The Totem-Maker

 

 

 

 

The Totem-Maker

 

Chapter One

The Little I Can Tell

 

 

 

I would not have asked to be born under a portent. The day of my arrival on earth began, at daybreak, with a fearsome one.

I knew the story so well, I could for years picture the event vividly. I believed even, alone most hours with my imagination, that the vision was not of my own conjuring. I was despised. Despised yet untouched, as are prophets, and I cherished all my suffering promised.

I have come to know the world better. If I were chosen specially for anything, it was at the agency of men, and the thing was to shoulder the thankless task at hand. If I’d possessed any gift, I had been well taught not to nurture it, to let it die. Envy bites hardest those hearts for whom triumph must walk, hand-in-hand, with the debasement of others.

The story I recounted, though, in times I call helpless, not innocent, was this the old woman sang, stirring the pot. My place had been to serve; she would not have me call her mother. She longed for her days of labor to end in rest, she dreaded the intervention of a god…

And tidings of great change to come. “Because you are small, Lotoq keeps quiet, he listens for you,” she would say.

This god’s name could be spoken, as it was thought a word of strangers, an old tribe living at the mountain’s feet when orchards, forests of pine, had greened its flanks, when game teemed so, bright-feathered birds filled each morning’s nets. This was known. The old woman kept her back to the mountain. Only I stared at it, rushed to the door for a bold look. Lotoq, living mountain, god or devil, was shaped like a crouching spider, the more imposing for the black ribs of rock that buttressed the snowy peak, and the web-like wisps that spun above it.

A road connected our town to the next, and the next after that; it, like the temple columns risen when the flood subsided, had been built by these prosperous, doomed ones. Their pavement was sound, stones surely a thousand-weight each, and fitted with cunning, that no grass could grow between.

But nearby the road ended, its slabs thrust from below, splintered and heaved all directions. It ended in a crevasse, deep and foul-smelling. However the rains fell, this never filled.

The month before my birth, cruel signs had begun to show themselves. Birds fell from the sky, in such quantity as to block chimneys. A terrible groaning shocked the soles of the feet, a glow, a burning light in colors no fire of dung or charcoal could produce, hovered, turning the snows of Lotoq to a metal-hued, steaming cloud.

Something awful and tragic then occurred to that city, that place of might with its golden gates locked, not long after—somewhere below the mountain’s opposite face.

“I cannot go near the place,” a traveler brought word. “I think we will never know. I think none escaped.”

 

 

 

1

 

 

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Soon after came scouring floods that islanded our village, once situated on a rise, now a barren plain. Deprivation followed, and I was protected from sacrifice, for being born to a woman with no means of telling: What was her home? What had she seen?

Her agonies were heard at the old woman’s door, and she was found fainted there. She awoke in her throes, her shrieks all her speech…

I was born and my mother died.

Thus the priests said wait, wait for another sign.

Fresh deluges came, kinder rains, rolling pebbles into channels with the endless push of running water. New streams recarved the ways of old rivers. The land found its depth and waxed fertile, green spreading outwards from banksides, still in the years before I knew myself a being, in a place.

This place.

The old woman spoke to me only to correct, to give orders. I had nothing to teach me that adults feared at all, or what they feared. Doing for myself, doing of chores, perfecting them that I not be punished, was all the world held in my knowledge of it.

I had not known how this village from the day of my birth withered. Nearly all had survived, but none wished to stay. Under such a vastness of devastation it seemed odd, but it was true…only a day’s march, and one came upon planted fields, wells that yielded pure water, houses in prosperous gatherings at crossroads, caravans of traders, passing. Tidings arrived, and the limits of Lotoq’s wrath were believed at last.

But the people were forced to bind themselves to the land, to do labor, as the holdings skirting the mountain belonged to three lords. One overseer who kept vineyards and cornfields in his master’s stead was called a fair-minded tyrant; another was called the son of a goat. A third refused to welcome any of our refugees.

They worked off the price of their keep, and one by one returned. Why had the old woman and the priests remained, why did messengers in those years bring food, kindling wood, jugs of water for our sustenance?

For that the god’s sign did not appear. Had not, though my years became ten.

 

On a hot afternoon, I followed Elberin. The old woman said he was now my master. Our feet made dust fly among slim-trunked trees, that had within their decade’s sprouting gained many in number. To dig one for the sake of moving it (which for the shade, the builders of new houses did), meant safeguarding the trailing roots, tangled with the next tree’s, and the next’s. Each must be severed at no less than an arm’s length, or the tree would die.

Their height was twice my own. Their shade was a thin veil over gritty earth; the sun beating on their leaves drew out a brothy smell.

 

 

 

2

 

 

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I do not mean to dwell on trees, except to say I remember the smell, and the bitter flour ground from the seeds that matured at summer’s end. This flour I knew intimately, as among my chores were all parts of its making: gathering the seeds, culling them, kilning them, grinding them when they were browned and brittle, sieving the powder through a cloth…which also I had to weave, and it was from the leaves of these trees.

I do not mean to dwell on them, but to say they were not native to our land. So I had been told. They were come as a burdensome gift, the gods’ familiar humor…and even the bark stripped from the lower branches was woven into baskets; even a pungent sap with some sweetness about it, was used in feast offerings, fermented into a drink we called sahin, sap-wine.

And so I made the flour. I sealed the flour away in jars. I baked the bread and cakes.

I was most content to be always busy. When I saw the priests at the door with their heads together, I had the chore at hand to excuse myself. But I was meant to come at once to any adult who had not yet instructed me; to give obeisance, to ask, “Vlan (or Vlana, which was our way of calling an elder), what would you have me do?”

She had put me into their hands by stages, the old woman. Never in our time together did we speak but face to face, and so to me she had no name; and for her superstition would give none to me.

With my hands clutching some implement—a broom, a mallet, the stone our bread was baked on—I existed in a state of apology. I exasperated; I ought by now to have prophesied, have manifested…fits, a clouded white eye, any sign with some whiff of holiness.

Elberin decided I would be taught the symbols, and employed when he took notions, to record them. He ushered me from the old woman’s house into his own, to an anxious severing from my usefulness. Now after breakfast I sat, it might be an hour or more, waiting. Fearful that my idleness would be flown at, for a fault.

I was not to touch Elberin’s things, to tidy, to mend. I was to carry a tablet on our walks, soft unfired clay, and to mark down the names of things. Over my shoulder weighed a basket filled with many of these small tablets (that I made myself).

It was his way, when I had scratched down errors, to seize the clay from my hands, send my etchstone flying, smash my work to pieces. He did this with a great dispassion, and rarely a word.

I began to mark the seasons. By my punishments, I could count these as different, one to another, a chronicle in mistake and shortfall. My early years gave only the mildest of joys. Joy I felt when alone working the furrows of my garden, thankful to my god for this secret, whispered in the slow certainty of fruitfulness. You will grow, you will break from these roots, you will be whole unto yourself.

We kept a cat and a dog, as against vermin and vagabond one must, and here too, was joy. I loved them. These innocents showed me none but a welcoming face. And I was never cruel, as the old woman, as Elberin. Never at my hand were the good creatures swatted, never chased with a broom.

 

 

 

3

 

 

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But there were bad seasons, blights in the crops, dearths in the harvest, for which I was held wanting. There were myriad quibbles with Elberin, when I had only his tasks for time spent, and no garden to tend.

I was as tall, at length, as the elders. By now our town had doubled in size; it had doubled again and again. And from that prince who hadn’t deigned to shelter refugees, came a snaking throng, seen all along the road into the distance, towards haze and his border.

A mammoth beast of work led them, its shod hooves clapping the pavement laid by the old race of Lotoq’s plain, a long-maned beast of such girth that one must be harnessed before another. They drew their burden in train, catching all eyes. Iron bells tolled from the collars circling their necks.

The wagon bore a statue. The second wagon its massive plinth.

Two days’ labor with trunks of trees, and wheels and ropes, and the prince’s slaves had raised this monument. That we would know our land was claimed, and know our prince by his visage. The face was done in gilt; the robes enameled in brilliant blue, a hue stronger than the sky, but as I’d seen at the heart of a flower.

By this time I believed I also would be a priest. I had copied out all the scrolls, and so my histories, my genealogies and my miracles, were well-established in memory. Any Father or Mother I met would speak a name to me, and I recite the lineage. I knew the size of spring leaves, what their veins boded, when mortifying sacrifice was needed, as envious gods demand. I knew the meaning of a grasshopper, of a double-yolked egg, a blood-red moon. The types and colors of clouds.

I clipped the wings of a moth, drew the divining circle in ash, and read the pattern that in dying it scattered there.

I had been set to work particularly on signs, for the elders hoped…they had invested pride in this hope, and held to it…that here my gift would show itself. And so the prince’s seizure of our city, and the fertile fields outlying, proved a portent indeed—for me. The puniness of my oracular talents was bared.

A host of strangely dressed men, testified to by sentries of the night, had swarmed like insects through the thin trees of Lotoq’s flanks—by moonlight seen; by morning gone. It was the culminating sign.

“Elberin’s.” [I was called this way, as his possession.] “What do you say?”

I answered her, the priest Burda: “That our borders are crossed, that ones foreign to us have passed in the dark hours, that their business is not to stay.”

She smiled, and looked at Elberin. I knew I’d said nothing, really. Nor had I foreseen the next day’s news, or I might have invented a wild prediction, unable to be tested or shown false.

But you will note that to preserve my place meant caring for my place. I had not come, then, to care for anything so worldly.

 

 

 

4

 

 

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And so I sat on a cold evening, a spring evening that promised frost, at work by hearthlight. If no one wanted me, I liked this hour between dusk and dark for repairing my few garments, my blanket and rug, my shoes and tools. I had never in my life asked that any new thing be given me. The old woman had treated my outgrowing of clothes as a willful act, vaguely embarrassing—as though I might by stealthy trading aim for a rise in status.

I sewed, and paid no mind to voices at the door.

I heard one say what I was called, the foundling. Joking of tone; expectations I would become a prophet to inspire pilgrimage, to make the locals rich, had long been a joke to Elberin.

I raised my head at a rustle of fabric, a young man peering at me round the curtain of Elberin’s chamber. He withdrew his face.

“Yes, tonight is better,” he said.

He then stepped into the room, reached to snag my basket, to lift and drop it. “Is this yours to take away? Will your things fit?”

They would, I told him…because I would make do with whatever did fit, and yes, the basket was mine. This was my station, not to protest, never to query. My confusion would waste his time, and I saw already in these evidences, that he was my master now.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

5

 

 

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Chapter Two

Jealousy

 

 

My new place was a sleeping porch where all the slaves had their pallets. I had traveled for a day, then half another, forced to do this blindfolded; allowed to see my bread and leg of fowl by the campfire, but in the morning before full day, blinded again.

The kinder of my companions told me this was because slaves try to escape. “And truly, a master who has had the bargain of selling one, may take him back…to have both money and man.”

I thought about my questions, how to catch out what I hoped to know; how I must be stupid to them, here at the start. “Did you belong to a good house? Was your work pleasant to you?”

Another, sun-scorched and older than we, whose brow bore a bowl-shaped indentation, had warning in all his speech (of which there was little). He listened, and the third listened, a woman, whose tasks I longed to shadow, the kitchen being my native place.

But it was my writing that made me desirable to this man, Cime Decima. His family held the right of tax collection, in this quarter of this city unknown to me, and he did not himself make records on tablets. By which you may suppose he could not, or could not make the numbers come to account, but I had been servant enough, in my years, to ask no more.

“No, I belong to the family,” my friend said. “I was born in Gueddus Treiva’s mother’s house, and Cime was made a present of me. There is a ceremony, you may not have this in your old city, where the mother of the groom chooses gifts the bride will bring to the altar. Nyma Decima collected from Gueddus Treiva a slave, an altar-bowl of alabaster, a team and chariot.”

I understood I might do well to note these names, remember them if I were able, and that demurely, my companion suggested it. He had not told me what I wanted to know, whether the Decima were just in temper…or mercurial. But he had told they were a family of rank, and followed tradition.

 

It was my lady Pytta I attended at first. I was given a livery to wear. I was given a broom as my staff of office, and when she strolled her garden I walked ahead, to swipe at spiders’ webs and clear away fallen leaves, droppings of birds…

But these made patterns that were signs; I had read them in my old life, and found it tempting to pause for a divination.

“You see what an odd creature it is,” Lady Pytta remarked to her waiting-woman. “It will stomp and sing at a serpent, but the dung of a blackbird balks it…”

I bent to one knee, and rose at the tap of her fan.

“Cime’s wife, the gods favor enterprise just now…as I interpret, may you forgive me. There is a change of fortune on the horizon.”

 

 

 

6

 

 

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My predictions earned me status in the Decima household. As a prodigy; or if not that, a jester. Divorced now from any shadow of belief, I shaded my words, colored each hope with wider and happier prospects. I shared quarters with others, but was called for alone.

Lady Pytta, as a young wife, had the duty of visiting the high houses. She enjoyed her peers: she pleaded my help with the matriarchs.

“The Treiva are easy, they,” she told me what I knew, “are mine. I can put them last, but I won’t. I need strength! And the Decima are easy, because none live here, none but Mother Nyma and Cime. But Runah Veii, do you think? The Veii are almost relatives, Caleyna…did you meet her? My father’s wife? She and I are such good friends, but…” A whisper. “She has a secret. We can’t be conspicuous, we have to tiptoe around a certain party… Oh! You’re making me die, Little Creature, because I’m going to tell you everything in a minute, and I must not. Cime would say, a slave! Pytta!”

(And did she hold to protocol? Not at all. I had her stepmother’s secret and many others.)

I was a novelty for Pytta to collect in her train; given the hood of a priest for a lark.

Other servants would be sent away, and dark lamps lit, incense burnt. They insisted on me the importance of preparing behind a screen, of declaring myself ready. I was flattered to be listened to, flattered to have silence fall at the sound of my voice. I was played with—kindly I do think—asked to choose, as the women could not among themselves, whose fortune would be read first. The game lasted the spring and summer, and was in all only camaraderie, sport.

I had been isolated in childhood; I had not known what rivalry was.

 

Autumn would come in one cycle of the moon, and at last Cime claimed me.

“This is no trouble to you, to ride a pony?”

“I can, with two hands. If I am to mark my tablet…”

“Patience!” He shook a sack of beads or marbles. “Yours. Take it.”

My pony was named for his brown coat, Cuerpha. The sun sat low, burning red, and so I wrapped a cloth around my head and neck, fixed this with a cap.

“Wait, I like that!” Cime sent his groom to Pytta for a scarf and cap of his own. “I ought to look like something…unexpected, citified. Priestly, even. When I say to the farmers, ‘on my authority’… What do you think, Mumas? The headgear carries a certain baffling weight?”

Mumas, his deputy, demurred with a smile.

We mounted, and Cime said: “Now, in the planting season…”

He was speaking to me, because he had raised his voice. And because his deputy, riding at his side, gave a hunch of the shoulders that suggested an inward laugh.

 

 

 

7

 

 

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“We ride to the fields and take measure of each planted, each left fallow, what grains are sown. We inspect the vineyards, the new leaf. The landholder pays in that portion, and if for drought or blight the harvest falls short, he is free to make appeal. But there is no appeal if he hasn’t paid his taxes.”

“And when the emperor’s portion is taken, do your soldiers join you?”

I spoke to show I listened. You, who read my tale, heed: I had been taught to be well-spoken, to approach my elders as a student. I had sought, for that, to be quick and clever to them…useful, apt. I was alone in my status; they were many in theirs. But the world is a large place.

Here was a lesson I had not learned: that slaves could belong, in the eyes of some, among the dogs. That upon a man like Cime’s deputy, Mumas, I—my being, my looks, my voice, my sayings, the mere parting of my lips—grated. To appease this man, I could not have debased myself to a low enough humility, or silenced myself beyond the stirring of his fears.

“It would make a show,” Cime allowed. “But the farmers don’t resist openly, so threatening the mailed fist, when I ought to…” He grinned back from his saddle. “And maybe I will. Signal to them that the gods are wiser than they, and I have a creature who speaks to the gods. Ha!” He laughed for a moment, relishing the picture, and Mumas looked back at me, too.

“Well. Today we see how the crops stand in the fields. And nothing, if I have not numbered it, can be taken to the exchange. Close as we watch, I promise you, there is not one farmer doesn’t winnow by night, doesn’t sell over the border.”

“Because it’s not much effort to them, we are so near.”

He reined up, letting Mumas trail ahead. “Here. We have room for you at my left. I did that work once, riding the boundary road, before my present honor.”

“And what post,” I asked, after thought, “do you hope to rise to? If you don’t prove indispensable as a tax collector?”

“Emperor,” Cime said, very low. “I see your joke, creature. And that is the answer of answers, you’ll agree.”

 

The owners of these fields were of the Eight Houses, else the high merchant class; the farmers were their tenants. The town behind its wall sat at sea’s edge, high in a bowl amid fertile slopes. These slopes descended from a naked peak, leagues off…the great god Ami’s mountain, I learned. Cime’s boundary road ran alongside a river, the Dagossa, the small branch of which had broken from the mud of Lotoq, to become again the Edagossa, the native river of my old home.

No one feared now that I would gain my bearings and flee. No, and for those months from spring to autumn, I counted myself content. I believed I had the grace of my lord and lady. I had work to do, and would grow in giftedness, to ornament the house of Decima.

 

 

 

8

 

 

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Each quarter of the town—I will give it a name: Monsecchers—was governed with some independence from its sisters, under rule of its own militia. The militias were the Emperor’s, whose army obeyed his mercenary Prince. But matters of justice belonged to the Houses; Lady Nyma, Cime’s mother, sat as judge above the Marshal.

The villas were built to face the four directions, and shared a courtyard, where supplicants waited their summoning. This dull chore of meeting whomever held stewardship over household treasuries (there were lords who disputed the hundredth part of a single tree’s fruit), was not Cime’s.

 It was the deputy’s place to cool his heels.

Walking or riding we went down from the Decima villa to the merchants’ square, to the stable of Mumas; for here he waited…punctilious in duty….

One might think. But he arranged this excuse not to have me cross his threshold.

“I have a trick in mind,” Cime said, one particular day. I gave answers he found clever, and so we spoke nearly as friends. “You understand the tax collector’s share is sheared by all he can’t pry loose. Blame your lady…”

“Thank her, rather?”

“For liking me out of the house?”

I chanced it. “A bench under Lord Sente’s olive tree for your servant. But I believe I’ve seen you climb his porch and enter.”

Pytta had told me…Cime was saying this… It was very possible she had, and if her husband guessed, he would not, might not, break her confidence…

The humor had its elaboration, its diction, due to the mischief involved.

We turned onto the street where Mumas kept his house, and Cime’s laughter, his hand on my shoulder, were heard and seen by Mumas idling at his stable gate.

He crowded me aside, walked next to Cime and began his complaint. Yesterday, a third day, Sente had refused us. Sente’s dispute with the Emperor’s taxes would redound on Lord Cime, whose deputy had—for three days—performed no other task.

“You have clients I should have carried your assessments to. Two days more, and the month ends. They will split hairs on it…”

“Yes, they’ll feel entitled to start the bargaining afresh.”

By no sign did the import, that he could be disgraced in office, trouble Cime.

“For Sente I have a plan. You needn’t fear the wasting of your time, Mumas. Two days will do for the others. To hang between the poise and the fall ought to sharpen their wits…and if they balk, what serves Sente will serve them, too. You read and write? You do not require the company of a scribe?”

Mumas, silent, shook his head.

“Go.”

Cime turned his back, leaving Mumas to stand, to step away, to linger…

To decide, finally, to stride up the street, shoulders set.

“And you,” Cime said to me, “will waylay one of Sente’s servants, ply him with your arts. Find the lady in his fortune, make a peril and a glory of it. Sente is a superstitious man.”

 

 

 

9

 

 

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It had been uneasy, my trailing after Mumas, told to serve him…and to never mind him.

“You’ll sort it out,” Cime said, with his good cheer.

Yes. My marks, so careful, were not legible to Mumas. I scribbled; I had better copy it all again. Mumas before the high-born wished me to merit no acknowledgment. But they knew. I was Cime’s curiosity.

“See, it writes everything down. What do they call you?”

“Foundling. Creature. Scribe,” I answered.

“Read my words back to me!”

“Wait.” Another spoke. “Let me find a chair, I may suddenly sleep. Here!” [To a servant.] “Fill my cup.”

“Lord Arima,” I read, “blames his foreman, who ought to have avoided bribing the Emperor’s Guard.”

Laughter, and Arima, to his friend: “There you have a record! History will know us. We had some hope in the days Mumas’s memory held it all…”

I was not at fault; this idea of Cime’s (or his mother Nyma’s), of keeping proper accounts, was wise. But it was novel to this circle, fun for them.

And I think Mumas had not made himself popular.

No word of mine could be answered by other than a snap, a sneer, a long quiet space of busyness, of attending to the important…a bit of lint on his sleeve to pick, a question of whether he’d heard his name called, a craning of the neck. Then, absently (or with a mild start), what was I staring at?

My Lord Deputy, shall I repeat myself?

Fools and children, it seemed, the rich of Monsecchers were. But I loved…I nearly did…my own Cime and Pytta. I would have been crushed if something I’d done, or they feared I might, frosted our exchanges.

What had I ever expected of Mumas?

This was as I saw it. We walked together for a time, and I soon would walk another way. My stolid bearing of his companionship was a steppingstone, in its fashion.

 

Pytta gave me Lom…my fellow slave’s freedom for the afternoon. He had my broom now, and my role of sweeping the garden walk.

“Yes, take him! He has just cursed me with the sight of a dead snake in my birth month. Money I was saving for a good cloth must go to alms. I’m going to make Cime give you back! But tell me if you need any other thing.”

I was not certain I needed Lom. I trusted him for his good heart. He was the one I’d told you of, first to speak to me the day I arrived.

“I’ll teach you the signs,” I said. “As a way of passing time.”

 

 

 

10

 

 

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My plan was to make a memory story to suit each figure. Through Lom, to satisfy my curiosity, without his knowing of my other purpose. I would use a hex, an arrangement of triangles that tellers call houses, and have him draw a tile to fill each room.

Petitioners here were dwarfed under the porches of the four manors, connected by a running colonnade that changed from style to style. The tiling underfoot, for those invited to mount the steps, was at first a plain black marble, with columns crimson (a pairing that thrilled me, though I knew nothing of the owner); the next was glazed terra-cotta, each tile stamped with a smiling sun, a sun in bronze above the entry hall, columns all trained with vines. Then came the house of Oc’Marasas, carved on every surface with stories of the general’s great battles, in stern bone-colored marble.

Next, Sente’s house, aloof in unadornment, mere fieldstone and painted wood.

Sente’s servants idled on the porch above, fanning themselves. A fountain bubbled at the courtyard’s center, its waters spouting from birds’ heads and falling to a gutter that fed the lower streets.

We topped our canteens. We drank and wiped our faces in the shade of Sente’s olive. I bent, then, to etch six triangles that formed a larger, with many others traced within. Any fortune matched to a base-up triangle was taken reversed.

Other games could be played on this template, and I will never know…

But I had chosen this.

The four directions of the wind were the houses into which one’s spirit might be born. North, of the intellect; east, of love; south, of concealment; west, of the flesh.

“Which house is yours?”

“I can’t say, Kire. My birth was not marked by the seers.”

“You are very dry, Lom. Are you innocent, or teasing? Have you never been cast at all? Ah!” I said, drawing tiles. “I choose east, may the gods set me right.”

I put that sign we call fish before Lom, to explain the nature of the telling. “You see, a thing under water symbolizes wealth. If the water is still, your wealth is safe. If it flows to sea, you will be bankrupted storm by storm. If it flows inland, you will gain steady riches. If the fish falls here, under dark of night, which we read left, though it sits right… Then, my Lom, it will not be luck for you to have a water sign fall on the right above. You will pray, if you turn that one, that it falls in the center.”

“Where water pools and does not flow.”

I smiled. “You have got ahead admirably. You may well be a spirit of the north, and I may be the fool! I will put the fish away, and have you draw another.”

I shook the bag of tiles, gave it to Lom; Lom drew with no eagerness. But with some flair in placing them, I laid out his fortune. I meant to tell it truly. The tiles could not lie, but the teller, by omission, could allow the light to glance here or there. I would give Lom a future of burdens eased, of hopes for rest and pleasure.

 

 

 

11

 

 

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Lord Sente called through the window. His servants were at the rail, eyes on my mysteries, ears unhearing.

Again, I turned fish…

And so the gods must demand it. And here was eda, the diminutive. Lom gave a sigh. He had nearly spoken, then stopped himself, showing me an unearned reverence. The last three up-tiles were tre, bega, and sun.

The down-tiles were fal, rain, and wev.

“Will it be bad?” Lom asked.

“It! Your fortune?”

“Kire,” he said to me, the name an endearment, “I know my fortune. I read signs also, those my grandmother knew, sold from that place behind the mountain.”

He meant that vanished city under Lotoq the traveler had spoken of, and…as did we all…kept silent a moment for having mentioned it. “She saw.” He held my eye. “That would have been the day you were born, her people carried away. At dawn was a flight of ravens, and you know…”

He made me unhappy, saying this. I would have to tell him.

Ravens were said to carry souls to the clouds, to the realm of the gods. He had got both fal and rain, and these being down, meant up. He had got bega, which was the sign of the raven. He had got it in the center, thus it touched all other signs, drove them like the hub of a wheel.

But if he had not told me his story, I would have made light going of this, for Sente’s sake. His servants’ bodies threw shadows over my work, yet their mouths were shut; they did not jeer. I sat faltering, and my lengthening muteness brought a nod from Lom.

I heard…in my betraying voice…a brokenness. “A small legacy will come to you, unexpected.”

“Interesting. You are Cime’s servant. I’ve seen you in the company of Mumas.”

Lord Sente said this.

He opened the porch gate, beckoning me to climb the stairs. Put on notice by a finger snap from his lord, one servant lifted a palm. “The seer. Not you.”

If Lom weren’t asked, I had still my duty to Cime. But Sente and his man offended me. I felt in the wrong, in a way I hadn’t the burden of guilt to relieve myself of…not then. Later, I picked at it, nightly when I might have slept, and tried to find if I had done anything excusable, anything I might forgive myself for.

“My Lord Sente, I wonder…”

“You had better not.”

“I wonder,” I said, regardless, “if it interests you…interesting was your word…to have a game, at all? If you would have a game, I must please have Lom.”

 

 

 

12

 

 

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If Sente often was read his fortune, he would doubt me, and I would need at once to think of a role for Lom.

But we passed unspeaking down a dark and cool hall, the secret pomegranate nature of Sente’s taste in things apparent. Tiles of a stone I’d never seen, matrices of amber polished into streaks of lightning…

Yes, truly, a deep water hue blazed with glassy gold. I marveled at the tiles alone. But the walls were also tapestried, telling of Sente’s ancestry; and each pilaster had its pedestal, sporting a bust or figure, a goddess or a beast.

We descended to an open room. The hillside curved his terraced garden; benches braced his balustrades under awnings. The air was rich in scent, of sea waves on gusts of wind, of mountain breezes moving languid, teasing flowers on vine-laden trees.

A fountain played too, sunken and half-moon in shape. Sente wore only a cloth knotted at the waist. I was propriety in tunic and sandals. Blue-feathered birds eyed our approach, unconcerned until the movement of our garments made its own breeze.

“Tell Cime…” Sente paused at the scattering of wings, then sat. “That the gambit is a clumsy one.”

I sighed. To me, my master had seemed clever enough.

A servant mounted from the cellars, bearing a tray of sugared fruits and wine. Sente gestured for me to take the second cup, to eat as I pleased.

Yet, seeing through it all, his gesture ought to have been his own usual gambit…of leaving Cime’s envoys to stew (likely enough in such weather).

Sente wanted something of me. I ate a single berry, and took a restrained sip. “My Lord Cime has sent me here only…”

“To do the work of his deputy.”

To this, his disparagement of Mumas, I felt receptive enough. And I’d shown my smile…we do, when our lips are still, and our eyes downcast. He stared, measuring me. A weakling would leap to flattery, speak out of place…

But, however false-hearted, I repeated myself. “My Lord Sente, I have brought in writing the demand of the Emperor, not of my master, and I will give it to you. My Lord Cime asks that I do, and I cannot take it upon myself to do more.”

