Magesong (15 page)

Examining the room with his inner sense, he came to feel
that any chair was as good as another.  He found a small table next to the wall
and took a seat as a waiter who looked no older than fifteen shuffled over to
ask him if he wanted wine or rum.

"Rum," he answered.  They would throw him out if
he didn't buy anything at all.

He settled in for a wait and silently said the name Farlo
had got for him. 
Airen Libac
.  Farlo had been right about that, the
notoriety of the Libac expedition, the ease with which he and the one-handed
sailor had chatted about it.  Reyin picked up the mug of rum and let the fumes
sting his nose.  He decided not to drink.

The fellow came an hour later, walking in backward through
the door to the kitchen with a half-empty bottle of wine in one hand.  And
Reyin knew him to be the one.

"Yes, we will."  He said to someone in the
adjoining room.  His tenor voice rang loudly in the small space.  "And you
must come call on me in my studio.  Bring some cheese — a roasted hen would be better
— and I'll open that cask of port."  A muffled voice answered him, too low
for Reyin to make out the words.  "Very well, my friend," he called,
raising his bottle in mock salute, "good night."

He spun quickly on his heel, and Reyin wondered all in an
instant what he should do if the man went straight to the door.  But he went to
the now unattended harpsichord, where he then took a long swig from his bottle,
sat down, and hammered out a fast waltz, increasing the tempo until it doubled,
then tripled, making it a furious tune that ended with a strange chromatic run
across four octaves.

It was done drunkenly, but had taken more than a little skill;
the man must have studied for years.  Reyin now knew how to approach him.  He
had always felt uneasy about striking up conversation with strangers, but now
was the time.  Before he could rise, however, the man took up his wine and spun
again, his attention falling on Reyin.

"Greetings to you, sir," he said, striding right
up to Reyin's table.

He was older than Reyin, a little thin for his height.  His
hair fell long and loose behind the ears, somewhat stringy, and did nothing to
cover a hairline that had receded beyond the crest of his forehead.  Three days
of growth clung to his face."

Jasso Correnan," the man said, offering his hand across
the table.  "Are you from Ava?"

"Kandin."

"Thought so," Jasso said with a smile.  "I
was born in Ava, but I've been living here since I was twelve.  This isn't your
first time to visit our city, strange and full of wonder."

Is it me or the city he speaks of, thought Reyin.  "Yes,
it is," he answered.

"Then your luck is beauteous, my friend.  This is no
sailor's brothel.  You have come to a meeting place for the perfumers of the gods."

"Who?"

"Us.  We.  Those whom you see about you."  He made
a sweeping gesture with his arm, but only the two men with the four giggling
girls were there.  "Poets, musicians . . . my friend Galilo, the cook
here, is a philosopher without equal; he over there," he waved at a square-headed
man who returned a toast, "is a great painter yet undiscovered.  This is
our place to meet and cavort."

Reyin looked at him, nodding as if interested.  When he was
young, Reyin had gone to a meeting of an artists' society which, without much
ado, had turned into an ether frolic.  Even they had looked more sober than
these fellows.

But the trick with the harpsichord had been good.

Jasso looked at him.  "I know what you're
thinking," he said sharply.  "That this is just drunk talk.  You're
thinking that because Galilo has no patron, he could not be much of a
philosopher.  But I'll tell you — he is a political philosopher and he's
writing his master work, a dialogue on the proper conduct of the ruling class.  Therefore
he can accept no patronage that would influence his work."  Jasso's face
glistened with beads of fresh perspiration, and he plunged on excitedly.  "For
that matter I have no patron myself, but I play as much as I want.  And I play
what I want.  Those with sponsorship don't come here.  They live in villas.” 

Reyin saw an opening here.  "You make patronage sound
like a bad thing, Jasso."

"Oh no, not at all," he answered passionately.
"I just don't think it is the measure of us."

They stopped and sipped their drinks in silence for a
moment.  Reyin decided to just come right out with it.

"True enough, my friend.  But still, could you turn
down support from a man like, oh say, Airen Libac?"

