City of Bones (26 page)

He edged forward just enough to get a poor view of the far side of the room, but still couldn’t see anyone. He didn’t dare move further in; these were his own people, not half-blind city dwellers, and extra caution was called for.

The voices faded as the speakers left the room. Khat waited, then stepped around the side of the arch—and was staring at his cousin Rhan, not ten paces away.

Rhan was hardly less startled than Khat. He came forward, and Khat backed away, out onto the terrace again. Rhan stopped just inside the archway, as if he realized this wasn’t going to be a joyous reunion. “How did you get here?” he asked.

There were a dozen not-so-clever answers to that. Khat asked only, “Did you come here looking for me?”

Rhan was his age, his height, dressed as if he had just come from the desert but without the dust, in robe and boots and loose trousers. In the years since Khat had seen him last, he had also become a shaman-healer. His forehead was tattooed with a blue circle, meant to represent the third eye that saw past the natural world into the realm of the unnatural. Khat and Rhan had used to look somewhat alike, but Khat couldn’t see himself in his cousin’s even features anymore.

“No,” Rhan answered now. At Khat’s expression he grimaced, and added, “It’s only part of the reason. We had business to settle about the trade roads. But we heard from a trader in the High Season caravan that you were in Charisat. It was the first we’d heard since Leslan saw you in Dunsaru. We came—”

“What trader?” Khat interrupted. He noticed he was speaking the pure Old Menian of the Enclave now too; it was a wonder that he remembered it.

Rhan looked confused, as if he couldn’t see how it mattered. “A city man named Biaktu.”

Khat swore. He could have guessed that. Biaktu would talk to anybody.

Impatient, Rhan said, “We want you to come back to the Enclave with us.” He took a step forward, and Khat took a step back against the balustrade. Rhan stopped, startled again. He said slowly, “You’ve changed.”

Maybe that was true. Khat was finding it almost impossible to meet his cousin’s eyes, for fear of seeing what he felt, and for fear of revealing himself. He didn’t know why he had come here. Curiosity, maybe. The kind that led you to poke at half-healed wounds and make the blood flow again. He said, “So you want me back. Tell me why.” His uncle, Rhan’s father, was probably the most influential man in the Enclave councils now. That was certainly the way things had been heading when Khat had left.

“Leslan told you…”

“I want to hear it from you.”

Rhan took a breath. “You’re one of the last of the Amaher lineage. If you don’t come back, if you never leave us children, the Enclave could lose that line entirely. That’s why my father wants you back. The rest of us just… want you back.”

Khat had known when he left the Enclave his lineage was near to dying out; it wasn’t his problem anymore. “He should have thought of that before he told me to leave.”

“He didn’t tell you to leave.”

Suddenly Khat had no trouble meeting Rhan’s eyes. He said, “No. He told me I should have died with the others. He wondered what I’d done for the pirates to keep them from killing me. He was sorry they couldn’t think up anything quicker than putting a knife through my leg and leaving me staked out to bleed to death, and he was sorry you and the others got there before I’d quite finished doing it—and at the time, I was sorry about it too. If that’s not telling me to leave, I don’t know what is.”

Rhan shook his head, but he was the one who wouldn’t make eye contact now, and it hadn’t been so long that Khat couldn’t recognize the significance of that gesture from another kris. Rhan said, “He was wrong, and now the rest of the family is condemning him for driving you away. He needs you. He sent me here to find you. Isn’t that revenge enough?” Rhan gestured out toward the city, suddenly angry. “How can you live in this place? They’re ignorant and dirty, the city reeks, they turn their own people into pirates …”

“Yes,” Khat said softly. “We’re much better than they are. We only turn our own relatives into pirates. Or try.”

Rhan’s eyes darkened. “I know you don’t believe me, but that’s not what my father intended.”

“You’re right, I don’t believe you.”

That was two deadly insults in the space of as many breaths, and the way the words were spoken in Old Menian left no doubt of the intent. But Rhan only looked away again, and said, “We’re leaving tomorrow. Whatever you’ve done here, you can still leave with us, part of the embassy and under their Elector’s protection until you’re out of Charisat.”

