"If you"d ask that question, you can"t know my grandfather Chirak Shaldeth."
Under the layer of cosmetics there wasn"t the smallest change of expression in Cattail"s face. Only a small puckering of the brows-carefully executed so as not to wrinkle the paint-as she tried to place the name.
"One of the Grand Bazaar proctors?" Shaldis prompted.
"Oh, of course! Silly of me. I knew the Shaldeth had a proctorship, and I should have realized with the name you"d chosen that you were one of them. Your grandfather is a proctor, dear? The only proctor I know is Merj Glapas."
Leopard appeared with the coffee, and Shaldis sipped it-it was thickly laced with sugar, vanilla, milk, and cinnamon-and chatted with Cattail as the rose-amber globe of the sun sank itself, burning, into the lake and all the yellow-sailed fishing craft slipped out over the glowing water, borne on the hot whisper of the desert breeze. The time of Sunrest, the mages had called it, sacred to its own G.o.d Ka-Theruabin. Every spell performed during that hour had a special formula attached to it, to take account of the particular magic of that time.
As far as she could tell, either Cattail had never had the slightest thing to do with her grandfather"s house or household, or she was a consummately clever actress-something Shaldis was certain that she was. It wasn"t, of course, easy to casually bring up anything in a conversation so overwhelmingly dominated by her hostess"s insistence on telling her every detail of everyone else"s business in the neighborhood and what she had paid for the coffee service, the embroidered cushions, Leopard, or her hairdresser, but Shaldis persevered. When she slipped into the conversation the mention that one of her grandfather"s maidservants swore she"d seen Cattail herself in the house at night, Cattail"s eyes widened with credible-looking startlement and she said only, "Good heavens, what an extraordinary idea!" instead of, Who says this? or When? "How on earth would the girl have known what I looked like?"
Shaldis shook her head. "I have no idea. But I think that"s what gave poor Ten Flower-the girl who asked me about the fertility spell-the idea that she wanted one. She says when she heard this, she thought one of the other maids was trying to get herself with child by my uncle Tjagan, to get special privileges, and Ten Flower, who is also sleeping with my uncle, wanted to get in there first."
"Good lord, these poor silly children." Cattail shook her head. "As if any man-though I"m sure your uncle is a very paragon of virtue, my dear-is going to treat any woman better if she bears him a brat. Still, wait here for a few minutes and let me see what I can make up for her. Shall I bring Leopard back and have him sing for you? Or have him read to you? He has a ravishing voice, among other things," she added slyly.
"No, thank you, I"ll be fine. The silence here is lovely, this close to the lake."
"I should think that after living up in that ghastly Citadel for two years you"d give your thumbs for the sound of a little music, but to each her own. More coffee? A gazelle horn?" She moved the gaudily cloisonneed plate of cream-stuffed pastries closer. "My cook is a marvel-I don"t think even the king has one as fine. He cost a hundred gold pieces from Lord Nahul-Sarn and worth every dequin of it, I a.s.sure you. Not a woman in the realm can cook as well as a man who is truly an artist. Well, help yourself, my dear."
For a few minutes after Cattail"s departure Shaldis did simply sit where she was in the protective ring of stinking mosquito smudges, drinking in the lakeside quiet. The noises of the wharves were trans.m.u.ted by distance to a musical murmuring, like wind in trees. The evening breeze pa.s.sed with a gentle hrushing among the forest of dried-out reeds that had grown up between the old wharves just below the wall of Cattail"s house and the lake"s current sh.o.r.eline a hundred feet away. Swallows veered and darted over the pools, and even the sewery, fishy stink of that intervening stretch of reeds didn"t seem so bad, brushed over by the movement of the night air.
The magic light of Sunrest lay upon the world. Soon it would be gone, and dark would come.
When she was sure Cattail had retreated to her workroom elsewhere in the house, Shaldis got to her feet and went to the door that led back into the rooftop kiosk that contained the stair down into the rest of the house. It stood open, veiled in gauze to keep the mosquitoes at bay, and through the pinkish layers she could see the pierced lamps of the tiled stairwell. The elaborate tile work-brilliantly colored like everything else in the house-went around the opening of the door, breaking only for the heavy iron hinges of the folded-back leaves of the door itself.