“You are a slave. If Cime will not give you your freedom, I’ll buy you and I will give it. Mumas…” He began this, and said under his breath: “Why anyone has use for him!”

“My Lord, will you bid Lom indoors?”

At Sente’s hand was a gong…which he struck with a fist. I had won my point, all I hoped to win—that my dear Lom not be made inferior even to me, but allowed to share Sente’s wine.

 

 

 

13

 

 

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The porter led Lom to the terrace’s threshold, preceding a new-arrived visitor for whom Lom rightfully served as vanguard, Cime. Sente did not rise.

“Can I fairly suppose, Sente, that the law touches you at last?”

Mine was the eye Cime caught. I could hardly convey to him his friend’s remarkable words.

Sente gave orders for the kitchen; the porter bowed and backed from us. I stood, giving place to my master. But Cime stopped before the fountain, and let the spray of it wash his feet.

“If the day is an auspicious one, I will of course take gold from my treasury. To part with gold on an inauspicious day is to pay the penalty twice.”

Cime’s face replied with an obvious calculation. The countermove made difficulties…we were all in these lands bound to the old beliefs. Cime laughed in private, but would not himself have spent money without a casting, and if I’d told him fortune forbade the hour, he would rather fall into debt than be an offense to the gods.

He took my vacant seat. “Do your work at once,” he told me.

“My Lord Sente, have you any preference?”

Sente tossed a pillow to the pavement. I sat and drew a tablet from my bag.

“Shall I suppose that Cime, who shared my boyhood tutor, and shined by his efforts a favorable light on my own…what we may call, next to nothing…?”

They grinned at each other. The kitchen servant brought more wine and fruit. A smell of roast pig came to us, and Sente said, “Of course, dine with me.”

Cime prompted: “Suppose…?”

“Would have trained his servant to cheat me?”

“I wouldn’t know how, with these arts.”

“Well, that is the better answer. If you said you wouldn’t do it, I would flout the lie by sending to Elcade. It would take a day or two, and you would be formally in dereliction of duty.”

Elcade was a hermit, a fortune-teller of that sort who breathe the fumes of Lotoq and babble visions.

“Have faith!” Cime said. “You cannot outwit the gods. Why make your doubts conspicuous to them?”

“My lord,” I said to Sente. “Will you trouble to draw the tiles, or…”

“No, creature. Choose.”

He got nothing from the gods as to wealth. Cime quipped in low voice that his friend could hide gold so cunningly even the gods did not perceive it. Sente for this removed a ring of tiger’s eye and plaited gold, and laid it on the altar (a small temple of clay, such as graced all our rooms).

“Great Ami, I apologize for this scion of Decima. The House of Vei desires only your mercy.”

 

 

 

14

 

 

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I drew for Sente mostly dry signs, the least ill-boding reversed. An easier sort of luck than rain, so given to deluge or drought, too much or none at all.

The dove, bearer of gossip, sat center. Sun was below, to the left. For glancing up now and then to meet a frown of discernment, that versedness in tiles I’d expected, I felt it was I dealt with gently by the gods. I would not be hated for the fortune I cast Lord Sente.

“There is talk of marriage,” I told him. “This will leap. The green frog and the grasses oppose, and we know the frog springs from cover to water.”

His tile opposite sun, always most personal to the subject, was swan, the bride. Sente might have a bride. I was soon to follow him to his dining hall, and might sit embarrassed, fearing to meet an inconvenient eye.

“I believe, on this assurance of the most reverend Fates,” Cime said slowly, “I will ask you to put our matter to rest. Why let money weigh on conscience, when we would rather be merry?”

“I had rather be merry.” Sente stood, and bent over my tablet. “Will leap…?”

“Oh, gossip might do another thing. Burgeon. Gallop. Flap in the wind.”

“No, keep a tidy narrative with your tiles. But add this: the anthill falls to dust at an ass’s kick.”

He spoke an old saying.

 

I understand the mind of my enemy. Proud men, struck in their natures with a grudging suspicion, men who have risen a little, gained in their small reputations, but never can be lords of this world, hang on praise-seeking, stub toes on open defiance. Mumas would have liked the Emperor to discern a petrified merit in his will to perform his office.

The performing of it was another matter.

He despised Cime. He supposed Cime to despise him. All gifts to Mumas were unwelcome, almost insults; but he felt no less insulted denied them.

The porter arrived, and with his stick of office prodded us along.

Lom and I were served on the steps leading to the dais, where the lordly reclined. Carried up and whisked off dripping chaos, were tables crouched into place before the divans; tables piled with meats, with netted sea-things in their shells, with fruits carved as flowers, bowls of wine.

We among all servants here had privilege to sample from Sente’s kitchen and enjoy, being not ourselves employed. We kept our heads low. We offered profuse thanks at every new plate and cup, and were loftily ignored.

The honored guests had come to broker a daughter’s marriage.

Sente held back not much of his reluctance and disdain. They, who felt wronged, felt lowered, but pleased for this to have the upper hand, commented…

And the gist of these remarks we could grasp. Often they used words of their own; often they put heads together and conversed to the exclusion of the party. Sente answered by striking up talk with Cime.

 

 

 

15

 

 

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The wine in this country had for many years now a foul undertaste. Well, that was the soil itself; the changeable airs between the mountain and the sea. Sweeter could be found in the north. But being a month’s journey, there could be no waiting for the midwinter fairs…

“My poor Darsale. Ah! She will grow used to it. Are you familiar at all with our sort of food, Sente?”

They were the palest man and woman I had ever seen. They had spots to their skin, a russet pattern dotting their arms, and for the bareness of these, were more clothed, too, than anyone I’d seen—under and over garments, bonnets on their heads, shoes above the ankle. They made me pity all the more this daughter.

To be such as that, and to come alone, and to have been supplanted beforehand by another…

I was struck by the porter’s manner. He entered, knowing something, that in his private thoughts gave entertainment. He was bold enough, with this smile in his voice, to ask if the supplicant should not be summoned after the dinner was ended?

“I believe he wants the Prince…expected him here, I can’t say why. But he is Lord Cime’s man.”

A clap of hands, and a lesser servant drew the curtain. Mumas with a face of sums jotted, lists completed, edged in. Lifted, to spot the northern pair, the face showed a growing surprise.

Cime’s being there astonished him.

Sente, to shame the parents of Darsale, downed wine devil-may-care. He leaned, fell a little, tapped his friend’s arm with a cup. “I give you leave. Interrogate your…what do I want to call…”

“Mumas,” Cime said. “Have you been to my house? Is there a message?”

He must think of Pytta, and the child she bore…he frowned; Mumas frowned back.

Sente said: “Have him wait at the foot of the steps.”

It was the only place one might. The northerners had their servants, waiting women and armed esquires, a small rebuking crowd on the right. Sente had his own, casual in retort, on the left. Lom and I, by the pride of Sente’s retainers, sat on the highest rank, almost a joke (but played very soberly).

Mumas began to speak; some fresh illumination intervened, choking his words.

At last: “My Lord Cime, no. If I were asked to carry a message, I would dispatch it by my own servant, and he would give it to the porter. At this hour, I had not thought of ceremony… My Lord Sente, you have my apology. I will return to my own house.”

 

 

 

16

 

 

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Jealousy makes the most vigilant of watchmen; jealousy’s regard never strays from the envied man’s house, his wealth, his luck in love—his luck, even, in misfortune, should misfortune draw sympathy, open purses. Jealousy’s regard is on the street corner word exchanged with one of higher office than its host; it is on the beggar before the hated door, on the dog and cat…

On the slave.

And Mumas’s eyes regarded—

Who was great in our city, who greater still.

The tragedy, then (for why should small, scheming men’s lives not end, as do the lives of kings, in the Fates’ laughter?), was that Mumas did not attempt blackmail. To keep this earnest pest from offering himself to the parents of Darsale, Sente would have paid, Caleyna Treiva prodded him if he balked.

But Mumas was not made to tuck away sums, contented as a spider. If Mumas said duty compelled this report, said it everywhere, and to the Prince’s men, the lawkeepers, the inward heart that knew vanity compelled it, would still its beat. Audience with the Prince and praise were wealth to Mumas. He had learned the poor secret, that Sente crafted for his paramour golden gifts, as much to keep Darsale in want (if the marriage must be), as to show Cime the tax collector his empty vaults.

 

Mumas made the point that he was an equal, not a servant. He left Sente’s feast, glancing once, where my eyes would have met his boldly. But he looked at Lom.

 

 

It was full autumn, when the gods of the north and south winds blow battles over the sea, and the hills bloom scents of change, exhalations from the chimneys of the earth, while dying greenery sweetens the morning mists. Trees whose pods we gather and roast, bend like a nattering flock, rich in red feathers.

In the lowlands withering slows, and gardens go long without change…but don their touches of purple and gold, go out of flower, sport their fruits.

Lady Nyma had come to order her son’s house for the birth. Cime was free of duties, other than to sit in the chambers hearing speeches.

“Gods above, deliver me!”

Pytta, dressed in a flowing suirmat, moved to the garden pavilion. Her friends came laughing, draping themselves over cushions. From post to post hung targets: the serpent, the cat, the dove, the sun, the ship…

When anyone felt moved to do so, small pillows stuffed with seeds of another podded tree, the bitter rosira, were hurled to strike them.

This game was also of fortunes. But lightly played, and desultory. Pytta put her feet in a basin of cold water. Lom and I took two ends of a cloth, and fanned the women, moving nearer and farther.

 

 

 

17

 

 

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The cloth was painted with a favorite legend, of the lovers who confounded the gods. The young man was held prisoner to be sacrificed; the princess, having begged her father allow a parting word, threw herself from the tower in his stead, a great sin…

To shed unconsecrated blood and spoil the omens. The young man gave a cry that rent the heavens, smashed to earth the bowl of entrails, just placed for the priests to read the smoke of their burning.

He poured the flaming coals over his garments.

He ran crazed, then, and followed his love.

And the gods gave to the watchers the dreaded sign. They graced the lovers with life, transforming them into palmeini, small hawks (who, in truth, hunt our songbirds). Such cloths of silken stuff and fine needlework moved the air up and down, side to side, in the hands of slaves (such as we).

Vlanna Madla kept a large workshop, the lower hall all looms and weavers, the courtyard filled with pitted fires and dyeing vats; the upper story and attic let to drapers, makers of flags and banners, their sewers and embroiderers, their artists of the brush. Money changed hands on a porch at the building’s front. But only servants paid here, or delivered to Madla the request, as Nyma had sent her woman to do, to dine, and bring samples.

The meal was necessary; it was custom. Important merchants and proprietors were gentry in our land. (Mumas by this right considered himself so.) They were never, unless family, guests at weddings, or birth feasts, and their guilds honored holy days in ways peculiar to each trade. But Lady Nyma’s order for the nursery, for the hosting of many visitors, meant asking a favor…

That Madla take this job, occupy her people with it; give, quite possibly to her lasting loss, other jobs to competitors.

I was at loose ends with Lom on the rim of a well, sitting under the porch where the great ones sat. It was cool in this spot, and we were silent, listening.

They pretended for a time there was no business to discuss, speaking only gossip—billows of which, in those days of the Prince, passed from mouth to ear. Sente’s affairs were powerfully interesting, but Madla knew not raise them in the house of Cime Decima.

Her deep voice honed to carry, she ventured a toe. “Those… Leelaye. The father paid a call on Mumas. To see his horses, I believe…that would be the nature of the meeting. I don’t know if they are ignorant.”

(Leelaye was a white-rooted plant that crawled over rock where water fell. Stepped on, the thin skin peeled to a slippery gum…they were pallid, weak, and treacherous. Yet the poor would wrap them in leaves to ferment, portion the stinking matter into water jars, and be drunk on this wine. The desperate had leelaye in abundance, as no one else wanted it. You see, Reader, why the name lent itself to the newcomers.)

 

 

 

18

 

 

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We heard murmurs. Louder, from Nyma: “Everyone is wise in his own way, dear.”

Someone else: “He will let his house to their cousins. Spare us if we don’t see hordes! Ah, Madla!”

Lom and I looked at each other. A gesture? A face…

Some laughter and throaty sounds of ruefulness. Pytta’s friends’ chatter, low and giggling. A scornful, “Ha!” heard above all, Caleyna Treiva’s.

A space of dishes clattering, then a freighted silence, making Lom and I sit up. Bless him, he would not say it, but I did, leaning to whisper: “Will our lady burst the dam?”

He smiled…and she did.

“Maybe Mumas thinks he will surprise them. Maybe, for all we know, they can be surprised.” Pytta stopped for a moment. She went on. “Are the northern men virgin on their wedding night, do you think?”

We slaves, moving invisibly even through bedchambers, could not be surprised…at the vulgarity of the jokes. And to the House of Decima’s advantage, Madla came down pleased with herself.

 

But pleasure ebbed, as the sun dropped. Pytta wanted her nap. Madla had by then sat an hour at Nyma’s side, and the two come to a price. Pytta’s maid rose to gather cushions; Pytta’s friends found their excuses, and left us one by one.

Nyma called over the railing, and beckoned to us. Lom and I climbed to where Madla and her helper knelt ordering their belongings. I did not know the woman’s name, and she knew of none for me, but I bent at the knees, straightened, and said (as addressing a free-woman): “Mera, allow me to follow with your burden.”

She lifted to me a pair of wood-bound books. Lom held his arms stiff until she had piled on another three. He bobbed, and said: “Mera, many thanks.”

And here Mumas enters, by a rear gate.

He was the lesser scion of an ancient family, having an income rather than wealth; his inheritance was a house and stables in the Anse Cerbe, the Old City. That, and the right…not of appointment, but to be appointed.

Most gentry of the Anse Cerbe accepted the middle plane with pride. They had reward enough, enjoyed the public virtues of competence, service, diplomacy; and even humility, if the ruse suited. Their sort pulled the levers of governance—for outside debating halls, the mechanics of a nation must shift and roll at a practiced touch.

Mumas felt the back gate of Vlanna Madla’s workshop a rebuff. His nature urged him towards the villas; the city’s commerce stood firm between.

 

 

 

19

 

 

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First came change.

As to turn a tile, and find the sun’s promise shadowed, so slightly, by the cat—whose tail may flick one way or another.

At Cime’s house we heard the clanging bell. Fire burned in one of Madla’s lofts, a tentmaker’s. This man employed three; they had fed a length of cloth over the balcony…

And being too few to manage so much, had let the cloth touch coals under a dyeing vat. Flames mounted at a roar, chaotic flight meshed and locked itself with her foreman’s courageous marshalling of buckets. Lom and I stumbled after, by the path of Madla’s swinging stick, carrying her books.

We were not wanted, but curious, excited…

We were.

Apprised by ears and eyes, Madla met her foreman as he pushed clear.

“Have them take all those things, any scrap the fire has so much as warmed…carry all to the street. The floors must be swept and sluiced with water. Atrus may climb my roof and tear away the tiles himself… No, of course not.” A tight smile; and one returned. “Tell Atrus I wait for him.”

Lom and I were forgotten. Madla chivvied her woman to the finding of scattered witnesses. Shouted orders brought dozens clambering with burnt cloths. We tangled in and out, the neighborhood circling, a hand or two reaching for the books—

One waved a fistful of scorched braid, a bronze coin between knuckles: “What does she ask?”

Now a horse appeared, forcing way, restive under the whip. At a jog in Madla’s wall Lom and I withdrew.

The rider was Mumas.

Through hubbub his arm flung side to side, and only his anger made itself heard. A bucket upended; someone backing, fleeing, skidded to a painful fall. My gaze was here when the whip licked my bare arm, and the voice came distinct, bellowing, “God’s bane! I won’t have you in my sight!”

I ducked into his path. In worse language he berated me, bent on riding me to the wall. Madla’s books were slipping; I did not like letting them go. I felt that Mumas would trample me, meant to, if I stooped. Lom edged to lay his own load down; he was back and reaching to steady my elbow.

Drumming his whip and kicking heels, Mumas cleared half-circles round his horse’s flanks. His frenzy drew notice, and from the animal’s orbit a wary quiet spread. By now its master might easily have charged onwards.

I say all this to paint the picture. It was much faster…Lom’s head was next to mine, his arm sheltering, then a flash and a blow that glanced my ear.

And blood that bathed, where that from my arm had trickled.

 

 

 

20

 

 

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Chapter Three

I Am the Cause

 

 

If in life the Fates were not indifferent to us, and did not record in their Book the start and end of each wayfarer’s journey, merely that; if our sorrows, petty to them, were guided by a kind and just deity, a mother’s hand turning our blind eyes to the light, our stubborn hearts to humility, while the flame of the candle yet burned…

A death would be as a bedside story that ends when the hearer drifts off.

And all is well.

 

If Lom had opened an eye…if he had been able to speak…if he had said, I am resigned to it, I saw the signs of it, Kire, we spoke of this…

The wound was grievous. The hoof had struck the skull from above and behind. I stood a stupid moment not understanding or believing. Lom, though gone, stood too, in the thick of confusion and cowering, of onrushers (bless them), clutching after garments, tackle, to pull the poor mad animal away. Blood flowed like water from a broken vessel, and all of us, whose bodies had pressured him upright, jumped with horror or milled off in shock. He fell.

Half-kneeling, I saw Mumas had won his deference. No one delayed him now, all parted before him, and he was soon ridden from sight. It was only then, when Vlanna Madla came running with a set, furious face, that I fell myself, pawing at a roll of burnt cloth.

He was gone, he never would know another thing done to his uncaring form, but Lom was not wholly dead. Blood came through the ball I’d bundled and pressed, wanting only a meeting, his strength to mine…

Not this softness, this relentless ebb.

Another roll of cloth was pulled taut, hands on my shoulders drew me back, and Lom was placed. Madla directed the stretcher to her counting room.

I shook off tears and stupor, trailing; I was not the sufferer. “Mera, if I may…I’ll wait.”

Her chin trembled, and she did not answer. But in the hours after, I learned she’d given orders for quiet and comfort, Lom’s and my own.

The room fell dark, and I sat resting a hand on Lom’s chest to feel him breathe, until the numbness in my legs became insistent. I wanted to say soothing words and nothing came to my heart…nothing at last but my failure to honor Lom’s goodness.

“I will,” I said to him. “You would not. If I had been struck, I would not merit a nemesis. But it is you who go and I who stay…and so…

“This the gods ordain. Forgive me. Sleep.”

 

 

 

21

 

 

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I eased to my feet and faced the windows, the unlit alley.

“Leave the shutters open.”

Madla had spoken over my head, not to trouble me. Her woman returned once, cradling a candle flame. She lifted the cloth from the untouched supper dish, added a spice-scented bun, and left Cime’s slaves alone.

I thought of these women…looking over rooftops at stars, listening to hoofbeats, dim voices, lowering my gaze to see lamplight flare in a downstairs room. I ought to have kept a blank mind, let the gods speak. Let them pity me with wisdom. But I thought then of my master, how deeply in defiance of ordinary rules I was, whether forgiven…

Or whether, of less value than Lom, I was held at fault. I might be held unlucky, unsafe to keep, as I had in my old home.

Cime I heard speak, shouting for Mumas. The growing light of torches made plain he had gathered his household knights, and they had concealed themselves in the dark lanes. They had surrounded Mumas, but allowed him to enter his home.

He came out. I saw by the light of his doorway, his hand tremble. He flung a purse to the foot of the steps, where Cime gripped his sword unsheathed.

“I suppose the slave is dead. I wish it had been the other. But there, my honored Lord Cime, my purchase. Or, if you won’t take my gold, you may choose a slave of mine.”

They faced each other, silent; Mumas bold in his terror, Cime quivering with insult.

“There is no recompense for what you’ve done.”

Cime stooped, hurled the purse, striking Mumas in the belly. A ripple of speech passed the ranks of his knights. They wondered—among themselves, but for their lord’s ears—if by this he meant challenge. If he would order them into the house to take blood vengeance.

But Cime was Lady Nyma’s son; he was the Emperor’s tax collector, and he could not.

 

Lom was dead. I knew this, crouching to him again.

Challenge, I thought of it.

I thought of the law, under which I had no right of being. But the Balancers, who stalk the guilty, stand on where human justice fails.

Tell me, I asked them, am I wrong?

 

Come the morning, I left Madla’s counting room.

Lom would be sent for burning. With no ceremony I knew of, that a friend, a brother or sister, at the death of a slave was called to perform.

For strength I ate the food set out the night before.

 

 

 

22

 

 

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The horses stirred and snorted, not caring that their early visitor was strange…dawn, and any bustle of humanity, meant food to them. I found the creature Mumas had ridden, stroked its nose. It stood calm in its stall.

A groom entered, muttering, toting a pail of mash, and when his sight adjusted, he froze. He flung a warding hand. “Get out!”

I could see his master’s ways with him gainsay his first judgment. He peered towards the slot that gave air to the stall, through which the horse could find the water trough. He looked at me again, and his calculation seemed apparent enough.

“You don’t want me to go,” I said. “Or how will you prove I was here? And I advise you not to waste good water, for foolishness. I have not poisoned it. Take me to your master, and let him punish my trespass as he wills.”

The law of challenge required that I touch my adversary’s person. If I allowed myself delivered to Mumas, it would suit. He might kill another of Cime’s slaves. But Cime, of superior family, had the higher right of disposition. I judged Mumas wise enough to see himself as he was, slidden to the cliff’s edge, clinging to the leelaye’s slippery root. He had never wanted a feud with the House of Decima.

The groom found me too reasonable. “Did you get hold of something?”

He scanned rasps and picks, mallets, tackle, hanging from the walls. I spread my arms, smiling a little. My garments were thin summer ones. “No, I will never steal from Mumas. But I have something to say to him. Do you find me unworthy to speak to your master?”

“Me… I don’t care.”

“Better, if I make my way in from the yard? If I have done this myself, and no one to blame?”

He thrust hair from his forehead, in the way of reluctant agreement.

Discovering Mumas was as easy as pricking my ears. The slave attending his breakfast was underfoot, it sounded. Too sudden with the water pitcher, too slow stopping the clatter of its fall. I doubted Mumas had slept, and I doubted his agitation could calm itself.

How to enter…

If he only looked, he would see me watching at the threshold. The servant saw me, and in his brooding Mumas missed the twitch and quick effacement. So, I thought, do they hate him? Does this woman wish I would draw a knife?

Mumas heard my feet at last, strolling in; perhaps he smelled Lom’s blood staling on my tunic. He breakfasted without arming himself beforehand, sensibly enough, so could only leap from his bench, tamping away panic even as I studied his face.

 

 

 

23

 

 

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The mouth drew in at the corners. “You bring a message from Lord Cime. Yes. It is his sort of humor.”

“The message is mine. Please keep still a moment. You,” I spoke on, approaching him, holding his eyes, so that he would keep still, “will choose the weapon. That is your right, by the law, as you know. You see I have none.”

He gave no order to his slave. Knights were expensive articles, and Mumas might support no guard. I put my hand on his belly…which, you have guessed, Reader, was symbolic in these matters. And if the challenge followed, it must be answered.

“I charge you as assassin. You have killed my friend Lom. You will fight me, Mumas. I, Cime Decima’s slave. I have never heard the law forbid it.”

The law did not. It was not done.

 

I had learned this city’s ways at times I was told a new thing. A slave (even a jester, bought for novelty) hasn’t business affairs, and errands to perform only as commanded. Only when I’d found myself wandering, cursed for stupidity by shopkeepers, or household stewards blockading their lords’ empty villas, was I cured of misjudgment. My early life in the shadow of Lotoq had been my book of law and custom. Often, I was wrong.

Mumas harried up his two helpers, and I walked between them to his door…being thrown out, if it pleased Mumas.

“Tell your master to make his petition before Lord Sente’s new relative.”

“Exactly those words, or may I know what person you mean?”

He meant the Prince, cousin of Lady Darsale. He would not shout this name over his threshold, to a slave. A sad trap for Mumas, and I’d done nothing to rig it. I had expected to be taken seriously. Scorned and deplored, even wished dead…but comprehended.

I would have to think of a greater provocation.

I sat on the steps, so far delinquent now, I felt a peculiar reunion with my life under the old woman’s care…

When, finished with chores, I was sometimes free. She called me Fate’s child, not her own. And so I was allowed to walk the ashy countryside until nightfall, numbering the small green things that willed to live, and no one had wanted me.

I did know Cime wanted me, and expected me. I had every sense he indulged me; little fear he would not excuse me. But for a day, it seemed, I could please myself.

Shutters folded back, my friend of the stable yelling, “Why are you loitering there? Go to your master!”

I waved in good cheer. “Tell your own he has not answered what the law demands.”

 

 

 

24

 

 

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I saw Vlanna Madla’s foreman come up the street, speaking as he approached.

“Lady Pytta sends that Lom’s ashes be scattered upon the Dagosse, to flow by the gods’ grace to the Edagosse, to the city of the lost. That of his mothers and grandmothers.”

“Of them all, his people,” I said. “Who on the other side live on in their ways. A strange visitor to their city, now and then, brings a strange tale…and they doubt, perhaps, if they live in this world or the next.”

He made a gesture of piety, though I had not favored him with a seer’s vision—only shared a fancy long held, of the afterlife, the chill we feel at times, the certainty we have lived this scene before. One or two hours passed, and the house of Mumas sat closed and silent.

I was less comfortable than I had been—the exigencies of keeping vigil began to tell. I might not succeed alone, even a full day. But a minor ruckus burst at the back of Madla’s establishment, louder than the hammering in the lofts. A figure skipped across to mount the steps beside me. She was a girl of Madla’s, bringing a water jug, a basket of bread and fruit.

“Eat if you like. Or go to her courtyard first, you know. Vlanna tells me to hold your place. Will Mumas come out, do you think?”

“His dignity forbids. But if the servant orders you off, say you’ll go when Vlanna asks it, at his master’s behest. Beware that Mumas has a temper…”

“Oh, that.” She flapped a hand, her mistress’s weight behind her.

“Mumas knows the law,” I finished. “He will be rid of me when he chooses to obey. Remind him, if chance allows, that he may decline the fight. The annals will record my victory.”

I spoke for the shutters. The girl laughed.

When I was back Mumas had not come out. I ate my second breakfast. Madla, seeing to my lunch as well, sent the girl again at midday. The lane was well-trafficked, most pages and porters returning my salute, a few stepping close to ask, “Is this the house where Mumas lives, the man who killed Lom?”

I put a hand to my ear, and with a smile, they shouted the question once more.

So much tacit support from the merchants beneath him, so much bold condemnation from his neighbor, a woman of ordinary birth, but well-respected…so much effrontery from mere servants…

By now, in clatters and mutters, symptoms had begun to manifest.

Mumas would have to summon a man of law. He must seethe that I cost him money, that his spending of it paid me, too, in credence. The shutter edged back and knocked into place, the third time within the hour.

A small man in the square-crowned hat of a lawyer, stoic for the heat under black drape and belt, came at a trot. The crowd stood off, some with a sardonic flourish…to a fresh act in the day’s theater.

 

 

 

25

 

 

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“There…” He mounted the steps. “Sits the conundrum.”

“I don’t think I am, that I’ve made a difficult puzzle. Mumas may kill me if he likes, not when. Isn’t that privilege enough? My death, by Lotoq be it so, may not fall in the shadows. The ceremony I ask is not for me…it is that my friend be remembered.”

His face changed. But he said: “I think you know well how you’ve placed him.”

He would not debate, or give advice for nothing. Feeling in his pouch for a scroll where some tenet of law was inscribed, he met the servant already holding the door.

I did not know it, though.

I own myself flattered by the crowd’s amusement, and that they seemed to take my part. I did not turn death over in my mind, since this prospect cannot improve for closer study. How had I placed Mumas? Where he could not escape his shame, I guessed…not caring.

A knight rounded the stables, reining his horse. “You are to be arrested. Will you run?”

“No.”

“No, you won’t.”

I knew his colors, not his insignia. I thought the smile he carried away was for the pleasure of reporting this.

 

They would have me imprisoned in a cell of Lord Sente’s.

The noble houses did this service for the Emperor, quartered his knights when his entourage entered their city, guarded his prisoners in their dungeons. Cells were made as each house saw fit to construct them, below ground or in towers, kept wholesome or wretched, used when some breach of public order had occurred. Most disputes were confined to their sphere—noble to noble, tradesman to tradesman, household to household, downwards through the laboring and serving classes.

