Something nickered across Jubal"s face, then was gone.
"The Stepsons?" he asked. "When last I heard, they still ruled the streets. What makes you think they"re gone?"
"Don"t toy with me, Hawkmaster," Hakiem scolded, reaching for more wine, only to find the bottle empty. "You, who know even what"s going on in my own head, must know that those clowns in armour who parade the streets these days are no more Stepsons than I"m a h.e.l.l Hound. Oh, they have the height and the hair of those they replaced, but they"re poor subst.i.tutes for the mercenaries who long ago followed Tempus off to the Northern Wars."
"Of course."Jubal smiled vaguely.
A small purse found its way from his tunic to his hand, and he pushed it across the table to the storyteller.
"Here," he instructed, "use this to buy yourself a charm, a good one, against poison. Violence in the courts is quieter, but no less rough than that you know from the Maze, and tasters are not always reliable."
"What I really need is a guard against their snakes," Hakiem grimaced, making the purse vanish with a wave of his hand. "I"ll never get used to having so many reptiles about."
"Check with me next week," Jubal answered absently. "I have people working on an antidote for that particular poison. That is, of course, a.s.suming you decide to retain your position. A street storyteller has no need of such protection."
"You have one of the beynit?" the talesmith asked, impressed in spite of himself.
"They aren"t that hard to come by," the ex-crimelord responded casually, "which reminds me. If you need a tidbit to keep your patroness happy with your services, tell her that not all the snakebite victims appearing lately are her people"s work. There are those who would discredit her court by duplicating their methods."
Hakiem raised his eyebrow in silent question, but Jubal shook his head.
"None of mine," he declared, "though the idea bears further study in the future.
If you"ll excuse me now, I have other matters to attend to ... and tell your escort I said to see that you reach your next destination safely."
The sound of Jubal"s laughter brought Saliman hurrying into the room.
"What is it?" he asked, half-puzzled, half-concerned by the first outburst of gaiety he"d witnessed from Jubal for many months. "Did the old storyteller have an amusing tale? Tell me, I could use a good laugh these days."
"It"s very simple," the Hawkmaster explained, regaining partial control of himself. "We"ve been betrayed. Double-crossed."
"And you"re laughing about it?"
"It"s not the intent, but the method that amuses me. Though I have no love of being tricked, even I must admit this latest effort displays a certain style."
With a few brief sentences, he sketched out what he had learned from Hakiem.
"Subst.i.tutes?" Saliman frowned.
"Think about it," Jubal argued. "You know at least some of the Stepsons on sight. Have you seen any familiar faces in those uniforms lately? Perhaps the one who made the alliance with us? It explains so much, like why the so-called Stepsons suddenly don"t know which end of a sword to grasp. And to think I expected to take advantage of a naive second-in-command."
"So what are we going to do now?"
"That I decided as soon as I learned of the deception."
All signs of laughter faded from Jubal"s eyes, to be replaced by a dangerous glitter.
"I make alliances with men, not uniforms. Now it just so happens that the men, the Stepsons, whom our alliance is with are now somewhere to the north, putting their lives and reputations on the line for the dear old Empire. In their efforts to be in two places at once, though, they"ve left themselves vulnerable.
They"ve turned their name over to a batch of total incompetents, hoping their reputation will suffice to bluff their replacements" way through any crisis.
"While we have an alliance with the Stepsons, we have no obligation at all to the fools they left behind in their stead. What"s more, we know from our own difficulties in rebuilding exactly how fragile a reputation can be."
The eyes were narrow slits now.
"Therefore, here are my orders to all under my command. All support for those in town who currently call themselves Stepsons is to be withdrawn immediately. In fact, any opportunity to hara.s.s, embarra.s.s, or destroy those individuals is to take priority over any a.s.signment save those directly involving the Beysib. In the shortest possible time, I want to see the name of the Stepsons held in somewhat less regard by the citizens of Sanctuary than that shown to the Downwinders."
"But what will happen when word of this reaches the real Stepsons?" Saliman asked.
"They will be faced with a choice. They can either stay where they are and have their name slandered in the worst h.e.l.l-hole in the Rankan Empire, or they can return at all speed, risking the label of deserter from the forces at Wizardwall. With any luck, both will happen. They"ll desert their post and find they are unable to reestablish their reputation here."
He locked gazes with his aide, then winked slowly. "And that, Saliman old friend, is why I"m laughing."
