Shkai’ra turned Megan’s giftblade in her hands; it was a pleasure to handle something so well made.
“Shaaid?” she said absently. “Maggot. The poorest, dockworkers, day laborers. Escaped tenants, beggars, children born without kinfast. No money, skill, or lord: a million heads in this brick warren, and two-thirds are shaaid. They die by the thousand down in Low Town; more come in every day, to find the silver bricks of Illizbuah’s streets.”
“Better to be a ... gaaimun, is that the word?” They laughed and walked out into the brightness of hallway.
There were crowds along the Laneway of Impeccable Respectability; they turned to throngs as the two women turned onto the eastbound Street of Dubious Delights Tolerated But Not Approved; that was a major artery leading to the Old City that Megan had wandered the night she came in. Carts drawn by oxen, mules, horses, dogs, and humans crowded the brick pavement; folk on foot thronged among them. Naked porters bent under wicker baskets; robed upper servants; a party of off-duty soldiers in green leather tunics, hands on the hilts of their shortswords; two tall black Haytin from the Kahab Sea, feathers nodding from their fantastic sculpted manes of coiled hair.
Smells of sweat, dung, hay, smoke, hot brick dust hung around them among the creaks and clatters and babble cast back by the three-story brick walls on either side.
Not every building along Delight Street was a joy den, of course; tiny stores spilled their goods onto the raised side passages, hawkers cried, pedal-driven looms thumped from behind blank walls; a small girl in a loincloth stood and drew rude words on the stucco with a stick of charcoal until a harassed-looking woman darted out to drag her off by one ear, swatting at the child’s rear energetically with her other hand.
Megan dodged around a cart loaded twice head-high with cornstalks, then avoided a priest in a soiled orange robe with stubble on her shaven skull with a whirl that brought her to rest against the counter of a wine shop. Tubs of wine, beer and fruit juices were sunken into the counter, which bore stacks of cheap clay mugs, a dipper, and the elbows of a scowling owner.
As crowded as the night street, she thought. But the nature of the crowd had changed. People spoke more loudly, and sunlight brightened them; the night folk were gone to their pallets. This city at night had a darkness more than material, tasting of smoke and incense and music. A torrent of children passed, shrieking with the excitement of some incomprehensible game.
She reached over to touch Shkai’ra on the elbow. “See, that one there?”
Gawking, a boy of fifteen seasons stood on the corner. Tall for his age, and big in the wrists and ankles; Shkai’ra judged him to be from the Piedmont borderlands from his long tunic and leggings and the pale skin, perhaps of a yeoman-farmer kinfast.
“An easy mark,” Megan said. She slid a tiny iron slug across the counter and took a cup of pomegranate juice, cool and tart on her tongue. Briefly, she wondered at the metal’s value. “In F’talezon, the child packs would leave him stripped and wondering on the DragonLord’s doorstep. Not a healthy place.”
“Not greatly different here,” Shkai’ra said as they elbowed their way forward again. A woman in a soiled white tunic was talking to the boy. “That’s Maihra, of the Low Lords. They specialize in kidnapping; that one’s kinfast will have to pay well for him.”
Megan had noticed and avoided a number of people trained much the same way she was. Thieves had a look to them. “So. What should we be doing?”
Shkai’ra looked down at her. “You can buy anything in Illizbuah, anything that exists. But I know just the place you might be interested in.”
The weapons shop was part of the Dark Creatures of the Earth Brought Forth and Transformed by Effulgent Light: one of the metalworkers’ bazaars. The whole of it was covered, two stories high on arched glass-fiber-concrete; below were narrow laneways through acres of milling confusion—customers, guards, artisans, fetch-and-carry slaves, apprentices, food sellers. For all that, it was less crowded than might have been expected; access was limited, and Shkai’ra had had to show her member’s sigil in the Guards’, Mercenaries’ and Caravaneers’ Guild to enter.
“Whulzhaitz,” she snarled in her own language. “Sheepshit. Sometimes I think it would have been better to settle among unlettered folk. At least if they rob or kill or imprison you, it will be for a better reason than not having your papers in order.”
