Guilt Edged Ivory

by Doris Egan

  They wouldn't shake. I looked left and right, at two men in faded robes who were pulling me away. I opened my mouth, and a length of white cloth was dropped over my head, pulled tight between my lips, and tied in back. I felt the fingers behind my head, tying it, ruffling my hair—an unpleasant feeling, even aside from the fear. So there were more than two of them. My legs were still free, and I kicked out at the men on either side, but unfortunately I was not at a good angle to do much damage. I aimed a vicious one behind me, but that unseen gentleman had prudently dropped back a pace.

  We were only a few steps from a small, jury-rigged tent by the wall of a building on the edge of the square. I was hustled toward the opening. One of the few fully covered tents in the marketplace; once inside, nobody would know I was there. I could be within a few inches of Ran and he'd have no way of knowing. Assuming he wasn't going to be dumped inside next to me. I half-hoped that he would be.

  It had all happened in seconds. I was pushed inside, where I stumbled in the sudden gloom. Hands shoved me down onto the ground; at least there were some cushions scattered there. I turned, awkwardly, to look up.

  A knifeblade glinted in the dim light. As he dropped to one knee, one of the men pulled it from a sheath on his belt and drew back to—there was no mistaking this—get a good angle when he shoved it into my body. There had been no hesitation, no stop to rest, no attempt to talk to me. I'd been walking in the square thirty seconds ago, chatting with Ran. I was paralyzed with terror and disbelief.

  The knife was drawn back to strike. The world turned a sharp, sickening corner and shrank to this few meters of space, the dirty tent, and the man with me. I wasn't thinking about Ran, or anything else. If you'd asked me my husband's name, I doubt I could have told you. I doubt I could have told you my own name.

  Then the blade paused. By whatever incomprehensible rules the universe used, that had got me to this tent, the weapon hesitated. I no more expected to understand a reason for it than I expected to understand why I was there. The man turned. I followed his glance to the tent flap, where the other two were waiting outside. Except that one of them seemed to be lying on the ground, taking a nap in the sunlight. The man with the knife—the only important person here, from my point of view—twisted around, launched himself to his feet and out through the opening. I lay there, pretty much at my limit in handling simple breathing, and picked up scuffles and yells from the world outside as my ability to hear turned itself back on.

  A fat, gray-haired woman with a mountainous chest appeared in the tent flap. In her hand she held a heavy brass lamp with blood and hair on one end. She peered in and grinned a wide grin that showed teeth were a minority population in her head. "Theo, love," she said. "I thought it was you."

  Irsa, my old mate from the days of no money, who sold pellfruit and red pears to support her innumerable children. I mumbled something. She came farther in and knelt beside me. "Are you all right, child?"

  I nodded. But logical speech felt a long way beyond me, as did getting up. She puckered her lips in sympathy. "I yelled for the protective association, and last I saw your friend was being chased over Kymul's Table of Pleasurable Devices. He won't be coming back, you know." She put a hand on my forehead, like a young mother testing for fever.

  "I hope you didn't want to question the one lying out front; I don't think he'll be rising from where he is."

  "Uhh. Irsa____"

  "He didn't hit you, did he, sweetheart?"

  I shook my head. "I'm sorry… I don't know what's wrong with me… I just can't seem to…"

  "Had the life frightened out of you, I 'spect. We shouldn't be surprised; that groundcar nearly did the job, too; did you realize it was coming straight at you in particular? Jumping two skulls in a row is more than anybody ought to have to put up with, at least in the same five minutes. The body's not made for that sort of thing, you've got to rest up in between. Do you think you can sit? I can get you water from the bottle on my cart."

  She helped me sit, and a shadow crossed the opening of the tent. Ran. Irsa turned; she knew him, and satisfied herself with a mere disapproving look. "You could keep a better eye on her, you know," she said. "You're the one who got her to leave the market, where she was safe."

  His clothes were covered with dirt. "Safe," he repeated. He made a sound that could have been a laugh, but wasn't.

  "Safe I said and safe I meant," said Irsa. "Nobody tried to kill her in all the time / knew her."

