The second offense is not forgiven.
Steps worn into a curve by the passage of generations of feet led to the Smalldoor, a high-arched aperture lined with sun-yellow tiles. I closed my eyes, followed the steps by memory, so I was not blinded by the sudden dimness inside. There was a soft whisper of blade leaving sheath; my hand blurred out and locked the child’s wrist, stripping the knife from him as an afterthought. “Not today, little one.” The ceremonial greetings of Antai’s Guild are full of Pensar loan-words, a curious mumbling dialect I had not mastered much beyond the basics of.
I took the rest of the small cave, nominally a tavern, in one glance. The Keeper was a new face; perhaps old, fat Curajoh had retired to a villa. In different corners, eyes gleamed, and blades as well. The fire was low; the heat is the first test. In summer there is a blaze, in winter there is not, to teach the young thieves discomfort is inevitable. I stamped twice upon the threshold, warning them I had a companion who was not of the Guild and that I vouched for him, and pushed the tiny door-guard—a thin, obviously part-Kmeri scrap of a boy too small for the down sprouting on his upper lip—away, but not overly harshly. He moved backward without looking, his feet in soft buskins, his head wrapped with a black cloth as well. If he did well at the door, he would likely graduate to the daily harvest, picking pockets in the great markets or wharfside.
“Who’s that a-knocking?” A deep rumble from the bar at the left back corner, a massive curlicued piece of driftwood rumored to have washed onshore during the Storm Years.
“A traveler upon a moonlit road,” I replied. D’ri pressed behind me, but I did not move, letting them take a good eyeful of me.
“And where are you bound, traveler?”
There was no mead or ale at that bar. Here past the Smalldoor, there is only a massive cabinet behind the Keeper, its many drawers holding herb, tincture, paste, and other things. Some drawer-fronts are marked, others are not, and it takes many years before a young Keeper is allowed to mix or mingle, decant or stopper.
Given the nature of the substances, that is for the best.
“For the dells or the eyrie, Keeper of the Many Deaths. I am Kaia Steelflower, and I have business here.” In short, I would go to whatever part of the House I needed in order to find an answer.
A short silence, gratifying enough, before the Keeper breathed a term of passing obscenity and his large white hands—delicate and pampered, for they are the most valuable part of his brethren—flickered in the gloom. “Ah. Come in, come in. You and your friend are welcome here. Hospitality is offered.”
Well, at least we won’t be knifed in the House. “Many thanks.” I pressed my palms together, bowed slightly, and set off down the internal steps, avoiding the third out of habit. D’ri followed, stepping only where I did as if he was an apprentice, and a murmur ran below the surface of the silence.
There was a patter of running feet. Someone was being alerted to my presence. I halted in the middle of a bare expanse of floor, feeling an unfriendly gaze, and turned my head slightly.
“Sorche!” the Keeper hissed. Now I could see he was bald, and his pate gleamed with oil, stippled with inkneedle marks in whorls meant to catch and hold both knowledge and luck.
Now that was a familiar name.
“Ahi-a,” I said, very softly. “Out of the egg now, smoke-bitch?”
She wore a dark dhabri, wrapped and knotted in some barbaric fashion, almost like the Banath of the Far East, those figments of G’mai children’s night terrors. Perhaps she had adopted the style to cover the pale streak in her curly hair, or simply affected it to set herself apart. Her knuckles were white, and if she kept moving that steadily toward me, I would have to draw a knife.
“Business.” A slight lisp colored the word. There was a hard dart of light—perhaps she had acquired a false tooth, to replace the one knocked free years ago. “Returned to finish our duel, foreigner?”
“We have no duel, Smahua Sorche-va.” What were the odds of me seeing the one Shanhua I had a tale or two of history with, here? Had she had heard of my arrival and dropped an indiscreet word, perhaps thinking a student could succeed where Sorche’s own sponsor and thiefmother had failed, then come to wait for me? It was just the sort of ill-considered action I would expect from the journeyman she had been, not from a full assassin in her own right.
