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Master Aritoli was looking down at him, joy on his face. "Had enough time off, lazybones?"
He was in his own bed. "Master—" Maljun tried to sit up and felt as though he was made of lead.
Aritoli, laughing, grasped his shoulders and gently pushed him back down. "A jest, please! I beg you, Maljun. Lie back. Rest. Rest all you want. By Irhan, man, it's good to see you still among the living."
"How—how long has it been since—"
"Five days, Maljun. Gods, you had me worried. It's a good thing Mistress Govan is so fine a healer."
"Five days," Maljun murmured. "The dusting ought to be done, and the garden—" He tried to sit up again and Master Aritoli again pushed him back.
"Rest, I say! There is no rush for you to return to your duties. Someone from the Society volunteered to fill in for you. He's doing just fine and he'll stay until you are fit. In fact, he wanted to speak to you as soon as you were able." Aritoli jumped up and called out the door, "He's awake!"
As Maljun tried to puzzle out who would have volunteered to fill in for him, old Servitor Jussive came through the door. Maljun's mouth dropped open.
Jussive nodded to Maljun and turned to Aritoli. "If you please, Master, I would like to speak with him privately."
"As you wish." Before stepping out, Aritoli pointed at Maljun and said, "Rest. That's an order." Then he closed the door firmly behind him.
Jussive sat slowly on a chair beside the bed and looked at the far wall. "I advised you to remain constant to your duty."
Maljun felt schoolboy fears well up in him. "So I did, Servitor, as I saw it."
With a little snort, Jussive said, "Would you like to know the consequences of your actions?"
Maljun nodded.
Jussive looked down at his hands. "You know we never reissue Rods of Service. If one is lost, the server is never given another. You must be dismissed from the Society."
Maljun closed his eyes.
"There are reasons for this. You came perilously close to betraying all that the Society has striven for."
Maljun opened his eyes again, feeling even sicker.
"Because of what you have sacrificed, I will tell you what it is you nearly destroyed. Our founder, Endophili of Tichen, understood the fragility of our world and the danger from those who welcomed its end. Fleeing some danger that is not recorded, she came to Liavek and began the Society of Servitors. Her experiences had taught her a single important lesson—power lies not in the great, but in the small. A thing so great as a mountain can be worn down by drops of rain, yet grains of stone can become a thing as great as a mountain.
"Order and harmony is maintained not by some mighty power, but by the individual actions of many lesser folk. Endophili had observed how servants seem to keep the world in order, and that was the power she wished to harness and enhance. The spells we teach we claim are simple ones. That is both the truth and a lie. We dare not use great spells lest we catch the attention of the great. Therefore we use little spells which in combination for the same purpose become very powerful indeed. As fragile threads can become a strong rope. Though many have wished to destroy or disrupt life in Liavek since we have been here, none have succeeded.
"But you exposed our spells outside their normal pattern of use in a way that caught the attention of the great. Sister Vanta may have learned of our web of influence. Or she may not. But you see the risk."
Maljun nodded solemnly.
Jussive sighed and leaned back, closing his eyes. "Vilei was fired from her position in the palace and returns to us in disgrace."
"I am so very sorry," whispered Maljun. "Servitor, the fireworks— Did we not at least prevent some damage there? My master yet lives, unharmed I see."
Jussive snorted again. "The fireworks? They did precisely what they were supposed to."
"What—"
"What did you think would happen!" Jussive snapped. "Your spells were only the Restoration spells, intended to let everything act according to its nature, and so they did. That infernal puzzle rose into the air, on cue. It hovered over the center of the square, firing gouts of colorful sparks, which fell to the ground harmlessly. And, as intended, the construction burst apart in sprays of white and silver that vanished in the sky. It was a very pretty effect."
"No—no fireworks fell on the spectators?"
"What did you expect, man? The Church of Truth may be foolish, but it isn't bloodthirsty. The Regent and Church are dangerous, but not in the way that you believe. Their battlefield is the mind, and the casualties are thoughts, not bodies."
"Then," said Maljun, "I risked my life, the livelihood of others, and the security of all Liavek for a misunderstanding. Perhaps it would have been fitting had I not survived."
"The good servant does not have time for self-pity, " Jussive muttered. "And I have not had my full say."
"What more?"
"Well. Regent Geth Dys was to give a speech as the firework sphere disintegrated. A very beautiful speech, as I understand it, that would have captured the imagination of the crowd. A speech about the joy of letting go of one's illusions, that sort of thing. But he was distracted by a group of servants who were doing a spell counter to the philosophy of his speech. It seemed to bother him considerably."
Maljun imagined a frustrated Geth Dys flapping his white sleeves, and he almost laughed.
"By which time, your Master Aritoli had apparently become bored, so he began entertaining the audience with sorcerous fireworks of his own. This so impressed everyone that by the time the Regent was ready to speak of the evil of illusions, people were enjoying the illusions too much to listen. After they laughed at his first lines, Geth Dys gave up in disgust.
