High Couch of Silistra Page 10

  As they approached, Celendra spoke to the larger, a dark-tanned man in leather breech.

  “Will you call for us, Jerin?” Jerin grinned as he racked his lashes. He wiped the sweat from his eyes and walked to the nearest circle, bounded in low gol-blocks, where he hunkered down, waiting.

  Celendra tossed her head. She took a gol-knife without testing. She knew which she wanted.

  We stepped within the circle.

  She opposite me, we both took time, eyes closed, to ready ourselves.

  I would be the slitsa, the deadly serpent. Like the slitsa, I would hypnotize, striking and gone, deadly. I went through the ritual, feeling the knife as my head, my eyes, my fangs. My hand was one with my weapon, my eyes were in the blade, I was what the knife was. I was ready before Jerin called us out.

  I faced my quarry, crouched, swaying. The gol-knife writhed back and forth in my grasp. Her eyes,, followed. I kept my eyes from focusing on her blade as she leaped toward me. When she reached my position, I was not there, but behind her. As she whirled to meet me, I slashed out, and the teeth of the gol’s serrated edge raked her dark shoulder. I had first blood. She cursed, leaped, and struck down. I felt the wind from her thrust, but the slitsa, ever moving, remained untouched. Some had come to the edge of the circle. I heard rather than saw them. My eyes were for Celendra’s face, reading. She stood, legs planted wide apart, tossing the knife from hand to hand. I waited. When she thought she had my attention, she struck. Whirling not quite fast enough, I felt the gol-teeth on my arm. Infuriated, I ducked under her slash and felt the gol-point connect with her rib cage. Before I could withdraw, her blade came up, for my throat. Beyond thought, I met her blade with mine, so close to my face I could see the sweat on her black hand. The blood trickled down my arm, from her shoulder, from her ribs. She was stronger than I. Slowly my blade was pushed up by hers. I disengaged, rolling. I heard shouts. She landed where I had just been. I scrambled to my knees. She was on her feet. I tossed my head to clear the hair from my face. In that moment, while she waited, tossing her blade, crouched, I knew I could take her. She should have come in and downed me then, but she did not. Celendra, too, knew that I was more than her match. I struck up at her, launching myself at the hand that would hold the blade when I reached her, and connected. My fanged gol-knife bit hers from her hand, and it flew from the circle. So does the tiny slitsa down the mighty dorkat.

  I threw my blade after hers, and, slicked and panting, reached out my copper hand, wet with blood from my gol-bitten arm. She looked at me, did Celendra, and took it slowly. Then her arm went around my waist. I had seen her struggle with her feelings, as I would have had to if it were she who had bested me.

  Jerin, who had called for us, had the knives back at the rack. The Slayers and the guards regarded us with amused respect, standing in small knots around the circle. I saw coins change hands. So they had bet on us. I wondered what my odds had been.

  I put my scraped arm to my mouth and sucked the blood. A girl appeared with water and clean cloths. I took a cloth and turned to my opponent. She let me clean and dress her scrapes. It was the least I could do. None were deep, nor would they scar noticeably.

  I think some of the Slayers would have approached us, had they dared. We sat together on the ground and watched the men practice until the sixth bell, at which time Celendra arose, thanking me for the match.

  “My honor,” I said.

  “Next time, Estri, I will be ready for you.”

  “The element of surprise does have its limitations,” I agreed.

  She would probably beat me badly the next time, if I were fool enough to use the same technique.

  “Would you have your meal with me in my keep?”

  I nodded. “I would be much pleased to do so.”

  “Eighth bell,” she said, disappearing through the door near the racked weapons.

  As she entered the doorway, two of the Slayers I had seen watching us earlier made their way toward me.

  “Would you go again, lady?” asked one, when they stood before me where I sat with my rear on the low gol-blocks.

  “Thanks, no.” I smiled up at them. The sun was at their backs.

  “We won a sets pay on you.”

  “You have excellent judgment,” I congratulated him.

  The one who had spoken last knelt down before me.

  “Be careful of her, lady. She does not like to lose. She has slit throats for less.”

  “No one likes to lose,” I answered him. His hair and eyes were brown, his skin dark. He would have been handsome but for a scar that ran the length of his face, following his cheekbone, down to his jaw.