Another shadow detached itself from the gloom, and there was a quick movement. My hand twitched, I felt D’ri tense, but it was another thief, this one far too small to be anything but an apprentice. “No,” said a small, piping little boy’s voice, and I thought of Diyan. “Hospitality, ma-neft’lua.”
Thiefmother. So she was training little poisoners, now. A position of high prestige, but it also kept her squarely in the Guild’s sight. It was not at all usual for the Smoke Clan to let one of their own serve in the Red House. The Many-fingered and the Fish-eye clans were those who traditionally trained any who wished to take the thief’s way in Antai, and they are jealous of the prerogative. Thievery training is the accepted first school for those who wish to join the assassins, and freelancers are requested to earn membership by passing the basic thief-tests and bringing a greater dowry-gift to the Guild.
The Twins, the Guild are sometimes called, or the Twin Excrescences. The assassin clans claim to be the elder sibling, but the thieving clans laugh and say what is an assassin but a thief of breathing life?
Uniting such a collection of light-fingered, murderous groups called for a special touch. The Clanmothers, however—some are male, but even they are named Matrihua, Mother, by their clan-children—understand that peace is more profitable, even if less immediately satisfying. Decisions which cannot be collectively reached, or negotiations requiring a titular ruler, are left with the Head.
I waited. The Keeper hissed something else in their argot, and I caught a word or two. Yes, I was expected.
How very interesting.
“You killed my mother, Steelflower.” She dragged the third syllable, turning it into a relative of the word for a blacksmith’s slagpile. I had not suspected such poetry in her. “And I swear, by—”
“Cease.” A new voice, this one quiet but with an undertone of authority that halted Sorche maddeningly just out of range. “You do not hold the iron to back such a threat, Smahua’s get.” A thock of a staff on uneven wooden flooring, and I knew who it had to be.
I did not take my gaze from Sorche, but I placed my palms together again. “A great honor to hear the words of Ban-juae,” I said, respectfully enough, even though the term could be taken as an insult.
On some days, the one titled the Head of Many Bodies might take offense at the name. On most, however, he would take it as the honor due his achievements, and it would even amuse him.
A gamble, to address him thus, and one I often took.
A wheezing laugh, another staff-strike. A faint jingling that would be the bell-bracelets he wore on either wrist. “Kaahua-kaahaiua.” Two words, one the spreading of a courtesan’s legs, the other a plaintive cry of seabirds. So he remembered the poetry contests. I had not done too badly, though Antai’s dialect is slippery indeed. “It is we who are honored. Come, the chai will grow cold.”
I measured Sorche—a long, slow, insolent look—then deliberately stepped forward. For a few fractions of a moment I was within her reach, and had she moved...
She did not, and D’ri followed me, his tension intensifying. If she thought to strike at my back, a fully trained s’tarei would prove an impediment indeed.
Sorche made a soft inarticulate noise, but she did not move. Now that she knew I was in Antai, I would have to be careful. Not too much for my own sake, since she ached to defeat me before she killed, but for those I...cared for.
A snake will bite when threatened, but human vipers are not nearly so charitable.
I drew even with the bar, nodded to the Keeper. “If any of my companions suffer sudden ill-health, Sorche of the Smoke, I shall look for you.”
She said nothi
ng. The bright beam of her hate burrowed into my back and found no purchase.
The Head’s gray robes—of fine quality, despite their artful tattering—fluttered slightly. He tipped his head, turning for the stairs almost hidden behind the Keeper’s twisted, polished wharf, and the bandage over his eyes was more than customary or training, or affectation.
He was one of the greatest thief-assassins in Antai’s history, the only male Head in a hundred summers or so, and had been born blind.
Hospitality
The room had not changed. Wide and full of sunlight from the square crystalline blocks set in the roof, its wooden floor polished to a soft beautiful glow. At the far wall was a tiny lacquered Clau cabinet, its lines verging on the edge of florid, nicely balanced against a curve of wet-black Hain pottery holding the wild arc of a tamil branch. The leaves were deeply serrated, flame-colored, and worked against the pottery’s simplicity and the cabinet’s almost-tastelessness. The pottery was probably worth two or three of the cabinet, and that could have been one of his tests.
