by Doris Egan
Coalis smiled austerely. Ran pulled me out onto the floor.
I found that we were standing, alarmingly, at the far right of the double row of dancers. "We're lead couple!" I said.
"I know."
The musicians looked ready to start up any moment. I hissed and pulled his sleeve to make Ran face me. "We'll have to go first, and everyone will be watching us! I don't know this dance that well!"
"Nonsense. You'll do perfectly well, you always do."
Ran's often overinflated views of my capabilities can be soothing, but there are times when reality must be injected into a situation. I turned to the woman on my left and smiled politely. "Would you mind being lead couple? My partner and I are going to the bottom."
Ran said, "Theodora—" but I ignored him, grasped his hand, and pulled him to the end of the row. "That wasn't necessary, was it?" he said, as we took up our facing positions.
Ran's ego rarely admits other viewpoints—actually, it's one of his more endearing qualities. Mind you, he'll yield to my wishes often enough, he just makes it clear that he thinks I'm crazy.
At that moment Grandmother Porath announced, from the chair she'd retired to, "We'll begin this dance from the left side! Musicians!"
The row of dancers all turned to us. I felt the blood leave my face.
"Barbarian self-consciousness," murmured Ran. "Don't panic. We can do this."
My mind had gone completely blank.
"Left-right palm touch," said Ran, as the music started up. "Then place, advance, place. And turn—no, to your left—"
Moments of terror followed by moments of enjoyment. I've always gotten a kick out of that backwardskipping thing during the jig, and did this time too, until I skipped right into the two people behind me. However, we all seemed to survive it.
When it was over, we all bowed and I said to Ran, "I need to go somewhere and sit down." I felt as if I'd been digging ditches for a day and a half.
"Kylla and Lysander must be on the top deck. I hear there are benches up there."
"Terrific."
We made our way across the salon to three doors behind the musicians' seats. Two of the doors had stairs going up. Ran said, "One of them's probably to the watch. —You look tired. I'll see which one goes to the upper deck." He started up one of the staircases. I leaned against the door-jamb, turning to face the salon, and found my sleeve tugged—by Grandmother Porath, who'd come by to harangue the musicians.
"I know," she said, sympathetically. "Sometimes it's so hard to know where to go."
I wasn't sure whether she meant directionally, or if it was a reference to my nearly sending four people keeling over in "The Other Side of the Mirror."
I said, "Do you mean in the dance or in life?"
She cackled. "The dance. I've done life."
"Theodora?" Ran's voice floated down. "This is it."
I bowed to Grandmother Porath and went up the stairs. At the top it was all sunlight and soft winds, and the buildings of the capital passing slowly on either side of the canal. About a half dozen people had come up here for the relative silence and the relaxed atmosphere; Kylla and Lysander were sitting on a bench near the railing. Ran and I joined them. A striped awning had been set up to shade this side of the boat.
"Nice," I said tentatively, wondering how things were between them.
We were passing under Kyme Bridge. Lysander said, "You can see the roof of our house if you stand in front."
"We'll probably be passing it in another ten minutes," added Kylla, calmly enough. At least they didn't seem to be throwing things.
Unfortunately, one of the Poraths chose that moment to invade the upper deck: Kade, architect of "the marriage thing," and probably the person Kylla least wanted to see, next to Eliana, emerged from the stairs. He peered around the deck, then started angrily toward the opposite rail. The security guard who'd let us out the gate that morning was leaning there weakly, looking none too well.
You could hear Kade's voice clear across the deck. "Aren't you supposed to be watching my sister?"
The guard's voice was harder to catch. "… fine, on the boat… nothing's going to happen…"
"That's not your job to say! Your job is to watch her!"
"… job is to watch everybody… defensive chaperone all the time… better protection than the Emperor…"
Kade glanced around at the rest of us—I must honestly say that our group had fallen silent and was eavesdropping openly—and realized he was creating a spectacle. He grabbed the guard and hauled him over behind the stairway entrance, where their voices became unintelligible.