Khat looked out over the garden, smiling grimly. The assumption that he had done something terrible here, that it would take the Elector’s protection simply to get out of the city safely, was almost flattering. And it was strange that the belief that a kris living in a Fringe City must be a criminal was shared even by other kris. But he knew the offer was genuine, whatever he thought of the intentions behind it.

Khat wasn’t fool enough to feel any affection for Charisat itself, but he liked living here. He liked the relics, the access to books, the food, even some of the people, occasionally. But he could leave this place behind him now, leave Riathen to deal with the Elector’s nasty Heir, leave mad Aristai Constans unable to find him. Sagai and Miram need never find out that he had ever stolen for Lushan, leaving all well on that score, as long as he didn’t think about the fact that he would never see them again. He could do that. He was used to leaving friends. Elen… Elen could get the scholar’s name and continue the fool’s quest on her own.

Except that Constans didn’t think it was a fool’s quest, or he wouldn’t have sent Shiskan to kill Radu the fortune-teller. So maybe it wasn’t a fool’s quest.

He couldn’t decide if he was being a fool or a coward, or both. He looked back to Rhan. “No.”

“What… ?”

“No, it’s not revenge enough,” he said, and swung over the balustrade before Rhan could move to stop him.

Khat hesitated at the edge of a grove. There was movement in the greenery off to his right, a flash of bronze from a vigil’s robe. Someone must have seen him pass through the garden. He still had Elen’s token, but explanations would be difficult, if not impossible. Khat bolted through the trees, heading for the garden wall.

The gardeners had been piling loose brush here, and Khat crashed into it. He had no idea how loud dry wood could be when it cracked. The vigils were after him in an instant.

Khat came to an open space where the ground was covered by silversword and a small fountain built into the garden wall trickled water into a low gutter at its base. He turned at bay—they would be on him in moments.

But the two vigils didn’t break through the flowering bushes after him. He could see them—they stumbled, pointed in different directions, called conflicting orders to each other, and finally veered off out of the grove entirely.

Khat watched them, amazed and thinking,
Drunk this early
? Well, it was the First Tier.

“I told you not to come back here.”

Khat spun and scaled the wall as if he had springs in his legs. Only when he was perched on top did he look for Constans.

The mad Warder leaned against a fig tree as if he owned the place—which, for all Khat knew, he might. He still wore the dusty black mantle, with no veil. He said, “I told you it would do you no good. Was I wrong?”

“I didn’t know you came out in daylight,” Khat said. That was only partly a taunt. Constans didn’t look quite real under the morning sun. With his height and sun-faded hair and light eyes he could have been kris, somebody’s crazy old granduncle. Except somebody’s crazy old granduncle couldn’t make two men lose themselves in broad daylight simply by wanting it.

“Was I wrong?” Constans was gently persistent.

Khat dug his fingers into the stone to keep his balance and glanced around. There was a walkway on the other side of the wall, with a shaded colonnade to one side with tiled benches for passersby. No sign of anyone. He said, “This wasn’t what you meant.”

“True,” Constans admitted. “But I wasn’t wrong.”

An errant breeze ruffled Khat’s hair, and through a gap in the trees he saw the vigils halfway across the garden by the lotus pool, arguing. He didn’t know how much longer he dared stay here. “Why did Shiskan kill Radu and not me?”

Constans shook his head, mildly exasperated. “If you don’t know what happened there, you still know nothing.”

He’s not wrong about that, either
. Khat snorted. “Then why bother with me?”

“And how long can you run from everything?” Constans countered, sounding as if he really wanted to hear the answer.

In this city where Khat’s dead body was worth more than he was alive, not long. And the Waste was nowhere to run to. The person Rhan thought he and the others wanted back was long gone, had died years ago when the pirates had shown him just what helplessness was. If he ever went back to the Waste to live for good, it would be with the ghosts. Constans saw far more of that than was safe, and any answer that even approached the truth was dangerous. Khat asked again, “Why bother with me?”

“Has Riathen burned the bones for you lately?” Constans started forward, moving unhurriedly. “You should let me do it for you. I don’t let my preconceptions cloud my vision.”