Shaldis spread out her hands, brushed them lightly across the doors, the tile, then knelt to touch the threshold, and stippled her fingers over the curtain of gauze.
The sigils of protection, of warning, of ward leaped out at her as if they"d been shrieked. Beneath them lay other sigils still, glyphs tinkered together from both High Script runes and from the hasty letters of Scribble into signs of cursing, scrubbed into the wood and iron, written in salt and blood. Shaldis sensed those evil signs were inactive, but they"d been activated, then put to sleep again, recently and often-probably every night, she thought. To whoever forced or opened those doors at night, terrible things would happen . . .
There were no limiting spells on those curses, which shocked her deeply. It meant that the evil would take any form, disproportionate to the act of burglary and striking those for whom the cursed one cared, as well as the offender himself. They would also, eventually, have an effect on the inhabitants of the house, not only Cattail but the handsome Leopard and the talented cook.
One of the first lessons Shaldis had been taught as a Sun Mage-and in fact one of the first principles taught by any of the organized systems of male wizardry-was that all spells must be specifically limited in their duration, in their strength, and in their effect. The carelessness of Cattail"s defenses both horrified and disgusted her. The former laundress didn"t care, evidently, that the generalized curse placed on a burglar might take the form of a contagious disease spread to half the neighborhood, or the maiming of his innocent wife or child by a crocodile"s bite.
You touch my house, something AWFUL will happen to you, was all she cared about.
Had she been taught by a responsible mage, who"d been taught responsibly by his master, would she have done differently? Shaldis knew that the house had been built-and therefore these curses laid on the doors-after Summerchild had pointed out to Cattail that spells must be limited, even though there were many spells that did not work nearly so well that way.
Almost certainly, no one burgled Cattail"s house. Not anymore, anyway.
Shaldis couldn"t be sure, but she felt that the magic that had made those signs was different from that used to put sleep spells on the guards in the gallery outside her grandfather"s room. The faint residue she"d sensed in the wall of the gallery had a different color to it, a fundamentally different quality, as if she were differentiating Summerchild"s sweet tones from Cattail"s throaty purr.
Which was just as well, she thought, returning to her chair as she heard her hostess"s rather heavy tread on the stairs. Confident as Shaldis was in the strength of her own counterspells, she wouldn"t have wanted to risk one of Cattail"s curses sticking to her by breaking in and having a look at the woman"s account books some night.
"It"s odd," she said as Cattail handed her a little pottery bottle (Pottery, good G.o.ds! And after Summerchild told her that ensorcelled substances must be contained in gla.s.s, which has its own special properties with regard to magic!). "I"m remembering what Nettleflower said"-she watched Cattail"s eyes again but saw no reaction-"about thinking she saw you in Grandfather"s house. She said it was a Raven sister, so I think she a.s.sumed it was you. But is there someone else working in the city that we don"t know about?"
Cattail sniffed. "Other than that poor frump Pebble? Good lord, I swear the child puts sheep fat on her face for ointment. And her clothes! And if I have to hear one more time about that dreary "papa" of hers or her tedious batch of sisters."
Shaldis wondered what Cattail said about her, behind her back. "I thought so, but it was on a night when I know Pebble and Moth both were at the palace with Summerchild. In fact I"d thought that you were there, too," she added hastily, seeing Cattail"s eyes narrow with slighted anger. "But I know sometimes you"re busy and don"t go."
"Well, some of us have to earn our living and don"t have our bread handed to us by men-"
Shaldis broke hastily into what she guessed was a coming tirade with "Do you think there"s someone else working in the city? Another Raven sister?"
And saw Cattail"s mouth harden to a slit. "Nonsense."
There is.