  Ran knelt down, more as if he didn't have the strength to stand than as a convenience in talking to me. "You're all right," he said. He seemed to be telling me.

  I nodded. "He had a knife," I said. My voice embarrassed me by suddenly coming out like a child's.

  "Mine probably had one too, but they got separated from me when a couple of angry people tried to run after the groundcar. Pure luck."

  Pure luck. Three minutes ago we were walking across the market like a pair of innocents.

  I made out a mound of pillows in the dim light behind me; they weren't much help in trying to get to my feet. Not that it would have been so comfortable to stand up anyway. Ran and Irsa were both stooping under the low roof.

  "What are you doing?" asked Ran.

  "Trying to get up."

  "You're the color of new paper. Stay where you are for a while. We're not late for anything."

  It was a bit embarrassing how my body had just switched off. I'd been in tight spots before—you can't really hang around professionally with the Cormallons and not be in tight spots—but the wall of eternity had never thudded down so forcefully in front of me. So quickly. While I was alert and conscious, and yet without any time to prepare for it.

  The other side of the mirror is a skull.

  I admitted, "Maybe a couple of minutes' rest isn't a bad idea."

  He put his arms around my shoulders, and since there was nobody but Irsa to see me snuffle on his robe I let him do it. As a matter of fact I was quite glad about it.

  After a moment, Irsa said, "Children, who's the fellow back there?"

  At once I tensed. My alarm systems were apparently still quivering. But her voice had been casual, and Irsa was no fool. "What fellow?"

  "Behind you there."

  I stopped snuffling and turned to the mound of pillows between me and the wall. In the gray light I could just make out some sort of non-pillow shape on the far cushiony slope. Irsa got up and held open the flap of the tent a little farther.

  The pillows were wet, I now realized. "The fellow's" throat had been cut.

  Without speaking, Ran and I pulled the top cushions off and tossed them aside for a better view. I think we each had the same idea.

  The bar of dim sunlight showed a man of middle age, completely bald, still wearing a green felt cap to protect his skin. He was pale for an Ivoran, but not sunburnt; he'd probably taken good care of himself, didn't go out much in daytime, stayed in his tent when he plied his trade. Assuming this was his tent. Well, he'd escaped sunburn. The bloody crescent under his chin was dark and already starting to cake. I couldn't swear as to what color his robes had been originally. The pillows beneath him were soaked.

  Ran extended his hand toward the other side of the pile. He still wore the cadite ring. There was a bruise on the fingers on either side of the stone, probably from when he'd thrown himself away from the car. His hand stopped a few centimeters from the man's face. He turned to me.

  "Our sorcerer," I said.

  He nodded.

  It was a pretty gruesome sight, and added to it was a fecal kind of scent I'd only just become aware of; but I found there was no more space left in me to be shocked, or even surprised. And in terms of luck it was all of a piece with a miserable day that had gone before it.

  I glanced around the tent and saw a torn sign tacked to one canvas wall:

  LUCKSPELLS… 5t.-15t.

  LOVE FILTERS… 10t.-25t.

  CURSES… 2t.-8t.

  DELIGHTFUL ILLUSIONS… 17t.-30t.

&nbs
p; YOUR PAST AND FUTURE,

  WONDERS OF ALL KINDS, PLEASE INQUIRE

  That certainly seemed to nail down his professional identity. I guess we could have skipped the ring after all.

  I said, "I think I'd rather rest someplace else," and Ran extended a hand to help me up.

  I turned to Irsa. "What about the protective association? Will they report this to anybody, will they want to question us?"

  "I don't see why, sweet. It's nobody's business. This fellow probably paid his dues like everybody else, but I'll tell them you two had nothing to do with it, and who cares about the rest?"

  Ran said, "Thank you."

  "Ah, it's nothing. The cops like to stick their noses into every silly thing, like they'll find a payoff somewhere if they keep looking—but we'll just roll the gentleman up in one of Ton's old rugs and carry him away tonight, when the market breaks up."