THE CORNERS OF MEMORY.
Lynn Abbey
1.
A door that had been obscured by shadows opened to admit a hunched-over figure in dark, voluminous robes. The laboured wheezing of the intruder filled the little room as, with quick, bird-like movements, the winding sheet was opened and the naked corpse revealed. Light entered the austere room from a single barred window high on one wall, illuminating the face of a young woman who lay on a narrow, wooden table, masking her waxen pallor so that it seemed she rested in the gentle sleep of youth, rather than the deeper sleep of eternity.
Ulcerous fingers uncurled from the depths of the shapeless robe sleeves, fingers more morbid and repellent than the corpse they probed. From within the cowl came a sound like a laugh - or a sob - and the grotesque hands brushed the young woman"s hair away from her neck. His dark robes concealed her as the crippled creature sighed, sniffed, and bent to her throat. He stepped back, examining a slim phial of blood in the faint light.
Still silent, except for his strained breathing, the robed figure lurched back into the shadows, where he conjured an intense blue light and, drop by drop, emptied the blood into it. He inhaled the vapours, extinguished the light with a gesture, and returned his attention to the corpse. His fingers re-examined every part of her without finding any mark other than the small bruise on her neck from which he had removed the blood.
Sighing, he drew the edges of the shroud together again and carefully rearranged the folds of coa.r.s.e linen. He smoothed her ash-brown hair over the bruise on her neck and, reluctantly, folded the cloth over her face. There was no doubt, this time, that a sob escaped from the shadowed depths of his cowl. There had been many women when he had been young and handsome. They had pursued him and he had squandered his love on them. Now he could remember no face more clearly than the one he had just covered with the linen.
The mage, Enas Yorl, shuffled back into the shadows, lit an ordinary candle, and sat at a rough-plank desk, his face cradled in his unspeakable hands. She had been a woman from the Street of Red Lanterns; from the Aphrodisia House, where blue-starred Lythande was a frequent guest. Yet they"d brought her to Enas for the postmortem. And now he understood why.
Dipping the stylus in the inkwell, he began his report in a script that had been antique in his own youth. " Your suspicions are confirmed. She was poisoned by the concentrated venom of the beynit serpent."
Lythande had most likely suspected as much, but the Order of the Blue Star neither knew nor taught everything. It fell to such as himself, more shunned than feared, to research the arcane minutiae of the eon; to recognize the poison for what it was or was not. Enas Yorl continued: The mark on her neck concealed two punctures - like those of the beynit serpent, though, my colleague, I am not at all certain that a serpent slithered up her arm to strike her. Our new ruler, the Beysa Shupansea, has the venom within her - as she has shown at the executions. It is said that the Blood of Bey, the envenomed blood, flows only in the veins of the true rulers of the Beysib, but you and I, who know magic and G.o.ds, know that this is most likely untrue. Perhaps not even Shupansea knows how far the gift is spread, but surely she knows she is not the only one ...
A weeping ulcer on Yorl"s hand burst with a foul odour, and a vile ichor seeped on to the parchment. The ancient, cursed magician groaned as he swept the fluid away. A ragged hole remained on the parchment; grey-green bone poked through the ruined flesh of his hand. The movement, and the pain, had loosened his cowl. It fell back to reveal thick, chestnut-coloured hair, which glittered crimson and gold in the candlelight - his own hair - if the truth were known or anyone still lived who remembered him from before the curse.
He did not often feel the pain of his a.s.sorted bodies; the curse that disguised him in ever-shifting forms did not truly affect him. He still felt as he"d felt the instant before the curse had claimed him. Except - except rarely when in mocking answer to a yearning he could not quite repress, he was himself again: Enas Yorl, a man twice, three times the age of any other man. A shambling, rotted-out wreck who could not die; whose bones would never be scoured clean in the earth. He hid the radiant, unliving, and therefore uncursed, hair.
The ulcer was congealing with a faintly blue, scaly iridescence. Yorl prayed, as much as he ever prayed and to G.o.ds no mortal would dare worship, that sometime it would end for him as it had ended for the woman on his table. He no longer wished that the curse be removed.
The blueness was beginning to spread, bringing with it dis-orientation and nausea. He would not be able to complete his message to Lythande. With a trembling hand, he clutched the stylus and scrawled a final warning: Go. or send someone you trust, to the Beysib wharf where their ships still lie at anchor. Whisper "Harka Bey" to the waters; then leave quickly, without looking back - The transformation sped through him, blurring his vision, softening his bones.