"I know you hear everything." Shaldis hoped her widened eyes and the slightly worshipful note in her voice-copied from Nettleflower"s best efforts with Uncle Tjagan-would eradicate the memory of her earlier expressions of distaste for Cattail, her clientele, and her methods. "I thought you might have picked up a rumor-"
"Rumor?" The older woman spit. "It wouldn"t be a matter of rumor, my girl, with the king and that concubine of his holding out as much gold as you care to think about to any woman with the smallest wink of power to come over to their side. A woman has only to be able to call birds to her hand or charm the fleas off her papa"s donkeys for Summerchild to take her in and start telling her how to conduct her life. Why would you think I"d know?"
"Because you"re independent," said Shaldis, taking the pottery phial, very carefully, from Cattail"s hands. "Summerchild is the one who has access to the royal library, after all. Just because some of us seek to learn what Summerchild has to teach doesn"t mean we think her way is the only way."
She waited, but Cattail only regarded her with hard suspicion in her dark eyes. "You owe me half a royal," she said after a moment. "Let me know when your grandfather"s girl conceives."
Shaldis nodded and produced the coin with a friendly smile. "I will. And thank you."
She followed the handsome Leopard down the stairs, holding the phial wrapped in a corner of her mosquito veils and reflecting that she"d be lucky if she wasn"t pregnant by the time she got home. There were seven clients in the waiting room by that time, drinking coffee and chatting as if they were at a bathhouse. Shaldis didn"t recognize any of the veiled women, but one of the men-corpulent, pockmarked, overdressed in pink and purple satin, and studying the room with the sharp attention of one who could price the embroidered cushions to within a dequin of their value-she recognized as Xolnax, the thug who was water boss of the Slaughterhouse District. And, according to her aunt Yellow Hen, a frequent visitor to her grandfather"s study.
She boarded a water taxi and returned to the torchlit walls of the Yellow City in a thoughtful mood.
TWENTY-TWO.
A column of a hundred riders reached the king"s camp just before sunset, with the first whispers of the cooling evening breeze stirring their banners and the captain"s plumes. These, like Numet"s company, were levies of the House Jothek, loyal to the king and his family and paid, now, from the royal treasury. Watching them approach, Oryn reflected not for the first time that there ought to be some other way of policing and defending the boundaries of the realm. All the great landchiefs had their private armies, whose loyalty to the king was less real to them than their duty to their clan chief.
A dozen of his minor chiefs-and all the sheikhs they ruled-were in fact originally va.s.sals of House Akarian, who had gone to the banner of Taras Greatsword in protest against the decadence of their former lord. What they would do in the face of the jubilee, thought Oryn, watching the tired horses, the sweating and heat-sick men ride up to the little camp, was anyone"s guess.
The tents were packed up, the horses watered, the saddles of the newcomers changed to fresh mounts. In spite of Geb"s near-tearful declarations of humiliation, Oryn, with only minimal repairs to his coiffure and eye paint, looked as kingly as he ever did, though he suspected he more resembled a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound bouquet than a king. Where is Barun to look n.o.ble when I need him? The captain of the column saluted and agreed that his men press on, at least until they were well past the point where the teyn had attacked before. Having pa.s.sed that point with no sign of further trouble, at Oryn"s suggestion they halted for an hour"s rest. "We"re not going to reach Three Wells much before dawn in any case, and if we encounter teyn closer to the village I"d so much rather have rested men around me than tired ones."
Numet looked a little surprised at this consideration. It wasn"t, Oryn reflected, very like the warrior heroes in ballads, wherein everyone simply leaped on their seemingly inexhaustible horses and pounded away at full gallop for fifty miles whether it was midsummer or not. But having lost half a day, there didn"t seem much point in dashing madly to what he was almost certain would be a smoking ruin.
His father would have, of course.
They rode through the night, ringed by scouts and p.r.i.c.kling with wariness, but no attack came. "They"re near," Summerchild whispered, riding beside him, her eyes half closed in a listening trance. "There are dozens of them, moving along beside us through the sagebrush, far more than any band I"ve ever heard of."
"Only the teyn?" whispered Oryn. "No one else?" And, when she shook her head, "That"s unheard-of."
