High Couch of Silistra Page 8

  “You are both dead,” called Ganrom disgustedly. “My men have just slain each other, Dellin, with as much grace as a pair of three-legged threx.” His voice turned soft, conspiratorial.

  “Would you, my friend, like to join me in a little recreation?”

  “Not with sword,” Dellin declined. “I have not the skill.”

  Ganrom looked disappointed.

  “I will, however, if you insist, fight you hand-to-hand, no conventions. But I warn you, I learned what I know long ago, high in the north, and you will surely make quick work of me. I have not the refinements of the Slayers.”

  “I insist,” said Ganrom, stripping off all but his breech. “I will not, I promise, do you any permanent harm. If you would have quarter, it is yours.”

  Dellin freed himself of his garments. He reached down and rubbed his hands in the dirt. He had a look of keen anticipation on his face.

  “Thanks, and to you the same.” I thought the Liaison Second badly underestimated his opponent.

  Fen and Mael came and lay, one on each side of me, propped up on their elbows to watch.

  “Idrer, will you play the winner?” asked Ganrom as he and Dellin entered the empty circle. The heavyset Slayer nodded. The kifra had been drunk to the last drop the night before, and the big man had accounted for most of it. He had been taciturn and surly all morning.

  They were like two great tawny animals, circling each other in the midday sun, the red-haired and the black-haired heads weaving with concentration. They stalked, circled, feinted, each taking the other’s measure. Dellin was on the defensive, dancing light to keep out of range of Ganrom’s mighty arms. Ganrom dived for him, striking at Dellin’s neck. Dellin ducked under him, fluid as running water, and his foot connected with the red-haired Slayer’s belly. Ganrom, with a howl of rage, launched himself upon the half-prostrate Dellin before he could regain his feet. They rolled in the dirt, grunting and growling. Then, magically, Dellin was out from under the Slayer, backing away, crouched low. Ganrom came at him again, trying for a shoulder hold. Dellin reached down and up under his opponent’s arms, his hands at the other’s throat. They rolled again in the dust. And disengaged. And engaged. They stood struggling, upright, their limbs tangled, each straining to throw the other, to break the hold. They were like living statues. Then Dellin collapsed. Ganrom, startled, released his grip. On his knees in the dirt, Dellin reached up deftly and toppled the Slayer. They grappled once more, rolling.

  The men outside the circle were very quiet.

  The tangled bodies had parted, and the two men stood, begrimed and swaying, each at one edge of the circle. The sweat ran down them in rivulets, streaking their dusty limbs. Dellin was shaking his head back and forth, the red-haired one weaving.

  Dellin took a step forward, stopped, and rubbed his eyes.

  “I give you a quarter, Slayer.”

  “And I you, Dellin. It is a long walk to Arlet. We would not want to tire ourselves overmuch.” Ganrom, his chest heaving, staggered to Dellin’s side of the circle and clapped his arms about him.

  “You should test for the Slayer’s chain,” advised Ganrom as the two men came to sit beside us in the shade. “With a little training, you might win one.”

  “Perhaps, but I would need a good teacher. You have seen my weakness at hand-to-hand only, and that is my strongest skill.”

  “Ah, yes,” commiserated the Slayer, “hand-to-hand is my weakest skill, But keep in mind that the competition in that field is less than in the sword or stones. I myself have won the Golden Well in the Arlet hand-to-hand three passes running.” The best compete in the pass games. Ganrom must have been skilled indeed to have triumphed three consecutive times.

  Idrer waived his exercise, as it was obvious neither man was in shape to fight again. He and Fen and Mael broke the camp, and we took the road once more.

  Ganrom set a slower pace, and for the first time I was able to match them. We kept our march long into the dark, for the Slayers’ leader sought a special place.

  Little was different that night than the night before, save that we ate from a haunch of denter Mael bartered from a trader bound to Baniev, and Fen and Mael gave better accounts of themselves when dinner was done. We had also, at Idrer’s insistence, purchased kifra of a better vintage than that the Slayers had supplied. There was some talk of the Day-Keepers calling a conclave of the forereaders and the Slayers, which struck me as strange, but I soon forgot it, at Dellin’s hand.