I’d better buy papers, soon, Megan thought. I’ll probably need them to leave from the looks of this place.
They plunged into the crowd. Shkai’ra’s height and sword and alien looks made only a modicum of elbow work needful; she noted that surprisingly few jostled Megan, and none twice. The air was thick: smoke from the forges, despite their fuel of charcoal or city gas; sweat, the vinegary smell of hot metal; the soapy almost-taste of quenching oil. Light was dim through the grimy skylights, and Shkai’ra found her way more by memory than sight. It played her false more than once, amid booths cobbled with board and canvas.
“Been more than a year; they shift ... Ah, here.” One alcove opened to a long narrow workshop. It was for display and a little finishing work; a lathe whirred somewhere in the background, and the teeth-jarring sound of a grindstone came, clear through the sun-roar of the crowds echoing from the pillars.
The proprietor looked up from dashing a dipper of water over his head as they turned sideways to enter. The wet glistened on his scalp, bald as an egg, and on skin as black as the soot of his trade and seamed with five decades of forge heat. He was dressed in a loincloth and leather apron; not a tall man, but muscle bulked huge on ape-thick arms and shoulders.
“Hai, Firehair! he said, grinning hugely. He had the slightest trace of an accent; native-born, but his mother had wandered in on a ship from the Sea Islands. “No need to ask what you seek.”
He waved a hand toward the walls and racks. Weapons, and things that must be weapons from the company they kept. There were swords, short double-edged cut-and-thrust blades; the long single-edged cavalry swords with basket hilts that the east coast kingdoms favored. Pensa broadswords, as tall as Shkai’ra at the hilt. Curved swords, recurved chopping blades, swords mounted on poles, swords that slid into canes and umbrellas and scribes’ book stands. Knives of every description, from a main-gauche as long as a forearm, meant to do duty as a shield, to a dainty little razor-edge knife, thin and flexible enough to slip inside a belt, with the hilt shaped as a buckle. Spearheads, pike heads of metal or fiber-bound ceramic or glass. Halberd heads, knife-sharp chain-like fighting irons, throwing stars, blowpipes that slid in sections like telescopes. Behind lay bits and pieces of armor.
Megan said not one word, but the wall drew her as if the metal were magnetized. Good work here, she thought. Layer-forged, from the sheen, with charcoal added. Her eyes were caught by a blade hanging just above her eye level. Eastern work? If I didn’t know better I’d say that was one of our best. It matches our best; what a market for metal, if I could find a way to get it here. Good iron was expensive everywhere, but east of the Lannic they did not use iron beads for currency. She turned and raised an eyebrow at the smith.
“Trade goods from oversea? Worth maybe the iron that makes it.”
“Good work,” he said. “As good as mine or my kinmates, but different.” He lifted it down with huge spatulate fingers that were somehow delicate, and bellowed over his shoulder, “Tea!”
“See,” he continued. “Layer work, yes ... but I think they used iron and steel wire, not twinned bar-stock. Nice! Firehair’s sword is like that, but it comes from the northwest. For this, I could give you, oh, only one-twenty-fifth the weight in gold.”
A boy of twelve with something of the man’s build came in from the rear with a tray. The tray was grubby leather, but the flask and cups were Naiglun porcelain, delicate, simple and lovely, eggshell thin. The smith lifted one cup, the scarred and calloused hands closing on it as lightly as on a rose. “The Sun shine on you! he said. “A pleasure to deal with someone who knows good work.”
“Brightness! The offer is an insult to the weapon. And who needs blood quenching? Superstition! A tub of seawater with leather soaked a week does as well. For that price I could offer this.” He reached over and picked out a lesser-quality dagger, still of steel; but laid beside the first the difference was obvious.
She blew gently over her cup, looked through the steam at the smith, and settled herself for a long session. “Perhaps when we speak of silver rather than gold would I consider this one, or others. The market seems to hold many smithies. Perhaps I should look around first.” She raised the cup, sipped, and set it down. “I thank you for the tea. It was nicely made.”