"Of course, your master would not have been available to provide such pleasant display, had you not foolishly taken his place in confronting Sister Vanta. Master ola Silba confided to me later that, had you told him of your worries, he might well have been the one on the steps, not you. And surely whatever spells Sister Vanta had prepared were tailored for his mind."
"So," said Maljun, a small hope dawning, "by little actions, a greater danger was averted."
"One could look at it that way."
"Still … Vilei …"
"Oh, don't concern yourself too much with her. The Regent ola Klera has offered her a position as Head Steward of her household. She should do well enough."
Maljun closed his eyes and sighed. "I am very glad."
"As I have said, the power of the Restoration spell is great, but subtle."
"And what should I do now, I wonder," said Maljun.
"Well," said Jussive, standing, "Master ola Silba has said nothing about being dissatisfied with your service. Once you are well, you can resume your duties."
"But not as a Servitor."
"In name, no. We cannot allow it. If anyone asks, I must tell them you were secretly studying with the Goldthorne House, and your training was none of ours."
"So I can no longer do the spells I know."
Jussive shrugged. "Should you survive the next months until your birthday and succeed in investing your luck in whatever object you choose … well, we cannot take from you what you have learned. You will do what you will. Now, you should rest and I must return to your duties. I believe your master said he needed a particular scented oil for some intimate gathering of friends." Jussive rolled his eyes and started toward the door.
"Servitor?"
"Yes, Maljun?"
"Do you—do you think I did wrong?"
Jussive frowned and looked at the ceiling. "Wrong. Well. Let us say that perhaps you exercised a prudent disobedience, and let it go at that. Good day to you."
"Bazaar Day: Ballad" by John M. Ford
A fat brocaded merchant sang the praises of his merchandise
His audience a soldier and a beggar bent and gray
The beggar no more drew his eyes than common rats or summer flies
His mind was on the man in steel, and on h
is monthly pay
"I'll sell you guns and powder and I'll sell you pikes and shining swords
And drink to blunt your senses to the daily thrust and cut
I'll dress you up in bronze and cords, and finally in six pine boards
And then sell you the hammers for to nail your coffins shut."
The soldier smiled and reached into his purse, and then the beggar said
"Do you recall this hammer that you sometime sold to me?"
The soldier frowned and turned his head, and signed against the Eye, and fled
The merchant's eyes turned evil then, quite terrible to see
"Why should I know your hammer? Is there reason that I ought to do?
Or do you mean to tell me?" and his voice turned very hard:
"That you're a thief I know is true, perhaps you've other talents too
So if your story's good enough, I might not caIl the guard."
The beggar said, "I soldiered once, a green recruit from up the hills,
My company supplied from you when first we mustered in
It's not the shine on swords that kills, it's steel that pays the butchers' bills,
I learned that proof the hard way, from your worthless piece of tin.
"It might have been on mountainsides, it might have been in meadows gay
It might have been in forests or upon a hill of slag
It might have been by night or day, it doesn't matter anyway
The murky morning after no one rallied to the flag.
"Alone against one final foe, my situation mighty tough
I had to strike, and hot, or I should nevermore be free
Your other goods were shoddy stuff; your hammer it was good enough
To kill the man who tried so hard to do the same to me."
The merchant said, "My sorry friend, now even if your story's true
You cannot have a reason to be angry, sir, with me
Let credit fall where credit's due; you're here because I dealt with you:
I think you got your money's worth: how can you disagree?"
The crooked little beggar turned the shining hammer in his hand
Said, "Let me end my story, then you tell me what it's worth:
I think you still don't understand: I said I killed the bloody man,
I never said I fought him anywhere upon the earth."
And now the twisted beggarman looked bigger than these words can tell
With thunder in his bootheels and the lightning in his eye
"You never gave a spit in hell for anything you couldn't sell,
But I've come up from underground with something you can't buy!"
He struck the hammer on the stone; it made the cobbles quake and ring
The merchant started pleading and the wind began to wail
The air began to crack and sing as tents and poles and everything
Came down like so much paper in the fury of a gale
There's darkness on the Merchant's Row and stillness in the great bazaars
An emptiness in doorways and a silence in the stalls
The merchant and the man of wars are gone into the summer stars
They're gone into the thunder when the final hammer falls
"The True Tale of Count Dashif's Demise" by Jane Yolen
There are many stories told about the death of Count Dashif but none, my lords and ladies, is worth a copper coin. They are fabrications, obfuscations, taradiddles, and lies; all tales spun out by wretched tellers for pitiful profits and nebulous rewards.
There is but one true history, built fact upon fact, which has been told down through the years in my family, father to son, father to son, over and over. It has been polished by our tongues until it shines like a ripened olive, like a water-smoothed stone, like the jewel in the Levar's best crown. We have kept that truth alive by this process of mouth-to-ear resuscitation and with but a little bit of encouragement, my Excellencies, I shall pass it on to you this Beggar's Night.
Encouragement comes in many forms, and not all of them are hard, round, and golden. But I will not begrudge you the payment of even such a small coin.