He folded the paper with a gross, awkward gesture and left it on the shroud.
Paralysis had claimed his feet by the time he"d fumbled the door open and he retreated back to his private quarters, crawling on his hands and knees.
There was much more he could have told Lythande about the powerful, legendary beynit venom and the equally powerful and legendary Harka Bey. A few months ago even he had thought that the a.s.sa.s.sin"s guild was only another Ilsigi myth; but then the fish-eyed folk had come from beyond the horizon and it now seemed some of the other myths might be true as well. Someone had gone to considerable trouble, using distilled venom and a knife point to make the wound, to make it seem as if the Harka Bey had slain the courtesan. He did not personally believe the Harka Bey would trouble themselves over a Red Lanterns woman - and he did not truly care why she had been killed or who had killed her. His thoughts surrounded the knowledge that the methods of the Harka Bey, at least, were real and might be turned towards ending his own misery.
2.
Of late life had been kinder to the woman known in the town simply as Cythen.
Her high leather boots were not only new but had been made to fit her. Her warm, fur-lined cloak was new as well: made by an old Downwinds woman who had discovered that, since the arrival of the Beysib and their gold, there were more things to do with a stray cat than eat it. Yes, since the Beysib had come, life was better than it had been - Cythen hesitated, repressed a wave of remembrance and, reminding herself that it was dangerous folly to remember the past, continued on her way. Perhaps life was better for the Downwinds woman; perhaps her own life was now better than it had been a year before, but it was not unconditionally better.
The young woman moved easily through the inky, twilight shadows of the Maze, avoiding the unfathomed pools of detritus that oozed up between the ancient cobblestones. Tiny pairs of eyes focused on her at the sound other approach and scampered noisily away. The larger, more feral creatures of the h.e.l.l-hole watched in utter silence from the deeper shadows of doorways and blind alleys.
She strode past them all, looking neither right nor left, but missing no flicker of motion.
She paused by an alley apparently no different from any of the dozens she had already pa.s.sed by and, after a.s.suring herself that no intelligent eyes marked her, entered it. There was no light now; she guided herself with her fingertips brushing the grimy walls, counting the doorways: one, two, three, four. The door was locked, as promised, but she quickly found the handholds that had been chipped into the outer walls. Her cloak fell back as she climbed and, had there been light enough to reveal anything, it would have shown a man"s trousers under a woman"s tunic and a mid length sword slung low on her left hip. She swung herself over the cornice and dropped into the littered courtyard of a long-abandoned shrine.
A single patch of moonlight, brilliant and unwelcome here in the Maze, shone amid the rubble of what had been an altar. Holding her cloak as if it were the source of all bravery and courage itself, Cythen knelt among the stones and whispered: "My life for Harka Bey!" Then, as no one had forbidden it, she drew her sword and laid it across her thighs.
Lythande had said - or rather implied, for magicians and their ilk seldom actually said anything - that the Harka Bey would test her before they would listen to her questions. For Bekin"s sake and her own need for vengeance, Cythen vowed that they would not find her wanting. The slowly shifting moonlight fed her terror, but she sat still and silent.
The darkness, which had been a comfort while she had been a part of it, now lurked at the edge of her vision, as her memories of better times always lurked at the edge of her thoughts. For a heartbeat she was the young girl she had once been and the darkness lunged at her. A yelp of pure terror nearly escaped her lips before she pushed both memory and old feats aside.
Bekin had been her elder sister. She had been betrothed when disaster had struck. She had witnessed her lover"s b.l.o.o.d.y death and then had been made the victim of the bandits" l.u.s.t in the aftermath of their victory. None of the brigands had noticed Cythen: slight, wiry Cythen, dressed in a youth"s clothes.
The younger sister had escaped from the carnage into the darkness. Waiting until the efforts of drinking, killing, and raping had overcome each outlaw and she could bundle her senseless sister away to the relative safety of the brush.
Under Cythen"s protection, Bekin"s bruises had healed, but her mind was lost.
She lived in her own world, believing that the bulge in her belly was the legitimate child of her betrothed, oblivious to their squalor and misery. The birthing, coming on an early spring night, much like this, with only the moonlight for a midwife, had been a long and terrifying process for both of them. Though Cythen had seen midwives start a baby"s life with a spanking, she held this one still, watching Bekin"s exhausted sleep, until there was no chance it would live. Remembering only the half-naked outlaws in the firelight, she laid the little corpse on the rocks for scavengers to find.
