Liavek 6 Page 8

  A narrow stairwell curved from the corner by the hearth to the roof; the top steps were thick with cobwebs. Erlin swept through them, lifting her skirts higher than strictly necessary. The count stood back to allow the nervous merchant to precede him. Jen and Cav came last, and Jen pretended to tie her sandal so she could whisper to Cav. "Something's wrong. You don't address a count as 'Your Grace,' that should have alerted him that Mother isn't… that she doesn't …" But Cav, she saw, was not listening.

  Liavek spread out below them in a sun-splashed mosaic of twisting streets. To the east lay the flowered glory of the Levar's Park, crossed by the sparkle of the Cat River; to the south, the green copper roof of the palace. Above, masses of white clouds floated in turquoise. A brisk wind whipped Erlin's gown against her knees and Jen's unbound hair into her mouth. It was a perfect day for cloud casting.

  Count Dashif twisted his bracelet slowly around his wrist.

  "Now if I knew what question you wished cast …"

  "Ah, that is where the superior nature of your wizardry must come into play, mistress. My guest has a question, but being unused to consulting cloud casters, he does not wish to influence the answer by even phrasing it. And of course I do not wish to influence the answer, either." He stroked the jeweled bracelet with his left hand, and met Erlin's eyes.

  Jen felt herself flush with indignation. Erlin might not be … well, she might not be what she thought she was. But she was a wizard, a cloud caster, and for the count to suggest …

  Erlin herself gave no sign of anything. From her bodice (the merchant looked hastily at the distant river), she drew out the square of fine linen that was her luck object. Easily concealed, not likely to be stolen, sturdy enough to wash, the color of the sky. It was embroidered with silk clouds faded now to the color of cream.

  Please, Jen begged silently, please let her have the power this time, at least this one time again—

  And Erlin did. Jen saw the moment her mother's face changed. The spurious haughtiness and tawdry theatrics fell away, and in the planes and taut curves was the cloud caster Erlin might have been.

  She held her luck loosely in both hands, palms closed only enough to keep the soft linen from blowing away, and raised it to the sky. From the blue cloth a thin line of vapor rose in wisps. It spiraled slowly upward, misty in the sun, until Jen could no longer follow where it blended with the clouds above.

  The clouds began to change shape.

  First there were masses of uncarded wool, fluffy and white. Then the wool directly overhead began to thin, to stretch, to spin into long filaments against turquoise sky.

  The merchant gripped both hands tightly together.

  Erlin began to rock back and forth. Her lips parted, her eyes closed, and a light sweat filmed her forehead. Above her, the filaments of cloud began to sway. At first they moved all in the same direction, as if blown by a light wind. Slowly some of them changed direction, coalesced, came apart, and formed a definite pattern—but not a pattern Jen had ever before seen in a cloud casting. It looked like a ladder, with two long filaments crossed by short ties. Yet somehow Jen knew that it was not a ladder.

  "The railroad," Count Dashif said quietly.

  Beside the first casting, a second began to form. Huge clouds folded in on themselves, becoming compact, dense, and blocky.

  Roofs began to form. Doors, windows, and a peculiarly shaped gate, decorated with the head of a spitting camel.

  "I know that place!" Jen said aloud, before she could stop herself. It was Camel Alley, a dilapidated street running southeast from just inside Merchant's Gate, and notable only because its dilapidation and teeming tenements were more typical of Old Town than of the area around Merchant's Gate. Jen had trawled for clients there—but never alone.

  The merchant moaned. Jen found herself gripping Cav's fingers; they felt dry and still. Erlin's swaying became wilder, and as the other four craned their necks toward the sky, the cloud railroad began to blow toward the cloud alley. It was a snaky sort of blowing, as if the railroad writhed in indecision. Below, on the street, a small crowd had gathered, mostly jeering youths whose baggy pants blew in the opposite direction to the clouds, extravagant banners of chartreuse and scarlet and vermilion and lemon.

  All at once Jen felt Erlin's luck tingle over her mind.

  It had happened before, during an intense cloud casting. She was Erlin's daughter, she had had lessons in investiture for three years now, and she knew that her own talent was strong. She would not be able to influence Erlin's spell, but she was able to catch the spillage of magic, tingling and teasing her mind. She liked it.

