Saber and Shadow

by S. M. Stirling

  She went into the warded room, picking through the minted bits for the silver, opening one of the windows. “Watch.” She carefully aimed and tossed a bit into the midst of a group of revelers who were hitting each other over the head with bladders, elaborate festival costumes suffering under the wobbling blows. A second’s pause as they realized what had hit the pavement; then a frantic scramble to grab the silver. Megan chuckled and tossed another bit into a group about twenty feet from the first. “Even without warding, if you’re careful, no one ever thinks of looking up!”

  The Kommanza laughed. “Godlike beneficence,” she said. “More so—all the gods I’ve met are stingy as starving coyotes.” She picked up a heavy, round Pensa coin, chiseled into fretwork, sighted, and flicked it off the head of a staggering reveler two stories below. The man in the fishmask staggered still more, looked down at his feet, and fell to his knees. He picked up the coin and gripped it between his thighs; puzzling, until they saw him raise both hands in the Fehinnan attitude of prayer.

  Back in her room, Shkai’ra leaned back against the opposite end of the window opening and tucked her feet beneath her. “That dark brown looks good—a little drab for festival clothes, but good.”

  Megan looked down at her tunic and adjusted the sleeve, tugging at the small red embroidery. “Festival? It’s comfortable, and dark. What do I want with anything more?” She was honestly puzzled.

  “Well,” Shkai’ra bent and seized a handful of fabric, “you might try this or this or this—” Laughing, she pitched one tunic after another over Megan’s bead, the folds of thick smooth cloth settling over her like huge orchids.

  “Hey! Ach. Stop!” Megan sat down suddenly, overburdened with cloth, and pulled away the one lodged over her head. “I suppose they are nice. Like this one.” The silks and satins slid to the floor, pulled by their own weight, except for the honey-colored one across Megan’s lap. She ran her hand over it as if it were a cat and said thoughtfully, to the air, “This one reminds me of Shyll ... in winter before the summer sun washes the hair color away....” Her voice trailed off as she stared down at the cloth, her hand mechanically continuing the slow stroking motion.

  Shkai’ra’s grin faded. “Megan,” she began, almost shyly. “There’s ... I’ve been an exile for a long time. I’m twenty-and-six snows; five years since I left the Zekz Kommanz, a long time to wander without a roof.

  “There’s an estate. Not far from here; good pasture, and the pomegranates are sold by name. Back aways, I put a, hmmm, down payment on it. The owner lives elsewhere and owes me a favor. The manor is nice; not large, but, well—room enough for two, and to spare. More later, but ...”

  “The harvest festival will be beginning soon,” Megan said. “And the river will be slowly starting to grow its skin of ice. The north wind will blow from the steppe, carrying winter in its teeth ... I have a revenge. And kin.”

  She looked up at Shkai’ra. “Come with me. Only for a short time. I want to show you my home.” She half reached out a hand to Shkai’ra, who had gone very still.

  The Kommanza started to speak, then leaned her head against the windowsill for a moment. “Mine are a homefast folk,” she said softly. “I have do have friends here ... even though none so close as you, who I’ve known only this tennight. I know this place; the wounds of my homeroots are only now scarring. Must I cut them again?” She looked up, and astonishingly the cold eyes glimmered in the afternoon light. She held out a hand, palm upward. “Stay?” she asked, a plea without hope.

  It was late. Megan raised her head from her knees and stared blindly into the darkness. Across the alley, on a ledge, two gleaming coals glinted; the eyes of a cat. She scrubbed angrily at the comers of her eyes. Water lapped quietly at ships and docks and pilings below the niche she had found on this rooftop. It smelled like home. The quiet call of the shipwatch drifted up to her ears.

  I cannot stay. I cannot stay and I cannot demand that she come with me. This is her place, and I am as strange here as she would be there. I cannot stay. Goddess, weaver of lives ... curse you.

  She was perched where she could just see the four-master that had arrived yesterday. The ship looked sound enough, and the general air on board was quiet and calm: a timber run up the north coast, then across through the islands of the Great Sea. She would be on it when it left.

  I want to scream and smash things ... kill someone, hurt someone as much as I hurt. But I found out a lone time ago that that doesn’t work. She stood up and started back to the Weary Wayfarer, using difficult and dangerous ways across the roofs so she wouldn’t have time to think. The new guard on the roof just nodded as she slipped past him. His silence had been bought with one of Milampo’s gemstones.

