Saber and Shadow Read online

  Almost, but she remembered that the produce markets in the Old City were closed this day, and what vendor would have been given an order for delivery? She crossed to the other side of the street, one hand to her pouch. The sound of grit against stone under her sandals sounded loud in her ears as she hurried past glass inlaid walls.

  Only one more turn, she thought. On the grounds of my master, not even the Adders would dare follow.

  As she turned into the laneway, the market vendor laid down her yoke and wiped her face, making a sign with her fingers. Two dark figures on the roof opposite stood; one lifted something with a metallic glitter.

  Milampo’s servant felt only an enormous blow beneath her shoulder blades. The huge impact threw her forward onto her face; it was when she tried to rise that the pain began. She moaned and felt a bubble of wetness break on her lips. It ran down her chin and dropped to the dusty pavement, bright red in the morning sun, one more droplet among so many shed that morning.

  It was impossible to breathe. She struggled, forcing her lungs open against the wet tearing within, and crawled. One pace, two. Her hand pulled the belt pouch free from its thongs. The toss was weak, and the pouch landed a pace short of the doorkeeper’s alcove.

  “Hearing ... and obeying ... Master,” she whispered. And there was a long night’s falling into emptiness.

  Megan hit the ground just behind Shkai’ra, saying, “Wait, now you should see to that hand now that we have a sec—” when she felt it. She reached out and caught Shkai’ra’s wrist, in a suddenly urgent grip.

  It was a tickle in the back of her mind. An elusive whiff of power coiled somewhere in this place like the delicate sound of a color or the scent of a song. “There is power here.” She turned this way and that but could not pinpoint the source of disturbance. “Such power ...” she whispered.

  Shkai’ra bared her teeth and glanced around. The expression was not a smile. “Spook pushers,” she said, very softly. “Oh, I don’t like spook pushers. Never trust a shaman—the truest thing the Ancestors ever said.” She didn’t see Megan’s sideways look.

  They took the path to their left, breathing deep to get their wind back. Shkai’ra sucked at the wound in the fleshy side of one hand, below the little finger.

  “Should have watched the back shoulders of the spearhead—sheepraping sharp,” she muttered.

  The paved way turned around a massive bush covered with thousands of tiny blue flowers moving gently in the warm, slow breeze, tapping against the stone of the statue in their midst. Megan looked up at the figure of the leaping dolphin with growing uneasiness; there was a prickling between her shoulder blades, as of approaching ... peril? Not necessarily, but something was about to happen. This feeling was one she had learned to trust.

  They padded around the corner and stopped dead. Before them, a woman sat. Long black hair flowed down, over her cream-colored robe, past the cloth-of-gold cushion on which she sat, to coil slightly on the purple-and-green marble of the dais. A light wooden lattice overgrown with a green vine blossoming scarlet arched over her protectively. From a small brazier on her left, incense rose in a blue coil; to her right was a silver bowl on a tripod of bronze. She raised eyes as white as milk to meet them, from the crossed palms in her lap. Without iris or pupil; blind eyes, that saw.

  “I greet you both,” she said. The voice was soft, curiously hard to gauge. The face was smooth. Was the voice that of a child, or of middle age?

  “I felt you in my darkness. One from afar; another from farther still. I see you in darkness, and darkness follows you: fate, but that I cannot see.” Her nose wrinkled. “Blood, the smell of it; now, and in the time to come.”

  The woman’s voice dropped like cool water into the humid stillness of the garden. Shkai’ra backed away, unconsciously, knuckles white on the grip of her saber as the tiny hairs along her spine struggled to rise against the sweat-damp cloth.

  “Who ...” She cleared her throat against the sudden roughness of her voice. “Who are you? You’re no Sun priest; nor a merchant’s clerk.”

  Megan bowed and made the gesture of respect, the clap of her hands sounding in the drowsy hum of bees from the lilac. “Lady of Power, you see much. We apologize for disturbing your, ah, meditations.”

  She backed up, pulling at Shkai’ra’s arm, searching for a safer distance from this woman. Shkai’ra, she thought, don’t offend this one. Megan felt breathless, the sensation of pressure under her lungs almost stifling.

