Light in the Darkness

by CJ Brightley

  “How about untying me so I can eat,” I suggested with some hostility after what seemed three forevers.

  Rajanas blinked, his focus returning to the present. And to me. “From the looks of you you’ve never used your hands to eat before,” he commented, his tone amused as he pulled a thin-bladed dagger from the top of his boot.

  “Ha ha,” I snarled, turning my back on him. “Are you going to keep your promise and turn me loose soon’s this bucket hits a port?” As soon as I felt the cords ease I jerked my hands apart and rubbed my wrists through my sleeves. My feet were free next, and I rubbed my ankles as well, enjoying the faint disgust that curled his lip when he stared down at the mud flakes that fell off my filthy feet.

  “We shall see,” he said, straightening up. “Ah. Here comes Hlanan. Watching you eat will probably be a spectacle I’d rather miss.” He sauntered out.

  I made a rude gesture at his retreating back, then followed to the door, casting my gaze over what part of the yacht lay in immediate view. I could not see much damage. This was surprising. The Skulls were famous for destroying what they couldn’t steal, and they usually made quick work of their victims by doing all at once.

  That is, when they were attacking for their own purposes. Some of their captains hired their ships and crews out from time to time when normal pickings were lean. The lack of destruction pointed to the possibility of either slaving or hostage-taking missions. Attacking ships belonging to lords was a very risky business, and tended to cause the sort of thorough revenge-seeking that only the rich relatives of lords could afford—unless one of those relatives had hired the ship in the first place. Hostages? Or—?

  Hlanan appeared, carefully bearing a tray. My eyes and nose welcomed lentil-and-tomato soup, and two wheat-cakes, and a thick, creamy pudding covering a fruit tart.

  “Here you are,” he said, smiling. “I suggest you eat and then sleep. You’ve earned it. We’ll talk more after you’ve rested.”

  The way he carried the tray so carefully indicated he wasn’t used to performing this task. The best way to get rid of nosy people, I’d found, was insults. And the quickest insult was against status. “For a servant you sure are slow,” I said as I picked up the soup bowl.

  “Slow at what?” he asked, his tone inviting me to explain.

  I slurped in the soup, partly because it was hot, but mostly because slurping was supposed to be unmannerly.

  “How am I slow, Lhind?” Hlanan asked again. “I’m trying to learn.”

  “Just slow,” I said in my surliest voice.

  “I beg pardon,” Hlanan said, inclining his head. “How could I forget? Six days without food!”

  I didn’t like having my lies remembered. Safer not to talk at all.

  So I ignored him and concentrated on the food, which was delicious. I ate as messily as I could without actually wasting any. That meant making lots of noise, grunting, slurping, and snorting. When I dared a peek at Hlanan, the smile was pronounced—he was enjoying my disgustingness! Flames of Rue, how was I to get rid of this person?

  “Go away!” I snapped.

  “As soon as you are done,” he said gently, indicating the tray.

  At that point I was thumbing up crumbs. His gaze followed my hand. Alarm thrilled through me—was my fuzz showing? No. I’d sewn my cuffs tight to my wrists, and my fuzz was thin and sparse at my wrists. None showed, especially under the coat of grime.

  So I shoved the tray away so it almost fell. He caught it up, the dishes sliding as the ship rolled the other way. Not a word of annoyance, or even a flash of anger escaped him as he steadied the tray, one elbow against the bulkhead. Then, timing his movement to the roll of the ship, he got out the cabin door, and closed it gently behind him.

  I didn’t bother to check and see if it was either locked or warded. Exhausted, full for the first time in days, I stretched out on the bunk.

  I don’t remember falling into sleep.

  3

  The cabin was dark when I woke, starlight glowing in the little window revealing a stone jug of fresh water. I drank most of it, then got up and stretched. Now was time to have a look around, without nosy servants, or mage-students, or scribes. Whatever Hlanan was.

  I don’t care, I thought. I just want him and his questions out of my life.

  I reached for the cabin door with one hand, the other going to the loop in my waistband where I kept my lock-picking tool, but to my surprise the door opened. I slid noiselessly out. The night was clear and warm, the stars pale lights overhead, and one of the moons lay in a golden crescent just above the horizon.

