“Yes, madam.”
The duchess paused at the door. “Just remember—I want a sense of deliberate carelessness. The way you did my hair for the Lassiters’ ball. A tumble of silk.”
“Deliberate carelessness.” Lucinda nodded, and a slow smile spread across her face. “Madam, no one will be able to copy you.”
“Well, they can try,” Diane said, with the most piquant of little smiles, the one she had when something genuinely amused her. “They can certainly try.”
• • •
The big man huffed and puffed as he walked with his sacks of turnips. He didn’t want to talk. Which was good, because it meant Micah could really concentrate on remembering their route for her map because of the way the old cows had laid out the streets. It took some thought, but she could do it.
“Carry those for you, mister?” An enterprising boy tried to stop Master Onophrion, but: “No need,” the big man huffed. “We’re nearly there. You all right, then, little one?”
“Yes, I am,” said Micah, without the breath to explain that she wasn’t that little: She had strong shoulders and a broad waist. “Cobby,” Aunt Judith called her. Like a good plough horse. But compared to the cook, Micah was pretty little, so she guessed he could call her that if he wanted.
“Here we are.” He fumbled with keys at the door of an old, old house, and opened it. “Just drop them in here. Sa-a-a-a-am!” he roared. “Come help me with these!” He turned back to Micah. “I’d offer you a hot drink, but I must get to work for the Turnip Poet. Here. Get yourself one at the Ink Pot; it’s close by.”
He handed her a handful of brass. And then the door was shut, and she was alone, stamping her feet on the cold stones of the streets of the University.
It felt like a lot of brass. But her fingers were too cold to count it. She shoved the money deep in her pocket. A hot drink sounded like a really good idea. Micah started looking for the Ink Pot.
The sun was still up, but the twisting streets were narrow, and the old houses hid most of the sky. Not too many people were about, and those that were, were hurrying through the cold, their black scholars’ robes clutched tight around them, their long scholars’ hair flying behind.
“Ho-o-o-t taters!”
A boy stood by a big tin that held bright embers with baking potatoes nested in them. They looked good to Micah, and so did the warm tin.
“Get ’em while they’re hot!”
She approached the fire, and rubbed her hands at it.
“How many for you, friend?”
A potato would warm her hands; but if she was going to spend the money, it would be better to be indoors. And besides, the cook had told her to get a hot drink. People sometimes got mad if she didn’t do exactly what they said. “Zero,” Micah told the boy.
“Zero? ’Zat your name?”
“No. It is a number that is less than one. Less than one half, even,” she hastened to assure him, in case he got the wrong idea. She didn’t like it when people tried to buy half a turnip, either.
“‘Less than one’ equals fuck off, kid.”
“Can I just warm my hands a little?”
“No. Not if you’re not paying any.”
“Fair enough. Can you tell me how to get to a place called the Ink Pot?”
“The Ink Pot . . . hmm . . .” The boy stroked his chin, as if he had a beard. “’Zat where the poets hang out?” Micah didn’t know, so she didn’t say anything. “Let’s see . . .”
The directions he gave were not very clear. He kept using street names—which wasn’t useful because there weren’t any signs—or else landmarks like “right by the bookseller’s with the picture of the dog in the window,” which were not that helpful either. But while he talked, Micah made all the turns a good pattern in her head, so when he finally finished she thanked him politely and set off.
It was not as close as the cook man had said. Or else the potato boy was confused. When she got to where he had directed her, all she saw was a plain door; a door set in a wooden wall with a low shingle roof. Was this the Ink Pot? It looked a lot like an old stable. But she could hear voices inside. Maybe it was a secret tavern. But where was the tavern sign? What if it was somebody’s house? Micah was standing frozen when a young man in a black robe hurried up to the door. He stopped when he saw her.
“Don’t be afraid, young ’un. Doctor Padstow won’t bite.” He opened the door, motioning her in with him to a place full of voices and warmth. If they didn’t have hot drinks, at least they had heat. Micah went in.
