Stranger at the Wedding

by Barbara Hambly

  She made herself watch and listen to his screams. Having betrayed him, she felt obscurely that this was something she had to do. The day was grillingly hot, the air thick with the sewage smell of the river and, here where the old black slums crowded close around the ancient city fortress, buzzing with flies. They swarmed around the pyre, crawling on the sweaty faces of the watching crowds. Though she was some distance away, she could see them crawling on Tibbeth's bald scalp as the executioners bound him, and he twitched as the insects bit and rolled his head like a drunkard, trying desperately to shake them off. It was summer, and the wood was dry. She'd heard somewhere that for wizards, the Inquisition picked fast-burning wood that gave little smoke so that the victim would not suffocate before the fire began to blister and then consume his ankles.

  Tibbeth had not suffocated. Thanks to the Inquisition's care, there was very little smoke, so Kyra saw everything clearly. She had given little thought to what it actually meant for a man's body to burn from the feet up. She tried to call to her mind the picture of him bending over Alix's bare shoulders in the moonlight, the fleeting images of that filthy dream, while she watched. The stink of charring flesh, the smells of the people around her, the roar of the fire, and the crawling feet of the flies never afterward left her dreams.

  It took a lot longer than she'd thought it would. Long before it was over, she slipped away from the crowd— and there was a huge crowd in the square, packed so tightly that she was afraid she wouldn't make it to the shelter of a side street in time—to vomit until she thought she'd faint.

  When she had gone back home, light-headed and shaky, her belly muscles aching—and they'd ached for days—Briory told her that she'd been given orders no longer to admit Kyra to the house. "I'm sorry, miss," she said, staring stonily into middle distance beyond Kyra's left shoulder. "Master Peldyrin has taken your mother and your sister out to the summer place at Meadowford until St. Ploo's Day."

  "Nonsense," Kyra managed to say, though she felt her face and hands grow even colder than they already were. "If he didn't want me being a witch, it isn't terribly intelligent of him to force me into being a prostitute, either."

  "That's as may be, miss," Briory said, still carefully avoiding her eye.

  "Don't be an ass, Briory—open this door."

  But it closed in her face.

  "Briory…"

  She beat the panels with her open hand.

  "What about my things? What about my jewelry, damn you? Briory!"

  Turning, she caught a glimpse of a man loitering in the square, picking his teeth with a straw and carefully not looking at her. She recognized him vaguely. She thought he'd been in the outer offices of the Inquisition one day during the trial. The Witchfinders were watching the house, watching her.

  Waiting for—what? Her to use magic against her family? To show signs that she had lied, that she intended to set up as a dog wizard for herself?

  Remembering Tibbeth's screams—the fire wouldn't even have burned out yet—she felt a cold, sinking sense of terror she had never known, the terror of being truly alone and utterly without help.

  "Damn him," she whispered, anger flooding in to replace the fear. "Damn him, damn him, damn him…"

  The beauty of her magic, like some enchanted glass goblet, seemed to shatter in her hands, cutting them to the bone. Standing on the high steps, she was conscious of the Wishroms' scullery maid and a couple of chair carriers down in the square staring curiously at her, a tall red-haired stick of a girl in a gaudy pink and white dress, pounding on the shut door of the big stone house.

  It came to her that she had no idea where she was going to spend the night.

  Head high and pearls jiggling, she'd stridden down the steps, across the square, and away into the city again.

  Chapter XV

  Strange, Kyra thought, lying with the lightweight quilt drawn up over her chin. After all that, to be back in her parents' house again.

  She blinked drowsily up at the painted ceiling of the yellow guest room. Idly, she identified the various birds the painter had depicted: a pigeon there, a dove there, a couple of well-executed sparrows, a cloud of finches like gray and white sunflower seeds scattered over the top of a salad, a startlingly pink parrot. Then she closed her eyes again, shutting out the pale slant of the morning sun.

  Not a very welcome guest, perhaps. But here.

  Six years.