  A couple of sailors noticed me, but went about their business. I spotted a wide hatch with the honey-hued glow of lantern-light spilling out, and ghosted near as voices floated through the open space.

  Someone strummed fingers along the metal strings of a tiranthe.

  The notes shimmered in the quiet air, high, down to low, sending an echo to shiver through my bones and sinews, down into my brain to stir very old memories that I still couldn’t quite reach. Once, surely, I knew music. Why else would it come so often in my dreams?

  A flicker of brightness, no more—the Blue Lady holding out her arms to me—then the image was gone, like the sparkle of the sun on water.

  The images wouldn’t come back, but the feelings lingered. I slipped down the stairs as if compelled by some spell, knowing it was stupid. There was no reason for all these useless emotions of sadness and longing.

  A thief has no time for music. After all, you can’t steal it or spend it. I remembered the time, two or three kingdoms away, when I’d stolen a tiranthe. But when I got it to a place where I could try it, I found out fast that listening and playing are two vastly different things.

  I laughed at the memory—but my feet wouldn’t move on.

  A male voice joined the tiranthe’s glissades, a clear, warm tenor, and I oozed up to the open cabin door and peeked in. Lounging on a bunk, the center of attention, was that copper-haired fellow in velvet. The soft firelight made art of his fine cheekbones, the curve of his generous lips, the cerulean blue of his eyes as he sang a ballad in a tongue I’d never heard before, but as always the words formed into patterns, and the sense seeped in after.

  Eugh! There I was, doing what I had vowed never to do again, admiring someone just because nature had been generous with his looks. But not with his nature. His single glance at me had been one of utter disgust, his humane suggestion that I (being offal) be tossed overboard. And here he was singing about love.

  Love! Romance! Poets and bards all claimed love and romance were all-powerful as well as eternal, but really, what is either but attraction, as ephemeral as a sleet storm, and about as comfortable? No, attraction was more like a disease than a storm.

  I recalled that contemptuous glance of disgust, the indifferent suggestion that I be tossed to my death, and turned away, but I couldn’t scold myself into a comparable indifference.

  Somewhere, somehow, I had formed the belief that beauty ought to be joined to the qualities I thought beautiful: kindness, compassion, truth. I scrambled up the steps to the deck, but the melody pursued me as relentlessly as memory. Two inescapables, memory and music, as imperceptible and yet as powerful as any magical enchantment.

  And both as untrustworthy as beauty, love, and romance.

  Music, I could not make. Memory, I could not command.

  There I stood, unable to recover my own past. The memories I could call up were mostly the kinds I’d rather forget, like a certain lantern-chinned player in the ancient city of Piwum, where—for the first and last time—I’d actually managed to earn an honest living, as a theater mage. My illusions made those plays look better than they sounded, until I found myself not watching my cues, but that one fellow, in hopes of gaining another smile in spite of my cowled, disguised self.

  He was handsome, but also loud, arrogant, tight-fisted with a coin, and disloyal to everyone except his own comfort. But did I see that? No, all I thought abo
ut were his beautiful black eyes, the cleft in his chin, the rich and sonorous sound of his voice, and I found myself using my powers to steal little things for him (“Just little things, it hurts no one,” he said winsomely)—fine slippers and velvet cloth and gold ribbon for his hair—just to win a smile, to hear those pretty words.

  I debated removing my disguise, just so . . . I never did define what was going to happen after that, except there’d be a glorious ending like the most romantic songs. Then, late one evening, I returned backstage to fetch my rain canopy and encountered him murmuring the exact same pretty words to the girl who sold fruit, before the two went off to be alone.

  I left that city that night, and for the past three years, my strict rule had been to leave as soon as I learned anyone’s name.

  So here was this beautiful blond nobleman warbling this song about a couple of witless people wasting their time longing for each other and letting other people and weather and things deal them nasty blows without their doing much about it, except complain in metered rhyme.

  Beauty, pah! Love, faugh! Romance, I spit upon thee!

