Wrath-Bearing Tree (A Tournament of Shadows Book Two) Paperback

by James Enge

  “This is a love poem,” Deor said aloud, not quite believing it until he heard his own words. “He’s in love.”

  It all made sense now. Deor had actually seen Morlock comb his hair on five occasions in the preceding month, and he never left the house anymore without putting on fresh clothes, sometimes of rather bizarre cut.

  It seemed all too likely to end in disaster. But courtship was rather different for dwarves, and Deor could think of no way he could help.

  “Poor Morlock,” Deor said. “Poor whoever-she-is, too,” he added, equally sincerely.

  Naevros syr Tol was the greatest swordsman under the guard, perhaps the world, and it had been seventeen years since he had last felt the impact of another’s blade, in practice or in a real fight.

  Before this morning. The second time he felt the blunted end of his pupil’s practice sword graze his left arm, his eyes grew hot, and a broad angry smile spread like burning oil across his dark handsome face.

  He brought his pupil’s sword into a bind and knocked him off balance, and delivered what would have been a killing blow to the chest, if Naevros had been using a real sword. It must have stung a bit, even so.

  The other man’s pale hard face hardly twitched. The gray eyes took on a knowing look, though, and Naevros could not even pretend to himself that he had not overreacted out of vanity.

  “You hold yourself a little out of true, because of your shoulders,” he said to his pupil. “You’ll want to watch that. It makes you unstable, as you see.”

  “I’ll remember,” said Morlock Ambrosius wryly.

  “That’s enough for today. My blood is running a little hot, I’m afraid.”

  Morlock nodded impassively and turned away to put his practice sword in the wall-sheath. He picked up his red cloak and threw it over his forearm; he was still sweating from the practice bouts. His shirt was an unusually stylish one this morning. If Naevros wasn’t mistaken, the garment had been run up by his own tailor. But it was the sort of thing one only wore on formal occasions; Naevros himself was wearing a raggedy old thing he usually threw on when he was exercising.

  “You’ve done some real fighting since we last fenced,” Naevros said as they walked from the courtyard to the front door of Naevros’ modest city house.

  “In Kaen,” Morlock said, nodding.

  “Real fighting makes all the difference somehow. The same sort of decisions appear in a different light when one’s life is riding on the outcome. Kaen, eh? Haven’t been there for a hundred years. Is it as bad as ever?”

  “I only saw part of the coast. Hope I never go back,” the crooked man added with a grimace.

  Naevros could not cordially like the man, but he refused to dislike him either. For one thing, the fellow was dangerous, and Naevros made it his practice never to dislike someone who was dangerous, even if he had to kill them. It was easier to see someone’s strengths and weaknesses without a cloud of dislike in the way. They said that love was blind, but in Naevros’ extensive experience it was really hate that kept people from seeing, or understanding what they saw.

  “It’s lunchtime,” he said to Morlock, as they stood in the street. “Come down to the cookshop and we’ll split a chicken and a pitcher of wine.”

  Morlock was about to give one answer when all of a sudden he paused and then gave another. “Sorry. Must go. Thanks lesson. At Illion’s?” If the last was a question, as it seemed to be, he ran off without an answer.

  Naevros was still decoding this, and pondering a few other matters, when a familiar contralto voice broke into his meditations. “I find you deep in thought, Vocate Naevros. Planning your strategy for the new Station?”

  “Nothing is ever decided at Station,” he answered reflexively. “Though some things get settled at the parties before and after. A good midday to you, Vocate Aloê. Will you split a chicken and a pitcher of wine down at the Benches cookshop? I am dying of hunger.”

  “I will not split a chicken,” Aloê Oaij replied. “But I might eat part of a chicken someone else has split. They cook it well with peppers down at the Benches. They have good pastries, too. Those puffy glazed things filled with ellberry custard? Glorious.”

  “You’re a glutton, Aloê,” said Naevros, smiling as he turned to walk down toward the Benches. “How do you maintain your girlish figure?”

