At that point, they turned yet another comer, and Jame recognized the Way of Tears with Marplet's wall stretching out on her left. Cleppetty, like a horse nearing the stable, picked up speed. Jame was fairly trotting to keep level with her as they approached the corner. Her sodden right boot kept slipping down, however, and she entered the square as she had left it, hopping on one foot, this time tugging the boot off. Cleppetty was already among the brick mounds, several paces ahead of her. The servant girl Jame had seen at the window was just turning away from the fountain, an ewer full of water clasped carefully in her arms. She looked across at the two from the Res aB'tyrr, and the pitcher slipped out of her grasp.
Then time seemed to slow for Jame. She saw the ewer falling, falling, and the girl's face distort with a look of horror. She was staring not at Jame and the widow but above them. Simultaneously, Jame heard a rush of air overhead and saw the shadow of the sling darken across Cleppetty's shoulders. The ewer was falling, falling, and she was springing forward. Bare toes and shod dug frantically at the cobbles. Her hands struck the widow's back, and they were both falling, with Cleppetty propelled ahead, her hands in the air, her basket flying away. . . and the ground leaped up at Jame's face.
The ewer shattered, cobbles bit into her cheek, and then the sky fell.
Bricks crashed to earth all about her in a deadly hail, smashing on impact, filling the air with flying shards. One grazed the arm that she had flung up to protect her head, numbing it at the elbow. Far away, a woman began to scream. Then something all too close struck the ground with a resonant boom, making the pavement pressed against her face jump. There was another crash, even nearer, and then nothing.
Jame thought she must have gone deaf. A moment passed, however, and through the savage ringing in her ears she heard dust rattling down, the fountain splashing, and then, nearby, Cleppetty's oh-so-welcome mutter, no louder, no more or less indignant than ever.
She carefully unwrapped her arms from about her head. The right was still partly numb but moved without difficulty. Not so her leg. Looking back, Jame saw the last object that had fallen. It was a beam, some ten feet long and nearly a foot square at the head. The first end to hit had gouged half a dozen cobbles out of the ground; the second had smashed into a pile of bricks, fragmenting the first seven layers. Her bare foot was wedged between pavement, girder, and the two surviving tiers of bricks.
The widow was kneeling beside her now, but her words were only noises to Jame, for she had just heard something else, high above, which seemed to thicken the blood in her temples and pull her head back as though it were on strings.
Niggen, Marplet's ungainly son, was leaning out of the third story window, where the tackle rope had been secured, snickering.
He stopped abruptly when he saw Jame's face.
The killing madness had come on her too suddenly to be checked or controlled. She was still thinking quite clearly, but only about how to get to that window, to get at that toad-faced boy, and what she would do then with red hands, red nails. But first one had to be mobile. She began to pull at the trapped foot. Something gave in the ankle, and then it was free. She tried to stand. Far back, behind the madness, there was pain, but now only a certain weakness registered, which must be kept in mind lest it betray her. Someone was saying, "Stop it stop it stop it," over and over again, and then a hand gripped her hair, jerking her head around.
Eyes stared into her own, inches away, and a voice demanded, very distinctly: "Do you want to destroy us all?"
Jame blinked. It was Cleppetty, her face dirty and scratched. Over the widow's shoulder, she saw Ghillie and Rothan running toward them across the square.
"All right?" The widow gave her a light shake. "All right?"
Jame nodded, speechless.
Cleppetty sighed and let go of her hair. "Good. Now come along home, child. There's nothing more to do here, and you're hurt."
The cousins had reached them by this time. Ghillie made a gesture as though to help Jame, but Rothan, for once showing more sensitivity, stopped him. They walked back to the inn with Jame a little apart from the others, limping badly. No one said a word, not even the servants who had appeared in the door of the Skyrrman. Certainly, no one laughed.
