Luma dried her eyes and blew her nose and breathed in and out and in and out. She was a thirty-year-old woman. This had to stop. Straightening her shoulders, she stalked from the library.
Randred wasn't in his counting room, so she ascended the great winding stairs, carved from rare Mwangi mahogany and chased with floatwood, headed for his bedchamber. She found her stepmother, Yandine, exiting the room.
Yandine projected a beauty neither of her daughters quite laid claim to. Carefully cultivated ringlets of ink-black hair descended to sharp, rosy shoulders. Her tight bow of a mouth bore a red gloss, impeccably applied. Yandine had plucked her eyebrows into thin, ironic lines. Her bodice displayed her decolletage to intimidating effect.
Luma could tell you little about clothing, but had overheard that Yandine's revealing neckline and voluminous skirt would have been all the rage in the city of Korvosa a generation ago. Yandine's conception of elegant attire had evidently frozen at the time of her courtship with Randred. On a day when she was trying to be charitable to her stepmother, Luma might reckon that her father wanted her to look like she did when they fell in love. The rest of the time, she figured Yandine still felt like a Korvosan, even after living in Varisia's other great city for more than a quarter century.
This brought Luma to consider another of her own character flaws. As a citywalker, forever bathed in its song, Luma was a part of Magnimar, and it was a part of her. She had no choice but chauvinistic pride in her city, and a wary distaste for its rivals. If Korvosa had a trait that Magnimar did not share, Luma disdained it. Or perhaps the disdain arose from the citysong, and Luma merely absorbed it. Korvosa had kings and queens; Magnimar, the Council of Ushers and a lord-mayor. Therefore, Luma disliked monarchies and all of their trappings. In Korvosa, the old families styled themselves as nobles; here they acted like nobles but mostly shrank from the term itself. For this reason, aristocratic affections rankled Luma, even as she granted the thinness of the distinction between one custom and the other. Most of all, Korvosans ached to reassemble the shattered Chelish empire, from its harsh justice to its new devil-worshiping faith. Therefore a revulsion for the empire and a loathing of devils were etched in Luma's soul.
All of this tainted her view of Yandine. Luma conceived of her as queenly, autocratic, devilish. How much of this was fair and how much prejudice she could no longer tell. The question was all tangled up in her magic now. She tried to remember what she thought of Yandine before the city called to her. The recollections were of distance, of those lacquered eyebrows forever raised, of unflattering comparisons to her blood children.
Then again, though Luma had always told herself she should embrace Yandine as an ally, she had never truly tried. The time for an attempt, she decided, was now.
Luma made for the door handle. Yandine reached out, and with smooth, cool fingers, gently removed her hand from it.
"Your father is sleeping, dear."
"It's important."
A hint of smile drifted across Yandine's lips. "It always is, isn't it? Come with me to my room. I'll pour you tea."
Luma summoned the image of someone comfortable in the world of etiquette. She settled on Byrillia Laxander, a woman of about her age who would always come to the balls and masques that Yandine threw. When at a loss for what to do, she would imagine Byrillia talking to Yandine, and do as she would. As she slipped down the hallway to Yandine's room, she also tried to see herself from Yandine's vantage. She was a wild, half-elven creature, incapable of grooming, hostile to fashion, unwilling to raise herself from a slouch. A walking, shambling ambiguity, neither woman nor child. A nervous wretch, bristling whenever Yandine mentioned her beloved Korvosa.
Maybe they were right to dislike her.
With a shudder, Luma recoiled. That was precisely what they wished her to think. They'd planted their collective mocking voice in her head. It said crueler things than the real siblings ever did.
A wave of perfume buffeted her as she followed Yandine into her chamber. Luma unwrinkled her nose, but it was too late—her stepmother had already seen it. Up went the eyebrow. The left one, this time. There was a code to it, a hierarchy of disapproval, but Luma had never succeeded in cracking it. The left might be the worst of the two, or might not.
On an iron-topped side table rested a Senaran heatstone. Yandine poured water from a ceramic jug into a kettle incised with the paired swords of the Chelish imperial seal. "You are aware of your father's illness?" she said.