  She walked along the quiet corridors, her boots noiseless on the rugs, feeling sleep soaking the building. Every other lamp was lit, reflecting warmly on the wood-mosaic walls.

  She curled into the warm curve of Shkai’ra’s back a short time later, careful not to wake her. As she drifted to sleep, her thought was sorrow for leaving, along with joy at going home—strange and bittersweet. A tear slid down one temple and was lost in her hair.

  Chapter XXIX

  The wineshop was half sunk into rubble. Not ground—there was little in the harbor district of the Old City—this was the ruins of past cycles. It was dark inside, cool, musty and heady with the smell from the vats lining the back wall. Shkai’ra ducked her head beneath the low beams, staggered slightly, swayed back erect.

  “Wine,” she said to the proprietor. “Wine, strong an’ cold.” Her voice was slurred, and the staccato gutturals of Kommanzanu heavy in it.

  The owner peered at the big foreigner. Most customers here ordered wholesale and knew their vintages. This one? “One-twenty-fifth silver for a liter crock,” he said. That was outrageous, but the disturbances had raised prices generally.

  Bloodshot grey eyes flickered over him; he could sense that they used him only as a resting point, focused on some inward thing. A hand tossed a minted bit on the table. A gold bit. A whole gold bit. Enough for a tun of Aahngnaak that would need four horses to pull it. The shopkeeper felt a sudden chill; nobody treated money they had earned that casually, and this was no aristocrat. He whispered sharply to a kinchild.

  “A stone jug: the Maanticell, quickly.” That was a frontier vintage, respectable but not distinguished, the sort of wine a magnate would serve at a banquet.

  Minutes stretched, and he watched the impassive hawk face. She had plainly already seen the bottom of the goblet more than once, but there was little of the slackness of wine; merely a cold grimmess that settled like a mantle around her shoulders. The sleeves of her fine blue-black silk tunic fell back, and he looked at the thin white scars on forearms that rippled as her fingers moved on the worn bone hilt of a curved sword.

  There was a clatter from the street door, and a ragged urchin slipped through the screen of wooden beads at the foot of the stairs, the door ward panting behind him.

  “Pardon, Kin-elder, he—” She swiped at the boy with her staff. “Come here, little limb of darkness!”

  The child dropped flat under the swing, rolled across the flagstones, under a barrel raised on timber slats, and tugged at the red-haired foreigner’s tunic hem, grubby fingers closing on the round gold-thread mandrels that hemmed it. The shopkeeper closed his eyes and winced; he was a kindly man and would not wish serious harm even to a shaaid cub doubtless come to see what he could pilfer. A clip across the ear would have been enough.

  Astonishingly, there was no blow or cry of pain. He peered, and saw the bright head bent as the woman in the blue tunic went down on one knee. The boy grinned and shifted from foot to foot, reveling in his importance.

  “... more trouble than an ape, Dahvo,” she said.

  “No,” the boy whispered, in a clear carrying tone. “Said you’d want to know: ’t old blind gimp bowl-shaker, tha know? Big one now. He ...”

  The woman grabbed him sharply by the forelock; the words drop
ped to a murmur. When she straightened again, her face had changed. She smiled, and the shopkeeper recoiled as she vaulted the vat with a smooth raking stride, landing easily. The wine arrived; she swept it up, weighed the stoneware jug thoughtfully, then tucked it under her left arm. “No use wasting good liquor,” she muttered thoughtfully. “Or letting it get in the way.” Her eyes rested appraisingly on the stairs.

  The boy scurried up and tugged at her again, at the tooled leather of her weapons belt this time. She started from her tactician’s reverie and grabbed him by the scruff of his neck.

  “What, pest?” she asked, with what was almost a chuckle in her voice.

  “Ol’ bowl-shaker, he say tha’d give me a bit,” he said hopefully, wide-eyed, with a look of total trust. The woman’s eyes flicked back to the granite risers of the staircase, each worn almost to a U by sandaled feet.

  “And you came without being paid in advance?” she asked. “No, here’s your bit.” She fished blindly in her pouch and pressed the result into his small, hot palm. He stared down at it and for once had no words.