The smith scowled and signaled his kinchild to replace the cup. A horn cup of fruit juice succeeded it. “Bah. The others would cheat a foreigner on principle. I am a man without prejudice, and nothing is too good for a friend of a friend. Besides, you would care for the steel. For you ...”
Shkai’ra laughed. “Now you’ve unsaddled yourself,” she said. “Next to working the metal, he loves bargaining.” She turned to examine a tray of arrowheads.
It went on for a while, discussing relative worth of workmanship, the smith bewailing the necessity of being generous to a friend’s friend, protesting that his kin had to eat. At last, before them lay the eastern knife, three of lesser quality, and a knife harness.
“Ach, we are agreed on one-thirtieth for the one; but for the others ...” She sighed. “The most I could agree on there would be one-seventh, silver.”
“You would have my work for nothing? It pains me. Five.”
Megan pondered. “Since you are Freyat Kizkar, Friend of Kin, I would be generous. Five and a half if the harness comes too.”
He frowned deeply. “You make me cut out my heart on the altar of friendship! May the Sun see my generosity to a stranger! Agreed.” They slapped hands on the bargain.
She rose, buckling on the harness and trying various placements for the blades.
“A heavy investment,” Shkai’ra said, replacing a bola with balls of stone set with bronze spikes. She hesitated as another customer came through the curtain; a blind man, old, with skin like weathered parchment. He wore a patched tunic and carried a staff and begging bowl.
“Harriso!” she said.
Megan snicked a blade back into its sheath. “Investment in the tools of the trade,” she said. “Another friend?”
The man’s face turned toward her, nostrils flaring. Then he smiled, his face a network of wrinkles, the smile of an ancient, wicked, merry child.
“So, you come to the City again, Red-Hand,” he said in a smooth, well-modulated voice. Megan’s Fehinnan was just barely good enough to recognize the accent of an aristocrat, or a scholar. “And another foreigner with you. One who smells of death-to-come, like you.”
He turned to the smith. “Kermibo, my friend, today I think we must forsake our discussion of the philosophy of Annitli the Subtle.”
The metalworker shrugged, “We’re getting in some new barstock, anyway.” He smiled sheepishly at Shkai’ra’s inquiring eyebrow.
“Philosophy?” she said incredulously. “Time was your only pastimes outside the smithy were beer and sex.”
“Well, a person must have something to do in their age.... Fare you well.” As they pushed aside the curtain, he added: “And bring many more such friends; she’s got more business for me than that boy acrobat you dragged along last year!”
Shkai’ra cleared her throat at Megan’s look and turned her head to the beggar. “How goes the city, Harriso?” she asked as they plunged into the crowd of the Metalworker’s market.
He shrugged, and used his staff to trip a woman who had jostled him into a stack of pots. “In and out, around and about, as ever, Red-Hand.”
“A philosophy you were going to study with the smith?” Megan inquired. “Written, perhaps?”
Both the others regarded her curiously. Harriso opened his mouth to answer, then shifted to a mendicant’s whine.
“Alms! Alms and the Light will shine upon you! A copper buys so little, and the Beggar King must have his half of that.”
A member of the Watch strolled by, eyes roving. Shkai’ra broke off a bit from a copper coil and tossed it into his bowl.
“I can smell them,” Harriso said. The metal disappeared into his tunic. “You travel in learned company for a change, Red-Hand. As to the City, the Sun-on-Earth, in her wisdom, has issued a proclamation doubling the taxes on bread meal, salt, and fish.”
His hand tightened slightly on her elbow, and Shkai’ra choked off her reply.
“So that all may know the wisdom of this, the proclamation is to be read from the steps of the temple. Great is the wisdom of the God Among Us,” he added dryly, “but I shall be content with secondhand knowledge.”
The blond woman stopped at a vendor’s stall and bought stewed lentils, a round of flat bread, and ground chickpeas fried in oil. Accepting the well-filled bowl, he squatted in a corner and produced a bone implement from his runic, with a fork at one end and a spoon at the other. Eating with fastidious neatness, he continued, “Thank you, Firehair. We will speak later, in privacy, I think.”
The blind eyes turned to Megan. “May my fingers see your face?” The touch was feather light. “Ah, younger than the voice. Yes,” he added gently. “If you wish to peruse the Path of the Ten True Ways, you must follow your own way. The printed book does me little good, in these days.”
