Liavek 6 Read online

  "Hence your henchman's errand," said Nin. "Considerate of you."

  "I am a responsible employer," replied Ambrej. "Now tell me. How will you compel me to give up the robe? You cannot threaten my life."

  "Certainly not," Evor Nin agreed. "May I threaten your henchman?"

  "I am merely Nagual's employer," Ambrej replied, "not his keeper. The robe's price goes beyond his life, I'm afraid."

  "Then let me phrase this as gracefully as I may," Nin answered. "You have been an excellent guest. You have partaken of our entertainments with well-feigned enthusiasm. Allow me to invite you to extend your stay. I would like to arrange that your visit last—indefinitely."

  "I decline," said Ambrej. She rattled the knucklebones. "Let me clarify the situation. The robe may not be sold. Cannot be mislaid, nor traded nor stolen—cannot, in short, fall into the hands of anyone but its owner. And even then it cannot be set aside. If I took off the robe, your henchman still could not put a bolt into me. Gavren Col was my grandfather. The robe was bequeathed to me—I cannot simply give it to you."

  Nin's eyes narrowed. "Your counteroffer, then?"

  "I propose to venture the robe as a gambling stake," Ambrej said, and rattled her knucklebones suggestively. "All due respect to your hospitality, but I do not mean to live and die in Liavek. I have family obligations."

  "I agree," Evor Nin said. "We wager your robe against my hospitality."

  Ambrej nodded and made her first throw.

  The pair of them played turn about, Ambrej leading, Nin replying. Singles, doubles, triples, scatters, all went by in a desultory flash, then the variations began: Clicks, No Clicks, Over the Mountain, Rock the Cradle.

  The rest of the diners continued their meal but they chewed with an absent air, eyes fixed on the flash of fingers, the sweep of swift hands.

  Aul choked on an olive when one of Ambrej's pieces bounced into the gravy at Cross the Bridge. Ambrej played on, her concentration unimpaired. Evor Nin had difficulty at Hammer and Anvil, hitting his spoon as well as his target piece, but completed the turn in a rattle of scattered cutlery.

  Ambrej pressed on, past Cat's Eye and Camels, then, at Thread the Needle, her hand grazed the soup tureen and her piece struck another with a flat, final click. Ambrej froze. The entire room was suddenly still.

  "The end of an era," Nagual said.

  Ambrej folded her arms and watched while Evor Nin gathered the pieces up into his pudgy hand. With great deliberation he made the first toss, then put up the throw stone. Serpent quick, he seized his piece and slid it through the others, snatched his hand back and caught the throw stone.

  "I believe that," said Nin, setting the throw stone down with precision, "is that."

  Ambrej rose and unclasped the robe, folded it, and laid it on the seat of her chair. In her linen trousers and jerkin, she seemed a little shorter suddenly, and a shimmer of red faded from her hair as she stood there. "The robe is yours," she said, and began sorting slowly through the disordered tableware to return the knucklebones to their lacquered box.

  Nin pushed himself up from his place and moved around the corner of the table to reach for the robe. "A moment," he said, as he shook out the shining brocade and put his arms through the sleeves, "lest any of my family foolishly think the robe still protects you—"

  He gestured.

  The guard in livery put a second bolt to his bow and began to wind the crank that drew it taut.

  Ambrej opened her mouth to protest. Before she could frame words, Nagual hit her hard between the shoulder blades. She went down. Nagual reached back, as though to scratch his neck, then brought his arm toward Nin in a wicked arc. Metal glimpsed the light, then Nagual dropped, too.

  The wooden table vibrated as Nagual's knife struck beside the first crossbow bolt. With a chiming sound the silver soup tureen split in half and rolled off the table. The second bolt pierced the back of Ambrej's chair.

  "That settles that," muttered Nagual, and began to make his way to the door on knees and elbows, a perilous journey through a maze of table legs, mashed fruit, and trickling soup.

  "I think Nagual has made it very plain that the robe protects you now," Ambrej said, back on her feet. She picked up her lacquered box. "I have things I need to do in Cenedwine—and it's so hard to get people to listen if they think they'll be killed if they stand beside you."

