Back on the dock, Ixkaab thanked the agent profusely, pleased that she would never see him again.
Oh, don’t thank me, always happy to help such a distinguished visitor, so pleased the first ship is in after a hard winter, please give your uncle my best regards and tell him it’s a privilege to serve the Kin-Winny Trading fleet . . .
His words ran together in his enthusiasm, but she got the gist of it. Xamanek’s light, was he never going to finish? He was like one of the beggars lining the flower-strewn road to Ixchel’s temple. . . . Kaab smiled to herself as she figured it out. Of course he was.
“I will certainly tell my uncle when I see him.” (And not my aunt? She’d heard these people undervalued women. Well, so much the better for her.) “But, sir, please allow the immediate expression of my gratitude for your kindness.”
Kaab and the agent did the dance of protesting, insisting, protesting, insisting—she made note that, as with the Bakhim, it was the usual three times before he conceded. Kaab dug in her sash for her pouch of cacao and pressed a reasonable-size chunk on him.
He acted as if it were Nopalco gold and not just a common-variety bean, barely worth a hot bath back home. So she’d given him too much. But what of it? She raised her chin. The Wasp was full of cacao; and she was a first daughter of the House of Balam.
She let him bow to her one more time, waited until the agent’s attention was once again turned to the unloading of cargo (as it should have been all along), and went to where her personal luggage sat awaiting transport.
Ixkaab was still wearing her shipboard travel dress: loose trousers and blouse under feathered vest under quilted jacket. Her thick, dark hair was decently wrapped atop her head, and she was grateful for the scarf that covered it all. Every piece of cloth kept you warmer here.
Traders, of course, were supposed to adopt the Local garb, to blend in. There would be plenty of time for that when she had presented herself at her family’s compound. For now, let the Locals think of her what they would! She was not planning to go among decent people anyway. Before she settled into being the dutiful daughter of a house of prosperous foreign merchants here, convincing all her kinsfolk that she would never get into trouble again, she needed to test out her newest skill, acquired on the ship from the old crippled sailmaker who had once been a swordsman.
“There!”
The Duchess Tremontaine finished tearing the long, fine seam of her pale green silk skirt. Her maid was working on the other seam, but the duchess was not above putting her hand to fabric, if it would get the job done faster. And besides, the action of pulling the material apart, the sound of the careful stitches snapping under her hands, gave her satisfaction.
“Yes, good,” she said. “All that green was getting vulgar. I’m going to wear dove colors this spring. They will look dreadful on poor Sarah Perry, but she won’t dare try not to follow, not if Lady Davenant takes it up, and you know she will. Lady Sarah is about to marry her homely daughter to Rupert Vernay, who stands to inherit Lord Filisand’s not inconsiderable estates someday. What a pity she’ll have the choice of looking either stylish or corpsy at their wedding this spring. Now fetch me the gray satin underskirt.”
“I fear I have not yet gotten the chocolate stains out of it, madam.”
“Have you not?” The duchess rested her hands for a moment. But her tone was contemplative, not angry. “Have you not, indeed? Lucinda,” she said with sudden briskness, “you will have to finish the task yourself. Run the seams up the green, so . . .” She bunched the fabric in her hands. “Yes, so it ruches naturally. You need not be precise. Just make sure it falls so that no one can see the chocolate stain on the gray.” Her maid nodded, taking the green silk from her. “I will be writing letters in my closet. I am not to be disturbed.”
“Yes, madam.”
The duchess paused at the door. “Just remember—I want a sense of deliberate carelessness. The way you did my hair for the Lassiters’ ball. A tumble of silk.”
“Deliberate carelessness.” Lucinda nodded, and a slow smile spread across her face. “Madam, no one will be able to copy you.”
“Well, they can try,” Diane said with the most piquant of little smiles, the one she had when something genuinely amused her. “They can certainly try.”
The big man huffed and puffed as he walked with his sacks of turnips. He didn’t want to talk. Which was good, because it meant Micah could really concentrate on remembering their route for her map because of the way the old cows had laid out the streets. It took some thought, but she could do it.
