Liavek 8

by Will Shetterly

  Collerne was last. The captain-general turned in the entry port, prepared to lower himself to the boat, curled his fingers around the safety line. His bandaged hand slipped uselessly, and Collerne gave a gasp of pain as he began to topple backward into the boat.

  Derec leaned out and took the captain-general's arm, steadying him. Collerne looked at him with dark, fathomless eyes.

  "I acted to preserve the ship, Captain-General," Derec said. "There was no other way. Birdwing was your dream, and it is alive, thanks to me."

  Collerne's face hardened. He turned away, and with Derec's assistance lowered himself into the boat.

  ''Cast off," said Derec. He stepped up to the poop and watched the fragment of darkness as it fell astern, as it vanished among the gentle swells of the Sea of Luck.

  He'd said what he'd had to, Derec thought. If Collerne refused to understand, that was naught to do with Derec.

  "What now, Captain?" Tevvik's voice. Derec turned to the wizard.

  "Sleep," he said. ''I'll deal with Marcoyn in the morning."

  •

  Derec rose at dawn. He wound his two pistols and put them in his belt, then reached for his sword. He stepped on deck, scanned the horizon, found it empty save for Torn II riding two miles off the starboard quarter. He brought Birdwing alongside, shouted at the other ship to heave to, then backed Birdwing's main topsail and brought her to rest a hundred yards from the other ship. He armed a party of Birdwing's sailors and had them ready at the entry port. Derec told Torn's lookout to give Mr. Marcoyn his compliments and ask him to come aboard Birdwing.

  Out of the comer of his eye, Derec saw Tevvik mounting the poop ladder. The Tichenese seemed unusually subdued; his expression was hooded, his grin absent entirely.

  Marcoyn arrived with a party of half a dozen marines, all dressed grandly in plundered clothing and armor. The big man looked savage; he was probably hung over. A brace of pistols had been shoved into his bright embroidered sash.

  Derec could feel tension knotting his muscles. He tried to keep his voice light. "I need you to resume your duties aboard Birdwing, Mr. Marcoyn," Derec told him. ''I'm sending Sandor to take charge of the prize."

  There was a pause while Marcoyn absorbed this. He gave an incredulous laugh. "Th' piss you will," he said. "The prize is mine!"

  Derec's nerves shrieked. Ignoring the sharp scent of liquor on Marcoyn's breath, he stepped closer to the big man. His voice cracked like a whip. "By whose authority? I'm captain here."

  Marcoyn stood his ground. His strange pale eyes were focused a thousand yards away. "The prize is mine!" he barked. ''I'm in charge of the sojers here!"

  Hot anger roared from Derec's mouth like fire from a cannon. "And I am in charge of you!" he shouted. He thrust his face within inches of Marcoyn's. "Birdwing is mine! The prize is mine! And you and your sojers are mine to command! D'you dispute that, Marcoyn?"

  Do it, Marcoyn, he thought. Defy me and I'll pistol your brains out the back of your head.

  Marcoyn seemed dazed. He glanced over the poop, his hands flexing near his weapons. Derec felt triumph racing through his veins. If Marcoyn made a move he was dead. Derec had never been more certain of anything in his life.

  Marcoyn hesitated. He took a step back.

  "Whatever you say, Captain," he said.

  Readiness still poised in Derec. Marcoyn was not safe yet, not by any means. "You are dismissed, Marcoyn," Derec said. "I'd advise you to get some sleep."

  "Aye aye, sir." The words were mumbled. Marcoyn raised his helmet in a sketchy salute, then turned away and was lost.

  Tension poured from Derec like an ebbing tide. He watched the burly marine descend the poop ladder, then head for his cabin. He looked at Marcoyn's marines.

  "Return your firelocks to the arms locker," he said. "Then report to Randem's repair party."

  "Sir."

  Derec sent Sandor and some of the armed sailors to the Torn, then looked up at the sails. "Hands to the main braces," he said. "Set the main tops'l. Steer nor'nor'west."