  He was, if possible, more inscrutable than he had been the night before. He seemed to delight in my abasement. He did not refuse me when I went to him in my need, but he had no kindness for me, no intimacy in his lust. I would have given much for a gentle caress, an understanding smile. Neither was forthcoming.

  I laid my head in his lap when the night was old, and he had tired of me. I did not sleep, but lay quiet, listening to his drink-muddled exchanges with Ganrom. His hand touched my hair; he stroked my head absently. I held my breath. I, a woman of Astria, had lain still as stone on a man’s lap as the night wasted away, hoping for such a touch, needing it, but unable to ask. I wished he would hold me, but he and Ganrom talked on.

  Finally, I dozed. I woke when he slid out from under me and stripped off his gear. I feigned sleep when he lay down beside me, and rolled drowsily to him. He allowed me to rest my head on his shoulder, his arm went about me, and I slept.

  The next day, Detarsa first fifth, we made it to within sight of Arlet. The sky was gray and threatening, as it had been since sun’s rise. When we came to the intersection where from the road to Arlet the thoroughfare that leads to Baniev and the sea branches right, and that which leads to Morrlta, where the trappers sell their pelts and buy their needs high in the foothills, branches left, Arlet crouched above us, another half-day’s journey, squat and angular on her craggy perch. Arlet is built of dark-blue gol-blocks, rather than the free-spiral gol-forms of Astria. The Well has been often expanded, and cube and tower jut out at odd angles, that they may find foothold on the rocky crag. She lies like a hulion sprawling on a log, dark and powerful. I could not see the great wall of Arlet, which undulates about her like a tight-fitting chald, but I knew it existed, hidden in the shadows of the oncoming night. There is only one gate by which one may enter or leave Arlet, and the double doors of that gate stand thrice the height of a tall man, of star-steel, machine-powered and ponderous. Arlet is not an enticing sight, in the ominous dusk, from low on the road, but I was heartened to see her. Soon I would be free from Dellin and the Slayers, and in control of my destiny once more.

  I would have gone on, having seen my destination, but none asked my feelings.

  The night wore away in its familiar pattern. This would be my last night with the Liaison Second of Arlet. I found that the thought upset me. I longed to speak to him, to advise him to take chaldra in Arlet, to find out if he would visit me in the Well, to test him out about the duty he had to the Well-Keepress of Arlet. I dared not.

  He had said, I reminded myself, that he would give me what help he could. My inner self told me that it was a different man who had offered me the Liaison’s house in Arlet, who had said he would buy my use in Arlet. I would, I told myself, be lucky to get my chald and my father’s ring from him, and be quit of him forever. My inner self disagreed. I was perplexed and preoccupied. Dellin noticed, and took me away from the others, into the brush.

  “Your heart,” he chided, “is not in your work.” The rain began to fall as we stood there, in the brush and the gloom, facing each other. Dellin’s arms were folded across his chest, and the droplets glinted in his black hair.

  “I would speak to you of Arlet,” I said.

  “When I seek you in Arlet, we will speak of Arlet.”

  “I cannot go into the Well looking like this.” He had told me what I wanted to know.

  “I had not thought of that,” he allowed. “Mael mentioned that tomorrow was market in the Inner Well. I will buy you something with the dippars you made on
the road. I will also give you your things. You deserve them.”

  He put his hand under my chin and tilted it up to look at my face.

  I was glad it was raining.

  “I love you,” I whispered, unable to hold it back.

  He raised an eyebrow and kissed me on the forehead. He did not reach out to hold me.

  “I doubt it,” he said finally.

  “I have never said that to another man.”

  “That, I do believe.”

  “You wanted me before.”

  “I want you now. But on my terms. I only said that I doubted your love for me. I think, with all your experience, you know little of love.” There was nothing I could say to that. I put my head against his chest.

  He had me there, for I went on my knees to him and shamelessly begged, that he might recollect me the sooner in Arlet. The privacy of the scratchy, brittle brush was opulent luxury.

