by Doris Egan
One day Brian came to me with the news there was a suite free on the Queen Julia. I took a hasty implant of the spoken (but not the written) language of Ivory, and here I was, two years down the path—Ivoran years, which made them even longer—an illiterate fortuneteller for the world at large and Ran Cormallon in particular. Well, ishin na' telleth, as they said here, being the strongest way of saying "I'm not about to care" that it can be said. I had heard of monasteries in the hills nearby where the men and women spent their days thinking and tending gardens. "Saying 'ishin na' telleth' to the world," it's called. I doubted I could ever match their fine and careless composure.
It was too bad about not being able to read, it had made life difficult for me—though it was not all that unusual on Ivory, not the badge of shame it would be on Pyrene or Athena. But I had picked up some compensatory skills along the way.
Those cards, now, those were unusual…
Chapter Two
"Welcome, noble sirs. Can I get you some refreshment?"
The bald man harrumphed, returning Ran's bow. He ignored me, which was understandable, since he didn't know I was there. I was in my alcove, well within earshot, behind a satin curtain. The alcove was just big enough for me to sit comfortably, spread my cards, and get a good view of the office from the automatic projection on the curved wall. The more I knew of his affairs, Ran kept telling me, the more specific I could be in my card-readings. I found I had no more trouble with the deck; in fact, it was a joy to me to have this sudden, sure skill, to see the rich pictures and feel the new emotions tumble into my mind, and, to be truthful, to be able to look through a window into the lives of strangers and know there was nothing they could do about it.
The three officials sat themselves on raised platform cushions that tended to put their eye levels just below Ran's. The woman and the younger man took silver cups from Ran and sat holding them mechanically. The bald man ignored his cup. He folded his hands over his chest, just where his robes parted to accommodate his bulging stomach.
"I don't think this need take too much of your time, gracious sir. Our request seems pretty straightforward, as I understand these things."
"So it is. I just want to make sure you know what you're asking."
"I'm asking for a simple removal. And if I may speak plainly, your fee seems a bit high for a service we could easily perform ourselves."
"You're free to perform it, noble sir." When the bald man didn't answer, Ran went on, "What you are paying for in this case is untraceability. Two of you belong to a particular house, no need to mention names, and you want that house to remain uninvolved in this. All of you are colleagues in the Department of Water and Power, and all of you will be advanced through this action. You don't want to anger your victim's family or alienate your own. Very well. His death will not only appear to be a natural death, it will be a natural death. Stroke, heart attack, whatever you like. Sorcery partakes of nature, after all. And if you considered my fee too outrageous, you wouldn't be here."
The woman's bracelet tapped the cup in her hand. She seemed startled by the sound. The bald man looked at his two colleagues, then back to Ran.
"How long would this take?" he asked.
When they had filed out, Ran pulled back my curtain. "Well?"
"I don't like them."
"I'm not pleased by their company myself, but that wasn't the question I had in mind."
I sighed. "The cards don't like them either, Ran."
"Sir."
"Sir. There's something funny about them and their designated victim. Something to do with a blood relationship. Necessary information we haven't been given—"
He was already going to his shelf of hand-held books, pulling down the current year's volume of the Imperial Rolls. "Hideo, Hideo… here it is. What a victim our victim is—no major family support, no powerful relatives. A gift from heaven, apparently. You're sure of the cards? Could it be that a blood relationship with one of our three visitors is what you're seeing?"
I ran the cards again. He was always patient at this point, almost deferential. "I can't explain it, but I get the same answer both ways. Our target or our clients: a powerful person involved, a blood tie. And possibly illegitimate—it's on the left side of the configuration."
"Huh. Well, I'll put them oif for a day or so while I make inquiries."
"I'm sorry."
"Why apologize? That's what you're here for, to warn me off dangerous ground." He went over to the small round window behind his desk, unscrewed the locks, and pulled it open. The smell of late-flowering cinnatree came in with the summer breeze. It's strange how deeply smells go in the memory; the antiseptic smell of my creche when I was small, the smell of old books in the artifacts library of Athena's North Branch. The Square was always filled with the aroma of food cooking. Cinnatree is a wonderful smell to enter a tiny room, it seemed to pull down the walls to the world outside. I stretched and let my legs dangle from the alcove niche. "This is the first negative report you've given me," Ran went on, "and I'm glad. You're coming more into tune with the cards. Are you doing as I said, keeping them with you and sleeping with them at night?"
"They're always in my pouch," I said, patting the leather bag I had slung beneath my outer robe.
"The more you do, the more you'll be able to see." He unlocked a drawer in the desk and pulled out a green candle and a small plastic packet of dried leaves. "There's no need for you to wait around, I won't be seeing any more clients this afternoon."
"Well, I was wondering if I might use one of the terminals in the other rooms."
"Go ahead; you don't need my permission. Polite of you to ask, of course."
"The problem is, I need an access code."
"Why can't you use your own code?" His voice changed. "Are you involved in anything you didn't tell me about?''
"No, no. I don't have a code… I'm not on the Net."
"That's impossible."
