Saber and Shadow

by S. M. Stirling

  “Sun and General Commander Smyna! Sun and General Commander Smyna!” she called, and the troopers took it up raggedly. “Treason! Treason in the temple!” The squadron spurred forward, one or two horses stumbling and sliding over the body of the priest.

  Another section of troops double-timed into the square from the eastern exit; infantry this time, with bolt-guns and the close-quarter stabbing spears of the marine detachments. The cavalry commander wheeled her mount to watch as the crowd poured away on either side like water cleaving before a ship’s prow; the square would be empty soon, which suited her well. Cavalry needed room to maneuver, and a sitting horse was an easy target. Around her, brief combat flared; the Hands were not trained or equipped for open combat, and the citizens who had joined them were worse than useless. Screams drowned the battle shouts.

  She spurred forward to greet the marines and take command. There was just time for her to realize her mistake before the bolt-gun shaft slammed under the nose guard of her helmet; it punched through bone and brain to bury itself in the sponge-and-cork backing on the other side.

  “Treason! Rebellion in the Iron House!” the leader of the infantry called. His troopers swept forward, firing from the nip and then closing on the riders, whose mounts spun in caracole among the crowding bodies. Most of the Hands were down, and only a fraction of the crowd turned to join the temple loyalists. But a fraction of that crowd was thousands, and their hands moved for the lancers. Behind them, the last of the priests retreated up the broad stairs of the temple, stave and chain striking on lance shafts and swords; they stood, and fought, and died so that the great bronze doors might swing shut on the battle. And the cavalry retreated before the mob and the marines, their backs to the closed portals.

  Even the horses went down under the weight of the mob, screaming in fear over the crowd roar. People fled the renewed bloodshed, clutching children and weaker kin, their festival finery spattered red. Elaborate masks crunched underfoot, blood oozing through empty eyesockets.

  In the alley, Megan almost couldn’t distinguish festival sound from the fight noise rising behind her. She blinked back a sudden memory of her own, stepping aside to allow a troop of dancers with torches and ribbons past her. They were laughing, and a few were singing and staggering slightly already in their dance, clutching at each other. Megan thought that they should encounter the new riot just around the corner of the square. “Hai! Hai, don’t go ... Hai!” Ignoring her, they went on. “Shit!” She felt a sudden choking. “They aren’t kin of mine!” she told herself, hating what was happening. I’ve my part in it. I can’t ignore that. I’ll just think about it later, when I can.

  She cut through a small park, almost stumbling over the couples in the grass. The crowd here was closer, and she stopped by a fountain to look for a rapid way through. She stepped to the rim and leaped for one of the dryer ornaments higher up. The stone under her hands was slick. As she went from fountain to low balcony, then up the side of the building, she noted that the color of the water was changing from blue to green. Festival, she thought. We’ve given them some festival.

  Chapter XXVI

  Megan lay at her ease on the tiles, chin resting on cupped palms. Shkai’ra leaned back against the shallow slope of the roof, sipping from the iron-glass flask. The red baked clay of the roofing was gritty beneath them; the warm-earth smell of it mingled with the rank smell from columns of smoke that rose like pillars into the late afternoon sky. From the fourth-story roof they could see a dozen major fires, and the clamor of the fire fighting squads mingled with the sounds of combat and riot—and even of celebration; this was a large city, and most of the citizenry were reluctant to sacrifice their festival.

  The chaos in the streets was abating, as squads of the Elite Guard sallied from the palace quarter. Yet the faction fights still ran through the city, along street and alley, in chambers and close places beneath the earth. It would be days before the Sun-on-Earth’s troops flushed the last hold-outs into the light; much that was done this sennight would never be known.

  The two women lolled above; they had an excellent view of the roads about, and their high perch made it unlikely that those who fought or fled would pass by.

  Cat-content, Shkai’ra stretched. “Like nobles at the cage fights,” she said, handing her companion the flask.

  Megan didn’t reply at first, sipping and replacing the cork. “Too many people striking at random. If someone kills me, I don’t want it to be by accident.”