  Men tailed onto the braces, fighting the wind as they heaved the big mainyards around. Canvas boomed as it filled, as Birdwing paid off and began to come around, a bone growing in its teeth.

  Relief sang in Derec's mind. He had managed it somehow, managed not to have to become Marcoyn in order to defeat him.

  "Well done, sir." Tevvik's voice came quietly in Derec's ear. "But you should have let me handle him. Marcoyn's still a danger."

  "To no one but himself." Flatly.

  "I disagree, Captain. What will happen when he discovers you've set Collerne and the others free?"

  "Nothing will happen. He will drink and mutter and that will be the end of it."

  "I pray you are right, Captain."

  Derec looked at him. "I won't have a man killed because he might be a problem later. That was Lord Fors's way, and Marcoyn's way, and I'll have none of it."

  Tevvik shook his head and offered no answer. Derec glanced aloft to check the set of the sails.

  Suddenly he felt his heart ease. He was free.

  No more mutinies, he thought.

  Birdwing heeled to a gust, then rose and settled into its path, forging ahead through a bright tropical dawn.

  "Divination Day: Invocation" by John M. Ford

  So many minutes make one day as days fill out four years

  And as such correspondences beguile the human mind

  One day is cast (that never on the calendar appears)

  The image of the fifteen hundred following in fine

  The empty little hours are when the sweetest dreams occur

  The love that sweats for your desires, the power desire employs

  Until the senseless pleasures pop as though they never were

  And hands crush pillows clutching at what light of day destroys

  The morning shines with prospects, brooks no limit to your powers

  And soon you will be working—but not prematurely soon

  The waiting work soon swells to jam the ever-dwindling

  hours

  Until procrastination meets the headsman's stroke of noon

  The afternoon dissolves into a swirl of things undone

  You beg the rushing minutes what they cannot stop to give

  You cannot reef the sails of time nor anchor-chain the sun

  You cannot live two lives or catch your teardrops in a sieve

  The moon and stars illuminate the counsels of the night

  A cool black velvet respite from the rages of the sun

  Consider what you've done this far, consider what you might

  Consider that the night will end and all things shall be done

  A handful of the desert trickles timewise through a glass

  And empty fingers stroke the sand to feel out what comes next

  The juggler's trick with moments is to catch them as they pass

  And live the years as more than just a gloss upon the text

  "As Bright as New Coppers" by Bradley Denton

  When two coins are minted

  from wild luck in Rain,

  the forces shall rage

  and cause great ones pain.

  —The Book of the Twin Forces

  DRAINED AND SWEATING, Mardis slipped her silver bracelet over her wrist and stumbled out of the bedroom. Investiture hadn't been as terrifying as the year before, but it had been even more tiring because of the unusually hot weather. She felt as though she had spent the morning inside a brick oven.

  Thardik, the wizard who had trained her, was still sitting in his own chalked circle on the floor of the front room. "It's done," Mardis told him. "My luck's invested for another year." She held up her hands and murmured a phrase, sending miniature bolts of blue lightning crackling from her fingertips for a few seconds. It was a trick that she'd been practicing every evening during the few minutes that her birth-moment magic was available, but it had never been so impressive as this. "And it works, too. Mere words cannot express my apath
y."

  Thardik, grunting in discomfort, uncrossed his legs. "Gods, that feels good. My legs have been cramped for the past hour. I was afraid I couldn't keep the magic-suppression spell in f-force if I stretched."

  Mardis glanced at the sandglass on the mantelpiece. "At least you didn't have to restrain my wild luck from its mischief as long as you did last year. We've only been at it two hours. That must be some kind of record."

  Thardik nodded. "No doubt. Nevertheless, I suggest you spend your remaining birth hours resting from the ritual." He paused. "You are a magician of a rare sort. Mardis. It won't take you long to earn the levars you need to erase the b-bakery's debt." He tried to stand and fell back with a thump.

  Mardis grasped his wrists and managed to pull him to his feet. "I only wish there were some other way," she said. "I really don't want to be a wizard."

