Liavek 5 Read online

  There had been a time when she hadn't even known her birthday and luck hours. L'Fertti had helped her to discover them, and to recognize the subtle signs of it. It was here, it was now. Time to invest her luck. No more waiting. Now.

  She lit the black candle, glanced down at the pamphlet. She let three drops of hot wax fall into the vessel of blood. They congealed and floated. She glanced at the book again. Now the words. She whispered them, nonsense syllables that didn't resemble any language she had ever heard. She felt nothing. But according to the book, she was supposed to have a floating sensation by now. She chanted the syllables again, more firmly. Nothing. Nothing at all. And she felt nothing of the subtle tingling she had come to feel whenever L'Fertti guided her through one of the tiny magics he permitted her.

  Panic scrabbled inside her. No. Be calm. Do one of his exercises. Breathe in, hold, breathe out. Try to be aware of your skin; of cloth touching it, of floor beneath you, of air against your face. Center yourself within your body. Relax.

  And now she felt it, a floating, not of body but of mind. As if her thoughts were coming unhooked from her mind. The glob of black wax in the blood. It looked like a…like a…. Unsettled, she looked away from it. Her eyes snagged on the candle flame. She stared into it, entranced. Felt it pull at her. Birth luck raced through her like a riptide, tore her free from the moorings that held her to her everyday life, carried her away. The candle flame was like a brightly lit tunnel. She roared through it like a runaway coach, racing away from her life, back to other times, other places, other identities. She knew she should seize and master her luck, but not yet, not yet. It was so strong, and there was so much yet to see, if only she would let herself go, surrender to it. It whispered, it promised; it was taking her to the heart of all secrets, to the center of herself. It flowed around her, pushed her on like a wind drives a sail-car, from one brief image to the next. The coast of Minnow Island wreathed in silver mist. A candlelit table, a woman's slender hand resting atop a man's, the couple's faces lost in shadows. A man, built like T'Nar, but much younger, bending his back to the sweep of a dory's oars. A rumpled red cloak, flung wide atop the sweet earth in a meadow of tall sun-yellowed grasses. A man standing beside it. Kaloo felt her identity shrinking, her self receding as she came closer to him. She couldn't find room to care. She stood by the cloak and watched him. He was dragging a white shirt off his head. His arms were lifted, the shirt hiding his face but baring a tightly muscled belly, a line of hair that rose from his navel to widen over his chest. He drew lithely muscled arms from the shirt's loose sleeves. Something in the way he moved promised—no, threatened—great pleasure. He bent slightly, pulled the shirt free of his head, and let it fall to the grass. He straightened, shaking a head of dark curly hair. He lifted a smiling face to her. Dark, dark eyes, eyes she knew, eyes too close to hers—

  •

  He shook her and slowly the dazed look left her eyes. She stared into his, and for a moment he would have sworn he was holding Erina—the old Erina. But then her expression changed to confusion, and then to fear, and she started to scream.

  "Shut up," said Dashif. "You don't have time for that. How long is your luck time?"

  Kaloo shook her head. Dashif shook Kaloo. "How long?"

  "I don't know."

  Her eyes fell to his right hand, which held her instructions. He glanced at them, scowled, crumpled them up, and threw them across the room.

  "No! I need those—"

  "As much as you need evisceration," he agreed.

  "But—"

  "If you don't quiet down and listen to me, your luck time will be over and you will die. Do you understand?"

  The hand of terror had drawn her expression, but Dashif took no pleasure in it. At last the girl nodded.

  "Good," said Dashif. "Sit down over there. Get rid of these things." He kicked away the candles and the hair. "Now, you need an object to invest in—"

  "I know that!" She sounded indignant. Dashif almost smiled.

  "Good. Take it in your right hand. Yes, now…Where did you get that?"

  Kaloo stared down at the fan she held, and began trembling again. "I just—I don't know. What's wrong?"

  "Nothing. Never mind. I knew someone once who invested her luck in something very similar." He shook his head to clear it. He didn't need this now. He had questions to ask this girl, and he couldn't ask them if she sickened and died due to a failed investiture. But now what? When he'd had magic, he had invested his own luck a score of times, but how to coach someone?

