Liavek 5 Read online

  "Yes. Yes!" The child struggled. Arianai bent forward. Quard hugged Theleme and said, "Look away from the man, Theleme. Look away. Do you see something coming there? Do you see a camel, and a rider? I think they're coming. Do you see them?"

  "Yes…I see them."

  "And does the rider have a whip? Can you see the whip in the rider's hand?"

  "Yes."

  "Look, Theleme! The rider's reaching down for you. Catch the rider's hand as the camel comes by. Quick, now! Catch it!" He gripped Theleme's hand in his own.

  "I have it!"

  "I'll pull you up now!" He tugged gently at Theleme's hand. "Hold tight, hold tight! We have to ride fast!" He slipped his hand around Theleme's waist.

  "I'm holding, master!"

  "Now, we must ride for the green man. You have to be brave now, Theleme, for we must drive him out. Do you see the whip in the rider's hand?"

  "Yes, I see it. I'll try to be brave."

  "Very well. Here we come. And here comes the whip." Quard gestured to Arianai. She raised her hands and clapped them as hard as she could. Theleme twitched, but held tight to the stuffed camel.

  "Here it comes again!" Crack!

  "Is he running, Theleme? Can you see the green man run?"

  "Yes! He's running! He's running away…" Theleme's voice faded, and she relaxed in Quard's arms. He rocked her gently.

  "I think she will be better now," he said finally. "Here—can you take her?"

  Arianai did, and Quard stood up, the stuffed toy under his arm. He put it in Arianai's arms beside Theleme, who cuddled it without waking. Then he walked to the door. "I'll go up to the corner and get you a footcab. There must be an enterprising few of them out in the slop." He opened the door, letting cool air in from the dark outside. "Well. It's stopped raining."

  "Quard, I—"

  "I doubt she'll remember the story about the princess as any different from the rest of the dream. If she does, tell her that I made another camel, just for her."

  "Quard."

  "Let me get the cab. You don't want to carry her home, do you?"

  "I wouldn't mind. If you carried the camel."

  "'I'll carry the child if you carry the camel.'" Quard's voice was suddenly fiat. "That must be the punch line to a joke, but I don't remember it."

  "Come and have tea. I'd like to talk to you."

  "What, and wake Theleme with our pillow conversation?" sounding more sad than funny.

  "Do you have other appointments?"

  "There's your cab," Quard said, in a tone that made Arianai hug the child tight. He went running out the door, and was gone for minutes, and minutes, the door wide open. Then a footcab did appear. Arianai went to meet it, found the driver had already been paid. But Quard was nowhere in sight. Arianai closed the shop door and rode home. She put Theleme to bed, the camel still in the child's grasp, and then sat in her office making notes on the case and rereading medical books that had been dull the first time. Finally, at almost midnight, she went to bed, and her sleep was very sweet.

  •

  Shiel ola Siska blew through the narrow bronze pipe, sending a narrow jet of flame from the spirit burner onto the tinned wires in her left hand, brazing them to a circular copper plate as broad as three fingers. She tongued the blowpipe, spraying fire around the copper, producing a pleasing rainbow finish on the hammered metal. She slid her fingers to the other end of a wire, bent it around, then fused it to the plate. Another wire was curved and twisted over and under the first before being brazed in place; then the next, and the next.

  The end product was a copper brooch bearing a coil of wires, tangled, complex, yet pleasing in form. The purpose of the item, the ritual, was antimagic: When luck was driven through the brooch, spells cast at the wearer would be ensnared in the coil, their energy twisted and untuned and dissipated. Certain spells, at any rate. "The most crucial of magics," ola Siska's instructor had taught her, "is the illusion that wizards are infallible, but their customers can foul up any enchantment."

  And as with any magical device, it was temporary; it would lose its luck on ola Siska's birthday, or with her death. No wizard could truly create. A true adept could bind luck into a thing and make it truly magical—but only once, for the bound magic was gone from the wizard forever. The brooch was just a brief diversion of luck, as a spinning top that could stand impossibly on its point until it slowed and toppled.