"Yes."
Struggling with the weight of it, Yandine placed the filled kettle on the stone. "The news is worse than your father and I have let on." She spoke the stone's word of invocation.
Luma tried to tell herself it was not a call to Asmodeus, King of Hell. She'd read of Senara, a place deep in the empire where the line between man and devil had blurred. "What do you mean?"
"Your father forbade me to tell any of you what the physicks have been saying. But a waste has appeared deep in his organs. It devours him from within. We've consulted priest after priest, but they say his natural allotment of years has run out."
"That can't be. He's too young."
Yandine waved to a high-backed chair opposite her bed. She sat on her mattress, hands folded in her lap. "That is what I keep saying. The priests reply that each man has his number of years, as laid out by fate and known only to Pharasma, goddess of graves. That number may vary. And when it is short, it seems an injustice. Yet on such imbalances the worlds and planes are founded." Her hand tightened around a hank of silk bedsheet. "When I hear their fatuous platitudes, I want to tear at their faces. Yet we have had many healers in and they all say the same. He must prepare for his soul journey. And we must all together ease his mind in the days we have left with him."
"Days?"
"I hope it is months. Or years. Perhaps if you pray to the city. Do you pray to the city?"
"Yes and no. It's hard to put into words."
Yandine cocked her head. The gesture reminded Luma of the fishing eagles that perched on the seawalls of Dockway. "I have not taken the time to understand you, have I?" Yandine asked.
Luma did not know how to answer this.
The kettle shrieked. Yandine rose, pouring its contents into a ceramic teapot fashioned in the shape of a dolphin. She opened the lid of a shallow ebony box, revealing its compartmentalized contents. After a moment's contemplation, she selected a tea and, with an ornate silver spoon, filled a perforated metal ball attached to a delicate chain. With one hand, she clipped the end of the chain to the opening atop the teapot. With the other, she overturned a sand timer of brightly colored blown glass. Pink grains tumbled through the narrow opening between the upper and lower bulbs.
"Why has Father kept his condition from us?" Luma asked.
A sad chuckle caught in Yandine's throat. "Would you expect anything else?"
"He's too stubborn to show us."
"He has been husbanding his strength," Yandine said. "You must help ease his path, Luma. And your brother's as well. It will be a great loss to Arrus, to be deprived of his father's counsel so young. Iskola plans well, but cannot replace your father's wisdom, which comes from having lived. It is unfair that Arrus should have to fill Randred's boots so soon. He underestimates you, does he not?"
"Who?"
"Well, your father has also, but I refer to Arrus. My son fails to see you as you are."
Luma hesitated. "Often I am kept in the dark," she offered. "On missions. And then called on the carpet when I improvise wrong. If he were more forthcoming during briefings ...and Iskola, too."
Yandine poured the tea. "The right move depends on correct information." She passed a cup to Luma, then took one herself.
Luma took in the tea's aroma. "Do the others know?"
"Arrus and Iskola only. I should perhaps have told you first, as you are the eldest, but it is Arrus who will inherit the house and its council seat. It is he who must prepare himself. And as what goes in Arrus's left ear comes out Iskola's r
ight, there was no point in telling one and not the other."
"And now you'll inform the others." Luma tried the tea; it was still too hot for her.
Yandine gulped it down, though. "Your father would fall into apoplexy if he realized I'd disobeyed him. He thinks he can will the sickness from his bones, with none the wiser. The less said aloud, the better. I'd hate for him to overhear."
Luma watched bubbles chase each other on the surface of her tea. "And you'll speak to Arrus for me?"
"And advise him to trust you better?"
Luma nodded. "And Iskola. As you say, they are front and back cover of the same book."
Yandine wrapped chill fingers around Luma's free wrist. "Leave it to me, my dear." Her voice dropped. "I have ill-treated you, haven't I?"
Luma stammered.