We had no assize to rule on spats. Our marriage-brokers, our buyers and sellers (as to spoken pledges, laughable offers, weights of grain, purity of gold) spatted continually. The fort’s soldiers fought over courtships, preferences, cheating of rations, cheating at games. Or novelties of their own invention…for sport, for boredom. Lady Nyma’s sessions were convened only to resolve matters that challenged the law.

Sente had applied to the governor for the price of my maintenance, and I, loosely checked by the knight who’d arrested me, was made to stand in a metal collar chained to my wrists.

Mumas did not come to his steps to gloat. Lord Ulfas arrived, hurried. On his heels, shouts grew louder, and a clatter of hooves. The wave of human witness parted in a flap, excited, pointing, as four knights preceded a nobleman, riding singly.

Trumpets sounded, and a few of the crowd fell silent.

“Oh, there. I don’t like his looks,” a woman said. “He’s not ugly, but he’s not right.”

The Prince, from his saddle, caught my eye.

 

 

 

26

 

 

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He addressed Lord Ulfas, with a northern show of baffled curiosity. “I cannot keep this prisoner for myself?”

“In justice…” the governor began.

“You have some scheme for the enrichment of your minor houses? Material to the bankruptcy of your Emperor, no doubt. But we have councils in my land, not courts. As the breaking of bread leaves each holding a crumb, and a crumb for each is greater than a loaf for a few, so a verdict that comes by many stages must be wiser than…”

He bored himself, and made a negligent gesture.

“In justice…” Ulfas began again.

“Should I have denied this man’s request?”

Mumas could not snub the Prince. The crowd craned to stare, and found him with his man of law, thumbs hooked on his belt, hands working forward and back.

“I have only been asked to array my soldiers and my ships, that your enemies cease their piracy, that your harbors fill your Emperor’s barren coffers, that your people are not seized into slavery along the highways. Having done so much, I was given another small task, and thought to have it dispatched within the hour. But tell me what your pace is, Lord Ulfas, and I will slow to it.”

“Ao-bahcan Darsale,” Sente said. “I yield to you, if it pleases you. The prisoner is yours.”

“No. The Emperor’s money is my niece’s. Have it be a month, a second month. Let us all be comfortable. Sente, you are of rank to deliver my message to Lady Nyma.”

Sente, showing pains when the Prince watched the prisoner, effacement in answering him, bowed and moved with his household guard, backwards.

 

My cell was over the stable—clean, well-scented by manure, my own straw fresh. I was in company, contented with it, enjoying a snort or nicker from below. I talked to the horses aloud, and fancied encouraging words returned. I had visits from two sociable cats, opening the shutter for them when they climbed. Yes, I could have escaped. Water and food were brought by a lone servant, and never with a jangle of weaponry.

But I was eager to know Lady Nyma’s ruling, how she would explain it…feeling almost in audience to my own drama.

Sente came up the ladder one evening, toed away straw in a circle, and placed a lantern. “You bear it all calmly.”

He sat, crosslegged, on the floor.

“Lom told me he had seen his fate. I am a teller of fates. Do I tell myself, then, that I have played my role, and no more can be helped? If the gods mean us pebbles in a rushing stream, with no power to rise or sink or come to shore, why have they made us at all? What is the use of this game, with no sport in it? We die in agonies…we starve, we burn, we drown. We seem at rare times to please them.”

“Yes. You have thought all that.”

 

 

 

27

 

 

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“I have thought,” I said, “that I cannot wash my hands of Lom. He befriended me. Could our gods have devised this, that he do a good and kind thing…a very great thing, my lord, for I am very much without friends… Then, that jealousy poison the heart of Mumas, that Lom, and not I, pay the price? Does his death answer some implacable story, plotted to the end of time, by the all-knowing, mighty Ami?”

He was silent, and so I said, to finish, “I don’t think it. I believe Ami would have us rise, be angry perhaps, not bear responsibility…but seize it.”

“Now you touch me nearly,” he murmured. “Mumas, you see…why will you not have guessed?” He studied the lantern’s flame, and began in a different way. “I could have filled that place, sat idle in my house, bargained with the bargainers. Cime and I, and our knights, would ride roughshod over one or two new-sprouted fields. The scofflaws’ money would come unstuck. A bit of fun. But Cime believed he would follow tradition. Why not if in old days a Mumas would receive the honor, and if Mumas has two causes of complaint—that he is denied his right, and that the Houses steal from the Cerbani… Why not give Mumas a thing to prove, instead of a thing to grudge? He might do well, and the Emperor be pleased. He might do poorly. Then he must shut his mouth and be gone.”

“Well,” I said, “is that not wisdom?”

“What do you see?” He asked me this, after getting to his feet.

When for minutes he had not furthered his point, I tried, “What is it like for me to see…? How do I know there is anything divine in…”

“A dream? Is that how it is? A trance that comes over you?”

“No… No. Mine is a paltry gift, likely no gift at all. A sense no better, I suppose, than to say…”

I looked at Sente’s silhouette, framed by the window. I had always possessed one shirt, one tunic, one warmer robe, one pair of shoes. I did not make the sort of choice that had come to my mind. But I saw his silver cuff, cabochoned with the amber stone that in his house I’d admired. “I will wear this adornment today. This I feel certain of. I don’t dream or swoon, no.”

Also I said, telling myself, I lose nothing by it: “I know the gossip, my lord. But my certainty is that you will thrive. Caleyna Treiva…”

“We have given each other up.”

He kicked at the stone wall, willing himself this pain, stifling a broken noise.

“That’s all.” He turned, stooping for the lantern. But sat again. “No… I’m a fool. I came to confess to you. Please don’t pity and forgive me. But hear me. You recall that you and Lom were on the steps, and that Mumas came into the hall. Of course my servant had not told him they were there. Cime… The parents of Darsale, my new father and mother. Mumas had been to some ministers of the Prince…he was not given audience… To say my plan was to cheat and mock him.”

“I can’t even deny it…it was.” On his feet suddenly, he yanked the shutter, alarming me as the flame leapt. “Here! This adornment!” He flung the cuff to the yard below. “Let it be found by anyone. May Ami bless. No, you see, as easily as that, the Prince tossed my cares aside.” A sad, ironic smile. “I would put Caleyna in danger, but it was my choice, to obey or disobey. I would be Darsale’s husband, and Darsale would inherit my estates.”

 

 

 

28

 

 

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I knew what his confession would be. Mumas was an oddly uncalculating man. Yes, with the pertinacity of a mole paddling at her blind tunnel, he could make trouble for others. He would tell himself this was not making trouble, this was his office. That he felt himself alone in performing it, must seem all the more reason to persist.

“You blame yourself for belittling Mumas. And before such guests! You saw it, how weak at that moment he was. Mumas, a man you’d had nothing to do with, who was not your friend, or Cime’s, or the others’… Whom you felt affronted you must care for, take time to speak to. More than that. You saw how it tortured him, his footwork polishing the reputation of one he despises…”

My smile was faint…showing only in the eyes, perhaps. Sente was in gloom.

“He despises Cime,” I said, “and he cannot resist the dream of a strong protector. The Prince does not belong to Monsecchers. The Prince is not loved, as Mumas is not loved. But he, as the old story goes, is feared. Mumas grew to wish harm to you, the Lord Sente who thwarted him, who might have paid but played instead, showing off his empty coffers. Laughing at Cime’s deputy. Mumas had faith the Prince would destroy you…he did not suspect the intricacies of the Prince’s plan. You also wished harm to Mumas. Which you could bring about easily enough.”

“Which I did. Easily enough. You credit me with eyes to see…I doubt that of myself. Will the gods really allow me to thrive? I have killed a man. Without honor. Without malice. Without cause.”

 

Before the great day arrived, I had one more visitor. Sente did not require Cime’s wife, in her recovery, to climb ladders…or to enter his stable at all. I was taken to a chamber, a sleeping room open to the air, along the terrace where I’d met him; and after Lady Pytta left us, he told me I would stay.

“You won’t run. But feel free, if you like. I can make excuses.”

Escorting her away, she in her own melancholy, he had caught Pytta’s eye, and they’d sighed together. As to his plans, the Prince found persons fallen in his way immaterial. Until the marriage had come off, Sente could not offend.

After, he must try very hard not to.

“Tell me about my Lord Cime’s heir,” I’d begun.

From folds of the large garment she still wore, she drew my sack of tiles and tablets. “Don’t tease. I have come to ask you the same.”

I did enjoy the games, and would the company; I did not trouble her to name which, but chose a pattern best suited to a newborn’s first forecast.

“Is he a morning child?”

“You ask.”

 

 

 

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Such commonplaces, of one possibility from two or three, have no magic in them. But because the games are fun, my subjects do not want badly to think. (And I have seen practitioners tease with an ill will, cast a false guess to draw a true answer.)

 

A boy, born in the day’s first quarter, calls for a pattern of rays, and a clean line between, dividing in four parts for the stages of life. Each half has four up-triangles, and four down-triangles. All values are as the tile reveals; there are no tricky reversals. Each down-triangle gives a negative, each ray of the sun-sign applies to a house—of riches, marriage, children, war, peace, friends, enemies, length of life.

I shook the bag and threw, selecting only tiles with their faces hidden, that at their landing had formed lines of import. I took three from a right-hand arc, and laid them in the direction of the moon’s waxing. Riches, marriage, children. Two I laid, one at the center of the sun, the other on one of her rays, for length of life. I threw again, commenting to Lady Pytta as I did, keeping her apprised of my purpose.

And so I had said, “I am throwing for war, for enemies. Last, for friends and peace.”

“Put it all away.”

I hesitated.

“No, never turn them. This is not passing weather—something is happening to us. I wanted to feel happier, knowing the future. And now I feel I trust you too much. You’ll be kind, but what will you see? I think a void. I think the gods will not answer. Peace and friends, long life…can my son come into his own? Now? If Cime stays in the Prince’s favor, still the Prince profits from war. He will only invite more of his soldiers, and they will only take more…more of our fields, our houses, our knights and horses and gold, our sons and daughters. I’ll not bear it if I see you softening the blow.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

30

 

 

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Chapter Four

To Be and to Choose

 

 

Lady Nyma’s assize was of high ceremony, a sober weight to impress itself on any accusant entering lightly. I entered in fear. I must be dressed in a blue and yellow garment, with high collar and ornamented fastenings, that designated me Petitioner. I was assigned counsel; I had not expected it.

By his title, his stoniness of manner, and these competent mysteries urged upon me, I felt that Vranga-lan Banche wanted his part done….to his standards, yes. But rid of, and quickly.

“The law requires no ignorant person be done a misjustice for ignorance alone.”

“I admire the sound of these phrases,” I said.

“We may survive this case without hearing from you…do yourself that favor. And bear in mind what we win, when we win.”

Stand and sit when ordered, allow Banche all speech, answer only Lady Nyma—

“Now, something may occur, on the side of Mumas. His counsel, a friend he produces, Mumas himself… May mumble a certain thing, and hope you understand what can be denied. A provoking thing…you were fond of Lom. An ugly thing.”

By this picture I was provoked. Banche nodded, and nodded, pleased enough almost to smile. When my face had changed through embarrassment, anger, disgust…then grown calm and ready, he said: “What will you say?”

I made a gesture. But told him: “Nothing.”

He was reining me in, as did my shorn hair and stiff coat. Banche sourly expected I would surprise. “You have no pockets. Your hands are at your sides.” He squatted, in an old man’s way, grunting. He patted my shoes.

“But I could tell you. What would I hide? An amulet, a tile?”

“I don’t want your word. My task is to do my best, and trusting you is not that. Will you invoke Lotoq?”

“Blasphemy, my lord.” A moment passed. “And no.”

 

We entered the pillared hall of the Villa Montadta. The Prince had made a gift of this house, from Cerus Montadta to himself. Cerus was honored with a general’s post, to a far corner of the Emperor’s wars. In his absence, strange furnishings had attached, skulls in burnished helmets, hides of animals I’d thought myth.

Mumas as Respondent was costumed in brown. He was allowed a sash in his family’s colors. Citizens packed the far wall, benches were filled with non-Monsecchereans; no proper aisle lay between sides. Mumas and his counsel were crowded to an edge.

 

 

 

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I faltered in, stumbled over boots, drew laughs and found myself misdirected. I whispered: “My lord Banche, will I sit below the dais?”

Banche shut his mouth mid-answer, as three knights rose and bowed. They sat on the floor. I and my counsel sat, on this first bench. Mumas and his scooted within earshot, furtive, and no one corrected them.

The Prince entered, lowering hands in the air. “Quiet! In this chamber, I abdicate all authority. We have it so, in the North…” He said these things walking, kicking feet aside, to stand before Lady Nyma. “A king in the Hall of Council is no king. A man of great landholdings owns none. A mother is counted childless.”

“Whereas our law requires no disturbance, or irrelevance introduced, under threat of arrest, once a proceeding has formally begun.”

The Prince smiled, and a passage—that showed on his face—of imagining a cool retort, ended with Lady Nyma’s further:

 “I have not yet asked my officer to announce the case, and summon the parties. We have not begun. Be seated.”

“You see how it bodes,” Banche muttered. “Will Nyma’s verdict be allowed to stand, be interfered with…”

The Prince sat at Banche’s side, and our bench was full.

“Citizens and guests, Petitioner and Respondent, Counselors.”

The officer spoke; Lady Nyma drew down a tablet, topmost of several at her right hand. As our parts were announced, we rose. The Prince did not. His knights on the floor did not.

Lady Nyma spoke: “The Petitioner asks the court to consider whether laws which pertain to dispute by challenge, pertain to the slave as to the master. The Respondent charges the Petitioner with trespass in his house, and with assault upon his person; the Respondent requests that Cime Decima be made to offer reparation, which the Respondent’s counsel states his client will accept, in the form of the Petitioner’s being bonded over to Mumas Martas, by Cime Decima. The Respondent asks that the court dismiss the request of the Petitioner; and that the session be closed upon this resolution. The court dismisses the Respondent’s charges, denies his request, and will hear the Petitioner’s request.”

I wanted badly to peer at Mumas. I had known nothing of his designs on me; I rejoiced in their dismissal… But I began to feel myself the walker, high on the mountainside, who dislodges the pebble.

The officer shouted: “Cime Decima!”

A confusion of echoes, of stomping feet, of many chains and rings of wealth jingling as the seated half-turned. Cime followed a rush of air, the drawing back of a curtain, a faint scent from his robe reminding me of Lom, and our home.

“This you swear before the court, Cime Decima. That you ask nothing in reparation from Mumas Martas; that you will put no price on the dead slave Lom. That for your part, you withdraw from the case altogether, will press no claims, will speak no word in future.”

“I do.”

 

 

 

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Cime was given the chip of obsidian used to mark the unfired clay. He signed before this room of witnesses. The clerk inked the tile and pressed it to a stretched cloth, which by another was carefully removed for drying.

Lady Nyma spoke: “For thirty days, I have weighed one question, upon which all other questions the court shall consider in this case, must of necessity hinge. From Dal Ruggia, where archives pertinent to the matter are found, I have returned, after many days’ study.

“We allow that a slave is regarded property of his master. What we must determine, here and today, is whether a slave can be a person of will; can choose his actions independently of his master’s will. If this is so, the law being the same law, its weight accorded in the same degree, to every person whose circumstances are in principle the same, the law’s bearing on a slave must be as upon a free person—if the slave’s conduct is not that of mindless property, but results from considered choice, as would the conduct of a citizen. The law being derived from natural right, and this right being apparent, a verdict’s fairness, when applied without caprice, must be manifest. For to apply the law in such a way that it thwart its own purpose, or flout the commands of our gods, is to apply no law at all.

“Let us then consider instances that illustrate what a slave is, and what a slave is not.” She paused at a murmur. “Those who have objections may at the close of my remarks raise them. Suppose Ami, the Father of Lotoq, bids his son shake the earth, to our great destruction.”

She gauged us all, for she had boldly invoked the nameless, the god we dreaded. Nor did Lady Nyma make the sign…but many others touched their fingertips and bowed their heads.

“If the guest of a householder dies by the fall of a pillar, we do not curse the god. We live only by our Maker’s will; we dispute with him least when his anger is greatest. Yet we do not blame the pillar. Such things we build are subordinate to our choices, and we ourselves are to blame for them. Yet suppose the house were poorly constructed… The householder would be held at fault; she might win in her turn recompense from the builder.

“Suppose that a neighbor plants his corn, and the householder’s chickens, being let to roam free, eat the seed and deprive him of his harvest. We do not blame the chickens; and yet, we do not blame the seller of the chickens to the householder. Fowl must be penned; unpenned fowl are a known hazard, thus ruled the fault of their owner, who pays. By this we acknowledge that fowl, left to themselves, will wander and peck.

“Suppose the householder does not pen them, and the neighbor sets his dog on them. We do not blame the dog for the loss of the fowl, but we acknowledge that the creature performs the will of its master, a thing we do not accuse fowl of doing. In such cases, the magistrate will order that the parties come to terms, recognizing fault on both sides. But if the master sets the dog on a fellow citizen, and does him bodily harm, an officer must confine the dog and destroy it. This is written in the law because we will not trust the dog to be safe, when it has proved itself dangerous. Heed, Citizens, that here, and well established, lies a distinction: we acknowledge in the dog both the status of property, and the embodiment of human will—yet without human conscience.

 

 

 

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“If the master sends his slave to injure bodily an enemy, the master is at fault, but the slave does not escape the law. Yet let us propose that the enemy meets the slave and begs the slave do him no harm.”

Here, Lady Nyma was silent a long moment. We sat, and thought of what she wished us to think. The Prince grunted. I feared he would interrupt, remark a stupid thing.

I felt him eye me…

I had squirmed, I suppose. He said nothing.

“The case I cite is known to many, that of the slave Hanit. Hanit was sent bearing a gift of wine to the marriage feast of Vlan Androchas. The wine had been poisoned with seeds of the rosira tree. Lord Tahme, Hanit’s master, first ordered this errand of his steward, whose habit of thieving some portion of fine wines for himself—

“Led to his death. Hanit witnessed this, but was told by Lord Tahme, hurry, dry your tears, the feast will be on! Yes, you…seal your lips, or you die. Hanit saw him brooding on his deed; in the time she ran to his rival’s, he would decide her death best…the task done, and no value in her higher than his freedom. Before the wedding party, she confessed to Androchas. Can I believe you? he asked. Hanit’s voice failed her. But his father said, pour the wine among the fishes. Androchas went to the fountain, and all the company followed.

It was proved that Tahme’s slave spoke the truth. You will stay with me in my house, Androchas said.

“The slave is capable of choice by conscience; so the case of Hanit instructs. Any of us, placed as Androchas, would desire this. Further, Hanit owed the greater obedience to the law, for the law states that we cannot take what we cannot give. Human life is granted by the gods, and only the gods by miracle may restore it. The human intellect, of imagination, of wit, is not molded to a type, not constrained, not altered, by status. Lord Tahme was not a good man for being free and noble. Hanit was not corruptible for being enslaved. We cannot make a sorcerer’s talismans of designations. We must find our reasons by logic—by which we derive principle, by which we derive law. Any enslaved person who may prevent evil is expected by speech or act to do so. We desire this; we benefit from it. We have, by a thousand examples beyond Hanit, demonstrated that we believe, too, in the principle at hand, that the law governs every person.

“Citizens, the Petitioner seeks to avenge a death, as our law of Challenge permits. There is no question of obedience to the master, for Cime Decima makes no claims, and has before you all sworn so.

“Vlanna,” Lady Nyma said to a minister at her left. “I ask you now to speak.”

 

 

 

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The woman stood. Her face was scarred; her arms bore the grooves of knife wounds, accenting sinew and muscle.

“I am called Pyrandtha. I am a Knight of Caeluvm, a Challenger. I fight no longer, but I serve, for we pledge our lives to the virtue of honor. I have been named by the Emperor Minister of Causes to the city of Monsecchers. I am asked by Lady Nyma to state for the court those rules apt to the Petitioner’s cause, for many of you are strangers, and many have never challenged.”

My eye she sought, at this pause. Whenever a person of importance exercised dignities of office, rituals I had never believed touched me, I felt a thrill. Of a glamour, touching me also. I wanted my turn on stage; I wanted my audience to want it. Some clever answer, and mysterious…

Yes, it flitted through my mind, in a hushed voice, loud enough for the Prince, for Lady Nyma, but not for the gallery, left to whisper and gossip…

But the Minister of Causes asked no question.

“The challenge must fall into one of three classes: Sauta Umos, insult to the person; Sauta Maitos, insult to the house; and Sauta Faibe, insult to the weak. The law holds that a person of lower lineage or place cannot commit Sautos against a person of higher; that a person without citizenship cannot insult the family or reputation of an Elector, but—this, to the law of challenge, is the foundation—any person may issue challenge against another, on the charge of preying on one weaker.

“The Order of the Knights of Caeluvm exists for this purpose, that many of the rightly aggrieved are not able to meet an opponent in combat. We are a charitable order. We swear a vow of Service above Self, even unto death, if the gods so will.”

She stopped again, not to offer her order’s charity to me, but because the Prince was playing at something. I saw him shift in his seat, with his knee nudge his bodyguard’s. Lusting to see a woman fight, as women did not in the Prince’s land?

And he would not fight himself, he would order one of his knights—

Whom Pyrandtha would destroy. I felt such scorn, I mouthed the word coward.

“The form of challenge, which by the account even of Mumas Martas, has been done correctly, is this: The Sautos must be stated, its being and its reason, the hand be placed on the belly, the seat of trust. As we do when on pilgrimage to the shrines, where the stonecrafters who lived among the gods carved their images by arts lost to us, and the priests fasted, and the earth burned day and night, and the blood of the impious ran as a river in the streets, to consecrate and make holy the living rock. When we pass in procession, and when we say our prayers, we place our hands on the belly of the god, but our eyes we cast down.”

Her words were for the Prince. Our midwinter time of pilgrimage was soon; many hearts would pray, many more of us walk the procession than before the Prince’s day. We would pray the Emperor be toppled from his throne, that his paid vassal be exposed to our mercy. And that, if it pleased the gods, the Prince would never leave this land.

 

 

 

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“Now, one who is challenged may see fit to decline. When it is recorded that he answers no, equally he has forfeited the right of dispute. What is charged against him stands, though he pays no other penalty than in honor lost.

“If he will fight, he must appear with his challenger at the Offices of Cause. Record shall be made of the dispute and its circumstances; who charges; who denies; where they will fight, and with what weapons. The accused may, and his challenger may, employ as champion a knight…or a friend.”

She glanced down, though she spoke from expertise and had no need to consult Lady Nyma’s tablets. “They who seek charity may, counselled as to form by my deputies, apply to the Vranga-chae’m of our order.”

The law permitted any length of delay, but the Vranga-chae’m’s refusal meant combat must take place within four days. Her deputies might explain to me why I should wish a delay. I didn’t. I had wanted to pay such close attention to these great ones, trust with all my heart I could sit empty-minded, drink in grand-sounding phrases, gaze with wonder at the Villa of Montadta, its alley of columns, every four the legs of a giant horse, a team to pull Lotoq’s chariot, to speed his wheels of thunder and fire…

And at the high dais draped in its rich cloths, the handiwork of patient years, wise minds deciding for the best.

Wanted to be lulled out of all awareness. I was not so gifted; I understood. I feared I did. The friend to fight my battle was Cime. He would kill Mumas, and Mumas could not die that way. For between doing and being done evil lies a thread so narrow…only Ami can discern the path that never veers.

Yet it might be also that Cime was hated by someone, or the House of Decima was, or Cime’s wife or his riches were envied. Mumas might gain the luck of an enemy’s enemy. Can my son come into his own, Pytta had said. Now?

Could he? No grief to a friend ought to come, at any rate, from this scuffle of a proud fool who had murdered, and his tormentor, who would see justice done. Mumas must pay the price he owed, but only that. The tale of Mumas Martas only, live or die, be written on this tablet.

The Minister of Causes took her seat, and the High Magistrate rose.

“In summary, I state the question again: Does the law, in benefit and punishment alike, govern all who are charged to obey it? Our enquiry has uncovered two key principles. First, that the slave cannot be classed as an object, or an animal, for the slave possesses a conscience and a will; second, that the law must touch the slave, albeit the slave is not a citizen, albeit the slave holds no property, else the will of a slave shall be ungovernable.

“The complaint may be raised that if one slave challenges, many will challenge. I counter with two points: One, that we allow marriage among slaves. We do not find this fault in the case of marriage, that if one slave seeks to marry, many will seek to marry. Marriage proceeds by consent among parties, and by worthiness to maintain a household. It is constrained by the weight of ceremony and obligation. The solemnities are the reasons marriage does not occur wantonly, or in ways disruptive to society, neither among slaves nor citizens. The laws of challenge are constructed with those same constraints in mind.

 

 

 

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“Two, that we uphold the master’s right to place one slave in the stable, another in the kitchen, a third at his side. We know well that ‘making places’ may cause jealousies and intrigues, and does so among citizens as well as slaves. Here we have a practice that often leads to harms, yet we make no attempt to manage human nature by law. Harms in theory and not in fact cannot supersede our basic right of choice. The fear of slaves’ challenging cannot carry more sway than whether a slave challenges…with the present hearing, our weighing of each fact and factor, evidencing where reality places its limits.

“Should the court allow an argument constructed along a particular line, it cannot be lax in enforcement, or blind to instances of identical construction, for the sake of convenience. The law, if to answer imagination rather than fact, must intrude upon and oppress the free citizens of Monsecchers intolerably.”

Lady Nyma restated the attestations of Mumas, Cime, Banche on my behalf. She spoke again of challenge…

The Prince’s men began to be difficult.

A shock, then. The Prince reached across and hauled me to my feet, as he stood to his own, unbidden.

In a voice to cow the room, Lady Nyma’s officer bellowed: “Citizens. Honored guests. Counsel and client. Cime Decima. Sente Vei.”

My head stood no higher than the Prince’s bruma, a breastplate northerners wore, a beast with flared snout molded upon the heart. I held motionless—in no way to suggest opinion, loyalty, even curiosity. But with great curiosity, I wondered. Sente had made an attestation of his own; Lady Nyma had not introduced it.

“The court rules thus: The challenge against the Respondent, Mumas Martas, is in full keeping with the Law of Challenge, and is within the rights of the Petitioner to issue; therefore Mumas Martas must answer. That is all.”

All, but not simply. I willed, I prayed, Mighty Lotoq, Great Ami, have him say it, let his pride bear it. A hundred witnesses saw him commit the act…

I will not fight, may it please the court.

The Prince said: “Mumas Martas agrees to the challenge. He will fight the slave upon the mustering grounds of the fort. What else?” He fingered his chin. “Knives…shall we have shields?”

 

 

 

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Chapter Five

The Mustering Grounds

 

 

Cime, at the court’s adjourning, waited, standing where the great hall opened to the lesser, Sente at his side. I saw every face measure me, many gaze towards the dais, imagining Mumas…

Mumas had not left his place. He and his counsellor sat together, backs to us all. I could not guess if shock held him fast, or loathing for the people of Monsecchers. Cime pinched my counsellor’s tunic (this was respect in our land, to touch the clothes, not the body). He steered us by the row of lecterns, where a clerk of Banque’s would find an empty place, and one of the court’s bring tablets.

Our group gained a fifth, a man who served the Prince closely. He seemed not a knight, but more a Recorder of Acts.

Acts, however, the northerners marked in tattoos and burning brands, in disfigurements of ears and noses. Their naked arms told legends, their cheeks and brows were peppered with beads, burrowed under flesh, colored with indigo. Some showed constellations…the stars were everyone’s, I realized.

And wondered what the northern tales might be, of the Great Walker, the two Chariots…

Our escort’s head was shaved, a mountain driven in with bone slivers, tiny ribs thrusting up in a spider’s crouch, a campaign badge for conquering the land of Lotoq…he was quiet, listening. His eyes were studious, and I felt he was learning our language.

My question, had I not swallowed it, would have been, am I free? Will an officer return me to prison? Will I be marched in four days to the fort, given a knife, await a sign to begin battle? Will I stand at some distance from Mumas, will he look me in the eye, will I pity him too much to wish him dead, but yet…

Younger, quicker…ruthless; a dirtier fighter, willingly…

Will I kill Mumas? Because I know, at the last, I will fight to live.

Blinking my eyes against the sun, I walked the colonnade of the Villa Montadta’s porch, Cime’s hand on my shoulder, teaching me the way. The way of our future.

