Liavek 2 Read online

  "His training seems rather harsh."

  Vetzah lowered her gaze to the floor and nodded. "It sounded so nice, so I let him bring me here. He feeds me and teaches me. Brings me lots of canvas and paint. But he put this chain on me to make sure I stay at my work."

  "Did you know he takes the credit for your paintings?"

  The girl nodded again. "Old beggarman Rog came by and told me. I got mad at Sheyn when he came in. But he beat me, tellin' me folks would know they're my paintings when I'm ready. Says it's bad if folks know it's mine before I'm good enough. What do you think? Am I good enough to take my own credit?"

  Aritoli solemnly took one of her paint-stained hands and kissed it. "My dear Vetzah, your paintings should decorate the Hall of Arts in the Levar's palace. You have exquisite talent. But, clearly, you have magical talent as well, else you could not have summoned me as you did. Couldn't you have escaped this fate with that?"

  "I'm not a wizard, sir. But today's my birthday, and this morning was my birthing-time. I could feel it, all bubblin' and burnin' inside me while I was finishin' the city painting. So, while Sheyn was sleepin', I put that feelin' into the painting. He warned me you were gonna be at the showin', so I just thought how I could tell you to help me and where I was and all. And I just put those thoughts into the painting."

  "And you've had such practice at putting your feelings into your work that it no doubt flowed naturally. It is no wonder your paintings are beautiful fantasy landscapes. They were your only avenue to escape this dreary reality. But, never fear, I—"

  The door slammed open and Sheyn stood in the doorway, breathing hard and sweating, face pale with fear and rage. "So," he growled softly. "You come to my studio, though I warn you not to." Sheyn took two steps into the room and slammed the door shut behind him.

  "Ah! Just the person I wanted to speak to," Aritoli began.

  "What do you want?"

  "I want to know why, Sheyn. Your reputation was unequaled anywhere. Why...this?"

  The Zhir said nothing, but walked around the advisor to a table on which lay palettes and brushes. Sheyn reached out slowly to one of the brushes and grasped it as if it were an animal that might escape. Raising it, his hand began to shake, the tremors becoming more and more violent. He grasped his right wrist with his left hand to try to still the trembling. But it continued until, with a gasp, he had to drop the brush.

  Sheyn's face contorted as if he were about to cry, and he slammed his fist into the table. "You see?" he whispered. "You see?"

  "Disease?" Aritoli asked softly.

  "A curse. I did a portrait for Prince Jeng that he did not like. He thought I insulted him. He asked Shzafakh, court wizard, to curse my hands so I could do no more 'insulting' paintings. Then I was banished. So long as I am cursed, I cannot paint."

  "Why didn't you ask someone for help? There are wizards here in Liavek who—"

  "I knew no one here! And the shame...I could not bear the shame. I hoped if my name was still good, I could borrow a set of hands and earn enough to buy countermagic. Then I would return to Ka Zhir and use my uncursed hands upon Shzafakh's neck!" Sheyn raised his face, his eyes sad and begging. "Please, Master Critic, you will...forgive my deception? Tell no one? Let me be, and in time I can repay you—"

  Aritoli shook his head. "I'm sorry. I cannot condone what you have done. For one thing, although slavery may be common in Ka Zhir, it is illegal in Liavek. But the greater crime to me is denying this woman the attention she richly deserves. I cannot pretend that I do not know, or forget what I have seen."

  "In that case, Master Aritoli," Sheyn said, stepping forward, "I must ensure that you cannnot speak of this to anyone." The artist's fist plowed into AritoIi's middle, knocking him against the wall.

  "Stop it, Sheyn!" cried Vetzah.

  Desperately trying to regain his breath, Aritoli watched Sheyn advance on him, preparing to strike another blow. Suddenly ·there came a loud snap, and Sheyn fell to the floor. Vetzah had pulled taut her leg chain, tripping him.

  The Zhir picked himself up and snarled at Vetzah, "You! You are street filth! You are chalk dust and lost coppers without me. It is for us both that I do this. Shut up and keep to your place!" Sheyn backhanded Vetzah, sending her crashing against an easel.

  Recapturing some air, Aritoli pushed himself up against the wall, knocking over canvasses. As Sheyn came at him again, Aritoli readied himself, briefly wishing he had thought to bring his rapier.