"That was a terrible question to put to you, wasn't it? You must excuse me. My mother drilled me from an early age in the principles of verbal combat. In a Korvosan ballroom, one must be prepared with every utterance to put one's interlocutor on her heels. It is as difficult to break as any habit. So let me say it straight out. I have wronged you, by omission. There is no love blinder than a mother's for her children. In my zeal for them, I let you roam about untutored. In those days I was a frightened girl in a woman's gown, anxious for my position and for theirs. Fear makes one a fool. Yet as it ebbed and I came into myself, I still permitted you to be treated as an inferior in your own house. I come to you asking for your filial duty, but how have I discharged my maternal obligations? Indifferently at best."
"It's not as bad as all that," Luma heard herself saying.
Yandine retook her perch on the mattress. "It is kind, of cours,e for you to say so. The truth is that you needed a mother, as much as any of them. More so. Yet I was too silly to be that for you." A quaver distorted her speech. "My brood eats fire and spits pride. And that is good. But you should not have been excluded. "
"I should have stood up for myself sooner."
"We could all blame ourselves. Your father, too. But now is not the time. I'll talk to them."
"If we have it in for Khonderian, I need to understand why."
Yandine tapped absently at the handle of her cup. "That would be squad business. I can't ask directly."
"I'm sorry," said Luma.
Yandine shook her head. "You apologize too much. And for my part in that, it is I who am sorry. They are adults now, too. All of us must prepare to change our long-held ways. In the meantime, I beg you, be easy around your father."
"I will."
"And do not let on that I have told you."
"I won't."
Yandine stood. "Let's be as Randred, and adopt a stoic mien."
∗ ∗ ∗
Luma and Ontor went out together to find the gnome. As they cut through the Marble District on their way to Bridgeward, a guilty urge to confide pushed aside all other thought. Ontor deserved, as much as Arrus, Iskola, or she did, to know that their father was dying. Then again, whatever her misgivings, she'd given her word. If Yandine did mean to help her with the others, Luma couldn't very well go back on that. But how would Ontor—or, for that matter, Ulisa or Eibadon—respond when they learned that she'd been in on the deception? It set her head to spinning. The teeming complexity of the citysong, arising from thousands of minds, plus places and traditions and animals and climactic conditions, she understood. By comparison, the interrelations of a mere eight persons seemed impossibly elusive.
Luma couldn't stand it. She would touch on the matter without giving herself away. "How stands it with you and Father these days?" she asked.
Ontor kept his gaze on those moving alongside them: a stooped man leading a mule; a soot-stained pair of laughing urchins; a covey of penitents, masked and robed. "Why do you ask?"
Already she wished she hadn't said anything. "Sometimes it is good between you, sometimes not."
"Yes, but why do you ask?"
She groped for a suitable lie. "You said I should watch my step with Arrus."
"I didn't say it like that."
"Maybe the problem is that I'm selfish. Do I ever ask how the rest of you are doing?"
Ontor adjusted the collar of his leather cuirass. "So this is you showing you care?"
"I suppose."
"Maybe one way to do that would be leaving well enough alone."
The two passed a trio of Randred's employees on their way to guard duty at one of the grand manors. In lieu of salute, the men tipped the bills of their helmets. Ontor waved in silent reply. After they'd gone, Luma realized that she ought to have done the same.
"So that means it's not good?" Luma said.
Ontor sighed. "Take a hint, will you? I suppose it could be worse. The same old."
"The same old what?"
"You know Father. He wanted a footpad in the squad. He's not so sure he likes one in the family."
"Did you have words?"
"Lately we communicate by dirty looks. What's this about?"
"He doesn't really mean it."
"Neither do I. He's a father, I'm a son." Ontor shrugged. "It's how it goes."
She tried to think how she might nudge him in the needed direction without giving away Yandine's secret. Ontor had to patch it up with him, and urgently. Father could slip away unexpectedly. If that happened before Ontor had a chance to reconcile with him, it would be her fault. He'd never forgive her—and he'd be right.
Luma detached from her surroundings to let the meeting with her stepmother spool through her head. How had she let Yandine maneuver her into that promise? She should have seen its consequences, but hadn't. Sometimes she had no idea why she did what she did.