A shudder came under the feet. This, we called the Giver’s Laughter.

Once, and twice again.

We stopped. Cime and Sente, having their amulets, said prayers of appeasement. Banque strode off, with no word for the god and none for us. The northerner stared to where Lotoq stood distant.

And laughed, too, pointing for me a curl of smoke.

Lotoq had purpose in me; it was Monsecchers he warned today. The gaiety of untried souls…the young of the houses of Decima and Vei…pleased him. He liked that they welcomed in their midst his deep designs, sped them, paved avenues for them.

 

 

 

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We were down the steps, into the sunset shadows of tall houses and steep-pitched streets. Down from the hills that overlooked the Sech-apla, a green plain cut by the sea, a crescent of empty terrace where in famine times numbers were made to live. To wait, and be sacrificed. Strange tides rose at times, tides with no moon; the Sech-apla could not be inhabited for these. They were of the hungry sea gods, beings of grasping arms, whose names could not be known but by the drowned. We called these gods the squari.

Cime and I walked ahead, quiet, hearing Sente’s steps fade off.

“I won’t need you for any chore, and Pytta won’t. You were no friend to Stol, I think.”

He put it that way. Had I been too preferential to Lom, or above myself altogether? Stol and his wife could not admire me, I doubted, and Cime was placing me in their hands. I climbed the steps, drew back the curtain, saw in shuttered dark the sleeping porch, the quarters of Cime’s slaves, and alone I sniffed the air of it.

My eyes and throat betrayed a weakness to tears. I had made Lom’s murder my cause. I had played a role befitting some inspiration of the Prince. In spectacle I’d lost my way. I had done nothing for my friend.

 

The stranger had followed as far as the villa’s gate, speaking once, and courteous: “Stol, Mero, I have heard this, he sold himself to you. He was Caeluvm, he is no longer.”

Cime’s face grew fixed and he answered the Prince’s man no word, would not turn, even, to eye him in reply. The gate closed. I looked back…and nodded to the stranger’s wave. He left untroubled. But I was sad for the snub, embarrassed. Baffled.

I had learned a morsel of Stol’s history. Yes, among the very poor, free men and women old, broken in health, unlearned in any trade, would sell themselves into bondage. They did for tokens, and allowed themselves to be worked to death. But they died under a roof, allotted their daily bread, alms enough to eke the last of their labor.

Lom’s pallet was gone. Mine was laid, and my basket, my clothing, my bag of tiles. My candle was here, but I had no other to light it. When I had been wanted and liked, no fear would have kept me from entering the villa.

You are carrying the death you may soon die, I told myself. Pytta does not wish to see you. For her sake, Cime wishes you unseen.

Along the passage arched windows were shuttered for night, skins of sheep over them. Candles burned on bronze stands down the center,  flames dancing in drafts, but far from touching pillars or hangings. And Stol was lighting the last of them.

I could not properly call him Mero. I bent at the knees, held the posture, allowed him to ignore me.

“Go fetch your pallet. Leave your basket. There is decent light here in the hall, and we will have to start now, at once. The Prince has given you four days, has he not?”

 

 

 

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Four days in which I’d expected, shunned and alone here, to meditate, to pray, that if the gods willed any service of me, they would grant the charity of revelation.

“You say start…”

His laugh was angry, and satisfied. “Yes. A thing you have not suspected, Gifted One.” He pointed to that I’d first noticed about him, the stamp on his brow where a heavy blow had misshaped his skull. “Each chapter of our order is dedicated to a virtue. You know the virtues.”

“Honor,” I said. “Faithfulness. Love.”

“Three?”

“No, Stol, I name my guesses. I don’t know your Order’s doctrine.”

“If Pride were virtue, that you would know.”

“Do virtues save then, as sins destroy?”

He struck a pose of thought, held it for a punishing minute. “I won’t waste your hours of life on debate. And yet one day, you…why suppose not?…you will hold place in the Senate, and if sauce is wit, you will find an appetite for yours. For this day, for all this night, and all tomorrow, we will play a game. Not a game of fortunetelling. The War-Maker’s game. Go.”

When I’d rolled my pallet, and shouldering it scurried back, I found a board laid on the floor. Polished slate, etched with lines, twenty rows of squares. The pieces were dobs of glass, as the blower drops in the sand.

“Lay them out. Blacks your side, whites mine.”

I scooped murky greens and pearls from a bowl to sort, again and again, it needing two hundred to fill the squares on my side to the center, where Stol’s met them. To a place between us he scooted a spool on a spindle. The spindle was marked with an arrow, the spool in squares of red and gold, numbered.

“Do you suppose it matters who goes first?” he asked.

“You. And I will learn whether it does.”

“You expect to have that luxury. In battle. In warfare.”

“No.” I centered two or three men that sat imperfectly. “No. I can bear harsh teaching, Stol. That I had from Elberin. Tell me what you would like. If I play badly, shout at me, or sneer. Do you suppose I care?”

I knew orders of knighthood put postulants to absurd ritual, mystery made so by withholding the commonplace reason—that frightened holders of rank hoped to wring ambition out of any who might unseat them. I did not aspire to it. I could not see my future suffer if I enraged my tutor.

He spun the spool, and the number was ten.

“Your move then. Take ten of my men, and place one of yours on the tenth square.”

 

 

 

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Rapid was the exchange of tests, up to the dozenth spin. The board cleared, and ignorant to any means of victory, I advanced my men every which way, taking Stol’s as the spool indicated.

He could have his game; I had only time.

But I saw wide gaps grow on the board. If I were to win seven steps, I might gain one captive. If Stol won eight, he might take my lone patrol, draw overnear my outpost of six.

The fewer men left, the more strategic every move.

“But there are players, you know, players who are at the game for days…the board may sit while a man goes about his business, and when next he visits his opponent, he has thought of the best answer. But then his opponent has thought, too. Because we have ten on the spool, each man can move one to ten squares. Each encroach is limited by his first position…the edge of the board, the center… They have tried for centuries, those who tend the great charts. Each possible move of each possible piece by each possible turn of the spool. I am far from being so good.”

My teacher twice that night defeated my army, allowing me at last to nap when I’d grown too sleepy to attend. Pride, Stol very secret about this, had won me his regard. I was a maker of mental charts, young in the eyes of others, but old in the years I’d spent at it, those pleasant games of the fortuneteller.

 

I woke to fresh cold air filling the hall.

Stol said, “Eat your breakfast and come down to the water trough.”

Half dreaming I obeyed. My head was full of the War-Maker’s game, the puzzle of whether it mattered to plan, until the field had cleared. Or was it true…so complicated were the numbers destined upon each piece…that like the paths of the stars, the game was ordained, and the reading of each man’s fate attainable?

All the slaughter, then, of the early rounds could not be waste, but a terrible necessity. If it had been war.

I hated this…I felt Lotoq urging me towards an answer none had discovered…

My mind moving glass soldiers, I came heedless to the trough. And got a great surprise. Stol strode up behind me, grabbed my nape and dunked my head.

“Make yourself alert! There is almost nothing about fighting I can teach you in two days. Tell me why we played the game.”

I inhaled, drew in water, snuffled it out on my sleeve. “Strategy, for me to have an idea of it.”

“Take this knife.”

He said so after a long pause. He said further, arriving at it, “To have an idea! No, I think you have never tried to arrange matters for your own ends. That has nothing to do with why we should be here at all!” He busied himself with a wooden shield, the gathering of it one-handed from the wall it leant on, the thrusting of it to my open arm. “Take this as well.”

 

 

 

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The knife was iron; together with the shield, too heavy. “Could I fight with only a shield, though?”

“Can you kill a man with a blow?”

Thoughts of divine justice… But I hadn’t the strength of a rearing horse. “Suppose I knocked the knife from his hand?”

“Is this the way I teach you? Hold those up! Knife at your waist, shield below the shoulder.”

I faced him, my knife as instructed, shield pulling towards my knee. He touched the side of my neck with his own knife.

“I hadn’t thought of that. I’d have guessed it was the heart.”

“You may guess any foolish thing you like. But quicken your intellect. I will do that again. I want you to tell me anything you see that may be of use to you.”

He swung the blade, while I stood feckless, wishing by the gods to have my intellect quickened.

“Again.”

This time, as slowly, slowly, for my sake, Stol lifted his blade, I leaned and countered with mine…just there, at the elbow. Intuition suggested it, that the muscles moving the arm be severed.

“And why do you know what you know?”

“Because you were slow for me.”

 

Pytta ordered the best of her kitchen for our lunch (and more than any delicacy, it bolstered me knowing her silence was not disdain). My aching limbs, by afternoon, taught me a wiser economy of effort.

A lunge with the knife must complete itself. The weight would carry. The driving home was not the moment of decision; it was the moment of weakness. Every act that distracted or frightened Mumas, was the battle. I must learn to feint with an eye to opportunity.

“How does the blade come out? You will have to know it. If he rolls and rips the knife from your hand, if he has the strength to come at you yet… Am I joking?”

“No, Stol, but what if I ran, and kept running? Staying within the field, of course… It is really against the rules?”

I’d given a picture, and he struggled to find it uncomic. “Please dishonor me as little as you may. I want to see a sober look. Mumas thinks you a spoilt, coddled creature. Handle your arms as you have today, and he may give you the gift at the outset, before you tire yourself.”

Exaggerate, play on my enemy’s folly. I took this lesson, and sober eyes from Stol’s face. When he raised his weapon, I let the shield slide to earth.

Caught by impulse, looking, my seasoned tutor left his belly clear for the touch of my knife—

It shook a bit, then, with laughter.

 

 

 

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The Prince had found a noisy man, Imoë the Squatter, thief of a hilltop home. Like he of the Villa Montadta, the owner lived away, south in the Emperor’s ugly capital, at the Emperor’s feet. Imoë was mad, or drunk all day, and among the barren columns kept a circus—

For during the Winter Rending, the house had half-toppled. A hard year, of snow below the mountain, of blighted fruits, of Lotoq’s pacing his chamber floors, rocking foundations. This was sixteen years past, Imoë for nine dwelling unbudgeable. No one of rights lived in our city to accuse him. The Prince liked every troubling person, all lawbreakers who held the assizes at bay.

He had made Imoë master of ceremonies. Imoë, walking his lion on a new-gifted jeweled chain, harried men from the crowd. A ragged follower came draped in a vivid bolt of Vlanna Madla’s silk, taken the day of the fire. Where Imoë picked, and the crowd shoved seven to stand forward, his follower in singsong egged them to choose who would be matched.

In a lower field of the grounds, mounted men drove through a melee fought with clubs. Wounded were carried off to cheers…cheers for the wounds, not the heroes. Cadenced chants in the northern tongue, my death-battle with Mumas made a triviality, not even the best show on the day’s ticket.

 

The fort had high steep walls, and far down among the rocks, secret ways, it was said; so siege could not defeat us while our fort defended us. Its inside was a warren, of soldiers’ quarters, weapons stores, kitchens, stables, treasury.

The nobility were seated behind the rampart. They might turn seaward if I bored them. The sky was cloudless, sun warm. The sea cared least for humankind on such days she wore her sapphire mantle, her greatest beauty…singing songs of her own.

For our banners, our battles, our tyrant and his Fair Day, she cared nothing. And rightly. The Prince’s stagings were all to mock Monsecchers, inebriate us, spill our blood.

“Bid the champion approach.” The voice was Elberin’s. “You must bow before your Prince.”

I was too far below. The wall draped in pageantry loomed between myself and the eyes, hidden, that apparently could see me.

“In the style of my own country, and yours, Elberin, I will bow.”

I remained as I was. Laughter, the Prince’s, rose above the others. A woman said, “Everyone’s betting against your choice. Oh, yes, admit it!”

I had not called Elberin Vlan, before the parents of Darsale, whose short coughs I had not forgotten. Light talk, the smell of roasting meat and spiced wine warming, filtered to the shadow I stood in.

Then Elberin said: “Wait for the outcome. The foundling is the god’s favorite. There will be some twist to the story.”

“Then let us have the end of it now.”

 

 

 

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For the Prince’s underling these word were enough. I heard running feet fade along the parapet, and soon he crossed the field, tapping men on the shoulder. Some game with a ball that was not to touch earth, was shouted into default, victory to the side that left the field smug.

Nervousness seized me.

I saw the ground churned and gouged. I thought of Mumas and his bleached summer tunic. He cared for this in his appearance, that his garments be white, as a man’s who can have his horses saddled by a servant, a man of…

Equal status, you know it, I told myself. Mumas Martas, as good as Cime Decima. Worthy, if not forced by this slave, to this Challenge, of sitting at the Prince’s side, a second Elberin.

Was it possible? Would a handful of mud in the face do less than one mid-chest; a garment sullied enrage Mumas more than any name I could fling, any joke inviting laughter?

For the space of a minute, temptings and loathings flickered. Stol, with his question…could I kill a man with a blow?

Could I play this war-maker’s game with subterfuge enough? No one had brought me my battle toys, so I bent, gathering mud, and rehearsed the pretense of it. I understood Stol’s pride, his wish to have me use my knife and shield, only those. But grip that wooden mass by two sides, heave it up…

After fouling my foe’s person, cheating against the Knights’ rules, filling (I hoped) Mumas’s head with a maddening wasp buzz of indignation…

Could my shield catch him at the ear, as his horse’s hoof had caught Lom?

If I could ask so much of the gods.

“What do you suppose all this delay is?”

Stol was beside me, tone too conversational. My fist of mud had been guessed, as to purpose. But chiefly he was irritated with the Prince, “…tarts up the program with sport, when a life must end today. You know, there’s honor in respecting death.”

He added, with a nod at the rampart, “Not on his side,” and moved to tackle a knight of the Prince wandering our direction, studded face blank but willing.

“Why don’t they begin? Why aren’t they staking out the field and clearing those stragglers?”

The knight laughed. He put his hand on my head, in the way of making playful measurement. He drew his long knife and feinted it at me, said a northern thing to Stol that ended in a shrug.

 

 

 

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There was a shout, well down the field, the import that the games were over. So we judged by the head-hanging posture of those stumping to the stalls, where little refreshment was left to be purchased.

I said, “What now? The Prince has not ordered the combat off?”

“Your rival does not appear. I say you have won. I don’t know what it is.”

The speaker was the Prince’s man, who had followed us from the Villa Montadta that day. Neither could I have said what it was I’d won. I’d expected to hurl all my strength, all that my muscles, so sore and over-tried, could be driven to; and to beg, in prayer under breath, my god to guide that knife…

While the crowd milled, while I, and Stol, and our comrade of a passing moment stood, none facing the tower, a figure dropped from its crown.

The odd blur of movement drew our eyes.

And we heard, far off, a wet crunch.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Chapter Six

A First Road

 

 

No one that day had further use for me. Although more certain with each step, that at Cime’s house I would be barred, I returned. Stol and Larsa were not in the servant’s hall; my pallet was, and I lay on it. I was only tired.

I woke to a conversation under the window, of the Prince’s deputy and Elberin.

“There were signs, Wosogo. Everything had grown lush, a wonder. That the soil could ever become fertile, and so soon… The strange trees infest the hills you are about to cross. If it pleases your lord, he may say the wind delivered them. But as he rides over Lotoq’s dead, let him beware.”

The man by name or rank Wosogo said, the metal things that pierced his face clicking, “The seer carries fortune. Such plans, I may say, as your Lotoq…”

“Perhaps you mean to arrive at this—that my wisdom was not sufficient to predict such havoc. Well, I don’t claim to know the mind of the Giver. He rumbles, it is not always ill-omened. Or not for us in this present life. The newcomers wanted the foundling sent away, and I bowed to them. Now the lake of sweet water has gone sour.”

I had brought at my birth too much of taxas, the gods’ dark designs, and the newcomers—now as well the people of Monsecchers—feared to have me among them.

I pushed from my pallet and went to the steps.

Elberin took slow note of my unwashed mud. “You are not wearing the only clothes Cime Decima has given you?”

“Surely I am less suited than another you may readily hire.”

He waited me out. I offered mercy: “For whatever task my clothes are too plain for, or too stained. Also, it’s late in the day… To me, the day has been long.”

“Well, there.” Elberin spoke to Wosogo. “What you will find yourself contending with. I believe the Prince calls it cleverness, and amuses himself with our superstitions regardless… Our little customs. He may like to possess a seer, he will wish he had not. However seeming, the words will betray these forays into outreasoning, so that getting just what he asks for, the Prince lands at a disadvantage. One day, at no advantage. Goodbye.”

His pace became resolute, and the back of him passed Cime’s gate. There Elberin turned, and said to me, “Your road goes one way, and mine another.”

“The gods are so kind.”

“The Prince will have us start the road tomorrow. It is winter soon, and we have all this land to cross to the sea, where we are going.”

These were not Elberin’s words, his fading grumble—to himself, for my ears. Wosogo had a frown on his face, of interior work. His fluency in our language ebbed (I supposed), as he measured in his own what he wished to say next.

“The Prince makes you free. There are fortunes to be told on every man who journeys. Every beast, horse and oxen, every sun’s rise and set. It is always with our people to be at odds to the sea. That is an old curse upon us.”

 

 

 

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I suffered, not knowing what had befallen me…but I traveled among indifferent companions. They offered food I didn’t want; they offered drink I did.

Yes or no, I was not rewarded, not rebuked or coaxed.

When able, I asked Wosogo: “What sort of journey is this? Why are we going?”

“I…journey. But I think I have not the word. Balbaec is a town of the Alëenon, all they, those people, trade by the mountain from the fortress city. On the plain is a great bazaar, at all times. Strangers come…they come even over mountains to the east.”

He put a picture in my mind, or the Giver did. I saw walls buttressed with living rock, a puzzle of tunnelways, as our own small fortress boasted—but sinister, breathing bursts of fire, through engines in the labyrinth above. I saw a great upwards road flanked in pines, a mossy garden in the clouds, circled by captive eagles. Far below, a rift between chains of peaks, a green land with a thousand bright tents. I knew of nothing in my life to account for the invention. I knew also the Prince hoped by some means to break this fortress, claim it, bottle its trade into the Emperor’s coffers.

“Why, though…” I said. A minute or two had passed.

My face might have shown anything, but Wosogo’s was as a man’s facing death in battle, who finds in his hand a spellbound weapon.

Thrilled, grim in purpose, both.

“Why, Wosogo, are we so urgent?”

“Monsecchers. The Prince has seized the city, the Emperor fears it. He will name it capital, have the harbor. But…”

“Pending one quest, to measure loyalty. And the Prince has not refused.”

A pause, and a lowered voice had brought me this confidence…gleaned, after all, from the highest councils. Wosogo trusted my magic, but he did not wish to have this talk.

“Please,” I said. “I mustn’t keep you.”

 

Cuerpha was my gift from Cime—my pony, his blanket, saddle, all.

Pytta came to me. “I should not. Word spreads far and wide, young fascination. Just when my husband and I would rather be small, and barely seen… I’m crying.” She was, wiping tears with the knuckles of a ring-studded hand. “We are forced to say goodbye. And because you know truth, whether I lie or don’t, why pretend…?”

“Oh, thank, and make offering to Lotoq. Peace without me is no shame to wish. Small and barely seen sounds lovely… I can’t manage it.”

“Maybe you will come by great fortune. I pray, but I fear for you.” She blushed, laughed. “To speak of luck, when you are riding off tomorrow! Curse me!”

“I don’t.”

“This,” she said.

And left me. And so I found this, the bundle, to be a vest of fleece, lined with the story of the lovers—the cloth Lom and I had fanned her with. Pytta gave me gold, chains of fat links, and other rings yet, with green stones and red, most prized.

She had sewn these in, to silently keep their places.

 

 

 

47

 

 

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Wosogo had pointed me to a master of intendance, often seen among us at the rear. His wagons were my pony’s pace-setters. Farthest back, keeping clear of the wagoneers’ whips, walked a camp of unknowns. From the north (they did not look it), from conquered lands of the Emperor, from the plain beyond Monsecchers…?

Their ways were practiced, their goods strapped to half their heights again on twig-framed baskets. Nights they shed these, staked them in a circle, possessions inward. A safe camp, yet never approached by the Prince’s soldiers.

My latest guardian trotted rear to fore, and when he passed, slowed to grip Cuerpha’s halter.

“Far there.” He grinned down.

“Many days,” I said.

A gesture, the removal of an object from a bag. I reached behind, wondering.

No, he shook his head. “Vlan seh’le.”

“Ah… There is a lord, a general of the province. Let me not say province… I believe, general-governor. We have a name for that type of outpost.” And in my own language, I could not have supplied it. With a shrug of apology, bringing laughter, I said, “The general will receive the seals, and he will give us his hospitality. We will spend the night inside his walls.”

Caring enough to try at this, my friend threaded out sense—his face showed it—from seals, give and night.

He would have ridden on, but I’d taken a notion…

I patted Cuerpha’s neck. “Brei!” I pointed to Cuerpha’s neck, and spoke our word for pony again.

He patted his own mount’s neck. “Habba!”

Now he did spur away, and I hoped I had learned…

Horse, and not the name of his horse. The beginnings of a language with no alphabet to note them down.

 

I felt eased, finally, of the abuse done my limbs training against Mumas. That, and only a day between, and the riding, hours upon hours. I’ve grown stronger, I told myself. I lay awake regretting I’d bedded down to doze, long enough to pass my chance for a meal. I rested my head on my hands.

For the torches I could see no stars. I thought of Mumas.

We loved our dead; we felt that, like grandparents, they took to their seats at last, awaiting visitors as was an elder’s due. But they sat in kindness, sage of advice, rewarding remembrance. Well-wishers, too, who loved us when Fortune did not.

Mumas had no kin and had neglected his ancestors. He sat underground, hearing footfalls approach and fade above his head.

 

 

 

48

 

 

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At my first home I’d slept in profound silence. Dreams at the mountain’s foot did not meander from sound to sound, weave stories from caterwauling, birdsong, grunts and morning footsteps. I dreamt of blackened earth, shapes like limbs of trees, that stirred to rise, that gained a gossamer humanity…and with their eyes beseeched me, “Remember and tell.”

I could not remember, though, waking. What lives they had related, what names I was to search for, what tokens they’d brandished. I knew in sleep I understood their language, forgot when not guided by the god. He also told me, remember.

Our army’s road had been forged within my lifetime, grimly to curve Lotoq’s flank. Boulders house-sized, scowling and beak-nosed, many, rude carvings of giants’ heads, sat as fallen, spat by the god. Their eyes peered at and followed us, while we averted ours and fingered amulets. We felt their anger shiver underfoot.

At a helpless pace we intruded. We wormed onwards, as an army half on foot, half-mounted—drawing its wagons, its cooks and blacksmiths, its launderers and menders, its scavengers and rabble—must.

All through this land had rained myriads and myriads of stones, held fast by a charm, some, others light as bread. Certain of a size a woman or slave could carry. Dozens day-long lifted them to sledges; droves of horses dragged them to the masonry yards of the fortress. A soft blue rock abundant here severed into fat planes, which carvers caused to relate our victories, appease our gods, hex our enemies.

We were metal-crafters. Wood for my people was a dear commodity, and our land lay barren of old forest; we made machinery from rock and clay, water, wind, and woven ropes. The quarriers had an ingenious device, new to my eyes. They had made a chute of glazed tile from a natural crevice. Women poured a stream of water at a gentle angle; men hefted a rock and slid it to the incline’s foot, where sat another. Both split at the impact.

But the stone-works passed; we left the dusty air of them, thankful rain lowered on the seaward horizon. Our march was uphill, the drummers’ cadence unflagging. Finally came a true road, paved. The army fanned out while we of the wagons were shouted to the verge. A long, long slope yet, making east, met us midday. We were at our meal, and I was feeding Cuerpha one stem of hay at a time…I had a laughing audience for this, the scavengers’ clan. The soldiers sent them gathering, firewood, lost things along the road…

A surprising number of valuables could jingle to the ground unnoticed. The scavengers…they seemed an enslaved people belonging to the Prince, by gesture begged I hold for them pretty shards of crockery, useful scraps of leather. Yes, buckles and nails the soldiers wanted. The soldiers paraded their servants to the kindling wagon, where they laid sticks, and dropped all else in a pail. Fists might be raised…but the scavengers were innocent. At night, they crept to me by firelight, and behind my back I returned their treasures.

 

 

 

49

 

 

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A messenger, cantering aside the ranks, met my eyes—from a distance, which suggested nothing to me. He carried a bundle; he steered with his legs, as men who fight with spear and bow learn. He halted and caught Cuerpha by an ear.

My pony expected well of people, a contented beast, rare to startle. I stood and patted his neck. “How may I serve you, Mero?”

The messenger gave me the bundle, and pointed to the fort.

As I mounted, the scavengers made noises of playgoers, scattered clapping, a whistle or two. For theater I lifted my hat to them. The scavengers broke into song. Cuerpha’s hooves clipped past soldiers who frowned; to convey my respects, I unfurled the cloth…banner, flag…

Garment, possibly.

We circled from earthwork to earthwork. The general would disperse his legions here; the paved road served to the limit of them. But our country was at peace. The earthworks had posted no archers, no sentries.

Wosogo sent his seal-bearer with two other bearers, one of the Prince’s banner, one the Emperor’s. We halted, waiting in our saddles, while a ceremonial parley began.

“Charmer,” a man said to me. You will not suppose I had been paid a compliment. The name was given to accosters at temples, who flung bad fortunes and collected gold to undo them; to most it meant charlatan.

“Mero,” I said once more. “How may I serve you?”

“Prepare yourself. You are to see the general.”

The general called me Charmer also. He wanted the chore of greeting done. “I will give you what you need. You will ask for whatever lacks.”

 

“Am I…?”

I spoke to myself. Seated in my chamber, I had been sorting tiles, discarding broken tablets. But curiosity had the best of me, and in this indoor light I unrolled my gift. A high-collared cape seemed more certainly the thing I’d brandished as a flag. I had insulted my hosts.

I knew that every office-holder wore his or her dignity in capes, sashes, robes. The general had said I was to dine on his couch. The great ones reclined, dining, in suirmats alone, to glut in comfort, letting juices fall as they would.

“…expected to wear it now?”

“Call me Jute. I am your servant.”

She entered, with paleness and tightly closed lips, where a knock would have spared her embarrassment.

“Please join the conversation,” I said. “Are you my guide to the general’s couch?”

“If I am told you wish it.”

I offput my servant much, I could see. I’d wanted to wear the cape, hoping I was gauche. Hoping for a bit of fun…but I began to think. Few in a fort who serve are not soldiers of low rank. This woman must suffer at every beck and call.

“Jute, what have you seen of custom at table, in this house?”

 

 

 

50

 

 

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She would not answer. Even-voiced and eyes on my work, I said: “I do not own a suirmat. I would need to have one spared, by one of the general’s retainers, perhaps. Else I may enter his hall to be laughed at, wearing this cape they have given me. I am a novelty to these men, I unnerve them a bit…they may want me the butt of a joke. If so, it serves me better to forgive. You see I have no great status in the world. I am not much more than the charmer they call me.”

“Do you bid me bring you the suirmat?”

“Please do.”

She gave another of her angry looks—for the “please”.

Alone, I weighed temptation. I might sow mayhem, play havoc with happy lives… I could see honor in casting my own fortune first. I centered a tablet and etched a simple wheel of life.

I laid out tiles, and turned that of the hub. It was the Counsellor.

I turned the tile for the First Hour of the Sun. It was Raven. It could not be, for all the god had smiled on me this mystery. The First Hour of the Sun was the birth sign, and here I sat, born living and not dead.

“Giver, may I not earn your favor? You will correct my error, Aantahah Ami, Salo-Lotoq. This people, or this place, for Alëenon is a strange word to me…their Prince will displace ours, and my counsel will be the instrument of his undoing. You will correct my error, Aantahah Ami, Salo-Lotoq.”

Feeling put wrong, I meant to fix this; I would sweep my tiles into their pouch, shake them out again, cast a corrected fortune. To misvalue the Giver’s favored one was to misvalue the Giver and his Gifts—and, I reminded myself, “There are imps and demons in the world.”

I thought of weather, the roll of the seasons, our taskmaster in this enterprise. Time was short for the thousand things I was charged to prescribe upon. I saw it must be the Wheel of Life for each and all, from the personal slaves of the officers, to the Prince…to the Emperor, if we praised him afar. I might do thirty, fifty, a hundred in a day. I might cast from the rising to the setting of the sun.