  Ola Siska stroked her finger across the wires. They played a faint series of notes, not quite music. She snuffed the spirit burner, took the brooch to a table covered in white linen. A high window let the light of the three-quarter moon shine upon it. She took up a pair of forceps, and with them lifted a small silver casting of a spread-eagled, naked man. She started to lower it into the nest of wires.

  There was a slight rumbling beneath the floor. The copper brooch bounced into the air. rolled across the linen, and fell to the floor, where it kept rolling. Shiel muttered darkly and turned to catch it as it wheeled away—had she been thinking of spinning tops? Was that why the thing was acting so—

  The brooch bumped against metal with a little tinny clink and fell over. The thing it had struck shifted; it was a boot, of lapped bronze plates.

  Ola Siska looked up, slowly. Above the boot was a bronze greave, a knee-cover, then, resting on the knee, a jointed bronze gauntlet. The hand pushed down, and the knee levered up, and the figure of a man in full metal armor stood up, a bronze man shaded green with verdigris. His breastplate was heavily engraved with intricate designs, and his helmet bore winglike flanges at the temples. Its crown nearly brushed Shiel ola Siska's ceiling beams.

  His faceplate was a mirror-finished sheet of metal, without features, without holes for sight or speech or air.

  Her throat felt tight. So it had not been time and chill night air that had taken Sen Wuchien after all, she thought. She should have known.

  She should have been told!

  The bronze man walked toward her, holding out its hands. Ola Siska saw that its forearms were spiked down their length, like a crab's arms. She was quite certain that the jagged metal points had not been there a moment ago.

  She flexed her hands. If she had not been at work, there would have been a ring on every finger, half a dozen bracelets on each of her wrists, each one the ritual of a spell. But she still wore amulets, around her neck and ankles, in her hair. And most important, she had the vessel of her luck safely on her person.

  She caught her full skirts in her hands, swept them upward like a butterfly's wings, then released the cloth and touched a square pendant of interlaced steel and glass rods.

  As the skirts fell, a circle of something like stained glass, though impossibly thin for glass, appeared before her. Grainy color radiated from the center of the disk, and thin black veins.

  The bronze man collided with the colored disk. There were showers of sparks where his armor touched it. Ola Siska reached to the top of her head, pulled out two long golden pins. She raised her hands and breathed deep, feeling the power rise from her vessel to the pins.

  A bronze gauntlet punched through the disk in a spray of colored fragments. Cracks shot through the glass, and in a moment it collapsed to the floor, and evaporated.

  Ola Siska stiffened, but did not break the incantation. She threw the two pins. They flew true as arrows through the air, and pierced the bronze man's hands, nailing them to his breastplate. Ola Siska raised her right fist, slammed it into her left palm, and the pins shone with unbearable blue light, hissing as they welded themselves into place.

  The bronze man struggled to pull his hands free, as Shiel ola Siska groped through her boxes of jewelry for the proper ritual device. There was a grating noise, then a rhythmic clinking, like a music box but deeper and flatter. Ola Siska seized a bracelet and turned.

  The bronze man's arms had fallen off at the shoulders, and dangled from his chest by the nails through their gauntlets. From the sides of his breastplate, another pair of arms, thin and rodlike, was fol
ding out, oiled cables gliding in grooves along their length.

  Ola Siska dropped the bracelet—no use now to sever the thing's legs—and turned, and ran, out the door and into the night. She could hear the clanking of the bronze man behind her, and could not help but waste a moment in looking back: There were now spikes and hooks and blades down all its limbs, and steam hissed from its joints.

  She ran up the street, trying to keep a grip on her thoughts and her skirts, unable to order her luck with the brazen thing behind her. She seemed to feel a dull red heat from it, but that was only in her mind, surely in her mind—

  She paused, leaned against a doorframe, turned to face the thing. It was twenty paces behind her, taking slow long strides. There was no steam, no furnace glow, and even its steps were not overly loud; it had a sort of quiet dignity as it came for her. She held up a hand in a warding gesture, saw that her fingernails shone brilliantly green.

  Into the pit with dignity, she thought, and hiked up her skirts and ran. She heard the clank of metal behind her, dared not waste the time to turn but knew it was gaining. Could it tire? Metal fatigue. she thought, with—irony? Ha, ha, ha.

