by Doris Egan
I stood up. Ran said, "Sweetheart, step away from the table."
I've said before, there's a tone people use when they're serious. I was thoroughly confused, but I stepped away.
Vere Atvalid put a hand to his neck. He seemed to be having trouble breathing. Ran said, "Close the door."
He meant me, though he was staring at Atvalid. I shut it. The Steward was turning pale. He started to cough.
Have you ever seen anyone choking? Two seconds ago they were concerned about a thousand minor details, they had strong opinions on the proper design of a shirt collar and the fact that they hate vegetables. Two seconds later, and you can see in their eyes that they don't care an iota any more: It's all narrowed down to one concern only. An invasion of dragons from the Annurian legend could be taking place, and the survival of the human race could be in doubt, but the outcome's all one to them. It's not just the fact that death has its own perspective—it's the surprise that comes with certain forms of it. People have died willingly for a cause, but here they've had no warning, no chance to prepare. The body states its own case unopposed: It wants to live, and the hell with everything else.
Vere Atvalid dug his fist into his own abdomen, but of course there was nothing lodged for him to force out. He kept feeling his throat frantically, searching for an obstruction he knew was there.
Ran held his eyes. Atvalid bent over the table and pounded a fist against it, once. Do something!
Ran leaned over slowly. The soft blue felt hat of Imperial Favor had been jammed into Atvalid's belt. The edge of it
was visible past his outer robe. Ran licked his upper lip thoughfully, his fingers reaching for the blue folds. Then he hesitated. "I can't take it," he said. "You have to give it to me."
Atvalid's fist hit the table again.
"Can you hear me?" said Ran, frustrated, but enunciating each word clearly and loudly, as though agony had a volume of its own that he needed to be heard over. "You have to give it to me."
Atvalid's fingers scrabbled at the belt. He took hold of both ends of the hat at once and couldn't get it loose; then he pulled it out and flung it at Ran.
It hit Ran's chest. Vere Atvalid crumpled to the floor and lay there, not moving.
I walked around the side of the table and knelt where I could see his face. He was breathing again.
I looked over at Ran. "What did you do? And what good does it do us? There are half a dozen guards in the room outside, and another dozen upstairs. Are you going to choke them all?" Apparently the kyrith had been right; the leaching of sorcery was only temporary. But I didn't see how it could help us now.
He stared down at the blue hat in his hands. He was pretty washed-out himself, but there was a triumphant look in his eyes. He fell to his knees beside me, glanced at Atvalid, and dismissed him. "He's alive." Ran took a deep breath. "I needed his symbolic permission, or I wouldn't be able to do this so quickly."
"Do what? People will be in here in a minute—"
"If they were listening, they'd be in here now. I'm not saying we're not being recorded, but he was the only one listening. —Watch what you say, just in case."
"He'll be thrilled with us when he wakes up. The odds on letting me go just took a nosedive."
"They were pitiful to begin with." He spoke quickly. "Take off his outer robe."
I started to pull it off, questioning as I went. "Look, I know you like to keep things to yourself, but this is definitely the moment to speak up—"
"We do the logical thing, The— uh, sweetheart. One person came in here. One person will leave. Him."
I stopped, the robe half off. "Another projected illusion? It's not possible. It would take weeks to set up."
"A planted illusion, using him as the focal point of attention. By the laws of magic, attention is energy; he has the accumulated perceptions of everyone who's looked at him recently, and he's given permission for it to be tapped. You'll wear this hat—"
Despite a couple of years of study, I could only follow Ran's technical jargon so far. One thing was clear, though. '77/ wear the hat?"
"Only one of us can leave. You're the logical choice."
Usually I reserve my arguments until present crises are over, but we lost three or four minutes here batting it back and forth. Ran wasted some initial time by taking the position that he was the First of Cormallon and he was ordering me to go; this had its usual effect, and he dropped it pretty quickly. I told him that he was the native here, and I had more faith in his ability to accomplish something once he escaped than I did in my own. He pointed out that the farmer illusion was no longer safe and with his face he wouldn't get ten steps outside the bank.