"Who knows what the teyn are truly like," Summerchild replied, "when they"re free to act without wizards to keep them afraid. To keep them enslaved."
Oryn glanced down at her, this beautiful woman, this Pearl Woman, the mother of his daughter and the delight of his life. Now all those things and something more. It had seemed completely natural to him, when he"d learned that Summerchild"s perfections included the abilities of a worker of magic. As a Pearl Woman, she had been trained from babyhood to be a perfect weapon, a perfect tool, in the hand of the man who owned her.
But he knew that she felt responsibilities to magic itself, which outdistanced her love for-and duty to-him.
And in her voice he heard, as he had heard before, that she did not feel that the G.o.ds had given her magic to enslave or terrify anyone.
Not even those whose unwilling service meant the difference, now, between life for the people of the Seven Lakes or slow death.
He didn"t know what to do about this. As king, he knew that the time would come very soon when he would have to do something.
And he feared what it might be.
After her visit to Cattail, Shaldis felt that her next call of the evening had better be the Slaughterhouse District. By ancient decree, the gates of the Yellow City were closed at nightfall, only opening again for the market-going farmers an hour before first light. But in fact, during the summer months the Fishmarket Gate remained open until well past midnight. Heat-sickened families would stroll out together along the ca.n.a.l"s high banks, and the wealthy would float along its tepid waters in lamplit barges. Around the Fishmarket Gate, and the square pool at the head of the ca.n.a.l, a small night fair operated through the summer months, jugglers and singers and tent-sheltered taverns selling date wine and beer. It wasn"t considered safe to stray too far from the torchlight-thieves and crocodiles alike waited in the darkness, the one species occasionally providing a late-night snack for the other-but it was a cheerful and beautiful scene nevertheless, torchlight and color warm against the cobalt darkness.
Shaldis reached the head of the ca.n.a.l, and paid off her water taxi, not much more than a half hour after full dark. She bought a bag of raisins from an old sweet seller, and a packet of dried apples soaked in honey. To these she added a jar of wine, reflecting with a certain amount of pleasure on Tulik"s probable expression if he were to find out where the money he"d given her was going. There was plenty of time, she knew, to walk.
A well-worn path stretched along the outside of the city wall to the Slaughterhouse District, and there was little danger of crocodiles once one got away from the basin at the ca.n.a.l head. The inhabitants of the Slaughterhouse District were no more averse than anyone else in the city to carnival sweets and cool breezes-in fact most of the pickpockets at the night fair commuted along that footpath to homes in the Slaughterhouse when their evening work was done. As Shaldis made her way along the wall she breathed deep of the rich scents of the orchards and gardens that spread all around the city on this side, though she didn"t neglect to keep a listening ear on the undergrowth. The Gray Cloak of illusion worked only on humans.
As she came around the eastern side of the city the ground grew higher and drier, the beds of tomatoes, beans, eggplant giving way to the harsh dryness of the rangelands. Southeast the Redbone Hills shouldered against the sky, a rough outlier of the Dead Hills and, like the Dead Hills, the province of tombs and tomb robbers. The dry wind brought her the stink of the slaughterhouses that lay outside the East Gate, and mingled with that stink, the greater reek of the squalid suburb where dwelled the city"s lawless poor.
No clan had jurisdiction in the Slaughterhouse and there was, in effect, no law; even the city guards came to the district only in groups, and never at night. Mud hovels crowded up against the sides of what had been handsome villas, once upon a time, now crumbling and crowded hives in which whole families occupied single rooms and let boarders sleep in the corners. Those too drunken, too uneducated, too lazy, or too unconventional to find work with the guild artisans in the city made their homes here. Shaldis herself had roamed its filthy alleys in boy"s disguise as a child, and last spring had hidden here from a murderer of Raven sisters. There were still a dozen people here who knew her by the name of Golden Eagle, her pseudonym at the time.