  Glad to be completely disease free, I thought scornfully that my shimmers had more substance.

  I retreated to my cabin to hoard up on sleep.

  o0o

  I woke up in the early morning when Hlanan entered with another tray.

  My mood was foul.

  Hlanan’s wasn’t. He grinned like he’d just heard a rare joke, and I wondered if that Rat-eyed Rot-Nose Rajanas was above putting some sort of mouth-frying spice in the food. I’d certainly do it to him, had I the chance.

  “Good morning, Lhind,” Hlanan said.

  Ignoring him hadn’t worked, because he studied me with even more interest than he had the day previous. I didn’t want to be studied any more than I wanted to be questioned. What to do? Ask the questions, and be as boring and annoying as possible.

  “What are you laughing about,” I snapped. “We finally nearing the shore so I can get off this garbage scow?”

  “I’m happy because my aidlar returned this morning.”

  “What’s that?” I retorted.

  “It’s, well, a talking bird,” he said as if I’d asked eagerly and politely. “It travels with me. Went off yesterday to find out where we are, so now we are able to steer in the right direction.”

  “The wind picked up,” I said. I could feel it. The ship rolled as if alive. “It’s making me sick. Where are we, anyway?” I demanded.

  “The storm blew us a ways north. The right direction, as it happens. We just outran the other ships we’d been traveling with. We should reach port by tonight.” He set the tray down before me, then sat on one of the trunks with the air of one who intends to have a good, long chat.

  So I forestalled his questions. “How’d you and the Slime-Slurping Night-Crawler happen to be there when I did that spell after the chase, in Tu Jhan?” I whined, then jammed wheat-cake into my mouth and chewed as noisily as possible.

  “Sli— ? Do you mean Rajanas? We were spending time in the marketplace, waiting for some of his party to finish shop-visits, when Rajanas saw you rob that unpleasant man in the yellow dyers’ smock. The man was bringing quite a bit of attention to himself, calling that apple-woman a cheat.”

  “He’s the cheat,” I snarled.

  “So that’s why you provoked a chase? To get him away from the woman? Is she a relation of yours?”

  “She’s my great-auntie. She’ll be desperate, looking for me,” I moaned pitifully.

  “She did not seem unduly concerned when the chase began. No doubt she had her reasons,” Hlanan said, his head tilted at more of an interrogative angle.

  “Auntie counts on me being home soon’s I can,” I said.

  “Home being . . .” He began.

  “You don’t need to know where her house is.”

  “True. Beg pardon.” Hlanan inclined his head. “Anyway, it was your taunts that intrigued me at first. You called him a . . . What was it? A stinking scum of a sweat-sack. I wondered if you were bidding fair to become the gutter-poet of Tu Jhan.”

  “The what?”

  “A reference to the Gutter-Poet of Akerik, who made himself famous in the Shinjan War. It’s a long story. You don’t read or write?”

  “No,” I snarled, and then whined with as much affront as I could muster, “You did all these rotten things to me just because I mouthed that bullying dyer instead of cutting and running?”

  “You sound outraged.” He grinned. “Well, partly that, and partly because you are so young. It made no sense, sorcerer’s apprentice and thief. Especially in Thesreve. I wouldn’t dare to do any spell in that country.” He gave me a quick, lopsided smile, but his gaze remained steady and observant.

  “That’s exactly why I don’t want any more magic than the one spell I stole,” I said, and crunched into a piece of bread. “Yum!” Crunch, crunch, slurp, smack!

  “Do you like being a thief?”

  I shrugged. “It’s an easy enough life, if you’re fast.”

  “Your family are thieves as well?”

  “Yep,” I said. “Whole family. Both parents. Grams and gramps. Gotta get back quick.”

  “Do you never spare a thought for those you steal from?”

  “Ha, ha!” I laughed, proud of the spattering of bread I sprayed. “It’s always them’t never been hungry, who say that.”

  Hlanan’s brow creased thoughtfully. “Who has said it to you?”