"If illusion won't work for you, I don't see how it'll work for me."
He said, "Give me your cards."
I handed him the pouch and went on arguing. "You could be out of here by now, and off looking for a Net link. The Steward has one."
He spread the cards in a swirl on the table, evidently searching for a particular one. "If I'm executed," he said in a voice that suggested his mind was on something else, "any evidence as to family will die with me. No one will care enough to pursue it." He pulled out a card from the deck. "Here we are."
Ran is a born egotist, except when it comes to his duty. "What about me?" I said finally, in a forlorn kind of way. "What am I supposed to do alone in the Northwest Sector?"
He looked mildly surprised. "We can't both go. Here— see this card?"
It was the rope and plank bridge over Thunder Chasm. A farmer was leading a cart and oxmod over it, a risky proposition at best. I pulled back mentally, to keep it from being more than a card.
" 'Careful Endeavor.' What of it?"
"We don't have it anymore." He tore the card in two. "The picture also represents a link between two geographical locations. We're linked, too, through being tied to this deck of cards. If we'd gone through a Cormallon marriage celebration, we would've exchanged bluestones for a while, but we'll use what we've got just the same."
I blinked. He was leaving me far behind. If he'd started to recite " 'Twas Brillig and the Slithy Toves," I couldn't have been as unenlightened.
I almost said, "Ran," but remembered in time not to use his name. He looked up from the deck and said, "Time, my tymon. We don't have any. Take the card."
I took the half he held out to me and replaced the deck mechanically in my pouch.
"Ignis fatuous," he said, "an illusion lodged in the mind of the beholder. Like romantic love." (An Ivoran speaks.) "Those who have seen Vere Atvalid most recently, or those who are on daily terms with him, will retain a strong impression of his appearance; and that appearance is what they'll see. The guards in the room by the stairs have seen him most recently. They won't stop you."
He was putting the other card inside his robe, by his bluestone pendant.
I said, "I don't look anything like Vere Atvalid."
"It's a planted illusion, not a projected one. You don't change."
"Thank you, I know the difference. I also know that only a sorcerer can place an illusion like that, and only if he's on the spot. It has to be placed on each person, one by one. So it looks like you're the logical candidate to escape, after all—"
I'll be with you every step of the way.
He hadn't said it out loud. I stared at him. "The deck," he said. "We've both used those cards so many times, we've both worried over them so much… they're your equivalent of a bluestone, Theo—sweetheart. If you died tomorrow, we could reconstruct your memory traces from that deck."
I had a sudden and somehow suffocating vision of my pack of cards in the library-morgue at Cormallon, among
Ran's dead ancestors, pulled out now and again for a walk through my memory.
"Attention is energy," he said again, repeating one of the hundred and ten laws of magic. "Your attention to the cards, other people's attention to Vere Atvalid—the psychic traces remain, for a while at least. I'll be able to see through your eyes and do what nee
ds to be done. So we'd better cut it short, tymon, and get you out into the world while we can."
"And you'll be with me… every step of the way."
"Until you get too far out of range. We should be all right while you're in the bank, though."
I hesitated.
Ran said, "Our friend isn't going to stay unconscious forever. You've been shilly-shallying for nearly ten minutes."
"I have not been shilly-shallying!" I said, rather loudly, trying to cover up some of the confusion I felt. In all my visions of Stereth's band coming to a bad end, I'd never really imagined Ran at the end of a rope or the downside of a chopping block.
"Glad to hear it." Unlike mine, Ran's voice sounded utterly normal. "So, you think we would finally have made it to the wedding party at the end, do you?"
Well, there were a lot of smart-aleck remarks I could have made to this non sequitur, but under the pressure of the moment I condensed them. "Yes."