  She took the scabbard of her saber in her left hand, holding it horizontal to the ground for a fast draw-and-strike. “Stay here,” she said. “Not much chance they’re in place, but it could start raining hurt,” she said, and was gone, taking the steps in a bounding run that left only a faint tap-tap of sandal leather on stone behind it. There was a blare of light and noise from the street as the door swung open, and a smell of dust; then the cool, fruity darkness of the cellar-store returned.

  “Sun in Her Glory!” the owner of the store muttered. His gaze fell to the boy, who started, tucked the gleaming sliver of metal in a loincloth that looked to have started its career as a dishrag, and began to edge toward the exit.

  “You can keep your reward, child of the streets,” the shopkeeper said. The slum boy looked unconvinced, but there was nobody between him and escape. “It must have been mighty good fortune you brought.”

  Dahvo scratched his head, examined the result, and cracked it between thumbnail and forefinger. “Dunno,” he said, puzzled. “The message—‘Fear the revenge of the defeated, and take ship for your life.’ Na much good about that, izzit?”

  “Twenty?” The head supply clerk arched his brows. “Twenty breakfast and afternoon trays returned unused from second-five-west?” He pursed thin lips and rolled the cork-covered surface of his pen between ink-stained fingers.

  Glaaghi scowled. The tiny attic office crowded around her, smelling of paper and dust, lit by a single skylight bright with morning through its coating of grime. The occupant fitted easily into the room; barely thirty, she knew, but looking older. He was pale, a legacy of his Nefaai father; thin brown hair receded from his forehead over pinched features.

  “Do you realize,” he continued, “just what the cost of—” He paused to examine a list. “The cost of ten times ten double eggs, corncakes, syrup, tea, coffee, lemonade ...”

  “Which you use for blood—I can see it boiling in your veins,” she sneered heavily. “I tell you—” She hesitated. “I tell you there’s something strange about second-five-west. I sent Ehaago there; he came back with the tray. A day in the sweatbox, and he ‘forgot’ again.”

  The clerk sniffed and steepled his fingers. “The fact remains, with the disturbances, prices have risen. The Weary Wayfarer’s Hope of Comfort and Delight is not a charitable organization, and we must all pull together to control costs. Prices have risen steeply. Now, a deduction from your very generous stipend—awk!”

  Glaaghi closed a hand on his shoulder and another on his elbow, big work-roughened hands sinking into the flesh of a small man who had spent many years squatting behind his table. That overturned, and she led him to the door on tiptoe.

  “So, I’ll show you,” she said.

  “But, but—put me down, woman!” His attempt to free himself was futile.

  “It’s not polite to talk back to your mother,” she said and thumped him down on the second floor.

  He looked about the corridor. “Why deliver five trays to a four-room floor?”

  “You can say that to—” They both started. The clerk passed a hand over the back of his neck in unconscious reflex at a feeling of cold wind touching his skin. The world blurred and shifted, as a pressure they had not felt lifted from their perceptions.

  The cook looked down at the clerk. “Didn’t you just say, four rooms?”

  He nodded again. “Of course, I—” He stopped, with a mental sensation of running into a concrete wall. “But ... there are five rooms here! There are five on all the floors. I ... forgot. And I remember forgetting.”

  They both drew the circle of the Sun on their breasts. For a long minute they stood and stared at each other, implications running through their minds like rabbits before the hounds.

  “There’s always a certain amount of wastage,” the clerk said thoughtfully.

  Glaaghi nodded. “Not waste! The servants get it, and the hogs what they won’t eat!” She nodded again, with enthusiasm.

  He tapped at his chin. “In any case, the room fee covered it.”

  Glaaghi waited through a musing silence.

  “Well, we need to order the new rugs and arrange protection from the new Dark chiefs.”

  “And no mystery here, eh?”

  “Mystery?” the clerk said, arching his brows once more. “Of course not. And now, Mother, I think we both have business to attend to.” He minced decisively down the corridor.

  Chapter XXX

  Megan tilted her head back against the mast and looked up, up to the dizzying height where the sails were being released from the port bindings; quick-release knots were tied at the reef points of the smaller sails, and the larger ones loose-hauled. The rigging swarmed with crewfolk, seemingly as tiny as the gulls wheeling raucous above. The breeze was offshore, running with the beginning of an ebb tide, but still the air bore a hint of open sea.