  I remember little else of that night, for I was focused so on Dellin that I retained only the memory of his voice and his hands.

  IV. Well Arlet

  It was close to mid-meal, bright and hot, when we neared the Arletian gate. The road was thronged with vendors and merchants and traders, for it was market day in the Inner Well. Arletians disdain uniformity of dress, and the crowd in the large U-shaped court of stalls was a riot of color—shifting, swirling, clashing primaries. Laughter and hawkers’ spiels and raucous cries drifted between the towering metal gates toward us as we threaded our way between the mounted and pedestrian, tourists and the locals, star-traders and pelters down from the hills.

  The feeling of holiday was strong around us, and the Slayers were much affected. They fidgeted and joked, speculating on the delights they planned to purchase under the Well’s copper-scaled roof.

  “Would you sup with me tonight? The hospitality of the Liaison Second’s house can be stretched to include four more.” Dellin’s words were for Ganrom.

  “I would not test my welcome there, my friend, by including Slayers in your party. There is little love lost between the Second and the Slayers,” Ganrom replied.

  “Ah, but the old Second no longer holds court here, and the new, I have heard, would change the old ways,” Dellin said as we were squeezed together by the unruly crowd as it queued to pass under the scrutiny of the red-garbed guards lounging against the wide-swung metal gates. He put his hand, which bore my father’s ring, on my neck, that we would not be separated by the crush of bodies.

  “So be it, then, Dellin. If we are thrown out on our heads, however, you must buy the dinner, at a place of our choosing.”

  “Done,” the Liaison Second agreed. “At moon’s rising, then?”

  “At the Liaison Second’s,” Ganrom confirmed.

  As we passed through the portal, two of the guards separated themselves from their fellows and blocked our path.

  “You cannot bring such a woman within the Well gates, Astrian,” said the broad, brown-skinned, portly guard to Dellin. I heard the Slayers around me, as if they were one man, loose their swords in their scabbards. Dellin still wore my woven Astrian chald,

  The squat guard’s hand was on his hilt.

  Dellin looked him up and down slowly.

  “Can you read, zealous one?” he asked the guard.

  The sword was unsheathed and gleaming in the guard’s hand.

  “Indeed I can, and I may read your name to the Day-Keepers this evening if you do not get yourself from my sight.”

  “I think I will reach in my pocket and give you a thing to read,” said Dellin, unperturbed. “You never know who may come walking through these gates to Arlet. Should you have lied about your literacy, I suggest you find another who has the skill. Otherwise, it will not be my name that goes on the Day-Keepers’ roll.” His voice was chill and commanding. He reached into his pocketed parr belt and pulled forth a rolled sheet of orange fax. The guard blanched when he saw it. Fax is not common among Silistrans.

  The guard took the proffered document and awkwardly unrolled it, sword still in his hand. His mate peered over his shoulder. I saw three other red-garbed guards sidling toward us through the crowd. We had blocked the entry, and it was congesting behind us. The three came up behind the guard who had spoken and his mate.

  The brown-skinned one’s lips moved as he slowly and laboriously attempted to decode written B.F. Standard. All speak it, but only the more literate read the curious computer script.

  “Give me that,” snarled a florid-faced, middle-aged officer with golden squares at his shoulders. “What is the trouble here?” he snapped at Dellin as he snatched the fax from the illiterate guard. The brown-skinned one began to explain. His superior silenced him with a wave.

  The ranking guard’s eyes flashed over the orange sheet. He let go the lower edge, and the fax rerolled itself. He handed the roll to Dellin, his face expressionless.

  “Get back to work,” he snarled at no one in particular. The knot of guards melted away. Behind me the Slayers expelled their breath and shifted their hands from their weapons.

  “Shall I escort you myself, sir, that none of my men bother your party further?” He raised his right arm to his chest, forearm parallel to the ground in the Silistran gesture of respect and service. Ganrom muttered to himself.

  “What is your name?” Dellin asked.

  “Tetrim, point leader, Liaison,” answered the officer. The Slayers behind me whispered to each other. If they had suspected before, they knew now.