Once inside the Res aB'tyrr, however, the silence broke. As Jame slowly pieced her senses back together, she found herself seated in the kitchen with Cleppetty bent over her ankle and everyone else crowded around them, talking furiously.
"Did you see . . . did you hear . . ." someone was babbling in the background. ". . . could have been killed," said another voice, nearer, angrier. "I tell you, this time they've gone too . . ."
"Just cuts and a pulled muscle . . . then why . . . I don't know." Ah, Cleppetty and Tubain, coming rapidly into focus.
"Kencyrs are odd people," the widow was saying, quite clearly now, "and this child is odd even for a Kencyr. Just look at those . . ."
Jame closed her hands with a snap and thrust them out of sight behind her. "Why did you say 'Do you want to destroy us all?'"
Everyone in the room spun around and stared at her.
The corpse has sat up on its pyre, she thought grimly. Hurrah. "Why did you say that?"
"Well?" Cleppetty glared at Tubain. "Are you going to tell her? She's earned the right to know."
The innkeeper raised his massive shoulders and let them drop again in a gesture of complete helplessness.
Cleppetty snorted explosively. "Very well," she said. "If you won't, I will. The sum of it is that we're involved in an undeclared trade war with Marplet sen Tenko. It began about a year ago when he started to build the Skyrrman, which he had no right to do in the first place since Tubain here has the tavern charter for the whole district. We went to the Five to protest and were sent to the Skyrr representative, Harr sen Tenko. He wouldn't even see us."
"Even if he wasn't the most corrupt magistrate in the city," said Rothan, "his wife wouldn't let him. We found out afterward that she's Marplet's sister."
"It gets better," said a mournful voice under the sideboard, where Ghillie had gone to earth to avoid being trampled by Cleppetty.
The widow snorted again. "You may well say so. After that the goading started. It looked odd to us from the start, and so we held back—a damn good thing, too, because pretty soon we noticed that every time Marplet's lot tried to start a fight, there were always one or two guards lurking around just out of sight. So that was it, then: Marplet had bought them; and if we reacted, they would swear before the Five that we had started the trouble in the first place, had in fact begun an undeclared trade war, and so as the instigators would have to pay. Wars are expensive. The fine for an illegal one would ruin us—will ruin us, if we fall into Marplet's trap. Now do you understand?"
"I. . . think so," said Jame. "But why didn't you tell me this before?"
"He," said the widow, jabbing a finger a Tubain, "didn't want you caught up in it. He seems to think that if he ignores it, the whole thing will dry up and blow away. Well, it didn't blow away, it fell down—and the gods know what it will do next. Now will you take this business seriously?" she demanded, turning on the innkeeper. "Now will you admit that something has to be done?"
Throughout this tirade, Tubain had been leaning against a post of the cellar door with his eyes closed, like a small boy pretending to be asleep in a room full of bogles. Now that they were all staring at him, he opened them, said with great dignity to no one in particular, "I'd better go check those new hogsheads," and disappeared down the basement steps.
"He won't even talk about it!" Cleppetty exclaimed, hoarse with exasperation. "Mind you, he's a good man—one of the best—but there are some things he simply can't face, and that doesn't make it any easier on the rest of us. If you stay here, child, you'll have to be especially careful because you seem to attract violence and have a potential for it that, I think, will mean disaster for someone sooner or later. That's the trace of far-seer in my family speaking. Take it for what it's worth. But remember, it
would be a poor return for Tubain's hospitality to pull the inn down on his head.
"Right. That's enough of that," she said, clapping her hands. "The rest of you, scat. We all have work to do and no more time to waste."
* * *
AFTER THE OTHERS had left, Jame stayed in the kitchen for a while with her foot in a basin of cold water, surrounded by a growing cloud of cinnamon, ginger, and galingale as Cleppetty attacked the ingredients of a goat's heart pie. Then Tanis, who had been out, burst into the room and so embarrassed her with praise that she was forced to flee. Although her ankle throbbed savagely with every step up to the loft, she was almost dizzy with relief. The waiting was over. She would not have to leave the inn after all. For as long as she needed it, she had a home.
