Jeweled Fire

by Sharon Shinn

  “Most of my customers pay in Malinquese coins, but some of my wealthiest patrons are from Dhonsho and Cozique,” Chandran explained. “They are willing to pay more for the convenience of using their own money.”

  Leah had a chance to practice her math skills late in the day when an older woman accompanied her petulant granddaughter to Chandran’s booth and began picking through the music boxes. They wore the long, flowing clothing that Leah had learned to associate with Cozique; that, more than the fact that they spoke Coziquela, gave away their national origin. Nothing pleased the little girl until Chandran brought over a music box made of deep red glass and featuring a small gold rabbit that spun slowly on the lid while the melody played.

  “I want that. Can I have that?” she demanded.

  “Of course, anything to make you happy,” the older woman said. She seemed amused rather than irritated; Leah herself would have been tempted to push the little girl down the stairwell if they’d been anywhere near the center of the building. “I can purchase it with Coziquela coins, can I not?”

  Chandran nodded and looked pointedly at Leah, who made a guess at the right multiplier and named a sum. She wasn’t sure if it was correct or not, but the woman handed over her payment without argument.

  As soon as the customers were out of sight, Chandran gave her a nod of approval. “Nicely done.”

  “I thought the number might have been too high.”

  Chandran offered his buried smile. “She did not think so.”

  The rest of the day brought a handful of additional customers, but they all possessed Malinquese funds, so the transactions weren’t too difficult. Still, by the time the floor cleared and merchants started closing up their booths, Leah admitted to herself that she was feeling fatigued. She wasn’t used to standing in one place all day, trying to look welcoming. Her cheeks hurt from the unaccustomed smiling.

  That says something about you that you don’t want to think about too much, she thought ruefully.

  “I usually reward myself with a cup of keerza at the end of the day,” Chandran said. “Would you like some?”

  Leah didn’t care much for keerza, which she considered either bitter or flavorless, depending on how it was brewed, but she never missed a chance to cultivate a friendship. “I would,” she said. “Thank you.”

  Chandran stepped back into the little curtained area and set a kettle over a tiny portable firepit. Leah dragged out a pair of stools and arranged them in the middle of the booth, so she and Chandran would have room to sit comfortably. About half the other merchants were engaged in similar rituals, she noticed, taking this hour to wind down or tally up accounts or visit with neighboring vendors. The rest of the shops were completely deserted.

  “How do you know your merchandise will be safe overnight?” Leah asked as Chandran handed her a steaming cup and settled in the chair across from her. “A determined thief could break into any cabinet he wanted.”

  Chandran blew on his cup to cool it. “There is a ring of guards outside the market every night. Thefts are few.”

  Leah sipped her keerza, which was on the strong and bitter side. Why would anybody drink this stuff? “Guards? Paid for by the merchants?”

  “Originally,” Chandran said. “But given the importance of the Great Market to the economy of Palminera, it has become an expense borne by the crown. Of course, the rents we pay to lease our spaces are a source of income for the crown, so in some sense we are funding the guards.”

  Leah took another swallow. It might not be so bad if she had a sweet to go with it. When she came back tomorrow, she would bring something sugary—enough to share with Chandran. “How long have you had a booth here?” she inquired. That seemed safe enough to ask; if he felt chatty, she might learn how he’d managed to acquire the space.

  But he didn’t. “For ten years. A very lucrative ten years.”

  She grinned. “I imagine so.” There was only about half the cup left and she chugged the rest of it down, just to get it over with. She felt her stomach turn over in protest. Welce and Malinqua had healthy trading arrangements, but Leah couldn’t imagine this particular item catching on in her home country. “So what time should I be back tomorrow? When would the royal party arrive?”

  “They might come at any time—or they might not come until the next day, or the day after. It is hard to gauge.”

  “Then I guess I’ll just keep returning until they do.”

  He nodded. “As I expected. Be here when the market opens. I will give you a pass that will see you through the guards in the morning.” He gave her a stern look. “It will not get you past the perimeter at night, should you be thinking of returning and appropriating a few items from my fellow merchants.”

  That made her laugh. She appreciated suspicious people; they reminded her of herself. “What, you don’t know me well enough to trust my good intentions?”

  “I don’t know you at all,” he said. “As you do not know me. Either of us might be much different than we seem.”

  She acknowledged that with a rueful look.

  “Would you like more keerza?” he asked.

  “Thank you, no. I need to get home.” And the sooner the better; the keerza was not agreeing with her stomach at all. She gathered her feet under her, preparing to push herself off the stool, but he held out a hand.

  “One moment,” he said, his voice darkly serious.

  She tried not to show the tension that suddenly tightened all the muscles in her back. “What is it?”

  His black eyes studied her as if he wanted to read her soul. “Why are you so interested in meeting the Welchin princess?”

  “I told you—”

  “The truth,” he said. He gestured at the empty cup still in her hand. “I put poison in the keerza. If I do not like your answer, I will call the guards. I am not interested in playing any role in an attempted assassination.”