  The guard had brought out a third bolt and was cranking his bow industriously.

  "Makes it hard to keep dependable staff, too," Ambrej said, and threw the gravy boat at Nin. It hit the guard instead and his bowstring snapped. The guard swore and nursed bruised knuckles.

  Ambrej kept a wary eye on him as she worked Nagual's knife free of the table. "If you should try to gamble the robe away," she told Nin, "I recommend some game of skill. In games of pure chance the robe seems to, er, intervene."

  The knife came free just as Nagual reached the door. "And now," said Ambrej, following him, "we really must be going."

  •

  Next day, in the Two-Copper Bazaar, Dala found Evor Nin waiting beside the snail stall.

  "They bought a camel and made straight for the Drinker's Gate," said Dala, when he had his fee. "There will be no catching them if they head for the foothills."

  Evor Nin made a noise in the back of his throat. "I know they bought a camel. Her servant paid the trader half a silver soup tureen for it."

  "It was a sound animal. I'm afraid she is beyond your reach. Still, it is a nice piece of brocade."

  "Is it?" asked Nin bleakly. "My daughters laugh at it, my son is afraid of it, and every servant in the household has given notice as the result of a rumor it will kill them to stand near it."

  "I hear it caused a little trouble in Cenedwine, too," said Dala, and started eating snails.

  "A Hypothetical Lizard" by Alan Moore

  HALF HER FACE was porcelain.

  Seated upon her balcony, absently chewing the anemic blue flowers she had plucked from her window garden, Som-Som regarded the courtyard of the House Without Clocks. Unadorned and circular, it lay beneath her like a shadowy and stagnant well. The black flagstones, polished to an impassive luster by the passage of many feet, looked more like still water than stone when viewed from above. The cracks and fissures that might have spoiled the effect were visible only where veins of moss followed their winding seams through the otherwise featureless jet. It could as easily have been a delicate lattice of pond scum that would shatter and disperse with the first splash, the first ripple…

  When Som-Som was five her mother had noticed the aching beauty prefigured in her infant face and had brought the uncomprehending child through the yammering maze of nighttime Liavek until they reached the pastel house with its round black courtyard. Yielding to the tug of her mother's hand, Som-Som dragged across the midnight slabs with the echo of her shuffling footsteps whispering back to her from the high, curved wall that bounded all but a quarter of the enclosure. The concave facade of the House Without Clocks itself completed the circle, and into its broad arc were set seven doors, each of a different color. It was at the central door, the white one, that her mother knocked.

  There was the sound of small and careful footsteps, followed by the brief muttering of a latch as the door was unlocked from the other side. It glided noiselessly open. Dressed all in white against the whiteness of the chambers beyond, a fifteen-year-old girl stared out into the dark at them, her eyes remote and unquestioning. The garment she wore was shaped to her body and colored like snow, with faint blue shadows pooling in its folds and creases. It covered her from head to toe, save for the openings that had been cut away to reveal her right breast, her left hand, and her impenetrable masklike face.

  Staring up at the slim figure framed in its icy rectangle of light, Som-Som had at first assumed that the girl's visible flesh was reddened by the application of paint or powder. Looking closer, she realized with a thrill of fascination and horror that the skin was entirely covered by small yet legible words, tatt
ooed in vivid crimson upon the smooth white canvas beneath. Finely worded sentences, ambiguous and suggestive, spiraled out from the maroon bud of her nipple. Verses of elegant and cryptic passion followed the orbit of her left eye before resolving themselves into a perfect metaphor beneath the shadow of her cheekbone. Her fingers dripped with poetry.

  She looked first at Som-Som and then at her mother, and there was no judgment in her eyes. As if something had been agreed upon, she turned and walked with tiny, precise steps into the arctic dazzle of the House Without Clocks. After an instant, Som-Som and her mother followed, closing the white door behind them.