  Cav pulled his hand out of hers as if it were on fire.

  As Jen turned toward him, the writhing railroad reached the alley in the clouds—and froze. Slowly, slowly, the tracks reared, like nothing so much as a ghostly cobra preparing to strike, until it loomed over the dilapidated buildings. There, it swayed, moving now to strike the alley, now to miss it. The sky darkened, and the jeering crowd fell abruptly silent. The merchant fell to his knees. His eyes never left the sky.

  Dazzled, Jen looked from the clouds to her mother—she had not known Erlin could do all that—and so saw the moment it happened.

  "I think you will have your decision soon," the count said in his musical voice. He addressed the merchant, but his gaze was on Erlin, and his right hand caressed the jewels in the bracelet on his left wrist.

  Erlin's dark eyes were huge, vulnerable, and strained with the moment of magic. Jen thought numbly what it must be costing her to hold that power back for even a moment. Why was she doing it? Why was she hesitating?

  Almost imperceptibly, the count shook his head.

  Erlin shuddered. The tingling in Jen's mind wrenched itself hard, and then turned itself wrong. She clapped both hands to her temples. Wrong, wrong: water burning, wood melting, magic forced into a shape it did not want to go …

  But Erlin forced it. The cloud railroad struck at Camel Alley—and missed. The tracks curved around the alley, not through, and all the buildings stood.

  The merchant cursed suddenly, clearly, with disappointment.

  The tracks stood clear for only a moment longer. Then the illusion began to melt back into clouds. Erlin gasped and collapsed against the balustrade. The fiery wrongness left Jen's mind, and she blinked in the sudden brightness of the paling sky.

  "My guest and I wish to thank you," Count Dashif said smoothly to Erlin. "You have been most helpful." The cloud caster looked at him with dangerous eyes.

  •

  "How could she do it?" Jen demanded of Cav, who said nothing. "How could she?"

  The two sat on the roof, in the navy blue hour just before night. There was still enough light to see each other's faces: Jen's preternaturally sharp, anger limning the bones; Cav's a dun pudding.

  "She knew what answer the count wanted, and she gave it to him. That poor merchant thinks the land is worthless now, or at least not worth the gold it would be if the railroad wanted it. And she did it with her luck. She sold her luck!"

  Cav said nothing.

  "It would be one thing to steal the bracelet—I thought of that. But the best cloud casting she's ever done, real power and magic—how could she?" Jen fell silent a moment. Then she cried with all the drama of Erlin herself, "If that's what being a cloud caster is, then I don't want to be one! I won't be like her!"

  "You will damn well be what I say you will be!" Erlin's voice cried. Her hand thrust over the top of the stairwell, followed by the rest of her. "How dare you!"

  Jen jumped up and clenched her hands. "How dare I what?"

  "How dare you judge me!"

  Jen thrust herself forward. Erlin stepped to meet her, and mother and daughter stood inches apart, glaring. Erlin raised her chin in the haughtiness of a great lady correcting a servant; Jen lowered hers like a market fighter.

  "I said you will not presume to judge me!"

  "I will judge anyone who betrays her greatest gift!"

  E
rlin's chin creased with the weary skepticism of someone who has learned from life; Jen raised hers.

  "When you are older, you'll understand things hidden from you now."

  "I will never be old enough to sell my one talent!"

  Erlin let her chin go soft and maternal; Jen tightened hers in incipient hysteria.

  "You have many talents, Jen dear. When you are a cloud caster—"

  "I won't be a cloud caster! I won't be anything! Do you think after what I've seen today, after what you did—"

  Erlin slapped her, lightly. Jen cried out as if she had been pushed over the balustrade. Erlin reached for her, quick tears filling her eyes. Jen pushed away her mother's arms, then flung herself into them, sobbing wildly. The two women clung and wailed. After two minutes of that, Jen bounded away, flinging her arms wide toward the sky.

  "How could you betray … that? It's like betraying life!"

  Erlin's tears disappeared and she smiled with superior patience. "Don't be so dramatic, dear. It's a bad habit."

  Cav made a sudden movement, but did not look up from studying his clasped hands.

