Liavek 8

by Will Shetterly

  Larren's wails grew shriller, and unusually, Asriel joined him in his screams.

  Mardis strained against her guards again. "You'll take them nowhere!" she cried. "They're our children, and they're staying ours."

  Narni looked exasperated. "They'll accept whoever we choose to raise them. They won't know the difference."

  "We'll come after them," Mardis said.

  The babies' wails subsided.

  Narni sighed. "I was afraid of that. That's why I had to arrange things so that Karel would come to me—because I could then bring him here, and you would follow. That's the only way I can do what I must without anyone else knowing about it." She snapped her fingers, and two guards seized Karel again. "A few citizens may have seen me or my servants about our business with you and your mother earlier today, but there will be nothing to link the Faith of the Twin Forces to what will be found here tomorrow. As for the grandmothers—well, even if they were to learn where the twins will be, they wouldn't survive the sea voyage there. I'd see to it."

  Karel struggled against his captors, but had no better luck than Mardis. "Damn me for an idiot," he growled through clenched teeth.

  Narni stood on tiptoe and kissed his lips. "Of course, sweet. I hereby damn you for an idiot."

  "If you want us dead," Mardis said bitterly, "why not just kill us instead of baiting us like this?"

  Narni pirouetted with a flourish of scarlet robes. "Because I love my work!" she sang.

  "P-perhaps," Thardik said, sounding as if he was fighting to suppress his terror. "B-but you also have to know whether you succeeded in stealing Mardis's t-true luck piece, so I will tell you: She knew you were spying on her, and she p-placed the bracelet so you would think it was her v-vessel. " He raised his voice in defiance. "That means that if you t-try to harm us, your whole scheme will be torn apart in a whirlwind of wild m-magic." He looked at Mardis. "Child, the p-priest thinks that if she provokes you, and you do nothing, that must m-mean that you are without power. Only then will she feel safe in c-cutting our throats."

  Narni giggled. "Don't be silly, Master Fat-Sack. This place is surrounded by a spell that would keep out her luck piece anyway. And as for birth-moment magic—" She glanced at the sandglass. "We'll be finished here before she can use that. I know her birth moment too, you see."

  "A barrier spell created with ordinary magic may have d-difficulty against wild luck," Thardik said, sounding braver. "Mardis, I suggest a demonstration. Then maybe this spoiled girl will s-stop annoying us." His eyes met Mardis's with a look that said he was ready to try the spell they had agreed upon.

  "Very well," Mardis said. Let him be close enough, she prayed to all of the gods in general. Please, let him be close enough. She tilted her head back until she was looking straight up. A rumbling noise filled the air, and dust fell from the high ceiling.

  "Cut the bracelet!" Narni cried.

  Mardis snapped her head down and saw that the guard beside the chopping block had drawn his sword and was raising it high.

  "No!" she shouted, and only then realized what she had done.

  Narni laughed humorlessly. "Move Master Fat-Sack farther away from her," she said. "She's got his luck piece. A bit of monkey dung, no doubt."

  The guards did as the priest commanded, and the rumbling ceased. Mardis couldn't suppress the miserable thought that anyone as stupid as she deserved to die.

  The guard by the chopping block, still holding his sword high, looked at Narni with questioning eyes.

  "Well, go ahead," the high priest said impatiently. "Once it's broken, we'll know she can't hurt us."

  The sword flashed downward.

  Simultaneously, a smaller flash shot across the chamber and struck the big man on the wrist before glancing off the support column and falling to the sawdust. The guard, crying out in pain, buried the edge of his sword in the chopping block, missing the bracelet entirely. Then, as he stared at his bleeding wrist, Rashell charged out of the passageway and across the chamber, ramming her head into his ribs. He fell to the floor with the heavy woman on top of him.

  Mardis felt her own captors' grips slacken as their instincts told them to help their comrade, and she drove her elbows into their bellies. Wrenching free, she sprinted toward the chopping block.

  Rashell clambered to her feet and snatched up the bracelet, holding it high and shouting, "I have it, daughter, I have it!" over Narni's cry of frustration.