  It had been nightfall that summer afternoon six years ago when she reached the Mages' Yard. It was situated in the quarter of the Old Believers, a shabby slum on the east side of town in the shadow of the old walls, where tightly packed half-timbered houses leaned wearily against one another, their jutting upper stories nearly meeting over the narrow streets. Every third shop seemed to sell old clothes or the bizarre icons of their religion. Men in faded black robes stared at her as she passed, men with long hair hanging in elaborate braids to their shoulders, or waists, or sometimes longer, their beards similarly dressed and tied with ribbons of all colors, to the glory and honor of their twenty-one half-forgotten gods. An old woman, filthy beyond description in a yellow gown that looked as if it had been stolen from a duchess a century previously, caught her arm and muttered at her toothlessly; Kyra pulled free and hurried on her way. Instead of the familiar images of leaden saints in street-corner shrines, the garish, stylized seals of the Old Gods were sometimes visible, painted on the brick walls under decades worth of filth. Strange odors drifted from doorways, and children darted around her like flights of half-naked swallows, vanishing into alleyways too narrow for a cart to have passed. The street was paved with cobblestones the size and shape of cannonballs; green water lay between them, buzzing with gnats and stinking.

  She knew where the Mages' Yard was. She had passed it occasionally on her solitary rambles, had once visited Tibbeth's house to find him in conversation over tea with the Archmage. In the gathering gloom she could see that four or five of the dozen houses that bordered the narrow cobbled court were dark. Tibbeth, she recalled, had frequently read in his study without lights. In other houses orange lamplight flickered where men and women crossed the torn sacking of the curtains; not all the houses there were occupied by wizards. Windows and doors were open everywhere to the warm night, and though the rest of the streets in this riverside quarter hummed with mosquitoes, there were none here. Cat eyes gleamed at her from windowsills and broken brick steps. A fat woman in the peculiar five-pointed head scarf of the Old Religion came out of one house, shaking a dishcloth, and Kyra walked over to her, feeling horribly conspicuous in her pink taffeta, her flowerlike collar and cuffs.

  "I'm looking for the wizards," she'd said, and immediately had felt completely foolish.

  The fat woman smiled. "Well, you come to the right place, dearie."

  And behind her a voice said, "Can we help you?"

  She turned to see a tall woman standing at her elbow, nearly as tall as herself. The open door of the fat woman's little house let fall a bar of grubby light; by it, Kyra saw that this new arrival wore a plain black robe, uncorseted and belted simply, over an equally plain shift. But her eyes—pale green like pearly jade—were the eyes of a queen, and her black hair was pinned back with small gold clasps whose workmanship Kyra identified at once as coming from the most expensive jeweler in the city.

  Tired, empty, and queasy from her long walk and the terrible shocks of the afternoon, Kyra held out her hand and said, "My name is Kyra Peldyrin—"

  "I saw you this afternoon in the square," the woman said quietly as the stout Old Believer housewife retreated to her own house like a turtle's head withdrawing into a shell. She left the door open, however. Its light and the light from the single tall window downstairs threw irregular shadows over Kyra and the dark-haired mage. "And we have followed the trial. Was the man truly your master?"

  Kyra nodded wearily. Of course, she thought, the Council wizards would take an intent interest in the judicial slaying of even a dog wizard. In her years with Tibbeth she had acqu
ired an acute interest in the slightest shifts of public opinion regarding the magebom. For them, even with the protection of the Council, it would have been the same. And thus they would know her as what she had spent the last two weeks swearing she was: a girl who had seen the light, gone over to the Inquisition, and sold her teacher's life out of spite.

  Bitterness and exhaustion flooded her. There would be no welcome for her here, either. She was astonished she hadn't thought of that before and saved herself the walk.

  But the woman asked, "Did he try to have you? Is that why you did it? You look a little old for what we know of his tastes."

  Kyra's jaw tightened so that she could not speak; she felt that she'd never be able to speak again. She only felt tired, unable to come or go, and so dirty inside that it surprised her, looking down at her dress and her hands, that she wasn't black with filth. Surely, she thought, what she had done had to show somehow on the outside.