  His mouth twitched, he started to say more, and stopped.

  “Yes?” I prompted. It was getting chilly as I sat there with the sweat drying on me.

  “Are you of the Well? I have not seen you. I would give back some of what I won on you.”

  “I am new here.” I told him my name. He raised an eyebrow but did not withdraw.

  “What is your price?” he asked. I told him that, and then got to my feet.

  I put on my best smile. I find it hard to feel feminine directly after an encounter in the circle.

  “I will see you later,” he said to me as I headed for the door to the Well.

  “Tasa,” I replied.

  As I made my way back to my blue-and-gold-hung keep, the Slayer’s words rang in my ears. Perhaps I should not have scored Celendra. The fight had taken me; I had never even considered the politics of beating one’s hostess before her own people one day in that stranger’s hospitality. I had been going since sun’s rising without food, and little drink, and under much pressure. I determined to get some rest before the evening’s activities, that I might have a clearer head and more balanced emotions. I wondered whether Dellin would couch Celendra this night, and then whether that possibility had had anything to do with my precipitation of our sojourn to the Slayer’s circle, and then lay down on the blue spread couch and went within myself to that place which is neither sleep nor waking, where time slows down, and one can crowd an evening’s rest into the space of two bells.

  “Before the eighth bell,” I told myself aloud, “you will awaken.”

  I opened my eyes to see the fattening crescent of moon peak above the crags through the window to my left. For a moment the scene flickered, and it was as if I stood high on the gleaming towers of Astria, with the crescent moon shining on the Litess River as it wound toward Port Astrin and the sea. Then, again, it was the barren crags of Arlet before me, and I rose, stretched, wet-clothed my body clean, and went, naked but for my chald, to dinner in Celendra’s keep.

  As I turned the corner and slapped the palm-lock, the eight bell chimed. Celendra sat before a low table set with covered dishes. She rose to greet me, and the chains she wore rustled softly as she moved. Her body was a chalder’s dream. From a wide silver collar, fine chain dipped and looped down her breasts, nipped in by a metal waist cinch, from which more woven chain depended to the tops of her thighs. She wore arm bracelets and wristlets. Her hair was loose and as long as mine, blue-black silk on silver on midnight.

  She greeted me and guided me to the table, where we sat, legs crossed, on low cushions.

  “Your fitters here in Arlet are to be commended for their originality. I would, while I am here, take advantage of their art. I would especially like a breech and band like the one you wore this afternoon,” I said.

  “Thank you,” acknowledged Celendra. “I will have one made for you by our rematch, tomorrow, fourth bell.” She seemed the same; I could detect no hostility, by ear or reading.

  “Fourth bell, then. I have a feeling it will be your score. If you have fought as few women as I, you will understand when I say that I enjoyed that match as much as any I have had an occasion to fight.” I prodded her a little more.

  “Indeed,” said Celendra, serving me fried harth and mashed tuns, fruit and drink. “I have had little experience with women opponents. I find
I rather like it. There are many things that two women can experience together that a woman and a man cannot.” She looked at me keenly. I had prodded too hard.

  I let it pass. I studied my plate and found a choice bit of meat.

  “You have been reserved for the evening, you know.”

  I looked at her from behind my kifra goblet of M’ksakkan crystal.

  “No, I did not know. Who has done me the honor?” I said, cooler than I felt. “Dellin?”

  “You have been reserved by Sereth crill Tyris, of the Arletian Slayers’ Seven. Doubtless you have heard of Sereth of Arlet, he who was victorious at the last Slayers’ conclave, who took the outlaw band of Gershom at the falls of Santha, who subdued the renegade Slayer Ferin?” She grinned at me.

  I had heard of him. He had been brought before the Slayers’ Council to justify his excessive kill record. It was said that in his keep beyond Arlet he had three well women whom he had got with child. Three is very many on Silistra.

  “The same Sereth of Arlet about whom the song ‘Sweeper of the Mountains’ was written?” I asked. We keep far more musicians in Astria than Arlet, and I remembered the tune clearly, for it had been in an experimental scale, of the overtones contained within A440.

  “The same,” she confirmed. “If I had chosen a man for you, one to teach you the ways of Arlet, I could not have done better.”