"Oh, well," I said, with some disappointment. A minute or so later, the guard, looking rather subdued, preceded Kade down the stairs.
Kylla turned to her husband. "Even their security guard doesn't want to spend his life with Eliana Porath."
"Oh, gods, Kylla—"
Ran caught my eye and we withdrew a few feet to the railing. He said seriously, "You know, I don't see any good way out of this. The Poraths have put their House on the line so obviously, it'd be a slap in the face if Lysander tries to squeeze away."
"That's why they're being so open."
"Trap or not, it'll still be an insult. And you know how the Six Families are. Murder's a game to them. They do it all the time without reason, and when they do have a reason—" Ran's face expressed his disapproval of killing for impractical motives; it was a judgment he shared with all the commoner classes of Ivory, right down to the market square beggar.
"So what are you saying? That Kylla's going to have to grin and bear it? She won't, you know."
"I—" He broke off, looking surprised. "Did you feel that?"
"Feel what?" Something in his voice made me nervous. I put a hand on his arm for reassurance, and just then there was a kind of shimmering, a faint tremor. There'd been an earthquake in the capital about sixty years ago, but there was no reason to think we were due for another. Except that something different and uncontrollable was definitely happening—
I took a step back and looked around, but everything was all right: The buildings, the canal, the passengers still intent on their conversations. Whatever it was seemed to have stopped.
I looked at Ran. He was leaning against the rail. "We're getting closer to it," he said thickly. His face was white.
The only thing we were getting closer to was Catmeral Bridge, near Kylla and Lysander's villa. I went back to Ran. "What is it? Do you want me to get help?"
There was a commotion on the level beneath us. Somebody yelled. A voice tried to answer reassuringly, there was another yell, and running footsteps. The window just below us was open and we could hear it all. There was a woman's scream.
I looked over the side of the boat. Someone was in the canal; a blue and gold silk robe floated, bobbing and then disappearing as the wearer sank, dragging it into the gray water. A few seconds later there was the flutter of an arm, and a dark head appeared and vanished.
Splashes directly under us marked two security guards diving out the same window. The boat was slowing down. Everyone on the upper deck had joined us at the railing to stare. "Who is it?" I heard someone ask. There was no answer. The guards cut their way through the water, diving and reappearing where the head and arm had made their last appearance. They must have spent a good twenty min-
utes swimming back and forth to the boat and then diving again and again. I was impressed with their training: Swimming is not a widespread art on Ivory.
Kylla, Lysander, Ran, and I all watched silently, along with the rest of the boat, until the two guards returned. There was no sign of a body.
We looked at each other. Blue and gold silk: Kade.
Chapter 4
We missed most of the confusion downstairs. I was told later that that scream we'd heard was Grandmother Porath, who'd fainted immediately and had to be laid on some pillows the crew brought out. Between dealing with her and watching the security guards dive for his son, Jusik must have been in a
state.
When Ran and I went downstairs, we found Eliana being clutched by the old lady, who was lying propped against a set of red cushions, looking about a hundred years old. The two security guards were standing dripping by the bar. And Jusik was in an argument with the steersman about turning this damned boat around, now! so they could return home at once. A typical Ivoran of the great families, nothing was more important than returning to safe, familiar territory in times of stress. I could see Eliana agreed with him. The steersman kept trying to explain that the canal wasn't wide enough here to turn in.
Finally Jusik bowed to physical law and announced to his guests that it would be another hour before they would come around to the pier again. Please make yourselves as comfortable as possible, etc.
I found myself drifting over toward the bar and thought maybe a drink wouldn't be a bad idea. I'd never even spoken to Kade, he meant nothing to me, but it was impossible to avoid the shock of his death in the faces of the people he had known. And in conjunction with whatever Ran and I had experienced upstairs, it threw me off balance.
