Storm Season- - Thieves World 04 (10 page)

Mor-am?

Fire glared, a quick flaring up of orange light in the direction of the shanty. She struggled then. The two of them held her.

"You can't help him," Mradhon said, his arms locked round her.

"She's hurt," said Haught. "She's bleeding." They tended her, the two of them. She hardly cared.

* * *

"It's him," the Stepson said, looking disdainfully at the human wreck they deposited on the road across the bridge. Rain washed the wounds, dark threads of blood trailing in a wash of water over the skin. The guard toed the informer in the side, elicited a little independent movement of the arm, lit in lightning flashes. "Oh, treat him tenderly," the Stepson said. "Very tenderly. He's valuable. Get a blanket round him."

"We lost the rest," his companion said tautly. There was rage beneath his tone. The Stepson looked up. A shadow stood there in the lightnings, in the rain, an unlikely cloaked shape, a darkness by the bridge.

When the lightning next flashed it was gone. Fire danced on the water, full of tricks and shadows on this side of the bank. The blaze might have taken all of Downwind, but for the rain. It was dying even now.

Six horsemen thundered across the bridge from Sanctuary to Downwind, securing the road.

"You'd better send more," the garrison officer said. "They're like rats over there, small but a lot of them. You-saw that."

The Stepson fixed the man with a chill, calm eye. "I saw catastrophe. Two of us could have turned the town upside down if that were the object. Perhaps you misunderstood. But I rather doubt it. Six could raze the town. But that wasn't what we wanted, was it?" He looked down at the moaning informer, then collected his companion and walked away.

* * *

"Drink," Mradhon said. Moria drank, holding the cup herself this time, and stared blearily at the two men, Mradhon leaning over her, Haught over against the wall. It was decent food they gave her. She wondered where they got the money, dimly, in that vague way she wondered about anything. She was curious why these two kept treating her as they did, when it cost them, or why two men she had never met had proved dependable when those she had known best had not. It confounded her. They never used that language they both spoke, not since that night. Haught had put on freeman's clothing, if only that of Downwind. He had scars. She had seen them, when he dressed. So did Mradhon Vis, but different ones, made with knives.

So did she, inside and out. Maybe that was what they had in common, the three of them. Or that they wanted what she knew, names and places. Or that they were just different, thinking differently, the way people did who had not grown up in the Downwind, and that kind of maze of foreignness she never tried to figure. She just took it that they wanted something; and so did she, which was to fill a nebulous and empty spot and to keep fed and warm and breathing. Mor-am was dead. She hoped so. Or things were worse than she had figured.

by Diana L. Paxson

The fleeing King ran towards the Gate, the strained lines of his back and arms, and the bunched muscles of his thighs, eloquent of desperation. His face was shadowed and his crown rolled in the dust; behind him lay a confusion of arms and weapons, and the bloodied sword of his conqueror raised against a sunset sky.

"And here we have the last King of Ilsig, pursued by Ataraxis the Great. . . ." Crimson damask rustled stiffly as Coricidius the Vizier motioned towards the mural that glowed on the ancient wall. He bowed to the Prince and his companions. The other guests at the reception stood in a respectful half-circle on the chequered marble of the floor.

Lalo the Limner, trailing self-consciously a few steps behind, squinted at the painting and wondered if he had made the sky too lurid after all. What would they think, these great lords of Ranke who had been sent by the Emperor to evaluate Sanctuary's preparations for the war?

Prince Kadakithis flushed with pleasure and peered more closely at the figure of his ancestor. Coricidius fixed Lalo with an eye like a moulting eagle's, summoning him. His aged skin was pallid above the vehemence of his gown. He should not wear that color, thought Lalo, suppressing an impulse to duck behind one of the gilded pillars. Coricidius always affected him that way, and he had almost refused the task of refurbishing the Presence Hall for this visit because of it. But however discredited the Vizier might be in Ranke, in Sanctuary his power was second only to that of the Prince-Governor (indeed, some said that his influence counted for more).