  Ran understood at once. He said, "Theodora, do you still have your moneypouch?"

  My hands went under my robe, to my belt. "Yes." I opened it and counted out tabals until Ran waved me to stop. He collected the coins and gave them to Irsa.

  He said, "Please thank them for their kindness."

  She smiled, displaying that lovely, half-toothless mouth again. " 'The gratitude of a virtuous man is worth more than gold.' "

  "True, but 'the excellence of friendship is a coin no emperor can mint.' "

  They might have exchanged a few more anti-money aphorisms just for the heck of it, but Irsa was busy dropping the coins into a bag inside her outerrobe, counting them as she went. We waited courteously for her to finish, then we all three left that tent forever, stepping out into the brightness of a normal market day in high summer.

  Irsa's first victim had been dragged away, perhaps in the name of neatness; I saw his legs protruding from behind a cart of sugar ices. Belatedly, I said, "There was a third man."

  Her face creased. "Was there, child? I didn't see him. He must've dropped out before the other two went for the kill."

  I nodded reasonably. I was functional, but behind it my mind was still playing back the last ten minutes over and over. The aim of today's excitement became clear. There would have been three bodies found in the tent, throats cut. I gagged involuntarily.

  A skinny young man in a brown robe walked up to Irsa. He wiped sweat from his forehead. "No luck, Mother. We tracked him as far as Brindle Road, but he must have climbed atop a carriage or some such thing. He vanished."

  I don't think this was one of Irsa's surfeit of children; I think he just called her mother out of respect and familiarity; but in the two years of our market association I'd never laid eyes on any of her family. Though she complained about them enough.

  The young man's glance passed on to Ran and me. "I'm very sorry," he said, sketching a bow.

  Ran bowed himself, then shrugged. "It happens. We appreciate your effort."

  It must have been a wild chase; Brindle Road was well over a kilometer away. Whatever were we going to do now?

  Around the three of us, Trade Square bustled with its usual enthusiasm. Nobody could say these people didn't have energy. "Six tabals?" I heard someone cry nearby. "5a tabals? Are you out of your mind? Don't our children play together like brothers and sisters? Six?"

  Whoever slashed our sorcerer had gone into that tent recently. Probably it was the same knife-wielder I'd been introduced to so abruptly; he and his friends could have waited with their draining corpse till Ran and I came in sight. We could question the nearby vendors, offer a reward…

  Why bother? I knew the system here as well as anyone.

  Five hundred people in Trade Square, and I'll bet none of them had seen a thing.

  Chapter 11

  As Irsa had said, the car was coming straight at us. It's hard not to take a thing like that personally. Meanwhile, tired and wrung-out as I was (and no doubt as Ran was, though he never admits to such), self-preservation gets the wheels of the mind to turning. In order to wait for someone, you have to know that they're coming; that much seemed obvious even in my state of rapidly descending IQ. Who knew we were tracking the sorcerer?

  Well, practically everybody who had anything to do with the Poraths knew that we were looking into the matter. And the Poraths knew an amazing lot of people. Assuming for a moment that Loden was the real target here, why pick the boating party to aim for him? Maybe that public display was no accident. Maybe they wanted it to be seen, and a scandal to start?

  Really? said that annoying schizoid voice in my head. How much of a scandal starts from drowning a journeyman guard? Who of any importance would ever care?

  All right, but the point is that the Poraths and their hangers-on are not definitely out of the picture, regardless of who the intended victim was. Now, Ran pulled the ring off Kade's finger yesterday. Any number of people could have heard about it by now, and if they assumed the logical next step, that we could somehow trace the sorcerer by it… apparently a hired sorcerer, who might be willing to drop his ethics and name names—

  A hired sorcerer, just doing his job. The same way Ran does his job.

  —Shut up. Anyway, the point is that… is that… we don't seem to really be any closer, do we? Almost ended up on the floor of that ratty tent, soaking the rest of that

  fellow's pillows, and we still don't have the faintest idea of who's responsible.

  Perhaps a holiday and a good book would be in order.

