Amberlight

by Sylvia Kelso

  “So it’s a—peace-maker?”

  No somnambulist now. All too much vinegar in the curl of the mouth.

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, of course that’s why Dinda’s tax-collectors squeeze out blood for it! The worst tyrant that ever mangled Cataract! The most violent state in River’s length! Of course that’s why Mahash runs Shirran dry to raise slave caravans! And that’s why Dhasdein’s bankrupting itself for gold from the Oases—so they can conquer more of the Archipelago with pearl-rock to trade for more gold to pay for another statue to grab more colonies to—make peace!”

  He has to sit and pant. Tellurith just manages not to gasp. To retort, “And Verrain?”

  “Verrain too, where’s the difference? They’ll take over the Oases if they ever raise the men. Slave-broking with Dhasdein—flirting with Cataract—they use the things on their neighbors like everyone else!”

  Then he freezes in mid-breath.

  They stare at each other while rain splatters the windows, gagged by matched, comprehending shock. He at a world’s betrayal. She at the answer to questions that Amberlight, secure in its vendor’s monopoly, has never thought to ask.

  She recovers first. At her shift in the chair that says, with winner’s complacence, Value repaid, his hand jumps to his glass.

  In the clear white qherrique light it lasts an eternity, she poised on her chair edge, his hand crushing the glass-stem, the black eyes, pools, lakes, midnight oceans, ravaging, massacring her.

  Before he lets go. Sinks back, trembling with more than weakness. And whispers, “You bitch.”

  Carefully, Tellurith moves her own glass out of reach.

  “How many days’ keep was that?” His lips tremble as she knows they never would in health. “How many silk—Oh, no, bitch . . .”

  “Sit down!”

  “You offered the bargain,” she goes on softly, into that moment’s hiatus, precise and lethal as an entering sword.

  “God’s eyes—!”

  The aborted lunge melts. Their eyes burn together like gold in king’s acid, the echo of his words polluting the silent air.

  Try me with some more names.

  Very slowly, he sets both elbows on the table. Sinks his face into his hands.

  Her own hands ache to work the pain out of his shoulders, smooth peace up into the rumpled hair. But he is no longer a bed-bound victim. And the interrogator’s gamble, that has already repaid so richly, can only be carried on.

  Not, says her own rebellion, at this cost.

  “You’re exhausted. You’re nowhere near well. And today you’ve overtired yourself. I can call Caitha. Or you can let Verrith help you,” the slight lift of voice brings her into sight, trained, hefty troublecrew masquerading as house-help, “take a dose of sleep-syrup and get into bed.”

  * * * *

  “Little trouble with a razor.”

  Azo, Verrith’s equally stolid partner, tamps her bloody nose. More phlegmatic than Tellurith, dragged home at midday from an extended freight-dispute. Far more phlegmatic than the culprit, all but foaming in his bed.

  “Caitha said,” Azo slides the reddened handkerchief away, “best.”

  Which comes to solid infirmary restraints over his chest, arms, legs. With matching efficiency, stripped. The disordered sheet bares naked torso, upturned, newly bandaged wrist. Face of a white fury, black-coal killer’s eyes.

  “So this is Telluir’s, Safe?”

  Inwardly, Tellurith swears. If he had to run crazy enough for wrist slashing, did the wardens need zeal to match?

  “If you’ll go this far, why not just let me take care of it?”

  Foolish, foolish question. Her stare tells him that. The whitened mouth, the stricken look, is his involuntary reply.

  Then the lips set. “I’ll do it, you know.” Ice-cold now. “There are ways. Even like this . . .”

  Wrench on the restraints. A fresh view of wiry but muscular body that she remembers surprisingly well.

  “I’ll break something. Starve. Smother myself . . .”

  “I thought,” she says, low and keener than a knife-cut, “that you had more guts.”

  His body bucks, once. Before he lies back. Falls back, sweating, panting. Spits it through his teeth.

  “Bitch.”

