determine even your afterlife. It has nothing to do with mundane spells failing, with irate harridans complaining about inefficacious love potions-"

  The score of students tittered.

  Randal continued. "This is profound business. Some of you will make this journey slowly, in stages. Some will only partly complete it during this term. But to be truly an adept, you must in your lifetime journey to the twelfth plane, conquer all that stands in your way to do so, and there meet your guide face to face. Your guide is your representative where feet cannot tread. It is privy to knowledge you otherwise cannot tap, to power you'll never wield on your own."

  A hush fell over the students. Randal's voice had deepened even further. In his fighter's tunic and dark pants, he was the picture of a field mage, so much more suited to this lesson than some soft adept in a festooned robe of power. When Randal leaned forward, his neck outthrust, his eyes raking their ranks, no one even shifted in surprise at the words he spoke next.

  "Class," Randal said in a suddenly softened voice that signalled his most intense concern for their welfare. "This is a lesson not without its dangers. Afterwards, there will be no teasing among you, no bravado from those who proceed faster toward those who go slowly. All of you are about to risk your sanity and mortal persons among the planes. Go cautiously, go with determination, and go with my blessing." He straightened up.

  A murmur ran through the students.

  When it subsided, Randal said, "And now, if you'll all put your feet flat on the floor, hands flat on your thighs, I'm going to guide your trances."

  As Randal ran through the relaxation litany, Merricat let his voice be her beacon. When he instructed her right hand to rise, of its own accord, from her lap and hover before her face, it seemed that her hand was indeed weightless. And when he told her to open her eyes and behold the manna of her person, she was unsurprised to see a green nimbus surrounding her fingers, to see the bones beneath the skin, and to see blue lightning spurting from her fingertips.

  When she was instructed to close her eyes again, they closed without her volition. When she was told that her hand would now fall to her thigh and when it did, she would open her eyes and see the first plane around her, she was not afraid.

  Until her hand hit her thigh. Then Merricat was plunged into vertigo and if she could, she would have grabbed onto her chair. But she could not. Her body was under RandaFs control, not her own. When the snap of his fingers caused her eyes to open, she beheld a landscape windwhipped and strange, stretching forever in all directions, where hills had crests like frozen waves and trees were perfect spheres. Beneath those trees were others and she knew (without knowing how she knew) that some of those others were her fellow students.

  She knew because she was under one such tree and beside her were creatures part human, part not. One creature came toward her in wide strides, staring at her through one burning round eye, cocking the head of a falcon and saying through the beak of a bird: "Welcome, Merricat, to the first plane. What is it you seek here?"

  "Knowledge," said Merricat as she'd been coached in RandaFs lesson. "Friends. Power of mind."

  The beak of the bird grew large and from it came the words, "There are no friends for you on the first plane, as there are no friends for you at Aphrodisia House. You must seek higher. Here, as there, you will find only tools
."

  "Give me one, then," she heard her own voice say, and was appalled at her temerity,

  The bird head nodded and the bird beak came close.

  She wanted to shy away from the sharp beak but she could not. Her palm extended and the beak neared the soft offering of her flesh. And into her palm it dropped an insect, like a wasp. The insect tickled her palm and on her flesh, with many legs, it danced. And as it danced, a wasp's nest came into being and into it, the wasp soon crawled.

  Then Merricat's hand became very heavy and the next thing she knew, it had fallen to her lap, for Randal's voice was saying, "•• . . at the count of three, your spirit will return to your body and your eyes will open and you will be in your seat beside your fellow students."

  It was as if the adept spoke only to her. She listened only to his voice as again dizziness overcame her. She was flying through clouds of many colors, among ancient seas, and farther.

  When she found her body, she felt absolutely sucked into it and her spirit came to rest in its prison with a thud that was her hand hitting her thigh.

  Her eyes opened. She blinked. The students around her were all palefaced, white-lipped, and silent. No one looked at anyone else. But Merricat looked at her hand on her thigh.

  In the palm of her hand was a red blotch about the size of the small wasp's nest. The hair rose all over her body. Surely this must mean something, or else she'd done it all wrong . . , What connection could the first plane have to Shawme's plight and the thing she'd told her friend to keep secret?

  She was shaking, trembling all over. Her skin was blotchy, red and fishy white.

  She didn't hear the rest of the lesson, she just heard Randal's voice, the only comfort in her universe which now was no comfort at all.

  She had to tell the adept what she'd done, how she'd failed, and find out what the omen meant. She had to.

  When the class filed out, her throat constricted: what if Randal left before the last of the students were gone? She couldn't chase him down the halls, or sortie to his private chamber where real magic was always under way. She just couldn't.