  Those eyes turned to her, and the woman laughed. “Fear me not, young-kin. I am merely a seeker of wisdom. And a prisoner, a hostage.” The laugh transformed the ageless face into that of a young girl. “Or so my ... host ... thinks.”

  She raised her hands, and a faint nimbus of blue light played around the long, slender fingers.

  “This moment was foreseen.” Her voice was remote, the laughter faded into a cool monotone that might have come from the idol in a sanctuary carved of glacial ice.

  “Now all turns on your actions. Two chance-met wanderers, and on them rests the fate of great lords, wisefolk, merchants, and priests, and common folk without number. How, I cannot see; there are too many branches of the path. On all those that go well, you fare together.”

  She diminished into humanity. “But it would be best if you left soon.” She pointed down the avenue of topiaries behind her with a sparely elegant gesture. “There lies a gate which will not require you to traverse much of the greathouse; the household is much disturbed. Here is clean clothing.”

  She turned her head, and at the unspoken summons a man appeared. Middle-aged, he was near seven feet in height and corded with muscle. He picked up the white-eyed woman as an adult might a child, and it was only then that they realized her legs hung limp and useless.

  “That way, Bors,” Yeva said. The milky eyes turned to regard the two. “Go well, I hope,” she continued. “That you go into strangeness, I can be sure of.” Megan stood, looking after them, silent.

  “Come on,” Shkai’ra said, waving a hand before her face. Megan started as if coming back from a long distance, then hesitating over the gift of the clothing. Then she shrugged. What else to do, wander about bloody? For someone that powerful ... she wouldn’t need something as simple as a gift to hold us.

  They shed their tunics, rinsed blood from their skins in the fountain and donned the clean plain garments that lay folded on the dais. Megan followed Shkai’ra down the row of sculpted shrubs to the opposite wall that encircled the garden, and to the heavy door set into it.

  Megan paused, felt in her belt, and sighed. “Another cloth gone. You’d better clean that meat cleaver of yours.” She looked about, then cleaned her daggers with a corner of her old tunic.

  Shkai’ra pulled a silk rag from her belt and wiped the long patterned blade lovingly. The dappled patterns in the steel shone as the red-brown scum came away.

  “Ahi-a, I never leave blood on my swift-kisser here longer than I must,” she said, buffing the metal again and sliding it back into the sheath, a practiced motion that didn’t need the guidance of eyes. “Getting good Minztan steel this far east is near impossible. Besides, even in Illizbuah walking the streets with a bloody sword is a trifle conspicuous.”

  “What, it isn’t the universal practice? I’d have thought—” She broke off, intent. Beyond the door: a muffled sound, perhaps a whisper, and from the other side.

  She looked at Shkai’ra; the Kommanza shrugged, drew, the point of her saber making small neat circles in the air. “The doorkeeper, maybe. Go on.”

  They opened the dark mahogany panel, and met silence. Projecting walls made a U-shaped nook for the guardian, but it was empty. The liveried figure of the servant lay beyond in the street, one outstretched hand touching the threshold; a bolt-gun shaft behind one shoulder showed the reason. She was very recently dead, still bleeding in a slowing trickle, and at their feet lay a belt pouch. They both moved toward it by reflex; Megan’s hand arrived first, tucking the leather bag under t
he hem of her tunic.

  “Time to count it later,” she said. “No sense waiting for whoever shot her.”

  Shkai’ra bent over the corpse for an instant as they passed. “Ahi-a—House of Milampo Terhan’s-kin. The fattest pig among the merchant swine-princes. Fifty ships, interests in the western trade, slaves and metal and spices.”

  A dark figure clung to the roof above them, straining after their departing voices. Two more joined him, and they dropped softly into the street beside the body of their victim.

  One knelt to run quick expert fingers over the still form. “Shadowed One, it is not here.”

  The leader cursed softly and flipped the body over with her toe. “Search about,” she said to the others. “Our informant said this one would have it.” Her head swiveled to where the two outlanders had passed. Or could they have taken it? A fine sweat broke out on her forehead. She would not envy the subordinate assigned to take that news to the Adderchief. “Perhaps those two should be questioned.”