  Thardik flexed his knees, and they popped. "We do what we must in this world," he said. "I wished to be a wizard as powerful as you with your wild luck will be, but I am not—so I count myself lucky that I can levitate s-stones. My declining years, at least, will not be spent in poverty, and when I am gone, you can take your twins to the railroad's Central Station and tell them that your teacher Thardik helped to b-build it."

  "Speaking of poverty," Mardis said, wiping sweat from her face with her blouse sleeve, "you needn't worry about the cost of the gold dust you had to buy for the suppression spell. I'll go with you to the Station tomorrow to see whether they'll hire me as well, and you can have my first month's wages."

  Thardik scratched his head between two of its various tufts of white hair. "My child, if you, with your skills, settle for railroad wages, you are a fool. Besides, the gold I sprinkled around the house is a birthday gift."

  Mardis embraced him. "Thanks, but I'm going to pay for it anyway," she said. "Still, I suppose I should try to find more wizardlike employment than the railroad. Otherwise, Karel and I will be in debt until the next Levar." She sighed as she released Thardik from the embrace. "It's time to stop whining, in any case. Like it or not, Karel's father died and left the bakery in debt, and I gave birth to two new mouths to feed when we expected only one." She passed a hand over her damp, tangled hair. "I don't like magic, but the sad truth is that it pays better than crisp-buns."

  "You would have had to invest your wild luck anyway because of what it would do to you if you became pregnant again," Thardik said. "Failing to perform investiture could c-cost you your life."

  Mardis shrugged and then winced as she felt a twinge in her shoulder. "I know, but that isn't my only concern anymore. If it were, I would've invested my luck in a sweet roll and let Karel eat it, as I did last year."

  Thardik's eyes grew as big as ten-levar pieces. "So that's what happened. No wonder you didn't turn to magic as soon as your troubles started—you couldn't. Rashell thought you were just being s-stubborn."

  Mardis crossed the room to the worn camel-hair couch that she and Karel had bought secondhand at the Two-Copper Bazaar. "Well," she said, flopping down on her back, "you can tell Mother that she's finally got her wish; I'm a wizard. This time, I invested my luck in my—"

  Thardik clapped his hands over his ears and headed for the door. "I don't want to know," he said. ''I'd blurt it to somebody, and then you'd be in a fix."

  Mardis yawned. "Good point. Liavekan magicians are competitive enough that one of them might steal my luck piece to keep me from stealing clients."

  "I know some who would do it just for the f-fun of it," Thardik said. He opened the door, letting in a bright wash of midmorning sunshine. "Since it's Luckday and I don't have to work, I think I will indeed visit your mother and tell her that your investiture was successful. She'll worry otherwise."

  Mardis chuckled sleepily. "If I know my twins, Mother won't have had a spare moment to spend on worry."

  "Shall I have her bring them back here?"

  Mardis shook her head. "She's keeping them the rest of the day. I can only lie here an hour, and then I've got to get to the bakery. Karel will worry too, though I told him not to when I shoved him out this morning. And he'll need my help with the Luckday bread-baking, because poor Brenn isn't much use. She just hasn't cared about the business since Delfor died."

  Thardik nodded in sympathy, then asked, "Do you have any message for your mother, other than the happy news of your investiture?"

  Mardis yawned again. "No. Just kiss Larren and Asriel for me, and don't be surprised if they try to pull out what's left of your hair. Karel's not joking when he calls them little bandits."

  The old wizard smiled. "If I am foolish enough to let a four-month-old babe tangle his or her little fingers in my hair, I deserve my fate." He pressed his right palm to his forehead. "Farewell, Mardis. I shall take your blessings to your son and daughter, whose faces shine as bright as new coppers in the light of the summer s-sun."

  Mardis groaned. "I asked you to kiss them, not drool over them."

  Thardik stepped outside. "I shall try to remember the difference," he said, closing the door behind him.