For a month or two. Then every morning in frost, every north wind blowing to our fleet’s ruin when asea, would weigh our spirits, while a mission launched out of favor with the gods…

I saw the coming round of my inner words. The work of demons: famous for sloth, for smugly dropping a seed and deserting it. As human minds are famous for nurturing these seeds. Soon roots cling to a cliff, branches block all light, and fear…fear to go, fear to stay…trammels us to an imagined perch.

However much it tired me, I must show the same smile to everyone. How, if the Charmer, a being of mystery and power, yawned at them and sighed? And mumbled, tossed tiles in idleness, bored with it all?

 

 

 

51

 

 

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A thousand trials…

And would Raven not be turned many times, so surely once, in the First Hour of the Sun? I had twenty-four tiles, I drew twelve for this game. Raven was destined to come by day or night…if I cast for only brighter fortunes, I would soon know.

I thought of the other pouch in my basket, the glass men of the War-Maker’s Game. Of what Stol had told me, its masters dreaming the math of it, trance-walking their lives while each piece was moved to all places, a layer in a stack four hundred high…

No. Four hundred times some number I could not guess.

My own games were not pure. The mechanical intervened; I could finger the impurities of the tiles, the bubbles of glaze, the chipped edges. I could cheat, push off disquietude, disappoint Lotoq. He would take his hand from me, and my enemies would know it.

Who were they, my enemies…?

Jealousy. If I had courage, I would find them in the sixth hour, where fortunes have climbed their highest. Beyond is ebbing, then sleep, until the thousand-years’ rebirth.

“Salo-Lotoq,” I prayed. Forgive me. Make me strong tomorrow.

“Atu. Marei capeddre’yhce.”

Here was another servant, a fleece draped over her arm. I was mildly irritated. I ought to fast, having such unwonted fits…through the general’s meal, take a link of my gold to Lotoq’s temple.

When our prayers are led by priests, we answer the call of Salo-Lotoq: In mercy, accept me before You. She had echoed my words with this. “There is,” I said to her, “a temple nearby, dedicated to the Giver?”

Like many, she took my friendly address, my unsurprise at her, for dispositions of holiness. She made the sign, and knelt. “Only his priests go.”

“I may go.”

Jute arrived with my dinner garment, and set up a scolding of this woman. I caught her name, Dessa Lom. I caught that her place was in the kitchens; she had transgressed to speak to me.

“Dessa Lom, remain. The god wills it, Jute. If truly she were not meant to leave her place, she would be there yet. You may stay or go.”

Jute made a face, and backed from the room.

Dessa crept in, half a crouch that gave way to a burst of motion. She unrolled the fleece on my table. A wonderful crafting of beads, of bright-hued threads, of crested heads of an iridescent lizard, the sahreik, that we dried in the sun to make brilliant, and that were coveted against death on the road…all these, and more my glance would not discover, woven in an old woman’s tapestry. Matriarchs of families too poor to possess gold gathered stones and shells, polished and shaped them, sewed them, along with many things of beauty given our earth by the gods.

 

 

 

52

 

 

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“My hegnedre carried this, and was told by a woman there, Larsa, do you know her…? Yes. That Lom named you to have what was his at death. We learned, so, that he was dead. In that house Lom was a fear to speak of, and my brother was turned away by the master. We had seen ravens for three days. We at last gave them corn, and they flew.”

Her hegnedre, our word for the younger of two elder brothers, had had no difficulty pursing me; our army crossed the land with a great noise, leaving tales of hardship. But how breath-catching to know Lom’s gift had willed its travels within the circle of his family!

To say its farewell to each. “Was it your mother who collected her charms upon this skin?”

At a nod, I spoke on: “We will pray together for her soul’s comfort. Lom’s soul on its wanderings soon will be guided to her feet, and blessings beyond count.” I folded the fleece, woolen side out, patted it with the firm flat of my hand. “I am so pleased to have seen this, and to have been thought of by your kind hearts. But if the god counsels me your need is greater…”

“Oh! I pray he does not!”

I confess it, I’d had the small ruse in mind, that I, with my secret wealth, would not take Dessa Lom’s. I would tell her the god forbade it. I saw that for her the tapestry portended harm and death. Her family treasure could not be cured of omen, and so she would have it in holy hands.

I felt now it would be many days before I tried Lotoq’s patience again.

 

The dining porch I entered alone, Jute fading at the door.

The general pulled flesh from a bird and glanced up at me. Nothing else. I ventured seating myself on the steps below his couch.

A prompt servant brought wine and a bird of my own. They had filled its cavity with spiced meat of some other creature—snake, this tasted. (But in our land we ate snake quite often.) I wondered if I would have a loaf, or any small thing for a morning meal, to carry to my room.

No one greeted me, or named himself to me. A courtier was wanted for the tasks of placing people and making each feel his role assigned, the words familiar. Courtiers are not found at border forts. For soldierly reasons, the men disliked shyness in themselves, blamed me; while, knowing I’d arrived at the Prince’s pleasure, they felt constrained to force such thoughts away. They chewed with a rare concentration and wished the evening done.

I did too. Hiding my smile, that I might tell great lies of invented proprieties, say I must have sweets and music. The Prince had instructed I was to be accommodated, allowed to do my work—a thing only I understood.

 

 

 

53

 

 

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When I’d eaten, when the servant had come with the cloth, and I had cleaned my fingers, I began idling with my tablets and tiles.

This drew every eye.

The general left his seat to grimace overhead. A minute of watching, then: “Are you starting…what, this afternoon? What has become of Jute?”

I answered the question I could. “I will cast for you, vlan, and anyone able to wait, as the light lasts. Tomorrow, to start again. How do you propose keeping a record of all that is done, and all that remains to be done?”

“The word of my men.”

“But…the word of a horse? A quiver of arrows?”

Silence. “Is it a scribe you need?”

“And a couch and low table. And, how do you suppose? Let us begin with twenty, each man, his weapon.”

“They are not mine to command.”

“No, vlan. As the Prince would have you do, you must do. But they are not mine.”

He did not have the luxury of expressing himself in a language untranslatable to me. He shouted up an adjutant. “My couch. This room, for your work. Every officer will dine in his own chamber.” Voice raised; to the adjutant, softer: “Have the table found, and…”

“Great respect, my general, but may I ask, is this job of a scribe’s a thing the woman can do?”

“Has she promised so? I would not trust her lies.”

Anything in Jute’s manner revealing, I let pass quickly through memory. “Jute has not, I think, told me as expected.”

“Jute is your servant. She will go when you go.” And vex my life no more. The general was content with this picture, leaving me, saying: “You will cast me some later time.”

The adjutant said: “She is a northern woman. We battled an outpost of a king’s son, at the river’s mouth of their realm, twenty years past. We gained the city of them. When the god showed his great wrath, we…we ourselves, who fought there…saw the omens. Rains fell, rains of mud, and the river overflowed its banks. The priests told the Emperor, it is not the god’s mind to hold this place. The Emperor refused retreat, but a captain…”

A nod, to the passage the general had taken.

“…said, imprison them all, and carry them away. The northerners will remember that. And fortunes are such, now, we are ruled by a northern prince.”

“But Jute was of that royal house. She is a slave here.”

“She is. Her task—that chokes her, I must guess—is to interpret for you the northern speech.”

“Soldier,” I counted. “Weapon. Beast. Slave. Servant. Wife. There are bead sellers, in the town below?”

“Hardly a town. But you will have beads. Eight colors, more than six, should you need them. A table. A scribe, perhaps. Enough?”

“I’m pleased. If you will visit me midday tomorrow…”

“You may cast me, then, yes. I have no fear. And I will take your orders.”

 

 

 

54

 

 

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One of the Prince’s captains came next morning, in company with my friend, the officer of the wagons. Jute stood tall, cupped her right wrist in her left hand, arm crooked upright below her neck. The sleeve of her tunic fell to the elbow.

The men looked wary.

“Jute, give me their names.”

Depwoto, she told me. Egdoah. Egdoah also to be my scribe. Surely not, I said. I stared at her forearm, which bore a sign troubling to her countrymen. A patch with none of the strange, pale hair, plucked clean of these, and inside a raised circle—as the northerners made from slivers of bone worked under the skin.

A family sign.

She held the arm stiff and let me read it, which I could not. “He wishes this himself. You have a champion. He will stay by your side, and you will teach him this language.”

Great disdain for it, our language. As well for Egdoah, whose championing I’d learned of with gratitude. Jute left my couch to sit on the steps with her back to us.

“Egdoah. What will you like to call me?” I pointed to him, and to myself. I watched him pass with Depwoto some questioning remark.

Jute said: “Nur-elom.”

“Nur-elom,” Egdoah repeated in innocence.

She meant insult, naming me the little scion of the slave Lom—scion only grammatically. I began to wonder, given such clues, if Jute were not…

“Jute, does the Prince call you cousin?”

Her eyes widened, a look of rage, panic-threaded; she glanced past the columns to the blue sky, and in this silence noise of the army camped everywhere filled the porch.

“Yes” I said. “Depwoto, Egdoah. I am Nur-elom.”

I patted the place next to me, and Depwoto sat, with a simplicity that made me think better of his kind. Whom had I met in this place unbeset by crippling haughtiness? Lom’s kind sister Dessa, the general’s adjutant, the northerners Depwoto and Egdoah.

I thought of a refinement to my art.

Each man would like something, some charm to finger and remind himself he was favored, that he brought no curse to the great undertaking…

And the answer, as the god had put Dessa in my mind, was the legacy. I bade Jute fetch it. “You know well what I mean. You will please make haste, come again to your duties at once.”

She had grown used to her privacy, I saw—to words inside herself being such the men surrounding her, ordering her, could not understand, doubly cached away. Here were two discovering news of her; who, meaning no harm, would tell it to their comrades. A curiosity, a phenomenon.

There were so many things you could not help.

 

 

 

55

 

 

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I etched my wheel on the first tablet. I placed the tiles. The captain’s luck was doubtful, although—

“You have a son?”

I glanced at Jute, who stood below the steps, clutching the tapestry. “Bring me that. Ask Depwoto.”

“Two sons,” she told me.

“The heritage of one will prosper. You are to travel and not return.”

A smile, at Jute’s translation, came slowly over his face. She told me he wished to know if there were glory in his death. The sixth hour’s tile was the cat. It was quite fair for me to interpret this as success, for the cat catches its prey. I told Depwoto…I did not wish to look away from his eyes…yes, there is glory in it.

He rose, not hearing Jute say my words again, and I used my flint to cut the thread, that bound a shining black stone with white specks.

 

The only thing I have ever wanted was my own life. And if you care to live, you do not make yourself an envied obstacle.

The wealthiest man in our land was a brother of the Emperor, who stood at the imperial elbow, winning small gifts for timely praises. Only a patch of land, a bit of coast barely arable; only a detachment of knights to protect it.

The Emperor made errors. His brother did not.

The wealthiest man in our land had no ambition to take another’s place. Cime had made me know of him, Lord Teomas, a visitor to the House of Delia, which is to say the quarter where the imperial lineages lived. The mother of Lord Teomas, the second wife of the last Emperor before my time, had been aunt to Lady Nyma.

“So bearing the weight of a king,” I’d said, “is proof of the gods’ disdain.”

“Yes, just that. When cannot Teomas make free use of his brother’s house, and stable, and fleet? Of all he desires. A day ends, another begins. We will never enjoy better all we have feasted on, all the music heard, yesterday.”

I recall I laughed. “Lovely words. Not yours, surely?”

“No, some ancient’s I was tutored on. Mumas, what name do I want? The drowned priest who speaks forever as a burbling spring?”

I was liked by Cime, disliked by Mumas.

“Why…Gosse. Gosse, who was made the river god.”

Servant to the Houses of Decima and Treiva, dressed in new clothes and seated on my pony, where the least of our people had no mount and labored by foot… I was proud. I was blind to this pride and felt myself humble, aligning my thoughts with what I believed Cime’s. As I sit now, far from my youth and place of birth, I impart to you this lesson. We are not well with the will of the gods. Never, having not their eyes to see—but least when we are certain of it.

 

 

 

56

 

 

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Our setting sail became urgent; no more could be postponed.

We crossed a plain of murmuring dark earth, from the outpost at the foot of the mountain, to the fingering ridges that brought us to the sea. A marvel of a sea this was, to teach me the shape of my land…a spit between waters. We rode twenty-four days.

On an anxious one of camping, soldiers had been set filling skins at a grey river, thin flowing, clear as the sky. But from this grey no blue reflected. The soldiers chained themselves downslope, fast fallen silent through this hour spent, passing skins hand to hand. They pulled sleeves over fingers to keep the waters from encrystalizing…

With ice, I’d thought, urging them speed. It was not ice, it was not salt, it was some other clear and shining substance, fragile, becoming dust in the strong east winds. They kicked dust from their boots, as the lowest men came to the top, and it sparkled away under a dreary sun. Neither under sail, nor for our remaining time crossing this plain, would we come by water so easily.

The flavor of Lotoq’s wrath was sweet, somewhat iron.

Gazing where we’d come, I saw a plateau of black sand. Height and distance showed rectangles of roofs, sunken streets between. I had never wished to know it. I had never thought to see the legend of the buried city proved truth, in its pitiful humanness.

The people must sleep underground posed as death had found them.

But the city went unnamed as we passed, that city of Lom’s family, and so I cannot name it to you, today. I felt the wish of the dead to be named, to be risen from burial, given chance to appease the god—and the taste of them in their water I will not forget.

 

We reached a harbor town, called Sianka. The Siankans said nothing I, or the soldiers, could understand. Terse of speech regardless, they lived behind a wall. They had hammered a gangway, years of pounding rock on rock, making the natural cliff their protector. Tunnels they had hammered, too, chutes from wall to town. The town was only stone huts, thatched in dried seaweed.

The Siankans kept pigs. Horses were unknown to them. But the sea they knew.

Their leaders enriched themselves selling pot upon pot of dried fish, fermented broth of fish, an oil of fish that burned well in lamps and thickened in the cold air, making sails taut against the wind, ships faster.

The Prince sailed with his knights; he had his wife along, and her attendants—she, eager, I had been told, for battle. The royal craft was light, a single-masted ship to give its commander pains, in the wake of our larger vessels. The winds were turbulent on this sea the Siankans named the Zablenen, driving from the south, whirling from the north, ever weeping rain, and frigid.

Siankan priests for our leave-taking skinned two of our sheep, emptying them of brains (potted in wine for the Prince), as the Siankan rite did not forbid it. The sheep were thrown to the waves from a Siankan tower. As I played priest to the Prince’s army, this was my dignitary’s role, to watch. I shivered to see a monster of Zablenen come at the god’s bidding, white belly thrashing, maw thrusting…

But the creatures, the poor sheep, were dead.

 

 

 

57

 

 

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I could not swear this was true. I’d had nothing in my life to do with butchery, or with physic, and I wondered for the first time, what is that threshold? What proof life has flown?

In my own speech, then, but aloud for the benefit of my comrades, I begged Zablenen to forgive me. First, that I did not know his proper name, nor whether I erred in addressing him at all; again, that he forgive our mixed party of neighbors to his worshipers, our clumsiness in sacrifice, our ignorance of his will; at last, that he withhold not from us his mercy, in calming the waters of our crossing.

The waters showed no sign of calming. I was led to my ship.

I will tell you its construction. Two masts, the bow quite long and thin, upcurving to a carven shape like a snail’s shell. But meant for one I doubt, as men and beasts in pursuit of great enterprise decorated both sides, drowned at the waterline. The sleeping deck sat highest, tented by hides, closed by a few measures of planking. It was the place I must live for some weeks.

On the deck below were our many pots of provisions, their weight made perfect, no more on the left than on the right. Lowest, and always airing freely, for the center was laid across with the split trunks of great trees, was the horse deck. The sides of this were raised and floored for the rowers, and also cargo was distributed here, the heavy engines of war.

Asea, our berth sat a terrifying height above the oars, and the men accustomed to sailing engaged in acrobatics without a care, skipping from one side to the other.

For company I had Jute and Egdoah.

I worked daily on learning his language, while he learned mine. We took lessons as well in the lay of creation, together from a map. A map must be no marvel to my worldly readers, who have bent and plotted over scrolls of cloth, painted with shapes of nations and names of seas, islands known inhabited, others barren, where no fresh water may be had. And coves where ships may anchor safe, cities of trading peoples giving welcome…

But I had never used a map. I had seen shrines pointed in symbol on crossroad stones. And ways, by landmark; but here was math again, a small measure by grid or arc, by formula, that could grow to a god’s-eye view.

The sea beyond ken was not marked by lettering, but by signs like the symbols of my tiles. Egdoah shrugged, and said he did not read these runes. Princes and wise men used them, and could tell their meaning.

“But you, Jute?”

“No, why would they have taught me?”

I pressed this near-admission. “Our written signs are not thought too high for even a slave. You have been helping me set down Egdoah’s words.”

She muttered, and with my ear tuned to the northern speech, I felt she had called ours a pig’s tongue. Perhaps not. I turned to Egdoah, and said, “So?”

The syllable meant why. I traced a finger straight across the Zablenen, a long, narrow body of water between island-studded coasts. There were monsters, and in these depths they would reign. But Egdoah, understanding, said another thing.

“Pirates,” Jute told me.

 

 

 

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She peered for a glimpse of sun, and pointed. “There is a great city not on this map, an island of the south. Very near the shore, bridged by land when the tide is low. That realm is feared by everyone…their ships are fast, faster and far more seaworthy than this.”

I saw only the swell and rushing lacework of white foam. Sometimes, as the skins that sheltered me hung low, I failed to see, and got a slap of saltwater in my eyes. Also dizziness would upset my stomach, and only sinking back into my little darkness restored me. But I made it one of my tasks to stand and walk, to acclimate my feet.

The view opposite held interest.

Our way was not straight, but followed the coast, our fleet well out. For (as Egdoah had me to understand) currents made by sea-devils, whose kingdom was fathoms deep, had strength to draw even a large ship abeam, her rowers helpless to right her. The Prince’s legions returned to the port of Hezhnia, a city aligned with Monsecchers…if a cloud-road, as the gods use, could cross this sea.

They spoke another language, the Hezhnians. But spoke many languages, Egdoah said. They were conquered and gave tribute to the Emperor. Their harbor curved on the map like an implement our orchard-keepers use to snap twigs hung with fruit. My knowledge of things pictured it so, and I gave the name to Egdoah.

“Cimbel. There is a bird that lives only among the gods, above the great mountain Ami, who dwarfs his son Lotoq. But Ami is quiet and kind, as no human sets foot there. We have a story how this came to be.”

I spoke too much and too quickly, as I would. But these two sayings, there is a bird (my finger and thumb flapping to make one), and we have a story, were not difficult. The northerners’ word for bird was juta…and so it seemed to me I had got the meaning of my servant’s name. You will know this pleased her ill.

“And what do you say for moon, Egdoah?”

I drew a crescent in the air.

He bowed his head, and told me, Chos.

“Is Chos a powerful or a vengeful god?” I asked Jute.

“You will never make a journey in your life if Chos despises you.”

Make, at all, or succeed at…I could not pursue this. I had promised Egdoah a story.

“The moon, Egdoah, once always showed his face, as does the sun. In a green land, where night was nearly as day, lived a princess whose name was Escmar. Escmar had a gift from her grandmother…”

I gestured for Egdoah’s patience, that also of the young soldiers who waited to have their fortunes cast. I pulled an orb from my basket, and spun the milky stone, showing its blues and yellows.

 

 

 

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Happy-enough hours I had spent wading the ashy stream, searching for this soft, translucent stone. I was shown how to use a flint to etch spiral lines, deeper ones where I wanted my stone to break. Next I carved a bowl of pumice. My eye was good, and my totems, turned and turned, finished in sand, became round as the moon.

“A gift like this,” I told them. “But mine grants me only hints. The grandmother of Escmar was a Seeress of the ancients, and knew spells to say over hers. The girl was kept in the forest alone, but heedless of any hardship, for she need only wish on her totem any thing she wanted.”

Egdoah, the murmur of Jute’s voice following mine, sat absorbed. One of the soldiers met Egdoah’s eye…his face saying, yes, I know that.

Later, wait and see. Even Jute, her smile arch, allowed Escmar a generous suspension of scorn.

A prince, I told them, a Hezhnian it might have been, set off to hunt on the Island of Birds, but his ship was blown to Escmar’s. Her song drew him to her palace, and she was not afraid. How could she be? She had known only her grandmother, and to her eyes the stranger appeared as a forest creature. “But I did not wish for it,” she puzzled. “If I could understand this…this One’s talk.”

At once, she understood the prince’s speech and more, that he was a man, a being like and unlike herself; that marriages were, between lovers. “The wind was of the gods above,” the prince said. “For I sailed in search of glorious feathers, to weave into a bonnet for my bride to be, and here I have found my truer bride!”

Certainly a tale comes shorter with speeches, than with each passage picked out in narrative…

Jute, however, acted my lines in a way to make them silly.

Perhaps sillier. I sighed for my audience and drew smiles. Escmar, I said, grew angered at length. She had pledged herself, and for her prince’s admiration had wished a bounty of game teem her forest, and every day he hunted, and put the marriage off, and would not carry her home on his boat, to meet his father the King. She wished herself into a bird, feathered in surpassing glory. Then in the wanton manner of the ancients, she led her love a chase to a great waterfall—where leaping to net her, he plunged to his death.

She wished herself a woman again, and said over her totem, “Now restore him.”

“Ha,” said Jute. “And he lay dead.”

“Not,” Egdoah said, with a worried face.

I hoped I had not erred, trodden on a word forbidden. I recalled I had no reason to tell this story, only to explain why a moon-shaped implement was named for a bird. “No, friend, there is redemption.”

The soldier said, “The princess ran mad over all the world. She flew into the face of the sun, and the plumes of her tail caught fire. She was blinded by the smoke, and she crashed into the face of the moon.”

 

 

 

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This, while animated, was all too speedy for Egdoah’s grasp. Jute explained, in a slow, condescending way, that Escmar was ashamed to bear her own form, and made herself a bird once more, a plain grey kite. She took the name Cimbel, meaning, from an old verb: to cut, or in the vernacular, unadorned.

What my pride would have borne with a grudge, Egdoah seemed to take as rare honor. He thanked Jute with downcast eyes, calling her Princess. I believe so.

Now, Ami, father of gods, cast Escmar into the sea, and the waters doused her flames. The moon, so wounded, must die. They expected this, and it felt to the people of those times unendurable, their nights forever dark. A terrible age of cold and famine passed over the land, while the people threw their dead into the sea, and prayed the Father of Oceans surrender them Escmar.

Escmar met her grandmother. Alone among the dead, would the grandmother speak to the outcast. But, “Cimbel,” she said in greeting, and Escmar knew herself unforgiven.

“If it is the will of the people, send me to them! Why should I live? I do not wish it.”

These words Jute spoke as though they were her own.

 

Escmar and her love went severed still. Ships were cried by the lookouts, my audience sent dashing to their posts. We few passengers squinted at the setting sun and made out hulks, masts spiking black against the orange sky, sails reefed. Ous ships approached shore with the wind, but our escort dragged to the meeting place under oars. A great traffic passed my shelter, those of Monsecchers crouching to drop coins in the little shrine I’d made…

Which was to Aeixiea, goddess of crossroads and comeuppance. When passing a place of destiny, the wise will appease her. And what, among the Alëenon, was I to do with so many coins?

An open boat drew ahead, having six rowers and lamps in festival numbers. A tent was aboard, but officers in mail and robes, four, stood near the prow. Each helmet was capped with a beast’s swinging tail. Two in less regalia rose, unfurling flags—of the nation, the Alëenon, and the city of Hezhnia.

Our sailors bore their weight on the ropes, shortening the sails to slow our progress. The Emperor’s men discussed this, that the northerners would let their ships be boarded, piloted by foreigners to a strange harbor.

I said to Jute: “The Prince’s wife, who journeys too…”

She sat with an air, as though I offended or trespassed.

“I was told by others…”

“By Egdoah, admit it. You don’t know any others.”

“That if the Prince were killed, the army would take her for their general.”

“Because her father was Wolgan.”

 

 

 

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As always, if Jute were unforthcoming, I gave her naivety. “Wolgan… But you speak as though this were a quality, not a name. Or a clan? Do the Wolgan have godly powers? Are they descendants of some deity?”

“Yes.”

Obscure. But I knew something of the northerners’ legends…

They were not pretty, as my little fable of Escmar, and their gods did not forgive. Errant lovers were cast into cold prisons, to grope in blindness, to know themselves failed, however courageous, however children of misfortune. Our realm of the dead was only a shadowed land of mists, from which souls who pleased the dark god Tophe might win escape.

“Are you Wolgan?”

“No.”

A lie, I thought. She had been Wolgan, born Wolgan, but her slavery disgraced her. She counted herself banished.

Pride, pride, you are a foolish people, I wanted to say. Still it was of use to know family lines meant so much to them. They could deny themselves help and young men die for it…

It was not a woman leading them they feared; it was a vulgar one, low-born.

Night on the open sea was alight in strange ways. The stars gleamed, clustered thick as diamonds in a basilisk’s egg. I felt my eyes could drink this light and shine it before me…but magic cannot be performed by wish.

Other lights, green and dancing, played across the waves. Egdoah said, “Do not look. They will spirit you to the city below.”

I smiled. “Your sea devils.”

“I change my mind. You may look…it is for them to fear.”

His superstition allowed not much of banter. I saw him try to hide the sign by which the northerners warded demons, four fingers out and the thumb touching the palm.

I slept, as it seemed our rendezvous must take some hours.

And when the sky lightened, I woke from a dream of talking, talking all around me. I woke reminded I had never, after all, cast the Prince’s fortune. I had never tried again to learn my own. What was I, if I were born to the House of the Dead, but lived? A totem of protection to my charges, bearing the sum of the thousand thousand spirits Tophe could not examine one by one…to learn if they had died in innocence, or with great works undone?

Tophe alone speaks of himself, no other god, not they, will raise his name. I have heard it said always, that to turn a curse you must look into the reflection of a still pool—if you dare invoke him. I thought the god of the dead had spoken to me in this dream. The voices, though, were from an Alëenon ship.

When I stood and peered from under my roof of skins, I saw it had been lashed to ours, and the Prince had boarded.

 

 

 

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I saw him with no head covering, hair in the wind. He seemed to me freed and unburdened. He had come to us knowing our language, and knew our hosts’, too. His speech with their envoy was confiding, and they laughed at a joke half-sad. The captain glanced across. When he saw me, my plaits hooded in fleece, he invited the Prince to see. And when they had seen together, they agreed on some act, a thing to be done at once.

So with no breakfast, I was pulled from my shelter onto this vessel of the Alëenon. Jute at the Prince’s command passed across my basket and the little shrine filled with coins.

“Am I to follow?” she asked.

“No. I am going to make a gift of you to my kinswoman. She is the wife of Sente Vei.”

He spoke not for Jute, but that Sente’s friend, I, would know the marriage was complete, no more of Sente’s gold to be cached in the House of Treiva.

“Lord Prince,” I said, “are you making a gift of me, as well?”

“No. I have an office for you in mind…though the Alëenon will get the use of your performing it. You see that this is a mountainous land.”

Mountainous and cold. But in the time I might have turned and questioned, the Prince was called away. The smaller boat had been roped aboard, propped on a wedge of planking. Ropes circled the hull, and I thought the sailors must launch it thus, slowly to unwind and right itself.

After a spell of our slow approach, I shivered, and a sailor brought me a different sort of skin—thick, long fur of a lovely animal I would rather have met living.

I touched my heart and bowed my head.

He laughed. “Atu. Nur-naache.”

And I laughed, for understanding these words. Here were cousins, small dark-eyed people like ourselves, whose language was almost ours. He had said our word atu, which is to greet another with a blessing. Nur, a small thing. And naache, where for us a favor, a boon, would be nake.

“What office will they have me fill, can you tell?”

“I have more.” After leaping down a ladder, he returned with a jar of wine and a bowl of bread.

“My gratitude,” I said. “Atu. But, what office?”

“Please cease to interrogate our friends.”

The Prince shooed away my helper. In his hands were dishes of his own. He sat, arranged these, patted the place next to him. “As I am here to be asked, why not ask me?”

“You are sailing with the Alëenon. When,” (because I had pushed myself into this corner), “I’d thought we had left you behind. What office?”

