by Jo Clayton
She began working her way west again, drifting in and out of taverns as the afternoon latened, ignoring shouted offers from traders, shipmasters, sailors, and others who mistook her purpose, ignoring caustic comments from several tavernkeepers who objected to her presence or the presence of Yaril in their taprooms. As shadows crept across the streets and out onto the river, she came to a quiet rather shabby structure near the western wall. Her feet were starting to give out, her knees were tired of bending and she was about ready to quit. How easy once she was out of sight and touch for Sam mang to change his mind, call himself a fool, head for pleasanter waters.
Without much hope she pushed through the door, stood looking around, squinting against the gloom, trying to make out the faces of the dark forms seated at tables about the room. The man behind the bar came round it and crossed the room, a little rotund man without much force to him.
“We don’t want children in here. You should be ashamed of yourself, woman, using a baby like that in the business. Go on, get out of here, go on, go go go.” He waved pudgy hands at her like a farmwife shooing chickens out of the kitchengarden.
She glared down at him, her patience pushed beyond its limit. “You calling me a whore, little man?”
He winced. “No need for hard words, what do I care what you do? Just don’t do it here.”
“What I’m going to do here is sit myself down and have a bowl of wine and my young friend is going to do likewise.” She pushed past him and went to one of the stools at the bar, swung up on it and sat massaging her knees. Yaril climbed up beside her, sat with her small chin propped on her palms, her elbows braced against the aged dark wood.
A chuckle came from one of the darker corners. Brann’s stomach turned over and she felt breathless as she recognized the voice. Sammang came into the light, stopped beside her. “I greet you, witch. So you made it.”
The little man started, opened his eyes wide, set a winebowl in front of her, one in front of Yaril, shoved the jug at her and backed hastily away without waiting for payment. She slanted a glance at Sammang, filled the bowls and sipped at the wine, sighing with pleasure as the warmth spread though her. “So I did.”
He reached round her, caught the jug by its neck, went back to the table. Yaril giggled. Brann scowled at her. “Finish that and go stand guard, if you don’t mind.”
Yaril nodded, gulped down the rest of the wine. Ignoring the goggling eyes of the barman, she wriggled off the stool and trotted out.
Brann squared her shoulders, slipped off the stool and marched with her bowl to the table in the corner where Sammang sat waiting for her. She set the bowl down with a loud click, pulled out a chair, dropped into it and scraped it close enough to the table so she could lean on crossed arms and look past him or at him as she chose. “Who’s with you?”
“All of ‘em; said they’d swim the whole damn river if I tried leaving them behind.” He filled the bowl, pushed it toward her. “Relax, Bramble, I’m not going to jump your bones out here.”
“Hunk! What about the Girl?” She sipped at the wine, her elbows braced on the wood to keep her hands from shaking, avoiding his eyes except for quick glances.
“I circled round by Perando, picked up a cousin of mine and his crew. He’s got her tucked away up the coast a bit. When did you get in?”
“Yesterday. You?”
“A week ago; been doing some trading, lucked into a few things that should pay expenses. Yesterday, mmm. Haven’t located your folk yet?”
“The children are going out again tonight. Tell Jimm to knock his totoom for me and stir up some luck; sooner this is done, the easier I’ll be.” She rubbed at the nape of her neck, frowned at the tabletop. There was a stirring in her that had nothing to do with the way Sammang made her feel, a sense of tidal forces moving that frightened her for herself, for her kin, for Sammang and the troupe, for everyone and everything she valued. She reached for the bowl, gulped more of the wine down and forced herself to ignore that fear.
“We’re ready to go when you are.”
She glanced at him, looked away. “I could know more tomorrow. Maybe we could meet here to make plans?” She had to fight to keep her voice steady. “If you’re staying here?”
He reached out, closed his hand around hers. “Finish your wine and come upstairs.”
“You sure?”
“I’ve decided face value’s good value. I missed you.”
“I… I hoped…” She emptied the bowl and stood, swaying as the rush of the wine made her dizzy. Sammang reached out to steady her. His touch was fire, more disrupting than the wine. The first time they’d come together in the cabin of his ship, it’d been easy and natural as breathing, this was more deliberate, colder… no not cold, far from cold… but planned, not a sweet happening, but a deliberate step taken in full understanding of what she was doing. She was nervous and uncertain, afraid she couldn’t please him this time. “The barman?” Her voice was a silly squeak; she flushed with embarrassment.