  She looked down at her hands, lying on her crossed legs, warm in the sunlight. Why so cold and empty? she thought. I’m going home to fix Habiku. Her goods were stowed, with a minor ward to make sure that no straying hands discovered reason for them to disappear. The ship was making ready to cast off on the shipmaster’s word, and the pilot stood by the wheel.

  So why the tight feeling under the breastbone? It was absurd; even Shkai’ra would laugh. Shkai’ra. You did say goodbye, she reminded herself. You did leave the kin-gift knife with her, so there’s still a link. It isn’t as if she died; life will continue.... So why do you feel so alone? she asked herself sardonically.

  There was the usual last-minute confusion at the boarding plank; a kinfast of fur traders was late, and their folks were dashing up with bundles in their arms. The sailors avoided them with practiced nimbleness, until a brace hauling on a line chanty-walked backward into a servant scooping spilled beads off the deck; there was a curse from the petty officer, and the sound of a rope’s end encouraging the landsman to mind his step. The shipmaster shouted over the side as the row tug bobbed alongside, looking woodchip-small beside the great windjammer.

  Tide at full flood soon, Megan thought. We’ll be underway in twenty minutes, with the favoring wind, and more easily than the mankiller lanteen rigs common at home.

  The Zak surged to her feet and strode to the rail, as if to leave hollowness behind. Leaning on the teak, she looked out over the docks. Alien. All strange, even the smells, too warm and spicy beside the cold riverports of her memory. She wanted to be home; not going home, but being there. She drove one nail into the hard wood and watched the teak splinter up around it, oblivious to the clatter of low-geared winches behind her raising a spar.

  I told her I’d miss her. It’s not even a couple of hours yet. Damn. Going nowhere in circles if I don’t stop.

  She forced herself to concentrate on the ship; there should be useful hints, here. Let’s see. Square rig above, fore-and-aft below, staysails ... A young crew-woman skipped nimbly along a spar, far above.


  Wouldn’t Shkai’ra have just cringed at being that high, she thought with the beginning of a smile. And done it anyway—damn! Wistfully: But I wish I could have shown her a Ri.

  * * *

  The horse shied. Bastard kinless cowturd, Shkai’ra thought savagely. There had been no time to saddle, barely enough to throw the frame for the heavy saddlebags over the restive animal.

  Just the sort of handless cow that a merchant would buy, she thought as she edged it, snorting and rolling its eyes, through the gate and into the street. All looks and nerves, no stamina or sense. This was the sort of beast that shied at a blowing leaf or a shadow, Zailo Unseen alone knew what—

  The horse did a standing jump, all four of its slim legs shooting out in an equine starfish. It landed, bucked hugely, and bolted. Shkai’ra’s legs clamped home effortlessly; she had ridden from the age of three, and nothing short of a warhammer could throw her, even bareback. The saddlebags pounded against the horse’s shoulders: from one came an enraged ERR—EHROHWAW—ERRRR as Ten-Knife had the air squeezed out of his lungs in midhowl. Chickens, children, and pedestrians bolted from her path; she retained enough control to swerve around a cart laden with early-season watermelons and baskets of peaches. That prompted a thought; the curved sword slipped into her hand, rose and fell with a solid tchik of steel into pine as she slashed the ropes holding the rear gate in place. Behind her there was a roar of falling fruit, the wet sounds of melons striking stone, a wail of peasant anguish; twelve span of oxen tossed their heads and lowed plaintively as she dashed by. Then she was around the corner and onto Delight Street; it would not be wise to gallop here, with the Watch so thick. She reined in and risked a glance behind.

  There was no obvious pursuit; the remnants of fallen factions would not dare to operate in the open, not yet, not while there was a chance of catching her in the streets. She used the point of her saber to twitch a blowgun dart out of her mount’s haunch, then reined it in sharply with one hand. Behind her, down the Laneway of Impeccable Respectability, came the joyous screaming of the street children as they swarmed over smashed melons. The Kommanza looked up through heat-haze to the morning sun; she had a little time, and there would be few faster than a rider to follow. The main gates would be watched, of course, but there were too many ships and too much harbor, if she did not linger to haggle for passage.