The Singers of Nevya (69 page)

Zakri bowed to her, and to the three or four Housewomen laboring at the sinks and the ovens. Their glances were cursory, but he smiled politely at them. “I have—I’ve come from Amric,” he said. “I’m Singer Zakri,” he added, and bowed again to the whole group.

The woman snorted. “Another one! Well, you’re probably hungry and thirsty. I’m Mura, and these are my kitchens, so you’ll not be helping yourself without permission.”

Zakri smiled as winningly as he knew how, and bowed again to Mura. “I wouldn’t think of it,” he murmured sweetly.

“Hmm.” Mura’s sour expression did not improve. “Sook!” she called.

A young girl hurried forward, wiping her hands on a bit of towel. Her hair, bound back with a strip of soft
caeru
leather, was as black as the stone of the ovens, but glossy as ice. She had great dark eyes that slanted upward at the corners. She nodded to Zakri, and smiled, the first friendly gesture he had received at Soren.

Mura pointed to a long scarred table. “Sook will find you a bite and you can have a sip of wine, since you’ve just arrived. Sit over there.”

Zakri did as he was bid, but he said quickly to Sook, “I’d rather just have tea.” The girl turned to the huge fireplace and reached for a large kettle resting on the hob.

Mura snorted again. “What itinerant refuses wine when it’s offered?”

Of course, no itinerant Zakri knew would refuse, but he could hardly tell her that. “We—we’re not much for wine at Amric,” he said. He hoped Amric was so distant that these women knew nothing at all about it. “But you’re very generous, Housewoman,” he added. “It’s good to be sitting down in a nice warm kitchen.”

“Just don’t sit too long,” Mura snapped. “We’ve work to do.” She turned her back to him and took up a great knife carved from ironwood. She was cutting a hunk of cured
caeru
meat into chunks with rapid, sure slices with the knife.

Sook smiled again at Zakri as she brought him nutbread and a small knife, and a bowl of quickly heated
keftet
. She poured the tea into a finely carved teacup, so thin it was almost translucent. She set the kettle near his hand. He watched her work, admiring her long eyes.

“Sook,” he mused. “Now that’s a name I’ve never heard.”

“It’s a traditional name here,” she answered as she handed him a spoon. “It was my grandmother’s, and her grandmother’s, summers past remembering.”

“It’s lovely.” Zakri took a spoonful of the
keftet
. He and Berk had eaten better in their campsites. As the stableman had said, there was too much meat and not enough grain. The bit of fish that flavored it was welcome, though. He had not tasted fish since his days at Arren. He drank two cups of tea, quickly, then stood and carried his dishes to where Sook was scrubbing pots at the sink, her small hands red with water and strong soap.

“I thank you,” he said.

She took the dishes from his hands before he could put them down. As she did so, her wet fingers brushed his hands. Before he could catch himself, he flinched away from her touch. The carved teacup slipped between them, and fell toward the floor. It would no doubt have shattered into a dozen pieces. Reflexively, Zakri’s psi flicked out, a quick tap of energy that lifted the cup back into Sook’s fingers. Her eyes went wide, and she looked from him to the cup, unsure of what had happened. She opened her mouth, but he shook his head slightly, and she closed it again.

He must be more careful. He had not realized how accustomed he had become to the discipline of the Cantoris. When had anyone except his own Houseman last touched him? It must be almost a summer ago.

He smiled at Sook, and she smiled back, but warily. He cursed himself as he left the kitchens to go in search of the
ubanyor
. Surely, he scolded himself, you can manage yourself better than this. One would think he was a wild boy again!

Soren was indeed full of itinerant Singers. When Zakri found the
ubanyor
, its big tub was half-full of them, lounging about in the water, laughing and joking. From the
ubanyix
down the hall, similar laughter sounded in the higher registers. He stripped, dropping his soiled tunic and trousers in a corner, and slipped under the water with a groan of pleasure. At least, with so many Singers about, the water was decently warm. His skin tingled with it, and he ducked under the surface to soak his hair.

A heavy man slid over next to him, making the ironwood of the tub creak as he moved. “You’re the courier’s Singer, hmm?”

Zakri looked out from under the lather he was rubbing into his scalp. “So I am,” he said. “Zakri v’Amric.”