It is not enough to steal, he was fond of saying. You must know what you are stealing.
A lean brown man in rag-serrated gray robes, his slim staff not bothering to sweep the floor before him now that he was on familiar ground, Hoeri-kin Hansate motioned us into his sanctum. “I admit,” he said, in heavily accented tradetongue, “I am surprised.” He lifted one hand to touch the band over his eye sockets. I knew what lay underneath—filmed, webbed, gray orbs, withering from some disease or blight. The rest of him was hale enough; very few survived underestimating him. He freed his ungaze, letting desiccated sclera, iris, and pupil breathe, and tucked the covering band into a pocket with a quick flick of long, graceful fingers.
I moved a single step to the side, glanced at D’ri. “I doubt that, han-fua.” The highest title an outsider could give a male Antai rolled off my tongue, as if I had practised it since our last meeting. I was briefly pleased by that. He often shrugged at bloodshed, but did not abide impoliteness of any stripe. Manners, manners, he had used to say, tapping one finger on a benjua board before he decided he liked poetry contests with a G’mai even better.
So did I. Benjua is arcane, boring, and tilted in favor of whoever moves first. It was no wonder the Head played it so often.
A twitch at one corner of his thin, dry-lipped mouth turned his face into a Clau imp-carving for a brief moment. “Your accent has improved. Please, bring your friend to our table. Does he drink chai?”
“He would be honored.” I could even be relatively certain the chai was not poisoned.
“And you speak for him?” The question, with its intonation dipping in the middle, asked a subtle question—as mother, as lover, as thief?
“My adai is familiar with your ways.” Darik, low and pleasant, in passable tradetongue. The cadence of G’mai wore through it, a familiar face under a mask. “I am a poor barbarian, and afraid of making some misstep.”
“Ah, a man unafraid to admit as much.” The Head laughed, a merry dry insect-whisper cackle. “You bring me such interesting things, K’ahnua.” It was the word for an eldest daughter, one a merchant does not wish to marry off because she has a good head for counting. Which meant he was extremely pleased—or being sarcastic.
Either was likely. Or both. And now I did not have to answer what precisely D’ri was to me, but the old man perhaps would think in such terms as marriage. You should marry into a clan, K’aiaha, he had said once, after a long night of playing benjua. I had almost snorted an inelegant laugh before I realized he had meant it kindly, in the manner of a merchant showing great favor to a most promising, albeit foreign, employee.
“Your time is precious. I would not waste it, unless you will it so.” I motioned D’ri along, telling him with a glance that he need not step precisely where I did now.
“I have never found fault with your manners.” He indicated a low chai-table made of a single block of spongestone, its porous surface decorated with spreading patterns of tea-rings and other splashes. Much business was conducted at this table. “Please, sit. Your house was troubled last night.” He folded down, slowly, perhaps playing at age-creaking bones.
Or perhaps not.
“It was,” I agreed. “Though that is not the only reason for my visit.”
“Hm.” An iron kettle hung over a faint depression in the stone, steaming gently—the water was freshly boiled. The familiar ritual of making chai absorbed him for a few moments, enough time for me to settle on the other side of the table. “You are not behind in your tithes.”
“No.” I restrained myself from adding of course not.
He stirred, sniffing carefully. Some said he could smell fear or untruth. Or sarcasm. “Our family grows restive.”
In that case, what is a Shan-hua doing downstairs with the little ones? “Such is their nature.”
A series of small nods, a doddering old man’s movement, but far too fluid. “You remember my words well. Tell me, K’ahnua, why you did not take Sorche’s life?”
It was an unexpected question, so I paused before answering. “Before, or now?”
“Either.”
“I do not murder children.” Not if I can help it. And, thank the Moon, I had not ever been forced to such an expedient.
“Is she still a child?” Bright interest, his mouth opening slightly, filmed gaze moving as if it followed an invisible thing through the room. He took his time selecting the bowl from the rack cut on the host’s side of the table; his fingers lingered over glazed or unglazed porcelain, searching for the perfect pairing. He finally selected a shallow bu-yan of very fine Clau whitestone, the precious almost-translucent material they do not sell anymore. They have not mined it for many a year indeed, so any instance of kalallallillanuharala—such is their name for it, the Shainakh call it albestrkha—is precious. Kesamine has a teardrop of it, hung at her throat with black silk on feast and Festival days, worth almost as much as her inn.