  “It’s a womanly figure,” Aloê said, not walking alongside him, “and I maintain it with frequent exercise. Speaking of which, were you going to change?”

  “Change what?” Naevros was surprised. “My clothes? To go down to a cookshop? Are you serious?”

  “I’ve noticed that excessively handsome men are sometimes careless about their appearance. I suppose they think they can afford to be.”

  “I hadn’t noticed that at all.”

  “That’s why I brought it to your attention.”

  Naevros grumbled a bit, but when he saw that Aloê was serious he went back into his house. Aloê waited downstairs, reading a book, while he took a quick run through the flood room and threw on some decent but not gaudy clothes. He was not rich, and he was saving his gaudy clothes for the social events surrounding the Station. Besides, he had no need to show off in front of Aloê: they were old friends; he was her sometime mentor, now ally. And she thought him excessively handsome. He liked to dwell on that last part especially.

  Naevros ran into his housekeeper, a gossipy old queck-bug named Verch, on his way downstairs. “The Vocate Aloê is waiting downstairs!” the housekeeper said eagerly. “Is she staying for lunch?”

  “We’re going out for lunch, Verch. There’s no need to trouble yourself.”

  Verch pouted a bit. “Are you at least taking her to the Dancing Day at Vocate Illion’s?”

  “I’ll be accompanied by the Honorable Ulvana, as you well know, Verch,” Naevros replied, a warning tone in his voice.

  Verch’s face fell further. “Honorable,” he repeated rebelliously under his breath and stood aside to let his employer pass.

  Aloê was perched on a chair close enough to the foot of the stair to have heard this whole exchange. She grinned at Naevros as he descended, and then he was sure that she had.

  “Verch is still taking good care of you, I see,” she remarked when they were safely out of doors.

  “Nearly unbearable. But he’s cheap, and I’m broke.”

  “And Noreê says you were saying the same thing two hundred years ago.”

  “Some truths are eternal.” He looked sideways at her. It seemed odd to him that he had not known her two hundred years ago, that he hadn’t always known her.

  She was worth knowing. She was nearly as tall as Naevros himself; her skin was dark brown; her hair: dark ringlets of gold; her irises: brighter rings of gold; her lips were darkly rosy and full. She had the hard balanced muscularity of a dancer or a wrestler. But to say that she was the most beautiful woman in A Thousand Towers—and many did say it—was hardly to scratch the surface of this remarkable woman. That she was daring and courageous in mortal combat was a fact Naevros had witnessed with his own eyes. That she was deeply learned in the intricacies of Wardic custom he had been assured by those who knew and cared about such things. Most importantly, for Naevros, she had a kind of mental deftness, a feel for situations.

  He admired her very much, and from almost their first meeting there had been a rapport between them, an unstated bond of admiration and trust. It had never, somehow, become a sexual relationship. He had many of these (the Honorable Ulvana being merely his latest partner and perhaps not the most notable one), but somehow they never lasted, and none of them had ever mattered like his bond with Aloê.

  He dreaded the day when she made a public union with someone. There were many suitors, male and female, in A Thousand Towers and elsewhere, who would have gladly paired with her. But somehow she walked untouched among them all. If she coupled with anyone—he assumed she did—they must not have mattered to her; she never walked with them in the light of day as she was doing with him, n
ow.

  He was glad of that. He hoped, knowing it was selfish, that this would never change. But he feared it must: someday she would find someone, and their bond would be transferred to that other . . . and then Naevros would kill him. It would be pointless and horrible, and Naevros knew all that, but somehow he thought he would do it all the same, the way barbarian kings ordered slaves executed at their funerals. His link with Aloê had swiftly become the most important bond in his life; its death might require a barbaric funeral, some sort of sacrifice.

  “That mushroom of yours is back in town,” he said aloud, to turn the conversation into a safer stream.

  “Mushroom. Mushroom,” she mused for a moment, and then said, with an indifference that warmed Naevros’ heart, “Oh, you mean Morlock. I thought I saw him standing with you, but he ran off so fast I couldn’t be sure.”

  “It was him.”

