"Your grandfather has a number of-of a.s.sociates, whose names are best not bandied around the town," her mother said. "Not that he has a thing to be ashamed of, except his disgraceful language. You aren"t eating your bread and b.u.t.ter, dear."
"One of "em"s Noyad the jeweler." Yellow Hen stood up from the hearth, dusting ashes from her hands. "Your grandfather got him a pitch in the best part of the Grand Bazaar-a place other jewelers have waited years for-in exchange for a cut of his profits. And Ahure works for Noyad these days."
"Doing what?" Shaldis had seen the haughty old Blood Mage"s elaborate peep shows of illusion and machinery, designed to keep Lord Jamornid believing in his ability to do magic. She couldn"t imagine Ahure coming down to do anything so mundane as keeping a jeweler"s books.
"He won"t say," replied Yellow Hen. "And if anyone asks him he merely looks haughty and denies it. But word"s spread around the town that Ahure"s found a way to imbue gems with good luck or ill."
"That"s silly." Shaldis obediently tore her bread into pieces and consumed it, the b.u.t.ter dripping down her fingers. "Ahure couldn"t imbue a sponge with water. No mage can."
"You sound awfully sure of that, dearest."
"I am awfully sure of it, Mother. And I"m certainly awfully sure of Ahure."
"Be that as it may," said her aunt with her crooked, toothy grin, "by looking wise and tapping the side of his nose and raising his eyebrows when anyone asks him questions, Noyad-who swears Ahure only "does him favors" and won"t say what-is charging three crowns for turquoise pendants that no one in their right senses would pay three dequins for . . . and is getting it, and getting it so fast he can barely keep up. What he asks for real jewels that have "pa.s.sed through Ahure"s hands," I"d hate to tell you."
"Oh, please. And Ahure and my grandfather fought?"
"Ahure came to the house three or four days ago," temporized her mother. "Of course no one heard what they said, but Nettleflower-who was up in your uncle"s room on the gallery over the garden-said that she saw Ahure storm out of your grandfather"s study, shouting back at him that he would put such a curse upon the house that it would crumble to the ground. Of course," she added with a glance sidelong toward the storeroom where Nettleflower"s body lay, "though she was quite a . . . a good-hearted girl underneath, I"m sure, sometimes Nettleflower wasn"t entirely truthful."
That, reflected Shaldis, as she licked the b.u.t.ter from her fingers, was putting the matter mildly.
Whatever had actually happened between her grandfather and the former wizard, Nettleflower was the only possible witness.
And a few days after that, the girl had met the old man in the marketplace.
Money? With a promise of more, if she"d let him into the house by the alley door?
And before the next day"s sun had risen, Nettleflower was dead.
"What is it?" Oryn rolled over on the loose bed of cushions laid out for him on the ground, propped himself on one elbow, and immediately wished he hadn"t. The bruises that had seemed minor a few hours ago had stiffened and he felt as if he"d been racked. Dear G.o.ds, I never properly appreciated what the guards go through. I really must raise their pay, give them a special liquor allotment, have a special baths built for them in the palace, or something.
Summerchild was sitting up beside him already. Even within the shelter, the heat was like being slowly roasted to death. No wonder he"d dreamed about being bricked up in a furnace. . . .
"What"s burning?"
She pinned her veils over her face and hair again and crouched her way to the tent flap, Oryn hobbling behind. He noticed that Summerchild, who had taken just as many blows in the battle as he had, still moved with the lithe unconcern of a dancer.
Jethan and two other troopers were also out of their shelters, talking to the pickets around the camp. A column of smoke stood in the eastern sky.
Summerchild asked, "Is that Three Wells?"
"It"s the only habitation in that direction, lady."
"Can you call up the image of the place in your mirror?" asked Oryn, looking down at his ladylove, and Summerchild"s brow puckered.
"I"m not sure. I"ve never been in Three Wells, but I could try focusing on the smoke. I"m not sure how much I would see."
"Try it," said Oryn softly. "If the town is deserted, and all there are dead, I am most curious as to who set the fires. And why."
TWENTY.
At no time of the day or night did the Dead Hills appear welcoming. There were those who said that the broken badlands east and south of the Lake of the Sun had earned their name from the tombs that honeycombed them-those of the kings more isolated, those of n.o.bles or the wealthy merchants dotting the dry wadis that could be reached from the Yellow City in a few hours. But those who looked on the hills, or rode through them, quickly came to the conclusion that the name had come first, the tombs, after.