Khat thought,
That’s enough of this
, and fell back off the wall, landing on his feet. He ran down the walkway, not looking back.

“Elen is a sweet girl, and to be searching for relics of strange repute is wonderfully interesting,” Sagai said thoughtfully. “But I wish there was some way we could bow out of this game.”

“I shouldn’t have dragged you into this,” Khat said. He had told Sagai about his most recent adventure, leaving out only Aristai Constans’s part in it.

“I invited myself in, and if anyone is going to be assigned blame it should be this Riathen, who sounds like a very unpleasant sort of man.”

Khat couldn’t argue with that. They stood at the wall of the Academia, under the shade of one of the double row of colonnades that ran along it. This was as much as most people ever saw of the place, and here the students and lesser scholars taught classes for those who could afford to pay. Reading and writing Tradetongue for archivists, numbers and sums for clerks, and an occasional wild-eyed and threadbare scholar who told stories of the Ancients for copper bits. This was also where scholars bought relics from lower-tier dealers, and there were a few such transactions going on now. Khat saw Danil and another dealer he knew displaying a collection of tile or ceramic fragments for an eager young scholar, and he hoped Elen would get here before they finished and came over to pump Sagai and him for information.

Across the street a gaggle of peddlers sold anything the scholars might want, from scraps of paper and ink cakes to the backings for wax tablets. The Academia had been founded by the Seventh Elector as a small school for the study of the Ancients. As Charisat had grown in power and relics had grown in value in the markets, the Academia had grown in size and influence. It now taught everything from medicine to philosophy, and had one of the largest archives of Survivor texts in the Fringe Cities.

Elen appeared out of the crowd and came up to them. She nodded a greeting to Sagai, then said stiffly to Khat, “I was going to apologize to you, but after what you did to me, I don’t think I will.”

“Did Seul die of apoplexy?” he asked her.

Elen’s lips twitched as she suffered through some internal struggle. Then in a more normal voice she said, “No, but he’s going to die of something else if he keeps behaving the way he has been.”

“Do you have the name?” Sagai asked her.

Elen held up a scrap of paper. “Yes. I came as soon as the clerks found it. It’s a scholar named Arad-edelk.”

“Never heard of him before,” Khat said. He had been hoping it would turn out to be someone he had done work for, someone who might be inclined to believe their warning, but at least it wasn’t one of the more prominent scholars, who were notoriously contemptuous of relic dealers. Maybe this Arad would be easier to talk to.

Armed with the clerk’s scrap of paper, Elen went up to the gate vigil. “We need to speak with the scholar Arad-edelk.” As she spoke, she twitched her plain brown mantle aside to show the painrod hanging at her waist.

The confused vigil looked at Elen’s lower-tier robes, at her pain-rod, at Khat and Sagai, then unlocked the gate.

They came through into a small court, where blue and white tiled archways led off through a gray stone gatehouse. An old scholar hastily trying to arrange his veil came toward them. “Warder, there is some problem?”

“We must speak with the scholar Arad-edelk. That’s all.” Elen’s smile was meant to be reassuring, but the man looked askance at her.

“I see. He has very important work, but perhaps …”

Just then another scholar came striding up toward them as if he thought they were there to storm the place. His mantle and robes were richer, and he wore the
mythenin
chain of office the ranking scholars affected. Khat recognized him with a mental grimace. It was Ecazar, who had held the position of Master Scholar for the past ten years. The Academia might have other fields of study, but Ecazar was first and always a relic scholar. Despite this he and old Robelin had never agreed on anything.

Ecazar looked Khat over as if he suspected him of something disgusting, then asked Elen, “What is the meaning of this?”

Elen gave up on smiling. With an edge in her voice, she said, “I’m a Warder, of Master Riathen’s house. I would simply like a few moments of Scholar Arad-edelk’s time, if it’s not too much trouble.”

Ecazar struggled to think of a way he could refuse, then gave in with poor grace. “Hmm. This way.” He strode off across the court, the older scholar who had greeted them trailing him like an obedient servant. Ecazar had always harbored a resentment against the Warders, since the Academia was answerable only to the Elector and the Warders were the only court officials who could conceivably question the Master Scholar’s authority inside its walls. That Elen appeared here with Khat didn’t help.