  With a quick shift to the left, he managed to dodge Sheyn's fist and struck out with his cane. Sheyn gasped as the beak of the raven's head struck just above his right elbow. As Aritoli hoped, the arm dropped limp to Sheyn's side, temporarily paralyzed with pain. As Sheyn grabbed his right arm with his left hand, Aritoli twisted and struck with the cane again, for the left arm. Again, Sheyn's arm dropped to his side. With a shove of the cane into Sheyn's stomach, Aritoli pushed the artist into the wall, where he sat with a thud.

  "Now," said the advisor, "I shall take Vetzah and—"

  "How? She is in irons. By the time you find a blacksmith to free her, she and I will slip away like bats on the night wind. There are cities other than Liavek."

  Aritoli paused a moment, then opened his hand to show a small, iron key. "Not quite. You see, I have found her key."

  Sheyn's eyes flicked instinctively toward a patch of bare bricks high on a wall. Then he frowned, confused, at the key in Aritoli's hand.

  "That is to say," the advisor continued, allowing the illusion in his hand to disappear, "that I have found it now." He went to the wall and felt for a loose brick. Pulling one out, Aritoli discovered a niche containing a small bag of coins and a key.

  "A trick!" snarled Sheyn. "Cursed to Thung be all wizards!"

  "With that attitude, you'll never paint again," said the advisor, unlocking Vetzah's leg iron. He helped her stand, then reached inside his shirt. He pulled out a coin purse and added its contents to those of the purse found with the key. This the advisor then tossed into Sheyn's lap. "Number seventeen, Wizard's Row. If you cannot find help there, you'll find it nowhere else." Without another glance in Sheyn's direction, Aritoli took Vetzah's arm and guided her out into the warm Liavekan night.

  •

  "I can hardly believe this, Ari," said the Countess ola Klera. 'This young woman is the real painter of these beautiful scenes?"

  "Yes, I am, Your Grace." Vetzah had only just been brought from Sheyn's rathole of a studio, and she was clearly overawed by the luxury surrounding her.

  The countess laughed. "Well, Vetzah, although you are not quite what we expected, under the circumstances it would be unfair of us not to offer you the same patronage we offered Sheyn. Though I'm not sure how we'll explain this to our friends."

  "You need only hedge the truth a little," suggested Aritoli. "Say that Sheyn declined your offer of patronage, instead recommending his promising student, Vetzah."

  "Yes, I think that will work," said the countess. "Then there will be no surprise at the 'similarity' of their styles. Thank you, Ari. Once more you prove your skill at gracious solutions. "

  "I thank you, too, sir," said Vetzah. "Can I do anything to repay you?"

  The advisor kissed her hand, saying, "You owe me nothing, my dear, save to fill the world with your exquisite art. Oh, and you might, at some point, look to taking lessons in magic. You have talent there too strong to ignore."

  The artist nodded, gazing at Aritoli with admiring eyes.

  "As to...anything else," Aritoli said, raising an eyebrow, "we'll see."

  "You are no doubt weary from your ordeal, Vetzah. Come, and I'll see that you are bathed and given fresh clothing. If you will excuse us, gentlemen." The countess nodded to them and led the artist away.

  The count stepped closer to Aritoli and said, "Another conquest, Ari? She hardly seems your sort of challenge."

  "Actually, I'd rather she spent her emotional energy on her painting. Still...we'll see what she looks like when she's cleaned up, eh?" Ari
toli winked.

  The count sighed and shook his head. "Sometimes, Ari, you make me think the rumor about you is true."

  "Which rumor is that?"

  "The one that claims whatever god or goddess made you put your heart in your eyes."

  Aritoli shrugged and smiled. "It is possible."

  "But what of Sheyn, Ari? He did defraud the countess and me, though we lost little—thanks to you. And he did enslave Vetzah. Shouldn't we report him to the Guard?"

  "I beg your forbearance in this instance, Meceno. I have given Sheyn the means to regain his own talent, if he will but use it. And if he succeeds, he will be worth more to the world than if he is sent to languish in a cell, or forced into labor to pay off heavy fines."

  "I see. But are you certain he will not simply find another talented beggar to be his 'hands'?"

  "He knows I will be watching for him. He can no longer trade on his name as he did. Not until the work is indeed by his own hands." Aritoli chuckled. "You know, that is what should have given me the clue in the first place—his hands were clean." The advisor raised a finger to stroke his mustache and noticed that his nail-paint was chipped and flaking off. Examining his palm, he found smudges of paint and dirt from Vetzah's studio. "Speaking of which, Meceno, could you tell me where I might get a good manicure?"