  Poison! Oh, she’d been a fool for not even suspecting. Even by keerza standards, this cup had tasted foul. Malinqua’s early history was rife with tales of deadly drinks served to unsuspecting rivals, and even today a fatal brew was the preferred weapon for murder. She was an idiot.

  Leah’s mind raced as her gut cramped. She had a whole range of medicines in her lodgings—including more than one antitoxin—but judging by the way her abdomen was clenching, she wouldn’t be able to make it that far without puking her guts out. Or worse.

  “I am not interested in assassination, either,” she said, trying to keep her voice calm. He hadn’t specified if the drug he’d administered would kill her or just incapacitate her, and his solemn bearded face didn’t give away any clues. “The truth. I am in Malinqua as an agent of the Welchin crown. I send back any useful information to the regent, Darien Serlast—who will shortly become king.”

  “You’re a spy.”

  “I am.”

  He considered that a moment. “Relations between Welce and Malinqua have been generally friendly.”

  “That’s right. And there’s been nothing damaging in my reports. Just—information.” As he thought that over, she added, “The empress has spies in Chialto as well. You know that. Just as she has spies in Cozique and they have spies here.” You might be one of them, she thought, but decided it was more prudent not to say so. Her stomach was really knotting up now, and her hands felt sweaty. One way or the other, this was not going to be pleasant. She tried to push down the panic that kept rising at the back of her throat. It would only make the situation worse.

  “Why do you want to make contact with the Welchin princess?”

  Leah rubbed her hands on her trousers. “She’s Darien Serlast’s daughter, and she came here without his permission. He’s afraid for her safety. He wants me to discover if she is well, and to offer to be a friend to her if she isn’t.”

  His gaze sharpened. “Why did she run away from her father’s
court?”

  Now Leah could feel perspiration building up in her armpits; her breathing was coming faster. If she survived this, she was never again leaving her lodgings without a general-purpose antidote stashed in her pocket. “I don’t know. I haven’t lived in Welce for five years. I don’t know the politics of Chialto anymore.”

  “Why did you leave Welce?” he wanted to know.

  She stared at him. No one had asked her that question the whole time she’d lived here. Even Darien hadn’t asked—although he knew, and everyone she’d left behind in Welce would suspect. She didn’t want to talk about it, not with this clearly ruthless stranger, but she also didn’t want to die. “I’ll tell you,” she said, “but first get me a bucket or something, because I’m going to vomit.”

  He did better than a bucket—he handed her a small pink capsule. “Swallow this,” he directed. “You’ll feel better very quickly.”

  She eyed it doubtfully, and Chandran actually smiled. “No need to be suspicious,” he said. “I wouldn’t poison you twice.”

  She took the drug from his palm and he poured her another cup of keerza. It didn’t taste much better even without the noxious additives, but she gulped it down along with the medicine. It was surprising how fast it worked; her stomach calmed almost immediately.

  “I think I’ll tell Billini that he shouldn’t send any more friends your way if he wants them to remain his friends,” she said.

  Chandran actually laughed at that. She hadn’t thought laughter was in his repertoire. “Billini might not know me as well as he thinks,” he replied.

  “I’m guessing very few people do,” she retorted.

  That amused him, too, but his nod was solemn. “Now. Your reasons for leaving Welce.”

  She shrugged. “I fell in love with a man and I thought he loved me back. There was a baby. It turned out the man didn’t want me, and I didn’t want the baby. So I gave the child to people I trusted, and I ran away someplace I wouldn’t have to think about any of them again.”

  Of course, she did think about them, all the time. That small face, so red and angry, so impossibly beautiful. One glimpse, that’s all she’d allowed herself, and it was the image she saw every night before she fell asleep, every morning when she first woke up. Her lover’s face she’d had a little more success erasing, but sometimes it visited her in her dreams.

  “And who besides the regent knows you’re in Malinqua?” Chandran asked.

  Leah shrugged. It was becoming easier to breathe, easier to sit up straight; the antidote was faster than the poison. “I don’t know. Darien can usually be relied on to keep a secret, and I asked him to tell no one, but he might have felt compelled to let my family know where I am. Or maybe not. No one has come looking for me.”

  “Did you want them to?”

  Leah narrowed her eyes and surveyed him. A big man with an unreadable face and no doubt a whole catalog of secrets of his own. She understood why he would want to know her motives, but she was surprised he would ask after the state of her heart.

  “I didn’t,” she said.

  “Do you think you might go back someday?”

  “And leave Malinqua?” she replied flippantly. “Where everyone has been so kind to me?”

  He smiled again at that. “You are feeling better, I see.”

  She came to her feet—still shaky, but not so bad she thought she’d fall over. “I am,” she said. “But I’m tired—I’m sure you understand. I just want to get home.”

  He rose, too, subtly reminding her how imposing he could be. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then?” he asked without inflection. The question behind the question was obvious enough: Even though I tried to kill you, are you still planning to return?

  She made him a mock bow. “I’ll see you tomorrow. I’ll bring my own food and drink with me, though.”

  The smile showed briefly through the beard, then disappeared. “Somehow, I thought you might.”