The man was dark, and looked to have eight or nine summers. The arm he rested on the edge of the tub was thick and covered in black hair. He pointed vaguely upward with his chin, at the upper levels of the House. “I’d drop the Amric part of that, if I were you. Cho won’t like it.”

Another man came closer on Zakri’s other side. “It’s true, Singer. We’re all v’Soren, now. All of us.” He gestured around the
ubanyor
. “Every man in here is an itinerant.”

Zakri leaned back to rinse the soap from his hair. He scrubbed his face with his fingers to give himself time to think.

When he took his hands away, he contrived as innocent a look as he could. “Amric is a long way from Soren,” he said.

“So that means you haven’t heard?”

“Heard what?”

The second man peered at Zakri. His red hair was faded, and his complexion roughened by sun and weather. His face and body were narrow as a
wezel’s
. “You’d best come talk to Cho.”

“Cho?” Zakri kept his mind blank and empty, just in case, but he felt no tickle of probing psi. More than likely, these itinerants could not hear his thoughts.

“Cho. He’s the one in charge here.”

“But what about your Magister?”

The man’s eyes became mere slits, and he stood, dripping water on Zakri. “I’ll take you to Cho. He’ll explain how things are.”

The first man put a heavy hand on Zakri’s shoulder, and Zakri whirled. Water flew from his hair as he shrank from the touch, and his bare skin scraped against the ironwood of the tub. The man cried out, “By the Spirit, Zakri! I didn’t mean to scare you! Listen, all Singers are safe here. It’s elsewhere you have to worry.”

Zakri drew a deep breath. “Sorry, Singer. I—I’ve been on the road a while. I’m jumpy.”

The heavy man nodded, as if he understood perfectly. “Sure you are. That close to the Glacier . . .
tkir
, even
urbear,
I hear.”

Zakri grinned as casually as he could. “
Urbear
come off the Glacier once in a while,” he agreed. “It’s the
tkir
that scare me.”

“Down here we have mostly
carwal
, and they hardly move out of the water.” The man patted his belly. “My mate tells me I look just like one!” he laughed.

The red-haired man climbed out of the tub, and gestured to Zakri. “If you’re ready,” he said as he reached for a towel from a lopsided stack. “We can get in to see Cho before the evening meal.”

Zakri followed, and accepted a towel to dry himself.

The dark man lifted a hand in farewell to Zakri. “See you in the great room,” he said. “By the way, I’m Shiro, and that’s Klas. I was born right here at Soren, so you can come to me if you have questions.”

“Good to meet you, Singer Shiro.” Zakri bowed shallowly above his towel.

“You can drop the Singer,” Klas laughed. “There’s so many of us here, it’s hard to find somebody who isn’t one!”

Zakri dried as quickly as he could. He had to dress in his soiled clothes, with only a change of linen from his pack. He followed Klas down a long corridor and up a staircase. As they went, he listened. There was a great deal of psi about, but none trained as his own had been, at least none that he could detect. Where on the Continent, he wondered, were the Cantor and Cantrix of Soren?

Chapter Four

Zakri shouldered his saddlepack and hurried after Klas. The older man scurried down the corridor like a
wezel
fleeing from hunters. His pale eyes darted back from time to time to make sure Zakri was following. The patchy
quiru
made irregular shadows, and Zakri’s shoulders prickled each time he walked through a little pocket of darkness. To leave them unrepaired offended all his instincts. It disturbed him to think that there might be no one in the entire House who could do it. How did the House members live with such a
quiru
?

Only once did he see a bit of intact
quiru
light, evenly bright from stone floor to ironwood ceiling. It was just beneath the main staircase, a narrow hall leading toward the back of the House. He fell behind Klas as he peered into it, trying to discern the origin of the light. Klas already had one foot on the stairs when he saw that Zakri had stopped. He flapped his hand in the direction of the hall.

“Carvery,” he said, then hurried on. Zakri had to leap the stairs two at a time to catch up with him.

The banister of the staircase felt strange under his hand. When he looked down at it, his progress slowed yet again. There were banisters on every staircase on the Continent, of course, but this one was beautiful,
obis
-carved into a design of whorls and spirals that seemed almost to move, to writhe under his fingers. Its pattern drew his hand upward as if the carver’s Gift still haunted the ironwood. When he reached the top, his fingers lifted from it with reluctance. His guide appeared not to notice, neither the beauty of that piece nor of any of the others that met their eyes at every turn.