The little room was full of benches occupied by black-robed scholars with slates, all grouped around a hot brazier. In the middle, a man with black-banded yellow sleeves was drawing with a burnt stick on the plaster wall.
Micah stared. It was an eight-sided shape, perfectly divided into eight triangles. Around the outside, each line was marked with a letter a. The sides that made up triangles in the center were marked b. It made a fine pattern. But between each of these, a dotted line without a letter cut each triangle into two parts. Now, that was interesting.
“The question, gentlemen, is this,” said the man with the burnt stick: “What is the total length of the lines bisecting the triangles—Bisecting, as you will remember, Master Smith,” he said pointedly to the student who had come in late with Micah, and was clearly wrong about Doctor Padstow not being one to bite, “being the act of dividing in half . . .”
Bisecting, Micah murmured to herself. What a wonderful word for it!
“. . . then: What is their total length, expressed in terms of a and b?”
The young men all scribbled furiously on their slates. “Doctor Padstow?” One raised his hand. “If we were to connect the eight outside points to create a circle . . .”
“It would create a very pretty picture, Master Elphinstone; but unfortunately, would not get you any nearer the answer.” A bell started tolling, a huge, heavy sound on the air outside. “And so I’m afraid I will have to leave you to ponder the question until our next lesson.”
Micah felt jumpy, as if she had to pee. She couldn’t stop wriggling inside. She had to tell them, if they couldn’t see. “Squares,” she said loudly.
Doctor Padstow looked up sharply. “Who said that?”
“I think it was the kid.”
“Because you’ve made the inside ones squares, and they’re all the same, so to find out, you just add them all up!”
Everyone was staring at her. She really hated being stared at.
“Are you a geometer, boy?”
“No,” Micah said. “I have to go!”
She turned and ran.
Now the streets were full of people; men of all ages in black robes, scurrying about as though they were rats set free from a trap. The big bell must have released them. They didn’t see anything wrong with pushing to get where they were going, either. Micah really, really hated being pushed, or even being brushed, by strangers.
She tried going back the way she’d come, but the black-clad rats wouldn’t let her. She was scared, now. She counted backwards from two hundred and fifteen by numbers divisible by three. That usually helped. But people kept bumping into her. She couldn’t see where the street ended so she couldn’t tell where to turn. She was losing her numbers. She was losing her maps—
• • •
“You all right, kid?”
Micah looked up from where she was crouched in a doorway, her hands over her head. She didn’t remember getting there.
“Don’t touch me!” she said hoarsely.
It was a young scholar, almost as young as she was, maybe. “I won’t.” He drew back his hand. “Did somebody hurt you? Did your master beat you?”
“No.” Micah felt in her pocket for the turnip cook’s coins. They were all still there. “Nobody beat me. I just got lost.”
The young scholar smiled. “I did, too, my first month here. You’re from the country, aren’t you? I am, too. Can I help you find your way?”
“The Ink Pot
?” Micah said without hope.
“I know it. Come on.”
This boy did want to talk. But mostly he was telling her about himself. It didn’t matter, anyway. The streets were a giant tangle of yarn, like when the cat got into Aunt Judith’s basket. It would take her all night to untangle them. Eventually, Micah told herself, she’d find a street she knew, and she could start again. But she’d probably have to wait ’til dawn to find her way, unless she spent money to hire a torch to walk her through the night streets, and Cousin Reuben would be mad. She definitely had to have a hot drink, first.
• • •
Riverside felt dangerous to an experienced hand like Ixkaab Balam. There were a million hiding places amidst the close-together, leaning old houses of stone, where anyone could be lurking.
But before she’d left her father’s house, Kaab had taken a little memento from the wall of his accounting room. It was one of the curiosities her kinsfolk had sent back from foreign parts. Since his duties left him no chance to travel overseas, her father liked to line his workroom with exotica.
Her father might be annoyed to find the Xanamwiinik dueling sword gone, but surely he’d understand why she had carried it with her across the sea.
The blade was long and heavy and bright. The Wasp’s sailmaker had shown her how to keep it from rusting during those months at sea.