Elen and the scholars drew a little ahead, and as they followed, Sagai asked Khat, “What did you do to Elen?”

“Nothing,” he told him. “She’s making it up.”

Sagai didn’t appear to find this believable.

Ecazar led them through an archway, up a short flight of broad steps, and through another series of courts. The buildings were all rambling and stone-built, their arches and doors framed by tile or colored pebbles. The fountains were shaped into tortoise shells or abstract suns, and most had two or three tiers, showing they were more for looking at than for drinking or washing, but the Academia got its water money straight from the Elector’s court anyway. They also passed the little plaza with the clock tower, almost as old as the Academia itself. The clock rang a bell for each hour, and outside of each of its five galleries a procession of bronze and gold suns, moons, and other astronomical symbols rotated at the appropriate times. The three-story escapement was supposed to be the finest precision instrument of its kind in all the Fringe, and the clock also told phases of the moon, the annual movement of the sun, and predicted the first days of the High and Low Seasons every year, but these were of use only to scholars.

Students talking or reading in the shade of the little courts stopped to stare curiously at them. There were veiled Patrician boys and young Patrician women in jewelry and fine kaftans, but most were humbler sorts from the trading families of the Fourth Tier.

It’s been a long time
, Khat thought. Once he had been such a common sight here few had stared. He noticed his partner’s preoccupied look. This was the life Sagai should have had, as a member of the Scholars’ Guild in Kenniliar. Sagai had managed to do some work for the Academia when he had first come to Charisat, but most of the tasks that could be given to noncitizens went to one of the many apprentice scholars instead, and he hadn’t been able to support a family on so few commissions. Khat asked, “Do you miss it?”

“Occasionally,” Sagai admitted. “After the excitement of the relic trade, I might find it dull.”

Not likely
, Khat thought.
Not likely
. He missed it himself, especially the free access to the Academia’s libraries. Books were occasionally sold in the Fifth Tier markets, but these were always cheap pamphlets filled with wild tales of adventurous caravaneers and traders in foreign cities. Miram saved her tokens and bought a few every so often, read them aloud to Netta and the children until the pages threatened to split, then sold them to dealers on the Sixth Tier. There were booksellers on the Fourth Tier who regularly obtained copies of scholars’ notes from the Academia and would lend them for relatively modest fees, but none were happy catering to noncitizens, and none would even let Khat in the door. Even Sagai at his most persuasive was only allowed to take out one volume at a time; he called trips to the booksellers tests of humility, and said it was the only place in the city where one paid for the privilege of being reminded that one was a foreigner and a resident of a lower tier, instead of getting it for free from strangers on the street.

They came to a low building with a pillared portico, set all by itself in a roomy court. As they went up a broad flight of steps and into its cool, bare entranceway, Ecazar told Elen, “This is where Arad resides. It’s been set aside for his work.”

Sagai raised an eyebrow at Khat, who shrugged one shoulder. If Arad had an entire house to himself in the crowded Academia, he must be important indeed.

They passed down a short hall, quiet and bare, and into a large central room with several obliquely angled ceiling louvers letting in the daylight. The walls were unadorned, but in the past someone had scribbled figures and notes on them that a scrubbing hadn’t completely erased.

“Wait here, and don’t touch anything,” Ecazar said. “I’ll summon Arad.”

As he left, the older scholar took up a position at one of the doorways, watching them as if he was on guard.

“Of course,” Elen muttered, and glanced around. “Why do you think they’re so nervous?” she asked quietly, but Khat and Sagai didn’t hear her.

Their attention had been firmly captured by what was obviously Arad-edelk’s current project and the reason he had been allotted such spacious quarters.

On the floor in the far corner of the room was a splash of soft, glowing color. It was an Ancient mural reconstructed from cracked tile pieces. The central portion was at least seven feet long and ten wide. The edges were uneven still, and some sections had gaping holes, showing the job was far from finished. Sagai gasped, and Khat felt weak in the knees himself.

“Oh,” Elen said, noticing it. “Look at that.”