  "Me!" Jen shrieked. "It's you, you're a … you did—"

  "What I did, I did for you! I've never done anything except for you and your brother! Just because I wanted to afford valuable luck pieces for you two, just because I didn't want you to have to invest your luck in a ragged piece of cloth as I was forced to, just because I wanted the very very best for my children"—she started to sob, pathetic sobs of maternal hurt—"wanted lovely luck pieces, so Cav will be tempted to go through with his investiture and be able to earn a respectable living and not die poor and starved and alone like I've been since your father left—that's all I wanted, to tempt Cav, to please Cav; this is all your fault, Cav—"

  Cav neither moved nor blinked,

  "Yes, it is!" Erlin cried, She put a handkerchief, scarlet and lace, to her eyes. "All I've ever wanted is to make something of my children, everything I've done has been for that, if you had only met me halfway, Cav, I wouldn't have done what Jen hates me for now—I wouldn't! Cav, my son, if you had only helped me know what to do, if you had only shown some spirit, if you had only wanted something—"

  Cav looked up. His broad pasty face caught the last of the daylight. Erlin stopped ranting and stared in astonishment. Jen stopped flinging her arms about and stared in astonishment.

  Cav said, "I want to invest my luck in the railroad."

  •

  He would not explain. The women begged and cried and raged and pleaded and fell on their knees and threw things and hugged him and hit him. Feminine ranting filled the shabby little house: feminine shrieking, feminine tears. Cav would not be worn down. He wanted to invest his luck in the railroad.

  Finally, Cav gave Jen some words that she supposed were an explanation. They were, at any rate, the most words he would string together on the subject of the railroad.

  "It's solid. It's hard. It goes somewhere."

  Jen, red-eyed, tried to consider this. "Solid"—unlike clouds. "Hard"—unlike a square of embroidered linen. "Going somewhere"—unlike Erlin's endless overwrought schemes, circling back on themselves to collapse in tangled hysteria.

  "But you'll die!" Jen wailed. "No one has ever invested luck in a railroad. We've never even seen a railroad!"

  They went to look at it. The three of them trooped out to the Merchant's Gate one hot day just before sunset, a procession solemn as a funeral. The women's faces were extravagant with swollen protest, Cav's as impassive as clay. Erlin wore black.

  There was not much to see. Although railroads had existed in Tichen for thirty years, construction on Liavek's first line had only begun six months ago. Track was being laid in Hrothvek, Saltigos, and Trader's Town, none of which would reach Liavek until the next year. Within the city, work had begun on the Central Station, although so far this edifice was represented by a low wall, some wooden framing, and a great deal of mud. The track of the spur line, which would eventually run inside the New Wall (including through what was now Camel Alley), was not yet begun.

  Outside the Merchant's Gate, surrounding what would become the Central Station, lay the land that would become the train yard. It stretched between the Golden Road and the Cat River, a maze of half-laid rails gleaming red in the bloody light. Some of the track, which was wood capped with a thick strip of steel, disappeared into long, low sheds; some of it circled back on itself; some of it just stopped, metal ends raw against the soft mud. Much of it still stood in great heavy piles around which the ruts of carts bit in deep ditches.

  "Impossible," Erlin said. "My dear son—you must see—a place like this …" She stubbed her toe on a half-buried rail and uttered a small scream.

  Cav's face shone.

  "Cav," Jen said in a small voice, "what would you invest your luck in? The tracks are laid in pieces—see, they fit together at these lines—they're not a unity. Not at all. And this idea of a 'train'—there isn't any train. Not yet. There won't be a train until the Levar's fifteenth birthday. And this station—oh, Cav, you know how bad it is to invest luck in a building! What if it burns down, or is destroyed like the houses in Camel Alley will be, or—there's nothing here to invest your luck in!"

  Cav said, "I want to invest my luck in the railroad."

  "But Cav—"

  "I forbid it," Erlin said. "There is no argument. I absolutely forbid it." She stood very straight, her black shawl billowing around her like a sail.