"Of course not."  Jasso gave off a short laugh.  "I've
played for him before, you know.  He is as strange as they say, but not at all
the dashing treasure-hunter you might think him, with all his travels and
airship flights and such.  In fact, he has a big stomach and wears spectacles. 
But he's a polite man, that one.  Always comes over and talks to me when I play
for him, and genuinely interested in music."

"What about these treasures?" Reyin ventured.

"I don't know anything about them.  He doesn't show
them to the likes of me.  But they say each one is fit for royalty."

"Is that how he got his wealth, treasure hunting?"

"Oh gods no.  He was born to it, like the rest of the
stinking nobility.  He's an academian.  He digs all those things up just to
study them."

"Not an easy man to see, I suppose."

Jasso's eyes suddenly turned hard.  "Now I see what
you're up to."  He nodded with certainty, his smile turning grim.

In the space of a heartbeat a panicked thought struck
Reyin. 
He thinks I'm a thief casing the Libac place, which is really what I
am, and now he's going call the night watch or his friends to administer some
local justice
.

"I'm not up to anything," Reyin said, slipping
into that relaxed-yet-confident tone and open expression he had practiced with
the crowds for years.

"I see things, and I know what I'm seeing now.  You‘re
a lute player.  Not a callous on your hands except for your left fingertips. 
You already knew about the Perfumers."  Jasso's eyes were fixed in
conviction.  "You've heard about Libac's garden party, haven't you?"

Without pausing to think, Reyin made the decision to play
along.  "Yes.”

"And you're looking for a clue about how to get hired
on.  You should have just told me; I'm friends with Turo Porane, the top
director in the city.  Most everyone uses him when they throw one of these
bashes.  He likes me for dining music.  I just improvise, and nobody notices as
long as I keep it soft and flowing.  Unfortunately, I'm the only musician he's
hiring for this one unless the acrobats need somebody, but I think they have
their own.  The party is what, only three days from now?  But I'm meeting Shara
Littosi and some of her friends this evening — she's Turo's favorite singer.  She'll
know if you can still get in.  Why don't you come along?  Shara might even take
us to Zulitan's.  Great fun, you'll see."

So they went, Jasso leading the way down a cobbled way,
lecturing Reyin about Mira-Delvin's music society and giving a brief history of
each local landmark they passed.  Every third man on the streets seemed to be
Jasso's friend, at least he called them by name and waved a greeting.  Shara
and her friends, an actress named Olla, a perfect face within endless waves of
brown hair, and a wiry, nervous fellow called Girmo, waited for them at an
outdoor table at a night cafe.  Traffic moved slowly in the warm midweek
evening.  Most of the tables sat empty.

Jasso called for a bottle of wine and everyone ordered food
except Reyin, who pleaded that he had forgotten the Jakavian custom of late
supping and had eaten a huge meal at sundown like the foreigner he was.  His
dinner in The Barrel had been a fish cake smaller than the palm of his hand. 
When the waiter set down bowls of cold tomato soup along with steaming platters
of clams and mussels, his stomach nearly turned over.

Shara explained that the card was full for the garden party,
but if he was any good with his lute they would find work for him of the indoor
sort.  Jasso's friends were less strange and less inebriated, and Reyin was
soon comfortable with them, finding himself laughing hard and suddenly thinking
that he had not done so in a long time.

No one had enough money for Zulitan's, so they ended the
evening back at Jasso's fourth-floor studio, which held little more than an old
spinet, a rusted stove, a wardrobe, and a bed behind an ornate wooden screen. 
Jasso fetched the cask of port he had promised to his friend the
cook-philosopher.  Everyone refused at first, but Jasso, very drunk now and
almost reeling, insisted so strongly that they agreed to one last toast.

"To song," he intoned somberly, "the sound of
life."

They drank in silence, each one listening to what music he
played in his breast.

Soon Shara made excuses for her and Olla and Girmo to
leave.  Reyin tried to go with them, but Jasso took his arm and asked him to
stay.

Weird came the feeling of the moment, a shifting of winds,
concentration of time.  At this exact moment, many things touched at one
point.  Saying a farewell to the others, Reyin found a chair and sat down.  Jasso
closed the door on them, then floated across the room on a sea of wine.