“Carry those for you, mister?” An enterprising boy tried to stop Master Onophrion, but: “No need,” the big man huffed. “We’re nearly there. You all right, then, little one?”
“Yes, I am,” said Micah, without the breath to explain that she wasn’t that little: She had strong shoulders and a broad waist. Cobby, Aunt Judith called her. Like a good plow horse. But compared to the cook, Micah was pretty little, so she guessed he could call her that if he wanted.
“Here we are.” He fumbled with keys at the door of an old, old house and opened it. “Just drop them in here. Saaaaam!” he roared. “Come help me with these!” He turned back to Micah. “I’d offer you a hot drink, but I must get to work for the Turnip Poet. Here. Get yourself one at the Inkpot; it’s close by.”
He handed her a handful of brass. And then the door was shut, and she was alone, stamping her feet on the cold stones of the streets of the University.
It felt like a lot of brass. But her fingers were too cold to count it. She shoved the money deep into her pocket. A hot drink sounded like a really good idea. Micah started looking for the Inkpot.
The sun was still up, but the twisting streets were narrow, and the old houses hid most of the sky. Not too many people were about, and those that were were hurrying through the cold, their black scholars’ robes clutched tight around them, their long scholars’ hair flying behind.
“Ho-o-o-t taters!”
A boy stood by a big tin that held bright embers with baking potatoes nested in them. They looked good to Micah, and so did the warm tin.
“Get ’em while they’re hot!”
She approached the fire and rubbed her hands at it.
“How many for you, friend?”
A potato would warm her hands, but if she was going to spend the money, it would be better to be indoors. And besides, the cook had told her to get a hot drink. People sometimes got mad if she didn’t do exactly what they said. “Zero,” Micah told the boy.
“Zero? ’Zat your name?”
“No. It is a number that is less than one. Less than one-half, even,” she hastened to assure him, in case he got the wrong idea. She didn’t like it when people tried to buy half a turnip, either.
“‘Less than one’ equals ‘fuck off, kid.’”
“Can I just warm my hands a little?”
“No. Not if you’re not paying any.”
“Fair enough. Can you tell me how to get to a place called the Inkpot?”
“The Inkpot . . . hmm . . .” The boy stroked his chin, as if he had a beard. “’Zat where the poets hang out?” Micah didn’t know, so she didn’t say anything. “Let’s see . . .”
The directions he gave were not very clear. He kept using street names—which wasn’t useful because there weren’t any signs—or else landmarks like “right by the bookseller’s with the picture of the dog in the window,” which was not that helpful either. But while he talked, Micah made all the turns a good pattern in her head, so when he finally finished, she thanked him politely and set off.
It was not as close as the cook man had said. Or else the potato boy was confused. When she got to where he had directed her, all she saw was a plain door, a door set in a wooden wall with a low shingle roof. Was this the Inkpot? It looked a lot like an old stable. But she could hear voices inside. Maybe it was a secret tavern. But where was the tavern sign? What if it was somebody’s house? Micah was standing frozen when a young
man in a black robe hurried up to the door. He stopped when he saw her.
“Don’t be afraid, young’un. Doctor Padstow won’t bite.” He opened the door, motioning her in with him to a place full of voices and warmth. If they didn’t have hot drinks, at least they had heat. Micah went in.
The little room was full of benches occupied by black-robed scholars with slates, all grouped around a hot brazier. In the middle, a man with black-banded yellow sleeves was drawing with a burned stick on the plaster wall.
Micah stared. It was an eight-sided shape, perfectly divided into eight triangles. Around the outside, each line was marked with a letter a. The sides that made up the triangles in the center were marked b. It made a fine pattern. But between each of these, a dotted line without a letter cut each triangle into two parts. Now, that was interesting.
“The question, gentlemen, is this,” said the man with the burned stick. “What is the total length of the lines bisecting the triangles? Bisecting, as you will remember, Master Smith,” he said pointedly to the student who had come in late with Micah and was clearly wrong about Doctor Padstow not being one to bite, “being the act of dividing in half . . .”