  “Back for more lessons? Hasn’t he learned all you can teach him yet?”

  “Only about swords.”

  She moved her darkly golden head to indicate her indifference to swords and the people obsessed by them.

  “I think he’s taking notes on my wardrobe.”

  Aloê smiled gently.

  “No, really,” Naevros said. “I’m fairly sure he’s consulting my tailor, anyway. He was wearing a wide-sleeved shirt with yellow silk inset, like one I was wearing a few years ago.”

  “I remember.”

  “I think he’s hoping to make a splash at the Station, or perhaps to catch someone’s attention. Poor woman.”

  “Or man, as the case may be.”

  “I don’t think so. He’s sporting a new bite mark at the base of his neck, and I’m pretty sure it was made by a woman’s teeth. Although the edges are a little ragged . . . I might be wrong, I suppose.”

  Aloê shrugged.

  “Someone is killing gods in Kaen,” Naevros remarked.

  “That’s—Oh? Really? How do you know?”

  “Their embalmers keep writing me for advice. How do you think I know? People travelling in Kaen have said so. A number of cities on the eastern coast of the Narrow Sea have lost their name-gods. Some cities have just gone vacant. Your mushroom was telling me an odd tale of a city taken over by a giant plant. But others say there are cities that have turned to the worship of the Two Powers.”

  “Has there been an invasion from Anhi?” asked Aloê, naming the confederation of cities far to the east, where worship of the Two Powers was the state religion.

  “Not a military one. Hard to say what the number of missionaries may be. The Court of Heresiarchs was encouraging foreign missionaries for a while.”

  “Yes, I remember hearing they would soak them in pitch and use them as torches for their evening parties.”

  “Kaen is a brutish place. But there’s something to be said for their attitude toward missionaries.”

  “Have cities in the interior been losing their gods?” Aloê asked.

  “Apparently not. Just on the coastline.”

  “Facing us, across the Narrow Sea.”

  “Yes.”

  “That sounds like another invasion attempt, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes, that’s the best opinion among those who’ve heard the news.”

  “You always have the best news, Naevros.”

  “I hear it from my tailor. What do you think the Graith ought to do about it?”

  By then they were at the Benches, but they continued to talk about foreign affairs and avoid talking about their own all the way through lunch.

  A few days later, the Graith assembled at the Station Chamber, just inside the crumbling and disused wall of the city. In a ritual older than the Wardlands themselves, the Summoner of the City called the vocates to stand at the long oval table in the domed chamber in the early light of morning, with the light of the sun filtering through the windows on the western edge of the dome.

  After the opening rituals, the day was given over to the news from Kaen. Five vocates and three thains spoke; all had travelled in or near Kaen over the past year, and all had news of some god who had been displaced from its name-city—all of them along the eastern coast of the Narrow Sea. Morlock spoke briefly of his experience over the summer past, but did not join in the discussion that followed.

  Neither did Aloê, but most of the vocates present had one or fifteen thousand words to say. Even Naevros spoke at some length, smiling wryly as he caught Aloê’s bored eye. Another time Aloê saw Morlock looking—not at her, exactly, but in her direction. He was dressed less splendidly than the previous day (if Naevros hadn’t been joking about that), and his face looked a little haggard, as if he weren’t sleeping well. The sight made her want to sneak off and take a nap. How they all talked and talked and talked. . . .

  Of course, nothing was decided. The sun was setting when Illion asked leave to stand down. His request was granted by acclamation, and the Summoner of the City adjourned the Station until the next day at noon. Many of them had been attending Illion’s parties on the opening night of Station for more than three hundred years, and the rest had other plans for the evening.

  In the scramble that followed adjournment Aloê met up with Illion and Naevros, who were talking about the government of Anhi.

  “Vocates,” Aloê said coolly. “You’ve seen more of these than I have. Is the first day of Station usually so boring?”

  “Only if something important is happening, or likely to happen,” said white-haired Noreê, coming along behind her. “Then everyone wants to get his oar in the water, so that he can say afterward he helped steer the Graith in its crisis.”