  Cav did not answer. Jen said, in the same small voice, "Investiture is so difficult anyway …"

  Erlin turned on her. "Now don't you start! You've had the finest in training, it's cost me a fortune, and except for that I might have lived on Wizard's Row myself … saving every minute… clothes on my back … time I cast for a margrave … best I know how …" They were no longer listening. Jen, apprehensive and wan, gazed at Cav. Cav gazed out across the muddy farmlands and darkening road, out toward Trader's Town, out beyond that to the unknown and empty and silent Great Waste, out where the railroad would go.

  •

  The twins had been born a little after dawn, Jenneret first and Caveril just a few minutes later, after a labor that had cost Erlin only five hours of discomfort. Nothing she could do had made labor longer, or harder. The birth had been notable only in that Cav, even when slapped on his broad little ass, had refused to cry.

  For this investiture birthday, Erlin had spent every copper she had, buying great quantities of sweetmeats and marzipan, good wine, masses of blue and white silk to shroud the windows, and two luck objects. Both Cav and Jen had walked through the last few weeks subdued and obedient, with little to say, but the sight of their luck objects should cure that, Erlin thought. Matching turquoise amulets bought at one of Liavek's better shops, the Tiger's Eye, from a tall black-haired woman who—though not even a wizard!—had stared with insolent amazement at Erlin's gown.

  Well, in a few more hours no one would ever stare insolently at her and hers again. The twins were destined for great things. She, Erlin, could feel it. They would be cloud casters of such fame that nobles would come even from Tichen and Ka Zhir to consult them, and they would be celebrated in song and story. And Erlin, too, of course, as their mother, honored and revered for this triumphant outcome to her tragic struggle to survive after desertion by a spindly-souled lover.

  She wondered how one set about having the Desert Mouse company do a play about one's life.

  The evening before the investiture, all was in readiness. Jen and Cav and she had scoured, had baked, had purchased sweet-smelling Farlander candles, had hung the voluminous blue and white silk over all the windows. The twin luck pieces, turquoise amulets carved with such intricate scrollwork that the mind could make of it anything it would, including clouds, lay on twin silk pillows before the hearth. Just before midnight, Erlin disappeared into her room to bathe and perfume herself, and to dress in the brocade gown. Nothing else would do for this, the crowning night of her life. In a few years, o
f course, she would have clothes and jewels far greater than this, greater than the bracelet from Count Dashif (so unfortunate that it had had to be sold). She would need them to receive guests at Cav and Jen's home on Wizard's Row. But for tonight, the brocade was the best she had, and nothing less would do.

  She smiled at herself in the old mirror, by the midnight light of the expensive candles.

  "Mother," Jen said, "Cav is gone."

  Erlin turned slowly toward her daughter. "What?"

  "Cav. He's gone."

  "No. He can't be. You're mistaken. Look again, you impossible child!"

  "I think," Jen said, "that he's gone to …" and then could not say it. Into Erlin's face rushed a look so terrible that Jen took a step backward. Thunderheads mounted there, heat lightning flashed; in the ominous rumble small animals dashed for cover. Between stiff lips Erlin got out, "Get me a footcab from the inn. Or a bodyguard. Whichever you find first."

  "But—"

  "Whichever is faster."

  "It's almost ti—"

  "Go!"

  Jen went. Running down the dark street to the inn, two thoughts crashed in her mind: My investiture, and Oh, Cav—

  Bursting back inside with the incurious but greedy guard, she was amazed to see that Erlin still wore the brocade gown, that the amulets were gone from the hearth, and that Erlin thrust at her a thick bundle of blue and white silk.

  "Erlin … not at the—"

  "Run!" Erlin cried, with a furious glance at the bodyguard. "Come! Run!"

  "Run, mistress?"

  "You heard me! Run!"

  "I do not run, mistress. I—"

  "Double your fee!"

  Jen gaped; Erlin never paid double anything. The man's eyes narrowed and he nodded. ErIin picked up her preposterous skirts with one hand, and Jen saw the moment the storm actually broke.

  Running through the moonlit streets of Liavek, Jen feIt a stitch in her side. Erlin, panting and gasping, would not let them stop for an instant. People still strolled the warm and sweet-smelling summer streets; in Old Town youths jeered at them, in the Levar's Park soldiers and flower sellers and lovers watched bemused as the weird trio tore past, Erlin's gown flapping like brocaded fins. Jen could not catch her breath.