  Mardis could sense that two guards were close behind her, but all she had to do was get within three paces of the bracelet, and then—

  The guard on the floor rolled into Rashell's legs, tripping her, and in an instant he was straddling her with a dagger at her throat.

  "Stop or she dies!" he shouted. He sounded as though he hoped Mardis would not stop.

  Mardis halted, at least five paces from her goal, and her pursuers grasped her arms. Larren and Asriel began crying anew.

  Narni hurried across the room with her one unoccupied guard and leaned down to pluck the bracelet from Rashell's grasp. Then she turned and glared at Mardis.

  "Why couldn't you have just stayed home?" the priest said. "Then I would've known for certain that I had your magic and that you wouldn't be a problem. When Karel came to see me, I could've had some fun and then let him go. But since you didn't stay home, I had to find out whether you still had your luck, and now that I see what a nuisance you're going to be, I …" She scuffed her boot on the floor, raising a small cloud of sawdust. "I don't have any choice. If I should release you, knowing that you'd be a threat …"

  Mardis, feeling numb, looked back at the sandglass. If only her birth moment weren't still a half hour away, then she could at least try to do something, anything—

  Narni pocketed the bracelet and waved at her guards. "All right," she said, her voice quavering. "Do it." She covered her eyes with both hands and fled into the darkness beyond the support column.

  Abruptly, the twins stopped crying.

  Mardis, her eyes darting wildly in a desperate search for an escape, saw everything happen at once:

  The guard holding the sword at Karel's throat drew back to strike.

  The guard on Thardik's left looped a cord around the wizard's neck and began to pull it tight.

  The bleeding guard raised his dagger and drove it toward Rashell's heart.

  Mardis felt a pistol barrel pressing into her side.

  And then …

  The sword crumbled to powder.

  The cord snapped.

  The dagger turned into a lizard and scurried up its wielder's sleeve.

  The pistol became a stick of soft dough.

  For a moment the Scarlet Guards stared, dumbfounded, at the things that had been their weapons, and then they released their prisoners and fell to their hands and knees, snuffling in the sawdust and grunting like pigs.

  Narni ran backward out of the darkness and collided with the chopping block, and the sword that was stuck there became an enormous black snake that coiled around her torso. Her robes melted into a gelatinous red substance that flowed about her as if alive and coated her from head to foot. "Eeeeewww!" she squealed, covering her face again. "Eeeeeewwww!"

  Then the priest rose from the floor, flipped upside-down, and swooped up until her feet touched the high ceiling. She swayed there, still shrieking, while Mardis stared up in astonishment.

  Rashell and Thardik joined Mardis, and they, too, gazed up at the priest. "This c-could get us into b-big trouble," Thardik whispered.

  Then Karel joined them, carrying the basket that held the twins. Mardis, instantly oblivious to the priest and her soldiers, looked down at her children and was amazed to see that both were gurgling happily.

  "Look at them," she said, stroking their perfect little arms and cheeks. "Thardik, how could you have said that their faces are as bright as new coppers? They're at least as bright as gold levars, and more beautiful."

  "That's from our side of the family," Rashell said.

  "Could we p-p
lease get out of here?" Thardik asked, glancing up at the quivering Narni, whose squeals had become whimpers. He sidestepped to avoid a falling dollop of red goo. "I'm starting to feel a little s-sick."

  Karel leaned close to Mardis. "Uh, I don't know just what's happened here," he said in a low voice, "but if we leave things like this, we'll have to flee Liavek, and even then we'll never be safe. Narni may have failed, but sooner or later, His Scarlet Eminence or some other high priest will find us."

  Reluctantly, Mardis looked up from Larren and Asriel. "Your Grace," she shouted to the dangling Narni. "I hope you and your fellow priests will see now that wild luck cannot be suppressed, and that children should not be separated from their parents. However, I'll make you a bargain: I'll undo all that I've done here and will raise my twins with the utmost respect for Liavek, for the Red Faith, and for the Levar and her Regent—although I will not require them to subscribe to the Red Faith or to any other. I will swear to all of this, provided that you swear on your Faith and your life that neither you nor any other agents of the Faith of the Twin Forces will ever again interfere in any way with the lives of these twins or with the lives of any of their friends or family."