And he’d shown her how to use it, as well. His legs being as they were, he could no longer enact the moves, but by Ahkin, he could make Ixkaab dance! Up and down the deck, ’til the strange grip felt normal in her hand and the weight of the sword on her arm. And then its silver tip up and down the mast-that-was-her-enemy, until Kaab was sure her enemy stood no chance. But when the sailmaker lifted a marlinespike, and showed her what a clever blade could do to dance around her like a dragonfly in heat—Kaab smiled at the memory. It wasn’t a toy, after all.
She was glad the Local sword hung at her hip now. There were very few people on the street, although it was nearly midday. But they had to be somewhere. Indoors, maybe? Few of the cunning, twisted chimneys gave forth smoke.
The Riverside stone still exuded coldness from the night; and judging by how the houses nearly met across the narrow, filthy streets, the sun probably never reached between them long enough to warm them. On one street Kaab went down, most of the houses looked abandoned: wooden doors rotted, shutters and glass gone from the windows. Ancient staircases up to nowhere.
Kaab headed for a street where she could see wash lines hung across the road between houses. The sheets on them were yellowed, the underwear torn—but between them were bursts of color, like parrots roosting in a tree: a bright scarf, a frilled skirt, a stripy stocking . . . Poor people. But ones who liked some flash and dazzle.
Ixkaab counted dozens of mangy cats on the streets, the roofs, the doorways, cats of all sizes and colors—some new to her—all of them scrawny, many of them patchy and bitten; but she didn’t see a lot of rats. Good for you, kitties! she thought.
I know my love by his way of walking
And I know my love by his way of talking
And I know my love by his steel so true
And if one love leaves me, I’ll seek a new!
A woman was singing vigorously to herself, loud enough to be heard around the corner. Kaab slowed and took the side of a house, to see before she was seen.
The woman was leaning against a wall, catching a bit of sun on her pale, pale face. But her hair was aglow already. Kaab blinked. It was no trick of the light: the woman’s hair was the color of clouds at sunset, of a good ripe mango, of a hunter’s fire. If not for her face, she would be a creature of fire—but no: The woman heaved a long sigh, and her bosom rose like Ixel’s pale twin moons from the top of her gown.
Kaab let her breath out slowly. Was this a Riverside prostitute, waiting for customers? Was her song some kind of signal to let people know? If so, where were they all? Why weren’t the streets lined up five deep to taste the nectar of this woman’s lips, bright and pink as the blush on her pale cheeks . . . to unbind those twin moons and let them sail the skies of pleasure . . .
“I’m going to kill you, Ben!” the street goddess yelled up at a window above her.
A bright head popped out of it. “Not if I kill you first!” A young man’s face, pretty and delicate as Chamwiinik porcelain, capped with tousled golden hair that just had to be fake. “You’ve hidden my best striped jacket!”
“I’ve pawned your ugly jacket!” Her hands on her hips, her head tilted up to the window, the sun-haired, moon-bosomed woman turned her back to Kaab. Her buttocks . . . well, there might be some padding under that skirt. Against the cold, maybe. But then, there might not.
“It wasn’t funny the first time, Tess, and it isn’t funny now! Come up and get me my goddamned jacket! Or I swear I’ll—”
“Get it yourself,” she sang. “It’s under the bed, where you flung it last night sometime between when you got that message from your father, and when you finally stopped drinking.”
“Very funny.” But his head ducked back inside. The words wafted faintly out: “I looked under the— Oh.”
“Oh.” The woman Tess smiled to herself with those ripe guava lips. She leaned back against the wall, picked up a skein of her glorious hair, and started braiding it into tiny braids.
Kaab murmured a Tullan verse to herself: “If I were your sweet sister, I would braid your night hair into as many strands as there are stars in the sky . . . and if it took all night, and the next night after that, then who could fault or interrupt us?”
The door sprang open, revealing the gold-haired Ben in a fine, bold jacket of green and red stripes, buckling on a sword. At last! Kaab thought. Some clothes with color! But any approval she had for this Ben vanished when he seized Tess roughly by the arm.