  “But nothing ever gets done at Station—only talking. So those-who-know tell me,” replied Aloê, with a quick glare at Naevros, who grinned unrepentantly back.

  “There’s some merit in deliberation,” suggested Illion.

  “Only if it leads to useful action.”

  Illion the Wise smiled and did not disagree.

  “Come away with me, Aloê,” Noreê said. “These gentlemen have deliberating to do.”

  Aloê would have rather stayed sniping and snarking with the men. They amused her; and Noreê, with her bitter scarred face and bitter blue eyes, rather scared her. But she was not inclined to give into her fears, so she took the older vocate’s arm and they walked together out of the chamber and into the street. Both places were crowded, but wherever Noreê walked a way opened up before her.

  “I won’t keep you long, young Aloê,” Noreê said. “But I wanted to keep you from sliding into the error that many members of the Graith fall into.”

  “What is that?”

  “They think the Graith is important.”

  “Oh.” Aloê looked at the woman who had slain two of the Dark Seven with weapons, and a third with her bare hands—a woman who had dedicated her life to the defense of the Wardlands, a woman who had worn the red cloak of a vocate for four hundred years. “The Graith is not important?”

  “Of course not. A pack of silly old fools, full of talk and empty of action, just as you saw it today.”

  “Then—”

  “But the individual Guardians—especially the vocates one by one: they matter. Today was just talk. Tomorrow will be just talk. Stations are mostly talk. But talk can spark ideas, and ideas can fire some person, some individual, to action. That is why we do this.”

  “I think I see.”

  “Good. Run and play, then. Perhaps I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  The deadly old woman walked away, leaving Aloê stunned by the double blow. Run and play? If she’d patted Aloê on the head, she couldn’t have been more patronizing. And: perhaps she’d see Aloê tomorrow? Why perhaps? Was that a second insult . . . or a piece of veiled advice?

  She was still pondering the matter when Jordel walked up to her and asked her why she was standing there in the street like a silly cow.

  “To get your attention, of course,” she replied. “What else does any woman in A Thousand Towers want to do?”

&n
bsp; “I consider that remark a violation of the Treaty of Kirach Starn,” Jordel said coolly, referring to the memorable day a few years ago when they had agreed to stop hating each other’s guts.

  “Then let’s have less cow-talk,” she replied briskly, and he shrugged and nodded. “What’s up?” she continued.

  “Baran and Thea and a few of her friends are all getting something to eat and then going over to Illion’s.”

  “I guess I’ll chew the cud with you, then.”

  “Enough with the cows. I’m sick of cows.”

  “Did another one break your heart, J?”

  Jordel was still obsessing about cows when they arrived at Illion’s an hour or two later, so Aloê took the opportunity to sneak away into the already-dense crowds.

  It took a lot of people to crowd up Illion’s place. It had belonged to Illion’s family for some portion of forever, before the city had stretched out this far, and the garden walls rambled over a group of hills that had stayed green and fairly wild as the web of stone streets spun itself on every side. But the family had built a medium-sized house and a rather gigantic dance hall in the center of the hills, and (ever since Illion and his brother had inherited the property) they held a Dancing Day on the first and last days of Station. Practically everyone in the world attended them.

  Everyone in the world seemed to already be there. She saw Callion the Proud and his wife, whatshername; they were bickering, as usual. She gave them a wide berth. She ran into Rild of the Third Stone and talked for a while about herbs. Afterward she met Vocate Vineion and talked for a while about his dogs. Eventually Vineion drifted away in search of a beer. As Aloê wandered on, she came across Morlock Ambrosius shuffling a deck of cards and explaining to a few hangers-on how they worked. Since she was interested in the matter herself, she stood nearby drinking a glass of cool wine.

  “How do the archetypes know the future, though?” someone was asking.

  Morlock shrugged his crooked shoulders. From the expressions of a few people watching, they would have preferred that he hadn’t. Aloê wondered if he had done it because he knew it would bother them, or because he didn’t care. Either way: good on him.