Klas scuttled on to the very end of the upper hallway. More laden shelves and cupboards lined the walls, but Zakri had to pass them with no more than a brief glance. Klas was already bobbing his head to several men squatting over a game of stone-and-bone. A woman leaned in bored fashion near a door, watching the throw of the game pieces. All of them, the men and the woman, wore the leather tunics and cropped hair of itinerants. They looked Zakri up and down in a moment of idle curiosity, then turned back to their game.

“So who’s winning?” Zakri asked. No one answered.

Klas pointed at Zakri with his red-stubbled chin, and said, “We need to see Cho. This one just came today.”

The woman straightened to push open the door. “Take him in, then,” she said. She eyed Zakri briefly as he passed, then turned away. He was only one more Singer in a House full of Singers, hardly worth her interest.

Zakri had been in more than one Magisterial apartment, and the room he and Klas entered was exactly that. It was spacious, with elegant and generously proportioned furnishings, everything gracefully carved in what he already thought of as Soren fashion. A long table dominated the room, with chairs drawn up to it in formal ranks.

But there was no Magister here. The thin dark man pacing past the window wore the dark tunic of the upper levels, but it was an affectation. It did not suit him. A man and a woman, also dressed in somber colors, sat at the table. The woman had a large account book before her, her arms curled around it as if to protect her responsibility. The man held a
ferrel
-quill pen in his hand, poised above a sheet of Clare’s paper. They watched the man pace with hooded eyes and drawn faces. When the dark man whirled to see who had entered, both of them stiffened.

Berk glowered from one end of the table. He had not yet bathed. His gray hair was coming out of its binding, his beard was matted, and he scowled indiscriminately at everyone in the room.

Klas cleared his throat. “Cho, here’s an itinerant who just rode in today. Thought you’d want to meet him . . . .” His voice trailed away as the man’s eyes, long, dark eyes like those of the girl Sook, fixed upon him. Klas stiffened like the others, and Zakri heard the click of his throat as he tried to swallow.

When Cho’s eyes shifted to Zakri they narrowed. Instinctively, Zakri shielded his mind, and not a moment too soon.

At first it was only an intrusion, much like being prodded with a rude finger. But when the finger met resistance, the psi became a knife that thrust and sliced at Zakri’s mind without regard for any harm it might do. It was clumsy, and it was obvious, but it was also powerful, and very, very dangerous. Zakri struggled to keep his face innocent as he closed his mind against it.

Cho’s eyes flickered. Zakri tried to disguise his shields behind a cloud of muffled thoughts like those he heard around him. The effort sent perspiration trickling down his ribs under his tunic. He made his eyes round, and he produced a foolish smile as he bowed.

“Are you the one I thank for the nice hot bath?” he asked.

The flicker left Cho’s eyes, leaving them the flat black of charred ironwood. “No,” he said. “I have better things to do than warm the
ubanyor
. Who are you?” His voice was light, the pitch rather high, without resonance or inflection.

Klas put his hand on Zakri’s shoulder, and Zakri held himself still, suppressing his discomfort at the touch.

“This is Zakri,” Klas said.

“My itinerant,” Berk growled. His eyes met Zakri’s briefly, and then turned back to Cho. “We’ll be on our way first light tomorrow,” he said.

Cho leaned against the window casing. He tipped his head tipped back to look down his thin, hooked nose. He wore an
obis
knife strapped around his waist in a finely tooled scabbard. His black hair was long, braided into a plait that hung over his shoulder almost to his waist. He drew it through his fingers, again and again, as he regarded the newcomers. “And what if your—” he emphasized the possessive, a slight smile curling his lips. “If your itinerant would rather not?”

“It’s hardly his choice, is it?” Berk snapped. “My Magister hired him. He’s been paid.”

Zakri tried to look as guileless as possible. “That’s right,” he said brightly. “Magister Edrus keeps me very busy at Amric, actually. If it’s not travelers, it’s hunting parties. I never have to go looking for work.”

Cho straightened, and tossed the braid back over his shoulder. “Well, it’s time their precious Cantors and Cantrixes did some of that work! Real work. Let them get their own hands dirty.” He strolled to the chair at the center of the table and sat, leaning to one side with his arm draped lazily over the high carved back. “Young Zakri is welcome to join us here,” he said to the room at large. “We’ll have plenty of work for him, if work is what he wants.”