The Count Dashif was neither the blood-soaked murderer nor the magic-forsaken princeling you have heard of in other tales. He was a man—not a mad god. He had his magic, more hidden than even he knew. And he had his long list of hates. What he did not have were his right hand, his left leg, and his right ear. But it was his nose, my Elegancies, that finally did him in. That nose—and another part of his anatomy that modesty—and an empty pocket—forbids me to mention.
But a coin can loosen even the tightest of tongues, as long as we are on the subject of anatomy.
Tori was the count's name, though no one alive dared use it. It was the small form of Toriff, but believe me, there was nothing, my Magnificencies, small about him. Of this I have ample testimony from shop girls and street girls, and the published diaries of Countess Neelya, plus the whispered confidences of a small, dark-haired thief.
Still, the tale I would tell is not a bawdy barracks round; nor is it of the count's greatness of manhood. It is about the shortness of his years, for he died at the moment he most wished to live. And it was all on account of his nose, my Graces. And that other piece of his anatomy.
Dashif had a daughter, a girl of no great beauty except in her bedazzled father's eyes. And another daughter and a son who were uncommonly pretty but of no importance to this tale.
The girl of whom we speak had been raised in a tosspot inn and had eyes the color of certain blue flowers that grow only by the side of roads and wastes. Her mind had sharp angles. Her tongue was like a knife. In other words, my Graciousnesses, she was a child of her father, and the more beloved thereby. She was, in fact, the only person in the world he cherished, and he was determined to polish his gem to a high gloss; though like a miser with his treasure, he kept her hidden from the light.
So, rather than presenting the girl at court and acknowledging her as his daughter, Dashif let the world think she was just another of his flirtations. And she was rude enough to enjoy the speculations.
The girl was named Kaloo, which, as you know, my Graciousnesses, is the name of the honey bear, the one that chortles as it digs into a hive. She was like honey to the count. He could not keep away.
He came to the inn to collect her on a Beggar's Night like this to find—of course—that her stepfather who owned the inn was playing at dishboy and the dishboy (as was the wont along the waterfronts) was innkeeper for the evening. The boy was a handsome lad, though a bit thin in both hair and what lay beneath. Taking his night's role too seriously, he was attempting to enjoy Kaloo's favors. She, while not averse to a kiss or two in a dark corner, was resisting his bolder thrusts.
The boy was just leaning his nose into Kaloo's cleavage, newly revealed by one of the elegant dresses her father had purchased for her, when Count Dashif strode into the inn. He roared once, which was all the warning he ever gave his enemies, and pulled out two pistols from his waistband. Though the Count could not fire yet for fear of hitting his daughter, the roar itself was sufficient to undo the dishboy. Losing his courage and his bowels at more or less the same moment, the boy raised his face and tried to flee.
It was a mistake. Once absent from Kaloo's side, he presented a remarkable target. The Count fired at the two places he felt had so recently attempted to violate his precious child. One of them was the boy's nose.
The Count almost always hit what he aimed at. However, since the two targets this time were at opposite ends of the boy's anatomy—that word corning up rather often in this narrative, as such worthies as yourselves will have already noted—he hit only the boy's nose, smashing it beyond the skill of any leeches in Liavek. The other bullet sailed between the boy's legs and buried itself in the hearth.
Then Dashif took his daughter by the arm, dragging her away to the House of Seven Pleasures where the latest play by May Gan B'russtt was to be performed. Dashif and his daughter, bei
ng of similar natures, enjoyed the play enormously, forgetting the bit of bloodletting that had preceded it.
Now the boy, my Exultancies, had not forgot. Indeed, he was not able. Though the leeches had cleaned him up and sewn him up, they had only been able to fashion for him a nose out of a silver spoon boiled down and crudely reshaped. It looked like the topmost peak of the Silverspine Mountains with a sprinkling of little points like dead trees.
He was ruined forever. The silver nose picked up the heat of the kitchen and held it, so he could no longer work there. And, as for his manhood, though it had not been physically injured, the shock to his desires precluded any pleasure whatsoever. He was unable or, as they say in Ka Zhir: Though he lost not the pen, the verses were gone. A remarkably graphic people, the Zhir.
What was he to do? He had lost his means of livelihood, for being a dishboy was all he knew. His silver nose marked him. And all desires but one had fled. He would have done himself in had he the passion for it. But his one passion was this: to kill the Count.
He knew he could not himself call Dashif out. His training was in pots, not pistols. He thought and thought all that day and decided that the only thing to do was to hire a wizard, though he had no coins with which to pay.
He walked slowly to Wizard's Row and knocked on the very first door he saw. It was the only door he saw, for all the wizards, save a Tichenese spell maker named Frost, were off enjoying Festival Day. And of course, when wizards are not at home, their homes are not … er, at home.
"Come in," the door intoned.
Unnerved, the boy leaped back. Then, taking his courage in hand, he knocked again.
"Enough with the knocking already," the door said, its accents shifting drastically. "Would you like me to knock on you over and over?"
"No, not really," the boy said, "since I am not a door."
"Well, I am not a door either," said the door as it creaked open. "I am ajar!" It began to laugh uproariously. "Get it? A door—ajar?" Its laugh tapered off to a giggle.
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