  •

  Mardis folded her hands on her abdomen and grimaced as she felt the excess fat there. She had still not lost all of the weight she had gained during pregnancy. She had always associated getting fat with growing old—because her stocky mother, Rashell, had always seemed incredibly old to her—and thus she had the unpleasant feeling that she, at the age of nineteen, was getting old herself. Only a year ago, she had been a child; now she had two children of her own, a failing bakery, a husband whose spirits seemed to sink daily … and a layer of flab around her hips and middle.

  She wondered if Larren and Asriel would grow up seeing her in the same way that she had seen Rashell—as a broad-bodied worrier who couldn't be happy. Would they never see her as she would always see herself—as the slim, laughing girl she had been the year before, holding her braids like handles as she teased Karel about the bracelet he had just given her?

  She raised her right arm to gaze at the intricately engraved silver band that had been Karel's wedding gift and that was now the vessel of her wild luck. Almost white against her dark arm, it was a delicate, beautiful piece of work … but it seemed less bright than it had been last year. She still cherished it, but it was ever-so-slightly tarnished now, and even if it were polished, it would never be quite the same—it would never be new—again.

  Just as Mardis would never be a slim, laughing girl again. No doubt she would laugh again, and perhaps even lose the weight she had gained, but …

  Things would get better. They had to. She loved Karel, and knew that he would not be so melancholy once they paid their debts. He had lost every aspect of the child on the day that his father died six months earlier, but his delightful humor was still there, just under the surface. He was only twenty, and he couldn't stay sad forever.

  And then, of course, there were the twins.

  Mardis's labor had been difficult, and the only way she had been able to stand it had been to focus on the likelihood that her baby would have the same birth moment that Mardis herself did—but then the whole thing had ended with an agonizing contraction a half hour before her own birth moment, and the one baby she had expected had immediately been followed by another. The midwife, shocked, had looked up at her and said, "You don't have any more surprises for me, do you, dearie?" Mardis had longed for the strength to kick her.

  As for the babies themselves … More temperamental, troublesome children, she was sure, had never been born in Liavek or the Empire of Tichen. (Ka Zhir, maybe.) When Larren was happy, Asriel was cranky; and when Asriel laughed, Larren screamed. It was impossible to keep them both pacified, and Mardis was only too glad to let Rashell watch them for several hours each day while she worked at the bakery.

  Despite all that, though, Thardik was right—their faces did shine like new coppers, and there was no perfection like the perfection of their tiny fingers and toes. Larren, the boy, already had a shock of gleaming black hair that was exactly like Karel
's; and Asriel, the girl, had deep, dark eyes that Karel swore were duplicates of Mardis's own. And even as Mardis and Karel commented on these features, they would notice that Larren's eyes, though less dark than Asriel's, were a lovely hazel color with small flecks of green and gold: and that Asriel's hair, though less dark and thick than Larren's, was as soft and fine as spun silk.

  Strangers often said, with wonder and admiration in their voices, that the infants looked precisely alike … a remark that Mardis always assumed meant that both babies were exceptionally beautiful. Karel called them little bandits because they stole hearts.

  As Mardis gazed at her luck piece, she realized that while she had lost some precious things, she had gained others. For better and worse, she had traded her childhood to become a baker, a spouse, and a mother.

  And now, she reminded herself in resignation, she had become a wizard as well.

  The silver bracelet felt hot on her wrist.

  •

  Mardis awoke with her bare forearms and calves sticking to the couch. For a moment she thought groggily that she had dreamed the sound of knocking, but then it came again. Someone was at the door.

  As she sat up, she discovered that her body ached all over. Investiture had taken more out of her than she'd realized, and now all she wanted in the world was to be left asleep. The sandglass on the hearth indicated, though, that it was almost midday, and time to go to the bakery.

  It would be impossible to fall asleep again, anyway. Whoever was at the door was using something other than knuckles and seemed willing to keep knocking until the door wore away to splinters.

  Mardis's white cotton blouse and calf-length pants clung to her skin as she stood, and she pulled them free, shuddering at the sound the damp cloth made. The day was getting hotter by the moment. She looked down at the couch and saw a huge dark patch in the shape of her torso.