Ontor appeared grateful for the lapse into silence. They reached their destination, the street of sprawling taverns. Tables and benches stood piled in front of their alehouses, awaiting nightfall, when they'd be placed out in the street. Luma spotted the barmaid who'd served Khonderian and his guest. The server applied soapy water to one of the stacks, a rag in her hand and a bucket at her feet. Ontor assumed a genial expression.
"I'll handle this one," he said. He walked past the barmaid, then stopped himself short, as if noticing her only in retrospect. Turning on his heels, he doffed his sheep's-hide cap to her.
With the instinctive caution of a woman who deflected approaches all night long, the barmaid drew back.
From her unobtrusive corner, Luma kept a lookout for signs of her unknown observer. She did this reflexively, without thought, as she watched Ontor work the barmaid.
He subtly adjusted his posture, adopting a body language that was for a moment conciliatory, then more subtly forward. He flashed a smile at her. He essayed a comic half-step back.
Before long, her resistance melted. She looked away from him, then coyly back. Adjusted her hair. Fussed with her neckline.
Luma couldn't decide whether to admire her brother's skill, or deplore the barmaid's poor showing on behalf of womankind. The two positions, she decided, were entirely compatible.
Ontor chatted with her for a while before flattening his hand and holding it up at roughly the height of a gnome. The barmaid flushed. Vigorous gesticulations followed. Luma could tell that Ontor's inquiries had come up positive: assuming they had the same gnome, she knew him all too well.
The conversation drifted back into flirtation. Ontor let it go on for a polite long while before finally breaking it off. As he left, the barmaid reached out to brush his wrist with her fingers. Rather than return to Luma straightaway, Ontor kept on in his original, feigned direction. Luma slipped off down a back lane. A few minutes later, according to the squad's well-ingrained protocol for surreptitious, coordinated foot travel, they reunited. They lingered over a table of items for sale outside a candle shop and pretended to be interested in the merchandise.
"She liked you," Luma said.
"They always do. It's sad, when you think about it."
"You're melancholy these days."
Ontor said nothing. Luma changed
the subject. "The fellow we're looking for is called Noole. He's a regular there. Not to mention a hundred other drinking establishments."
"So he likely asked Khonderian to meet him there, instead of the other way around."
"Possibly," Ontor allowed.
"Did Arrus tell you why we're poking into Khonderian's affairs?"
"Unlike you, I'm only as curious as I have to be."
They moved on to the next stall, this one featuring candlesticks of pewter or brass. Many took the forms of Magnimarian landmarks and monuments: Twin's Gate, the Guardians, the Battle of Charda. The vendor, a round, florid-faced man, roused himself for a moment, then lapsed back into a nap.
"Noole's a poet," Ontor said, "and apparently a popular one, at least with those with a taste for sonnets and quatrains. He gives readings in the smartest Summit salons, and gulps down rotgut in the worst Rag's End dives."
"Meaning he could be anywhere in the city."
"Indeed."
"And that he'd be a superb spy," Luma mused, "able to infiltrate any crowd." They moved off to a third table, heaped with stacks of cheap candles, sold by weight. "Khonderian gave him money. It must have been for information."
Ontor frowned. "Spy implies concerted effort. He might simply be selling some tall tale he ran across."
"Likely so. But until we can say otherwise, let's not underestimate him. Did your barmaid name any specific haunts?"
"Several. The closest's a drinking shack down by the bazaar. The No-Horn. Heard of it?"
Luma shook her head.
"Then I say we head there and ask around."
Chapter Six
Bazaar of Sails
Even before its flapping pennants hove into view, Luma heard in the citysong the strain of commerce distinctive to Magnimar's bazaar. It vibrated with clinking coins, barker's cries, and the chuff of scoops into bags of spice. In its harmonies, greed, hope, and wonder intermingled. The luffing of tents, rattled by stiff gusts from the sea, percussed themselves into a drumbeat of buying and selling. Foreign undertones joined in: wisps of citysongs from the world over, brought here in the memories and longings of its traders. From a chaos of clashing civilizations they came into sync with Magnimar's marble echoes.
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