“None of his business, Bramble-without-thorns.” Sammang touched her cheek. “Relax, little witch, we’ve plenty of time.”
FED UP TO FULL strength from the rats and snakes of the Quarter (Brann didn’t want angry ghosts shouting her presence to the night winds and maybe Temueng-ears), Yaril and Jaril flew out her window and swept on wide owl wings across the lake to the great pile resting on the roots of fire-hearted Cynamacamal. Brann hitched a hip on the windowsill and watched them vanish among the cloud shreds, staying where she was a while longer, enjoying the damp cool wind blowing up from the river. A long day. It was full dark before she could wrench herself from Sammang’s side, getting back to the inn just in time to celebrate Taguiloa’s success. Then she had to go out again on the feeding hunt. Now she sat in the window, her thin silk robe open to the nudge of the soft wind, remembering the feel of the solid powerful body next to hers, the smell of him, the hard smoothness of his skin, the spring of his hair. She watched the Wounded Moon rise over the Wall, up thin and late, dawn only a few hours away, feeling within herself a deep-down purring that was not a part of her, a little angry at it, unhappy that it was there, hoping Sammang wasn’t aware that he’d pleasured Slya perhaps as much as he’d pleasured her. She stretched and yawned, slid off the windowsill, padded across to the bed, dropping the robe to the floor as she moved, sinking into the flock mattress, sinking deep deep into a dreamless sleep.
Yaril and Jaril circled over the main pile of the palace, wheeled away as something wary and malevolent down there smelled them out and reached for them, long invisible fingers combing the air. They spiraled higher and stopped thinking, only-owls for a while, until they felt the fingers coil back down, felt the palace folding in on itself like a blood lily come the dawn. They drifted a while longer through the clouds, then went back to their swoops over the grounds, locating the guard barracks, the crowded warrens where the servants lived, the far more spacious and luxurious quarters of the Imperial dapples and the carefully tended fields where those monsters ran, the workshops and greenhouses, the foundry, the glass-making furnaces, the kitchen gardens, working their way out and out until they came to a new structure tucked into the folds of the mountain, an isolated compound still stinking of green cement and raw lumber. High walls, a guard tower overlooking a heavy barred gate. Torches burning low to light the space about the gate, lamps inside the tower, guards drowsing there but ready enough to come awake at a sound. The owls sailed across the wall and fluttered down onto a rooftree, then melted into light shimmers and slipped inside through the rooftiles.
Workshops. Spacious. Well-equipped, though there were no steel tools about. Locked up or carried away for the night, or for times when the tool users were sufficiently tamed that the tools wouldn’t be a danger to them or the guards. The light smears zipped through the shops and passed into the living quarters. Room after empty room, then a sleeper, another, then more empty rooms. In all that vast place there were only twelve, of the twoscore gone to the Fair ther
e was only a bare dozen left. Despite what the pimush had said-perhaps had said to escape a drawn-out dying-the Temueng soldiers had not been tender with the Arth Slya slaves. The changechildren wondered briefly if the Emperor still expected his double-hundred slaves from the Valley, wondered if the sribush in charge of the invasion forces had gotten tired of waiting and sent Noses prowling to find out what happened to the pimush and his captives.
When they’d probed the whole of the compound and made sure there were no others tucked away into the odd corner, they drifted back through the occupied rooms, naming the sleepers so they could tell Brann just who was there, knowing each because they knew what Brann knew.
Callim. Brann’s father. He’d been beaten, probably because he declined to work. He was recovering, the beating must have been several days before, stretched out on the room’s single bed, snoring, twitching as flies walked his back, the weals there sticky with salve. Cathar, Brann’s oldest brother; slept curled up on a pallet in one corner, Duran her younger brother sat dozing in a chair beside the bed, waking now and then to fan the flies away.