As the old hands gently took in the lines of her face, she smiled at his compliment, but she thought of being in darkness for the rest of her life and quelled a shudder, feeling sudden anger for the injury done. She could see faint marks around the ruined eyes that spoke of deliberate blinding, yet in him she felt a serenity lacking in most. Wisdom, she thought. Not content but tolerance. She grasped the hand and said, “Old books and scrolls are of interest to me. My name is Megan, Elder.” She rose and turned to Shkai’ra. “The temple. The dome? Perhaps we should hear this proclamation. It would, after all, be natural that strangers go to see this place.”
Chapter V
“What was Harriso, before?” Megan said, clinging to the arm of the pedicab. The ride was as smooth as glass-fiber springs and rubber tires could make it, but the two sweating laborers on the pedals were forced to perform a good many swerves and swift brakings in the congested street. Besides, the machine was new to her.
“A noble, and a priest,” Shkai’ra said, reclining at her ease. No Kommanza liked to walk when there was an alternative, and keeping a horse in the City was beyond her means. “He fell from power, but the priests of the Sun are sacred. So they took his eyes, rather than his life. His wits are as sharp as ever, and he hears everything. I saved his life once; not much of a life, he said, but the only one available at the moment. He seems to like me well enough, ‘for an illiterate heathen savage,’ as he puts it.”
The machine swerved among horses, carriages, wagons, and swarming pedestrians. Kilometer after kilometer of Illizbuah slid by: tall buildings and low, brick and concrete and some sheathed in stucco or mosaic or stone; streets of weavers, of lensgrinders, potters, leatherworkers, apothecaries, chronometer-makers and machinists; little corner temples; the blank walls that courtyard-centered tenements turned to the streets. The heat grew, and the crowds flowed eastward. Ahead they could see the battlements of the wall that separated the Old City from the New. Helmets and spearpoints flashed from the wall; flamethrowers snouted, and dartcasters. Five centuries ago this had been the city’s outer shell, and it served the purposes of its masters to maintain it.
The gates were swung open and the crowd streamed into the darkness of the tunnel, through another set of gates enclosing a small courtyard, and through the two dogleg jogs in the road befo
re emerging into the Old City. Megan took in the arrow slits, shielded slots, nozzles, and various other strange openings where the walls met the ceiling of the tunnel and in the ceiling itself.
“A cautious people. Do they have reason to be?” She thought of a shaaid beaten in the street, raising a shattered no-face to the crowd, last night. The cleanliness of this city was strange, but the stink of corruption was just as strong as at home. The mood of the crowd grated on her, raising hackles. There was trouble here, familiar trouble.
“Not usually,” Shkai’ra said. “I’ve never seen a city so strong, and it rules broad lands. Nobody’s stormed it since the Maleficent’s time, and that doesn’t count; nothing and nobody resisted her.” Shkai’ra frowned in the tunnel gloom.
“Odd,” she said. “They usually have a guard detail here, checking papers. There are more shaaids here than I’d expect, too. They have the money to keep slaves for most rough work in the Old City, rather than hire day labor.”
Past the gate the roads were wider and less crowded: a relic of previous centuries, when Illizbuah had been a garrison of administrators and absentee landlords rather than a center of trade and crafts. High walls covered in glass mosaic swept by, the tops of trees hinting at gardens within.
Megan joined Shkai’ra in glancing uneasily at the crowds around them, sweeping toward the central square. There was too much purpose here. That faded from her mind as they swept through the last blocks of offices that surrounded Temple Square. Everything did.
“Elder Brother,” she breathed, with reverent awe. There had been glimpses of it, over the intervening buildings, but ... not this. The base of the temple was a block a thousand meters on a side, sheathed in white marble polished to glass brightness. Above that reared the gold-sheathed dome, two hundred meters tall; another twenty meters of flame lancing from the apex. The bright noon sun flared off it, impossible to look at without weeping eyes; a huge blazing pile that left intolerable afterimages. A monolith that must have taken years to build, and many deaths.
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