"No, a lot of people in the market aren't on the Net. They don't like to be kept track of, and when I started to work the Square they told me not to register. It's not compulsory, you know."
"Great bumbling gods in heaven!" It was the first time I'd seen him surprised. "How do they tax you, woman?"
"Oh, they don't. The Emperor sends census takers into the market every now and then, but they never get very far. I saw one get pretty badly beaten, and he was one of the lucky ones."
After a moment of wonderment he said, "I knew the Emperor always has notices up for census takers willing to travel out to the Northwest Sector to try and register the outlaws, but it never even crossed my mind they might also be trying to register people in the very shadow of the capital. I've been leading a sheltered life." He took out a scrap of paper and wrote down a number. "Here. Since it's a family number, I've got to know what you'll do with it."
Feeling my face get a little hot, I said, "I want to learn to read and write."
He shook his head. "Theodora, I have ceased to be surprised. Memorize it, burn it, and use it as much as you like."
So I took it to one of the other rooms. It was the first time since my classmates left Ivory that anyone had called me by my name.
It was a silly thing to be so pleased about, I thought, especially as I had rarely heard my full name anyway, not since childhood. It was a nice enough name but nothing special; we only used one name on Pyrene, so we dug deep for variety. My creche-guardian named me from a random-historical program, after an ancient empress. On Athena I was usually Teddy, or even Teddy Bear, which latter I left behind as one of the few advantages of my exile. (It's hard enough looking small and cute—and in a totally asexual way, I might add—without having your nose rubbed in it.) But this casual human contact had warmed me more than anything else on Ivory.
Sentiment, however, did not stop me from making my usual daily cash-count, as I walked back to the inn:
Third class passage to
Athena: 520,500 dollars
,500 dollars = 140,166 tab
als Ivoran
Weekly salary = 760 tabals which makes today's earnings = 108 tabals
My total savings to date = 9,120 tabals
,166 - 9,120 = 131,046 tabals still to go.
I could save the necessary in about three years, provided I remained the single-minded miser I had become.
It was odd: When I was pulling in two or three tabals a day in the market, I was never so obsessed with money. Now that I was making a higher salary than I could ever make on Athena (where even the most honored scholars saved for decades to make their one trip on a starship), now that my goal was a serious possibility, I regarded every spent coin as an enemy.
I stopped to buy a bag of apples in the market, mentally subtracting the price from my savings:
,120 tabals
- 63 kamb. (rounded to one tabal)
,119 tabals.
Which increased, you will see, my tabals-still-to-go amount by one. This may not seem like much, but when you figure in this same amount every day it comes to quite an unfortunate total per month. I decided against getting any meat or rice with the apples.
I found myself doing calculations like this one all the time, and I didn't like it. I also found myself lying awake at night, worrying about my money belt, wondering the best way to approach one of the nonNet bankers who operated so informally in the market. They charged a ridiculous interest rate for the "favor" of looking after your money; but I'd heard they were reliable. Of course I could have used Ran's access code to get a legitimate account; but then the account would belong to Ran, and I wasn't quite that naive.
One of my ancient literature texts had been a piece called Moll Flanders—an English story about a woman making her way in a hostile, male-dominated society. I remember that this woman couldn't pick up a pewter tankard without reappraising her general net worth. She was beginning to look more and more sensible.
Anyway, I took my apples home and had them for supper. It seemed to me that they'd tasted better in the days before I reduced them to numbers. But then, maybe they were just off-season.
The next day Ran met me at the door. "Good news," he said, "in a manner of speaking. Your report on our threesome of yesterday checks out. They failed to tell us that their chosen victim is the illegitimate son of our Noble District Magistrate. It seems to be an open secret, that's why he's rising so fast in the department, and why our friends are so nervous." He took a bite out of the piece of fruit in his hand. "Have you had breakfast? Have a plum." He tossed me one. "I've already warned the magistrate about them, and he's sent us a reward. Not what we would have gotten from our almost-clients; but not ungenerous, I think. They'll be in the Imperial Prisons by lunchtime."
"Is that a good idea? Won't you be making enemies?"
He shrugged. "Nothing we have to worry about. Hardly anybody ever comes out of the Imperial Prisons. It's not like the army." (The army being where most Ivoran criminals end up.) "There's not even a trial." He grinned happily, a row of perfect white teeth in a brown face. The level of physical beauty I encountered on Ivory was depressingly high; if I hadn't kept in mind that my stay was temporary, I might have gotten an inferiority complex.
"That's not why I'm so pleased, though," he was go-ing on. Or possibly I was just showing the effects of two-plus years by myself.
"Sorry," I said, into a pause in the stream, "I missed that. Who are 'they'? What do they want?"
"It's a lovely idea. One of the Great Houses, of course. Who else would own prostitutes? Do you think I'd take a commission from some Gold Coin rattrap? An advisor at the Yangs' has come up with something new. Something new!" He practically sang it. "You don't know how boring this job can be, Theodora. Nothing but routine, day in and day out. Everybody has the same three or four problems. 'Cast me a curse, gracious sir, I need a luck-spell, gracious sir,'—I'm tired of hearing it. We sorcerers can be creative enough for ourselves, but nobody knows how to make use of us. I only get about three halfway interesting assignments in a year."