  The girl (whose name, Som-Som later learned, was Book) led the two of them through spectrally perfumed corridors to a room that was at once gigantic and blinding. White light, refracted through lenses and faceted glassware, seemed to hang in the air like a ghostly cobweb, so that the shapes and forms within the room were softened. At the center of this foggy phosphorescence, a tall woman reclined upon polar furs, the cushions strewn about her feet embossed with intricate frost patterns. The glimmering blur of her surroundings erased the wrinkles from her skin and made her ageless, but when she spoke her voice was old. Her name was Ouish, and she was the mistress and proprietor of the House Without Clocks.

  The conversation that passed between the two women was low and obscure, and Som-Som caught little of it. At one point, Mistress Ouish rose from her bed of white pelts and hobbled across to inspect the child. The old woman had taken Som-Som's face lightly between thumb and forefinger, turning the head in order to study the profile. Her touch was like crepe, but surprisingly warm in a room that gleamed with such unearthly coldness. Evidently satisfied, she turned and nodded once to the girl called Book before returning to the embrace of her furs.

  The tattooed servant left the room, returning some moments later bearing a small pouch of bleached leather. It jingled faintly as she walked. She handed it to Som-Som's mother, who looked frightened and uncertain. Its weight seemed to reassure her, and she did not resist or complain as Book took her lightly by the arm and guided her out of the white chamber. Long minutes passed before Som-Som realized that her mother was not coming back.

  The first three years of her service at the House Without Clocks had been pleasant and undemanding. Nothing seemed to be expected of her save for the running of an occasional errand, or the proffering of some small assistance with the pinning of hair and the painting of faces. Those who served in the brothel were kind without patronage, and as the months passed, Som-Som had come to know all of them.

  There was Khafi, a nineteen-year-old dislocationist who, lying upon his stomach, could curl his body backward until the buttocks were seated comfortably upon the top of his head while his face smiled out from between the ankles. There was Delice, a woman in middle age who used fourteen needles to provoke inconceivable pleasures and torments, all without leaving the faintest mark. Mopetel, suspending her own heartbeat and breath, could approximate a corpse-like state for more than two hours. Jazu had fine black hair growing all over his body and would walk upon all fours and only communicate in growls. And there was Rushushi, and Hata, and unblinking Loba Pak…

  Living amidst this menagerie of exotics, where the singular was worn down by repeated contact until it became the commonplace, Som-Som was afforded a certain objectivity. Without discrimination or favor, she spent the best part of her days observing the animate rarities about her, wondering which of them provided a template for what she was to become. Eavesdropping upon Mistress Ouish and her closest associates, patiently decoding their under-language of pauses and accentuated syllables, Som-Som had determined that she was being preserved for something special. Special even amid the gallery of specialties that was the House Without Clocks. Would she be instructed in the art of driving men and women to ecstasy with the vibrations of her voice, like Hata? Would Mopetel's talent of impermanent death become hers? Smiling as she accepted the candied fruits and marzipans offered by her indulgent elders, she would study their faces and consider.

  Upon her ninth birthday, Som-Som was escorted by Book to the dazzling sanctum of Mistress Ouish. Her parched smile disquieting with its uncharacteristic warmth, Mistress Ouish had dismissed Book and then patted the wintery hides beside her, gesturing for Som-Som to sit. With what looked like someone else's expression stitched across her face, the proprietor of the House Without Clocks informed Som-Som of what might be her unique position within that establishment.

  If she wished, she would become a whore of sorcerers, exclusive to their use. Henceforth, only those cunning hands that sculpted fortune itself would have access to the warm slopes of her substance. She would come to understand the abstracted lusts of those that moved the secret levers of the world, and she would be happy in her service.

  Kneeling at the very edge of the bed of silver fur, Som-Som had felt the world shudder to a standstill as the old woman's words rolled about inside her head, crashing together like huge glass planets.

  Sorcerers?

  Often, sent to fetch some minor philter or remedy for the older inhabitants of the House Without Clocks, Som-Som's errands had taken her to Wizard's Row. The street itself. shifting and inconstant, full of small movements at the periphery of the vision, presented no clear and consistent image that she could summon from her memory. Some of its denizens, however, were unforgettable. Their eyes. Their terrible, knowing eyes.