  “Tetrim, send that man back to school. And any others here who cannot read Standard. I would make my own way for the moment. You could, however, inform my house of my arrival, and that there will be five for evening’s meal, at moon’s rising.”

  Dismissed, the point leader, Tetrim, made haste to his fellows, where he spoke briefly, and then disappeared in the crowd. He took the brown-skinned guard with him.

  We passed through the gate without further problem. Ganrom reached across me, and, grinning, took Dellin’s arm and squeezed. The two faced each other against the inside of Aglet’s great wall. Ganrom furrowed his brow in mock anger. Dellin had the look of a boy caught stealing brin.

  “You lying outworlder!” Ganrom accused. “Liaison Second of Arlet. Ha!” And he could restrain himself no longer. Peals of laughter rang from that mighty throat and broke Dellin’s composure, and the two leaned against each other, pounding and poking.

  “And do you know …” gasped Dellin, pointing his finger at me, shaking with mirth. “Can you guess who that… that girl is?”

  “She is not, then, a coin girl?” wheezed Ganrom, leaning on Dellin. The other Slayers were also infected with mirth. They sat on the ground, their backs against the blue-gol blocks of Arlet, chortling.

  “Perhaps she is high-couch of Astria?” wisecracked Idrer, snorting in hilarity at his joke.

  At that, Dellin sank back against the wall, rubbing his eyes with his hands.

  I had hoped he would not tell them. I had also hoped he would include me in his evening meal.

  “Not possible, but funny, very funny,” objected Ganrom.

  “Why not possible, Ganrom?” said Dellin innocently, composed.

  “She … she is mute, and agreeable, and … she obeys you,” he trailed off.

  “That she does. Here.” Shaking with rage, I went to him. I considered strangling him with my chald, which he still wore around his neck.

  “Magic,” he said, putting his hand to my throat. “Speak. Tell them your name.”

  I did, and they fell silent. One does not so abuse a Well-Keepress.

  “Give me my things, Dellin,” I hissed, “and I will take leave of you. Who knows what will befall me by way of your flapping tongue?”

  “Soon enough, soon enough. Now, be silent again, if you would have them.” He turned to the Slayers. They looked, to a man, perturbed.

  “At moon’s rise, my friends. And do not forget. One must give a woman what she needs, no matter how high her station,” and he turned me roughly aro
und and guided me through the crowd to an aisle of stalls.

  Through every stall in the Arletian market we walked, until Dellin stopped me before a large star-trader’s booth filled with off-world fabrics and crafts.

  “Choose,” he said, waving me inside, and struck up a conversation with the clerk.

  I was loath to touch the delicate gauzes and silks with my filthy hands, and the shopkeeper’s eyes followed me as if the same thought was in his mind. He suggested to Dellin that under the circumstances I might use his shower stall in the back room.

  I did this, and took my time. It was a narrow portable shower, with hardly enough space to turn, but I luxuriated in it.

  Clean to squeaking, I disdained my grimy s’kim, leaving it on the dirt between shower and shop proper, and walked, naked, covered with beaded drops of water, to where Dellin lounged with the clerk. There was a length of silvery silk and two silver clips, set with white stones, and a bone comb backed with a matching silver handle on the counter between them.

  “I have little time, Estri. These will have to do.” He gestured to me to dress.

  I did so, slowly, shamelessly, before the popeyed clerk, taking as much time before the mirror as I dared. Only when the silvery silk was most artfully draped and my hair sleek and shining did I leave the interior of the star-trader’s shop.

  Dellin looked me up and down, nodded, and paid the bill. It was exorbitant. He steered me across the crowded Inner Well until we stood before three broad steps that led up to a massive thala door, upon which were carved many women.

  “Turn for me.” I did so. He took my chald from about his neck and with the tiny key unlocked it. He removed my father’s ring from his middle finger and threaded the chald through its band, then fastened the chald around my waist and secured the key in its housing. He drew from his wide parr pocket belt a small tas bag and handed it to me. I could feel the viewer and slightly bigger holos through the buttery leather. He then reached behind my neck and removed the necklace of dippars he had put on me in the forest. He Held it out to me.