  “I will be honored to serve him.” I mused. “Why is he not in conclave with the forereaders and Day-Keepers, with the other high six of the Arletian Slayers?”

  “One had to stay behind to greet the new Liaison. Sereth is not a man to sit and talk, days on end, as they do in conclave. And I think he will attempt to make a more satisfactory arrangement with the new Liaison than was between the Slayers and the old Liaison. I would do such a thing, if I were he,” Celendra speculated.

  I was not listening. Sereth of Arlet was a man one heard about in songs, not a man one expected to couch. He was the kind of man about whom women talk. The women said he was discerning and difficult to please, and he had been known to leave before sun’s rising should a woman not prove sufficiently interesting. If I much pleased him, it would be a poultice to my bruised ego. And I would please him. After all, was I not Estri of Astria? I, also, have had songs written about me that are widely sung. Sereth had never been to Astria; therefore, he had never been with a good deep-reader.

  Her last word had been “Liaison.”

  “Have you been approached by the new Liaison Second?” I asked.

  “He sent a message informing us he would honor the Well with his presence.” I caught the hostility in Celendra’s voice. He had not, then, “reserved” the Well-Keepress.

  But someone had reserved me, and he would know that. Perhaps he would fulfill his duty to the Well-Keepress. I had my own chaldra to fulfill.

  “May I go as I am?” I asked Celendra over a final sip of kifra. I had been to Dritira and Stra, Galesh and Torwin, Baniev and Port Astrin, but never before this day had I been within a rival Well. Arlet was as different from Astria as the Sabembe range from the Parset barrens.

  “You had better, or lose whatever you wear to Sereth’s hand.”

  I stood up. I wanted to hear no more about Sereth of Arlet, of the Slayers’ Seven. I would see what developed.

  The common room was transformed. The M’ksakkan chandeliers, hung on long chains from the vaulted copper ceiling, gleamed and twinkled. Musicians played cadenced Silistran music from their box against the far wall. As we entered from Celendra’s keep, the milling mass of well women and customers enveloped us. The air was heavy with the sweet smell of danne and the acrid tang of distrit, the bar-pressed danne resin, and the women’s perfume and the close smell of perhaps five hundred bodies in a small space. I was jostled by a trader from Kost, blue-white skin and silver hair set off by a knit-silk navy jump, embroidered in metallic thread. An Iartex noble, with bells and bars of his rank, pinched my naked copper rump. Celendra was grabbed up by a pair of twins from Katrir, with tufted ears and slit-pupiled eyes. They pulled her away in the crowd. A well woman, laughing, caught up in the arms of a M’ksakkan, floated past me on her way to her keep. I made for the crowd’s edge and found sanctuary against the wall that separated the doors to drink and drug rooms.

  The wall against my back gave me courage. I scanned the throng, but saw none that I knew but the small shaved-headed girl who had guided me to Celendra upon my arrival. She was dressed in scarlet web-worked pants, in the lowest-price section. She looked lovely. Celendra was nowhere in sight. Once I thought I saw her, but the black figure turned, and I saw it to be a man of Hertekiea, his silky hair down on his hips. The Hertekieans count a man’s hair length as we do high-chaldra. The dark one must have been an influential personage, indeed, on his home planet.

  I turned my attention to the drink room. Dark and full of men’s rumbling voices, it served not only kifra, brin, and fruited jeri, but the drinks of a hundred worlds. The decor, I noticed disapprovingly, was Bipedal Standard Modern. I slipped within and sidled my way to the server. I got name and took it to a corner from where I could see not only drink chamber, but the entry desk and most of the common room as well. There were only a dozen females in the drink room, those who had already gotten a mate for the night and were, at their customer’s bidding, awaiting his readiness there.

  Hands reached around from behind me and cupped my breasts. I resisted the impulse to throw my drink, and turned to face the man to whom those hands belonged. It was the scarred Slayer who had warned me about Celendra at the circle. He was larger than he had seemed, squatting before me with the sun at his back.

  “Tenist dast-ei,” I greeted him, as a well woman.

  “Tenist mist-as,” he replied, as a customer.

  “I have been reserved for this evening, by one Sereth crill Tyris. I am indescribably downcast that I will not be able to serve you,” I said with ritual decorum.