Again Bekin recovered her strength, but not her wits. She never learned the cruel lessons that hardened Cythen and never lost the delusion that each strange man was actually her betrothed returning to her. At first Cythen fought with Bekin"s desires and agonized with guilt whenever she failed. But she could find no work to get them food, while the men often left Bekin a trinket or two that could be p.a.w.ned or sold in the next village - and Bekin was willing to go with any man. So, after a time, Bekin earned their shelter while Cythen, who had always preferred swordplay to needlework. learned the art of the garrote and dressed herself in dead men"s clothes. .
When the pair reached Sanctuary, it was only natural that Cythen found a place with Jubal"s hawkmasked mercenaries. Bekin slept safely in the slaver"s bed whenever he desired her and Cythen knew a measure of peace. When the h.e.l.l-sent Wh.o.r.esons had raided Jubal"s Downwinds estate, the younger sister again came to the aid of the elder. This time, she took her to the Street of Red Lanterns, to the Aphrodisia House itself, where Myrtis promised that only a select, discriminating clientele would encounter the ever-innocent Bekin. But now, despite Myrtis" promise, Bekin was four days dead of a serpent"s venom.
The pool of moonlight shifted as the night aged and Cythen waited. She was bathed in silvery light and blind to the shadows beyond it: undoubtedly the Harka Bey had chosen the rendezvous carefully. She held only her sword hilt and endured the cramps the cold stone left in her legs. Rising above the pain, she sought the mindlessness she had first discovered the day her world had ended and the future closed. It was not the fantastic mindlessness that had claimed Bekin, but rather an alert emptiness, waiting to be filled.
Even so, she missed the first hint of movement in the shadows. The Harka Bey were within the ruins before she heard the faint rustle of shoes on the crumbling masonry.
"Greetings," she whispered as one figure separated from the rest and whipped out a short, batonlike sword from a sheath she wore slung like a bow across her back. Cythen was glad of the sword beneath her palms and of the st.u.r.dy boots that let her spring to her feet while the advancing woman drew a second sword like the first. She remembered all Lythande had been able to tell her about the Harka Bey: they were women, mercenaries, a.s.sa.s.sins, magicians, and utterly ruthless.
Cythen backed away, masking her apprehension as the woman spun the pair of blades around her with a blinding, deadly speed. By now, five months after the landing, almost everyone had heard of the dazzling swordwork of the Beysib aristocracy, but few had seen even practice bouts with wooden swords and none had seen such lethal artistry as advanced towards Cythen.
She a.s.sumed the static en garde of a Rankan officer - who until the Beysib had been the best swordsmen in the land - and fought the mesmerizing power of the spinning steel. The almost invisible sphere the Beysib woman constructed with the whirling blades was both offence and defence. Cythen saw herself sliced down like wheat before a peasant"s scythe - and cut down in the next few heartbeats.
She was going to die. . .
There was serenity in that realization. The nausea dropped away, and the terror.
She still couldn"t see the individual blades as they twirled, but they seemed somehow slower. And no one, unless the Harka Bey were demons as well, could twirl the steel forever. And wasn"t her own blade demon-forged, shedding green sparks when it met and shattered inferior metal? The voice of her father, a voice she thought she had forgotten, came to her: "Don"t watch what I do," he"d snarled good-naturedly after batting aside her practice sword. "Watch what I"m not doing and attack into that weakness!"
Cythen hunched down behind her sword and no longer retreated. However fast they moved, those blades could not protect the Harka Bey everywhere, all the time.
Though still believing she would die in the attempt, Cythen balanced her weight and brought her sword blade in line with her opponent"s neck: a neck which would be, for some invisible fraction of time, unprotected. She lunged forward, determined that she would not die unprotesting like the wheat.
Green sparks showered as Cythen absorbed the force of two blades slamming hard against her own. The Beysib steel did not shatter - but that was less important than the fact that all three blades were entrapped by each other and the tip of Cythen"s blade was a finger"s width from the Harka Bey"s black-scarved neck.
Cythen had the advantage with both hands firmly on her sword hilt, while the Harka Bey still had her two swords, and half the strength to hold each of them with. Then Cythen heard the unmistakable sound of naked steel in the shadows around her.