The bartender had wandered away, so I poured myself a pink ringer and offered one to Ran. He shook his head. The security guard who'd argued with Kade and then dived for him in the canal sat down heavily on a bench next to the bar, creating a puddle of water beneath it. He pulled off his wet jacket and dropped it in a ball at his feet. He glanced over toward the old woman, where Eliana sat rubbing her hands, and his face was as drawn and pale as hers.
No wonder. This wasn't going to look any too good on his record. Coalis had already taken the other place on the bench; he was staring at nothing, in a state of shock. I had the rare experience of seeing a professed na' telleth completely and obviously at a loss.
I suddenly grasped that, whatever his relationship with Kade had been, the Poraths no longer had an heir and a spare. Coalis was now first son of the House. He must have realized by now that he could forget about being a monk.
It was funny, but I could empathize a lot more quickly with the destruction of a dream, selfish though that may be, than with any sorrow over Kade, whom I'd only known as an irritant. I poured a new ringer into a large glass, walked over to Coalis, and held it out.
"Medicinal purposes," I said. "It won't do any harm."
He accepted it and started drinking. Poor kid. He'd lost that self-possession that made him seem ageless last night, and looked like what he was: A boy in his late teens, who'd just taken a major blow.
I realized that the still-wet guard next to him was shivering. "I'm sorry," I said belatedly. "I can get you one, too. And they ought to have brought you some towels." Typical insular House reaction, to take care of themselves and forget everybody else.
"Thanks," he said. He wiped his nose with his arm in a distracted sort of way.
I turned to go, when a voice said to Coalis, in pure provincial argot, "Tough break, kid."
A voice I knew very well. A voice that could not possibly be here. I turned back, shocked, to see the Imperial Minister for Provincial Affairs holding out a towel to the shivering guard. "You look like you could use this." Then he smiled at me. "Hello, Theodora."
A height between medium and tall; dark hair shot with premature gray, the calm certainty in his face of a very heavy falling rock. He wasn't wearing his glasses. Stereth Tar'krim, one of the few outlaw leaders to ever successfully get out of the Northwest Sector and into the Imperial power structure… and the only one who kept his old name.
I became aware that my mouth was open, and I closed it. "What are you doing here? Where were you? I didn't see you with the guests before." Not the most polite, or even most coherent greeting, but it was out before I could think about it.
"I was downstairs, chatting with friends." There's a kind of phoniness, when Stereth uses words like chatting, that he enjoys and likes his listeners to enjoy.
Coalis looked up dully. "You two know each other?"
I might have asked the same thing. What was Stereth doing on an intimate conversational basis with the younger son of Porath? Or rather, the first son, now. I looked at him speculatively.
He said, "I suppose this means Ran's aboard, too. I should have come upstairs earlier. Where is he?"
"Right here." Ran appeared behind him, looking, I am glad to say, nowhere near as shocked as I felt.
Stereth turned happily. "Sokol." he said. Quietly, thank the gods.
Ran's eyes went wide, and he took Stereth by the arm and pulled him behind the bar. I followed. In a fierce whisper he said, "Do not call me Sokol."
"Your past is nothing to be ashamed of."
"I'm not ashamed, and don't do it." Ran was morally entitled to give orders on this subject, as it was Stereth's fault that we'd once used aliases to begin with. "What's going on here?" Without waiting for an answer, he added, "Look, I don't want my family name pulled into some new affair of yours."
"I beg your pardon, old friend, but you'll have to tell me what you're talking about." There was a slight edge of coldness in his voice now.
"Kade Porath. He was killed by sorcery."
I said, "He was?"
"That's interesting," said Stereth. He said it thoughtfully, not with sarcasm. "I was downstairs when it happened, but from what I heard it did sound strange."
"Are you seriously telling me you had nothing to do with this? You seem to know the new heir pretty well, Stereth. And I know how you like to make alliances."
He did not appear offended. "I'm seriously telling you I had nothing to do with it. I never lie to my crew, remember."