  She didn't cry, but she felt herself begin to shake all over and could not meet those sea-colored eyes.

  The woman stepped forward and put a strong, slim arm around her waist. "I am Lady Rosamund," she said in a voice like molten gold and sunrise. "Come in and tell me about it."

  Below and around her the house murmured with talk. Uneasy talk, sharp and jabbing, not the usual chatter of the maids at their work or the footmen gossiping in the servants hall. The clatter of breakfast dishes was missing. Frowning, Kyra sharpened her concentration, listening down through the house, and picked up, three floors below, her father's angry voice.

  "By God, this wedding was cursed from the start!"

  "You mean the day was cursed when you hired on those drunken dockside reprobates!" the voice of their neighbor, Neb Wishrom, retorted. "Best musicians in the city—faugh! Best wenchers! Best troublemakers! Let my daughter tell you what they're best at!"

  From the attic above Kyra head the scuffle of feet and an opening door, then the voice of—she thought—the harpsichord player asking, "And what's the delegation for, then?" while somewhere below she heard—thought she heard—light, rapid feet springing down the back stairs and the flute player's voice whispering, "Get out through the postern gate and down the cellar next door. She said she'd have it open for me and make sure none are down the cellar. The rest of you cover for me and meet me at the Bountiful Peaches tavern tonight."

  Kyra closed her eyes and sighed as Master Wishrom stormed on. "I'll have the magistrates on those worthless tosspots!"

  "And you'll have my word behind yours!" She could almost see as well as hear her father smite the top of his desk with his fist. "All they've done since I hired them has been drink my wine and debauch my servants—and now, I find, my neighbors' daughters as well!"

  Only a few days ago, Kyra thought, she would have sniffed with wry amusement at the thought of the good-looking young flute player stealing kisses from Tellie Wishrom and would have said to herself, Silly little goose.

  As she had said, and thought, about Alix.

  Now…

  The Cherry Orchard on Algoswiving Street, as Spens had promised, catered a very good meal indeed to the wealthy rakes who frequented it after small-hours gambling bouts. The place had been almost full when she and Spens entered, the bright coats and lace-edged ruffles of the men and the overly tawdry finery of the local girls and pretty boys half obscured by veils of blue tobacco smoke. The air had been thick with the smells of coffee, ambergris, and beer, but the roast duck and braided breads brought to their table by a black-clothed servant girl had been excellent, and Kyra had been surprised at how hungry she was.

  She and Spens had meant to stay only the hour or so that it would take for the household to stir and stumble blinking into bed, but in fact it was only an hour short of dawn when they finally left. At the Cherry Orchard Spenson pointed out to her various of their fellow customers, young courtiers or older rakes, identifying their families and political factions and talking with ease of the true business of the Court: trade balances, the proposed national bank, and the colonies in Dhareen. She spoke of her training at the college, and he of the voyages he'd made: "I'm sorry now I never studied the wizardry there, for I'd like to see how it compared with what you've told me."

  Though he said more than once that it was high time he gave up the sea and learned to manage the responsibilities that one day would be his alone, when he spoke of the Jingu Straits under the rising sun, or fog on the wild coasts of the spice lands, or the marketplace intrigues of Saarieque, all the stiffness vanished from him and his blue eyes grew bright. They talked all the way back to Baynorth Square.

  It was only when they reached the garden door and Spens whispered, "I'll see you tomorrow at the countinghouse," that silence fell between them. For what seemed a long time she stood in the doorway, looking across into his eyes, visible to her in the darkness though she herself must have been no more than a pale blur and a gleam in shadow, feeling that the night had been too short. That something more was needed.

  Then, as if at some unspoken signal, they stepped together, clenching one another tightly. The part of her that from time to time during the day had raised the question of whether she really loved this man—after all, she had to get back to her studies at the Citadel; she couldn't really fall in love with her sister's betrothed— made one faint, protesting sound and perished. All that existed was his mouth, sweet with beer and duck sauce, and the breadth of his back beneath her gripping hands, and the warmth of his arms around her waist, pressing her close against him. Those, and the desperate surge of heat that seemed to rise through her from the soles of her feet to her hair, which she would have sworn lifted like fire from her scalp, a heat unexpected and completely unknown that shook her to her marrow.