Many of the surviving murals were views of the sea, but this was a landscape, and different from anything seen before. It seemed to show a place of limitless horizon, of low rolling hills covered by high grass, dotted by flowers of red, yellow, even purple. In the foreground was a stand of trees of unrecognizable types. Some might be acacia, but a taller, leafier form of acacia than Khat had seen even in the garden up on the First Tier. In the shade of the trees sat a woman.

Her skin was a warm brown, and her hair was long and heavy and dark, hanging down to her waist and braided with strands that glittered with crystals or glass mixed in with a silvery pigment. Her features were too blunt for Patrician standards of beauty, but the smile on her face and in her dark eyes put those standards to the lie. She wore a brief light-colored shift with a net of beads or tiny gemstones over it, and it was evident that her figure was generous, though her waist was as small as a child’s. She sat on a stool and was leaning down, offering her hand to the creature that played at her feet.

“What is that?” Sagai muttered to himself.

Khat realized that he was sitting on his heels by the mural, though not close enough to risk disarranging the precious pieces, and that Sagai was beside him. “A very ugly baby?” he suggested.

The creature looked like a diminutive, emaciated old man, covered with short ginger-brown hair and with a weird snakelike tail. It was grinning up at the woman with a look of idiotic pleasure, but Khat felt that if he had been in its position he would’ve had much the same expression on his face.

“I don’t think it’s a person,” Elen said from behind them. “It only has four fingers. It’s some mythical creature, or maybe an animal.”

A few of the pieces lay to one side, waiting to be edged back into place. Others were stored nearby, laid out on low racks of light wood, probably fresh from being cleaned of whatever dust or muck had collected on them over the years.

“At a guess,” Sagai said, still talking to himself, “five thousand, five hundred days.”

“Six thousand, maybe seven,” Khat corrected. “Look at that blue.” The sky was a pure and valuable cerulean blue, dotted with the white lace of clouds. Modern tiles tended to lose their color over time, but these were as brilliant as the day they were made. Little details said this work had been finely crafted: not only had the blue kept its luster, but the red had stayed red and not faded to rust-brown as sometimes occurred on otherwise well-preserved Ancient tiles.

“Ah, yes. You’re right. Six or seven thousand. At least. I’m not sure I could put a value on this.”

He was probably right. Allowing for whatever changes time had wrought on the tiles, they were looking at the sky the way the Ancients had seen it, before the Waste had burned the clouds away and melted the blue into the brighter color it was today.

“It was found on the Eighth Tier, under the rubble of a collapsed warehouse,” a quiet voice said.

Elen straightened, stepping back self-consciously. Sagai barely glanced up. “How long has this taken you?” he asked.

“A year. It goes more quickly now.”

“And where does it go when you finish?” Khat looked up at the newcomer for the first time.

Arad-edelk was short, and the eyes above his veil were dark, narrow with weary suspicion, the brown skin around them lined with worry. The hyphenated second name was an old custom from the Survivor Time. In most cities it had died out, and it was really only prevalent on the lower tiers of Charisat. Arad-edelk might come from an old family, but not one whose members often made it past the Fifth Tier. He eyed Elen warily, and answered, “The palace.”

Khat and Sagai both looked up at her. Elen glared down at them. “How fortunate there’s an Imperial representative handy for vilification.”

“We didn’t say anything,” Khat pointed out tightly. “Do you think you need vilifying?”

“You might as well have said it.”

Ecazar was waiting in the doorway behind Arad, watching them all suspiciously, and Arad was looking at Elen as if he thought she was mad. Seeing her not only speak to lower-tier dealers but argue with them was probably all the proof he needed. Elen seemed to realize it and composed herself. She smiled at him. “I’m sorry. It’s been a long day. Perhaps we could speak to you in private?”

Uncertain, Arad turned back to the other scholars. Ecazar snorted derisively and walked out. The older scholar gave Elen a stiff-backed little bow and followed.

“You are the scholar Arad-edelk?” she asked him.

“Yes.” This was admitted with great reluctance.

“You recently bought a relic from a fortune-teller named Radu?”

“No.”

Arad had looked her right in the eyes when he lied, too.
The little bastard
, Khat thought.