  Well, he'd been at the births of two of his children. How different was this? It was a birth, of sorts. The midwife had said he had helped those times, so he could help now.

  With more confidence than he felt, he said, "Relax. There's nothing to worry about. This has been done for thousands of years by millions of sorcerers before you. Let your body relax. Feel the fa—your luck object. Touch it, test its weight, study it, look at its details. Soon it will be more than it is, and so will you.

  "Feel your power, your luck. It is there, but it is yet unreal, or unrealized. Now it will become real. It is easy to make a small change in the fan with your luck, isn't it? To heat it up or cool it down? Cool it a trifle. Do you feel it? Now you have the link to it, and the hard part is over." What a lie! "All that you need to do is let your luck flow, because the path is there. Can you imagine the path? A trail, a hallway, a road, a riverbed. A riverbed, with your luck as the river…"

  ª

  As Kaloo relaxed, a peculiar clarity came over her vision. She saw all things with unshielded eyes. She felt more a spectator than an actor as she stared at the fan in her hand. Odd, she had never really seen it before. Oh, she had held it, opened it and gazed on the scenes painted there, but never like this. A river scene was painted on the fan. How had he known that? And as she looked at it, the river flowed with her birth luck. Flowed, and cooled the fan in her hand. Cooled it, just as he had said.

  He was helping her. She suddenly knew it. She didn't know how, but she was sure it was his magic that suddenly filled her with confidence and strength. He was lending his experience to her, guiding her. She couldn't fail. All she had to do was listen to him and obey him. He'd help her finish the investiture. He knew what he was doing. The ominous power of Dashif's luck was near legendary in Liavek. A thing to fear—she nearly lost her grip on the flowing birth luck. Yes, a thing to fear, but also a thing to believe in. Later she would sort out why he was helping her. For now, she would accept it. With his help, she knew she could do this. She stared at the fan and, with a sudden intensity, willed her luck into it. Pushed it in, tamped it down, trapped it in the folds of the delicate paper. Almost kept it there.

  "It won't stay." She looked up from the fan to tell him, to ask his help. He crouched before her, his eyes on a level with her own. Beneath those dark eyes, twin scars ran vertically down his cheeks, as if he had wept a thousand tears and their scalding passage had eroded his face. She felt caught in the maze of his face, in the lines of maliciousness and hard power that crossed and contradicted the lines of sorrow and regret. She leaned closer, her attention dragged into.his face, studying how life had marked him. She wanted to reach out and touch him, smooth away the pains that had changed him so. Someone lifted a hand, reached out slowly. "My poor Dashif," she said with infinite pity. She touched his cheek. tried to smooth away the mask that covered the face of the man who had fathered…who had fathered…

  The muscles of Dashif's face had hardened under her hand, setting it into a grimace of puzzlement, outrage, or something else. She knew him suddenly for what he was, and jerked back her hand from that contact. A rising thunder behind him suddenly crescendoed as the door split and T'Nar avalanched through it.

  T'Nar roared at Dashif, rage depriving him of speech. He glared from Kaloo to Dashif, and his face contorted with hate, his skin turning a patchy red and white. "You struck Daril, and now with my Kaloo—!" The stocky old seaman choked on his accusations and abandoned any attemp
t at speech. He flung himself forward, his thick-fingered hands darting for Dashif's throat.

  •

  Sitting, deep in concentration, with my back to an unguarded door, thought Dashif. I deserve whatever happens to me. But even as he was cursing himself he was moving, and the old sailor—what was he babbling about?—was left grasping air.

  Dashif shot out a foot, low to the ground, and caught the sailor's ankle. The sailor fell. Dashif kicked him in the head. The sailor tried to stand. Dashif kicked him again. The sailor moaned once, then was still.

  Kaloo whimpered, "No."

  Dashif drew a pistol.

  Kaloo said, "No."

  Dashif cocked both barrels.

  Kaloo cried, "No. Please!"

  Dashif pointed the pistol at the sailor's head.

  Kaloo screamed, "Father! Don't!"