Little Pig Alley ran down one side of the shut-up Temple of Nebekht, and Greasy Yard opened off that, into what had formerly been the stable quarters of a large house. Shaldis ducked through the red-painted adobe archway into the yard and saw the familiar sight of children darting wildly around the dusty s.p.a.ce playing moonlight ponies; saw Vorm and Zarb, the two local drunks, lounging in the doorway of one of the little rooms engaged in their endless slurry-voiced yarning as if they had neither moved nor come to any conclusions since spring. On the opposite side of the court, a rawboned dark-haired woman was making couscous over a dung fire in the doorway of her room. Shaldis let the Gray Cloak dissolve around her and the woman looked up and said, "Hey there, girl. Come to see how your old friend Rosemallow"s doing?"
"Come to gossip." Shaldis dropped her night-fair purchases on the ground beside the fire and seated herself on the remains of an old camel saddle next to the house wall.
"I thought Crafties could just draw pictures on the ground and blow chicken feathers over them and find out everything they need to know." Rosemallow looked at her across the pot with a glinting, gap-toothed smile. Like most of the women of the Slaughterhouse District she didn"t bother wearing veils unless she was going into the city and wanted to look elegant. Certainly, few inhabitants of the Slaughterhouse bothered to divide their dwellings into seryak and harem, the domains of men and women.
"I did," Shaldis replied. "And that chicken feather fell into the corner of the picture labeled Go ask Rosemallow. Don"t touch that," she added, setting the veil-wrapped jar in the corner by the step.
"What is it?"
"One of Cattail"s fertility potions."
Through the open door of the room next to Rosemallow"s a woman"s voice could be heard, moaning "Oh, my darling-oh, my beloved! Ah, ecstasy! Ecstasy!"
Rosemallow dumped half the raisins and half the apples into the couscous and blew on the steaming spoon. "Then for the G.o.ds" sakes set it on the other side of the door so our girl Melon won"t even pa.s.s it when she"s done with this one. That"s all we"d need around here, and if it"s Cattail that made it, the dear G.o.ds only know what she"d birth. What is it you need to know, dearie?"
"Where does Ahure the Blood Mage live these days?"
"Lord, girl, you don"t need chicken feathers and honeyed raisins to find that out. He"s got a house south of here at the foot of the Redbone Hills by where the Carpenter"s wadi comes out."
"What, that scraggy old mortuary temple?"
"The house just beside it. Reach through the door there, honey, and get me some cinnamon. That box there just inside."
Shaldis obeyed. Rosemallow"s room was, unexpectedly, spotlessly clean, her own bedding and that of her children unrolled already over the divan and floor and her gray cat, Murder, solicitously nursing a litter of kittens. "Isn"t that dangerous?" she asked, re-emerging into the courtyard. "You get wilding teyn and runaways in the hills. Bandits, too."
"His magic protects him." The older woman dusted a pinch of spice into her stew. "Of course, Noyad usually sends a couple of his boys out to keep watch over the place, but to hear Ahure tell it, he"d be fine alone."
"Noyad the jeweler must value him, if he keeps bodyguards out there."
"Why not, if he"s making money for Noyad hand over fist putting luck wards and pa.s.sion spells and what have you into those trinkets of his."
"Do you have one?"
"Melon does." Rosemallow nodded toward the dark doorway of her friend"s room. "She"ll be out in a minute," she added unnecessarily, since matters were audibly approaching a conclusion within. "She has about a dozen. Me, I"ll stick to Starbright"s horoscopes." She patted the half-dozen brightly beaded leather amulets strung around her neck, each containing advice for those born within her year, sign, phase, and aspects. Men"s horoscopes, which were keyed to the sun, were much simpler.
Shaldis settled her back against the camel saddle again. "You haven"t heard rumors around town of any new Raven sister working, have you?" she asked. "One that maybe the water bosses out here have control of and aren"t telling anyone about?"
"Funny you should ask that."
She looked up uninterestedly as a young man staggered from Melon"s room, a half-drunk camel driver who smelled worse than any self-respecting camel Shaldis had ever met. He leaned back through the doorway, mumbling words of endearment. Does Tulik make a fool of himself chasing the Melons of the world? wondered Shaldis contemptuously.