  The qherrique-tide moves her, as sure as it is inexplicable. She says, “Get these off,” and starts undoing restraints.

  Half a watch later he is still shaking, sweat printing the back of the pristine white shirt. Staring blindly across the balcony out to high noon on Amberlight, a pellucid, celadon-blue pre-rain day. Oblivious to Uphill food on the table, Telluir’s House-head dancing attendance, a day’s work gone begging, in listening, hearing quiet.

  He moves at last. Says it, choked, to the table-top.

  “Just tell me—Why?”

  And Tellurith says, “Ask me what I know about qherrique.”

  It takes him a good minute to master the shock. The black eyes stare, all anchors, this time, lost.

  “W-what—do—you know—ab-bout qherrique?”

  “We mine it,” says Tellurith precisely. “From the hill. From the inner walls of the qherrique. The mother-face. The only place it will tolerate us. It’s dangerous. The rock’s bad. The face—can object. There are accidents, nearly every moon. When it’s cut, we make it into statuettes. That too is dangerous. We do other things. What do you remember of Amberlight?”

  He can only shake his head.

  “Can you get up?”

  When he manages it, she holds his arm to lead him onto the balcony. He is too stunned to resist.

  To left and right the blocks of Khuss and Jerish and Hafas Houses, close beneath their domes of qherrique, are familiar as her hand’s shape. The mosaics glitter blue on Jerish’s front. Down­hill, smaller clan and client demesnes tangle garden-greens with glaucous roof-tile, the squared shapes of modest men’s towers, and imported marble, granite, limestone among the wine-crystal red, as dark as drying blood, of local rock that gave Amberlight its first name.

  Emberlight. Near seven hundred years since a nomad clan wintered on the hill and hewed permanent fireplaces below the place where a clanswoman first touched qherrique: Amanazar, legend says, equally legendary founder of Hafas House. Six hundred years since a ruler used that legacy to destroy bandits; and a decade less, since her daughter shaped the first statuette.

  Below the clan grounds, in the business quarter, bright spots fill the streetways, busy Craftless folk at work. The tall, glossy grey-black power-panels of wheeled traffic thread the crowd. The press fills Exchange Square, suturing Uphill with the bitterly contested gangland-zone, where the jobless, shiftless youth of River Quarter skirmish over ground lost by day to be re-occupied at night. When she became House-head, that tide had barely risen above the slums.

  And across those slums run the broad, uncumbered freight tracks where the big carriers move in procession, up and down to the quays.

  “Do you see those vehicles?”

  Maybe his pupils contract.

  “Did they tell you about Amberlight’s vehicles? The ones that use no horses? That are driven by the sun?”

  His lips move. And suddenly, turning on her a stare he cannot hold from showing incredulity, he nods.

  “Yes!” A different shock now, impossible to hide. The first thing recalled, however prompted, at his own will.

  “Yes.” Nor can she help the smile, the brief grasp of his arm. Whose muscle does not repulse her touch. “And they told you that no-one’s ever understood how?”

  His eyes open, black upon blackness, full into the noon light. At last he breathes, “Gods . . .”

  Her stare tells him that she understands. Both understandings. We are getting, she thinks, too good at stares.

  “And—gods—the ships as well?”

  “You
’d best come inside.”

  But though he wobbles in her grasp, she does not let him sit down. Instead she leads him to the wall.

  “Have you looked at this?”

  He looks now, over-bewildered, but with the resilience of those redoubtable native wits.

  “Don’t touch!”

  The stare he turns on her is again growing wild.

  “Yes. That’s qherrique.”

  “You use it for—decoration?” Tripled disbelief.

  “It makes decoration here.” The glowing veins trace their arabesques, undisturbed, upon that apricot-marbled wall. “But it’s all through the House.”

  “Through . . .” Absently, discarding pride, he removes her hand. “I have to sit down.”

  “The panels of the vehicles,” says Tellurith, watching him across the table, “draw the sun. They’re made of qherrique.”