Bisecting, Micah murmured to herself. What a wonderful word for it!
“. . . then: What is their total length, expressed in terms of a and b?”
The young men all scribbled furiously on their slates. “Doctor Padstow?” One raised his hand. “If we were to connect the eight outside points to create a circle . . .”
“It would create a very pretty picture, Master Elphinstone, but unfortunately, would not get you any nearer the answer.” A bell started tolling, a huge, heavy sound on the air outside. “And so I’m afraid I will have to leave you to ponder the question until our next lesson.”
Micah felt jumpy, as if she had to pee. She couldn’t stop wriggling inside. She had to tell them, if they couldn’t see. “Squares,” she said loudly.
Doctor Padstow looked up sharply. “Who said that?”
“I think it was the kid.”
“Because you’ve made the inside ones squares, and they’re all the same, so to find out, you just add them all up!”
Everyone was staring at her. She really hated being stared at.
“Are you a geometer, boy?”
“No,” Micah said. “I have to go!”
She turned and ran.
Now the streets were full of people, men of all ages in black robes, scurrying about as though they were rats set free from a trap. The big bell must have released them. They didn’t see anything wrong with pushing to get where they were going, either. Micah really, really hated being pushed, or even being brushed, by strangers.
She tried going back the way she’d come, but the black-clad rats wouldn’t let her. She was scared now. She counted backward from 215 by numbers divisible by three. That usually helped. But people kept bumping into her. She couldn’t see where the street ended, so she couldn’t tell where to turn. She was losing her numbers. She was losing her maps—
“You all right, kid?”
Micah looked up from where she was crouched in a doorway, her hands over her head. She didn’t remember getting there.
“Don’t touch me!” she said hoarsely.
It was a young scholar, almost as young as she was, maybe. “I won’t.” He drew back his hand. “Did somebody hurt you? Did your master beat you?”
“No.” Micah felt in her pocket for the turnip cook’s coins. They were all still there. “Nobody beat me. I just got lost.”
The young scholar smiled. “I did too, my first month here. You’re from the country, aren’t you? I am too. Can I help you find your way?”
“The Inkpot?” Micah said without hope.
“I know it. Come on.”
This boy did want to talk. But mostly he was telling her about himself. It didn’t matter, anyway. The streets were a giant tangle of yarn, like when the cat got into Aunt Judith’s basket. It would take her all night to untangle them. Eventually, Micah told herself, she’d find a street she knew, and she could start again. But she’d probably have to wait till dawn to find her way, unless she spent money to hire a torch to walk her through the night streets, and Cousin Reuben would be mad. She definitely had to have a hot drink first.
Riverside felt dangerous to an experienced hand like Ixkaab Balam. There were a million hiding places amid the close-together, leaning, old houses of stone, where anyone could be lurking.
But before she’d left her father’s house, Kaab had taken a little memento from the wall of his accounting room. It was one of the curiosities her kinsfolk had sent back from foreign parts. Since his duties left him no chance to travel overseas, her father liked to line his workroom with exotica.
Her father might be annoyed to find the Xanamwiinik dueling sword gone, but surely he’d understand why she had carried it with her across the sea.
The blade was long and heavy and bright. The Wasp’s sailmaker had shown her how to keep it from rusting during those months at sea.
And he’d shown her how to use it, as well. His legs being as they were, he could no longer enact the moves, but by Ahkin, he could make Ixkaab dance! Up and down the deck, till the strange grip felt normal in her hand, and the weight of the sword on her arm. And then its silver tip up and down the mast-that-was-her-enemy, until Kaab was sure her enemy stood no chance. But when the sailmaker lifted a marlinespike and showed her what a clever blade could do to dance around her like a dragonfly in heat— Kaab smiled at the memory. It wasn’t a toy, after all.
She was glad the Local sword hung at her hip now. There were very few people on the street, although it was nearly midday. But they had to be somewhere. Indoors, maybe? Few of the cunning, twisted chimneys gave forth smoke.