  Narni's squirming subsided slightly, and even in her obvious distress, she spoke coldly. "And just what will you do if I refuse your bargain, Karel's chubby wife?"

  Mardis gritted her teeth and took a deep breath. "I'll leave you here and burn this place. Furthermore, when my twins have gained their full powers, I'll have them destroy your Temple and Faith." It was a massive bluff, but she didn't think that Narni would doubt her … especially since the priest had a snake coiled about her waist, was coated with red slime, and was hanging upside-down from the ceiling.

  "If I accept your terms," Narni said, "what guarantee do I have that you won't go back on your word?"

  "If I break my part," Mardis answered, "the agreement will become void, and you and the other priests will be free to do as you like." A long silence followed, but at last Narni swore, on her Faith and her life, that she accepted Mardis's terms.

  "Thank you, Your Grace," Mardis said. "Now, before I begin to fulfill my part of the bargain, I have a request: That bracelet was my husband's wedding gift, and I would like it returned. "

  Narni dropped the slime-coated silver band, and Mardis caught it. Immediately, the proximity of her invested luck filled her with an intense feeling of well-being, and when she slipped the bracelet onto her wrist, she felt better still. She wiped off the slime with her sleeve.

  "All right, I've done it," Narni said. "We've got a bargain, so let me down and get this snake off me. Eeeewwww, he's licking me, get him off!"

  "Of course, Your Grace," Mardis said dryly, and then she nudged Thardik and whispered, "Go ahead."

  Thardik gazed at her with a confused expression. "W-what?" he asked.

  Mardis chuckled. She might have known that Thardik wouldn't be able to undo his own work. Now that she had her wild luck back, though, she might be able to reverse another wizard's conjuring … .

  In another minute, all eight soldiers were on their feet, and Narni, her robes restored and the snake only a sword in the sawdust, stood before Mardis, glaring with fury and frustration.

  "Do you have any idea what my Temple will do when I report this?" the priest cried. She looked down at the sword on the floor. "I ought to—"

  Mardis held up her hands, fingers spread, and sent streaks of blue lightning crackling out to whip around Narni. They returned to her and disappeared with a snap.

  "What you ought to do is stay clear of me," Mardis said. "A bargain is a bargain. As for your fellow priests, you can tell them that you were able to eliminate the danger of the prophecy without taking lives or kidnapping the twins. You opted for a balanced path instead of one of violence. As I understand it, that should be exactly in accordance with your Faith."

  Narni rolled her eyes. "A lot you know about the Faith of the Twin Forces, baker," she said, and then gestured to her soldiers and started toward the passageway.

  She paused beside Karel. "You know why I've kept track of you, don't you?" she said in a tiny voice. "You really were my first love."

  Karel shook his head. "No, Narni. You were."

  The high priest sniffed and stalked out, her Scarlet Guards trailing her in a tight pack as if they couldn't wait to be out on the street.

  •

  Mardis, her mother, her husband, her children, and her oldest friend were left alone in the warehouse. The four adults stood looking at one another for a long moment, and then they burst into laughter, finally releasing the tension that had gripped them all day. Asriel, startled by the sudden noise, began to wail again, but Larren continued to gurgle.

  "Thardik, I didn't know you had that much magic in you," Mardis said between chortles, clapping him on the shoulder. "I was afraid for a moment that Her Grace would be stuck up there until Liavek crumbled into the sea, simply because you couldn't reverse your own spell!"

  Thardik blinked. "Me? I was too far from my acorn to do a thing. I thought you did it all with birth-moment m-magic."

  Mardis stopped laughing.

  Rashell, looking at the sandglass on the table, said, "Why, she couldn't have. Her birth moment is still several minutes away."