In the next room over a man sat, dull-eyed, slack-faced, fingers plucking steadily at nothing, Uncle Idadro the etcher and inlayer, a finicky precise little man, never too adept at handling outsiders; his wife Glynis had gone to the Fair most years befere but she died suddenly of a weakness in the heart and left him drifting, his eldest son Trithin, his only anchor against the world, he was wholly unable to cope with. This year he’d taken that son to the Grannsha Fair, the boy blessed with his mother’s bubbling good humor and ease with people. Little friend of all the world they called him when he was a baskling then a trotling. No sign of Trithin anywhere within the compound; perhaps he was alive elsewhere, but neither of the changechildren believed it, more likely that the Wounded Moon, rose whole than that they’d find Trithin walking earthface again.
This is the roll of the living they call out to Brann later: Callim, Cathar, Duran, Trayan, Garrag, Reanna, Theras, Camm, Finn, Farra, Farm and Idadro. Eight men, four women.
This is the roll of the dead: Trithin, Sintra, Warra, Wayim, Lotta, Doronynn, Imath, Lethra, lannos and Rossha.
At the end of this final sweep the two light smears hovered in the middle of an empty room and sang to each other the questions that had occurred to them. What was that thing in the palace, that thing with the groping fingers? How powerful was it that it not only caused the Emperor to commit genocide, but made Slya herself act deviously, wrenching them from their home space and sending them to Brann to change her so she could be a vessel for Slya, bringing Slya here disguised to fight her attackers? They circled each other and sang their uncertainty. Should they tell Brann what they thought about it? She knew some of it already, knew Slya slept within her and simultaneously slept within Tincreal, knew Slya drove her as she drove the stone of Tincreal, with utter disregard for her and those she cared for. The changechildren contemplated that disregard with a chill in their firebodies that paled the light and almost sent them into their hibernating crystals, the form their people took when all energy was drained from them and no more would be available for some considerable time, the dormant form that was not death but a state for which their folk had little fondness and exercised their ingenuity to avoid unless the alternative was the dispersal of real death, like burnt-out stars choked to ash and nothing. The children hovered and shivered and were more afraid than they’d been since they woke on the slopes of Tincreal and found themselves starving in sunlight. “She might send us back when she’s finished with us,” Yaril sang.
“No…” It was a long long sigh of a sound, filled with a not-quite despair; after all there was much to be said for this world and for the companionship they shared with Brann.
“We could talk to her,” Yaril sang, “when this is over. Brann too. If Slya returns us, she’ll have to change Brann back.”
“Brann,” Jaril sang, “is a brown leaf falling, not ignored but not restored. Why should Slya bother, after she gets the Arth Slyans free again and the vengeance she wanted for the slaughter? I think the great are the same in all realities, they use and discard, use and discard, this one and that, for what they consider the greater good. Their good. Poor Brann.”
“Poor us.”
“That too.”
Two small light smears, very young for their kind with much of the long slow learning of that kind yet ahead of them, swooped anger-driven through the roof tiles, melted into twin owls and went powering back to Brann, uncertain what they should or would say to her, hoping with every atom of their impossible bodies that she slept and dreamed of the bite of pleasure she’d worried from the chaos of her life. They didn’t know what to do, how the Slyans could be rescued without harming folk who were their friends, what to say to Brann if she asked their advice.
They glided through the open window, blurred into their childforms and tiptoed to the bed. Brann was deep asleep, her eyes moving under the lids, a small smile twitching her lips. Yaril looked at Jaril; he nodded and the two of them retreated into a corner and sank into the catalepsy that took the place of sleep.
JASSI STUCK HER head in the door, knocked against the wall.
Taguiloa looked up from the glitter sphere he was polishing.
“Someone to see you.” She winked at him. “Tightass highnose creep with Maratullik’s brand on him. Imperial Hand, eh man. You musta connect some good coming up.
Taguiloa set the sphere carefully into its velvet niche, got to his feet and began pacing about the room. This was an astonishingly early response to his permit; he’d expected several days of rest before the Temuengs took note of his presence, if they ever did. He stopped at the window, stared at the court without seeing any of it. I’m not ready… He snapped thumb against finger, swung round. “That I did. Uh-huh.” He smiled at Jassi. “Tell your creep friend I’m busy but if he wants to wait, I’ll be down in a little while. If he decides he wants to hang around, offer him a bowl of your best wine so he won’t be too-too annoyed.”