Summer or winter, they had the appearance of a land the G.o.ds hated, or at least those G.o.ds who had the good of humankind at heart. The bleak waste of pale-brown stone was like a dream landscape of half-buried skulls, riven with twisting canyons; a world whose parched shade offered no coolness. Dusty precipices and blank stretches of broken talus flung back the day"s heat even in the deep of night. Even where the King"s Aqueduct pierced them, a gray finger pointing toward the distant Oasis of Koshlar across two hundred miles of desert, the hills seemed dead, waiting silently for some night when they might silently swallow up the work camps of men and teyn and camels.
In the Valley of the Hawk, twelve miles from the aqueduct and fifteen from the walls of the Yellow City, the silence and the waiting seemed more perilous.
Foxfire climbed stiffly down from the litter in which she"d swayed, suffocating with heat, since the previous night and asked, "Who in their right mind would build a house in this place?"
The villa lay before them, the same dusty brown as the surrounding rock. At one time the pylons on either side of its gate had been painted with scenes of lion hunts and crocodile spearings. At one time there"d been sycamore trees in front of the pylons. Their desiccated trunks remained, behind which the flaked eyes of hunters and prey stared hopelessly across the desolation of dust.
"What did they teach you in that school of yours, girl?" demanded her grandmother, swinging down from the horse which she"d insisted on riding, knee to knee with her son. "A hundred and fifty years ago there were springs in a dozen places in the foothills, and the lords of House Jothek hunted lions in the desert from here. If she"s to remain under your roof," she added, regarding Mohrvine as he dismounted, "that daughter of yours had best put in her spare time here studying the lore of her own House."
"I shall mark it down as a future course of study for her," replied Mohrvine smoothly, crossing to Foxfire"s litter and putting a gentle hand on her shoulder. "Let us use the time here to the better purpose of making sure our House remains the House of Kings. Then she shall take her place in its lore"-he smiled down into her eyes-"rather than merely reading of the deeds of others."
Foxfire looked around her, hating the place. Hating the sense of being watched by something just out of sight in the shadows of those sun-blasted arroyos. She was deeply grateful for Opal"s little veiled shadow in the second litter she"d insisted her father provide for her maid.
"Must I stay here?" Her voice was barely a whisper. "Won"t you need someone in your household in the city who can communicate with Granny at a moment"s notice? I"m much better at it than I was."
The hopeful eagerness as she brought out this fib warmed her father"s eyes, turned his coldly handsome face gentle and human. In that moment she would have done anything for him. Anything except remain here, if given a choice.
But her father did not believe in choices. Not when the advancement of the cadet branch of House Jothek was the prize. "My child, your grandmother has more need of your powers than I do. Pigeons can carry a message from the city in a matter of hours. They will have to do."
Behind them a baggage camel groaned. The caravan that had accompanied the litters moved forward as the villa"s gates opened between the pylons. Foxfire looked through them into a courtyard as dust-choked and brown as the hills.
Beside the camels a line of teyn walked, chained neck to neck. The lead boar balked at the sight of the hills; and Foxfire"s brother Zharvine, who was in charge of the baggage train, tapped him with the end of his six-foot rod. "Don"t start giving us trouble now, Dogface; you"ll have worse than the sight of those hills to think about, believe me." The teyn only looked around them in silent anxiety, not understanding a word.
Her least-favorite brother, urthet, emerged from the gate, squat and stocky. He walked up the little rise to where Foxfire and their father still stood beside the litter. Even the litter bearers-teyn matched and trained to respond to the commands of the human team captain-cl.u.s.tered together, swaying fearfully from foot to foot as they gazed at the parched wadis, the sharp columns of grayish-buff rock.
"Well"s dry as a crust, sir." urthet practically spit the words out. Twelve hours traveling in the blistering heat, with only the shortest of noon halts, had done nothing for his temper. "We"ve put the waterskins in the cellar. We"ll have to ration."
"We"ll send out for more tomorrow," promised Mohrvine with the casual ease of one who has at least three of the city"s gangster water bosses in his pay. "Is there enough for Belial?" He glanced with a kind of affection at the tall-sided wagon that had been nursed and lifted over nearly fifteen miles of rutted path, the wagon whose black felt canopies and tarred sides glistened with damp and smelled of murky wetness and filth.
"Should be, sir. Though he"ll need more soon."