  Shkai’ra bent a casual eye on the scrimmage below. They could see figures dodging among the planters and shrubs, tree trunks and curbstones of a small public garden. Brief glimpses of black cloth, street tunics, the mottled green of camouflage paint on army leather armor. Harsh breathing of humans in desperate effort and fear of death; rutching of hobnails on brick.

  “On the whole,” she said, “I’m glad it worked out this way. Not just for us—there would have been a lot more damage if that war Smyna wanted came off.” She frowned at herself. “Must be getting attached to this place ... oh, well. At least this way it’s mostly people who took up the sword themselves. ‘Take up the sword, take up death: your enemies’, and your own,’ as the Warmasters say.”

  Megan looked at her. She’s surprised me, she thought. Aloud, in a reflective tone: “I think that message is still dangerous—dangerous as a plague carrier—and it is still floating around somewhere in the temple.” Her eyes dipped to the pavement.

  This is not my city, she reminded herself. These are not my kin ... but I’m glad Jaipahl didn’t live to see this. Fehinna is a beautiful place, if only the so-called government would just let it alone and not keep coating it in blood.

  “Where was I?” she asked, trying to match Shkai’ra’s casual tone. “If any of them should start putting the facts together and realize who planted it ...” She peered into the gathering dusk between the buildings.

  “Amazing how long someone can live with the intestines hanging out, isn’t it?” Shkai’ra chuckled and called out softly, “Stop trying to stuff them back in, man.” She shook her head. “Still, they always try, don’t they?”

  “Perhaps Yeva has that answer as well,” Megan said after a moment. “After all, some magics can be released from a distance.”

  “You and that spooker with the funny eyes.” Shkai’ra looked down at Megan. “I have a spooker as a lover, and she wants to talk to the other shaman. Ahi.”

  Below, a priest stole furtively behind the knot of soldiers who stood panting and bleeding over the dead assassins. Her hand scattered a fine mist of powder; seconds later one soldier shook her head and another staggered, his features contorting. With shrieks of insane fury they fell on each other, striking blindly. A shortsword sheered off most of the priest’s face as she turned to run, quite by accident.

  “Not a bad sort, as shamans go,” Shkai’ra concluded grudgingly. She swiveled herself over the rooftree and slid down the opposite side on her stomach, dropping lightly over the edge and landing, with springy resilience, on a small balcony.

  “Coming?” she called softly.

  Almost at that moment, Megan landed lithely on the balcony railing, which put her eyes nearly on a level with her comrade’s.

  “You bellowed?” she said, and was scrambling down the side of the building before the Kommanza could answer. Shkai’ra looked after her, cursed, and paused to thrust her sandals through her belt.

  They were level as Megan leaped across to the lower roof of the next building. Shkai’ra grinned as she began to skirt the central courtyard, stepping quickly and lightly along the eaves just above the terra-cotta rain gutters. The smaller woman sped ahead again, down into the courtyard and along the top of a board fence.

  “If you will take the wide road ...” she called from a story higher on the roof of the next house.

  Their speed grew, and with it a wild and reckless exultation. Shkai’ra leaped, and the rest of the journey was scattered fragments: a cat staring at her disdainfull
y from a ledge she traveled along hand-over-hand. a shred of vine tearing loose from under her hand, and a pot crashing down from its windowsill to shatter on the roadway.

  They outdistanced the Elite Guard squads and the quiet they brought. That moved out in a wave from the palace of the Sun-on-Earth, making little distinction between revelers and rioters, except that the latter were more prone to stand and fight, and therefore the; the celebrants of the festival scattered with a drug-bright uncaring, to resume their play elsewhere. The streets were slick with blood and wine, bodies knotted together in love or death. And at the last, there was only the quiet of the richer sections of the New City, where celebrations were private and guards kept the peace.

  Milampo’s estate fronted on the Street of Sweet-Scented Shade Nourished by the Gold of the Sun. Chestnut trees lined the courtyard walls along it, meeting to mesh their leaves together over the pavement. The long green tunnel rustled softly in the light evening breeze, full of shadows and the smell of leaves. They slid down a wall, fingers and toes gripping, and dropped to the concrete.