  Ran agreed that any further action could wait till tomorrow. We both went home and I sat in the downstairs study with its specially imported chair—a desk chair, but a marvel of soft upholstery—and I tilted it back and put my feet on the desktop, while Ran went out to the cookshop for our dinner.

  I noticed that we had messages waiting on the Net, and I exerted myself so far as to reach over and push a button.

  One of them was the House secretary's notice of the revised agenda for the yearly meeting of the Cormallon council. It was marked with a family seal, and the notation PRIVATE. The meeting was scheduled for later in the week, so Ran would probably want to get a look at this when he came in. I hadn't seen the last agenda list, so I used my privilege code to open it.

  It read:

  2nd of Kace

  6th Hour

  Breakfast/Welcome

  7th

  Financial Review

  9th

  Branch Reporting

  10th

  Midday Meal Served at Central Pond

  12th

  Particulars and Problems:

  • Mira-Stoden

  • Theodora

  • Andulsine alliance

  15th

  Recess

  lst/eve

  Supper, Wine, Entertainment

  Does my name leap out at you there from the middle? It leapt out at me.

  Notice there's no explanation listed for Mira-Stoden; everyone knows our branch in that city has been having problems. No explanation necessary for the Andulsine alliance either—people have been talking about it, off and on, for years.

  And no explanation necessary for Theodora.

  Damn, I didn't need an explanation either. When I asked Ran a while back about how our House would handle my not producing any heirs, I had the Cormallon council meeting in the back of my mind. It might seem, to non-Ivorans, a little early in the marriage for anybody to be concerned on that topic, but the unfortunate tendency of males of the great families to get themselves knocked off has made the Houses prudent about succession rights. They like to have it all clear as soon as possible. I'd already seen what happened from one disagreement over succession, and I could understand wanting to avoid anything similar.

  I did want children, but left to my own devices I'd probably have waited a couple of years. When the hints I'd picked up led me to conclude that I didn't have a couple of years, I'd made that check-in with the Selian Free Clinic. The big news was that my implant had indeed dissolved, months ago, and there was nothing standing between me and kids but random chance. A
nd the unknown factors of our separate genetic heritage.

  Not that I'd considered this anybody's business. But if you think the Cormallons won't jump right in and inquire about all kinds of personal particulars in regard to child-production, you don't know them. I noticed they'd left a lot of time for it, too; the whole long afternoon was reserved for their "particulars and problems."

  Did they have the potential junior wives lined up already? I'd bet my House share that somebody, somewhere, had a written list. A nice neat one, like this agenda here.

  Maybe with ratings next to each name. Gee, maybe when the branch reps showed up for the meeting they'd each get a copy.

  I had only just reached that thought when the door opened, and Ran came in carrying a large bag. He put down the issue of that day's Capital News, and walked over to set the bag on the desk. "Be careful, it's hot," he said. He pulled the bag open so I could get to the bowls of food more easily, then he turned and went back toward the door to get the News again.

  I let fly with the top bowl. It hit the wall just over his head, as he bent down to pick up the News. Chunks of red groundhermit slid down the wall and most of the rice fell in a lump on his sandals. He jumped.

  "What the—" I sent the vegetables after them. He dove out the door.

  "Theodora?" came his voice, tentatively, from the hallway.

  I sat there, bubbling like a pot on a stove. You should understand that I am not, by nature, a thrower. That was more Kylla's speed. Perhaps nearly getting killed this afternoon had had an effect on my personality.

  "Theodora?" he said again.

  I said—good heavens, it was amazing how steady and cold my voice sounded—"Go upstairs and ask the Net for a copy of the council agenda."

  There was a pause.

  "Are you going?" I asked.

  "Uh, Theodora…"

  "You've seen it, haven't you?"

  "Sweetheart, there's no need to take this personall—"

  "How long has my name been on the list?"

  "Listen to me," he said, still from around the corner of the hall. "I knew you'd be upset—"

  "How long?"

  "Um, it was on the first draft, but I had it taken off. But then so many people brought it up, I had to let them put it on again. It's not as though it means anything, Theodora."