"Remarkable-such freshness of line, such originality!" One of the Imperial Commissioners bent to examine the brushwork, chins quivering with enthusiasm.

"My Lord Raximander, thank you. May I present the artist! Master Lalo is a native of Sanctuary ..."

Lalo hid his paint-stained hands behind his back as they all looked at him, curious as if he had been in Meyne's Menagerie. It must be only too obvious that he lived in the city-the battered buildings through which the painted King was fleeing belonged to the Maze.

Exuding attar of roses and geniality, Lord Raximander turned to Lalo.

"You have great talent, but why do you stay here? You are like a pearl on the neck of a whore!"

Lalo stared at him, then realized that the man was not mocking him-neither the Prince nor the Vizier had ever ventured west of the Processional, and the Maze had not been included on the Commissioners' sight-seeing tour. He stifled a grin, thinking of these popinjays at the mercy of some of his old friends from the Vulgar Unicorn-like alley-cats with some Lady's pet love-bird, they would be.

The other Commissioners were looking at the painting now-the General, the Archpriest Arbalest, Zanderei the Provisioner and an undistinguished relative of the Emperor. Lalo listened to them commenting on its naive charm and primitive vigor and sighed.

"Indeed-" came a soft voice close to his ear. "What recognition can you expect in this city of thieves? In Ranke they would know how to appreciate you. ..." Lalo jumped, hearing his own thoughts vocalized, and saw a slight man with clipped greying hair and a skin weathered brown, draped in dove-grey silk. Zanderei... after a moment his memory supplied the name, and for a moment he imagined he recognized amused understanding in the Commissioner's eyes. Then blandness masked them, and as Lalo opened his mouth to reply, Zanderei turned away.

A meek nonenity, Lalo had thought him when the Prince introduced the Commissioners to them all, and now Zanderei was a mouse once more. Lalo frowned, trying to understand.

A youthful eunuch, somewhat overaware of the splendor of his new purple satin and fringe, approached with a tray of pewter goblets. It was wine of Caronne, the whisper ran, cooled by snow that had been packed in sawdust all the way from the northern mountains whose possession was now being disputed so bitterly. The Commissioners took new goblets, and Coricidius motioned the slave away. Lalo, whose cup was almost empty, looked after him longingly, but did not quite have the confidence to call him back again. I should have used myself as a mode]

for the cowardly Ilsig King, he thought bitterly. Too many people here remember when I was drinking myself to death and Gilla took in laundry from the merchants' wives, and I am afraid they will laugh at me. ... And yet he had painted the walls of the Temple of the Rankan gods, he had decorated this hall, and the Prince himself had complimented him. Why could he not be satisfied? Once my dream was to paint the truth beneath the skin, he thought then. What do I want now?

The air pulsed with polite conversation as rich merchants of Sanctuary pretended they were accustomed to such affairs, the Rankans tried to look as if they were enjoying this one, and the Prince and his officers uneasily enjoyed the Empire's belated recognition while wondering whether it was to their advantage. Except for Coricidius-Lalo reminded himself. Rumor had it that the Vizier would stop at nothing to spend what remained of his old age back in the capital. A wave of scent set Lalo to coughing, and he turned to confront Lord Raximander's beaming face.

"Why not return to the Capital with me?" the Commissioner said expansively. "A new talent! My wife would be so pleased."

Lalo smiled back, his vision expanding in images of marble columns and pavements of porphyry that far outshone the face-lifted splendors of Prince Kittycat's hall. Would Gilla like to live in a palace?

"But we need not waste the few weeks I have to spend here-" Lalo's skin chilled as Lord Raximander went on.

"A picture of me, for instance-you could do that here in the palace as a small demonstration of your skill."

Before Raximander had finished, Lalo was shaking his head. "Someone must have misinformed you-I never do portraits!"

Some of the others, attention attracted by the raised voices, had drifted toward the mural again. Zanderei was watching with a faint smile. Coricidius motioned towards the wall with a bony finger. "Who poses for all your pictures, then?"