  She pictured herself naked before a gale that had known the depths of the oceans of chance in which people are but fishes, a gaze that saw the secret wave-patterns in those unfathomable tides of circumstance. In her stomach, something more ambiguous than either fear or exhilaration began to extend its tendrils. Somewhere far away, in a white room filled with obscuring brilliance, Mistress Ouish was detailing a list of those conditions that must be fulfilled before Som-Som could commence her new duties.

  Firstly, it seemed that many who dealt in the manipulation of luck would themselves leave nothing to chance. Before such a sorcerer would enter fully into physical congress with another being, the inflexible observation of certain precautions was demanded. Foremost amongst these were those safeguards pertaining to secrecy. The ecstasies of wizards were events of awesome and terrifying moment, during which their power was at its most capricious, its least contained.

  It was not unknown for various phenomena to manifest spontaneously, or for the name of a luck-invested object to be murmured at the moment of release. In the world of the magicians, such indiscretions could be of lethal consequence. The most innocent of boudoir confidences, if relayed to an enemy of sufficient ruthlessness, might yield a dreadful harvest for the incautious thaumaturge. Perhaps he would be plucked from the night by cold hands with unblinking yellow eyes set into their palms, or perhaps a sore upon his neck would blossom into purple, babyish lips, whispering delirious obscenities into his ear until all reason was driven from him.

  The intangible continent of fortune was a territory steeped in hazard, and she who would be the whore of sorcerers must also undertake to be the bride of Silence.

  To this end, Som-Som would be taken to a specific residence in Wizard's Row, an address remarkable in that it could only be located upon the third and fifth days of the week. Here, the child would be given a small pickled worm, ocher in color, the chewing of which would render her unconscious and insensitive to pain. As she slept, her skull would be carefully opened, revealing the grayish pink mansion of her soul to the fingers of one who abided in that place, a physiomancer of great renown. At this juncture, the Silencing would commence.

  Connecting the brain's hemispheres there existed a single gristly thread, the thoroughfare by which the urgent neural messages of the preverbal and intuitive right lobe might pass to its more rational and active counterpart upon the left. In Som-Som, this delicate bridge would be destroyed, severed by a sharp knife so as to permit no further communication between the two halves of the child's psyche.

  Following her recovery from this surgery, the
girl would be granted a year in which to adjust to her new perceptions. She would learn to balance and to pick up objects without the benefit of stereoscopic sight or depth of vision. After many bouts of tearful and frustrating paralysis, during which she would merely stand and tremble, making poignant half-completed gestures while her body remained torn between conflicting urges, she would finally achieve some measure of coordination and restored grace. Certainly, her movements would always possess a slow and slightly staggered quality, but if directed properly there was no reason why this dreamlike effect should not in itself be erotically enhancing. At the end of her year of readjustment, Som-Som would have a cast taken of her face, after which she would be fitted with the Broken Mask.

  The Broken Mask was not so much broken as sliced cleanly in two. Made of porcelain and covering the entire head, it would be precisely bisected with a small, silver chisel, starting at the nape of the neck, traversing the cold and hairless cranium, descending the ridge of the nose to divide the expressionless lips forever. The left side of the mask would be taken away and crushed to a fine talcum before being thrown to the winds.

  Prior to the fitting of the Broken Mask, Som-Som's head would be completely shaven, the scalp afterward rubbed with the foul-smelling mauve juices of a berry known to destroy the follicles of the hair so that there could be no regrowth. This would at least partially ensure her comfort during the next fifteen years, in which time the mask was not to be removed unless the slowly changing shape of the skull made it uncomfortable. In this eventuality, the mask would be taken from her and recast.

  Covering the right side of her head, the flawless topography of the Broken Mask would be uninterrupted by any aperture for hearing or vision. The porcelain eye was opaque and white and blind. The porcelain ear heard nothing. Concealed beneath this shell, their organic counterparts would be similarly disadvantaged. Som-Som would see nothing with her right eye, and would be deaf in her right ear. Only in the uncovered half of her face would the perceptions be unimpaired.