“You could land up to your neck, Taga.” She eyed him uncertainly, but with more respect than before. “You that sure of yourself?”
“Jassi, lady of my heart and elsewhere, I’m not, no I’m not, but if you scratch every time a Temueng itches, you’ll wear your fingers down to nubs. Now go and do what I said.” He wrinkled his nose. “If he walks, come tell me.” She shrugged and left.
Taguiloa closed his hands over the window sill, squeezed his eyes shut, breathed deeply. This was make or break. He knew as well as Jassi that he was taking a big chance. If the slave walked out chances were he or another like him would not be back. Chance. He touched his left shoulder. Tungjii, up to you, keep your eye on us.
He pushed away from the window, hunted out the travel papers and the metal credeens he was holding for all but Brann. He stood looking at them a moment, then tossed them on the bed, kicked off his sandals, stripped. Moving quickly about the room, he washed, brushed his long black hair, smoothed it down, tied it at the nape of his neck with a thin black silk ribbon, making a small neat bow over the knot. He dressed quickly in the dark cotton tunic and trousers, the low topped black boots that he thought of as his humble suit. When he was finished, he inspected himself carefully, brushed a hair off his sleeve, smoothed the front of the tunic. Neat but not gaudy. Smiling, he collected the papers and creedens, left his room and went down the hall to Harra’s.
She let him in, went back to the skirt she was embroidering, using this bit of handiwork to calm her nerves and pass the time. He looked around. Except for them the room was empty. “Seen Brann?”
“She went out with the changekids this morning early. Excited about something.” Harra narrowed her eyes. “That’s your go-see-the-massa outfit.”
“The Imperial Hand sent a slave to fetch me.” His eye twitched, he put his hands behind him, not as calm as he wanted to appear. “I’m letting him stew awhile.”
“Don’t let it go too long. But you don’t need me telling
you that. Think it could maybe be about Brann?”
“I don’t know. He asked for me, Jassi says.”
“Ah. Then it’s either very good news and we’re on our way to the Court or it’s very bad news and the Hand’s going to be asking you questions you don’t want to answer.” She paused a moment. “Last doesn’t seem likely. If he was going to be asking nasty questions, he’d send an empush and his squad to fetch you, not some slave.”
“Right. Here. You keep these.” He gave her the troupe’s papers and the credeens after separating out his own. “In case.” A wry smile, a flip of his hand. “In case the Hand is sneakier or crazier than we know. Get Negomas and Linjijan back to Silili.”
“And Brann?”
“If I donTeome back, be better if you keep as far from her as you can. You know why she’s here.” He moved his thumb over his own credeen, slipped it into his sleeve. “Well, I’ve killed enough time. I’d better get downstairs.”
“Keep your cool, dancer.”
“I’ll try, mage-daughter, I shall try.”
TAGUILOA FOLLOWED the silent slave through the West
Gate onto the broad marble-paved avenue fronting the lake, thinking about the year he and Gerontai had come here. They’d got to the lower levels of the Temuengs, the merchants and magistrates and minor functionaries, but the powerful had ignored them and they made their way back to Silili without getting near the Emperor’s halls. Meslar Maratullik was the Emperor’s Left Hand, running the Censors and the Noses, head of security about the Emperor’s person. Hope and fear, hope and fear, alternating like right foot, left foot creaking on the gritty marble. Following the silent sneering slave, he walked along that lakeside boulevard, past walls on one side, high smooth white walls with few breaks in them, only the massive gates and the narrow alleys between the meslaks; The lakeside was planted with low shrubs and occasional trees, stubby piers jutted into the lake, with pleasure boats, sail and paddle, tied to them. The lake itself was quiet and dull, the water reflecting the gray of the clouds gathering thickly overhead. No rain, just the grayed-down light of the afternoon and a steamy heat that made walking a punishment even in these white stone ways as clean and shining and lifeless as the shells on an ancient beach. Now and then bands of young male Temuengs came racing down that broad avenue on their high-bred warhorses, not caring who they trampled, whooping and yelling, sometimes even chasing down unhappy slaves, leaving them in crumpled heaps bleeding their plebian blood into the noble stone. Taguiloa’s escort had a staff with Maratullik’s sign:on a placard prominently displayed so they escaped the attention of the riders.