His eyes lit for me, in a way of sharing my mischief. I felt almost in love. For that is power to the powerless, friends.

 

 

 

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The Prince raised me to my feet, while Jute made display of fretting.

“Deliver me,” she whispered.

These words among astonishing clucks, and apologies, no less, her hands straightening my clothes, patting at the wineskin, which by luck had not burst.

“May my servant, who you see is so attached to me, not keep her place? Is there no other gift for the Lady Darsale?”

“Erjuta ohn knows well there is no comparable gift.”

She spun, and would have leapt again. The waters of the harbor teemed with boats. All this while I had wanted only to look and take it in, the landing of the fleet… The city whose white buildings shone in the sun, rising on terraces of rock that marched from the mountains to the sea.

“Might the gift…”

I knew of nothing more I could do. They’d caught Jute, who would for this passion, whatever its cause, have destroyed herself. Would she yet, left unattended…was this northern affair so not to be yielded upon…?

“Might the gift be postponed, promised for another time?”

“Why do you suppose not? Let me see you exercise your own gift.”

“Darsale carries a kingdom with her to her marriage. Lord Sente wants no part of it…that is not divination, but a thing you have marked yourself, and will use to his regret one day. But the tide turns, does it not, my Lord Prince? The kingdom was Jute’s, she was taken by the Emperor’s mercenaries. How many years ago, I cannot guess. The Lady Darsale is her young sister. They will scarce have known each other…and, I think, had been reared in the houses of different mothers. This despair of Jute’s is humiliation. But among your people I see a satisfaction in such endings. You are too proud to bargain with Fate. You are pleased to see it fall harshly on one even of your own house. There, Lord Prince.”

“Ah. We are very sober now. Perhaps Darsale will be kind.”

“And Jute will despise kindness because she does not ask for it.”

I heard a sob. It had left my mind, in this exchange, that she heard me speak of her.

“Away with that one,” the Prince said.

Then himself he took off, striding for the prow.

Jute’s hands were bound, and the men who held her arms, moved her to the ladder. I sent my servant a steady look, not a smile. What I wished her eyes to see was, I will not forget. Comes a time when I can help in some way, I will call it my duty…trouble myself, even do I rise to any height in this world. This magic too, to deliver thoughts heart to heart, was only within the power of the gods.

Trust me, Jute, or not.

My attendant among the Alëenon returned. He bent for my basket.

 

 

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I waved a hand and pinched its edge, wanting not to be served any longer. Our tussle came to a standstill at once, for he was polite. But keeping hold, he explained a thing, made single-handed gestures…he and I, his hand and rapid words, a few that rang familiar, told…he and I, and others would sail yet, up the coast. Yes, to my bitter disappointment, I was not to set foot on land. I was to drop down a knotted rope to a rowing boat. This vessel bore a sort of housing at the front, a deck for the oars below and behind—and my pony, Cuerpha, forgotten by me this last day, I saw toss his head. None else of him could be seen. His shared stall was a crib at back of the cabin; two other ponies were there, pack animals of the general’s.

Our picking a way north through winds and currents and tiny outposts where stores were kept under care of lonely guardsmen, has no lesson in it, and I will not linger here. We rode, six of us, through twenty-one sunrises, an unslackening pace, and four of the riders were not Alëenon. They were traders, I thought myself to understand, of the race of the citadel. This by the word of Moth, my friend.

Moth had nothing much other to say to me. But he had said this:

“The tollhouse keeper is always alone.”

He tried as well to convey the fear of the place his people had, the unwelcome awe with which they prepared to regard me, for that I was sent to this task.

It is only the Prince who chooses me, not the gods, I’d said in return.

I was hurt, though my common sense warned—the Prince is not your ally. And if he should be…

Well, you have it from his own mouth. Never trust him. But cocooned from conversation, by urgency, ignorance, winter’s threat…I nursed pain. He ought to have bid me luck, finished the advice Jute had interrupted…said goodbye. As we climbed, snow began to blow in our eyes and blot the horizon, while the crushing peaks loomed dark grey. Certainly they were angry gods, worthy of each other, affronted at these specks mounting their flanks.

And then I was shown the house of logs and stone. And then my baggage was thrown on its floor—and wasting none of the day, my escort fled.

 

As no one came this way, I had time enough to be tutored, to learn a strange language…but records seemed not to be kept. I could, and of necessity, I did, draw near the fire, ladle water from the boiling pot, hold this steaming basin at my peril under the blanket, sitting very still. In that way I whiled my hours thinking, taking myself round the tollhouse grounds, listing for myself all I might do for my greater comfort.

At the spinning of wool I was no hand, had I known, even, how to fashion distaff or wheel. If traders crossed this pass, I would offer for their rugs, if rugs they carried—what…? I asked myself. What can I make or do of value? I can trap, and so perhaps have skins. And I had the stock of oddments the old keeper had left behind him.

 

 

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My sheep lived in cave-like diggings, in the outcrop of rock that sheltered the tollhouse. And yet they were tame, they expected me, came to me wanting the fodder I strewed for them. So far I had sufficient of this dried stuff, found in the stable that made a second room of the house.

I calculated that the earth here, in its arable season, must be meagre and gravel-sewn. But winter hardened or no, still one could chip at soil as at a stone wall. Each day to dig my trench another fingernail’s depth, until perhaps in a month, I would begin to lay there the fire’s ashes. Sift the pebbles, and salvage the dust. And in the spring, I might lay seed in the barest patch of fair humus. The roots would prime the ground for the next season.

Then, would I demand the toll; and then, would I tender it back for goods, which I had no right to do?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Chapter Six

Use for Use

 

 

The gods that ruled this country, and this strange prison of the tollhouse, said nothing to me. They sent snow, and I could hardly guess whether it were a gift of beauty, or a slow, suffocating torture. It was beauty to the eye and torture to the feet, at any rate. I had not been told their names, or in what way I might supplicate them.

The sheep, this breed, were very white of fleece, and soft. I had a plan to call the old keeper’s possessions mine, to take the meat and milk and wool…profit from it in a gentler season. But I entertained that I might do myself mortal injury if the animals were of rare type, sacred to the gods, kept here only for sacrifice.

“Is my language strange to you?” I spoke aloud, facing the peaks that pinched between them their storm clouds. “I am an obedient servant, and will do those tasks I am given to understand.”

Every morning, chores forced me to wrench free of skins and blankets, where I was content and could have lain all day. But I had basins to fill with snow, so as to have water. The people were rich in ores here, it seemed, those that color metals gold. What in my land would be shaped in clay, or hewn of wood, was here wrought, and with wonderful figuring, too. One of the legends I’d grown up with came to me, of the cat and the rooster, and the sons of fortune.

A prince’s ransom would Elberin call such gifts, if I returned to him bearing what in this new life were my daily vessels.

I dug out my doorstone, and even when I had all the water I and my pony could require, dug further. I felt warm from this exercise, which was something. And on clear days…I had discovered I must tie a scrap of my underlinen over my eyes, to see at all when the sun shone on the snowfields…I was able to note a valley. Or greater than that, a plain, as many leagues below as I and my escort had ridden from the mountain’s foot. Some pines of a crabbed shape overlooked the drop, which I thought must be perilous. But I would not go to the edge; I would keep myself back among the trees.

I carved out channels for an hour or two before I took a midday meal, and an hour or two afterwards. I spread fodder for the sheep. The stable opened into a yard, kept clearer of snow by a double line of pickets, one high, one low, pine branches laid on for a roof.

I noted the chore in this…but I would repair the gaps in time.

Also, the wind swept over some barrier, a hump of rock, and the snow gathered beyond. The house was sited to all the advantage this evil place afforded, so that for sunny days, a thin trail of bare grass showed, a path the sheep followed coming into the yard.

Of days, I had counted seventeen since my abandonment here. (You see that I was a conscientious user, in this way, of words to fuel my grievance.) The corner of my house held three great urns. The traders had carried these in sacks of straw, slung over the flanks of their own sort of horse, a beast great-footed and longhaired. The urns were filled with seeds and nuts. I had honey as well, though less of it.

 

 

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 I did this: mixed a handful from the urns with two fingertips of honey, then cleaned my hands in a bowl of water and drank it.

And by this time, already I thought desperately of meat and bread, of green leaves to chew.

I woke on the eighteenth day, having contemplated in a doze of how I worked ceaselessly, without method. I turned my pony into the yard for his short circling walks, and brought him indoors to his stall and fodder. I tended his coat and hooves. I fed the sheep. I built my fires and heated my pots of water. I wrapped my feet and went outdoors to dig. I forced hunger, the more easily to endure but one food at every meal. I might need to wash myself one day, or my clothing, yet in this cold I felt at peace with it all.

But how wonderful to have had a helper! How wonderful to have had a friend or servant, only to hear me speak. This was my morning revelation, Reader, that if I did not gather firewood soon…

I had probably wasted more of my supply than was wise. I knew, even I, that sticks want seasoning—and how to dry them unless I had built a fire?

And if one matter is most urgent, others must be less so. Yes, I was frustrated.

I saw there was a job, a higher task of ordering and arbitrating. I must play Elberin to myself. Besides this, were all my labors…and so I must play Jute. Then, as to me, the one meant to master some art, or overmaster some malevolent place-spirit; to make myself the key, or prove at last that the tollhouse held none for the Prince’s campaign against the citadel…

I would not solve the puzzle. I feared it. I saw in this equation of chores and time, defeat, demanding some magic or miracle to slot each piece into its proper place. And I would not live unless I solved the puzzle.

But the old woman had taught me also, when mastery of the smallest art was an hours’ long labor: “Do what you can. For now, child, do what you can.”

The gods seemed set to storm again, conjuring clouds, and the low sun himself was cowed, shining pale in colors not his own. First to the yard, to collect all that might be burned.

And out I burst, eager.

I had startled something. Its wings flapped against my face, and I shrank, covering my eyes. All that in an instant, so that when I looked again, the yard was empty of hawk or eagle. I heard its cry, from a place far among the cliffs. The hunter watched my own predation, or among the minor deities of nature, my fair claim of victory…did the rules work so.

The poor prey was like a rabbit, only short-eared, the fur white, the body warm.

Warm, and I dreaded much that it was not dead…again, I doubted I knew these matters well. And that my knife, skinning it, would do cruel harm.

 

 

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If in conscience one can think of harm, already the choice is made. There are few harms we do in innocence. But I tried the blade, the tip of it along the belly, the creature seeping blood and cooling all the while. I took it in my hands and left by the front way.

Snow was falling.

I held the dead thing high in the sight of the gods, and said, Mighty Ones, Great is your Blessing, humble my gratitude, and boundless. Forgive me that I am ignorant. Show me, if I err, what is your will.

I felt better then, and finished my work, tamping down pity.

Thus I had meat for a meal, and was able to stretch a lovely, small pelt…to save, as I had no use for it. And by now the storm was on me, my plan to gather firewood, the firewood itself, traded for this other boon.

I bedded down, a maelstrom howling round my house, and framed the problem. Here was a day on which I’d had a chance. Chance, not I, had won. Tomorrow I would pay attention, make no choice at all until I’d asked myself: By sunset, where will I be, if I do this thing?

Came then four days of boredom. I brought Cuerpha inside altogether, letting him make manure in his stable. I was not lucky with my fires, my hands too stiff, the winds down the chimney snatching away the flint’s spark, my coals gone dead. I found the snows, piled over the very roof, kept the wind off at last…without it, my blanketed cave was tolerably warm. And bedding under every cover I possessed, against my pony’s belly, I did not suffer.

Only for knowing Chance had won four tosses against me since I’d lost the last. Strictly, though, I’d won back some of my store of firewood, for being not able to use it. I had won back some of my fodder, as the sheep were gone sheltering to their hiding places in the cliffs. I arrived, by this path, to thoughts of the War-Maker’s game. The champions played in their heads, moving pieces in every idle moment, as Stol had told me. My troubles became as such pieces arrayed on a board…

There were many ways to advance them to my ultimate disadvantage. I talked these stratagems out, Cuerpha pleased to hear my voice.

On the fifth day, sun again.

By now I had come to accept my early turns amateur. I wasted nothing in self-blame for what I could not have known—but to be coldly impartial, I had played wretchedly. I opened the door to the yard and surprise, at breathing a gentle air of spring. Terrific icicles columned the side of my house from roof to foundation. The patch that had been clear showed signs of clearing again.

 

 

82

 

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Of course I had a sense of the seasons. This was weather, not the passing of winter. In my first days here, I might have wandered in such balm, bending to study curious plants, collect pretty stones. Today, I asked my question. Where by sunset? With my basins filled, my fire kindled, and bundles of sticks laid out to dry. Today, I took proper advice of myself: Finish these tasks. Do more if you can.

I decided also, being in a speaking mood, to address the gods…to address them as friends, to call this melting weather another of their kind blessings.

“The Prince—that man, I say, who holds such title in my land, Salo-Harpthok, though to you no doubt he is nothing…to me a vexation…”

As was well, I thought better here of complaining to deities, and warned myself to do no more of it. “Salo-Harpthok, he has gathered legends of the Alëenon people, but the time to share them with me he did not allow himself…”

I drew breath.

“I name you this thing in my own language, my dears, by which I mean high-born, to be revered. These are not insults, but yet if you have some name only for me to call you, my ears are open…”

I spoke, and I bundled sticks under one arm. I spread snow, heavy wet stuff, with a hearth-broom of split twigs. I found tangled in the grasses a waxy-leaved vine, dotted with red berries. I wanted to eat them. They looked capable of poisoning me.

I knelt, took up a stone, and crushed one berry against it. I put my finger to my tongue. The flavor was waxy itself, not sweet. Not bitter. I saw that the earth was of a yellow hue, mixed with flakes of grey rock.

The roots of the meadow grasses ran shallow, but were like the old salt-cured ropes of sailing vessels, my thoughts of steeping them coming to this end: a handful of twisted straw, utterly dry.

You are dawdling.

The voice…I hadn’t said it to myself, was of one interested…

For not having truly heard the words, I felt this. One curious of what I did, not kindly disposed towards me. I stood, took up the four corners of the skin my bundles waited on, carried them indoors, strewed them far from the fire, not to catch a spark.

I ate my disappointing seeds and honey. I had daylight left…what more?

I would take the hot ashes from below the grate, out to my garden spot. That would be to care for food (at least, in good time); I had cared already for warmth. Water gave me no troubles. Second to these foremost, should be my education. I chose this, though the move was of the speculative kind. Any implement I might craft, or means of shortening my tasks, producing more of what I needed more of, with less time spent in labor, must bear to the good of my three imperatives.

All I could learn about the lay of the land, then…the wild things that lived here, the people I would one day collect my news from, trade with, ask of for the tolls, would teach me what of my time was waste, what was not.

 

 

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I weighed Lotoq’s inscrutable will, the caprice or ruthless purpose of my new gods. I wondered if I ought to pursue a different trade. I wondered if I were not free to go as I liked. Perhaps the caravans of the citadel, when met, would carry me off beyond the mountains. In a language I had yet to be taught, I would carve above my lintel: “I am Nur-elom, seller of…”

Fortunes.

My little shrine filled with Aeixiea’s coins began to rattle, making a musical noise, until the clay hut itself rocked, and the jangling became a tocking. Afraid of insulting her, to sit and stare while a dedicated object’s sanctity was breached, I caught it up. The fire, stirred by this shaking, shot brown puffs of smoke, my precious wood burning over-quick…smoke the vents of the chimneypiece’s curious construction could not altogether dispel.

Some tool stored in the stable clattered down.

Another.

I coughed, and fanned, held the offering box steady on my lap, looked wildly here and there, had a moment’s time to worry the roof might crash upon me and leave me…

Shelterless…

Then, calm.

And my pony stood at peace in his stall, for Lotoq had expressed himself thus, often in our old home. Fear and despair came to me. How had I offended? With so much I could not do, what thing could I have failed to do? Would the gods not bear with me until spring came, and I had learned?

I went back to the yard in a wandering way, thinking to look at their shrouded faces and discover a sign. The red of the berries caught my eye. My gaze shied willingly enough from the angry mountain to the earth, where the ashes just strewn sat black and grey, softening the yellow soil. But this place I’d meant for my garden was fissured, split down the middle.

I saw some shining thing…and on my knees, peering, three or four others.

Now a wind came, gusting strong. Prudence warned me to go inside and see to the fire…

I held myself to this purpose, stayed picking up this and that. A fear the objects would vanish seized my imagination. If they were not living, it was impossible they should. And yet I felt so tested, that it seemed every choice would prove the misstep which would doom me.

 

 

84

 

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The fire was fine. I had therefore been wrong to worry. I began to see my watcher, my god, as Game Master.

 

The warm winds blew through the night. In the morning the road from below could be seen streaking the meadow, ramping beyond to the mountain pass.

And travelers…

I thought they were leagues distant yet. I made out the red in their clothing and blankets over the haunches of their plodding horses. I felt braced with an unpleasant tension, awaiting duty…not knowing if all traders were courteous and spare of speech, as those I’d briefly met.

Or of the same nation, however they resembled one another. Part of my mind peddled to me the fear of being robbed, taken again in slavery. Part said in return: Be of faith.

First of my duties was the gate…it needed swinging closed. Once I’d barred them the road, the law of the tollhouse obtained in symbol.

They could of course, armed and strong, pass as they liked.

They could pay as they liked. But only either, for having chosen.

Tugging and shoving, I found my little strength insufficient. I was embarrassed under scrutiny, my struggles well in view. I heard no laughter in the lulls of the wind, only conversation.

I would have to mount Cuerpha, find a rope, fasten it…

Loop it round the top log. I could visualize this, but saw myself also gripping the two ends, trying to ride without reins, with knees, as the soldiers had been able. I saw my performance clownish; I was certain I would fall…that my mind’s engineering of this scheme was faulty.

I did mount Cuerpha, whose hooves were in a state to need this exercise. I rode him to the road, ahead towards the pass a short distance. The travelers hailed me and I heard them call a repeated phrase.

I waved, but called nothing. Of protocols, I knew none. Greetings I might shout would be meaningless to them. And I feared the sound of my voice, that it would ring young and small. I spurred Cuerpha into a tight turn and cantered him past my house. This was not wise…in more promising soil, the thaw would have made a mud-trap. Clown again, I would beg the travelers’ help freeing my pony. Instead, he sprayed a bath of clay over my garb and face, exuberant, almost disobedient to me.

My garb, I will tell you here, was a sight strange enough, no doubt, as all I’d brought was of thin cloth, and all of it I wore at once, with two skins draped over my shoulders and belted at the waist to make an ill-fitting coat. My feet were wrapped in wool that I’d contrived to pin, and that readily worked itself loose.

 

 

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They were laughing, as they reached the open gate, and I reined my skittish mount, dancing my way to them. Two leapt to the ground…the traders did not saddle their horses. Their clothing was red wool, stitched everywhere in vines, rosettes, patterns like flakes of snow or stars. They wore leather helmets with plates of metal; over their wool, an apron-like covering fashioned the same.

Their weapons were hatchets, spears, bows and quivers of arrows. Their teams drew six wagons, two cabined, curved-roofed, painted in the designs of their clothing, showing a fondness in pigments as in dyes, for that rich, brownish red.

They spoke; they pointed…their fingers played the air with a trotting motion, so nothing but that I amused them could I conclude—a frantic, mudstained ragamuffin. And, I knew this of all peoples I’d met, it would be impolitic not to alight myself, to meet them with my face at their level…

I scrambled from Cuerpha’s back. The dismounted ones seized the gate, worked it to and fro. Whatever rust had frozen the hinges impeded no more, but the logs top and bottom swung at odds, threatening to torque apart.

Another thing to find time for, to figure the means of fixing.

There were women, too…one opened a shutter and put her head out, shouting. Her hand came next, bunching a circle of red stuff. A trader went to her, they bantered and scolded…he approached to stand toe to toe with me, bearing this he’d taken from her. Rough and good-humored, he caught my bare head in it.

I suppose I amused further, struggling free, pushing my gift hat from my eyes. But behind the laughing tail of the caravan, as the traders passed down the road, was dropped a sack. The sack had coins; it had also an earthen jug.

What was it meant for? Did I drink it?

 

I had not made up my mind the next morning. This fine weather meant my work table might be put to use…and were I to create a useful thing, I must think of what. By the rules, I had firewood yet to gather. I’d pulled from the earth two of the shapes…they were of a size to fit in the palm of my hand…my fist, I mean to say, might close on one comfortably, as on a clay flute. They were smooth to the touch, rumpled in contour. Their color was purple, they shined like burnished metal, the two ends were formed as seeds—here I mean the top carried a buff circular mark, and the bottom a nub, a filament, as though it would root.

I’d left the others part-buried, thinking they would sprout into some marvelous thing in the spring…but the leaving them left me uneasy. In some way these seeds made me uneasy altogether, and the thought growing in my mind, that as I had four, I could split one and discover what was inside, made me feel ill-counselled, as though the seed itself dared me, knowing better than I what malignity I might unleash.

I brought my orb from my basket and set it between the two.

 

 

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Nothing moved or glimmered until I turned my back. Then I heard something…a knife blade pulled from a sheath. Not, I tell you quickly, a noise, much less any part of my real surroundings, only the sense of such a noise. I’d turned, deciding I would taste whatever was in the traders’ jug. I would at home have made a tea, the steam of which the orb was passed through. When this cleared in retreating patterns, a seer truly ordained, as Escmar’s grandmother, might read her answers there.

The heat perhaps awakened godly powers within the orb.

I did not attempt a tea from the berries. I did, with great caution, sip from the jug. And laughed a bit…the liquor was flavored entirely of honey.

Bhe! Bhe, I said, addressing any or all of them, seeds and orb. To speak the word against evil comforted me. It had always comforted the old woman, and even Elberin, who scoffed at my frequent terrors, who used his stick on snake and dog alike, saying to me, “I am old, and I will die when the gods run out of uses for me…”

Even he, at times, made the warding sign and spoke the dispelling word.

Bhe, I said, and went to my garden. I lay on my stomach and reached deep. The seeds had a certain tug to them, as with pulling-stones, those found on hillsides where sand has been rendered glass by lightning. I worried out the third, but lost the fourth, fingers slipping, the seed rolling deeper into its crevice.

And that, I told myself, is fair answer. Three will come out and one will not.

The orb was off the table.

I’d felt nothing, no tremor lying in closest contact with earth. The table had nothing in appearance out of level.

“Here,” I said to the seeds, “is your companion.”

No noise at this reunion, or movement.

“Bhekale, I am going to cut one of you open.”

I turned my back to enter the stable, listening with ears most sharply pricked. I heard the scree of the hawk somewhere above my house. I heard wind, and felt it billow through the shutters, fresh, heartening, fearful…

The weather would turn, of course. With my hand-axe, I came back to the table. I took the baking stone from the hearth. (A bitter thought at this, as so many good dishes might be made, had I only the makings of them.)

I placed a seed. I brought the axe down with all the strength my labors had built in me. My wrist jarred, pain shot through my arm and the blade flew from the shaft. But I drew myself up, did not flinch for the ache, decided neither would I stoop to search the floor. I touched the seed, I picked it up, I carried it to the window’s light, and turned it every which way. Not the least mark was on it.

 

 

87

 

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I slept a first night with them in my house…slept to excess, the honey drink to blame. Sorry for my hurting arm, and for myself altogether, I’d swallowed two or three strong draughts. That day I woke not having dreamed it or thought it, but with certainty a crafted thing of my own must be puny in magic to the bhekale, its company an insult. I put the orb away.

Bhekale, I said to them, yet naming them evil, I need my axe, which one of you has broken. I went astray yesterday, and gave to him my attention, and never brought in the firewood, a thing I also need.

The air was cold, and only Cuerpha, restless for a jaunt along the road, stirred. The birds seemed silent. Yes, I know the signs, I told them. A storm is coming, and I am very hungry. For I might eat this mouse-fare day long and still feel a lack. My wrist is weak, and that will make a hardship…

Just here, midst this grumble, I saw myself in a play performed before my mind’s eye, toting a sledge, I the beast of burden, the sledge laden with sticks and logs. Yes, that was the answer, the one I’d failed to conceive…for having eight days now posed the question. A sledge there was, in the stable, fastened already with a rope; stacked, though, with sundry baskets and cloths…

And not needing these, I’d let the sledge become disguised to me. The Evil One seemed to answer me this, too.

I let denial float in my head unspoken.

I don’t need you. I am not here to serve you.

I went from my breakfast feeling taunted, to saddle Cuerpha. Then, after all, I turned him into the yard. Firewood above all. The Iron Seed was right…I chose this for a new name, telling myself also, to concede a wrong is reason. What the Prince would have me learn will not make me of use to him, if I am another Mumas, proud and stubborn.

My young pony had never been hitched to a vehicle, and the way to the pines looked to my eye pitched and rocky. I would tie the rope round my waist…my arm less trouble then. I remembered now that needles could be steeped, that the old woman had known of this as a medicine. At Lotoq’s foot no pines were seen, nor no patient wanting potions to ease the pain of childbirth. I had never tasted the brew (all her simples she had taught me the measure of by taste)…but any medicine might feel healing when one’s diet had been so dull for so many days.

Under the pines was snow, the surface ice formed into slickened gouges and jagged teeth. My foot broke crust; from pooling mud my wool wrappings soaked water. I discovered this crystalline stuff shrank both top and bottom, that small green flora sprouted sheltered—the winter world far from dormant. I had been stupid, I supposed, and might have found forage, if I’d known the mountaintop country…

If, my complaining heart said, I had been instructed at all…

 

 

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I crouched and picked promising leaflets to chew, daring this without much fear. I cut needled branches and tossed them onto my sledge. I made my way closer to the overhang, drawn by the plain I could see so far below, by what at the very edge of distance might be the sea.

I had not gone within what looked twice my height, well back on the modest slope that fell to the precipice, thicker snow here blanketing…earth. Safe ground. My mind had no other thought as I worked round a trunk and spidering roots towards a better view.

The bird of prey’s shriek turned my head over my shoulder, angled my eyes to the sky. Uphill I saw a white hare start from where it sat camouflaged.

Under my feet the ground gave way.

All of it, everything. Only the tree stood anchored. All my salvation was in hearing the cry and spinning to follow the hare’s dash. My legs plunged, but my arms flung forward, my hands seized roots.

If I had not faced the path to my house, for turning, I’d have pitched flying over the cliff, with nothing to catch at. I used my hips to hunch inelegantly ahead, and ahead. My feet were weights; flailing them after footholds, I sensed…I knew, with no words or calculations framed as such…would harm the terrible precariousness of my balance. I wormed my way onto what felt solidity. I hooked toes then, and walked myself on my belly, further. I dug with freezing fingers into the mud and found other roots.

By now I could think a bit. But only when I came to where I’d left the sledge, did I push onto hands and knees.

Then I lay on my back and stared at the sky.

My heart was calm. I watched the clouds mass, and told myself, it doesn’t signify. You have work to do, get to it. You will bear the lesson in mind…you will not die the death of Mumas. Twice today I’d invoked his name. And so I stood.

But when I came to my door, I saw a horse was tethered outside. Another of the traders. I put my head in, and he sat there on my rug, busy at a practical task. Knitting…I knew of this art, but had never tried it. He had brought a dog into my house, that for wanting to growl me from my own threshold, quietened when the man clucked. My guest beckoned me in.

On such occasions, I’d chosen to speak, presuming all that accompanies words: expressions and gestures, friendly cadences, communicates to better advantage than silence.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t here to take the toll. I was loading my sledge with firewood. I see you have started a fire.”

I bent to the hearth in exaggeration.

I patted the dog’s head.

 

 

89

 

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My patron, not in the least unforthcoming, sat giving me nods, smiles, speaking syllables of agreement. I excused myself to the yard to fetch my pony, finding the trader’s arrows had landed him two hares. They hung by the feet in my stable.

I scurried, at a thought, indoors again.

The thought was unworthy of my new friend’s kindliness. And my purpose I had not concealed from him, rushing up short before the table. The Trio shone in their places; the trader’s eye, holding mine a moment, twinkled.  The tone of his words was just as I’d have used, if I chided: “Don’t you worry.”

I apologized, and murmured, bowing out again for Cuerpha: “They are dangerous. They put ideas in one’s head.”