And yet, somehow, that wasn't enough.
Sitting on the ledge looking out over the city, Jame considered this. A home, yes, but the inn could never be her whole world. She had too many questions that could only be dealt with out there in the labyrinth of Tai-tastigon, questions that no outsider could hope to answer. Only when she knew the city could she hope to know its gods. She must find a way into the heart of this larger society—as she had into that of the Res aB'tyrr—and how better than by joining the city's most powerful guild?
But to become a thief! No proper Kencyr would even consider the idea. But hadn't she been told often enough that she wasn't proper and never would be? She would probably go through life as she had begun it at the keep, with only a precarious toehold in the world of her people. Honor alone —as the Kencyrath understood it—kept her secure, and only a scrollsman or a priest could tell her if such a thing as an honest thief was possible. The spirit of the law would undoubtedly be outraged, but if the letter remained intact. . .
Jame suddenly grinned. It seemed she had already made up her mind. In the morning she would first seek her priest's blessing (ha!) and then the killer-maze that Penari called home. If she survived both, it looked as if the Kencyrath was about to acquire its first official thief.
Chapter 3
Into the Labyrinth
THAT NIGHT Jame slept deeply and was pleased to find in the morning that her ankle had all but healed. After she had worked the last bit of stiffness out of it, she went down to the kitchen to inform the household of her plans. She expected opposition. Instead, "I've seen this coming for a long time," said the widow as she cut generous slices of bread and cheese and put them into a knapsack. "You're not the sort to relish life in a cage." Tubain also made no protest but was clearly upset as he intercepted her at the front door and furtively slipped three silver coins into her hand. She thanked him with a quick smile and left the inn.
Marplet sen Tenko was sitting in a window of the Skyrrman smoking a long-stemmed pipe. His big tiger-tom, Fang, crouched beside him on the sill. As Jame crossed the square, both the innkeeper and the cat watched her with almost the same expression, calculating, self-confident, and faintly amused. Neither would relish a quick kill, she realized with sudden insight. This man would toy with the Res aB'tyrr as long as the game entertained him and not a moment longer. Still, his mocking gaze teased the flicker of an answering smile from her, and she saluted him formally with raised fist and open hand, as one does an acknowledged enemy on the eve of battle. Then she left the square.
Her goal was the house of her god, where she meant to ask the priest if she could join the Thieves' Guild without a fatal loss of honor. The many gods of Tai-tastigon had made her question the very foundation of the Kencyrath, their belief in the Three-Faced God; but as she had realized the night before, she could no more separate herself from all aspects of her culture than step off the edge of the world. That was clear to her now, far clearer, unfortunately, than the location of the temple. On impulse, she set off toward the rising sun.
The streets unrolled before her, twisting back and forth under a bright winter sky. They rarely led due east. Realizing that she was not going to get anywhere in a hurry, Jame began to enjoy the challenge of these tangled ways. Some streets were quiet, lined with handsome houses or the back walls of gardens; others bustled with brightly clad crowds, through which peddlers strolled, hawking fermented mares' milk and honeyed locusts, while bands of penitents trotted past chanting their sins in unison. But best of all, in Jame's opinion, was a nest of spiral lanes, each arm of which was devoted to a different sub-chapter of the Glovers' Guild. Here she saw gloves made of leather, linen, and silk dyed all shades of earth and sea, their cuffs sparkling with jewels or heavy with shining threads. It was an elegant pair of black kidskin that she finally bought, however, joyfully spending all the money that Tubain had given her. With gloves on, her differences would not be so apparent. The idea delighted her.