"Juss one thing," he said, rummaging behind the
screen.  "I want to give you something."

He came out with a folded piece of paper and pressed it into
Reyin's hand.

"What's this?" Reyin asked.

Jasso turned up the lamp.  "Can you read?"

Reyin nodded, reading it.  "This is your work-pass to
get into Libac's garden party."  "Yes, they have guards at the gate
and such, so Turo sees that we get passes.  Just tell him that I sent you in my
place.  He'll understand."

Reyin stared him.  "Are you certain?"

"Yes, yes, I don't need the work right now.  You're
just getting started here.  Yes, you take it, my friend."

Reyin looked into his glazed eyes.  This was indeed drunk
talk, and Jasso would awake tomorrow and remember, or not remember, what he had
done and come looking for him.  And the man's studio barely out-classed the
Topmast Inn.  He clearly needed money.

Jasso drifted to the bed and sat down.  "Oh yes, a
small detail, you must dress nicely — no minstrel costumes.  It's something
Turo insists upon."

Reyin slipped the paper into his pocket.  "I don't know
how to thank you," he said, feeling that, for one of the few times in his
life, he had spoken a pure truth.  Jasso would not remember that as well.

Jasso let himself fall back to lay sideways on his bed, his
eyes fluttering closed, his arms stretched out like broken wings.  "Tis
nothing," he murmured.  "Tis .  .  ."

Reyin blew out the lamp and
left him like that.

"Well done!" Farlo shouted the next morning when
Reyin told him of Jasso and the gate pass.  "You find out where it is and
how to get to it, then later when everyone's asleep we go back in and lift
it."

"No."

Farlo stood thoughtful for a moment.  "Oh I see, yes,
good thinking.  You want to go in alone so I can be waiting out back — "

"No," Reyin said firmly.  "I am not a
thief."

"Neither am I!" Farlo roared.  "But you don't
seem have a better idea."

He threw open the window flap and held the burned side of
his face to the sea breeze.  "Listen.  The lives of the people we love are
at stake here; it ain't like we're cutting purses for boozin' money.  This
Libac doesn't have any respect for the folk of Lorendal, taking what is ours
just because he wants to own a rare old treasure.  We have the right to steal
it back."

"Let us say, for the moment, that I have no moral
problem with that.  But perhaps you noticed that the place is thick with
private guards.  Maybe I'm afraid of getting caught and spending ten years in
the local prison.  Maybe I simply don't have the stomach for breaking into a
man's house in the dead of night.  Did you ever think of that?"

Farlo looked at him in disbelief, then dismissed it with a
shake of his head.  "Doesn't matter.  Just find out where his treasure
room is and I'll do the rest."

He was sure that Farlo didn't understand.  Why didn't the
man believe him when he said he was afraid?

"We have three days to decide that," Reyin told
him.  "Right now we must go straight to a tailor's shop."

"Why?"

Reyin showed him the grimmest of smiles.  "To find out
how much of our goods we must sell."

And, in the end, it was almost everything.  The tailor
wanted the equivalent of ten kandars for the rush job.  Farlo didn't say a word
when Reyin told him why he needed a gentleman's suit; he simply handed over his
bedroll containing his spare clothes and all else he owned except his knife. 
They had no time to find a proper market and spend the day hawking their goods,
so they found a pawnbroker and got a fourth of what their things were worth. 
Farlo's clothing was worthless, and the broker offered only pennies for the
thickly-woven goat hair blankets of the Pallenborne.  They did better with
Reyin's minstrel outfit, and of course his watch fetched a good price, but they
still stood three kandars short of the tailor's fee when they had nothing left
but Farlo's toilet articles and Reyin's instruments.  So Reyin committed the
hated act.  He showed the broker his fipple flute.  The whole business was done
by midday, and they stepped out of the tailor's shop with exactly two pennies
and no purse to hold them.

"We can't even go back to the Topmast Inn," Farlo
said.

"Ever sleep under a hedge?"

"Not inside a city."

"It's no trick in a warm dry place like this — we
should have been doing it all along.  And we can get old bread at the end of
the day for a penny a loaf, so at least we'll have something to eat
tonight."