  “Sereth crill Tyris. I know him intimately. Let us go upstairs for a brief time. I am sure the Seven will take no offense.”

  “Though you are all brothers, beneath the Seven, I think in this case I must decline.” I backed away from him, into a Koster, spilling that one’s drink over his front and my rear. “Another time, approach me.” I smiled at him.

  The scar-faced, dark-tanned Slayer had not released me from within the circle of his arms. He pulled me to him, tightly, in the midst of the crowded drinking chamber.

  “Are you afraid of the wrath of Sereth crill Tyris?” he asked me, his lips at my ear.

  “One would be a fool not to fear the wrath of such a man. It is said he kills for sport more than duty. If I were you, I would not tempt him.”

  “Now we have each warned the other once,” he said. “You must at least allow me to buy you a drink.”

  If he would let me go, he could buy me anything.

  “I have had enough drink, I think.” I still held my empty glass of name. “But you may, if you wish, get me some distrit, for I have had a long and tiring day, and expect a longer night.”

  “Your pleasure, Estri,” said he, his arm around my waist, threading me through the crowd and around the corner into the drug chamber, where seats appeared as if by magic before us in the crowded room. I leaned back against the cushions, while the Slayer snapped a server to us with a raised hand.

  I decided I rather liked this easy, confident man. The scar on his face, once one got used to it, set off his regular features. He would have been unbearably pretty without it.

  When the tray of distrit was set before us on its spindly legs, he loaded the pipe and held it to my lips. I took a long puff and held it. He, also, sucked in the smoke, but very little. I could feel the stimulant working within me.

  I looked up, toward the door, in time to see Dellin, resplendent in his black-and-gold formal Liaison’s garb, with Ganrom at his side, heading toward us.

  I looked quickly away. I had not planned on encountering them, and certainly not with this man, whose
name I did not even know. I would have preferred that he had not seen me at all, but only heard that I was couching Sereth of Arlet.

  “Trouble?” the Slayer said, his eyes on my face. I had not realized my emotion showed so.

  I shook my head, for they were upon us.

  “Just the man I was looking for,” Ganrom said jovially, reaching toward the seated Slayer. He did not rise, but put out his hand, laconically.

  “Ganrom,” the scarred one said. “How was the hunting in the forests? How many teeth did you take?” He gestured for them to sit. Ganrom pulled an out-worlder roughly from his seat. The small Iartex hissed his anger and scuttled away. Dellin put his handover his eyes, a pained expression on his face. When Ganrom eyed a second Iartex, on the other side of the closest tray, the man hastily rose and departed.

  The two seated themselves. Dellin stared into my eyes until I looked away. When I looked up, I could see the muscles twitch in his jaw.

  “Ganrom, if you would stay gainfully in my employ,” Dellin said, “you must learn to be a little softer with the people whose rights I must protect.”

  “Agrh,” snarled Ganrom. “When the Liaison Second needs seating, they should have enough sense to jump up and move.”

  The scarred Slayer picked up the pipe and passed it. Dellin took a very cautious taste.

  “Ganrom,” he said, “why were you looking for me, and how come you to be employed in the house of

  the Liaison? Time was when no self-respecting Slayer would spit on that door.” His voice was very soft. It sent chills up me.

  “Introductions. You must forgive me, brother. Khaf-Re Dellin, Liaison Second of Arlet.” He waved his hands about. “Sereth crill Tyris, of the Slayers’ Seven.”

  I pulled away from the scarred Slayer, Sereth of Arlet, on pretense of refilling the pipe. So this was he. His amusement with me in the drinking chamber now made sense.

  “I would change all that,” Dellin was saying. “As I told Ganrom and his men, any Slayer who will work with the Liaison, on wiping out the chaldless and making the roads safe for off-world shipping, will be handsomely rewarded. Such a thing could be arranged without decreasing the mobility of the Slayers or interfering with private projects or Day-Keepers’ tasks. I would ask no loyalty that would interfere with chaldra. You would do what you do now, and get tithe from the Liaisons, whether or not you get tithe from your private clients. We could back you up with more than money. Think on it. The technology of the Liaisons at your disposal. And another thing, I will test for the Slayers’ chain, under Ganrom’s tutelage. I think, when I wear it, things will be easier with both the Slayers and the Day-Keepers.”