  And waits, with complete faith in his wits. Vindicated when in less than another minute he puts one hand to his temple and says faintly, “And in the houses. It heats . . .”

  “Only the Houses.” Pronouncing the capital. “In winter, yes, it gives out heat. In summer, it takes it back.”

  “It cools the house?”

  “More than that. Didn’t you notice in the infirmary? No lamps?”

  This time he is too stunned for speech.

  She cannot control the smile. “I don’t mean to put you back in bed.” And is shocked when her mind adds, Not yet. “But you did ask.”

  In a moment, she goes on. “That takes a lot more power than sun. Did you see the windmills on the crests?” Still struggling, he nods. “They feed the mother-lodes, and the House-qherrique; all day, every day.”

  She reaches over to pour two glasses—the delicate, fine-blown Uphill glasses—of Shia’s guest-choice, chilled white wine. Mutely, he sips.

  And when she gives him breathing space, again it is vindicated. The head comes up, the black eyes waking to keen, intellectual life.

  “You said—dangerous?”

  “We shifted you from the infirmary because we mined a slab the next day. There were six patients that night. Half the mine roof fell on us.”

  There is respect in the indrawn breath. But the mind it does not deflect. “Dangerous . . . to make a statuette?”

  Tellurith cuts a slice of the chicken in aspic, adds a helping of Shia’s delicate sorrel and basil salad, a hunk of the crusty House-baked bread. Passes the plate.

  “When you’re fit, I’ll show you what I mean.”

  * * * *

  But already a Head’s back-log is waiting, mandatory presence at first cut of the kinglet’s statuette, two minutes’ action, four hours ceremony. An equally mandatory birth-celebration for Jura’s granddaughter, first girl-child to the eldest daughter of Hezamin House. A crisis in the polisher’s shop, where some tyro has burred the face of a Verrain Family’s piece, worse calamity than the girl’s broken wrist. It is two evenings before she can sit down, still in her good day-clothes, to take a grateful sip of wine and meet that black stare across the dinner-plates.

  “Can I ask,” the Quetzistani “a” is broader than usual, “what you know about, Not safe?”

  He has been impatient; Verrith and Azo have told her that. Iatha has belabored her ears for culpable, hideous breaches of City secrecy, while jubilating over the information’s prize.

  But he has waited till her main meal is eaten. And nothing he learnt in that last interview, down to a possible password, has been left to waste.

  Tellurith kicks her chair back. Begins, one-handed, to unlace her boots. Quiets her breath before she speaks.

  “May I ask you something first?”

  The brows twitch. Straight black bars above the yellowing bruise, crossed by the black wing of falling hair. The eyes never shift.

  “If, when I answer, you do the same.”

  “Good enough.” She cannot restrain the smile. “Why wouldn’t you work with anyone else?”

  The frown comes in earnest, thunderous. “It’s no use.”

  “Eh?”

  “Nobody else knows the right words. Nobody else can—” the eyes deflect, are pulled grimly back—“follow them up.”

  “And why wouldn’t you eat?”

  Why would you think? Up from under the brows, a sullen, wordless scowl.

  Because you would not come. Because there was no other leverage to bring you.

  Because without you, without some hope of regaining my self, there was no point in life.

  For a moment she savors it. Hostile, truest acknowledgment of a House-head’s skills. Before she fulfils the pledge.

  “When I asked what you knew about Amberlight, I was not looking for such a great secret as—as the things you said. I started to explain why it would not be safe for us to let you go—unless we knew why you were here.”

  A lesser man would exclaim, question. She reads the measure of recovery as he works it through, behind that unblinking stare.

  “So you couldn’t learn anything—except through me, myself.”

  Worked through, indeed.

  “And when I wouldn’t try for anyone else—you brought me here.”

  Terrifyingly far through. Far enough to leave unspoken, And you will go on trying. By whatever means available.

  And because there is no surety my memory is truly lost, if I never remember, you will never let me go.