  Chapter VIII

  Megan and Shkai’ra strolled along the brick sidewalk, a luxury of these affluent quarters of the Old City. Folk were about their business, seeming to ignore what was happening only a half kilometer away. Or perhaps not seeming, Shkai’ra thought. Old City dwellers were not all rich, but the poor here were mostly the servants of the wealthy; the unfree mostly not even Fehinnans. A quiet existence, ordered, secure; it might have been a different continent, a world invisible from the desperate daily scramble of the lowtown slums. Massacre did not really touch their lives; unless they were physically involved, it was not real to them.

  The traffic of the street parted for a laaitun of cavalry, with bright gold-lacquered armor and ribbons wound in the horses’ manes. Shkai’ra put an arm around Megan’s shoulders and nodded to a laughing group about the entranceway of a shop.

  “Nothing stops Fehinnans when Festival is coming,” she said. Gaily painted masks were being passed from hand to hand: faces of saahvyts and paancahs and waybaycs, the devils and pranksters and house goblins that lingered still beneath the austere monotheism of the Sun. There were other goods for sale: leather wine flasks for squirting into the mouths of passersby, hand pumps for showering colored dust and strange powders, air-filled bladders for banging on heads, and feathered cloaks worked with the grapes and ears of com that symbolized the season of growth. Even in Illizbuah the City Solstice, High Sun, was still largely a fertility rite.

  “Much like Dagde Vroi at home,” Megan said. “Days of Fools, at Year End.” Her eyes narrowed speculatively at some of the powders displayed. “One of my kin,” she spat, “makes things like these, but for more serious purposes and higher prices. If I’m lucky, she’ll have died before I get back.” Suddenly she laughed. “She would be lucky if she did!”

  Shkai’ra smile died as she looked down at her companion. “Hoi, you’re limping? Did you take a wound?”

  Megan twisted her leg to one side and looked at it with annoyed impatience. “Nothing serious—I didn’t notice it at the time.” Her chuckle lapsed into an almost hysterical giggle. “It must have been in the eating shop. To go through all of this and be stabbed in the leg with a table tool, with a fork! The burghers of this city are more dangerous than the soldiery. Don’t worry, it’s hardly visible.”

  Shkai’ra grunted skeptically. Megan must have good natural resistance to infection, to have lived this long; still, even a small wound could bring the green rot, or poison the blood. “Best we see to it, though,” she said. They were in a district of shops, expensive goods for the Old City trade. Among them stood a small park: tessellated brick pavement with dwarf flowering shrubs in carved stone pots.

  “I’ll take a look,” the blond woman said. Megan leaned against one of the man-high flowerpots and extended the leg behind her; the wound was in the calf, difficult to reach.

  “Remember, that fork was in a priest-bureaucrat’s mouth—no telling what was on it,” Shkai’ra said as she knelt to examine the puncture. Two small red dots, side by side; she ran her fingers around the affected area before applying her mouth. “Hmmm, mere was something in there,” she said, spitting. “Tines probably broke off.”

  Shkai’ra worked the wound with her fingers until the blood flowed clean, then produced a tiny bottle from a belt pouch and poured green liquid into the holes, ignoring Megan’s startled twitch.

  “Fishguts! What are you doing, woman, whittling it deeper with a hot needle?”

  “Stings, doesn’t it?” Shkai’ra replied, grinning up at the Zak, teeth white in her tanned face. “The Fehinnans make it from seaweed. Good for cuts. Now, why don’t we eat, since we didn’t get to, earlier.”

  A copper bit stirred the vendor of a nearby pushcart. A big ceramic vat bubbled in its center, sending a scent of hot peanut oil into the warm, still city air. Into it the streetseller flipped a double handful of meat chunks, onions, peppers, and pieces of yam. A few minutes later, he scooped them out with a slotted wooden ladle, rolled them in flatbread, and doused them with a hot brown sauce. Cornhusks served as platters; an extra bit brought two wooden cups of peach juice from a sweating clay jug, cool and tart.