"… Just checking." Ran came over, kissed me very briefly, and pointed me to the door. His hands on my arms were ice-cold, even through the sleeves of my light jacket.
I went through the door. I stepped out into the special storage room. I started to walk away. Behind me I heard Ran shut the door and twirl the lock.
It seemed to be happening, didn't it? Every step I was taking was making this reality more true.
I stepped into the guardroom. About six young men in uniform looked over to me as I did so; I made sure my glance took them all in. Now was the time for me to be arrested, if it was going to happen.
One of them stood up from the chair where he'd been drinking tah. "Sir, do you want me to stay with the prisoner?"
I shook my head, realizing sickly that Ran and I hadn't discussed voice. When I opened my mouth would they hear
Vere Atvalid, or an upset female barbarian? I continued hurriedly to the stairs.
Nicely done, tymon. Ran's thought startled me.
Ran? I sent back. There was no reply.
I got to the first landing and paused for breath. They'd dug their vaults deep, the paranoid kanz. My hand on the railing was cold and slippery.
Don't… won't be long now. Part of the sentence was missing. Static in magic, I thought, with no humor whatsoever. I was getting farther away.
There were footsteps on the landing above. A door closed. The feet started down the stairway.
Go back. And face six guards without an explanation? Not to mention laryngitis.
It would look better if I were ascending the stairs normally. No—the farther up I got, the more fragile was the connection with Ran's sorcery. I backed down a few steps and started up to the first landing again.
A set of deep red robes embroidered with gold thread came into view. Feet in boots, like everyone on the Plateau, but these were soft, thin yellow leather, with suede flaps. A fashion boot, not anything I'd like to take out into a Plateau night. A belt embossed with traceries of situ leaves. An overrobe of white, clean even in this climate. And a face—
"Vere, my boy!" said a voice I'd heard before, but never this happy.
The voice of the provincial governor. Nor Atvalid.
I froze. Surely Vere's father would not be deceived for long. He barreled down the stairs and threw his arms around me, somehow not noticing that I was a lot shorter and softer than his strapping offspring.
He was an affectionate father. My breasts were pressing against his rib cage. No, he didn't notice.
"I'm so proud of you!" he cried. "Forgive me for coming myself. It's not to check up on you, you know that, my dear boy. But I couldn't stay away. I swear I tried, for a full quarter of an hour I tried, but I had to come at once. You've made it all worthwhile, Vere. My very best hopes, everything I've worked for—I'm babbling, aren't I? It's a good thing nobody from the Shaskalan council is here. Well, aren't you going to say something?"
He waited. I did, too, for a handful of seconds that seemed to stretch for several hours, while my thoughts banged around hopelessly in my brain like a bird trying to escape a room.
"It's good to see you, Father," I said finally.
I tried to steel myself for whatever came.
"So you do forgive me?" he asked.
"Certainly. Uh, there's nothing to forgive."
The arms around my back again, crushing my chest. He was soaring high with joy. "Now, I know you sent for an armored car," said Nor Atvalid, "and instead you got an aging administrator. But I have an explanation, and I'd like you to listen to it before telling me it's a bad idea."
I was afraid he'd suggest we talk upstairs, but he was too excited to think of anything but saying what he'd come to say.
"This Stereth Tar'krim," he said. "He's grown too popular with the uneducated. He appeals to the same idiots who go to provincial theater and think pole pirates really exist."
Didn't pole pirates exist? That was a blow.
"We need to show them that he's not a success, he's a criminal. A failed criminal—that's the important thing, the failure. That's what we have to get into people's minds."
"Umm," I said, trying to sound thoughtful.
"So I've ordered a cage to be constructed here in Kyno-gin. A sort of prison-wagon. We can carry him back over the roads to Shaskala and let the people line up and see our captive inside. Then we can execute him publicly back in the city. I don't think we should make it a municipal holiday, do you? That would be attaching too much importance to him. And. yet we want a good crowd, you know. What do you think?"