  "A Coincidence of Birth" by Megan Lindholm

  THE GIRL SAT in the cool darkness, bony knees drawn up tight to her thin chest. Her eyes were closed. She drew long deep breaths in the steady cadence of sleep, but she had never felt more alert. About her in the darkness loomed countless casks, kegs, and dusty bottles. They held the potent wheat beer of Lenan on the western plains, Dragonsmoke from the Silverspine Mountains, and the many red vintages of Saltigos. Had she drunk them all, she could not have felt more intoxicated. Something burgeoned and grew inside her, struggling like a moth ripping out of its cocoon. This must be her day and her time, for luck was swelling in her, bubbling and begging to be harnessed. She was sure of it.

  "Kookaloo!" There was the thud of the cellar door followed by the ponderous step of Daril. She could hear her foster mother breathing laboriously through her generous nose. "Kookaloo! What's keeping you? Those sailors want their beer now, not next week. They've a tide to catch. Kaloo!"

  She tried to shut out the homey sounds, to stay within her bubble of belief, but she failed. With a sigh, the girl unfolded. The elusive feeling had popped like a soap bubble on the daily wash. Kaloo stepped from behind the row of beer kegs, brushing cobwebs from her dark hair and bringing the filled pitcher. Daril gave a snort of impatience at the sight of the flattening foam. Snatching the pitcher, she gave it a fresh head. "And what was keeping you this time?"

  "I'm sorry, Daril. I meant to hurry. But here in the dark and the cool and the silence, I felt something inside me, building up and rising like an incoming tide."

  "Gut ache?" Daril said. "Drink some garwood tea. That'll make you pass whatever it is." She started up the stairs.

  "Daril!" Kaloo was nearly speechless with disgust. "That's not what I meant!"

  "Then what?" Daril paused on the steps and looked back in mild annoyance.

  "I thought I felt my luck. You found me in the month of Meadows. If I were two months old then, I would have been born sometime in Buds. Maybe even today, at this hour. I keep having these...stirrings...inside me." Kaloo waved a hand helplessly, unable to describe what she had felt.

  Daril paused on the steps to give her a fondly tolerant smile. "My little Kookaloo nestling. You could have been a tiny baby four months old, or a big whopper of an infant only a month along. You were so scrawny and weak when the sailor dragged you in, no one could tell. Besides. It's not your day that makes you feel that way, but your years. You'll be getting your woman's blood soon, and you'll start changing from a stick to an armful." She paused with a sudden speculative look. "It might not be too soon for you to be nibbling Worrynot. There's many a girl who thought she was too young to worry about such things, only to find her body knew more than she did. You know where it is; in a jar with the other herbs. Help yourself. Better safe than sorry."

  Kaloo seethed silently at the bottom of the steps. "Woman's blood!" she sneered in an acid whisper as the cellar door thudded behind Daril. "That's what she's been saying to me since I was ten, whenever I felt good, whenever I felt bad." She glared down at the soft blouse that sagged limply over her thirteen-year-old ribs. She tightened the drawstring at the neck and retied it. She had asked Daril to stop making her blouses so ample, but the buxom mistress of the Mug and Anchor was sure that Kaloo would blossom any moment. The generous blouses and skirts that Daril turned out for her only made her feel more childish. As for Worrynot, Kaloo would probably never need the contraceptive. Who would want to lie with her? Even her face was plain. Black hair that curled the wrong ways, narrow black eyes, olive skin; like a dress cut from cheap cloth and sewn quickly, there was nothing to distinguish her from three-fourths of Liavek. The feeling of magic was gone. She was as sure now that today was not her time as earlier she had been certain it was.

  "Kaloo!" Daril called again. She jerked from her musings and clattered up the wooden steps, back into the heat and noise of the serving room. In spite of the spring warmth, a full fire was burning on the hearth, and a servant was turning a spit of roasting meat over it. He was sweating at the task; Kaloo was glad it was not hers. Meats were cooked out in full view of the serving room, but the savory pot-boil that was the inn's reputation was kept safely bubbling back in the kitchen where its secrets could be preserved. That was where Daril's voice came from, and Kaloo brushed her way through the tables and patrons to answer.