  Suddenly she thought of a place to run, a thing to run for. She had cast the spell away uncast, and now—

  She stretched luck down to her right foot, felt the anklet there rattle and loosen. There was no time to stop, take the thing off, do this properly; it had to be timed just right—

  Ola Siska kicked off the loop of silver. It sailed out before her, spinning, expanding from a bracelet to a belt to a loop broader than her shoulders; it struck the pavement; she leaped into it—

  And landed on her hands and knees, gasping, half the city away, where Park Boulevard met the Street of the Dreamers. The shop called the Tiger's Eye was dark, its awnings folded. There was only the slight glitter of street lamps on the items behind its windows.

  Shiel tried to stand. She couldn't, not yet; the spell had drawn most of her strength. She was terribly cold. And her nails and knuckles were greenly luminous.

  She pushed herself upright and went to the door of the shop, groped at her belt for a gold-and-silver key that hung there. She rubbed the pendant, pulling hard at the last of her luck.

  Her hand spasmed and the key fell on its cord. Of course the shop would be sealed against magical entry. She pounded on the door, still short the breath to shout.

  Behind her was a sound like a key in an unoiled lock. She looked into the dark shop. and in the glass saw the bronze man reflected, tall and shining and severe. his arms stretched out to her.

  Ola Siska leaned against the door. With just a moment to recover herself, she could break the glass, reach through…no, that was too obvious, the inner holt would require a key. There was no sign of a stirring within, no lights, just a twinkling like stars on crystal and silver and brass. Only an inch of wood and glass between her and that whole constellation of life.

  Something blurred her view: It was her face, shining green in the glass. Was that truly the way it was, then? Was she really so tired of running?

  She turned, leaning back against the door, hands on knees that glowed greenly through her skirts. She looked up at the bronze man, who stood above her with his metal hands outstretched. His face was green as well…no, it was just her reflection.

  "Come," said the bronze man, his voice rasping and twanging like a saw cutting wires, "if you are coming."

  "I could have run farther still," she said, breathless but with dignity. "I could." She held out her hand, but remained sitting, so that he would have to kneel to her, like a courtier and not a conqueror.

  Which he obligingly did.

  •

  The sun came out the next morning, in more ways than one; Theleme woke wanting breakfast, and almost smiling. Arianai gave her some buttered toast and juice, knowing the child would be hungry but that her stomach would be in no shape for a heavy meal, and then they tossed on light cloaks and went for a walk along the canal.

  As they crossed the lower bridge, they ran into a cluster of people on the street, around the Tiger's Eye, and a line of Guards keeping them away from something. Arianai recognized the officer in charge, a tall, hawk-faced woman with straight black hair, and walked up to her.

  "Hello, Jem."

  Jemuel, captain of the Levar's Guard, turned. "Hi, Anni." More softly she said, "Keep the little one away. It's not nice, what's over there."

  "Can I help?"

  "Not any longer, Anni. It's another green one."

  "What? A Green priest?"

  "Another glowing one—you haven't heard? The half-copper rags have been full of it."

  "I've been busy, and you know I don't read the rags."

  Jemuel said, "We've got two wizards dead in three nights. Not a scratch on either of them—but the bodies are glowing green as fireflies."

  "Just a moment, Jem." Arianai led Theleme over to a baker's cart, bought her a sweet biscuit for distraction, then went back to Jemuel. "Glowing? Magic?"

  "What it seems. Funny, though, you should even have to ask—Thomorin Wiln said that phosphorus could make a body glow so, but he tested, and there wasn't any, nor any other poison he could find. Phosphorus, imagine that. More ways to die than you'd think, eh, Anni?"

  "Who were they?"

  "Um? Oh. Two nights back was that old Titch who lived up on the canal, Wuchien; found him in the park. And this morning when Snake opens up, she finds Shiel ola Siska glowing on her doorstep."

  "Snake," Arianai said distantly, thinking of Snake's skill with the camel driver's whip she always carried, thinking too of a rag-stuffed toy.

  "—so there it sits," Jemuel was saying, "one not far from his house, the other a long way the wrong side of the canal; a man, a woman; a Titch and a Liavekan—no pattern to it except that they both did magic, no motive, no sense. And an ola Siska dead, so the nobility are demanding that Somebody Do Something." She sighed. "Guess who."