  It is all there, perilously open, in those black-steel eyes. As open as what she has said about his value, his standing, what his menace must have been. She watches him think that through, and wonders if whatever she bought is worth the price.

  He takes a long breath. Smiles faintly. The man he was has never been more clear.

  “Nothing for nothing,” he says, and jerks her heart halfway through her teeth. “You’re a gambler too.”

  Throwing back the gauntlet of comprehension. If you cannot risk letting me go, neither, with information missing, can you risk my suicide. And if the only way you can get information is to give it, then you will give. You know that I have so little choice. Die in your hands, live in them as you so swiftly showed me, under total restraint. Resign myself. Or take the gamble, play your game, and try to re-win that self. And if I succeed, if I am what you think, the chance of losing me along with what you have already given is a gamble you are also prepared to take.

  Neither has to mention the highest stake: That the threat posed by his presence, the vulnerability of Amberlight, is real.

  Tellurith inclines her head. A duelist’s salute to a fine pass. “I told you—the choice of terms is yours.”

  He sips his wine. Now, for the first time, comes a blade-thin, irony of a smile. “If there was a choice, would I be here?”

  * * * *

  Tellurith carries the caution of that subtle inanity to bed with her: Only a fool would make any other choice; therefore, no choice, for no fool would ever have the choice. When—she can almost see the black eyes slit—did you take me for a fool?

  * * * *

  But it draws a thunderous scowl when she has no time for him next morning, then reports of Shia badgered along with the troublecrew that night. And something perilously near a tantrum, after, with just margin to change for yet another vital Uphill dinner, where she must patch temporary alliance between Jerish and Keranshah over the burning question of freight-drivers’ wages, she bawls through her bedroom door, “Mother blast, you’re not the biggest thing in Amberlight! Wait your turn!”

  Nor is there time for him next day. An untoward duty this time, whose harbinger catapults her upright in the bedclothes, staring into the lampless dark. Not, What? not, Why? Just the imperative, unmistakable: Wake!

  Two hours before sunrise, the bitterest morning watch. Bitter as the word that meets her, stumbling night-robed to the apartment door, and returns her, for another p
air of sleepless hours, to bed.

  When she does reach the site, the evidence is all smoothed away. Noose gone from the ornamented lintel, body laid out, hands folded under the shroud. The mother to greet her in the doorway. Dry-eyed, amid the wreckage of a family’s life.

  A mainstay of the Power-shops, her skill has shaped light-gun, cutter, vehicle panels, and fitted their assemblies for over thirty years. But now her hands are knotted with arthritis. And her only daughter is dead.

  Tellurith ignores the salute of hands clasped to forehead, stepping past to draw her straight into an embrace. To say into her neck, “Veristya. Oh, my dear.”

  The clutch tightens convulsively. Acknowledging a pain they both know is truly shared. It is a long minute before Veristya lifts her head.

  “Well.” The gesture, quiet and concise as are the best power-workers’, takes in the apartment, its ground-floor windows open on the garden, among the choicest in the Power-shop wing. Inherited from her own mother, whose mother lifted them from the clan demesne when she first found “something in the hands.”

  From the inner room come the stifled lamentations of the family men. Around them the chattels of three lifetimes are being mustered; tallied, divided, packed or thrown away. Veristya meets her Head’s eyes with composure, as she says, “We’ll be out in three days.”

  No need to ask, will your kin receive you? They both know that Downhill there is no one left.

  “I never blamed her.” Veristya speaks abruptly, turning as abruptly from the too betraying light. “Right through her twenties, she kept saying, It’ll come. It must. But I didn’t worry. I’d have been happy to see her in any—any G-guild, I’d have gone along.”

  But, the silence adds, she would not believe it. She would not go. And now she is dead and I am crippled and it is all too late.

  “She finally made Quira test her. Just yesterday.”

  Quira is behind Tellurith in the door. Power-shop Head, a frost of grey across her plaits, a frost of grief on her dour, broad, shrewd face.