  I shrugged again, sharper. “I never saw that anyone was the happier for being honest. Take Auntie! Honest, but still Yellow Smock cheated her, saying he’d protect her, but he didn’t. And as often as not she went hungry. So I decided, why not do something? It would be fun.”

  “Fun? Even though you were pursued and your life threatened?” Hlanan’s eyes narrowed. “Why don’t you want me to think you have loyalties?”

  “Because I don’t have any,” I retorted. “I do what I like. I go where I like—” I began, then remembered the invisible Grams and Gramps and family, so I moved on quickly, “Loyalty is weakness, setting yourself up for another betrayal.” I waved a slice of peach. “Loyalty to freedom, and fun, yes. Not to people. As for Yellow Smock, I robbed him because he’s a vile bully and a cheat and it was fun to make him bellow in front of the entire street. The old apple woman, that is, Apple-Auntie, she isn’t worth cheating because she’s got nothing worth taking.”

  Hlanan leaned forward, clasping his hands between his knees, and said again, “Why do you wish to deny you have loyalties?”

  I snorted, louder than a den of slumbering drunks. “It’s the truth, for whatever that’ll getcha in gold.”

  He tipped his head the other way. “To return to what you said earlier. As it happens I have experienced hunger, in a limited sense. I know someone who went hungry for longer, at much the age you are now. He worked to reverse the misfortune he’d been dealt.”

  I grinned at him. “So he’s rich now, is that what you’re saying?”

  “He has recovered his birthright—”

  “Good. Then point him out, and I’ll do one lift without worrying about how he’ll manage if he goes hungry again.”

  Hlanan sighed. “I’ve offended you. I’m sorry,” he said directly, rising to his feet. “I’ll go.”

  “Where’ll I put this tray when I’m done?” I asked, suspicious at how easily he’d accepted his defeat.

  His answering smile was as gentle as always, but his gaze had gone absent. “Take it down to the galley. Thanks.” He walked out.

  As soon as I finished eating, I nipped to the cabin door and threw the latch. A fast search through the trunks disclosed a small hand mirror under a load of cloaks. I pulled it out and tilted it desperately, examining as much of myself as I could see.

  I had to make certain it was really the magic spell that had caused this spate of questions. I didn’t want him finding out any of my secrets. It was possible he might guess I was really a female. That had happe
ned a few times, as I couldn’t help my size.

  In some kingdoms it didn’t matter, like Thesreve, in spite of the laws against magic. The secret that I didn’t want anyone to guess was what kind of female. That is, that I wasn’t like the humans that surrounded me. I’d not yet met anyone like me, and I’d learned the hard way that letting others see me as I really was brought nothing but grief.

  I hadn’t seen my own reflection since the beginning of autumn, when I’d found these clothes. I’d been certain then that nothing was wrong. The weather was now warming toward spring, but plenty of men and boys were still wearing cowls that hid shoulders, neck and ears, and many of those wore caps over the hoods. In heatless houses it was the only way to keep warm.

  My tunic was a plain, heavy, shapeless homespun brown—what little of it could be seen beneath half a year’s accumulated dirt and grease. I had sewn several pockets on the inside of it for quick stashing, and to fill out my shape. Underneath it I wore heavy black man-sized knee pants, which came down to my ankles. These were excellent for hiding bulky stash in. Below the knickers were my bare feet, coated as were my hands and face with brown nut-oil and weeks worth of grime. I turned my hands over, and found no challenge to the anonymous brown of dirt. So I tipped the mirror up and peered at my face.

  An anonymous face, I thought. Small nose and mouth, like my short stature and thin frame, made me look much younger than I was, but what in that would cause interest? My eyes were wide-set, my brows dark with the nut-oil, and I’d seen plenty of people besides me who had eyes this same shade the color of honey. There were also plenty of people who had more of a slant to their eyes and brows than I did.

  I threw the mirror back in the trunk in disgust. Who would have thought that doing one tiny spell would cause this much bad luck? Just count yourself lucky you weren’t seen by a Tu Jhan magistrate. I recoiled from the memory of the stake, and a figure writhing in the flames.

  Time to stop this and go do some spying. Maybe you’ll learn something of use.