"You don't tell them the whole story, either. And anyway, we're not in your crew anymore." He took a deep breath. Stereth was the one person who could sometimes put Ran at a loss. "We were never in your crew."
This was debatable. We'd spent the previous summer as involuntary guests and co-conspirators in Stereth's outlaw band. Fortunately, the Imperial prosecuters were still unaware of this. The penalty for the use of sorcery as a weapon against the Empire is decapitation for every member of the family. Technically, that would mean every Cor-mallon on the planet, down to the last newborn child. I didn't want to test the law to see if they'd go through with it.
I said, "So, Stereth—did you buy new eyes from the barbarians?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"You're not wearing your glasses."
"Ah." The Legend of the Northwest Sector felt vaguely around an inside robe pocket. "I left them in my other robe."
Ran was giving me this look that said, Must we speak to him socially?
I went on, "And how's your wife?"
From his seat by the wall, Coalis was watching us all with great interest.
"You know Cantry, she never changes. Ah, Theodora, Ran, I believe you've met my secretary."
I turned and got another in the series of small electric shocks I'd been receiving all day. A member of the old outlaw band I'd never expected to see again—"Clintris?" I said disbelievingly. A stocky woman, born to disapprove, her hair pulled back severely; wearing a set of robes she never could have afforded in the old days, that nevertheless managed to seem unbecoming.
Clintris… Ran groaned. "Oh, gods, are they all here?"
I said, "Clintris, how are you?" There was warmth in my voice; we'd actually gotten to the point where we were getting along, by the time our adventure ended. She glowered back. What had I—
Oh. I'd called her by her road name, that we never used to her face. "Tight-Ass" would be the nearest translation.
Stereth corrected us. "The lady Nossa Kombriline."
"Oh, right. Of course." I bowed to her and she inclined her head a fraction of a millimeter. Clintris was not a forgiving sort.
She turned at once to Stereth. "Sir, I've been talking to the captain." Nobody avoids talking to Clintris if she's set on reaching them. "We'll be at the pier in about forty minutes. You have an early dinner tonight with the undersecretary from the department of power, and I believe in any case we should distance ourselv
es from… the events of the day."
"In other words, you'd like me to bundle us both into a closed carriage and go straight home."
"It's my recommendation."
Clintris—that is, the lady Nossa—was in her element as a governmental secretary, though her accent was still tinged with the provinces and the scarlet outerrobe she wore looked as though it had been hastily wrapped around a tree stump with a face. I glanced down at my own clothing involuntarily; was that how I looked in Ivoran robes?
I looked up to find Stereth meeting Ran's eyes. "I'd recommend the same course to you, old friend."
Ran looked away toward the rows of liquor bottles, as though they were the most interesting objects on the boat. "We're here with some relatives. We'll have to see what they want to do."
"Oh, yes, the Shikrons. I suppose they may feel the family has some claim on them. What with the engagement, I mean."
Typical Stereth. But I suppose Coalis had told him.
Ran said, "Nobody's engaged yet." It came out more firmly, I think, than he meant it to.
Stereth raised an eyebrow. "And nobody will be, if you have your way. I see. I guess you have more reason than I do to be glad Kade had an urge to go swimming."
He smiled. Ran turned a blazing look on him, and I grasped my husband's sleeve. "Shouldn't we find Kylla and Lysander and see what they want to do?"
I could see him banking the fires. Ran does not approve of losing one's temper in public; he thinks it's common.
Stereth is one of the only people in the world who can bring him so near to it.
"If there's anything I can do," said Stereth, as Ran turned away. "And let me know if you need a ride."
Ran strode off toward the stairwell, making a sound very like a growl.
We took Kylla and Lysander home in our carriage. They were both very quiet. Ran was sitting beside Lysander, and I held Kylla's hand.
Ran nudged Lysander and spoke quietly. "Did you know the Minister for Provincial Affairs was on board?"
Lysander blinked. "Stereth Tar'krim? Was he? I didn't see him."
"Do you know of any reason the Poraths would be associating with him?"