The Ruined City (10 page)

“Wheels, in my case.”

“The thing’s impossible.”

“The thing, as you put it, is essential. Understand clearly, once and for all. There is no time left for family feuds, tribal squabbling, personal rivalries, or other such pointless distractions. When the danger is past, those concerned may resume the games, should they so desire, but not before then. I am relying upon your good sense to support and assist me in this. If you cannot or will not, then I must proceed without you.”

Aureste examined his brother, whose fragile appearance, gentle manner, and calm good humor concealed a will at least as strong as his own. He himself was acknowledged head of the family, but Innesq was the undisputed premier arcanist of House Belandor. In all matters arcane, Innesq ruled.

“I’ll always support and assist you.” Aureste’s eyes dropped under the other’s regard. To disguise his discomfiture, he continued,
“But I must wonder if you don’t overtax yourself. Surely it’s too soon for exertion. You aren’t strong enough.”

“I was not strong enough yesterday,” Innesq admitted, “as I discovered when I attempted to leave my bed. But now I have had a good night’s sleep, a solid breakfast, and I am perfectly well. I am expected at Corvestri Mansion, and it is time for me to go.”

“Go?”
Incredible
. “Pardon me, but how long is it since you have—gone—anywhere?”

“I can hardly say. But I am going now.”

“Well. If you are truly set on this, then take the state carriage, it will best accommodate your chair. And at least two or three bodyguards, fit to deal with Corvestri treachery.”

“A Sishmindri to assist with my chair will more than suffice. Zirriz is one of the strongest and ablest, but he does not seem to be available. When I ask for him, I am told only that he is ‘gone,’ which, among the Sishmindris, may mean physically absent, mentally deranged, dead, or spiritually diseased. I have not ventured to demand specifics, because—as you may know—the Sishmindris regard direct inquiry into such matters as intrusive. Do you know where Zirriz is?”

“Why, no.” Aureste offered a faint, puzzled frown. “But if he’s gone missing, then he must be found and brought home at once. Vitrisi is no safe place for a stray Sishmindri, these days.”

“It never was, but what do you mean?”

“While you slept, there have been killings. It began in the Plaza of Proclamation, where a pair of Sishmindris belonging to the governor’s household were attacked and slaughtered by the rabble, along with a few Taerleezi guards.”

“There can be only one reason. The poor wretches must have contracted the plague.”

“You’ve hit it. Those creatures carry and spread the disease. The governor avenged the destruction of his property—the massacre in Rookery Grove was designed to quell Faerlonnish
enthusiasm—but all that it really accomplished was to drive the panic-stricken into the shadows. Since Rookery Grove, the public fears have fastened upon the Sishmindris, who are now turning up dead all over town. I don’t know how many have been killed, but this I do know—there are plenty of Vitrisians fully in favor of wholesale extermination. If our poor Zirriz is wandering about out there, we’d do well to find him—for his own sake.”

“And ours.”

“True, his disappearance represents considerable financial loss.” Aureste’s tone of regret was perfectly sincere.

“That is not what I mean. The Sishmindris do not lack intelligence or strength. They submit to slavery perforce, but it is possible to push them too far.”

“And then?”

“And then we might find ourselves confronting a true revolt.”

“Splendid. Perhaps they might rally the horses and donkeys to a Pan-Bestial cause.”

“You persist in underestimating these beings. I can only hope that you will not find yourself too rudely disillusioned one day.”

“And if I do, I trust you’ll be there to intercede on my behalf.”

“I would try,” Innesq returned mildly.

Shortly thereafter, to the wonder of all, Innesq Belandor departed his ancestral home. Attended only by a single Sishmindri, he traveled by carriage the short distance to his destination. His wheeled chair was unloaded, he was assisted into it, and then, for the first time in human memory, a Belandor crossed the threshold of Corvestri Mansion.

Vinz Corvestri was there to greet him, together with the adolescent son, Vinzille, the one described by his father as combining the best of Steffa and Corvestri. Certainly a promising youngster, weedy but well favored, with intelligence and curiosity lighting his greenish eyes.

The two of them conducted him by an obscure route to a workroom at least as fine as his own lost haven, and unmistakably older. This space had served the arcanists of House Corvestri throughout the generations, and the echo of their ambitions still rang through the atmosphere. Some of those past adepts almost seemed to speak aloud.

They seated themselves at the table, the boy including himself as if by habit, the father offering no objection. Preparations were quickly completed, and the Distant Exchange commenced. Young Vinzille’s mind was immature and his technique unsophisticated, yet his talent was marked and his contribution noticeably enhanced the sending. Within moments the message was winging toward arcanists far and wide.

Grix Orlazzu came down into a rock-strewn hollow between hills, and there he stopped dead. For a moment he hardly knew what had halted him. Uneasiness, even suspicion, prickled along his nerves, and there was no obvious cause. His questing gaze traveled an ordinary misty vista. Then his mind recognized the subtle pressure of importunate intelligence seeking entry, and at once he raised barriers against the Other.

Moments passed. The pressure continued, and something of the visitor’s quality managed to impress itself upon his consciousness. This call was almost comfortably familiar in nature. It came not from the Other, but from human minds much like his own. The minds of arcanists, linked and working together.

Instinct coupled with curiosity almost served to admit them. Then he caught the flavor of the message—an intimation of impending disaster, a plea for assistance.