  It was what Alix felt for Algeron, she thought dimly, with what portion of her mind was capable of forming thought at all. It was what all those songs were about. All this time it hadn't been maudlin hyperbole, after all.

  Dear God, I didn't know it would be so strong…

  They were both shaking, panting, when they drew apart, staring into one another's eyes; then they closed again, more violently, as if they would devour one another there in the darkness, leaving only a hot glitter of ash.

  She had been trembling when she ascended the stairs, and it was a long, long time before she slept.

  Alix, she thought, remembering her sister's tears. If it was anything like that for them…

  The memory of Spenson's arms, of his mouth against hers, wrung her like a soaked cloth.

  Dear God.

  She wondered what on earth she was going to do. She couldn't simply abandon her studies. After all she had gone through for them, after six of the happiest years of her life… He certainly couldn't marry a wizard or even take one as a mistress without losing his place in the guild. And what on earth are you thinking about, anyway? You can't leave your studies to stay here and become Spenson's mistress!

  Some deep, complex shudder within her whispered, Don't bet on that, and she shook herself with indignant impatience. No wonder people acted like lunatics when they fell in love. If love was as common as people seemed to think, it was a wonder anybody got anything done.

  And in any case, she thought, now was scarcely the time to think of that. With the furor in the house over the flute player—she could hear the troop of footmen her father had sent to the attic descending, with the harpsichord player talking nineteen to the dozen in their midst—it was good odds she could slip away unnoticed and avoid a confrontation with her father herself.

  Spenson was waiting for her, as he'd said, at his countinghouse on Salt Hill Lane. She felt a flare of annoyance at the completely unaccustomed softening she felt within herself at the sight of him—Good heavens, girl, he's only a stocky bull of a man in a dreadful striped waistcoat sitting at a desk!—until she saw the smile that broke across his face like sunlight when he looked up and saw her, standing in the doorway between the desks of two of his clerks.

  She stepped forward
and tripped on the threshold, and he caught her hand.

  "So what are we going to do?" he asked when they were striding down the street toward the fashionable purlieux of the Imperial Prospect. "Send Hylette's shop to sleep?"

  Kyra grinned at him. "Oh, I don't think that will be necessary. You're just going to go in and engage Hylette in conversation while I look for talismans under the doorsills."

  His eyes widened with alarm. "I'll do nothing of the kind!"

  "Come now, Hylette hasn't bitten anyone in months, and the rumor that her last victim died was horribly exaggerated. I'm sure any of those nice young men who had breakfast at the next table over from us in the tavern this morning could go in and have a perfectly decent conversation with her."

  "Then get one of them," Spens said promptly, and they quibbled about it all the way down to Hylette's shop.

  Hylette Zharran's dressmaking premises were located in the most fashionable block of the Imperial Prospect, whose unbroken lines of colonnaded shops stretched from the curlicued iron elegancies of Prince DiHony Circle as far as the pseudo-classical marble facings of the Emperor's Gate. Beyond that it was a tree-lined boulevard to the gates of the palace grounds, lined with fashionable shops and blocks of expensive flats, but the truly prohibitive real estate was between the circle and the Emperor's Gate. In the winter the buildings looked like a line of dirty gray cliffs, looming above wheel-cut snow and slushy ice, but the brightness of the spring day mellowed the heavy granite facades and made the dresses of the women—even the servants in their plain dark blues and greens—into flower beds of moving color. The street was one of the widest in the city, and carriages moved easily up and down without the crowding of the sections nearer the river. Doormen in scarlet coats hurried from the bigger shops to help ladies down from the fashionable barouches and landaulets; flower sellers called out to Kyra and Spenson as they passed, comfortably arm in arm, on the wide flagway beneath the arcades. Somewhere a bearded man in the painted leather coat of the Sykerst was playing an accordion; the smell of a fudge vendor's cart vied with the flowers and the perfume of the ladies that they passed.