He came leading his horse through the damp little passage between rock face and stable wall, the rock curved like the half of a tunnel. Snow that fell blew clear of this gusty place or never entered. He pegged up tackle, laid aside bundles and bags slung across the horse’s flanks. And ahead of the tollhouse keeper, who stood staring, he went inside, with one particular bundle on his shoulder.

My pony stalled and blanketed, I joined him on a burst of wind, strong enough to slam the door at my heels. I made show of haste, hugging arms to my chest, darting a smile. I was chuckled at. Sunlight through the shutters streaked on and off…light of lead-gold hue, dying fingers of it piercing a blue bank of cloud.

His remark I read again by tone. “We’re for it.”

I hadn’t thought of this; this shy-making conundrum of days, perhaps, spent with a lodger. I unhooked the skin rolled above the shutter to cover the rear window, and my guest, learning his task at once, unhooked that at front.

After the chores of the fire, we spitted meat, dividing one hare. I offered him those foodstuffs that I possessed. I heated water and steeped the needles I’d collected. The result was not wholly excellent, but a brew much improved by the trader’s salt-stone. Such I hadn’t seen, this he unwrapped… And the unwrapping itself gave me study. His gear was in a woolen cloth, four triangles folded to make a smaller square, and four again. Inside the folds were a number of things, garments as I supposed, rolled to protect others. Soon he had created a bed for himself, having pulled out pans and utensils, small leather purses, filled each with necessities. One held his seasonings…and with a knife he shaved bits from what looked a frosted pink gem, into the pot. I tasted and understood.

Salt, got from the sea when I’d lived in the House of Decima. Salt for the meat, salt to make a soup of pine-flavored water, a handful of seeds thrown in to fatten…

I blessed the salt.

Now it seemed time to sleep, the room growing cold, the winds relentless. But my friend dusted ashes from the hearthstone. Over a space of the floor, he smoothed them with his palm. I guessed at first he was himself a fortuneteller, ash the medium of his people. But instead, he made a picture. He drew a wall and a road. The road arced downwards from a fortressed place, passed through mountains to what soon became a house. My house…he pointed to it in such a way. He palmed the dust again, and drew his road onward.

 

 

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He drew a city, Balbaec…I could not know that it was. I pronounced the name, and he shrugged. Yet I guessed his story told of his living, the path he followed, the places he visited. I sketched an arrow back from the city, back, as the narrative had it, though erased, up the mountain highway to the tollhouse. I gave him questioning hands and eyebrows, and his head bobbed yes.

He lifted a finger, found coins in one of his purses, dropped these from left hand to right. He palmed the dust and drew the house again, laid a coin at its doorstone. But inviting me with a gesture that seemed to say, take it, he shook his head, snatched the coin, his smile…

Playful, perhaps. He rooted among his gear, bringing out a pair of short boots. I thought them another of his own: they were identical. But a moment more, and using the coin, the house, the boots, he’d wakened sense in my mind. Rather than accept his money, I would accept warm feet, a thing I needed. Very badly did I need these boots, but I did not feel the tolls to be a payment I earned. Aeixiea’s coins were not mine. The tolls were not mine.

But the trader placed the salt beside the boots. He unrolled another cloth and here were balls of yarn, such as he’d used knitting when I’d met him. He conveyed he would teach me this art, and I would buy the implements and materials. Again, so precisely what I sought…that practical task, the chore worth the time spent. The means of filling my free hours that would help me steal a march on my others—and give me more free hours to make more useful things.

 

When the warm winds returned, I knew them better, for my new friend’s instruction. I had confessed to him, as clearly as our created language allowed, how I’d fallen and might have died. He found this comic, and I will never know if I’d made it so by the telling. His willingness to laugh at me was lack of fear (a thing I expected to inspire in no one), and his disregard for an officer holding a post of import…if I were that officer. But he’d explained, if I had not well learned it, that these winter thaws and freezes made the clifftops treacherous.

And my earthquake had not been after all. The trader gave me news of a mighty rock fall, drawing for me the face of a broken mountain, gouged like a hunk of bread torn with fingers.

At the end of his stay I’d bought more of him, I don’t know how.

Or rather, not what any of it might reasonably have cost, and the trader seemed indifferent. Sewing kit, yarn, knitting needles, salt and some few of his herbs. Boots and the raw fleece to stuff inside until they fit. A bow and some arrows.

I tried to offer him one of the Seeds, wanting rid of it. My thought was that a pretty thing…

They were pretty. They might not, to wiser eyes, feel sinister…

Would go for a price, to a merchant in Balbaec.

The trader made a sign. Not ours, but easy to read. I realized then he’d kept well away from them.

 

 

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Chapter Seven

The Recalcitrant One

 

Twice more before the spring, the winds came and thawed my garden. They had a name, these amiable winds, but my guest had not made me know it. As Balbaec to him, the sound of the word conjured nothing memorable in my own tongue, and I hadn’t yet hit on what I prided myself was a clever device.

I’d searched by now all corners of the small house, crawled the loft, wherein like the stable sat basins, bowls, and baskets, empty. As though some harvest, aided by servants—some to carry from the field, some to wash, some to pit or peel—had been the old keeper’s business. I puzzled on it, but this was not my object. Any sign he tallied his coins, I searched for, any formula he’d used to portion his share from that owed the collectors…

And this was to assume a share.

Perhaps my duty was to make my own living. I found it unfair; however, the Prince was not just in his dealings. He had favorites…I had hoped to be one of them.

But, as I’ve confessed to you, Reader, I was stealing his money. I called this a temporary state; I meant to replace what sums I must divine I had spent. I had not even the cost of things at home to compare, in Cime’s care having bought nothing for myself. Almost, I thought, I would need to make use of money to learn its value, and I came near deciding to steal openly on such a day I could afford a journey to the city below, to buy a few things with the coins I acquired more and more of—that, to my bemusement, no one would take from me.

But, cleverness. Noting how the knit stitches made wedge-shapes, like characters of writing, I tried the experiment of knitting figures in rows, to serve me for record-keeping. I hadn’t risked marking on my tablets, having so few. I’d tested a slurry of mud on the stable wall, but dampness dwelt in its blocks of stone; I feared my reminders in a months’ time would vanish. Evenings now I made my squares, forming a sort of cloak or blanket, each square a diary of my day.

When for twenty in a row (and I could say this with certainty, having memorialized it) the air was warm, and it had not rained, a large caravan passed the tollhouse. Now there were flowers, white spilling the meadow’s edges like seafoam, islands of orange and eddies of blue. I hoped this spell was of the goddess’s will, that the dry was not drought.

And, as for Her, she was of my imagination. Where I’d lived she was Trifesse, born of morning mist, under whose light tread the fields bloomed. These contemplations recalled to me a question I’d half-entertained on my travels.

Can there be but one grandsire, Ami; one mighty father-son, Lotoq; one great goddess, the wife who lives far, far, in a frozen land on the sea, its snows flat as desert, blackened by the ashes of her red fire? We call the mother of our race Aza. But legend has our faithless ancestors driven by the wrath of Aza on a long, terrible wandering. We had come, shrunken in numbers, from the east, to the gentler western lands of Ami.

 

 

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Always, I’d taken these stories for truth. We were not like the northern people. Through all memory told in their songs, they had lived in their one place. They found us unbeautiful, or colored in ways that marked us for subservience. We were, of course, greater in wisdom, greater in our music and our arts. So great as to have crafted what they of the north could not, our stone sentinels, towering with the flame behind their eyes, guiding ships to the walls of our port cities, walls that defied the sea and made safe harbor where nature made none. Our skill with the flow of water, our fountains and pools, ours alone.

All this forged a pride I’d shared. I from an unknown parentage, not honored with a name. I had been feared at times, been sold, freed, raised to a height… If I counted this office a rise in status.

But I’d believed in the mightiness of our gods. I had not seen the boundaries of a god fade, a new god rise, one almost my equal, Salo-Ami, Aeantahah, spare me vanity. A border-god, who guards a patch of earth. To give way, a hundred miles hence, to some other.

And a lesser god ought be appeased with lesser sacrifice. The gods of these mountains had favored me greatly in sparing my life, sending the hare and the hawk. In Balbaec, though, could one defy them altogether? I calculated the rock could not crush and bury such a plain. It would roll so far and cease, and that place it ceased was the limit to which below the anger of these gods mattered. My cautious piety…I wondered. Could I take more on myself, choose more boldly?

Now, my friends, at odd moments, passing in from the yard, I had been trying rocks on the Iron Seeds. If I struck them as they lay on the table, not a thing altered. If I placed one on the floor, stood on the table myself and dropped the rock, it was this split or crumbled. (My guest the trader had repaired my axe…but never again did I think of using it on a Seed.)

Bold as I’d resolved to be, I had put one in the fire. Its purple deepened. I held it with tongs, turned it in the light. A rainbow danced. I put its fellows in the fire and left them baking in hot embers overnight. These too grew beautiful, even more so.

 

The caravan showed me evidences of a society among the trading families. I saw yellow wagons and green precede the red. I saw a roof of copper, windows framed into squares of thin horn. And this tallish house had an attic porch…up among pillows, a woman lay at her ease. Under her perch were openwork panels, every flowered join of them painted white, red-centered, the wood waxed to a gloss, exotic birds caged behind. Feathered in armor of shining green metal, so they looked to me, working peevish bills at their confinement, shrieking now and then like demons…

 

 

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I wanted one. For no reason but that the thought of a tame, fabulous monster in my possession pleased…I began to see myself in a light, become famous for this or that particularity. Ways and wonders about this tollhouse keeper, tales traveling where I could not, inspiring awe…

I was not pleased.

It discontented me much, to feel rivaled by a legendary Other, adventuring forth while its poor shadow lay tethered. I reminded myself of my small list. Fresh-killed game, if they had it. Yarn. More arrows for my bow. (Attempting the use of it, I’d learned arrows were easily lost. As well, they did not go where you’d aimed them, unless the distance were short indeed.)

Elberin…I found I longed to tell the story…to have one of these visitors for a companion, just for hours enough to share something of my life, things I could share with no one…  Elberin had taught me to set snares. I found the business heartless. Too often broken creatures lay in them not dead…

“Totem-Maker!”

I collected my thoughts, spurred to the gate on Cuerpha, my custom…and for the usual reason of ceremony. The traders knew all states and manners in which tollhouse keepers past had greeted them. I hadn’t the language to ask that they teach me. I’d achieved nothing towards dignifying my role.

But this address, while meaningless, was in the tongue of my first country.

“Who speaks?”

Said (by me) with the very least authority.

His hair was the hue of those orange meadow flowers…he was a northerner. But not a Prince’s man; one permitted the pass of the Citadel.

“Can you translate for me, then?” I asked. I had more to say…can you ask them if they’ll spare time to stay the night, now the weather seems gentler. Can they tell me their stories, can you, of sights along the roads and lands beyond the mountains?

I wore my knitted wrap—as by its present size, it served me. He jumped from a wagon. I dismounted. He sauntered close and looked this garment up and down, my question ignored.

How I found myself disliking him!

“Curious patterns. What do you make them for?”

“Because, stranger, I don’t know any better. Call me, if you like, Nur-elom. Why,” I added, “should you call me Totem-Maker?”

“Oh, I expect you’ll make your totems in time. You’ve unearthed the seeds. That’s a rare start.”

He waved the others onwards, half-turned, the gesture lazy. The lead rider whistled. Not to the fellow, unbudging where he stood. My wish granted, praise the gods; my asked-for companion…this arrogant stranger. Aza, can it be you paying me thus? Does your potency journey west with the easterners? Have I blasphemed, am I so rebellious and covetous?

 

 

94

 

---

 

The bag was tossed, and the stranger at his indolent pace stooped for it.

“But,” I said, feinting to left and right. He seemed to shift onto whatever foot put him squarely in my path. “I have purchases!”

“I can’t promise my wagon holds everything. But it holds most things.”

He was taller and making distractions with his hands; I (it was a lesson; in time, I absorbed it) angry with him, my mind rehearsing hard feelings…

I had not observed them leave a wagon off their train, and a beast—not a horse, but a frightening thing with horns—yoked to it.

“It’s springtime, Keeper. The people of Balbaec will be making their way up.”

“But the others, going down, and ahead…”

“Yes, the goods of Taqtan are one sort of thing. Mine are another. Now show me in. I want to see with my own eyes.”

I could hardly play at something devil-may-care, as though I had toured all the world, and chose living here, on a mountain road so lonely the law I enforced had weight only with the honest. I might have looked, to the stranger’s eyes, sadly wasted at the end of this hungry winter. I fumbled with the latch in nerves and eagerness, and promised him with too much chatter I did have a bit of jewelry, one or two stones of value, even if he had brought in his wagon only those plaits of dried, spiced meat the traders chewed.

He followed, to glance at the seeds I’d been working over as I have described, by a variety of tortures. “Now those…they are taking on the proper colors. One or two look nearly done.”

Well. I had no use for it, allowing myself to understand what I was not to be told. “You would like to buy them, all three?”

“No. Have they their faces?”

We looked at each other. I said, “You are my guest? Or do you live in your wagon?”

Why, or how, should they have faces! I hissed this through my teeth, but inaudible, as I went to stir the fire…to turn my back on him.

“If the weather is fine, yes. Tonight I’ll never trouble you. But we’ll take our meal together?”

“Of course.”

He laughed. He’d been laughing the while, by the tone of his speech. Oh, I disliked him. I was tired of him.

“And what sort of fowl do you hunt in the treetops?”

“What sort of food can I get from you that you would prefer to eat?”

 

 

95

 

---

 

His society was nine days the thorn in my side.

Under his eye that first night I put away the coins, shaking them into a chest, a disposition I mistrusted. Their embossments and metals were not the same…logic suggested different meanings. Over my shoulder I gave him a daring look.

There! A fortune, is it not?

He smiled, knowing…but not as a wolf to the lamb.

“And here,” I said, noisy setting the jug before his plate. “Have the most of it, if you like.”

And here, he sighed. “How am I to think of that? Do you wish it, or will you be angry if I do? Totem-Maker, I can tolerate very well leaving you alone.”

How I’d become as bad a host as Jute had been a servant, I didn’t know. Or did, perhaps. Pride, pride…myself I chided this time. Yet scarcely mollifying was this alteration, that he dropped a scale of his armor.

Peddler, you’ve come to teach the Keeper, so you think. To be so very patient with me in my ignorance…

 

In the morning, when without invitation he was there to see me wake, he’d covered my table with articles; a cheese, eggs, ground meal, pots of crystallized syrup, some aromatic cuts of the traders’ venison, cured in their fashion. Fleeces, dyestuffs, a distaff and spindle. Three knives meant for weapons, the blades prettily traced, hilts jeweled. And jewels as well for my arms and ears, if I’d liked them. Jeweled slippers, and a jeweled girdle. Cloths of silk, carried west to us only by the traders’ road.

I slept dressed, no longer feeling myself so unlikely to be disturbed that I didn’t half expect it…

The display was his seller’s way of enticing me to purchases. I sat upright, and reached for the poker to stir the fire’s embers. To stand would be the first yielding.

“Take your time. You have no competition this day. Soon you will.”

“I will have those things for my larder.” It seemed to me he might like me to go wrong; he might be a Prince’s man after all, a traveling spy, wanting to measure the depth…to which I’d plunge my arm in the Collector’s trove.

“Some of your sheep will soon be lambing.”

Piqued, I stiffened. Be rid of that, I told myself. “Well, I know nothing about it. Do they need help to lamb?”

He laughed. “Unlikely. But you’ll need to milk them. Can you do that?”

“I never have.” I’d known it to be done, though…had seen it done.

“And do you know how to make cheese from milk? And do you know how to spin yarn from fleece?”

“Peddler. I believe I am in need of a servant.”

 

 

96

 

---

 

I hadn’t expected to answer this way. So many pictures crowding to me, of chores added to chores…

Disappointed (it seemed), he said: “You may find labor in Balbaec.”

“I doubt I will, as I don’t speak the language.”

We bickered, but I saw my path clear. “You are an old visitor here. You have spoken to the Keeper before me. That is no mystery, is it?”

He shook his head.

Meek, now? I don’t believe it. I said this to myself, and crossed my arms. “Then will I be an offender, to go down to the city? I have no one to mind the post. Or, does the Keeper have duties there? You may as well tell me,” I added, not letting him lapse so soon into smartness, “whether all this shepherding and spinning is how I live, whether I trade with the traders?”

“If you trade with anyone, it is you set the rules. You may sell such goods as you see profit in. Go gather the flowers from the meadow…there are flower sellers in the town. Ride your pony down and trade him for an ass.”

I thought of a rejoinder. But my rude guest spoke with some justice. “No. I see all that. I can do as I like. I can do my own thinking, too. What, though, with the coins? I have been told they go to the Collectors. The Collectors are of the Alëenon? Or they are of the Prince?”

“They are of the Tollhouse.”

“Fie!”

“Instead, would you have me teach you a thing or two of archery?”

 

His teachings were mathematical, a way I much liked to understand things. The arrow cannot fly straight from the bow…and the creature you aim at moves also. Each bow has quirks of its own, no two alike; the archer must know the instrument.

The peddler found a mossy trunk and fixed it standing; with his knife scraped a round patch from the moss. And in the dirt he showed me a diagram, the arc of a circle, the arrow flying this way, that way. Where it might hit its mark.

He drew me to a close distance, the length of a fallen tree. Six arrows I sent flying, one of which struck the round.

“Fetch them and we’ll begin again.”

“Oh, you and I…?”

For this, a shooing hand, languid. A camaraderie growing, that I told myself I would not allow. My legs carried me back and forth many times that day, while the peddler watched, instructing. But I let part from my reserve a modicum of respect for him. For when, six times together, I’d struck on target, he moved me back.

Now I came to learn both how I’d succeeded, and how I appeared to fail. I made informed adjustments; in one day’s work, I’d gone from talentless to capable.

 

 

97

 

---

 

He stood holding a Seed under the window’s light. Two hollows like eyes seemed to glint aware, each with its dot of white. The totem had woken in itself this visage, by charm or wickedness.

“Tell me your story.”

“They are only things I’ve found. You would rather suppose, what…that I’d dreamt of them, felt them sing through the soles of my feet?”

I was sure he wanted it, and I was sure he would cheat me.

“Found them…lying on the ground?”

“No, they were well buried. The earth is poor here. My duty is to make of it what I can.”

He laid the object down, turned to me from the table, no more of pretense that he half-addressed what he chose to call a totem. His face was oddly still.

With my story then, I cheated him…

I explained how I’d used the fire ash, laid it out warm, that I could dig my little fingertip’s improvement…how every day, I’d done this. I bent to touch the top of my boot, the depth of garden as I’d made it, before the earth split.

An event I let rest unspoken. The traders knew of the rockfall. If my friend were so clever, let him surmise, let him ask.

“You make me think. I doubt anyone’s done a lot of digging up here. How many seeds altogether, eh?”

“Why…? Do you mean to say they are—”

Here was the peddler I knew, lifting an eyebrow at my breaking off. “Fortuneteller, I shan’t supply your answers, to sit amazed while you read them back to me.” Derision colored his voice. “In the tiles…is that your art?”

“Relict. Of earliest times. I only sought the words. Answer me, then, what sort of flower makes them?”

“Perhaps it is in your fate to breach the Citadel. The zhatabe is said to own a great library, scrolls decorated by inspired sons and daughters of those godlings first cast to earth, when the dark of night had been dispelled by the fires of divine warfare that sheeted across the skies until the second darkness. If any mystery is not concealed there, it shall never be revealed. The people of Taqtan have a legend. You have yourself heard the story of the first tree, whose limbs upheld the heavens. And all creatures of earth lived among them, until by that battle of the gods she toppled, thus the waters were born of the firmament fallen, and the land was filled with creeping things of every kind, and only the birds, sheltered in those limbs still high as a mountain, were given the gift of flight.”

 

 

98

 

---

 

He ushered me to the door. He caught his staff, and me by the elbow, and off we went in silence to the road, where in full vista the peaks could be seen. I was of no mind to speak, worried that the peddler, with his lore of varied nations, his sometime majesty, his frequent disdain, was a Princely retainer of power…my Prince, or this zhatabe, emperor or king of the Citadel people.

I stewed inside, in defense of my fortunetelling.

Hadn’t I done good with it, given comfort and hope? I did not make sport…

Never would I have held a seeker in contempt.

He lifted his staff and showed me with a gesture the veins of white running in the shape of a branched tree through the scoured cliffs. Yes, I’d heard the story of the mighty Mother Oak, and I had seen this proof.

But seen it not.

“The seed may sprout one day,” he said.

I don’t know why, when he looked at me, I foresaw my own death in this word.

 

I made the reacquaintance of an older friend, young Moth. He arrived with the Balbaecans, whom I saw first in pilgrimage, winding afoot in a long column, myself perched at the spot I called Cliff-Head. (Caepfodthe, I give you the word, in my first language.) The road, gentle in descent beyond the gate, doglegged here, once, twice, three times, and a fourth. How did the traders get their wagons round? For curiosity I’d once followed to watch. The answer: they took the wheels off. Between planking on the undersides they gave to their vehicles, even the very tall ones, a host of human legs.

The traders, I began to surmise, would not return until the last of summer. What riches did they find along the coast to carry home to Taqtan?

I sighed with wanderlust.

The peddler, keeping to his place in the meadow, bought and sold. And the Balbaecans, passing the gate in parties of four or six, began to pitch tents in the meadow. They scavenged everywhere, digging my wildflowers’ roots and roasting them over fires. I found a pair of strangers in my back yard, taking wood from my stores.

Raucous, the Balbaecans played and sang much of the night.

I felt the peddler egged them on in their trespass. Yet sensible the house was mine but to tenant, and that I had never been told if the meadow belonged to it, I stifled (in ill-grace, perhaps) my indignation. How could I know if I were not at fault, if I owed better hospitality to travelers from below?

On that ninth day when the peddler was to leave me, though I did not know it, Moth, after a rap at my door, walked in.

“Is it you?” I said.

“Totem-Maker.” Round-eyed, he made signs with his hands, and stared at the Seeds.

Now, to go back…

On that night, before the peddler had discovered the face (which he’d predicted), I’d tried a new thought. No rock or blade could mar them, no fire burn them. If they were the strongest of all things, could it be they marred one another? I climbed on my table and dropped a Seed, striking the victim I’d placed on the floor. Still, I failed. I believed I had.

 

 

99

 

---

 

Bright sun through the shutters made obscure what might have terrified, the slow-blinking eyes, like those of a basking lizard. Moth took a stool in the corner and set his bag at his feet, still speechless. I had not myself studied the Seeds, stared at them as though to meet their gaze…with command. The impressions of glimpses I’d received, afraid to do more. But I understood—for the peddler’s visit, I was too well informed—that I would be expected to command them.

I had slept with them in my house, woken to them in the mornings; I had that much courage. Duty serves, where liberty shirks. For my visitor’s sake, I said:

“Don’t trouble over them if you can help it.”

And what do I know of Moth? Asking myself this (though the answer was, next to nothing), I decided on: “Are your mother and father at peace?”

Of the Balbaecans I recalled that cousinly link to my own people, and the question was always asked at home. Whether one’s parents had become protectors in the next world, or whether they dwelt in this, peace was most desirable.

Moth fingered a chain at his neck, and nodded to me, yes.

“Please. You have my assurance this work of mine is harmless to you. Are you sent to live in my house and be of help?”

Just then the thought occurred. I’d spoken this wish to the peddler; in saying the words aloud, as well to the Seeds. And before the gods. But I began to suspect what sort of vehicle these totems were.

“Are you a great magician, then?” Moth said at last.

“Well, Moth, are you? I mean no disrespect. But let us suppose you have within you any sort of greatness…and why think otherwise? You can’t name, you can’t feel, what you will do when the hour comes, when you achieve that deed above all, that destiny. And neither, for myself, can I. I do not know myself to be a magician of even small powers.”

Our similar languages, I doubted enough for him to grasp all this. His face was believing, though. He hugged his bag and tiptoed past the table, out to bed in the stall opposite Cuerpha’s. In the warm weather, I supposed I could allow it. I did not want Moth’s place to be so lowly. But if he dreaded the Seeds, neither could I force him near them.

The peddler, come to amuse himself, to laugh that I’d put Moth to work gathering my arrows, confided to me he would take his leave under that night’s moon. I urged on him two of the totems. He accepted one, and gave me a number of things from his wagon, not sold. I sent Moth to the loft for baskets, loaded them helter-skelter. I did not appreciate the chore.

Then the peddler sat to dine with me, and when the bowls were cleared, drew a carved box from the pouch of his tunic, having my fingers be those that touched the totem, to place it inside. These charms were nothing of value to me. I disliked their watchfulness, expected evil from it. But the peddler said even kings would barter for them, bestow titles and estates, if the return proved worthy, if the totem were the right sort.

 

 

100

 

---

 

“And I am going to leave you with your reward, though you don’t like receiving it.”

He dropped, one by one, a handful of bright gold on my table. “When I am back this way, you may like to buy of me something that catches your eye…something more than a sack of meal and a skein of wool.”

This idea of coins, though I knew they were exchanged in the coastal town, where foreign ships put in; and where such things were of great use, and yet of no immediate use…seemed to me a dubious magic. The world’s insistence on money confused me. That another would give a thing, a marker in a game…that at length I would give it back, and by this means have enriched us both…

He rummaged among the baskets, laughing aloud. He’d frustrated me; he was pleased to have done it. He drew out a cap, and like that early trader, placed this on my head.

“Now that’s no use, you not having a mirror. But see!”

Again he bent, found a round disk on a handle…of some white material, this, that flashed a glorious rainbow in the firelight. I saw a thing I never had, being somewhat shamed to study my reflection in pools of water. The hat was red, gold braid trimming its upfolded flaps. The face beneath was strained and dirty.

“It’s what you lack, and why you collect your tolls from pity, and not authority. A proper cap of office.”

Leaving me, then, with advice to make clothes that fit and wear them, he strode across the now-empty meadow. Under jeweled blue beams strong as dusk, I saw him busy himself at once with the harnessing of his creature.

 

The last of the Seeds, that for so long had refused to be shaped, kept its eyes closed. I knew the totems now, and knew it contrary. It formed itself, finally, when I decided to leave it outdoors.

You dislike the damp, perhaps. Cold dew may be your death, for all I know. For all I knew, since nothing I’d done yet angered or troubled them.

I bought through that season, spring becoming summer, with an eye to the future. A great luxury for me, this having of possessions for the enjoyment of them; this notion I might put a thing by, shelved in its new-made state, for one day. I need not defend my choices. As payment for service, this was fair, and enough.

And that same expansion within me, that growing faith in my own importance, made me bold in tossing my Recalcitrant One into the garden.

Draw up your fellows, I said to it. That much you can do.

Mornings I went out, as every sunrise brought change. Moth had been badly frightened by the emergence of two new Seeds, and left the patch to my tending. But skilled…at lying in wait, knife in hand, pouncing like a cat…he proved himself. I let him hunt for me. I let him have all care of the sheep. I bought chickens from the Balbaecans, having Moth, and a dog now, to keep guard.

 

 

101

 

---

 

I could not miss the eye. Its countenance had formed such that it seemed curled on its side asleep, but this powerful one’s magic sang in the air around it. The song was a thin, moaning whistle, melodious, unearthly…

A mockery of my sarcasm with the peddler. On my mountain the gossip of forest dwellers raised a cacophony; thus, lest I fall betranced, I exercised my mind on discerning of the calls I knew, birds I had given new names to.

For Moth was not in that way educated. As to how Alëenon sages ranked fowl in their compendia, he could impart nothing. I threw out seed. I would not have lured any bird to my bow, but wanted them close for study.

“We call that the redbreast. And that is the yellow-throat,” my servant told me, confident.

“And these small ones?”

“Are brownets.”

“But, do you know, in my country we also have such birds. Yet ours are different in kind. Their breasts are striped.”

Moth watched me, patient to know my point, which I had made.

“There are many things,” I told him, saying an old thing. “Under the sun.”

“Yes, Keeper.”

My Recalcitrant One I kept now in a pouch at my belt, having it a personal totem for the time being. And I spoke to it.

“You have ambitions, I suppose. You count yourself stronger than your lessers, for you cause them to obey you. Yesterday I asked you to wake the faces, and you woke…I dare say you were able to wake…one. I wait, Creature, to see if it’s the sleeping one rules you, after all. And what may happen if I throw you in the fire, now you have your eyes? I will try it in a moment, or if you counsel me to choose that misshapen fellow with the mild face, him I will trial.”