"He"ll have it." Mohrvine"s smile widened as his green gaze followed the wagon down through the courtyard gate. Still affectionate, but all gentleness had disappeared. Then he turned back to Foxfire and laid his gloved hands on her shoulders again. "Be a good girl, and do exactly as your grandmother says," he admonished and leaned down to kiss her forehead. "Don"t leave the compound for any reason. These hills shelter nomad raiding parties in the summers and bandits-they pa.s.s through the wadis to have shelter in attacking the rangelands around the city."
Foxfire looked out past him at the hills, reflecting that the warning was hardly necessary. He could have given her a million gold pieces and a written promise from Deemas, the patron G.o.d of thieves, attesting their nomad-less state and she still wouldn"t have gone anywhere near them. There was something within them, among them, that watched her and waited. She knew it.
"Learn all you can from Soral Brul," her father went on, naming the young adept, formerly of the Sun Mages, who was even now walking back to the gateway with urthet. "And from Urnate Urla." He nodded at the crabbed and skinny little man who, after his powers of earth wizardry failed, had gone to work as secretary for one of the Slaughterhouse water bosses. "But don"t tell them anything, don"t trust them, and don"t let yourself be alone with them. Understand?"
"I understand." Her grandmother"s horse appeared from around the corner of the compound wall, and Red Silk leaned down from the saddle to address the two former mages, young and middle-aged. She made a sweep with one arm, as if describing a barrier, and Foxfire heard Soral Brul hoot with laughter.
"Why don"t you hang straw dollies on the walls while you"re at it?" He named one of the old peasant cantrips against the Bad-Luck Shadow. "Or plant marigolds around the walls to chase ghosts away? Poqs, I mean." He spoke the nomad word for the thing the wandering people claimed was responsible for every ill from dead sheep to cross-eyed babies.
"Don"t laugh at the Bad-Luck Shadow when you stand so near his abiding place," responded Red Silk drily. "You need not believe in the warding spells that guard you from him for them to work." She reined her horse away.
Foxfire shivered. As a child she"d half believed in the Bad-Luck Shadow, as something that "got" bad little girls, though she"d never heard or read of anyone who"d ever actually been "gotten." Unlike the djinni, who had been attested to by sightings and periodic contacts for centuries, there was nothing real called a poq. Yet out here in this utterly silent land-this exile where she and her grandmother were to come up with spells to deal with crocodiles, cobras, and whatever poison it was that the Priest of Time concocted for the test of the king-she felt the presence of Something.
Anything seemed possible here. She stretched out her hand to the other litter; Opal emerged through the curtains, gave her a protective hug.
Her father"s voice called back her thoughts. "You won"t be here for long, my little vixen," he promised. "Indeed, the quicker you find an answer to our problem, the quicker you can return home. But for good or ill you will be back in the Yellow City in forty-three days."
Foxfire started to say, but it"s only thirteen to the Moon of Jubilee, and realized that her father wasn"t thinking of Oryn"s tests.
He was thinking of his own, to be held under the new moon that succeeded Oryn"s death.
Late in the afternoon, with the gold sun lying two hands-breadths over the scraggy sagebrush to the west, Jethan"s voice said, "My lord king?" outside and Oryn pushed up the light inner curtain.
"I suppose Geb will have a stroke when he learns I"ve acted as my own porter," sighed the king, beckoning the guardsman inside. Even on its downswing the sun was a power to be reckoned with, and the evening wind had not yet begun. "But goodness knows where we"d put a porter inside here with us, and bringing along a lodge for one to sit outside would have meant another baggage a.s.s, and that sort of thing can get out of hand very quickly. Any sign of the reinforcements?"
"The pickets have just sighted a dust cloud in the west," reported Jethan, kneeling upright under the tent"s low roof. He had, Oryn observed, washed his face before presenting himself; water still glistened in his hair. "That isn"t why I"ve come, Lord King. The teyn appear to be gone."
"As of when?"
"Not long ago, I don"t think, my lord. I"ve been watching with a spygla.s.s all afternoon. I could see half a dozen of them most of that time, just sitting."
"That"s odd in itself, isn"t it?" remarked Oryn. "I mean, they can usually hide under pebbles, it seems. Why sit in the open?"
"To let us know they were there, perhaps?"
Oryn raised his brows. "That isn"t behavior one usually hears of with teyn-that kind of planning ahead, I mean. But, then, up until last winter one never heard of them attacking men, either. If they"re no longer in evidence I suppose Numet should send out scouts."