Lalo twitched like a nervous horse, trying to find an answer that would not alienate them. . . Anything but the truth, which was that a sorcerer's spell had enabled-nay, compelled him, to portray the true nature of his sitters' souls. After a few disastrous attempts to paint Sanctuary's wealthy, Lalo had learned to choose his models from those among the poor who were still uncorrupted.

"My lord, that one was done from imagination," he said truthfully, for the Ilsig King had been inspired by his memories of fleeing through the Maze just ahead of local bullies when he was a boy. He did not tell them that he had got the Hell Hound Quag to boast of his feats on campaign while he posed for the figure of the Rankan Emperor.

One of the eunuch pages scurried towards them and Coricidius bent to hear his message. Released from his gaze, Lalo stepped backward with a sigh.

"You are too sensitive, Master Limner," Zan-derei said softly. "You must learn to accept what each day brings. In these times, ideals are an expensive luxury."

"Do you want a portrait too?" Lalo asked bitterly.

"Oh, I would not be worth the trouble-" Zan-derei smiled. "Besides, I know how I appear to the world."

Cymbals crashed, and as Lalo's startled pulse began to slow he realized that the other end of the room was flaring with the colored silks of the dancing girls. He should have expected it, having watched them rehearse almost every afternoon while he worked on the paintings here.

Such a commotion, he thought, for a few strangers who will make notes on Sanctuary as most artists make portraits-recording only the surface of reality and then will be gone.

Happily abandoning their conversations, the Commissioners let the purple-clad pages usher them to couches below the dais on which the Prince was already enthroned. The dancers, chosen from among the more talented of Kadakithis'

lesser concubines, moved sinuously through the ornate topography of their dance, pausing only from time to time to detach a veil.

Trembling with reaction, Lalo drifted towards the row of pillars that supported the vaulted and domed ceiling. Someone had left a goblet on the marble bench, nearly full. Lalo took a long swallow, then made himself put it down again. His heart was pounding as loudly as the drums.

Why am I so afraid? he wondered, and then wondered how he could be anything else, in a town where footpads dogged your steps by day, and if you heard a scream after dark you ran not to help but to bar your door. It must be better in the Capital... there must be somewhere Gilla and I could live in safety. He lifted the goblet once more, but the wine tasted sour and he set it back half-full. Coricidius would not care if he left the celebration now that he had exhibited both the pictures and their creator. Lalo wanted to go home. He got to his feet and stepped around the pillar, then halted, startled as something in front of him seemed to move. After a moment he laughed, realizing that it was only his reflection in the polished marble that faced the wall. Dimly he could see the glitter of embroidery on his festival jerkin, and the sheen on his full breeches, but they could not disguise the stoop of his narrow shoulders or the way his belly had begun to round. Even the thinning of his ginger hair was somehow mirrored there. But through some quality of the dark marble or some trick of the light, Lalo's face was as shadowed as that of the Ilsig King.

* * *

Lalo worked his way around the outside of the Presence Hall to the side door. The corridor seemed quiet after the clamor of music and the wine-fueled babble of conversation, and the government offices that occupied the spaces between the Hall and the outside of the Palace were empty and dark. As he had expected, the side-door leading to the courtyard was bolted tight. With a sigh he went the other way, passed through the Hall of Justice that fronted the Palace as quickly as he could, and out through one of the great double doors that led onto the porch and broad stair.

Torches had been fixed in the pillars at the top and bottom of the stair, and their fitful light gleamed on the armour of the guards who stood at attention on each of the four wide steps, and glowed on the purple pennon tied to each spear, then rayed out across the inner courtyard in uneven ribbons of brightness and shadow, as if the soldiers had become part of the Palace architecture. Lalo paused for a moment, noting the effect. Then he saw that the first guard was Quag, nodded, and received in answer the flicker of an eyelid in the wooden patience of the Hell-Hound's face.

Lalo's sandals crunched on grit as he crossed the flagstones of the inner courtyard, punctuating the patter of applause that drifted from the Palace, at this distance as faint as the sound of wavelets on a shore. He supposed that the concubines had stripped off their final veils. He must remember not to show Gilla the sketches he had made of them practicing.