“Let go of me, you sot!” she said.
Of course! He must be the man who sold her love, to pay for his vainglorious jackets. Pimp, that was the word. Local custom or not, Kaab couldn’t stand it. And hadn’t he also just threatened to kill this glorious woman? She had come to Riverside to try her sword, and this was her perfect chance.
She stepped forth from the shadows.
“The brightest of mornings to the one of you, and a heap of trouble to the other.” Kaab didn’t know how these people issued a challenge, but he could hardly mistake her meaning.
The pimp stared at her. And then he laughed. “Nice outfit, sister,” he said, “but the Riverboaters’ Masquerade was last month.”
Masquerade? Oh, he meant her clothes. Kaab tightened her woven sash ostentatiously, and showed him the scabbard at her side. “I do not joke.”
“I do not care,” he mocked.
“Shhh!” Tess pulled at his sleeve. “Ben, she’s one of those chocolate people!”
He grinned. “Chocolate, huh? And does your rich Trader mama know you’re out here in big bad Riverside, little girl?”
Kaab breathed in slowly through her nose. She had no trouble understanding Ben’s language. His accent was like the sailmaker’s, and he spoke as loud as a village priest.
“I will be clear,” she said distinctly. “You trouble this lady. You insult my people, my mother, and my dress. You have a sword. I have a sword. Is more clearness needed?”
“‘Is more clearness needed?’” He seemed to be mocking her accent. “Well, that depends.” He put his hand on his hilt. At last. “I might need to see what color your blood is.”
“Ben!” The glorious Tess was actually pulling on his arm. “That cart won’t wait forever! Do you want to see your father before he dies, or not?”
“This won’t take long.” He shook his woman off.
Decency required that Kaab just let him go to attend his father’s deathbed—but her liver-spirit was too stirred up to care. If he’d rather fight her, let him. She’d make short work of him and his insults. She drew her blade, all thoughts of formal challenge gone. And Ben drew his.
Like buzzards scenting meat, p
eople were flocking to the space around them, making a rough circle for them to fight in, shouting incomprehensible things. It was crude, it was bizarre, it was outlandish—and Ixkaab Balam felt alive, for the first time in weeks.
Ben lunged at her at once—in a hurry to catch his cart, no doubt—but she knew this one; the sailmaker had taught her. Her wrist moved, and his blade slipped off hers with a grinding noise that made her grin. Take that, you mangy little pimp!
“She knows what she’s doing, Ben!” Tess cried. “For godsakes, stop!”
Kaab’s wrist finished the move, twirling her point around his to target his chest. But Ben was not to be had so easily. He stepped back, then came at her again, as if he couldn’t believe it hadn’t worked right the first time. Again she countered him, and this time her point reached closer to his chest.
The people kept yelling, again with no respect for the fighters, as if this duel were a servants’ tavern brawl. Above them she heard Tess’s voice blaring: “First blood! First blood!” What was she talking about? Kaab wasn’t bleeding, and Ben wasn’t either. “I’m the cause of the fight, and I’m calling it just to first blood!”
Circling Kaab, Ben growled, “Shut up. I’m going to kill her.”
“No you’re not! You haven’t got time! Just pink her and go!”
Kaab’s body was hot, but the fight was cooling her liver-spirit, and her head-spirit was reasserting itself. Ben was distracted. Maybe his woman was even doing it on purpose, to help Kaab rescue her from her pimp. It was the perfect time to try a special little play her shipboard friend had taught her, a trick he said would never fail: a fake thrust that led the enemy to aim for your shoulder, while you blithely went in straight to his heart.
It failed.
She felt a wasp-sting in her right arm. “Rose-torn demons of hell!” Kaab shouted, dropping her blade.
“First blood!” All around her, the people were crying it out, like an incantation. Kaab didn’t trust them. Her sword had skidded west. She reached down for it—
A burly old man had his foot on the blade. “You know the rules,” he told her. “Or if you don’t, you shouldn’t be here.”
The Complete Season 1 Page 40