She couldn"t imagine it.
Does Jethan?
The thought was like accidentally rolling over onto a thorn branch, but before she had time to sort out why, Melon appeared in the doorway, casually draped in a half-dozen veils of a.s.sorted hues and not very much else. Her hair-a towering confection of braids and blossoms whose general style Twinkle had obviously been trying to achieve-hadn"t even been mussed. "Pig," she remarked, as the camel driver disappeared through the gate into Little Pig Alley. She produced a mirror from goodness knew where on her person and checked the state of her eye paint (unimpaired). "Piglet, I should say. Hey there, Golden Eagle," she added, with a wave at Shaldis. "Are those apples? Darling!" she added when Rosemallow produced the wine, and bounced over to give Shaldis a hug that reeked of camel driver.
She looked around for her cup and moved in the direction of the veil-wrapped parcel. "Don"t touch that!" the other two chorused. "Tell her what happened to Murder," added Rosemallow, when Melon sat back with the wine.
"Oh, yeah." The girl nodded, her round face with its bright-pink cheeks growing grave. "Poor Murder got caught by two of the dogs over in the next street-by the time I got them off her I could see it was too late. She ran and hid in a crack in a wall, and before I could get her, that thug who owns them came out and gave me grief for whacking them-he"s one of Xolnax the water boss"s thugs, who guards the wells around here and charges five coppers apiece to let anyone draw water. By the time I"d dealt with him Murder had dragged herself away. I knew she couldn"t live-her leg was nearly torn off and her skin ripped back and bleeding."
Tears filmed the girl"s eyes as she drank her wine; Shaldis glanced back at the door of Rosemallow"s room, through which Murder could clearly be seen, calmly nursing her brood.
"We couldn"t find her for days," Rosemallow went on, "and we had to feed the poor kittens ourselves-their poor little eyes weren"t even open! Then two days later I wake up one morning and there she is, healed. She hopped back in among her kits and started nursing them again like she"d never been away. She has a big fresh scar on her leg and another one on her back where the skin was ripped away, and she was hungry and skinny."
"It was magic," said Melon. "That I swear. She wasn"t gone above two days, and she couldn"t have lived. Here, I"ll show you." She went into the room and re-emerged a moment later with the gray cat in her arms. The scars on Murder"s body were fresh. When Shaldis touched her, she felt the echo of the magic that had saved the cat"s life. There were echoes there of the sweet simplicity she"d felt on her grandfather"s door latch, on the walls of the gallery where his camel-driver guards had been put to sleep. She stroked Murder"s head, traced the huge scars with her fingertips.
It had to be the same Crafty one. Yet why didn"t it feel more similar?
There couldn"t possibly be two unknown women working magic-hidden magic-in the streets of the Yellow City.
Could there?
"That isn"t all," said Rosemallow. "I heard someone found an ill-wish mark-fresh-on the house of one of Xolnax"s goons-"
"Which one?" asked Shaldis. "Who?"
"Don"t know. This is just something I heard thirdhand in the baths. But Xolnax has been asking all around the town-not just in the Slaughterhouse but everywhere-about who might have made it. Cattail"s been asking, too. And she"s been coming down here, touching the walls like you do." She mimed the brushing gesture Shaldis had made in her grandfather"s study and gallery, in Cattail"s garden, everywhere she sought the whisper of another"s magic. "She"s looking for her, all right. From the questions she"s asked, it sounds like she thinks it"s a child. . . ."
Nonsense, Cattail had declared, with that hard suspicious glare. Why would you think I"d know?
The king and that concubine of his holding out gold . . .
Resentment had glinted in her voice like the raw rash of nettles.
She had withheld herself from the circle that Summerchild had formed, disdaining to have others tell her how to use her power.
But now she was seeking to make a circle of her own. To control others and to draw on and drink their power through the Sigil of Sisterhood, as she fancied Summerchild did with Pebble, Shaldis, Pomegranate, and Moth.