  He stopped and turned to her. He felt himself trembling. "What are you saying, girl?"

  Her eyes had become huge, and a knuckle had found its way to her mouth. She said nothing. He looked into her face, and this time, when he saw Erina, he knew he was seeing Truth.

  The scars on his face burned as from salt on a wound. He carefully released the locks of his pistol, lest he set them off with his trembling. He replaced the pistol in his belt, and his movement was slow and dreamlike. He knelt beside the girl.

  "Can such things be?" he said, and his voice felt hoarse and strained.

  "Please don't hurt him," she said.

  He glanced down at the unconscious sailor. "I won't. I promise." He returned his eyes to the girl…his daughter. Could it really be? She stared back at him, and it was Erina, who had said, "I forgive you."

  Then he shook himself. "We have little time, child. We must finish."

  •

  She looked at T'Nar, fallen to the floor. Struck down by the man who had fathered her. He had fallen out of her reach, and she suddenly felt she would never be able to reach him again. Would never be able to touch him as his Kookaloo, as his fostered nestling. She was something else now. She was Count Dashif's daughter, child of the most ruthless and feared man in Liavek. Daughter of nobility and intrigue, heir to power and wealth. Power and wealth, such as she had imagined her invested luck would bring her. She looked again at T'Nar.

  "You must finish your investiture. Your time is slipping away," Dashif insisted. He knelt before her, his eyes devouring her face. He repelled her. She desired nothing that he was a party to.

  She forced herself to look at him. "I can't. I don't want to."

  "You must. Or you will die."

  She locked eyes with him. Every ounce of Daril's upbringing and ethics recoiled from this man. But something deeper in her, something that seemed always to have lurked in the shadows of her soul, recognized a kinship. He would never have wondered at his daughter's need for privacy, for times of solitude. He would have expected his child to invest her luck. He would have recognized the unchildlike drives that motivated her, and he would have channeled them.

  He put his hands on her, and she refused to flinch. Daril's child would have cowered. But her very defiance marked her as Dashif's as she said, "I won't."

  His grip on her wrist tightened. His other hand held the back of her neck. He forced the hand that held the fan up before her eyes. "You will," he said. "Because you cannot help it. Look. Look at the fan. Your luck flows there. You know it. You see it. It flows there because you want it to. You want your luck to flow there, because you want the strength you can tap there. You want the power you can trap there. If for no other reason, so you can say no to me, and perhaps mean it. So you can say to me, 'I forbid you to kill that man!' instead of, 'No, please, don't hurt him, please.'" He put a pleading whine into the last words, mocking her helplessness.

  Anger and hatred surged through her, fury that anyone should be able to speak to her so, to treat her so. And with the anger, riding it, she suddenly saw the greater part of her luck. It was tied to her frustration, to the deep-seated anger she had always suppressed. They had kept it from her, all these years. She could not doubt that they had all known, Daril and T'Nar and Dashif himself. They had kept it from her, the knowledge of her birth, even of her luck time. Kept from her that which was hers.

  But no more. Even as the overpowering surge of anger passed through her, she saw it rush into the fan. The river surged and boiled with a wave of fury and luck. It would overflow its banks, it would sweep away the delicate flowers and graceful trees that banked it. Her luck would rush away downstream and leave her here, weak and dying. She did not know how to contain it.

  And then she knew: as he did. With icy calm and contempt. With cold, iron control and a face that was a mask. She sealed it off, sliced it off cleanly. All the baggage of her journey from childhood, the fears and pains, wild hopes and crashed joys. Emotions that had seared or soared within her. Hatred and anger and love and joy. And luck. All boxed and bound into a fan. Contained where only she could tap it. Invested.

  Dashif was no longer touching her. She did not know when he had taken his hands away, nor how long she had been staring at the fan. It didn't matter. He was rocked back on his heels, studying her, looking at her face. It didn't matter. What he was looking for was no longer there. She snapped the fan shut and held it closed in her hand. Her soul hummed within it.

  "You did it," he said softly.