"I already went, sir," said Jethan. "When I didn"t see any teyn I took a horse and rode two or three miles in the direction of Three Wells. I was unmolested."
"Good heavens, my dear boy, you didn"t need to do that!" cried Oryn, really distressed. "You could have been killed." He could see, beyond the edges of the bandages on the young man"s arms, the blackening bruises of rock hits. "The G.o.ds bear witness that just getting on a horse at this point would kill me."
Jethan didn"t smile. Oryn suspected he considered grimness part of his job. "I was mounted, sir, and could probably have outrun them. When I wasn"t attacked I checked for tracks. There were hundreds, dispersing in all directions. As if they"d all decided that they no longer needed to hold us here."
"Or as if someone had decided for them." Oryn heaved himself to his knees with a gasp. Jethan helped him to his feet and supported him to the tent door. As they both straightened up outside, Oryn untoggled his spygla.s.s from his belt again and scanned the eastern desert, the thinning column of smoke that was now almost extinguished in the pallid sky.
"I don"t like this," he said softly. "I don"t like it at all. They"re behaving like soldiers-soldiers under some central command. Why murder the nomads who"d been through Three Wells? Why block the way to the town from us until it could be burned?"
"You make it sound as if there"s someone controlling them," said Jethan. "Using them as tools. How?"
"I think at this point," murmured Oryn, "how doesn"t matter as much as why."
"My lord!" Captain Numet appeared between the low shelters as men began emerging, pouring out slim field rations from waterskins, preparing their horses for another ride. "Reinforcements are approaching; we should be able to deal with the teyn now." He saluted sharply. "My advice is to press on as soon as you can be ready, my lord, so that we can be through them before dark."
"Or we could, if they behaved like men and stayed put," remarked Oryn. "Thank you, Captain. Yes, I shall be ready in a few minutes. Geb, darling- Yes, there you are. No, I don"t think I shall have time for you to shave me . . . No, what I"m wearing is quite all right. Thank you," he added, with a smile to dispel his chamberlain"s disapproving pout. "Just have them make a horse ready for me and for my lady. I"m rather curious," he added as captain and chamberlain went striding away in opposite directions, "as to whether the teyn have actually dispersed, or whether this is simply a trap of some kind. And I"m even more curious as to what we shall find in Three Wells that someone would rather we didn"t see."
TWENTY-ONE.
With the evening"s first cool, Raeshaldis made her way through the southern gate of the city and took one of the brightly decorated water taxis down the ca.n.a.l that led to the Fishmarket District on the lake"s edge. This was still a pleasant trip of a mile or so through the relative coolness of palmeries and gardens, although the ward spells that had once kept the mosquitoes from the ca.n.a.l had-like all other wards-failed.
Mostly, the Fishmarket District was concerned with the fleet of big reed canoes that sailed each sunset out into the deeper waters and brought in netfuls of silvery trout, flopping ba.s.s, and millions upon millions of tiny, oily sardines-the staple food of the city"s poor-and with the barge traffic from across the Lake of the Sun. Corn and dates and rice from the Jothek and Jamornid clan lands around the White Lake and the Lake of Roses came in here, and pigs, goats, cattle from the richer Sarn farmlands along the sh.o.r.es of the Great Lake to the north. As they approached the lake, Shaldis was interested to see how the ca.n.a.l had been deepened, to allow for the gradual retreat of the sh.o.r.eline over the past decade. On either side of the ca.n.a.l, land that up until a decade ago had been lake bottom was now a dispirited-looking tangle of reeds, ponds, and brush, alive with birds and crocodiles in the last red glow of the retreating sun.
This was the first year that the sh.o.r.eline hadn"t retreated still further. Without the Sun Mages to sing the rains across the desert from the barren coasts of the distant ocean this spring, Shaldis wondered, watching the back of her veiled but otherwise nearly naked boatman dip and bend with the stroke, how soon would it be before the waters retreated too far for the distance to be traversed with ca.n.a.ls and bucket lines?
Eight women.
The G.o.ds help us.
And one of them, the G.o.ds help us, Cattail.
Cattail had had a new house built this year, on the site of the modest dwelling she"d shared with the long-suffering little nonent.i.ty who"d been her husband. The big, dark-haired woman liked to proclaim in her deep voice how nothing could induce her to abandon her friends and neighbors in the Fishmarket; the uncharitable (Shaldis among them) suspected that Cattail so loved the worship of the coterie of neighbors whom she had dominated for years with advice and favors that she simply couldn"t stand the thought of living elsewhere.