  “We’ve been—” Shkai’ra began, then pulled Megan back into the shelter of the doorhouse. A group of assassins flitted down the street, moving from tree to tree; they were in place for an assault on the merchant’s house just as a squad of soldiers rounded the corner.

  “Nasty weather lately,” the Kommanza whispered, as a shortsword lashed by their refuge. The flying point swung a trail of red that hung in a perfect arc before spattering on the whitewash above their heads; in the darkening light the blood was black against the glimmering paleness. Shkai’ra slid the latticed door closed: a risk, but it was unlikely that the preoccupied fighters would notice the slight movement. “It’s raining sharp objects. Best we let these good folk finish their business before we knock.”

  Megan leaned into her companion’s shoulder and sighed. So nice to see a fight and not be involved, she thought. Then: Goddess, I must be more tired than I thought!

  The combat settled; in the last purple dusk of twilight, they could barely see flies settling. Shkai’ra opened the door, and they stepped over a lax arm that lay before it, a throwing star slipping languidly from relaxing fingers into a pool of blood.

  “Ahi-a, we’ve been lucky.” Shkai’ra mused. “Or the hand of a god has been on us, or a spirit, or ...” She nodded toward the merchant’s house, still reluctant to name the occupant. Names gave power. “You like that one, don’t your”

  Megan’s hand idly traced the graffiti scratched into the courtyard wall—“Hail profit”—and a crude picture of the Reflection involved with a mule.

  “Dah ... if matters had been different. I might have been her student ... disciple, perhaps.”

  But we think too differently, a stubborn inward honesty said. Illizbuah and F’talezon are months’ sailing apart, but the Guild of the Wise and the Lake Quarter were farther still.

  “Give me steel anytime,” Shkai’ra grumbled, hammering on the portal with the hilt of her dagger. “Killing people by ... thinking ... is, ah sloppy, somehow.”

  The door-slit at eye level opened, and a frightened child’s face peered through.

  “Boy! Send to your master’s guest, the Wisdom Yeva, and tell her that the message bearers have returned. Quick now! She might be angered if you keep her waiting.”

  There was the sound of a stool overturning and the patter of bare feet on flagstones. Shkai’ra nodded. “Easy enough to seize which name brings the fear-sweat in that household, and it isn’t the master’s.” She snickered.

  “You are quick enough to use the name of power, when it suits you,” Megan said, bringing a rueful shrug from the Kommanza.

  They waited. A bee wandered sleepily in the flowers of a vine that overgrew the walls; garden-scent blew to them, overriding the street odors of dung and death. Megan pushed herself upright and listened, head to one side. “Hola, he returns, and with one even smaller than himself. The merchant must have found grown folk too expensive to keep replacing.”

  The child led them through the half-familiar strangeness of the garden and into the main wing of the house. Guards and servants were absent, perhaps hiding in their quarters, or gone to find richer pickings than a trader’s pay in the chaos of the streets. But the interior was almost painfully bright, with lanterns and a spendthrift’s hoard of wax tapers.

  Megan shuddered at some of the colors and decided that she much preferred the Weary Wayfarer’s more subdued taste. Suddenly, she was sick of the inlay on inlay and over-ornamentation. Simple, clean-cut stone, beautiful for its own sake, was better. Like home, she thought.

  Milampo Terhan’s-kin was hopping from one foot to another—an interesting sight for one of his bulk. His round brown face was flushed and shiny with sweat as he waved small, beringed fists in the air. The color of his face almost matched the thick varicose veins writhing across spindly legs; they in turn set off the bright orange silk ribbons wound upward to his knees, securing his sandals. A purple tunic from Chin hung stiff with argent embroidery, cinched by an acid-green velvet sash. The costume was considerably crumpled, by both figure and unaccustomed exercise.