"Filthy, fish-eyed b.i.t.c.hes!" Cythen exclaimed. The local patois, usually unequalled for expressing contempt or derision, had not yet taken the measure of the invaders, but there was no mistaking the murderous disgust in Cythen"s face as she beat her sword free and stepped momentarily back out of range.
"Cowards!" she added.
"Had we wished to slay you, child, we could have done so without revealing ourselves. So, you see, it was simply a test; which you pa.s.sed," her opponent said in slightly breathless, accented tones. She sheathed her swords and, unseen still in the darkness, her companions did the same.
"You"re lying, b.i.t.c.h."
The Harka Bey ignored Cythen"s remark, but began unwinding the black scarf from her face, revealing a woman only a little older than Cythen herself. The clear racial stamp of the Beysib unsettled Cythen as much, or more than, the twirling swords. It wasn"t just that their eyes were a bit too round and bulging for mainland taste but -flick - and those eyes went impenetrable and gla.s.sy. To Cythen it was like being watched by the dead, and with the corpse of her sister still foremost in her mind, the comparison was not at all comforting.
"Do we truly seem so strange to you?" the Beysib woman asked, reminding Cythen that she, too, was staring.
"I had expected someone... older: a crone, from what the mages said."
The Harka Bey hunched her shoulders; the gla.s.sy membrane over her eyes flicked open, then closed without interrupting her stare. "No old people came on the ships with us. They would not have survived the journey. I have been Harka Bey since my eyes first opened on the sun and Her blood mingled with mine. You needn"t fear that I am not Harka Bey. I am called Prism. Now, what do you wish from the Harka Bey?"
"A woman from the Street of Red Lanterns has been murdered. She slept secure in the most guarded House in Sanctuary and yet someone was able to kill her leaving the mark of serpent fangs on her neck." Cythen spoke the words Lythande had taught her, though they were far from the ones she would have freely chosen.
Though the Sanctuary woman believed it impossible. Prism"s eyes grew wider, rounder and the gla.s.sy membrane fluttered wildly. Finally her eyelids closed and, as if on cue, the loose, dark clothing she wore began to writhe from her waist to her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, from her b.r.e.a.s.t.s to her shoulders, until the bloodred head of the woman"s familiar peeked above her collar and regarded Cythen with round, unblinking eyes. The serpent opened its mouth, revealing an equally crimson maw and glistening ivory fangs. Its tongue wove before Cythen"s face, drawing a faint murmur of disgust from her.
"You needn"t fear her," Prism a.s.sured Cythen with a cold smile, "unless you"re my enemy."
Cythen silently shook her head.
"But you do think that I, or my sisters, killed this woman who was, in some way, dear to you?"
"No - yes. She was mad; she was my sister. She was protected there and there was no reason for anyone to want her dead. She lived in the past, in a world that doesn"t exist any more."
The cold smile nickered across Prism"s face again. "Ah, then, you see it could not have been Harka Bey. We would never kill without reason."
"There were no marks besides the snakes fangs" puncture anywhere on her. Myrtis even called Lythande to examine the body -and he arranged for Enas Yorl to study the poison. And Enas Yorl sent us to you."
Prism turned to the shadows and spoke rapidly in her own language. Cythen recognized only the names of the two magicians; the native Beysib language was very different from the mix of dialects common in Sanctuary. A second woman joined them in the moonlight. She unwound her scarf to reveal a face that shimmered orchid as it stared at Cythen. Cythen let her hand rest once again on her sword hilt while the two women conversed rapidly in their incomprehensible tongue.
"What else did your magician, Enas Yorl, tell you about us -besides how to contact us along the wharves?"
"Nothing," Cythen replied, hesitating a bit before continuing. "Enas Yorl"s cursed. We left Bekin"s corpse in his vestibule and returned later to find a note tucked in her shroud. Lythande said it was incomplete; that the shifting curse had claimed him again. Beyond saying that you, the Harka Bey, would know the truth, the note was indecipherable."
There was another brief exchange of foreign words before Prism spoke again to Cythen. "The shape-changer is known to us - as we are known to him. It is a serious charge you and he bring before us. This woman, your sister, was not our victim. You, of course, do not know us well enough to know that we speak the truth in this; you will have to trust us that this is so."
Cythen opened her mouth to protest, but the woman waved her back to silence.