In either case, thought Shaldis, the house looked like exactly the sort of thing a laundress would have built if she should suddenly happen to have several hundred thousand gold pieces thrust upon her by merchants, land-chiefs, and wealthy gentlemen desirous of love potions or curses with no questions asked.
Cattail was sitting on her little roof-garden terrace, enjoying the cool breezes and the sight of the wharves below. As Shaldis was shown up by an extremely comely young serving man, Shaldis noted that reeking smudges of lemongra.s.s and pitch burned everywhere: Cattail hadn"t figured out a mosquito ward, either. And the doors and windows of the little kiosk through which the stair from the house below opened into the garden were defended with ma.s.sive shutters and bars, so Cattail hadn"t had any more luck with the problem of thieves, despite her reputation. The Fishmarket was a poor district.
"Raeshaldis, my dear child!" Cattail rose from her short-legged couch and crossed the garden to meet Shaldis, her jeweled hands held out. "So good of you to call." In the heat of noon, just before the dead hours of siesta, Shaldis had gazed into her crystal and spoken Cattail"s name. When the swarthy, heavy-featured countenance of her sister Raven had appeared, she had asked if Cattail would do her the favor of receiving her that evening.
There"d been four other people in Cattail"s downstairs waiting room when Shaldis had come in. They"d all glared daggers at her when the handsome young steward had heard her name and taken her up before them.
"Leopard, go fetch us coffee," Cattail commanded with a wave, and the steward bowed deeply and departed. Shaldis had to admit she felt a little shock, since even slave men were never given the descriptive pet names that women-and, she reflected, teyn-went by. Even the lowest male slave was named by his father with one of the names that appertained to their clan, and that was that. Men kept their names, even slaves or entertainers like the graceful Belzinian who danced in the Circus District before scandalized crowds. Everyone Shaldis met was shocked, in one degree or another, that she"d taken a male clan name when she"d left her grandfather"s house; it had never occurred to her that a woman would arbitrarily rename a male slave she"d bought, the way men routinely renamed women.
For that matter, she"d never heard of a woman owning slaves in her own name, and guessed that Cattail had a mud husband tucked away somewhere, the way the madams of the Blossom Houses and brothels did: a legal spouse contracted with and supported by a small stipend, who legally owned the woman"s house and slaves and who knew better than to ever put forward his claim. Most of the Blossom Mothers and madams worked through gangsters contracted to murder the mud husband out of hand in the event of funny business.
Shaldis didn"t envy Cattail"s spouse.
Then she was embraced in a great wave of expensively perfumed flesh and guided to a chair. "Dearest child, is it true about the King"s Jubilee? Is he really going to go through with it? It will make it excessively awkward for poor Summerchild if he fails, and her without a son. Awkward for us all. I wonder she hasn"t done more about getting herself to conceive by the king. It"s really a fairly simple matter."
She regarded Shaldis with those heavy-lidded dark eyes, and Shaldis"s mind went back over the two or three attempts that had been made, over the past year, by various landchiefs to introduce new, youthful concubines into the king"s harem. It was generally supposed that Summerchild used spells of her own on the king-which Shaldis didn"t think was the case, though she"d never asked-and that she had placed some sort of spell ward on him to keep him proof against other women"s love potions, something else Shaldis had no information about but which she considered only logical.
Maybe their love was simply beyond all that.
Three of the clients in Cattail"s opulently decorated chamber downstairs were women, anonymously veiled in extremely costly silks. Spells of fertility, thought Shaldis, or spells of love, despite the fact that even when the men had been working magic, spells of fertility were dangerous things and as often as not killed the mother or produced a dead or deformed baby. Summerchild was keeping a record of such things, now that women were either trying to work men"s spells or inventing their own. Despite Cattail"s claims, there was little reason to believe they"d gotten any safer.
"I"m glad to hear you say that," said Shaldis, watching her hostess"s face carefully. "The Lady Summerchild keeps her own counsel, the way she always does, but I was asked recently by one of my grandfather"s household about a spell to make her conceive, and since that"s not in my line, she asked me to come to you."
The plucked brows arched up. "Asked you to come to me? Dear child, and you agreed to run errands for a concubine? With that kind of att.i.tude I can see why the Sun Mages ran into trouble. No one respects even a Crafty who"ll run their errands for them. Be advised by me, dearest, don"t let yourself be imposed upon again in that way. Why didn"t the poor thing come to me herself?"