  • • •

  Leah walked slowly through the stubborn rain and let it sluice away the last side effects of Chandran’s mystery drug. She still felt a little wobbly, but her stomach had relaxed enough that she could imagine being hungry before long, so she made a slight detour through the Little Islands part of town. It was a polyglot neighborhood filled with immigrants from a whole host of southern nations. Here you could find shops carrying the bright fabrics of Dhonsho, boutiques selling books in Coziquela, and cafés serving the traditional dishes of Welce. She would swing by one of those cafés and pick up something for dinner.

  But first she made her way to a side street to visit a small, squat building with no windows and a single door. Painted on the plain white stone exterior was a simple mural featuring a sturdy tree planted beside a flowing river; a small bonfire burned next to a plot of freshly turned earth, while a flock of unidentifiable birds circled overhead.

  The five symbols of the elemental affiliations signified that this was a Welchin temple. Leah didn’t often bother to slip inside and pull blessings—these days she rarely felt like she deserved blessings—but today she felt the need for a little guidance.

  She stepped quietly inside, dropping a few coins into the tithing box. Three visitors were already there, all congregated on the green torz bench. They weren’t speaking to each other, at least at the moment, but they seemed to be enjoying the silent communion all the same. Well, that was the torz gift—the connection of one person to another person, to all people, part of the great human chain of being.

  Leah had been born torz, was still torz as far she knew, but she felt like she had severed all connections five years ago and still hadn’t figured out how to reknit them. Wasn’t sure she wanted to. She hadn’t had anything approximating a real relationship in five years, and she’d done just fine.

  Everyone looked up when she walked in, and two of the other visitors offered tentative smiles. She knew what they were thinking, and it annoyed her. She nodded brusquely and moved as far away from the others as she could, taking a seat on the red sweela bench. But it was a small place and there was almost no way to avoid staring across the room at the others.

  They wanted her to pull blessings for them from the weathered wooden barrel in the middle of the room. You could choose your own blessings, of course—just dip your hand in the big pile of coins and draw out whichever ones felt right against your fingers—but superstitious folks always wanted to have three blessings pulled by three different people. Three strangers was best of all.

  On the rare occasions Leah dropped by a temple, she preferred to be there alone, so she could move from element to element without having to share the experience. A torz woman who welcomes solitude, she thought with a twist of her mouth. That must make me a rare creature indeed.

  But if she had learned anything during her five years in Malinqua, it was to do favors anytime she had the chance. So she nodded again to the other visitors—Once I am in a state of balance, I will gladly work with you—and then closed her eyes.

  She always started on the sweela bench; it was the element of fire and mind, and she always thought more clearly when she sat there. Chandran’s little trick had seriously unnerved her. How had she become so careless? She scarcely knew Billini, and here she was trusting him and his circle of friends. She needed to be smarter than that, less vulnerable. If Chandran decided to turn her over to the empress’s guards, her useful time in Malinqua was over.

  And then she would have to make the staggeringly difficult decision about what to do next with her life.

  She could fail to return to the market tomorrow. If guards were there to apprehend her, they would wait in vain. Chandran might track her down through Billini, but Billini knew nothing about Leah, including her address. Neither of them would be able to find her if she never showed up on their premises again.

  But she’d miss her best opportunity to make contact with the Welchin princ
ess. There might be chances to approach Corene on the street as she visited the famous sites of the city, but Leah doubted that the royal guards would allow a random stranger to get close enough to whisper introductions.

  The market was her best option.

  She would return tomorrow, but she would be prepared for betrayal. She’d bring more than her usual complement of weapons under her clothing, and she’d wear her sturdiest shoes. If she had to fight and run, she’d fight and run. It wouldn’t be the first time.

  That settled, she felt better about the day. She nodded decisively and moved to the white bench. Elay. Air and spirit. Never an element that spoke to her clearly, and today was no different; she just wasn’t the kind of person who thought on an ethereal plane. But she stayed there a few moments anyway, taking in long, slow, calming breaths, just to say she’d tried.

  The black bench next—hunti. Bone and wood. Strength and unflinching determination. Leah hadn’t had much hunti in her before she’d come to Malinqua, but she’d toughened up considerably since then. She stiffened her spine, hardened her resolve. She wouldn’t let Chandran’s antics scare her off. She’d be prepared for anything when she returned to the market tomorrow—but she would return.

  She slid easily over to the coru bench, silky blue to reflect the element of water. The coru virtues had always appealed to her, even more so these days; she liked to think she’d learned to adapt no matter what came her way. The trick with embracing coru was to avoid becoming so flexible that you lost sight of your goals and your personal morality. You might bend and rearrange, but you had to hold to that hunti certainty or you’d be lost.

  No delaying it any longer—time to join the people on the torz bench. They squashed up against each other to give her space, but of course her leg brushed against someone else’s knee anyway. Sorry, he mouthed, trying to draw even farther away, but she just shook her head and smiled. It was almost a relief, actually, to be forced to remember that there were other people in the world—people with their own hopes and fears and disreputable secrets. Why had these particular individuals abandoned Welce? What terrible memories had they left behind? And what comfort did they draw from this brief interaction that would gird them for their private battles during the rest of the nineday?