Apparently Atvalid Senior moved quickly for somebody who'd said he was leaving things up to his son.
"Uh, won't displaying him on the Shaskala Road be dangerous? It might lure in his followers."
I was hoping to keep Ran in Kynogin for a while. Particularly if they wanted to execute him in Shaskala.
"So much the better if it does," said the Governor, with the first trace of coolness I'd seen today. "I'll welcome getting a score for the price of one. Cutthroats and scum, standing in the way of all our best interests."
Even the people whose job it was to capture Stereth Tar'krim didn't usually talk about him that way. In the Sector, where life was hard, people had sympathy for the difficult choices of others.
"Years of effort," Nor Atvalid went on. "Working for the governorship. Trying to prepare the people for a less corrupt system. Constant struggle—I know I neglected you, Vere—and always more work, always people getting in the way. Refusing to understand that I was trying to help them, trying to make up…"
The man was obsessed with this. He went on for a good five minutes on the theme of being misunderstood. If they would only all pull together and cooperate with him! But no, they followed after a passing outlaw with a good line of talk and no interest in improving things—
Trapped in a stairwell with a madman—and the real Vere Atvalid could be coming around even now. For the first time in my life I felt a hint of the panic of claustrophobia.
I put a hand on his arm. "Father, perhaps you'd like to go down and talk to the guards. They can fill you in on things. I'm a bit tired—"
He turned a keen gaze on me, making me even more nervous. Gods, he had to keep looking down to address me, didn't he even notice that?
"Son," he said, "I appreciate your leaving the university to complete this mission. I know your friends must have advised you to distance yourself from my little obsessions, didn't they? You don't need to answer, I wouldn't expect any differently from the world as it is. But it means a lot to me, Vere. Your grandfather would have had something to say about it, too."
"Oh… yes, I'm sure he would."
"Sit down for a minute, Vere."
"What?"
"Sit down. Here on the steps. I want to talk to you seriously for a minute."
Let me out of here, powers of earth and heaven! Gods of fools and scholars, all I want is to see sunlight again and deal with the troubles I have, which are more than sufficient to my needs.
I sat down.
"
Son, I never talked much to you about Tammas District. You were just a boy when we were in residence there, and the troubles hadn't really started, and when they did I thought it best to send you off to your cousins. That may have been a mistake. Not that I would want you to suffer, or be in any danger, but I think like most youngsters you probably have no conception of what things were like there."
I'd heard about the troubles in Tammas District, even met a few refugees in my time; it was all pretty remote, though. And things were supposed to have settled down, anyway, except for the unemployment and the militia units always being there. There were plenty of places to go on Ivory before I ever needed to see a godforsaken place like that.
Tammas District. Wasn't that where Stereth was from?
"Grandfather Torin had only been in office a month when things started to go wrong. Poor management of the man before him, he said, and I believe him. Your grandfather's an honorable man in his way. You know that, don't you?"
I made a sound in my throat that could be taken for assent.
"Of course. You've never had much of a chance to talk to your grandfather, and I've always regretted that. He really doesn't have the energy, Vere, I'm sure you realize it's not that he doesn't care. He can barely get out of bed, after all. No one in our family has ever disgraced the Blue Hat, son, don't forget that. Generations of administrators, and no one ever had to give it back to the Emperor. Not even Granddad. —Not that there's any reason he should have. Had to give it back, I mean."
Nor Atvalid rested his arm on my shoulders. It was amazing that this man, vulnerable as he sounded now, could be the same one who put on the show on the platform in the center of town, the day I came in to sell stolen cattle.
"You see what I'm saying, son?"
"Oh, yes." I didn't have a clue, but I tried to sound enthusiastic in a detached kind of way. That may not make much sense, but if you've ever tried to discourage a harmless idiot at the All-Athenan University Mixer from trying to pick you up, you'll know the kind of tone I mean.