  "Captain?" It was a young Tichenese, Snake's assistant Thyan. "There's kaf."

  "Enough for one more?" Jemuel said, indicating Arianai.

  "Of course. Hello, Healer."

  "Well…will Theleme be any trouble in there?"

  ''I'll take care of her, mistress," Thyan said. "Part of the job. Do come in."

  Jemuel and Arianai sat in wicker chairs, by a tiny brass table with the porcelain kaf service; Snake, wearing an embroidered abjahin with the long whip coiled incongruously at her waist, leaned against a cabinet, stroking her cup, looking as if she wanted to pace. Arianai recalled that the shopkeeper had quietly put out word that she was to marry shortly. Death on the doorstep must have been quite an intrusion.

  "You did know ola Siska?" Jemuel said.

  "Of course I knew her. Everyone involved with jewelry did. But I never carried much of her work. Mostly she sold through Janning Lightsmith, sometimes the Crystal Gull."

  "Too expensive for your trade?"

  "Thanks, Jem."

  "Well?" Jemuel said, not apologetic.

  Snake gestured with her fingertips. "Not to my taste. Shiel had a particular fondness for…well, strange images. Skulls. Human figures twisted up. And sharp edges: she showed me a necklace once that…" Snake ran a hand around her throat.

  Arianai said, "There's a market for that?"

  Snake said, in a more relaxed voice, "There's a market for everything. I'm no prude; I'll sell you a poison ring, or a pendant with a hidden dagger. But Shiel ola Siska's work seemed to…celebrate death, and pain." She looked around the shop, at the multitude of trinkets and oddments that crowded the place. "Let me show you something," she said suddenly, went behind the counter and brought out a velvet-covered tray. She raised a spherical pendant on a fine gold chain. "This is one of hers. I bought it for the craftsmanship, before I quite saw what the thing was."

  The pendant was an openwork ball of gold and silver pieces; the gold bars were straight, the silver ones coiled.

  "It's a shiribi puzzle, isn't it?" Arianai said. "What's th
at in the center?" She put her finger to the pendant.

  "Careful!" Snake cried, and Arianai stopped her hand, just as she saw that the object within the shiribi puzzle was a silver figure of a man, curled into a fetal position with one arm outstretched.

  Then Snake's hand shook, and the metal sphere bumped against Arianai's fingertip; and the ball collapsed on its silver springs, into a tight knot of white and yellow metal from which a pale hand emerged in a gesture of pure desperation.

  "Kosker and Pharn!" Jemuel said.

  "It'll certainly be salable now," Snake said, "dead artists and all that. But I've wondered ever since I first looked closely at the thing, would I want to do business with anyone who'd buy it?"

  "You think it had anything to do with ola Siska being at your door last night?"

  "I've told you already, Jem, I don't know why she was there."

  "And you didn't hear her knock."

  "If she knocked, I didn't hear it." She put the pendant down. "There was a privacy spell on the bedroom last night."

  "Thank you for saving me the question," Jemuel said. "Anni? Something wrong?"

  Arianai realized she was still staring at the shiribi puzzle. "No, nothing."

  From several corners of the shop, clocks began to strike nine. Jemuel said, "Pharn's teeth, it's three hours past my bedtime. If anything occurs to you—either of you—as a clue, you'll let me know, right?"

  "Of course."

  "Sure, Jem."

  "Thanks for the kaf. I'll sleep better for it." She waved and went out of the shop, jingling the porcelain bells above the door.

  Arianai said, "Snake, you sell some toys, don't you?"

  "Sure. Want something for the little girl you've been—"

  "No, I…have you ever bought from Quard?"

  "Quard? Yes, some marionettes. He makes the best string puppets I've ever seen. He'd have a reputation and a half, if his shop weren't harder to find than Wizard's Row in a dust storm."

  "Hard to find…"

  Snake put her hand on Arianai's shoulder. "Are you sure there's nothing wrong, Anni?" They locked eyes for a long moment, and then Snake said gently, "Oh. Yeah. Me, too…guess you've heard." She smiled, a little sadly. "It does make it harder to look at death, doesn't it?"