“Some are such their entire lives.” Unease touched my nape. My braids were very heavy, because my neck was taut as towship-cable, hauling a weight behind it on the water’s resisting back.
He whisked the chai in a rustic wooden mixbowl, its spice rising with steam in perfect curls. “The world has changed, Flower-of-Metal. The Clans grow jealous. Many outsiders have come.”
Well, Antai has a port. “The ships keep bringing them.”
A faint hint of sour amusement touched his lips, an expression he wore often during poetry contests. “And many come from the North, bearing strange tidings.”
“I have never traveled very far north from Antai.” Redfist’s friend? Why send a half-trained snakelet, then?
“Are you about to?” He set the whisk aside, poured with a steady hand into the glowing, innocent bu-yan.
“I leased a villa.” Meaning, I intend to winter here. To add that it was halfway up a Hill could have been mistaken for boasting, so I did not.
“With good red Shainakh gold. Luck favors you lately.”
Well, the news would travel quickly. “Perhaps.”
“You have become wiser. When last we quoted Simyaua together, your answer would have been for now.”
Simyaua was fond of adages that showed just how quickly luck could turn rank, and how the only truly happy man was one who had died without misfortune. I did not answer. The message was clear enough.
The Head lifted the bowl, savored a mouthful, and passed it to me with the slight bow tradition demanded from a host. I took it, scorch-warm against my palms, and his index finger tapped mine twice.
Tiny, leathery touches, and they echoed hollowly in the well of my belly.
One, two. Dear gods.
The chai was sweet, strong as they took it in Antai with no milkfat. Sometimes they add a dollop of boiled and whipped cras oil, especially for the harbor lifters. It keeps those rope-muscled bravos warm even on sleet-lashed stormdays, hauling cargo in and out of deep, malodorous holds. I took a goodly mouthful, passed it t
o D’ri, and sweat began along the curve of my lower spine. I studied the Head’s racked, copper-skinned features.
“Smahua’s thiefchild will be chastised for her inhospitable behavior.” A glint of steel in his tone, soft and subtle, the hidden blade.
Ah. So it was Sorche. Why would she send a...oh. “Perhaps Sorche’s apprentice was simply impatient.”
“The young often are.” He accepted my graciousness with a small nod, but his mouth had turned down at the corners. “The Keeper has your chits, so the merchants do not cheat you overmuch. Do you wish what you left in my care?”
Why else would I come? “Yes. I thank you, han-fua.”
“Ah, she thanks me. Tell me, friend-of-the-Flower, do you enjoy the chai?”
D’ri glanced at me. He looked interested, a bland expression he probably wore during interminable protocol-laced events in the Dragon Palace’s great bulk. I have only seen paintings of the great city of the People and the house of royalty at its center, with the holy mountain containing Beleriaa’s tomb rising above.
“It is very sweet, and very good,” he said finally, soft careful tradetongue struggling to match the rise and fall of a tongue trained to subtle inflections and cadences.
“You have an accent.” The Head nodded, that same doddering movement, a wicked cast to his mouth now. “Where is your homeland?”
“Far across the sea.” Darik glanced at me, and the Head made a soft tching sound.
“That is all she would ever say, either. Now, leave me. There is much business today, I have had all the leisure I am allowed.”
“Winds grant you luck,” I murmured, and sitting still for long enough to be polite was a torment, my knees pressing into wood and the consciousness of something very, very wrong indeed looming above me. I had to act reluctant to quit his company, especially since he honored me so singularly.
Downstairs, the Keeper did not even glance at me, but one of his silent assistants slid a thin trashmetal chain holding several jingling brass tabs across the counter—marks that I was a member of the Guild in good standing, and could be overcharged only at some peril. I thanked him with a nod—the chest-cache I’d left with the Head was probably already at the villa.
Steelflower at Sea Page 10