  As she passed the table closest to the kitchen door, she felt her arm snagged and she was suddenly lifted off her feet and deposited on a lap. "T'Nar, I am getting too big to be treated this way!" she protested.

  T'Nar grinned, his gap-toothed pirate's smile like a fence in his whiskery face. "Actually, you are finally getting big enough to be treated this way. Why do you think I waited through years of damp diapers and skinned knees for you?"

  She would have pulled T'Nar's beard for his rough teasing, but the serving room was full today. Too many sailors were turning to see what he had caught. So she only tugged free of him and gave him a smile she didn't need. "Daril calls me!" she explained and hurried off.

  T'Nar was the one who had found her in a dusty ditch by the Levar's Highway. He had brought her to Daril, knowing that her youngest son had just married and moved away, saying, "Here's a little Kookaloo to fill the empty nest." The name of the wild songbird that left its eggs in other birds' nests had become her own. "With no more thought than they'd give to naming a kitten," she grumbled to herself.

  "Kaloo!" The call blasted her ears as she stepped into the kitchen.

  "I'm here," she said quietly, taking a furtive delight in watching Daril jump at her voice so close behind her.

  "About time, too. Here's the basket, the coins are under the cloth in the bag. Don't lose them."

  "It's Grinnel's turn to market!" Kaloo protested.

  "He already went. And he already forgot cindra buds and spiny hearts. I'm to serve my pot-boil with no spiny hearts in it? I could have strangled him!"

  "Why didn't you?" Kaloo grumbled softly to herself, but Daril picked it up.

  "Well, if you'd rather take his place at turning the meats…"

  "No!" Kaloo settled instantly. "I'll go."

  "Then hurry. Don't go off in a dream and forget your errand. And hurry back, too. There'll be cleaning up to do before the dinner hour."

  Kaloo picked up the basket and started for the door. Daril's voice, on a less distracted note, followed her. "And there's an extra half-copper in the bag. For a sweet. Time we started putting some meat on your bones."

  Kaloo rolled her eyes and left. It was a balmy day and folk in the streets were taking their time. A harbor breeze nudged Kaloo up Park Boulevard. The Mug and Anchor was built close to the docks, so the tavern enjoy
ed the trade of every sailor too hungry to walk deeper into Liavek. And once they'd tasted Daril's pot-boil, they made it a regular port of call. On most days, Kaloo shared Daril's pride in that. But today it was just one more distraction that kept her from focusing on herself.

  Ever since she had been old enough to wonder, she had pondered the question of why she had been left in a ditch to die. The last few years had brought an even more powerful question. On what day and at what hour had she been born? If she was ever to harness her magic, she had to know her luck time. And that was a thing no one could tell her.

  Shops became more frequent as she entered the Merchant's Quarter. She slowed to enjoy the displays. As she passed the Tiger's Eye, four young rogues came boiling out of it, the crack of the owner's whip but a breath behind them. They rushed past her and on without a second glance. See, she told herself spitefully, too plain even to attract trouble. She shook her head and hurried the rest of the way up Park Boulevard to turn left on the Levar's Way. A half-dozen chipmunks, drawn by treat bowls left for Rikiki, scattered out of her path.

  The Market was not crowded at this hour. Most folk preferred to shop in the cooler times of the day. Many of the cheaper stalls were unattended, their shades rolled down against the heat. But Daril never dealt with the cheaper merchants anyway. Kaloo went directly to Lexi's, where huge parasols and insect netting protected his produce. She selected cindra buds that crumbled easily between her fingers but did not crush into dry dust. And Lexi himself cut through a spiny heart to show her the starlike red pattern within the tuber. It was a good scarlet, and the spicy scent rose appealingly. Kaloo nodded and he filled her basket.

  As she was turning to leave, Lexi gave an earthy exclamation of disgust. Kaloo whirled back in astonishment.

  "Pardon, Kaloo." The merchant mopped at his second chin with a silk kerchief. "I meant no offense. But it's the third time this tendays that my stupid apprentice has gone off to make deliveries and left a parcel behind. Same customer, too! Look at this!" He gestured at a neatly tied package. "Those herbs were fresh picked this morning, and wrapped in damp cloths to keep them at their best. But by the time Roen gets back, they won't be fit to feed a bad-tempered camel. I'll lose my sale. I just hope he won't be offended," he added apprehensively.