  "Yes." No emotion to her answer. She felt…weariness. That was all. No elation, no joy such as she had imagined. She wondered if it was this way for everyone who invested luck. She found she rather liked holding her emotions tightly shut in her hand. Like her father. She met Dashif's eyes without smiling. Behind him, T'Nar's eyes were open and Dashif's death was in them. His knife was in his hand, the old blade gleaming. She looked into Dashif's face, at his dark eyes, at the jawline they shared, at his curling locks that had come to her as unruly waves in her hair. As the old seaman stood up behind him, she did not betray anything. For she felt nothing at all.

  •

  Dashif felt the movement behind him and lunged to the side. The swipe meant to part his head from his neck breezed past his cheek. He thought he had made it in time, but then, as he stood, he felt the side of his head aching.

  He backed up immediately. The old sailor had a short, ugly knife in his hands and hate in his eyes. There was blood on the knife, but no time for that now. There came a flash of pain from his missing foot, but there was no time for that, either, as the knife flashed down.

  He lunged, rolled, and came to his feet again. The sailor came closer. It was all the stuffing in my empty boot. My kicks aren't as disabling as they used to be. He backed away again, looking for his chance. The sailor crouched low, eyes intent as he moved forward. Dashif risked a glance around the room. A chair was almost right behind him. If he could get his hands on it, he could disable the sailor with it.

  The sailor lunged again and Dashif jumped backward. He felt the chair behind him. On impulse, he sat in it. When the sailor's knife came down, Dashif presented his left leg as a sacrifice. The knife bit into the wood. The sailor looked startled. Dashif twisted his leg and the knife went flying. It clattered to the floor near Kaloo. She didn't move.

  Before the sailor could strike again, Dashif was up and there was a pistol in his hand. He kicked the sailor in the groin, then hit him in the head with the pistol. The sailor went down. Dashif cocked the pistol.

  "You promised not to kill him."

  The voice penetrated, as from another world. He looked up. Kaloo. Yes. The side of his head ached. The girl shrugged. Her eyes were like ice. Dashif pointed the pistol at the sailor.

  "You promised," she repeated. She wasn't pleading, she was stating a fact.

  An object on the floor between them caught Dashif's eye. It took a moment before he realized it was his ear. He swallowed the bile that rose in his throat and realized that soon he'd grow

  dizzy, then faint, and he'd be at the mercy of the sailor.

  "Promised," he said. "Yes. I suppose I did." He un
cocked and replaced the pistol. He pushed back his cloak, removed his own knife, and carefully sliced off one of his puffed, ruffled, pure-white sleeves. He tied it around his head. How much blood had he lost? Would he pass out? How long would it take? Another minute? Five? Ten? What would she do?

  She must have seen the sailor coming up behind him, yet she hadn't warned him.

  "You are, indeed, my daughter."

  "Yes."

  "It is sad."

  She seemed to understand what he meant. She said, "Yes."

  "You lived, just now, because you became cold. You won't live again until you feel the warmth." She didn't understand, but didn't seem to care, either, and that was worse. Dashif said, "I love you, my daughter," because he suddenly knew that he did, and it hurt far more than his severed ear. He said, "I will find you again, or you can find me. You don't have to fear me. Ever."

  •

  It was the second time she had seen him bleed. Yes, and the second time she had seen him defeated. This time…all that blood, sliding down the side of his head, soaking and spreading across the shoulder of his white shirt. He might…she snorted, a harsh sound, dismissing the thought. Let him take care of himself. Hadn't he let her take care of herself, all these years?

  She looked around the room, feeling a strange detachment from its disarray, even from the man who groaned on the floor. It felt like the time T'Nar had had to cut the big hook out of her palm, and she had wanted to faint, but couldn't. Somewhere, she knew she was badly hurt, but she couldn't find the pain. T'Nar's hand twitched against the floor. He'd recover. She'd seen enough tavern fights to know that, and she also knew from what she'd seen that Dashif's kicking leg was a false one. T'Nar's heavy canvas trousers would have absorbed most of the impact.

  Too much had happened, too fast. She felt she could not get a grip on all of it. She had invested her luck, found her birth father, and taken control of her life in one short afternoon. Now she badly needed to find a quiet spot to think it all through.