The power is yours. But ask for nothing you will not yourself endure.

I credited this…but feeling a strange temptation to anger.

Rising an hour past, our sun at once had put his face behind a bank of clouds. I wondered how far Cuerpha could carry me if I took the traders’ road, how soon before the skies stormed? How treacherous the climb home, following the descent?

These plans were for solitude.

I hadn’t wanted the totem’s advice to be so duty-bound…

No one—as I weighed magic and meaning, I advised myself so—could be as dull as to miss the moral of Escmar’s tale.  A totem, a talisman, a charm for wishing…what was this, really?

With Moth to shoulder half the chores, still each day I had more work than could be done. My work contented me…what more would I ask, but for time? And time, Great Ami himself cannot alter. With a chest of gold and no law but my own on this mountaintop, I might go the place, be the thing I liked—if gold, jewels, silks, were my longing.

 

 

102

 

---

 

I could not return to Monsecchers, where I was known, and be anything but a thief and a failure. Gold would not buy me birth. I considered, even, that Pytta and Cime might prefer the legend of me; I, finished for them, to an end satisfactory. If I came back, a disappointment, a seeming fraud…

And was there duty in that? Towards a story of yourself, a role to play at, fair or not: Fortuneteller, Keeper, Totem-Maker…Omen…

Being to the world what it said you were?

Then, can we wish for, any of us, more than we can imagine? The houses of the gods hold wonders beyond our minds to know, but we cannot ask…

Desire, yearn after…

You see, Reader, wisdom, as might have been sent me by the gods, lay couched where only the plod of my pony’s hooves and isolation…yes, from Moth’s asking me his next directive…would allow me to converse with it.

 

I rode from the cave where I’d sheltered from the first storm; then had to wait out a second, spent of its bluster too late in the day…

My pony and I were alone; this spreading plain, rich in purple-seeded grasses, quite empty. The road to Balbaec followed a watercourse, and what I’d taken, looking down, for shrubs with blue-grey needles, were fair-grown trees, the stream cutting deep to make a narrow valley.

Its pines, able to grow in thickets here, their sated roots laced below the bed, grew nowhere else within my sight. Cattle grazed the plain, a bearded, short-horned kind, mingled with deer, and I could not guess if the Balbaecans owned one herd, both, or none. I saw no marks but the specklings on the cattle’s flanks. All I met, my height measured now against these mountain walls, was more and greater than pictured. In this discovery, most commonplace of the unseasoned traveler, I gained my first, modest colloquy with wisdom.

The upward slope that reached the caves—and of these was a city street’s worth of dwelling houses, some with the charcoal of fires inside stone rings; some with only bones, no proof the devourer of flesh were man or beast—was rock, tablet-sized shingles of it, like a giant’s roof thrown down by wind. The climb for Cuerpha would have been impossible. My own legs were worn to stiffness, when for curiosity, I’d struggled up to peer inside one cave. But from this vantage I saw that, as with the grass and trees, the stone-field hid things. A road well-trodden ran the perimeter; athwart this, a broad highway of its kind had been patiently fashioned, stones stacked to form two angled walls.

After a rest, I walked down to fetch Cuerpha by the easy way. Constant labor seemed needed, and where I encountered fallen rocks, I lifted and threw them aside, feeling I owed this respect to all who passed this way. It did cause me something of fear, as I laid my camp from night to night, to have so much mountain overhead, such catacombs below.

 

 

103

 

---

 

The cave road carried to the foot of a hill, down to the sea-plain of Balbaec proper. I saw travelers now, far away, a small company. If they had dogs, Cuerpha’s scent (my own, for all I knew) would carry a warning.

And I wanted that loneliness I hadn’t yet found; I wanted to escape a hailing exchange. Hospitality required that strangers not unfriendly keep the road together for a time, until had been said all that could be of one another. I would then take up my path, or be persuaded to abandon it. Or be given a companion to guide me.

With what sort of fame did the name of Nur-Elom ring, in this city where certainly it was known? Was I well-described? Would they disbelieve, be disappointed, that I could be the peddler’s Totem-Maker…supposing the peddler had traded on this gossip?

I took the totem from its pouch. An hour, two hours…

To judge, from my perch, how far they were, how much of contemplation I might entitle myself to…

I’d been going to say, was beyond me.

But these tiny figures made a mixed company: two riders at the head, several on foot, a cart… Pulled by no beast, only at each shaft a man. The riders, making themselves so unhelpful, must be hired escorts.

This had not been the arresting thought. I saw the entourage pass a tree, an olive, always planted (in such lands I’d known) at particular intervals along roadways. The oil of the fruits was healing to the sores of the foot-weary. And each, having its own character, its own small deity, marked the way with familiar comforts.

 

I will deem the man a head taller than myself. In two strides he covers his own height, did he lie on the ground… When I see him pass the olive, I count his paces to the next. I know these trees to be planted at measured lengths, and of an age. If I try, I can do better. I can judge in a way that is helpful to my purposes.

 

And not be…but now I was sure it was the totem, mocking…

Not be frustrated, sorry for myself, that I was asked to use my head.

And so, though sacrificing the time it took, I discovered an hour before I must watch closely, and hope, if my mood were still sullen, they would pass me unnoticed.

Ask. What was it you wanted?

To fling you to the road, let the travelers find you. No, Totem. The strength of my arm falls short, I need not trial it. And for my lack of faith you will work on me some drollery, as the story of the Herdsman-King, who sought to cheat death.

 

 

104

 

---

 

This, Reader, though I suspect you have such stories in whatever land I find you, was of a free citizen named Alchas. He espied one day, whiling his hours plaiting a chain of wildflowers, an entourage approach, that of a beautiful princess. She beckoned, against the frowning looks of her chief courtier, and Alchas descended, the flower-chain held careless in his hand.

“Oh! I’ll have that!”

He bowed, and the courtier disdainfully placed this gift around his mistress’s neck.

“And who is the fellow? Ask his name.”

Smitten, Alchas bore these spoiled manners…he did not rebuke her in his heart, for that, mounted paces away, she demanded her servant speak to him.

But the courtier said, “The man is nothing. A keeper of cattle.”

The woman tossed a ring to Alchas, and the entourage moved on. The ring was a dull brown bronze, the stone grey…a token that, when pressed upon her by her father’s necromancer, she had despised.

Alchas placed the ring on his finger, and swore an oath:

“Would I were king! And she my wife, and that rogue brought so low as to beg a herdsman for his very life!”

Came a thunderclap, and Alchas heard a voice:

 

None can be happy in all things

For in their weavings the Balancers hide

By will of Ami his symmetry, he

Who has charted the ages of all mankind

The tide no more does rise than fall

The gentle seasons flank the cruel

The years turn ever like a wheel

Long leagues the journey of a fool

 

Choose now, the necromancer said. Alchas looked at the lowering clouds overhead, at the forest glade behind. He listened to the stream that chattered below the hillock where he stood.

“What choice?” he asked at last. “What devil art thou?”

“Will you have all you wish, or will you be happy?”

Alchas doubted; the voice to him seemed trickery. And what can be all one wishes for, but happiness?

“Make me king!” he said, and laughed.

And at first his new life went well. He ordered the courtier thrown into the sea. He was high-handed with his queen, though to save herself she smiled and made obeisance to this husband. But, for Alchas knew not much of palace intrigues, thus scarcely did she need to employ them, she had sent to a kinsman, begging he would bring an army to her city’s walls, and lay siege.

 

 

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Now as with many walled cities…as with Monsecchers, I had once mentioned…here were tunnels having secret openings, passages where a single body might squeeze between jagged rocks, or wriggle free among tangled roots. And watches would not be set over these places, which seemed wasted, inhabited by only the wild. In this way, although the people of the city starved, and the King’s soldiers as often quelled riots as manned his defenses—foraging parties, embassies to the besiegers, at length the Queen herself, trafficked as pleased them…

And in the Queen’s case (and those of her own household), did not return.

The King had the palace stores to survive on. But he was alone, not merely for his wife’s abandonment, but that he’d never won the respect of his ministers, his courtiers. The nobles of his city felt their losses, and cared nothing for his. They conspired, made pact with one another; they arranged to deliver him up to the besiegers, asking by messenger whether his enemies would prefer him alive, or would his death make matters more convenient?

Yet the King as cattle-keeper had been a congenial man. He had found in his loneliness, even before the ranging of that army summoned by his Queen, solace in wandering down to the stables, the pens and the grazing yards. And for these visits, in all the city he’d made one friend, a milkmaid, a dull-witted girl (as was thought), taught and afforded a simple living.

In truth, her imagination was so full of so many things, that she looked lost and did not answer when ordered about. But the girl had noted the Queen’s escape, and the means of it. Without occupation, with the milk cows slaughtered for their meat, she’d been sent to a lowly place, to sweep the tiles and hearths of a nobleman’s house.

“What is your name?” she asked the King.

They were both at an early hour come to the meadow where grasses waved tall, now the cattle were gone. And for the same reason, for a wistfulness troubling each heart.

He’d been going to say, Girl, do you not know who I am?

Instead, he told her, “Alchas.”

“My name is Runen. Are you sorry that woman has left? Would you follow her if you knew the way?”

What could Alchas say to this? He would, and he would not. But he said, “Show me.”

And once they’d got as far past the tunnel’s mouth as Runen dared lead him, she whispered the conspiracy she had heard, a girl so little regarded they’d spoken with her in the room.

Alchas settled into a shepherd’s hut, desolate for the war that raged in the land. He made traps for birds and fashioned a fishing net, dug roots…and as the year waned, harvested wild fruits. Happiness grew upon him, in this simplicity of caring for only himself.

But mindful of the necromancer’s verse, mindful he had journeyed far to reach the home he’d left, he lived content and sorely discontent.

He had had it before, and had thrown it away, happiness. He knew he could not keep it now.

 

 

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My friends, you have foreseen the end.

The Herdsman-King, having made his face known to so many, escaped for only a time. Soon the god of that world below, Tophe, gathered in what had been promised. Alchas was discovered and sacrificed. The invaders departed, the city gates were opened…and there was joy for some.

A fable, as I learned it. Though perhaps a King Alchas had lived among the Emperor’s ancestors… For this perversity, that had made me wish to quiet myself with a story, I remained at the mouth of my cave, easily spotted. The lead rider blew a note on his horn that rose and fell. Small exchanges with Moth and other Balbaecans, gave me to understand the notes spoke a language. I was asked to come down and name myself.

I went down to within shouting distance, sparing them the long wait, had I picked my way over stones to reach the road. “The tollhouse I’ve left in the care of my servant. He will collect if your business takes you there. You may call me Keeper, or I am called at times Nur-Elom.”

The riders sat their horses indifferent.

It was a merchant of Balbaec who stood yoked to his wagon, along with his son. He was in that trade of decorated cloth, as had been Vlanna Madla, the wagon thus not over-weighty. But goods so desirable could be sold anywhere. He had hired guards, the wise choice…while neither, these few leagues from home, felt impelled yet to don his armor. Helms and breastplates and shields were slung behind saddles.

“Come down, Nur-Elom, and take my hand. I will like to have your blessing. If you would honor me with a game, indeed… Any ill omen and I will turn back.”

He laughed, and I padded along, not to trip and tumble—if I were to be a local dignitary.

While I padded, he spoke on.

“Omens are in the air…we are soon to play host to an army. A man of the Prince has given him news they say pleases him. But no, I will not ride to the mountains. I take the straight road, onwards. Some women of his household have forced Lord Ei to vacate his own.”

The Prince’s household, I thought. I was better with the Balbaecan tongue for knowing Moth, but so much gossip all at once, my eyes busy watching my feet and my ears sorting grammar, made me lose characters in the merchant’s tale.

What I knew of the Prince I did not feel privileged to say, and so I arrived totem in hand and stood in polite silence.

The son said, “Oh, there”, and nudged his father.

“Dare you show it?”

“Oh,” I said in turn, “it is nothing to me.”

I held my familiar to the sunlight, so that it would shine prettily. I was shy of the face, allowing one could be deluded…

That, having the ambition to succeed, I might invent my successes…with only the timid Moth for company and no worldly friend to doubt me.

 

 

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My immediate fate was as I’d predicted. The merchant, Tazt Shenath, begged my company that short way up the road, to the stronghold of Lord Ei. He had jested about the game, but was in earnest as to games and more, feasting and entertainments, once lodged under protection of the Prince’s guard.

And that wife, the woman I’d seen on my sovereign’s boat, whose glances for me were wholly indifferent, had brought against boredom, Shenath told me, her cousin Darsale. Sente, a friend whose news would delight me, had not come.

But if Darsale, then Jute. I had made a promise to Jute, to help her if I could. Arriving in this state, I would be to my old servant something new. I was sorry I’d embraced Jute’s mocking name for me, put Nur-Elom about as my preference. If I found no cause to speak with her, how would it seem?

Taztam Shenath, the son, saw in me a contemporary. This was true, we were of an age, though for so long now I’d abandoned youth. I had to counsel others, manage the tolls, conquer this object I carried, make it be for me. I knew it, and did not know what I myself would be, as Totem-Maker.

“They at the Citadel will know you have it.”

“But if they were frightened, they would send an embassy. Why be conquered? They must believe in their fire-weapons.”

“What do you say?” Shenath asked.

“I have been told it.” I had forgotten the teller was Lotoq. “By some means, by ductways we may suppose, as with any engine of fire, they make their roads impassable. To which I would answer, no magic about it, we will not fall upon them by road, then. We will learn the better way in.”

“The totem will tell you.”

This from his son did not please Shenath. He doffed his hat and struck Taztam a blow on the chest, harmless.

“No…but truly, Taztam, it is the Prince who makes war. I should hardly come into it.”

“But is it,” Taztam said, when we’d made camp and he no longer pulled a wagon, so closely quartered with his father. “Is it a wishing stone?”

I lifted a hand. The matter needed thought, the answer stating well; I did not want my hesitation to look like the concealing of dire things, a charlatan’s trickery. The answer, like the handy-come story of Alchas, was paid to me at once (wicked beast of a totem, how I would be rid of it!), couched in my moments-ago reflection. “Yes, Taztam, if you ever wish to wish for something…”

I smiled. “You may meditate for many years, like a player of the War-Maker’s game, threading out each effect of your desire to make one change in the world’s pattern. In Ami’s scheme.”

 

 

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I mentioned Ami. Taztam, and others nearby listening, made the sign of piety. I did not; I hadn’t the habit. The priests did not, for priests were regarded of a caste with the lower gods. Elberin I had mirrored, growing up. I saw that I could not be a friend…no one’s ever, it would seem. They took this difference for a Totem-Maker’s semi-deity.

Now, what sort of home made a border stronghold in these lands? The clan of Ei had theirs on a promontory, perched in good defense, the winding way up unsuited to a large company.

Over the sea in the first country, our rock was soft. One type light as earth, crushable to sand with a few hammer blows. This mixed with crop seeds and broadcast over our fields kept off disease, made the soil black, the new leaves vivid. Another type made a clay that drank water, and when hardened, repelled it.

In this second country of the Alëenon, rock stood stark from the plain, deckling like leaves bound in a book, flinty grey, iron red. Sometimes the great tomes of the gods were flung on their ends. Sometimes they lay sprawled on their backs.

The rock was not much shaped by the natives. They came rather to its terms, as the Siankans had done. All the corner-posts of Lord Ei’s house were planted trees, forest lands being sparse on the Balbaecan plain…and the living trunks were studded with bone. This bone served for anchoring. That anchored, what the people had in abundance—grasses, woven into dense mats, hung in pairs, fleece stuffed between. Water flowed from the mountains, and was channeled under the flooring. The floor was snugged flagging, those myriad flat stones scattered the length of the cave road.

The plain-dwellers were herdsmen and burned manure for heat; their water-channels constructed to carry through furnaces, kept alight outdoors. And while the smells were strongly of hair and fat, and green ferment, the large unpillared rooms were swept clean, warmed with a heat that misted the skin, counter to the driving winds that had pushed us along the road, parched our throats.

At the start of our climb, the household came out bringing sweets and wines to refresh us, walking the way with us…this was the goodwill, the charm of the Balbaecan people. We entered a lower room…the levels of the promontory dictating those of Lord Ei’s house. Shenath met, and was ushered indoors by a household steward; a woman came also, who served Noakale, the Prince’s wife. We would eat with the servants and lesser retainers—an arrangement wholly contenting to me. Lifelong I had been of that quality. But Shenath himself betrayed me, though with kindest intentions.

“You must fly to your mistress and tell her our companion is the Foretold, the Totem-Maker. Mera, Lord Ei will not care to know the sal’nuhr-ostre had been under his roof, in any part denied its revered place. We should all be cursed.”

He said this, stressing all.

I did not know enough, but thought he winked at formality, put an air on for private amusement. The cursed one was not me (my impression strong that this was Jute), but I stood cursed in appearance, too odd to all eyes not to be known at once. And was I the Foretold, now, as well?

 

 

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Noakale descended, herself. “Why it’s you! Such a mystery they make! And what terrible thing that cannot be named have you brought to us? Come, come…someone may like to have a talk with you.”

This fulsomeness of nature I would not have suspected. She took me up the steps with little pats and chuckles. I thought Jute had risen in fortune, that she was an intimate now of her mistress. I was daunted, but I was glad for her. I went further…it was not hard to ignore Noakale’s chatter…I hoped for Jute all the haughtiness in greeting me (refusing to do so, perhaps), that her heart seemed to feed on.

The person I was led to was the Prince.

His dwelling was a chamber made from screens and draperies; he had placed himself in his wife’s quarters, kept secret from the Balbaecans. Of their adopted tyrant’s presence, Shenath was not to be told. But Shenath stayed for hours only, and I must now stay for days.

Food was brought. That particular generosity never ebbed; among these people one did not move from outdoors to indoors, room to room, without sustenance.

Lord Ei’s cook ordered a stone loosed from the floor, a fire below fanned. A great, almost conical basin was mounted above, on four ornate feet of bronze. One servant brought a board, angled it against his hip and chopped at a slab of meat, pieces falling like tiles, sizzling out their fat. Another chopped root and leaf; from the basin’s two sides, these ingredients crossed in air, a showy dance…the cook herself finished the dish by pouring in a cup of wine.

I could not mind, as it smelled so good…but I was amply fed that evening! The rule, as in my own country, was to banquet when banqueting, show enjoyment of that given, invite no evil by speaking of evil. For such ingratitude, harvests might fail, cattle be stricken. If I must be the exemplar of the gods, then, I must be apt in manners, resting against these pillows on this carpet, tended by both households, the Prince’s own faithful, and Lord Ei’s…

Word would soon be carried to him, I thought, of the personage come to his house. Here was another I must not harm, bring anxieties to; while saying this, I confess I sat in mind of our purpose, and framed a question for the Prince:

“And so, soon you would have traveled on, in disguise as you arrived. You meant to see with your eyes this, and the others.” I withdrew the totem. I offered it, and he waved a hand. I longed for anyone to show me that courage of touching it, and my sovereign most of all. But I had not proved the opposite case, that his reluctance was cowardice.

“But,” I said, “do you see the face?”

 

 

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Did he? I feared not, and that also sat with me badly. “We meet by fortune. I daresay you don’t believe it yourself. The Balbaecans are a kind and honorable people. Wise, no doubt, as regards their bargain. I have not met the ruler of the Alëenon. He trades with the Citadel. The risk is bitter, that he aligns with you, and the day will come… When he my friend the Peddler called the zhatabe will sue the gods for this land’s destruction. Well, you have seen Lotoq’s wrath. When a cause is righteous, the vengeance of those Ami’s hand restrains is more, loosed, than mankind can imagine.”

“What, again, do I not believe, my subtle young friend?”

Reader, I had set this snare, then placed my foot…his mockery I’d earned. Pride makes for temper, and temper had goaded sententious speech. “I apologize, my Prince. I’d meant to say, did you seek me at the tollhouse, the rumor would fly, though to your face they should pretend ignorance. The Balbaecans would conclude you marched with the summer.”

“I intend it. But I cannot make a secret of the seasons. It is the only time…sooner than that. I wait another muster, another fleet. The supply trains go to the first outpost, and the companies follow, when the scouts return.”

A servant poured wine. I could not know any longer, having bonded to this totem, if I acted, or was prompted to act. I sipped, wanting not to overdo…but wine or no, I resolved to leave Lord Ei’s house with the mastery. What I decided I would choose. These hints in my ear must cease, for I would hear them no more.

My advice was contrary to the Prince’s belief, that he could not spare to gather his forces over another winter, make his attack less in good, than in the best, of time. Hurry in warfare? Surely never advised…I wanted to ask, what will you do when you array your army there, when you see the Citadel rise towering to the clouds? You cannot besiege them, because you cannot get round them. Your soldiers are not your men. They are the men of three nations; they are not loyal to one another. Evil weaponry will rain agonies upon them…and what, shrinking in terror, haunted by the burned and maimed, feeling they gain nothing of worth to them now, by your promise of gold… What persuasion other than the iron fist? You will order them to keep to their camps, as though the camps could be redoubts, not doorstones for beggars. When most have deserted you, the Emperor also, because you have made yourself too weak to protect him, will ask some other Prince of your land to be his protector.

“And so, I impress you little. You sit with an arch face that disapproves. Yet in silence. Let me then repent, whatever I have done.”

Of course he was humorous.

With no formal plea for my counsel, he asked it. He, not in his own home resting more than a quarter of any year; he, the sagest of the battleworn, wanted what they all did. A magical person, whose notions about things were none such, not the equal of any thoughtful soul’s, but willed by heaven, mysterious. He would not consult his common sense, for having above mine the sum of two decades.

 

 

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“No, I won’t rush you.” He had made to rise, but sank again, while the fingers of a hand concealed under pillow-fringe tapped.

I told him, “I am not a general. You do not want me for advice you had sought and trusted without…or long before…you’d known of my existence. You could name me now who travels with you, who sits with you, when you propose your attacks, when you hold that sort of council. I have at times been gifted by my patron-god Lotoq with vision. Vision tells me we do not know these people of the Citadel. My own mind says persuasion is better than brute force.”

He shook his head, and made me sorry. On his face was disappointment. “I ought to find the educated ones, the lawyers. And the talkers, the courtiers…convene a mission of dissemblers, offer sweets to the zhatabe. Forgo my attacks.”

He waited for my appreciation. That I had said something unmilitary, and with distaste, and that he mimicked this manner.

“Your aggressions,” I said.

Now he laughed aloud, but furthered his point. “Pass years in talk, make ceremony of deciding whether a line inked on cloth or paper…there! Decide that first! Shall we record these dealings by your means, or by theirs? My people record nothing. Every important matter of my life, of my charge, I can tell you now.”

“You gain something in memory from those things Wosogo keeps on your behalf.”

For this, he gave me a near hug, a hand on each shoulder, pulling me towards him. I felt my difficulty again, some wish outside propriety…

He was only telling me…

“Nur-Elom…will that do? You have a way, Nur-Elom, and it settles me. If you are this Totem-Maker as well, that is for Elberin…for Lord Ei perhaps, who, if you do not know, is captain over the city of Balbaec. For any such men as care for a thing I never have, to be thought clever.”

“They care to not be thought unclever.”

“You,” he said. “You see a difference.”

“But my Prince. All I am telling you lies…if I may be of some use…in what you took a moment ago for cleverness. You flatter me, and I like it. I don’t possess that holiness to hold myself above it…I can bed down, as it were, very cozily, in flattery. In sweets.”

I lifted one, a Balbaecan fried cake stuffed with milk curds. He took it, and returned me half.

“In admiration,” I listed on. “And in office, riches, at length in an idea of myself. I could be angry with you, or with any who sought my wisdom, and did not revere me properly. Withhold my gifts if you dared doubt my glory.”

“I do…I doubt your word. I reserve opinion as to your glory. But foresighted is foreguarded, is it not?”

 

 

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“Well, yes…and I’ll not go that route. Foresight is a blessing, to be sure, but you see my meaning…I have a weakness. Lotoq loves me more than others, but he does not love me. Then, Vlan, are you only charmed, or do you understand that weakness of yours I ask you to consider?”

“Count me a poor student. We have talked too long, and I’ve forgotten.”

We lay on our cushions, alone in this room, sharing trifles and bantering. And I felt immensely flattered, teetering on my own prediction.

How many times, I asked him, are we certain in our lives of untested things? I favor the trying, when the risk is only the answer of no.

“And who is to refuse what?”

“The zhatabe. To receive a visitor. When I see him, I shall even tell him I am there to look and learn, and to carry my discoveries back to my Prince.”

“Why?”

“Because he’ll know it.”

“And because you are persuasive, he will surrender all to the Emperor. Thus we avoid bloody war.”

“Why…I ask you back…why war at all? Let me answer. I can live peacefully, with my tollhouse and my sheep, making and selling. I can live prosperously, may I know, at whatever time it pleases Lord Ei to tell me, whether I am a tenant, or an inheritor, or occupy my house by virtue of my totem-raising, wherefore I claim a share as mine by rights.”

“No one, I will end the mystery for you, knows what you are.”

But they had legends I seemed to belong to…

“My Prince,” I said, “name any trade other than that of soldier for which there is no need, no place, no duties…no… In fact, all these you’ve mustered for your invasion of the Citadel have trades of their own, and you’ve harmed everyone by taking them, leaving their work undone. Then, regard how the Emperor, in his endless wars, has enlarged his standing army. Here we have not the case of our fortress guards, our city guards, or the household knights of Decima and Vei…”

“Not true, I think. You are saying these guards keep order, patrol their masters’ lands, fetch and carry for him, at times. And the soldiers…”

“The Emperor’s soldiers,” I interrupted. “Don’t they…? Is your life so rarefied you have never heard the people’s complaint? Everyone despises the mercenaries. They seize the farmers’ harvests, and their good animals. Daughters become second or third wives of men who, yes, have the wealth to keep a guard of their own. Young men without fortunes cannot marry their loves. The soldiers steal wine, though they call this tribute. A bribe, in common terms, to prevent them breaking and burning. Our peasants flee to the hills, when wine fuels the army’s rampages. There is no portion for taxes, the poor farmer can’t be held to it, and if there were, that tenth of his grain and grape must go to feed the army. The Emperor wants to be rid of them, and to fill again his coffers…then, you know very well the sequel. You are living it.”

 

 

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“Share with me what you know to be better than conquest.”

“Peace?”

“Have you ever lived in a time of peace?”

To his mind he had the better of me, but his argument was no argument at all. “Elder,” I said. “You ply a trade, and war suits it. It does not, most. And…”

He wished to cut me short, but with an upraised hand I quieted him instead. If his mood were receptive, if he were entertained by my choice of insult…if he would then allow me this intimacy, I might sneak off, as it were, with the power inherent.

If I kept that bemusement, that half-smile on his face.

I indulged a small performance. “My dear, you understood me to say that I would go…I, travel to the Citadel. Find the Peddler, if you will, and ask him to be my guide. Oh, your soldiers may be forced to linger here another few months, but you have some way of explaining that to Lord Ei…nothing so footling, I doubt, as mere words of persuasion. Let us suppose the hosting of a foreign army delights the Balbaecans…”

I failed to charm. He answered me a long sober silence.

Then: “I will want Wosogo. I should summon Lord Ei as well…”

I myself wanted Wosogo. He had listened when I spoke, been inclined, of information, to give me useful things. The useful thing I must know was whether the Prince could find dishonor in the work of spies…dishonor and cowardice. For I felt, was it only an enemy to be undercut, that the worm enters the apple and tunnels weakness through the heart; and the hand that plucks it from the tree, however light of touch, finds the flesh yielding. But a rotten apple, he does not covet…

It might be rather, that asses trample the fence and devour the good fruits of the orchard, the gleaners left to salvage what they may…

Else it may be the farmer, to his friends, makes trade, and there is no spoilage.

Where good was to be found in strategies of war, I saw it only in the spending of each soldier, each animal, each weapon, each drop and crumb of confiscated goods, sparingly…a match near exact to purpose.

My Prince would like to strike a great blow and after count consequences; strike another, and for this alone interest himself in numbers. Fewer dead, the new way best pursued; more dead, the first.

“Will I let you go? Are you only my prophesier when I allow you all liberties? Because I cannot have made you think you please me. Waiting is too costly. I hadn’t planned it.”

He was, though, saying yes to me, not no.

 

 

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