Not difficult to guess the reason. These arcanists knew what was coming. They meant to cleanse the Source, and they wanted Grix Orlazzu’s assistance.

They wouldn’t get it.

He scarcely pitied the human tyrants of the world, whose greed and cruelty had wrought calamity everywhere. Surely they had earned their punishment.

Many of them, but not all.

And those who had not? The myriad blameless?

No concern of his. He did not wish them ill, but he was not obligated to help or defend them.

They would thrive or perish without him.

The shaky mental barriers reinforced themselves in an instant. The arcane call ricocheted off into the fog.

Grix Orlazzu resumed his trek.

The smell of sizzling bacon might have restored appetite to a corpse. In a certain sense, that was the function it was meant to perform. The hour was late for breakfast and early for the midday meal, but time did not matter when addressing the quirks of a ruined body and mind.

The sullen morning light of winter filtered down through the mists veiling the Alzira Hills, down through the bare-branched trees of the woods to touch the mouth of the little cave scooped into the base of the overhang shadowing the stream. A cookfire burned there, and beside it knelt Yvenza Belandor, frying the fragrant rashers. She wore her customary plain dark gown, beneath a winter cloak. Her hair was neatly ordered, her aspect purposeful. All in all, she appeared unchanged by loss or privation. Behind her, all but invisible in the shadows of the entry, Nissi sat cross-legged and motionless, luminous regard fixed on the fire.

Off to the side, in the midst of what passed for daylight, back pressed flat to the chilly support of the overhang, sat a still and broken figure. His large body was stingily covered in garments too small for him—breeches too short, doublet too narrow in the shoulders, too small in the chest, too short in the arms. But these items, former property of his murdered brother, Trecchio, were the sole garments available to a penniless
outcast in the depths of the woods. They had been roughly altered to offer workable accommodation—both sleeves of the doublet slashed along their seams to allow passage of the bulky bandages protecting the left arm and the torn fingers of both hands; the breeches likewise sliced to pass smoothly over the battered feet. An assortment of additional injuries—burns, bruises, cuts, and worse—concealed themselves beneath the ill-fitting clothes. But the bandages wrapping the wounds that dented the beaten skull were whitely apparent. And nothing at all softened the wreck of the face—the lacerated lips folding oddly over a toothless gap, the smashed nose scarcely functional, and above all, the livid flesh surrounding the black pit of the burnt-out right eye. The remaining eye—the color of slush shot with blood—stared vacantly off into the mists.

The bacon was adequately crisp. Removing the strips from the skillet, Yvenza piled them onto a trencher, added a round of hard biscuit, and placed the meal before her son.

“Eat,” she commanded.

He appeared unaware of her presence.

“I know that you hear and understand me. Do as you’re told.”

The cyclopean eye did not blink.

“You know the consequences of disobedience, boy. How many times must we repeat this sorry scene?”

A stranger observing the exchange would have thought Onartino Belandor deaf.

“As you wish, then.” Grasping his jaw with one hand, she used the other to cram a rasher forcibly into his mouth.

Onartino offered no resistance. After a blank moment’s delay he chewed and swallowed as if unaware. Another two rashers followed, then Yvenza paused.

“Now then. Pick up the next one yourself.” She waited. Onartino neither stirred nor glanced in her direction. “Don’t pretend you can’t, we both know better. Do it.”

He did not comply. Breaking off a fragment of the biscuit,
Yvenza stuffed it into his mouth. He chewed and swallowed. She inserted another morsel, and he ate it.

“You’re like some worm that’s been stepped on, boy. Where’s your courage, where’s your will? You were never strong on intellect, but at least you had some courage, or so I fondly imagined.”

She grabbed his jaw. This time his mouth clamped. She slapped his face, heedless of the assorted injuries, and his one eye blinked. Her hand went to his broken nose and pinched the nostrils shut. His mouth opened and two bacon strips went into it. He chewed and swallowed both.

“Now show me what you’re made of. Make an effort. Feed yourself.”

He sat, good eye staring straight ahead.

Yvenza’s lips assumed a contemptuous curve. Without further comment, she hand-fed him the rest of his meal, all of which he accepted passively. When the trencher was empty, she set it aside, rose to her feet, and extended her hand.

“Get up,” she commanded. “Lean on me if you must, but move. Now.”

Onartino appeared oblivious as ever.

“You’ve done it before. Now do it again. The white little girl called you back from the antechamber of death. I’ll own that she did even more than that, for you’ve progressed further and much faster in recovery than would have been possible without arcane support. But you must do your part. You must work to recover your strength. You
shall
work, else find yourself some means of livelihood, perhaps one involving a tin cup. For I’ll not have a crippled weakling on my hands.” Evidently expecting no reply, Yvenza stooped, grasped her son’s left arm and slid it over her shoulders, slipped her own right arm around him, and exerted force.

He sat inert, neither resisting nor cooperating. Powerful though she was, Yvenza’s initial effort to lift him failed. Her eyes went to the still little figure seated just within the mouth of the cave.

“You—Nissi—come here. Lend a hand,” she commanded.

The seated figure remained motionless. Nissi’s eyes never strayed from the fire. In the dimness of the cave, her lips might have been moving, but no sound emerged.

Yvenza breathed a muffled imprecation. Tensing all her muscles, she exerted her strength and managed to raise her son to his feet.