  “Peace!” he shouted to the mage beside him. “Peace! Trade will be ruined for a year; my kin will be levied twice over for damage repair and municipal service—the reconstruction taxes will be worse than a war, with our competitors left to steal markets! And you—”

  Yeva moved her fingers slightly, and Bors stepped forward. With no trace of effort, he lifted her out of her chair; in her white gown of linen she seemed a child, cradled against his breast. The disquieting white eyes turned on the merchant with the amused tolerance of an adult for a relative’s spoiled and noisy offspring.

  “Peace,” she said. “Your more moral trade-kin went to the flaying tables, arrested for their direct approach to the Reflection, for protesting his cherished Holy War. They sacrificed their lives; what have you sacrificed other than shaaid you don’t care about and money?” She raised a hand, cutting off his bellowed interruption, to indicate the two warriors. “Here are those who carried our message with such skill and daring. Do they not deserve praise and reward?”

  The merchant turned and regarded the two women. His first reaction was a drawing back and a glance about for his guards. What he saw was not reassuring: a tall scarred blond outlander, with the worn hilt of her saber under one palm and a small swift darkling, less obviously foreign but with a cold amusement on her face. They smelled of sweat and smoke, of things the Terhan’s-kin had labored long generations to force out of their lives. He set his shoulders and was somehow more than an overdressed fat man squealing at fate.

  “Magician you may be,” he continued quietly. “But you have no right to make a jest of my life and the lives of my kin and guildsibs. Are we playthings to you?”

  Yeva paused, surprised. Her eyes closed for a moment of thought, then strayed to the two who waited with an alert, wolfish patience. The merchant was a man without justice, but his accusation bit a little.

  “Yet you asked our aid,” she said gently. “You cannot cavil at the manner of it; we warned that it might not be to your liking. These two—”

  “—probably tried to sell my life to the biggest bidder on a scrap of paper!” Milampo said.

  “Certainly, Shkai’ra said. “But they wouldn’t stay bought.” Megan kept a considering silence, her eyes roving the surface of the room.

  Yeva sighed imperceptibly. “There are things here which you cannot know,” she said. “I may not tell, nor could you understand if you heard.” She turned to the two. “And for the paper you left on the temple floor, do not concern yourself. That has been attended to.”

  Shkai’ra nodded stiffly. She did not relish the feeling of an unseen hand behind her striving, but there was little to be done.

  “Out of my house!” Milampo stormed. It was an act of considerable courage, and his hand shook as it pointed to the door. “And take your greasy thugs with you!”

  Yeva signed to Bors
. “I go,” she said. “And warriors of such ... perception and resource will doubtless find their own recompense.”

  As Bors strode from the room, Milampo suddenly realized that his means of leverage was leaving. He waved a languid hand at Megan and Shkai’ra. “I’ll have the porter give you a copper or two for your trouble,” he said, and started after the servant and the magician, calling something about compensation. Shkai’ra looked after the merchant and the mage with interest; Milampo was sweating and trotting to Keep pace with Bors’s long strides, his yapping complaints reminding her forcefully of the dogs he bought for his watch system.

  He seemed to have forgotten their presence completely: natural, or perhaps Yeva’s last gift. Her eyes followed the three out into the corridor; this led naturally to a cool, appraising examination of the interior of the room.

  It was interesting. The floor of this entry hall was glowing, pearly Baihma marble, except for a twelve-meter oval in the center, which was clear heavy glass over a pool of fantastically colored fish. The walls were hung with Pensa tapestries and hex signs, where they were not crowded with shelves full of knickknacks. Milampo’s taste seemed to run to solid gold yoni with emerald centerpieces, along with carved jade jaguars, figures of swans and leaping dolphins done in a blue glaze, crystal goblets tastefully inlaid with his name in tiny rubies, and other items less restrained. A granite plinth bore a silver statue of the merchant himself in one-quarter scale; quite accurate, except that the artist had left out twenty years and about a hundred pounds. A scent of costly incense drifted on the air, overpowering the smoke and stench from the festival and riot-torn city. Cool air gusted up through ducts from the chamber below, where slaves pedaled endlessly to power the fans.