  "And I was even farther from my luck piece than Thardik was from his," Mardis added.

  Karel set the basket on the floor and rubbed his forehead.

  "Now, wait—If Thardik didn't create any of that chaos, and you didn't …"

  Mardis glanced at the sandglass, which confirmed what she already knew. "Larren and Asriel were born a quarter of an hour ago on the thirteenth day of Rain," she murmured, and then stared down at her wailing daughter and laughing son.

  She heard Karel swallow hard.

  "Precocious little bandits, aren't they?" he said.

  "Birth Day: Sonnet" by John M. Ford

  I do not know the day that you were born,

  Nor know you mine. Our local mystery

  Proclaims that when the hidden time's outworn,

  Then luck's tied off like birth-cord. Therefore we

  Knit all our birthdays into one, and dance

  (Hands held) around the edges of the thing:

  You guess that mine's in summer. (Not a chance.)

  While I suppose that yours is in the spring.

  The years will never wear the puzzle out,

  For who can live to hope to see the day

  When earth unravels birth? Confirm the doubt,

  The end we cannot reach; and those who say

  Those dates are both well known, and all of this

  Pretense, do not know what a secret is.

  "A Hot Night at Cheeky's" by Steven Brust

  THE SIGN OUTSIDE the inn showed the south end of a mule heading north. The place was called Cheeky's after the owner, Cheeky, whose name was Mariel. It was in Old Town, or, rather, just outside it, its door looking onto Rat's Alley near the Soldier's Gate. Its single story pushed up against Farrier's Way as if it was about to step onto the street and be swept straight to the docks and thence to the sea.

  The main room was rather long, with the bar running its entire length to the left of the door. It was dark most of the time. Beyond this room was a door that, presumably, led back to Cheeky's living quarters. In fact, it didn't. It led back to a small private bar, and a private meeting room, but the only people who knew of this were the staff and those few who received notes that said, "Go back through the door, help yourself at the private bar, and wait in the meeting room." Such notes were not common.

  Cheeky's clientele included a fair share of sailors, a few day laborers, some merchants, and more than a few of the older and prouder—if not richer—representatives of Liavekan society. It didn't have the best pot-boil in Liavek; it didn't have the worst. The home-brew ale was fine, the choice of wines good enough, the whiskey and brandy not very overpriced. There were occasional fights, but not too many nor too bad. The bouncers' names were Tsep
and Vejed, and the wizard's name was Ried. Ried wasn't officially associated with the inn, but he hung around a lot because he was a good friend of the owner, Mariel, whose name was Cheeky.

  The first to arrive that evening was a man built something like a Redshore Retriever. He had the big barrel chest, the powerful legs, and the same sad eyes as the dog, and it would not be hard to believe that beneath them was as keen a nose. His name was Rye. He left his footcab in the street outside Cheeky's and went in. It was Divination Day. The three-quarters bell had rung a few minutes before. Twilight was rearing its indefinite head.

  Rye walked back past the stage, where a musician was begging a cittern to come to tune with itself. Rye spoke briefly to Vejed and showed him a small slip of paper. Vejed shrugged and pointed to the back. Rye went back until he came to the private bar. A lithe woman of perhaps six or seven and twenty, with olive skin, a very thin face, and hair so straight it looked dead, glanced at him and said, "The room at the end of the hall. I'll be right there," and went back to studying the camel-racing predictions in the Crier.

  Rye, somewhat hesitantly, helped himself to an ale and took it back to the room Cheeky had indicated. A single table was there, with six chairs. He walked to the far end and sat down.

  Presently, Cheeky came through the curtained doorway and sat across from him. She held a tall glass of dark tea with a large piece of ice floating in it. She took small sips, swallowing with relish.

  "I'm Cheeky," she said.

  "Rye. You sent the message?"

  "Yes. It was the only way I could think to make contact with others."

  "Others? Then there will be others showing up?"

  "I hope so."

  "You have something?"

  "Yes, but I'll need help."

  Rye grunted. "I had not thought you sent for me out of charity."