  The two women lounged back into the shade of plants and buildings, sitting at their ease on a patch of coarse grass. On the street outside a group of retainers trotted by, dressed in the livery of the Terhan’s-kin. Swords were forbidden to them, but there were ceramic-headed spears in their hands, knives at belts, worried determination on their faces. Shkai’ra juggled the hot food in her hands, watching with interest from between the leaves of a potted eucalyptus tree. Happily, she inhaled the smells of warm stone, garlic, hot oil and flowers. Patterns of sunlight shifted across her face, dappling as wind shifted branches.

  “Here, she said, handing Megan the second roll. “If that pouch was missed so soon, it had something in it besides the doorward’s wages, or I’m a kinless sheepraping nomad.” Her eyes narrowed in amusement; a Fehinnan friend had told her once that she loved strong happenings more than wine, and there were times when she saw some truth in that. And an exile with nothing to lose but her We could play such games with no regrets.

  “Rauquai!” Megan exclaimed, blowing gingerly on her portion. “And I thought to rest in this city! You realize, Shkai’ra-my-friend, that since I arrived I’ve scarcely stopped running? Well, nothing more is likely to happen; soon I’ll be able to raise passage money and sit on my butt, the fine lady passenger.” Megan finished the fruit juice and peered over the rim of her cup at the Kommanza, eyes snapping. “You don’t like ‘spook pushers’?” Shkai’ra set her own cup down on the yellow brick, circling her arms about her knees.

  “Nia. I almost got killed trusting a spook pusher, once. And the shaman who was there was supposed to be on my side.”

  “Don’t you think you’re tarring all powerful people with the same brush?”

  “Well, yes, but the only part of the other world that ever touched me were my gods, and they aren’t what other people would call ... nice.”

  “If you even know about it firsthand, that makes you a spook pusher.”

  “Niaf Nia. Shkai’ra’s eyes narrowed. “A shaman once told me that my line, the chief-Ian, had as much power as your average cabbage, and it had to be like that so it wouldn’t interfere with the gods talking through us.”

  “Ah.” Megan stared down into her cup. I obviously can’t tell her—

  “How did you know about the spooker in the garden, anyway? You said something the minute your Feet hit the dirt.”

  Then again ... this morning she trusted me behind her with a weapon. But then she was safer doing that. People are less likely to kill than they are to shun ... She shrugged mentally. She’d done well enough without friends before.

  “See that fellow there?”

  The Zak nodded at a man dozing in the heat. He lay on his cloak, a broad-brimmed traveler’s hat over his face; beside him at waist height was a wine cup, securely planted on the rim of a tree pot. She dipped a finger in
to the dregs of Shkai’ra’s cup and drew two lines, one around the base and another on the rim. “Watch,” she said.

  Very gently, she put a finger to the edge of Shkai’ra’s goblet and pushed. The cup five meters away leaped in a parody of the tiny motion, and the cool liquid poured unerringly into the man’s lap. He leaped to his feet with a wild, strangled yell, fist upraised. Awareness blinked back into his eyes, and the realization that there was nobody within five meters of him. His mouth worked silently; the fist fell, and his eyes with it to the purple stain on the brown cotton of his tunic. He wrapped his cloak about his middle and stole away.

  The Zak picked up her cup and emptied it with a sly almost-smile. “Not everybody who can do a little magic sits under bushes and makes prophecies,” she said impishly, hiding her tension. “Better to have a little fun now and then.”

  In a chamber overlooking gardens, beneath a dome of crystal, a robed figure, another of the Guild of the Wise, sat motionless above a brazen bowl of water.

  Others had watched here before him; there would be a relief when he tired, and that would not be soon. Sensation/experience/perception drifted through the still pool of his mind, without rippling its receptivity. Leaves brushed against the brickwork of the tower; a breeze whispered through the latticework supports of the dome, laden with the scent of flowers and baking bread.

  A spot of light appeared in the clear water. He rose smoothly from the cross-legged position he had kept for a hand of hours. Another figure appeared on the spiral stair below.

  “It has begun,” he said to the one who came. “Summon the adepts.”

  His gaze returned to the water. The workings of the Patterns were a never-failing source of wonder. This was the nexus of probability they had sensed; he closed his eyes and ran fingers of thought over the skein of branching alternates that ran forward from the fixed point of now he occupied. There was very delicate work ahead, a nudging at the workings of fate and chance to ensure that events fell as they willed.