Beyond the glovers' lanes, the buildings began to grow progressively larger and shabbier. This looked promising, she thought, remembering the abandoned structures around the temple; but while there was a growing tinge of darkness in the atmosphere, it was nothing like that which surrounded the dwelling-place of her god. Then she came to the crest of a small hill and found herself looking down over a narrow canal at the charred ruins of the Lower Town.
In a city as thick with gods as Tai-tastigon, only the practice of keeping such beings confined to their sanctuaries made a normal life possible for their mortal fellow citizens. Occasionally, however, one did escape or "come untempled," and that was what some people believed had happened to the Lower Town. At any rate, six years before it had become evident that something that had no right to be there was at large in this rich district; but since no one knew its name, there was no way to drive it out. At last those who could had left the area, putting their homes to the torch behind them. Even this last attempt at purification by fire had failed, however, and the destitute had thus inherited what no one else would have.
This, at least, was the story that Ghillie had told Jame. She didn't know how much of it she should believe, but there was undeniably something wrong here, even after all these years. As she passed more and more of the blackened buildings and the hovels that had sprung up like sickly growths in their shadow, she found herself moving warily, her sixth sense prickling, as though she had invaded, in its absence, the den of some unknown and unimaginable . . . thing.
It was a strange place to hear the sound of rushing water. Drawn by it, Jame continued eastward until she came to a low section of the Old Wall at the end of a street. Beyond it, there was a sharp drop down to the floor of the Rim, that relatively new district that circled the city between the old and inner walls. Some ten feet below her, a cataract of water roared out of a vent in the wall, holding a rainbow captive in its spray.
"Is that the River Tone?" she asked an old man who was standing nearby, watching the waterfall.
"Nay. That be the sewer outlet."
"But the water is perfectly clear!"
" 'Course it is," he said, spitting down into it. "Old Sumph and his priests see to that. We puts it out, they takes it in. Eats shit, does old Sumph—among other things—and loves it. You don't believe me, go over to the inner wall sometime and have a look 'cross at his backside."
Jame reflected that whenever she asked about the gods of Tai-tastigon, she always seemed to find out more than she wanted to know. But if this old man liked being informative . . .
"Can you tell me," she asked him, "where to find the Temple of the Three-Faced God?"
His shoulders stiffened. When he turned, she fell back a step, thinking from his expression that he meant to strike her. Instead, he spat on the ground at her feet and hastily shambled away.
What an odd reaction, she thought, watching him go. Some people, apparently, liked her god even less than she did. Nor was the old man unique. When Jame put her question to other residents of the Lower Town, most were too frightened to say anything, and some became violent. All she found as the day slid down into dusk were hostile looks, incredible squalor, and more sickly or deformed children than seemed possible. Quite a number of these urchins took to followin
g her until, by the end of the day, she found herself at the head of a ragged, hobbling parade, unsure if she should walk slower so as not to tire them or run away from the lot.
However, the problem disappeared along with the children as the sun dipped behind the Ebonbane. Everyone was seeking shelter, Jame realized, and all around her the few feeble lights were flickering out. Clearly, this was not a place to be out in the streets after dark.
Her wandering had by now brought her to the Tone, running swiftly in its deep bed, and hearing faint music ahead, she set off along its left bank in the growing gloom.
Across the river stood rows of shining houses similar to those that once had filled the Lower Town. Beyond them, farther upriver, were the islet estates of the very rich, cradled between the arms of the Tone, separated by canals.
Music came from some of these gleaming isles, but not the boisterous strains that had first reached Jame in the darkness of the Lower Town. These she continued to follow as the two branches of the river drew closer together until the farther one disappeared behind the flank of a large, narrow island ringed with a marble wall in the likeness of a ship's side. Ahead, looming against the Ebonbane, was a huge white structure with mastlike spires from which streamed banners of scarlet and gold. The grounds around it swarmed with people costumed and plain, rich and shabby, all dancing together in the mad grip of carnival, drunkenly singing the praises of the Sirdan Theocandi and the great, the wonderful thieves of Tai-tastigon.
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