The Riverside stone still exuded coldness from the night, and, judging by how the houses nearly met across the narrow, filthy streets, the sun probably never reached between them long enough to warm them. On one street Kaab went down, most of the houses looked abandoned: wooden doors rotted, shutters and glass gone from the windows. Ancient staircases up to nowhere.
Kaab headed for a street where she could see wash lines hung across the road between houses. The sheets on them were yellowed, the underwear torn—but between them were bursts of color, like parrots roosting in a tree: a bright scarf, a frilled skirt, a stripy stocking . . . Poor people. But ones who liked some flash and dazzle.
Ixkaab counted dozens of mangy cats on the streets, the roofs, the doorways, cats of all sizes and colors—some new to her—all of them scrawny, many of them patchy and bitten, but she didn’t see a lot of rats. Good for you, kitties! she thought.
“I know my love by his way of walking
And I know my love by his way of talking
And I know my love by his steel so true
And if one love leaves me, I’ll seek a new!”
A woman was singing vigorously to herself, loud enough to be heard around the corner. Kaab slowed and took the side of a house, to see before she was seen.
The woman was leaning against a wall, catching a bit of sun on her pale, pale face. But her hair was aglow already. Kaab blinked. It was no trick of the light: The woman’s hair was the color of clouds at sunset, of a good ripe mango, of a hunter’s fire. If not for her face, she would be a creature of fire—but no: The woman heaved a long sigh, and her bosom rose like Ixel’s pale twin moons from the top of her gown.
Kaab let her breath out slowly. Was this a Riverside prostitute, waiting for customers? Was her song some kind of signal to let people know? If so, where were they all? Why weren’t the streets lined up five deep to taste the nectar of this woman’s lips, bright and pink as the blush on her pale cheeks . . . to unbind those twin moons and let them sail the skies of pleasure. . . .
“I’m going to kill you, Ben!” the street goddess yelled up at a window above her.
A bright head popped out of it. “Not if I kill you first!” A young man’s face, pretty and delicate as Chamw
iinik porcelain, capped with tousled golden hair that just had to be fake. “You’ve hidden my best striped jacket!”
“I’ve pawned your ugly jacket!” Her hands on her hips, her head tilted up to the window, the sun-haired, moon-bosomed woman turned her back to Kaab. Her buttocks . . . well, there might be some padding under that skirt. Against the cold, maybe. But then, there might not.
“It wasn’t funny the first time, Tess, and it isn’t funny now! Come up and get me my goddamned jacket! Or I swear I’ll—”
“Get it yourself,” she sang. “It’s under the bed, where you flung it last night sometime between when you got that message from your father, and when you finally stopped drinking.”
“Very funny.” But his head ducked back inside. The words wafted faintly out: “I looked under the— Oh.”
“Oh.” The woman Tess smiled to herself with those ripe guava lips. She leaned back against the wall, picked up a skein of her glorious hair, and started braiding it into tiny braids.
Kaab murmured a Tullan verse to herself: “‘If I were your sweet sister, I would braid your night hair into as many strands as there are stars in the sky . . . and if it took all night, and the next night after that, then who could fault or interrupt us?’”
The door sprang open, revealing the gold-haired Ben in a fine, bold jacket of green and red stripes, buckling on a sword. At last! Kaab thought. Some clothes with color! But any approval she had for this Ben vanished when he seized Tess roughly by the arm.
“Let go of me, you sot!” she said.
Of course! He must be the man who sold her love, to pay for his vainglorious jackets. “Pimp,” that was the word. Local custom or not, Kaab couldn’t stand it. And hadn’t he also just threatened to kill this glorious woman? She had come to Riverside to try her sword, and this was her perfect chance.
She stepped forth from the shadows.
“The brightest of mornings to the one of you, and a heap of trouble to the other.” Kaab didn’t know how these people issued a challenge, but the pimp could hardly mistake her meaning.
Tremontaine Season 1 Saga Omnibus Page 3