"But what is it?"
He looked sheepish. "Sorry. I don't usually let myself get enthusiastic. Well, ishin na' telleth. Here's what they want—"
One of the Great Houses had come up with the idea of using sorcery in their business. Every boy and girl in the House was to be given what we decided to call an over-texture, a sort of double tactile image. A client who stroked a girl's breast would feel that, in addition to warm flesh, he was touching something else—silk, perhaps; ot leather, or steel, or the petals of a rose. Ran was intrigued, but before he accepted he wanted me to run the cards. There was to be some small trouble, I reported, but with people rather than the assignment itself. That was good enough for him.
The next few weeks were busy ones; it was a complex project. Each of the House entertainers had to decide what image he or she wanted to project and,, proud egoists all, none of them wanted to repeat another's sensory texture. It was a new concept, and Ran had to work out the spells from scratch. Our house suddenly became filled with people using vidiphones, using computers, running back and forth between our office and the Yangs'.
That was how it happened. The overtextures were to be attached to the entertainers themselves, rather than planted as an illusion in the minds of the customers, and so lengthy spells had to be placed on every one of them. It was time-consuming, and since Ran charged a high fee for his time, the House hired another, cheaper sorcerer to assist him in the actual placing of the spells.
I was on a terminal in an empty room, practicing my reading, when I happened to look up at the spy projection of Ran's inner office on my wall. His new assistant was there, measuring one of the boys from the Great House. I was so engrossed with the boy—as I said, the level of physical beauty on Ivory is high—that it took me a moment to notice the woman. Ran's assistant looked very familiar. I wasn't sure why, but I had a very uncomfortable memory associated with her… then I got it, and the surge of anger that went through me was a new experience.
I linked with the room, voice but not visual; this is not considered strange on Ivory, where no one gives away any information if they can help it. "Is Ran Cormallon around?''
"He's in another room. Shall I call him?" That was the voice, all right.
"Yes, please. Tell him it's a private call." In a minute Ran was there. "It's Theodora. I don't believe it myself, but I've met your new assistant before. She's the one who rolled me when I first came here and made me miss the Julia. "
"Are you sure?" I could see him in the spy projection, turning to look thoughtfully at the door. The door itself was out of my line of sight, but I knew it was closed, since I had said the word "private."
"I don't suppose," he said wistfully, "that you would be interested in revenge."
There's nothing a well-brought-up aristocrat likes better than the chance at a good bit of vengeance-taking. As an Athenan, I should have been beyond that sort of thing.
"The hell I'm not," I said. "Two years of my life—I could be a Master of Arts at North Branch by now.''
"Leave it to me," he said with delight. "You'll allow me to participate, won't you? I mean to say, as my employee, it's as much an offense to me as to you."
That seemed rather convoluted to me; if not for her, I wouldn't be his employee. I wasn't about to object, though. I said, graciously. "I'd be happy to hear any ideas you have."
"Thank you." He cut the link. On the projection I saw him smile.
The Great House commission took a few more days. Ran worked closely with his new assistant—Pina was her name, I learned—then told the House he had to take care of family business for an afternoon. He left her to finish placing the spells by herself.
When Ran got back to the office there was a message for him on the Net. The House was not pleased. Somehow it had happened that one of the girls our new assistant cast her spell on—a nice girl who thought it would be fun to feel like polished mahogany—ended up with skin of dragon hide. And a boy with the look of a statue of some ancient god, who had asked for
the texture of marble, found that he had sprouted thorns. His first customer actually bled.
"Let's go," he said. "I hear the Yangs can be very rough on people when they want to be."
A Yang representative met us in their public room. "Something will have to be done. Curran—" (the boy with the thorns) "—is scheduled to sing at Lord Degram-mont's birthday party tonight."
"Oh, it shouldn't affect his singing," said Ran calmly.
The man glared at him. "And who is this person? You can't bring strangers into our House."
"A member of my own House," he answered politely, "although not my family. Theodora, this is the gracious sir Tyon Yang. Theodora is my assistant. I usually like to choose my own, when I get the chance."
The man's mouth tightened. "Please come with me, gracious sir and lady.''
I was moving up in the world. I hoped I would be around long enough to enjoy it.
* * *
The Yangs had a disciplinary chamber in the private section of their House. It was shaped like a pit; old-fashioned, trite, psychologically formidable. Pina stood in the pit's center. There were only four other people present, aside from Ran and myself. Three men and one woman, in formal robes with the circled Yang "Y" on their chests, sat in the front row. Empty seats rose behind them. I wondered what they filled them for.
"Madame Pina," said one of the men, when we had been seated, "this hearing is to determine whether your actions today stemmed from simple incompetence or were a deliberate attempt to sabotage the reputation of this House." A ring of fire sprang up around Pina, knee-high. "All questions are to be answered truthfully, on peril of your life." Like all entertainment Houses, the Yangs went for a good show. They knew how to go about it, though, and I speculated on what Ran's and my roles were to be in this.